Dear Brothers and Sisters,
As we begin a new calendar year, we give thanks for all God’s blessings at Our Lady of the Rosary parish. We worship in a beautiful new church; our school is practically bursting at the seams with the children from new families moving into the area. We have a wonderful and talented team of teachers, parish workers, deacons and catechists and we are constantly adding more to our number!
JohnMark Cayer is a young graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is our new Director of Faith Formation and Thomas Sohler is another young Steubenville grad who is taking over the role of Facilities Manager. This leads me to announce another great development in the parish.
Some months ago, we purchased the little house adjacent to the gym and were praying about how we might best use it for the parish ministries. I envisioned a small community of young men living there to maintain a presence and witness in the parish and foster the prayer life.
At the end of the summer a visitor to the parish introduced himself to me. Doug Gonzales is a former Church of the Nazarene pastor who has been a Catholic for a good number of years. Now that his family is grown up, he has been discerning God’s will for his life and feels called to the eremitical life.
For those not in the know the “eremitical life” is a life of solitude—devoted to prayer and sacrifice. Doug was finding it difficult to find someone who understood this unusual calling and who was sympathetic to it.
He found that person in me! I’ve been interested in the monastic way of spirituality for a long time and know the power of prayer and the need for prayer now more than ever. Therefore, I have invited Doug to come and be our “parish hermit” and live in 6 James Drive which we will call “The St. Paul House of Prayer.”
We hope the house will be ready for Doug to join us by Ash Wednesday and that JohnMark and Thomas will live there too, making up the small community of prayer I envisioned.
I will write more about this next week, but am happy to receive questions and comments about this unusual, but exciting initiative in the parish.
Your Pastor,
Fr. Longenecker
I’m in the US Army Reserve and was recently assigned to the 391st Engineer Battalion training out of the Donaldson Center here in Greenville. I live in Knoxville and worship at St Albert the Great Catholic Church regularly. I attended mass this Sunday for the first time and was in awe. Your parish is absolutely breathtaking. I have 18yrs of service with 2 combat tours in two wars and like to think of myself as pretty stoic and tough. I was overwhelmed to tears with the beauty of everything. Fantastic experience and a reminder of how beautiful our faith is. Thank You. Father Longenecker is a fantastic homilist. I enjoyed my time with you all and the presence of God immensely and look forward to next month to worship with you.
Thank you Joseph for your encouraging words. We feel blessed every weekend to be able to be at OLR, and look forward to seeing you again. Please introduce yourself to Fr. Longenecker or Fr. Richard next time you’re at Mass.
The way Vatican II documents called for liturgy to be. Modernists trained after 1969 have abandoned a pearl of great price. Some few Novus Ordo oases remain (less than a few dozen nationwide). This is one. God bless Fr. Longenecker.