New Song - Page 46 of 49 - Notes from a Catholic marriage

FTT #14

At Mass this morning, the lector was a little old lady who has to stand on a stool to see the lectionary. She always has trouble with the complicated Old Testament names, and today’s was a doozy:

There was a certain man from Ramathaim, Elkanah by name, a Zuphite from the hilly country of Ephraim. He was the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives, one named Hannah, the other Peninnah.

And on it went, with still more names–I really felt bad for her. After Mass she walked past my pew to whisper, “YOU should have done the reading today!”

The kicker? I looked it up when I got home, and she did the wrong reading: that was the cycle for 2012, not for 2013. The actual reading for today was much more straightforward!

[Blogging question: Should I refer to a female lector as a lectrix?]

FTT #13

Jacinta [hushing a child during Mass]: “That’s good enough.”

Tina the three-year-old: “No, it’s a bad ’nuff!”

On the way down to Denver a few days ago, Scott and I hit a snow patch on Highway 20 and went into a spin. We veered sideways towards oncoming traffic, then slid backwards across our lane towards a cow pasture and a barbed-wire fence, and then came to a stop on the side of the road pointing back toward the direction we had come from.

When I got home, I told Jacinta about the event. While it was way too much excitement to cram into seven seconds, I think it brought Scott and me closer together. “When you nearly die with someone,” I explained to Jacinta, “it makes you friends.”

Jacinta didn’t have to think even a moment about that one: “You have enough friends!”

FTT #11

I’m in Denver for a meeting of the Board of Directors of WCC. On the way in I saw a billboard off the highway that proclaimed, in large letters,

RAISED WITH COMPASSION AND WITH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

And then in smaller letters below that:

CHICKENS RAISED WITHOUT ANTIBIOTICS

And then below that, a picture of a burrito filled with chicken bits. I don’t know what it means about our culture, but it made me laugh.

FTT #10

We had more music in the house this Christmas than in previous years. Bernadette the eldest progressed far enough in piano to play simplified Christmas carols, and the others learned how to work the .mp3 player. Tina the three-year-old has about three favorites, among which is “Joy to the World”, which in her rendering goes as follows:

“Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy! Repeat the sounding joy!”– and so on.

What a mouthy thing!

Tina the three-year-old has a policy whereby she always disagrees with Papa. If I say, “You are my cutsie!,” she has to say, “No, I am mama’s tootsie.” If I say, “You are Tina,” she must respond, “No, I am Tina Ree Homes” (Faustina Marie Holmes). Just this morning, as we began a conversation, I asked her, “Are you going to disagree with Papa?” “Uh-huh!” she assured me cheerfully.

So sometimes I say things just to provide some kind of reasonable provocation for the inevitable disagreement. This evening when she asked for a drink, I told her, “I will give you a drink–on your head!”

“No,” she retorted, “in my mouth!”

“Your mouth is in your head,” I pointed out.

“No,” she said, dutifully following policy but unsure how to conclude the sentence, “it’s in my…mouthy thing.”

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

While reading the Catechism this morning, I saw something new (to me) about the idea that the world was created for the glory of God. At least, I don’t think I saw this as clearly before.

It is not hard to grasp that God created to share his own goodness: the only other alternatives are that he created for some benefit he would derive, which is not possible, or that he created for the sake of sharing something else’s goodness, which again is not possible since anything not God is part of his creation.

What struck me this morning is the transition from there to the notion of glory. Because the greatest share of his goodness God can give is knowing and loving, and the greatest thing he could offer to be known and loved is his own goodness, it follows that the greatest share in his goodness God can give to a creature is that the creature acknowledge and praise God.

FTT #8

It’s hard to say exactly what makes a child “ready” for first communion, but in our parental judgment Regina the seven-year-old is not yet ready. She’s awfully sweet, but….

Today, for the first time in quite a while, she asked about it: “When will I receive my first communion?” To which her mother replied, honestly enough, “When you’re ready.”

“I hope I am ready while I am seven,” Regina continued. Ah, I thought, she begins to experience that desire, that thirst–ah, perhaps she begins to be ready. Casually, her mother asked why she hoped for that.

“Because,” she explained, “seven is the lucky number!”

I hope that’s right–I’m crossing my fingers!

FTT #7

My inversion table came today. It’s an impressive assembly of metal and plastic that looks vaguely like a modern rendering of the medieval rack.

That must be what inspired Jacinta to tell the kids that it is a torture device that hangs people upside down. She added something creative about a new approach to discipline and addressing bad behavior, but they never got that far. They emphatically denied that it is a torture device, and they emphatically denied that it hangs people upside down.

Once I had it assembled and they could see that, indeed, it hangs people upside down, they grew more quiet. And then when I got on it myself, they were completely set at ease.

[Blogging question: Is it redundant to italicize “emphatically”, since italics are a form of emphasis, or is that a kind of beautiful fitting of the symbol to the thing symbolized? I leave you to decide.]

Revelation and the Shape of the Church

As I read through the Catechism yesterday, I was struck by the comment that the revelation of the Trinity–the most fundamental doctrine of our faith, and the highest in the “hierarchy” of doctrine–was not complete until the mission of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This led me to the following thought:

The giving of revelation constitutes its recipient, the Church, while the growth of the recipient makes possible the giving of revelation: the two go together. To spell out the consequences of this idea: as long as revelation is incomplete one should expect the Church to be growing and changing in fundamental shape; and as long as the Church is growing and changing in its fundamental shape, one should expect new revelation. So it was not incidental the the fundamental doctrine of our faith was revealed completely when the Church was in a way completed. Or to put it the other way around, anyone who claims to receive new public revelation is implicitly claiming that the Church is still developing toward its fundamental shape.

This led me to a further thought, which extends and qualifies the above:

The Church could not attain its entire fundamental shape before the apostles had exercised their ministry. For example, there could not be a hierarchy in the Church before there were enough converts to have multiple congregations, and Peter had to get to Rome before the Pope could be the bishop of Rome, and somebody had to get sick before the Apostles could administer last rites, and so on and so forth. So as long as the apostles were still active, the Church was still in some way in formation and new revelation was to be expected; with the completion of the apostles’ ministry, the Church had its entire fundamental shape and so no more revelation was to be expected.