AN ASH WEDNESDAY STORY

I believe it was Ash Wednesday, 1983. 

I was living and teaching in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and was living through a particularly challenging time. 

So Ash Wednesday, that year, had a more than normal personal meaning to me. 

In those days I used to ride my bike to and from my job at a local Catholic high school, about a 7 mile ride each way. 

That afternoon, which was particularly hot, and which was in what we call the "dry season" in the tropics, I saw smoke rising in the direction towards which I was pedaling home. 

As I came down the hill which sloped toward the beach near my home, I saw that the entire area around the place where I and a friend lived had been burnt black. 

There was about a hundred yards between the paved road and my home that was a dirt road. 

I slowly pedaled down the dirt road while the smoke rose from the burnt black tangan-tangan "fields" on both sides. 

It was hot, smoky, and dead. As close to a reminder of Hell as I wanted to get. 

Today, my former home is still pretty much surrounded by Tangan-Tangan fields. And every time I visit I remember that Ash Wednesday, when, like my life at that point, everything around me had been burned to a smoking ruin. 

However, thank you Jesus, He raised me from both the ashes on my forehead and the ashes surrounding my life and home. 

It was a good lesson as there would be more fields of ashes to navigate as I grew older...as we all do. 

Keep the faith.

STUFF THAT BOTHERS ME (AT MASS) - PART 1

I was struggling to title this post - which might become a series. 

So I think I'll call it "stuff that bothers me," though at this point in my life, I am willing to just put up with it and keep my head down. 

The latest thing to jump out at me is the way lay "readers" read at the Mass. 

I'm not sure if they're told to do this or they just like to do it, but they portend to be public speakers instead of readers. 

I say this because these "readers" feel they must look up from the reading and directly look at the congregation at the end of each sentence - or close to it. 

It is not the reader who is "proclaiming" - but the Word of God that is being proclaimed. 

In fact, the reader who looks up from the reading and attempts to directly engage the congregation by looking at us distracts from the Word of God and makes him or herself the focus. 

Just read the Word of God and sit down. 

In fact, it would do all of us well to revisit the venerable Catholic practice of CUSTODY OF THE EYES.