The Feast of St. Jude

October 28, 2009

Peace and Good,

My week has been kind of busy. This past week I was in St. Pius X parish in Seligsgrove, PA for a parish mission. This is an area that did not have all that many Catholics only a few decades ago, but not the parish is doing quite well. They built a new church last year and used an altar from one of the churches that was closed. I always like it when we use these beautiful pieces of art in our new churches instead of having them end up in inappropriate settings. The theme on Sunday evening was the Eucharist, on Monday conversion, and on Tuesday the Blessed Virgin Mary. This was one of those parishes where the morning and evening talks were the same (some parishes prefer this because the elderly parishioners do not like to drive in the dark).

I arrived home late Tuesday evening, and flew out to Buffalo on Wednesday. The friars are having a series of meeting to talk about the proposed union of the two eastern provinces. They were originally ethnic. My province, St. Anthony, was the Polish province, and the other province, Immaculate Conception, was Irish, German and Slovak. These differences don't mean a lot today, and we have been doing our formation together for over 50 years. We will have the final vote next April when we all meet in chapter.

I finished a few works this week. One was a book called the Price of Admiralty by John Keegan. It speaks about various naval battles that changed history. He is an excellent military author.

Another was Blood and Roses by Helen Castor. This was a fascinating book. It is the history of one family drawn from a collection of their family letters during the period of the War of the Roses. It is so rare that we get to see how the great events of history affect normal families. I would highly recommend a book like this to anyone interested in this period.

For my spiritual reading, I finished the Confessions by St. Augustine. I had read it during novitiate many years ago, and I thought it was time to read it again. It is not an easy read, but there were gems to find here and there. The only thing I wish is that Augustine had had an editor, for he seems to go on forever when he begins to discuss a topic. Yet, this has been called the first psychological biography in history, and it is easy to see why. He has some beautiful insights into why we do things, and why we avoid them. His discovery of meaning in the person of Christ is profound and meaningful to anyone who has read about his floundering about in various philosophies and religions.

God bless and
Shalom
fr. Jude