[My first Pastor’s Note as Pastor of the combined churches of Whatcom County, WA]
I am excited to be your Pastor and I am excited about the potential good that will come from Partners in the Gospel!
It is hard to say anything beyond that. We are doing a big thing and there are big emotions, and I want to be sensitive to those emotions. Sacred Heart, St. Joseph (Lynden), and St. Peter had to say goodbye to their pastors last weekend, so their mourning and adjustment is particularly acute. And Assumption, St. Joseph (Ferndale), St. Anne, and St. Joachim are experiencing a significant change in how they interact with their former pastors, which is its own weirdness and grief. At best, this weekend is going to see a lot of running around and bumping into each other as sacristans, altar servers, and priests try to navigate each others’ systems. But for many of us, all the change and confusion will have a worse effect of elevating the difficult emotions we are already feeling.
There is a lot of excitement to be had. Like I said, Partners is going to be really good for us, but we have to go through the very human process of adjusting to change before that excitement can really take hold. And change is hard. And here we are. Nevertheless, I am excited to be your pastor and I am excited about the potential good that will come from Partners in the Gospel! And I am sure Fr. Thumbi and Fr. Tyler can say the same about their excitement to begin meeting with you and working with you. As a final note, though, I do want to let you know a minor miracle that has happened, that has strengthened my hope that Jesus is in charge of all of this and that he is taking care of us. For the last two months, I have been massively stressed about covering our Masses in Whatcom County. Fr. Stephan will not arrive from India until late July, and being down a priest makes our Mass schedule nearly impossible. In addition, I could not find any priest to cover my Spanish Masses at Assumption while I took my time off in preparation for July 01. I was hurting and stressed. And then, without any effort on my part, Fr. Thumbi informs me that he will have a priest friend visiting from Kenya until mid-August, exactly the time-frame we needed to cover Fr. Stephan’s absence. And then a Spanish-speaking parishioner at Assumption tells me that he has a priest friend visiting from Honduras during June and July, exactly the time-frame I needed to prepare our Spanish community for having one fewer Spanish-speaking priest. I did nothing to make any of this happen, and God just took care of us. I think he gave me, and all of us, this sign, as a portend of things to come. If we are faithful to the Lord, he is going to make sure we are taken care of in exactly the ways that we need.
Fr. Moore 