ENRICH YOUR FAITH, STRENGTHEN YOUR FAITH 

LAY WITNESS TALK

Good Afternoon! My name is Norris Cantrelle. I am grateful for the privilege of visiting with you today. You’ll be happy to know that my presentation should only take about six minutes. Many of you received a letter this week from St. Hilary containing a brochure entitled “Enrich Your Faith, Strengthen Your Church” together with a commitment card. If you did not receive this mailing, it means that you have not officially registered as a parishioner of St. Hilary. We have extra copies of the brochure and commitment cards at the end of each pew and in the back of the church. All adults are encouraged to fill out the commitment card so we can have your names and contact information. Couples should provide contact information for both of you. The commitment cards have a provision for your telephone number and email address. Your contact information will enable us to provide you with important and sometimes urgent communications quickly and without cost to St. Hilary. Our ability to effectively communicate with you will draw us closer as a loving, caring church community. Please take time to carefully review the brochure. The brochure has a list of services St. Hilary provides and many of its ministries. Over the years I have been privileged to serve as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, a Lector, on the Pastoral Council, the Finance Council, the Lay Support Committee for the Diaconate Internship of Father Paul Birdsall, the OSV Increased Offertory Giving Program, the St. Hilary Parish Implementation Committee for Strategic Planning, and the St. Hilary Legacy Committee. In all humility, I recite this litany not to impress but only to encourage you to come forward and offer yourself in service to the Lord and his church. I assure you that any time I offered to serve, I always received more than I ever gave. Being in the presence of such generous and joyful men and women who love the Lord and serve St. Hilary, always inspired me to be a better person. St. Hilary is blessed with an abundance of people who do amazing work transforming the lives of the people they serve. They are true missionary disciples. Now, I would like to challenge some of you. Have you thought about how you could serve others? What gifts and talents have you received that Jesus is asking you to share with us? Ask Jesus to show you what he wants. Listen to his voice. As you well know, Jesus usually speaks to us through others, through his disciples, like you and me. Actually, most of the time, he speaks to us through Father PJ who’ll ask us to do things we might not otherwise want to do unless we get a personal invitation. The brochure also includes a beautiful letter from Father PJ. Please read it. Father reminds us that “through prayer and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are able to further our mission ‘engaging others as missionary disciples’ to love God and neighbor as Jesus taught.” He explains, “Stewardship is about doing the work of Christ, engaging our many resources to further the ministry and mission of Jesus Christ.” The Parish Brochure provides a summary of our latest Statement of Income and Expenses, showing that we ended the year with our first surplus in seven years. Our deficits of recent years have resulted primarily from our need to deal with long-delayed major repairs and essential improvements to our parish facilities, which thankfully are now in good condition. Because of your generosity, St. Hilary is not in debt and we are fortunate to have substantial savings on deposit. We pledge to continue this prudent stewardship of all of our resources. Having managed to pay our bills and fixing up our buildings, we want to do more. As Father PJ states in his letter in the Parish Brochure, “We now also want to focus on the “new evangelization” with programs and services to welcome and grow new disciples and engage others to meet the varying needs of our community.” He invites you to “Enrich Your Faith, Strengthen Your Church.” Please review and fill out the Commitment Card. If you are interested in electronic giving, please check that provision on the Commitment Card. If a significant number of you are interested in electronic giving, we will explore options to make this available to you. The Commitment Card also provides helpful suggestions for calculating your weekly sacrificial offering. In closing, the first and most important request we ask of you is to prayerfully consider sharing your gifts, your time and talents, in service to the Lord and St. Hilary, helping each other along the way to our eternal and heavenly home living always as we are called to be missionary disciples to our neighbors and to the world. To achieve our mission as a community of believers, we secondly ask you to also re-examine your stewardship of your treasure and with the help of God consider increasing your weekly sacrificial financial offering, so that it will be an offering that truly reflects your financial ability to give. Thank you for your kind attention to my remarks. Thank you for your warm and loving support throughout the years. I am grateful and proud to be a member of our St. Hilary Parish family.