Monday Message, November 10, 2025

KNOW

Please reserve January 24th on your calendar for a special meeting. All youth ministry leaders, safe environment coordinators, and parish catechetical leaders will be invited to a dinner and conversation about updates to the safe environment manual, volunteer covenants, and communication with parents. More details to follow, but the event will take place at Notre Dame in Easton around 6:30 pm.

Please spread the word about the Bishop’s Lecture Series, which is scheduled to take place later this month. The flyer is here.

Pam Rittman with the Bishop’s Appeal – from which we all benefit – is looking for a catechist or parish catechetical leader to answer a few questions. If you can help, please email Pam directly.

To track your catechists in Catechists 2.0, go to LEAD, then My Learners, then filter by Groups, and choose Catechist 2.0. From there, you can add additional filters to see whether people are authorized to serve (have completed formation and are VIRTUS-compliant) or if they need a gentle reminder. If you have people who are teaching and are not yet enrolled in formation (you shouldn’t be), please share this link with them.

All Advent resources are now online, including the digital calendar image for you to print if you missed your share of the 10,000 we printed. Click here for details.

The Bishop will meet with more parents this week. Have you spread the word? So far, more than 400 parents have engaged with the bishop.

Please consider distributing this flyer about Women’s Emmaus to the women in your parish. For more details, you can contact Loren at St. Michael in Greenwich.

The GIVEN Institute’s Catholic Young Women’s Leadership Program provides leadership development, faith formation, and dedicated mentorship for Catholic young women aged 21-35 who seek to live out their unique vocation and mission. Women accepted to the program participate in The Leadership Forum from June 24-28, 2026, at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and are then paired with an established Catholic female leader for 1-on-1 mentorship and support to develop and launch an Action Plan – a new initiative activating personal gifts in service to others. GIVEN is also accepting applications from lay and consecrated women (ages 36 and above) who would like to serve as mentors or volunteers at the 2026 Forum. All women are encouraged to join GIVEN! To learn more and apply for the 2026 Cohort, please click here.

The Institute staff will be in Baltimore on Thursday and Friday. Please plan your panicked calls about something you probably already know the answer to accordingly.

REFLECT

Do yourself a favor and take the time to see the movie, Cabrini. We celebrate her feast day this week, and the film is streaming on Angel (app) and available to rent on Amazon and Apple TV.

The filmmakers do a great job of highlighting the plight of the immigrants, especially those from Italy, the corruption and ignorance they must face, from the streets of New York to the leaders of civic and religious organizations, and how Mother Cabrini’s courage and faith change the world.

Unlike most films about a religious figure, this movie avoids the sappiness and frivolity that can often accompany a story of a hero led solely by their faith. There is no silliness here – only the incredible faith of a woman who knows that she is being called to something great and must constantly work against the cowards in her way.

Ultimately, it is a film about the dignity of all human beings. It is hard to watch the movie and not think about how little we have learned in the last 140 years. We still blame immigrants for crimes they do not commit. We still hear our leaders using derogatory names and even slurs to refer to those working hard to feed their families. We still struggle to understand that we are all children of God, regardless of whether we have the papers to prove it. Mother Cabrini gets angry – and we should be angry too. Angry enough to fight for change, to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, to give drink to the thirsty. That is the real miracle of the movie – you leave wanting to do more, knowing that thoughts and prayers are hardly ever enough.

See the film. Listen to Mother. As she says in the movie, no man could do what she can.

Working together, we can make the world a little kinder for one another.

LAUGH