BG45 Posted December 29, 2013 Author Share Posted December 29, 2013 How even... You are a freak of nature and I envy your bath-taking skills. p.s. I hope you had a Merry Christmas. :) Why thank you, I do try to keep my freakishness polished! And the phone was on the closed toilet lid lol. Thanks, hope you had a very Merry Christmas as well! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 1, 2014 Author Share Posted January 1, 2014 Happy New Year Phatmass!! (It's a holy day of obligation!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Yup! I dealt with it and got up early to go to the 9am Mass at my parish. I wish I could have gone to the Midnight Mass at the FSSP Parish. It was a high Mass too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneLine Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 (edited) Well you can check in on my rant on Open Mic about the travails of TRYING TO KEEP this requirement in the land of 'since it is a holiday we will limit ourselves to one Mass in our parish.... and not tell you when it is.... but you can trust us that: * It won't be the same as the usual Holy day of Obligation Schedule (because it is a HOLIDAY) * It won't be at the same time as a Sunday Mass (again, because it is a HOLIDAY) * We will run it at an ungodly hour like 9AM (when many people were up later than usual to see the new year in and might want to sleep in!) and * We won't put it on the parish web page NOR on the phone message system (because we are keeping last year's resolution of totally baffling the Parish). It actually took me about 15 calls to locate a parish with a live human who could confirm that YES!!!!! Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Daly City, California was Actually having THREE MASSES in English and ONE in Spanish on NEW YEAR'S DAY! (So a special prayer for their parish, and free advertising!!!!!) http://www.olphparishdc.org/msd.html And... I just got the first telemarketing robo call of the year! :bananarap: Praying for them, too..... :evil: Happy new year, everyone!!!!! Edited January 1, 2014 by AnneLine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 I guess I am rather blessed with my local parishes. They are good about publishig holy days of obligation and having a couple different options for Mass at each parish. (At my parish alone we had a 5pm vigil mass, a 9am and an 11am). I know at the FSSP parish they had 11pm adoration before midnight high Mass. I soo wanted to go to that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Oh a high Mass! That would've been amazing! But hey, TheresaThoma, you still got to Mass!! Did a Vigil Mass here personally. Though FSSP sounds amazing...pretty blessed here too. Fr. C., here at home, always mentions them during the weekend Masses and puts it in the bulletin so no one can claim to not know. They moved our morning one from 8am to 11am to encourage more folks to attend. AL, just read that thread and went o.o at the adventure. I do not like the sound of your parish, no offense. I'll take mine and TheresaThoma's! (As well as the one back at school which is amazing about holy days too.) Glad you found a parish that worked though! And nothing wrong with giving a good solid place like that some free advertising, none at all! :) Happy New Year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneLine Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) Actually, mine IS a good parish, BG!!!! I just think that they have stopped thinking about things from the outside in... and are thinking of them from the inside out! That was something that was drilled into us when I worked at the One Stop Career Center. It didn't MATTER what our intentions were in providing service.... if the people coming into the center didn't get to the right part of the Center, then what we thought we were doing wouldn't matter. The problem here is that we have a priory of friars who get it that people want to sleep in a bit, and becuase THEY get up at 5:30 each morning, getting up by 8 sounds like a real gift! And to them, it is! The problem is they LIVE there, and they don't get it that we have to travel to and from the parish!!!! So... they offered a very lovely thing -- a 2 hour adoration, benediction, solemn Te Deum from 10-midnight and a champagne reception at midnight... .and then THEY fell into their beds to arise 7 hours later. I think because it wasn't an issue for THEM to get to Mass, they just don't realize it can be for some of the rest of us. And it never occurred to them that some of us would have liked a MASS to be part of the offering at midnight! WE still had to go home.... and had to find a Mass!!!! I am thinking maybe might be worth a contact to the Parish AND to the Diocese about this one... I just don't think they have thought it through!!! And I HATE the 'one mass on holidays' idea. They should be open to having their 'holiday' on a different day. Come on.... I'll even let 'em have 2 days off for working the holiday..... Funny collateral story -- Mr. AL and I took my very dear Friend Fr. M out for lunch last month. He's 93! And what a great guy. At one point over lunch the topic of 'finding a Mass while on vacation' came up - and he seemed kind of non-plussed that it could be an issue... never had been one for him. And he did a double take and then got a huge smile on his face when we pointed out, delicately, that HE could have Mass whenever he wanted it, but we had to go hunt for one... and admitted he had never seen it quite that way, but we were making a good point! Edited January 2, 2014 by AnneLine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 That all makes a lot of sense with that added context! I imagine you're completely right about all of that, and holy cow at a 93 year old priest!! I laughed out loud here at home when I read your (good) point, it's not an issue for him to find Mass, since he can celebrate it on vacation himself!! One of the priests at school said he loves going to Mass as a parishoner sometimes while on vacation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 Looking about the Mass this morning, I could not help but notice all the dour faces. Though it was with good cause; only about half the regulars had made it to the 7am Mass at my parish at home, due in no small part to the cold. The first thing that hit me was the saying attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila, "God save me from sour-faced saints!". The second was, "Good grief BG, try smiling yourself why don't you?" Mass is always good to me in one secular regard, and that is in reminding me of what a hypocrite I can be! Whether it's while praying a penitential prayer, or even just a recognition that I'm frowning too. That, my friends, is known as an epiphany, and fitting that it happens on Epiphany. Epiphany is the day when we celebrate the coming of the three wise men to worship at the feet of the Christ child. Their gifts are highly symbolic even. The gold representing Jesus's kingship. The frankincense a gift fitting of God's own High Priest, and then the last gift...myrrh, a burial ointment, a sign of how this was all going to end in thirty-three years. More than just bearing symbolic gifts, the magi themselves also represent something greater. Us. And I don't mean to speak with hubris as if we're better than anyone else. It is my guess that few, if any, who read this post will be of Jewish descent, yet we all worship Jesus Christ as the Lord. The children of Abraham, in faith, are primarily gentiles. The Epiphany shows us the first occurrence where gentiles come before the Christ and pay Him homage as a King. They are the first, but they are not the last. Paul and Peter will fight over issues related to gentile believers in the early Church and even by the end of the first century, a number of gentile followers could be found throughout the Roman Empire. Eventually Christianity would become the Empire's state religion, with the gentile followers vastly outnumbering those of the people that the Christ was born into. Missionaries would go forth across the world over the next centuries, sometimes at the point of the sword, other times with but their words to gird them. Two millenia later, we enter the scene...two billion followers of the Christ, almost all of us gentiles who follow in the footsteps of those magi at the Epiphany. It's been a long road from three men who came to pay homage, but we continue it, and those after us will do the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 Wonderful reflection BG! Thank you for sharing it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 Thanks :) It was brought on by the opening of the homily at home at Mass. "Italian altar servers wearing Mexican chasubles (sp?) given to them by African nuns while a Swedish priest with an Irish last name is celebrating the Mass. I think we're doing a good representation of gentiles, just like the magi did." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 8, 2014 Share Posted January 8, 2014 Ok that is more than a bit confusing with all those nationalities! Still really cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted January 9, 2014 Author Share Posted January 9, 2014 Haha, yeah it is. And I thought it was cool when he said it! Confession was surprisingly humorous tonight...not normally a Sacrament one thinks of like that. I can tell, because what happened was before we began. An old woman and I tried to out-nice each other on who could go first, when suddenly this stream of children goes between us. We try to let the kids go before us, when we're told they're just up there to look at the vocations chapel by the confessional! So I sort of quickly went, "You can go first" and ducked back in the sanctuary. :hehe2: Yes, I was there first, but she was barely able to stand, and darnit, I didn't want her to fall over and hurt herself due to waiting on my sins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 That is funny! At my parish we have a line of chair set up for people who are waiting for confession. It simplifies a lot of things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MissyP89 Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Sooooo I heard this talk. And it blew. My mind. You can listen to the whole thing online. It's radically changed the way I look at confession -- though I think the other big key is finding the right priest, someone that makes you feel secure. http://www.catholicity.com/cds/healing.html I float around to various parishes now from week to week. Now that Mom-Mom's gone, I really don't need to be on that end of town anymore. I go occasionally out of a sense of obligation -- we are not getting married there, but Monsignor is still handling paperwork with the parish near Rowan, so. I've been enjoying going to the parish where my family grew up. Their vicar is a 60something rough-and-tumble Italian guy, and I love him to bits. Nothing shocks him, and he treats me right. Add that a friend from high school goes there (someone to sit with FINALLY!!!!), and I'm almost feeling at home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now