Happy Sunday!

The dirt lot on the corner of 38th Street and Greenway in 1979 tells a story of a treasured land with a vision that will one day be built to worship God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Our Blessed Lord teaches that the Kingdom is like treasure and like a pearl. Precious items so valuable that joy moves the seeker to a radical reorientation of life.

Happy Sunday in July!

This week in our Sacred Scriptures at the Holy Mass, we are invited to look at God’s way of ruling the world and then to imitate it in a way that allows for human flourishing in life and love. God’s ways are really not harsh, indifferent or quick to destroy, thankfully. He is sovereign, yet mild. He gives room for repentance.

I began writing this piece by googling “how do you make soil fertile?” which should tell you everything you need to know about my own abilities as a gardener.

I remember seeing a packet of seeds in the store one summer as a child and convincing my mother to buy them. They were delphiniums, which bloom into a beautiful cone shape if you know what you’re doing. Alas, I didn’t.

I receive a lot of junk mail. I’m on a bunch of people’s asking-for-money lists, and so were the people who owned this house before me, and when you put it all together, it results in quite the pile of paper accumulating on my counter.

I leave it there because, while I have received this mail, I don’t want to receive it. Do you see the difference? To really receive someone or something, you have to look at it, assess it, make space for it. Accept it. Decide it will have a place in your home or your life or whatever, and give it that place.

For a long time, I didn’t understand why the virtual Masses of the pandemic were so wearisome to me. Theoretically, shouldn’t it be a tired mother’s dream, fulfilling her Sunday obligation from the couch, not having to worry how much noise the kids are making?

But it wasn’t. Seeing Mass without experiencing it left me hungry. It left me starving.

A few years ago, I met a woman in my parish who was a successful lawyer. Yet in her free time, she poured her energy into a nonprofit she founded to advocate for children with special needs. When I asked what inspired her, she spoke of her niece, who was born with disabilities. Her niece was both a glorious gift and a constant challenge. Out of that painful, beautiful experience, she felt called to create something lasting for other children and parents. The nonprofit thrived, not because she had mapped it all out, but because she was deeply moved to act.

John 6:51-58

When I was a young altar server, I once overheard two very different comments about the Eucharist. One person asked, “Is Father distributing the bread or the wine?” Later, another asked, “Can you go get Jesus from the tabernacle?” Same parish, same Mass, but two very different ways of speaking. I pondered: So, is it bread that we pretend is Jesus? Or is Jesus a tiny white thing in a box? I was utterly confused.