February 27 – Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

This is Commitment Weekend for the Joliet Diocesan Catholic Ministries Annual Appeal.  Started in 1985, the CMAA is the way for you to support your local Diocesan church.  We support the global church yearly through the annual Peter’s Pence collection and various other collections.  We support the national church through periodic annual collections such as the Home Missions collection.  We support Our Lady of Mercy through the Sunday Stewardship Collection.  It is important to support our Diocesan Church that provides many ministries and services to our local parishes.

Our Lady of Mercy is one of 125 parishes in the Diocese of Joliet.  The Diocese of Joliet is comprised of seven counties – DuPage, Will, Kendall, Kankakee, Ford, Iroquois, and Grundy.  There are over 545,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Joliet.  Add to that number the many families who are registered, active and supporting Our Lady of Mercy and actually reside in the Kane County portion of Aurora, which is the Diocese of Rockford.

Today we heard a record homily from Bishop Hicks calling us to do the works of the Lord, the theme for this year’s CMAA.  If you haven’t already, I encourage you to make a gift to the Catholic Ministries Annual Appeal.  Your gift can be made in one payment, or a series of monthly payments.  And remember, it’s not the size of the gift that counts, it’s your participation that counts because YOU are a member of the Church of Joliet.  I thank you in advance for joining me in making a gift to the 2022 Catholic Ministries Annual Appeal!

I want to give a shout out to Fr. James for his fantastic 3 weekend preaching series (January 29/30, February 5/6, February 12/13) that combined the mission statement of Our Lady of Mercy (To offer everyone a life-changing encounter with Jesus, grow disciples, and send them on mission) and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.  The amount of prayer, effort and time he spent developing those three homilies was quite evident.  He did a fantastic job.  If you didn’t hear the series or missed one or two, I encourage you to go on our website and listen

Father Don