Greetings in Christ, Happy Easter!
I’ve got a couple of things to run by you guys in regard to me as a person and my schedule. First thing is oddly embarrassing. As you may know, my right knee tends to be a problem; I’ve had a number of procedures on it and the last one was the best. My right knee has been completely pain-free for a month now. The bad news is that, for the first time in my life, my left knee is killing me! I’m very frustrated by this. I guess I over-relied on it for too long and now, when I get up, it really hurts for a bit. If I keep walking, the pain gets a lot better. I’m telling you this for a couple of reasons: one, after my first Mass of the day, I’m not always able to stand and distribute communion. I hate hate hate not distributing communion and promise I’m doing my best to avoid missing it. The second reason I’m telling you is that I set up another doctor appointment to look at it. I’ll keep you updated on this front.
The next thing I want to run by you is Thursdays. Typically, my Thursday starts with Mass at Holy Family and then I head over to my other parish, St. Mark, and work with the staff there. I’m going to change it up a bit so that I can be more faithful to my duties as Dean.
I don’t know if you remember, but the Bishop appointed me as Dean of ten other parishes and I don’t feel like I’ve been doing as good a job as I should on that front. The requirements of the Dean are manifold, but the two duties I feel I need to be better at are regularly visiting each parish and regularly meeting with each priest. I’ve been frustrated trying to figure out how to do all of these things and be a pastor at two parishes. Fr. Steve called us a couple of weeks ago and offered to help us here, so we went ahead and signed him up for some Thursday Masses. This way, I can go straight to St. Mark on Thursday mornings and after that, go off and meet with priests and do parish visits in my Deanery.
Progress on our new building continues and I am so very excited about the day we finish! Please keep those amazing workers and Morgan Construction in your prayers. These folks are great.
I’m so grateful to God for you all and I just love being your priest. Jesus bless you!
fjk