A NOTE FROM FR. VINCE
(Note that there is a weekday mass at 7 pm on Wednesday and again on the 24
th
. Regular weekend masses begin on June 27-28)
Hello everybody! It’s Friday again already. We’ve spent 10 weeks now close to home and maybe work. For the past 30 years, I’ve been pastor at both ends of the metro: Ss. John & Paul in Altoona, and St. Boniface in Waukee. St. Boniface has 1000 kids in faith formation. The average age of those over 18 is about 40. The suburbs have far fewer seniors. St. Augustin average age of those over 18 is probably 8-10 years older. My point is that the suburban parishes have differing stats on how their people are affected by Covid. But I still think the similarities are very much alike in this respect:
great numbers are people who have lost their job, furloughed, or are holding tighter to the job they still have; people have lost their business, their business is hanging on, and the future is daunting; people who are hoping to be able to pay for college or others have to put off retirement.
If we’re lucky, maybe some of the fear in our lives has abated, but I wouldn’t count on it. We generally hate the unknown. Now, that is all that is in front of us, the unknown. There is a TV show, now canceled, called
“The
In-Between”.
There we are, between the GOD IS GREAT today, and ALL HELL is breaking loose.
To change gears from my depressing e-mail by saying that “
the in-between
” is one of the best places to find faith and spiritual connection. When God is great, we are often less thankful. When our life is a total mess, we pray only about our recovery. It is in-between those that we can find solid ground. The Bible is the story of God’s people journeying through the in-between:
Moses trapped in the Sinai for 40 years….the Jewish people being 300 years in 2 main exiles…..Jesus’ 40 days in the desert….the early decades of the church…and on and on.
I bet we can recognize that in ourselves. We can sit in isolation during those times, or we can grow because of them. God appears as much to us in our daily struggles as in the ‘great moments’ of our lives. God may be harder for us to experience during those times. We can either sit and sulk (one of my favorites), or join the journey that Jesus is always talking to us about. My personal experience is that my
“in-between”
life makes more sense when I’m journeying in my faith rather than when I’m stalled in place. More later……..
