Santa Matt's ramblings

Due to changes in my Christmas schedule I was finally available to appear as Santa at the "YMCA Santa Run". So on the appointed day and time I found myself with Mrs. Claus posing for pictures and talking with the runners as I moved to the area the Y had setup for me. Families would come and get pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus. One of the people that came for pictures was a grandma and three grand children, a brother and sister around 5 years old and their cousin a girls about 7 or 8. It was immediately apparent that the brother and sister were her favorites. She seemed to only want pictures of them with Santa. At one point when the older child tried to be in a picture grandma told her "Get out of the picture. You're ruining the picture." After several minutes of this the little girl was in the corner crying and I was seething but I held my temper in check. When grandma finished getting her pictures she took the two younger children aside to look at the pictur...

So the whole family gets together for a late breakfast or brunch. All of my kids and grand kids were there and Pam's fiancee' Zack and Monica's brother and his two kids. Quite a few of us and a small table for the grand kids and their chaperon which doesn't show in the pictures.  Here we have Ralph and Angela, Monica's Brother Steve and James Here we have James again and his wife Adrienne, Pam and Zack. In the background you can see Jonathon, Steve's son and the chaperon for the grandkids table around the corner.  I peeled a blue colored egg and it must have had a small hole in the shell. Look at the interesting pattern it left.  Jonathon took turns giving his second cousins piggyback and horsey rides. Here is Sera's turn as soon as she puts down here Easter loot.  Here is Angela and Monica sitting and chilling, talking to James in the picture below. In the background you can see Jonathon giving AJ a ride. I think AJ enjoyed it more t...

Easter is the holiest day of the year for Catholics. We believe that what took place on that first Easter two millenniums ago changed all of creation for all of time. So we try and make it special. Catholics also mark days like our Jewish brethren as sundown to sundown, not midnight to midnight. So starting a bit before sundown on Holy Saturday, we start the vigil for the celebration of Easter. We start outside of our darkened church. There we light a fire against the darkness. From that fire we light the new Easter candle that we will use for the next year. From the Easter candle we light our individual candles and enter the church following the Easter candle and the priest. In this picture are some of the altar servers waiting to start the procession.  Okay, one little flash picture just so you can see the Easter candle being carried by the deacon and father in the background in white and gold vestments. The church is lit only by the candles as...

OK, so I'm a lousy writer. I never seem to have anything to say when I sit down to blog. Wow! Two years since my last blog. Well I've decided to make a change! I will begin with this post to make this a photo blog. I take tons of pictures and I'm going to start post pictures with captions and occasional longer text. So here goes the first one: Every Easter we have a traditional Slovak breakfast. My wife Monica is pure Slovak and pure Catholic. So we have this tradition, we make all of this special food and take it to the church Saturday and get it blessed by the priest. Here are pictures from the blessing.   The basket with the square handle is ours. Father Gary comes out singing lines from "Tradition" from "Fiddler on the Roof"  He reads some of the traditional prayers from the book. Talks about the tradition and then blesses the food with more prayers and the sprinkling of holy water. Most people give him samples of their bakery in grati...

OK, it has been awhile but it seems there is more to this mystic thing then assembling a new toy for the grand kids. I have read and meditated long on this and I have some observations. My first thoughts were how to achieve my "Dark Night of the Senses". Should I deny all sensual aspects of my life? But then I realized that it is less about denial then changing my perceptions of sensual things. Ignore good food for bland food? No, eat the same but gain an appreciation of where it came from. Think about the person who prepared it. What are their thoughts and feelings as a human being, not just their skill as a cook. Then I thought about how will I know when I have passed through my "Dark Night of the Senses"? Then I realized it is not the destination that was important, but the journey. In an earlier post I talked about my vision of people as spirit guides. I had a vision of me climbing a mountain. God is at the top of the mountain. And as I climbed along the path I ...

So I'm reading this little meditation prayer book about the birth of Christ and today's message ended with look back on some of the times and ways God has blessed me. And as I thought about that for a minute I gave a little chuckle. Remember my blessings? Remember every meal I ever ate, every present I ever received? Remember every person I have ever met, whether I liked them or not? Remember every embrace of my wife? Everytime I held one of my children, my grandchildren or any child? Remember every time I was held as a child? Remember the people who have loved me and who I have loved? Remember the beauty and grandeur of the things I have seen as I travel the world, huge mountains, thunderous water falls, lushious forests, a perfect flower. Remember snow and rain and wind, the southern sky and the sweep of the Milky Way. These are just some of my blessing, blessings to many to count or remember all, in my limited humanity. No, my problem isn't in appreciating all of the thi...

Life is like a really good mystery movie. We start out with no clue as to what is going on. But little by little we learn things and the solution becomes clearer and clearer. As we progress through the movie and more of the plot is revealed we get excited, we want to know all of the answers to our questions. Was the butler really polishing the silver? Was that God that answered my prayers and helped me get that job? Was the poison really in his coffee? Is there a heaven and will I be welcome? Watching the movie we have our theories. We start to pick out suspects based on the revealed clues. In life we have our faith, our beliefs, based on what religion has revealed to us. But right up to the moment the clever hero or heroine gets the confession from the murderer, we are waiting for one more plot twist. And right up to the moment we die, we will have questions. Is there life after death? Did I pick the right church? What will happen to me? What did God mean by that revelation? As we wat...

When we were young we did things to honor our mothers. We would not step on cracks in the sidewalk, etc. Our mother probably enjoyed our thoughts but what she really wanted and how we should have honored her was to clean our rooms. It is much the same with God. We make all kinds of ritual prayers and that is good. But what God really wants is for us to clean our rooms. He wants us to clean the room of our soul. God Bless you and yours

Sometimes special people enter our lives. When I first met my wife's family, there was one person I did not meet, Mary her sister. Mary was only allowed home twice per year and she was never allowed to travel alone. No, she was not a secret agent or a convicted criminal, she was and is a nun, a Sister of Notre Dame. Down through the years visitation rules have relaxed some. I have seen her many times, either at the family or at church functions. Mary taught me many things. Some in her kindly cheerful voice, some just by the way she lives her life. Yeah, I know, she's a nun. She is supposed to live a exemplary life. But sometimes you meet a member of a religious order that shines in a special way. People that even if they were not in a religious vocation would still be holy. Mary is one of those. Mary is one of the people that answered my questions during the years that I was looking for a church. She is responsible for my starting to sing in church. I tell my religious ed stud...

Where I go to church there were two women. They are not related, but you rarely saw one without the other. As they grew older, one of them developed emphysema. Eventually this brought her to the final days of her life and she entered hospice. You may or may not know that hospice is a kind of care, not a facility. Someone may be in hospice in the care center, in a convalescence center or in a private residence. When this woman entered hospice, she was taken in by her friend. Her friend set aside a bedroom, equipped it with oxygen and a hospital bed. She cared for her day and night, only taking a few hours sleep for herself when a hospice volunteer would sit and watch for her. I have someone who will do that for me. I married her. But the loving friendship of these two women is inspiring. "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:35 God Bless you and yours

There are several good books out about Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism. I have read both Scott Hahn's book and Alex Jones' book. Although there are some similarities, their books are much better and offer insights that I can only now think about in retrospect. My family was not the church going kind. My parents were good people and believed in God and Jesus Christ but they were not practicing Christians. So when I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade I decided I needed to go to church on my own and see what religion was all about. We lived in the kind of neighborhood that could not make up its mind if it was country or suburbia. There were small clusters of houses off of the two lane county road, although we were only a couple miles from the small town of Grand Blanc, a kind of suburb of Flint. Well the only church in walking distance was a Baptist church about a quarter mile down the road. So Sundays I would walk to church. I met some very good people ther...