A Concord Pastor Comments: An update

On Friday, May 31, I ended my assignment as pastor of Holy Family Parish in Concord. Prior to Holy Family I had been pastor of the former Our Lady Help of Christians Parish in Concord for 10 years. Thus, on last Friday I completed a quarter of a century as the Catholic pastor in Concord, Massachusetts. It's very difficult to leave the place and people who have become my home and family!

Holy Family in Concord and St. Irene Parish in Carlisle became a collaborative of parishes on June 1, 2019. Where before there had been two parishes with two pastors and two parish staffs, there will now be two parishes with one pastor and one parish staff. I'm 72 and the retirement age for priests in the archdiocese of Boston is 75. Among other cogent reasons, the shepherding of these two parishes deserves a commitment longer than the three years remaining for me.

I am not retiring. I have been assigned as a senior vicar to New Roads Catholic Community, a collaborative of St. Luke and St. Joseph Parishes in Belmont, MA. New Roads was in the first round of collaboratives six years ago. Fr. Thom Mahoney is the pastor of this collaborative. Early on in my time in Concord, Thom was a seminarian at Our Lady's and I was his mentor - now he's my pastor! I'm grateful to be letting go the administrative responsibilities a pastor carries and I look forward to the challenge of working in a collaborative.

And what about this blog, this Concord Pastor's blog? You can be sure that I plan to continue writing daily as I have for the past nearly 12 years. In fact, I hope to have even more time to devote to this and I have ideas for a few new features I may be adding.

And the name of my blog? I've spoken about this question with the new pastor in Concord, Fr. Frank Silva, who has no problem with my keeping my blog's name. So I'll be posting under the same title at the same address for, I hope and pray, a good long time!