October
29,2006
A
Dark and Stormy Night
Super
Raffle
If you’re reading this on Monday morning, you’re too late
to be the winner of the $10,000 in the Super Raffle. (Unless of course,
you ARE the winner of the Super Raffle.)
There might be few tickets left on Sunday morning. $100 gets you a chance
to win some or all of the $10,000 we’re giving away. The question:
Deal, or no deal? Stop in the Parish Center Office for your last chance..
Bishop
Giuseppe Returns
We’re happy to welcome Bishop Giuseppe to St. Brigid’s for
a brief visit next weekend. He’s coming as the guest of honor
of the Padre Pio Prayer Group. (For those who are new to the parish,
Father Giuseppe came each summer for 20 years to help our parish. During
his last stay here, he was appointed bishop of two dioceses in northern
Italy: Cuneo and Fassano. We’re glad to see him again.
Off
to College?
Are you or your child away at college? At St. Brigid’s we like
to stay in touch via occasional e-mails as we send photos and news from
“home”. College students wishing to be connected through
our “Letters from home” can sign up online here
or you can mail or
e-mail thecollege names and e-mail addresses to Father Ralph and he’ll
put them on the list.
Census
Continues
Of the approximate 6,000 families we usually send mail to, we’ve
received completed Census booklets from over 4,000. So we’ve got
a ways to go.
Is your booklet in?
e-mail Father Ralph:
Past Columns:
October 22: Washington Trip
October 15: Marriage Help
October 8: Fall Fix Up
October 1: Cut Off Week
Sept 24:War Begins At Home
Sept 17: Who Do You Think
You Are?
Sept
10:God Be With You
Sept 3: Back to
School
August 27: Merry Christmas
August 20: Wine or No Wine
August 13: Mangia...
August 6: Mixed News
July 30: Impossibly Little
July 23: Come away!
July 16: Got a Mission?
July 9:Missing God
July 2: Jesus Interrupted
June 25: One Here, One to
Come
June 18: A Father's Gift
June 11: Charity Begins
At Home
June 4: Turning Silver
May 28: Eight Years •
Eight Months
May 21: If Any
May14: Celebrating Mothers
May 6: Celebrating Priests
April30: Baked Fish
April 23: What we hear
April 16: Out of the Tomb
April 9: Jesus, Our Source
of Peace
April 2: NOW, Can you Hear
Me?
Mar 26: Can You Hear Me
Again?
Mar 19: Can You Hear Me
Now?
Mar 12: Now Take 4Steps
March 5: Take A Step
Feb 26:Coming Home
Feb19: Visiting Heros
Feb 12: Passing Pastor
Feb 4: Annual Appeal
Jan 22: Abandoned Nets
Jan 15: Everlasting Life
Jan 8: I'm not going to
jail..
Jan 1: Happy New Year
Columns
from 2005
Columns
from 2004
Columns from
2003
Columns from 2002
I’m
tempted to tell scary stories here this week , as Halloween approaches,
but since I assume that myriads of children are avid readers of this column
each week, I don’t wish to frighten them.
OK, probably no children read this
column, but I did have to start with something about Halloween -- after
all, our neighborhoods are lit with an erie orange glow and in a few days
our streets will be overrun with all manner of gouls. And as much ‘fun’
as this might be for some, the real feast of this week is in danger of
getting buried in mounds of candy wrappers (includuing Mounds).
The real feast
is the one about Saints. Did you ever wonder how the Feast of All Saints
got to be placed at the start of November? Well in ancient times, before
people knew Jesus, folks noticed that the days were growing shorter; things
were getting colder; leaves fell off the trees, crops died in the frost
(and people died in the cold). It looked like the sun was going away and
the kingdom of death was growing stronger. So folks fought back by dressing
up as death and as ghosts and gouls, seeking to frighten off the darkness.
Then Christ came. Christians didn’t
fear death as the pagans did. Death was a dark and stormy moment on the
way to everlasting life. So as a sign to the rest of society that they
didn’t worry about the darkening days and the things that went bump
in the night, they proclaimed the beginning of the dark days to be a festival
of life, a festival of living saints, not the walking dead.
“All Hallows’ Eve’
is the night before the Day of All Hallows (an old way to say “All
Saints Day”) and if you mush “hallows”+“eve”
together, you get the origins of “halloween”. There is so
much about candy and pumpkins that it might be easy to forget that the
upcoming festival is about saints. So be sure to talk about saints this
week. Think of who your family saints are. Think of the saints we know
who are in heaven. Come to our All Saints Day Mass -- it’s a holy
day of obligation for a reason: we want to celebrate God’s new life
so that the darkening days don’t overtake our souls. Now THAT would
be frightening.
