Dear friends, peace be with you and God bless you, I hope you are well.

This is Lynda Monckton’s last week before retiring from her role as Director of Family Ministry. Personally and as a member of the SLFL team, I am grateful to Lynda for her love of God and neighbor, her fidelity to the Church, and her commitment to strengthening sacramental marriages during her time here. We will all miss her and wish her the best in her retirement!  If you haven’t yet relayed your congratulations to her, I’m sure she would be happy to hear from you before she goes.

I’m very happy to announce that Mr. John Barrientes will assume her post starting August 2. John most recently served as Parish Catechetical Leader at St. Matthew’s in Winter Haven, and before that as a Pastoral Associate in a parish in Anchorage, Alaska. Among the many gifts he brings is his experience empowering the laity to assume responsibility for evangelizing their friends, family, and community, something that will strengthen our efforts to build up the domestic Church in our diocese. Please keep John in your prayers as he starts in his new role.

In today’s Gospel we find one of the simple yet beautiful parables of Jesus, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all the he has and buys that field.” I think it is something in the radical nature of Christianity that helps attract the attention of others. The most attractive Christian witnesses I have ever known are those who have tried to live according to this parable, being willing to give up everything to find and acquire that treasure. There is an authenticity in abandoning everything for Jesus that speaks to the truth of who He is and what He does for us.

As you begin preparing catechists and ministry leaders for the coming year, I would invite you to share passages like this with them so that they can consider how they also can follow Jesus more closely. Their witness will be all that more powerful as a result and the people to whom they minister will notice.

Southeast Catechist Conference
For those of you who are promoting the Southeast Catechist Conference, I wanted to let you know about a parish planning meeting for PCL’s and communications staff. This meeting will be coordinated by the Archdiocese of Atlanta and Virtual Catholic Conferences to answer questions and help in any promotional effort you wish to make. There is no obligation to attend, this is just one more good resource. It will take place Thursday, 7/29, at 10:00am Eastern.

You can access the Zoom meeting with this link.

You can also find the Parish Planning Guide for the SCC at this link.

To register for the SCC, you can click here.

New Directory for Catechesis Study Group
For those of you who have not yet read the new Directory for Catechesis, we are starting a 4-week study group on August 3. Meetings will take place via Zoom on Tuesdays from 3:30pm-4:30pm, ending on August 24. If you would like to participate, please email SLFL@orlandodiocese.org. You can purchase a copy of the Directory for Catechesis here and download it here in Spanish. For anyone involved in handing on the faith, this is a crucial document that gives us our strategic goal. It will (re)inspire you as a disciple and give more direction and definition to everything you do.

Count on my prayers for you and yours, and please keep us in your prayers as well.