Thanksgiving Thoughts And Wishes, A Little Early
Yes, I know; Thanksgiving is almost two weeks off.
But I hope you’ll humor me this week.
Thank you – all of you.
Thank you for helping us make The Message the very best community newspaper for the Diocese of Evansville.
You’ve done that, in the almost-four months I’ve been here, in a number of ways:
n You’ve indulged a number of changes intended to focus our content as much as possible on news from within our 12-county Catholic community.
n You’ve enabled those changes by stepping up to provide stories and photos when asked.
n You’ve provided stories and photos – and good ones – when we haven’t asked.
n You’ve embraced the digital editions we’ve posted online – like this one.
Someone recently emailed about these, and I want to share part of the email:
“Since you have been editor, The Message is a lot more about parishes and our mission with such wonderful pictures and stories about what parishes contribute to a diocese.”
I am personally grateful for those kind words, but none of this is about me. Truly and sincerely, it’s about you.
You, dear readers, are our parishes; and our parishes are our diocese. Connect the dots … you are the diocese.
We will continue to focus on making news from our diocese the priority every week.
That being said, we also will continue to find room to publish stories from Catholic News Service and elsewhere – but never at the expense of local, Diocese of Evansville news.
It’s with an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I now use a bit of this space to ask, humbly, a couple of favors as we soon greet a new liturgical year with the beginning of Advent:
1 – Pray for us. We need your prayers, and we thank you for them. We are happy to return the favor.
2 – Please continue to think of The Message and plan to provide us with photos and information from your events.
We want to cover all the news you have, but we need your help to do so.
If you ever find yourself thinking, “I wonder whether The Message would publish something about this…” – find out. Contact us; send us a photo with IDs we can use to write a caption, or a story, or both.
3 – Encourage someone you know to subscribe.
Many of you have taken the time to tell us how much you enjoy The Message these days. We hope you will share that enjoyment with everyone you know. Let folks know that they can download a digital copy of this issue from the website, and that they can stay in touch with our Catholic community by subscribing.
We continue to work on the details necessary to begin offering a digital subscription; but even when it becomes available, the print edition won’t go away. The goal is to offer you the paper the way you’d prefer (hard copy or digital) – not force you to make a decision that it’s either one or the other.
You can subscribe online – so maybe we can ease some of your Christmas-shopping anxiety by suggesting you give gift subscriptions.
Our goal is to use The Message to engage all of you; to connect you; to help you feel the Catholic family ties across all of our 12 counties. We also hope to re-engage Catholics across the diocese – to help them see what a vibrant, dynamic and faith-filled community we are.
We want them to know that we are a community ready – anxious, really – to welcome them home.
All of us on The Message staff thank you for welcoming us into your homes every week, and we wish you a Blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving.
“In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:18.
“The Lord bless and keep you! The Lord let His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!” – Numbers 6: 24-26.
Stay faithful, my friends.
