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When giving thanks, naming names is always dangerous because it is too easy to leave someone off the list who also deserves a great big thanks. So, I want to use this space to give general thanks to everyone who helped with Totus Tuus, the Corpus Christi Procession, and the Anniversaries Mass and Reception.
I start with Totus Tuus week. Thanks to everyone who had a hand in the following: overall leadership team; forms needed to be created, marketing and advertisements made and strategically placed around the campus; completion of online and paper forms and given to the right people; housing and hospitality including a host family for the women and getting the St Patrick Rectory ready; food organizers of breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner; the food was amazing according to the Totus Tuus teams; supervisors in the Commons of the School the whole time there were students at Totus Tuus; getting the chapel ready for daily Mass, which was not a normal daily mass schedule for us; preparing items for Holy Hours; the adorers who usually come to Holy Hour at those times were asked to come to main church for their Holy Hour and share it with students; preparing and leading the campers in and through the sacrament of reconciliation; there was a whole team of people behind the scenes who just quietly kept the Totus Tuus and the parish teams working together very well; parents who registered your children for the week and for allowing your teenagers to volunteer during the day; teenagers who worked during the day and to all young people who took advantage of this opportunity and to the adults who worked together from all three chapels of one parish to give the young people a good experience. We received excellent reviews in all areas from our Totus Tuus team. It was a team effort of a cast of dozens to make this happen. For that I am grateful!

Then there was this past Sunday! Thank you to the stewards who made the Corpus Christi procession amazing again this year: overall leadership team, securing the permissions for the procession and prayer stop on the lawn of the courthouse; setting up and removing the street barriers; musicians leading us in song, printing the song sheets, getting the sound system working and traveling with us on the streets; tiki torches filled with fluid, getting materials over to St Patrick including the canopy, tiki torches, incense, thurible, crucifix, albs, fire sticks, vestments, and more; recruiters of ministers; ministers and volunteers who said yes and following through; first communicants and confirmandi and their coordinators for asking them to attend and those who attended; setting up the prayer space at the courthouse, setting up Sacred Heart chapel and waiting to greet the procession, taking pictures, making sure we were in the center of the street and moving at the right pace during the procession; those who purchased the water and cookies and set up the Parish Center and hosted the small reception after the Procession; putting everything away after the procession and reception; cleaning the two chapels and the Parish Center. It was another beautiful Eucharistic Procession! Thank you!

To those who helped with the Jubilee anniversary Mass! Making the invitation; Facebook and media outlet notices; setting up for several more altar servers and priests in the sanctuary; for my family, the priests and religious in the reserved sections of the pews, to those who set up for and cleaned up after Mass; musicians for their extra practices including the prelude and sequence; for those who took pictures and distributed them. for the amazing singing that came from the choir and entire congregation; lectors, six altar servers, the parish deacon community taking up the collection and bringing up the gifts. Thank you to everyone who had a role in the Mass of Jubilee and who participated by attending the Mass. Thanks, too, for the sacrifice of love for those who could not attend the Mass because they were in the school preparing for the reception… What a reception!

For the months of work the organizers spent preparing for the amazing reception! What a display of food and drink! And, so many compliments on how great the flavor and variety! For those who brought a dish or ordered food; for those who set up tables, chairs, decorated the tables, ordered and purchased supplies including the three cakes; for the hospitality ministers who were behind scenes taking care of personal needs for those in need; for the use of all of the spaces needed in the school; for rearranging, cleaning up before and after the reception and putting everything away throughout the whole first level of school, parish center and St Patrick basement; for creating memory tables for the three of us and then taking it all to where it needed to go; for photography; for our emcee, for those who orchestrated the order of events for the emcee, for those who gave short talks and for those who watched the doors entering the school. What an honor and blessing for us in how you as parish showed hospitality to all! These four events are stewardship in action. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!