This year Hope for the Future was able to provide more than $2 million dollars in tuition assistance to 2,282 children in 36 schools across the archdiocese. Total assistance was more than 20 percent higher than last year, which was so important as we worked to regain enrollment in our Catholic schools after COVID. And 26 percent of all the students in our Catholic schools were Hope recipients this year. Of the families receiving assistance 60 percent are single parent households — mainly Hispanic moms — with 90 percent Catholic families. We need to put ourselves in these families’ shoes and provide them with the support and encouragement they need to move forward. We provide hope. When we pour our hearts into that, we see miracles happen.

Pope Francis calls us to practice compassion as a synodal exercise of healing. “When we go on a journey with others, it is not unusual for someone to feel sick, to have to stop because of fatigue or of some mishap along the way. It is precisely in such moments that we see how we are walking together: whether we are truly companions on the journey, or merely individuals on the same path, looking after our own interests and leaving others to “make do.” For this reason, on the 31st World Day of the Sick, as the whole Church journeys along the synodal path, I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness.” Read the full text from Pope Francis’s Message on the 31st World Day of the Sick.

National Association of Catholic Chaplains offers a Prayer of the Faithful for World Day of the Sick. Access additional resources for the sick on our website, and share with us how we can pray for you or a loved one.

The Sophia Institute is offering this free professional development workshop at St. Matthew Catholic Church from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Participants will explore how the Eucharist is truly a sacrament of love and how they can lead their students to receive greater spiritual fruit from Communion. Learn the Old Testament roots of the Eucharist, as well as their fulfillment in the Mass.