RBWords - Volume 25 - Number 1: January 2012
Something to Think About
With this issue of RBWORDS, I begin the twenty-fifth year of writing this monthly newsletter, which started as a Sunday bulletin article at St. Albert the Great Chapel at Southeastern Louisiana University! When I left there in January 1988, I began to send a monthly newsletter to close friends and the list gradually grew. The first e-mail edition was sent in 1996. There are now less than 20 of the more than 200 recipients who still receive this by “snail mail.” The world has changed a lot. In those 25 years I have been in campus ministry, formation ministry, leadership ministry, parish ministry, and now, full time itinerant preaching ministry out of Houston, TX. I realize my address changes have been a challenge, but that is the nature of my life. Here is my current geographic residence: Holy Rosary Priory, 3600 Travis Street, Houston, TX 77002. My e-mail address is rbwillop@gmail.com and my cell phone 210-241-2906.
My ministry takes me quite literally coast to coast, but mostly in the area from Texas to Florida, south of the Oklahoma to North Carolina line, which 11 states comprise the Southern Dominican Province. I preach mostly parish missions and retreats of all kinds. I am in good health (I turn 69 on 2/25) and I thoroughly enjoy what I’m doing. I like the Dominican priory in which I live. Houston is a great place for travel by air in terms of available non-stop flights, and it is central for driving. My own hometown is only 4.5 hours away by car. I feel blessed in my ministerial situation, but even more so in you, my beloved friends and readers. It is for you that I do this month after month, year after year.
In terms of “something to think about,” one of my great adventures right now is learning how to use the new “Roman Missal.” Some editor with a strange view of the world did not put a Table of Contents at the beginning of the book. So, now one must hunt for things. I spent part of this morning putting special tabs on certain pages for Masses that I like to use on certain occasions. This past weekend I had to hunt a long time to find the wedding Masses! So, if the new translations are an adventure to you, you may be sure they are an adventure to the celebrants, too! IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!
It Has Been Said
“For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed: And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent.”
Romans 10:14-15