ON THE EVE OF MY ANNUAL EVALUATION VISIT TO PHOENIX MORE FRIENDS COME TO VISIT............

Preparing to fly to Phoenix, Arizona tomorrow for my 3rd Annual Kidney Transplant at the Mayo Clinic; I am very pleased today to have received welcome visits from my friends Sara and Pete Nava, and my colleague Reverend Father Steve Avella.  Pete and Sara came by this morning before lunch and we had a pleasant chat, as we have had so often for more than thirty years at St. Rose's Church and in their home in South Sacramento.  Their friendship and support have been a joyful mainstay in my life, as it continues to be now.  Fr. Steve arrived just after 4 o'clock and we had a well rounded conversation for upwards of an hour before dinner, catching up on current events, as Steve winds down his visit home in Sacramento and returns to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to his professorship  for the new academic year.  Like the other visitors I blogged about last week, Sara, Pete, and Steve, provided a boon to my spirits at a time when the frustration increases daily at being sidelined unnecessarily.  Some of the spiritual reading I am doing speaks of Encouragement as an essential component of the spirituality of priests.  I certainly believe and experience that as being true for me, as the encouragement, example, and expressions, of solidarity from family members, other priests, and cherished friends, who truly support me and care about me sustaining my vocation, are increasing their affirmation and presence prayerfully and socially.  The next two and a half weeks give me the opportunity to break out of the redundancy days currently hold for me, when there is pastoral ministry I can and should be doing.  Enjoying the next seventeen days instead of merely enduring them, will also please God; lift my personal, priestly, spirituality from the shackles at least temporarily, of a setting that does not define my life or my priesthood, at age 55............Fr.  Troy