A BUSY BEGINNING TO THE LAST TEN DAYS OF LENT 2010..........

Monday and Tuesday of the 5th Week of Lent have been full of priestly ministry. The 2nd Grade Student Confessions at Sacred Heart at 9 am Monday morning, and then I went to Assumption Parish in Carmichael, to help with the 7th and 8th Grade Student Confessions, and then last night was our SacHeart Lenten Communal Penance Service; then today I was at St. Mary's Church at 58th & M streets hearing some of their Student Confessions at 9:15 am, after celebrating the 8 am Mass at Sacred Heart; and made three more Homebound Sacramental Calls, the third one being with Social Services Sister Sheila Walsh, S.S.S., who founded the Jericho Social Justice ministry in Sacramento in 1987, the year I was ordained a priest. Then tonight I was the presenter at RCIA, one the Nicene Creed, our Profession of Faith defined and promulgated at the first Council of Nicea, in 325 A.D., which was the first of the 21 Ecumenical Councils of the Church in our history, the Second Vatican Council, (1962-65) being the latest. Tomorrow morning I will preside at a Lenten seasonal Mass at Saylor Lane HealthCare Center on Folsom Blvd., at 11 am. It was there 4 years ago this month that my father died at age 84, just weeks after choosing to become Catholic. I will also be hearing Sacramento State Newman Center Confessions with the Director, Father George Wanser, S. J., Wednesday at 6:30 pm. All of this ample activity, but also the vital ministry of being a priest. With each day since my kidney transplant last August, my return to Sacramento in October, and my assignment In Residence to Sacred Heart in January, I am continuing to show success in being able to resume my former duties fulltime as a priest and to become pastor of a parish again in July. As the final ten days of this Lenten Season lead us to the Easter Triduum, may you fully embrace the Springtime of the Church and our annual commemoration of Holy Week and the Paschal Mystery of Jesus the Christ..........Fr. Troy