No Homily Post This Week
I know that I have not been posting to the blog as much as I had hoped; not even as much as I had before I left for Rome. It has been nearly a month since I posted the last Liturgical Footnote. I apologize to the readers of this blog (not that I think there are many of you, but numbers is not all that important). October has been a challenging month.
I have not mentioned this on this blog (although I talked about it when I was writing for Catholic Ragemonkey), but last November, six months after being ordained a priest, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thank God, thyroid cancer is very treatable, and after two surgeries and very easy radiation treatment, I was placed on Synthroid to make up for the fact that I no longer have a thyroid to produce the necessary hormone. It has taken months to get my hormones back on track. When they were out of whack I was very tired all the time.
A few days after returning from Rome I was my endocrinologist, and she told me that my “numbers” were finally in the range she wants them to be. That means no initial sign that the cancer has spread, and I am not so fatigued all the time. Wonderful news, and all due to the many prayers of family and friends. Now my doctor just wants me to be stable on the meds for 6 months and then I will have a body scan to confirm that they got it all.
At the same time I started to breath some relief about my cancer, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. This week we got the shocking news that Dad’s PET scan shows that his cancer is also in the liver, spine, thigh, and lymph nodes — classifying him as Stage IV, the worst stage. Dad has as positive an attitude as I think you can expect, he plans to fight the cancer the best he can, but he and my Mom knows that it is going to be a difficult road. I ask you to please keep Dad (and my family) in your prayers.
All this, on top of the regular stresses of being a priest in a big parish, has given me a new fatigue. It has also lead to a writer’s block when it comes to my homilies. The last few weeks I have really struggled to write something, not finishing until Saturday afternoon.
This week it was even worse. While I knew the points I wanted to reflect on this weekend, Priesthood Sunday, the words were not coming. In prayer I felt that maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself, too much emphasis on MY writing something “good,” that I might not be allowing the Holy Spirit the room He needs to say what He things needs to be said. So for this weekend I am just going to let the Spirit do His thing. I have read and prayed over the Scripture for this weekend, and have looked at commentaries and “homily-helps” to help me reflect on the Scriptures. Tomorrow I will ask the Holy Spirit to speak through me. As one Jeremy Camp song (”Empty Me”) puts it, “…more of You and less of me….” Maybe I will be able to give a recap of what the Spirit prompts me to say.
