As I was calendaring for the summer and the many events that are coming up, I realized that in July I will have been here at St. Peter for two years. How quickly time goes and I think I am having fun!? Looking at events there are some baptisms and weddings (at both parishes) coming up which are happy events for the parishes to celebrate. Keep them all in your prayers.
For St. Peter the picnic is fast approaching, next week!! So please look to the volunteer
bulletin board for areas to offer your time and talents. I encourage you to pick up some more raffle tickets and sell them where you can. Of course pray for good weather.
June 9-10 I will be at the Institute of St. Joseph retreat. The Institute is a public
association of the faithful in our diocese. I am a fully professed member and will be installed as the priest moderator for that fraternity. More information about it is on the Institute of St. Joseph webpage.
Conor Dugan, in Columbia magazine Nov. 2024, wrote the following in an article.
“‘Marriage Needs Strong Friends’. Marriage is hard, and it takes hard work. It inevitably involves pain and suffering. Christians are promised the cross, so we shouldn’t be surprised when the cross finds us in our martial vocations. Yet too often we seem shaken by the crosses of married life.
To admit that we struggle in marriage can seem an admission of defeat, a denigration of the beautiful truth of the Church’s teachings. However, it is key to a genuine life of faith. As the future Pope Benedict XVI once put it, ‘True believing means looking the whole of reality in the face, unafraid and with an open heart.’
It isn’t enough to be honest and forthright just with oneself. We also need others–friends who share our belief that marriage is for life and worth work working at and working at and working at. We need friends who will be there to laugh with us, pray with us and tell us candidly when we are being big meatheads who need to apologize…We need friends we can talk to about the warts in our marriage that aren’t obvious from curated social media posts. And we need to share our struggles long before they become a crisis….Friends, on earth and in heaven, are integral to a good marriage. Seek them out. You and your marriage will be stronger because of it.”