Our New Pastor

This weekend I had two sort of big Catholic things going on. The first was that we got to see our new pastor, the second was we were a part of the Life Chain in Kenosha this weekend. I'll write about our new pastor now, and later when I upload my Life Chain pictures I'll write about that.

We went to Saturday night mass to see the new priest. Our new priest and associate, that we are sharing from another parish are members of the Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament from India. It's sort of a new thing for me, as silly as it sounds, because I've never really been to a parish where the priests are a part of an order, or at least that I can remember. The other funny thing is that the pastor's last name is the other priest's first name (and I can't pronounce his last name) so we're doing the first name thing, which I guess really is different for the parish.

Anyway back to the topic at hand, he did a beautiful mass. There is a bit of a language thing, I have a horrible time with accents of any kind. It's pretty close to the truth when I say that I get to central Illinois and I stop being able to understand people. But I've had professors from various countries, as well as friends so I'm confident over time I will get used to his accent. I had a little trouble with the homily, but I was fine for the gospel because I had read it earlier in the week at RCIA.

What was especially beautiful was the consecration. He took such care, and did it with such love and respect. It was really wonderful. After mass mom let him know how the consecration touched her, and I shook his hand - no small thing for me, I'm shy so I usually avoid shaking hands and saying hello to people I don't know (I know, I'm weird). After seeing him and seeing mass, and the way the altar boys were back to genuflecting - which had been gotten rid of with our interim pastor - I just feel so much better, and I'm thankful that they will be serving our parish.