Dear Family,
It was nice to be at all the liturgies last Sunday. Thanks to Archbishop Keleher and Father Mike Hippee and Father Gary Wiesmann and Father Ronnie Brohammer and Father Jim Nero who ministered to you over the last weeks and months. It’s hard to believe this all started on February 17th. Your response to them was very hospitable and I thank you for that. That virtue seems to mark us. I receive so many nice leers from visitors you take to their hotels aer Mass. Somemes not only are people grateful, but they almost sound surprised. I’m sure we have our sins but I hope inhospitality will never be one of them.
By way of updating, our new kitchen has more or less been on hold since I got distracted with health issues. I want to get it back on track. All the money that you have given for the kitchen is safely set aside and earmarked for that. I want us to build the kitchen without debt. I know we have not collected enough to do that, although I don’t think we are too far from what we need. You’re going to ask me how much we are talking about, and the truth is I don’t know yet, but I hope I will after we’ve met again with the architect and a contractor who I think will be ideal for us. Keep it in your prayers, and if your budget allows, keep it there too. In September we will get back on track.
Although it wouldn’t be the sole reason for building a kitchen, someone who had to go to the rectory to boil water to make ice tea for last Sunday’s pot luck, ‘observed,’ “Well, if we had the kitchen we wouldn’t have to do this...”
Speaking of last Sunday’s Pot Luck Dinner and Ice Cream Social, all I can say is we ought to do it more often. The Pastoral Council was responsible for the idea AND then doing it. Doing is always a challenge from the setting up to the cleaning up. But many hands make light work - to coin a phrase.
My hearelt thanks to the Council members who understand that parish life is connually finding ways of bringing people together. People who make it easier for the rest of us to gather, are opening the doors for finding new ways of experiencing the Body of Christ. In the end, that’s the whole point of being Church.
Sometimes the ways we experience each other aren’t new at all, but the people who are involved are. Think of how many people you have met here at St. Sebastian to say nothing of the many you have known from other parish homes “up north.” Have you ever thought about the fact that those folk might need you more than you need them? In fact, are YOU the only Jesus some will ever see – to steal a line from a song!
There are surely times when we need to ‘recoup,’ to rediscover a bit of peace. I’ve been very grateful for quiet recovery me in the last few months. Hopefully that never becomes an excuse simply to withdraw. The world will be just that much harder to remake when people lose themselves in anonymity and pull their gifts out of the arena.
This year I’m 75, and Canon Law says that at that age we priests are asked to submit our resignaons to our bishops. The bishop then makes a decision about accepng the resignaon. Our Archbishop and I have had that conversaon and his queson to me was, “What do you want to do?” I can’t tell you how good that made me feel. I’m enjoying my ministry. I look over the last 48 years with a lot of gratitude. Now, as Father Tony Mulderry said on one of his visits to me, “Wait three months until you are better. Then you can make a good decision.” So don’t get excited or anything. I’m not packing (unless you want me to.) We put it all in the hands of the Lord.
In Him,
