Dear Friends in Christ,
Here are a few updates from the parish for the week of May 30, 2021.
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1) Memorial Day Mass: One of the realities of our "post-COVID" world is rethinking how we used to do things. It dawned on me this morning that with a large number of our community that watches the 7 AM daily mass online and since we didn't announce this adequately, it would be best to still have the 7 AM mass at our parish on Memorial Day.
SO, contrary to what I announced at the Saturday Masses, we WILL have a 7 AM mass on Memorial Day. If you are part of the regular 7 AM Mass community, please call your friends and tell them that we will still have the 7 AM mass on Monday.
For those who are interested, there is also a 9 AM mass at Our Lady Star of the Sea as we had previously announced.
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2) Festival THANKS! First of all, THANKS to all of you who helped support this year’s mini-festival. What a response! With all of the ticket sales and donations, we brought in just over $190,000. GOD BLESS YOU! SJA is the BEST!
In the next week or two, we will publish the FULL list of 100% “Club Members” and all the financial data.
Congrats to our winners:
$10,000: Fr. Rich
$5,000: Gloria Coatney
$2,500: George Thomas
$1,000: Jack Greer
100% Winners: Nicole McCoy, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Allemon, Dr. Prakash and Dr. Marivac Massand, Nancy Voss, and Jill Gutierrez.
To watch the drawing, click on the image below:
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I’m grateful to:
Festival Chairs: Dina Ciaffone, Patti Kesner, and Emily Radatz.
Ticket Chairs: Anne Radatz and Peggy Venditti.
Food Truck Chair: Mary Garofalo.
Security: Ryan Schroerlucke.
Clean-Up: Rachel Gerard, Annabella Dillenbeck and Cam Vitale.
Signs: Chuck Moore and Charlie Moore of Chuck Moore Signs.
Raffle Ticket Sponsors: A.H. Peters Funeral Home, Autumn Heating and Cooling, Gilbert’s Pro Hardware, Pointe Lamp and Lighting, and Zeppelin Cleaning Services.
North American Midway Entertainment: Blake Huston.
Food Trucks: BBQ Daddy, Tim’s Good Food Grill, Cosmic Burrito, Grillwich Tot Shop, Batter Up Waffle, Kona Ice, Deutschtroit, Raquel’s Cucina, Estia Greek Street Food, Aruba Freeze, Grampy’s Clam Shack, and Full Rack BBQ.
I’m also grateful to the Parish Nurses and Ascension Health for all the work done with the Vaccine Clinic that coincided with the Festival. In total, we had 140 vaccinated at our site.
And talk about God watching over us. It didn’t start raining until 6:01 PM on Sunday, a minute after we closed down.
Thank you God! AMEN!
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3) Save a Life - Contact Congress to SAVE the Hyde Amendment |
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WHAT
Congress is trying to force Americans to pay for abortion.
HOW
The Hyde Amendment and similar laws have protected taxpayers from funding elective abortion for 45 years. Now, powerful members of Congress want to take away these laws that both Democrats and Republicans have supported for nearly half a century.
WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT THESE PROTECTIONS?
Billions of taxpayer dollars could be used to pay for abortion.
TAKE ACTION
Sign the petition to Congress!
PETITION
Save Hyde. Save lives.
Taxpayer dollars should NOT pay for abortion.
The majority of Americans agree with this - both Democrats and Republicans.
For 45 years, the Hyde amendment and similar laws have protected taxpayers from being forced to pay for elective abortion.
The Hyde amendment has been signed into law every year since 1976, whether the Congress and the White House were led by Republicans or Democrats.
The Hyde Amendment has saved nearly 2.5 million babies and mothers in difficult circumstances from the tragedy of abortion.
An overwhelming majority of Americans, including low-income women and women of color who are most impacted by it, support the Hyde Amendment and laws that prevent government-funded abortion.
We urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to ensure that the Hyde Amendment and all similar life-saving appropriations riders remain in place during the 117th Congress and beyond.
Do not force Americans to subsidize the taking of innocent life. Oppose any bill, including any appropriations bill, that expands taxpayer funding of abortion.
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4) Electronics Recycling Event for Holy Innocents / St. Barnabas Parish - SATURDAY |
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5) PRAY: The Story of Fr. Patrick Peyton |
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6) Motor City Makeover:
Join the Archdiocese of Detroit and Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan as we participate in the 2021 Motor City Makeover. We will begin in the church at St. Suzanne / Our Lady Gate of Heaven at 8:00 am for prayer and then send people out to work in the District 7 community (surrounding the parish). Please bring a sack lunch and a lawn chair and eat a picnic with us in the St. Suzanne parking lot following the service project!
We will collect trash and do minor landscaping on public property. Supplies will be provided-- but an e-mail will go out to registered volunteers requesting any additional tools we may need for the day that you could bring.
ALL PARTICIPANTS UNDER 18 must attend with a parent/legal guardian or an official chaperone (a parish-endorsed representative who is Safe Environments trained and has in-hand signed AOD-endorsed permission slips indicating that they are the supervisor of the event). The AOD and CCSEM will not be able to provide chaperones as part of this event.
Date: 06/12/2021 (Sat.)
Time: 8:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Location: Start at St. Suzanne / Our Lady Gate of Heaven
9357 Westwood St, Detroit, MI 48228
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7) This Sunday's Readings - Sunday, May 30, 2021 |
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8) Grow+Go for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity |
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Grow+Go, content is designed to help you understand what it means to be an evangelizing disciple of Christ. Using the Sunday Scriptures as the basis for reflection, Grow+Go offers insight into how we can all more fully GROW as disciples and then GO evangelize, fulfilling Christ's Great Commission to "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:19) The concept behind the weekly series is to make discipleship and evangelization simple, concrete, and relatable.
Click on the button or image below to download a PDF copy of this Sunday's Grow+Go.
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9) Sunday Reflection by Jeff Cavins: |
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In this week’s Encountering the Word reflection for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Jeff Cavins discusses how baptized Christians are children of the one true God, and he shares a little bit about the mystery of the Trinity. |
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10) Stimulus Check 3 Gift to SJA: With each of the Stimulus Checks, many in the parish have called inquiring if there was a family that could use the help. The answer is YES ... your parish family!
As was mentioned a few weeks ago, the first Saturday of March would have been our annual School Gala, the 15th Annual Gala. But because of COVID, the Gala couldn't take place. That annual fundraising nets approximately $100,00 per year. Then given the decline in Sunday offertory and Christmas collections because of the reduced number of people coming to Church, the income we rely on to carry out our many great works has been on the decline. So, we created, and are widely publicizing, the Stimulus Check 3 Gift to SJA. I hope you can be a part of this little project and fundraiser.
I realize not everyone can afford to give part or all of their stimulus check, but to those who can, I would ask that you consider this easy gift to the parish.
Checks can be written to SJA with a memo: Stimulus Check 3 Gift. You can also donate electronically by clicking on the button below.
Thanks for your ongoing and generous support of SJA!
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11) Giving to SJA: I'm truly grateful for all of your support of SJA during this pandemic. Your support means so much. The increase in electronic giving has been tremendous. Giving electronically, whether on a one-time or recurring basis is pretty simple. For more information on online giving, please click on the following button.
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12) This Week's Edition of TALLer Tales |
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Annual Festival Stress Test: Our annual SJA Festival often brings with it several “stress tests!” For me, the “stress tests” often involve some electrical or technology issue. Unfortunately, the problems don’t usually repeat themselves, so there is never a clear-cut pattern or a quick tried and true solution to whatever situation we may be facing.
You may not know this, but we print all of the raffle tickets in-house. We buy the paper stock perforated to our specifications, so all we have to do is print them. Having watched for many years what we have to do for the State of Michigan to track the raffle tickets, I decided to automate the process a bit many years ago. Using a combination of Excel charts and Word documents, I figured we could assign a beginning ticket number to each family and then create the ten tickets based on that beginning ticket number. With this method, we then account for every ticket given or mailed out.
A few years ago, knowing we were tracking the tickets going out, I decided it was time to track all of the tickets being returned. Having this data would allow us to run a ton of statistics based on those returns. This would also help us automate our 100% listing at the end of the Festival. Having seen some other charity raffle tickets with barcodes, I decided it was time to up the ante and apply barcodes to our tickets to easily record every returned ticket. All we would have to do is scan every single incoming ticket.
After doing some research, I learned a lot about barcodes. I had NO CLUE how many barcode standards existed. This meant I had to be very accurate in my work because if I got the barcode wrong or used a different barcode standard on our ticket scanners, I would be in trouble. Everything had to match up, or it wasn’t going to work.
We’ve used barcodes on the tickets now for three years. Because I usually have lots of time and like to work weeks and months in advance, I have time to test and retest my systems. WRONG. This is Church people, and things get done at the 9th hour! Since last year’s system worked, I used last year’s work as a template, made some changes, and printed away. After all, if it worked last year, it was going to work this year.
Shortly after the tickets were printed, stuffed, and mailed, I went looking for the two barcode scanners we’ve used the past two years. Unfortunately, they were nowhere to be found. So, of course, I had EVERYONE looking for them. Of course, everyone kept asking if the scanners were “lost” in my office. We spent a week looking for these scanners. Then, we did what everyone would do, blame the guy who just left (Father John). We thought that maybe he accidentally took them when he packed up to go to St. Daniel’s last June. Highly unlikely, but we had to blame someone. Sorry, Father John!
With the ticket scanners lost, I decided to buy a new one. Based on my Amazon purchase history, I was able to find the manufacturer of the barcode scanners we lost (or Father John took). The scanner arrived a few days later. With the new scanner in hand, I got my Excel chart up and running. I created a few test raffle packets to ensure all was in working order (something that should have happened before I printed all the tickets). As I was scanning, I noticed an issue. A few of the tickets returned some odd numbers that didn’t match what was on the ticket. My heart sank. What did I do wrong? Suddenly, I was trying to figure out how to tell our Ticket Chairs they would have to enter all of this data manually. Gulp. It didn’t make sense. Then, I saw a pattern. All of the tickets scanned okay except for the top left ticket of every packet. I checked and rechecked my formulas and merge codes, and everything was correct. But the first ticket and sixth ticket returned an odd number that didn’t make sense. I was starting to sweat big time at this point. I was now in hyper-drive because they were waiting to start scanning the incoming tickets so we could get things rolling for the early bird drawing. I then did what most people do, turn to Dr. Google. After some research, I decided to narrow down the standards being used on the new barcode scanner. After narrowing the scanner to only the standard I used on the ticket, it started to read the barcodes accurately. I was breathing a sigh of relief. Scanning some 16,000 tickets was one thing. Manually entering them was another thing. That would not have been a good conversation and would have been one stress test I would have failed big time! But I corrected the problem, and all was fine. These stress tests are … stressful! Maybe next year, I’ll test my systems and work ahead of time. Fat chance! But then again, these yearly “stress tests” keep me young and on my toes!
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Enjoy the week. Know of my prayers!
In Christ,
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13) Tire Tracks in the d’Arc |
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“Tails” of Trails: Last week I got around to replacing the computer on my bike. The new one doesn’t rattle, which is probably a good sign. My work was being observed by an inquisitive and sociable squirrel. This bike, as I’ve mentioned before, has travelled the country with me.
I took it to Omaha when I was there for 10 weeks for a seminary summer program. The program began with an 8-day silent retreat. I would go out every day, often down to the river-front. One day I stopped in a park by the river. When I got back on the bike, I knew it was in the wrong gear, so it was tough peddling uphill, but no problem, I’d get going, I thought. But it was much harder than expected. I looked down and I had a flat tire. So I jumped off the bike and then realized I had not one flat tire, but two! So I pushed the bike two miles uphill back to Creighton University, where I was staying. The next day, by permission of my spiritual director (silent retreat, remember!), I took the bike to a repair shop, realizing that I’d walked past it on my way home the day before, not knowing the city. The bike shop found thorns in both tires that they said they see a lot in the area. Those were the first of 4 flats that summer. A deacon on the same program picked up 13 flats that summer!
This could not happen the next summer—I was headed to Irene, South Dakota for a 30 day silent retreat, in the middle of nowhere. There were no bike shops there! So I bought Kevlar tire-liners—the same product race cars are made of. But I also took 7 spare inner tubes. The Kevlar worked. Seven years later I still have 7 spare tubes.
But that summer, my bike certainly had its share of adventures. I doubt this new bike computer will see the top speed I reached on that month in South Dakota. Again, I would try to go out riding most days, but it was a very different landscape to Omaha. In Omaha, I recall being told that if, on a silent retreat, you find yourself talking to squirrels, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. I feel like we were being set-up for failure, because in South Dakota, trees are the rarity. Open spaces are the order of the day and in an entire month, I saw a total of one squirrel!
A lot of these rides were along long, straight and almost flat roads. But… one day I discovered there was a hill…. A long hill… a really steep hill. This, in South Dakota, was an unusually exciting find. And I determined to see how fast I could go downhill. (I’m a middle child). The turn I wanted to take was half-way down the hill, but I decided I would go to the bottom and turn around and ride back uphill to the turn and continue on my route.
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And so I reached the top of the hill and put my head down, crouched as low as I could and started peddling faster. The bike took off down the hill. I was heading into the wind and the sound was deafening as it rushed by. Then the front of the bike started to shake and wobble. This was a mountain bike and these tires were not designed for this kind of speed. Don’t try this at home! I was young and foolish. But the computer topped out at a little over 38 mph. I have the feeling I won’t be seeing that in St. Clair Shores.
Having survived the land-speed record attempt, I turned around and headed back uphill to take the dirt road half-way up.
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As I made the turn, a HUGE dog came bounding toward me. This road was flat, and I didn’t look at the computer this time, but I may have reached a higher speed this time, escaping the dog! He eventually got tired of the chase and gave up. Another 5 miles up the road I came to my next planned turn. But, there was a barrier across the end of the road, with a big, “Road Closed” sign on it. “Hmmm,” I thought, “that’s not convenient.” Down the road I could see some construction work. “But surely it can’t apply to bikes? I can go around on the grass verge.”
It was a terrible dirt road, rutted by vehicles and the dry weather. But I slowly rode toward the construction. A few hundred yards before it was a house and as I rode by, a HUGE, LOUD, ANGRY dog bounded across the yard and chased me down. I set off peddling as fast as possible and as I approached the construction, my heart sank. Yes, that sign meant “closed to bikes too!” The construction went all the way to the barded-wire fence outside the verge. I stopped, got off the bike, turned around and waited to be mauled. The dog came bounding up…. and stopped, stood there, and looked at me. Behind me was a 12 ft deep trench across the road, where a drain was being installed. Deciding that just maybe I wasn't going to be eaten, I squeezed through the barbed-wire fence, dragging my bike, clambered down the hole, through the water and out the side into a field. Now I was stuck on the wrong side of a creek. In the middle was a sandbar, so I looked around for something to bridge the gap. Of course, very few trees, but I did find a dead piece of wood. I set it down across the water and step on it. It broke in half and I fell in the muddy creek with my bike. I dragged the bike out of the mud onto the sandbar. Half way! Same problem. Repeat. The only resource I had was the same broken piece of wood. So I managed to bridge the gap to the other side. “Avoid tall grass because of ticks,” they said. “Ha!” I said. “Too late,” as I staggered up the grassy hill to reach the road, now on the other side of the construction. I reached the road, climbing through the barbed-wire again, only to be greeted by the same dog! Somehow, while I was doing my best MacGyver impersonation, the dog had quietly made his own way across the gap. For the next 5 miles, that dog refused to leave me, literally trying to run between my wheels, almost knocking me off. I got so annoyed that I stopped and started yelling at the dog to leave. I scared him and he ran into a field and hid behind some tall grass. There was a silent pause, then he popped his head up over the grass to see if I was still watching him. I got back on the bike and set-off back to the retreat house, the dog still under my wheels. One mile from home, he left. By then I wanted him to follow me all the way home as I was curious as to what the reaction of the two retreat house dogs would be.
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You are in my prayers this week!
Fr. Andrew
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14) Words on the Word: May 30, 2021 - A Promising Path
Local folks of a certain age will recall when the Detroit riverfront paled in comparison to the waterfronts of other cities.
Chicago’s lakefront. No way.
Grand Rapids? Not even close.
And so on. But there were numerous headlines a few weeks ago noting that the last portion of Detroit’s celebrated east Riverwalk project has now begun. That section, for which ground was broken on the old Uniroyal site by the Belle Isle bridge, is the last piece left on the 3.5 mile greenway between there and the Renaissance Center.
It will replace, in the words of one of the officials who participated in the groundbreaking, “a desolate, underutilized part of the city” with a beautiful, navigable, friendly walkway/bicycle path.
All of which is great news for the generations of Detroiters to come.
It’s a promise, in many ways, of better things on the horizon as we stand at the precipice of positive progress.
And, in its own small way, it’s not unlike where Israel found itself, as a people, as they prepared to enter the promised land of Canaan, leaving behind a difficult past and looking ahead to the promise of tomorrow.
For our part, we just need to remember the source of goodness, and keep God at the forefront.
“This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, and there is no other,” we hear in today’s first reading from the book of Deuteronomy. More to it, then, comes this:
“You must keep his statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today, that you and your children may prosper, and that you may have long life on the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you forever.”
© 2021, Words on the Word
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This week's LIVE Stream
Schedule at St. Joan of Arc:
Monday (May 31):
7:00 AM - Mass
Tuesday (June 1):
7:00 AM - Mass
8:30 AM - School Mass (Grades 5-8)
Wednesday (June 2):
7:00 AM - Mass
8:30 AM - School Mass (Grades 1-4)
Thursday (June 3):
7:00 AM - Mass
7:00 PM - Holy Hour (Praise and Worship Music)
Friday (June 4):
7:00 AM - Mass
6:30 PM - 8th Grade Mass and Graduation
Saturday (June 5):
12:30 PM - Baptism of Evelyn Mastay
1:30 PM - Baptism of Corenzo Gino
2:30 PM - Baptism of Maggie Louise Karenko
4:00 PM - Mass
6:00 PM - Mass
Sunday (June 6):
8:00 AM - Mass
10:00 AM - Mass
12:00 PM - Mass
1:30 PM - Baptism of Grant Vovos
Please note that all of our masses and events can be accessed through the ARCHIVE section of our Live stream page if you are not able to watch it live!
We also have our own ROKU Channel. Search for "CATHOLIC" in the ROKU channel store, and you will find SJA's channel. A Fire TV Channel is also available.
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Click on the image below
to download a copy of our
Bulletin for May 30, 2021
The Solemnity of Pentecost
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Weekly bulletin: Sending the bulletin has been greatly received by so many people. IF you are getting the bulletin online and would prefer that it not be mailed to your home, please click on the button below to be removed from the mailing list.
At the same time, if you are NOT getting the bulletin and would prefer to get it, click on the same button and ask to be ADDED to the list.
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Read the latest from the DETROIT CATHOLIC
Click on the image below.
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