Memorial Day + Pastoral Council

Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    In Happy Memorial Day! This weekend, we remember those who have died in service to this country. I hope you are able to visit the graves of your loved ones, especially those who served in the military, to pray for the repose of their souls and remember them. I’ll offer a Mass at St. Joseph Cemetery at 9:00 am on Monday, Memorial Day, for this reason with the rain site being St. Patrick’s. This is a good weekend to take a trip with your kids and visit the graves of your relatives who have died and explain to them who they are and what they meant to you. It’s good for us, too, to visit the graves of our great grandparents and great great grandparents to pay our respects and remind ourselves who they are. I always find it enlightening to walk to the grave of my great Grandfather, John Miller, who came from Germany to Haverhill, Iowa with his sister, Mary. The grave markers allow me to physically see the husbands and wives and children of these relatives. It’s one of the reasons we tell people that it’s important to put all of a person’s remains in the same place with a marker and not to scatter the ashes somewhere or keep some of a person’s ashes in a locket or on your mantelpiece: people should be able to visit a grave or mausoleum or some specific place that houses the remains their friends and relatives after the person has died. Having those spaces eases the sadness and strengthens the hope of those who are still alive. 

On a completely unrelated note, I want to thank the seven people who put their name forward as candidates for pastoral council. In past assignments, we’ve been blessed to have one or two more people on the ballot than the number needed for the council. It shows the commitment to volunteerism and leadership from the people of this parish. Thank you so much! I learned some lessons in this election that I hope to put into practice next year. First, we need to start the nominating process in mid April and have the names in the bulletin the first weekend of May so that we can have elections by the second weekend of May. I pushed off collecting nominations until the first weekend of May, which meant we had biographies of the candidates the same weekend as we voted, which was not fair to the people who ran. I think I’d also avoid having elections on Pentecost. It is a very full liturgy with incense, sprinkling rite, the sequence, and a proper part to Eucharistic Prayer I. Nonetheless, since voting has to be completed by the third weekend of May for constitutional purposes, we couldn't postpone until this weekend. But, overall, I consider it a success since, despite another change in staff, we carried off the election and some people who were “trapped” on the council are getting a reprieve and new voices will be represented.