Category Archives: Catholic Life

Sleeplessness Before Holy Hour

03 Saturday Feb 2018

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Two AM. At three-thirty, I will drive down to St Benedict for my Holy Hour, my time before the Precious Body of Christ, my time with Our Lord. I don’t really understand metaphysics. What I do know is that this time has been transformative for me. So I continue to give Our Lord this hour in particular every month.

It is not about good social policy, social justice, or helping the poor. But this time makes me a better Catholic, a better Christian.

Holy Hour makes a crack in the wall of selfishness that surrounds my being. Through this crack enters a serenity a peace. The serenity comes from knowing that I don’t have to change the whole world, just me. I can be a little more respectful, a little quieter, more accepting of the way people are, people like my wife or my children, for starters.

We want grand solutions to the problems of this world. We think these solutions to problems like war or intolerance or poverty can be constructed as if those solutions were Saturn rockets or polio vaccines. Maybe the grand solution is by losing, a little bit every day, that wall of selfishness. That selfishness is not only our greed or hunger or lust, but also our hurts and our pains that we use to separate ourselves from others.

By the way, none of that losing is easy. It demands a daily surrender to God.

Sunday Well Spent

29 Monday Jan 2018

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In my fantasy, I am drinking French roast coffee made in a French press pot with freshly ground beans. I am eating a butter croissant slathered with butter and fig jam. I am reading the New York Times at a leisurely pace in no hurry to do anything in particular.

In reality, I made the coffee, prepared the croissant, took the papers off the porch, sat in my “comfy chair” (imagine Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition), found the Mississippi John Hurt Delta Blues recordings on YouTube my friend recommended. As I opened the paper, I acknowledged to my innermost self that I have zero (0) interest in reading the paper. I am not going to spend this Sunday, damp, chilly, and rainy though it may be, getting agitated by current events. Why? I have a whole damn week for that. Shortly after Mississippi John Hurt finishes Sliding Delta and Charley Patton does Jesus Is A Dying Bed Maker, I go upstairs, put on starched white shirt, black trousers, hounds’ tooth jacket, black tie, and shiny black shoes. I’m going to Mass.

My soul needs it all. The time with God, sitting with my friend Madeleine, and watching the families together, especially the children. Unbeknownst to me, it is Catholic Schools Week, so the school children process in and sit together in the front pews. The children are wearing their school,uniforms, the boys with white polo shirts with the St Benedict Crest, while the girls wear the grey plaid jumpers. (Is it really 2018, not 1958?) The oft-satirized Drill Instructor Nuns are a thing of the past. The teachers are all lay people.

The Mass ends just as my back can take sitting, kneeling, and genuflecting no longer. Now comes the piece de resistence. We sing the beautiful Alma Redemptoris Mater for the recessional. Father Tony notes my buzz cut with approval when I shake his hand at the door. He gives my noggin a rub, a most friendly and welcome gesture. He is human. Whaddaya know!

Home. Then we take a trip to a pizzeria for white spinach pizza, then back home. Mrs CorC? has work. I take a nap, debating whether I really want to swim today, aching body and all. I go, complete 2500 meters. I’m glad I did. It means that my average is 5 workouts per week, 20 swims in 28 days. The pain is considerably lessened. Thank you, endorphins.

I am especially proud that I watched no sports this Sunday or the whole weekend for that matter. I have had enough. In my head, I hear Dylan Thomas read:

“I see the Boys of Summer in their ruin…”

It is over.

Instead I listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rogers & Hart songs. Such a voice, such delightful songs. I secretly long for a woman who loves Rogers & Hart and Ella as much as I do. That would be, well, perfect.

Simply perfect.

‘Tis The Season….

14 Thursday Dec 2017

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I have a love/hate relation with Christmas. Painful memories. Fond memories. I remember my father had to leave one year the day after Christmas to do a year-end audit in Birmingham, Alabama. I just wanted him to stay, probably not as much as he wanted to stay. Nowhere nearly as much as he did.  Christmases with my children. And thanks to divorce, Christmas without them.

And then there is the Holy Mass for the Solemnity of the Incarnation. I have been to Midnight Masses, and Christmas Day Masses. The serenity I associate with the Mass is profound. The silences between the chanted portions of the Masses are equally as moving as the chants.  And the Gloria is exquisite.  If one is lucky enough to be at a Mass where The Credo is chanted (the Missa Angeles especially), it is especially moving. He became Man and dwelt among us. The Incarnation will always be a Mystery. There are things we will never figure out. Mysteries.

Other music is also singularly special.  Händel’s Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Brittain’s Ceremony of Carols. Then there is the exquisite Marian Anthem, for the season,  Alma Redemptoris Mater, the simple tone Gregorian Chant.

Most importantly Christmas is the orange in the toe of my hand-knitted Christmas stocking. Because St Nicholas remembers that for the longest time, an orange, a simple orange, for Heaven’s sake, was something special.

Love/Hate. Loss of family, Presence of Our Lord, the perfunctory acts of charity, birds taking Mylar “icicles”  building their nests.

It’s a jumble. A delicious jumble.

23:36. EST. 7. XII. 2017

08 Friday Dec 2017

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Here I am at the end of a day. After a five day respite, I went swimming again. I had no idea how much I missed it. I put on six pounds in six days. Don’t ask how. But the appetite  seems to ramp up when I am idle. Today I swam 2500 meters. During the swimming respite, I had 2 leaf raking sessions in those 5 days.  My  back was in agony for about twenty four hours post raking session. Aleve© helped some. Still I thought I had screwed up my back in another place different from the fusion site of two years ago.

Live and learn. Work out at least five days a week. I re-learned that old rule.

I went to the Vigil Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It was a very reverent Mass in English. Father Tony M is a good priest.  I think he loves his vocation. I told him about my elder son’s autism. He seemed genuinely touched that I shared this news with him.

Now I am sitting recollecting my day, waiting for the chick movie on Lifetime Channel to end.  All in all, not a bad day.

Why Am I Awake?

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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Most of you know I go to Nocturnal Eucharistic Adoration on First Fridays. (It’s a Catholic tradition). I choose my Holy Hour between 4 and 5 AM. That means I’m groggy and half-awake for most of  Saturday morning. All in all, it’s not a bad feeling, compelled, to just sit, watch the world, and be with my thoughts.  The contemplation of Holy Hour transfers from Our Lord to the world at large.

I could think about my frustrations, how I’m not getting what I want, such as sex, time with my adult children, and why the Culture isn’t acting the Way I Want It To Act.

Big Parenthetical Aside Coming

(Ironic, isn’t it, that no matter what our values and opinions are, we think our set of values and opinions are the only ones that bring true happiness to people. That assumes that happiness is our primary purpose in life. I will leave that question of what our purpose is open for now)

Rather than dwell on frustration, appreciation is far more worthy pursuit. Friendship. Beauty. Love. For example, a friend brought her dog to AA yesterday. Seeing that dog made me happy. I totally get how therapy dogs can be beneficial.

I just read where two of my blogosphere friends met for the first time. I’m glad, and I wish I could have been there too.

Happy Resentmentholding Day.

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, food, Sobriety

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  • The Aztecs had a rite of human sacrifice wherein a priest would excise the heart of a female victim from her body with an obsidian dagger and offer that still beating heart to the Aztec deity. We should not be astonished at the miraculous conversion to Catholic Christianity of the indigenous persons of Mexico in a little over a decade after the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  If some anticlerical secularists in our culture are to be believed, we should be resentful that the indigenous religion was abandoned. Those nostalgic for the old religion are obviously in no danger of having their own hearts ripped out.
  • So we have another Thanksgiving and America has an opportunity to express gratitude. How can one even begin to express gratitude in our Culture of Entitlement? Gratitude makes us uncomfortable. We do not ever want to be uncomfortable!!!! Never. Ever. 
  • Are you grateful for the modicum of comfort you enjoy? Why be grateful for something you are entitled to? If we remember the Pilgrims and others who celebrated Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago, we can always dredge up every wrong committed by European immigrants subsequently from 1620 who treated others shamefully and shabbily, wrongly. That will stifle, even smother, this humbling spirit of gratitude. My experience among my fellow  recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in my circle of friends is that gratitude has to be instilled among us.  We feel entitled to feel good.  We drunks and druggies act on our sense of entitlement by using.
  • The Culture of Entitlement and Resentment is fueled by the fires of Envy.  One is entitled to a free college education, free healthcare, safe neighborhoods, clean air, clean water, and somebody else, not you, has to pay for it. Those who have more than you obviously stole it, in one way or another.
  • If you don’t have all that you desire, the proper attitude is covetousness directed at those who have more, not gratitude for what you do have.
  • It’s a prescription for discontent.  So the logical break from a day of Thanksgiving is to rush out and jump back on the acquisition merry-go-round. That these are purchases intended as gifts is merely a different salve for our egos, proving to ourselves that not only are we savvy consumers, but think of others, almost as much as we think about ourselves, but not quite.
  • Gratitude. Get some.

Holy Hour. Short Fiction? 

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, loneliness, Love and stuff

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Perhaps there is no fiction. Perhaps the stories are how we tell the truth. The only way. And the dreams are the distillate of the waking hours.

The First Friday brings Nocturnal Adoration. The faithful sit quietly before the Consecrated Host, The Precious Body Of Our Lord, clothed, as it were, in the exquisite monstrance. The monstrance sits on the low altar.  And those who sit with Our Lord in the Form of Bread, contemplate, meditate, pray. Those who sit with Him at Four AM, sometimes fight back sleep, but always return to His Presence. This morning, Joseph brought just his Rosary and a prayer book containing the Memorare, which he had yet to memorize despite how many years.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored  thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not  my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me.    

There were souls in Purgatory to pray for. And those here with us, with burdens too grievous to bear alone.                                                                       

 

There were Mysteries to be contemplated, Sorrowful, Joyful, Glorious. And hopefully Fruits to be blessed with.  One day. Some day. Now there were the beads, the prayers., the thoughts which fly to God via Our Lady.

In The Name….. I believe,,,, Our Father….., Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary.

….now and at the hour of our death.

 Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy.

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy….

The hour wore on in the silent church. When it ended he knelt at the altar rail before The Precious Body of Our Lord, blessed himself (In the Name of….) and left, dipping  his fingers in the font, blessing himself again.

He returned to the empty bed, yet more silence. Even the birds weren’t awake. Or did he refuse to listen?

He put his head on the pillow. Her scent lingered still. Patchouli.  How much longer would it remain? How long had it been?

Marriage. Such a fancy word. Powerful. All enveloping. Every day until….  A shared life until that end, which came with her in that hospital bed the hospice people brought, along with the morphine or whatever it was.  Her fingers touched the beads of her Rosary as she drifted away. The priest, Father O’Hara, gave her Last Rites, and she was on the way.

Fourth Glorious Mystery, The Assumption,  The Fruit of this Mystery is the Grace of a Happy Death.

That day for him that never ended.

Sunday Morning

10 Sunday Sep 2017

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Mr. Good Catholic here managed to sleep through any chance of getting to 11:00 Mass. There is always the 4:30 Extraordinary Form (Latin ) Mass.  

I woke up fully embracing the gift of being alive. I should eat something, I suppose. The sun is shining, the temperature is pleasant. 

This is the first Sunday of the NFL season. Pro football is one of my guilty pleasures. I admit it.  Other guilty pleasures of mine include fried salt herring,  Looney Tunes from the 30’s and 40’s,  and Krispy Kreme Donuts.

As near as I know, our Florida friends and family are safe.  Several of them are in law enforcement, so I suspect they will be needed. My brother-in-law’s mother lives in Bradenton. She is around 90 and her daughter took her to her home in Georgia. We just hope she has a home to return to.  Praying for the folks in Florida.

Choosing

19 Saturday Aug 2017

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Celibate or Chaste? I no longer consider my marriage that lacks a sexual dimension to be a “less than” or inferior bond. It is what it is. And the love between my wife and me is wholly satisfying. 

I believe our highly sexualized culture is a great deception. That happiness based on sexual fulfillment is an unattainable state and rests at the heart of this deception.  

So I’m choosing chastity until we have a sexually active aspect to this marriage.   As a Catholic marriage, we recognize God in all Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity as a partner in this bond.  Our marriage is our Vocation. I am saying good bye to the illusions of the erotic fantasy world.