Greetings to all and messages of prayer and gratitude from Fr. Tom! He continues to recuperate and is getting stronger each day. Like I mentioned in my email to the parish last week Fr. Tom so wishes he could be with us for the sacred liturgies, devotions, and activities of these first weeks of Lent. However, he is listening to his doctors and us brother-priests in Holy Cross to rest and feel better. We’ll be very ready and excited for his return to SJV but in the meantime he knows we’re all praying for him and love him very much. He asked me to let you all know how grateful he is and that he is praying for all the faithful of the parish.

Since the 10th century we Christians have begun our Lenten observance with the ancient Latin hymn Attende, Domine, et miserere, quia peccavimus tibi. (“Look down, O Lord, and have mercy, for we have sinned against You.”) I mentioned last Sunday that I do not believe Catholics are obsessed with sin, as many in society would claim about us. There are people who laugh at the phrase “Catholic guilt” and think our religion causes us to constantly feel guilty or ashamed. If you’ll pardon the old-fashioned response, what a bunch of poppycock!

Parishioners of a certain age may remember the Question 6 from The Baltimore Catechism “Why did God make you?” and its answer “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” A young person asked me last week this very question - from his own curiosity, not from a catechism class - and I thought of this answer. We exist because God desired (and still desires now) that we exist, and so we are born. No one is an accident or superfluous.

In his book Priests for the Third Millennium, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan tells the story of an older man on his deathbed, surrounded by his children and the parish priest. Wanting to settle his affairs before he passed away, he gave each of his sons and daughters an assignment based on their profession: to the attorney went the responsibility for settling the estate, to the accomplished businesswoman daughter went taking care of the family store, and so forth. Each had a stated responsibility except the priest, who asked “sir, and what would you like me to do?” To which every head in the hospital room turned and looked with surprise at the priest and the old man said “Well Father, you pray of course!”