Aaron's Organ Recital

~ Friday Ruth and I went to Aaron's Organ recital (which was really awesome - he did a wonderful job!).

~ Saturday I met up with Ruth to clean the baptismal and holy water fonts and then when she went to work I ended up helping Maureen pack stuff up in boxes at her mom's house. Later that evening was supposed to be XLT. Tom showed up to join me but it ended up being cancelled so we decided to go to Kate's house for a while.

Father Dan had another plane incident happen (for the other one go back to April 14).

Part of Fr. Dan's homily was about what happened to him on the plane on his recent Italy trip. Once again he was trying to sleep but couldn't because a woman behind him kept on talking and talking and talking, etc. He just knew that the topic of Religion was bound to come up in thier discussion so he said "Lord, you just give the right time to do something and I'll do it". Sure enough the woman said to her seat mate "You know, I don't understand why we have to go to church every Sunday. It's just a bunch of made-up rules by celebate men who can't find anything else better to do."Pretty soon the man next to Fr. Dan turned to him and asked, "Are you a Catholic priest"? (he was of course wearing his priestly outfit). Fr. Dan said, "Why yes I am." The man replied back in a loud voice, "You're a Catholic priest? That's awesome!" Suddenly the talkitive woman just stopped talking when she heard that.The man asked Fr. Dan several questions and one that came up was "why do Catholics worship saints". Of course we as Catholics do not worship saints - we honor them. Fr. Dan's explanation was beautiful! He explained it this way:Jesus has friends and he wants his friends to be friends. Here on earth you can always go to a friend and ask them to pray for you about anything. We as Catholics believe that this friendship doesn't end after we die. That's our relationship with the saints - they are our friends because they are Jesus' friends...and we can always ask them to pray for us.

The man really liked Fr. Dan's explanation and told him that he had never had anyone explain it that well to him. I too love that explanation because of how true it is!

~ So this book I'm reading called "Rome Sweet Home" by Scott Hahn has a beautiful explanation of Mary (FYI this book is about a protestant convert and his wife who also became a convert)."Mary is God's masterpiece. Have you ever walked into a museum where an artist was displaying his work? Can you imagine his being offended if you were viewing what he considered to be his materpiece? Would he resent your looking at that instead of at him? 'Hey, you should be looking at me!' Rather, the artist would receive honor because of the attention you were giving his work. And Mary is God's work, from beginning to end."Here is something else I found to be awesome in the book. This is a part where Kimberly (Scott's wife) is studying Catholicism but is having a hard time with the concept of Mary. I took these thoughts to prayer that night and for the first time asked God what he thought about Mary. The phrases that came to my heart were these: 'She's my beloved daughter' , 'my faithful child', 'my beautiful vessel', and 'my ark of the covenant bearing Jesus to the world". "I could not figure out why it was that it seemed to be that Catholics worshiped Mary, even though I knew worship of Mary was clearly condemned by the Church. Then I got an insight: Protestants defined worship as songs, prayers, and a sermon. So when Catholics sang songs to Mary, petitioned Mary in prayer and preached about her, Protestants concluded she was being worshiped. But Catholics defined worship as the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus, and Catholics would never have offered a sacrifice of Mary nor to Mary on the alter."

I wanted to share that before I head to bed. G'night all!