We appreciate all the interest we’ve gotten in our Guide to the Rosary. It seems that whenever we print material from it in the paper, as we did in the issue before last, a new group of people calls to order copies.
There’s a connection be---tween our Rosary booklet and the lead story in this issue of the Register, about Father Timothy Vakoc. It was 2½ years ago that Father Vakoc was last active as a chaplain in Iraq. One of the tools he used to minister to Catholics and other troops overseas was the Register’s Guide to the Rosary. In conjunction with Catholicmil.org, and thanks to the orders our own readers made, we created a special desert-camouflage version of the book.
Archbishop Edwin O’Brien welcomed the book, and recommended it. Chaplains such as Father Vakoc followed his lead.
A recently published photo essay about him shows Father Tim at work in Iraq — interacting with American soldiers and with the children of Iraq.
But it also shows him riding a military transport.
It was on just such a transport that a roadside bomb gave Father Tim the injury he is now slowly recovering from. A few days before, he gave the Register his last interview, via e-mail to our staff writer Joe Pronechen.
But it was a letter home to his sister that carried a quote that I found especially moving.
“The safest place for me to be is in the center of God’s will,” wrote Father Vakoc, “and if that is in the line of fire, that is where I will be.”
It’s a sentiment every Christian should learn to share.