In my last post I showed what my dear wife got for our tenth anniversary. Well, I think she made out pretty well herself. See why, below the fold:
This past Friday my wife and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. In ten years you get to know a person pretty well and the gifts, over time, can become less paint-by-numbers and more customized. What did my wife get me? Look below the fold. What did she get? That’s another post.
I’ll be the first to admit it. I would never have expected to hear a supermodel use the word “biogenesis” in a sentence, let alone use it correctly. There are times when it’s very pleasing to be wrong.
There’s an old saying that goes, “if you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans”. Old sayings almost always hang around because there is at least a glimmer of truth in them, and sometimes a lot more than a glimmer.
As I was rushing around to get out before Mass this morning I realized my shirt was rather wrinkled. “No problem”, I said to myself, “I’ll keep my jacket on and nobody will notice, and I don’t have time to iron it.” I should have heard the chuckling.
We went through our normal Morning Prayer – a new addition just this week (thank you, Father!) – and my plan was going swimmingly. Then as I sat there collecting myself before Mass Father walked up the aisle looking right at me. You know that look – the one where their eyes don’t move from you and you feel like you couldn’t possibly hide if you wanted to. He walked right up to me and asked if I would do the readings for Mass – this is a first in this parish for me. What was I supposed to say, “Nah, Father, my shirt’s a little wrinkled and my ego won’t allow me to be seen looking like that”? I did my best to not look completely like a deer in the headlights, but I can virtually guarantee I failed miserably.
At this point the laughter in heaven must have been rattling the pictures. Suffice it to say that as I proclaimed God’s Word I realized that if anyone was noticing my wrinkly shirt they were missing the point of the matter. While it wasn’t my intention, I’m glad I had the opportunity to give God a chuckle, and two lessons were learned. First, everyone has to let God take center stage at Mass, not just the priest. And second, I need to give myself another five minutes in the morning from now on…
It’s a little late in the day, but I didn’t want to let it pass without offering my most heartfelt thanks to God for this wonderful gift of a Pope and ask anyone reading to offer a special prayer that his reign as Pope may be long and fruitful. Even at his 82nd birthday his energy and vivacity far outpace that of many far younger. Ad multos annos, Holy Father!
From guest-blogger CK at Adam’s Ale:
It is we who form the times, and it is we who can transform them. Our dark times mean that every faithful Christian is a beacon that makes so many heads turn to see where they can find the light they so crave. We can do nothing, but God can do everything, and He can change the world with one person who cooperates with His grace. His will for you today is right where you are with the people you meet today. You were not born at the wrong time – this is the time He chose for you before the beginning of the world. God has to scrape the bottom of the barrel today to find the few who are willing to conform themselves to His will. That means that we who are weak, afraid, and inadequate were born for greatness. If we cancel out our own wills and embrace God’s, perhaps at the end of our lives we will find that we were noble soldiers in a great spiritual battle. Perhaps we can make the times “right” not only for ourselves, but for the generation to come.
That’s what they call an old-fashioned kick in the butt. Let’s get on with it, folks!
First, Fr. Zehnle of Servant and Steward answered quite nicely the question, “for what should one pray before Mass?” It’s yet another one of those things we as Catholics just never quite think to mention to anyone. I’ll have to remember to bring this up in RCIA so I can point them to his fine answer.
Second, Fr. Sylvester of Shouts in the Piazza provides a concise list of Five Things Every Catholic Should Know. And it is indeed amazing how many don’t.
I’m sure there are many more – I’m way behind on my blog reading. Again.
The Triduum is upon us, having started yesterday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Walk into a church now and you will find it starkly empty – a reminder that the life of a church comes through the Lord in the Eucharist and not through anything we can do. Today we will venerate the Cross upon which our Savior hung, winning us our Salvation. Finally, tomorrow the Easter fire will pierce the darkness, the Paschal Candle will be held aloft and Deacons and Priests throughout the world will proclaim “Christ our Light!”. We will welcome new members into the Church and there will be, should God so will it, goosebumps all around.
I wanted to point you to some far greater posts on the Triduum from the Dominican Friars at Godzdogz. You can find their post on Maundy Thursday here, and their post on Good Friday here. They are, in the good Dominican tradition, excellent reflections. Should they publish a reflection on the Easter Vigil, which I’m quite sure they will, I shall try to be sure to link to that one as well.
May your Triduum be blessed and draw you ever deeper into the mystery of God and His love for us!
Well, most of it, anyway. And besides being far busier than I should have been to get out of Lent what I could have. But we can beat up on me later.
Just before Ash Wednesday I received a box in the mail from my dear old Irish Catholic grandmother. As I opened the box the smell that wafted up let me know whatever was inside had been in her house for a long time – there’s just something about the smell of her house I’ll never quite forget. Inside I found three books and was suddenly struck by a realization both sobering and uplifting. Her eyesight has been getting worse as she’s gotten older, and her high blood pressure certainly hasn’t helped. The last time we were together she lamented how difficult it has become for her to read which was painful for her as she has always loved to read spiritual works and particularly the Bible. While I have no proof I can’t help but be haunted by the thought that she is sending me, as her only family member who is an actively practicing Catholic, bits and pieces of a library she can no longer read. My previous plans for Lenten reading mattered no more – I had to read whatever it was she sent, and I’m glad I did.
Among the books she sent me was A.G. Sertillanges’ classic What Jesus Saw from the Cross. The book follows Jesus from multiple points of view – centered on, as one would guess, what He could see upon the Cross, and dives deeply into the events that happened in the places He could and couldn’t see. Fr. Sertillanges spent time in Jerusalem and his first-hand contact with the Holy Land is evidenced throughout the book. With an artistic flourish I could only hope some day to imitate in the slightest way he paints the events of those fateful days in the reader’s mind.
More than a historical treatise this is a spiritual work that helps unite the reader with the happenings of those days. Yet even calling it a spiritual work doesn’t fully encompass what is inside. It is by turns historical, spiritual, apologetic, and theological – and perhaps a few other things I haven’t quite categorized. Even though the book is now more than sixty years old so very much of his commentary is still not only relevant but timely. An example for your edification:
Jesus is not mocked today; but is He not generally forgotten? Compassion is rare, still rarer is active devotion. And when we say that Jesus is no longer mocked we are thinking only of His person, to which Jesus Himself attaches far less importance than to His work and to our salvation.
How many insults are hurled at the doctrines, the practices, the ministers, the precepts, the promises, the words, the deeds, the institutions, and the persons connected with the name and work of Jesus crucified! Here, too, there are those who mock and wag their heads; here, too, are drinkers of win – the wine of sophistry and licentiousness – who sing after Jesus as He passes.
The Passover of mankind still continues. Men pitch their tents and move on; men drink and dance; men worry and become absorbed in business; men form attachments and break them; men love and hate – and Christ hangs on the Cross. His sorrow meets only with contempt, and His appeal, His offer of salvation, arouses nothing but a vague and distracted smile.
Lent may now be all but over, but there is never a bad time to read a book so moving, challenging and educational. Buy two and give one to someone else much like my dear grandmother has done for me.
