I find it humorous that an album titled More Mellow Sixties would include “Something in the Air” by Thunderclap Newman.

So you might recall that before I left for GenCon it was announced that we’d be getting a new associate pastor.  Father Bob was supposed to be introduced at all of the masses the week I was in Indianapolis.  Well the following weekend our pastor and the other priests who preside over masses were all out of town, leaving him the whole parish in only his second week.  What a sudden amount of responsibility, but he seemed to be doing well under the pressure when I saw him at the Sunday evening mass.  He said a wonderful homily as I recall, even if I don’t recall the content these several months later.  It definitely tied into the narrow gate from the gospel reading.  I recall that much.

In the meantime he has been settling into the parish life well.  It turns out that both Fr. Bob and Fr. Milt went to the University of Notre Dame.  In his homeland of Uganda he used to celebrate mass in Parliament once a week, and was even the spiritual director of the nation’s VP, as the nation’s first Chaplain to the Catholic Parliamentarians.  So, as you can imagine, Uganda and Indiana did not prepare him for Phoenix’s heat.  He’s so good natured, however, that he really appreciates the luxury of air conditioning, pizza, and cheese cake. 

Two weekends ago he was similarly left the parish all to himself when all of the other priests were once again out of town.  The deacons were kind enough to assist him, and he did really well again.  Because Father Milt usually handles the Sunday evening mass he was really stressing the lack of EMs before mass.  I tried to assure him that the Sunday evening mass is always (even since I can recall) short on EMs.  They’re scheduled, they just either don’t show up or show up late, so the mass requires a lot of last minute substitutes.  (It’s bad enough that after two years of requests, my mother & I finally caved in and took training to become an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist myself.  I haven’t needed to substitute yet, but I’ve only been trained for a month and I’ve been lectoring every other week for the past few months.)  He wasn’t assured until we filled all of the slots with substitutes.  He gave an excellent Right to Life homily, brilliantly tying in the words of Habakkuk, Paul, and Luke with the special collection for Respect Life Sunday.

So, thank you God for bringing our parish another associate pastor.  Fr. Gene isn’t getting any younger.  He keeps discussing retirement more and more each year.  We may not be the biggest parish in the diocese, but we can certainly use a younger priest to assist our pastor.  God Bless Father Bob.

Thanks to septentrio for the quiz:

“Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past.” ~ Dora
“If that’s true, then wisdom is knowing that you’ll be an idiot in the future.” ~ Marten
“And common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot NOW.” ~ Faye
Questionable Content #976: “Dora Dharma” by Jeph Jacques