GIVE PEACE!

St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish turns parish theme into lawn signs

f you are driving around Niskayuna or Schenectady, you will likely see a “Sign of Peace” in front lawns in various neighborhoods.

The signs — which say “PEACE BE WITH YOU” in bold letters and St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish below it — are the brainchild of the St. Kateri Teka­kwitha Pastoral Council and coincide with the parish’s theme of the year, “Embrace Hope, Give Peace.”

“Our pastoral council helped choose the theme of ‘Embrace Hope, Give Peace’ and we thought about how to make the giving of peace a concrete thing,” said Father Robert Longobucco, pastor. “So I hope that when you see the sign, you really want to ‘Give Peace,’ … , and hopefully return the peace by saying “And with your spirit.’ It is an active giving of peace and the bad Catholic joke is that this is a ‘Sign of Peace.’

“People have really appreciated it and taken it up. They like having them up in their lawns and other people around the neighborhood have noticed it who aren’t part of our church and I think there has been a lot of appreciation.”

“We try to come up with a theme every year, and the pastoral council really wanted to focus on that,” Father Longobucco added. “We worked together crafting (the theme)  … and it is something that the world seems very much in need of. The church has a particular responsibility to make sure that it’s present in our neighborhoods.”