Hello to all St. Mary’s parishioners!

I hope everyone is holding out well. Here are a few updates on our parish situation.

We are putting together a cluster of all the parishioners email addresses that we have, in order to communicate more quickly, more effectively with as many parishioners as possible. Unfortunately it’s taking more time than we would have liked. Hopefully, this will be up soon. If you want your email address to be on that list, send an email to Lorna, and she will take care of it.

In the meantime, for news of the parish, please consult on a regular basis our parish website, our Facebook page, our Instagram page, or the parish bulletin, which is available on our webpage.

Very soon I believe, when you go to our website, you will discover that it has been changed. We are crossing over from our current website to what is called a Tilma website. It is a website that was designed specifically for parishes, and that several parishes in the archdiocese have already switched to. People tell me it’s very attractive and user-friendly.

Most of you have heard, I believe, that for the time being, we are not opening the church for the celebration of mass with a congregation. We will continue to monitor the situation, and as soon as we feel that we can re-open the church in a way that is orderly and safe, we will do so. We feel that at the present time, that is just not possible. Even though we are not opening up right now, it’s probably good to start disseminating the following. Whe we do open up, in all certainty, it will be on a basis of a combination of invitations and sign-ups. Parishioners will be allowed into the church for any given mass only if they have either been invited to attend, or have signed up to attend and their sign-up has been confirmed. We need to avoid at all cost the situation of people gathered at the entrance to the church, only to be told they can’t go inside. Please get this message out to as many parishioners as you can think of.

We are well on our way in setting up a phone ministry, to reach out to as many parishioners as possible, to see how they are doing, to see if there is anything we can help them with. But please don’t wait for us. This is something we can all do. Please reach out to the parishioners you know, especially those who, being alone and/or frail, might be in need of a contact. If you discover someone who has a need that you are not in position to meet, call Lorna, at the parish office, and we will do what we can to reach out to those people. Our list of people who have signed up for this ministry is now closed, but we could probably still use people who are prepared to run errands, or provide transportation for people who are unable to get around on their own. If this is something you’re prepared to do, again, please give your name and contact information to Lorna.

In the name of the whole parish, I want to say thank you and God bless you to all who are able to, and are continuing to contribute financially to the parish in this time of need. Thanks to you, and to the federal wage subsidy that we will be receiving until August 29th, we are staying afloat. Again, thank you, and God bless you.

Finally, I repeat, please share all of this information with as many parishioners as you can think of. We need to work together to get the information out there. I’m thinking especially of those people whom we can’t reach because we have no contact information for them. Some of you know who those people are, for example, the people who come from all over the Lower Mainland for the Tagalog mass. It’s virtually impossible for us to reach those people. Please help us by sharing with them everything you are aware of with respect to the parish.

I conclude by urging us all to remain vigilant as we attempt to ease back into “ordinary time” in the liturgical sense, and in the social and economic sense. This is a very critical time. By the grace of God, may we all remain healthy, safe, and well.

 

Fr. Guy