Come Celebrate With Us

25 Jun

“Festivals promote diversity, they bring neighbors into dialogue, they increase creativity, they offer opportunities for civic pride, they improve our general psychological well-being. In short, they make cities better places to live.”  ~ David Binder

There are all sorts of people who line up on one of two sides regarding festivals:  for and against.  Come to think about it, I guess that can pretty much be said for anything, can’t it?

Some people think that we host our annual parish festival merely to make money.  They think that we do not care about the impact it might have on our community.  That cannot be farther from the truth.  In fact, we do care about the impact our festival has on our community.  That is precisely why we have our festival.  We want it to impact our community — in a positive way.

Our festival provides people an opportunity to come together and enjoy one another’s company.  It provides people an opportunity to hear some good entertainment.  It provides people a chance to “go away” on vacation without actually going away.  A lot of people call that a “staycation”.  Because of finances, some people cannot afford to go on summer vacations, so they use the opportunity to come to our fest.

That is all the immediate impact our festival has on our community at large.

Of course, the other impact it has is that it supplies us the funds that we need to continue our many ministries that impact our community by cooking for soup kitchens, offering utility and rent assistance to the needy, supplying food to the hungry, et cetera.

We are here for the long run.  We want to see our community grow.  We want to give our community an opportunity to gather together and celebrate together.  We want to be able to assist those in need.

That is what every Christian is called to do.  Sometimes we do it collectively.  But we are called to do the same individually on a daily basis.  Go and provide for someone in need, whether it be spiritually, emotionally, or materially.

FAITH ACTION:  Let whatever you do today promote the well-being of another.