St. Joan of Arc is getting ready to launch our new website. In
anticipation of the new site, Fr. LaRussa has asked us to begin practice
postings from some of the departments on Staff. Parishioners will be
able to come to this page to see blogs that change daily. Each day’s
post will be a different staff member or clergy posting their additions
to the parish blog. The blog will also give parishioners the ability to
watch video links or listen to audio segments from the various Staff
members and clergy. We hope you will enjoy the experience.
This posting is an example of what you might see on this Parish Staff
Blog. As the Director of Youth Ministry here at St. Joan of Arc
Catholic Church, I get to see a lot of behind the scenes things that are
going on with our youth and young adults. One program I use is called
“The Dead Theologians Society” or “DTS” as we are often called. Don’t
let the name scare you! DTS is a very holy and Catholic organization,
which teaches teens about the Saints. Each week we meet as the DTS
chapter here in the parish ands we study a particular saint’s life
story. We read quotes by those saints if there are any and we ask the
intercession of that saint as we pray for our families, our parish, and
ourselves. The neat thing about a blog is that I can share with the
average parishioner about what we are doing and how the program works,
by blogging about it.
For instance last week our DTS chapter studied the life of St.
Florian who is known as the patron saint of Firefighters. We read a
brief account of his life and his martyrdom. We then prayed for his
intercession to help us and our families in matters of fire safety etc.
To demonstrate to you the effectiveness of this prayerful
intercession I will now share the fact that my house almost caught fire
two nights ago. I believe it was through the intercession of St. Florian
that we were wakened by our smoke detectors and were able to get out of
the house and call the fire department all with out major confusion or
harm of any kind.
It seems the blower on our furnace stopped working causing the
heating elements to over heat and spark off a small fire in our heating
vents.
We were very fortunate in that it went out pretty fast and the small
amount of smoke set the alarms off in time for us shut the system down
and contain the problem.
Now you may ask yourself did it really matter that I had just asked
for the intercession of St. Florian at our
DTS meeting or was this just
coincidence?
I’ll leave you to answer your own question but through this blog I
can at least share that experience with you and hopefully bring you to a
deeper appreciation of the Church’s teaching on the “Communion of
Saints” which we profess our belief in each week at Mass during the
Creed.
With this blog I can also post a link so you can learn more about St.
Florian simply by clicking on the link and reading posted information
from another source. For instance please
CLICK HERE
and you will be taken to a posting about St. Florian on another
Catholic website. But please come right back so I can show you something
else.
Ok hopefully you are now back on this posting and I will show you how
I can post a video about an event we are holding for the adult and
married couples of the parish. Please
CLICK HERE to see a 2-minute video about our St. Valentine’s Day Dance. But come right back!
Another example of how this can interactive for you as a parishioner
is that you can directly communicate with the staff about our blogging
because we can add an email link like this simply click on the
following:
herringbone777@live.com
and you will be able to write and send an email directly to me! You can share your thoughts with me.
Ok, hopefully this example of our parish staff blog is exciting and
informative to you. I hope you can see the benefit of being able to
communicate in this manner. We will be able to share events, thoughts,
prayers, videos, and all kinds of other things through this blog. We, as
the parish staff and clergy, hope that you as a parishioner can see the
many exciting opportunities this blog will present to you to make your
experience as a St. Joan of Arc parishioner a very full and blessed one!
Our hope is that you will check in on this blog daily to see what new and wonderful things we have to share with you.
God bless us all in this new endeavor!
Yours in Christ,
Michael A. Barone ~ Director of Youth Ministry ~ SJOA
