During a Mass celebrating the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis observed, “If [the Church] should fail to rejoice, she would deny her very self, for she would forget the love that begot her,” he said. “Yet how many of us are unable to live the faith with joy, without grumbling and criticizing? A Church in love with Jesus has no time for quarrels, gossip and disputes. May God free us from being critical and intolerant, harsh and angry!”

Increasingly, in social settings like dinner parties, the person I am talking to will take a serious tone and say something along the lines of: “This homelessness seems to be getting out of hand.”  Then, with a manner that is genuine in both concern and resignation, they will ask: “What can possibly be done about it?”

I have found over the years that my answer to that question takes far too long. After a while, there is a glance at a watch or scan the room for other conversations. The reasons for homelessness, and the poverty that causes it, make for bad dinner- party conversation.  

As parents, your life can feel like a staged performance — days and nights spent in front of the same sets over weeks and months:  Act 1:  home. Act 2: office. Act 3: school event. Act 4: sports.  Act 5: Church. Like a play, you perform alongside mostly the same characters:  spouse, children, co-worker, teacher, pastor. It is a wonderful performance, and it is true that it goes by too fast, but like every good play, it is good to have a break in the midst of the action.  Over the past six years, as our three children have grown up, Legatus has been the welcome intermission. 

It’s pumpkin season! Those wonderful, plump, orange balls of fall can be seen almost everywhere we look this time of year. They are relatively easy to grow in our diocese and are fun to watch in the garden.

Hens and chicks are charming and are a very interesting garden plant. They grow extremely well in our diocese, don’t need a lot of water and under the right conditions come back year after year. They remind us of motherhood and little babies and life passing on from one generation to another.