Over 20 years ago when I was first ordained my brother Paul took early retirement and moved his family to Sacramento. I promised him I would visit often, and I did. I went once a week for a few months but then I became too busy, and I reduced my visits to twice a month, but I stayed over 2 nights each visit. I loved those visits because I did everything with his family: watched the kids play sports, attended the kids’ important days at school, dined with them and their friends and families and generally wasted time together. Those were great times and I really got to love his family so much.
Later when he moved back here to San Jose and got a house only a few blocks from my house in my parish, I saw the family more frequently but didn’t stay overnight. While I spent lots of time with the family it was not as intense as I wasn’t staying overnight.
So, one night Paul and I came up with a commitment to each other that we would talk everyday by phone and see each other for a meal at least once a week in his house or mine. Then we committed to traveling together a few trips a year to spend overnights together and keep our bond of love alive. It worked!! One night while we were both away on retreat together, we heard the same thing from the Lord in prayer. It was a powerful commitment that changed my life for the better. While I still miss our time together because it has been nearly two years now since he passed, our shared love remains with me now and I am better for it.
I know many of you pray every day and see the Lord in your daily lives and especially on Sundays. But I also know many of you yearn for a deeper connection with Jesus and with God the Father. Like my relationship with my brother Paul, sometimes we need to step back and see how much deeper we can go and if we can make more time with Jesus in prayer. That cannot happen without the commitment of more time in prayer. I know that many of you think you just don’t have the time to give the Lord any more time. Trust me we have time, but we just have not made it a priority or a decision to make it real.
Just like my brother and I decided to commit some more time to our relationship, I am asking you to commit some more time to your relationship with God. To make that decision, I want to share with you some new skills to be successful. That will require you to think and reflect about where in your life you want to make changes and how.
The St. Simon Retreat Rekindle Your Spirit, is designed to enable you to make that decision for yourself, to learn new skills to be successful and celebrate together in community. Please come to our parish retreat and invite a friend like I invited my brother Paul. It has the power to change your life. It is on feast day of St. Simon – Friday & Saturday, October 27-28. Register with this link here. Monday is the last day to register, and we want you to enjoy this amazing opportunity to be inspired by some brilliant music with Francesca LaRosa and Meredith Augustin, conversations and meals to ignite friendships, time and space to reflect and deepen our relationship with Jesus.
Finally, this weekend we celebrate World Missions Sunday, and the second offering is for World Missions. Most people do not know what this collection is for and why it is important. The Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States and their counterparts in every nation of the world, enable the faithful to provide annual subsidies to missionary dioceses, and to support mission seminaries and religious formation houses, the education of children in mission schools, the building of chapels and churches, as well as sustaining homes for orphaned children, the elderly and sick. These offerings do not go to Rome but, at the direction of the Pope’s Missionary Dicastery, they are sent directly to the beneficiaries.
For the first decades of its life, the fledgling Church in the United States received essential support from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (predecessor to Missionary Dicastery) some seven million dollars until 1908, which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $250 million today. Catholics of this country have returned that generosity in abundance and the missions have grown immensely especially in Africa. I ask you to be generous as the Missionary Church depends so much on such a generous response. Please give a donation online here (under Fund, choose October – World Mission). Thank you.
God Bless
Fr. Brendan