You amaze me!

As a faith community you continue to amaze me.  There are more numbers who are coming into the building to celebrate Mass in person.  There are also more folks who are coming to the parking lot and sharing in our worship via their radio.  There are more and more groups of folks, not all connected to the church, who are discovering creative ways to meet and share time with one another.  And through it all you continue to give generously to the parish via our CPL program.  Commitment to Parish Life is not just getting involved in what goes on inside our building.  It is also getting more involved in the communities we life and work in.  Canon Law tells priests they are responsible for ALL the people who live in the territory, not just who sign up for your parish.  That is about 70,000 in Maple Grove, to say nothing of the many other zip codes of those who belong here.  I don’t expect you to meet with folks from Blaine to Chanhassen, from St. Paul to Maple Lake.  It is enough to just meet and share good news with those you see day after day.  When the early church was growing they were telling people the Good News.  Not of freedom from oppression by the Romans but freedom to choose to identify yourself as a child of God.  The story of turn the other cheek, walk two miles instead of one, and give them your cloak as well as your coat, were meant to help people see that how they identified themselves made all the difference in the world.  You could choose to see yourself enslaved and oppressed or you could choose to see you were special in God’s eye.  I hear so many stories of how you have chosen to see yourselves as bearers of Good News to others.  I am deeply grateful for your work.  Fr. Mike