From the Pastor's Pen

Last weekend I talked about a bedtime prayer you could make. The gospel was the beautiful, tender invitation of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will give you rest.” But how does this work? This works when we let go of what is tiring and burdening us. I mentioned that a speaker in my college years soothed us by saying that all the problems of the world disappear when we lay our head on the pillow at night. But that doesn’t happen if we still bring all our problems to the pillow. Pope John XXIII, from 1958 to the early sixties, led the church through its greatest reforms in modern history, a strenuous task that met with much resistance. Every night he would do a set of prayers and meditations before going to sleep, and end by saying “It’s your church Lord. I’m going to bed.” What if we took his prayer and instead of “church”, said, “family”; “house”; “children”; “career” we still have our work to do in the morning, but our task at night is to turn it over to God, get a good rest, and meet a new day.

The calendar is ominous now. At the end of the month my pastorate here at St. Rose Philippine Duchesne will end. I don’t know what to think of it I’m sure some of it hasn’t hit me yet. I have been packing, for several weeks now books, clothes, music equipment, and assorted mementos and such, and it’s going well. I’m finding things years old from people and events that I’d forgotten about. I remember that I was surprised nine years ago when the Personnel Director suggested St. Rose as an assignment for me. It was-n’t on my radar. I could say the same of St. Monica Parish. I’ve known about it all my life, but I was sur-prised to hear the Archdiocese propose I go there. These last couple of years at St. Rose have been espe-cially rich for me. I’m grateful for your cooperation and for receiving my leadership here.

Meanwhile Fr. Nickolai is picking up piece after piece of the leadership role here. He’s been a part of everything I’ve done, and it’s exciting to see his fine mind and great spirit move into this. I’m glad in many ways that the Archdiocese has named him to carry on here.

-Fr. Tom