Sorry to be away...I've been busy!

It's been a good, but busy, two weeks.

Last weekend, many weeks of planning came to fruition at the parish. The Pastoral Council, the Finance Council, and I have been discussing, since the summer, the need to have an effort in the parish to acquaint parishioners with the financial needs of the parish and ask for folks' help in raising weekly contributions. We had a series of messages, in the bulletin and from the pulpit, over many weeks, about the situation. Over two weeks, parishioners shared personally about what their parish means to them; one weekend, we had a financial report that laid out the facts; and then the following week--last week--I made the case.

However, I made a mistake: I failed to notice that I had an obligation that would take me away on Saturday evening (a wedding at my prior parish). There was no getting around it: I simply had to be at the wedding, of course; and I couldn't postpone the whole program.

So, last weekend, I made the case at the Sunday Masses; this weekend, I made the case on Saturday.

As it happens, I was busy with other things, and simply couldn't get around to writing out my homily. Many times--and this was one of those times--I just have too many ideas, too many directions, at work in my head, and it's hard to boil it down. This is just one of the things that makes writing a homily hard: figuring out just what thread to follow, what themes to build the the message around.

So it was last week; and again this week. This weekend I had an added complication: my homily on Saturday would be very different from Sunday.

What keeps me busy? Well, a lot of it is meeting with couples preparing for marriage. Anyone familiar with Holy Cross-Immaculata will not be surprised to learn, this is a very popular place for weddings! So that means lots and lots of meetings with couples. And, because they usually are busy all week, that means lots of meetings on Saturdays; and some on Sundays.

And then, after our last Mass today, I had a trip up to Dayton. The folks with the "40 Days for Life" project--involving 40 days of steady prayer outside the abortion mill in Kettering--asked me to come up and give a pep talk this afternoon as part of their closing prayer service (although, it turns out, they will be keeping vigil at the death chamber for one more week). So I shared a few thoughts about what it means that our task seems so hard, and our hopes long delayed. I'm just grateful I didn't forget! I've been doing more of that, lately.

So, sorry for no homilies lately. God willing, I'll have something to post next weekend.