Farewell, Monsignor Nelson

After seven years at my church, our pastor, Msgr. Glenn Nelson, is moving on. He's been asked to resume a position he previously held in our diocese, which is as an assistant to the bishop -- this time the newly installed Most Reverend David J. Malloy. As far as I know, he will continue to be the Diocese's point man for the deaf ministry as well. And he's the first and only priest I've ever seen use sign language as he delivered his homily. He also sometimes signed the mass when another priest was celebrating it.

While I never got to know Monsignor terribly well, he's a good priest with a good heart and his homilies were always excellent. I belong to a Newman Center parish (Christ the Teacher University Parish just off the campus of Northern IL University in Dekalb, IL.) Newman Centers, named for Blessed John Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), serve university parishes all over the country.

Monsignor's connection to our parish began when he was a student at NIU in the 80s. So being sent to Newman by then-Bishop Thomas Doran was a sort of homecoming for him. He served us well as pastor and had to hold back tears as he gave his farewell homily at mass this evening.

I'm a lector at Newman (one of the people who delivers the readings at a Catholic mass, for the uninitiated) and I had the peculiar honor of lectoring at his first mass there as well as doing so tonight – the first mass of his final weekend. (I'm a lector for the Saturday night “vigil mass”; he'll celebrate at least one other Sunday mass tomorrow) It was gratifying to me that I got to serve as sort of bookends to his Newman experience and told him so at a farewell reception for him after mass this evening.

Our previous pastor, Fr. Michael Black, was good enough to return to Newman to sponsor my son, Eric, at his confirmation mass some years ago. That mass was concelebrated by him, Monsignor Nelson and another of our associate pastors at the time, Fr. Godwin Osukwo. Each of those three men is a twin and I wonder if any other mass has ever been concelebrated by three twin priests. Monsignor, the principal celebrant that evening, got a good laugh at the end of mass when he told us that while they were all twins, they weren't identical. (Fr. Osukwo is a black Nigerian; the other two men are white.)

While all of us at Newman will miss Monsignor, we can be heartened by the fact that he will continue to serve our diocese well in his new position. Many well-wishes and blessings to him as he begins the next stage of his wonderful career.