News Around the Parish

       Back to School – On Monday, August 20, our school faculty and

     staff came back to work and began a new semester with a Retreat. 

     The theme was “Nurturing Yourself and Your Vocation.” 

     Presented by Bret Allen, Associate Superintendent of Catholic

     Schools, the retreat was very well received by the faculty. 

     Then on Wednesday, August 22, the much anticipated first

     day of school finally arrived.  I heard from many Kindergarten

     parents that their children were looking forward to this day. 

     Having purchased new uniforms, backpacks and school supplies,

     they were eager to begin their first day of school at St. Brendan. 

     And many incoming first graders were both looking forward and

     nervous about starting school in the BIG school.  To all our new

     and returning students and their parents, welcome back. 

      It will be a great year!!!

Maintenance Around Our Facility – As many of you who were

around during the Summer have noticed, we have done some
maintenance work around our campus.  The big tree between the
school and the gym had to be, regrettably, cut down.  In an
inspection around our parish facility done by the Archdiocese’s
Real Property Support Corporation (RPSC), they noticed that
the tree was damaging the foundation of the school building and
gym’s retaining wall.  So their advice was to have the tree removed. 
We also had to repair the sidewalks around the school, church
and rectory, as people passing through our facility had reported
tripping and falling. A flat roof over the rectory was fixed as
water would drip into my living room during a rain storm. 
Over at the gym, we had to close the gym for maintenance. 
Normally, Legarza Basketball Camp would operate into
mid-August, but this year we informed them that we
needed to refinish the gym floor. We took this opportunity
to also address some leaks.  Steve Kalpakoff from the
Archdiocese’s RPSC had a roofer check on the condition of
the roof.  It was fine, but Steve recommended that the entire
building be painted with elastomeric paint that fills cracks and
holes and makes the structure waterproof.  No work has
begun on the tiled roofs yet, which was part of the Capital
Campaign project.  As the tiled roofs seem to be holding
out the rain, we will wait for the pledges to come in so we

won’t have to take out a loan.

Back to Work – I returned back to work on Saturday,
August 18.  I enjoyed my time away and felt a deepening
of my relationships with family, friends and with our Lord. 
On my first day of my time away, I was down in Carmel
at a Chinese restaurant and read a fortune cookie saying
that “Soon, I will have a new best friend.”  I chuckled at it,
but 3 days later, as I found myself drawn closer to the Lord,
I thought to myself that my new best friend is the Lord. 
I was delighted.  During my vacation, I stayed mostly
local in the Bay Area,ending my last week with a
classmate who has a parish near South Lake Tahoe. 
I enjoyed hiking, taking my nephews and niece on
bicycle rides, rafting and other outings with my family. 
I’ve grown to enjoy my friendship with my parents. 
I pray that you had a good and refreshing Summer too.

Fr. Dan

Be Filled with the Spirit and Partake

of the Bread of Life!

    Summer has almost come to an end. Of course, the term “summer”

    in San Francisco might  cause us to recall the words of Mark Twain

    when he stated - “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in

   San Francisco.” Yet the end of summer signals a time to take

   whatever increase in energy we have achieved  by resting to

   continue on into the year. For school-aged ones, this means

   a return to school and academic pursuits, for college-aged ,

   perhaps it is the end of a wonderful time spent with family.

   For those families that are getting ready for the adjustments

   and the new demands of the coming seasons, they are busy

   in these last days of summer concluding one season and

   preparing for another.

   One can tell from the advertising that the stores are running

   sales now. It is all about getting ready to go back to school.

   Soon the stores will be prepared for the holidays of fall and

   then comes Christmas, the end of another year as a new one

   begins and soon the Church will be calling all to celebrate the

   new life of  Easter which was accomplished by the Paschal

   Sacrifice and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We seem always

   to be so busy in preparing for the next season that perhaps

   we lose a certain respect for the current moment. We lose

  the ability to live in the present.. One can tell a person that

  has lost/ is losing this ability by a certain distractedness

  as we attempt to talk to them or a sense that they would

  rather dismiss us than dialogue. It is a sad casualty of

  our time and culture.

  In today’s first reading, we are encouraged to forsake

  foolishness and perishable values and embrace 

 wisdom and understanding. This is more than simply

 reading a text message written in code. It is a call

 for us to embrace the message of offered life with

our whole being and let the choice determine all

other choices in life. It is radical and salvific.

In  the second reading, we are encouraged to

beware that our time is finite and to utilize our

wisdom  in selecting wisely a way of life.

St. Paul was trying to be gentle, yet firm in

encouraging others to seek God.

In our Gospel reading, we are encourage to

seek the life-giving food that comes from

following Christ. To make this choice of God,

we have had three weeks of effectively the

same “advertising” in our Sunday readings

exhorting us to choose the food that endures,

to choose life through Jesus. Let us respond to

that invitation (“advertising” as it were), received

from God with greater attention and deliberate

choice. Our lives with God depend upon this choice!

  Fr. Mike

Reflections of Our Parochial Vicar

Choosing the Living Bread That Came

Down from Heaven

   At various periods in my life I have tried to take an assessment of where I have been and where I am going. We all do this exercise, knowingly or unknowingly. We evaluate our choices and we either deem the good choices or poor choices. We do this at every age. As children, we sometimes rebel/rebelled at having to do homework or prepare for tests. Using short-term thinking, we would try to avoid the prescribed effort to learn properly and we would be disappointed at our choice of avoiding quite attainable work when we received grades that were less than we would have desired. This had the effect of us resolving to do better next time and to restore our grades- which would happen if we kept our resolve.

   As young adults, we are suddenly confronted with such freedoms!

   Many of these freedoms we believe we have been entitled to,

   (always watch out for what follows the word “entitled”). I remember

   that when I had a home of my own, I initially looked forward to all

   of the fun times that I would have playing music and spending time

   with friends. Before, my dreams of unbridled revelry could be

   put into effect, I stopped and reflected upon the responsibilities

  of maintaining one’s own home. I had to keep a good job to pay

  for my lifestyle, and  to clean and take care of what I had looked

  forward to having as my own for so long. Not one of my blessings

  was without responsibility. When my brother and I had a boat and

  would venture out to the San Francisco Bay, I realized that I spent

  more time performing maintenance work and earning enough resource

  to pay for the boat and larger maintenance and insurance than I did 

  using the boat. All of my examples so far are ones that though worthy

  by earthly standards are without  significance as enduring in the sight of

  God.

   As an adult, I went through the occasional exercise of evaluating choices. 

   I concluded that though my choices to date haven’t been bad, I was not

   dedicating the proper effort in –in proportion to all of my time, to

   relationship with God.  This one poor choice was fatal to my

   chance of salvation, despite all other choices!  I decided to change

   this situation. We must seek God- not simply pass God by on the 

   street with a casual “Hello”.   So I decided to seek him with

   a greater sense of being called, as we all are.This effort was

   has been rewarded more than any earthly endeavor could

   provide The boat has come and gone, the home living has

   been replaced by rectory living, but the choice of God has

   endured and  sustained me. I share this personal journey of

   faith with you, my parish family, hoping that you will learn

   what took me too long to discover and is this Sunday’s

   Gospel message. In this “Year of Faith” proclaimed by

   Pope Benedict, the purpose is for us to seek Christ and

   right relationship with him.

   We are to seek Christ as the one who gave His life that

   we might have life. Doesn’t that effort deserve more than

   just a passing greeting as we seem preoccupied with earthly

   concerns? It begins with our  definitive choice to follow Christ!!!

   Fr. Mike