Great Weekend!

I have been in Antioch for a month and am slowly settling in and becoming accustomed to the demands of parish ministry in a busy suburban parish.  This weekend, we celebrated the Feast of Saint Dominic at all the Saturday and Sunday Masses.  The Dominican Laity hosted a "novena" (in quotes because it was only 6 days) all last week, with a Rosary, a talk, and a Mass of St. Dominic, and refreshments each evening. This all culminated with the multi-cultural celebration at the Saturday Evening Mass.  I celebrated and preached that Mass in English and Spanis.  

I learned a little bit of a lesson on Saturday.  When I have preach bi-lingually, I need to shorten the homily (cut it in half) - preaching it word for word in both languages meant that the homily that was 15 minutes long at ll the other Masses this weekend was a half hour long on Saturday night. Too much. This bi-lingual preaching thing is new for me.  I am still learning. 

I had a wonderful surprise at the Saturday Evening Mass. As I reached the presider's chair after the procession, I caught sight of Evan and Ashley Richards, beloved friends from Tucson whose wedding I celebrated 7 years ago, in the congregation.  They both work for Facebook and live in Santa Clara.  They had driven up for the evening to surprise me.  And Surprised I was.  After Mass I was able to go with them to dinner (at the Red Caboose!) and spend a couple of hours catching up. 

Preaching 7 Masses in 2 languages is exhausting.  But it was a wonderful weekend.  I am excited for the coming weeks as school gets started at our parish school and things begin to return to "school year normal" in parish life and programming.  It has been great to have these weeks of reduced summer programming to get settled in. I have had great times with Fr. Roberto (pastor, superior and friend) sharing ideas and getting energized for the coming year. I feel really blessed to be here!

Monday (day off) was kind of a lazy day.  I slept in a little and kinda lazed around in the morning because I pretty tired from the weekend. I edited and posted the text and audio files of my weekend homily (over on the "Joy of the Gospel" blog page) and did some more sorting and cataloguing of my huge cache of sabbatical photos.  In the evening, I went to see Meryl Streeps new moving "Ricki and the Flash," which I enjoyed.