Moller Artiste repairs

First photo: old and new rackboard supports. Second photo: replacement support installed.

If the Fathers of the Church Were Alive Today, 2: Augustine

Judy and Dr. Augustine with their children, Adeodatus and Tiffany

Hard to believe that I have been blogging at Confessions.blogspot.com for thirteen years now. If you put together all those blogposts, they add up to the equivalent of thirteen books! That’s one whole book per year! Every one of them a best-seller, just as I said a few years back, “This is what I wish to do through confession in my heart before thee, and in my writings before many witnesses.” 
Just the other day, my wife Judy pointed out that I even before our ministry was so unfairly attacked by Pastor Pelagius, I had already said in my blog, again and again, “Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt.” One of my brother pastors told me that he was sitting next to Pelagius at a church growth conference in Houston when that post went up, and poor old Pelagius got so upset he threw his Ipad to the floor and jumped up and down on it!
Now what, indeed, does God command, first and foremost, except that we believe in him? This faith, therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him, “Give what thou commandest.” Moreover, in those same blog posts, concerning my account of my conversion when God turned me to that faith I was laying waste through drinking alcoholically, the narration shows that I was given as a gift to the faithful and daily tears of Judy, who had been promised that I should not perish.
I certainly declared there that God by his grace turns men’s wills to the true faith when they are not only averse to it, but actually adverse. As for the other ways in which I sought God’s aid in my growth in perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish by going to confessions.blogspot.com #prevenient grace

If the Fathers of the Church Were Alive Today, 1: Origen of Alexandria

As a thought experiment I have attempted to imagine what it would like if the Church Fathers and other Ancient Christian Writers were acting and writing in the context of 21st century North American Christianity. I will add installments in the series from time to time as inspiration strikes. 

1. Origen of Alexandria

                                       Pastor Origen and Judy

They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless. -Revelations 14:4b-5, NIV

Now I know that you folks want to know what the Bible is telling us about these first fruits. Fruits are the results of our activity. Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and so is our whole life, since we are bent on progress in divine things.
But we don’t want just some of those first fruits  spoken of above which are made up of the many first fruits, we want ALL of those fruits, don’t we? So, if we’re right, in what must our first fruits consist, after the bodily separation we have undergone from each other, but in the study of the Gospel? For we may venture to say that the Gospel is the first fruits of all the Scriptures. So what are those first fruits? That’s right: a Bible Study. Where, then, could be the first fruits of our activity, since the time when Judy and I we came to Alexandria, but in the first fruits of the Scriptures?
It must not he forgotten, however, that the first fruits are not the same as the first growth. That’s why Judy and I started the First Growth Seminars as soon as we came to Alexandria. For the first fruits are offered after all the fruits are ripe, but before you have first fruits, you gotta have first growth. (For more information, visit firstgrowth.com)
Now of the Scriptures which are current and are believed to be divine in all the churches, one would not be wrong in saying that the first growth is the law of Moses, but the first fruits are the Gospel. Am I wrong? Now Judy says that I am wrong about a lot of things, so I have to ask!

For it was after all the fruits of the prophets who prophesied till the Lord Jesus, that the perfect word began to grow and send forth its shoots. Praise Him.

Achievable New Year's Resolutions for Catholics

Feel free to add your own. Just keep them achievable.

1. I will make sure that my cell phone is turned off before Mass starts.

2. I will go to confession at least once in the New Year.

3. I will make sure that my cell phone is turned off before I enter a church.

4. I will say the (5-decade) Rosary once during the month of May.

5. I will read one chapter of one of the Gospels during the New Year.

6. I will find out for myself what the Pope really said about (fill in topic of your choice).

7. I will read the section of the owner’s manual of my cell phone that explains how to turn it off. 

8. I will give alms at least once during Lent.

9. If any babies appear in my household or on my doorstep I will have them baptized before they reach the age of reason.

10. If my cell phone rings during Mass I will do something about it instead of just letting it ring.

11.    When receiving Holy Communion I will clearly telegraph my intentions regarding whether I will receive on the tongue or in the hand.

This is your church at 0500

School organ progress

The pipe organ in the school music room is now standing on its legs.

Words to Live By

"it is my conviction that theology is too serious to allow humans to think theologically without playfulness and irony. To try to be as serious as the subject would be arrogant, and could lead the hearer/reader to believe that I considered everything to be precisely as I describe it. Of late I have become even more convinced of the theological necessity of irony -- and of its nobler cousin humor--as a safeguard against idolatry."

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976, viii.