This weekend I am making a quick trip to the holy land – of Wisconsin. One of my high-school friends is getting married and I have been asked to celebrate the wedding Mass.

All the old gang will be there. A large group of us have been friends since the first grade at St. Peter’s Catholic School in Beaver Dam, WI. It’s deeply gratifying to me how close we still are and how much fun we still have together after all the years.

American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” So it will be a weekend for all of us to be care-free and comfortable and, yes, probably a little stupid too. Yet it is something holy that brings us together this weekend – just as it was something holy that brought us together so many years ago.

Blessings on your summer gatherings too. I will see you when I get home from home.

Fr. Dennis Zehren

Pastor