Good Friday

And my face will hit the floor at the beginning of this holy celebration.  All else will be forgot.  And I will enter in to the sacred sufferings of Jesus, the holy passion of Christ. In the midst of a world in turmoil and a mind on fire - teetering with exhaustion - there I will find my peace. Dressed in red, kneeling beside the Cross of my Friend, there I will contemplate His wounds. 

a thought?

What will be left of sanctity once eroded by the draw of pixels and tech?

There needs to be a truly impassioned, heartfelt, brilliant text penned by a shepherd about the Mass and Precious Body and Blood of Christ. 

I mean, a text so honest and unapologetic it makes everyone a little uncomfortable. 

We don’t need more critique.  We need saints. 

We need heros...sanctity...and sacrifice.  

We need men and women who dare SUFFER for love of Christ and  His Church. 

 

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?”