You could've bowed out gracefully
But you didn't
You knew enough to know
To leave well enough alone
But you wouldn't
I drive myself crazy
Tryin' to stay out of my own way
The messes that I make
But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me
Yeah, you get me
It's amazing to me

CHORUS
How every day
Every day, every day
You save my life

I come around all broken down and
crowded out
And you're comfort
Sometimes the place I go
Is so deep and dark and desperate
I don't know, I don't know

Repeat Chorus

Sometimes I swear, I don't know if
I'm comin' or goin'
But you always say something
without even knowin'
That I'm hangin' on to your words
With all of my might and it's alright
Yeah, I'm alright for one more night-
every day
Every day, every day, every day
Every day, every day
You save me, you save me, oh, oh, oh
Every day
Every, every, every day-

Every day you save my life

At long last! This entry is 1 in a set of 4 that I was inspired to write during our May trip to Peoria, IL for our friend Robert’s Ordination to the Priesthood. All four entries will appear over the course of this coming week.

Funny story from our trip to Peoria for Father Robert’s Ordination:

At his first Mass on Sunday morning (the day after the Ordination) at St. Mark Church in Peoria, we were just gathering when something uniquely Catholic happened: Old met New in a very real and tangible way.

The congregation had been gathering for close to an hour in the church, and the priests, deacons, acolytes, et al were making final preparations and moving to the back of the church to prepare to begin.

Being very “by the book” new priests (Alleluia!), Father Robert and the others had of course a thurible - loaded, nonetheless - and, as a result, a LOT of smoke from the incense.

It resembled the times at camp when a new scout would try to start a fire with a bunch of large logs by loading it with a pile of leaves.

Yes, there was that much smoke.

It was glorious!

As I prayed, I found myself thankful for how gracefully and simply the smoke served to raise my thoughts and prayers and pull me from the temporal world into the reality of the Heavenly world that we would soon enter into in the Mass.

But that was quickly interrupted by The New.

Lights. Flashing lights. Loud beeping and sirens. Alternating. Lights. Beeps. Sirens. Lights. Beeps. Sirens.

For a moment, I was taken back to the last time I had been pulled over by a policeman.

But I immediately snapped out of it and started looking for the fire, the exit route, Suzanne and the boys and my parents.

And quickly noticed that no one else was moving. Except for the pastor and another man from the congregation who were hurriedly darting from the front of the church to the back - and again, and again, and again.

It seemed that someone had neglected to turn off the smoke alarm system that was obviously overly sensitive for a Catholic worship space.

Of course, the modern world has its imposing way of taking over even the most sacred of spaces and times. The sirens and lights continued for minutes - many minutes - until the sirens of the fire truck arrived and the firemen were able to verify the safety and disable the alarm system.

And Mass began and continued without a hitch.

But buried in these simple moments - and 20 minute delay to the start of Mass that really didn’t phase anyone - was a wonderful reminder of the reality of the Church in modernity.

In our Catholic faith, the oldest of the Tradition and the unwritten teaching of the Apostles meets the newest of the realities of our world, science, technology, and culture. And at the synapse, despite the debates and arguments and finger-pointing that can sometimes result, is the reality of God’s Will meeting man’s humble working and re-working of the world that he was given.

In a sense, what we saw that morning was a symbol of the reality of the Gospel brought into modernity. The message of a Law higher than all powers on earth. The message of a choice more important than any a man has made before. The message of a God of justice and compassion who gives much and anticipates much. The message of Love, of our highest calling as mankind, and of a world and a life beyond the present.

Old meets New every hour of every day as Christ continues to make Himself and His Sacrifice present on every altar of the world. As Christ enters this broken, troubled world. But which is Old and Which is New? Is Christ and the Church the “Old” and the world the “New”? No, I choose to think that we as Christians are called to see the world as the “Old” and Christ and His Church as the “New”, the goal, the normative end which we seek. Such it is in our New Life in Baptism. And are call is to carry that flame of Christ through our life here into the next.

As we prepare to celebrate Fathers' Day we should reflect a bit on what a father is. Today I'm afraid that there are a large number of people who can no longer relate to the reality or the concept of a father. This was not always the case as most marriages never suffered from the ravages of divorce. Many individuals today did not have the benefit of a father at home, or even in their life to any extent. 50%+ of marriages, including Catholic marriages, end in divorce. Single parent families are painfully common.

A human being needs both a father and a mother, male and female, to receive the fullness of nurturing, love, and support. One parent can try heroically to fill both roles, and do quite well, but it is never the same as when mom and dad fulfill their respective roles.

A father, along with a mother, obviously collaborate with God to bring life into existence. You will never know the eternal joy of Heaven without your father and mother saying yes to life. A father protects and supports his family. If evil in any form threatens his family a father must engage the evil and protect the family. This is true most of all spiritually, but also physically, emotionally, economically, and morally.

[Emphasis here is mine:]  Dad has to fight many a battle to win the war of the salvation of the souls of his spouse and children. If dad doesn't even know there is a war, where would that leave his family? How many sleepless nights fathers have had had worrying how to provide for mom and the kids? How many days he has come home from work bone tired, trying to provide a life for the family better than he had? How many deaths has he died agonizing over the welfare of each of his children?

Remember your father this Fathers' Day. Pray for him, alive or deceased. While you are doing this, hopefully through a day started with the Holy Eucharist, remember your priests, who are truly fathers in the spiritual sense. They too have expended a lot of 'blood, sweat, and tears' trying to insure the well-being of their spiritual children. Without the priest there is no forgiveness through the sacrament of Reconciliation. Without the priest there is no strengthening through the sacrament of Confirmation. Without the priest there is no anointing of the sick. Most of all, no priest no Eucharist - the Source, Center, and Summit of the Church's life.

Let's pray for our fathers, both biological and spiritual, this Fathers' Day, and every day. We need them, and they need us.

God bless you,
Fr. John Corapi

Boys Scouts praised as heroes after twister kills 4

When the howling winds finally died down, the Boy Scouts -- true to their motto, "Be Prepared" -- sprang into action.

Putting their first-aid training to use, they applied tourniquets and gauze to the injured. Some began digging victims from the rubble of a collapsed chimney. And others broke into an equipment shed, seized chainsaws and other tools, and started clearing fallen trees from a road.

Dozens of the Scouts, ages 13 to 18, were hailed for their bravery and resourcefulness Thursday, the morning after a twister flattened their camp in Iowa and killed four boys.

"There were some real heroes at this Scout camp," Gov. Chet Culver said, adding that he believes the Scouts saved lives while they waited for paramedics to cut through the trees and reach the camp a mile into the woods.

As Jesus passed on from there,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, "Follow me."
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
He heard this and said,
"Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
(Matthew 9: 9-13)

Seed sales are up 20% ... Boston has 3000 community gardens and hundreds of people on the wait list currently (plot fees are $30) .... people turn to gardening in economic slowdowns ... gardeners at least partly motivated by saving money ... 15 healthy tomato plants will produce about 100 pounds of tomatoes ...at $3.99/lb ...$400 ... estimated to cost $55 to grow those 15 tomato plants.

Beyond the occasional backyard garden, few of us have the capacity to produce our own food. But until the last few decades, most Americans still exercised a lot of control over the quality and cost of the food entering our home: We cooked almost every day. We bought ingredients and turned them into meals; we planned menus and stocked pantries, all of which required being connected to our food.

Today, despite a mania for cookbooks, celebrity chefs and 24-hour programming on the Food Network, cooking is a dying art. According to the Department of Agriculture, half of our food dollars are spent on items cooked outside the home, and almost half of the meals served in the average U.S. household lack even a single from-scratch item.

Marketing surveys blame our crowded schedules, our "time poverty": The average American can spare just 30 minutes a day for the kitchen. But the sad truth is, many of us no longer know what that room is for. Because so many of the roughly 100 million consumers born since the 1970s grew up in households where cooking was already passe, it's a skill we never learned.

Yet if we're serious about reclaiming control of our food, the kitchen is where we have to start.