September 2020

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope this note finds you all well! Having been in Detroit a few weeks now, I wanted to take a moment to update you on how things are going and what we've been up to.

I moved into St. Mary's on August 1st and very soon things were off to a good start. It had been a good trip out. I took the long way in order to see a few close friends in New York/New Jersey and was even able to stop by my old stomping grounds at Capuchin Youth and Family Ministries on my way through. They were all really good visits and I arrived with the sense that God was working through this move. The night we arrived, the one of the families in our parish brought pizza over. We had dinner with them and their seven kids and then went to the church to pray. Fr. Athanasius spoke about how the idea for this missionary program ultimately came from St. Anthony (one of my favorite saints) and then the friars and the Ponce family prayed over us. After that we venerated relics of St. Francis Xavier and St. Therese, the patrons of missionaries, and asked for their prayers as we began our missionary year. There was just a sense that God was up to something.

That sense was confirmed when the next day, I was walking through the back parking lot to my car and I met Mark. Mark lives next door to the church in the old convent. He's in a rehab program for veterans there along with probably a dozen or more other men. Mark flagged me down and wanted to know how he could become Catholic. My second day here, God put me in the right place at the right time. I'll be giving Mark instructions starting on September 13th. Please pray for both of us.

Since then, we've spent a lot of time working to get the parish up and running. With one priest and a part time staff person, a lot of projects had been put on the back burner that Maria and I were now able to tackle. I spent my first two weeks working on the website (which I think looks pretty darn good right now: https://saintmaryofredford.church/) and Maria worked on scheduling, and flyers and planning for the upcoming year. Catechesis starts up on September 13th and so both of us are at work planning lessons and getting kids registered. I'll be teaching ages 13-18 and Maria will teach ages 6-12.

As far living goes, I have a pretty good setup here. I live in Msgr. Hickey's old apartment, which has its own bathroom, couch and a mini kitchen. Across the hall from me is the practice carillon and the stairs to the bell tower. I think that would have been Msgr. Hickey's living room, but with the practice carillon in there and kids going up in the tower on Sundays to ring the bells, I pretty much keep to my half of the hallway. Twice a week we eat meals with the friars and last Saturday had a bonfire in the back courtyard with some young adults from the parish. In the meantime, I'm finally learning to cook for myself and have discovered the great joys of the crock pot. Doing the prep when my belly is full and I'm still a rational creature has definitely been to my benefit. :-) I've also discovered a 20 odd mile bike path that's only ten minutes away from us. It follows the Rouge River and has very few intersections, so I've been able to get out on my bike a few times a week. It's been good.

I think that's enough of an update for now. I'll send out more periodically. Thank you all so much for your support. Please keep me, Maria and the friars in your prayers. Know of my prayers for you.

In Christ,

Joe

P.S. As always, if you have any specific intentions you'd like us to pray for us, please email me. We'd be happy to do so.

October 2020

Dear Family and Friends,

I pray all of you are well! It's been about a month since I last emailed, so I figured it was time for another update.

Things continue to go well at St. Mary of Redford. I've been venturing out into the neighborhood more. It was recommended that I not go out alone, so I've been taking company (picture attached.) :-) Her name is Sasha. She's an old dog who belonged to Fr. Athanasus' mother before she came here last year. Sasha and I have been going for walks in the neighborhood. She has an arthritic hip and sometimes reminds me of my mother as she seems to walk faster to cover up that anything is wrong... It's been good. She's been a conversation starter with some of the neighbors, plus she gets me out of the house.

Back in the office my job continues to expand. I'm still teaching CCD for teenagers and we now have dates for bringing both our RCIA candidates into the church (please pray for Mark on November 14th and for Nick on November 21st.) In addition to the usual duties, this past week, I started dabbling in wedding coordinating. And no, I never in my life imagined I'd be doing that. :-) A bunch of couples have contacted us about getting married here in the past few weeks. A few have come by for tours and I've already had my first official meeting with one couple. They've all been very nice. However, the friars haven't had a wedding since they have been at St. Mary's, so all the policies and procedures have to be written out from scratch. So now, here I am, figuring out how to do marriage preparation classes. :-) Fortunately the couples we're working with have been great and we have some resources to draw on so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's a new adventure, but it's a privilege to be able to accompany people during one of the happiest moments in their lives. I put together a page for the website on weddings. It's a work in progress, but I'm pleased with what we've got so far: https://saintmaryofredford.church/weddings

Over the summer, I mentioned to some of you that there was talk of having me play the organ at the 11 AM Mass here at St. Mary of Redford. At first it looked like I was off the hook, since an organist had been hired before I moved in. However three weeks ago the organist quit and lo and behold, I wound up back in the choir loft. :-) I'm just a substitute until we can hire someone full time, but so far it's been going well. The previous organist was his own cantor and I (and the congregation at St. Mary of Redford) have been mercifully spared that fate. We have two cantors (Sam and Teresa) who graciously help out every Sunday. I'm only filling in until we hire someone permanently, but it's been fun working with them. We've been doing a lot of old school hymns and the extra long communion (St. Mary of Redford uses the communion rail, so it takes more time) has given me space to improvise during Mass. Admittedly, sometimes it comes out sounding a little like a movie track, but no one's complained so far...

Lastly, we had the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi this past Sunday. It was a lot of fun. Since Franciscans run this parish, we did it up. We had a beautiful Transitus service on Saturday night commemorating the passing of St. Francis into eternal life. Then afterwards we had a bonfire for the young adults who came to the service. We probably had about ten young adults (mostly from the University of Michigan come). We're planning on doing a similar bonfire on Halloween night.

As you can see a ton of stuff is happening at St. Mary of Redford. There are a lot of other anecdotes I could share, from a boy who has insisted his mother bring him to St. Mary's because we use incense, to the adventure we had in removing a safe from St. Mary's during our work day. I think this is enough for now though. As always, thank you so much for making this year possible. Please keep Maria and I, the friars, and all the people we're working with in your prayers. If you ever have any intentions you'd like us to pray for, just send me an email and we'll be sure to do that.

God Bless!

Joe

P.S. I mentioned in my last letter that I've been writing bulletin columns. We just finished publishing the first series and the link to the article is below. We also wrote a prayer to Our Lady of Redford which you can also find below.

November 2020

Dear Family and Friends,

With another month of missionary life in the books, I thought it time for another email update.

The most exciting news (in addition to discovering how to adjust the temperature of my refrigerator) is that efforts to colonize the bell tower have begun. As many of you know, my apartment is connected to the bell tower. Not many people go up there except (surprisingly) to ring the bells before Sunday Masses. With the weather getting colder, I've been looking for a place with enough space to be able to work out (so that I can grow in wisdom and grace and not in other ways) that would be far enough out of the way so as not to disturb anybody. Yesterday I put two and two together and realized the second level of the bell tower would be a perfect spot. Consequently, I spent my afternoon mopping up brick dust. It looks pretty good now! It's already been suggested to me that if I need extra weight to lift, I can just start lifting bells. :-)

Speaking more seriously, it's been a really good past few weeks. We had Lessons and Carols this past Thursday night and it was a wonderful evening. As the organist in residence, I was put in charge of organizing it which, as with most things I agree to do, was much more complicated than I expected it to be. I got a nice little volunteer schola together to lead the carols and not a few eyebrows were raised when they discovered they would be singing a song called, "Adam Lay yBounden." Still, everything went off very nicely. We had kids doing some of the readings and a couple of carols, we had a small but respectable turnout, and the whole thing really lifted everyone's spirits (or at least it did mine.) You can find the video of the event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdxNuyKIQTE&t=1s

Lessons and Carols became my official excuse to undertake a new hobby. I've talked about learning how to play the bells in the bell tower (called a carillon) for a while, so as a prelude to Lessons and Carols, I learned how to play Carol of the Bells on the carillon. Admittedly, I had Transiberian Orchestra's version in my head when I played it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6FhOb7-1dg), which apparently came across. Fr. Athanasius told me that he and Br. Paul were pulling out of the church parking lot while I was practicing and Br. Paul commented, "Dude! Joe's playing that rock song." Fr. Athanasius has been making fun of him for that since.

On a personal level, missionary life has improved a lot since Maria and I started hosting people for dinner on our days off. It had been a bit of a dilemma for a while. We were the only two missionaries in the house; we couldn't hang out in the friary, it wouldn't be appropriate to hang out in each other's apartments, so we wound up spending a lot of time sitting by ourselves. A few weeks ago, we realized that if we invited at least one other person, we could do dinner in Maria's apartment and have company. We started inviting friends and it turned out that there were a lot of other single Catholic people we knew who were also really happy to have company for a while. We've done it twice now (I'm proud to say the first time, I successfully cooked my first roast chicken) and both were a real grace for both of us.

Evangelization efforts continue. Our two RCIA candidates both came into the Church last month. One took the name Joseph (which I approved of) and the other took Raphael. We're continuing to meet for a few weeks after to talk about the graces they've received since getting their sacraments. We're starting to get more Mass requests and I've set up a form on the website where people can request a Mass online. I've been pleased to see what a good response that's gotten. And as always with a parish, you never know who's going to call or knock on the rectory door. Those interactions are always a grace.

Lastly, on a sadder note, we had to put Sasha, the friary dog, down this past Tuesday. She was almost thirteen years old and had developed a large tumor on her heart and lungs. The house won't be quite the same for a while.

I pray that all of you are well and had a good Thanksgiving. As always, let me know if you have any intentions you'd like prayers for.

Yours in Christ,

Joe

December 2020

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope this note finds you well as we get towards the end of the Christmas season. I’m currently at my parents house in South Portland which has afforded me ample quiet time to write to you all.

The month of December brought a lot of adventures (at least by my standards) and probably not enough sleep (which I have dutifully made up for this past week.) I think I already wrote about Lessons and Carols from earlier in the month (Lessons and Carols 2020 - YouTube). In the middle of the month, the friars left for Phoenix for a week. One of the brothers was being instituted as an acolyte and the two postulants were taking the habit and receiving their religious names. I was a little worried it would be too quiet with them gone, but when the friars are away, the missionary will play. For the week they were away, I was able to spread out from normal quarters in the bell tower and enjoy the use of the friary kitchen and living room for a bit. Part of this meant (with Fr. Athanasius’ permission), being able to host people for dinner. I described it to a Mexican friend as having parties but he explained to me that his First Communion party in Mexico as a kid involved 500 people and my 3-6 did not qualify as a party. An organic group of young adults is slowly forming at the parish and it’s been good to see. Plus, I discovered a good pot roast recipe in the process.

Since the friars were gone, I had the run of the sacristy as well for the week. Those who have done sacristan duty before know that it can be intimidating learning where things are with other people watching you work, so a week of anonymous bumbling around was exactly what I was hoping for. I also got to dust off my cassock and surplice for the first time in a long time since I was the only one there who could altar serve and lector. This meant (on a week’s notice) learning how to serve the Latin Mass. I served my first low Mass for Fr. Athanasius the morning of their departure and then served for Canon Sequara at the parish Saturday morning Mass that weekend. I had one false start (there were six sequences and I got up from my spot too early) but Canon Sequara still said I did a good job.

When the friars returned, they found the church still standing and in one piece. With less than a week to go before Christmas, we transitioned quickly into Christmas preparation mode. Giant Christmas trees were put up, a sign that congratulating our Confirmandi on Grand River Avenue since August was finally changed, wreathes were hung, nativity scenes were put out, others were found wanting and put back, and all the while I stayed in my office and worked on getting further certified as a marriage prep coordinator (please pray for our couples.) The church looked absolutely stunning. Right about that time, Christmas dinner was delivered to the front of the church. A parishioner graciously donated a 24 pound piece of meat (the church wasn’t the only sign of beauty that day) and came to drop it off while I was in a meeting. I’ve never quite felt like such a conquering hero as walking down the aisle with that piece of beef in my arms, past Fr. Athanasius’ office (in the sight of everyone) to deposit it in the fridge. The man who donated it gave me explicit instructions on preparation, but fortunately for all involved, I would not be the one preparing it. When Christmas Day came, we had a high Mass at St. Mary’s at 11 AM and then went over to the Ponce’s house for the afternoon and evening. The Ponce’s have seven kids, so between them, five friars, and myself, we put a pretty good dent into Christmas dinner. Naturally jam sessions with Fr. Athanasius and nerf gun wars with the kids continued late into the night.

Thus ended the first half of this missionary year. My stint as organist is now complete. I improvised many a communion meditation (and may inadvertently played Final Countdown on the Feast of Christ the King) and pulled out all the stops during the Christmas Carols on Christmas Eve. The new organist will play her first Mass on January 10th. Being the occupier of the bell tower, I will of course continue to work on learning to play the bells (Carol of the Bells on Carillon - YouTube.)

Coming up this year, First Communion Prep will begin, a new semester of CCD will kick off (a family from across the street just contacted us via St. Vincent de Paul about signing up their kids), young adult events are planned, and it looks to be a promising several months. On the vocation front, I’d ask for prayers on February 16th to 22nd since I will be going down to Phoenix, AZ to visit the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit’s main house on the Indian Reservation down there. We’ll see what the good Lord has in mind.

I pray all of you are well. Merry Christmas and God bless!

Joe

January and February 2021

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you all are doing well. I usually try to send these updates monthly, but time has gotten away from me and I'm sending this later than planned. Consequently, I'm a little backed up on news, so you'll have to forgive the length of this email.

God has been doing a lot at St. Mary of Redford in the past few months. As I write this letter, it strikes me how many people have come through these doors recently whose lives have changed in a major way. A couple of weeks ago, I was hosting dinner for a group of guys who were getting ready to do a program called Exodus Lent. Exodus Lent is a series of disciplines that strips your life down to bare basics (fasting twice a week, no sweets, no media, no unnecessary purchases) and increases your commitment to prayer (holy hour every day, examen at night, etc.) There are eight guys in their twenties doing this together at St. Mary of Redford. Over the course of the conversation, two of the guys started talking about their past struggles with addiction. At one point one of them made the comment, "You know, if you had told me last year that I'd be having dinner with a missionary in a bell tower right now, I'd have told you you were crazy." To which the other agreed. It struck me that a lot of the people who have started coming to St. Mary of Redford are in a similar boat. In the last year or two God's light broke through whatever darkness they were struggling with, and we have the privilege of being the ones to help them lay the foundation as they rebuild their lives.

Another conversion story comes to mind. I was walking to my office one day when Br. John of the Cross flagged me down and asked if I could sit in on a meeting with him. When I asked what it was about, he said there was a lady whom he had prayed over in a Walmart two years ago who had contacted the parish and was looking for someone to talk to about some struggles she was having. Without going into details, this woman had been through a lot, so we listened and then took her over to the church. We showed her the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, burning with love for her and told her to remember that Jesus sees her true worth, even when other people don't. Since then she's been coming to St. Mary of Redford whenever she can. She's actually preparing to make her first confession now.

Once a month we host young adult events at the parish. We had been doing potluck dinners since they were easier on our budget, but in January, the turnout was so overwhelming that the food disappeared before the late arrivals ever had a chance. What was stranger about the crowd was that (unlike most church events), it was almost all guys who came. So when our February dinner came around, I decided that we'd just provide pasta rather than do the potluck thing again. Pasta seemed affordable and I knew I could cook large amounts of it without too much effort. Of course, I didn't want to be caught short again, so I cooked eight boxes of pasta. Despite another good turnout, I was sending people home with gallon bags of leftovers...

Discernment with the Friars of the Holy Spirit continues. The Friars have been having me over for dinner four days of the week now which has been great. Granted, for Lent they go vegan, but I still appreciate the company. I was able to go down to visit their house in Phoenix last week. They have care of a native American reservation down there. The whole thing is like something out of a western. It's desert as far as the eye can see, surrounded by mountains in the distance. There are little village dotting the reservations and little mission churches in each one. I got to go with Fr. Peter Teresa to three of the mission churches on Ash Wednesday and I felt like I was in another world. The friars down in Phoenix were extremely hospitable and I enjoyed my time there. Plus, there was a lot of time to pray which I took full advantage of.

In other exciting news, three of our couples here just had or are about to have babies, so March and April will have a bunch of baptisms. We started St. Joseph devotions on Wednesdays and I've been handing out St. Joseph oil from Montreal. Four of our kids are getting ready for Confirmation, so please pray for them. We got the old sanctuary lamp hung up in the church (which is really excited) and a new paint job on the sacristy. Lastly, I'm getting ready to do a holy hour (like what I did in Advent at Holy Martyrs' Church for those who were there) focused on the love of Jesus who made Himself a prisoner for us in the tabernacle. That will be on Friday at 6 PM, so prayers appreciated. Please also pray for Daniel who is on the verge of becoming Catholic but not quite there yet.

As always, prayers and best wishes to all of you. Thank you for making this year possible.

In Christ,

Joe

March and April 2021

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope this note finds you well. I've been meaning to write to you for a while, but things have been a little crazy. Normally I update you on the things I've been doing, but this time around I just want to share a few stories with you.

God continues to work amazing things at St. Mary of Redford. Since I last wrote, we've had two more men ask about beginning instructions so they can be received into the Church (and there's a third who continues to be on the fence; please pray for Daniel.) One of the men is named Dave. His wife, Diane, is Catholic. When they first were married, she brought Dave to church with her but he had a bad experience with it. Diane eventually found St. Mary of Redford and started coming here. She kept telling her husband that it was different at St. Mary's, that he'd find a warm welcome here, but it took months for him to finally come around. When he finally came, he was just beaming. He met the friars (Br. Lawrence is especially known for his warmth and friendliness), I took him on a tour of the church, and he stayed after Mass to meet all the other parishioners at the 5 PM Mass. It wasn't two weeks later when Dave was asking about starting RCIA.

We've had another man from the neighborhood who has been showing up to church at unexpected times for the last several weeks. I first met Tommy after Mass one night. He seemed pretty out of it, but he wanted prayers. We had epiphany water (which is essentially super blessed holy water) and I offered him a jar of it, which he despite suggestions to the contrary, he promptly insisted on drinking.

Since then, he's shown up to Mass looking for prayers on a regular basis always just looking for prayers and holy water. He's totally unchurched, so we've learned not to expect the usual etiquette. Tommy's way of entering a church is to show up at the consecration, walk straight down the center aisle, genuflect, and then look for me so we can go and talk off in the fellowship room. Still, the graces for him have been real. He's had a really rough history with drugs, and gangs, and a broken home. We've been talking through a lot of that with him and (sometimes to our surprise) he's listened to what we've had to say. Every week when we see him, he's been a little more put together than the week before. This past weekend, he talked with one of our parishioners about possibly getting a job working in his restaurant. He's got a long way to go, but it's been amazing to see what God's been working in the short time we've known him.

Then there's Wally. Wally came to us looking for help getting a bus ticket a few weeks back. We helped him out, gave him leftovers from the fridge and got him a ride to the bus station. He seemed really appreciative, but admittedly, you always wonder a little whether people are being honest with you or not. Then a few weeks back, Wally showed up again at the church beaming from ear to ear. He came because he wanted to share some good news with us: he'd finally gotten a job. I had only ever met himi that one time, but it was enough that he wanted to come back to see us to tell us all about it. He couldn't have been more grateful for the way we had helped him but moreover the way God was blessing him. God really works, and the joy of this missionary year is that we get to be in a place to see it happen.

Of course there have been all the usual activities and the graces that come with them. I've seen three babies baptized over the last month, we've had confirmation classes and catechesis, we've had people calling here to get married, we had all the big Masses during Holy Week. It's been a graced time.

I'm now in the process of tying up loose ends for the year. Much of my year has been spent building the infrastructure for future missionaries and now with six weeks left to go, I'm in the mode of making sure everything is wrapped up. We've bought textbooks for catechesis, have the apartment all furnished, have a process set up for how to do baptism and marriage prep, and have the website more or less where we were hoping it would be. I can't say I'm happy to be in wrapping up mode, but it has been a gift to reflect on everything that has happened this year. I'm very grateful for my time at St. Mary of Redford and all of you who have made this possible.

Prayers for you and your families. Happy Easter and may God bless you abundantly.

In Christ,

Joe

P.S. Attached are pictures from the last month. Among them is a picture of St. Joseph's Day pastries I made for March, a group of friends that came over for a bonfire on St. Patrick's Day (one of them from Cork), the churching of one of our parishioners after she gave birth, and a Palm Sunday procession we wound up doing in the rain.

May 2021

Dear Family and Friends,

Today is my last official day as a missionary at St. Mary of Redford and so I wanted to send one last email to let you know what we've been up to here and to thank you for support throughout the year.

Last month, I expected May to be fairly quiet. After all, most of the friars would be done with school and off to Phoenix. CCD and Confirmation classes would be wrapping up. Since we wouldn't be adding any projects beyond May 31st, it seemed like it should be a pretty calm month. In fact, we raced to the finish.

May proved to be a very fruitful albeit busy month. With the friars away, I was left in charge of the Men's Group, which of course I took full advantage of. For the month of May, we met to read a book by GK Chesterton called The Ball and the Cross. The book (which is absolutely hilarious) is about an atheist and a Catholic who are running away from the law (and become friends) in order to have a duel over slights and infractions in honor both parties have endured from the other. It's a delightful and thought provoking tale and we had a lot of fun with it.

My duties as marriage coordinator at St. Mary of Redford continued. We finished the marriage prep course for the couple I've been preparing over the course of the year and then set to trying to design a course for another couple in the parish who is engaged. They're a delightful couple: he's from Michigan and she's from Ireland. She's probably heard more stories about my grandmother than she'd care to, but she's been very polite about it. In addition, a third couple contacted us about getting married here since their home church was too small to accommodate their families. Fortunately for me, the wedding got scheduled for this past weekend, so after a year of coordinating weddings, I finally got to see one happen. It was really beautiful.

This past week was spent almost exclusively on carpentry. Fr. Athanasius wanted to do a procession with our statue of Our Lady of Fatima for the May Crowning, but we didn't have a bier with which to carry her. Naturally, Maine pride swelled up in my chest, and I insisted that I'd take care of it. The look on Fr. Athanasius' face told me had standards about these sorts of things, so I set to building a slightly more involved design than I originally planned. A week later, having only whacked one of my fingers with a hammer, we had a white and gold bier that built specifically for our Mary statue. We did the procession this past Sunday after the crowning and it was really wonderful to see all the parishioners come out for it. It was a fitting end.

Today, Maria and I finished in some ways what was our year's big project. We were the first Become Fire Missionaries and it was our job to blaze the trail and set the program up so that other future missionaries had something they could step into. We set a lot of programs up and learned a lot through trial and error. To make sure this knowledge got passed on, we sat down to write a Become Fire Manual this past month. Today Maria finished editing and printing it off. At 60 pages it's a verifiable tome. We were very pleased.

Conversions continue to happen here. One man from the rehab center next door was talking with one of the friars about the Catholic faith. At first, he was just sparring about religious questions. But then Br. Elijah gave him a Miraculous Medal and as soon as he put that on, his whole tone changed. He wants to become Catholic now. We have another guy in college who showed up to one of our young adult events. His parents are adamantly opposed to him coming to church because they're afraid it will take time away from school, but he's still been coming and wants to enter the Church. Two of our young adults live nearby and they've been helping him get to Mass. Meanwhile, I gave my last RCIA class to Dave yesterday and we went for dinner to Mr. Chicken afterwards. Dave has a ways to go before he enters the Church, but it's amazing to see the way he lights up when we talk about the faith. God has been doing a lot here.

(For those curious, I recorded a couple of my RCIA lessons back in December. I just got them up on our YouTube channel today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPBMjtrcAmo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5yXMLsHjyo&t=194s

As usual, I've attached some pictures to this email. I've also included a pdf with a summary of what your donations produced. Obviously, the most important fruit of your donations are the hearts that were touched and the relationships that were built, but I wanted to let you know that because of your donations, St. Mary of Redford has been built up significantly.

Please pray for Juan and Ben. Both these men are prospective Become Fire Missionaries. Maria will be returning for another year.

God bless you all for your generosity. Thank you for what you've done for this neighborhood in Detroit and all who have been coming here. Thank you for the opportunity you've afforded me to take a year for discernment. After spending this past year with Franciscan Friars of the Holy Spirit, I've submitted my application to enter in the fall. God willing, this August, I will be a postulant on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Phoenix, Arizona. Once again, thank you for this opportunity. It's borne a lot of fruit in a lot of different ways.

As always prayers for all of you. I hope to be able to see some of you when I'm back in Maine to visit next month.

Yours in Christ,

Joe