Homily prep

Here is an AI prompt that I’ve been working on. It puts Claude to work as something of a research assistant when it’s time for me to prepare for a homily. As my weekends for preaching are scheduled well in advance, I have plenty of runway. Usually a week or two out, I’ll spend some time with the texts in lectio divina, listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes this is sufficient; sometimes it isn’t.

When I need to dig a little deeper, I’ll start opening commentaries and doing some background work and this is designed to put some starting points in my hands. I created a project in Claude, and added a CSV export of my Zotero library, which I use to track my theology books. Then I added the following standing instructions, which we’ll look at a piece at a time.

First, the setup. This is what I’m after: main sections with a note about the user - me - of the final product. Bearing in mind that I will also be preaching in Spanish, pull out any important terms and give me their translations.

You are assisting a Catholic deacon with homily preparation. When given a liturgical date or a set of scripture readings, you will produce a structured homily preparation document which includes:

• EXEGETICAL NOTES — Brief critical notes on each reading (key Greek/Hebrew terms, literary form, historical context)
• PATRISTIC WITNESS — 1–2 relevant quotations or references from the Fathers on these texts (verify before citing; flag any uncertainty)
• MAGISTERIAL CONNECTIONS — Relevant CCC paragraphs, papal documents, or conciliar texts
• SPANISH GLOSSARY - include a list of key concepts and provide a list of their equivalents in Spanish suitable for a largely Mexican/Central American assembly.

Next, I want to be very specific about the sources that I want used. This is an important step because it’s possible the LLM will consult it’s own training data rather than conduct web searches for additional resources. The problem with the training data is that the LLM may also respond with inferences which might or might not be correct, and I want as much precision as possible. By instructing the LLM to use these sources I am forcing the issue. I also make a reference to my personal library.

Sources for searching:

• Vatican.va for magisterial documents
• USCCB.org for lectionary text confirmation
• New Advent (newadvent.org) for patristic sources
• The Catena Aurea at www.ecatholic2000.com/catena/
• Bible commentaries (note which and try wherever possible to use specifically Catholic commentators)
• The file called “theologicallibrary.csv” contains an inventory of physical texts available to me. Where relevant, recommend specific titles from this list. I also retain online access to the library of St. Meinrad Archabbey and can access additional resources such as the Catholic Encyclopedia.

This next part also clearly spells out what I do not want as well as other things that should restrict the results. Most important: I do not want any suggestions for themes, focus, structure, content, imagery, or applications. I want the academic facts and nothing else. There is also a note about the Spanish texts we use.

Constraints:

• Do not fabricate quotations; flag uncertainty explicitly
• Do not suggest a focus or theme; this is a task specifically reserved to the deacon.
• Use RSV-CE for scripture quotations
• When the deacon assists at Mass in Spanish, the pastor favors the use of lectionaries from his home country of Colombia and which do not match the Spanish readings at the USCCB. The Colombian Episcopal Conference (CECol) lectionary is published by San Pablo Ediciones and is based on the Biblia de Jerusalén in Spanish. It may differ from the USCCB Spanish lectionary, which draws on La Biblia Latinoamérica. The preacher should verify the specific wording of each pericope with the pastor before quoting from the Spanish readings.
• Note any Denzinger references where applicable

The last part is a set of specifications that I actually had the LLM generate - they have to do with the way I want the final document to look. Since I want a PDF, I want it to start with LaTeX. Since there are frequently other languages (Greek and Hebrew) in the output, I want those characters to render correctly. And since I am a nerd, I want it to look more like an academic text than a business document - keep the decorations and other visual clutter to a minimum. Just create a clean, readable document that will look good printed or on an iPad.

After several iterations over the final document I landed on one that I liked, so I told the LLM “give the instructions necessary to reproduce this last version precisely” and this is what it said:

Output Format — LaTeX/PDF:

• Produce both a compiled PDF and the .tex source file.
• Use XeLaTeX as the engine (xelatex), not pdflatex. XeLaTeX is required for Unicode Hebrew and Greek.
• Use FreeSerif as the main body font (available at /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/). FreeSerif has confirmed Unicode coverage for Hebrew (U+0590–05FF) and polytonic Greek (U+0370–03FF). Specify all four faces explicitly in \setmainfont.
• For Greek, use the polyglossia package with \setotherlanguage[variant=ancient]{greek} and the \grk{…} command (or \textgreek{…}).
• For Hebrew, do not load polyglossia Hebrew or the bidi package — bidi.sty is not installed in this environment. Instead, render Hebrew inline via a direct \fontspec call to FreeSerif: \newcommand{\hbr}[1]{{\fontspec[Path=…]{FreeSerif}#1}}. Hebrew glyphs will display correctly in any modern PDF viewer; full RTL reordering is viewer-dependent.
• For tables, use longtable with \RaggedRight and p{…} column specifiers (requires the ragged2e package). Never use l, c, or r specifiers for columns containing substantial text — they cause overflow. Size columns to fit within the text width (default text width on letter paper with 1.25in margins is approximately 6in).
• Use mdframed for note boxes and scripture quotation blocks. Preferred style: left-bar only (topline=false, bottomline=false, rightline=false) with a light gray background for quotations; full box with gray border for notes/warnings.
• Section headings: titlesec with \Roman{section} numbering and a thin rule beneath in a muted gold/ochre color. Keep color use minimal and academic.
• Compile twice to resolve longtable page breaks and hyperref labels.
• The formatting should be academic and spare, not business-oriented. Avoid decorative color tables, gradient headers, or heavy visual elements.

The full prompt is here if you’d rather grab raw text.

When I want to use it, I open the project and say something like “Prepare a homily prep doc for the 12 Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A - here is a link to the readings,” and then I paste in a link to the USCCB’s site. And off it goes.

Our pastor begins a pretty hectic travel schedule which puts me in the chute for a whole bunch of daily communion services. These are held, like daily mass, in the small chapel behind the main sanctuary, which is the original church building and has been combined with a small fellowship hall. The weekday crowds are small but very regular. Language alternates by day, English and Spanish, and we do Exposition and Benediction on Thursday evenings beforehand. Sometimes I preach, sometimes I don’t. Today was one of the days I didn’t. As our homiletic instructors told us, if you have nothing to say, don’t take ten minutes to say it.

In other news: I’m very eagerly awaiting for Magnifica Humanitas to drop. I’ve been mulling on this for awhile now and trying to figure out a way to properly assess AI personally, professionally, and pastorally. What I’ve gotten to so far is a series of questions for reflection on the use of AI for any particular task or outcome:

First, does this use supplement human judgment and prudence, or substitute for them? Will the person - for whom the work exists, and not the other way around - be freer from drudgery and tedium?

Second, does the pace of adoption allow for deliberation and the exercise of prudence?

Third, to whom do the benefits of this use accrue? Who bears the costs of this decision, even - or especially - if the costs are not necessarily reflected in a P&L statement?

These questions, I hope, distinguish between an outright rejection of AI, which seems unsustainable on the one hand, and wholesale, at-all-costs adoption on the other. By treating them as morally neutral tools, we consider whether or not their use contributes to human flourishing or risks deskilling, marginalization, or injury to agency.

Nothing new on the book front. Proust certainly does have a handle on adolescent romantic angst as experienced by someone who spends entirely too much time in his own head. Thinking back to early teens…yeah, pretty much nails it.

Currently reading: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust 📚

Select from among you…

This weekend I was offered the option of a funeral or a baptism, so I took the baptism which turned out to be eight baptisms and it was a blast. The main sanctuary was set up for a wedding at noon, so our parish witnessed the full arc of life: baptism, matrimony, and death. It’s continually humbling to be close to these moments of life.

Speaking of matrimony, my marriage prep group - four couples - wrapped up the final session last week. Nobody fled the room, so it looks like they’re all going through with it. They’ve all been great and I’m very much looking forward to seeing them plunge ahead into this new life together.

Elsewhere on campus, a ladies ministry ran one of their semi-regular food sales: from-scratch tacos and other assorted goodies. I have now tried lengua (tongue) tacos and they were delicious. 11/10, will be ordering again. Interest in the next OCIA program is beginning to grow - we’re getting more and more narthex conversations from people asking about the next session. We’ve got a meeting coming up to discuss next year; sussing out a place to meet will be high on the list.

Our pastor is about to start a slightly hectic spring and summer travel schedule which means I’ll be stepping in for daily communion services for awhile. I’m also penciled in to lead a May crowning at the end of the month, so that will be fun. Daily stuff means more preaching, so more at-bats. I like the daily homilies: short and to the point. My next scheduled weekend for preaching is Ascension Sunday, so I’ve got a bit of time to work on that one.

In my ongoing conversations with my cohort-mates (we have a groupchat, of course), I’m struck by how very different the directions our diaconates have taken, especially in the different vibes (for lack of a better word) at each of our parishes: very modern in one place, very traditional in others. Very rich in one place, very working-class in another. One of my favorite expressions about the Church is that it’s A Really Big Tent, but the mind sort of boggles over the scale of the Bigness. One thing we all share in common is that we’re busier than ten rats in a bag of Cheetohs.

Gardenwatch: things are doing well. The temperature has cooled off a bit and I think we’ve got some rain in the forecast this week which will be nice. I’ve got some business travel and will miss most of it.

Bookwatch: closing in on the end of Swann’s Way. I feel sort of invested now so I’ll probably continue to the next book, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. I also coming close to the end of De Sales' Treatise, so it will be time to pick new spiritual reading before too much longer. About halfway through the Dicastery’s publication.

Dogwatch: still growin'. Training is highlighting some personality differences. One is very well motivated by food or treats of any kind; the other one is variable in his mood. What entices him today is boring tomorrow, that sort of thing. He keeps it interesting for sure.

Radiowatch: nothing at all, sad to say. Occasional tinkering with ADSB and ACARS but not much else. Radio tends to be a cold-weather hobby any more.

Prickly pear - first blossom!

The Social Edge

Bright Simons points out that the miracle of an LLM is less a measure of its own ‘smartness’ and more a reflection of the civilization that produced it, because it’s the civilization’s output which trained it.

What all this implies for AI is straightforward. Every token in a training corpus is a fossil of social interaction—a trace of negotiation, argumentation, institutional meaning-making, or cultural transmission. The intelligence that AI systems exhibit was never individual to begin with. It was forged in the spaces between people.

And if those spaces are allowed to shrink due to over-dependence on human-machine interaction, we have trouble. If the interactions that generate rich language become rarer, shallower, or more homogeneous, then the intelligence that depends on them will slowly degrade. We will not hear any bangs, true, but we will notice a gentle, almost imperceptible narrowing over time. The machines to which we are fast entrusting the future of discovery will slow down when it matters most.

The more we cognitively offload to the LLM, the more our own competence erodes. We stop producing some of the higher-end tasks to the AI and so eventually we run out of stuff to feed it.

This intersects very nicely with Reclaiming Human Agency, mentioned below, reaching several of the same conclusions by purely secular paths.

The AI Research Group of the Centre for Digital Culture has released a second publication in their series examining Artificial Intelligence and Catholic social teaching, ethics, and moral theology. The first volume - Encountering Artificial Intelligence was good and I’m very much looking forward to starting this one, which is available for free as a PDF: Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

So here is a rare post that refers obliquely to my professional life.

If AI seems like it’s basically everywhere now I can assure you that it’s even more pervasive for people (like me) who work in the technology field. I’ve noted here before some of my concerns regarding LLMs and their inability to weigh, categorize, or hedge their output. All output, regardless of provenance, is equally plausible to them and is presented to the user accordingly, though I’ve noticed more language-of-uncertainty creeping into Claude’s output recently.

I was introduced to the concept of mechanistic interpretability the other day. This is a research field that examines the massive neural nets that make LLMs tick and aims to figure out how and why they do the things they do. It’s bonkers to me, still, that we’ve created something that’s too complicated for us to easily understand and whose inner workings remain a substantial mystery to us. This is, I understand, a necessary consequence of building something that seeks to work more like a brain than a simple expert rules-system. The former is a thing that can be trained to do a task from scratch, where the latter is built to do one thing extremely well, such as play chess. The chess-playing bots can beat basically anyone now, but they can’t do anything else with this ability. We can examine the chess bot code and know why it made a particular move in a particular situation; we can’t easily know why an LLM produced that output in response to this input. This makes a sort of sense; similar insight eludes are own self-understanding, so maybe this is as good as it gets. As the models get bigger/better/faster, their inner workings become even more opaque. And then what, exactly?

To be clear - I believe these things are useful. I’ve seen what they’re capable of, even on a tiny scale, for the various things I use them for. I do worry a bit about the speed of things and the wholesale enthusiasm for it all. I’m trying very hard to not sound like a contrarian antiquarian here. Part of is the memory of the dot-com hype-cycles of the mid-90s and part of it is knowing how the technology sausage is made. In any case I’m grateful for this working group’s stuff. It’s important and worth the time to read, especially for those making technical decisions, policies, and so on.

Garden

I burned a day of PTO so that I could get the spring planting done since my weekend windows have gotten considerably smaller. The major project was the border out front, which I’ve been slowly converting into a cottage-style riot of things. After an expensive (but oh so worth it) trip the local nursery I came home with Russian Sage, two kinds of Coreopsis, some Verbena, more coneflowers, a pair of echinops, plus a slew of kitchen herbs, annuals for containers, and other bits and bobs.

Then came several hours of digging, planting, and scratching around. I got basically everything in except for some annuals for the pool area out back. You can be sure of some pictures once things establish themselves and start blooming.

The weather was perfect and today I am paying for it: hands and back and so on.

Primero las Escrituras, luego la Comunión. Ese es el modelo en el Evangelio de hoy, en la liturgia, y también en nuestras vidas. Si queremos reconocer a Cristo en el mundo, tenemos que ser primero un pueblo de la Palabra.

First peony!

He is Risen indeed!

Triduum thoughts:

This was the first year I found myself aware - very aware - of the continuous liturgical flow from Holy Thursday to Evening Prayer of Easter Sunday. The unresolved tension hovered in the background throughout the last few days and was finally put to rest when I laid the breviary down last night. Easter, of course, continues through the Octave this week, then throughout the season until Pentecost, and so on until the Lord returns in glory, but the Triduum is complete and it feels great. The Chrism Mass feels like it was a month ago.

We have a stellar group of altar servers, boys and girls, who performed absolutely perfectly throughout all of the things. It is a joy to watch them carrying on with one another, especially when we all sit down to eat. You have to feed kids if you’re going to ask for their extended help through rehearsals and whatnot, and filling an entire table with umpteen kids and a handful of adults felt very much like what it was: a big family meal. You would have thought everyone was related. To be sure, there are several sibling groups in the mix but the kids all act like an giant group of cousins or something. It was great to watch.

The groupchat of my diaconal cohort was lively throughout - posting pictures and comments. Someone’s hair briefly caught fire during the Lumen Christi but it sounds like it was over quickly. Most of us were able to reconnect and catch-up in person at last week’s assembly. We got to do it again at a reception prior to the Chrism Mass. I’m glad that we’re all keeping in touch. Everyone’s assignments have all turned out to be so very different. The parishes all have different characters and populations, multiple pastoral styles and organizations, different levels of…well, wealth. Some are huge with extensive staffs and budgets to match. Others are smaller. I am fond of telling people that the Church is A Big Tent in terms of piety and spiritualities; I’m learning just how big the tent really is.

Bookwise: Proust continues. So far so good. I can see that I’ll be digging into this for a while.

Weather: Cool but nice. Managed to get some yardwork in this weekend. We’ll pass our Last Frost date here shortly and then plant with impunity. Most of the perennials have come back nicely but I’ll need to replace the lavender. The new trees seem to be doing well. We got a nice bit of rain on Saturday night and the cool temps are helping a bunch.

He is risen indeed!

Ok let’s do this thing. Currently reading: Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust 📚

He answered

Towards the end of The Rings of Saturn, Sebald discourses a bit on Chateaubriand. This bit resonated with me deeply, as someone who has also planted a number of trees:

When he returned in 1807 from his long journey to Constantinople and Jerusalem, he bought a summer house that lay hidden among wooded hills in the Vallée aux Loups, not far from the town of Aulnay. It is there that he begins to write his memoirs, on the first pages of which he speaks of the trees he has planted and tended with his own hands. Now, he says, they are still so small that I provide them with shade whenever I step between them and the sun. But one day, when they have grown, they will give shade to me, and look after me in my old age much as I looked after them in their youth. I feel a bond unites me with these trees; I write sonnets, elegies and odes to them; they are like children, I know them all by name, and my only desire is that I should end my days amongst them.

Yesterday there was a diocesan assembly of deacons. It had originally been set for earlier in the year but canceled because of the ice storms. The rescheduling was a bit awkward, but the content was nice and a couple of us got to serve mass with our bishop, which is always good. Then the race back to the home parish to get ready for a pair of vigils last night. Then two more masses today, so the first big day of Holy Week is in the books. I have narrated four passions and the sanctuary has been packed and palpably buzzing with excitement. Many are the occasional visitors; we hope they stay a bit. The kids are all beaming and the weather is gorgeous. We’re off to an excellent start.

Bringing of Jollity

Tonight we’re using a Christmas gift from the kids: symphony tickets! The Nashville Symphony is performing Holst’s The Planets which should be a lot of fun. I’ve heard “Mars” gets to stand in for a lot final sci-fi movie scoring; it’s one of those pieces that sounds like you’ve heard it before even if you’ve never heard it before. The pivot point in “Jupiter” is the melody for the hymn O God Beyond All Praising among others. CULTURE! Very excited!

Man is the perfection of the universe; the spirit is the perfection of man; love, that of the spirit; and charity, that of love. Wherefore the love of God is the end, the perfection and the excellence of the universe. In this, Theotimus, consists the greatness and the primacy of the commandment of divine love, which the Saviour calls the first and greatest commandment. This commandment is as a sun which gives lustre and dignity to all the sacred laws, to all the divine ordinances, and to all the Holy Scriptures. All is done for this heavenly love, and all has reference to it. From the sacred tree of this commandment grow all the counsels, exhortations, inspirations, and the other commandments, as its flowers, and eternal life as its fruit; and all that does not tend to eternal love tends to eternal death.

— St. Francis de Sales, Treatise, X.i

Thoroughly enjoying The Rings of Saturn and Sebald’s meandering, introspective style got me interested in Proust’s Swann’s Way, so that’s inbound from Amazon and I’ll have something to chew on for awhile.

The quince and medlar are showing some signs of life. I’m always a little nervous planting bare-root trees, but each of them has tiny little buds in all the right places.

The puppies are asleep in a pen adjacent to my office and I about have all the changes down for the Exsultet. Further reports as events warrant.

Things are busy busy busy.

Met with the pastor earlier this week to go over the many things of Holy Week, who’s preaching what, and so on. I’ll do the first of two Good Friday services (in English) and preach the Vigil in English and Spanish; he’ll take Good Friday in Spanish and the two masses of Easter morning. Done and done. Visited my spiritual director, caught up on the first seventy-some-odd days of ministry and made my confession. Marriage prep class tonight with four couples. Baptizing a grandson tomorrow. Full slate of liturgies Saturday and Sunday.

In other news, the weather is breaking in the right direction. We went from flurries earlier in the week to…checks temperature…77 and sunny. I’m hoping we’ll avoid any late freezes at this point, since everything’s sprouting and blooming like crazy. Certainly the grass could use cutting. Probably have to squeeze that in some afternoon next week.

Herewith some thoughts from Francis de Sales that come up in his treatment of indifference, which is how he describes a disposition of accepting from God things that give us pleasure along with the things that do not (Treatise on the Love of God, IX:vii). I found them extremely appropriate during these final weeks of Lent.

God has ordained that we should employ our whole endeavours to obtain holy virtues, let us then forget nothing which might help our good success in this pious enterprise. But after we have planted and watered, let us then know for certain that it is God who must give increase to the trees of our good inclinations and habits, and therefore from his Divine Providence we are to expect the fruits of our desires and labours, and if we find the progress and advancement of our hearts in devotion not such as we would desire, let us not be troubled, let us live in peace, let tranquillity always reign in our hearts. It belongs to us diligently to cultivate our heart, and therefore we must faithfully attend to it, but as for the plenty of the crop or harvest, let us leave the care thereof to our Lord and Master. The husbandman will never be reprehended for not having a good harvest, but only if he did not carefully till and sow his ground. Let us not be troubled at finding ourselves always novices in the exercise of virtues, for in the monastery of a devout life every one considers himself always a novice, and there the whole of life is meant as a probation…

Credo

I was an OCIA catechist for a number of years, and every year, the most common questions we fielded from the seekers were about the rules: the rules for what to do during the mass, the rules for the calendar, vestments, fasts, and feasts. It’s not the craziest place to start. From the outside looking in, Catholicism must seem like nothing more than an impenetrable maze of rules and rituals. Once you unlock the rules, you’re in.

Our faith, wrote Pope Benedict XVI, is not simply a set of intellectual propositions requiring our assent. It is about a decisive encounter with a person, an event which enlarges the horizons of our existence and provides a new direction. We see this encounter in three different forms during these final weeks of Lent.

The Samaritan woman encounters Christ at the well, having come alone and in the heat of the day. She is an outcast, but nevertheless encounters Christ in a setting scripturally associated with courtship. Filled with an awareness of the Living Water, she runs posthaste to the people who rejected her to share what has happened, inviting this same community to see for themselves.

Lazarus will be called forth from the cave next week. He will be called from death and darkness by name, returning the light for a time. The family at Bethany along with the mourners and others encounter the Lordship of Jesus in its fullest before the Passion. Indeed, this final sign of Jesus is the first domino to fall on his way to Calvary.

Today the man born blind asks for something he has never had before: his sight. We are reminded throughout this Gospel reading that he was born blind. He wasn’t asking for a restoration of something lost, but rather something he never had. We know the world first through our senses. Imagine for a moment, if you can, what it would be like to receive an entirely new one. It’s difficult; maybe impossible. His new direction is internal, progressing from “I don’t know” to “He is a prophet” to “I believe, Lord.” I can believe he didn’t budge from the very spot where he received his sight. It’s easy to imagine him just looking at everything around him carefully and re-assessing everything he knew about his world with these new sense.

These readings are read at the Scrutinies, a trio of masses in the third, fourth, and fifth weeks of Lent and particularly focused on the catechumens and candidates who will be received into full communion at the Easter Vigil. All three show the decisive encounter with Christ, and the new direction which follows - a direction ordered to discipleship, and the joy of the kerygma. We are called to share it, running with the Samaritan woman. We are called to feel it within, like the man born blind, and we wait patiently for the Lord to call us by name from darkness into light.

Rules are important, certainly. All relationships have them: friend groups, work environments, and the unspoken body of beautiful rules that arise over time during the course of a marriage. It is the love which comes first, though. The rules arise over time as a reflection of that love. Imagine catching the eye of someone across the room, mustering the courage to walk over and say hello, and being met instead with a catalog of rules: on these days we do this, at these times we say these things, we eat such-and-such weekly, and under no circumstances will we do thus. You would be right to do an about-face and exit quickly. First the encounter, then the relationship. Rules will come later, over time. Without that decisive encounter - that first meeting which leads to love, they won’t matter. Our world becomes smaller and darker.

Let us instead enter into someplace larger, knowing this place in new ways. If your world seems small lately, or it seems just ordinary in all of the daily rhythms of life, we can encounter Him today, right here at the altar. We can say with the man born blind “I believe.”

“I believe.”

Currently reading: The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald 📚

Books and stuff

So I’m in Las Vegas this week for work. My company hosts a customer event here and most of us are here working more-or-less behind the scenes to make sure that all the technical stuff runs without a hitch. I work out of a home office and have been a remote worker for many years now, so it’s nice to work alongside other folks in person. The weather is nice, not that it matters much at these things. The hotel is also nice and the food is uniformly excellent. I’m not much of a gambler, but I can definitely see the appeal. I’m just too cheap, to be perfectly honest.

I’ve reached the point in the trip where I can reasonably begin thinking about the return flight home. Yesterday I checked the total drive time, just in case I had to rent a car and leave without notice. It could happen! You can’t be too careful. Alas, it’s a long - but simple - drive. Hit I-40 and head east until I’m basically home.

Making good progress through Haidt’s book. No surprises; all of this stuff has been very top of mind for a while. Very keen to start The Rings of Saturn when I get back. Connected with a co-worker who has very similar reading tastes and we title-dumped each other over drinks last night. I came away with a recommendation for Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday (translated by Anthea Bell!). Since travelogues were on tap I offered out Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

A tarot card/palm reader was featured at the event last night. She motioned me over and patted the seat next to her. I declined. “My bishop,” I said, “would not be pleased.”

“Your bishop? Would it help if I called myself a personality consultant instead?”

“It would not, but have a lovely evening.”

Check-in starts 24 hours from departure, says my airline app.

Currently reading: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino 📚

Four-day weekend

I’ve got a couple of days off in advance of the weekend (and a week of upcoming business travel). The weather is gorgeous so I’ve been in and out of doors constantly. The pups, for their part, are also enjoying the sunshine (see below).

Tomorrow night is the first formal session of our current marriage preparation cohort. We had a meet-and-greet a couple of weeks ago and the four pairs are just lovely people. I am very much looking forward to sharing this bit of formation with them. We’re using Beloved by Augustine Institute and it seems every bit as well done as Symbolon, which we used at my former parish for OCIA content.

Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn showed up today and it goes in queue right after Italo Calvino, which is right after Austerlitz.

I’m preaching the fourth Sunday of Lent, and for year A, the mass readings for that day are aligned with the Scrutinies so I only need to prepare a single homily.

I have a deep love of the Scrutinies - three Gospel readings which profoundly meditate on growth in Christian discipleship, the movement from darkness into light, and the Paschal mystery. Our faith, taught Benedict XVI, is not merely a system of intellectual propositions to which we intellectually assent, but rather an encounter with a person. This encounter moves our horizon of understanding outward, growing to encompass more that is true, real, and beautiful. Once this horizon is moved, it can only be moved back by our willing so - our decision to cast our eyes back to the ground or to retreat back into the darkness of the cave. To return to a life of the furtive sins we carry around with us like so many leaking baskets of sand.

Enjoying this beautiful warm weather

Here comes The Son

The weather is warming up here and I’ve got seeds arriving a bit later today: sweet peas, sunflowers, and zinnias. Most of them are going into the cottage-style garden in the front of the house. The winter was short enough that many of the perennials from last summer stayed a bit green throughout - the bee balm has spread all over the place and the yarrow looks like it’s tripled in size. I added milkweed last summer and hope to see it sprouting this year. Very excited to get started. Other tasks on the to-do list: pull the weeds, which also overwintered pretty well. I also have some replacement bluebird houses that are also for installation.

Not a whole lot of cleanup for now. A few limbs here and there from the ice storm, but our trees seem to have escaped the worst of it. The pistaches and dogwood look good, too. Quince and medlar should ship at the end of this month.

Puppy life is continuing apace. They’re getting into a good sleeping pattern, though we’re still getting them up in the middle of the night for a potty run. Last night we went four hours, which is some progress. The cat, for her part, is getting used to the noise and commotion and has emerged from hiding to resume some of her usual haunts. They’ve come nose to nose once or twice, but one quick hiss is enough for the dogs to moonwalk straight away and go play somewhere else. They’re learning that she’s not to be messed with, and she’s learning that they won’t give immediate chase. This feels like progress.

Busy week at the parish this weekend - all day retreat for parents and godparents of our confirmandi and the usual slate of masses. I blessed a car, helped Father anoint a woman with cancer, and declined to bless someone’s locket which contained a portion of her late husband’s ashes. Just Say No to wearing your loved one after death.

Jury duty is over. Kids basketball season is over. Retreat talks are behind me. Ahead: some business travel and the ordinary cycles of Lent. Holy Week is already visible on our kitchen whiteboard calendar as March blends into April. I’ve taken all of Holy Week off so as to be available for all the things on campus. A break from the office will be nice but there will be lots going on elsewhere!