Greetings in Christ

Last weekend, I was at a local vendor's show with my Catholic books. It was a washout and I barely covered my costs.

One of my first visitors, however, was a fellow from another booth. He seemed to know what he was looking at and we began to chat.

It turns out, he is the Anglican husband of a Lutheran minister. He was pleasant, but began to talk about the Catholic parish near his wife's church. He made some mildly disparaging remarks about the priest, recently retired, from the village.

What really got me irritated though, was his cavalier mention that the church did not collapse when he and his wife received (took?) Communion at the Mass celebrating the Catholic priest's retirement. He said that the sister who gave him Communion was not struck by lightening for doing so.

I decided I didn't like this fellow much, even if he was a bibliophile.

I do not tend to be quick with a reply to commentary such as this fellow provided. Later, it occurred to me that telling him that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church, so it is entirely reasonable that their illicit reception of Communion would not cause thunderbolts or earthquakes. It does not mean that their illicit reception was of no consequence.

As for the Sister who was a minister of Holy Communion...it is not her place to say who is or is not eligible to receive.

To me, this man's attitude, and I suppose that of his wife, is simply bad manners. Imposing his beliefs, which apparently are that intercommunion is right and good, on the Catholic Church which clearly teaches otherwise while he is present at Mass, is just not nice!

Maybe next time something like this happens, I will be faster off the mark to respond.

God Bless

A Matter of Time

Hi Again

Wow. It's been a while. Things have been busy to be sure.

Lent is nearly done and I haven't even mentioned it! And I won't today, either.

Recently, I picked up a book belonging to one of my girls. It was a story of a young girl who discovered a way to travel back in time, in this case to the time of her mother's adolescence.

It was a nice little book to read. And I realized that I have read books with this theme several times as I grew up.

What is our fascination with time travel? I remember reading War of the Worlds by HG Wells many years ago and my strong interest in it.

More recently, I discovered a time travel of sorts. It was in the process of listening to a talk during RCIA given by our priest at the time. I was also an instructor, but this time I was definitely among the instructed!

I believe I've mentioned in a previous blog entry kairos and chronos time.

In our society, as well as European society, we live with chronos time. Time goes in a line and when it passes, it will not come by again. Kairos time is the time that God lives. Everything is there, past, present and future, all at once.

When we celebrate Mass, we are brushing up with kairos time. We are present in the death of Christ on the cross and at His resurrection. This is not a play. We have the real thing, right now and until the time when Christ returns to us in glory.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is being celebrated in the world somewhere at virtually every moment of every day. And yet it's all the same Mass. It's been going on now for about 2000 years, since it was instituted by Christ Himself just before He was crucified.

So, how 'bout some REAL time travel?