Friday, August 21, 2009

Farewell


Father John, the blogging Parish Priest of South Ashford in Kent has been with me for a week. He leaves on the morrow at the extraordinary form time of 5.15am, having celebrated a private (Extraordinary Form) Mass at 4.30am. He has had wonderful weather for his week here and has done a number of 'Vermont things,' including both swimming in a pond and a river, biking up to Smugglers Notch and being fed by a number of my good parishioners. He will join his priest-brother, Fr. Stephen Boyle, in Marquette, Michigan, where they will stay with Fr. John's good friend the Bishop of Marquette, Bishop Alex Sample. Then they return for a few days in New York City - luckily English priests have a richly deserved proper vacation, something most of Catholic Europe understands, even if it isn't very Catholic anymore. It has been a great joy to have had Fr. John with me and, believe it or not, he finds the Church in this part of Vermont both healthy and impressive! I suppose it takes an outsider to see things we do not see (even if his spectacles are a little rose-tinted!)

1 comment:

gemoftheocean said...

I take it he didn't have any competing moose for that river or pond swim! That or he has one heck of a blog post coming up!