Fr. Chuck’s Column, May 3, 2020

I hope that all of you reading this are tuning in to the presentation on the proposed Development Project of our parish, school, and rectory that is scheduled for May 3. There are some exciting developments! A lot of work by many people, and not a little money, have gone into getting this project to this point.
But of course, it is not the only thing going on around here. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we are doing church online. Our wor-ship space, as beautiful as it is, was not designed as a film studio. Due to a lot of hard work by several people, all ably led by Fr Rich Andre (whose engineering background has served us all well!) we have been able to pull off live-streaming Mass. This past week he assembled a team of experts qualified to teach us and to help us get to a much better broadcast.
This fits in perfectly with our planned renovation of the interior of the church. Remember that from the Encountering Christ Cam-paign? We wanted to use our parish portion of the moneys you donated to the Encountering Christ Campaign to replace our fail-ing sound system, to upgrade our lighting, and possibly to bring cool air up to the choir loft. We also want to add an attractive wall and door across the entrance of the St. Mary Chapel, so that it could be a quieter place for people to pray when we are gathering for Mass, and be used for small prayer groups. We have already had the addition of the statues of Sts. Mary of Magdala and Phoe-be and we want better lighting on them too.
Doing the interior renovation work requires moving the pews around and a lot of disruption inside. What better time to do this than when no one is in the church? While we wish we had all of you physically present, now is the time to do this disruptive interi-or work. It almost a gift from heaven! Well, that may be overstat-ing it somewhat, but it is a time for working in the church.
Doing all the work we want is close to $600,000. We have most of that on hand, thanks to the generosity of many people, both from the Encountering Christ Campaign and other sources. THANK YOU!!!
So we are starting the interior renovation, even while we are working on the larger development project. It is never dull here at St. Austin Parish!