All Saints Parish - 41 N. Perry St. - New Riegel, OH    Privacy Policy

Our Address:

If you are Catholic and new in the area, we invite you to join the parish of All Saints. If you are unchurched or inactive, we support your search!  Contact us at (419) 595-2567

John Baker, Judy Beard, Rachel Boes, Millie Clouse, Jeff Colatruglio, Franzisca Cramer, Harold Courtney, Tom Davis, Betsy Frase, James Gase, Alyssa Hacker, Dan Henley, Sarah Hoffman, Merle Hohman,  Kristen Kingseed, Zackary Kinn, Regina Lucius, K. Marsh, Dan Mathias,  Izze McIntire, Doris Parkins, Carl Reinhart, Paul Reinhart, Lorri Sauber, Hilda Scherger, Annie Schumm, Tom Schumm, Kenny Seiple, Sandy Siebenaller, Jim Snyder, Donald Steyer,  Margaret Theis, Ruthann Ulman, Elaine Lafontaine Wagner, Jim Ward, Martin Welly, Diane Wilhelm, Marlene Wisda, Charlie Zoeller

Photo Gallery

Video Page

Click Link Below to view

Mass Changes Page

ANNUAL CATHOLIC APPEAL: As of April 11th our parishioners have donated/pledged $21,482.00 Thank you to everyone who has made a pledge or gift. We are at 187.4% of our parish goal. It’s not too late to make a pledge. If you don’t have a form call the parish office or you may mail your pledge to ACA 2012, PO Box 917, Toledo, OH 43697

BULLETIN BUSINESS SPONSOR OF THE WEEK
“Financial Design P & C”

New Riegel, Ohio

Thanks to all our businesses and organizations for their generous support.

By Diane M. Houdek ...  

    A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that thanks to Facebook the word like now seems to need quotation marks, as in “Please ‘like’ us on Facebook.” The same might be said of the word friend. It reminded me of the cartoon I have hanging outside my office. Jesus is talking to a man with a fishing net and he says, “No, I’m not talking about Twitter. I literally want you to follow me.”

     Along with grammar and spelling, deeper meanings seem to be suffering somewhat from the explosion of words and information on the Internet. As we spend more collective time online, we lose touch with some of the basic concepts of life in the real world.

     But, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The way we treat one another, the care we take in our relationships, the way we expand our horizons and beliefs, are more a reflection of who we are than a determination of the technology we use or don’t use.

     People who reach out to others will be as compassionate in an email or a Facebook comment as they are in person. People who hide behind vitriol and anger might find the comboxes of a blog more anonymous than a city council meeting, but their responses will be much the same. People who spend their time giving to charitable causes will be doing online advocacy but they’ll also be working in the local soup kitchen.

     Our readings today are about looking beyond our horizons and our perceived limitations. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter goes to the home of Cornelius and there discovers that the Spirit is not limited to the Chosen People but has also entered this gentile household. This is an expansion of Peter’s preconceived ideas, and one that had to take place if the gospel was going to spread beyond Jerusalem.

     Jesus in John’s Gospel is completely focused on the love that the Father has shared with him and, through him, with the world. In today’s reading, he assures his followers that they are not slaves but friends. Friend is a significant word, no matter how much it gets thrown around in casual conversation. It’s one of the first words that children learn when they move out of their immediate families into daycare or preschool. It’s a word that means not only affection and closeness but something chosen. We’re born into a family but we choose and are chosen by our friends.

     Human analogies are never perfect for our relationship with the divine. Most of us have knows friendships and even family relationships that have broken down through human failings. But to begin here shows that our God is so much a part of our everyday lives that we can learn who he is by looking at our best experiences of love and then multiplying by infinity.

     One of the hazards of being a “people of the book” is that we can get too comfortable seeing our faith as a matter of saying the right words. We see this in fundamentalist religions when words are taken so literally that there’s no room for God to do something new. As we continue to learn the new words of the Roman Missal, we can find ourselves losing our thread of community prayer.

     We need to take time to sit with the deeper meanings of the words of Scripture and the liturgy. We need to rest in the assurance that Jesus calls us to be his friends. And we all know that some of our most treasured experiences of friendship come when we move beyond words to a deeper communion.