Praise and Worship Service with Ryan Beke on Saturday at 5pm
Click on the livestream link at the top of our Website 
Sunday Mass on Sunday at 9:30am
Click on the livestream link at the top of our Website
Holy Communion Drive Thru at the end of Mass
10:40 to 11:00am
Line up in your car on the side of the Church (8th St. facing Butler).
Follow the directions of the men of the Holy Name Society. 
Safe Distance Confessions by Appointment
Call me 706-267-1073 
Sunday School for Disciples on Wednesday
Join us on ZOOM at 5:30 for Prayer and Cocktails
We share our experience of Week #3 of the Ignatian Adventure
Meeting ID: 910-7007-1578
Link: https://bnionline.zoom.us/meeting/attendee/tJUtcOmoqTovHdzkbd2JapRshLWG3SfZzojQ/ics?user_id=8LFiV2UISoCpsD8GlW1PeA
 
This Monday the Pastoral Council and the Financial Council will meet via Zoom.  For me, the big agenda item will be approving a plan to create a plaza in front of the Church that will eliminate the dangerous steps.  Since I’ve been pastor, there have been several serious falls at our front door.  One person who was hurt was Sr. Jude Walsh.  I can only imagine what folks would have said about me if her fall had been fatal.  “That is the negligent priest who was responsible for Sr. Jude’s death.”  I would have been run out of town.  This week Mary Kay O’Leary hit her head on the front steps.  Fortunately, there was no internal bleeding. Jeff Cramer has come up with a great plan to correct the safety issue and I pray that the Councils will give us the okay to move forward with the plan.  In the meantime, entrance to the Church will only be through the side door on the parking lot side of the church.
 
The other big agenda item will be the reopening of our Church.  I know the desire to receive the Eucharist is incredibly strong, but we ask that everyone approach this reopening with a patient, loving and charitable mindset.  There will be restrictions but Delia, Mike Beytagh, and I are creatively working towards making the best of a difficult situation. As I write this on Thursday afternoon, the specific details of when public Mass will resume and how it will be celebrated are still being determined.  I expect to have something from the Diocese to announce this weekend.
 
This week on Tuesday, I celebrate my 41 ^st Anniversary of Ordination.  Recently, I’ve been telling family, friends, and my priest brothers in fraternity, how happy I am to be the parish priest of this faith community.  The deepest desire that God has placed within my heart is to be a good parish priest of a vibrant little faith community.  I have been greatly blessed by God throughout my priestly ministry, but more than ever since I came to Tybee Island, GA.
 
As for our present situation, I think most of us are doing fairly well in the face of this crisis. But there are negatives.  I worry about those who are facing harsh economic challenges. And while I enjoyed my alone time before this pandemic, as things have stretched on, I find that loneliness is creeping in.  It can lead to darkness, so I find myself turning to the God of light to ask that he might heal my loneliness with his loving presence. 
 
I was walking on South Beach one afternoon this week and it was crowded with about 100 College kids who had just finished their exams.  I was annoyed that there was no sense of social distancing among them and lots of hugging.  As someone in the at-risk category, I envied their young, healthy bodies.  I thought to myself, some of them might go home and unwittingly kill their grandparents by infecting them with the virus – yes, sometimes I have an outrageously extreme thought or two. 
 
As I prayed about these feelings, I realized that most in our society are not going to be compliant with social distancing forever.  I can’t fault the young for a very natural desire to be social.  The coronavirus is going to be around for a long time and a vaccine that would help us who are vulnerable to feel safe around the young is a long way off.  So, I can only try to control my own environment.  I can’t ask the young to stay quarantined for the next year or not go to school in the fall.  But I can keep my own circle of contacts small.  While remaining in self-isolation, I can do the things that I know will keep me physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy.  I can respect the desire of other at-risk folks that I not get too close to them without being offended.  And I can mourn the reality that for the next year or so my social life, my enjoying the physical company of others is going to be sharply curtailed.  Ugh!  Hopefully, we will all survive.
 
In this time when so many of us are separated from one another we want to be united in prayer.  And so, we ask God to bring a gentle presence of love and companionship to the following:
•         Those who have recently experienced the death of a loved one
•         Those who lie in loneliness in hospitals
•         Those whose fears and anxieties keep them awake at night
•         Those who feel isolated and abandoned
•         Those who feel alone in their dreams of a better world and a world alive with gospel values
 
Loneliness Prayer
Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the call to wrestle with my loneliness.  Help me to be more aware of your presence in my life, for I am on my own and at times I can feel so lonely.  Lord, You search the inner thoughts of my mind and You know my needs better than I know them myself, and so Father I place this need of companionship into Your hands and ask that You would give me a measure of Your patient endurance.
 
O Lord, you have searched me, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. Lord, please use this time of solitude to draw me closer to Yourself, to get to know You more and to love You better, for in my heart I know that You alone can fill this aching void in my life.
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What we are living now is a place of metanoia (conversion), and we have the chance to begin. So, let’s not let it slip from us, and let’s move ahead.
 
About a week ago an Italian bishop, somewhat flustered, called me. He had been going round the hospitals wanting to give absolution to those inside the wards from the hallway of the hospital. But he had spoken to canon lawyers who had told him he couldn’t, that absolution could only be given in direct contact. “What do you think, Father?” he had asked me. I told him: “Bishop, fulfill your priestly duty.” And the bishop said, “Grazie, ho capito” (“Thank you, I understand”). I found out later that he was giving absolution all around the place.
 
This is the freedom of the Spirit in the midst of a crisis, not a church closed off in institutions. That doesn’t mean that canon law is not important: it is, it helps, and please let’s make good use of it, it is for our good. But the final canon says that the whole of canon law is for the salvation of souls, and that’s what opens the door for us to go out in times of difficulty to bring the consolation of God.
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I am so very grateful for your continued support of our offertory during these difficult times.
You can give on-line at the top of our website or the old fashion way through the mail or the Rectory front door mail slot.  You are such good stewards of the resources God has given you.