March 25, 2013 – It’s His Plan

Well my 2 or 3 avid fans know that this blog is WAY later than usual.  No matter how much we try to formulate a schedule and stick to it, at times things go awry, and you have to adjust.  There was no big emergency or anything that popped up to throw me off track.  I got home last Friday evening and had a lot of computer work staring me in the face.  This took much of the evening to complete.  It included putting a copy of the Gala Auction Booklet on our website, which you can now go to and look at for a preview of all of the items which will be available for bidding on April 6 at the Dinner/Auction.  As you will see, it includes 2 copies of my first 230 blogs in book form.  I figured these would fetch a couple bucks until I saw that the minimum bid is $5.00, so someone will have to be either very generous or very sympathetic to pay this kind of premium price.

Saturday I was out of town much of the day at a dual great niece/great nephew birthday party.  Thankfully, with the help of modern technology, I was able to keep tabs on what was happening with our awesome volleyball team at the state tournament.  The girls won a thrilling first match in three games before falling just short in their second match in three games.  Still, what a great year it was!  A team with just three 8^th graders, three 7^th graders and three 6^th graders winning their conference, a regional championship, and making it to the second round of state!  They provided a lot of great, long lasting memories, especially as we celebrate the 150^th anniversary of our school.  We have much to be proud of with our school, academically and otherwise.  Here is a photo of our troops:

OK, so now my plan is to sit down Saturday evening and hammer out a blog.  But a couple of things get in the way.  I need to get treat bags, etc. ready for our Easter party in PSR the next day.  Plus I also realized that the NCAA basketball tournament had been on for 3 days, and I hadn’t really gotten to watch any of it, so… maybe the blog can wait until tomorrow.  Unfortunately for Pope Francis and the Jesuits, it was a rough evening as St. Louis University got thumped by Oregon and the #1 seed Gonzaga also went down.  So now the plan is Mass and PSR Sunday morning, then blogging Sunday afternoon.  But again, my best laid plans went awry as some other things came up.

So we come to Sunday night, and of course, well, hey, its Sunday night, there’s more basketball on, and who wants to blog on a Sunday night?  So Monday afternoon it is!  I could have made that a much shorter story, but as you can probably gather, my creative juices aren’t running real plentiful right now.  Also, I write this to show something that we all know.  No matter what our schedule is, no matter how carefully we have planned things out, ultimately things are out of our hands, and we have to adjust and follow whatever it is God has planned for us.

Jesus is such a wonderful role model for us because He is the ultimate example of doing whatever was necessary to follow the plan of God our Father.  Sometimes I think it is a blessing not knowing what may be awaiting us in the future.  Imagine being in Jesus’ shoes, knowing all along that His ultimate fate would be perhaps the cruelest, harshest death anyone could ever suffer.  Imagine being Jesus, just hours away from being betrayed by one of His beloved apostles; a betrayal which would set off a chain of torturous events.  Yet, He lowers Himself into the role of a servant, washing the feet of ALL of His apostles, then sharing a meal with them that would become an everlasting legacy.  Imagine Jesus, in the midst of being put on trial for crimes He did not commit, hearing His chosen apostle Peter deny three times that he even knew Him.  Imagine Jesus, experiencing indescribable pain as he await His death on a cross, yet having the wherewithal to make sure that His Mother Mary would be cared for by the apostle John.

Jesus follows His Father’s plan step for step, not taking any short cuts along the way.  He does this not for His own gain, but for the purpose of saving us from our imperfections.  What a tremendous act of selflessness!  Yet when the church asks us to refrain from sexual relations before marriage, or when we are asked to respect issues that promote life such as refraining from abortion, or when we are asked to formally confess our sins once a year, or when we are asked to make our Sundays holy by attending Mass, many of us take the more convenient, selfish path.  We focus so much on these “hot-button” issues in the church, it takes us away from the fundamental teachings – that God is love, that He loved us so much that He sent His Son, and that His Son is truly present in the Eucharist.  It is one thing to try to emulate Jesus and fail.  After all, we are imperfect.  It is an entirely different matter not to try at all.  Today, March 25, marks the feast when we recognize another act of total selflessness – the moment when Mary says “YES” to God when she is asked to be the Mother of Jesus.  A woman probably no more than 13 or 14 years old, an unwed virgin, taking the weight of the world upon her shoulders.  We Catholics love and honor Mary more than any other religion, and why wouldn’t we?

And this week, the week that we call Holy, why wouldn’t we, as baseball coaches love to preach to their players, get back to the fundamentals of what our faith is based on.  If we do that, we will see more clearly what God’s plan is for us.  We may not know what lies ahead tomorrow or the next day, but we will know what our ultimate destination is – eternal life in heaven.  God bless you this Holy Week.  Peace.