Dear Friends,

 

It was over a year ago that I first mentioned to you my hopes and dreams for taking a sabbatical. I recently celebrated 38 years of priesthood and ten years as pastor at St. Paul’s. Blessings all, but I welcome time away for prayer, study, and relaxation. A priest in Boston retires at age 75, so these upcoming months will give me the opportunity to reflect on the past and be refreshed for the future. I will be away from August 1st until December 1st, when I will return to carry on my ministry as your pastor.

 

While I am on sabbatical, Fr. Sanders will be the temporary administrator, and of course, Fr. Salzmann will be here as well. I am grateful to them for their generosity in picking up additional tasks.  We are also blessed to have four or five priests who will be coming regularly to celebrate Mass and confessions. Thank you to them all!

 

As to the shape of my time away, it looks like this: I will spend time on retreat at the Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, MA, later taking in a concert at Tanglewood. I’ll travel to the Midwest visiting friends, and in St. Louis, I will work in a L’Arche community for folks with special needs. (That is my academic background, and I have worked in other L’Arche communities around the world.)

 

I’ll later have time in Europe with friends, doing pilgrimage to many holy sites in France, Belgium, and Italy. (One place I will visit is Verona, where the church of San Zeno is located; that church is the model for our very own St. Paul’s!) I’ll make another silent retreat and pilgrimage in Malta, where St. Paul was shipwrecked and preached for three months, planting the seeds of the Catholic Church that is still so vibrant there. I’ll have a good amount of time in Rome, where I lived for eight years for seminary and doctoral studies (it is a proven fact that pasta and wine are failsafe instruments of the Triune God!). Things will wind down with time at the great Benedictine Abbey in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. During all this time, I will be reading, perhaps a little writing, praying, and asking the good Lord to renew my spirit.

 

I am grateful to the staff at St. Paul’s, to all those who provided financial assistance, without whom this opportunity would not have been possible, and to all of you for your prayers. I will think and pray for you often!

 

In Christ,

Fr. Kelly