Mission Statement and Patron Saint Discernment Letter

 (我們正在準備這封信的中文翻譯 – We are preparing the Chinese translation of this letter)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

We are pleased to begin the final stages of the discernment process for two important pillars of our new Mission: our “mission statement” and our “patron saint”. During the following weeks, we plan to follow a community-wide discernment process-- in accordance with Bishop McGrath’s January letter to our community--to achieve these goals.

Having both a clear mission statement and a fitting patron saint is important towards reinforcing our identity and establishing a purpose for our Mission. As we near the official date of our Mission installation (July 8), we are asking every member to participate in this discernment process by praying and by providing input on these two areas. 

As a community we have almost 30 years of history, with much to be proud of and much to look forward to.  We are blessed with so many talents, due in part to the broad range of generations that form our community.  Therefore, we strongly desire participation in this discernment from everyone, especially from our youth, our children!

You can provide your input directly to any of our Pastoral Council members in the printed forms that we are going to provide or by submitting them online at http://www.sjccc.org/index.php/commissioningevent/discernment.html no later than May 24th, 2012. 

Once all feedback has been received and compiled, the Pastoral Council will finalize the “mission statement” and proceed with the following steps for discerning our “patron saint”:

●    Sunday, May 27^th – The complete list of proposed saints will be available。

●    Sunday, June 3^rd – Everyone will be invited to vote on the list of saints。The names with the top votes will be reviewed by the Pastoral Council and presented to the Bishop the following week。

●    Sunday, June 10^th – We will announce the final decision for our patron saint and make public our mission statement。 This will be a memorable event as we will be able for the first time to entrust our Mission to our patron saint!

Enclosed is the latest working version of our mission statement as well as an initial list of potential saints to consider.  We have based this list of Saints on their involvement and love for the Chinese people, but we welcome any other suggestions or ideas.  

We look forward to hearing from you。

God bless!

SJCCC Pastoral Council (James Hua, Patrick Ku,

Teresa Lai, Henry Shu, Simon Liao, Yueh An-Pung,

Tony Fu, Shi Tien-Pao) and Fr. Olivera

* Mission Statement (under construction):

We are called to be a dynamic Catholic community that is welcoming to all, growing in faith and apostolic love, and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly among the Chinese, in the Diocese of San Jose and beyond.

* List of Potential Patron Saints:

	English	Chinese	Date of Celebration	Comments
1	Our Lady of China	中華聖母	Saturday before Mothers Day – (in May)	Since 1973 by decree of the Chinese Episcopal Conference in Taiwan.
2	Mary Help of Christians	進教之佑	May 24	Related to the Shrine of Our Lady of Sheshan, Shanghai. Pope Benedict XVI designated May 24th to be a special day to pray for China in the whole Church.
3	Martyrs of China	中華殉道聖人	July 9	Canonized by John Paul II in October 2000. The first Chinese canonized saints.
4	St. Francis Xavier	聖方濟. 薩威 or（方濟格，沙勿略）	December 3	Patron of the Catholic Missions together with St. Therese of the Child Jesus.
5	St. Therese of the Child Jesus	聖女小德蘭	October 1	Patron of the Catholic Missions together with St. Francis Xavier. She always prayed for the Church in China.

Note: As a help to the understand the situation of our community, our Pastoral Council together with Fr. Olivera is preparing a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document about our Mission. The document will be ready and announced in the upcoming days.

New members for SJCCC Pastoral Council - Chinese and English version

(See below for Chinese Version.  中文版在英文的後面)

Dear brothers and sister of SJCCC,

On February 18^th, we sent an email to all of you to communicate the imperative need of establish and strengthen our Pastoral Council in order to prepare effectively our community for the canonical status of Mission.

Following our request, the main group leaders of the community suggested thirty possible names as candidates to become new members of the Pastoral Council; fifteen of them accepted to participate in a discernment process on February 25^th.

The discernment process meeting was very inspiring and gave us the opportunity to listen the voice of the community on important issues for short and long term planning and action.

Two days after the discernment meeting, reviewing the data, praying and considering again the results, we realized that it was pretty clear that we had already got the desired number of people for the Pastoral Council.

Today we officially announce the five new members for the Pastoral Council: Teresa Lai (賴照郁), Tien-Pao Shi (施天寶), Tony Fu (傅典端), Patrick Ku (古柏) and Henry Shu (舒弘宇). This is a good opportunity to give them our most sincere congratulations and thanksgiving for their generous acceptance.

Five of them together with the current three members: Simon Liao (廖煥中), Louis An-Pang Yueh (岳安邦) and James Hua (華正朔) will bring our Interim Pastoral Council to a number of eight members, a very good number that represent very well our community. On Sunday, March 4^th during 3.00pm Mass, we will have a blessing and commissioning ceremony for them.

To prepare our Mission is the task of everyone in community. Please keep praying for this intention and let us be ready all together during following months to make our best dreams real for the Most Glory of God

God bless!

Fr. Olivera and the discernment committee (Louis An-Pung Yueh, James Hua, Simon Liao and Ken Wang).

親愛的主內兄弟姊妹們:

為了更充分地準備我們團體順利過度到符合天主教法規的Mission, 我們於二月十八日向團體發信表達了增固牧靈委員會的迫切需求。

根據我們的要求, 我們的幹事團推舉了30位候選者, 其中15位答應了召叫, 並參加了二月二十五日的審選會議。

審選會議非常順利, 我們聆聽了他們代表團體關於我們團體目前和長遠規劃的重大問題的聲音。

在審查會議、慎重考量、和不斷祈禱的兩天後, 我們確定了最後的名單。

今天, 在天主的恩寵下, 我們正式宣布如下五位成員加入牧靈位員會: 賴照郁(Teresa Lai)、施天寶(Tien-Pao Shi)、傅典端(Tony Fu)、古柏(Patrick Ku) 以及 舒弘宇(Henry Shu) 。讓我們向他們獻上最誠摯的祝福和感謝。

他們五位將配合現有的三位牧靈委員: 廖煥中(Simon Liao), 岳安邦(Louis An-Pang Yueh) and華正朔(James Hua) 組成八個成員的過渡期牧靈委員會, 代表我們團體所有信友的聲音。本主日, 三月四號下午三點的彌撒中, 他們將接受降福和派遣禮。

為過度到Mission 做準備是我們每一個人的職責。請為這意向祈禱, 讓我們一起在未來的幾個月做好充分的準備, 為光榮天主的極大恩寵, 實現我們的美好願望。

求主保佑你們!

歐維禮神父及審選委員(岳安邦、華正朔、廖煥中、王樹治)

Greetings, thanksgiving and pictures!

Dear brothers and sisters:

Happy Chinese New Year to you and your family!  What a wonderful celebration we had on Sunday.  It was particularly special that people from the local community also joined us in our display of Chinese arts and crafts.  Thanks to Teresa Lai, Sophia Chen, all the school teachers, parents, and children for the vibrant and joyful cultural presentation!  Retaining the Chinese culture and tradition are important for our families and for our mission. (See pictures: http://sjccc.org/index.php/activities/photo-album/938-cny-celebration-and-presentation-to-bishop-01-22-2012.html)

Thanks so much to Lucy, Maria Shao, Alan Hsia and our remarkable choir and Watermark worship teams. Thanks to Angie, Tien-Chia and all the liturgical groups, what a wonderful collaboration with the Cantonese team to have a trilingual Mass that integrates the New Year and Ancestry Remembrance tradition gracefully into the Liturgy. (See pictures: http://sjccc.org/index.php/activities/photo-album/937-chinese-new-year-mass-01-22-2012.html)

The Reception and dinner banquets were such a fun celebration!  120 people came to the banquet this year.  What a great way to spend the New Year's eve together as a family!  Thanks to James and Margarita to help us to create a rejoicing family spirit until the end.  (See reception pictures: http://sjccc.org/index.php/activities/photo-album/936-after-mass-reception-red-envelops-01-22-2012.html and banquet pictures: http://sjccc.org/index.php/activities/photo-album/935-chinese-new-year-dinner-01-22-2012.html)

During the day, the leadership team and the Planning Task Force presented an update to our Bishop McGrath.  He was very encouraging with all the progress we have made moving forward to become a Mission. He confirmed his presence with us in July and will keep us in his prayers.  The two important things he asked us to keep in mind are the evangelization to the Chinese people in the Santa Clara county, and to continue engaging the young people.  To that goal, we have a special event this Saturday with Grace Huang, from Taiwan, who brought 80 people to Catholic faith in the last two years. (http://sjccc.org/index.php/activities/activities-news/925-seminar-on-evangelization-1-28-2012.html)

Finally, I want to thank Simon for his leadership of the Chinese New Year and Louis for the Christmas celebrations. They and their families have worked hard and made possible these activities that bring us together as a family.  The strong participation of CM for Christmas and Chinese school for the Chinese New Year shows the importance of these ministries to our community.

Thanks so much to all of you!

Happy New Year, with the peace of God in our hearts!
Fr. Olivera

PS, Please thank George and Shing-Ming for taking all the pictures and Xiuli for setting up the web pages so we can see them. Thank to Tony and Wendar and thanks to many others friends that in silence make this celebration so amazing. Please enjoy these pictures of our Chinese New Year celebration and share with your friends!

Letter from Bishop McGrath

Dear Members of SJCCC

During the last six months we have been praying and working together following the directions of our Bishop on his letter of July 1st, 2011, with the goal of a more recognizable Catholic structure for our community.

A particular time of grace was the Workshop with Fr. Brendan the last November 12th where we received the answer to many of our questions; cherished together our past and projected our ideals for our future. As a fruit of this workshop we began to collect the different voices and recommendations from our community to be presented to our Bishop.

This is how I was able to send a letter to Bishop McGrath on December 16th providing him a summary of our work during the last six months and an outline of our recommendations. To give him more reference, I attached to my letter the Power Point presentation that was discussed in our last monthly leaders meeting of December. You will get all this material online in our web page.

Yesterday afternoon, January 2nd , I have received the answer of Bishop McGrath in a letter that you will find attached to this email. I think that this is an excellent news for all of us and the mature fruit of twenty eight years of sacrifice and apostolic presence of our community in the Diocese of San Jose. 

During the following weeks I will be working together with our Interim Pastoral Council as well as with our Planning Task Force for future steps, we will keep you updated. God bless!

Fr. Olivera