Ahead this week...

Tonight we pray Evening Prayer I of the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, the Divine Master. If you haven't heard of this feast before, don't worry: it's "proper" (assigned, as it were, privately) to the Pauline Family. Naturally, we make as much of it as we can. Not easy, because Sunday is not an easy day to find a priest who's free to offer such an exceptional Mass (they're all needed in the parishes), and the nearest Society of St. Paul community is 400 miles away. So we do our Liturgy of the Hours and make a special Eucharistic Hour of Adoration. And maybe a cake or something.
Except cake would begin to be redundant, since Monday will be my birthday.
Then Tuesday is the Holy Day (yes, the "obligatory" kind). (Yesterday's paper included the latest statistics on Catholic Mass attendance. More and more Catholics seem to believe that "Mass" and "obligation" have no relation to one another. (They're wrong. Not that "obligation" is the ideal motivation, but it sure makes something importance clear!)
Sr Helena and I are also on board to attend a media literacy event on Tuesday night. It looks at religion coverage in the secular news media. One of the panelists is Manya Brachear, from the Chicago Tribune. She's my contact person for those guest posts I do on occasion. This is a newspaper that actually has a religion beat! They take people's faith lives seriously, and research the news and human interest stories carefully and well. I'm sure she'll have a lot of really valuable contributions to make to the conversation.
All Souls Day isn't a Holy Day, but it deserves attention, too. And maybe some of those Purgatory Cookies I discovered years ago in Italy!) 
Then Friday, I head off to Boston to give a retreat to our lay Pauline Cooperators in what has become (for now, at least) the Snow Belt. (I hope it melts down fast!)

Sems night

We have extra chairs at the table tonight:  it's "Sems night" for the students at St. Joseph College Seminary. They get a special "sems" discount in the bookstore, and then pizza and what we call the "Pauline indoctrination session" after closing time. Sr Helena is our hostess with the mostess. (She really goes all out when we have company.) I stayed with my strong suits, peeling vegetables for the salad and apples for the dessert (because I did not buy enough pumpkin pie at Costco today).  The menu is pretty weird: pizza, meatballs and sauce, steamed veggies and salad. And dessert. 

In between, I tried to perfect a poster for the Advent Women's Retreat. I think the design came out well, but I am trying to figure out now how to get it to print properly (new printer; don't like wasting ink). Chicagoland ladies, hope you can make it! (I can't! Sr Helena and I will be on the choir concert tour, so we have volunteers running it this year.) Anyway, here's the poster so far (Advent wreath photo by Sr Emmanuel):

Today's Liturgy of the Word: best read backwards

If you read today's Gospel first, and then the piece from St. Paul to the Romans, it is as if Paul is commenting specifically on that Gospel! I'm always blown away when that happens, because the Lectionary was not planned out that way: the readings more or less follow in order in their own little cycle. But here it is again...
In the Gospel, Jesus is warned to escape before Herod kills him. He dismisses the threat, giving his would-be saviors a message to bring back to the King.  Paul, for his part, lists all the frightful obstacles to human flourishing (anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, death: things Paul faced on a rather regular basis in his ministry), and tosses them off with a rhetorical flourish: "If God is for us, who can be against us? Who will condemn us? What will separate us from the love of Christ?"
It's that very love of Christ that the Gospel shows us in Jesus' heartrending complaint against the Holy City: "How often I wanted to gather your children together as a mother hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, and you refused me!"
 And St. Paul reminds us, encouragingly, "If God did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?"

Is TV ready for a Catholic sitcom?

Decide for yourself! CatholicTV will air the pilot on Thanksgiving...

Not the Gospel we want to hear

There's a rather unsettling assertion in today's Gospel. It seems to contradict everything we associate with Jesus as savior. Instead of "Come to Me, all of you," we hear, "Enter through the narrow gate, for many will try to enter but won't be strong enough."
What?! Yet it echoes other Gospel passages, like this mysterious text: "The Kingdom of God is suffering violent attack, and the violent take it by force." Paul helpfully reminds us that "our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with the principalities and rulers of this present darkness," a hint that the gate is "narrow" precisely because it is surrounded by a host of supernatural forces intent on keeping us out. Truly, strength is needed to prevail in a case like that!
On second thought, this theme of the "narrow" entrance to salvation comes up over and over in the bible. In the Old Testament, one of the wisdom themes is that of the "two ways," one leading to life, the other to death. Remember what Moses said in Deuteronomy? "Choose life, that you and your descendants may live and have a long life in the land the Lord your God is giving you." What comes next? "For the Lord is your life."
There's also the play on strength and weakness. That lead me to reread the famous story of David and Goliath. David was only a sunburned shepherd boy, hardly strong enough to prevail against a full-grown warrior! And, truth to tell, David was not relying on  his own strength, though strength was precisely what he needed. "I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts...for God does not give victory by means of sword and spear."
Like David, Paul is not intimidated by the disproportion between human weakness and the strength needed to "enter through the narrow gate." Instead, he plays a whole game in his first letter to the Corinthians, going back and forth between "weakness and strength" and their "intellectual" incarnations, "wisdom and folly." Indeed, he boasts of his weakness! That is because the narrow gate is really the "scandal of the Cross": "a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness for the Gentiles," but "for us on the way to salvation Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Just today, Pope Benedict just commented in the same vein:

"The sword St. Paul holds in his hand also recalls the power of truth, which can sometimes wound and inflict pain, The Apostle remained faithful to this truth unto the end, ... he gave his life for it. The same logic holds true for us, if we wish to bring the kingdom of peace announced by the Prophet Zechariah and achieved by Christ: we must be ready to pay in person, to suffer ... misunderstanding, rejection and persecution. It is not the sword of the conqueror that builds peace, but the sword of those who suffer and give up their own lives" (from Vatican Information Service).

The Church and Science back in the News

Today's Trib had a short article in the business section that may have raised a few eyebrows. The Vatican signed an agreement with a stem cell company for an education and research project. (Here's a Catholic News Agency article on the same item.)
Naturally, with the Vatican as a partner, you can be sure that the research in question will be in the highly successful area of adult stem cells. (There are already quite a few proven cures attributable to "adult" stem cells, even though the more hideous, embryo-derived kind get all the publicity.) This, shortly after the news from very different quarters that an embryonic stem cell therapy for age-related macular degeneration was about to be tested in clinical trials. (So if the trials result in cures, it will be a first for the embryonic stem cells.)
The Vatican partnership is related to the STOQ project (under the Pontifical Council for Culture), and is not the first Vatican-science relationship that has resulted from it: last year, the Vatican signed an agreement with the Italian Space Agency. A book on biotechnology has been released by the STOQ office, and the stem cell partnership includes a conference on the technology to be held in Rome next month. One of the purposes of the office (the name stands for "Science, Technology and the Ontological Quest") is to support scientific research in areas that tend to be commercially overlooked, and to connect scientific progress with philosophy, so that new discoveries or therapies can be launched with a fully developed philosophy that is consistent with human dignity.
About the only thing STOQ doesn't do with panache and scientific expertise is keep its web site up to date!

Changes in the Mass!

Bring your lunch! Bring your questions! Bring a friend!

I finally managed to schedule a series of short presentations on the upcoming changes in the translation of the Mass. There will be three noontime sessions on the new Roman Missal. All sessions are free; each will cover slightly different aspects of the Missal, with plenty of time for your questions. Presenter is yours truly.


Not only is this an opportunity to come to a greater awareness of what the Mass is: it is an occasion to reach out to family and friends who may have drifted away from regular Sunday Mass. Without some kind of advance warning, they may feel alienated from the Church for good if they go to Mass on Christmas (or for a funeral) and find it sounding so unexpectedly different.

So...for the first three Thursdays of November, join  me here at 172 N. Michigan Avenue on your lunch break!

Praying with the Liturgy

Just a quick post today in honor of the two Blesseds whose feast day it is: Bl. John Paul (well known to all) and Bl. Timothy Giaccardo (known and loved within the Pauline Family). And here are the official opening prayers for the votive Masses for these two heroes of God:

For Bl. John Paul II:
O God, who are rich in mercy and who willed that the blessed John Paul the Second should preside as Pope over your universal Church, grant, we pray, that instructed by his teaching, we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ, the sole Redeemer of mankind. Who lives and reigns...

For Bl. Timothy Giaccardo:
O God, you have guided Blessed Timothy Giaccardo, priest, in life and in apostolate, with the light of your Word and the power of the Eucharist. Grant through his intercession that in the Church and in the world, the instruments of social communication may be rightly employed to lead people to goodness and that they may contribute to the spreading of the Gospel message in every place. Through our Lord Jesus Christ...

Peace or the Sword

Today's Gospel seems utterly contrary to everything we might assume Jesus stands for. It is as if he wants to disabuse us of our notions by stating things in as baldly contradictory a way as possible: "Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." (Some translations put that last word as "sword," heightening the contrast with peace.)
What gives? Didn't the angels sing "Glory to God and peace on earth" when Jesus was born? Isn't he Isaiah's promised "Prince of Peace"?
Of course, Jesus is making a point about what peace really is. Not the wimpy, self-content peace of compromised values; the peace that plays fast and loose with the truth. Jesus is the "sign of contradiction" whose own mother feels "the sword pierce her heart" for the sake of the true peace he came to bring: peace that takes a stand.
Paul writes to the Romans what their very own experience confirms: that the "peace" they had in their former lives of unbridled self-gratification now fills them with shame and embarrassment. It leads only to spiritual death and offers no hope beyond the pleasure of the moment. But if Jesus brings a "sword," it is a sharp and powerful blade, slicing through the bonds of slavery to the flesh and setting the person free to be a full-time servant of God, no longer waiting for mere wages, but confident of the gift of God: "eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Service Hours

For years now, it has been a typical part of a Confirmation program or ordinary high school training to expect a certain number of "service hours" from young people. Ideally, it is to introduce them to ways they can continue to go outside of their own comfort zones and help others in an ongoing way. But it can often seem more like a requirement that has to get "checked off" before one can leave the program, as if the service component of life was take care of for good.
Today's readings both talk about service, but in a way that shows that we are always in somebody's service, whether we recognize it or not. St Paul even uses the word "slavery" to talk about this condition we are all in. Yes, all. For Paul, "you are the slaves of the one whom you obey," whether sin, which  makes you obey your own passions, or faith, which makes you truly upright. I spotted an interesting example of the first in the news when the latest iPhone was released. Among the people waiting in line (for hours!) to acquire one was a person who said, "It's the newest thing. I have to have it." Isn't "have to" the language of slavery?
You could almost rephrase Paul's thought along these lines: slavery to sin (or any material desire) is a form of compulsion; the obedience of faith is a form of responsiveness.  The one is a requirement that seems to brook no dissent; the other is a relationship that calls for personal engagement.


(Pope Benedict has just announced a whole "Year of Faith" to begin next October!)

Checking in

With family still in town, I have hardly had time to turn on my computer, much less come up with anything to share other than all the activities we've been sharing. For instance, on Sunday, after the choir Mass at Mt Carmel, we all (Mom, my sisters and my niece, with me at the wheel) drove to southern Michigan to deliver one sister to her mother-in-law's for a visit. On the way, we stopped at the Indiana Dunes (National Lakeshore). It was a matter of braving the day's chilly winds to go out on the wave-lapped beach. Chicago was just barely visible to the northwest. We also stopped at "Mt. Baldy": an enormous sand dune that keeps making its way southward because the dune grasses that would have anchored it in place were trampled to death by visitors. (The Park Service is trying to restore the grasses, so most of the dune was off-limits.)
Two of my sisters really wanted to try the marked-off path to the "summit"--others of us weren't so sure. The signs warned that it was a "strenuous" climb, and we were all wearing our church shoes. But the intrepid won the day. We hiked the whole (short) way through deep sand. That's what is so interesting about the Indiana Dunes: they really are sand dunes, but forests are growing through the sand! So it looks like an ordinary, if hilly, wood, but you are tramping through nothing but sand. The last few yards went up at a "strenuous" angle, but the view from the top was worth it all. (Even Mom thought so!) Of course, we had a bit of sand to empty out of our shoes when it was all done...
Yesterday, most of my family went home; Mom watched TV while I helped in the bookstore. Then, at 4:00, Sr Helena walked in the door after a week in Italy! She has been creating high-resolution scans of the photo archives of our Founder for the documentary film. Evidently, things went fabulously well, and not just because she was enjoying our sisters' Roman hospitality. She found photos that most of us have never seen, and was even able to get an interview with the Society of St. Paul's most widely-published author, Fr. Gabriel Amorth.
My remaining sister will return from her mother-in-law's this afternoon and by this time tomorrow things in Pauline Chicago will be more or less back to "normal." (Sr Lusia is out of town, so all is not quite back to normal).

Counting on the Spirit

Today's Gospel ends with encouragement from the Lord: Even in the most dire circumstances, when we are brought to the law, on trial for the Gospel, we don't have to prepare our defense. The Holy Spirit will be the one to speak, giving us the right words at the right time.
I don't know about you, but sometimes I have my doubts about this. How many times I have been on the spot, and the words that came out certainly didn't seem to have much of the Holy Spirit about them, even though I may have been praying up a storm! But then, for one thing, I am not exactly completely docile to the Holy Spirit, and may have intruded upon the Spirit's action even while imploring it. More importantly, though, I wonder how many times my negative evaluation of the outcome is based on my own presumption of just what constitutes an acceptable outcome in the first place. What if the Holy Spirit really has disposed that my awkward or incomplete contribution is just that--an incomplete contribution to a much bigger project: a pebble in the cement of a magnificent complex. I want to see my words bear fruit (fruit that I can recognize) immediately; the Holy Spirit takes the long view.
So the challenge is one of faith, that characteristic virtue of Abraham (cf the first reading!). If we can begin to relinquish not only control of events, but of their evaluation, I'll bet we will become more and more docile to the Spirit--and thus more and more available as a member of the living body of Christ to let Christ live in us.
Here's a great little prayer from Fr. Alberione that I love to say in this regard: "Live in us, O Jesus, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit!"

Odds and ends

Know what I love about the Rosary? Find out on the Among Women Podcast with Pat Gohn!

I have a few exciting and fun days ahead: tomorrow my Mom is coming to Chicago for a week, along with all four of my sisters and one niece.  (The whole gang can't stay the week, but it will be quite a weekend with that many Flanagan women in one place.) My sisters, niece and I will be doing a Segway tour of Chicago while Mom takes in a quiet movie. (She's not up for that much adventure.) We hope to hit my favorite spice shop, too.

Today I had to fill in downstairs in the book center for quite a good part of the day--and then get the community some groceries (which took a bit more of the day). While I was "on the floor" I took a couple of phone calls: orders for our recent book, "The Mass Explained for Kids." As you may suspect, several of the orders were not for kids at all, but for grown-up Catholics who find the adult presentations on the changes in the Mass a bit intimidating. (That's one reason there aren't juvenile pictures in the book; the editors suspected there would be a high percentage of adult readers.) (Don't forget about my video explanations of the Mass changes; and check back occasionally for the other five or six that are still being edited.)

It seems a bit late to be commenting on today's Mass readings,  but that's what happened to the day. Anyway, I was struck at how, yet again, the first reading and the Gospel, which are not intentionally paired in any way, seemed to play off each other. St Paul is getting into that massive letter to the Romans by warning of the spiritual peril of condemning others for faults you yourself have--as if by enforcing God's law on others you could fulfill it by proxy! (Paul makes pretty free use of the language of "wrath" here to describe that spiritual peril.)

Jesus doesn't speak of wrath. He prefers "Woe!" (Same difference to me.) Woe over what? Woe to those who burden others with religious obligations, and who carry out the minimum prescriptions with exaggerated care, while minimizing the things that really count in God's sight: justice, mercy, faithfulness.
It's the message of all the prophets, from Moses to Jeremiah and Amos and all the way to the Apostle James. Prayers and public devotion do not offset neglect of God's manifest will towards our neighbor.

Be it Resolved...

Do you remember, way back around January, making a New Year's resolution that had anything to do with getting to know the Bible better?
In case you did, I have two suggestions for you. My first is always to read the Bible with the Church by following the daily Mass readings. (Even better, go to daily Mass!); my second comes as a result of my weekend in Kansas City, where I met the creator of a 30-session Catholic Bible study program in podcast format. You can get through the whole Bible by Christmas, just listening to the sessions every other week or so!
I haven't test-driven the program yet; I'm recommending it on the basis of its creator being Associate Director of New Media Evangelization for the Diocese of Sacramento. Seems like a pretty safe bet.
Just wanted to spread the word.

Looking for signs

In today's Gospel, Jesus answers those who kept coming to him looking for signs. Short answer? No. Because the kind of sign Jesus brings isn't the kind that our eyes can see: it is a sign for our ears. We don't perceive this sign with our seeing, but with our hearing, the way the Queen of the South heard Solomon's wisdom, and the people of Nineveh (featured in last week's readings) listened to Jonah.
The first reading corroborates this in the way that Paul, in the very first words of his massive letter to the Romans, keeps repeating "hearing" language: "Paul, called to be an apostle... the gospel [good news/message] of God which he promised... the obedience [root word is "to hear"] of faith... called to belong to Jesus... called to be holy."
The Bible seems to hint at what Thomas Aquinas said about the Eucharist: "Sight, touch and taste in Thee are all deceived; the ear alone most safely is believed." Paul simply ends up saying, "Faith comes from hearing."
So keep your ears open for that sign!

Running around Town

Just to clarify: I wasn't the one doing the running. Tomorrow is the Chicago Marathon, so the streets have been filled with skinny people, running. I passed quite a number of them as I made my way (walking) to the Cathedral for Mass this morning. And this afternoon, when I went up Michigan Avenue on an errand (driving), the sidewalks were packed with shoppers. Presumably the 20,000 marathoners and their cheering squads.
Adding to the general throng was (and is) a voluble group of protesters, presumably "Occupy Wall Street." I say "presumably" because a few minutes ago they passed across the street chanting about corporate greed, but yesterday (which seemed to be their organizational day), the Randolph Street staging area was arranged with signs and flyers demanding jobs and protesting NATO involvement in Afghanistan. I don't know if that was only for yesterday, or if today's march (in the early afternoon) was a catch-all protest, and only a hundred or so die-hards remained 'til the late afternoon to make their point about corporate greed which is, yes indeed, a very bad and damaging thing. Their chants are still echoing in such a way that the sound penetrates our house (what a distraction in chapel!), but you can't tell from which direction. Just a vague noise, punctuated by occasional cheers and whistles. A bit unsettling after a full day of it.
Here in Chicago there is also a regularly scheduled "protest" involving hundreds of bicycles on the major roads on particular Friday afternoons. Something about taking "back" the streets. It ties up significant resources from the police department, since there is such risk of injury to the cyclists.
I like bikes. I agree that war and greed and unemployment are all evils that should be eliminated to the extent possible. I pray for that!  But what good do parades do?
Do such demonstrations contribute something positive to public discourse, or are they just a form of entertainment? I'm beginning to think the latter.

The Bishops' Guide to Better Voting

Like many in Chicago, I am all too familiar with the infamous S-curve on Lake Shore Drive. You can't miss it. But many do. It has been the scene of so many crashes and other incidents that the concrete walls along the road are covered with traces of paint left by cars scraping by, and the roadway is littered with fragments from head and tail-lights crushed into the gravel.

The S-curve should not be a surprise to any approaching driver. There are any number of signs: "Reduced Speed Ahead," S-curve graphics, a clearly posted speed-limit, horizontal white strips crossing all lanes. But enough drivers rely on their own gut instinct for that curve that the city keeps talking about ripping the road out and reconfiguring that bend permanently. Meanwhile, they keep the signs up.

Something like that happens every election year. The Catholic bishops of the US typically revise and re-release a document to shed the light of Church teaching on issues at play in the election. This year, the document has not been revised, but a new “introductory note” has been added to pre-empt those who would distort the bishops' nuanced positions, and to warn all Catholics not to reduce election year concerns to one or two issues.


According to the bishops, life issues are crucial for Catholic voters (abortion is singled out as an horrendous, “intrinsic evil”), but many life issues are related to key social issues that they also present in the light of Catholic tradition: family life, parental rights, the rights of workers and of immigrants, the environment, questions about the use of force, war, the death penalty... These concerns do not fit neatly into the categories of our two-party system.

In some ways, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” is like that set of road signs on Lake Shore Drive. It offers valuable advice and guidance in a society that is losing the capacity for critical and courteous discourse, but all the evidence indicates that (like Chicago's drivers) Catholic voters tend to trust their gut more than any published sign or document, no matter how carefully thought out.

That can't be a good thing.
 
Add your comment to this post on the Chicago Tribune blog. 

CNMC: Wish you were there?

If you wish you could have joined us for the CNMC last weekend, do not despair! This being a highly wired group, you can find many of the talks online. Including my own (which starts about midway through this recorded video). Special thanks to SQPN for making so much available! 


SQPN.com

Kingdom Come

It's no coincidence that today's Gospel is Jesus teaching us how to pray right after we saw the harried Martha "busy with much ministering." Luke is making the point that ministry of any kind needs to come from (and remain supported by) prayer. But what is the secret to prayer? I was surprised to notice it in the first reading, the tail end of the story of Jonah.
Jonah is peeved with God for having mercy on the wicked (but repentant) city of Nineveh. And God does something strange. Instead of reproaching Jonah with a divine "and who do you think you are?" (as we see in the book of Job), God reveals his heart: "Should I not be concerned over that great city in which there are over 120,000 children under the age of seven--and uncounted numbers of cattle, too?"
Like so many fire and brimstone preachers after him, Jonah can see the wickedness, but he can't see all the rest that God sees--"the beasts and the children," as the old song went. God invites Jonah to see with divine eyes.
Isn't that the mystery of prayer?

Movie to Movement

A filmmaker Sr Helena knows popped in yesterday; he's in Chicago (hometown for him) to promote an animated 3-D project on the Mass. It will be showing in 20 theaters next week, but the actual release date is in December. Tickets for the pre-release are free to those who show up at the theater with the password (which I forgot; maybe Sr Frances will remember...). But you can also buy a ticket, too: each ticket purchase will provide a year's worth of clean drinking water for a charity in Sudan associated with the production house's mission outreach, "Movie to Movement."  There are other movies waiting in the wings: Cristiada (which I posted the trailer to during the summer); even a remake of the old "Marcellino Pan y Vino."

An interesting approach to mission! Get a worthwhile message yourself and help desperately needy people half a world away.
Here's the trailer for the animated version of the Mass (which will release in English and Spanish):

Martha, Martha

 Even though it's the feast of St. Francis, I've been keeping dear St. Martha company today, courtesy of this morning's Gospel. I love her, because I can so identify with her rather neurotic relationship with Jesus. You see, I am convinced that Martha desperately wanted to be just where Mary was. Sort of. As soon as she could get dinner out of the way, and maybe a little housecleaning. Whatever.

If Martha was really like me, she probably felt that there was stuff to do first--stuff that stood in the way of her giving herself permission to sit still and listen to Jesus. And maybe some of that pique in her voice as she tries to commandeer the Divine Guest is from the realization that Mary wasn't simply oblivious to the practical needs of life: Mary was freer of them than Martha was at that point.

That spiritual freedom is what we find in the saint of the day, too. Francis was so free of the compulsion to "seek first the practicalities of life" that he even gave away his clothes, in the confidence that God would take care of everything.

Maybe for Francis and for Mary, that freedom of spirit came from having had an experience of their relationship with Jesus that Martha had still not yet fully processed. Her turn would come (see John 11!).

KC report

I'm back in Chicago, doing catch-up after a great weekend spent meeting with and chatting in person with people I've only really known online. Among them, Jeff Geerling did the wonderful service of creating a kind of summary package of the talks; I have to say that he did a masterful synthesis of my own presentation--so much so that I don't think I need to post a link to the talk itself. (But I will.) Eventually I hope to get the video the postulants took of my talk and stream that so I can have it to share with others. (Our whole group of postulants drove in from St. Louis with Sr Rebecca to take part in the conference as their first "group" experience.)

It was Jeff who gave the talk on "Gadgets and Gizmos" in which he offered a sample QR code--and I was the first in the audience to open the link from the QR code on my (Android) phone (beating out all the iPads and iPhones in that well-wired hall!). So I got a prize from among the many gadgets and gizmos that Jeff gets sent for free as a technology product reviewer. It was an iPad microphone stand. "Do you have an iPad, Sister?" Jeff asked as he presented it. "Not yet," I told him: "It's on Jesus' 'to do' list." (They loved that. But it's the plain truth.)

Next year's conference will be in Dallas, the last week of August. That creates a potential conflict with our usual August recording schedule. I have already written to the sisters in Boston to see if the recording schedule can be pushed up by a week so I can get both in! 

Angel of God, my guardian dear...

For the feast of the Guardian Angels, here's a great talk by Professor Peter Kreeft on the Angels according to St. Thomas Aquinas!
I've always been delighted by the whole idea of a Guardian Angel. Kreeft puts an amazing spin on the whole mind-bending doctrine that a superior being would be, as it were, a servant to a creature of a lower order. It is, he says, God's signature: the vocation to humility.
Do you have any stories of your own angelic guardian's service?

Live from Kansas City!

Photo by Scott Maentz.

Well, my was live while SQPN was streaming it this morning...  In the end, I had to skip about three pages of really good material I had prepared--as Fr. Alberione said, "When a Daughter of St. Paul takes pen in hand, she never has to wonder what to write about." The problem is that there's so much to say!
What a fantastic image of the missionary Church here at the archdiocesan pastoral center! Over a hundred (maybe 130) people involved in evangelization and media, new and old. They are ardent, intelligent and down-to-earth. Unlike many churchy events, this one skews young. And very wired. As someone noted on Twitter, you haven't seen this many Apple products anywhere in one place outside of an Apple store. Apple should be underwriting part of the CNMC! (Props to the Knights of Columbus who actually did help out in that direction.)
You can catch the highlights of the day on Twitter, where everyone has been posting in real time. (My phone battery died, so you won't find much from nunblogger...) And here are pictures of the event to go with the Twitter stream. You can also find the personal notes taken by participants like Jeff. I'll post some notes of my own when I have more of a chance to catch up (first I have to make my Hour of Adoration).
After lunch we were able to preview a pilot sitcom for Catholic TV; it will be broadcast (and streamed) on Thanksgiving day, after which we will be free to put it on our sites. If it clicks with enough people (pun very much intended), a series may get the go-ahead. That would be a new thing in media: a Catholic family sitcom.

Now I'm off to chapel, to thank the Lord for streaming his light through us and among us at the Catholic New Media Conference!