The Spirit Moving

Though there are weeks left in the summer, the calendar page has turned to August, which has us looking to the year that lies ahead. I am very excited about all that God has in store for us. Tom Fregoso, our Director of Youth Ministry, is beginning his second year, and with the groundwork he has laid in creating relationships with our youth and their families, I am very eager to see all that will come about with and for our youth. Maggie Warner starts her new role as Director of Pastoral Ministries. I am enthusiastic about working and dreaming with her and the lay leadership of the parish, especially as we lean into Pope Francis’s synodal model of Church, listening more deeply to discover/discern how the Spirit is moving in the hearts and lives of the members of our faith community. Please join me in my prayers for St. Ignatius Parish as we embark on the new year, expectant of all that God will give!

It has been and continues to be a summer of transitions. Back in June, Lisa Freese, our Director of Faith Formation, announced that she was leaving us to return to work for the U.S. Government. Lisa began part time in August 2021 and came on full time in January 2022. No sooner had she begun, circumstances left us without people in the financial and communications operations of the parish. Lisa generously stepped into the breach and carried those various responsibilities – in addition to her own – until the holes were filled. Lisa developed wonderful relationships with her students and the CFF families. She was committed to the work of our antiracism committee, she shepherded the bookstore, and she was a valued colleague on the staff. Lisa, we will miss you, and we wish you well in this new chapter of your life. We will leave the Parker Avenue door always open for your return visits.

With Lisa’s departure, we have done a bit of reorganizing of Faith Formation. Tom Fregoso will now be responsible for the Confirmation program, which dovetails beautifully with his efforts to establish one of the strongest Youth Ministry programs in San Francisco. To direct Children’s Faith Formation, we will hire a part time person, a position that may be posted by the time you read this. (At this point, I want to thank parishioner Carolyn Lau for coming to work with us part time this summer to keep the administration of CFF moving, so that the new person can hit the ground running. Carolyn, we are SO grateful to you!) The Adult Faith Formation piece will be administered by Fr. Jerry Hayes, S.J. Who’s that, you ask? Keep reading!

I have a bit of sad news. Fr. John Whitney, S.J., will be leaving St. Ignatius as Associate Pastor. Fr. John came to us three years ago, and we have been greatly blessed by him since. Fr. John has a great gift for breaking open the Word, using poetry, his deep understanding of our Catholic tradition, humor, and his own experience of the Lord to engage our minds and our hearts. Fr. John is a gifted teacher, sharing his knowledge and his lived experience in workshops and pastoral letters. His contributions, born of his experiences as Provincial of the former Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus and as Pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish in Seattle, have been a great gift to our parish life, perhaps most especially at staff meetings and as a consultor to me. I have valued his companionship and counsel and will miss him. Fr. John is a holy and gifted priest, and we have been a better parish for his generous service to us. Fr. John will be working full time at the Schools of the Sacred Heart in Atherton, California. He will be the assistant to the Director of Mission for Pastoral Care. Concretely, Fr. John will be working with students in both upper and lower schools, with their families, faculty and staff. Retreats, Masses, faith formation and more will be part of his responsibilities and ministry. As we know from our experience of him, they will be very blessed by Fr. John.

Now there is some good news here. First, Fr. John will still join us some weekends, presiding and preaching a couple of weekends a month. Good news, indeed! We look forward to those weekends he is with us. The second bit of good news is that the Provincial of the Jesuits West Province has missioned Fr. Jerry Hayes, S.J., to be an Associate Pastor at St. Ignatius. Most recently, Fr. Jerry spent seven years at Georgetown University as the Director of Ignatian Programs (which included retreats, formation for mission, and spiritual direction). Prior to that, he was Associate Pastor at St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish in Sacramento, and, immediately after ordination, he was Director of Campus Ministry at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. As you can see, we are very blessed to have Fr. Jerry with us. I am very happy to have him join us, and I look forward to working with him and to seeing all that God will do for St. Ignatius Parish through him.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have been so kind to my family these past few months. As many know, we nearly lost my father back in June. He has since been in hospice care at home, which has been a great blessing, especially to him and my mother. We are deeply, deeply grateful for your prayerful support these months. We can feel it, and it has been a source of great consolation. Thank you.

Please continue to ask God to bless St. Ignatius Parish, that we are attentive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, that we become ever more a parish where people feel welcome and that they belong, and that we seek more ardently to care for the world beyond our doors so in need of God’s mercy and for our Mother Earth.

Oremus pro invicem,