21st Sunday of the Year

Dear Friends in Christ,

Several items for your attention:

1. We have a new parish website, and I encourage you to have a look and learn how you can more easily keep up with life at St. Mary’s. The new site is at our old web address, www.stmarysgvl.org, but everything else is new. For example, the new site automatically adjusts to the size and type of device you’re using, so on a smart phone or tablet, you’ll have an experience just as rich as on a desktop browser. We’re still updating parts of the site, especially school information and photographs, but here are some of the new features that I hope you’ll find useful:

+ the parish calendar in list and month view
+ the ability to manage your EFT account online (see below for more information)
+ links to outstanding Catholic websites like Word on Fire
+ the ability to stream homilies on a tablet or phone
+ quick access to full versions of past e-bulletins by date
+ links for streaming selected music from the Solemn Mass

2. Those of you who want to have direct management of your Electronic Fund Transfer online can now do so through the website, but before you can begin to manage it yourself, you need to send us the email address you want to sign in with. Once we have that registered with Vanco, we’ll send you a notice that you can use to sign into your Vanco account through the “Manage Your EFT” link on the homepage of our website. If you would like to do this, please send your name and email address to Jennifer Doiron at jennifer.doiron@stmarysgvl.org. After everything is ready, Jennifer will send you a notice to begin your own account management, and when you sign in for the first time, Vanco will provide a temporary password that you can change later in your account profile. We hope that this new tool will make it much easier for you to arrange your stewardship in whatever way seems best to you throughout the year, and as always, if you have any questions about EFT, please be in touch with our Director of Finance, Jennifer Doiron.

3. Religious Education for Children, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, and the Program of Catholic Studies, all begin after Labor Day. These opportunities to learn the Gospel more deeply are at the heart of the Church’s effort to fulfill the Great Commission, and we hope everyone will be involved in some way. All children between the first and eighth grade who are not in either a Catholic parish school or home school need to be enrolled in our religious education classes, and registration is taking place in Sacred Heart Hall after each
Mass this weekend.

Father Newman