Dear Sacred Heart and St. Mary on the Lake,
Last week I was bowling with Fr. Ginu, Jack, and our Sacred Heart students. It turns out Fr. Ginu is a natural and/or I am just naturally not that good. He has only bowled three times in his life and beat me twice! I am happy to say that I did get a Turkey (three strikes in row) one game. Now if only that would help me get a real turkey when I am out hunting for them!
This week Josh Bauer will be visiting. He just graduated from St. John Vianney Seminary in Minnesota and has a little window of time before starting a summer program in Omaha, Nebraska. He will help hold down the fort with Fr. Ginu and Jack while I am gone.
A reminder about Seamus’s upcoming Diaconate Ordination: Last year, Seamus Kettner was with us for his internship. He will be ordained a transitional Deacon Saturday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m. St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 955 Alton Rd., East Lansing, Michigan. All are welcome to attend. I would encourage you to go, especially if you have never attended an Ordination Mass. Seamus will be ordained a priest one year later the following June. It’s also pretty cool that his parish assignment for the next year is with my brother at St. Joseph’s in Howell. When I asked him, my brother graciously said that he would let Seamus come down and preach for us one weekend. It will be great to see him exercise his Diaconal ministry.
Congratulations to our graduates this weekend! I want to offer you two encouragements from C.S. Lewis with two quotes from his book The Weight of Glory.
Do not be too easily pleased:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” We fear that what we give to God - our desires, our dreams, our hopes, might be lost. But only in Him can they reach their full potential. Give everything to God and He will give everything to you.
There are no ordinary people:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” There are no ordinary people. Every interaction we have is an encounter that Christ wants to use for my good and the good of another. Through those interactions we can either help some get closer to that for which they are made, Heaven, or we can point them in the other direction. Let us help bring them to Heaven.
God Bless,
Fr. Todd
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