Celebrating Mass for Scouts

Celebrating Mass for Scouts

On March 25 I was invited to celebrate the Sunday Vigil Mass for Scouts (both boys and girls) taking a National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT) program at Durland Scout Reservation in Putnam Valley, N.Y.  I'm always ready to accept such invitations.  This was the 1st one in a good many years--since before I moved to Illinois and Maryland, and then the pandemic came along not long after I returned to New Rochelle.

This program had 48 participants in addition to more than a dozen adult and youth leaders directing the course.  About 20 came to Mass and were readily participative (which always pleases a celebrant) in some homiletic dialog about the gospel of Jesus raising Lazarus.

 I was told that the Scouts came from about 30 different troops, and some were from New Jersey and Connecticut besides the lads and lasses from our own Greater Hudson Valley Conference.

Outside it was rainy and cold (high 30s); inside it was definitely toasty, especially right in front of the wood-burning stove.

As I usually do when I can get up to Durland, I went for a long solo hike--in the cold drizzle.  I went east on the Red Trail as far as Lake Wiccopee, north on the lake road, then back into camp on the Yellow Trail, covering about 3 miles in 2.5 hours.  I didn't take any pictures; it was too dreary a day.  But the hike was good.  Judging from some footprints and other disturbances in the trail bed, someone else had been out on the trails earlier in the day.  But I didn't see anyone except some Cubs trekking around Sperling Pond.