Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School students Marcello Arellano, far left, and Jayden Ortiz pose with #BeGolden signs to point visitors to the unveiling of the Welcome Wall event at Love Field Airport on Sept. 14. (JENNA TETER/The Texas Catholic)
By Father Timothy Gollob
Special to The Texas Catholic
It was the first day of faith formation and things were slowly developing at Holy Cross Parish, Inc. The sun was peeking over the eastern horizon, where far away a hurricane was pounding the Carolina shore and rains were pouring down.
But all was tranquil in Texas and I was ready for the arrival of the first batch of eager students seeking their instructions on the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.
I had in my pocket a list of groups who were coming to various meetings that Saturday. One scripture study group was not on the list, but I put on a pot of coffee for them, just in case they came. I was rolling out the TV that they liked to use from a storage closet when I noticed that many large boxes of stuff had been evacuated from said space.
It took a while to pile the offending objects into the corner of a meeting room, but then the Bible scholars arrived and helped sort things out. They had quickly rejected their usual meeting space as something very smelly had hidden somewhere in that room and an investigation was ordered to be conducted in the near future.
To help our catechetical leader, I decided to open all the classrooms and turn on the a/c units as the morning was rather humid. At the fifth classroom disaster struck: my ancient key broke off in the lock.
The families were arriving and I was able to recruit a couple of men to help. They could not pry open the door or remove the broken end of the key, but they managed to get an exterior window to open enough so that an athletic, skinny, young fellow could squeeze through and open the door from the inside.
In the meantime, the parking lot was filling up and parents were seeking out the classrooms for their youngsters. They then went to the auditorium for prayer and for classes especially designed for them. We prayed that the year would be a blessed one and that we would grow as a community of believers.
That it started off a bit bumpy was an omen that things would be okay with the guidance of the Good Shepherd who wants the little children to come to him. And he knows how to have great compassion on the fathers and mothers because he once got lost in the temple himself and his folks were very worried until they found him.
Father Timothy Gollob is the pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Oak Cliff.
