Beautiful Worship

In the thread below, Rich hijacked my wishes for a Merry Christmas to steer the conversation onto 'beautiful worship' as the key to convicting the next generation. Uncle Jim chided that 'beautiful worship' could be something subjective, and what hits you may not hit me.

*By the way, I'm not complaining about the hijack, it dovetails nicely.

I just got off the phone with my father, which is always a treat b/c he doesn't do phone 'small talk' well.

In the course of our discussion, he mentioned that he and mom attended the 9:00 AM Mass Christmas morning at our home parish. The Mass had all the smells and bells, incense, singing and chanting, full compliment of servers, even lasted 1.5 hours.

Drove him nuts.

Not that it was too long, not that the homily was bad, not that the singing was offkey (we didn't discuss most of that), but a family in front of them seemingly have had infrequent attendence at best, and in dad's words: "The kids were old enough to know better" than what their behavior showed.

"I left Christmas Mass with the desire to go home and get a drink at 10:30 in the morning."


I wonder if the family in front of my parents left 'convicted.'

Admittedly, it is unfair to ask one liturgy to do that, but it could happen, because ultimately Mass is where we have the most profound interaction with Christ (and Adoration as an offshoot that returns us deeper into Mass.)

But, to know Jesus, one must first know about Jesus. But knowing about Jesus isn't enough to sustain a life long pilgrimage of faith.

Hmmm.... dilemma.

Much more to ponder over in this great season of Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Well, after a busy few days, I've finally caught up on some rest and and am basking the glow of the Second Day of Christmas, aka St. Stephan's Day. (Or Boxing Day for those crazy Canuckistanis!)

I hope you all had a wonderful and joyous Celebration of Our Lord's Birth. I had five Masses (two vigils, Midnight, and two morning) over the last two days at one parish while the pastor recuperates from a hip replacement. It was a nice little parish (seats 120 people tightly!) Afterwards, I went to a friends house for dinner and a long conversation about the state of the Church, a little to do with the Vocation Office and how to 'Convict' the next generation.

Finally, I hope the joy you experienced was even only slightly as great as my niece, who really got into a new NEMO! something or other.

Thoughts to Ponder...

Is there anything more peaceful than a two year old sleeping soundly on her father's lap?


Is there anything more terrorizing than a two year old who needs a nap but is fighting it off so that she doesn't miss anything because company is over and she wants to be the center of attention?


I love staying with my brother and visiting with my other siblings as well, but it also reassures me that I am in the vocation God laid out for me.

Good Families = More Vocations

Via the eNewsletter of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, comes the exhortation from the Asian Bishops that good families make for more vocations:

In their final statement, the bishops said that it was in families that the mystery of a vocation is born, encouraged and guided, and “the quality of family life […] either nourishes and fosters vocation or weakens and destroys” it.The bishops said an emerging global culture that fosters individualism, self-assertion and ambition brought a negative influence to Asian families and vocations as well.

As Catholics, especially during Christmas, we need to combat this 'emerging globacl culture that fosters individualism, self-assertion and ambition' with the deeper reality that an embrace of Christ, born for us by the Virgen, and crucified to take away our sins, is the only true path to an embrace of life.

Top Ten Posts

A few days ago, Adoro tagged me for a 'Top Ten' posts meme. Life interfered, but since it is a cold and foggy day in Iowa, it is time to scour my archives to see if I can round up ten posts that are worth sharing.

1) Spiritual Moms for Priests is a recent addition to the 'Called by Name' archive. I not only pass along info from the Vatican, but tell a bit of my own vocation story.

2) November brings The More, the Merrier with an idea of how to reinvigorate life in a parish.

3) October brought an unexpected surprise in Grateful for Gifts Received.

4) September brought about craziness in A Week in the Life of a Vocation Director.

5) I swiped A Father grows to support his daughter's vocation from Brad at Roman Catholic Vocations.

6) Seek Eagerly After Love was my attempt to present some of the themes from Deus Caritas Est.

7) My thoughts on Ordination to the Priesthood appeared in the Telegraph in May.

8) How to promote vocations in the Parish was the subject of One Every Eight.

9) Just in time for Advent comes a reflection from Lent on The Need for Reconciliation.

10) Last, but hopefully not least, are the words from one of the hardest days of my life as a priest, but also one of the most rewarding, as I shared my thought from the Homily for the Funeral Mass of a dear young one.

What day of Christmas?

Darcee passes on a little exercise in fun (by way of the Anchoress):

Best laid plans...

So, tonight was organize the room (always a necessity), get things outlined and ready to go before driving to Iowa tomorrow to visit my brother for the weekend. I was hoping to get that 'top ten posts' meme (how do you say 'meme' anyways?) that Adoro tagged me with done at about this point in the evening, and hit the sack early. Instead I'm eating a cold dinner at 9:00 at night.

What's that about how to make God laugh, tell Him you plans?

Between confessions ending at 5:00 and Mass at 5:15, my friend Kelly called to inform that our friend Tim was having a heart attack and was on his way to Christ hospital, could I get there NOW? (Ok, put this in the right context:) "Shit, I've got Mass at 5:15, I'll go up when I'm done!"

By 6:00, I was in my car heading up to Clifton and Christ hospital, which is only about 1.5 miles from the Cathedral. By the time I got up there, he was in surgery, and I sat and talked to Janet, his wife, for a while. (The hospital chaplain scored major points and showed up as well.) Janet's sister and nephew showed up shortly, and we were eventually brought back to see Tim and speak to the doctor. (Dr. Jennings, a parishioner from my former assignment, came out to see us as well.)

They had taken care of the blockage, one main artery completely blocked, and had put in a stint. Tim was back to his normal color and personality (something about the nurse looking at his legs?) By this point, Janet had greatly calmed down and relaxed, but she was very cute when we first got to see Tim, you could see the love in her eyes.

God was very good to him, Janet and the family (7 children). They were driving to deliver gifts for a family who had lost everything and had just stopped to fix a tire at a Speedway gas station, and he went out. The squad got there quick, and Kelly was right there to take the children back to the house so Janet could go with Tim to the hospital. Janet's brother (I think) lives next to Dr. Jennings. And she was right there to give him someone to focus on so he didn't drop completely off.

Praise God for his many blessings!

An email just came across the wire that friends are putting together a 'spiritual bouqet' for Tim and his family. If you want to add to it, just post it in the combox and I will forward it to them.

Friends, take care of yourself (me included!) Tim is a physical therapist and knows the dangers, but wasn't as cautious as he needed to be. It certainly woke him up, do you have an unhealthy habit that could lead to something similar?

Consider it

Norbertine Nuns?

Another new community, or at least newly arrived in the states.

Swing of the Thurible to Drew at the Shrine.

Spiritual Moms for Priests

It is no secret to anyone who has asked my vocation story. I am convinced that I made it through the seminary on the merits and prayers of 'God's Blue Hair Army' who diligently attended their weekly holy hour at the little Adoration Chapel at Immaculate Conception Church in Botkins, Ohio. (Which just so happens to be my home parish.)

Let me back up a bit. I guess it was during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school that I had my first opportunity to attend a retreat day/visionary experience at Our Lady's Farm in Falmouth, Kentucky. (Think Medjugoria without all the hoopla.) I think the visions that were supposedly happening there have since been proven false, but on the 8th of the month for several successive months, my mother, brother and I would attend this pilgrimage, even to the point that we (my brother and I) were 'leading' a bus for the day. We would leave the friendly confines of Botkins, Ohio, and travel in a caravan of two to four buses to the Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center for Mass (now the location of the studios for Sacred Heart Radio, among other things) before traveling further down the road to Falmouth for messages that Our Lady would give to a visionary. While there were certainly miraculous things that happened during those trips, I didn't go b/c of the visionary, I went to connect with God, through Mary.

After going a few times that summer and then heading into my senior year during the fall, Cindy, who was the coordinator of the trips, started challenging me. Every time she saw me, she would look up at me and say: "You're going to be a priest some day!" My response: "Cindy, SHUSH! I'm going to be a doctor!" "I'm praying for you." was her simple response. I, of course, immediately started to pray to be a doctor. (Hindsight says if you have an option of me praying for you or Cindy S., choose Cindy!)

These little tits for tats lasted my entire senior year of high school, during which time I was dating a very nice girl (shhhh! she was a Protestant! Oh, the horror!) so I was not at all interested in the priesthood. Cindy became especially devious and by this time had started putting a petition in the prayer book in the Adoration Chapel at the parish, as well as getting her prayer group of her fellow little old ladies, to pray that I might become a priest one day. (SHE CHEATED!)

Low and behold, I went off to Ohio State after graduating from high school as a proud chemistry/Pre-Med major thinking that God had answered my prayers and left her's in the dust! HA!

As is again obvious, she triumphed in the end. (Ok, really, it was God, but only because she went all Andy Dufrense on Him and kept pestering him about me and the priesthood.) At the beginning of my third quarter at OSU, I came in a little late to the Catholic Student meeting at the Newman Center (run by the Paulists, no less) because I was an officer for the Pre-Med group which met the same night. Well, this particular evening, the topic at hand was vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

I couldn't sleep that night. I tossed and turned. I got up at one and watched tv (causing my roommate to look at me with serious concern on his face.) I left at two in the morning to walk around campus (don't suggest you follow in my footsteps on this one!) Finally, I agreed that I would talk to one of the priests at the Newman Center about it, and got to some sleep that night.

Easter weekend was even worse, as how do I tell my mother and what would she say? Finally, after hemming and hawing all weekend, I stopped her at about 2:00 on Easter Sunday: "Mom, I think God might be calling me to be a priest."





Well, after picking her up off of the floor, we looked at each other and wondered what was next. The rest, as they say, is history. I switched to the Josephinum in Columbus the following year. Three years later, I graduated and headed to Mount St. Mary's in Cincinnati. Five years post that, I was taking a nap in the Cathedral one morning....

But, importantly, during those eight years (which were a little more tumultuous than I lead on, but for the sake of brevity (In an already 1000 word plus article, he mentions 'brevity'?!?!?) I'll skip the nasty details), Cindy, her friends, my mother and sister, plus people I did not even know, prayed for me, by name, before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

I would have NEVER made it without their prayers.

Which leads me to my whole point, that I have wanted to make on this blog for at least the last week ====>

The Vatican Congregation for the Clergy is looking for people willing to offer Eucharistic adoration for the preisthood and 'consecrated feminine souls' ready to become spiritual mothers of priests.


If you think that there is nothing that you can do to reverse the vocation crisis, you can always pray! NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PRAYER!!!!

It got my sorry butt through the seminary, unworthy tho I be. Pick one man in seminary, one young woman in formation, and offer each an hour of prayer weekly.

My priesthood is an example of what can happen when a community joins together to pray for this. (Oh, and the gifts keep giving, as another young man from my home parish is likely entering the seminary in the fall!)

A Hidden Joy of Advent

Advent, and Lent, too, for that matter, are the two primary penitential seasons in the Church, which means extra work for her priests, as there are confessions to be heard. Most parishes schedule at least one communal penance service during these two seasons, with the result that extra priests are called in to assist in freeing parishioners from the traps of sin. While it is a joy to help out in parishes, it does eat up evenings as we travel the circuit from parish to parish.

The 'Hidden Joy' of the season is often connected with these penance services. It is a common expectation (but not universal) that the host pastor provide dinner for the priests who can make it, either before or after the penance service. As happened for me last night, there were mainly priests there whom I do not necessarily see too often. There was a flock of retired guys there, and the conversation over drinks and dinner about their history as priests, assignments they had as young priests, dealing with former Bishops and Archbishops, their rememberances of their time in the seminary and of their first pastors and old priests who were around as they began their service; it all made for a good connection with the past, as we also look to the glory of the future.

Please pray for your priests, as we get stretched thinner, it is not always easy to balance out our schedules. Please pray especially for an increase of vocations to the priesthood as well. It is a wonderful and joy-filled life, one which i wouldn't pass up for all the treasures in this world.

6,852 priests and 11,010 nuns (vocations “shortage”?)

So gives Fr. Thomas Euteneuer as the number of potential priests and religious killed by abortion. He cites the statistics in an article on Tim Tebow and his rise to the Heisman Trophy, but also that because of a set of circumstances before he was born, his mother's doctors advised her to have an abortion. The only question that remains: 'What could've been???'

The sports world recently greeted the news that this year’s Heisman Trophy Winner, Tim Tebow from the University of Florida, was almost a casualty of abortion. Twenty-some years ago he was not the strapping 6’3”, 235 lb. beloved sports hero that he is today. At that time he was a one-inch-long unborn child whose existence, because of an amoebic infection, was defined as threat to his mother’s health. Pam Tebow, his mother, was told by a doctor that it would be in her best interests to abort this baby, and she refused. Her husband backed her up on that generous decision, and seven months later they gave birth to a perfectly healthy boy. Little did they know that twenty years later they would be standing on a national stage with a Heisman Trophy winner giving that magnificent witness to life. The world thanks you, Mr. and Mrs. Tebow! There cannot be a more touching Advent story than this.

I want this!

UPDATE!!!!!

Commentator M. Swaim points us to a similar game! (hmmm... I hope Santa subscribes to my blog!):

Congratulations!

Today, here at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains, we celebrate 25 years of leadership by Archbishop Pilarczyk with a special Mass of Thanksgiving this afternoon. In attendance will be most of the bishops from Ohio, as well as a number of visitors from out of state, most notably Adam Cardinal Maida of Detroit. (I wonder if he'll let me try on the reds? You think?)

Hopefully the weather doesn't deter things too much.

Crunch Time

So, it's now about 3:30, and I have the vigil Mass at the Cathedral at 4:30.

Hmm... Now about that homily....