Well, I didn’t visit any markets, and I certainly didn’t buy a fat pig. Yet here I am having returned from a quick jaunt to my native New Jersey.
While there, a nephew gave me perhaps the best tee shirt I’ve ever worn. It was a birthday present.
I shall wear it with pride.
The title is taken from the title of a Fulton Sheen book about the priesthood.
So let me tell you about the priesthood.
This morning I witnessed one of my dearest friends, a priest, bury his mother.
We’ve known each other since we were classmates in seminary. I remember one of our professors telling us a story in class one day. It was the story of priest who was preparing to celebrate the funeral Mass of his mother. I think this was a liturgy class. A priest-friend of that priest said to him, “Today, let the church bury your mother.”
The implication was that the priest in question should let the rituals of Holy Mother Church play out in all their beauty, that he should offer the sacrifice in persona Christi and let Our Lord work through him.
This morning, my friend let the Church bury his mom because he was not his own. He is a man configured to Christ. I watched as he choked up at the final prayers of the Mass. I choked up too because I feel for him. When we got to the cemetery he was composed as he prayed the last prayers he would pray in the presence of the body of the woman who taught him to pray and who offered him to God to be His priest.
In the ancient rites, there is a beautiful moment during a priest’s ordination where his hands, until then bound, having just been anointed with oil, are wiped clean of that chrism with a cloth called a maniturgium. The new priest then offers as his first gift that same cloth to his mother. At her death, she is buried with the cloth so that symbolically she may offer it to Christ at her judgment.
“Look what I did for you; my Lord! I made a priest for you!”
I have been so blessed to see so many intimate moments in the lives of Our Lord’s holy priests. I have seen these ordinations and witnessed priests give their mothers and fathers and siblings and friends Holy Communion. And today I stood by my friend as his mother’s body was lowered into the earth, just down the hill from my own twin sister’s grave.
Thanks be to God for holy priests!
Thanks be to God, too, for holy mothers!
Pray for priests. Pray God send us more and pray for those He has claimed that the evil one not snatch them away.
Mary, Mother of Priests, pray for us!
I’m in the air again. This time time attend the funeral of the mother of a dear friend.
Please pray for her repose.
“Stir up Thy power, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that from the threatening dangers of our sins we may deserve to be rescued by Thy protection, and to be saved by Thy deliverance: Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.” – Collect of the First Sunday of Advent
Am I the only one who really needed to hear this prayer? Isn’t it amazing how Holy Mother Church knows exactly what her children need? Uniting oneself with the priest in offering this collect to God, certainly helps set the tone for the four weeks ahead. Also note, as my Missal says:
“The liturgical texts used during the four weeks of the season of Advent remind the faithful of the ‘absence of Christ’. Therefore, the Collects of Advent do not end with, ’Through Our Lord Jesus Christ,’ as during the rest of the year. – Notes on the First Part of the Liturgical Year, Roman Missal 1962, St: Mary’s Press
So where did He go?
Don’t worry… He’s coming.
Today is the feast of the Apostle St. Andrew, the first called by the Lord. There is a magnificent novena (prayed for 25 days) that begins today. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m linking to Ann Barnhardt’s brilliant post and also posting the text of the novena prayer below.
Like Ann, Andrew is my confirmation name as well. My family had the custom of using the Saint who’s feast was on your birthday.
Today is the 47th birthday of my beloved late twin sister and also the birthday of a nephew and… perhaps most significant for me, the birthday of my only daughter. I woke up this morning filled with gratitude to God Almighty for creating me and for giving me the Catholic faith and so many marvelous gifts.
My baby girl and I – she’s already into her teens – have already had our breakfast at Chick-fil-a and will be enjoying this beautiful Saturday together.
Thanks be to God for all His wonderful gifts!
“Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment at which the Son of God was born of a most pure Virgin in a stable at midnight in Bethlehem in the piercing cold. At that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, to hear my prayers and grant my desires. (Mention your intentions here) Through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His most Blessed Mother. Amen.”
Two days ago I posted requesting prayers for two mothers of two different priests who were in their final agonies.
One of these dear women has gone to her judgment.
Please pray for the repose of her soul.
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her!
“Times have changed/And we’ve often rewound the clock/Since the Puritans got a shock/When they landed on Plymouth Rock. If today/Any shock they should try to stem/‘Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock/Plymouth Rock would land on them!” -Cole Porter
Times have indeed changed; but some things remain the same. Take for an obvious example, the ancient and venerable Mass of the Holy Catholic Church.
For this trad dad, one thing that never changes is my love of Thanksgiving. I blame my own dad. He was a sucker for this holiday, and all the many traditions that he pasted on me seem to be unshakable (some to my dear wife’s eyerolling delight). There’s the playing of Christmas music beginning as early in the morning as possible while stuffing birds. There’s the brandy Manhattans taken a bit earlier than what is normally socially acceptable. There’s the annual watching of The Karen Carpenter Story – a family tradition since 1990 and yes, we are demented.
Then there are the usual traditions. Turkey, family, etc.
And of course there is Mass itself. How could we as a family not celebrate this or any other day without offering to God the Sacrifice of praise, begging His mercy and humbly adoring Him at the foot of Calvary?
I mentioned Dad. I’d like to tell you a little about this man since this was his day.
My father was an actuary. For those not in the know, an actuary is a mathematician who uses statistics and probabilities to figure contingency tables. The actuary carefully examines copious data sets. Then he uses these data sets to determine some very interesting things, like how long a person can be expected to live with reasonable certitude. You may ask who would need to know this kind of information. Insurance companies and any company setting aside funds for pension plans would absolutely need this knowledge. It’s complicated business and explaining what an actuary is can be just as tricky.
When I was a little boy of five years-old, Sr. Assunta (my first grade teacher) asked each of the children in class what their parents did for work. I went home that evening and asked my father what he did. He replied, “I’m an actuary,” while letting a puff of Prince Albert tobacco smoke out of his pipe. I returned to school the next day and relayed the information to Sister.
“But what is that?” she asked.
So I went home again that evening and asked my father to explain himself. This time the pipe smoke billowed out from behind the Wall Street Journal as he sat in his favorite chair, watching Jeopardy.
“An actuary, son, is a place where they bury dead actors.”
Even at the age of five, I knew that his answer could not be correct because he had given me a location and not a description. Nevertheless, I returned to school the following day and relayed the information to Sister.
Sister laughed.
Having sent me home for a third day to figure this out, I now look back and realize that Sister was just playing a mental chess game as much as old Dad was and I was their intermediary.
“Daddy, Sister says to be real.”
“OK son, an actuary” – and remember the whole thing about probabilities and statistics – “is the man who brings a bomb on a plane because while the probability of there being one bomb on a plane are negligible, the probability of there being two bombs is infinitesimal.”
The pipe smoke still billowed, this time with a slight chuckle.
“Sister, my father said…”
I never saw the woman laugh so hard. Until the next day because, oh yes, she sent me home for the next round.
“Daddy, what is an actuary FOR REAL?!” I said growing tired of this dialogue I really didn’t understand.
“Son,” he said, “Go tell Sister that an actuary is the guy who uses the last urinal in the men’s room because it cuts in half the probability of his shoes getting wet.”
Pipe smoke billowed, hardy chuckle, and now shaking shoulders behind that newspaper.
I don’t know why she found this so amusing. Now I look back and realize it was her Irish, Bayonne, school teacher nun sensibilities. She gave me two gold stars.
Mom was none too pleased when I relayed the whole thing at dinner that Friday evening.
“Daddy!” she said, “Have you no decency? Sending the boy in to tell those things to the nun?!”
At the next parent-teacher night, Sister assured her she thoroughly enjoyed the jokes and all was well.
But just so you know, an actuary is a mathematician who uses statistics and probabilities to figure contingency tables.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I’ll always think of these incredible dad moments on this day and give thanks that I had such a wonderful man to raise me with love and humor and above all, faith.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy a classic Christmas tune on me.
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 