Pastor’s Thoughts

On Friday, August 21, the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Pius X. He truly was an amazing individual and pope who practiced humility and practiced it discretely. Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto was born 2 June 1835 and died on 20 August 1914. He was head of the...

Pastor’s Thoughts

As a young, newly ordained priest, I admired a senior priest who was gifted, beloved, and had changed countless lives. But soon I learned that he had fallen in catastrophic and destructive ways. The painful juxtaposition of good and evil was complex to process. How...

Pastor’s Thoughts

We all need quiet time to ourselves every once and awhile. Jesus in the Gospel is seeking quiet time. His very best friend just died, St. John the Baptist. Jesus sought a deserted place to pray, to think, and to mourn the loss of his cousin/friend. The crowds however,...

Pastor’s Thoughts

Around the time that the gold rushes ended in the nineteenth-century West, a curious phenomenon arose in New England known as money diggers. These were men who roamed the countryside with shovels, divining rods, and superstitious hope, convinced that treasure lay...

Pastor’s Thoughts

A man recently told me he was losing patience with the Church. “It’s supposed to be God’s Kingdom on earth,” he said, “but it’s full of contradictions and hypocrisy. Why can’t the Church just be better?” That last word...