Boy is it hot. I love me some summertime, but wow, am I out of the habit of heat. I forget, from year to year, the reality of the summer heat, especially after a long, mild spring like we just had. It was extra long, since winter sort of failed and spring started by default back in early Lent. Now, dramatic summer thunderstorms, and beastly heat are our lot; we should not be surprised.
The summers flanking my senior year in high school, I worked at a golf club, a real fancy one that has (since) hosted major tournaments. I did not maintain the course itself, but I took care of pretty much everything else, including the clay tennis courts and azalea beds, the lawns along the drive to the clubhouse, and for the residents of the homes in the club, I helped collect the garbage and drove the truck to the dump. THAT was HOT. All of it. But the absolute worst was having to go back out to resume whatever task I had been working on after one of the summer thunderstorms came busting through. The humidity was so high and so heavy as to make breathing difficult.
Ah the good old days.
These very days of this very summer will soon be counted among the good old days. Change is afoot in the Holy House of Soubirous, change that will echo through the parish before the heat breaks. As I type this, the Canonical Twins are on the porch immersed in one of their study sessions while their date with comprehensive examinations comes steadily closer.
Father Santandreu will be leaving us once he has met all the requirements for his degree. He has been good company, he has had a good run, but his bishop wants him back and has a stack of work for him in Buffalo. At the end of July, one day he will simply evaporate into the haze on the horizon.
Father Novajosky, on the other hand, comes from a diocese with a slightly deeper bench, and so he will be staying on to begin his next degree, the doctorate. He, too, will disappear when this month ends, but he will return with all the other students before Labor Day, and we will rejoice in his company again.
And Father Gabriel Okafor, who has been here only a few weeks, will go back to his parish in California come August, as well.
Change is hard; but wait – there is more! It is not limited to the residents of the house. Jackie Nguyen, who has been working here for almost twenty years, has found a donor and will receive a kidney transplant in less than two weeks. And Ron Farias, our business manage for six years, will retire at the end of this month.
Jackie will be out for a couple of months, best case scenario, and after that we will see how much we see of her. Ron will be helping with the transition here and there after the first of August, and will continue as a parishioner, but things will simply not be the same. I am turning everything over to the Divine Providence as both of these people were my prop and stay over and over again.
Let me turn all this over to your prayer, as well, and do not neglect to let these people who have played a role in your life know of your care for them. I know you know what to do. Everything is changing, but then it always does. We will learn what God has in store; His mercies are not spent.
After all this, I will be alone in the rectory for several weeks. My consolation is that it will be The Most Wonderful Month of the Year: August. I love August, heat and all, because the swelter and stillness and the peaches and the tomatoes; the ability get a parking place anywhere in the metropolitan area, any time, and to drive, even on the beltway, without horrible traffic. I love the mood everybody is in by August, when they have become accustomed to the calmer pace of summertime, and the effects of their vacations linger like a bright clearheaded buzz. Yes, August is hot, but it won’t be hot forever.
Some folks point at the heat and the storms and say the world is ending. Well, that’s a quaint thought but there is no good reason to put any stock in it. The world will not end until souls cease being saved by Christ, until the workers in the vineyard of the Church cease to gather in the Master’s harvest. THAT is an apocalypse to be dreaded, a sign to be seen and lamented, a disaster to be averted.
Meanwhile, I’ll take the heat.
