The front office and surrounding areas have been a buzz of activity these past couple of days with folks ringing the doorbell with great frequency and enthusiastic parishioners or friends coming to claim their prizes won or purchased at the past weekend’s glorious St. Clement Festival and Pig Roast. Whether you won or did not, I pray that last weekend’s fun and adventure, to say nothing of the glorious weather, left you feeling really blessed. “Blessed” is how I felt all through the three days and still feel as I write this. The goodness of so many folks and the happiness reflected on the faces of both old and young—especially our precious children—and all ages in between, touched me deeply. Praise the Lord!
Our whole parish was blessed by the leadership and complete engagement for many months of the Festival Committee: Barb Kalb (chairperson), Keith Geraci, Andy Kalb, Walt St. Clair, Jonathan Stuchell, Pat Stefener, and Joe and Kay Thoman. It’s hard for me to imagine a better group of folks to work with. Coincidentally, as I was doing some research early this week for a whole different project, I came across the following paragraph in the Feb. 4 issue of the 2007 St. Clement Parish bulletin, which was given the header: “Good News.” The paragraph read: “St Clement WILL be having a 2007 Festival thanks to Barb Kalb. Barb has volunteered to be our new chairperson.” Well, ten years later both Barb and the Parish Festival are still going strong!
Needless to say, our St. Clement School students, teachers, staff and parents contributed immensely to the success of the Festival. The kids sold over $5000 worth of grand raffle tickets—even more than was earlier announced. The homeroom baskets appeared to me to be bigger and fuller than ever. The teachers and staff, including the Principal, took care of the food booth the entire weekend. And so many parents volunteered lots of hours helping in the booths and in other ways.
On behalf of our whole parish, I extend a great thank you to the Village of St. Bernard. We are blessed indeed to experience the Village’s generosity, help and support in many, many ways. Most likely there are other groups or individuals I could name here; my not doing so is not from a lack of appreciation or respect for your goodness. Be assured that each person who helped make this Festival among the best ever is very dear to me.
While we celebrate how blessed we are, it’s important to be aware of the many, many folks who are experiencing great distress now because of the ravages of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. This weekend, we will take up a second collection to aid in their recovery. We are doing this in solidarity with Catholic parishes all over the country and so many other churches and organizations. The monies you contribute will be combined with that collected from all of the archdiocesan parishes and sent to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for distribution.
At the 10:30 am Mass this Sunday, we will be commissioning parishioners Kurt Brickweg, Jim Hodapp and Christina Spencer for service on the parish Pastoral Council. We think these good folks for their generous acceptance of this three-year call to service of St. Clement. Congratulations!