Message for August 8, 2024

Our first reading on Sunday was of their hunger and God meeting their need with manna in the desert, then, Christ’s gift of himself to us as our sustenance. 

God’s Providence is at the heart of our days and lives, something quite real. Providence is more than a city in Rhode Island!  If you were at the 11am Mass on Sunday, you know how I asked for the whole congregation to repeat that line together to make it their own. 

I was also asking them to repeat aloud together Lacordaire’s famed line (that I use in each email) to encourage us all: “All I Know of Tomorrow Is That Providence Will Rise Before the Sun!”

A few hours after Mass I was contacted by a student who asked if I knew that our newly-announced Archbishop was coming from Providence. I did not. But the above seemed all the more Providential!

How Providential it has been to have had Cardinal Sean O’Malley as our archbishop!  It is impossible to characterize the changes for the better that he made. So great were the scandals of what went before, it was a miracle that he achieved all that he did.  For his first years here he was shouted at by people for problems his predecessor, not he, allowed.  He once told us priests that he used to pray at night that he’d not wake up in the morning. It was the worst job in the Catholic Church. And he still is trying to set matters to right in dioceses around the world to make sure that children are safeguarded.  

How grateful we are for him and his service. 

We welcome Archbishop Henning and look forward to his installation and his leadership, as we also look to find venues and times to acknowledge Cardinal Sean. 

Thanks too for your faith that also anchors others around you!  Thanks for inviting others to our programs, enrolling them by our QR code here to be invited to all events. Thanks to your leadership in all this, may no one ever be left out!

God Bless You Each and All!

Father George Salzmann OSFS