One of the great communal celebrations is to welcome an infant into the community through the waters of Baptism. There are many ways in which the celebration occurs, depending on the construction of the church – especially the location of the baptismal font. At my previous parish, to give you an idea, there was no narthex. The large wooden front doors were perhaps 16 feet behind the last pew and opened up to the sidewalk and the main downtown thoroughfare.
It was right at the front doors that we greeted the beaming family and their newborn, along with the godparents. The first part of the Baptismal ritual occurred there at the doors of the church, the family was escorted to their pew in the front of the church as part of the entry procession, and we continued with the celebration of Mass. Continue reading
“Take care to guard against all greed” (Luke 12:15; from 
Next Sunday is the celebration of the 
It was a straight up trap from the outset. A plan to put Jesus between the proverbial “rock-and-a-hard-place.” Pay the tax and one side thinks you are a heretic and are capitulating to a pagan emperor who thinks himself divine. Don’t pay the tax and the other side sees you a seditious and a problem to be immediately dealt with. Seems like a lose-lose proposition.
After acknowledging that real strength comes from Christ and not himself, St. Paul writes: “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (
Every so often someone approaches me after I have celebrated a Mass to inform me what I have done wrong in the ritual. It is in those moments that I have great empathy for the physician who resigns themselves to listen to a patient reveal their self diagnosis based on what they have discovered on WebMD. Given the ubiquity of the internet I suspect every profession has similar moments. On one hand it is good that patients and clients inform and educate themselves; on the other hand there is a reason medical school, internship, residency, and specialty fellowships take a bit more time than an internet search. As a doctor/friend once offered, “There is a reason it is called the ‘Art of Medicine,’ – the human body is beyond complicated in all its possible reactions.” 
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