All Saints Day

My Dear Parishioners,

As our nation prepares to celebrate Halloween in a different way this year, it is a good opportunity to remind our young people that the Christian roots of this secular holiday involve our belief that the saints in heaven are praying for us.  All Saints Day, Sunday Nov. 1^st, is also known as All Hallows Day.  The day before All Saints Day is known as All Hallows’ Eve, which is where we get the word Halloween from. The day after All Saints, Nov. 2^nd, is All Souls Day.  It is the day that we set aside to pray for all those souls that have experienced bodily death and are not yet united with God in heaven.  We pray for the healing and purification of their souls so that they will be united with God. These holy days are good reminders that our Church (the Communion of Saints) is much bigger than just the here and now.

I want to remind you about an opportunity that has been beneficial for St. Joseph parish.  We are participating in a program known as Amazon Smile.  This is a way for people who usually buy things on Amazon to have a portion of their purchase price contributed to institutions that qualify as a 501c3, which our parish does.   It costs the customer nothing and helps out the parish.  AmazonSmile is a website operated by Amazon with the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon.com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice.  St. Joseph has been registered there for a couple of years.  If you are an Amazon Prime member you can also use Smile.  Here are some things you need to know if you wish to direct 0.5% of your eligible purchases to help our parish.

1. You need to be on Amazon Smile. Type www.smile.amazon.com. This can be tricky however because if you have already purchased something on Amazon, your computer may take you automatically to the regular Amazon site.  I am sure there must be a way to correct this, but I do not know what it is.  After some persistence I was able to get to www.smile.amazon.com while using the Google Chrome Browser.
2. You need to sign up for an Amazon Smile account. You will be asked for a username and a password.
3. You need to select your charity. There are some preset charities you can choose from, or you can search.  In the search bar you would need to type St. Joseph Parish, Warrington.  Please note that you should not spell out the word S-A-I-N-T but instead use St. Also you should use Parish, not St. Joseph Church.
4. Even with all this, there will be a lot to choose from, scroll down till you see St. Joseph Parish in Warrington, Pa and select it.  You can always select a different charity when you wish.
5. When you want to purchase something on Amazon, just be sure to go to the www.smile.amazon.com page. It looks very similar to regular Amazon, but you will see your selected charity listed near the top of your page.

Thank you for supporting our parish and happy shopping.

God Bless you,
Fr. Bordonaro