Following the benefit concert at our parish yesterday afternoon I had a good conversation with a Dean at Messiah College about expectations and surprises in life. He recalled that he met with me many years ago as part of a group that proposed the State Street Academy of Music at Saint Lawrence Chapel in Harrisburg. He recounted as well his surprise that he has spent much of his career in administration -- not what he planned. It was a sentiment I knew well: I was the last pastor of Saint Lawrence parish, and first proposed the idea of a school of music in that wonderful facility at a dinner following a visit to Vienna and Sunday Mass at the Augustinerkirche there, the site of a wonderful academy of sacred music. Imagine my surprise and delight when as a diocesan official the bishop asked me to handle the meeting about this very topic. Now, after 27 years in diocesan administration, I could share with the Dean not only that I was the originator of the idea, but my greater delight at being back where I always wanted to be: in parish ministry, with the saints of God. God has a plan, His grace-filled providence leads us, and His surprises throughout life should delight us always. I once had a spiritual director who repeatedly said, "God wastes nothing."

November 25,2013
Msgr. William J. King