Ready to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Diocese?

Good morning.

Before Deacon Bob gives his homily on the Word of God today, just a couple of brief announcements.

First announcement is uh you may have heard on the news or seen on the news about the fires that happen in uh Spokane, uh Washington.

Our Diocese of Orange has a great relationship with that diocese.

We send seminarians there for uh formation, and our bishop, who is Bishop Kevin Van, has asked the different parishes in our diocese to see what ways that we can assist uh what's going on there.

So here at St.

Joseph, we've decided that for this weekend, uh, whatever we receive during our offertory moment at all the masses, we're going to offer a tithe towards uh that cause.

If you haven't heard of the word tithe before, it's an offering of the first fruits of 10%.

And so we're going to take 10% of what we receive this weekend and offer it towards that cause.

And if you'd like to uh give more, we've set up an online fund, disaster relief fund, to be able to help uh all those affected by the fires.

So that's the first announcement.

Um, second announcement is over the past several weeks we have been promoting this big event called Bears More, which is the 50th anniversary celebration of our Diocese of Orange.

So you know that our diocese has been around for that long, for 50 years, and it's happening next Saturday, August 22nd at the Honda Center from 11 to uh 3 p.m.

Now, the diocese has asked every parish to bring a certain number of people to this event, and they've given St.

Joseph a quota, a number of people to bring to the event.

Can you guess how many people they've asked us to bring?

Some of you, what's that?

300.

They've asked us to bring 300 people to this event, to the Honda Center event.

And as of last week, uh we already had from our parish about uh 270 people registered.

Uh, but we would love to hit that go of 300 and even surpass it.

And so I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to all of you to come to this 50th anniversary celebration event.

It's for the whole family.

They have some great headline speakers lined up for the event, as well as a um a musician.

He sung for the Pope, he sung at World Youth Day, he's an internationally known uh singer and worship leader.

I don't know if you've heard his name before, but Matt Marr is his name.

He'll be singing at that uh uh event.

And it's for the whole family.

The end is the event is free.

And we've decided at St.

Joseph that uh we want to do something kind of cool.

So if you register for this event and you show your registration to uh either our office or in our courtyard after mass today or during the week, we're gonna give you a free uh Saint Joseph uh t-shirt.

I see a few people in here with the t-shirt there.

Would you guys mind standing so that we can um the ones who have the blue t shirt?

So those are the blue t-shirts that we're gonna that we're gonna get, they're our models for today.

Um and so the idea is that for all of us who are from St.

Joseph, we'll all show up in blue, and then uh when we get there at the Hanna Center, it's very big, right?

It's a big uh arena, and you don't know where you're gonna go, and just look for all the blue people and then follow them to where their area is so we can sit together.

We may even set up a kind of a WhatsApp so we can communicate.

Oh, we're gonna sit in this or that section.

But how cool would it be if Saint Joseph came in force, you know?

And we didn't even have 300 people, but um uh deacon uh Jim said this morning, what make it 600?

And then he said that during his homily, and then during the announcement, he said, make it 900.

What are you gonna come?

So, whatever number from Saint Joseph comes, uh it would be amazing if we could all come as a parish community, and we're celebrating as a whole diocese.

So all the parishes in the diocese of Orange will be at this Hannas Center event next Saturday.

So uh please consider uh joining the event.

The last that I checked on the registration, uh, the Honda Center event is already beyond 80% capacity.

So if you've been kind of on the fence about discerning coming, I would say register as soon as you can before the tickets uh sell out for this event.

So we we hope to see you there uh for There's More, the 50th anniversary celebration.

Give it back now to Deacon Bob for a homily on the Word of God.