Parish Announcements

For reference, there are about 248 weekday and weekend Masses per year at Holy Trinity that can have Mass intentions. There are about 156 weekday and weekend Masses at Historic St Patrick that can have Mass intentions. First Fridays, Holidays, Holy Days and Masses said for the parishioners of our parishes are not included in this number . Due to the number of regular Masses, we’ve had to limit requests to six public Masses per person/family per year to allow others an opportunity to request Masses for their loved ones. If we had fifteen people each requesting ten Masses, that would leave about 98 at Holy Trinity and about 18 at Historic St Patrick for the remainder of the congregation.

• Mass intentions are $10 each.
• 6 Masses can be requested per person/family at both Holy Trinity & Historic St Patrick each year. Requests over six will be said privately. Payments are to be made to the respective church.
• For those requesting only weekend Masses, we currently limit the number of weekend Masses to two per family, allowing everyone an opportunity to offer a Mass on a weekend.
• We cannot accept requests for Masses more than 1 year out.
• Requests for the following year can be submitted starting July 1st, and are done on a first-come, first served basis.
• While requests for public Masses are limited, there is no limit on requests for private Masses. (Private Masses are said by our retired priests, or by our priests when thy are not scheduled for a public Mass.)

To request Mass intentions, please contact Jen at 309-829-2197.

A New Parochial Vicar
On Monday, January 13, I received notice from Bishop Louis Tylka that he assigned a new parochial vicar to our parishes of Holy Trinity and Historic Saint Patrick. He is to arrive the first week of March. As I write this on January 20, I am not at liberty to say who it is until I receive the official appointment in my hands by snail mail. I can say that he is a priest who grew up in our Diocese of Peoria and was ordained here. Father Peter Okola left on August 28; I and the substitute priests will appreciate our new priest’s arrival!

Four EMHCs at 4:00 PM Mass beginning February 1
The 4:00 PM Saturday Mass at Holy Trinity has half the attendance of the 10:00 AM Sunday Mass, and therefore six EMHCs (extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion) are not necessary. The four EMHCs at that Mass will distribute the Blood of Christ while the priest and the deacon (the ordinary minister of Holy Communion) will distribute the Body of Christ. The priest and deacon will go first to the transepts (the small sections up front on the east and west) and then proceed to the side aisles. FYI, EMHCs are utilized when there are insufficient clergy and/or when Mass would be “unduly prolonged”. Many of our EMHCs do the hidden work of bringing Holy Communion to our homebound parishioners on various days of the week.

Traveling Man
Back in July, Bishop Tylka invited six of us priests to accompany him to a conference for Catholic clergy in San Antonio, Texas. That is where I was January 21-24. (Fr. Dustin Schultz, pastor of Saint Patrick in Merna, went also.) I will visit my youngest brother and his family over a weekend in February. In the last week of February, I will visit a priest friend who is a pastor in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, whom I’ve known since seminary days. As the Little Prince says in the famous book by the same name, “It is only the time we ‘waste’ with our friends that counts.”
~Fr Loftus

Spiritual Adoption of an Unborn Child
Each January 22, all dioceses of the United States observe “a day of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life and of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion.” A past abortion surfaces especially when the mother is in hospice care – the conscience cannot forget. So, we pray for child and mother and for all who pressure the mother into abortion. Here is a prayer by Fulton Sheen that I’ve said every day since 2002: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby that I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion. [Name the baby.] Jesus, may Your peace and Your love embrace the hearts, minds and souls of the family, friends and loved ones who encourage this abortion and lead them all to Your Sacred and Eucharistic Heart.”

Game Changers – Car, Internet and Smartphone
I was introduced to a very interesting book, Corn Kings & One-Horse Thieves: A Plain-Spoken History of Mid-Illinois, by James Krohe, Jr. The author describes how towns that grew rapidly after the Civil War – Danville, Decatur, Galesburg – lost population rapidly after 1970. Then the car enabled people to live in small towns and commute into big towns for work. Then add the inventions of the Internet and the smartphone (which 91% of Americans own) and we can see how our downtown areas emptied out. Modern inventions make it common for people to work from home, too. Here is how Krohe puts it:

“Paradoxically, the automobile, having eviscerated so many isolated rural small towns, is saving many others that happen to lie within convenient driving distances of larger places offering jobs. Small-towners began driving into the cities every morning to work, and city people moved into small towns within commuting distance every evening to sleep. The more vigorous the local economy of these suburbanizing cities, the more energetically is settlement pushed out into the countryside. Its effects are especially plain around the mid-Illinois cities of Springfield, Bloomington-Normal, and Champaign-Urbana. Departing from the regional trend, these cities grew (albeit modestly) once they made a successful transition to more service-based economies based on health care, insurance, distribution, retailing, higher education, and government services.”

“Many a dying farm town now welcomes suburbanites as their great-grand-parents welcomed settlers. These new pioneers arrive in SUVs rather than wagons, but they find in these once-dying towns the same attractions that appealed to their predecessors, mainly cheap land on which one could build a house and raise a family, only now the farmstead is a fenced-in backyard, the livestock pets, and the crop grass. In suburbanizing farm towns such as Sadorus and Savoy and many others, chances are good that the guy in the next booth at the diner talking about his new John Deere is describing not a combine harvester but a riding mower.”

~Fr Loftus

The annual observance of National Catholic Schools Week starts the last Sunday in January and runs all week, which in 2025 is January 26th to February 1st. Schools typically celebrate with Masses, open houses and activities for students, families, parishioners, and the community at large. The theme for Catholic Schools Week 2025 is “United in Faith and Community.” As communities of faith, Catholic schools instill in students their destiny to become saints. Academic excellence is the hallmark of Catholic education intentionally directed to the growth of the whole person – mind, body and spirit. Service is fundamental to Catholic education and the core of Catholic discipleship. Service is intended to help form people who are not only witnesses to Catholic social teaching, but also active participants through social learning.

For those who have made a financial contribution to either Holy Trinity or Historic St Patrick, your contribution letter will be mailed in late January to the address we have on file.

Thank You for Christmas Notes and Gifts
I prayed a Hail Mary for you with each envelope I opened. Your kindness is appreciated!

Prayer for My Children’s Conversion (by a Catholic dad)
“Lord Jesus: Open my children’s eyes, hearts, and minds to the wisdom and the saving graces that come from You through the Eucharist and Your Holy Catholic Church, then inspire them to engage well in the Catholic faith for the salvation of their souls
and the souls of those whom they touch. I humbly and earnestly make this request in Your Holy Name together with Your and Your Blessed Mother’s charity and blessing upon my children. Amen.”

Pope Francis on Gossip (December talk to his curia)
“The title of this address is ‘Bless and do not curse’ …Saint Paul, writing to the community in Rome, says, ‘Bless and do not curse’ (Romans 12:14). We can also understand his words as meaning: ‘Speak well and do not speak ill’ of others, in our case, our co-workers, our superiors and colleagues, everyone…”

“I would suggest today, as I did some twenty years ago at a diocesan assembly in Buenos Aires, that all of us, as a way of exercising humility, learn the practice of self-accusation…Those who practice the virtue of self-accusation and do so consistently are gradually liberated from suspicion and distrust, and make room for God, who alone can bond hearts. If everyone makes progress along this path, a community can be born and grow, one in which all are guardians of one another and walk together in humility and charity. When we see a defect in someone, we should only talk about it with three others: with God, with the person in question, or, if that is not possible, with the person in the community who can take care of the situation. No one else…”

“To help us abase ourselves, we can go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This will help us. Each of us can ask: when was the last time I went to confession? En passant, I would like to mention something further. A few times I have spoken about  gossip. This is an evil that destroys social life, makes people’s hearts sick and leads to nothing. People say it very well: ‘Gossip is pointless’. Be careful about this…I like to think of the Roman Curia as a great workshop in which there are any number of different jobs, but where everyone works for the same purpose: to bless others, and to spread the blessing of God and Mother Church in the world.”

~Fr Loftus

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout the United States in its companion decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Since that time, millions of children have lost their lives, and millions of women and families have been wounded by abortion.

On June 24, 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, and we praise God for the great opportunity state and federal legislators now have to protect pre-born children. While God, in His mercy, ended the nearly fifty-year nationwide regime of abortion on demand, right now state and federal laws, in many instances, are still hostile to pre-born children. So, great prayer and advocacy is very needed.

9 Days for Life is the U.S. Catholic bishops’ annual novena January 16-24, surrounding the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children.

Let us join in fervent prayer for those who cannot pray for themselves.

Tuition assistance scholarship grants from the endowment fund established as a result of the Diocese of Peoria ROOTED IN FAITH Campaign and named in honor of Archbishop Spalding, the first Bishop of Peoria, will be available for the 2025-2026 school year for students enrolled in or intending to enroll in grades Kindergarten through 12 in any Catholic school located in the Diocese of Peoria whose families are active members of a Catholic parish in the diocese. All grants will be based on financial need objectively assessed.

Information about the grants and application materials may be obtained from any Catholic elementary or secondary school in the Diocese of Peoria or on the Diocesan website www.cdop.org under Catholic Schools and then under John Lancaster Spalding Scholarship. Consult the detailed protocols and procedures and checklist at the bottom of the webpage for all requirements necessary to be eligible for an award.

Parents must apply online at: online.factsmgt.com/aid. Families of students currently receiving grants are reminded that all grants are for one year only, and anyone seeking to renew a grant for the 2025-2026 school year must reapply.

Deadline date for the completed application is April 25, 2025. Notification of grant awards will be made in June of 2025.

We’ve had lots of interest in how to help support this new ministry. We are over the moon with the response for cards.  Thank you! If you feel so inclined, we could use donations of sheets of 20 stamps. We have 100+ cards  to send out monthly.

If you know of someone who would benefit from receiving an occasional card, please contact Jen at 309-829-2197 or by email at
office@holytrinitybloomington.org.

The Vocation Ministry needs your help to continue to build a culture of vocations in our parishes and our diocese. Consider taking the traveling tapestry at Historic St Patrick’s or the traveling crucifix at Holy Trinity home for a week. The sign up is located at the St Therese statue at St Patrick’s and in the back of the church at Holy Trinity. The process is simple – sign up, take the tapestry or crucifix into your home for a week, pray during the week and return at the end of the week. You can pray the rosary, the chaplet of divine mercy, or any prayer of your choosing. Here is one possibility:

O Mary, St Therese ever turned to you in love, telling you her desires in simplicity and trust, and begging you to speak of them to Jesus. With her, we ask you to offer our prayers to your Son for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life in our diocese. Place within the hearts of men and women a love which is strong enough to lead them to devote their lives to the service of the Church. Help them to respond to your Son’s call with a love that will spend itself in service to their brothers and sisters. St Therese, Patroness of Vocation, Pray for us!

Any questions, please contact the Parish Office at 309-829-2197.