Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection for - Sunday, September 7, 2025

WOW!! Talk about a great party! Last Saturday evening over 800 people attended our 75th Anniversary, “Faith+Family+Food” celebration. Thank you for supporting the event. It truly was a festive and joyful evening.

Events like this don’t just happen. We had nearly 100 volunteers and at least 10 staff members who made the event a reality. While I can’t name all of them, there are several who went above and beyond the call of duty in the days leading up to the event and throughout the evening.

Our volunteers were exceptional! The Knights of Columbus cooked burgers and hot dogs, ran the “pub,” created and prepared pulled pork sandwiches, and generally filled in when and where needed. Guillermo Ibarra, Jake Knutte, and Gif Himmelright cooked and prepared nearly 100 pounds of pork butt and a huge quantity of coleslaw. Dozens of members of the San Felipe de Jesus community worked together to prepare elote (Mexican street corn) and fruit. A special shout out to Jeanette Galasso and Galasso Bakery which generously supplied nearly all the rolls that we needed for the event. Mickie and Dave Schinderle along with Gerry Holbert provided invaluable assistance in mixing 90 pounds of ground beef into meatballs, making sauce, and assembling and serving the meatball sandwiches.

On the staff side, Lupe Ojeda, Gloria Turnbull, and Pauline Tran worked for weeks to advertise the event, track registration, make signs, organize volunteers, design and order Stedwear. Suzanne Edwards, Diana Wehbe and a host of young volunteers took on the responsibility of making the event fun for children. Johnny Oskam and his band, YAGO, entertained all of us with terrific music. Our maintenance team, Ruben Mayorga, Efren Oviedo, Victor Fernandez, and Israel Ruiz, worked tirelessly to set up the hall and the plaza, to break it all down, and provided continuous clean-up throughout the evening. Finally, Tom Leeman pulled double duty overseeing the event as both Business Manager and KofC Deputy Grand Knight.

In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about how we should be intentional in planning our relationship with God which must be our most important priority - more important than our relationships with fathers, mothers, material possessions, etc. After we have placed God firmly at the center of our lives, we can more joyfully celebrate with one another as we did last Saturday.

Fr. Mike