DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY ON SUNDAYS AS A PRIEST OF JESUS CHRIST............

For the thirtieth consecutive Sunday, here I am not doing what Catholic priests who are capable do, presiding at public Sunday Masses - but sitting here filling time and space as though I am intellectually, spiritually, and pastorally, incompetent, whereas I am physicially challenged, not unable to celebrate and communicate as effectively as any of my brother priests.  My return in recent weeks to part-time ministry at Sacred Heart Church here in East Sacramento, assisting with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, (RCIA) and helping with Confessions of the students in the parish school, are most welcome additions to my mundane and underwhelming daily schedule, striving to retain the spirit and truth of my chronological age and capacity, in an environment where the focus is on retirement and assisted care, which do not reflect my life or condition.  Because I am in a wheelchair does not disqualify or disable my ability to carry out ministry, it empowers and enables it.  To think or to act otherwise only limits and marginalizes the value of the abilities I retain and the ministry I am ordained to carry out as a native born, local grown, priestly vocation of the Sacramento Diocese.  Resuming some aspects of public ministry is most welcome, in the anticipation and hope that common sense will soon prevail, allowing me to return to publicly presiding at Sunday Mass, regardless of whether I am able to stand, or need to sit; as over the past decade I have shown repeatedly how a wheelchair is an empowerment not a disablement............Fr.  Troy