Furthermore…

Blowhard at cocktail party:

“…and that’s when I got angry at God and became an atheist!”

Faith formation teacher to teenager:

“Sit down, Jeremy. We have more important things to discuss than whether there will be Christian rock in Heaven!”

Probably taking shape from thoughts about the Holy Trinity this Trinity Sunday, I found myself visualizing a cross or crucifix which combined the Holy Trinity and the Holy Family graphically. The upper vertical carries some representation of God the Father, such as a bearded ancient, and below that, a representation of the Holy Spirit, such as a dove, and at the junction of the horizontal and vertical beams, the face or corpus of Jesus, as seems suitable for a particular rendering, thus the Holy Trinity.

On the horizontal or crossbeam are depicted the faces of the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph, with Mary to the right of Jesus, thus the Holy Family.

At the foot of the cross I would show a gathering of saints or believers, standing for the Church and its people.

Preacher:

“Before I give you my text, and my message, I request the kids with phones not to text message!”

A bunch of us from the parish teamed up as volunteers to prepare and serve a meal to the homeless at the local Christian Coalition. All went quite well for a first time effort by mostly inexperienced folk. Without the blessing of the facilities and resources of the organization, already in place, we couldn’t have done it, or much of anything else.

For us Catholics, one wonderful sidelight was discovering on the wall of the dining hall in a prominent place a poster showing Jesus offering His Divine Mercy. It is such a good feeling be reminded that He “goes before.”

Preacher in pulpit:

“My message today is on Remembering Eternity, dedicated to those of you who keep looking at your watches!”

I got a feed on my computer from the New York Times telling about GodTube (www.godtube.com) which is a kind of Christian-oriented YouTube. It’s been around a while but was new to me. I looked it over, was pleased with what I learned, and joined. I was dimly aware of YouTube, but never got involved with it, if only because my computer is relatively primitive and doesn’t process TV-type stuff well,  if at all. But I saw it as an area I wanted to become a bit familiar with, and discovering GodTube motivated me to see what goes on in those precincts.  For the time being, I joined a group about Christian writing, and another about Christian comedy. There’s a little bit of a Catholic presence there, so I don’t feel like I’m casting adrift and cutting my tie line to the mother ship .

Politician to reporter:

“Of course I’m a practicing Catholic. I just don’t practice what they preach!”

Our church is planning a day of recollection with the theme “The Priesthood of the Faithful.” Mass will be celebrated as part of it, and at a meeting our Director of Ministries mentioned that we need to have  some appropriate music. So just as an exercise I sat down with our Word & Song book to try and pick out some hymns that might enhance the program. I only saw one title explicitly including ‘priest’ (Priestly People) which, although I believe its message is related and would bless us, it is not familiar to us, so I passed over it because the singing would probably be ragged

I was looking for songs that would convey a spirit of encouragement toward entering into the role of lay priesthood. I picked out one Psalm setting (Be With Me Lord) and seven hymns - All Will Be Well; Christ Be Beside Me; Here I Am, Lord; Just a Closer Walk With Thee (a personal favorite); Lift High the Cross; The Summons; and  We Are Called. We’ll probably only use two or three.

Frowning career woman advising newly hired girl who’s said the wrong thing:

“If you want to get on the fast track here, don’t be saying things like ‘pregnant silence’!”