My Daily Musing

   If you have not already done so, kindly go back to yesterday and you will notice that I wrote a "pre-game" reflection to the Super Bowl.
   Being one of those people who could give two hoots about who would win or lose, I thought it would be different to put the "competition" of the bowl games into proper perspective.
   What could be more proper than to place the same kind of attitude about the bowl games to our daily struggle against sin and death.
   Thank God that, remaining on His team, we have been assured of "the win!"
   Have a great day, you winner, you!

   That's right.
   I didn't make any mistake.
   I know how to use Roman Numerals.
   Whilst so many people were worrying about the Super Bowl today, I began to think that, perhaps, Christianity would get a "boost" if it began to appear more like sports than religion.
   After all, so many people could care less about their Church's teachings. But the God of sports, well, now that's a different story!
   Think about it.
   If we put Super Bowl MMX (2010, for the uninitiated) on the church marquee, we would probably get a lot of people coming to see what it was all about.
   It is about more devastation than you can find on any football field.
   Because it is not about a battle between any two earthly teams, but it is about a battle between God and the devil.
   It is a battle that has been raging for eons and really began heating up when Jesus Christ, the ultimate star of Super Bowl MMX, was born.
   For 2010 years that battle has been raging, taking victims all along the way.
   But the victory, a sure thing, has always been on the Lord's side.
   He is the victor, He is the one who can and will save us all from sin and death. That is, if we do not stray to the side of the other team.
   Hold firm.
   Hope in the Lord.
   Go God!

   Can anyone tell me just what it is with human beings that we appear to live in fear so often throughout our lives? We are afraid of getting sick, of getting lost, of losing family and friends, of failure, of death, of life, of, well, you get the idea!
   This weekend’s readings address this whole topic of fear as well.
   In the first reading, Isaiah blurts out, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” This was after Isaiah had a vision of the Lord. One of the Seraphim flew to Isaiah with a burning ember, touched his lips, and told him that his sin had been purged.
   Immediately afterwards, Isaiah heard the Lord say, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
   Isaiah’s response?
   “Here I am. Send me.”
   Again, in the Gospel, Peter met the Lord in a display of power. Peter’s response was to exclaim, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
   Jesus told Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
   Peter’s response?
   He left family and business behind and followed the Lord.
   Fear is a terrible thing and has awful consequences. Living in constant fear, people can develop ulcers, high blood pressure, heart conditions. Their personalities change, usually for the worse. They become suspicious, timid, excitable.
   We would do anything to escape fear.
   There is one who can release us from fear: Jesus Christ.
   As He releases us from the bondage of fear, He asks us to follow Him in a new direction in life.
   If our response is like Isaiah’s “Here I am. Send me.” or like Peter’s response of leaving all behind to follow Christ, we can rest assured that He will take care of us.
   The going may not be easy. We may still face difficulties in our lives. We may still be in danger. We may still find ourselves in peril.
   However, the danger, peril, and/or difficulties will be easier to face because God will set us free from the fear that often accompanies those circumstances.
   Tired of living in fear?
   Give yourself over to the Lord today!

   Okay.
   Do you realize what's happening here?
   I'll tell you.
   It is already six days into February.
   Honestly.
   Our year is flying by.
   In another week and a half we begin the season of Lent.
   From there it's a quickening of the ol' pace: a few weeks into Lent we have a Parish Mission and then a couple weeks later a Communal Penance Service. A short week from there we celebrate Easter.
   As Easter kicks off, we begin to have formation/discernment sessions for people who are interested in becoming Pastoral Council members. On Pentecost, we have our council selection.
   Then comes graduation.
   The Parish Festival.
   The Saturday of Parish Festival is our leaving date for a pilgrimage to Oberraumergau, Germany's Passion Play.
   Returning from Germany and we go into our Vacation Bible School and a month after Vacation Bible School, we are getting ready to begin school anew.
   WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?
   One of my staff members is taking Monday as a personal day because she is with a friend this weekend as the friend celebrates a 55th birthday. I started to chuckle and was just ready to crack an age joke for 55 when all of a sudden it hit me that I will turn 55 next year (October, 2011). Where does the time go?
   Our time on this earth is fleeting. One day we are born and, it seems, the next day we are looking at our own mortality at the end of our life.
   Our time on this earth is very temporary.
   If we want any kind of lasting time, we can only find that in the hereafter. There, eternity awaits us.
   And that is what causes the panic because we do not have a lot of time in which to prepare ourselves to meet our Lord face-to-face and hope for a personal invitation to eternal life with God. We must do all that we can to be ready for that moment. When we do anything wrong, that robs us of the few fleeting moments we have here on earth to be ready for God.
   Do not wait for tomorrow. Do not think that you will begin this coming Lent. Make sure that every day -- including this day -- counts. Prepare for the coming of the Lord. He will be calling you before you know it!

   There are a lot of things that are often said about someone who is in a vegetative (absence of responsiveness and awareness due to overwhelming dysfunction of the cerebral hemispheres) state. Many people make comments such as, "There's nobody home" and "Anybody in there?"
   There have been many people through the years, myself included, who KNEW that "someone was home."
   As I priest for almost 27 years, I have seen people who were in a vegetative state but whom, I felt, were experiencing their surroundings much more than people where giving them credit for.
   Even before that, about 37 years ago, when I was an orderly at a local hospital, I know that vegetative states did not mean that a person was unaware. It just meant that they could not respond in ways that we would understand.
   I took care of a patient who had been in a persistent vegetative state from the time that he was shot several years before. Every so often his health would require hospital intervention in order to stabilize him. There was never any response from him.
   However, if a certain family member would come in to "visit," that family member always made the comment that we should turn off the respirators, that we should abandon any kind of care, because the patient "was not there."
   Wouldn't you know it . . . after those comments, the patients blood pressure would rise alarmingly. We knew that "someone was home." That someone just was not able to communicate with us.
   On the news yesterday, there was a report done about patients in a vegetative state who were able to "answer questions" by reading their brain wave patterns. They were told to think about doing one thing for "yes" and think about doing another thing for "no."
   They were able to answer questions!
   Which might be a wake up call to some people in the medical field who treat vegetative patients differently because they think the patient does not know what is happening.
   And which brings me to my main thought for today.
   We often treat people differently in a spiritual manner because we think some people are incapable of "getting it" when we tell them something. There are times when we even give up on others because we write them off as not being about to understand.
   However, sometimes years later, we find out that something we said or something that we did made a profound impact on the person and their lives were changed for the better and they even became a great witness to others.
   The lesson for each and every one of us today, pure and simple, is to not give up on others. Even when we think no one is home, the house IS inhabited!

   We are in the midst of celebrating Catholic Schools Week. Today, we celebrate "Special Person's Day" in which the students have the opportunity to invite a special person to come in and spend some time with them at lunch.
   Tomorrow, we will have a Talent Show to showcase what our students can do because God has gifted them so.
   God has given us all talents and gifts and asks us to utilize them to the best of our potential.
   As we get ready for our talent show, I am mindful of the many people who have a lot of talent but who are too shy and/or insecure to utilize their talents. Others share their gifts with no reticence at all.
   God has blessed you.
   What are your gifts?
   Are you willing to show them to the world?

   The people who know me well know that I can be rather demanding both on myself as well as on others. As a perfectionist, I tend to expect that perfection from others. Perfectionists tend to be more critical and less forgiving of self and others.
   Which brings me to the question posed in the title to today's blog and also brings me face-to-face with today's saint: St. Blaise.
   We do not know a lot about today's saint. However, the pious history of the man tells us that Blaise was a good, holy bishop of the early Church. However, in his day, Christianity was definitely not popular. People were put to death for believing in Jesus Christ.
   Blaise was arrested and led away to death. One story says that the son of a jailer got a fish bone stuck in his throat. Another story says that while he was being led to jail a woman ran up to him with a son who had a fish bone stuck in his throat. Either story informs us that with a commanding word, the fish bone was dislodged and the boy lived.
   Blaise was not to be rewarded for that good deed, though. Instead, he was cruelly put to death.
   The tradition of blessing throats on the feast of St. Blaise arose from the miraculous healing of the youth, however, and to this day the Church still blesses the throats of the faithful on this feast.
   Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This prayer is one of the prayers that may be said as blessed candles are place on the throat of those who come forward.
   I ask myself, "If I were being led to death, would I have enough grace to help someone in need or would I not care about anybody else?" I would like to think that I would care about someone in need. But there are times that I am not so sure.
   Which is why I will be doing some major praying today, asking God to give me the graces I still need in my life to become the kind of person He wants me to be.
   May the day go well with you and for you today!

   Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. It is also known as Candlemas.
   The day recounts when Jesus, who is the light of the world, was presented in the temple by his parents, Joseph and Mary, in order to dedicate their first-born son to God.
   At the temple, they met two different characters. Simeon and a prophetess, Anna. Each of them gave words to Mary that were most certainly a cause for deep reflection. Both spoke about Jesus being the "downfall and the rise" of many. She also heard about the grief and sorrow that she and her son would endure. This was a most confusing day for them.
   It is that way so often in our lives. We attempt to follow God's will, to fulfill the commands of our faith, and we get confronted with confusing signs or words or deeds. Things make us wonder what it is all about.
   We have to remind ourselves that the answers we seek may not come to us while here on earth. One day, in the Kingdom of God, all things will remain clear. Until then, we are asked to place our faith and trust in God and allow Him to lead us through these days of our lives.
   On the feast of Candlemas, churches used to bless all the candles that they would use throughout the year. That tradition seems to have gone by the wayside. Tomorrow, however, well, that is a different story. Tomorrow we will bless candles and use them to bless the throats of all who come to Mass for the feast of St. Blaise. But I get ahead of myself. You'll have to wait for that story tomorrow!

   If you follow my blog, you will most certainly remember the days of freezing cold that greeted me when I went on my vacation to Disney last month. It was really miserable there and, to be honest, hardly felt like a vacation.
   Because of that, I thought to myself that I was going to steal away for a few days at the end of February and go to Las Vegas.
   The reason? Well, first of all, to go somewhere where I could enjoy a few days rather than lament the weather the entire time I was there. Second, I have not been there for about thirty years now and there has been a lot of change. I want to see the new buildings. Third, Disney's The Lion King: The Musical is playing at one of the hotel's theaters and I really want to see that musical again. It is splendid. Finally, it would be a dirt cheap holiday and that always attracts me. The economy is really on our side when it comes to traveling right now. Hotel rooms in Vegas are going cheap. I mean like $49/night at some of the big, splendid hotels. Sure cannot beat that.
   However, all of those hopes have been shot down.
   You will also remember, following my blog, that the day I was to leave for Florida began with a fair bit of trouble. One of my teeth cracked. I went to a parishioner-dentist and he was able to pull off the broken part and put on a "permanent" veneer that was to be temporary until my dentist decided what needed to be done with the tooth.
   What needed to be done? You guessed it. A crown.
   So today, this morning, I will be sitting in the dentist's chair for about an hour and a half to have my tooth cut down and then an impression taken so that a crown can be manufactured for the tooth. Two weeks from tomorrow, I will return to have the new crown put on.
   The cost of the entire process will be just shy of $1,000.
   So, goodbye Vegas. Hello, new tooth.
   I guess if it comes down to checking out the new hotels, taking in a comedy show or two, and watching the Lion King versus having a crown put in so that I do not worry about the tooth fracturing further possibly damaging the root that I would choose the tooth. But I don't have to be happy about it.

   When I was in grade school, the neighborhood kids used to play Superheroes all the time. One day, one of the neighbors decided to borrow his older brother's newspaper bag, climb onto their roof, and "parachute" off of the roof.
   Kids -- Do Not Try This At Home!
   The bag did not, in the least, slow his plunge to the ground and he broke his leg. All of our parents almost broke us when they found out that we were all involved and that we were waiting to take turns parachuting!
   But we had seen stuff like that on television and were sure that it would work.
   We life in such an age where fantasy has not only met reality but, for many people, it has passed reality. For many people, fantasy is the preferred state of life and mind in which to live.
   Movies are most certainly capitalizing on this phenomenon. Take a gander at Avatar. It is a great flick! I saw it in 3-D and it knocked my socks off. The colors were so vivid, the scenes so realistic, and the story so captivating. But I knew that it was just a movie and not reality.
   I had to chuckle when I heard about support groups being set up around the country because so many people had seen Avatar and wanted to have that kind of world. Knowing that they could not have that kind of world, they became depressed and suicidal and in need of help.
   Oh boy.
   We treat so much fiction as reality and sometime treat reality as fiction. We blur the lines between fact and fantasy and become lost people.
   It is time we grow up!
   St. Paul, in today's second reading, speaks about the differences from when he was a child and when he was a man.
   We are no longer children. We are adults. As adults in the faith, we have to set aside "fantasy." That is, we have to set aside things like superstition, "no fail" novenas, and other things that reflect non-truths.
   Instead, we must embrace the truth.
   There are some truths that are eternal and no amount of fiction will make them go away.
   God is not fiction. God is real. His truth is unchanging. His love is forever. You can count on that yesterday, today, tomorrow . . . always!

   This morning our Parish Pastoral Council will meet for its monthly meeting.
   When a person volunteers to go through the selection process possibly to become a Pastoral Council member, that person leaves behind a whole set of preconceived notions about how meetings work!
   To begin with, Pastoral Council members are selected, not elected. To many people, that process is unnerving since it is much more than a popularity contest or an agenda-wars contest. In the selection process, potential members come to discernment sessions to pray about and study what Pastoral Councils are all about and the type of person that should and should not be a member. Immediately, people recognize a radical difference. We pray and reflect as we invite people to discern whether or not they believe they are being called to be Pastoral Council members.
   After the discernment process, the candidates, on selection day, put their names on papers and those papers are dropped into a basket. At one of the weekend Masses, we ask the community to pray that God select the people He desires to be on the Council. Those names are drawn and those people are the new Council members.
   Coming to meetings, then, the Council member realizes that his/her role is different than at other meetings. To begin with, we start our meetings with prayerful reflection. At our parish, the Council members come to the morning Mass and the meeting begins immediately after Mass.
   Prayerfully considering the needs of our parish family, we discuss what we believe is important and pursue ideas that help us to "feel the pulse" of the parish community. We listen to reports from the commissions and we suggest ideas to the commissions.
   The Council realizes that it is not the "doing" body of the parish. Rather, the Council members are the thinking, praying, reflecting members of the parish. Their ideas flow from their prayerful consideration of topics.
   Being a Council member is not for everyone. A person that wants to accomplish something immediately and at every meeting would probably feel frustrated at Council meetings since the Council is concerned with visioning, long-range planning, and making ways for the needs of the parishioner to be met.
   The language, attitudes, and actions of the Council are different from any other group and this is one of the things that make Council members so special.
   So, if I may, I ask you, kindly, to pray for the members of our Pastoral Council today. Pray, also, for members of your Pastoral Council if you are from a different parish. They truly deserve a pat on the back and your prayers.

   It did . . . it did . . .
   Yesterday, I walked across the parking lot from the office to my house. My patootie froze solid and broke off right before I got to the front door. That, along with several fingers, toes, and other body parts.
   It is COLD out there!!!
   I was thinking about that, though, as I was preparing to write my blog entry for today. I was thinking, "Okay, Mike, what do you want to write? Is it going to be about a saint? About the parish? About the school? Is it going to be praising someone or something? Griping about someone or something? Hmmmm."
   Then it hit me.
   My toes -- the ones that are left, that haven't frozen and fallen off yet -- were tingling and I thought, "Ah, yes. I'll write about the weather!"
   And why, you may ask?
   Because it strikes me that I and a lot of people that I know have been complaining about the weather the past couple of days. It's too cold for us.
   In a few months, it will be too hot for us.
   Then it will be too rainy.
   Then, too dry.
   It always seems to be too something, doesn't it?
   Isn't that what human nature is all about?
   It looks for something about which to complain.
   Maybe because, in doing so, we feel better about ourselves because we make other people miserable as well or at least know that other people are just as miserable as we are.
   That is the secret weapon of a Christian. No, not making people miserable. A Christian wants to share his or her faith so that other people can feel good about themselves and so the Christian may know that other people believe as well.
   What would you rather do today, complain or be happy?
   I want to go for happy.
   So I think I will try to spread some faith today instead of some misery!
   I hope you can do the same...

   Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.
   His story is a very interesting one and one that resonates with many other saints -- and perhaps you and me -- as well.
   You see, when Thomas was five years old, his parents gave him to the Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino because they had high hopes that Thomas would chose the Benedictine way of life and, perhaps, become great some day. Maybe even become the abbot of Monte Cassino.
   Thomas, on the other hand, had other ideas.
   He eventually left Monte Cassino and the Benedictines and joined the Dominicans.
   His parents were beside themselves and they engineered Thomas' "kidnapping" by his brothers in the hopes that they could sway him from the Dominicans and have him return to and remain with the Benedictines.
   It was not to be the case.
   However, in the end, they did get their wish, in a manner of speaking. Their son did become great. His writings, which envelop the whole of Church theology, were and are critically acclaimed and a source of study for many in the Church even today.
   So, let's review.
   God has plans for us.
   We have plans for us.
   Other people have plans for us.
   Whom should we follow?
   All those who raised their hands for God, give yourselves a pat on the back!

   As winter continues on -- and it has tried to reassert itself the past couple of days with the temperatures dropping again -- people begin to look for sings of hope, for signs of spring.
   One of those signs has been happening lately. It is getting sunny earlier and earlier each day.
   Light really matters a lot. Without it, there would be life. Plants would die and, without them, so would we.
   The dark days of winter affect many people adversely. Without sunshine, many people become depressed.
   And, ultimately, with THE light, Jesus Christ, we would all lose the way and we would die.
   Christ, the light of the world, leads us each and every day of our lives. Allow Him to lead you today!

   Don't you just hate name droppers? They are often called all sorts of names.
   However, truth be told, I think we often feel a bit of a stir of jealousy when some names are dropped. We say to ourselves, "Wow. That person really knows so-and-so...!"
   Today the Church celebrates the feasts of two people who could easily be name droppers: Timothy and Titus.
   Timothy and Titus were contemporaries -- and close associates -- of St. Paul.
   They were people to whom Paul wrote some of his Epistles: The Letter of Paul to Timothy and The Letter of Paul to Titus.
   WOW!
   Can you imagine what it must have been like to know someone like St. Paul?! Dynamic!
   However, that emotion is from the perspective of history. I often wonder what it would have been like to be an actual contemporary and associate of Paul.
   Would I be worried that the authorities were going to come after me? Probably.
   Would I wonder why the work was so difficult? Why so many people were rejecting what I had to say about Jesus? Yeah.
   Would I think that being a disciple was not exactly a piece of cake? Most likely.
   But, in all of that, Timothy and Titus were people who marked the early Church with their presence and with their association with St. Paul.
   Now, as we celebrate the Feast of Timothy and Titus today, let us remember that we, like they were, are called to be heroic in struggle and completely faithful to the Lord.
   Good luck and God bless...