Vacation and Generosity
This Sunday, January 21, I’ll be heading out for a little vacation. It is always nice to get away for a few days, especially when it has been so brutally cold recently. Also, most priests try to sneak away sometime between New Year’s Day and Ash Wednesday.
This Sunday I’ll be flying down to visit my family in Georgia. My older brother moved about an hour outside of Atlanta after college in 2010, met his wife, and they have two children ages 8 and 6. In 2020 my parents decided to move south from Vandalia, and they currently live in the same neighborhood as my brother and his family.
Then on Thursday, I’ll be on a train all day from Georgia to the Northeast to visit my younger brother. He entered the Navy as a young man and for a brief period was stationed in Connecticut. While there, he met a young lady and they dated long-distance for a couple years. After he got out of the Navy, they got engaged, married in 2021, and have a 21 month-old daughter. They are expecting a baby boy in January.
I’ll fly back on Sunday, January 28. Next weekend, one of my classmates from the seminary, Fr. Chris Geiger, will be covering the weekend Masses. He has come up a couple times to cover for me and I’m so grateful that he is willing to drive 100 miles each way to offer Mass for you. Since we’ve known each other since 2009, please don’t believe any stories that he may tell about me… they most certainly couldn’t be true.
Also, this weekend we kickoff the annual Catholic Ministries Appeal or CMA. The CMA funds vital ministries that are too large for a single parish to undertake. This appeal funds college campus ministry at our non-Catholic universities, prison ministry, St. Rita’s School for the Deaf, our seminary, hospital ministry, retired priests, Catholic Charities, and various New Evangelization initiatives. Thank you for your continued support in the CMA. Our parishes have all reached their goal in the last few years and hopefully we are able to achieve our parish goal(s) again.
Our parishes have again benefited from the Kleinhenz-Moeller Foundation. This foundation was established decades ago to benefit the future of the Catholic Church in our area. Every year we benefit from the gifts of this foundation. This year the foundation has allocated funds to support each one of our parishes, our youth ministry programs, and future young adult programming. We are grateful for the stewardship of the trustees of the foundation. Please take a moment to offer an Our Father to thank God for the generosity of the foundation and to pray for its founders.
Have a blessed week. I’ll be praying for you while I’m away. May we continue to benefit from the generosity of our Lord.
Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Sean Wilson