via AIM: ‘Miraculous’ Christ Washes Up in Texas Rio Grande
A 5-foot tall statue of Christ washed up on the American side of the river and was discovered by Border Patrol.

“Jesus Christ manifests himself in many places, but he showed himself here in the way of an undocumented migrant,” said Marta Ramirez, a spokeswoman for the city’s Our Lady of Refuge Church.

Today, Paul and I were talking to Emily at the University Catholic Center. Apparently, she cuts her jelly prior to spreading it on a sandwich.
Personally, I had never heard of such a thing. Nor had Paul. Then again, Paul has yet to experience the wonder and awe that is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I digress.
Has anyone else heard of this? Does anyone else cut the jelly? Emily defends the act by pointing out that it eases the spreading process. Yet, peanut btter does not get cut.
Let me know. I am really interested in finding out how many people do this.

Just random things for today. Just now, I checked out the Austin Catholics site once again. For a refresher, this group protested the transfer of their pastor and have brought the issue before the public forum.
The latest document posted was a letter from Bishop Aymond to the group regarding a request for them to become a parish or diocesan ministry.
The more I think about the situation, the more I just shake my head.
Moving on, why the picture of a toilet? I don’t really have any particular thing to post on so I’m going to throw out a bunch of stuff.
Fr. Jim links up to a post about liturgical bloopers. In addition to the usual priest leaving the microphone on just long enough for the church hear him grumble about so-and-so needing piano lessons or whatnot, Christmas Midnight Mass 1997 was the best.
Sacred Heart had just reopened the main church after renovations and had yet to use incense in a Mass. I take that back, had yet to really use incense. Funerals and whatnot, but you only use a couple of coals and a small bit of incense. The Midnight Mass was the full thing- start out with three coals, add more any chance you get. Fill the boat up and plan on using it all. Hey, it’s Holy Smoke- why not?
The renovations included a new HVAC system as well as a fire alarm system. The settings weren’t set right and sure enough, in the middle of Fr. Koch’s homily- all hell breaks loose. The alarms start going off, a nice automated female voice tells us that “Emergency! Emergency! There has been a disturbance detected. Please evacuate the building. Emergency! Emergency!” Of couse, no one moved. Any man who felt like he had any idea whatsoever of what to do let the pews for the side hall with the system. After a few minutes, the system stopped and Mass went on as normal. Last time I mentioned anything about it to Fr. Koch, he still wasn’t too happy about that.
I’ve started spending some of my free time on thefacebook. It’s a social networking site for a handful of colleges. I was not too sure of it at first but it has grown on me.
That’s my toilet post for the night.

I can’t recall ever mentioning Adoration on the site before, which is a shame. I got back a short while ago after visiting the Adoration Chapel at Sacred Heart in East Austin with a handful of other students from the University Catholic Center.
Adoration, either with the Sacrament exposed or reserved, is one of the most powerful Catholic devotions and equally is one of the least known about and least understood.
Perhaps this is connected to my personality type, but being in the Chapel with the Blessed Sacrament is perfect for asking those probing questions. If you haven’t had the chance to go before, find some time this week and go.
I am behind on sleep so this post will be kept not-so-deep and not-so-long.

Grief is such a funny thing. Sunday, the 19th, was the seventh anniversary of my father’s death; now he’s been gone over a third of my life. No matter how far along I am in the grief process, or no matter how “over it” I am, this is always a bad time of year.

In many ways, it has been worse in the past couple of years than it had been for the previous five. While still at home, him not being there was hard, don’t get me wrong; however, now that I am “grown up” and away from the nest, the void seems deeper.

During my discernment process, there has exist the struggle of how do I know what to sacrifice? Is this really what I feel called to or has difficulty in one aspect or another driven me this direction? While I have discussed at some length these things with my mother, as well as friends, there is a noted lack of advice of the fatherly kind.

My father entered into the Air Force when he was 17 years old, he married my mom within a week of his 19th birthday. He had a child, my brother, within a year later. He spent almost 22 years in the Air Force, retiring as a Master Sergeant. He spent a few months outside of the military, then was hired onto for Civil Service with the DoD as an instructor. He spent 15 years doing that, working until two days before his death.

As a child, I had never put any thought into what type of discernment he went through. Did he join the military to get away from the farm? Was he actually interested in it? Did it fulfill him or did it try to seek that elsewhere? I assume, rightly or wrongly, the priesthood was never a major consideration. With a family as large as his (oldest of 10 surviving children) and none of them going to the seminary or a convent, I have the feeling that religious vocations weren’t fostered. I could be wrong but I simply don’t think my dad thought about it. Anyhow, how did he know my mom was the right girl? Was there doubt at the time? How much?

He stayed in the military for 21 years, including a tour of duty in Vietnam. Did he stay in because it was security for the family? Did he stay in because he didn’t want to leave? He left, from what mom passes down, because if he stayed, he was due for promotion and everyone being promoted to that rank in that field was being sent to Korea for a year. At almost 40 years of age, he did not want to be away from his family for a year again.

Before last year, I had not truly started asking these questions of myself and so I never thought to ask them of him. Now that I am starting to work on the “questions of life”, I want that insight. It was almost like losing him again, at least realizing there was more that was lost.
The pain that is felt every year in September is a little different each time. Last year, it was anger. It was being pissed off that he wasn’t around anymore. It was about why did he die, why am I without a father, why does everyone else have their fathers to talk to, to joke with, to look up to. That is still there this year, no longer to nearly the same degree.

This year, it is more about the void. Even if he would give me the worst advice in the world, so bad that I could see right through it, it would be something. It reminds me, oddly enough, of my Educational Constitutional Law class from freshman year. The Civil Rights battle for equal access to education started on the collegiate level in a state with public white-only institutions and no black institutions. Why? Because white students had something, black students had nothing. It is much easier to see a problem there than trying to figure out, like in the case of Brown v. Board, white students had a better school, black students had lesser schools. In either case, the point is there is nothing where something should be. Quality of that something, of that advice, is secondary to the fact that nothing exists now.

It was suggested to me by one of the Dean of Natural Sciences advisors to go to a support group with other people who have lost loved one. I went a few times but it wasn’t what I feel like I needed then or now. I think perhaps this is something that I need to get through, with my friends and loved ones silently supporting me as they have. There is nothing that anyone on Earth could do to fill the void that is left; it is now up to me letting the Holy Spirit fill that void with God’s love.

Grief is a funny thing. For each person, it manifests itself in different ways at different times. There are similar connections, of course, but there is always a bit of unpredictability about it. With all of that though, the bright side is we get better. This is one wound that time does heal.