From the Pastor's Desk - October 11 and 12, 2025
I want to take a moment to say thank you to a lot of people who have done a lot of hard work on recent weekends to make some important events and ministries very successful. The weekend of September 20-21, and in the days and weeks leading up to that weekend, many people in our Hispanic Community from St. Clement put in a lot of hours preparing for and working to have Padre Nelson Medina O.P. offer a public day of reflection on Saturday at St. Philip Neri, and an afternoon of teaching for our Hispanic lay leadership at the Sister’s Academy on Sunday afternoon. Fray Nelson is from Bogota, Colombia, and is very well known in the Spanish-speaking Catholic world for his preaching and teaching through his nearly 30-year presence via the internet at FRAYNELSON.COM, through other more recent modes of social media, and by traveling throughout the world giving retreats, conferences, and days of reflection. He is especially known for healing ministry, and the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation. He attracted around 700 people from Maryland and nearby areas to our day of reflection and touched many hearts to follow our Lord more deeply. A special thank you to Juan Luis Argueta and to all the membership of the Comité Hispano and the leaders of the Renovación Carismática in St. Clement, for making this such a successful spiritual event.
On Saturday, September 27, St. Philip Neri Parish, St. Philip Neri School, the Knights of Columbus, and Operation Mato Grosso were a significant presence at the annual Linthicum Community Fair. All four of these ministries had booths with information about aspects of the Catholic Faith, about our school, about the Knights and their charitable works and fraternity, and about the missionary work of Operation Mato Grosso. Mato Grosso had delicious homemade pizza being cooked to order with a pizza oven right behind their booth, and our school had delicious meatball sandwiches for sale. Also, our friends at Hope for All had a booth with information about helping our neighbors with necessities such as furniture, housewares, and clothing. From our parish, I want to especially thank Virginia and Jason Grimm and their family, Dan Young and all the volunteers from the Knights, and Mateo Santi-Amantini and his family, and the many others who gave so much of their time and sweat equity into making our Catholic presence at the Linthicum Fair so visible.
This past Sunday was St. Clement’s Fall Festival with lots of delicious foods, games, a moon bounce, raffles, information about outreach and other ministries in our pastorate, and a whole lot of fun. Our Lord smiled upon us with a perfect day weather-wise. We started off with a bilingual Mass bringing together our Sunday morning worshipers at St. Clement as one body, and we continued for the entire afternoon enjoying one another’s company having a good time. I was very happy to see a number of parishioners from St. Philip Neri come to the Mass and the festival to unite with their spiritual siblings from St. Clement. I want to offer a very special thank you to Eden Stepler and her family and to Matteo Santi-Amantini and his family for their leadership, coordination, and months of hard work preparing for and working this special day, and to the countless other volunteers from St. Clement and St. Philip who worked the event, cooked and served food, ran booths or games, and helped the festival be so successful.
Finally, I want to send a warm thank you to our staff members and many volunteers who have been making our second and fourth Sunday evening Pastorate Family Nights so successful thus far. We have had a lot of youth, children, and adults participating in various forms of Youth Ministry and Faith Formation both for young people and adults on these evenings. My observation as I float between the various youth and adult ministries going on those nights is that people are engaged, their discussing, their listening, and their growing in their relationship with Christ and with one another. Those of us who have been to the Youth Mass and the Praise and Worship with Eucharistic Adoration that kick off these nights, have sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit. We most of all thank Him for allowing these nights to go so well and for giving us the opportunity to grow in our Faith.
Let’s keep discerning the Spirit’s will for our Pastorate and let’s pray for the grace we need to keep doing His will.
God bless you all.
Father Rich