This Week: Pentecost X

“Internet Controversies”  –Fr. Vili Lehtoranta

Note From Father

Dear Faithful,
Bishop McGuire departed mid-week on his well-deserved vacation. He stopped part way on his journey to where he will be staying and said that the clerk at the desk for the hotel asked him what the “Bp” stood for in his email but then figured it out when he saw the “Fr” on a card and the collar on his neck. He then inquired if being made a bishop after being a priest was like get-ting an upgrade…“like when a father becomes a pa-paw?” This really gave Bishop McGuire a good laugh. I sometimes joke that he is getting “old,” but I didn’t know that he had entered into the “papaw” age range! Also, being from Massachusetts, papaw is a bit of local nomenclature which was, until now, foreign to me…but I was able to decipher its meaning from con-text.

As Bishop McGuire has left for his time off, Fr. Lehtoranta has returned. He reported having a wonderful time. It marks really the beginning of the vacation shuffle for us. One comes and another goes through most of August, ensuring that each priest is able to have a little bit of R&R to recharge the batteries before summer ends and the school, once again, begins.

The boys at our boys’ camp seem to have had a very good time, as one would hope. They really had perfect weather for all three days, with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the low-80s. I was joking with the young Fathers that I always figured I could either pray for the weather to be dry or the weather to be cool at boys’ camp…but I had to choose one or the other be-cause it would be a greedy prayer to ask for both to occur in July. So, I always prayed for it to be dry. Thus, the boys’ camps under my watch were typically exactly what I asked for: not much rain but usually blazing hot. However, Frs. Simpson and Brueggemann dared to go big and prayed for both dry and cooler and, low and behold, they got precisely what they prayed for! Perhaps I should have had more confidence…or perhaps they are just a bit more pious than I am.

For being in town, we often have quite a bit of wildlife come through the property here at St. Gertrude’s. I often joke that it’s like animal kingdom. It’s usually things like deer, skunks, or coyotes. However, on Wednesday night I had quite the interesting experience. After visiting for a while with the fathers who had come to boys’ camp, I was walking back up to my house along the path from the offices when suddenly I simultaneously saw a moment of black and felt air and the slightest touch of feathers brush my face…all completely silent. An owl had swooped down and dive-bombed me, brushing right past my face!! Boy did my heart skip a beat. I didn’t see it coming…I didn’t hear it coming. Just was walking and then it was there! Wild!

This weekend, I am down in Texas visiting all three of the missions. I will return mid-week and be with you all next weekend. Actually, it will once again be just me for the Sunday. I am happy to do this, but as when this was the case in July, I encourage you make use of the opportunities for confession on Friday and Saturday, as it is difficult to guarantee what can be done on Sunday.

In Christ,
Fr. McKenna

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