Fax Number: Fr. Jeremy Kucera Cell#: Monday-Thurs.: 8 am noon; 1-3:30 pm Cyndi Stifter: Fridays: 8 am - noon

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1 6 th Sunday in Ordinary Time February 12, 2017 St. Isidore the Farmer Area Faith Community St. Francis, St. Bridget, St. Malachy, Sacred Heart, Visitation Oratory, St. John Fr. Jeremy Kucera, Pastor Cyndi Stifter, Faith Formation Director AFC Office: th Street North, Benson, MN Murdock Office: ; kitchen Website: Mondays 8:30 am Noon Appleton Office: ; AFC Office Number: Monday-Friday 10:30 am 1:30 pm Fax Number: Fr. Jeremy Kucera Cell#: AFC Office Hours: Monday-Thurs.: 8 am noon; 1-3:30 pm Cyndi Stifter: Fridays: 8 am - noon cstifter@embarqmail.com LITURGY SCHEDULE Tuesday, February 14 5:30 pm BENSON + Irvin Anderson Thursday, February 16 8:30 am MURDOCK ++ Leo & Margaret Hilke Friday, February 17 8:30 am APPLETON + Robert, Sr. & Dorothy Steinke Weekend Masses Saturday, February 18 4:00 pm MURDOCK + Bob Collins 6:00 pm BENSON + Barry Jungwirth Sunday, February 19 8:30 am BENSON For the People 10:30 am APPLETON + Allan Hammerschmidt Father Jeremy is on vacation through February 24. Sacrament of Reconciliation Saturdays 3:00 pm Murdock * Marriage Preparation: Please contact AFC Office at least six months ahead of time to plan and prepare for your wedding. If one party has been previously married, the wedding cannot move forward unless an annulment has been granted by the Catholic Church. * Baptism Preparation: Please call Fr. Jeremy Kucera at * RCIA: Anyone interested in joining the Catholic Church please call the Area at Office for fall registration. * Registration/Moving: To register in a parish or if moving, call the AFC Office at or Murdock office at or St. John s at Catholic Charities - offering personal, marriage, family and pregnancy counseling *PASTORAL CARE* If any parishioner or family member is in need of a pastoral care visit and Holy Communion, please call the parish office. Today s privacy laws do not permit hospitals to contact churches when a patient is in need of a pastoral visit. We are made aware of it only when the individual or their friends and family contact us. We are also not always aware of parishioners that are homebound and would desire a pastoral visit. The Vocation View The Lord has a plan for each one of us; we have the ability to say yes or no. Don t be afraid to say yes if the Lord is calling you to priesthood or religious life. (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)

2 DAILY SCHEDULE Sunday, February 12 Tuesday, February 14 Wednesday, February 15 Saturday, February 18 Sunday, February 19 The Holy Rosary will be prayed ½ hour before Masses in Benson & Murdock Catholic United Financial presentation following Mass in Benson, coffee & rolls will be served 9:30 am Sunday School in Benson for 3-5 year olds 9 am 5 pm Eucharistic Adoration in Benson 6:00 pm Area Social Concerns meeting 2:30 pm Rosary in Benson that our hearts may be open to the Holy Spirit who lives in us 3:30 pm Sacred Heart Religious Education Enrichment Classes for grades K-6 Faith Formation 6:45 pm Grades 1-6 Home Lessons 6:45 pm Class for grades 7-11 The Holy Rosary will be prayed ½ hour before Masses in Murdock & Benson The Holy Rosary will be prayed ½ hour before Masses in Benson & Appleton 9:30 am Sunday School in Benson for 3-5 year olds Catholic United Financial is excited to introduce a new program to St. Francis Parish kicking off March 1st! MinisTREE is designed to help identify and meet some of the volunteer needs in the St. Francis parish community. Volunteer service opportunities will be recorded on MinisTREE volunteer activity cards. All parishioners are encouraged to review the activity cards for activities that interest you and fit your family s schedule. By participating in this program you are helping our parish meet critical unmet needs and supporting St. Francis with up to $400 per year! Once you have completed the volunteer activity, sign the card and drop it in the collection basket at Mass or bring it to the parish office. If you know of an unmet volunteer need in our community that MinisTREE could help address, please contact Rosie Hoffman at or Brian Zitzmann at Join us for fellowship Sunday after Mass on February 12 th to learn more! APPLETON ~ BLESSED CANDLES are available for a $3.00 donation at St. John s Church. The candles will be on a table in the front of church through Sunday, February 12 th. The Giving Tree will be up in all the area churches the next few weeks. If you would like to give to the Hope Pregnancy Center, take a bell from the tree, purchase this item and place it under the tree. All items will be given to Hope Pregnancy Center in Willmar. Thank you. National Marriage Week, February 7-14, 2017 and World Marriage Day, Sunday, February 12. Let s celebrate the gift and blessing of marriage. Go to the Diocesan Family Life page, for great resources to affirm and strengthen your marriage. There is a 7-day, virtual (at home) marriage retreat available, along with a host of other great resources for couples. Benson Music Booster s Annual Pork Chop Supper will be held Saturday, February 18 th at the Benson VFW from 5-8 pm. Cost is $9.00. All proceeds directly benefit the students enrolled in the Benson Music program. Donations Welcome! Take-out meals available by calling The Benson Area Memory Loss Network is planning a Lunch and Learn event at the Benson Senior Center Meal Site from 11:30 to 12:30 on Wednesday, February 22. Big Stone Therapies will discuss ideas for caregivers caring for persons with dementia. Free lunch for those who preregister. To preregister contact SCBHS Michele Sonnabend at Devine Home Care is offering free Adult Respite Care during the event, if interested call Lindsey at by the Friday before the event. St. Francis Family Groups - Letters were sent to out to all families last month regarding Family Group Dues. Please submit your dues to the Family Groups Treasurer, Sandra Nordaune, th Street North, Benson, MN

3 St. Francis Family Groups is need of new officers for the positions of President, Vice President and Secretary. If interested, please contact the parish office at Thank you! Catholics at the Capitol - Protect Life & Human Dignity, Thursday, March 9, 2017, Saint Paul, Minnesota Our state faces real challenges. Assisted suicide threatens the vulnerable. Underprivileged kids are stuck in failing schools. And too many families are trapped in poverty. Christ asks us to boldly step into the public square to protect life and human dignity. Will you answer the call? Join Minnesota s bishops, dynamic Church leaders, and 1,000+ Catholics from across the state for Catholics at the Capitol, a day of inspiration and advocacy at our State Capitol. Be INSPIRED by dynamic Church leaders and the power of prayer Be INFORMED about the critical issues impacting life and human dignity in Minnesota Be EQUIPPED to effectively engage your elected officials Legislators pay attention to their constituents. We WILL influence what they do. This is our moment. Let s go! Learn more and register at CatholicsAtTheCapitol.org or call Upcoming Catholic Voice Counts awareness meetings in the Diocese of New Ulm: February 12, 2017 St. Michael, Madison following 10 am Mass February 19, 2017 Cathedral, New Ulm following 10 am Mass February 26, 2017 St. Anastasia, Hutchinson following 10:30 am Mass These meetings will be brief informational meetings after Mass to hand out materials, answer questions, and encourage Catholics to participate in the Catholics at the Capitol event. Coffee and donuts will be served. Bishop Lucker Lecture Thursday, March 23, 2017, 7 pm at the Church of St. Catherine in Redwood Falls. Featured speaker will be Helen Alvare, Professor of Law at George Mason University of Law and former director of the USCCB s Pro-Life Activities, and current consultant to the USCCB. The theme will be Rise of Sexual Expressionism in the Law and the Decline of the Vulnerable. In the past 50 years especially, the federal government in all its branches has valorized adult sexual expression divorced from children and indifferent to marriage. While this undermines the wellbeing of all Americans, it strikes women, children, and the poor most dramatically because of their different opportunities, preferences, and constraints. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Following the Bishop Lucker Lecture will be the presentation of the Diocesan Distinguished Service Awards for A social will conclude the evening. This event is free and open to the public. Winning Number: 235 Our Area Faith Community has purchased a great new on-line resource for all our members. There will be more information in the weeks and months to come. We hope you find this resource helpful in your faith journey and in sharing your faith with others. The website is Formed.org and the parish code is: N6W22K. Please go to the website to set up your own personal account and please share this with your family and friends. BROOM TREE RETREAT CENTER Contact Information APPLETON NEW CHURCH TABLES... DONATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED to help pay for twenty (20) new tables for our church basement. The new tables will be a high quality, light weight, 60 inch round table that will seat eight (8) people. The new tables will replace the old heavy tables. Please write check to St. John s Church. Put the DONATION IN AN ENVELOPE MARKED TABLES and drop the envelope in the collection or bring to the church office. The old tables can be purchased at a later date. Please pray for Owen Meyer and family while he has Chemotherapy treatments.

4 The Tale of Two Catholic Churches by Fr. Dwight Longenecker The Pursuit of Happiness If Christians put the pursuit of happiness in this life as the primary goal everything changes. Suddenly the church is not perceived as an army engaged in a spiritual battle, but a mutual self help group in which people try to make each other happy. Church buildings cease to be marvelous buildings transcendent with beauty that take us to the threshold of heaven and they become functional meeting halls where the mutual self help group meet once a week. When the pursuit of earthly happiness becomes the driving force religion becomes utilitarian. Whatever is useful for making one happy is what is good. Whatever is not immediately useful is discarded. So, for example, what use is religious art or glorious church architecture? There is no immediate usefulness, so the images are pulled down, new art is not commissioned, and if it is, it must be crudely illustrative or didactic. In other words, it has to do something and be useful. When religion becomes a function to produce happiness here and now hymns become comforting, banal songs about us and our problems and how God will make us happy. When the quest for holiness is replaced with the quest for happiness the priest ceases to be an agent of God s supernatural grace in the world and becomes a therapist, a social worker, or simply an avuncular administrator of the mutual self help group. When religion is expected to merely produce happiness, then worship is stripped of mystery and it must become entertaining. When religion is expected to simply make people feel better instead of being better no one preaches on the difficult or hard hitting subjects. The pulpit becomes a platform for pious platitudes that make people feel nice and the confessional ends up empty. In the end, it is not only the confessional which is empty. People are not stupid. They soon realize that there are self help courses out there which are more entertaining, more motivating and run more professionally. If they want to be entertained, then worship on a Sunday morning will never be able to compete. If they expect to be made happy by religion they will very soon realize that religion doesn t really deliver all the instant happiness they want, and they will either start a long and hopeless search for the church that really makes them happy or they will abandon the faith altogether. The Adventure of Orthodoxy If this diagnosis is correct, what is to be done? Shall we return to the old days of long hectoring sermons on mortal sin, the fires of hell and the possibility of damnation? Certainly more instruction on seriousness of sin and the reality of hell would help to redress the balance, but that is really only treating the symptom. A real cure is a return to a rollicking, honest and hearty understanding of what Christianity is really about. It is about a supernatural transaction between God and mankind. It is the old, old story of a race fallen into sin, and a God who lowers himself to seek and to save that which is lost. Life, and especially the Christian life is about our search for the God who is searching for us. It is about stepping out on the adventure of faith to search for a city whose founder is God. It is about engaging in the war for our souls, and being determined never to sacrifice our eternal happiness in a search only for happiness in this life. Where this old story is preached and lived with dynamic discipline, hearty good humor and joyful abandon the faith will flourish. Where it is abandoned the faith will soon falter. It is vitally necessary within our catechesis, the formation of our children, the instruction of priests and the teaching of the whole church that we renew the foundations of our faith. If we do not there will soon be no faith left. If we do, the faith will flourish and we will build a church which will have the strength, the power and the glory to welcome home many more of her lost and wayward children. There is no better time to renew these foundations of the faith than the season of Lent. We are given the penitential season as a time to look within, to examine the foundations of our faith and embark again on that most exciting quest of all: the adventure of orthodoxy.

5 SYMPATHY We offer our sympathy to the Grossman family on the death of Ollie Grossman. Ollie was the brother of Jim & Clete Grossman and Rose Anne Bowe. Ollie passed away suddenly on Saturday, February 4 th. His funeral was held on Wednesday, February 8 th at St. Mary s Catholic Church in Alexandria. We offer our sympathy to the family and friends of Connie Diehl who passed away this past week. Connie s funeral will be held on Monday, February 20 th at 11:00 am at St. Francis Church in Benson. May Ollie and Connie enjoy eternal life and may the love of the Holy Spirit bring consolation and healing to all of their loved ones. Reflections for the weekly readings are part of this bulletin. This publication is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus Council #2129. OUR WEEKLY OFFERING St. Francis - Benson Sacred Heart - Murdock Adult $3, Adult $ Student $27.03 Student $3.00 Loose Plate $ Loose Plate $ Dioc. United Fund $50.00 Fuel $15.00 Fuel $ Votive Lights $6.00 Total $ Danvers Oratory $90.00 Building Maintenance $25.00 St. John - Appleton Parish Cemetery $ Gathering Space Flooring $ Adult $1, Food For the Poor $50.00 Student $20.25 Loose Plate $95.00 Total $4, Votive $20.00 Roof Fund $30.00 St. Malachy - Clontarf Designated Gifts - Tables $25.00 Adult $2, Total $1, Student $5.15 Fuel $10.00 St. Bridget collection figures will appear in next week's bulletin Total $2, Please take note of and support the sponsors of our Area Faith Community bulletin. We will be giving away gift cards that have been donated by these sponsors. Within the content of the bulletin will be hidden one Adult contribution Envelope number. If that is your number, please call the Area Office at to claim your prize for that week. You will have until 9 am Thursday morning following that Sunday s bulletin to claim your prize. If you are out of town any given weekend, you can look at our bulletin on-line at stisidorethefarmerafc.org. Congratulations to Ed & Sue Fitz! They were the winners of a gift card this past week. Be sure to scour the bulletin for your contribution envelope number to be our next winner!

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