Once again I find myself wanting to say thank you so much for being such a welcoming parish. This last week I received an e-mail from
someone who lives in the Twin Cities, but was up to Clearwater for a camping weekend. They came to St Luke’s for Mass that
weekend. And in their words…

Our family went on a last-minute camping trip in Clearwater August 20th-21st from the Twin Cities and so attended Mass at your wonderful parish for the very
first time. Before we were even seated at our pew, we were greeted by at least 6-7 SMILING faces! Opening the doors, smiling, saying “Welcome” and “Good
morning” it was wonderful. We have traveled a lot this past year to many states, and yours was the most welcoming parish among them all in many months!

The Apostles are asking Jesus this weekend to “Increase our faith.” How often do we try to increase our faith? Or is it something that
we see as we have or we don’t? If the Apostles, who walked with Jesus during his time of his incarnation were asking him to increase
their faith, surely we should be asking the same thing. We can increase our faith in many ways, but the first step is to desire it in the
first place. If we do not wish to increase our faith, it surely will not happen. It could even be that we lose the faith we have.

So ask yourself, “Do I will to increase my faith?” We are beginning a new Faith Formation year. We will be working with our young
people and try and nurture their faith. Yet much of that needs to take place in the home. If we do not wish to increase our own faith, it
will be hard to pass that on to our children. This year we are trying something NEW to help you nurture your own faith life. We are
not simply offering the Adult Faith Formation on Wednesday night, it will also be offered on Sunday between the Masses. Sunday and
Wednesday of the same week will be the same, so you have two opportunities to catch it.

We can also increase our faith by simply setting time aside to pray. We can incorporate prayer into our daily lives in many ways.
Saying a simple prayer before we get out of bed. We can pray before meals, before we study, before we start work… There is never a bad
time to pray. We can also increase our faith by doing some spiritual reading or spending time reading the Bible and reflecting. I hope
you will take these opportunities to increase your faith.

I love the following morning prayer…

Dear Lord,
So far I’ve done all right.
I haven’t gossiped,
haven’t lost my temper,
haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.
I’m really glad about that.
But in a few minutes, God,
I’m going to get out of bed.
And from then on,
I’m going to need a lot more help.

Blessings,
Fr Backer

PS I would like to thank anonymous for sending me 2 cases of Jars. Even got the jars I like best. 🙂