As a rule, I don’t expect St. Patrick’s Day to be a source of many blessings in my life. For the most part, I find it a tad tiresome – all the green and the blarney. (Can you guess that there are virtually no Irish genes in my bloodline?)
But St. Patrick’s Day 2014 is turning out to be a bit different, it would appear.
How are those Lenten resolutions working out for you? That”s one of the topics you can find discussed over at RAnn’s place, where there’s a weekly gathering of Catholic bloggers. You might to wander on over, to see what’s cookin’!
As for my own posts, this week: I wrote about an inadvertent honky-tonk tribute to Jesus I witnessed recently…about a certain man in white who knows how to convey wisdom without words…and about the important work that adult initiates do (or could be doing) in our faith communities. Enjoy!
Let us pause now…to remember that we are in the presence of the Holy One.
If you’re a cradle Catholic (like me), I want to say that you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a grown man get doused with the waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil.
By which I mean: You probably don’t have a deep, bone-rattling, knee-knocking sense of the work that the Holy Spirit wants to do in you…and in every baptized Christian.
Have we been blessed by the papacy of Francis, or what?
Blessed as a Church…blessed as the people of God…blessed as individuals, striving to know how the Holy One desires to work in our lives.
I had to smile at the irony: The other day, even as Jesus became present to us in the Eucharist, he was greeted with the unmistakable strains of a blues-rock classic – George Thorogood’s ‘Bad to the Bone.’
The Catholic bloggers are out in force this week over at Rann’s place, as Lent begins. Check out this link if you’d like to see what’s on their minds and in their hearts during the early days of this holy season.
As for my own blog posts in recent days, I’ve found a lot to write about in and around my church community– from the stray balloons that provided a reminder that Lent was near; to the impact of the Ash Wednesday liturgy on my heart; to the lesson I took from a day of simple meals; and leading yesterday to a few reflections on our habits of holiness.
Let us pause now…to remember that we are in the presence of the Holy One.
Things were pretty much a red-hot mess at the beginning of Mass yesterday morning.
They weren’t exactly terms of endearment, the first words my wife—my Paradise Partner—spoke to me this morning: ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. But I took no offense, because frankly, I resembled that remark.
The ashes were all around me at Mass this morning, and yet I found myself drawn to a different word in the liturgy.
The mylar balloons have been there for a couple of weeks now…bumping up against the beams, in the highest reaches of our church building — a good 50 feet or so from the floor.
Out of reach…up against the rafters.
