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July 22, 2022Wednesday, August 3rd | Funeral Planning Workshop
5:30pm in the Church
Thursday, August 4th | St. Michael Night Out
6pm at the American Legion Post
I met with Bishop Parkes this week to ask his blessing on my retirement next summer. I will be 70 in February. He asked me to pray about continuing as pastor until the summer of 2024. Really?? Trust the Lord to lead me and guide me into the future? What a unique idea in today’s “it’s all about what I want to do” world. I sincerely promised the Bishop that I’d honestly pray and seek out God’s will for my future.
I love being a parish priest and I doubt that I could ever find a better place to be a priest than in the St. Michael Faith Community on Tybee Island. But I am at a point in my life that I’d love to be free of the challenges of administration. And somewhat selfishly, I’d love to spend more time with family and friends and be able to travel (yes, even more than I already do) while I still can enjoy it. Then too, I’ve some creative ideas for priestly ministry that I look forward to pursuing in retirement. So, the dialogue with the Lord begins. Pray that I can keep my heart open to God’s will. The best fruits of my priestly life have always been rooted in prayer.
Plan to attend the funeral planning workshop. When facing the loss of a loved one, family members who no longer practice the faith are frequently the ones responsible to make the funeral plans. Questions about music at the funeral, Scriptural readings, words of remembrance, and other aspects of the wake, the funeral Mass, and the burial service frequently arise. By attending this workshop, you will be able to assist your family members in preparing prayerful and beautiful funeral liturgies that are faithful to Catholic belief and tradition and which give honor to the deceased in Christ. Topics to be covered will include: the Catholic understanding of death, the role of the funeral rites in the mourning process, liturgical options (readings, music, prayers, words of remembrance), cremation questions, and the importance of the Funeral Mass.
In meeting with the Bishop this week, I also shared with him initial plans to incorporate a couple of columbaria (a vault with niches for interring the ashes of cremated bodies) near the Grotto. The Building and Grounds Committee still has some details to work on before the Bishop’s final approval, but I am excited that this project is moving forward. We will share these plans at the funeral planning workshop.
Will your children be Catholic in 15 years? Studies show that the answer for 85% of young people today is no. Clearly, something isn’t working. Children are spending years in formation, receiving the Sacraments, and coming out the other side disinterested in the faith. We need to take a new approach.
The new approach that is quickly spreading through the universal Church respects the parents as the first teachers. Family Faith Formation is a family-based catechetical program that helps families grow in the transforming love of God by understanding and living the Catholic Faith. It is a unique model of formation that helps children and parents to become stronger in faith together. We would like to hire a Director of Family Faith Formation to get this program up and running at St. Michael Parish. A job description can be found on our parish webpage, https://www.saintmichaelstybee.org/jobs or on the Diocesan website https://diosav.org/employment. If you have questions, please contact Ginny Murphy (912-713-3323). Send resumes to [email protected] by August 8th.
Whenever you have plans to travel, please remember to bring back a Church bulletin. I love to see what is happening in other parishes.