An Honor to Serve

Bishop Olmsted has asked me to serve as the Spiritual Advisor to the Phoenix Diocesan Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

This evening I will offer Mass for the Diocesan Council, have dinner in the family dining room at the Watkins Center, and then attend the Council Meeting where I will give a short spiritual reflection and offer whatever advice I can to the Diocesan Council.

Please pray for our Diocesan Council (and all the local parish conferences) that the love and service of Christ continues to shine through in all our efforts.

If you so choose, you also might want to follow the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Phoenix Council Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/SVdP.

Football Season

I always get a chuckle out of the sports headlines with Catholic schools

• Archbishop Murphy rolls past Kennedy Catholic

• West Catholic earns victory over Monsignor Bonner

• Central Catholic defeats Bethel Park

• No. 3 Catholic Central rolls over Inkster

10 Days

I returned to the parish from my summer vacation just 10 days ago.  With the Labor Day holiday, there was even an extra ‘quiet’ day when the office was closed.

I have finally gotten through the stack of mail.

I think I’m up to speed on anything that ‘happened’ while I was gone.  A pretty bad roof leak in the Church is a major concern – luckily it doesn’t rain much in the desert.

I’m still getting lots of phone calls from folks who were waiting for my return in order to make appointments or settle ongoing items.

The school is in full swing – and this year we have two Sisters from the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, Sr. Maria Frassati and Sr. Jude Andrew join the school.  YAY!  (Yes, the Order that was featured on the Oprah! show.)

Weddings and Quinceañeras are scheduled for most of the weekends from now through November.

But nothing compares to being back ‘home’ and offering the daily and weekend Masses for the parish of St. Gregory.  It is good to be home.

All My Passwords/Days of Our Passwords

Yes, it feels like a long-running soap opera.

A few months ago, my iPad was stolen from my bedroom.  Because the iPad will let you store some of your passwords on the device, I had to quickly scramble and change as many passwords as I could.  I never put financial passwords or data on any device, but I did have some of my email passwords (yes, I have multiple addresses I’ve collected over the years), and some of my blogging and other account passwords as well.

I recommend that somewhere – NOT on any electronic device that can be stolen – you keep a list of all the accounts that have passwords.  I’m not saying to write down the passwords, but simply list all the services and accounts you have that use passwords.  That way, if something like this happens, you know all the places you need to go.

I’m still picking up the pieces, and still running across accounts and services that I haven’t gotten around to changing the passwords yet.  A list, like I’ve suggested, would have helped tremendously.

And to my former boss Jim, who occasionally reads this blog, you would be correct in guessing the root word I use for all my passwords.  Maybe I should change it to include either a prefix of $DTR or DTR>?