Pope Francis has designated the fourth Sunday of July as World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly.  I wonder if it will catch on like Mother's Day and Father's Day.  He picked the day because July 26th is the feast of Sts. Anne & Joachim, the maternal grandparents of Jesus.

     In our parish we have many grandparents and elderly.  Many have embraced their state in life and figured out how to make gifts of themselves.  Others are in need and would benefit from phone calls, visits, or some kind of assistance.

     At least some of the elderly are very wise.  I invite all the elderly to be open to God's grace, embrace the truth, grow in wisdom, and share that wisdom with younger folk.  May the rest of us benefit from their wisdom.

     Joan alerted me to a problem with the livestreaming:  the audio and video were out of sync.  I had created a new user account to manage the livestreaming and copied the settings from the admin account.  I forgot to copy the setting for syncing.  The audio needs to be delayed 1500 ms in order to sync with the video.  I fixed it and successfully tested it late this morning.

     New cases in Ocean County are rising fairly quickly.  According to COVIDActNow.org, we bottomed out at 18 cases per day on May 30th.  Since July 14th, new cases have been increasing steadily from 27.3 to 42.7 (seven day daily average).  Ocean County peaked at 543.1 new cases per day on January 14th.  I have not yet seen an increase in hospitalizations or deaths.  These numbers are consistent with what I'm reading, that new cases will go up while hospitalizations and deaths will not go up so much.  The vast majority of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are among the unvaccinated.

     I will be on retreat next Monday through Friday and look forward to spending some quiet time with the Lord.  Our retired priests will cover for me.

God love you,

Fr. Jim