Happy New Year

Here we are are at the beginning of the New Year, 2008. I wish each of you a very Blessed and Happy New Year. May many blessings be yours in this year.

Over the weekend I was assigned to St. James Parish in St. Joseph, MO. The pastor, alumnus Father Joe Totten, was away so I celebrated the weekend Masses and then stayed over through the New Year to celebrate the Masses for the Holyday. I returned to the Abbey yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon.

Now that the Octave of Christmas is over a number of the monks have gone various places, especially to visit their families for a few days. The Abbot always asks all of us to plan to be here for the Christmas Octave. This coming weekend the monks who are studying away from here start returning to their schools for the new semester. Our own students also return on Sunday, January 6.

Monsignor Ernest Fiedler, a priest of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, and a former spiritual director here at Conception Seminary College. died in a Kansas City hospital last Friday. He was Rector Emeritus of the Cathedral in Kansas City and had been pastor there for a number of years. I believe he was 82 years old. The funeral will be at the Cathedral in Kansas City with burial here in our own cemetery.

We are having very cold weather and have had more snow in the last four or five days. The last couple of nights it has been down close to zero.