Twilight Twitches

Dear Family,
Lent 2021. The banners hang over the north door of the Main Sanctuary and over the entrance to McDonnell Hall. Do you remember what the challenge is?

Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving: the three biblical challenges for Christian living.

We refresh our Prayer life.
We Fast.
We give Alms to the poor.

What better time than Lent to look at how we are doing, how we can focus on getting back to basics?

Dear Family,
Happy Valentine’s Day. I want to give you all the hearts I can today so that you will be ready to take on ASH WEDNESDAY with hearts ready to begin the journey to the celebration of the greatest feast in our Christian lives: Jesus Christ is Risen! He is Risen, indeed!

To prepare ourselves we Fast, ages 14 to 59, taking one main meal and two little ones. We abstain from meat, age 14 and older, on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and the Fridays of Lent.

Catholic.com tells us: “The reason Lent lasts 40 days is that 40 is the traditional number of judgment and spiritual testing in the Bible (Gn 7:4, Ex 24:18, 34:28, Nm 13:25, 14:33, Jn 3:4). Lent bears particular relationship to the 40 days Christ spent fasting in the desert before entering into his public ministry (Mt 4:1-11). Catholics imitate Christ by spending 40 days in spiritual discipline before the celebration of Christ’s triumph over sin and death.”

This week has been interesting. I had this Twitch 3/4 finished last Monday when the power failures happened. There must have been untruths in the Twitch because when the power came back on the Twitch was gone. Four days later I’m trying again, and I can hardly remember what I had written.

So, we’ll try once more. The good news is I got my second Covid-19 vaccine shot. I had no problems with either the first shot or the second, not even soreness. Now I’m beginning to wonder if the vaccine I got was real... No, don’t worry. I’m kidding.

I must confess that I never thought of getting a shot of anything (unless it was good bourbon) as a privilege of old age. But I had to admit to myself that indeed, in this case, age has its privileges. I would have forgone the shot and waited if someone with a more critical need could have gotten it, but I realized all that would do is screw up the system. My fervent prayer is that all of us can be vaccinated as soon as possible.

Dear Family,
This isn’t the way I want to begin this week’s Twitch, BUT some of you have been calling about receiving text message from me asking you to buy gift cards and then sending me the numbers of the card(s).

IT’S A SCAM!

It’s happened before. I will NEVER ask you to send me money or cards via email or text. If I need money, I’ll call you and pick it up personally. And I don’t need money, (at least right now…)

Don’t you wish people could use their creativity a little more productively?