A Son Becomes a FatherPlease offer Masses and prayers for
by Father J. Patrick Serna
In order to make my high school football coach fly off the handle, all one had to do was make an excuse for a failed block, missed tackle, or imperfect execution. If Coach Slaughter sensed that an excuse was about to blossom, he would shout a dictum which should be etched in the mind of every man: "Excuses are like armpits. We all have them and they all stink!" Three hundred pound linemen would be shaking every time we were given this gentle reminder. But Coach Slaughter referred to a body part which was not the armpit, and even the dimmest light bulbs on the football field knew that certain principles must be maintained in order to be a man. "No Excuses" is one of the principles which every man should stick to.
. . .
Allow me to go back to the year 1999, when I first met the seminarian Todd Reitmeyer. He was a "New Man" that August, and this was the beginning of my third year at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. While in my room unpacking from the flight overseas, there was a strong knocking on my door. Frankenstein might as well have been the perpetrator. After I told the clubber to enter, in swaggered a six-foot plus Goliath, but this particular hulk had a buzz cut and blue eyes. "So are you Patrick Serna?"
. . .
If you never met Father Todd and knew not his love for the priesthood, his love for fidelity, his love for children, his love for Jesus, then I exhort you to encounter him in his writings on his personal Blog, (www.fathertodd.com/blog) begun at the time of his priestly ordination in 2003, the title of which is: "A Son Becomes a Father: A live journal of a recently ordained Catholic Priest."
Fr. Todd Michael Anthony Reitmeyer, May 13, 1969 — May 24, 2006
Requiescat in pace
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