Light and getting out of Dodge

My son and I loaded the pickup truck with our overnight gear and headed out.
Out of the diocese that is.
It felt good to get away from this week--to get out of Dodge.

A few hours later and we were at Uncle Len's.
After a quick rest stop at his house we headed to church for Mass.
There we sat in the front pew and listened to the priest who happened to be....Uncle Len.

He preached about people who were the Light of Christ in his life and why they were the Light of Christ.

I glanced at the credance table and saw the familiar chalice--the silver one with the Apostles and the deep red background.  I remembered years ago of concelebrating Holy Eucharist with that same chalice.

Uncle Len was my first pastor.  He had me when I was a snot nosed pushy kid out of seminary.
Come to think of it--he's a rare breed.  He is what guys referred to as 'lifers'--the ones who entered priestly formation as a freshman in high school.  I'm not sure if there is such a program anymore, anywhere.
Yeh.  Len put up with a lot from me.

He was the last priest that I actually prayed in community with--as a priest. 
I wonder how many priests living in rectorys pray together.  (Then again, I wonder how many priests are praying.)

Uncle Len has been a light in my life.
I am not sure you are aware but there exist unwrittend codes in the clergy world.  One of those codes is you don't check on a guy when he leaves.  You drop him.
Len didn't.  In fact the reason he's called 'uncle' is because my son has known him his whole life.
Len was the one who provided a church for my son's baptism.  He was the one who would travel and visit.  And he was the one who sat quietly in the waiting room at the hospital with me, awaiting word on my wife's surgery.
...the Light of Christ.

Real Prayer is faster than 4G

One of the activities I did with high schoolers on retreat was known as the 'cell phone challenge'  It was born out of my getting tired of watching them glance at their phone or even commit the sin of blind texting.
So I decided to use the phone as a retreat prop. 
And it went something like this...
They paired up and the challenge was for one person to text the Hail Mary to the other person's phone.  While they competed I used whoever didn't have a phone (through the years that number decreased) as a 'reciter'  The reciters simply repeated the prayer, again, and again, and again until someone yelled that they received the text.  Then I had that person read it aloud--usually whole sentences were missing and often times there was a wild morphing of the Our Father and Hail Mary.
Many of them didn't even know the Hail Mary--(yeah religious formation!) but that is for another posting.

Funny though--the reciters felt like they prayed--and the texters didn't. 
Real prayer is faster than 4G.

I picked up a bunch of copies of the Pieta prayer book and spent the last couple of months distributing them.  Originally intended for just the high school kids, soon catechists, and other adults were also asking for them.

They were so grateful.
--all it was was a blue prayer book. 

Their souls were hungry.

Take a prayer book and sit before the Blessed Sacrament-treat your soul.

As a deacon and later a priest I was required to pray everyday the Liturgy of the Hours--the prayer of the Church.
I failed miserably at doing it.  There was a joke that you should buy ribbon insurance so when you died in the rectory someone would sneak in and update your prayer book--to make it look like you died cloaked in sanctity.
When I was released of my priestly life by the Holy Father, Pope Benedict--I was released from the promise of celibacy and the obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

Now, as a husband and dad--i pray them more than I ever did as a priest.

Two other prayer books have my attention now.
The Raccolta
The Blessed Sacrament Prayer Book

If your looking ahead to Lent--dust of the books and ready the knees.