Our Faith Community - NOW!

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St. Francis has returned to all Masses inside. Weekday and weekend Masses are now offered in church. We are seeing growing attendance inside church at all the services. We continue to take precautions to make sure everyone is healthy, such as having ministers of the Eucharist wear masks and cleanse their hands often. Currently you don’t have to register to attend a Mass because we do not have capacity limits. It is such a pleasure to be able to come together in church and receive the Eucharist.

We are a sacramental church!  We have been celebrating so many baptisms in the past months. What a joy to welcome the little ones into our faith community. There have been several weddings in the past months. How wonderful that these couples are including their faith in their decision to marry.  If you have put off a baptism or “church” wedding, give us a call we’d love to talk

We were talking with Fr. Paul Wachdorf about the anointing of the sick that he recently performed. Anointing is available to persons who are dealing with illness. Fr. Paul mentioned that he anointed a person who is expected to live a few more months. It gave the person great comfort to be anointed and also provided a way to talk with family members about wishes when the person dies. Call the parish office if you would like to talk about this wonderful sacrament.

Have you noticed that instead of youth serving as altar servers, you’re seeing deacons doing those duties? For now, we aren’t using youth to altar serve due to health concerns. This may change when the school year starts. The deacons have been at all the Masses to help at the altar. And by the way, we are more than just “big, old” altar servers. We have been doing the setup for Mass because many of our Masses are celebrated by visiting priests. And besides that, it’s just good for the deacons to be available to people before and after Mass.

If you are worried about coming into church and being in a crowd, we are offering an option. At the 11 am Sunday Mass, you can park in the back parking lot, stay in your car, listen to the Mass on your car radio and receive the Eucharist in your car. As you get to the back parking lot, look for directions from our Knights of Columbus. We expect to offer this option for awhile until it is safe for everyone to return to the church building.

It’s been nice to see that several people are coming to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation on Saturdays. At 4 pm, in church, one of our priests is there to offer the sacrament until 4:45 pm. We provide some guides to preparing for the sacrament and copies of the Act of Contrition, in case you forgot. If it’s been a while, the priest is glad to walk you through the process. Come by and take advantage of this powerful sacrament.