“God created each of us out of love, in order that we might reflect that same Divine Love in our own lives. Our Lord Jesus intended that our faith be lived in community, encouraging one another on our pilgrimage towards our heavenly homeland. The Catholic Church should be our family, our spiritual refuge, and our spiritual home. It is here that we grow individually and together as a community to deliver on the Mission of the Catholic Church to bring all people to a relationship with Christ.”
If the above paragraph is vaguely familiar to you, that’s because it comes from the opening lines of the St. Louis de Montfort 2022-2024 Pastorate Vision Plan we announced at the outset of 2022. We set a plethora of audacious goals, and with your help we accomplished several of them. But we are not done yet. The coming year promises to be filled with incredible graced moments for people to encounter Christ in a profound way and opportunities to witness to our faith in our broader community. But we will need each of you to make that happen. Again, this year I humbly ask for your generous financial support to help grow our Catholic Faith and meet the needs of our parish family.
Our parish has two separate, but equally important renewal financial campaigns/goals:
1. Parish Support (pledge form) - I invite you to express your pledge to help us continue to grow our parish liturgy, formation, outreach, campus, and school. We are one year into our Pastorate Vision Plan and your support helps us reach our goals in the areas of Mission, Community and Witness. On the back side, you will see examples of what has been accomplished so far...but we have so much more to do. With this letter and pledge card, I am humbly asking for your support of our parish efforts to bring more people to Christ.
2. Diocesan Support (CMA pledge card) - The CMA (Catholic Ministries Appeal) is our way to support the overall work of the local church. These funds support our Seminarians education (such as Dcn. Jordan Boone who worked on our campus last summer and is being ordained this summer). These funds support a variety of things from the routine operations and the ongoing support of our clergy or at our Retreat Center in Tipton (which hosted our CRHP, Confirmation, SLDM Silent Retreats to name a few) or through Campus Ministries at the colleges in our diocese. Our Parish Vision Plan came out of a Diocesan wide effort to strengthen our Catholic Faith in Central Indiana. You will receive the CMA pledge card in the mail from our Diocesan offices. Please discern this part of your offering with an open heart. Eliminating our past history of shortfalls will allow us to expand existing programs here at SLDM and/or explore new ones.
The SLDM parish staff and I remain focused on our Parish Vision Plan and will repeat how I concluded my message in this plan last year; “We invite you to join us on this journey over the next three years… In order for us to live our mission to Love God, Make Disciples, and Serve Christ in the World we need each of you. Let’s go…”
Under the Mercy,
Father Haan