Fr. Daniel's Letter to his Parishioners

 

Dear Parishioners,

As I write this note, I am on day one of my retreat at Marie Joseph Spiritual Center in Biddeford.  The church expects the priests to make a retreat once a year for five days.  Given these COVID days, I skipped last year, but thanks to Fr. Michael, I am able to go on one this year at this special time.  Usually Lent is a devotional and    prayerful time in the parish, and priests do not leave the parish.   However, like everything else, this year is different.  As I start my  retreat, I am thinking of so many things of which I am thankful.  There are many that I will not bore you with the list.  I would like to share two with you.  The first is the priests in the house with whom I live.  Fr. Michael is so generous with helping the parish and the priests, which allows us to do more for you.  Fr. John and Fr. Patrick are very attentive to the spiritual life of the parish and are hard   workers.  Fr. Samy and Fr. Seamus are so easy to have in the house.  Even though Brother Irenee is not officially assigned to the house, I love having him with us.  I thank God for how fortunate I am to be a part of the mix at this time in history.  It is so unique to have six priests and a brother living in the same rectory these days that God had to be the author of this plan to help us get through these trying days.  The second is being assigned to this parish.  It really is God’s great gift to me.  Lisbon Falls, Sabattus and Lewiston Churches are filled with beautiful people of faith, which makes me want to be a  better priest.  The parish office that serves you is filled with wonderful staff members who really want to make our parish a place people love to be around.  The one thing that is sad is that I go around and       experience all of this, I realize that a lot of you do not know each    other.  Once COVID is over, my goal is to help parishioners know the faith-filled people who are a part of their parish. 

By now, almost everyone knows that the governor will allow us to have 50% capacity in all our Churches.  This is a very big change, and I am like a kid at Christmas who wants to have it now.  However, we all have to wait until Palm Sunday.  It is just as well because we will have to work out what it will look like under these different      restrictions.  We have to explore options for what social distancing, mask wearing and contact tracing will look like with more people.  Please look at the home page of the website for up-to-the minute    information.  As soon as I know, I will put information up there.    It seems that the rumor mill is in high gear these days and there is a lot of misinformation out there.  If you hear things at the grocery store and it does not make sense to you, check it out on the parish website and app.   God bless.     ~    Fr. Daniel

 


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