St. Anastasia Roman Catholic Church
Deacon Ron’s Desk

 The new format for our Men’s Fellowship meetings has been a great sucess!  Each month more men are coming to celebrate Mass, to enjoy fellowship with each other and to enhance our faith.

At our next meeting on Saturday, December 11, we have a former Muslim, Abdu Murry, who has embraced Christianity, coming to speak to us.  Abdu has been on many radio and television shows discussing apologetics, Christianity and other world views.  He has also spoken to many church and youth groups.  I know his insights will be informative and hopefully lead to a great discussion. We will start with Mass at 7 a.m., have a light breakfast and then meet until 9 a.m.  Come out and join us!

We’ve already made some progress against our CSA shortfall and we sincerely appreciate that…hopefully we can address 100% of the shortage in the next couple of weeks.  Some of you may have been confused regarding an article in the Michigan Catholic last week that indicated St. Anastasia had achieved their CSA goal….we did…for last year….the shortfall is for this year’s annual appeal. Sorry if that caused confusion for any of you, I have to admit we had to take a second look at the article as well. We are also continuing to see a short fall in our weekly donations, something that we had hoped to see turn around by now, but that’s not been the case. Perhaps some of you are holding out for the Christmas collection which I want to remind must be made in the Christmas envelope or in an envelope clearly marked as “Christmas”. As in the past, this collection is exempt from the 7% Archdiocesan assessment, but it is counted in the total income of the parish on computing next year’s CSA pledge amount. As we did last year, we’ll be able to offer those of you on automated collections to also do so for Christmas, that form can be found below.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING. OUR SOULS ARE GETTING FAT!?!? – Advent begins today. We are on a journey. What the heck does it mean to be an “Advent person?” We can easily get caught up in the shopping of “Thanksgiving Thursday” (A new term I just learned. It means folks don’t wait until Friday to shop, they get into the craziness of buying on the holiday), “Black Friday”, and “Cyber Monday”.  Are cash and presents the only thing we do to ready ourselves for Christmas? No way. Being an “Advent person” is not something we do alone. We journey together with all of the Catholic Christian community. From the awesome liturgical opportunities building toward the birth of Christ, to being part of a people who focus on the call that The Christ has given to us in Baptism. The holiness of the season is summarized in the ancient Advent hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which is based upon the seven Great “O” Antiphons. (These “O” Antiphons are recited or sung before at Evening Prayer from December 17 through 23.)   “. . . and ransom captive   Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here . . . “This line of the hymn calls forth the emotions of a community yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world. This desire was clearly expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt crying in their severe oppression. In many ways we are slaves today. We are Israel, needing ransom from a culture that has our hearts and minds captured in its grasp. We are crying out for deliverance from the problems of the world and our places entombed in these tribulations. As God has delivered people throughout human history, we hope to be delivered in our time. We are a people of waiting and the Messiah, i.e. Jesus, is our hope.

It’s occurred to me that while we point out many issues regarding our donations vs. our expenses, it may behoove us to put some hard fast numbers to that.  Please see this weeks bulletin (page 5 of the November 21, 2010 Good News) for a 5 year trend analysis for St. Anastasia covering the period of FY 06/07 to FYBUDGET 10/11.  (The Good News is available on our web site weekly; please see the home page.)

A GOODA TIMA WASA HADDA BY ALLA – Fr. Davidson was smiling last Saturday evening as we celebrated our Italian dinner.  It was a great showing of folks (in fact we could not fit in any more), the food was tasty, the Junior High kids who served were joyful in their giving, the musical numbers were on pitch and a lot of fun, and many folks experienced the hospitality and community of St. Anastasia for the first time.  Thank you one and all.  Whether you ate, drank, sang, served, cooked, cleaned, or decorated, you helped make the night to be what it was: fun and faith filled.

Memorial Ornaments will be for sale in the narthex after all Masses the weekend of December 4/5. Please be sure to buy an ornament for your loved one. The ornaments will hang on the Christmas trees in Church until January. One name per ornament, cost of $3 each. For questions please contact Kim Houseman by E-Mail.

If you are registered for a table as a hostess please be sure to turn in your table list with names, by Monday, 11/22/10 to Kim Houseman in the Parish office.

Please join us on Tuesday, November 23 at 7pm for the Family Thanksgiving Mass.  Please bring a non perishable food item for the St. Jude’s pantry.  The Praise and Worship service begins at 6:00.  All are welcome!

For the first time in about 3 months we have hit the weekly budget goal, actually exceeded it by $85.00. We hope this trend continues as taken on a year-to-date basis as we are still $21,902.46 under our projected income budget numbers. To add to bad news, we need to let you know that we were contacted by the Archdiocese of Detroit this past week and we have come up short on our CSA assessment by $26,513.41. As you may recall our assessment for the CSA for this year was $245,657.00; our pledges to date are $219,143.59 leaving the shortfall indicated above. The shortfall will most likely be slightly higher as a small percentage of the pledged amounts do not materialize or come in at a reduced rate. The long and short of it is if we don’t somehow make up the shortfall, St. Anastasia will be forced to write a check to the AOD for the $26,513.41…that approximately represents our budgeted weekly amount for Sunday donations…one week without any income. Extrapolate that to your own personal budgets and you can imagine the difficulty that will cause.

BEARER OF BAD TIDINGS? – As my Mom and Dad remind me when they get our bulletin: “You didn’t make budget again.” As disheartening as this is to hear once, I have been hearing it every week for about three months. We have fallen almost $22,000 behind to date. I kept telling myself we would make it up as the year progressed. I was able to hang onto my hope until I received a letter this week from the Archdiocese. It informed me that the active phase of the 2010 Catholic Services Appeal has been completed. Our target this year was $245,657. The amount we pledged was $219,143.59. Parishes not meeting their CSA target are required to assume the shortfall from parish funds. That means that we have to pay the $26,513.41 from our operating budget. In other words, we are now $48,415.60 behind in our budget to date. Something’s got to give, especially when 2/3^rd’s of the parish did not. Yep, you read that right. 1/3^rd of the parish is carrying the weight of the CSA target.