Pastor’s Weekly Letter

A young priest went to visit and elderly woman who had been a Christian for more than 75 years.  In those seven decades, she had seen some good times and some bad times.  Her husband had been dead for over 20 years.  She had outlived two of her four children and had gone through the sorrow of putting them in the grave.  She was not a wealthy woman.  There were times when the bare necessities of life were a daily struggle.  In short, her life had not been a bed of roses. After they had talked for a while, the […]

Does it appear to you that all of us are embroiled in that ongoing conflict between the old and the new?  Sometimes it seems that nothing ever stays the same.  Everything around us is in a constant state of transition.  The world is changing; our community changes; our home changes; the Church changes; even we, ourselves, change.  If you don’t believe that, well, go dig out an old high school or college picture.  Take a look at yourself then and compare it with the way you look now. Change is a fact of life.  So, what does this mean to […]

Every wife, mother, or whoever happens to have the responsibility knows that there are two ways to clean house.  One is routine and regular; the other is major and seldom.  In the first, you sweep the floors, vacuum the carpets, wash the dishes, make the beds, scrub the bathrooms, and dust the furniture.   The second way includes all of the above but goes a bit further.  You also move the furniture in order to get at the dirt that has accumulated under and behind.  You clean out the refrigerator and throw away all of the moldy food.  You rearrange the […]

Every person is a unique individual.  There is no one else in the world exactly like you or exactly like me.  Most of us take pride in this.  We are originals.  None of us wants to be an   imitation of some other person.  And this is a healthy attitude.  It would be a sad thing to go through life pretending to be someone else.  And yet, there is a sense in which imitating other people is an essential part of living.  We all do it.  The language that we speak is a case in point.  Every one of us learned […]

Central to our Catholic faith is a conviction that human personality is sacred, and that human life has meaning both now and forever.  That is one thing that makes the Christian Gospel the most redemptive force on earth – it believes in and proclaims the eternal worthiness of human life.  So, we have schools and hospitals and orphanages and rest homes; we send out missionaries, we feed the poor; we befriend the lonely and forgotten.  Why this tremendous expenditure of time and effort and money?  It is because we believe that all people are the most important things on the […]