St. Mark's News & Events for November 11, 2007

Greetings to all of you!

Well it’s nice to be finally back after an overwhelming and glorious trip around the Mediterranean Sea with over 100 members of our Parish family. It really was a long and arduous affair with people constantly forcing me to eat pasta and drink wine despite my huge protests. However, I’m sure many of you are waiting with “eager anticipation” to hear about our trip so I hope to give you a few tidbits in the weeks ahead. By the way, whatever they tell you about my presence on the trip is totally false and everything I’m writing here in these columns is true. So don’t listen to any of them! Anyway, I did manage to sleep on the plane on the way over which is a huge hurdle for me. Due to that I managed to hit the ground running and take in as much as I could when we landed in Rome for our three day tour. From the airport, we managed a nice bus tour of Rome and finally arrived at our hotel in the bustling section of Rome’s Termini Station. Of course, the first thing we did was find a restaurant that served pasta, which happened to be our own hotel! The first bite took me to pasta heaven so after that the whole trip is a blur so I might miss some of the events. However, I’m sure I will be reminded by those who went with me. After some Vino and visiting with some of our people, I went to bed and prepared for next morning’s tour of the Vatican and its amazing Museum. More on that next week!

As many of you now know, Fr. Isaac is now Abbot Isaac as he was selected to lead his Benedictine Community at St. Leo Abby. This is quite an honor as he becomes the spiritual father of his local community, similar to the responsibilities of a bishop in a diocese. Although he will be leaving us, he will continue to celebrate some Masses here at St. Mark so we are fortunate for that. His installation will be on December 1st so continue to look in the bulletin for details. We congratulate you Abbot Isaac and we thank you for your wonderful presence these last three years. We shall keep you in our prayers.

Well, that is all for now. I’m still trying to catch up on all the work I missed and that suitcase is still on my bedroom floor waiting to be emptied. Pray for me!

Peace,
Fr. David