Twilight Twitches

Dear Family,
For almost 40 years, every week I have been writing a letter to my parishioners. When I was in Miami, I called it Midnight Musings. Midnight was usually the time when I was able to get to writing in peace and quiet. When I came to St Sebastian I realized I didn’t have to be up so much at midnight and called them Twilight Twitches.

The idea behind the letters was to try and give my parishioners, then, a sense of what I was thinking. In Miami we had eight masses on a weekend in two languages and it would take me a month just to go through the cycle. I’d only get to speak to my parishioners once a month. I guess I hoped the letters that I wrote each week in the bulletins would fill in.

Dear Family,
Independence Day! A time of appreciation for our country and the freedoms we share! An occasion of stopping and asking ourselves how we can best honor as well as ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ this special environment.

As a faith family we see these freedoms through the prism of the Gospel. These are the freedoms that help us answer our calls to serve: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Dear Family,
Today we have one of those rare moments in our liturgical year when a solemn feast takes the place of a Sunday liturgy, in this case the June 24th celebration of the birth of John the Baptist. Why? How much time do you have?

Well, for starters, John is a pivotal figure in the story of our salvation. You often hear of him referred to as the last of the Hebrew prophets. He segues us from the “Old” to the “New” Testaments: the story of God dealing with his people.

Several of the pieces that make up the puzzle of our story appear just in today’s readings. First, the second servant song of Isaiah speaks of one who will come. First the image is of Israel itself, and then the image shifts to one who will make Israel great. The Psalm speaks of one “fashioned in the depths of the earth...” and “wonderfully made.”

Dear Family,
I have stolen and adopted this prayer from <http://onlineministries.creighton.edu> Creighton University’s Online Ministries page. They have a series of prayers there for fathers which I found very moving. Go look.

In gratitude for my Father
Dear God, the Father of us all, I thank you for my father. Along with my mother, through the marvel of your creation, my father gave me the gift of life itself. He was such a good teacher and mentor, such a wonderful example of how to live a life of faith. (With seven kids, Lord, he really needed faith.) Please, take care of him now and be generous with him as he was with everyone.
Father of Life, he was such a blessing to me even though his life was short. Once, when I was away and told Gram I had missed her, she said, “Don’t waste your time missing people; pay attention to the ones around you.” Nevertheless, I do miss him – and all of them, even after 50 years. I thank you for what Dad left me as gifts of love and faith. I pray that he has enjoyed your embrace and that the relationship he and I have now will be renewed with you in heaven. Until then, I entrust him to your love and ask you to let him look out for me and to assist me to stay on the path to you.