On Sunday, the 2nd of February, a significant portion of our population will gather together, often around a large-screen TV, supported by lots of edibles and drinkables, and take part in a kind of secular liturgy. After all, this is Super Bowl Sunday!
As I was thinking about this column, I went on-line to see what the internet version of the National Football League had to say about this most important day of their year. What struck me on their web-site was a “ticker”: a count down clock, showing the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the kick-off. I watched the site for a bit, watching the seconds tick off… moving me ever closer to the game.
If you’re a sports fan (and I am ), these kinds of games are fun. But, like every other good thing, we need to put them in some kind of perspective. If my son is coming home from a tour in Iraq, and he is scheduled to land at about the same time the Super Bowl is scheduled to start, is there any question of where I will be? If my pregnant wife goes into labor right after we leave the Noon Mass, do I let her catch a cab to the hospital, so I won’t miss any of the game? What if I hear about an old friend, in real depression over some hurt, and I’m told that “today” is the day he needs a visit, do I hear that call, or send a substitute, so that I can sit and watch the game? Having a perspective for life is a blessing, and such a perspective is sorely missing from the heart of modern culture. Everything and everyone is over the top. To answer this human need, the world-wide Catholic Church offers the feast day of “perspective” this Wednesday.
On the 6th of February, the Catholic Church (and much of Christianity) celebrates Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday begins the holy season of Lent, a time for introspection, a time for conversion of heart, a time to gain a bit of perspective. On Ash Wednesday, we will be reminded about our finitude (you are dust and to dust you will return). On Ash Wednesday, we will be invited to a change of heart (turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel). On Ash Wednesday, those seeking baptism at the Vigil of Easter will intensify their preparation. They will experience a Lenten desert, hungering and thirsting for the living God.
Ash Wednesday is our feast day of perspective: how am I living the gift of life? How am I rejoicing in my family? My work? My own freedom of conscience? How am I living as a member of this SJN community? Ash Wednesday offers us a time for perspective.
Come. Hear the invitation of the Lord. Freely admit your needs, your failures, your hopes. Come, join the rest of us in recognizing our imperfection and our need of a new Way of Life. That Way has been given, and the holy season of Lent allows us…through the sacred disciplines of prayer and fasting and almsgiving… to find ourselves again, in Him. A.M.D.G.
Msgr David Talley
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Saint John Neumann Parish charters Cub Scout Pack 522 and Boy Scout Troop 522. The Boy Scouts of America provides a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of citizenship and leadership, and develops personal fitness and outdoor survival skills. The Cub Scouting Program is for boys in the first grade through the fifth grade (or seven through 10 years of age).