I FIRMLY RESOLVE

If you are Catholic and you didn’t make a New Year’s resolution may I suggest that you don’t bother.  They are quite ridiculous for the most part.  When was the last time you heard anybody at a New Year’s Eve party talk about being successful at fulfilling the previous year’s resolutions?  Most resolutions are wishes and seem so big that after trying for a month (or a day) they are conveniently forgotten.  

Far more realistic are the resolutions we make

all during the year particularly when preparing for and celebrating the sacrament of confession.  For those who practice regularly (monthly) we have the constant reviewing of what is going well in our lives and where we are missing the mark, to identify weaknesses, build on strengths, and making resolutions to do better over the next four weeks.  Unlike a New Year’s resolution, it isn’t fixing everything with one day’s fell swoop resolve, it is the inching every day toward that better version of the self with the constant help of self review and Divine assistance.  It is a far better plan than a once-a-year promise made after one glass of champagne too many.

So perhaps there is a great New Year’s resolution after all: to make better and more regular use of the sacrament of resolutions: The sacrament of Penance. 

JOHN ALLEN'S CATHOLIC STORIES TO WATCH IN 2013

Happy octave of Christmas!  As the clock clicks away toward the beginning of a New Year (and since the latest prediction of the end of the world was yet again so disappointing) we might as well start looking ahead.  The following three topics are “Catholic stories to watch in the 2013” according to John Allen.

 

BEING DIPLOMATIC:  What will be the metal of the person sent to the Vatican as our diplomatic representative by President Obama?  Whoever it is that is picked will be very telling as to how seriously the Obama regime values a relationship with this city-state.  On the one hand it could be handed as a reward to a Catholic that helped get Obama re-elected – someone with little power and no real agenda.  Or it could be a heavy hitter that shows that the United States is serious about working with this small but powerful entity to bring about good in the world.  Only a deeper trek into 2013 will tell where this story will go.

 

FREEDOM:  Religious freedom will be heavy on the minds of Catholics this year.  We might have our feathers in a ruffle because we cannot have manger scenes or where crucifixes but that is not what is raising eyebrows at the Vatican.  Granted, these are sad things but we miss (in our little bubble as we tend to be in the United States) that in many places people are afraid of losing their lives over their faith, not just a paycheck. 

 

According to the International Study on Human Rights, 80% of all violations of religious freedom are against Christians.  (Not something you hear in the news, huh?)  The PEW Foundation reports that 137 nations report religious harassment, and Aid to the Church in the World, a Catholic Charity under the direction of the Holy See, reports that 150,000 people are killed each year for their faith or for carrying out charitable acts in the name of faith.  This will be on the mind of the Vatican this year.

 

GET YOU PROGRAMS HERE:  One of the things that drove me nuts during the papacy of Blessed John Paul II was the decade’s long reports on how frail and near death he was.  We should all be so blessed to have been able to work as hard as he did in our good health as he did in his poor health.  He was like a candle you couldn’t blow out.

 

Well, the same reports are starting to circulate around about our current pontiff.  Names are already surfacing about who might be the next pope. 

 

It was difficult for me to think of having a new pope when JP II died.  After all, he was elected pope when I was in junior high school and continued to be pope well into my priesthood.  It seems like Benedict is just getting started in comparison.  None-the-less, names are already surfacing.  Who will be the next Vicar of Christ – who are the shining stars that are put forth?  Chances are we haven’t the slightest clue who it will be but that doesn’t stop people from having fun giving a go at predicting.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May it be a year of blessings for you!

Hey Australia - Hope you enjoyed sleeping while we got to go to Mass today!

Pride cometh before the fall.

(Just looked at the post again - the above sentence is about the video - not Australians)

The Shelf - Short Film - watch more funny videos

If you can't view this video go here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

AND SOLEMNITY OF MARY THE MOTHER OF GOD!

AND WORLD PEACE DAY!

GUEST BLOG

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank His Holiness, Pope Benedict for guest blogging for today's post. Here is his message for World Peace Day

And for a little bit of silliness - I came across this video the other day. It is of a record that my sister had when I was but a wee little one. One day I dropped her record on the floor and a large chunk came out of it. It is a silly song (we had it in English) and nobody we sang it to ever believed that it existed. A couple of years ago I found the record at an antique shop and righted the great wrong I had done as a child. Here is a video in Spanish (you really can find anything on the Internet) for your holiday - holy day - listening pleasure. Make sure that you sound is turned WAY up.

In a little quiet town, just South of the Mexican border

There lived a lovely Juanita, a banana grower's daughter

She longed to sing at the opera but her father laughed and made fun

Still Juanita would sing each day in the fields as soon as her work was done

Juanita moved to the city in search of fortune and fame

It didn't take more than a couple of songs,

she had won the world's acclaim

Her father back home was astounded, his Juanita Banana a star?

He burned down the trees,

he moved to the city and he bought himself a guitar!

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE

If people look at Christians and think us odd for the celebration we undertake marking things they site as mythical at best, I say equally as strange is this whole idea of New Years. What is New Years after all? Why should a new year begin on January 1st? You’d think that it would start on an equinox, perhaps the spring one as the world begins to enter into new life – well – that is – if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere.

For that matter, why start a day at midnight? Not everyone does. Why not have at, say, 8:00? Then we could toast the New Year with champagne along with the desert course at dinner and then go promptly to bed before we do anything we regret like the gentleman at the gathering I was at last year – and - well, that’s another story. I just hope he got some help.

Of course, much of the world does not follow our calendar and does not mark January 1st as the beginning of anything, let alone being January or the 1st. In fact, even we admit that we are not quite sure that calendar is quite on. Give or take three years we say. Not even our liturgical calendar quite matches up with this. (Is it not interesting though as we discovered earlier this year that whatever calendar we should adopt it is of our Tradition that a week must contain seven days?)



Time becomes very relative when speaking with someone who just doesn’t get it. No, I’m not talking about your sister who can’t seem to show up for anything on time, more like my Dad who, in the depths of Alzheimer’s has completely lost the gist of time. Day/night, month/year, breakfast/dinner time, he simply smiles and says, “Huh, what do you know?” (Though for some odd reason he still loves his watch.)

What if we were able to inhabit another planet? What would happen to the marking of years or hours? How would we communicate? (Maybe we would have to start a star date like on Star Trek.) One would have to figure out what relationship one’s own time zone is to that of one on a different planet whose days might be longer or shorter. “What time is it there? 2:00 am? I thought it was noon. Oh, that was last month you say.”

What if they got to celebrate Christmas more often than we do because their planet travels around the (a) sun more quickly? Kids would cry that it was unfair that their cousins got to live on planet X because they got presents twice as often as they did. Or what if the planet just kind of glided through space? What would be used to mark (or would there even be) days?

There are too many holidays right now anyway. It would be nice to spread them out a little bit more. We could use a bigger party in February. Things tend to get a little ouchy just then when you are housebound because of the snow.

Just the same, I am pleased to wish you a very blessed arbitrary marking of the passing of an artificial construct of convenience and pray that you may enjoy many more of them or of the alternate particular construct you might be observing from the various options from around the world (or other planetary or otherwise systems).

I wonder if in keeping with diversity and the ever expanding world economy that greeting will ever become popular in the retail world?