Dear Parishioners,

Why should I attend a parish mission? All of us need to be responsible for our spiritual lives. Just going to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days and reading the Catholic paper is not enough. Our lives are under constant challenge and attack for many directions.

Family life and its demands, job requirements, the media and its drive for us to become more and more consumeristic all contribute to growing demands that can take us away from God. A parish mission helps us to look at our lives for a few evenings in a new light, a new perspective. It lets us take some time to think about the Lord and His presence in our lives.

It is so easy to lose track of this during our everyday lives. We are all so busy and the mission will benefit us in our spiritual lives.

Make a special note on your calendars to attend and see a little better how the Holy Spirit can be part of our daily life.

[SEE THE LETTER OF FEB. 8, 1998 FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE MISSION!]

One interesting web site that will help one to grow in knowledge of our faith can be found through our own web site STMhouston.org. You can then make a quick link or type www.nccbuscc.org/catechism/quizzes/scripqz.htm. [Use our site it's much easier].

You can find some interesting quizzes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is one way to keep upgrading our knowledge of the faith. Our faith is an organic faith, i.e. a faith that is alive and growing. We will never get to the point of arrival in this life. We will always be able to deepen and expand our knowledge of the faith.

Beware of anyone who thinks he or she has enough knowledge or for that matter enough virtue. That one is most fertile ground for Satan's cunning. He loves the person who thinks he knows enough. Once we think we know enough, we will stop looking for God's will.

There are several interesting links on our web site. Enjoy them. The world wide web has many, many good things. With some care you make sure that you do not open up those sites with pornography and lurid sexual content. There are some programs that will keep children out of those sites when you are not at home.

From Fulton Sheen: It is reason that creates motives for believing. Faith is to religion very much like credit is to business. Just as one must have a reason for giving credit, so, too, one must have a reason for believing. The conclusions of reason for accepting the testimony of anyone -for example, the testimony of Christ -are not mathematically certain. They are only morally certain. They are very much like the certitude that you were born of your own parents. And: No believer ever went into the Gethsemane of bitter grief, but that he found his Master had gone "a little farther."

I want to encourage you strongly to support the businesses that advertise in our bulletin. The advertising covers the printing and shipping of the bulletin which saves several hundreds of dollars every year. Please support them.