Welcome to 2025
I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. As I write this to you, it is still before Christmas. I’m hoping I also had a great Christmas and New Years. But if I’m honest, I will likely eat too much, maybe drink a little too much once or twice, and feel a little garbagey overall. My girlish figure will inflate a little more, and for those of you who were at the Christmas dinner, you will know what that means for my poor KC burgundy jacket. Trouble ahead. I also want to thank everyone who attended, worked or organized the Christmas Dinner and the pancake breakfast the following morning.
But with the holiday season behind us, and the liturgical Christmas season upon us for the next few weeks, it’s going to be a time to slow down a little again and take stock of what’s ahead. With the birth of Christ, the beginning of the prophecy of the saviour had begun and everything was looking ahead at that time.
ROSARY CHALLENGE – We are doing the 3000 Rosary Challenge again for the month of January. This year we hope to hit the goal of recording 3000 Rosaries prayed. But the actual goal is much less about hitting a target number and much more about finding ways to promote Rosary prayers. So for the month of January, pick a cause and dedicate as many Rosaries as you are able to the intention of that cause. It could be a person, a whole group of people, a problem or challenge, the struggles others are going through, or it could be just for you and the issues you are up against personally. Doesn’t matter to me what you are praying for. I just want you to keep in mind the weight of your prayers and what is regularly accomplished in life through prayer. At the end of every week in January send me an email with your weekly total and I’ll add them all up with a weekly overall total. Send your tally to gk7061@kofc.ab.ca. Invite your friends and family to participate as well. This isn’t restricted to men or Knights. It’s open to anyone who wants to take part.
FAITH FORMATION – I’ve been talking recently about working with Russ to build ourselves a faith formation program to offer to the men of the council so they can find ways to talk about and learn more of the faith. Russ has been very careful with me to ensure that whatever it ends up being, it will not be any sort of formal program, but instead will be free to take whatever life of its own that the Holy Spirit directs for it. I love that idea but I’m not going to lie. I am such an addict for knowing the parameters and drawing the lines of the box so I know when and where I can step outside of it, that leaving this to an open format is very hard for me. But it’s not that uncontrolled. We do want to have some sort of flow and structure to these gatherings so that it’s hopefully not wasting anyone’s time and we can find ways to creatively keep the ball rolling.
The ultimate goal of this type of thing is to encourage people to explore the faith and ask the hard questions that they struggle with. The secondary goal would be for there to be enough momentum to have other study groups and programs to start up as well. I mean the more options available and people who are taking the time to try new things, the better. We already have sights set on potentially adding a youth version as well as a post-RCIA group, with the option to invite and include other parishioners or general community members who want to keep going with the enrichment of their knowledge and faith.
Right now the plan is to hammer out some sort of format game plan and have something ready to roll out for February. So keep your eyes and ears open for updates if you might be interested in taking part in something like this. Sometime in mid January we should even have a name for whatever it is that we are going to do.
The MEN OF INTEGRITY CONFERENCE will be at the end of February in St Albert again. We discussed the potential of supplementing 50% the cost of attendance for up to 10 members who want to go. We also decided to offer this to the RCIA group as well. But as the discussion developed at the Executive meeting, the suggestion became a full reimbursement of the registration cost for anyone who pays in advance and actually attends the two days. So there will be a motion at the January meeting to propose this. It’s not possible to predict how it will turn out but if it is passed then we will put out a message to the group with the offer. So I suppose if you feel strongly one way or another about this, you might consider coming to the January meeting (1st Tuesday of the month at 7pm) so you can vote on this motion. Just sayin’… Conference details are at this link https://www.catholicfamilyministries.com/
PROGRAM AWARD – Last month, we moved our general meeting up a day to the Monday so that we would not conflict with the parish retreat. At the retreat on Tuesday, we had a guest arrive that was there to actually attend our general meeting, completely unaware of the change in dates. But it worked out ok anyway as many of us were there at the retreat anyway. Our guest was Wayne Johnson who has been promoting the Pennies for Heaven program. He brought with him an award for us from State for the Programs. It was very nice of him to volunteer to bring it to us, and fortunate for us that we were there that night. The award certificate is in the trophy case in the chambers. Thank you Matt Cornish for diligently submitting our paperwork to State for these things.
FURNITURE MOVE IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS – Last month we were able to move the council chamber furniture around. I think it turned out pretty good. There is no longer a restricted line of sight due to the support pillars. And we were able to find a spot to hang all of our pictures again. I hope you enjoy it. The only thing left to do is to create a stand to fill the last hole between cupboards that we can use to display all of our brochures and promotional items. But otherwise it should be set up in I believe one of the best possible configurations. Let me know what you think.
MEMBERS PASSING ON – Sadly we have seen several brothers pass on in the last 6 weeks. Keep these members in your prayers and try to set the dates aside to attend their funeral or memorial services.
- Wally Fedor – funeral January 9 Thursday
- Ken McDonell – funeral January 10 Friday
- Leo Giesinger – January 18 Saturday
Tempus Fugit. Memento Mori my friends.
Chris Carr
GK Fr. Leduc Council 7061
