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Available to you at the church entrances are the Little Blue Books for the Advent and Christmas seasons, which contain a short thought for each day of the season. Please take a book home with you, and feel free to take one for a shut-in or neighbor who cannot come to church.

Next weekend we do indeed begin the holy season of Advent. You will find within this bulletin an Advent schedule for our parishes. I would suggest that you put this schedule on your refrigerator or bulletin board so that you can participate in our liturgical celebrations and activities during this relatively short season.

By now you should have received the mailing for our annual census/block collection (if you have not received it, please call the rectory and let us know). Please remember that the census information is very important in order for us to update our records and to keep our data accurate. The block collection is equally important for us, since it is one of the single largest sources of income we receive in the course of the year.

Next Sunday, November 13, at the 9:15 Mass, our Confirmation candidates will officially begin their journey to this great sacrament with the Rite of Acceptance as candidates for Confirmation.

Father Lane’s primary assignment is with us here Saint Timothy’s and Saint Bartholomew’s. Being chaplain at Little Flower one day a week is a secondary assignment for Father, where he will primarily be celebrating Mass and being a priestly presence. I

At all the Masses at Saint Timothy’s this weekend, we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the dedication of the upper church. This took place on Saturday, October 25, 1952, when Bishop George L. Leech, the-then Bishop of Harrisburg, consecrated the church in the presence of Archbishop John F. O’Hara, the-then Archbishop of Philadelphia.

I am happy to inform you that I have hired Mr. Vince DiFrancesco as our new Director of Music Ministries. Vince is actually the music director at Immaculate Conception, Jenkintown, as well, and will be primarily working there.

On October 4th, we celebrate the great Saint Francis of Assisi, who received the mandate from the Lord to “rebuild my Church,” and is such a great role-model for us today as we strive to rebuild and reshape the Church in the image of Jesus in our present day.

God wants to share his great love and his life with us through this sacrament. It is not meant to judge us or to belittle us or to make us feel uncomfortable. The purposes of this sacrament are to bestow on us God’s mercy, to forgive our sins, and to reconcile us to God’s love.

I remind you that Catholic Charities is no longer a second collection in church, like so many other special collections we take throughout the year. It is now a direct mail campaign that basically lasts for a whole year. You should have received a mailing from the Archdiocesan Catholic Charities office, containing a campaign brochure and a gift/pledge card, along with an envelope within which you would be able to send your gift or pledge.

We pray for God’s blessing on the students of our Blessed Trinity School, who begin their new academic year this Tuesday, as well as on our wonderful faculty, who have been working so hard in these past weeks to make sure everything is in readiness for the children’s return.

On Saturday, August 20th, we will be celebrating the Feast of Saint Bartholomew (his feast day is actually August 24th, but we are moving it to Saturday the 20th so that everyone can join in the celebration). Our 4:00 Saturday evening Mass at Saint Bartholomew on this day will be a Solemn Mass, and will be followed by a celebration in the hall with hamburgers, hot dogs, and other goodies.

As I’ve mentioned to you more than once in the past few months, the Archdiocese is looking upon us as two separate parishes, joined together as one Catholic community in the lower Northeast.

I remind you that I would like to begin again the taking up of the collection at the weekend Masses by ushers, as opposed to everyone placing their donation in the baskets which are positioned in various points in the church. In order to do this, of course, we need ushers, especially since our faithful crew of ushers has been depleted for various reasons. I would ask any man or woman of high school age or older who may be interested in being an usher at any of our weekend Masses, to please call the rectory or see me before or after Mass

We are participating in this fundraiser with several other Catholic parishes and institutions. We are asking for a donation of $25 for each raffle ticket, and are asking you to please consider purchasing the raffle tickets for yourself, or selling them to family members, neighbors, or friends. The purchaser keeps the right half of the ticket.

Independence Day also is a bold reminder to us that the freedom we enjoy is very tenuous; in an instant it can be taken away, and in many ways the fundamental values we hold so dear have already been compromised by those working in our very midst to break down our society and to tear apart the freedom of which we are so proud.

Father Lane arrived this past Monday, and is already getting into parish life here at Saint Timothy’s. As I have told him many times, this is a perfect place for a newly ordained to learn how to be a priest. In a time when very few parishes anywhere, including in this Archdiocese, have assistant pastors, it is quite an honor for us, as a parish community, to  have Father Lane assigned to us (you will recall that we haven’t had an assistant since Father Monahan left us in the winter of 2018).

We are happy to welcome home to Saint Timothy this weekend Father John O’Farrell. Father John, a life-long parishioner of our parish, was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood on Saturday, June 4th by Bishop Michael Burbidge, the Bishop of Arlington, Virginia, in the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More in Arlington.

We celebrate this weekend the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. This great feast, in which we honor God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is a reminder to us of the awesome mystery of our God, a mystery which, in many ways, is too mind-boggling for us to understand with our mere human brains.

It is with a great measure of gratitude, as well as much sadness, that I announce to you the retirement of our Blessed Trinity principal, Ms. Linda Milewski. Ms. Milewski’s retirement brings to a close a long and fruitful career in Catholic education.