Fr. Ron Wagner, Pastor
From Fr. Ron's Desk...
Resurrection of the Lord Parish
October 2, 2022
Of Mind and Heart
This coming Thursday, the Diocese of Saginaw will be at our doorstep as Bishop Robert Gruss leads pilgrims from all over the Diocese to a Holy Hour for Vocations at 7:00 p.m. at our Standish campus. One of the great needs our Diocese has is Vocations to the Priesthood. We presently have five seminarians. One of them, Deacon Matthew Gembrowski, is scheduled to be ordained in the near future. Most of the parishes in the Diocese are served by priests who are at retirement age and beyond, including myself. At the recent fundraising banquet for seminarians, Bishop Gruss laid out two challenges to those in attendance: invite someone to consider becoming a priest and invite someone to become a religious sister. Story after story from priests and sisters is that the seed was planted when someone said to them, “Have you ever thought about becoming a priest, becoming a sister?” The Bishop invited us to plant the seed and let God take it from there.
Next weekend Fr. Thomas Hagen will be here to make an appeal for “Hands Together”. They work with the poor in Haiti by establishing schools, orphanages, nutrition and feeding programs, medical clinics, sustainable-development projects, and partnerships with local leaders and communities, Hands Together is building a better world for thousands of suffering people in Haiti. Hands Together volunteers bring needed skills to many of our educational, health and sustainable-development projects. Please be generous. This is part of the Mission Co-op work of the diocese where a mission group comes to ask for funds once a year.
My plan is to take some vacation time from October 7th to the 14th. It will probably be my last opportunity to get away before my knee replacement surgery which is scheduled for November 11th, Veterans Day. Weekday masses are cancelled during my time away.
My high school reunion went wonderfully. We shared a lot of stories and caught up with each other after 52 years since graduating from St. Stephen High School in Saginaw. We celebrated mass with the parish community on Saturday and had a reception later at the Saginaw Country Club. A good time was had by all. About 35 of us were able to be there out of the original 114 graduates.
I have reported to you on the Synodal Listening Sessions results held at our parish and in our diocese, but if you would like to know the results of the listening sessions nationally, they are available at usccb.org/ synod. About 700,000 people participated in the process which is being done around the world.