Thoughts and Prayers from Fr. Zwilling

November 11, 2025

Consider this a “Pastor’s Grab Bag” this week as there are a number of things I want to tell you.

First, I wanted to let you know that after consultation with our parish council, St. Paul Parish will no longer be serving as a polling place for any elections. While this has been a great service to our community, and certainly convenient if we happen to vote in this precinct, we’ve run into some difficulties. As we know, in November, Ohio Issue 1 passed, which resulted in the right to abortion being written into our state constitution. St. Paul served as a voting site, which resulted in many campaign signs being erected on

our property for several different candidates and issues, including signs that urged voters to vote “yes” on Issue 1, in contradiction to our belief in the fundamental dignity of every human life. Furthermore, our rental contract with the Board of Elections stipulated that we were required to allow campaigning on our campus. Therefore, we were not permitted to remove any signs. Another Catholic church in our area was flooded with signs specifically urging Catholics to vote pro-choice. This represents a serious violation of our witness as Catholics, and one can imagine similar issues presenting themselves in future elections. We’re also concerned that there may be a safety concern with inviting the broader public into our space. So, we’re pulling out. Let’s pray for a spirit of open dialogue and civil discourse in our state and our nation.


Second, please be on the lookout for a letter from me or Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. who will be assisting us with a parish directory update. Basically, we need to update our parishioner addresses, phone numbers, etc. to make sure we have accurate data, and to get all that data into a digital database so we can access it quickly. This will be a great help to us in the office. Thank you for helping us with this project, which has been a long time coming!



Third, in brighter news, you may have seen our parish semi-annual report in the bulletin a couple of weeks ago. In the past six months, we reported a $36,533 surplus in revenue! And this is after several capital expenses we have undertaken to improve and beautify our parish—a renovation of our St. Anthony statue garden in memory of Dee Farinelli, an attractive and cost-saving change from mulch to stone in our pond landscaping area, a plumbing overhaul in our church restroom, and an updated fire

suppression system in our kitchen, among other things. Thank you, parishioners, for all for your commitment to our parish, for sacrificial giving, and your love for God. Thanks, too, to all who volunteer in our pirohy ministry, which provides valuable income for us. Currently, we are putting much of this $36,533 in investments to help ensure the continued financial stability of our parish. A firm footing makes us ready for mission so we can accomplish our purpose as a parish. Thanks be to God!

Messages & Meditations from Father Rovnak

November 11, 2025
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, a day we set aside to recall the unity of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, that while they are distinct as persons, together they are still one God. This is one of the great mysteries of our faith, one that has been proclaimed by theologians and saints throughout the centuries. One of the most common customs and habits we have as Christians recalls the Trinity even if we do not always consciously realize it, making the Sign of the Cross. This is such a powerful and important sign within our faith, yet many of us do it subconsciously, almost robotically, and many more make it sloppily or half-heartedly. So why do we make the Sign of the Cross? There are many reasons for this, and I would like to highlight a few of them below: The Sign of the Cross is a mini-Profession of Faith. When we say the words “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” we invoke the Trinity, reminding ourselves of the unity of the God who saves us. As we make the motion we recall the means of our salvation, namely the Cross, that Christ died for all of us, and by doing so restored life to us in the heavenly kingdom. The Sign of the Cross reminds us who God is and what God did for us. The Sign of the Cross is also reminder and renewal of our Baptism. When we were Baptized, the Cross was traced on our foreheads which “marks with the imprint of Christ the one who is going to belong to Him and signifies the grace of the Redemption Christ won for us by His cross” (CCC 1235). Every time then, that we make the Sign of the Cross, we reaffirm that we belong to Christ. As Pope Francis proclaimed last year on Trinity Sunday, “By tracing the cross on our body, we remind ourselves how much God loved us, to the point of giving His life for us; and we repeat to ourselves that H is love envelops us completely, from top to bottom, from left to right, like an embrace that never abandons us” (Angelus Address, June 4, 2023). The Sign of the Cross is also an ancient tradition. Saint John Chrysostom taught the faithful back in the 4th century to “Never leave your house without making the sign of the cross. It will be to you a staff, a weapon, an impregnable fortress. Neither man nor demon will dare to attack you, seeing you covered with such powerful armor. Let this sign teach you that you are a soldier, ready to combat against the demons, and ready to fight for the crown of justice. Are you ignorant of what the cross has done? It has vanquished death, destroyed sin, emptied hell, dethroned Satan, and restored the universe. Would you then doubt its power?” As the world moves more and more towards a secular lifestyle, let us be like Saint John, and never doubt the power of the Sign of the Cross. Have a blessed day, Fr. Rovnak

Thoughts and Prayers from Fr. Zwilling

November 11, 2025
Imagine you are driving home from Sunday Mass. What are the chances that you remember what the readings were that you just heard half an hour ago? Mmmm… not always good! If we’re honest, sometimes we get distracted or we aren’t quite paying attention during the readings. It could be because we can’t hear the readers too well, or we are trying to wrangle children, or we are thinking of lunch, or any number of reasons. But we end up missing the readings. This happened to me recently (yes me, the priest!). You see, usually I am reviewing the coming readings over and over during the week because I am preparing for my homily. But on this particular week, Deacon Bill was preaching the homily. So it was really his fault! (Haha) I failed to look at the readings before Mass, and when I was finally sitting in my seat listening, a lot of it kind of went in one ear and out the other. At that moment, I came to realize how helpful it is to look at the readings before Mass or have some kind of reinforcement besides just hearing them. Sometimes the ears need a little help from the eyes. It can aid our comprehension to read along with what the reader is saying at Mass. So, what if we would like to follow along with the readings during Mass? I promise I’m not getting a commission out of this, but here are three alternatives: 1 – The Midwest Theological Forum Daily Roman Missal. This is my real “brush like a dentist” recommendation because it’s what I use, and it’s excellent. It has every reading for every day of the year (not just Sunday), prayers and devotions, and the excellent “How to Be a Better Catholic” section.  2 – St. Joseph Sunday Missal. If you search for this, you will find a smaller missal that just has the Sunday readings. 3 – USCCB.org. The website of the US Catholic Bishops, it has a link with all the daily readings at the top of the front page. It’s good if you are looking for something that’s free. I hope this will help if you are looking for a resource. The Word of God is a precious treasure. Let’s not miss it!

Thoughts & Prayers from Fr. Zwilling

February 16, 2024
I bet many of you have seen the Toy Story movies. I grew up with them. In fact, I remember sitting in the theater with my mom right around the time I went to college watching Toy Story 3. There’s a scene in the movie where the mom of the main character, Andy, gets emotional trying to deal with her son moving out to go to college. This was intentional- the movie makers knew that the kids and their parents who watched the first movie would have grown up alongside Andy and would be around that age. Playing with our feelings! Anyway, the premise of the series involves seeing the world through the eyes of Andy’s toys. For them, there is no greater joy than Andy playing with them. They’re his toys, and many of them have his name written under their boot. They were made to be played with! Yet life isn’t always fair to them. Sometimes they get left in the toy box, they almost get accidentally sold in a garage sale, and some of them even get kidnapped by the evil neighbor kid, Sid, who loves to mess with them in malicious experiments. But in the end, they return to Andy and experience the joy of making him happy again. Everything that has been created has been created for a purpose. A knife has been made to cut, a bird has been made to sing, a child’s toys have been made to be played with. And the human person? We have been created by God for eternal union with him in a life of perfect blessedness. We don’t always experience this in this world. In fact, we go through a lot of junk that feels very different than this. And we might say, “I wasn’t made for this!” But think of this: if God exists, and if he is truly all-powerful and infinite, that means that his love for us is literally infinite. It cannot be measured; it cannot be contained. And if this is really true, then each one of us is looked upon by God with a gaze of infinite and eternal love. We are destined to spend eternity with him free of everything contrary to our nature, destined to be completely and perfectly fulfilled in the deepest core of our being, destined to become exactly what we were created to be! If that’s true, then it’s really, really good. Ridiculously good. And that’s exactly the truth that is revealed to us in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It IS true! Even in this life of trials, may we always rejoice in the indescribable beauty of our heavenly calling!