From the Desk of Fr. John Nickolai - Sept. 20, 2020

When this bulletin is distributed, we will be in the midst of the first couple of days of our garage sale. I’ve only been here two years, but it has been quite a change in perspective, having the sale at the parish campus, seeing the many long hours of work, day and night, that went into setting it up, right outside my windows. Lots of people have given of their time for this event, but the two people spearheading it have been Theresa Brandt and Neal Thompson — if you see them, thank them on behalf of the parish for their work.

The garage sale is, on one hand, a very practical matter; the money raised helps the parish financially. But there is also a genuine “spirituality of garage sales,” if I may use such a term. I’m reminded of my days in a Catholic Worker house, and in the Jesuit  Volunteer Corps. Both of these organizations valued what was called “voluntary simplicity.” It meant making do with less, and finding that what one already had was enough, that one was already abundantly blessed by God. Sometimes we stretched old things to get a little more use out of them; sometimes we put up with the inconveniences and irritations that come with things being a little run down.

The last few popes have all spoken about the dangers of consumerism. Our culture can be very insistent that we need the newest version of this or that, the most up-to-date model. We give witness to an important truth when we show that there is also value in the reused, the repaired, and the recycled.