Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Sunday ADD Irregulars, Refugees, Phamily. Triggeratti, Dawn Patrol, Day Walkers, Early Birds, Later Dayers, Supporters, Members, Conversants, Lurkers, Fascinating People and Beautiful Bigots! I hope you have a beautiful day ahead of you and your weekend has been a good one.

Today in Cath-O-land we celebrate the Solemn Feast of Corpus Christi. At one point in Catholic history it was celebrated on the Thursday after Pentecost, but has since been transferred to the Sunday after Holy Trinity. Today our parish will celebrate the feast with a procession on our parish grounds. We will visit the cemetery to pray for the dead, the chapel to celebrate the beginnings of our community and finally return to the church with the final Benediction.

As a priest the Eucharist and Reconciliation define my life. The Eucharist is the most amazing thing I do on a daily basis. To honestly believe that bread & wine become the Body & Blood of Jesus Christ is either miraculously amazing and sheer nut-baggery. I obviously tend to favor the amazing side of this binary choice rather than the nutty side, but I can easily see why some outside of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and a few other believers in Presence might think so. Something, Someone so amazing is meant to change our lives, but God does not work magic, He works grace. Grace is like water, it only changes seeds into plants, it can never make a rock spout life. Every soul has that choice to be a seed for grace or a rock of resistance.

The sprouting, growing and blossoming of the soul will all depend upon the recipient's desire, interest and effort to know God through Scripture, prayer and other sources of study and formation. No Christian can proudly proclaim their flawless discipleship in following the Master. We all sadly continue to struggle against sin and often fall on the path of following Jesus. The key is to rise in sincere repentance and follow Him again. The real struggle is the sincere repentance, real change against addictive or repetitive habits is hard. Saying you are sorry, with the Divine or humans and making no effort to address the wrong, remedy the injury or really change your behavior is empty. God is patient with slow change, but has no time for games of deception.

This whole last bit is why I so enjoy celebrating Reconciliation aka Confession. It is not meant to be a rinse and repeat process of habitual sins that never change, but a sincere effort to acknowledge sins, seek repentance and open ones heart to transforming grace. I know many outside of the circus of Catholicism wonder about it. It is never meant to be a do what you want and then be sorry, any god worth His/Her/Its salt ought to see through such games. The God of Israel certainly does, and His Son seems pretty sharp on the upkeep as well. Games of deception do not sit well with Them.

Eucharist is the most amazing thing I celebrate and Reconciliation is the most humbling thing I celebrate. I am after all just another Disciple trying to help others discover the Master. For Catholics, faith is both personal and communal, directly to God and also within the community. I am saved by God within the community of the church. I encounter God personally and in the company of others in worship and other expressions of faith. It is never a either or type of choice, but rather a both and. Well enough rambling about the faith I love, I hope whatever defines your life, faith or otherwise, you love and try your best to follow. (Unless it is Communism, Fascism, Socialism or another flavors of oppressive ideologies, in which case wake the hell up!) Some may think that about Christians, but they are probably just closet commies or sofa king totalitarians who thankfully don't possess any real authority, just opinions. Everyone has a faith in the end, some are just more readily discernible because they have a community and creed. Happy Sunday my friends!