Blessed Sacrament Choir tonight!

Tonight we hosted the choir from Blessed Sacrament/St. Charles Borromeo parish in Newark, NJ at our 5:30 PM Liturgy. They all sang beautifully, and we really rocked the church.

Afterward, our Parish Life Committee hosted a covered-dish supper for the choir. More than 200 people showed up, to fill our Learning Center. It was very, very tight.

I'm overall very pleased with our Parish Life Committee, and how they hosted our guests. However, in assisting the committee members who were doing all of the work, I heard of several stories of parishioners who were downright rude, too demanding, who were disrespectful of our guests, and now I'm writing this with knots in my stomach considering whether we should ever do this event again, if it's going to cause such divisions and dissension.

Our Parish Life committee hosted a great event, and donated hundreds of hours trying to provide a great event. Yet the complaints that I heard from parishioners who give absolutely nothing to our parish who were demanding service at this event.....It was really disheartening. I have to tell you....I'm thinking of cancelling this event for next year.

While I really love having the choir from Blessed Sacrament parish here to sing our Liturgy in Gospel style, I am very, VERY, disappointed with the nasty parishioners that abused our Parish Life Committee this evening. Once again, I'm very dissapointed....let the word go forth!

The view from my window these days

Thanks to Mike McElroy for this great image of life at the Jersey Shore these days. I, for one, have had enough of the white stuff.

Let's pray that this is the last of the winter storms. January is NOT supposed to look like this in New Jersey.

An evening at Carnegie Hall

Last evening, I went to a great concert in New York, at the world-famous Carnegie Hall. For me, it was my first time there. And what a night it was!

The featured artist was John Angotti, who was backed up by a Catholic Choir of 330 people! Singing in the choir were our own parishioners Cindy Buck and Mike Zorner. They were joined by many other choir members from all over the Diocese of Trenton. We had a Party Bus for 30 from Saint Anselm, and we had a great time. I'm sure that this won't be the last bus trip to NYC for an event like this.

Thanks to Dr. Jerry Galipeau and other friends at World LIbrary Publications in Chicago, I think artists like John Angotti will continue to come to great venues like Carnegie Hall, and gather with many other Catholic musicians to bring the message of God's love to the world.

Celebrating Theophany

Last night, I joined my good friend, Fr. Michael Mondik of St. Thomas Byzantine Catholic Church in Rahway for the vigil celebration of Vespers and the Divine Liturgy for the Feast of Theophany. This was my first time concelebrating as the sole concelebrant for a Byzantine Liturgy. Fr. Michael was very gracious, and very patient with me, as I tried to sing the parts of the Liturgy that he gave to me. I was especially honored when he asked me to take the Blessing of Water at the end of the Liturgy. (It takes almost 20 minutes to bless the water in this Liturgy.) It was a great, and very moving evening for me. I think that I may ask my bishop for permission to begin studying the Byzantine Liturgy with the hope of gaining bi-ritual faculties.