Pastor's Column for September 6, 2020

Last Sunday while in North Carolina, I looked up Catholic Churches in the area so that I could attend Mass, but each one had the requirement of signing up for the particular Mass you wanted to attend, & each one was already at capacity! The exception was a Mass that was in Spanish, and so I probably would have understood only about 5% of what was being said. So I did what many of you do and participated at the 11am Mass through the livestream at St. Leo the Great. I appreciated the words of our guest, Fr. John Fisher, and when he mentioned my name at the end of Mass, I wanted to let him know that I heard him but gratefully you can’t use the microphone of the iPad in order to be heard on the other end. Anyway, I plan on supporting the good work of Cross Catholic Outreach and encourage you to consider a donation to them if you haven’t already done so. I was amazed at how far $25 goes to helping those people in Africa who otherwise would be without the basic necessities of life. We hope to have Fr. Fisher back again some time and I know he enjoyed dinner out with the Berigan’s so thanks to them too for offering him hospitality. 
I had a good relaxing vacation in North Carolina & enjoyed visiting the Biltmore Estate which I know some parishioners have seen as well. I’ll be mentioning what I learned on my tour in a homily when the time (gospel) is right. I climbed a lot of stairs & almost decided not to take a 2nd tour I bought where they showed you how the servants lived, but I’m glad I did it (though it required that you climb about 250 steps during that tour alone!). 
I am actually writing this column on Tuesday, September 1st. Once again the summer is behind us and our parish school will be opening the day after Labor Day. Please keep the school students, teachers and staff in your prayers as they begin this challenging year. Many have worked so hard this summer to prepare for a school year during COVID-19, most especially our Principal, Denise Burns, and we are grateful to the teachers for taking on the additional burden of learning (ironically) how to teach remotely for the students who will be staying home. I look forward to seeing even the masked faces of our children again.
I ask your prayers for Father Brown, pastor of Mary, Queen of Peace, who informed his parishioners that he has a detached retina & will be having surgery to repair it. I ask that you keep a parishioner in prayer who also just had surgery for a detached retina. I can sympathize with them as I had the same thing back in 2002 and nearly lost my sight in that eye. It’s a long process of recovery as you have to keep your head down looking at the floor for 10 days & then there’s a gas bubble in your eye which takes a number of weeks to dissipate before you can see clearly again. Please pray to St. Lucy, the patron of eyesight, for her intercession on their behalf.