Dear Parishioners,
This is the time of the year for changes. As you know, our deacon, Steve House, will be leaving to serve at St. Mary’s in Annapolis, and our music director, Jay Klapka, is retiring after a long career. They will be very much missed. However, the Lord has blessed us and given us two replacements. Deacon Howard Klohr and his wife, Sandy, will be joining us on July 1st. Deacon Howard was just ordained, has lived in Pasadena the last 30 years, is the father of 3 grown daughters and a grandfather of three. Our new Director of Music is Robert Henry and has served as an organist/music director for the past 21 years in different churches in the Archdiocese. I am pleased to welcome both of them on board.
While I am not a fan of modern technology and am frequently frustrated by my computer and the never ending changes, I cannot live without my smart phone. I so much appreciate the information I can get and the tasks it will do for me. Today, we can do so much more with it and all the other labor saving devices on the market, that we are losing the virtue of patience. Our consumerist culture brainwashes us to expect almost instant, visible results. But that’s not how God works. In the Gospel (Mk 4:26–34), Jesus uses the image of the farmer and the seed. It takes a good while for all the seeds planted to grow and become the harvest. It took 600 years for God to plant the seed with Abraham and bring it to fruition in Moses, and another 1200 years to grow into the incarnation of Jesus. Now there are over 1 billion Catholics in the world!
We have had the seed of God’s love planted in us at baptism and are called to grow in holiness. But that takes time—actually a whole lifetime. And so we must be patient with ourselves as we grow. We will make mistakes along the way, so we must be patient with ourselves, because God is patient with us. As Mother Theresa used to say, “God doesn’t ask us to be successful; he asks us to be faithful.”
Fr. Carl
