The Bishop’s Note
Sometimes I am not sure where the time goes. The days and the weeks pass by so quickly anymore. Surely, many of you feel the same way! Here it is August already, the beautiful month of the Immaculate Heart and a month filled with quite a few of our favorite feasts. May Our Lady help us to profit from the lessons of such great feast days and saints!
The boys’ camp ended on Friday afternoon after a rainy morning. The storms passed by but the clouds never lifted. Still, the Fathers and the boys went to the park for an afternoon of fun and games as is their wont. Very much unlike the girls’ camp, the boys spend much of the time off church property, although they are here in the mornings for Mass and breakfast and then come back in the evenings for Rosary, supper, and Compline. Well, everyone says that the camp was great and that all things went smoothly. Deo gratias for that! The Sisters spent the day Wednesday with some of the younger girls, taking them to the park for the morning and then com-ing back to church for pizza and games. The social life here at church is very active these days!
It is quiet without Fr. McKenna around, but it is good for him to get away for a while. He texted a few days ago and seems to be having a relaxing time. Fr. Lehtoranta is at St. Hugh’s this weekend and will be making one more trip to the missions this summer and has already planned out who he is going to visit while he is there. Father has always been very well organized and is a good planner. Fr. Brueggemann is staying here with me and the three seminarians for the weekend, and poor Fr. Simpson goes right from camp to the southern missions. Our seminarians are with us here at church for a few more days and have been good company as well as helpful souls. Alphonso did a fine job at the organ this past week and seems to have made a lot of improvements in his playing since last I heard him. Josh served as subdeacon for the Solemn High Mass on the feast of St. Martha—and did an excellent job. That is the news about our clergy…for now.
Sr. Ulrica has been working on updating some of our websites and just finished traditionalmass.org. I don’t think that much was added, but it was definitely cleaned up and made more accessible. She is working on sgg.org as well. I do not know how these young people do these sorts of things, but they do.
There are quite a few projects needing to be done around church, but what else is new. One of the school’s air conditioning units went out some months ago, but still isn’t fixed. A unit at the rectory and another at the convento just went out this past week. The flower cooler in the annex is leaking some sort of brown liquid. A panel of the siding finally fell off of the front of the convento. All these repairs need to be made. We are still slowly trying to get the cloister floor finished. The pond at the grotto is being worked on, but should look very nice in time for the Assumption. We still need to get the sanctuary floor fixed. If you look close enough, you will notice that the floor is uneven from when the supports broke a number of years ago. The rectory addition project is getting done, but is moving at a very slow pace. These projects have been on our list for a long time, but will hopefully get done in the very near future. Please say a prayer or two to that effect.
Thursday is First Thursday! If you can, come to the evening Holy Hour to pray for priests and for vocations. We desperately need more priests to carry the Mass and sacraments to souls, as well as to preach the unadulterated supernatural truths of the Faith. The hour at church will not be wasted time!
– Bishop McGuire