Jan. 1, 2021 Feast of Mafy, Mother of God (for us Catholics)

I found this on the internet this morning.

■ Untold numbers of vaccine doses will expire before they can be injected into American arms, while communities around the country are dealing with more bodies than their mortuaries can handle.

■ A pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital has been arrested and accused of intentionally removing more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine from refrigeration last week, knowing that they would be rendered useless.

A good way to start the new year, I think, an old, even ancient, blessing.

I quote my wish for your now and during this whole new year of 2021m from the Book of Numbers, Ch. 6; 22-27, the first reading for today, Mary, Mother of God.   

 

   May the Lord bless you and keep you.      May he let his face shine on your and be gracious to you.....May the Lord uncover his face to you and bring you peace.

 

These are the words of a priest whose parish is near the Nashville blast.

 

“My message was that pandemics don’t last, economic setbacks don’t last, and terrorists don’t last and it’s God and the Kingdom of God that are going to last forever and other things are just temporary,” Neely said. “That God’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

 

Probably good to remember that. Nothing good lasts forever and nothing bad lasts forever. Put your money on what does last forever.

 

Nuclear war ---President Eisenhower said in a 1953 speech :  “Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed…”

 

Jan. 2, 2021

Surprise, surprise. About 11am bishop Khumalo came to my room to say that we are all to go to Sanlam Center (a shopping mall) to be tested for covid 19. When. NOW. So I went next door to Bishop Lobinger (long retired, 91 yrs.old, soon, 92) and told him to meet me at my car at 11:20 saying that we were all going to be tested. Then I went to another neighbor, Fr. Urs, and told him and asked him to tell Fr. Dominic. We will all meet at the car at 11:20.

At 11;20 as we 4 got into my little car, the other 4 (Fr. Joseph, Fr. Bernard, the bishop himself, an Fr. Macarius, who had to be taken out of his wheel chair and the chair folded up and put in the boot (trunk)..

 

They have just renewed the shopping center and there is now a huge underground parking area where we gathered.

The novices and some of the other members of the monastery were there already (one of the novices was found to be positive so the whole monastery was in quarantine since last week. I guess, to be safe, our provincial , Fr. Bheki Shabalala, decided to have us all tested and got the health department to be ready for us.

Well we were all tested with that swab up and into the inner sanctum of our nose. The container was labelled and we were told to wait. Lo and behold, there was a health vehicle parked nearby that was actually a lab. So they did the lab work on the spot and in a short time the results for all of us came back NEGATIVE. Praise the Lord. By 1:30pm we were all back home. I wondered about getting, more out of curiosity than necessity, But it was a relief to know that we were all negative. We are all over 80 (some way over 80) and are very vulnerable. Now we can more or less relax but make sure that we continue to wear our masks and keep proper distance from others and keep our hands sanitized. Nice to know.

 

I have other things I want to put in today but let me start with this.