The Bishop’s Note
Today is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the two great pillars of the Catholic Church. The story of their martyrdom is both edifying and most interesting. Read it in Butler’s Lives of the Saints or in the Liturgical Year. But today also marks the priestly anniversaries of several priests. Bishop Dolan would have been a priest for 49 years, Fr. Cekada 48. Bishop Sanborn celebrates his 50th anniversary. Each one has done a tremendous amount of good in his priesthood. A prayer of thanksgiving to God is fitting and good.
Two new priests, Fr. Andrew Nowrouz and Fr. Chrisitian Ingham, were ordained by Bishop Sanborn on June 24th. Fr. Nowrouz will go to California to assist Fr. Zapp and Fr. Larrabee while Fr. Ingham will go to Florida to work with Bishop Selway. Fathers McKenna, Brueggemann and I went to the ordination which took place at Queen of Martyrs in Fraser, Michigan. There were four bishops and sixteen priests in attendance, some coming from as far away as France. It was nice to see them all.
What a great attendance for the St. John Bonfire this year! It sure was a hot day, but that did not keep anyone away. Thanks to all who helped organize the celebration! Someone asked if Fr. McKenna was going to breathe fire again, but I had to tell him that he retired from doing that a long time ago—much to this person’s disappointment.
Thanks to the Sisters, we are slowly working through Fr. Thielen’s belongings and getting the garage cleaned out before YAG. This is such a big project that it seemed overwhelming. Some of the items will eventually be shipped off to Fr. Mardones in Mexico should he need any of it for the missions there. Fr. Lehtoranta is at St. Hugh of Lincoln in Milwaukee this weekend, while Fr. Simpson is in Dallas where he had a baptism on Saturday. Fr. Brueggemann is on vacation.
We decided to rent a house for the Oblates until they can move into the convento. (The addition project is taking an unbelievably long time. They never taught us how to build when we were in seminary, and it is rather difficult to keep up such an active apostolate while running a building project, so there are a lot of headaches along the way as we figure this out.) As just mentioned, we decided to rent a house in the subdivision across the street, but just as soon as we gathered all the information and were about to call it had been rented to someone else. The search continues. Hopefully, we will soon see some actual, visible progress. I am thankful to Billy Young for helping us find a contractor to begin building. All in God’s time!
We begin the month of the Precious Blood later this week. The feast itself is on July 1st. Honor this great price of our redemption by coming to an extra Mass and receiving Holy Communion. You are bought by a great price…the Blood of God. Your soul belongs to God now. Do not cheapen it or give it to the devil by giving in to mortal sin. The price of a soul is immense since it was bought and paid for by the Savior’s Blood. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us!
– Bishop McGuire