Do you have good news for the readers? Let us know.
I have a few tidbits.
First, today I had lunch with a priest friend from my native place who was driving through on the way home from a long summer road trip. I haven’t seen him for years. He, too, had been given the heave ho from the seminary a couple of years before I experienced the same gentle “deselection”. He, too, was forced to leave family and friends and seek God’s will in another place, though not quite as far as I went. That’s another story.
My friend had a lot of observations about the Church and the near future. He sees things much as I do. And, a bright note, he said his first TLM recently, at the request of young people in the parish. Sweet.
I picked up my P.O. Box mail and had nice notes and a couple of donations from readers. Some prefer to send by snail mail.
- Good luck LM and family in your move! Thanks for the comments about Pontifical Masses.
- Thanks D&TH for the letter about life and the role the blog plays.
- LL, I will enjoy the marmalade. I am already contemplating how best to deploy it. And, I suppose I should have it with tea, rather than coffee. I shall carefully hot the pot and do it up right.
I really enjoy the notes about what going on. Thanks.
What’s your good news?
Loading ...
Couple good things (thank you Sts. Jude and Anne) to report:
1. Have multiple job offers on the table, including being picked up within another team in Big Blue so I don’t have to hand in my badge…
2. Spent the day at the Shrine inventorying the sacristies and taking photos of the vessels (and noting the contributors of the same). Some need to be replated and fixed…lots of devoted families who memorialized their loved ones in contributing vessels to be used on the altar.
3. Found, in the cedar closets, some beautiful vestments, some Roman, some Gothic, some better left in the bad old 60s, but there you have it, as well as a drawer full of, wait for it, maniples, burses, and amices.
4. Stopped by a sign shop to have suitable name plates made up for the priests of the Shrine who are interred in the crypt instead of the stick-on letters from the big orange box store. I’m going to clean up and repaint the doors of the crypt, polish the brass trim, and generally tidy up this most sacred resting space in the walls of one of the side altars in the shrine ambulatory.
5. Found a great little restaurant a few blocks away called “Patty’s Pierogis” that makes a stuffed cabbage (I can’t spell the Polish spelling) dish that is beyond compare.
6. And my cats are adjusting to life in the city by Mount Hope Bay.
Not bad for a Wednesday, feast of fellow ham St. Kolbe.
[Not bad for a Wednesday. Thanks for your work to preserve St. Ann’s.]
Good news indeed: I was today asked to conduct a splendid church choir and orchestra in the Missa Pastoralis by Karl Kempter (1819-1871) at Mass this coming Christmas Day. It is a much beloved Romantic-period Missa brevis that is often sung here in Austria and nearby Bavaria as part of the liturgy at Christmas. A fine recording of the work can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vCRgtEAUqc.
I have my first real time off in years this week (three weeks at home with three days at the beach in the last week). I also have a shot personal retreat at a nearby Benedictine abbey starting Friday.
After one of the worst summers ever, and feeling spiritually attacked for a large bit of it, I thank God for this opportunity.
My landlord just installed new windows and patio doors in the building replacing the old crappy windows from the 70s that we’re bitterly cold and caused the furnace to kick in every 5 minutes if I didn’t turn it down to 15°C.
The French have finally agreed to provide me with the handicap benefit, which will not only make my daily life much easier, but it will also be extremely helpful on the remaining stages of my 2019-2020 4000Km foot pilgrimage from home to home via Fatima, Compostela, and Lourdes.
We are celebrating the Feast of the Assumption at our new church property today. We are founding a new parish as a mission of the Ordinariate in Houston, TX. We have recently acquired land to build our church and this will be the first mass on the property today. Praise the Lord!
This week I got a Rosary in the mail which houses a relic of Saint Gemma Galgani inside of a locket in the centerpiece. I love her very much. I have to ask our priest what class of a relic it is. Father, if I acquire a Rosary that has a relic in it, does it need to be blessed or is it already sacred because it houses the body of a saint?
[Nothing is harmed or disrespected should the priest bless the rosary without intending to bless the relic. Then he gets to venerate it as well! Sounds like a good deal to me.]
We’ve had another vocation from our traditional parish! That makes three for the year that I’m aware of! Two are going to the IBP and one to traditional Benedictines, so all three are going to be formed solely in the traditional way using only the TLM. Blessed be God.
Our oldest son who has had problems in the past holding down a job due to his disabilities, seems to have finally found a niche where he can excel. Many prayers have been answered.
I am now only 4 months away from retirement. Yes!!!
Our young associate pastor in his sermon last Sunday reminded parishioners that the Feast of the Assumption was a holy day of obligation in our diocese and to miss that Mass was a mortal sin. If they did miss Mass without confession, they should not go to Communion the following Sunday. Several gasps and one nervous laugh could be heard.
He is a brave young man who teaches the Truth from the pulpit. I will have his back if our bishop tries to silence him!