Last week on the West Coast

March 9, 2010

Peace and Good,

I passed the past week giving a parish mission in St. Thomas More Parish in Oceanside, CA. This is a medium side parish which is preparing to build a Church. They are now using a room that is a gym/auditorium but they have decorated it quite well. It makes a great worship space.

The theme of the mission was Gospel life. The four evening talks were on the Gospels, with the last evening a presentation on Luke as part of the parish penitential service. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning I spoke about the heroes of the faith: St. Paul, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Peter. There was a great turnout for all of the talks.

They have a great practice there. I like to notice the different things that they do in various parishes to share the ideas with others. I noticed that in the prayer of the faithful they remembered the thirty day and one year reminders of the death of parishioners. It was such a nice thing to do - to remind the community that the deceased are still one with us.

I finished one short book, a novella, this week. It was a free offering from my kindle, sort of an advertisement for the author's works. His free book was The Hunters by Jason Pinter. It was a good read, a detective/journalist book. His writing is good enough to make we want to read other works written by him.

Here is my calendar for the next several months:

03/13/10 - 03/17/10 - St. Joseph, Pomfret, MD 20675 p.o.c. Fr. Mark Smith/Ron Weaver (Parish Mission)

03/19/10 - 03/25/10 - St. Lucie, Port St. Lucie, FL 34983 p.o.c. Fr. Mark Szanyi (Parish Mission)

03/29/10 - Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C. p.o.c. Kathleen Noel (Talk)

03/30/10 - St. Louis Catholic Church, Clarksville, MD p.o.c. Mike Leumas (Knights of Columbus Talk)

04/01/10 - 04/04/10 - Bon Secours Retreat Center, Marriottsville, MD p.o.c. Lynn Lieberman (Triduum Retreat)

04/05/10 - 04/10/10 - Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, Hamburg, NY 14075 p.o.c. Sr. Joyce Kubiniec (Retreat)

04/11/10 - 04/16/10 - Hyatt Regency Hotel, Hamburg, NY (Provincial Retreat)

04/17/10 - 06/12/10 - International House of Franciscan Studies, Canterbury, England, U.K.

06/13/10 - 06/18/10 - Hyatt Regency Hotel, Hamburg, NY (Provincial Retreat)

06/19/10 - 07/01/10 - St. Victor's Major Seminary, Tamale, Ghana, West Africa p.o.c. Fr. David Azambawu(Seminarian Retreat)

07/04/10 - 07/10/10 - St. Francis Convent, Mishawaka, IN 46546 p.o.c. Sr. M. Dorothy

07/11/10 - 07/18/10 - Quellen Spiritual Center, Mendham, NJ 07945 p.o.c. Sr. Teresa Marie (Sisters' Retreat)

07/19/10 - 07/23/10 - St. Francis of Assisi Friary, Mishawaka, IN 46546 p.o.c. Br. Paschal (Novice Retreat)

07/24/10 - 07/31/10 - Catholic Community of Chataqua, Chataqua, NY 14722 p.o.c. Ellie Lesser (Priest-in-Residence)

08/05/10 - 08/15/10 - Our Lady of Consolation Shrine, Kerry, OH p.o.c. Br. Jeffrey Hines (Novena)

God bless and

Shalom

fr. Jude