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