Ready for a pop quiz? You better be…

No post from last Sunday as I didn’t preach; I let the deacon handle it. In my defense, Sunday was the 23rd anniversary of his ordination, so it was pretty meaningful to him. And to be quite honest, I needed a week off.

Although they were really easy readings to preach on. This Sunday is a little more difficult, but I also haven’t really started working on it yet, either. I have the 11:00 this coming Sunday, so it’ll be on eventually…although with the holiday, it might be a little delayed. Time will tell.

I know I say this often, but I do have plans to post more stuff here. I just have a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. We’re starting the process of searching for a new youth minister, so I’ve got to get through interviews and hiring and on-boarding, and we’re also in the process of preparing our closed churches for sale. That’s a process that’s way more complicated than I think I appreciated, and probably way more complicated than most people realize. That might be worthy of a post – or series of posts – in and of itself.

But all that is for another time. I am going to enjoy the rest of this beautiful summer evening, and will get back to this another time.

Cheated a little bit with this one, as I largely just recycled a homily I’ve used in the past. But I like it, and I like to think it’s educational and informative, sooo……

When I finally returned home from Rome to start the real work of being a parish priest, I was assigned to Immaculate Conception Parish in Washington, PA. (IC is now part of Saint James Parish.) My pastor was Rev. William P. Feeney. I didn’t know Fr. Bill from Adam at that point, so there was a little trepidation on my part…would we work well together? Would we respect each other? Would we even be able to get along?

As usual, all of my fears were unfounded. Fr. Bill was, and is, a great pastor, a wonderful priest, an excellent mentor and a better friend. His parishes have been blessed to have him, and so have I. This past May – May 6, to be precise – he celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the sacred priesthood. The evening on June 18th, Immaculate Conception welcomed him home to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving, and how providential the date, because this weekend is also the feast of Corpus Christi.

Thing is, Fr. Feeney didn’t want to preach his own anniversary Mass. For reasons passing understanding, he wanted me to do it. So here’s my shot. Homily begins at about the 27:50 mark, and ends at about 39:10.

Sorry for the delay in getting this posted…been a very crazy week thus far.

It was also First Communion today, so when I decided to preach, I walked down into the nave and preached there. So you can’t see me on camera…and I’m not sure how well you can hear me. It should be ok, but I guess we’ll see.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

With regret that we couldn’t livestream the Easter Vigil – which was awesome – I present to you a very tired pastor celebrating the 9:00 AM Easter Sunday Mass.

I’ve used this homily before on Holy Thursday, but it evolves each time. (And I think it gets longer. I didn’t realize quite how long it was until I came here to post it.) Anyway, enjoy! We will not be streaming our Good Friday liturgy nor our Easter Vigil – it’s just not feasible given our limited technology. Easter Sunday, however, will be on.