This last week I received a call from my Brother in South Carolina. He was calling for a couple of reasons, the first was to tell me a few days before he had chest pains and they put 3 stints in his heart. This was a very scary wake up call for him. As he said, in his southern accent that he has picked up or works really hard on, “It is scary when it comes to your heart! You don’t have another heart.” His grandson asked if he needed to come home? Don said, I’m going to be ok, but I want to see you. He has started reaching out to siblings, that we sometimes get too busy to catch up with. We can all fall into that. But we should not wait for that scary wake up call.

I myself had a physical recently and made a point to call a couple of my siblings to update them on Hershey and myself. I still have some more calls to make. Time can get away from us, unless we make the effort. We can have other scares that make us think about this too, I missed a deer by about 5 feet last week.

Those of you with young families, make sure you take the time to be with your kids, to spend quality time with them. Husbands, do something nice for your wife, totally random. I remember walking into the hotel I worked at at the time. There were three girls working there. I asked the girl at the desk that I had known the longest, “Red, White, or Peach?” after she said ‘red’ I asked the next girl and she said, “white”. I went to the last and gave her a peach rose, gave the second a white rose, and the first a red rose. For no reason other than I wanted to make their day. I remember preaching about this at my first parish and that week someone sent me 3 roses (Red, White, and Peach) I never did find out who.

We should also not wait for one of these scary wake up calls to call on Jesus. We need to be working on that relationship every day. Making sure that we do what we need to do to pull away from those things that separate us from God. Making sure we are showing love for one another, in all that we say and do. Even in our relationships with one another. I would like to let all of you who over the past 4 years have told me how much I have meant to you, how much you have and do mean to me.

May the Lord continue to send Blessings on our St Luke’s Family.
Fr Backer