Catching up

Sorry, folks - I've been sort of blog-lazy lately. Too much to do & not enough time to do it, even if some of that "much" involves napping in the hammock on sunny Sunday afternoons. So, here's a shotgun blast of blog-stuffs:

*** Gorgeous sunrise photo to start things off.

*** Saturday morning found me at Our Lady of Fatima in Alcoa for the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. Father celebrated an "ordinary" Mass is a very "extraordinary" style, with beautiful, blood-red Roman vestments (i.e., a "fiddleback"), antiphons instead of songs, Sanctus in Greek, Agnus Dei in Latin, & the Eucharistic prayer celebrated "ad orientem," that is, towards the East, from which comes the Lord, the Bridegroom, whom we joyfully go to meet.

Father's homily picked up on the themes of "Earth Day" & utter reliance on God for everything. It seems to me that when things are going great the temptation is to congratulate ourselves for our good work, & when times get hard to deny that God is really present & working in the world. Either is a denial of God. I remember him saying something to the effect of, "Let other have their Earth Day; I for one will give thanks to the God of all creation."

Afterwards, we had a procession around the Church whilst chanting the litany of the saints, & finishing in the chapel with Benediction & Eucharistic Adoration. Lovely! More processions, please!

*** Having put aside a lot of personal reading to finish up my classwork, I finally finished my Lenten reading: The Seven Last Words of Jesus by Romanus Cessario, O.P. from Magnificat Publishers. This was a collection of talks given between the hours of Noon & 3:00pm on Good Friday 2008 in St. Patrick's cathedral in New York (that seems like a really great idea - maybe more pastors will pick up on this idea).

Detailed images from a 12th-century icon cross from the Abbey of Santa Maria Assunta di Rosano, Italy forms the backdrop of the book, but you are left to your own devices to ponder the happenings in those details, or to tie the images to the text.

Each word is it's own lesson; each a whole sermon on the Gospel by the Lord Jesus on the cross. If there is a theme tying the words together, it is how desperately God desires to love us & be loved by us in return. The softbound book itself is beautifully made, as I would expect from Magnificat, & Fr. Romano's writing gives a fresh & insightful look into scriptures that may have grown a bit stale with repetition. This was a great book that I plan to return to again & again, & not just during Lent.

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H.E. Rating: 4 aspergillum shakes

*** I absolutely cannot wait for the Crowning of Mary this coming weekend at St. Thomas! But, it's also the last day of Religious Ed for this school year & that's kind of sad. I think I'm already experiencing empty-nest syndrome. Still, it will be nice to have a little more freetime to recharge my own batteries this summer.

The kids will have mangaged to not only make their own rosaries of lovely Czech glass beads, but also will have read the Scriptures & recited 18 of the 20 Mysteries of the Rosary - every decade recited entirely in Latin! Pater Noster, Ave Maria, & Gloria Patri. Several kids learned them by heart.

There's so much more I wanted to share with them, but I can honestly say that I did my best to hand on the Faith to them. May God bring to perfection the good work begun in class.