Greetings in Christ, all!
Things are about to get weird – schedule wise – and I wanted to be sure to update you on it all.
We’ll start with the dates:
• Fr. Peter is going to be on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from January 20th until February 6th.
• Fr. David will be on pilgrimage from January 21st until January 31st.
• I will be providing the Sacraments and serving as emcee for a marriage retreat on The Good News Cruise from January 25th until February 2nd.
That’s nuts…how did it happen – that all three priests are going to be gone at the same time?
It’s pretty simple. We all made these plans before we were working together. Just a year and a couple months ago, Fr. Peter and Fr. Dave were serving somewhere else and made plans around those assignment calendars.
So, you will not be without priests. As soon as we saw this coming (about a year ago), we started calling priests like crazy. One of the priests from my support group, Monsignor Bernie Reilly, will be coming and staying at Holy Family for the seven days I am gone and beyond that. We did a sort of “plug-in-who-we-can” approach. All Mass and confession times are covered, thank God!
I do apologize and think it’s fair to say that this sort of thing won’t happen again. It’s just bad luck is all. For me, I’ve never been on a cruise ship and I’m pretty nervous but excited. I am able to take my Dad with me and he hasn’t been on a ship since his military transport out of Japan…we’re pretty sure the accommodations will be better on this cruise…hahaha.
In the meantime, please keep all your priests in your prayers: I’ll miss you and I’ll miss my Parish Families. The blessing of serving you fills me with joy.
fjk
