Confirmation Tomorrow
We have Confirmations tomorrow in the parish. The bishop will be sending one of his Episcopal Vicars, Msgr. Gene Reebeck. I am sure it is going to be a beautiful ceremony. It will also end our Religious Education program for the current year.
One might think that with the summer things would begin to get slower, but I think we are going to have a very busy summer here at St. Theresa parish. Fr. Mick, the pastor, met with the Diocese last week, and they told us to go to bid on our new building. I am not sure if I have written about this on the blog, so here is a summary. St. Theresa’s was established I think in the 1930s. Originally the parishioners had Mass in a pool hall. Eventually they bought some property and built a church, right on Main Street in Tuckerton. That church was expanded once, but the Catholic population in the area continued to grow. They had a mission on Mystic Island, but the parish continued to grow. About three years ago, after much planning and saving, the parish built a new church on a new campus; about 2 miles away. It is now in Little Egg Harbor, not the borough of Tuckerton, but it is a much bigger property and church. The church is in the round and rather modern looking, but it has some beautiful features.
The old church property was sold, and the parish offices were moved into a former doctor’s office in a professional building; across from the old church so 2 miles from the new. It is a very small space; the pastor and I do not even have our own office (we work out of our residence; a house in a neighborhood about half way between the offices and the new church). We really do not have anyplace to hold religious education classes; so we use the gathering space, the sacristy, the church, etc. Wherever we can make due. We have little meeting space. In other words we have a despite need for another building. The new campus has plenty of land, so we are planning on building a Faith Formation Center and Parish Offices. While a very efficient design, it will still cost about $2.7 million (we hope the bids, given the economy, will come in below that). Our parishioners have been great; they have pledged about $1.5 million already. The Diocese knows how much we need it, so they told us that we are going to build it. The bids will be complete in about 3 weeks. We will open them with the Diocesan officials, and select one. Then we will know how much of a loan from a bank we will need. We cannot say for sure when we will break ground but we hope it will be soon.
In the summer we also have a parish carnival, which I am looking forward to. I am sure it will be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
I really plan to start writing in this blog more regularly. I do preach this weekend, so my homily will be here, as will be my homily for the Ascension. I then leave for a very quick trip to North Carolina for my niece’s HS graduation.
I do want to restart my virtual School of Community on the book by Msgr. Giussani; Is It Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1: Faith. I left off at the assembly for chapter two; which is rather long and disjointed. I might just pick up at Chapter 3.
