Military Chaplains

In this week's Catholic Miscellany (diocese of Chas. weekly) there was short piece on a documentary being produced "examining church and state tensions at the heart of the chaplaincy". I really don't know what this means exactly, but my point in bringing this up is that one of the chaplains featured is Fr. Gary Linsky who started the Men's Prayer Group at St. Joseph's in Columbia some 11 or so years ago. He was a newly ordained priest who is now an Air Force Chaplain.

From the documentary's website a journalist has traveled with Fr. Linsky to a FOB in Afghanistan via Black Hawk:

There, in the center, Sergeant Robinson set up a table for the altar and two rows of chairs. Seven soldiers showed up and the chaplain took off his army shirt and slipped on his priestly garb – a white alb that covered him almost to his boots with a stole around his neck, a cross sewn at its center point. Linsky kissed the cross then lifted the stole over his head and settled it around his neck. In middle of nowhere, with a congregation of seven people who were thousands of miles away from their homes, Linksy intoned chants and the hymns as though he were in a cathedral.

What a picture this paints. God bless our chaplains. (This reminds me to look into the Chaplain's museum at Fort Jackson in Columbia as a possible field trip for the altar boys....)

Our Lady of Joyful Hope-pray for us! ... Oremus pro invicem!