Thank you for the warm welcome extended to seminarian Tim Roth last weekend. Tim is certainly an enthusiastic advocate for vocations to the ordained priesthood. I appreciated having a weekend visitor in the normally quiet rectory. Tim and I headed out for dinner after the 5 PM mass and later had quite a long chat about the seminary today, including ways that it is different and ways that it is the same as it was 35 years ago.
Between the two masses on Sunday morning Tim joined me teaching the third grade P.S.R. students some basics about the liturgy, and encouraging them to become altar servers. Hopefully soon we will have a new crop of altar servers. This is not a particularly difficult ministry, but it is very important. Anyone who has made First Communion is welcome to be a server. If you have any questions please leave a comment on the parish blog at www.saintvictorparish.org or stop and see me after any mass.
Speaking of the parish blog, please be sure to check out the new parish website. It was fun getting it set up, now I hope we will use it effectively. There are a few things I would like to add, including a gallery of pictures. But after just a couple weeks it’s already way better than the old website. Please leave a comment on the blog when you visit.
For example, please look under the “Recent Posts” column and read the post that is titled “Shopping for Sacred Vessels.” To make a long story short, the beautiful porcelain vessels that we use for mass are wearing out and need to be replaced. I’ve been shopping for something to replace them with for a long time, and finally found something of good quality and good value. There are pictures there on the website under that post. It would good to have a new set of sacred vessels in use in time for the beginning of our jubilee year. These items will be available as memorial items.
We seem to be coming out of the doldrums as far as weddings are concerned. The last few years we’ve have very few weddings each year. This has been the case at many parishes. Some of my colleagues suggested that this had something to do with the economy. Whatever the reason, the trend seems to be reversing. Next year there are quite a few weddings, which is a source of great joy for our entire parish.
An interesting feature of weddings these days is that often the couples are not living close to the parish for one reason or the other. We’ve already had two weddings in which all the pre-marital consultations were done via internet teleconferencing. Two of the weddings next year are like this as well. When I started working with wedding couples in the early 1980’s I never thought that one day I would be doing so remotely via teleconference. It is wonderful being able to have face-to-face meetings with wedding couples who are hundreds of miles away. So far we’ve only been able to figure out one-on-one meetings with just two ends to the conversation, but in cases when the bride and groom are in two different places I still have to find a way to make this work with three different locations.