After months of intensive preparation, we are now celebrating the official “kickoff” of Holy Cross’ Building Our Community, Blessing Our Future capital campaign! In the next week, every family in the Holy Cross community will receive a packet of information, which includes a financial request and instructions on how to invest in the future of Holy Cross Church & School.
For those who are wondering: what is the Building Our Community, Blessing Our Future campaign? Here in our parish, we strive to promote a welcoming environment through hospitality, fostering engagement, and enhancing community. To meet these goals, we need a fully accessible multipurpose facility large enough to host community-wide gatherings. This campaign is an opportunity for all of us to contribute to the building of the new Holy Cross Community Center. This is not a parish or a school campaign, this is a community campaign. The plan for this new facility has been created for the benefit of everyone associated with Holy Cross today, tomorrow, and for many years to come.
Every family will be asked to consider a specific commitment to the campaign over a three-year pledge period. We have gone through an exhaustive process to determine an appropriate request for each family. That said, in some cases, our request may be too high. In some cases, it may be too low. It is not an expectation. It is an invitation – and the starting point for your personal discernment. Ultimately we will gratefully receive whatever gifts you may provide. Please reflect and pray before you make your decision. Thank you. And thank God.
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This Sunday’s Gospel (John 4, 5-42) is rich and multi-layered in meaning and symbols. For example, the place where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman is important. He meets her – not in a temple, not on a holy mountain – but at the town well, in the middle of an ordinary day, as she is going about her ordinary chores. She is not praying – much less is she looking for the Messiah! She is just getting water for herself and her thirsty family.
Is meeting Jesus much different for us? Well, we do go to church on Sundays looking for Jesus, hoping to hear His voice in the Word of Scripture, and hungry for the life He shares with us in the Eucharist. We set aside an hour each week, just for this. But in between Sundays, we will have 167 more hours to search for Him … and Jesus will have 167 more hours to search for us – and meet us in the middle of our ordinary days, in the midst of our ordinary lives and work.
To ponder this week: Jesus took the Samaritan woman by surprise. Who knows how many times this past week He took us by surprise? Who knows how many times in the week ahead of us He will take us by surprise? How many times this coming week will Jesus approach us: looking for a way to meet us; asking us for something, engaging with us, and looking for a way to change our hearts?
