These 3 young people received the Sacrament of Confirmation on Tuesday, October 27th. Please welcome them as adult members of our community! Michael Bautch, Sarah Kraemer and Jonathan Gathje
“What do you wish for your child?”
Will you ever forget that moment when you held your child in your arms? That little brand-new, never-to-be-duplicated person-in-progress so small in your own hands. What an amazing miracle! Have you ever held anything as beautiful since?
It was while you were still in that same spirit of awe that the Church asked, What do you wish for this child? That’s the first question asked of parents and godparents as they come to the baptismal font. It’s a loaded question.
Of course, you wish health and safety for your child. You want your child to be spared all distress and harm in their lifetime. But we’re realistic enough to know how unlikely that is. Every life holds its share of difficulties, threats and harms. Even the joys and good in our lives often come accompanied by pain and disruption.
And so we look to a deeper longer within ourselves to answer the question: What do you wish for this child? By bringing our child to be baptized we declare our deepest wish — that this child will live not only as a child of this world, but as beloved child of God. We declare our hope that our child will live sustained by the truth that no matter what happens in this life, he or she will be cradled in the palm of God’s hand.
The rituals of Baptism enact both our fear and our faith. Our children are plunged into the waters to symbolize the dangers that life can hold. We face head-on our biggest fears as we hold this fragile life in our hands as the water is poured. Then the child is dressed in a white garment and sealed in the Spirit of God. Godparents handed a candle aglow with a flame from the Easter candle — the light of Christ.
On the day of Baptism, we bring our fears and hopes to the waters — and hope emerges triumphant.
[From At Home With the Word by Tom McGrath, August-September 1999. Reprinted with permission of Claretian Publications.]
In the waters of Baptism, we enter into the life of God – a God who has entered our life in the person of Jesus. God has loved us, cried with us, endured our pain and fear, experienced our despair and anger. God our Creator and Father is present in all our tears and laughter, in all our struggles and triumphs, in all our joys and grief. Today’s feast of Jesus’ Baptism invites us to embrace again the Spirit of God that first embraced us in our own Baptisms and the Baptisms of our children. Let that Spirit continue to lead and nudge us along as we “seek” to realize the goodness and meaning of that precious moment when God claimed us his own.
Hailey Stommes, Brady Mergen and Lily Wills made their First Holy Communion on Saturday, June 27th after a long delay due to COVID-19. Please continue to pray for these students and their families that God will continue to Bless them and they continue to grow in love for God.
The Bishop has requested each parish to implement safety precautions and they must be approved by the Bishop before we can have public Masses again. The list has been submitted to the Bishop after discussion at the Parish Council meeting on May 11th. Here is a list of some things you may see:
* Pews will be marked where you can sit in family groups. Ushers will seat you.
* There will be hand sanitizer you will be asked to use before & after Mass
* There will be no missellettes for the time being
* There will be no Mass Servers or Extraordinary Ministers
* Ushers will tell you when to go to communion or leave the Church
* The Church will be sanitized after Mass
* We ask that you practice social distancing when entering, leaving, and during communion procession
* We ask that you not gather at the back of Church after Mass
Dave & Brook made a video of them praying the Stations of the Cross. Please click on the link to pray along with them!