Suffering: Job’s job?

“We accept good things from God;
and should we not accept evil?”
-Job

It is given us by God the duty to reject evil. To rail against it. To raise a fist in protest. Even to lay down one’s life. There is no intellectual easy way here. Job, grant me your grit. 

Physicality

Yesterday, for the first time in 10 years, I put on my rugby cleats and took to the field..

The body is intimately linked to the soul.  To feel my body alive and thundering down the field, senses immersed in a game I know so well.  Super healthy.  Good for the soul.

Momentum is life giving.  To find new life through physicality is just what the doctor ordered. 

The Death of Eulogies

Eulogies do not belong at church.

The focus of the Mass is always Christ.

Having heard enough inappropriate stories from the sacred pulpit proves that point.

Some people believe that the story about uncle Tony walking around in his underpants with various stains in them is holy ground (I can’t make this stuff up).

Please clue in!

The inevitable confusion occurs when the story about the man’s underwear and the proclamation of Jesus as the light of the world are proclaimed from the same pulpit!

You cannot use the ambo to advance the profane and at the same time expect people to not become confused about its purpose and function.

The altar and the ambo are off limits to the profane.

Disagree if you want.
As for me, I can’t abide eulogies...a direct contradiction to sacrifice.

Take note, the sacred  liturgy is a hill worth dying on.   

Entitlement

Cough!! Hack!!! Ugh. 

I have caught the bug. Entitlement. 

The sense of being ‘owed’ appreciation.

Of being understood and listened to. 

Of having my opinion valued. 

Of being spiritually ‘reimbursed’ when I go out of my way to serve. 

Do I really know Love. Or do I just know reimbursement? 

Switchfoot crooned “I dare you to move.”

But I sit distressed, thinking, “Why should I have to?”

Let’s Kill It! A Eulogy for Eulogies

Undoubtedly the greatest risk to the integrity of the holy Mass is the practice of eulogies.  Eulogies undermine and corrupt the purpose and intent of the Mass as well as the sacred space wherein it is offered. Eulogies help pulpits devolve and succumb to petty competition between families giving ‘high praises’ of their loved ones.  The only One deserving high praise in the house of God is God Himself!  Blasphemy, sexually explicit ‘stories’, cursing, religious rants about hell and damnation...I have witnessed it.  Eulogies.  Think it’s just a cute thing families do to talk about grandma’s great cookies?  Where have you been?  I say this with love: Wake up!