You will notice on our parish website that we have revamped our Religious Education Program. We are very happy to announce that our students will gather much more often in Church to worship together at Mass on Monday afternoons/evenings in order to grow in their appreciation of the Eucharist, “the source and summit of our faith.” After Mass, Fathers Rozman and Roth will offer teaching sessions, in the Church, to keep our students up to date with their knowledge of the faith. Additionally, the sixth grade students will be working through the “ALPHA Youth” Program with the invitation to develop a more personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. Similarly, the seventh and eighth grade students will now both be using the “CHOSEN” Program from Ascension Press as they prepare for the Sacrament of Confirmation.
All of our catechists are working diligently in order to provide your child or children with the best Catholic religious education that they can; however, as we all know, the first (and best) catechists are all of you as their parents and guardians. Mr. Mark Rebuck, the Coordinator for Religious Education, looks forward to working with both parents and children as we work together to build disciples for our Lord Jesus Christ through our shared Catholic Faith. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to Mr. Rebuck directly via email, phone or text. It takes a combination of the students, their parents/guardians and the catechists/parish leadership to enable our REP program to bear fruit. We thank all those who are involved in bringing our younger parishioners closer to the heart of the Lord Jesus. Why are we doing this, you might ask? One of the fruits of the past few years is that we, the Parish Senior Leadership Team and the Parish Advisory Council, took the time to pray about, and discuss, how we can help our younger Catholics come to a more meaningful appreciation of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus, as well as what it means to belong to the Catholic Church. Our primary reason for being a parish is to do our utmost in the salvation of souls. We also have been hearing, and experiencing, that young Catholics throughout the United States are leaving the Church in alarmingly high numbers by the time they are teenagers. Too often, Confirmation is viewed as a graduation from our faith, instead of a Sacrament of INITIATION (the BEGINNING, not the end, of the faith journey). We are starting them on a major course for their life, and the question is: Are they just going through the motions in order to check the box on the list of To-Do’s? That is NOT what our Catholic way of life is. So, we are responding with what we hope will be a program that will help our youth grow in their faith and be an even more committed disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Please go to www.stjosephmech.org/religious-education for a full explanation of this year’s program. We remind our high school REP students that the “Chosen” Program will be offered this year on Wednesday evenings; Children’s Liturgy of the Word will continue to be offered online; we also have the capability of offering the Monday REP classes online whenever there is inclement weather, so there is no more need for us to skip classes because of a “snow day.” This year, we have chosen Blessed Carlo Acutis, a teenage saint, as the patron for the REP year. For more information on the amazing influence he has had on the Church, please go to https://carloacutis-en.org If any parishioner would like to join us when we offer Monday afternoon/evening Masses, you are welcome to do so. We just ask that you always check the parish bulletin, as there will be a few weeks when these Masses are not offered, especially when the REP program is on break, or observing a holiday schedule. Please pray for all of our students in the Religious Education, Saint Joseph School and Trinity High School Programs, as well as their parents, teachers and catechists. Blessed Carlo Acutis, pray for us! Saint Joseph, pray for us!