It's pouring outside again. This morning I'm going to spend some time getting Fr. Pat's homilies online. I'm using another blog: "A Catholic's Companion." I'm going to start with the Easter season C homilies "The Spirit and the Bride." The blogger format looks promising for this kind of thing.

I feel as if Fr. Pat's homilies comprise a seminal work that deserves to become part of the mind of the new millennium. Here's what I wrote in the introduction of the book. It still seems as true as it did 3 years ago:

------
As a Kentucky diocesan priest, Fr. Pat Creed placed his life in service to the transformative power of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. To this service he has brought energy and intelligence, a commitment to community action, and a wonderful gift for storytelling and preaching. The soft-spoken intensity with which Fr. Creed inspired listeners is difficult to capture in print, even more difficult to capture outside the liturgy within which the homily is an integral part. Within a broad range of challenging topics, listeners are taken, by his surprising scriptural knowledge and pervasive sense of community, to a point in which each person's own life is brought into question. No matter our backgrounds or expectations, we in the assembly always knew he was speaking directly to us, and by the end of the homily, had transformed some aspect of our own lives, changing our patterns according to the Gospel vision of God's love for us. This transformation was the gift we brought, together, to the celebration of Eucharist, week after week throughout the liturgical year.

Even more valuable to us now might be a glimpse of the processes that formed the speaker. While eagerly grasping the Second Vatican Council's renewal of the liturgy and structures of the Church, Fr. Creed maintained his commitment to its traditional forms and practices, privately and publicly adhering to the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours) and the integrity and centrality of priesthood.

Pope John Paul II has recently reminded us that Vatican II's renewal is really just begun, and has called for evaluation of the Church's direction within it. While this evaluation will certainly take place in meetings and conferences worldwide, this documentation of Fr. Creed's homilies is offered as the culminating record of lifelong evaluation of Vatican II, an evaluation that brings millennia-old voices of the people of the psalms and scriptures into weekly dialogue with the present and future People of God--voices transformed and re-stored by the action of the liturgy.

Yours in Christ,
Maggie Hettinger, editor

[Introduction of "A Catholic's Companion" Selected Scripture Readings of the Church Year with Homily Reflections by Rev. C. Patrick Creed Liturgical Cycle C (c)2002 C. Patrick Creed]
-----