St. Thomas the Apostle School’s 45th Annual Tricky Tray

Hit it big this spring at the St. Thomas the Apostle School’s 45th Annual Tricky Tray presented by the Home & School Association!

Join us for a fabulous day full of fun and a chance to win some prizes!

• When: Saturday, April 30, 2022

• Where: St. Thomas the Apostle School, 50 Byrd Avenue, Bloomfield, NJ 07003

• Time: Event Begins at 11:00 am

• Last ticket buy ends at 2:30 pm and last ticket drop is at 3:00 pm

• The calling time begins at 3:30 pm and you must be present to win!

Entrance tickets are $20 per person if purchased by April 27! Tickets are $25 the day of the event and are cash only. All guests must be age 21 or over.

Sign Up for Monthly Donation Runs with the Young Adult Ministry

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” - Mother Teresa

The members of the young adult ministry would like to thank everyone for their generous donations to our clothing drive. We received an overwhelming amount of donations.

On Sunday, March 6, volunteers from the young adult ministry were able to bring clothing from your generous donations, food, and rosaries to our neighbors in Newark.  We served about 50 people and only made a small dent in the clothing donations.

Due to the positive experience and the remaining supply of clothes, we would like to continue to perform this service for our neighbors in need.  The members of our ministry wanted to open the opportunity up to the rest of the parish.  If you would be interested in participating by either providing food items or joining for distribution please reach out to youngadults@stachurchbloomfield.org for more information.  We are hoping to make a trip about once a month and will have a sign-up sheet for anyone interested in helping.

Finally, I would like to share a brief story.  One time a group I was part of was bringing food and clothing to a halfway house – a house designed to help people transition from prison back to their lives.  Upon dropping off the items we started to talk with the man who was working at the house.  He was telling us how most of his life he dealt with addiction and was on and off of the streets.  He said he tried every program to help fight addiction: AA, different therapies, etc. but nothing seemed to be working.  And then with tears in his eyes, he pulled out his cross necklace, and said: “it turns out all I needed to turn my life around was to be loved”.  He told us after he was shown love, he quit drugs and had completely turned his life around. He was seven years sober and was now spending his time in this halfway house trying to help others do the same.

As Catholics, we are called to love our neighbors, especially those most in need.  We are hoping these service trips will provide opportunities to do just that, as you never know who needs a little bit of love to turn their life around.

Thank you, and God Bless you!

Young Adult Group for Catholics

If you are a young adult Catholic between the ages of 20 to 40 at any stage of life, we invite you to young our Young Adult group! We currently meet in person and virtually every other Thursday evening for Bible study, fellowship, outreach, and other social events. You can learn more about our ministry here.

To receive updates on our meeting dates, events, and to join our email list reach our to Brandon Codi at youngadults@stachurchbloomfield.org.

Join the Social Concerns Ministry for a Virtual Chat!

Are you feeling a little disconnected and isolated due to the prolonged COVID pandemic? Have you been struggling with the “Dead of Winter Blues”? Would you like to share your concerns with someone, need help with an issue, or just have a pleasant chat with another human being about how things are going? 

If so, you’re only a click away from your friends on the STA Social Concerns Committee: Barbara Albert, Fran Gardella, Michele Gilfillan, Shelia Walsh Romeo, Jason Scotti, Steve St Hilaire, and Joe Turner.

The Social Concerns Ministry is sponsoring a virtual chat on Zoom on Thursday, March 10th, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm for our St. Thomas Community.  We invite you to drop into our call any time between 7:00 - 9:00 PM to engage in community and conversation with one another.

This call is an excellent opportunity to meet some fellow parishioners, learn more about what the ministry is about, and share anything that may be on your heart and mind lately.

If you are interested in attending you can join our Zoom call here, if you are having difficulty connecting, please reach out to Fran Gardella at 848-448-4335 or via email at fgardella@hotmail.com. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Girl Scout Cookie Drive

Come out and support Girl Scout Troop 20204 of St. Thomas the Apostle School for our Drive-Thru Cookie Booth!

• Sunday, March 6, 2022, from 8:00 am - 1:00 pm

• St. Thomas the Apostle School, 50 Byrd Avenue, Bloomfield

• Parking lot across the street from the school

Stay in your car and have your favorite cookies delivered right to you!

• $5 a box for Adventurefuls, Lemon-Ups, Trefoils, Do-Si-Dos, Samoas, Tagalongs, and Thin Mints

• $6 a box for Girl Scout S’mores and Toffee-tastic

When stopping by our sale, we ask that you please remain in your cars and wear a mask upon delivery. We can deliver to your car window or directly to your trunk. Contact-free credit card payments or cash are both accepted.

If, instead, you prefer to order your cookies online and have them shipped directly to your home address, you can order here to support Troop 20204!

Beyond Cornerstone Seeks Volunteers for St. Augustine's Soup Kitchen

Image taken pre-COVID

Join the Beyond Cornerstone Service Ministry for a planning meeting supporting their work with St. Augustine’s Soup Kitchen!  We will be meeting on March 9, 2022, at 7:00 PM in the Parish Center.  All are welcome as we recruit new volunteers to help us serve those in need. 

The Beyond Cornerstone Service Ministry supports the Missionary Sisters of St. Mother Theresa at St. Augustine’s Soup Kitchen in their efforts to provide meals to those in need.

They request financial support from parishioners to meet this mission.  Please consider placing a check for any amount in the collection basket or the lockbox at the parish center. Please designate that the donation is specifically for the soup kitchen in the memo line.

If at this time, you are unable to provide support financially, we are also in need of volunteers to shop for supplies, food, and water and to then help deliver items to the nuns.  Each month, our current volunteers plan and shop to feed about 150 people, including adults and children. The Sisters then prepare and distribute the meals for the community – this may be the only meal they will have all day for many of the guests.  We also seek donations of cases of water and, if you are able, assist with our twice a month delivery. 

If you are interested in participating in the Beyond Cornerstone Service Ministry, please reach out to Alicia at aliciavons@gmail.com or 973-715-5770.  You are also welcome to stop by any of our meetings! Make sure to keep an eye out in the weekly bulletin for upcoming meeting dates.

Young Adult Ministry Clothing Drive

“The righteous will ask ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? Or naked and gave you clothing?’ And the King will answer them ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did to me.’” - Matthew 25:37-40

We have recently restarted our Young Adult Ministry, as you may have heard.  Our hope for this ministry is to provide a community for our parish's young men and women to grow together in their faith.  We believe a big part of this involves going out into the world, living your faith, and spreading the word and love of God through acts of service.

Drawing inspiration from the Franciscan Friars, we plan to engage in outreach to those in need by providing them with necessities such as food and clothing, and sitting with them in prayer.

This winter season, we humbly ask for the help of our parish to achieve this goal.  We are seeking donations of gently used winter clothing to bring to those in need.  One of the biggest struggles for the homeless in our area is staying warm during the winter. The smallest donation to our community could significantly impact someone’s life.

With the clothing collected, our ministry will make recurring trips to Newark Penn Station and Penn Station in Manhattan with food, clothes, and prayer to help support those going through a rough time in life.

How to Donate

Donations can be dropped off in the bucket near the Infant of Prague statue in the church, or reach out to Brandon Codi at youngadults@stachurchbloomfield.org.

It is easy to think that making an impact in others’ lives can seem too big a task to take on, but as Mother Teresa said, “There are no great acts, only small acts with great love.”

We once again thank you for your generosity, and God bless you.

Deacon Tom's Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Abundanza! Remember mama Celeste telling us how great her pizza was?  I don’t know whether it was the size of the pizza, the flavor of her sauce, or the amount of cheese that made her pizza “Abundanza.”

But, Mama Celeste taught us all the Italian word for abundance.

In today’s gospel, we see an abundance of water in six huge stone jars set aside for the Jewish Purification Rites: one hundred eighty gallons of water to wash the hands of the wedding guests and make them worthy of sharing in the wedding banquet.

What a blessing this abundance of water is, especially in this arid desert land. But, up to this point, even all this water cannot truly purify the wedding guests.  There’s nothing on earth that can truly cleanse them up to this point.  But, all this is about to change!

Many of Israel's ancient Prophets predicted that, at the Messiah’s coming, all the vines would yield an abundance of wine.  The Prophet Amos says: “The juice of the grapes shall drip down the mountains, and all the hills shall run with it.”  From the time the Jewish children were very young, they were taught to be on the lookout for this abundance of wine that would signal the arrival of the Messiah.

So, at Cana, when Jesus transforms 180 gallons of water into an abundance of the finest wine, Jesus is saying to all the wedding guests present and the whole Jewish nation, “Here I am. I, the Long-awaited Messiah, have arrived.”  We have here yet another epiphany, another manifestation of God’s saving presence breaking through into our world.

All the water on earth cannot purify us.  Only the Precious Blood of Jesus, poured out for us, can cleanse us.  Only the Precious Blood of Jesus poured out for us can make us truly worthy to share in the heavenly wedding banquet.

At the last supper, Jesus changes wine into His Blood, and then He generously sheds every drop of His Precious Blood for us during His Passion and His Crucifixion – showing us the abundance of God’s love for us.

Today, right now, God’s abundant Love is pouring down upon each one of us like a mighty waterfall.

St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians: that God can accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask.  He can do exceedingly more than we can even imagine!

Today, we ask: “Give me even more of your Divine Life, O Lord.  Give me even more of Your Holy Spirit!”  Jesus promises us that our reward for following His teachings will be “a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing.” 

Abundanza!