Another great resource for personal spiritual growth also comes from our Diocese. The Diocese is in a partnership with YDiscipleship. Every parish and every parishioner in the Diocese has access to some marvelous resources for personal use or for use in groups. Just go to formed.org

There are more than ample opportunities to go to confession. Confessions will not be heard on Good Friday and Holy Saturday Morning.

At their November 2015 General Assembly, the United States Bishops approved the formal Statement, “Create in Me a Clean Heart: A Pastoral Response to Pornography.” The full text of this statement can be found through the USCCB website. In part the text reads, “The Church as a field hospital is called to proclaim the truth of the human person in love, to protect people – especially children – from pornography, and to provide the Lord’s mercy and healing for those wounded by pornography.

There are some who wince at the mere mention of Lent. They think of the “sacrifices”, the things they have to give up. May I suggest there is a much better way to approach this grace filled season? Consider it as a spring-time for the soul, an interior “house cleaning” of all those elements of our fallen nature that constantly creep into our lives. Sometimes we are so used to them we don’t realize how harmful they really are in making spiritual progress and could threaten our salvation. The three pillars of any authentic spiritual life are what the Lord tells us in the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday: fasting, giving alms and prayer.

A new project developed by Brian Vogt to help bring your children back to the Church. "Everywhere I go I meet parents who are troubled because their children no longer practice the faith. Finally, here is a practical guide to doing something about that." Matthew Kelly, Bestselling author and founder of Dynamic Catholic.

Cleaning out the grotto gave me an idea. Recently I cleaned out the grotto, scrubbed down the statue, hosed down the stone work to remove built up dust and dirt and then cleaned the flooring. While doing that I thought that this would be a good time to put another statue in the grotto. I consulted a religious goods dealer in Denver who has experience with these things. He strongly urged that we avoid painted statues because over ten years or less the paint will begin to develop spider cracks and then chip away. He suggested that if we are not going to use marble or bronze (both of which are way out of our price range) we should look at plain white fiberglass. He recommended a website, elementsofhome.com Originally I thought of getting a statue of St. Joseph at the same dimensions of the current statue since having the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph together is pretty traditional. Then I thought we could go with two themes by getting a statue of the Holy Family (Joseph, Mary and the child Jesus) at 15 inches wide, 7 inches in depth and 25 inches in height. The second statue would be a Pieta with the Blessed Virgin holding the corpse of her Son after He was taken down from the cross, 20 inches wide, 10 inches in depth and 28 inches in height. Both would be smaller than the current statue but will fit within the spaces provided in the grotto and together would run about $500.00. The idea would be to show the child Jesus came into the world to die for us. Another option is to leave the statue of the Virgin Mary where it is and get a statue of the Archangel Gabriel who brought the Mystery of the Annunciation to the Virgin or a statue of the Archangel Michael. We are limited in what we can do since the shelf is 14 inches in depth and I do not want to place a statue whose base is larger than what the shelf can hold. So…we can keep the current statue and get one of St. Joseph (same size at 59 inches in height at a cost of $1,600). We can transfer the current statue to the CCD wing and get two smaller statues each with its own theme. We can keep the current statue and get one of the Archangel Gabriel or Michael. Or we can get two statues of the two Archangels and place the Marian statue in the CCD wing. And there may be other options. Any thoughts?

CCD (religious instruction for children) starts on Wednesday, September 9! Yes….it is that time of year! Parents of pre-school children who wish to enroll their children are asked to please pre-register them as soon as possible so we know how to best configure limited space and make sure we have adequate supplies. It is the policy of this parish to never charge for textbooks, workbooks or any other materials. The parish covers all the costs. All we do ask for is that parents please pre-register all their children as soon as possible to avoid last minute paper work.

The ministry of serving at the altar is being expanded to adult males. As Rick Anderson pointed out at last Sunday Masses the parish wishes to open the ministry of serving at the altar to adult males.

Adult Faith Formation Classes being offered. At this point the following classes shall be offered. Days and times have yet to be fully worked out. We hope to have all the details finalized by the middle of August when we will post sign-up / registration sheets

The Pope's Encyclical Letter on God's Creation and the Environment is now Online for all to read. It is located under Faith Formation with it's own page so it is easier to find.

The New Website for St John’s Has Arrived & We Hope You Like It and Use It! After many months of research to see what other churches were doing, using, and putting on their websites we finally came up with our Master List of Wants and What Nots. We found the right software and web applications for us, and we put together a team (please be sure to thank Chad Reckhard for his expert sound tech expertise and Matt Misslin for some beautiful photography) to make it the best website we could — one that would serve the needs of the parish, be able to grow with the needs of the parish, and still be really easy to use and keep up with as little effort as possible.

The structural engineer’s report has arrived and his recommendations include new steel columns to be installed in their remediation work.