With Holy Week upon us, I recalled in the past when I had received a call from a Secretary of a Church I had attended with the invitation to be one of the 12 folks to get their feet washed by the Pastor on Holy Thursday!
Recently, as I went to take a promenade at the Baton Rouge City Park on one bright, sunny & winter morning, I reflected back upon the past and pondered some things during this holy season of Lent. It was a great way to get some healthy activity done and enrich more than just the physical mode to include emotional and spiritual exercises as well.
Music has been so integral to my life and faith walk. Like a few years ago when I was in the St. Jude Choir and our Leader, Nicholas Abraham, PhD had noted, even Scripture validates this for those of us who used to think we could never sing or play music: “Make a joyful NOISE (Not Sound) unto the Lord! (Psalm 100: 1)
There are countless persons, basilicas, churches, shrines, seminaries, convents, towns, and cities named after St. Joseph. My native country, Canada, has him as its patron.
Recently and in the past, it was fun to get together with family during the Thanksgiving Holidays to catch up on things and find out what folks had been up to lately. Besides celebrating the victories of LSU and the Saints, as well as not cooking, since we went in with our siblings and ordered turkey and all the fixings from Matherne's Supermarket, I was very intrigued by what my retired brother-in-law, Dale, shared with us about in his adventures with storage auctions.
Each November we enjoy fresh-picked apples, cranberries and pumpkin-spice everything as our excitement builds towards Thanksgiving. The church in the United States observes another celebration this month promoting vocation awareness.
Harvard psychologist Robert Coles, in describing the French mystic Simone Weil, once suggested that what she really suffered from and what motivated her life was her moral loneliness. What is that?
Each October the Catholic Church in the United States observes Respect Life Month as a time to focus on the protection of God’s precious gift of human life. The theme of the month varies from year to year, but it usually concentrates our attention on the issue of abortion.
Maybe I’m writing this and no one can relate but lately I have felt as though I am making priority for everyone else’s prayer requests and not my immediate family.
Summertime can be such a strange time. Blessed with a job related to education I get to spend it with my kids. This is both an enormous gift and a giant shift in routine.
We hit the road for a trip to the Grand Canyon in the first two weeks of June. Traveling 3,500 miles in a van is an experience I have never had. Once I digest all the “sanctification” that occurred I will write a different column about that. What I want to shout out in glory is how thankful I am to the Lord for giving me holy friends and “my angel.”
