Dear Family,
Happy Birthday! On Friday October 7th, the feast of the Holy Rosary you (we) will be 64 years old. (We don’t look a day over 39.) On October 7, 1958, Pope Pius XII established the diocese of Miami. Actually, it was a cou¬ple of months earlier but the official date was October 7th. Only two days after that, on October 9th, the Lord took him home.

Archbishop Joseph Hurley was the bishop of St. Augustine, which then included the whole state of Florida except for a few counties in the panhandle. He was an Archbishop because he had been a Vatican diplomat. I never tire of telling the story that he attended the trial of Cardinal Stepinac in Tito’s Yugoslavia after WWII. When the judges entered all rose except Hurley. When they brought in Cardinal Stepinac, only Hurley stood.

As a kid, I knew Archbishop Hurley.  I was a server for Archbishop Hurley when he would say Mass in the convent at Holy Family in North Miami. Nothing like getting out of class!

Dear Family,
On his 25th anniversary as a bishop, I (we) sent Archbishop Wenski congratulations from “the priest and people of St. Sebastian” tucked into some orchid plants. He responded:

Dear Jim and Parishioners of Saint Sebastian:

Thank you for the orchids you sent to my home for my 25th Anniversary of episcopal ordination.

I am grateful for your thoughtfulness and kindness. +Thomas Wenski.

Considering all he has on his plate, I was grateful for his note. More important than orchids, we must offer our prayers for him. Think of the challenge of walking the very fine line between the demands of the gospel and the tragedies that surround us. It takes huge doses of the Holy Spirit, especially when some subjects come up that have meant a great deal to you over the years.

Dear Family,
Last week exploded with one momentous event after another. I won’t list them because you were there, too. Sometimes, I wanted to turn everything off or shut everything down. The only trouble is, you can do that for a while, but eventually you have to deal with all the ‘stuff.’

Annie will be taking a well-deserved break soon in a month or so. (Don’t ask for details. We get too nosy. Just pray she has a good time and a safe return.)

Annie came to mind because as I was writing about shutting things down, I remembered something! While Annie is away, I volunteered to invite “Honey” into the rectory. (Just in case someone needs clarity about it, Honey is Annie’s dog.)

I also remembered that when Honey is running in tight little circles and refuses a treat it means only one thing. Whether I want to hide or shut down, it won’t make a whisker of a difference. HONEY NEEDS SOME GRASS! AND IT’S NOT THE KIND YOU SMOKE! NOW!!!

Dear Family,
Delia Agnes Killeen Murnane. Widowed at 30, after eight years of marriage and four children, she raised her kids very well by working 12-hour days. She taught them to care for each other. She was my Mom’s mom, the only grandparent I knew. When I was five, I met my Dad’s dad, Charles. It is a fleeting memory of a nice man who was in a wheelchair, and who died shortly after.

I’ve told the story before but I repeat it here because it is one of my favorite memories. The last conversation I had with Gram was on a visit home from studies. I told her I had missed her, and her response was, “Don’t waste your time missing people; pay attention to the ones around you.”

Later in the same conversation we were talking about a priest who used to visit her. He was from Ohio and had come to Florida to take care of his dad who had recently died. I asked her if Father John would be returning to Ohio and she said, “Don’t be in such a hurry to take the living from the dead.”

Those two lines – and the profound advice they offered, have stuck with me for nearly 50 years. I can only hope I inherited some of the Irish wisdom.