Greetings in Christ!
I wanted to let you know that I’ll be taking a bit of a vacation/retreat this month. You may remember that every year, I take a 10-12 day retreat vacation around this time and that time is creeping up on me! I’ll be leaving right after my last mass this Sunday, July 24 and returning late the next week. I’ll be staying at my cousin’s house up north and I’m excited to sleep and not make decisions for a while…hahaha.
One of the things that I keep meaning to mention to you is the priest situation in our diocese.
To be clear, the Lansing Diocese is doing better than most in the US, but the issue is that there are less and less of us priests everyday, while the need for priests is relatively unchanged. Although Catholics go to or support their church less and less, they do still place tremendous demands on the Church and their priests and rightly so. We are, as priests, to be faithful to our call and make sure that fidelity is not contingent on whether they come to or support the Church in any way. That means we’re serving you who come to Mass and support your church as well as praying funerals, baptisms, weddings, last rights, hospital and home visits for those who don’t.
I’m bringing this up because it’s getting harder and harder to find priests to help us plug in the gaps when Fr. Le or I are gone and I’m asking for your prayers and patience as we deal with the limitations of myself and Fr. Le. There may be weekdays we can’t get to confession sessions or maybe even Mass…I hope to avoid this of course but it has proven inevitable at times.
I have been blessed beyond what I can describe here by the way you love us both, support us and give us your prayers and patience. I hope you know I’m not writing this because any one has failed, not at all. I’m just putting this up as a reminder and hopefully, a reason to get all of us to pray that God sends us more priests!
I love you all and thank Jesus I get to be your priest.
fjk