10 Celibacy Pluses

I congratulate my dear brother Ben, who was married today to lovely Jenna. I wish them every happiness. But the occasion moves me to recount some reasons why I love my celibate life…

1. Considerably more time for reading.

2. I can sing as loud as I want in the car, and no one minds.

3. Every time a baby has vomited sputum on my shoulder, or gone to the bathroom in my arms, I have gotten huge credit for being a stand-up guy. Absolutely every time.

4. No chance that any child of mine will ever go to Duke or UConn, or grow up and marry a Cowboys fan.

5. Whenever I go to a meeting in the principal’s office, it’s the principal who’s in trouble.

6. Considerably more time for reading.

7. The people who get disappointed in me because I’m a goofball rarely have an opportunity to let me know.

8. Whenever someone in the house yells at the dishes in the sink, I am never in the dark as to what happened to cause this.

9. No father-in-law gives me weird looks while I read a Jane Austen novel during commercial breaks in Thanksgiving football.

10. Sure, I have a hundred times more people who expect me to read their minds on a daily basis. But I don’t have to share a bathroom with any of them.

__

Happy Thanksgiving! May the good Lord bless us all, in our particular states of life.

Contra Gentiles

…I think that, in time, we will discover that it would have been better to capture bin Laden and try him in a court of law.

…Chapter 136 of Book III of St. Thomas’ Summa Contra Gentiles will enlighten us on the subject of marriage, especially:

The community of mankind would not be in a perfect state unless there were some people who direct their intention to generative acts and others who refrain from these acts and devote themselves to contemplation.

He Says He is Alive, Plus Father Cutié

Discussing St. Paul

In the autumn of A.D. 60, Portius Festus arrived from Italy to begin his assignment as Roman governor of Judea. He inherited a number of problems. One of them was that St. Paul was languishing in his jail.

King Herod Agrippa II came to the seaport city of Caesarea to greet the new governor. The king’s great-grandfather had built the city to curry favor with the waxing Roman empire.

Festus knew little of Judaism and nothing of Christianity. Nonetheless, in his conversation with Herod Agrippa, the new Roman governor unwittingly distilled the life of St. Paul into one single, perfect sentence.

The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio

—

I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.

From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.

For the world in its present form is passing away.

(I Corinthians 7:29-31)

This year we mark 2,000 years since the birth of St. Paul the Apostle. Today we commemorate the day when St. Paul went from persecuting Christians to being a Christian.

Perhaps you noticed last week that in our second readings at Holy Mass we have begun to read from St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. We will continue reading from these letters until Ash Wednesday.