Prayers

Dear sisters & brothers in Christ,

I pray that you are blessed. I want to thank everyone who has been praying for my mom. She is still having trouble, but at least she is doing better and is out of the hospital. Your continued prayers would be appreciated. I was on the verge of changing my vacation plans and heading home, when my sisters snitched on me (somethings never change) and I got a call from my mom telling me to go on vacation, and so, the decision was made for me. Fortunately she did begin to improve, although there are a couple things that still have the doctors stumped.

While I want to congratulate all of our graduates, I have to apologize to our Catholic Central & West Catholic high school graduates. I confess I missed the first one out of simple human error. I put the wrong date in my calendar. Then I missed the other one because I was preoccupied with my mother’s health issues. My mom never gets sick, and if she does she never tells us. For her to not only tell us that she wasn’t feeling well, but to ask my sister to take her to the hospital...well, we were all in panic mode. It was also very frustrating to be far away and not be able to help, see or even talk with her. I apologize again, but I just wasn’t in a mind set to be around a lot of people. I certainly did not want to dampen what I am sure was a very joyful celebration. Please know that while I wasn’t there in person, I was with you in spirit, and I continue to pray for your success in all your future dreams.

Despite being very preoccupied, especially for the first three or four days, it was nice to just get away for a bit. It eventually all caught up with me, because on about day five I just slept most of the day. There is an old saying, “Man (sic) plans, God laughs.” In order not to feel too guilty, I took some work with me, but God and the U.P. had other plans, because of such things as poor internet connections I wasn’t able to do most of it. Which on one hand was fine, but it just meant more work to do once I returned. I think God has a twisted sense of humor, because I think He may have continued to laugh when my car began to act up, which stopped me from going further West. And then, upon my return my dependable iPad, on which I do 90% of my work, decide to become undependable and it locked up and crashed. And then there seemed to be a domino effect of other issues and problems. I have never been able to figure out how Karma knows when I’m gone and when I return. ...so let me just say, if my car was running right I might have just kept on driving.

But at least some of pandemic restrictions are being lifted as more people get vaccinated and we learn more about Covid-19. We are in process of making decisions on how we will handle things here at St. Al’s. I realize there is a great desire to just cast everything aside and go on as if the last year and a half didn’t happen, but we do have a number of adults and of course our children who are not vaccinated and/or who have major health concerns. And so, we will try to open up while being mindful of the needs of all of our parishioners. Just keep an eye on the bulletin and on our web site for more information.

In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick