OL 2016: A Summer Offering of Letters (in Between the Two Political Conventions)

Summer is hardly the ideal time to hold an Offering of Letters. This is especially the case during the summer of 2016. On the weekend after the Republican National Convention and before the Democratic Convention, our senators and congressional representatives were likely going into election or reelection mode. 

And yet, parishioners at St. John XXIII Catholic Community in Albuquerque, including young Allison (pictured at left), felt it was important to let Congress know that politics is not just about elections and reelections. Politics involves an effort to affect policy, urging decision-makers to make the types of choices that favor the disadvantaged in local, national and international communities.  

For that reason, several dozen parishioners at St. John XXIII Catholic Community in Albuquerque took time to write letters to Sen. Tom Udall, Sen. Martin Heinrich, and Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, urging them to put more funding into programs. We managed to get close to 100 letters. 

We owed it to the parishioners who took the time to write the letters to present them as a true offering to God and as a sign of our commitment to our fellow human beings. On the Sunday after our Offering of Letters, we brought them up to the altar in a basket and asked Rev. Stephen Hickman, who was filling in for our pastor (Rev. Ark Biczak), to offer a blessing on our letters. (By the way, Father Ark was away on a mission trip to Africa).  

Father Stephen not only consecrated our letters with words, but with holy water.
 

Rev. Stephen Hickman poses with Offering of  Letters Team at St. John XXIII

  Here are a handful of scenes from the Offering of Letters at our parish.