MY LATEST KIDNEY TRANSPLANT UPDATE.........

Now in my third year of dialysis while awaiting a kidney transplant, I have begun looking beyond Sacramento for a possible transplant center. In addition to continue being listed at UC Davis Transplant Center, as I have been for the past two years, my prospective donor Victor Herrera and I are now exploring other recommended transplant centers for eligibilty interviews and acceptance. The two other transplant centers I have contacted in recent weeks are Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. On Wednesday May 20, Victor and I attended five and a half hours of interviews with the eleven members of the Cedars-Sinai transplant team of doctors, nurses, social worker, and coordinators and I underwent a brief physical, an EKG, a chest X ray and a full set of blood labs. Victor was also given a computerized body mass analysis by the donor transplant coordinator and found to be within the acceptable range for eligibility as my donor. In the next several weeks Victor will return to Cedars-Sinai to complete their required testing for potential donors. Then we await word of the transplant team's decision as to whether they will list me as a kidney transplant candiate at Cedars-Sinai. The Mayo Clinic in Arizona has also indicated a willingness to interview me to consider my eligibility in their transplant program. Victor and I will travel to Phoenix in coming weeks to meet with the Mayo Clinic's kidney transplant team, just as we did in Los Angeles. I am hopeful these further explorations will help expedite my receiving a kidney transplant, so that I can be returned to ministry and the work of being a parish priest I was ordained to do in the Diocese of Sacramento, 22 years ago.........Further updates will be posted here on my blog as developments warrant. Thank you for your prayers, support, and continuing friendships.........Fr. Troy

EASTER ENDS WITH PENTECOST AND THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

8TH SUNDAY OF EASTER - THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST

JESUS IS RISEN AND ASCENDED, ALLEULIA AMEN !! For 50 Days we have celebrated Jesus' New and Risen Life and the summation of His public ministry with the Apostles and other Disciples. Before the Risen Christ ascended He commisioned His followers to proclaim the Good News to the whole Creation. After the Ascension, the Risen Christ kept His farewell promise to send the Holy Spirit to remain with the Community of Believers until Jesus' glorious Second Coming at the end of time. Today we commemorate PENTECOST SUNDAY, the fiftieth and final day of Easter and the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the shuttered, locked in the upper room, Disciples. The Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit imparted on the day of that first Pentecost, gave the original disciples of Jesus the Christ the courage, wisdom and strength, to be sustained in carrying out their foundational ministry in God's Church. Those Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit continue to renew us the People of God here and now, to be faithful witnesses to the Risen and Ascended Jesus and the Gospel values He hearkens us to carry out. Pentecost, the Sacrament of Confirmation, and Masses of the Holy Spirit, customary celebrated at the beginning and end of school years, help us encounter the power of faith, fellowship and fidelity, the Spirit imparts upon us. As believers and followers of the Risen/Ascended Christ, we are Easter People. As recipients of all the Holy Spirit imparts we become Easter/Pentecost People of God. This week and as we move beyond the Easter Season may the power of the Resurrection, Ascension and the Sending of the Spirit, truly transform your lives setting you on fire with the power of Pentecost and God's Spirit to be faithful witnesses to building up of God's Kingdom.........Fr. Troy

EASTER AND THE ASCENSION OF THE RISEN CHRIST.........

The 7th Sunday of Easter is now the Solemnity of the ASCENSION, the crescendo of the Easter event as after His Resurrection the Risen Christ ascended into heaven back to the right hand of God the Father. In Jubilee Year 2000, I was privileged to be included in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as one of 40 Christian ministers sponsored by the Knights Templar. Among the dozens of sacred sites we visited was included the place in Jerusalem, a mountain top, where the Ascension is believed to have taken place. It has upon it a relatively small, circular, tower shaped building. Sacred Tradition teaches us the Ascension of the Lord occurred 40 Days after the Resurrection. Whether it is was forty days, forty hours, forty minutes, or even forty seconds, our faith in God's plan for salvation assures us Jesus the Christ, God's Redeeming Son, is risen from the dead and ascended into heaven until He gloriously returns at the end of time. The Ascension underscores Jesus' share in the Godhead of the Holy Trinity. Co-eternal with the Heavenly Father,who sent His Son into the world to conquer the power of sin and death over us and to reconcile humankind with the Divine. But the Ascension of the Risen Christ is also a significant moment in the history of the Community of Believers (the Church) for as the Apostles and other disciples were gathered around the Lord Jesus on a mountain top in Galilee before ascending, the Risen Christ commissioned them to go forth and baptize, teach, and preach, in His Name. Mark's Gospel specifically says, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all Creation". Thus the evangelization and ministry of our Catholic-Christian Church was set in motion and here we are some 2,000 years later the inheritors of that commissioning. By virtue of our Baptism and initiation into the Body of Christ, we are commissioned to be present and participating members in the mission an ministry of the Church. As we celebrate the Ascension of the Lord this week what are you doing to respond to the commissioning of your Baptism and initiation into the Body of Christ, the Church ? The Community of Believers fulfills its role and responsibility by the presence and participation of each one of us in the prayer, worship and ministry, of being Catholic-Christian disciples. Being a disciple of the Risen and Ascended Jesus is more than a perfunctory obligation, it is an everyday opportunity to share and to serve. As God's Easter-Ascension people what are we doing to proclaim the Good News to our part of Creation ? The time is now to embrace the essential truth of our own commission to build up the Coming of God's Kingdom. May the closing days of the Easter season 2009 bring you joy and cause yo to say YES, anew to God's Call and your rightful sharing and serving of the Community of Believers the Risen and Ascended Christ founded as His Church on earth.........Fr. Troy

"YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER".........IN MEMORIAM

Today, Monday May 11, 2009, is the 8th anniversary of the death of Reverend Monsignor Cornelius Higgins, the founding Pastor of Presentation Parish, in February 1961, and the Chancellor Emeritus of the Sacramento Diocese. May he rest in peace.........

THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER.........

6th SUNDAY OF EASTER

Universities are by their very definition places where discussion, discernment, debate and dialogue, take place in the process of learning and the attainment of a higher education. The University of Notre Dame is the premier Catholic university in the United States and is world famous as an institution of higher learning. One of my very close friends, a practicing and participating Catholic layman, is a Notre Dame graduate and has one of the best undergraduate educations of anyone I know. That did not occur by happenstance. It is is the result of my friend's hard work and the opportunity to study from a well honed curriculum inside and outside his major. The stellar reputation of the University of Notre Dame is the undeniable accomplishment of the Holy Cross religious order and the exemplary leadership for many decades of Father Theodore Hesburgh, the University President Emeritus. Father Hesburgh was not only an outstanding educator but an internationally acclaimed civil rights advocate. In recent weeks Notre Dame has been in the news amidst controversy over its invitation to President Barack Obama to be the 2009 Commencement speaker. Presidents are always sought after commencement speakers by colleges and universities, especially in the first years of their Administrations. Notre Dame's choice of President Obama as commencement speaker has stirred the opposition of conservative Catholics and traditionalist Bishops, due to his pro choice stance on abortion and support for stem cell research. 20% of the 265 American Bishops have stated their criticism of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama, and yet 54% of voting Catholics cast their presidential ballots last November for Obama. I vehmently disagree with President Obama on the issue of abortion, yet I also concur with the decision of Father Jenkins and Notre Dame to invite the President of the United States to be their commencement speaker. Father Jenkins publicly enunciated reason for extending the invitation is to open a dialogue, as a, "basis for further positive engagement", with President Obama on Life issues. Abortion is the first of a whole fabric of Life issues in the sanctity of life we believe in, as Catholic-Christians, "from the moment of conception to natural death". Father Jenkins goes on to say, " it is of special significance that we hear from our first African-American president, a person who has spoken eloquently and movingly about race in this nation. Racial prejudice has been a deep wound in America and Mr. Obama has been a healer".
Catholic opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research is also joined with equal opposition to the death penalty and unjust war, as well as support for a plethora of social issues. The Pope in a 1995 encyclical, the 'Gospel Of Life', embraced the "seamless garment" theology of life advocated widely by the late Chicago Cardinal Bernardin. In that pastoral teaching the Pope was consistently pro-life without exception. Former President George W. Bush, delivered a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, in 2001, the first year of his Administration. There was no controversy or protest then, and yet as Governor of Texas he allowed and oversaw the execution of more persons given the death penalty than any other governor in history. And his six years as Governor started the year the 'Gospel Of Life' was promulgated. A very wise professor of mine taught me, in a constitutional democracy we will never agree one hundred percent with any political candidate or public officeholder. When we disagree with them, it is our responsibility to debate and dialogue while representing and defending our beliefs. Instead of merely criticizing Notre Dame's decision or boycotting President Obama's appearance, why not have the Bishop of Fort Wyne/South Bend +John D'Arcy, or former Ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, also speak at the commencement, reiterating the wholistic pro life Catholic teaching ? That would more ably represent the role and purpose of the University. I feel the commencement address the President gives at Notre Dame this week may follow the lead of President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, at American University, when he proposed the politically contentious Test Ban Treaty, as a part of the commencement address he delivered. Given the continuing roll out of policies and proposals by this Administration, the President could well use the forum of his Notre Dame commencement speech to propose an equally significant initiative.
One of the voices of balance and sanity in this controversy over the commencement speaker is the retired Bishop of Monterey, California, +Sylvester Ryan, the former President of the California Catholic Conference of Bishops, who wrote in the May 11, 2009 issue of America magazine, "I for one strongly support the President of Notre Dame, and although retired, I know many active bishops who hold to the same position, precisely because we understand that holding a strong conviction about abortion (which I do) even as a fundamental moral imperative does not abrogate the need for cooperation with and recognition of our current U.S. president, especially considering the multiplicity of issues in our complex world. To honor President Obama for what he represents, simply as the president, and especially as the first African-American president, is a genuine and deserved action from and by the University of Notre Dame."
We shall know soon enough how effective the commencement address or the controversy has been to advance the issues of Life from conception to natural death. it is my hope the spirit of debate, dialogue, discernment and discussion, may continue to be furthered at the University of Notre Dame and all colleges and universities. ........Fr. Troy

MAY : THE MONTH OF MARY AND MOTHERS.........

5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER

My mother, Josephine Virginia Corey Feusi Powers, was the most devout Catholic in our family. From her girlhood until her death in December 1982, at age 60, she was constantly praying and faithful about attending Mass, while generously serving her family and others. Her devotion to the Rosary and the Blessed Mother were a mainstay of her spiritual life, as were receiving Holy Communion and going to Confession. She not only raised me and my 5 brothers and sisters to appreciate the importance of our Catholic-Christian Faith, but also took it upon herself to see that many of her nieces and nephews received religious education and the Sacraments of the Church.
A loving daughter, she cared daily for my grandparents, until two montths before her death, when her diabetes and leukemia, which she endured the last five years of her life, were in their terminal stages. I share this to illustrate the fidelity of faith, family, and fellowship, God desires us to live as faithful witnesses of the Catholic-Christianity we profess. I remember as a very young child how my mother would go to Mass on Sunday mornings by herself and in time, with me and my siblings. We would arrive well before Sunday Mass began and stay for several minutes afterwards, to pray. Once we made First Communion she would gather us on a Saturday evening about once a month and take us to Confession. I am convinced that her example, prayers and support, are one of the primary reasons I decided to become a priest.
In this month of May, the month of the Blessed Mother and all our mothers living and dead, this week we celebrate Mother's Day, our annual occasion for remembering and celebrating the women in our lives who brought us to birth and raised us lovingly and selflessly.
As we affirm our mothers and grandmothers anew, we also pray through the intercession of Mary our spiritual Mother, that God will bless all mothers and reward them with the ultimate blessing - the gift of eternal life.........Fr. Troy