"Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." - Luke 6:21.

As I write this on the last day of summer my heart is filled with sadness, not simply because it is the end of summer (which has always been a difficult day having grown up near the beach) but because I am transferring downtown to another parish. Paradoxically, I am deeply grateful for this sadness. Let me explain why.

Twenty years ago on this day, I was moving into Manhattan to begin a career in finance. If someone had asked me then, "Where is the last place in the world you would want to live?," without a doubt I would have replied, "68th Street between First and York." In fact, even if I had been offered an apartment there rent free, I would have declined it. For me, that address was Ground Zero. I had just lost my sister Maureen at Memorial Sloan Kettering and I didn't want to step within a ten block radius of the place. It was a valley of tears.

Over the next couple of years the Lord slowly moved me back into the Church as I began to discover the fullness of its beauty for the first time. Throughout high school and college I had always enjoyed Christmas and Easter but considered them to be celebrations along the lines of Thanksgiving Day, a nice tradition in which family and friends gathered and that was it. I will not go into my whole conversion story, but I will say that every time I searched for spirituality, the key to happiness, or an answer to the problem of pain I found that the mystics of the Catholic Church possessed the most wisdom.

When the Provincial assigned me to Saint Catherine's two years ago, I was struck with awe in God's providence which would allow for the transformation of even the darkest place of my life into what I knew would be a place of joy. God did this at the first Christmas. When Mary and Joseph first arrived in Bethlehem it certainly was not like coming home on Thanksgiving Day. After being rejected from the inn, the cave was a cold and dark place. But the cave was transformed because God was with the young couple, not just metaphorically but in the flesh. Likewise, the cave where Jesus was laid after Calvary was also the last place anybody close to Jesus expected to find joy, and yet the stone was rolled away and both the cave and the cross were seen in a different light that Easter morning. Through a deeper realization of Christ's victory on Easter morning I have been able to see this neighborhood in a different light. Each of the parishioners at Saint Catherine of Siena Church has been instruments of God's grace in making this a place of great warmth and light. I am sad to go but grateful that now it is a place that I will miss.

I would like to thank everyone at Saint Catherine's for their friendship, "laughter" and support. Please know you will remain in my prayers and Saint Catherine's will always hold a special place in my heart. Like many of the Friars serving here I am sure that I too shall return again for a future assignment!