Hello St. Paul Families,
I pray you are all doing well and were able to enjoy the weather the past couple days. You are probably wondering why on God’s green earth would Fr. Mark would turn his article over to me? I wondered the same thing. So I took advantage of the opportunity because those of you that have come to know me over the last 5 years I love to talk!!!! I don’t think I went a year in school without ever having a teacher mark exercises self-control box, I was a pleasure to have in the class but I just talked a tad much. Anyway, I will try to keep this on point. We thought it would be a good idea to give a brief overview of how we plan on proceeding with the next month and the special liturgies that are scheduled. I have them listed below in order with dates and times and toward the end, I will briefly explain our plan for Christmas.
Please keep in mind that we will try to do everything in our power to execute this plan as described but we will make adjustments when needed according to the daily updated CDC and State of Illinois guidelines. We will keep you updated on any changes. Please pray that we get a handle on this virus so that we may be able to celebrate Christmas with our loved ones.
The sign-up link for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be open to sign up on November 30th at 8:00 am. You may sign up by logging into Eventbrite or call the Parish Office to reserve your seats, the seats will be assigned in order to accommodate as many families and guests as we can. Christmas will be a “ticketed” event only and there will not be any walk-in spaces available. Once we create your reservation, you will receive a confirmation as you normally do, but we ask for you to save it so that just in case you have your proof. For those that call you will need to provide us with an email or stop in the parish office to pick up your “ticket”. We can also fax it, mail it, send St. Paul Lucy with the sleigh; we will get it to you somehow some way.
Sign-ups for Christmas will end on December 22nd at 12:00 noon, so we have enough time to assign seating, yes we will have assigned seating for Christmas. We do plan to use the balcony seating and we would like to reserve the balcony for larger families if possible. Please mark on your reservation if you are willing to be seated in the balcony, this will help immensely. We will have 76 spots available for families at each mass. We will constantly check the sign-ups and keep close tabs on each mass and we will add seats as they become available. As you can see, we will celebrate a total of 6 masses for Christmas which means that we will need an abundance of volunteers for each mass. We will need greeters, ushers, EM’s and most importantly sanitizers. Please contact the Parish Office if you are willing to serve in any of these roles.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us, we will do all we can to be accommodating during these times. As of today, it is business as usual but nobody can determine what the future holds for us, we will keep you informed of all changes as we receive updates from the Bishop’s office.
In closing, I would just like to say thank you to all of you for your patience, kindness and care. Our families here at St. Paul are amazing, alive and overflowing with faith. We truly are blessed and we will come through this shining brighter than ever before. We will continue to keep you all in our prayers!
Peace and God Bless,
Michele Kmety