Holy Comforter 2020: Spiritual. Social. Physical.
“… there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6)
A message from our pastor as we embark on this journey:
From time to time the people of God mark important milestones in their journey with the Lord. These are times of celebration in the lives of Christian communities.
Each congregation has its own story, and that story needs to be told to the next generation. The story of each Christian community is built around both the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of the generations that preceded us.
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is His new creation by water and the Word. From Heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride. With His own Blood He bought her, and for her life He died.
As we prepare to celebrate 140 years of Holy Comforter as a parish and 200 years since the founding of the Richmond Diocese, we seek to mark this anniversary through a series of spiritual, historical, and social events that honor our past, celebrate the present, and welcome the promise of our future.
We can use this anniversary to reflect on our history, reconnect with the former members, especially those who have moved away to other cities and states, to highlight the benefits and contributions made to this local community and to the diocese at large, and to pass our heritage on to the next generation.
Numerous anniversaries have been celebrated to mark the growth of Holy Comforter, which was founded on July 25, 1880. 2020 marks an important milestone for both our parish and the entire Diocese of Richmond. I look at this anniversary as a great time for outreach to a number of areas that will help to build up Holy Comforter anew; a time to reach out to members who have left the church over the years. A time for healing, restoration, building and celebration.
– Fr. Joseph Mary Lukaymuzi
The goal of the “Holy Comforter 2020” initiative is to deepen the faith of our parish and lay the foundation for future generations by physically enhancing our church, intensifying our spiritual practice and becoming more connected with one another through social activities. After soliciting ideas from the congregation over a period of several months, the pastor, staff, the pastoral council and the heads of the parish’s various ministries worked together during a recent retreat to come up with concrete ways to accomplish this mission.
Please click the links below to find out more information on our plans to…
- Improve the physical structure of our church to make it a more prayerful, reverent, functional and distinctively Catholic space.
- Deepen the spiritual lives of our parishioners so that their relationships with God may be enhanced and they can become better witnesses for Christ in a culture that desperately needs the Truth.
- Strengthen the social bonds between parishioners and between Holy Comforter and the community as a whole.