From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2026 July 12)

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Midsummer “Parish Temporal Affairs" Update

For those who are wondering, Fr. Patrick is slated to arrive this week from Peru, where he was leading a mission trip and then stayed for a couple weeks of home-visit. Dcn. Jose, who has been spending a month of his “deacon summer” in Sacramento having a very different pastoral experience, will arrive this week as well. Next week Dcn. Evan will ship out to Sioux Falls for a month, to do the same. I get to hold down the fort this summer, excepting ten days in August when I will have the opportunity to accompany a visiting bishop to PES-Lima and visit the “brethren” there for the first time since 2018 (so far forty four pages into the STL thesis… finishing before my retreat at the end of the month is not out of the question, should the Lord continue to provide the time and words to type away at it!). And we look towards a new pastoral year in which we hope and pray that God will send us more PES community members in the form of new aspirants discerning, brothers coming to study in the seminary, perhaps even another priest or two to expand the scope of our mission here… but the Sacred Heart will see to all that in His time!

So much for the community update. What about the parish? The figures for the last fiscal year are not available yet, but happily it is looking like we will not realize the ~$150K budget defect we had been projecting. This is good news, especially if this was due to a sustained increase in giving (all the more significant in a year in which people were asked to pledge towards the Capital Campaign) and decreased utility cost (perhaps due to new efficiencies related to the Church window project and other improvements). It was certainly helped by the fact that we had no major breakdowns this year, or unexpected $100K bills due to some repair or replacement. Which had been the pattern in recent… decades? 

Looking into the year ahead, we have a living hope that we can project a balanced budget for FY27. Which would be a not-so-small miracle for this parish. Though people at St. Mark’s come and go (every spring and every summer!), it seems that with God’s blessing we are experiencing some stable growth. And though we remain relatively small, we are outsized in our activity and generosity. How grateful I am for that!

I mentioned the Capital Campaign. As you know, it was a great success. Pledges may still trickle in, though the pledging portion of the campaign has officially ended, leaving St. Mark’s with 122 households pledging a total of $1,219,510… $831,559 of which is slated to come to the parish. And because you are already fulfilling those pledged, payments have already started to arrive. Still, it will take some time before enough comes in to move on the funded projects (the “first fruits” will go into the Families in Need Fund, then it’s on to the bell tower, moving downwards). 

In facility news, we have said “hello” to TC Swing, which is using our gymnasium five nights a month for some Late Nite Swing (whose rent has made the installation of the new air conditioning of that space possible). This fall we will unfortunately say “goodbye” to the St. Paul seminary, who after about fifteen years of renting the Convent space in the Parish Center will be moving into a place of their own across town. The loss of their substantial rent is of course concerning for the parish bottom line, though the vacancy opens up new possibilities as well. 

Those “possibilities” will be determined very much by the Campus Master Plan project, which is still slowly churning forward in the background behind our parish activities. Remember the goal: to tailor our parish campus to serve (and not to drain) our parish mission for the rest of the 21st Century. As I shared in the Pastor’s Address at the last Soiree, the reason we have not acted yet on the Planning Committee’s recommendation to list our school building for possible large-scale lease has been the emergence of a very attractive possibility which, in recent weeks, has come more into focus and gained some momentum. I commend that prospect to your continued prayers. Should that move forward, this “possibility” may become reality in exciting and very visible ways, especially if it involves the renovation of spaces and redistribution of parish activities within the campus, as well as the arrival of new neighbors/users of our facilities. We of course are committed to seeing all this come about in a way that best serves our parish community and its mission, both its present and its future (while honoring its past). Which is a lot to juggle, especially when faced with the realities of our finances and facilities. But God has all this in His hands. May our prayer this summer be: Lord, speed on the great work of Your love at our parish! Amen!

From the Heart of the Shepherd: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time