Who told you were going to make it home?
A good simple story.
I read a strange article the other day about a video uploaded to the internet by an ordinary blue collar worker. It was very emotional.
The day before he had gotten into an argument with his wife and it continued in the morning and he left work without speaking to her. They had recently welcomed their first child, and as you may have guessed the introduction of a little human who demands constant attention (and was dealing with col- ic) put a tremendous strain on their relationship.
When the man got to work, he wasn’t his normal upbeat self. Others could easily see the man was upset and distraught. He told one of his work friends about the situation and he concluded that he would just have to talk to his spouse when he got home from work later that day to sort things out.
This is when his friend shared with him a troubling truth. “Who told you that?” the coworker asked. “What?” the man replied, and he told him that he was planning on going home and talk it out. The coworker reiterated: “No, who told you that you were going to make it home?”
The coworker continued. “The biggest assumption that we take for granted is that we’re going to make it home whenever we leave for work in the morning.” (One of the workers who works at my nephew’s plant didn’t a couple of weeks ago. In a horrific explosion, the man died.) Sometimes you don’t make it home.
The man got the clue, phoned his wife from work, and dealt with the issue – immediately.
Jesus reminds us to deal with our broken relation- ships as quickly as possible. “Settle with your op- ponent on the way to the judge…” The truth of the matter is, we are all on borrowed time and now is a really good time to make peace.
What is a Vicar?
Great question. When I find out I will tell you… In the aftermath of All Things New, Archbishop
Rozanski decided to go to a vicariate system. The entire Archdiocese has been broken up into three vicariates (Northern, Western and Southern). Holy Redeemer is in the Northern Vicariate and Fr. Scott Jones is our Vicar. The idea is to bring the re- sources of the Archdiocese closer to the parishes. This wasn’t too big of a problem for Holy Redeemer since we were right next door to the Catholic Cen- ter, but it could be an issue for parishes in outlying areas. (My old parish St. Joseph’s Neier was about as far away from the Catholic Center as a person could get.)
The new vicariate structure, once it is fully operational, includes:
A Vicariate Coordinator, a Pastoral Outreach Coordinator, a Social Outreach Coordinator, a Finance Liaison, a Catholic Charities Liaison, an Educational Liaison, a Human Resources Liaison and other positions will be added as needed.
Ideally, the vicariate should speed up the response time for parishes with different needs and problems. It will help with short-term issues as well as, hope- fully, long term planning. As with anything new, there will be some bumps along the way, but Fr.
Jones is an incredibly intelligent and pastoral man (as are the other three vicars, including one of my classmates) and so this should be beneficial for us all.
Fr. Kevin