It’s a twofer today since I didn’t post anything Saturday or Sunday. So, let’s look at days 10 & 11 of this 68 day odyssey.
Physical
Saturday I skipped my exercises and took a little break. Okay, I admit, I slept in and enjoyed it. I didn’t get back home from the airport until about 11:00 PM so I was beat.
Sunday I did my exercises and pushed to level 6. I survived but my left shoulder gave me some trouble toward the end. I’ll work on level 6 again on Monday. It took me 12:37 to get through level 6 so that tells me that I’ll need to start as soon as I wake and avoid the phone for sure. Otherwise, I know I’ll have to rearrange my scheduled practices. I’m thinking that once I switch to level 7, I may need to start getting up earlier.
Spiritual
On Saturday, once I got my butt out of bed, I prayed through some of the Office of Readings and then went to Mass with Nicole and the kids. We then drove up the hill to pray at the graveside of my father and brother. It was such a beautiful day and a nice visit. A gentleman had his dogs out running around the cemetery. The dogs were friendly and came over for a visit. I know Dad and Dustin, as dog lovers, would approve!
After my workout on Sunday, I immediately dove into the Liturgy of the Hours and the readings for the day. I found some interesting parallels between the second reading from Paul and some of what I’m reading in the Summa of the Summa. St. Paul, in the letter to the Hebrews says:
He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when offered himself. (Hebrews 7:27)
So, the natural question is how is Jesus’ sacrifice, 2000+ years ago, applied to us today or to those who came before Christ? His action happened in time; a long time ago. The answer, in my mind, is that Christ is God and God is eternal. He is outside of time but entered into time for those brief 33 years. Since God is eternal, He can apply the merits of Christ’s sacrifice to all regardless of time. As Catholics, we believe that we tap into eternity in the Mass; that it is a representation of the events of Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, in an unbloody manner. The word “representation” is key here; not to be understood as “remembering” but as re-presenting, making present again.
In the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas talks about eternity and how it is connected to the now. Now is the time that we are connected to eternity until we enter fully into eternity. We are not connected to eternity in the past nor in the future but only in the present moment. That is why, over and again in scripture we read things like “chose this day”, “do not worry about tomorrow”, etc. Our connection is now, this very moment, where we live in time and eternity. Our deepest connection with eternity, while still on earthly time, is at Mass where we reach out to Heaven and eternity and Heaven reaches out to us applying the One sacrifice of the One high priest for all.
Emotional
To be honest, I’ve been dealing with a lot of internal anger, frustration, anxiety, and depression lately. The weekend was no different. However, those feelings are minimized by exercise, prayers, and family time. Saturday was a good day because I finally finished our new dining room table and the Buckeyes won. Sunday was good day because we attended Mass as a family and celebrated the birthdays of two or our sons.
Nicole and I continue to work through our dialogue questions. It’s always a joy to sit with her and share our journals and answers. The questions are not always a joy to answer. We talked Saturday about how what we are doing is actually really hard work but work that we believe will pay off for our marriage if we stick with it. It’s hard work because we (people in general) wear so many masks. As it is with social media, we only want people to see the good parts of us. It takes courage to face head-on the not so good parts, the weak parts, and the sinful parts. To do so in an open and honest way, to be completely vulnerable with another is difficult but very rewarding. I believe we would all have better friendships if we could be truly honest with one another and remove those masks.
Intellectual
I’m not one to brag, but, well, here we go… I finished first in the “Diamond League” of my Spanish App. I’m not sure what that means in real life except that I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in learning. I feel as though I’m definitely learning more words and able to make better connections in the grammar department. I’ll keep on plugging away.
My left-handed cursive continues to progress. I worked on it Saturday but not Sunday because of all of the family activities.
As I mentioned above, I’m starting to get more out of the Summa of the Summa. Much of it is way over my head but the little glimpses that I understand and the insights I’ve connected with make the work worth the effort.
That’s all for now. How was your weekend? Did you have highs and lows? Did you try something new? Did you fail? Did you accomplish something? Share your story in the comments. Thanks for following along!
A.I. Title & Image
The title for this post was spot on. I did laugh out loud at the image of all the dogs in the cemetery. I’m curious about the algorithm that created such an image after reading this post. Looking at the tombstone I guess I need to learn another language other than Spanish!
James M. Hahn, Author 