St. Anastasia Roman Catholic Church
Services Directory

The Christian Service Department, in conjunction with our St. Joe’s Workshop ministry, is providing St. Anastasia the opportunity for all of us to support each other’s dignity and financial upkeep by publishing a directory of registered parishioners who are available for hire.  Some examples of professionals we would want to publish information for are: painters, plumbers, landscapers, CPAs, stylists, spiritual directors, pet trainers, daycare providers, and electricians.  (Those are just a few!)  This guide will be updated bi-monthly on our website.  We will also have some paper copies available, updated once a month.

If you are interested in participating as a service provider,  visit this page.  You will see a the form you can fill out and submit online; it’s called “Professional Services Information Submission.” Or, if you wish, you may pick up a form in the parish office – near the fax machine – and turn it in to my mailbox.

Those wishing to hire a parishioner will soon see, on the same website page, the listing of all our available professionals.  Caveat emptor, of course.

In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI urges us to remember that we all need to be concerned with doing and supporting each other’s decent work.  He says, “What is meant by the word “decent” in regard to work? It means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labor; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one’s roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living.”  Let us strive together to provide such decency within our St. Anastasia family.

We have some good news… as related to you in past articles, we have two outstanding loans with the Archdiocese of Detroit that go back to the construction of the Pastoral Center, Rectory and Music Room. One of those loans with a current balance of $37,535.10 and a 5.5% interest rate will be paid off as of 3/31/10.  We will start paying against the second and larger loan with a balance of $1,170,769.00 and an interest rate of 5% as of June 30th of this year. Our plan is to pay $41,000 per fiscal quarter which will give us a payoff in 7.1 years.

The crowd that shouted “Hosanna!” also called out “Crucify him!”

The gospel according to Luke has been called the gospel of prayer, the gospel of women and the gospel of compassion because it stops to pay attention to these themes and the stories about them.

On His way to Golgotha, Jesus stops to acknowledge the grief of the women of Jerusalem and their insight that His death also signals the failure of the holy city to avert coming disaster and destruction.

It is hard to believe that today is Palm Sunday and we are at the beginning of Holy Week.  As we know this is the holiest week of the year. This is the time to take great joy in the fact that Jesus Christ died so that we can live. He did not die so that we can all live in a generic way but specifically for each and every one of us to live a life with Him for all eternity. During this week we have many opportunities to take part in the tridiuum. The tridiuum is the Mass of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Thursday), Good Friday Service (Tre Ore service), and Holy Saturday or the vigil Mass. Holy Week ends with Mass on Easter Sunday. I encourage everyone to take part in as many events as you can. See the schedule under Recent News on the Home Page.

Well, it appears spring has sprung and with it the usual winter clean-up and spring start-up projects and costs. We have already begun to accept bids for our lawn service and expect to have that contract done in the next couple of weeks. I’ll advise you of the cost when we get that far. In the past we have out-sourced the annual spring clean-up but this year have decided to do it in-house with our part time maintenance staff consisting of Dan Rochon (attending Oakland University) and Zach Houseman (Athens HS); two students that come in mid-afternoon during the week and on Sundays. They do a nice job for us and we’re extremely happy and pleased to have them. We’ve been utilizing them since the fall and it’s worked out well for both them and us.  We also have Tim Dunning coming in to help out Bill Scally on Monday and Saturday mornings with set-ups and miscellaneous jobs. I think you all know Tim…just a plain good guy that has served St. Anastasia and you parishioners in various capacities.

Our Lenten journey is coming to an end. In the past weeks we have encountered our own darkness of the soul. We have stood in the light of our Transfiguration and asked for faith. We have been blessed by God’s patience as he gives us another chance to follow his path. As prodigal children we have decided to turn back and return home once again. 

I have been very blessed, over the last 5 years, to teach our faith to a set of 22 amazing young people.  Of course I have not had all 22 of them in classes and Scripture studies every time, but I still think of each one of them as “mine.” They are currently in eighth grade.  Recently, some of “my kids” opened my eyes to an unsettling fact.

My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:

The reports out of Washington indicate this coming week will be climactic in the ongoing debate over health care reform.  In stating their position on this issue, the U.S. bishops have identified four key elements necessary to insist upon in the proposed legislation:

* A truly universal health policy with respect for human life and dignity.  (To be specific, the expansion of health care should not involve the expansion of abortion funding and of polices forcing everyone to pay for abortions.  It is very important that the language in the House-passed bill preventing abortion funding, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, be incorporated in its essential features as a part of any final bill.The provisions on abortion funding in the current un-amended Senate health care bill are seriously deficient and unacceptable.)

Please come to the church for the 11 AM blessing.

The tradition of blessing Easter baskets celebrates the joy of the Resurrection.  The Easter meal breaks the six weeks of Lenten fasting with the sharing of blessed food on Easter morning.  The foods represent fare abstained from during Lent: meat, butter, rich breads and more.

Our parish will hold Divine Mercy devotions on Sunday, April 11^th, from 1:30-4:30 pm. We will offer Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Rosary, and Benediction preceding our regular 5:00pm Sunday Mass.