Those of you who know me from St. Ann are probably aware that our oldest, Deanna, left home yesterday, July 29, 2008, for San Antonio, TX on her way to a year in Mexico to serve as a Missioner for the Mi Casa Foundation. Deanna will be stationed in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico (the 3d largest city in Mexico, I understand), and will be working at El Buen Pastor home for young girls ages 6-12. The children in residence there are orphaned, abandoned or abused; Deanna will be working with another Missioner, Lauren from Scranton, PA, and a nun who’s permanently assigned there.
Nice, right? And of course we’re proud of her, and we wish her well, and we hope all goes as God intends it to. She sure will be fluent in Spanish when she returns.
But this departure is a “first” for our little family. There have ALWAYS been the two, or three, or four girls here. People have taken trips, even loooong trips, but at the end of it, everyone was together. This time, though, when Deanna left us for that plane, in many ways she’ll *never* be back. Oh, I expect her to show up after this Mexico adventure, and to move back into her room…for a time. But the fact is that, when she returns, she will be Grown. And she will no longer be a permanent resident of our household. Always welcome, sure. But never again one of our four little girls who live at the Jones house.
So what about that? I am of course conflicted: on the one hand, to know that I don’t have to be responsible for her daily upkeep is nice; on the other hand…well, she’s my little girl. And she’s leaving. Strike that. She’s left. And now there are three.
Time passes oh so swiftly. One day, your kids are drooling on your shoulder as you carried their exhausted carcass through the end of yet another family adventure; the next day, you’re waving goodbye through the TSA security screening area, and watching them walk away. And the time in between seems like it’ll never end…until it does.
So what’s my point? Well…I’m a little sad. And I feel a WHOLE lot older. But I also know that we’ve spent 22 years preparing her for this adventure, and we know that God has called her to embark on it, so we’re happy for her. And we’re happy for our family; we’ll be enriched, too, be her experience abroad. And at the end of the day, God’s will is what all six of us are trying to live our lives to be about. So now we get our first true test.
Please pray for Deana, and pray for us, that we’ll not miss her TOO much.
God bless!
Share this:
Folks,
Please don’t forget the potluck/picnic after the 11:30 a.m. Mass on this Sunday, July 27, 2008 in celebration of the Feast of Sts. Joachim and Ann, our parish’s patrons. Bring a side dish to share, and come eat hotdogs and hamburgers with the rest of the parish.
It’s time we started hanging out together and being family, don’t’cha think?
Share this:
Here’s a link to a blog post by The American Papist, highlighting Natural Family Planning Week from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops: http://www.americanpapist.com/2008/07/good-us-bishops-launch-natural-family.html.
It may not be popular, y’all…but it’s true and right. If you have any questions regarding NFP, please post a comment. If Ann MArie (my wife) and I cannot answer them, we have “other resources”…
Share this:
Hey, Catholics!
Tired of getting beaten up by our separated brethren about those funny Catholic beliefs and practices? Want to turn the tables and help them think about why they might want to become Catholic?
Well, come on down to the Beginning Apologetics Course at St. Ann Parish starting in September! This course will start the process of preparing you to make a logical and coherent defense of The Church and Your Faith. The class will be offered on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings (same class taught twice a week) starting the third week of September. Stay tuned for more information. If you think you might be interested in attending, please post a comment and let us know how to find you!
Peace!
Deacon Chip
Share this:
There’s a song by a priest, Father Stan Fortuna, entitled “Adoration”. In it, Fr. Stan says:
“The more you look the more you see/ the more you see the deeper you will be in what it is you’re looking at. Adoration is the looking of your being with new seeing/On the right side of the throne where Jesus sat” Convoluted sentences, sure, but it really captures the essence of *why* we bother with Adoration of the Blessed SAcrament: when we adore Jesus in the Mst Holy Sacrament of the Altar, we are sitting at the right side of the throne. And we are as close to Jesus as we can be outside of Holy Communion where we actually take Him into ourselves to become what we receive.
Funny thing, though. We have adoration for about 10.5 hours at or parish, St. Ann Bartlett, 6529 Stage Road, Bartlett, TN 38135 every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday almost without fail. But the crowd is pretty thin!
This is why I am remarking on it. We have a lot of things going on in our parish; there are a lot of needs at our place, both in individual families AND as a parish; and i may be just me, but I sense a spirit of at least mild unhappiness among folks I have known for years. And yet, we don’t (and I include ME in that WE) take advantage of a *proven* and *time-honored * way of placing our petitions before the Lord, and ourselves at His service!
But this post is NOT just a beef session. I’d like to issue a little challenge.
Our adoration time lasts, as I said, about 10.5 hours, 3 days a week. Here’s the challenge:
I will spend One Hour in adoration of the blessed sacrament for every THREE people who respond to this post with a commitment of at least 30 minutes of adoration. If you are there 1/2 hour, I’ll stay an *hour*. We’ll do this for one month, starting today, and then evaluate the results.
The purpose of our prayer will be three-fold. First, we will pray for our own individual and family intentions. Second, we will pray for an increase in devotion to The Blessed Sacrament in our parish. Lastly, we will pray for our parish to “come alive”: we will pray for financial stability, for meaningful worship, and for a growth in the life of our parish.
If you will join me, please just post a comment to this post. If you’re not a member of St. Ann parish, then commit to your 1/2 hour wherever you live. Just Go. And Pray. Let’s see what God does.
And y’all? Don’t worry if you don’t “get it” at first. as Father Stan said, “The more you look, the more you see/The more you see, the deeper you will be in what it is you’re looking at…”
Share this:
Today’s Gospel is unusual, brothers and sisters. Jesus does NOT often take time to explain himself to anyone, at least, not in the pages of Scripture. Almost always, it’s left to us, in posterity, to figure out how what Jesus said applies to us.
But today, Jesus was explicit with his disciples. When they asked, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field”, Jesus told them exactly what He meant. He, the Son of Man, is the sower of good seed. The devil is his enemy sowing weeds, and the weeds themselves are the children of the evil one. At the end of the age, the harvest, God’s angels will collect “all who cause others to sin and all evildoers”, and they’ll go to Hell. He finishes the explanation off with a warning: “Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
How much more explicit could He have been? Pretty straightforward, right? The evil, and those who cause others to sin, will go to Hell; the righteous will be with the Father.
Problem is though: Which pile do we end up in? Are we wheat, or are we weeds? And what do we do if we find ourselves…weeds?
Jesus used this model for His disciples, first, because He knew they would understand. In ancient Israel, Herbi-systems had not yet taken off. There were no herbicide resistant strains of crops that could be planted; the farmer and his workers had to carefully prepare the soil, excluding as many weeds as he could see from the tilled earth. Then, as the crops sprouted and grew, he had to carefully identify the weeds, and painstakingly remove them from the soil, being careful not to disturb the sprouting food crops.
The problem with having an enemy come and sow weeds throughout the field is that it would make it almost impossible for a human farmer to salvage much of the crop. In pulling all those multiple weeds from the ground, the farmer would damage his crop, making it almost worthless. The only alternative was to just let it all grow, harvest it, and then sort it out by hand, hoping to save some of the good crop while throwing out the weeds. Can you imagine the labor involved in that? It would break most farmers!
But Jesus, in naming his supernatural workers for the harvest, demonstrated that God was capable of easily telling the difference when it would count. And He issued a warning: it pays to be wheat, and not weeds, at the end of the age, ‘cuz the weeds weren’t going to do well!
It would be easy to oversimplify Jesus’ words, and His warning, y’all. But in our world, in our time, we have so many more hazards, so many more things that can bump us into the “weeds” category. The obvious ones are almost not worth rehashing: don’t commit murder; don’t steal; don’t covet thy neighbor’s stuff. The vast majority of us know that those things are wrong. Don’t commit adultery, don’t lie; honor your father and mother, go to church; these too are all pretty simple yes-no propositions.
But there is an entire realm of moral trouble that gets ignored in our day, and it is every bit as dangerous to our souls, and to our status as “wheat” vs. “weeds”. Our culture is saturated in sexuality, and usually not in healthy expressions of it. The vast majority of us American Catholics reject the Church’s teachings on sexuality. And it is here that we run into trouble. It’s here that others lead us into doing what is objectively evil.
Next Friday, July 25th, is the 40th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, written by Pope Paul VI. It’s a pretty interesting read; and it talks about much more than a prohibition on artificial contraception. Pope Paul made four predictions in Humanae Vitae about the impact on society of unrestricted access to birth control. They were: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments. I won’t go into depth, but it would be hard to ignore that all of these things are a problem for our society forty years after they were predicted.
But what possible application could all that have to us? What could we possibly need to change?
Brothers and sisters, the misuse of sexuality pervades our society. What can we do about it? Refuse to be fooled. If we reject the Church’s teaching on the body out of hand, without educating our consciences, then we are allowing others to lead us to evil. Contracepting? That’s “weed” behavior. Talk to your pastor and find a way to accommodate the Church’s teaching. Sexually active outside of marriage? Weedy. Stop. Using the internet to access pornography? Weed behavior. Stop. Allowing our children, or ourselves, to watch programming on cable that tears them down spiritually? Weed behavior. Stop!
And after we stop all the weed-like things we’re doing, we can access the sacraments to rip out the weeds that have been sown in us. Receive Christ in the Eucharist. Regularly. Go to confession. Rip Satan’s influences out by their roots. Pray, sincerely, to God for the grace to do His will in our lives. And open ourselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit, who is always ready to lend a hand in helping us change our lives.
The reality, brothers and sisters, is that we live our lives in a constant state of flux, between being wheat, and salt, and light, children of God doing God’s will, and being weeds, children of the Evil One, doers of evil. It’s our wounded nature as humans; we will always be tempted by the world, the devil, and our own flesh.
But the good news is that, no matter where we find ourselves, no matter if we are the thorniest weed in the garden, we can be wheat through the grace of God. We have examples in our midst of people who are striving to live holy lives. We have the lives of people like Mary Cinquegrani, the mother of the former pastor at my parish of St. Ann Bartlett, whose love and faithfulness produced not one, but two priest sons! We have the examples of the saints, who though surrounded by a world that wanted to pull them down, succeeded in overcoming the lure of evil in their lives, and are now with God.
Wheat…or weeds? What are we right now? What do we want to be? God has a plan for us…whichever we choose to be.
As Jesus said in the Gospel: “Whoever has ears ought to hear…”
Share this:
It is my intention to begin commenting on the life of the Church and its people, especially in Bartlett, TN and the Catholic Diocese of Memphis. In no way should my comments be assumed to reflect the official position of any entity in the Diocese of Memphis (other than myself); I may be a Deacon, but I’m not a very important one!
Look for my latest efforts with homilies, talks that I may have given, and Thoughts on the Passing Scene (credit due to Walter Williams, conservative columnist, for the use of the term).
God’s blessings to all!
Tall, Bald, and Called 
Here’s One for All You School Parents (and the rest of us, too!)
Deacon Greg Kandra reports on a Catholic School with…wait for it…NO TUITION. Nada. For NOBODY. See the Story Here.
I don’t know about you, but this made me think. At a time when our parish is struggling financially, to the point of putting in flourescent lighting in the church and locking buildings to save on utility costs, here’s a parish that manages to educate almost 400 students…with no tuition. One that has done it consistently for 25 years. One that does NOT have an endowment to work from (as do our diocese’s Jubilee Schools).
How? Simple: the people of the parish tithe. Just like our separated brethren at Bellevue Baptist. Works out to about $550 per family in their case.
I’m not suggesting that we go to a no-tuition model for our school… but it makes ya think, don’t it? What could we be doing differently as a parish family…to make things work better? Needs prayer, methinks…
Share this: