| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Welcome to
Immaculate Heart of Mary
Northglenn, Colorado
303-452-2041 admin@ihmco.org
|
|
|
|
| Father Gregs Reflection - Sunday, 7-25-10 - Saturday, July 24, 2010Father Gregs Reflection
Dear Family of Immaculate Heart of Mary,
This summer our Family Life department has started two wonderful new initiatives, our FAMILY FLOWER GARDEN and our FAMILY CAMPING JAMBOREE! I hope all of you have taken a moment to walk on the north side of the church or drive down Malley to see the beautiful Family Garden. It is a wonderful spot. These small gardens are being cared for by different families in the parish who signed up to plant some flowers. That simple act of unselfish charity reminds all of us of the beauty we can bring into the world when all of us do our small part. I am very grateful to Linda Kalkorst and her husband Don especially for the walkways and signs which truly accentuate these small flower gardens. Linda, our Director of Family Life, has been instrumental in organizing and inviting, and even encouraging all of us to get our gardens planted and hardest of all, keep them weeded! I also want to congratulate all of those families for the work that has enriched our entire family in such a great way. Keep up the good work!
Next weekend you will also notice that we have visiting priests. Fr. Don Highberger and Fr. Tom Carzon, will be taking Fr. Peter and my place at Sunday liturgies, because we will be with over a hundred of our families way up at Sky Ranch on our first Family Summer Camping Jamboree! I am excited to ride in Fr. Peter’s amazing four-wheel drive jeep and spend two days with some of our family members. This Camping Jamboree is another way that we offer all of you an opportunity to get to know each other and make some new friends!
Speaking of making friends, this week I think you will see a parish alive with children and teenagers doing exactly that, making friends. Our summer vacation bible school, TOTUS TUUS begins this week! It will be a great time to have your children make some new friends and to have them learn a little more about the beauty of our Catholic faith! Thank you parents for getting them registered early and for bringing them here in the middle of a hot summer to experience what Christ invites all of us to experience as part of HIS Body the Church … friendship and holiness. Both are equally important and truly the foundation of all that we are called to be as a community. I know the children and teens will truly enjoy this great week of prayer, Eucharist, and more!
Community truly is the foundational principle of what we are called to be as Christian Catholics. Sometimes we forget that we are invited to be part of the Body of Christ in the context of community. Without each other the Body is not complete. Our contemporary world and culture is a world that teaches individualism. It teaches that we find our greatest joy in worrying more about what’s good for “me” than what is good for others. This is not the truth of Christ. Christ teaches that there is no greater love than to lay down our life for one another. He teaches that where two or three are gathered in His name, He is in their one midst! This is a message very contrary to the message of the world. During our unity Mass we saw up close and personal what the Body of Christ looks like. It is a glimpse of Heaven itself, when people go out of their way to build friendships and community. Those who chose not to attend the Unity Mass still have not figured out what I preach every weekend. That sometimes we must let go of our personal needs and desires, what’s easiest for “me” for the sake of the community. When I was sick with cancer this reality saved my life. It was not my alone time that healed me, it was all of you who went out of your way to pray for me, surround me with love and show your concern. Likewise, when any person gets sick, they long to be surrounded by love. Those who came to the Unity Mass, the Camping Jamboree, the festival, or any of the wonderful community events we host, get this message. Sometimes its not easy, its inconvenient, or we have to step up and even meet a stranger, but in doing it we create family and community and we build up the Church making Christ ever more visible in a world of darkness.
Thank you for all you do to build up the family of IHM!
In Jesus, Fr. Greg
|
| Father Gregs Reflection, Sunday 7-18-10 - Saturday, July 17, 2010
Back to the Journey!
Dear Family of Immaculate Heart of Mary,
We are excited to invite all of you “Back to the Journey”. As you know here at IHM everything we do is about our Journey, our Journey in faith and in our lives! Our Journey to God is truly the most important part of our life experiences! The parish family of Immaculate Heart of Mary, including Fr. Peter and myself, wants to be a part of that Journey. During these long hot days of summer, we invite you to begin to prepare for the fall by registering your children, your youth, and yourselves for our family night and faith formation programs, NOW!
This weekend David Pipp the director of Faith Formation for children and adults, and the director of our RCIA programs for those who are interested in becoming Catholic will be available to answer your questions about our programs for Children’s Religious Education and Our Catholic Journey classes. He is available to help you register your children for their sacraments of First Reconciliation and First Holy Communion as well as their religious education classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Jan Wood, the director of our Youth Ministry programs will also be available to answer questions regarding our youth programs for all the young people of our parish in 6-12 grades as well as our Confirmation programs. If you are a curious non-Catholic and would like more information about our faith, or if someone you love is interested in joining the Catholic Church, then you can also sign up for RCIA, The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, which is the eight month program required for those who seek to be baptized or make a profession of faith. Or, if you are a Catholic who never received one of your sacraments as a child or young person, sign up for our classes designed with you in mind!
I strongly encourage you to stop after masses this weekend and sign up for the wonderful Faith Formation programs we host for you and your families. This registration is so important to get done early. I know it is always easy to put it off until the fall, but I also want to remind you that these fine directors of our programs are working hard to provide you and your children and young adults with the best materials and experiences possible. If they know how many people will be in the classrooms and at the youth activities they can order books, get class lists together and keep you informed on when the programs begin and the necessary requirements. Those people who wait until the last minute to sign up and register make it very hard to provide the quality of ministry you have come to know and expect. I realize it might be easier to wait until a time when there is no line, no crowd or its not hot outside, but this is truly unfair for many people. Please sign up early and we will promise to do the best we can to share the richness of our faith with you in an exciting and meaningful way during the coming year. And to those who stand in line, or take a few minutes longer today, THANK YOU for your consideration and respect for the time of our staff, today. They, too, have families they would like to be with during the weekend, and your willingness to get your family registered is a sign of your respect and appreciation to them. Thank you!
We also invite you to walk down the cloister walk to the hallway that is between our new and old buildings. This east/west hallway is one of the best kept secrets to our weekend crowds! It is our Art Walk, our Art Walk is a hall that has a display of art work, and photography on it all year long. These wonderful artworks and photos are the fruits of your lives. They are done by local artists and are for sale. The proceeds from the current display of photography will go to help our youth pilgrims travel to Madrid Spain for World Youth Day. If you enjoy a particular piece of art work, and would like to purchase it, you may do so at the Information Desk. Thank you for all you do for IHM and we look forward to having you as part of our upcoming Journey in faith!
In Jesus, Fr. Greg
read more ... |
| Father Gregs Reflection 7-11-10 - Saturday, July 10, 2010Father Gregs Reflection
Dear Family of Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I hope all of you are enjoying the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer! The fourth of July weekend marks the true beginning of these days of summer when the weather is hotter, the days are longer and school and winter are distant thoughts. Summer is truly family time, or at least it should be. Here at IHM, family is truly the central focus of our parish life and our ministries. A parish is suppose to not only support you in the daily routine of your family life; it is also a family in and of itself. As you have heard many times, families are the building blocks of the societies in which we live. The stronger the family unit, the better the society we live in functions. However, keeping the balance between family life and the busyness of the world around us is really hard.
Today, families must compete on so many levels. Even in the privacy of your own homes you are competing daily with the world. The computer and television invites that world into your homes in a huge way. I remember not too many years ago when sitting in front of a computer was a mystery. Like my parents’ generation, the computer has opened a doorway to the world, much the same as television once did. A hundred years ago, summer was a time of hard work in a field or on the streets delivering newspapers and mowing lawns. When school was out, friends went home and didn’t always see each other until fall. Brothers and sisters entertained each other in the yard, hiking, playing baseball, swimming in the ditch or running through the sprinklers! In my generation, television began to entertain us. Suddenly a whole new world opened up and we could spend hours watching exotic wildlife in far away places or cartoons on Saturday mornings. Mom and dad began a new ritual, arguing with us about when to shut-off the TV and get our chores done. But even they began to get mesmerized by the “boob tube” this black box that sometimes even disrupted dinners!
Today, the black box has simply changed. Now I often hear parents lamenting the hours and hours their children are playing video games, computer games, or surfing the internet. Children are lost in cyberspace, spending hours on the internet, facebook and twitter. They seldom if ever are two feet away from their phones and dinner has become a time when very often we are all in the same room, but we are texting all the friends who physically are far away. What happens to the fabric of family life when there are so many distractions and so much of the world is constantly filtering into our homes? It begins to erode. The text message relationships, the email friends, the facebook stories become the life blood of robots. The real, live, flesh and blood people around us become ghosts and we hardly even notice them.
Families are difficult to sustain in the face of this onslaught. So
what do we do? I think we need to run away! Literally, families need to escape their routines and run away. Dads and moms need to take vacation time, they need to stay home and the kids need to cancel all the activities and shut-off their phones. Then they need to sit down at the table and make some plans for their great escape. Why not head to the mountains! Its even better there
because so many times your cell phones don’t work and you have no internet. When that happens guess what, we are stuck with each other! WOW! We might actually have to talk to the people around us. Kids might have to play, instead of be entertained and mom and dad, you might actually get to know each other again. Moments like that are essential to truly enriched family life. I hope all of you will work hard to find some time to vacation and run away for awhile this summer.
If you need help, then let us help. Join us for our summer Family Camping Jamboree from July 30-August 1. Fr. Peter and I are willing to run away to the mountains with our parish family. It’s a great opportunity for us to get to know you, and the best part of the whole weekend is that we can play and PRAY together, without interruption. We will have an evening of praise and worship and campfire songs and then a beautiful Mass in the mountains on Sunday morning. I hope you will consider a time with your priests as one of those great moments when we can truly be a “family” in faith. And don’t forget the week before the Camping Jamboree is our Vacation Bible School, Totus Tuus. Its summer! And we look forward to having some quality family time with you and your children.
In Jesus, Fr. Greg
|
| Father Gregs Reflection - 7-4-10 - Saturday, July 03, 2010Father Gregs Reflection
Dear Family of Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Last weekend the Gospel invited us to experience the FREEDOM of the children of God, which is ours only if we practice love. Today, we celebrate ‘American Freedom,’ and we must remember that true freedom only becomes a reality when we love. How is ‘love’ the ticket to freedom? It was visibly made real last weekend during our Journey Days Family Festival! The hard work of our volunteers was simply an act of extreme love ...love for IHM, love for strangers, love for our Catholic faith! If a person drove by late last Sunday afternoon, they would have seen that love in action in the hard work of a few very committed and fine people who were cleaning up after a tremendous weekend of love! Why were they there? They were putting into practice true American Freedom, and certainly the freedom of the children of God! Like all our hard workers, volunteers, chairpeople, and all of you who attended the festival and especially the Mass of Unity, this love is something remarkable and very special. Free people can do amazing things, and the best part is that it’s a whole lot more fun, challenging and enriching then being trapped in anger, bitterness, blame, selfishness or loneliness. These volunteers who worked so hard to bring us the Journey Days Summer Festival are busy people… they have jobs, and families, commitments, and a need to rest and relax, just like the rest of us. Yet, somehow they gave themselves permission to dedicate a great deal of time to this festival and to us their parish family. While so many of us were making many excuses why we could not volunteer, or even attend the festival, they were enjoying new friends, new experiences and a great deal of satisfaction, and yes, even tired muscles and sore feet. Yet they were more free then any of our family members who would not attend the festival for all their various reasons. Freedom gives us the ability to enjoy life to the fullest! It makes us tired but it invites us to meet new people and enjoy life in new and exciting ways. Freedom is satisfying; making excuses to be complacent, not involved, or to remain comfortable, is a terrible trap and a waste of time!
This Fourth of July weekend, I want to thank all of you who used your Freedom to enrich Immaculate Heart of Mary. Thank you for building friendships and community with each other, and thank you for attending Mass on Sunday here at your home, IHM.
The weekend was a tremendous success! I was moved by the wonderful children who enjoyed the FREE children’s activities all weekend. I was very impressed with the entertainment and the food was unbelievable! I also truly appreciated the Knights of Columbus this weekend! They worked very hard to cook hundreds of sausages and make lots of burritos and then they came back on Sunday and make breakfast for thousands!
Finally, I want to also encourage those of you who did not attend the festival or the Unity Mass to stop and ask yourself a simple question...why not? Certainly there were some who couldn’t attend for very good reasons. Some were truly disappointed they could not attend because of age, or health or other reasons beyond their control. These members were with us in spirit and I hope they felt the love we sent them while we prayed and played together. These are not the people who must question their lack of involvement. The ones who I invite to search their hearts are those who live on the fringe of faith. Are you one of them? Life is truly a journey and so today on this celebration of American Freedom we must pray for one another that each of us can continue to enjoy true freedom, use it responsibly and open our hearts to the way of freedom, which is of course, the sacrificial love of the Cross of Christ...not pizza love!
Thank you for making Immaculate Heart of Mary a wonderful parish family with free people, who are loving each other generously! Have a great summer!
In Jesus, Fr. Greg
To view this weeks bulletin, click HERE
|
| Father Gregs Reflection, Sunday 6-20-10 - Saturday, June 19, 2010Father Gregs Reflection
Dear Family of Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Greetings from Italy! This week I am on a pilgrimage with the students of Holy Family High School. As you all know I have been the chaplain of this wonderful Catholic High School for nearly eight years. One of the perks of this responsibility is to join the students on their annual pilgrimage to Rome! This is an amazing experience. They take their chaplain because they want me to go to bring them the Eucharist, encourage their lives as Catholics, and pray with them. They also like having their very own “Father” along with them for all the reasons each of us want our fathers around; they want some guidance, some leadership, and a good example to follow! And like any father, I depend on your prayers to help me live up to this daunting challenge. Being a Father in the world today is a truly difficult task.
Whether we are a father of our own children, a father in our places of employment to those who look up to us, or spiritual fathers such as being a priest, we all know that giving guidance, direction and example is a lofty responsibility. Yet, we all need good fathers! We need a strong example to lean on when life is difficult. We need good advice, we need support and encouragement! From moms we get the hugs from dads we sometimes need more than a hug, we need a little push, we need a challenge and we need a kick in the pants! That’s what motivates us to strive for holiness and to work for perfection. Sure a dad’s hugs are important and a mom certainly can give us the kick in the pants, but somehow when dad does it seems to have a greater impact! The thing about our fathers is that somehow we want to measure up for them. We need them to be strong and we enjoy it when they truly live up to that expectation. It makes us feel strong, more secure and more self-confident. Therefore, today, we need to offer a special prayer for our dads and our fathers (especially your priests!) so, that these men can have the strength they need to be the leaders we need! Thank you dads for your fidelity to your wives and families! And thank you Dads for your faith! That truly is the greatest gift a father can give his child, to teach them that we all need our Heavenly Father! After all, have you ever wondered who dads lean on? Like any of us, even the strongest dad in the world needs a dad whose a little stronger. It was no accident that Jesus called God, Abba, Father, or daddy … even Jesus needed a dad! And, in turn He gave us His own Father, to be our one true and incredible Father here on earth. So Dads, don’t ever forget you are never alone and remember God, our Father, is waiting to hold you up, guide you and direct you when life seems almost too hard and the responsibilities are too great for your tired shoulders!
Today, I also want to announce that our new assistant, or Parochial Vicar, Fr. Peter Musset, will arrive next week. He will be at the Festival Volunteer Picnic on Wednesday evening to meet the hundreds of you who will be volunteering at the summer festival. Then he will make his grand entrance at our Unity Mass on Sunday, June 27, here at IHM. That wonderful Mass begins at 8:30 am, before it gets too hot. It will be the first Mass Fr. Peter celebrates with his new parish. I urge you to join your parish family and both your priests as we celebrate our unity and friendship in Christ. I also know that like every year, some of you will not join us because of many good reasons, and a few poor excuses. However, remember, we need you here! If you are elderly or disabled we will have special seating for you in the building or in the shade! Bring you own lawn chairs or blankets to sit on the lawn if you are able, and we will also have plenty of chairs. It’s a beautiful Mass and I am deeply grateful to all of you who make the effort to join together in UNITY!
Welcome Fr. Peter and Happy Father’s Day to all of the men of our parish who are modeling their lives after Christ and who are setting great examples for all of us, their family!
In Jesus, Fr. Greg
To view this weeks bulletin, click HERE
|
|
|
|
|
|
Weekly Announcements - Sunday (7-25-10)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Flocknote Now - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 |
| Haiti Relief - Friday, January 15, 2010 We are searching for ways to help with the earthquake disaster. Checks made out to "IHM", noting the funds are for "Haiti Relief" will be accept in the mean time.
|
| Reconciliation Times Change - Wednesday, December 02, 2009New Reconciliation Times
Saturday 8:00AM-10:00AM
Due to changes in facility and to accomadate our large parish, Reconciliation times have been moved to Saturday Mornings 8:00AM to 10:00AM. Thank you for your understanding as we try to best meet the needs of our parishoners.
|
|
|
|
| Article about Haiti - Friday, January 15, 2010 Please Click HERE for more information about the Earthquake in Haiti and the Church there.
|
| "Babies" - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 |
 | New Communication Tool - Thursday, August 20, 2009Please Join us on this site to keep updated on all the latest information with the parish. Your organizations will start creating groups to help spread information easily. Register on our page here
|
|
|
|
|
Free Catholic Resources via Twitter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you would like to make a donation online, please click the link below. You can donate a single time, or sign up to continually donate via the web.
This is a service provided by Vanco and they have thier terms and conditions on the following page.
To make an online donation, please click HERE
|
|
|
|
|
Due to webcrawlers and improper use of the comments form, we have been forced to remove it. Please email the appropriate staff member located on the "Parish Staff" Page under "Contact us" on the left side menu. Thank you for understanding.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|