Church of St. John, Trenton, ND
We are most grateful for the funds we receive at St. John the Baptist Parish in Trenton, North Dakota. Because of this most generous grant, we are able to carry out some evangelization efforts that we normally could not do. As the pastor, I am convinced of the importance of getting valuable resources to our parishioners (and non-parishioners), many of which I believe change hearts and minds. Here are some things we have done lately which benefits all three of our parishes and the community as well.
This upcoming weekend we are hosting our first-ever marriage retreat. Matt and Mindy Dalton with Marriage Missionaries will be leading the retreat. They do marriage work full-time, and I believe this will not only be a great service to our parish, but to all the diocese as well, as we have a good number of couples registered from outside our parish.
For Lent, we are giving away the book, Everybody Needs To Forgive Somebody. Spiritual masters speak of two great blocks to the grace of God working in our lives, that of pride and unforgiveness. Hopefully this book will assist our faithful in coming to forgive others.
I have also been preaching a lot about getting into a consistent prayer routine. We have made available to our parishioners the “Examine” prayer aid which comes from St. Ignatius of Loyola. This is one of many aids we have provided our faithful so as to help them to pray daily.
Finally, the last two resources pertain to sexual sin within the Church. We have made available multiple copies of Bishop Barron’s Letter to a Suffering Church so that the faithful might better understand and have transparency in regards to the sex scandal. As well, we ordered hundreds of copies of a nice little resource entitled, 5 Keys to Freedom from Sexual Sin. With so many people struggling in this area, this resource is helpful to them and especially nice to hand out in the confessional, which we do often.
Peace,
Fr. Russell Kovash
