What a wonderful experience to have more than 30 of our parishioners at the St. Anthony of Padua Food Pantry for our Serve Together event!  We made a big difference and did a lot of work, building a cart, painting, cleaning, and sorting food. I have a special admiration for those who sorted produce and pitched what had spoiled. They loved others by doing a messy job!

In two weeks, on the weekend of Nov. 25-26, we’ll have our Worship Offering Commitment Sunday. We’ll ask everyone to consider the money that they offer to God as an act of worship, giving themselves to Him by giving back some of what God has given them. Next weekend, Nov. 18-19, we’ll hand out commitment cards as people leave Mass to help you think about your worship offering commitment. How God has blessed you? What you can give back to him?

Next weekend also brings two other important moments for our parish. First, on Nov. 17, our Board of Education will release the SSP School Strategic Plan. The Board has put together an exciting strategic plan for the future of our school, and we are looking forward to sharing it with all of you. We’ll publish the plan to our website, send a summary home with our students for our school families, and have the summary available at weekend Masses on Nov. 18-19.

Second, we’ll have our parish’s annual business meeting on Nov. 19, at 12:30 p.m. in the Father Keaney Center on the IHM campus. The purpose of the annual business meeting is to inform interested parishioners about the details of our parish finances by letting you get answers to your questions from the Finance Council, business manager Jim Boeger, and me. I encourage you to come to the business meeting, ask your questions, and learn from the questions of others. To prepare for the business meeting, next weekend’s bulletin will include a forecast of our projected revenue and expenses for the current fiscal year running from July 2023 to June 2024.  

Finally, a neat question on the Nicene Creed which we say each Sunday. 

In the Nicene Creed we pray each weekend, “for us men and for our salvation.” Why include only men? Especially in this day and age, when inclusion and equality are needed, especially by the Church.

Making sure women’s voices are heard and women’s contributions are valued is indeed a big need for our Church! For me, it was neat to see the recent Synod in Rome make a little progress in this direction. Like many old prayers, we recite the Nicene Creed as a translation; its original language was Greek. In Greek, the word translated as “men” is ἄνθρωπος (anthropos). That Greek word means “humans, as distinguished from animals, or the divine, or angels.” There are other words in Greek for “men, male humans” and “women, female humans.” In Latin, one of the first translations of the Greek, the phrase is translated simply “pro nobis,” which means “for us.”  So it's clear that the prayer means that Jesus came to earth especially for human beings. The prayer definitely does not say Jesus came to earth for male human beings as opposed to female human beings. A better translation might be “for us humans and our salvation.” Maybe someday the translation will change. 

God bless you!