Update: I’m not yet done, but I have some hours left… Prayers, please!

I just started writing the conference to be given on February 7, 2013, the other day, working on it an hour here, a few hours there. And now I see that I only have 24 hours to go, as I’ll have to have everything ready the night before, taking off early the next morning for the airport.

This is typical me, the best procrastinator in the world. It’s another extreme sport favorite of mine. The end is in sight for a first draft, perhaps by  Wednesday noon. Then I have to revise that, and, most importantly, time it. It’s supposed to be 45 minutes. Just to put me under pressure, it’s being video-taped, and then published.

It will be — how to say it? — extremely intense for those who will follow this. They will surely be thinking of all sorts of passages, for instance, in Saint Paul, while I’m speaking, along with many controversies about the Immaculate Conception and original sin, about Jewish-Catholic relations, about…. Well, you get the idea. Yikes! And I’ve not even written it all out yet, not even the first draft. Yikes!

Anyway, the IVE (Institute of the Incarnate Word) warmly invites you to attend the conference if you’re anywhere near Washington, D.C. I would be very happy to see some of you readers of this HSH blog. I know that very many of you hail from driving distance of the D.C. area. The flyer: HERE.

Thursday, February 7, 2013, 5:45 P.M — Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D. (Holy Souls Hermitage) — The Immaculate Conception, Mother of the Redeemer, in Genesis 3,15: How, with original sin, we are soldiers of the Incarnate Word in the Church Militant.

Ven. Fulton Sheen House of Formation
5706 Sargent Road
Chillum, Maryland 20783
tel. 301 422 8300
http://www.iveamerica.org

Chillum is well within the Beltway:

Update: I thank you for your many prayers. I finished the first draft, and have only a few minor typos to correct. I read it out, and it came to 45 minutes to the second. What a fright! About 15 hours of preparation. 15 pages, single space. But large print. 3 minutes a page, read somewhat quickly. Yikes!

P.S. Did you offer this ten second novena of thanksgiving to the Immaculate Conception for seminarian Philip Gerard Johnson‘s cancer going into remission? Take out ten seconds right now and do this, as it is very much great news:

O most beautiful lady, who appeared to the humble little Bernadette in the Grotto of Lourdes, look with pitying eye upon the sick and the afflicted. Let me remember to say to you each day as do the pilgrims at Lourdes, “Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.” Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.