A New Parochial Vicar
On Monday, January 13, I received notice from Bishop Louis Tylka that he assigned a new parochial vicar to our parishes of Holy Trinity and Historic Saint Patrick. He is to arrive the first week of March. As I write this on January 20, I am not at liberty to say who it is until I receive the official appointment in my hands by snail mail. I can say that he is a priest who grew up in our Diocese of Peoria and was ordained here. Father Peter Okola left on August 28; I and the substitute priests will appreciate our new priest’s arrival!
Four EMHCs at 4:00 PM Mass beginning February 1
The 4:00 PM Saturday Mass at Holy Trinity has half the attendance of the 10:00 AM Sunday Mass, and therefore six EMHCs (extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion) are not necessary. The four EMHCs at that Mass will distribute the Blood of Christ while the priest and the deacon (the ordinary minister of Holy Communion) will distribute the Body of Christ. The priest and deacon will go first to the transepts (the small sections up front on the east and west) and then proceed to the side aisles. FYI, EMHCs are utilized when there are insufficient clergy and/or when Mass would be “unduly prolonged”. Many of our EMHCs do the hidden work of bringing Holy Communion to our homebound parishioners on various days of the week.
Traveling Man
Back in July, Bishop Tylka invited six of us priests to accompany him to a conference for Catholic clergy in San Antonio, Texas. That is where I was January 21-24. (Fr. Dustin Schultz, pastor of Saint Patrick in Merna, went also.) I will visit my youngest brother and his family over a weekend in February. In the last week of February, I will visit a priest friend who is a pastor in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, whom I’ve known since seminary days. As the Little Prince says in the famous book by the same name, “It is only the time we ‘waste’ with our friends that counts.”
~Fr Loftus