I got a gift certificate for St. Patricks Basilica bookstore in Ottawa. They give a great discount for clergy, and have a really good selection. So I picked up a couple of books on a pet subject of mine: the End Times.

Today is the feast of the Holy Family, and it was my turn to preach. I find it very hard to preach on the subject of family. For those who think that priesthood is a vocation in crisis, I (as a priest) have only this comment to make: the vocation to marriage and family life is in as bad if not worse shape than priesthood. I take absolutely no pleasure in this, in fact this is what makes it so hard: because no matter what you say, you’ll wind up rubbing some salt in somebody’s wound.

…but it lasts 8 days!

In the Roman Catholic tradition, Christmas Day (Dec 25) is only the start of an entire “octave” of days, ending on Jan 1. So Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s an entire festival, where each day is also Christmas.

Tonight we have six masses for Christmas Eve: 4:30 pm, 7:00 pm, and 10:00 pm, each in two locations (church and parish hall). I just finished presiding and preaching the 4:30 pm, and my next one is at 10 pm. So I thought I’d get my blog entry in now, ’cause after I’ll be wiped.

…is over!

Yes, I know I should not leave it to the last minute. But to be honest, I am not a Christmas “shopper” so much as I am a Christmas “purchaser”. I know what I want to get before I go out and get it, so the rest is pretty easy…it’s just a matter of getting out there and doing it.

As I wrote in my last post, Josiah Neeley wrote one of the original critiques of my original postregarding God’s knowledge of actual future events. In it he states that it looks like that I am an A-theorist, and then explains that “An A-theorist, for example, would say that the future (and the past) do not exist.”

Today at our noon Mass I had the pleasure of welcoming a visiting priest and of concelebrating with him. Fr. Ibrahim Shomaly is a priest for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and is currently studying at the Lateran University of Rome. His plan is to eventually do a doctorate in Islamic Studies, and then return to Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to teach in the Latin Seminary there.

When the Charismatic Renewal movement began Catholics were introduced to a phenomenon called “baptism in the Holy Spirit”. People whose spiritual lives were lukewarm (or even quite cold) suddenly experienced a new “fire” in their relationship with God, which they attributed to the action of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. I have heard many testimonies to this effect from people who are otherwise very ordinary, and some are even able to pinpoint the day and hour when they “met God” in this new way.

Last night I got asked to take my car out of the garage and park it in the church parking lot overnight. Today I found out why: dozens of volunteers converged on our parish hall and garage to pack and deliver Christmas baskets for the poor of our neighbourhood, with my garage as the delivery and drop off point. While I live in what normally would be considered an affluent area, in some ways that makes the poverty, when it does strike, even worse, because people can feel very ashamed.

Well, I’m just back from seeing The Return of the King. My review is simple: it’s good, go see it. It’s not the greatest film I’ve ever seen, but along with the first two movies it certainly does set a new (and very high) standard for the fantasy genre.