July
17, 2005
Summer
Weeding
They're
Back
We’re
happy to welcome back Father Wismick and Father Giuseppe who are again
visiting with us this summer. This is Father Giuseppe’s 20th summer
at St.Brigid’s, so he’s the priest with the longest “stay”
and the best memory of life at St. Brigid’s since the time of
Father Schaefer.
We’re glad to have both our friends back home for a month.
Painting
Update
I understand that while I’ve been away, the painting of the interior
of the church has begun as scheduled. While all weekly activities have
been moved to the chapel, the church is open for all weekend masses
(including weddings). In addition to the painting, the pews will be
refinished
-- one half of the church at a time. (We’ll temporarily use chairs
til they’re back.)
Thank you for your patience during this time.
Weekends
All weekend masses (including weddings) will follow the usual schedule
in the church and school. In another week, some of the pews will be
taken out to be refinished and temporarily replaced by chairs. Thank
you for your patience as we refinish the interior of our church. By
the fall all will be lovely again. (Actually, even lovelier!)
Catholic
Ministries Appeal
Thanks to all who made a pledge in response to last week’s “encouragement”
by Soraya Navia. We’ll give an accounting in a couple of week
of where we’re at in the campaign. Right now every new dollar
given will come back to us in the form of a rebate once we reach our
goal.
e-mail Father Ralph:
Past Columns:
July 10: Ministry to Seniors
July 3: The Painters are
Coming!
June 26: The Last 25%
June19: Sommer in the
Summer
June 12: Great News Anoying
News
June 5: What's Essential
May 29: Setting Priorities
May 22: Painting Project
May 15: We are the Church
May 8:Mother of the Church
May 1: On Life and Death
April 24: Habemus Papam
April 17: The Spirit Abounds
April 10: Two men on a journey
April 3: He's baaack!
March 27th: Not the best
news...yet
March 20th: What are You
Doing For Easter?
March 13th: The Stench
March 6: To Tell or Not
To Tell
February 27: Dry Mouth Dry
Soul
February 20: Good to Be
Here
February 13: And he was
hungry?
Ash Wednesday '05
February 6: Ashes Already?
January 23: Catholic Schools
Week
January 16: Continued Charity
January 9: Migration
January 2:All is bright?
Columns from 2004
Columns from 2003
Columns from 2002
The
gardens are beautiful -- both herein an undisclosed location where I’m
ending my vacation today -- and (as always) around St. Brigid’s
Church The hardest part of gardening, it seems to me, is not the planting
or watering...it’s the weeding. In fact when I was a child, I recall
that my parents had a most successful method to combat garden weeds --
send the children out to weed. If we ever claimed to be “bored”,
we were invited out into the garden to weed. If we ever “got in
trouble”, we were sent into the garden to weed.
As a result, as children, we were
never bored and we were always well behaved -- such was the power of the
dreaded job of weeding.
So let me first say “thank you” to the dedicated volunteers
of our garden committee who spend countless summer hours pulling weeds
around the church. (And I’m sure they’d welcome bored or less-than-perfect
children to help!)
There is a kind of satisfaction
though in weeding a flower or vegetable bed. When the work is done, everything
looks neater, more orderly, less messy. So today’s gospel is uncomfortable
as an unweeded garden. What Jesus proposes is that the wheat and weeds
be allowed to grow together and then to let God sort it out in the end.
That’s not easy for people who like their human gardens neat. They
like people to be as easily defined as weeds and wheat. Some “belong”
and some don’t. When people don’t act the way the way they’d
like, or when foreigners move in on their soil, or when relatives turn
out to be more heartache than blessing...well the temptation is to want
to weed them from the gardens of life.
But Jesus urges patience. It’s
an uncomfortable, maybe even infuriating patience that has wheat and weeds
living side by side. But he reminds us that this is God’s garden.
It’s not for us to do the weeding (or for that matter to decide
who is wheat and who is weed). God’s the master gardener here. Our
job is to grow as we’re planted and to bear good fruit. We don’t
have to weed. Yay!
