Thanksgiving Harvest 2021 #5- updates. See more photos!

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THANKSGIVING HARVEST 2021

Special Edition #5

October 15, 2021

See Fr Joseph's Harvest Appeal Letter ( bottom section)

Paul Werner, parishioner of over 40 years, welcomes you to our Thanksgiving Harvest!

Paul Werner 2GMT20211015 022525 Recording 640x360

Below is an invitation from our Reverend Sister of our Day: Rev. Sr Mary Andrea Okafor, DMMM.

Dianne Pascall, welcomes you to our Thanksgiving Harvest!

See photos of recent Family Harvest Offering next section

Preparing our Hearts for our Thanksgiving Harvest !

It is not just about showing up on Nov. 14 to enjoy our grand family gathering of the year.

We start by preparing our hearts to celebrate God's mercy and thank Him for all his blessings on us and our families.

We reflect on the hand of God in our lives and give witness to this, not only of our salvation but of His daily blessings to us.

By this life of thanksgiving we continue the cycle of receiving God’s blessings and favor. Our theme in this year's harvest is Thanksgiving Harvest for Divine Restoration. (Isaiah 60:1-2).

We have many things to be grateful - our families, our jobs, our shelter.. and what about our the place of worship where the Lord has put us?

Where can we find such beautiful liturgy and a joyful praying community? Where are you being fed with the powerful & uncompromising message of the gospel of Christ?

St Antoninus Church!

You shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. (Deuteronomy 26:2).

To support our Thanksgiving Harvest 2021 is to thank our Lord God for all His blessings and favors- and continued trust in His providence. He will never be outdone in His generosity!

St Antoninus needs serious help from each one of us to continue with the Lord's mission in our Church.

This Harvest will be mainly used for much needed infrastructure repairs and improvements on our aging buildings.

Our fundraising goal for this year's Thanksgiving Harvest is $150,000.

We can do this, Church, but we must do it together!.

If each one of us reached out to 5-10 among our friends & extended family and asked them for combined donations of $800 (including our own) , we can easily come up with this goal.

There are several offering options for us.

Sign up for a Family Harvest Offering. We have 4 more Sundays for this leading up to this main event. During these Sundays of Family Harvest Offering, we invite our extended families & friends to come and process before the altar for blessings on themselves and their offering. Sign up now! (More on Family Harvest Offering in section below.)

Submit names of potential sponsors to the Harvest Team. The Harvest Publicity Committee will take care of contacting your leads. Donation cards & flyers are available at the Church entrance.

Let us know if you would also like a solicitation kit containing Fr Joseph's appeal letter, flyers, sponsor page and other materials for this fundraiser.

Please pray with your parish for a fruitful Thanksgiving Harvest 2021! Pray too for our chair lady, Maureen Ogbuehi and the whole Harvest Team for this year.

See Fr Joseph's digitized appeal letter below.

For all contributions, please go below for the online donation links and mailing address. Or click right here.

Thank you and God bless you!

OUR HARVEST GOAL is $150,000

So far, as of today, (Oct 15) the combined contribution from the Sunday Family Harvest Offerings, online & mailed in donations (not including pledges) is $9,418. Thank you!

With love & thanksgiving,

from our families....

The Family Harvest Offering is the time when a family, individual or a group comes before the Lord's altar to make an offering of their lives and their gifts to the Lord. This takes place during Mass on any of the Sundays leading up to the big celebration on November 14.

Last Sunday, October 10, there were 2 joyful Family Harvest Offerings: The family of Chief Dike & Maureen Ogbuehi

and the family of Chief Valentine & Jacinta Aniebue.

The family of Chief Dike & Maureen Ogbuehi

Family of Chief Valentine & Jacinta Aniebue

After Holy Mass, the celebration continued with lunch and fellowship in the church hall hosted by both families.

How to participate in the Family Harvest Offering

Choose your offering day among the remaining 4 Sundays Note availability as of today. We can have up to 4 families or groups per Sunday.

This Sunday

SUN, OCT 17

(1) Lawrence & Joy Anyanwu

(2) Emmanuel & Lovelyn Okafor

SUN, OCT 24

(1) Modupe Ojo

(2) Divine Adoration Prayer Community

SUN, OCT 31

(1) Brendan & Elizabeth Igwe

(2) Real Love Ministries

SUN, NOV 7

(1) Filipino Harvest Offering

Please call the office 973-623-0258 or 551-689-0107 if you would like to schedule your Family Harvest.

In support of our Thanksgiving Harvest 2021:

Come to the Filipino Harvest Offering!

You are invited to a FILIPINO LUNCH & LINE DANCING FUNDRAISER on November 7, right after our Sunday Mass. Ticket is only $10 for this event.

This year 2021 marks 500 years of Catholicism in the Philippines and the Filipino community would like to celebrate their thanksgiving with everyone for this momentous event.

Tickets will be on sale after each Mass. All proceeds will go to the parish Thanksgiving Harvest 2021.

Below is a sample of a "Filipino Line Dance" led by a group dance instructors. The fun is in following the dance moves.

This will be similar to the one we will be enjoying after Mass on Sunday, November 7 as part of our Filipino Harvest Offering. Tickets are being sold at only $10 and this includes a delicious spread of Filipino food.

Space is limited! Get your tickets from Lillian (201-993-7215) or Teresa (551-689-0107).

Support our Thanksgiving Harvest 2021!

An appeal from Fr Joseph

Thanksgiving Harvest 2021 & the Mission of St Antoninus Church

Dear St. Antoninus family & friends:

Jesus pleaded with his disciples “The Harvest is great but the laborers are few. Pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into the vineyard” (Luke 10:2). Here at St Antoninus Church we want to be all about bringing in that “harvest of souls.”

Would you join us in this mission through supporting our 2021 Thanksgiving Harvest celebration on Sunday, November 14th?

Holy Mass begins at 10:00 am with a Parade of Nations. Following the Mass, we will have our Thanksgiving Harvest luncheon and festivities.

(continued below )

(Fr Joseph's letter continues:)

This celebration is our primary annual fundraiser for vital Infrastructure repairs and improvements to continue the Lord’s mission here at St Antoninus.

Our Parish Mission

These times we live in are marked by so much fear and confusion, distrust and disunity in our families, our Church, our nation and in the entire world. People of all ages, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds are experiencing tremendous isolation, loneliness and insecurity. Yet, there is a remedy and a cure for everything that ails our deeply wounded and darkened humanity.

That remedy is Jesus! Only in a personal intimate encounter with the One who has conquered sin and all the misery it brings, including death itself, can our broken hearts and relationships be healed.

We don’t have all the answers, but we know our Lord does. Here at St A’s we have experienced

the love of God and new life in the Holy Spirit in a special way through the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Therefore, we seek to provide an environment in which that initial life-changing encounter can happen, and then deepen through opportunities to grow and mature in the faith.

Our primary mission at St A’s is evangelization – to

make disciples who will make disciples. This involves

various ministries and opportunities for prayer, but

clearly our greatest treasure here is our Sunday 10am

Mass, in which we taste the reality of the Eucharist

when heaven comes to earth and time ceases.

The legacy continues

St Antoninus Church has an amazing history. It was

founded in 1875 by the Dominican Friars who served here for 100 years. The Parish was devastated by the racial riots of the late 1960’s and left with only a handful of parishioners. Yet, in the 1970’s the parish was “born again” in the power of the Holy Spirit and through the care of the parish priest - Fr. Jim Ferry and a group of people whose common experience was a life-changing encounter with the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit - a kind of “personal Pentecost”. They were willing to leave the comfort of the suburbs and come to Newark to celebrate & share this gift with others.

Most of those re-founding members of the parish have gone home to the Lord, including Fr Jim, Fr Paul and so many holy priests, religious, and lay people, including our beloved matriarch, Eleanor “Momma” Carey, who passed on to the Lord last year. However, they left us a powerful legacy of faith, openness to the Holy Spirit and selfless service and sacrifice. In the midst of the messiness of the inner city, God has continued to raise up some great saints and pillars in the church.

These ordinary and extraordinary saints were a great inspiration for me, as I discerned my call to the priesthood while being a parishioner here at St A’s in the 80’s. Little did I know then that 30 years later, I would become the pastor of this very special parish.

A little parish that packs a big punch

We are blessed to have many ministries and devotions here besides our Sunday Mass: daily Mass & outdoor benediction, daily online Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration all day, 5 days a week, two weekly prayer meetings, two weekly scripture studies, monthly Healing Masses, Life in the Spirit Seminars twice a year, prayer conferences twice a year, and numerous activities involving our youth, young adults and family ministries, not to mention various outreach missions in the neighborhood and beyond.

We do all this on a shoe-string budget. I dare to say that due to the generous service of God’s people here, there is likely no active parish in this entire Archdiocese that runs on a tighter budget than does St Antoninus Church.

I thank the Lord that for the past year and a half, our office staff sacrificially gave up their salaries and worked as volunteers during most of this pandemic. Yet, throughout this time, we did not skip a beat in our ministries, both in person and online. We have been so blessed! And in the spirit of gratitude for all the blessings which the Lord continues to pour out upon us, and trusting that with the Lord there is always more, we believe that with God’s help we will continue to expand our outreach in the coming months and years.

Our appeal

We enjoy the blessing of having beautiful lower and upper church structures. The foundation stones of each were respectively laid in 1911 and 1940 (in the midst of the great depression).

It is understandable that they now need some TLC, particularly in terms of electrical and HVAC repairs and upgrades. The same inefficient and dilapidated heating system functions for the upper and lower church, and other than two recently installed and very temporary and inadequate window units in the hall, we do not have and never had AC in either location.

Funds raised from the last 3 Thanksgiving Harvest appeals ($ 172,391) have been reserved for the upgrade of our church electrical supply and the gradual replacement of our HVAC system in church. We have been forced to move slowly on these projects due in part to the pandemic. However, by God’s grace, we were still able to accomplish the following:

We built a catwalk and platform for the new electric panels 30 feet above the floor of the boiler room (to prevent damage from humidity and potential flooding); we rebuilt the entire stairs (25 steps) leading down to that boiler room, we installed the electric panels for the 800 Amp electric upgrade (awaiting the final hook up by the city) and we completed the architectural plans for a new HVAC system in the lower church / parish hall area.

Below, photos of the catwalk & 2 new electrical panels

There is still so much to be done and this year’s Thanksgiving Harvest is vital to that work. We ask you the parishioners and friends of St Antoninus Church to help us to exceed all previous years in fundraising. Our goal this year is $150,000. That is a significant amount but if everyone does what they can, this will be possible.

We are reserving 70% of all funds raised through Thanksgiving Harvest 2021 exclusively for

infrastructure work on the church. Some of this will be spent immediately on roof repairs and some will be put aside for on-going and future electrical and HVAC work. 20% will be used for the general running of the parish and 10% will be for charity.

Please consider being a Major Sponsor or Benefactor in anticipation of this year’s Thanksgiving Harvest on November 14, 2021 or simply give as generously as your means allow. Please extend this invitation to your family and friends, your business associates and any organizations you represent or belong to.

Through your prayers and financial support you share in our mission of building a future for generations yet to come. May our good God, the Lord of the Harvest, abundantly reward your generosity and hard work in Christ Jesus Our Lord.

In Jesus thru Mary (and Joseph),

Fr Joseph