The Pastor's Column

Financial Report to St. Vincent de Paul Parish, October 21, 2007

One year ago, I presented a financial report to the parish. A year ago, I may have surprised you by telling you that I like preaching about money. Actually, the reason is that when I preach about money, it’s not really about money at all, but rather a chance to talk about the state of the parish and our mission.

How are things going at St. Vincent de Paul Parish? I will let you be the judge: Our school enrollment is up. Our CCD enrollment is up. We have more persons attending RCIA classes on Monday nights, interested in becoming Catholic. Our number of baptisms is on the rise. We have more couples preparing for marriage at this parish. When I arrived, there were 3 couples planning marriages at this parish. Today, there are 24. (If you are planning on getting married next year, August, September, and October are filling up fast!) We are now distributing the Precious Blood at two of our weekend Masses. This led to a request two months ago for more parish volunteers. Over 100 parishioners came forward to assist as Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, Ushers, CCD teachers, CCD volunteers, Choir members, and Lectors.

We have record contributions to our building fund, increased contribution to our school endowment. In terms of real dollars earned, we had a record return on our investments over the past fiscal year. Several years back, we had a goal of raising our teacher’s salaries to 80% of our public school counterparts. This year, we pay every teacher on our staff at least 82% of the public school pay schedule. The new teachers on our staff this year are outstanding educators and are an excellent addition to our already excellent faculty. Our educational endowment is now able to provide a stable source of funding for those who had difficulty affording school tuition. We have many families receiving assistance according to their level of need so they can provide a Catholic education for their children. With the invaluable help of our parish finance council, we have identified ways in which we can hold down expenses. We have identified ways in which we can promote revenue. Two days ago, we reached an important milestone in the recent history of our parish. Our assistant pastor, Fr. Don Roszkowski, marked the one year anniversary of his arrival at St. Vincent’s, and he wasn’t reassigned to a new parish! In short, I hope you will agree with me that things are good.

I believe that every homily should provide some encouragement to keep us going. However, I also believe that every homily should put us to the test; spur us on; challenge us to do better. The readings today provide us both with encouragement but also with a challenge, and today’s readings challenge us to persevere.

In the first reading, God had blessed the Israelites with victory over the Amalekites. But victory could only remain with Israel so long as Moses persevered in prayer, raising his hands in prayer to the Lord. Through perseverance, the prayers of Moses insured the continued victory of Israel.

In the second reading, God has blessed his faithful with the Word of God in the Scriptures. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching.” But we will only profit from the Word of God if we persevere in living the Word. “Proclaim the Word. Be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.” Through perseverance, we not only learn the Scriptures, we live them more intensely.

In the Gospel, God has blessed his people with true justice. But to receive this gift, Jesus challenges us to be like the persistent widow who continued to nag the unjust judge. Through her perseverance, she would receive justice against her opponent. May we have the perseverance to remain faithful to Jesus.

Let’s be honest. Perseverance is a real challenge. It may be easy to do the right thing for a short while. But to do the right thing day after day takes heroic virtue. Persevering in our good intentions is what makes a saint!

The challenge I will leave with you is one of perseverance. But before we talk about that a little more, I would like to draw your attention to the financial report in the bulletin. A few items deserve special attention: Pre-school revenue and expenses are included on this report for the first time this year. Under Parish Expenses, Assessments and Donations are higher because this number reflects the shortfall in our Annual Diocesan Appeal for 2006. Thankfully, we do not have a deficit this year. We had a $25,000 surplus in pledges to the ADA in 2007. Under School Expenses, our Salaries and Benefits continue to rise, not only because of the normal salary raises, but also because of the need to hire additional aides for our larger classes, and the dramatic increases in the cost of health care. Toward the bottom, under Capital Campaign Expenses, the parish has spent money on our building project to conduct a feasibility study and to retain the services of a fundraising company. The parish has also spent money to professionally evaluate our existing facilities, and to retain the services of an architect to help us develop a long range plan. I believe this is an important investment in the future and is money well spent. In about a week, information about our building project will be mailed to every registered parishioner. I look forward to sharing more information with you in the near future.

The bottom line: Our losses in our operating budget are offset by our gains in our long term accounts. The parish’s financial standing remains about the same. Our bottom line hasn’t changed much from last year.

Yet, I would like to return to the top of the report to draw your attention to one line item: Our Parish Ordinary Receipts. This line item reflects the regular Sunday contributions of our parishioners. While many other line items have increased with inflation, our ordinary contributions have remained relatively flat.

Perseverance. The readings this weekend challenge us to persevere. Most importantly, we should persevere in faith, believing in God. We should persevere in doing good works, and fighting the temptation to sin. We should persevere in our desire to help those in need. But this weekend, I also challenge you to persevere in generosity.

Our regular Sunday contributions are essential to support the activities of our parish. When a weekly or monthly contribution is missed, the parish has less to draw upon to support our mission. Your support is crucial. Soon, I will talk about supporting a building project, but those contributions will be above and beyond our ordinary and consistent support that makes up the backbone of our regular parish activities.

I ask you to be generous. I ask you to persevere in your generosity. I ask you to believe with me in the mission of St. Vincent de Paul Parish. With Jesus’ help, may we persevere in faith; may we persevere in our service of those in need; may we persevere in generosity.