A Note From Fr. Vince
Hello everybody! The only thing worse than our last 2 weeks of ‘lock down’ is hearing that we might have another month of it. God help us all!
Sorry that our taped mass didn’t work out. I hope we will solve the problem this week. The
text of my homily
…..and
the audio
as well are in this email. That could be better than seeing my face anyway!
I hope you are holding up fairly well—under the circumstances. As I told you last week, I’m probably one of the people least affected. I am retired (was retired), I have my apartment, and Social Security still pays me.
So I think it would be fun for me to tell the story of the only person I talked to this last weekend. I live 2 blocks north of the Hy-Vee in Waukee. So Sunday morning I go for a few veggies, fruit, and the newspaper. As I approached the bananas and kept my 72” distance from a 35+ year old who was picking his. But what happened was he picked up a bunch and then put it down. He picked up another bunch and then put it down. He did this 5 or 6 times. So without thinking I blurted out “Are you going to touch them all?” I thought it was funny. He swung around and said fairly loudly “Man, what’s your problem?” I signaled retreat and walked away. That’s the only person I talked to all weekend.
I suspect you are trying to figure out the emotions that are running rampant in our lives. There’s a lot to choose from: fear, loss, the future, family, jobs…..fill in others. If you have asked where God is in all of them, join the crowd. It’s not hard to conclude that God seems on the sidelines and not very helpful. The next person over tells us about how they see God working in their lives. What? The rest of us could be in-between. The ‘in-between’ could feel great spiritual connection one day, and not the next. Like being whiplashed. What fascinates me, and maybe you also, is that in some way or another, everyone is feeling it. It’s seldom that all of our citizens feel the same. 9-11 was the last one for me. Maybe Vietnam…but most of our lives just carried on while soldiers are coming home in body bags. Maybe WWII…that’s a past tense group of people we find mainly in history books.
Let’s hope that when this crisis is over, we just don’t go back to our old selves. This is an opportunity to allow the Lord to help build a new future. We are on a journey to the promised land. We’ll get there sooner by working together….and letting the Lord do his work.
Stand Strong everybody!
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