Dear Friends,
Many thanks for
all of your greetings, good will, and
generous hearts.
As I have said
before, I am the luckiest person on the
face of the earth to do what I do where
I do it and with you.
I am writing this
in early December because of printing
deadlines and so forth so I assume that
you too have had a nice Christmas and,
if you are reading this have just about
had your fill of a church.
We have been here a
lot over the last few days.
Most of you don’t
spend this much time in church and if
you were lost, I would bet that the last
place your family and friends would look
for you is in church.
Getting lost in
church is not all that common in our
time and it wasn’t all that common in
the time of Jesus. It was probably the
last place his parents thought to look
for him.
Yet, there He was
in church talking with the elders and
chief priests of the people asking them
questions.
What do you suppose
were those questions?
Given how the story
finally turns out, I would bet those
teachers of the people were pretty happy
when Mary and Joseph got there and took
him home.
Young adolescents
can be a bit trying, you know.
I love talking to
our young adolescents. They are funny,
imaginative, creative, and they overflow
with energy.
They ask terrific
questions and have terrific insights
into the world that we share.
We are very lucky
to have Kim Hoogeveen and Bernadine
Smierciak who direct our religious
education programs.
We are very lucky
to have the catechists that we have for
all of our religious education programs.
Debbie Lund our
religious education office coordinator
is terrific and keeps the whole things
going.
Karin Jurek, our
music director, spends hours working
with many, many of our young people
allowing them to share their musical
gifts with the whole parish.
You should come
around some Thursday evening in the
summer when they practice and are here
just playing together long after the
practice has ended.
There are the
Vacation Bible School people and the
Children’s liturgy of the word people
and many, many others.
I hope and pray
that we are helping our young people
develop good questions for religious
leaders.
Lets pray that our
religious leaders learn to listen.
It would be a
terrible tragedy to lose these kids.
Peace,
Father Niblick