A Note From the Pastor: September 21, 2025

I’m looking forward to our first session of the Search (Thu, Sept 25th at 6:30pm – St. Philomena Parish Hall). As I mentioned at Masses last weekend, while I don’t believe it will solve the problem of bringing back all of our loved ones who have drifted from the faith, it will likely help us to better understand the reasons we believe. Hopefully, we can be better equipped to share this belief with others. But also, I trust we will benefit from shared time together. If you are interested in helping, I could use three or four folks to help me set up for these monthly Search sessions. Please send me an email or call. I’d be grateful.

On a different note, we are adjusting the First Friday schedule for St. Thomas, effective in October. Going forward, the schedule will be as follows:

• 9:00am Mass

  – Followed by exposition of the Eucharist

• 10:00–11:00am Confessions

  –10:30am Rosary

  –10:50am Litany of the Sacred Heart

• 11:00am Repose of the Eucharist

Changing topics again, by the time you read this, I’ll have returned from my spiritual retreat. Priests are required to make a 5-day canonical retreat each year. As I have in recent years, I’m going with one other priest, to a private home just north of the town of Ronald, WA, which overlooks Lake Cle Elum. We will each be self-directed for our retreat, including a portion of each day for silence, a daily holy hour and Mass.

I trust and hope it will give me a little more quiet space and time to self-reflect in ways that I’m not ordinarily afforded, all so that I can hopefully grow to become more than man and priest God desires for me to be, and that you all deserve.

Quiet and silence are commodities in short supply for most of us, and that includes me too. “Solitude and silence are guests of the soul. The soul that possesses them carries them with it everywhere. The one that lacks them finds them nowhere. In order to re-enter silence, it is not enough to stop the movement of one’s lips and the movement of one’s thoughts. That is only being quiet. Being quiet is a condition for silence, but it is not silence. Silence is a word, silence is a thought. It is a word and a thought in which all words and all thoughts are concentrated” (Dom Augustin Guillerand, Voix Cartusienne).

As I seek God in silence, know that you will be in my prayers, and I will echo your prayers, even if their details are not known to me personally. God knows the details, and it’s my privilege to unite my voice to yours.

Yours in Christ,

Father Todd O. Strange