On Human Freedom: Our Son the Lector

Tonight at the 5 p.m. Mass, our high school freshman was trained by an older woman to become a lector. He sat beside her, a few pews in front of us, and listened as she whispered directions and instructions. In a few weeks, he will share the lectoring responsibilities with her and then, if all goes as hoped, he's at the ambo on his own. It was moving to witness her sit beside him during Mass, passing on the faith.

This lectoring was my idea. It's important to me and my husband that our sons serve the Church and the larger community. But Lucas, who is the family's lone extrovert and a gifted public speaker, is happy to do it. Tonight, however, was a chance for me to mull what it means to be a free person and to follow our own paths to our destinies.

Opening Our Hearts to Our Enemies. Now.

We live in divisive times. Sometimes, that grieves me.

 How do we reconcile these two perspectives? Can we? A homily I heard yesterday gave me hope.

Burying a Bomber: What Would Christ Do?

We ended up tonight at St. Matthias in Somerset, NJ, a parish we don't normally go to and we all left stunned and inspired by the homily. The celebrant said he had had extra time this morning and decided to read the newspapers. He read the story of Martha Mullen, the Virginia woman who found a way for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev to be buried in an Islamic cemetery. Her gesture, widely critized, is an example of Christianity in action, he said.

"Are we not told to bury the dead?" he asked. Indeed. Burying the dead is one of the seven corporal acts of mercy. "

God requires us to bury, not just the dead of whom we approve, but every body that was created in His image. "And aren't we supposed to pray for our enemies?" the priest asked us.

Did we know, the priest asked us, that the suspect has a three-year-old daughter? Have we prayed for her?  Have we considered what this child's life will be like? Nope. I hadn't.

Baking Bread and Stumbling Through Lent

Today I am making challah. I found a great recipe online for something called Cinnamon-Apple Raisin Challah. On the King Arthur website, it looks like this before it goes in the oven: 

Let me tell you, my challah looks nothing like that.

Jesus at My Side: 365 Reflections on His Words

Last night, I began reading  Jesus at My Side by my friend Julie Cragon. This little paperback book has been sitting on my dresser for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I will be using this as a daily devotional.

In this rich and thoughtful work, Julie offers us quotes from Christ and reflections for every day of the year. I felt compelled to start with January 1. The Scripture is  Luke 2, verse 49. "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?" As with all the entries, Julie begins with the Scripture, moves on to a personal reflection, and then ties it back to the life of Christ Himself.

Light in Darkness

It is almost Advent, the time when we wait for the birth of our dear Savior.

photo from earthsky.org

We are entering the darkest days of the year, and that is not an easy time for me. Something about the lack of light makes me lose energy. I rise before the sun and drive to work in the cold.  

Yesterday, I Was the Welcomed Stranger at A House By A River

I heard a thump thump thump on my 40-mile drive to work yesterday. Once parked at the high school, I discovered the right back tire was flat. Really flat. I headed into classes. I could not have imagined that by the day's end I would be a stranger welcomed without question or worry by a family bearing far larger burdens.

The Inevitability of Struggle and the Omnipresence of Grace

A week after my whole little family visited a parish and heard a Saturday afternoon homily so horrendous that it prompted a weekend of soul-searching conversations about why we stay Catholic, we all were blessed with homilies that confirmed our struggles and our journeys. I know the Church is not yet another consumer good, but this old Catholic has grown weary of homilists who try to harangue, discourage, threaten and scare their listeners. I know living one's faith isn't easy, isn't supposed to be easy, but I sometimes miss words from the ambo that can give me food for my journey.

"Give Us This Day:" Unexpected Inspiration

Free. That's my favorite price.

That's why I headed straight to the back of the church after Mass when Father Joseph Domfeh Boateng announced at the end of 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Bedford, New York that there were free prayer books.

Liturgical Press, an apostolate of  Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota is giving free samples of its August issue of "Give Us This Day" a daily prayer  book. Already I have found some wonderful words inside its pages. My prayer life ebbs and flows and this booklet is proving a great midsummer boost.

On Forgetting About Prayer

Today was one of those days where nothing, from start to finish, went as I planned. Nothing went badly wrong, it's just that nothing went really well. At work, my laptop gave me all sorts of trouble, refusing to link me to the school's server. Then, an important, comprehensive evaluation of me, which I had been prepping for and anticipating for days, was postponed. 

By the time I got to the after-school faculty meeting, I was a knot of anxiety.  My girlfriend K, my best friend at work, eight months pregnant with her first child, sat down beside me in the school auditorium. Turns out her laptop too is being disobedient. I told her how terribly, terribly stressed I was feeling.

Lent: Opening My Heart

Sunday's Gospel reading from St. Mark was a story I've heard before. I started thinking of it in a new way, which is offering me a new way to think about Lent.

On Being Guided to Thy Perfect Light

This morning at Mass, I sang "We Three Kings of Orient Are" with the rest of the parish. My hunch is,  over the course of my nearly 50 years on this planet, I have sung this song dozens, if not hundreds of time. Today for the first time I was moved, really moved by the words "Guide us to Thy perfect light."

Shopping in the Landscape of Loss

My husband and our 12-year-old headed to a soccer store tonight to pick up some goalie gloves and shin guards. It was a store my husband never had been to, and I called ahead for directions. "They could have just told us," my husband said. "That it's in the shopping center with no other stores in it."

The day before, I drove the same son to an art supply store a few towns away to buy paint for a school project. The store was shuttered. On the drive home, I noticed the Harley-Davidson dealership in our town is gone, along with a new restaurant that never made it past its third month.

Waiting for Layoffs and Praying Together at Work

I called my father this morning to wish him a Happy Birthday. He turned 82 today. During our conversation he mentioned my brother, who is raising three young children with his wife, was waiting for an 11 o'clock meeting at work to find out if he was going to be laid off. My brother has been with the same employer for 25 years, and in his current position for four.

I kept him in my thoughts all day, praying that somehow he would survive this latest round of layoffs. On my drive home, I was sending up some serious prayer. I reached R. on the phone about 5 p.m. He was babysitting his year-old nephew. (The dad hadn't finished his work shift and the mom had to start hers early; the little guy was screaming in the phone as we were talking. R. was both soothing him and trying to tell me about his day.) I could also hear two of his own children in the background. His oldest was at soccer practice.

Feeling Grateful and Hopeful at My First Bar Mitzvah

This morning my family attended the Bar Mitzvah of a neighborhood boy we have known since he was a baby. I never had attended a Conservative Jewish Shabbat morning service, much less a bar mitvah. It was exquisite, reverent and beautiful. (The sanctuary is pictured above) I wiped tears from my eyes as I considered the overwhelming faith and courage of Jews through the centuries of persecution that enabled this boy to encounter this moment.

I also meditated on the links between my Catholic faith and Judaism as I listened to the prayers of the worshipers. As the Catechism teaches us: When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, "the first to hear the Word of God."  I always have been taught that Judaism is the root of the tree of our faith. And that without that root, our faith would not have flowered. For the most part, this insight has remained an intellectual abstraction to me. But this morning, in the faces and voices of those gathered for worship, I could see and hear that.

Among the readings in this morning's liturgy were was this one from the prophet Isaiah. It reminds me that we are begotten, not made. We do not make ourselves, and we cannot reinvent ourselves. We are not the result of a random pairing of sperm and egg; rather all that we are and all that we become is a result of the Presence among us. When we face the terror of hurricanes or the terror of men, we can stand before the Presence like beggars. And we can have hope.