Immaculate Conception to Holy Spirit
- Peter Lorenzi
- Feb 22, 2023
- 2 min read
In 1958, my parents moved our family to Eden, ten of us, with two more children soon to arrive. We joined the Immaculate Conception parish where the pastor was Fr. Norman George, later Fr. Leo Benker. He had just finished building the new church. It was all very new and different from our previous lives in a much more urban Lackawanna neighborhood. More than sixty years later, I have the fondest of memories of those days, the old homestead, the schools, the fields, the sports, the seasons, and new friends.
The pastor of my new parish, Holy Spirit in Kimberly and Darboy, Fr Carl Schmitt, evokes sixty-year-old memories of that time, place and experience. His level of energy, his attitude of joy, his self-deprecating humor, and his daily life homiletics take me back those sixty years, when life and pleasures were simpler, communication was analog and in person, families were large and intact, winters were colder and summers were milder, and religion ad faith were clearer (although perhaps also more mysterious).
I still have my 1957 St Joseph “Continuous” Sunday Missal, printed under the authority of Francis Cardinal Spellman. All in English. Do you remember “Quinquagesima Sunday”? [In fact, can you think of any word with two ‘q’s’ in it?] This all makes me pretty old school, as when Sunday Mass was on Sunday, and there was never any meat in the table on any Friday, not just during Lent.
The pandemic has taken me back to my roots. For the majority of the first three months, I reignited my ties with kidney brother Hank Hilton, via his daily streaming Mass and Thursday Fireside Psalms, along regular phone calls, emails, and group discussions that also included Mark Lindenmeyer and Steve Walters. For some time, I used the Divine Office for daily prayers, and then I adopted and shifted over to daily rosary recitation. And about two months ago, I added the Ignatian Examen as part of my evening prayer ritual.
Earlier this month, as the economy and churches started the long re-opening process, I have shifted my attention more to Holy Spirit and Fr Carl. In the past three of four months we had had regular contact, most often from when I would stop by the Darboy church where he heard confessions Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 9:00 to 10:00. After two confessions it evolved primarily into personal professional updates, and my responding to issues for Fr Carl in managing and leading his staff.
What facilitated my shift from my twenty-plus years of Hilton homiletics to Fr Carl was partially due to previous in-person Mass with Carl before the pandemic and, to a greater extent, Carl’s unbridled enthusiasm and optimism. And for the personal element, he sits during his daily homilies.
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