Dear Parish Family,

Happy Thanksgiving week! Remember to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving Day for all the blessings in your life. Gratitude and thanksgiving are remedies for sadness and hopelessness. They keep us grounded firmly in the truth of God's love for us and His grace abiding with us through all life's circumstances. As I like to say, you can't grumble if you're grateful! So be grateful and give thanks to God at all times.

We will celebrate Thanksgiving Day Mass here at St. Patrick's at 8:45 am this Thursday. Start your Thanksgiving Day off the best way possible by hearing God's Word and receiving the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of our gratitude!

 

We celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe this weekend. It is the last week of Ordinary Time before we begin a new liturgical year with the season of Advent. May we seek to glorify Christ our King in all our words and actions.

With the end of the year coming up, it's time to start looking at making a no net cost investment in the Angel Scholarship Fund (ASF). As many of you know from participating in ASF the past few years, when you contribute to ASF your state income taxes are reduced dollar-for-dollar and your contribution supports the Catholic School of your choice for a tuition scholarship for families. Put in even simpler terms, it's like the State of Ohio asking you if you want the taxes you owe to help families choose a Catholic education for their children. Investing is a no-brainer! It doesn't cost you anything since your investment comes back to you in your state income tax return, and your investment funds the future of our Catholic Schools. Here at St. Patrick's, we encourage our parishioners to designate St. Mary School in Chardon as their school of choice for their ASF investment.

 

ASF has been in place for several years now and has been incredibly successful for St. Mary School and throughout our diocese. Through ASF, we have been able to move away from a "discount" model of tuition (where a heavy parish subsidy funds the school deficit) towards a "scholarship" model that is truly representative of the cost to educate. This move towards a scholarship model has helped us increase teacher salaries for recruitment and retention of top talent, maximize the educational value for each student in our school, and lower the St. Mary Parish subsidy so that offertory donations can further the mission of the parish while still investing in the long-term sustainability and growth of Catholic education for our families. 

 

While we still have plenty of time for an ASF investment before filing taxes, I want to put this on the radar for all of our parish families. If you've invested in ASF in the past, remember to do so again this year. If you haven't invested in ASF, please take the first step to explore it. Pick up material in the back of the church, visit https://stmarychardon.org/asf to learn more, and reach out to me or Frank Rihtar ([email protected]) if you want to learn more. 

I am yours in Christ,

Fr. Scott Goodfellow