How Beautiful, Our Spacious Skies

Words by Sister Miriam Therese Winter
Adapted from "America the Beautiful" by Katherine Lee Bates, 1893
Music by Samuel A. Ward, 1882

How beautiful, our spacious skies,
our amber waves of grain;
Our purple mountains as they rise
above the fruitful plain.
America! America! God’s gracious gifts abound,
And more and more we’re grateful for
life’s bounty all around.

Indigenous and immigrant,
our daughters and our sons:
O may we never rest content
till all are truly one.
America! America! God grant that we may be
A sisterhood and brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

How beautiful, sincere lament,
the wisdom born of tears,

How beautiful, two continents
and islands in the sea
That dream of peace, nonviolence,
all people living free.
Americas! Americas! God grant that we may be
A hemisphere where people here all live in harmony.

Used with permission. © Medical Mission Sisters, 1993

Parish Town Hall Meeting
By Ann McEntee

Last Week, I reported on the Town Hall Meeting held on Sunday, June 12. Today I am continuing that report. The members of the Parish Pastoral Council reviewed the priorities the parish had chosen a year ago and the accomplishments on those priorities. We also reported on the objectives for this coming year in the area of Communication.

At the Town Hall meeting, we also heard the ideas, comments, and suggestions from parishioners.

This week, as we mentioned we are reporting on this year's objectives of the Parish Pastoral Council for Youth Ministry and Young Adult Ministry.  Next week we will tell you about the reports on Lay Leadership and Stewardship.

Youth Ministry was reported on by Olga Rodriguez:

Budget Impact:

• Hire a part-time youth coordinator as part of the youth coordinators team by July 2006. This person must be fluent in Spanish. This person will specifically target our Spanish speaking youth. This coordinator will collaborate with the current youth coordinators and aim to serve as a model for the new Spanish speaking youth. This person will lead the youth with the intention to be a spiritual guide and group leader. This person will also integrate the Hispanic Spanish-speaking youth with the other youth groups so as to have collaboration between the groups. This person will be responsible for developing a plan to achieve the objective of communicating in this collaboration. Details will be worked out later.

No budget implications:

• Collaborate with and inform the Spanish speaking community about the current activities of the youth groups by December 2005
• Invite the current youth coordinators to announce details of recent and planned activities of the youth groups in the Spanish Masses by December 2005
• By September 2005, three months into the planned program, meet with the youth coordinators to evaluate the youth group collaboration effort.

Young Adult Ministry reported by Mike Navarro:

The Vision:

The vision is to see young adults impact and change the world based on increasing their understanding and commitment to the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Mission:

The mission is to establish a community where young adults can Worship, Learn, and Grow in Jesus Christ.

The last six months have been an incredible spiritual journey, incredible in that I have experiences a hunger to learn more and experience our awesome Catholic faith.

In the first six months here at SJV we have created:

• A core team of 20 young adults that span all the demographics
• A Vision, Mission, and 2005 year goals
• Developing the 10:30 Mass as the entry way Young Adult Mass
• Began an evangelization strategy
• Presented our first spiritual journey called "A Walk with Jesus"

Moving forward with the second half our goals are:

• Focus on developing a community and culture around the 10:30 AM Mass
• Launch a Bible Sharing Series in August
• Prepare for 2006-2007

Where do I need your help?

• Begin to meet you, the leaders here at SJV, to share our gifts & talents
• Ask you to continue serving by your example to encourage young adults to be the next leaders
• Identify young adults who have a passion and desire to serve and develop a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ
• Reach out to the Young Adults leaders who want to extend their leadership skills centered around God.
• Your prayers.

How can you help today and now?

• Continue sharing your faith by your actions and example
• Decide the 2nd half of this year will be the most incredible spiritual journey for you in this season of your life
• Be part of our creating future leaders for SJV
• Share in our vision for SVYA

Conference on Spiritual Activism

The Tikkun Community is an international community of people of many faiths calling for social justice and political freedom in the context of new structures of work, caring communities, and democratic social and economic arrangements. They seek to influence public discourse in order to inspire compassion, generosity, non-violence and recognition of the spiritual dimensions of life.

Goal: Our goal is to energize and constitute an interfaith movement of progressive, prophetic spiritual activism and to give it a larger place in public consciousness. We propose a three-stage process in building the Network of Spiritual Progressives. You can get involved in any or all of the stages. Our gatherings will be an opportunity to show and tell, to share wisdom, to learn each other's traditions without fear of being proselytized, and to build mechanisms for ongoing contact and information sharing. There will also be an opportunity to provide training of relevant skills for doing this work. And we expect to have an annual gathering of this sort each year.

Anyone interested in MT25 would benefit from attending this conference. For additional information, visit their website: www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference

New Building Status

At the Town Hall Meeting on June 12th, Fr. Tim gave us an update on the Multipurpose Building. First he gave a bit of the history of the building plan:

1999 - The project began. The proposed building would include two stories, a stage, lighting, and sound system.

However, the dot com crash came, so less money was available, but nobody changed the building plans.

When Fr. Tim came, he:

1. Removed the second floor from the plan
2. Set up a committee to see how much could cost be cut
3. Cut off $150,000 in costs
4. Decided to upgrade the electrical work on the entire parish facility to be done before Christmas, 2005. This will cost $160.000.
5. But the work described in #4 will lower some of the costs figured into the Multipurpose Building costs.

Raising Money:

1. It has been very hard to raise the money for this building.
2. Commitment from two families, but after they die.
3. Fr. Tim will apply for a grant.
4. A family is willing to loan some money.

So, Fr. Tim is going to give the "Go ahead" to the architect for the full plans.

Estimates are, to construct the building's exterior to the extent that it is safe and weather-tight, but not finished, will cost about $ 3.5 million.  With a usable gym would be about $ 4.2 million. And to fully finish would cost about $ 4.65 million.

How are you going to help?

Coming Soon: Discipleship at SJV

The deanery, the group of local parishes that SJV parish collaborates with, has started a new program in Discipleship. You will be hearing about it soon, via mail, if you are a registered member of the parish. (If not, you can register by phoning the parish at 258-7832, or by dropping by the parish office on a workday.)

The purpose of the program is to get us all to move a step or two forward on our spiritual journey. Too often Catholic adults neglect their continuing spiritual development, assuming that Sunday Mass attendance is sufficient nourishment for their souls. But experience shows that we all need more nourishment, all along our life's journey. There is always more to learn, more to do, as we live out the call of Jesus Christ "Come follow me!"

A small group of volunteers is already in training for this program and excited about the new life we are seeing and will continue to see in our beloved parish. If you want more information, contact newsletter@sjvnews.net with your questions.

Announcements

Family Faith Formation is offered by St. John Vianney Parish. Registration will be taking place in June, with priority given to our own parishioners. Click here to see the latest revision of Class Schedule & Registration Information for the upcoming catechetical year.

* HELP NEEDED! * Family Faith Formation is seeking individuals who are interested in becoming a Catechist or Catechist aide for grades 1-6. Classes are held on Tuesday evenings, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (grades 3, 4 & 5) or Sunday mornings, 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM (grades 1-6). TRAINING WILL BE PROVIDED. Please contact 258-7832 x18 for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

St. John Vianney School is still accepting applications for the 2005-06 school year for Kindergarten and First Grade. Applications can be picked up in the school office Monday-Friday from 8 AM to 4 PM or on-line at our school website www.sjvsj.org.  For more information you can email mwood@sjvsj.org or contact Co-Principal, Martha Wood at (408) 258-7677.

Weekly Readings

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