Asking your prayers for Father Joe Linck, esteemed patrologist and rector of St. John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. Father Joe underwent surgery for cancer last week and is facing a difficult recovery.

Those who joined us for the St. Paul Center‘s 2005 pilgrimage to Rome know Father Joe as an outstanding confessor and preacher. It was heavenly for a bunch of patristics nerds to be with him — in Rome! — for the feasts of Saints Irenaeus, Peter and Paul, Cyril of Alexandria, and the Roman Martyrs. Unforgettable.

His master’s thesis, by the way, is very cool: “The Trinitarian Dimension of Eucharistic Communion with God in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus of Lyons.” He is also the author of Fully Instructed and Vehemently Influenced: Catholic Preaching in Anglo-Colonial America. He contributed to He Spared Himself in Nothing: Essays on the Life and Thought of John Nepomucene Neumann and The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition (many, many articles). Father Joe is a senior fellow of the St. Paul Center. And one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.

Humor, brilliance, and goodness make a great combination.

Anyway, I love the man dearly, and I beg your intercession.