Respect Life Sunday – 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43
October 5, 2014

 

Isaiah speaks of his “friend” who worked diligently to create the perfect vineyard.  He did everything one would expect, he spaded it, cleared the stones, and planted the best vines he could find.  He built a watchtower and a wine press.

What happened?  He got a bunch of wild grapes.  Wild grapes are a pain.  Years ago my dad had a handful of grape vines on his property that he kept trimmed.  They were there before he brought the property and grew a lot of good grapes but eventually became too much work for the amount of grapes he got.  So he pulled them out.  Now, around fifteen years later, there are still no planted vines but there are still wild ones that I have to keep cutting back.  The vines on the wild grapes grow like crazy but seldom bear grapes and if they do, bear tiny little grapes.

They need to be pruned to bear good fruit.

Of course the story is really about God.  God created the earth as his “masterpiece” and then gave it to us.  We could not have asked for a better creation but what have we done with it.

Do we keep ourselves pruned in God’s Word, cutting out the parts of our lives that are not in accord with God’s words?  Or do we let ourselves grow wild and then wonder why life goes downhill?

Jesus offers us a similar parable where the landowner does everything of him in setting up the vineyard and then leases out the land.  In payment for the lease, the tenants are supposed to give him part of the harvest.  This is a normal exchange of goods.

However, when harvest time comes, the tenants get greedy and want to keep it for themselves.  So much so that they murder the landowner’s servants and ultimately even his son.

The landowner’s servants are like the prophets of the Old Testament who were rejected by the people for preaching a message they didn’t want to hear.  Of course, the son of the landowner is Jesus.

Do we get greedy with what God has given us?  Do we use wisely the things before us?  It’s not that we can’t use them at all.  God has given us much to use but we must use it wisely as part of God’s masterpiece.

So far, I have spoken of God’s masterpiece as the things we see in nature, the birds, the animals, the land… but these things, while beautiful, are not God’s ultimate masterpiece.

God’s masterpiece is life and, created in God’s image, human beings are the ultimate masterpiece.

Sometimes we lose sight of what it means to be God’s masterpiece.  Sometimes we become too focused on ourselves and become greedy, seeking more than our share at the expense of others.  Those others are all part of God’s masterpiece and have the same rights as us.  We must not take from them what is their share.

Sometimes we think we get to decide what a masterpiece of life is.  We don’t.

This month is Respect Life month and this year’s theme is “Each of us is a masterpiece of God’s creation.”

All human life is a masterpiece.  It begins in the womb and ends as we know it as natural death.

Sometimes it seems inconvenient to some, interfering with their own plans.  We can be selfish and don’t want to make sacrifices.

Sometimes we value the gift of life when we are young but when we get old and tired we want to give up.  Our faith knows there comes a point when we don’t use extraordinary means to keep an ill person alive but death should never be hastened and come naturally.

Respecting life is not just a question of life at the beginning in the womb or at the end when we enter the tomb.  Respecting life also means valuing all life in between.

It means making sure people have their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter taken care of.  This comes from Jesus himself who tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

What about people with what some call “special needs”?  There are people with physical needs that might be lifelong or started with an accident or simply from aging.  They too are, and always remain, masterpieces of God’s creation.

There are people with challenges like Autism or Down’s.  Some “feel sorry” for these people.  Sometimes we don’t know what to do to help.

I know I don’t know what to do to help these people.  What I do know from my own encounters is that people with challenges like these are sometimes the happiest and most loving people we see.  There lies the real masterpiece of creation, love.

May we all have the grace we need to see as God sees, to love and know that “Each of us is a masterpiece of God’s creation.”

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Ezekiel 18:25-28
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 21:28-32
September 28, 2014
What does the word “Church” mean to you?

We call the buildings we worship in “churches” but is “church” just a building?

Without a doubt, our church buildings are a focal point of our faith.  The design, layout, and artwork say something about what we believe.  Every Catholic Church has a Crucifix in the sanctuary as Jesus’ death is central to our faith.  The altar is always central in the layout of a church as the place upon which we celebrate the Eucharist as Christ’s sacrifice for us.

Church buildings are important to our faith lives but our faith is not limited to a physical building.  When we speak of our parish as Immaculate Conception Church it is not just our building but the people and faith to which we speak.

We are a community of believers, called, as Paul writes, to be of the same mind and the same love, united in heart and thinking one thing.

As church we are called to look beyond ourselves, not acting out of selfishness or vainglory but in humility, the same humility that Jesus showed in becoming human and dying on the Cross for us.

What is the attitude we live with?

Is our faith part of our general attitude of life?

Do we think about life in terms of what we don’t have or what we do have?  Do we spend more time lamenting what we don’t have or thanking God for what we do have?

If we spend our time lamenting what we don’t have, we may be selfishness, thinking we need to hoard what we do have to take care of our own needs.

If we recognize how much we do have, then even when we don’t have everything we might want, we feel blessed and foster an attitude that calls us to share the blessings that we do have.

When we focus on what we do have rather than what we lack we can live with an “Attitude of Gratitude.”

I could say a lot about having an “Attitude of Gratitude”.  In fact, last Fall I did a presentation with this very title.  I’m not going to repeat that presentation here as it lasted about an hour but you can watch it online by going to the videos section of our parish website.

Let summarize how I see an “Attitude of Gratitude” in a couple of sentences.  To have such an attitude is to realize how blessed we are and that God is the source of those blessings.  Having an “Attitude of Gratitude” means recognizing that God doesn’t give us blessings simply for ourselves but to share with others who are less fortunate.

This means looking beyond ourselves and realizing we are put of something much bigger than anything we see right here.  I’ve already talked about our parish community as “church” but as “church” we are also part of a diocese, called to work together to proclaim the gospel in word and by caring for one another.

We support the diocese in prayer, in action by helping others, and yes, with our financial contributions.  Many of you have probably received this week the mailing for this year’s Catholic Ministries Appeal (CMA).

This year’s theme is “Attitude of Gratitude”.  We can be thankful and show gratitude for the support our parish receives from our diocese.

One might ask what we can be thankful to the diocese for.  Well, for instance in the last year, the diocese upgraded all our computers in the school and church to bring them up to current standards.  We paid for new computers, some parts to upgrade some computer, and software but the diocese did the work without charging us for the labor.

In the last couple of years, both at the church and the school, we have hired new people.  With every one of these hirings, we have received support from the diocese.  The diocese keeps us up on regulations and administers the benefits package.

These things may not be ministry but they are vital for us to be able to do our ministries.

Our Principal, Mr. Mills is frequently calling the diocesan schools office with questions or for support.

Just this summer Bishop Matano eliminated fees for annulments.  Much of the work of the Tribunal for annulments and other items is funded by the CMA.

I mention these things as things we can be thankful for but we shouldn’t view as simply getting back what we pay in.  It’s about helping others.  For instance a little over 10% of the CMA contributions goes to support the work of Catholic Charities.

To give you the basic numbers last year we collected $54,000 and this year our goal is up just over 2% to $55,385, a gain I very much believe we can make.  People increasing their contributions will help but I must note that last year we had about thirty fewer households contribute.  If we can gain thirty households and others keep contributing, we can make our goal.

Those are the numbers but remember it isn’t about dollars.  It’s about living with an “Attitude of Gratitude.”

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Isaiah 55:6-9
Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a
Matthew 20:1-16a
September 21, 2014
The landowner goes out and hires workers for the day and agrees to pay them the “usual daily wage”.  There is nothing usual here, it’s the standard practice of that day.

As the day continues, the landowner keeps going out and hiring more workers and tells them he will pay them what is “just”.

At the end of the day the workers who only worked a little bit are paid first and paid the full day’s wage!  So the workers who worked the whole day expect to be paid more but they only receive the “usual daily wage”.

They are shocked by this and I bet most of us won’t be any different.  Standard business practice is the more you work the more you get paid.

The landowner looks at it differently.  The “usual daily wage” is determined by what a person needs to live on.  The workers who only worked part of the day still have the same cost of living.  So, the landowner does not pay them based on the quantity of work they performed but their need.

When we set a salary do we consider what the person needs to live on?

So far I have just talked about this parable in human terms but, of course, there is a spiritual dimension.  As I look around the congregation I see people who have been coming to church their whole lives, some intermittent attenders, and some who just became part of our Catholic Church.

Do people who have been Catholic their whole lives get a better place in Heaven?

There was a story of a woman who had been a faithful Catholic all her live.  Her husband never went to church much but had a deathbed conversion.  Shortly after his death, she was talking to her priest.  Her priest sensed something was troubling her and asked her what was troubling her.

She said that while she was happy that her husband had his deathbed conversion and would be in Heaven, she found it troubling that she had worked hard all her life to be faithful while her husband didn’t live so well but because in the end he opened his heart, he would be in Heaven.

It is what is in our hearts at the end that determines if we are welcomed into Heaven, not the length of time we believed.

This could lead one to say ‘I’m going to live a fun life and when I sense my end is near, then I will go to church and turn my heart to Jesus.’

It doesn’t work that way.  For one thing, we don’t know when our end will be so, as Isaiah says, we must seek the Lord while he is near.  The other thing here is that if we think this way, I don’t know if we would really ever truly turn our hearts to Jesus.  We might say we believe but will we really?  If we believe, we will work to follow Jesus today.

It isn’t easy to follow Jesus.  Evil tempts us.  That’s why Jesus died on the Cross, so that our sins might be forgiven.  Jesus gives us the Sacrament of Reconciliation for us to know his forgiveness.  What do we need to do differently today to follow Jesus?

 

Homily – Exaltation of the Holy Cross

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Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Numbers 21:4b-9
Philippians 2:6-11
John 3:13-17
September 14, 2014

 

Today we take a step away from what would normally be the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time for this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

This feast dates back to the fourth century when St. Helena found the Cross on which Jesus crucified, verified by the miraculous healing of a dying woman who touched the cross and was healed.

Without a doubt, the Cross is a central image of our faith.  You can’t really be Christian without knowing of the Cross.  As Catholics, the rubrics clearly state that a Crucifix is to be located near the Altar.

We have our Crucifix behind the Tabernacle.  There is the large Crucifix in the vestibule.  Our gestures include the Cross.  In our procession and recession, one of the altar servers carries the Processional Cross.  Well, we call it a Processional Cross but we should note is a Crucifix.

What makes a Cross a Crucifix?  The Body of Christ.  Knowing the Cross is central to our faith and today we celebrate this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross but we do not worship the Cross itself.  We worship Jesus as Son of God.  We venerate the Cross as the instrument of our salvation.

As we celebrate this feast, our readings first take us back to the time of the Exodus.  The people were complaining against God and Moses.  Saraph Serpents bite the people and many died.  Those who remained came to Moses to admit their sins.  God forgave them their sins and told Moses to make a saraph and mount it on a pole.  All look at it will live.

The pole did not have “magic powers” to heal the people.  Knowing God’s promise of being healed they looked at the saraph pole with faith and in faith they were healed.  This saraph pole became a sign of healing and even today this image is found on the website of the American Medical Association.

Turning to Jesus’ words in the gospel, he says that the Son of Man must be lifted up and all who believe in him will have eternal life.

Jesus is lifted up on the Cross.  The Cross becomes the instrument of our salvation.  When the Israelites looked at the saraph pole in the desert they were healed physically.  When we look at the Cross, we see the spiritual healing we need from our sins, healing that only Jesus can make possible.

When you look at a Cross, what do you see?

Some people wear a Cross around their neck but never come to church.  I wonder if they just see it as jewelry.

We see Crucifixes in church but how much do we think about what it means for us?  We make the Sign of the Cross as we begin Mass.  We are blessed with the Sign of the Cross at the end of Mass.

Let us never forget what the Cross truly means for us.

 

 

A New Experience

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Today I did something that I haven’t had to do in seven years of priesthood and I would have preferred if I never needed to do it.

In a little over seven years I have probably done over 180 funerals (some Masses, some services outside Mass, and some simple graveside services).  The oldest person I ever did a service for was 107 years old.  Before today the youngest person was in their mid-thirties with the rest all over 45 and most over 60.  The younger ones all had health issues for a long time.

Today I did a funeral for a 17-year-old.  A month ago he was a typical 17-year-old but then he was diagnosed with Leukemia.  The initial prognosis looked good but in the past two weeks things deteriorated quickly and he passed from this world.

My Pastoral Associate and I met with his parents on Thursday to plan the funeral.  It was not an easy time but it was a grace filled time.  Yesterday (Friday) my day started with daily Mass and then a funeral for a 94-year-old woman followed by a couple of emergency anointings.  About 3:30 pm I finally sat down to write the homily for today’s funeral of the 17-year-old.  It was the most difficult funeral homily I have ever written (even more than for my own grandfather and mother).

Knowing it would be difficult I began with a prayer for God’s help and then looked over the readings his parents had selected and my notes.  I knew I did not have an answer as to why God allowed this to happen. I did not know what to say.  I haven’t experienced a loss like this in my own family.  As I began to actually write the homily I said another prayer asking for God to give me the right words to say.  Before long the homily was done and shortly after I left the office.

With the funeral at 10 am I arrived in the office about 7:45 this morning to tweak the homily and do a few other things. After tweaking the homily, I tried to do some other work but found myself too anxious. By 8:30 I went over to church to putter getting things ready for the funeral and to pray for God’s grace to help me.  At times during the funeral I was feeling very emotional but made it through.

A couple of people told me that I did a good job.  I don’t know.  I already said I don’t know why God allows things like Leukemia. What I do know is that if it was a good homily and funeral, it is because of God’s guidance through the Holy Spirit.  All I did was try to listen.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

 

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Ezekiel 33:7-9
Romans 13:8-10
Matthew 18:15-20
September 7, 2014

 

Ezekiel serves the Lord as a prophet.  Part of his duties as a prophet is to be a “watchman”.  A watchman stands on lookout to watch for trouble and, when there is trouble, alert the people.

As a prophet, Ezekiel is to stand on watch for the people who might sin and stray from God.  It is his role to tell the people when they are going astray and offer them the Lord’s words on how they are called to live their lives.

This is not a trivial task given to Ezekiel for it comes with a great responsibility.  Ezekiel must tell the people of their sins and waywardness.  To fail to do so is to sin.  If he tells the people and they continue to sin, it is their choice but Ezekiel is innocent.

In baptism, we are all anointed priest, prophet, and king.  Most people do not make being a prophet their career but sharing our faith must be part of how we are.  As we see people who do not follow the Lord’s ways, we too have a responsibility to speak out for what we believe in.  It is their choice what to do.

Yes, we need to alert people to their sins but we must be thoughtful about how we do it.  We must pray for the Lord’s guidance on how best to say what needs to be said.

Today Jesus gives us some guidance on how to tell someone their faults.  He gives us a process to follow that begins with going to any person who has wronged us one on one to “tell them their fault”.

This should not, must not, begin with us going to the person and screaming, Do you know what you did?  Do you know how much it hurt me?

It’s not easy to go to someone who has wronged us.  It is not just a process.  It’s about what is in the heart.  What is the motive of our words?  Do we go seeking to be the one who is right?  Do we go seeking revenge?

While we might be owed an apology, I think our motive should not be rooted in getting an apology.  Our motives are best when we go to the person seeking to help them be the best person they can be.  Maybe they don’t realize what they did.  Maybe they don’t understand why it is wrong.

Jesus then tells us that if the person doesn’t listen, we are to go to them with witnesses.  Getting witnesses should not be about proving that we are right.  The witnesses should be to help the person realize the truth and help them become a better person.

The same is going to the church for help.  Lastly, Jesus tells them if the person still refuses to listen, then treat them like a Gentile.  Even this should be seen not as punishment or avoidance.  It should be seen as a way to motivate the person to change so they can again be part of our community.

We are people of faith.  Part of our faith is to be people of compassion.  It isn’t easy.  We can struggle with it all our lives but we make it our way of life.  Most of us are baptized as little children and our parents make our baptismal promises for us but as we learn we must make our faith our own.  A key step in this is the Sacrament of Confirmation.  This Fall, we will have eight youth make this sacrament.  Today they begin their final preparation and we offer them our prayers and support.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Jeremiah 20:7-9
Romans 12:`01
Matthew 16:21-27
August 31, 2014
Jeremiah wonders if he has been duped in his role as a prophet.  He is proclaiming God’s Word and he suffers derision and reproach for it.

Shouldn’t preaching God’s Word be easy?  People should want to hear it, right?

We might say we want to hear God’s Word but it isn’t always what we want to hear.  Sometimes, following God’s Word means we need to make changes in our life, changes that we don’t want to make.

So, when Jeremiah speaks they don’t want to follow, they ridicule him and make him out to be the bad guy.

Jeremiah has grown tired of the suffering so much that he says he is going to stop prophesying.  Yet, he realizes he can’t because of the fire in his heart.

Peter has this same zeal to proclaim God’s Word.  Last week we heard Peter proclaim Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  In these words we see a great faith in part.

Now, today’s passage picks up where last week left off.  For the first time Jesus tells his disciples that he will be arresting, suffer, and be crucified.

Peter’s immediate response is to rebuke Jesus.  Can you imagine?  He just proclaimed Jesus as the Christ and now he is telling Jesus he’s wrong.  How can a person tell Jesus he is wrong?

Of course, we would never tell Jesus what to do!  Well, actually we do.  Who among us has not at some point told Jesus what we want him to do?  There is a fine line to walk in our prayers of asking vs. telling.  For instance, when we pray for someone looking for a job, do we tell Jesus exactly what the job should be like or do we ask God to help the person get the job that God says is the right job?

Peter doesn’t really mean to rebuke Jesus.  Peter, just like many others, had his expectations of what the Messiah would be like.  NO ONE’s expectations including suffering and crucifixion.  It won’t make sense.

If we believe in Jesus and do what he asks, shouldn’t life be easy?

Life wasn’t easy for Jesus.  It wasn’t easy for Jeremiah or the other prophets.  David became a great king but he faced struggles too.  Why should we expect any different?

Should we not be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus?

Jesus can do this as Son of God but is it possible for humans?

With God’s grace, absolutely.  We see it in the saints.  Friday we celebrated the passion of John the Baptist.  He denied himself by putting the mission God had given him before his own life.  He willing accepted the hardships (his cross) that went with this.

To deny ourselves is not to deny who we are.  It’s about letting God transform us into who we are meant to be.  Taking up our cross is about being willing to offer ourselves as a “living sacrifice.”

Being Christian is not about being popular.  Being Christian is about the Truth that Jesus teaches us.  May we always have the gifts of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to know the Truth and the courage to live and proclaim God’s Truth.

 

Faith and Reason

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Yesterday I was privileged to have a conversation with a young woman whose faith is very important to her.  It is inspiring to me to see such faith in young people. She is currently doing an internship and we were talking about the work environment in which finds herself.  It isn’t easy to find a workplace that values our Catholic beliefs.

She spoke about a person who told her he didn’t understand how she could be a person of faith and a critical thinker.  To this person faith calls people to blind obedience. They figured Christians believed just because God said so and we didn’t think for ourselves.  People who think like this reject faith in favor of critical thinking.

Our faith in no way rejects critical thinking.  Proverbs 4:5 tells us to “get wisdom, get understanding.”  Not only does our church not reject reason, it sees the ability to reason as a gift from God.  The gift of reason is part of what distinguishes us from other creatures in God’s creation.

God created us with a desire to learn.  Since the beginning of time, the scope of human knowledge has grown exponentially fueled by this desire to learn.  Yet what we know today is nothing compared to the knowledge that God has.

We have a God whose love for us is absolute and we can trust that anything God reveals to us is good but we can use the gift of reason to learn more about faith so that we better understand our faith.  This in turn gives us the ability to make decisions on how we apply our faith to situations today.  The most recent books in the Bible were written 2,000 years ago.  It is through the gift of reason and the Holy Spirit that we make decisions on how the Bible applies to our lives today.

To truly understand and believe we must use the gifts of faith and reason together.  Knowing this, Pope John Paul Ii wrote Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason).  It can be a weighty document but it is a wonderful description of the relationship of faith and reason. In paragraph 53, he quotes Dei Filius from Vatican I, “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also places in the human spirit the light of reason.”  In paragraph 42, he describes the function of reason as “to find meaning, to discover explanations which might allow everyone to come to a certain understanding of the contents of faith.”

Faith and Reason as both awesome gifts.  Faith is the greater gift because it is what we are created for.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Homily

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21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Isaiah 22:19-23
Romans 11:33-36
Matthew 16:13-20
August 24, 2014

Eliakim is offered the key to the House of David.  Jesus gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.  What is the significance of the keys?

We are not talking about keys to our home.  The key that Eliakim was not literally to the house that David dwelled in.  In this sense “the House of David” refers not to a building but to the Kingdom established through David, and not just an earthly kingdom but a kingdom of faith.

When Jesus gives Peter the keys, it’s not that there is a fence around Heaven with a padlock on it.  Peter is given the gift of knowing what it means to be Christian, what it means to say Jesus is the Christ.  Jesus makes it clear that Peter’s declaration of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” is not made through flesh and flood but through divine revelation.

Human knowledge seeks facts but depths and riches of God’s wisdom reach beyond human knowledge.  We can’t expect to understand it all but through the gift of faith we can believe.

It’s not that human knowledge is bad.  We need to learn all the knowledge we can about God.  The human knowledge helps us to know God.  Human words are essential as we try to express to others but at some point we make a leap of faith.

Jesus asks his disciples “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  The question begins at face value, who do they think Jesus is.  They compare him to other people like John the Baptist, Elijah or another prophet.

None of these answers are correct but it shows the people are thinking and talking about who Jesus is.  To help us grow in our faith we need to talk about who Jesus is to us.  We might want to say we don’t know how to talk about it but the only way we will learn is to begin doing.

The disciples have been talking about who Jesus is and it is time to take it to the next level.  Jesus next asks them, “But who you say that I am?”

Peter gives the correct answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of Living God.”  Peter has come to believe but as the story continues next week, he still needs to better understand what it means to say Jesus is the Messiah.

Who is Jesus to you?

Is Jesus someone you ask to fix your problems?

Is Jesus one you turn to for advice?

Is it easier for you to relate to Jesus because he is human and knows what life is like for us?

When Jesus reveals stuff to us that we don’t know, is Jesus someone you trust in?

Jesus died for us on the Cross to show us how much he loves us.  Jesus is the example of what it means for us to be people of faith.

How would you describe Jesus?

Getting Back On Track

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Those of you who are longtime readings of this blog know I used to write articles at least weekly here on various topics and events. It’s been at least several months since I have posted anything on a regular basis besides my Sunday homilies.  Honestly, the only reason the homilies got posted regularly is because I preach every Sunday so why not spend five minutes to post the homilies.

It used to be that I only posted my homilies if there was a particular point in the homily I wanted to offer here.  Some parishioners asked me to start posting the homilies on a regular basis so I did.  I’m happy to post the homilies here but the downside was as long as I was posting the homilies, when I got busy, I never made it a priority to write much else. However, this was just an excuse.  Those who read the article I posted a couple of weeks ago when I didn’t preach may have a better sense of what kept me from posting.

We went from mid January to the start of August without a Finance Director.  Our current bookkeeper was just hired shortly before.  She worked hard but was just learning about everything herself.  We were also fortunate to have four generous parishioners who are all retired business persons step up the plate to volunteer to help and a part-time person who helped.  Without their help I don’t know how we would have managed. Even with their help, I took on a lot of extra responsibility.

I overworked myself to exhaustion and grew weary.  There were a lot of days when I felt more like an administrator than a priest. In the middle of all this our Cemetery Caretaker resigned.  Fortunately (Thanks be to God), it didn’t take too long to find a great replacement at the cemetery. Part of me believes I handled things well but I know I didn’t always handle them well.  I am also aware that, however well I managed, the only reason I managed as well as I did is simple, The Grace of God.   Without God’s grace things would have worse.

The new Finance Director is working hard and learning the ropes.  I’m working with him but finding more and more time to be a priest and a pastor.  It’s going to take a while to get everything back on track but we are getting there.  Just last Saturday I was doing some “pastor work” and just stopped and realized how wonderful it felt to be getting back on track.  I’m not there but with God’s help we are getting there.

Thank you to all who have been praying for me and the parish during this time. I thank those who helped and for the rest of the staff and parishioners for being patient with me. I hope to start writing more here soon.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff