Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I'm excited to use my weekly correspondence with you to highlight two special times in the life of our Church and our community.
First, we are concluding our annual observance of Catholic Schools Week! Our students and teachers are concluding a festive week of surprises, raffles, snacks, spirit days and a hard-fought Spelling Bee. (Congratulations to Stephanie Velez and Miley Murphy, who will represent our school extremely well at the city level!) Especially in the midst of a challenging year marked by social distancing and virtual learning, this has been a great moment to celebrate God's many blessings. We're so grateful for the patience and support of our parents, the unrelenting creativity and innovation of our teachers, and the optimism of our students. But this isn't just introspective: our school community assembled donations this week for a number of local organizations who do great things in our region. We're eager to share the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with others.
If you know somebody who is thinking of sending their children to Sacred Heart for the 2021-22 school year, please encourage them to act quickly. We have already received a number of applications for next year, and at this point, we anticipate keeping the same social distancing restrictions, which limits the number of children we can accept for each class. Our Coordinator of Development and Enrollment, Casey Scarce, is always eager to speak to interested families.
To learn more about what's going on at Sacred Heart Catholic School, please take a look at some terrific videos on our school's Facebook page, especially the virtual school tour given on Monday by Casey; the "state of school address" shared by our principal, Kira Kania, back in December; the special Catholic Schools Week video we shared at Masses last weekend; and more.
Second, we are about to embark on National Marriage Week! This annual observance concludes, appropriately, on February 14, Valentine's Day. Of course, it's always worth remembering that the flimsy emotion of love trumpeted by society is very different from the sacrificial love that St. Valentine, and all our saints, modeled for us. Love isn't always easy, which we recognize just by glimpsing at the cross. But if you have ever loved or been loved, I would hope you would say that it's definitely worth it!
I'm tremendously grateful to members of the Legion of Mary for developing some special opportunities for married couples in our parish this week. They are providing the flowers on the weekend of February 13-14 (the last flowers we see before Lent begins!) in honor of this beautiful occasion. Also, they are coordinating a special novena which begins tonight. The English version will be broadcast nightly on our parish Facebook page from February 5 to 14 at 7pm. Our special invitees to this novena are the many married couples in our parish, but all are invited to gather online to pray.
And, finally, as a reminder, please join us either in person or online for our "Play-by-Play Masses" this weekend! Much like in the Super Bowl, where expert commentators give explanations to help viewers understand what's happening, our own Joyce Bustamante and Homero Ramirez Leon will provide insights during the Mass as to what we're doing and why we're doing it. It's always important to learn more about why and how we worship our God. See you there!
God bless you!