A Typhoon of Graces!
I think many of us here at St. Michael Church truly experienced the grace of God at work in the past seven days. Mother Olga and seven of her Sisters, the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth, came to Tybee Island for our evangelization and mission week.
The hurricane “Helene” hit us and took out our electricity just before the week began, but we were so blessed to have it restored within 36 hours. The rest of Savannah was not nearly so fortunate. It was the providence of God that many people flocked to Tybee Island so that they would have electricity and water, just in time for the Sisters to knock on their doors!
Many of our parishioners interacted with the Sisters, by driving them around in their golf carts, helping to prepare and serve them supper, and eating with them, and visiting with the Sisters in our parishioner’s own homes and businesses. The healing service was especially powerful, and the Church was filled to capacity as the Sisters prayed with people for healing, and then many also received the Sacraments of Confession and Anointing of the Sick, thanks to the presence of Fr. John Lyons and Fr. Jerry Ragan to help me.
I have received many messages from people who had been away from the Church, or struggling with their faith in some way, both Catholics and those of other or no particular religion, saying that their lives had been positively impacted, and that they were so grateful for our visits.
I want to thank our planning team and all of our volunteers who spent so many hours laboring to make this week a success! Thank you to all who contributed so generously to send the Sisters home with a generous stipend of more than $8,000!
Mother Olga and her Sisters flew out on Monday morning back to Boston, but we will not forget them, and we will continue to thank God for their mission here on Tybee!
As many of you know, on Monday evening I received word that the body of my father had been found on our farm lying near his still running bulldozer. The coroner determined that he had died from either a heart attack or severe stroke prior to falling off of the tractor when it fell forward into a ditch. My dad was 86 years old, and he really struggled with faith for most of his life. He was a good father to me and my brothers and sister. He worked very hard and taught us a strong work ethic. It was God’s providence that he married my mother, who was a devout Catholic and daily communicant. He went to Sunday mass with my mother and the grandchildren faithfully for the last twenty years, but he never decided to join the Catholic Church at my invitations. My mother died two years ago, and I am confident that her prayers in heaven set things into motion.
This past summer, he was in the hospital three different times, and each time, we were not sure he would survive. The last time, I had been scheduled to make a private, silent retreat up in S. Dakota, but I had to cancel that to stay with him. During that hospital stay, a priest friend went to visit him, and my dad became a Catholic in the hospital! He had already been baptized, and he joined the Church by profession of faith and received First Communion. The next day, Bp. Parkes came to the hospital and gave him the Sacrament of Confirmation. This was a much greater grace than I could ever have received on my private retreat!
My dad went home from the hospital, and even with his COPD and oxygen machine, kept working on the farm. He loved the farm and was never so happy as when he was there, watching things grow and taking care of the land entrusted to him. He died on his favorite place, doing his favorite thing. My mother used to always joke, when we would “scold” him for driving heavy machinery at his age, “Let him die on his farm. He will die happy.”
It was the end of a great week of graces. I will do my father’s funeral mass on Saturday morning at St. Matthew’s in Statesboro. And on Sunday, I will baptize one of my newborn great nephews at St. Matthews! It is the cycle of life…and faith. Thank you to Fr. John Lyons for covering the masses at St. Michael’s this weekend. Fr. Lyons summed up the week with Mother Olga and the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth so well when he said: “This has been a typhoon of graces!”
Fr. Brett Brannen
Pastor