Category: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Keep those confessionals humming, if you please, before and during mass if necessary, so that all can be absolved and go to communion . . . Too much to ask?

An astute reader picked up on Receiving holy communion at mass. . . . Everybody does it, which ran in this space recently.

“The most pastoral move a priest can make is to offer confession before Mass and remind the faithful of the requirements for reception of the Blessed Sacrament before Mass,” he noted.

Which would be putting up front the long-standing warning from Paul,

27 Whoever . . . eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Ditto the church:

The Church teaches that there are two basic requirements Catholics must meet in order to receive Holy Communion worthily.

First, one must be in a state of grace.

To be in a “state of grace” means to be free from mortal sin. As the Catechism states, “Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (CCC 1415).

What is a mortal sin? The Catechism explains that a mortal sin “destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God” (CCC 1855).

For a sin to be mortal, or deadly, one must be aware that the act is sinful and conscientiously commit it anyway.

As a kid, we were told three requirements — “serious matter, sufficient reflection, full consent of the will.” The sisters made it clear, so we’d remember.

Matter? what you did. Reflection? what you thought. Consent? what you chose.

Or: You did what? What were you thinking? Was it on purpose?

My friend further: “Amazing that even for traditional/conservative priests, this seems to be an insurmountable logistical challenge.”

Adding piquantly: “I am wholly in favor of the Eucharistic Revival, but it seems like a Penitential Revival is a necessary precursor.”

Lent would be a good time.

Brother Lawrence in 17th century, neither priest nor learned nor worth not much more than a kitchen hand . . .

. . . and his disappointment at God’s answer to his prayers:

. . . he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to GOD his life, with its pleasures: but . . . GOD had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state.

Too bad, Brother L. But consider your book, The Practice of the Presence of God, and the good things it can do for us. Gotta read that book . . .

Words from Holy Writ you will never hear from a New-Mass pulpit

I don’t think:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.48When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away.49Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous50and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

Too negative. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/13?44=#48013044

http://www.jimbowman.com

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On a Saturday afternoon, John Milton’s “On Blindness” came to mind . . .

Walking with the wife, I came up for some reason with the first and last lines of this stunning poem by John Milton, yet to write his “Paradise Lost”:

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent

BY JOHN MILTON

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Journalistically, it’s a case of a first-class lead and a first-class closer. Not to mention a first-class theological statement.

It’s Official: We Can Pretty Much Treat Covid Like the Flu Now. Here’s a Guide.

Our old friends at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say so.

A case of Covid no longer means isolating for five days, according to the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. It’s the latest sign of the virus’s normalization four years after it upended our lives.

You should now follow the same precautions with Covid as you take with the flu, according to new guidelines from the CDC. That means staying home until you’ve gone a day with no fever and improving symptoms. Take other precautions for the next five days, including wearing a mask and limiting close contact with others.

Those are the same steps the CDC recommends for other respiratory viruses.

Down there with the common cold?

That can’t be. Whoever wore a mask for the sniffles?

I remember when the panic was announced, looking up what to worry about and reading I can’t remember where, about coughing and sneezing as what to keep your distance from.

As for going outside, what ever happened to Vitamin D? I went walking as I had been doing, taking in the presumably clean-enough air sans mask, even when a squad car went by and I felt a twinge of law-breaking.

I did run into trouble, twice — when a man on his porch saw me walking by and wiped his face with the no-mask sign. I explained that I’d forgot it. (I had.) He did keep his eye on me until I got past his house.

Other time, when a woman left the sidewalk as we were about to walk by each other. stopping at the curb and we had an exchange — Me: it’s bullshit. She: It’s the law. Me: Arrest me.

If we had gone beyond that, I’d have ask the law’s number but was happy enough to lose her from my life for a while at least. (Turned out it was forever, far as I know.)

http://www.jimbowman.com

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