Weekly insight and thoughts from Fr. Damian Zuerlein
Pastor’s Letter 7.5.20
Dear Friends, I have had the pleasure of doing two sabbaticals during my priesthood. The first was for six months in Leuven, Belgium and the second was for three months in Israel. In both cases, there were students in the program from many different countries. We had...
Pastor’s Letter 6.27.20
Dear friends, During these long summer days, I invite us to learn from the founder of another of our local religious communities. I frequently use St. Ignatius for insight, but we can learn much from St. Benedict, too. As a young man, Benedict left his hometown of...
Pastor’s Letter 6.21.20
Racism is a sin that constitutes a serious offence against God. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that ‘We cannot truly pray to God the Father of all if we treat any people in other than brotherly fashion, for all men are created in the image of God
Pastor’s Letter 6.14.20
Dear Friends, An article in the Wall Street Journal this week reported that family grocery bills were increasing. That was because food prices, especially meat prices, were increasing and people were eating at home more frequently. I know that Jan, who takes...
Pastor’s Letter 6.7.20
Dear Friends, One of the challenges of the last several months has been the shift from a busy, crowded, and noisy world to one of separation, quiet and rest. For many of us, that shift was a foreign experience. We have learned to fear the thought of isolation. The...
Pastor’s Letter 5.31.20
Dear Friends, As I write this letter, the streets of some neighborhoods in Minneapolis are filled with rioters. There are stores being broken into and burned. All in reaction to the death of a man caused by four police officers. The video of the encounter shows the...
Pastor’s Letter 5.24.20
Dear Friends, For many of us, life is slowly returning to a more normal routine and for others, life remains a place of quarantine because we are part of an “at risk” group. Either way, we continue to find ourselves with “extra time” on our hands because we...
Pastor’s Letter 5.17.20
Dear Friends, One of the benefits of the present health crisis is that I have more time to read than normal and the quiet to read poetry as it needs to be read. So let me share with you something I recently read, a brief reflection and a poem from the poet and...
Pastor’s Letter 5.10.20
Dear Friends, The COVID crisis has been a reminder to all of us that our human community is far more fragile than most of us had ever imagined. It took something small but contagious to turn the whole world upside down. Our modern technology and...
Pastor’s Letter 5.3.20
Friends, Like many of the pastors in the Archdiocese, I am taking this opportunity to tell you where we are at in the process of starting to offer Mass again. When the Governor and the Archbishop said that we could start having Mass (within the guidelines), it...
Pastor’s Letter 4.26.20
Dear Friends, In a recent article in the British journal, The Tablet, the historian Tom Holland wrote about the impact the plagues played in early church history: “At the end of the second century, and then again in the middle of the third, bowls of wrath were poured...
Pastor’s Letter 4.19.20
Dear Friends, In the rectory, I have a reprint of a painting by Caravaggio that depicts the calling of St. Matthew. Like most of his paintings, this one has lots of darkness and glimmers of light similar to the paintings of Rembrandt. Chiaroscuro is the term...