I think we are going to settle on St Sebastians in Queens as our “parish of choice.” Although we plan to head back into Manhattan to go to Ascension parish this weekend to meet up with some friends. We ran into their ministry fair last weekend and they have quite a good number of things going on. The pastor also had a great homily on the late workers who were paid the same wage as those who had worked all day.
“Whenever I read this I want to yell “THAT’S NOT FAIR! I mean, this is how unions start!… But what we need to keep in mind is that we don’t need to pay attention to who gets the credit, or who gets more than I did—instead we need to be focused on Jesus…are we pleasing God with our work? How are we bringing Jesus into the lives of others?”
We attended Our Lady Queen of Martyrs this weekend again. We were treated by the best homily I heard in months by Deacon Greg Kandra of the Deacon’s Bench blog! And surprise surprise, I was even mentioned anonymously in his homily:
I had lunch with a friend who went to World Youth Day and he said that one of the Bishops said that “while all of us who are here are in the club, so to speak, there is something that keeps us from committing ourselves totally to Jesus.”
I was that friend and those words indeed inspired me to look more deeply at my own life and helped me make the decision to pursue a vocation to the diaconate.
Deapite the great homily and even a fairly nice choir, I just didn’t get a warm feeling from the place (Greg, if you’re reading this do not include yourself as playing a part in these feelings). So we might head back for some inspiration from time to time but I don’t think this will be our regular place of worship.
St Sebastians isn’t all that warm either but I can see it warming up a bit more readily than other places and I see more of a role for me to get involved there.
We are going to try St Rapael’s and St Teresa’s also in the Woodside/Sunnyside area in coming weeks. But it’s looking like St Sebastian’s has the inside track right now.