We're mixing things up a bit this week. We want to keep our audience on its toes. Last week we gave you separate HER PERSPECTIVE and HIS PERSPECTIVE. This week we are co-mingling. My comments (HERS) will be in this lovely royal blue and HIS will be in black.

In the interest of equal time (last week we went to my namesake, St. Mary's), this week brought us to St. Louis in Clarksville, MD. We were about 24 miles from home base.  This is a vibrant, large parish which is part of the Baltimore Archdiocese.  The parish is apparently so large that they actually have two Saturday evening masses.  Somewhat unusual for our area. I've only experienced the "more than one Saturday evening mass" in Ft. Myers, FL. This week’s church was also designed in the “modern” vain.  Built in 1980, the church contained a good mix of modern elements along with the traditional.  The stained glass windows featured in the church were massive and seemed to come straight out of a church built 100 years ago.  I disagree. There was something about this stained glass that made it feel more contemporary to me. Perhaps the colors were brighter and the metal part of the windows wer thinner and therefor a little lighter feeling than traditional stained glass windows. The altar had a modern flair with a feeling of tradition.  In contrast to St Mary’s from last week, this church contained plenty of light and had 180 degree seating in front of the altar. 


I personally loved the feeling of the church. The designer in me loved the paint colors on the walls - light taupe and creamy white. The church was transitional and the stained glass windows had me in awe - they were gorgeous! I loved that the sun was shining through the windows casting colorful reflections of the stained glass colors on the walls. 

Reflection of one of the stained glass windows. Beautiful!


The pastor, Monsignor Luca had mass. I don't know if all Saturday afternoon masses are similar, but there were a lot of players at this mass - two Monsignors, one deacon, four altar servers, two lectors, and one cantor. The Monsignor (an honorific title) was friendly and affable.  He introduced his concelebrant of mass (another Monsignor)  and admonished him to be brief in his homilies for they have a rule at St. Louis that homilies are limited to eight minutes.  The pastor said he has a stop watch and will be timing the length.  The pastor had the homily and didn’t stick to his own rule.  He spoke for nearly 12 minutes!  😊  Yes, I timed him. Yes, he really did with the stopwatch on his phone... only partially hidden by the missalette. That said, he had a terrific message.  

The first reading was from Jonah and dealt with the people of Nineveh turning away from their sinful ways (they did).  The second reading, from 1st Corinthians told us that time is short and the world we currently know is passing away.  We both thought this was somewhat prescient given what has been happening lately in the world.  By the way, the reading also stated, “let those having wives act as not having them.”  We don’t think we will adhere to that one…. Although Lou did nudge me when these words were said.

The gospel from the 1st chapter of Mark dealt with three main themes.  This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.  Contained in the gospel is the famous quote, “come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  Simon and Andrew and James and John all left their lives and followed Jesus.  Monsignor Luca brought this all together by beginning with a story from the 2006 movie, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and ending it with the 1940s mobster Mickey Cohen. Believe it or not, he was able to tie these two dispirit things together.  In the Talladega Nights movie, there is a scene in which the Will Ferrell character is saying grace and he prays to the baby Jesus, the Christmas Jesus.  When admonished that Jesus grew up and became a man, he said that the baby (teeny, tiny) Jesus was his favorite Jesus.  The point made in the homily here is that when you focus on the “Christmas Jesus” you don’t have to deal with the difficult things.  Monsignor referred to the “S” word (warning all parents to cover their children’s ears) that you must face when dealing with the adult Jesus.  Sacrifice.  When relating this all to Mickey Cohen, he told the story of when the mobster met the evangelist Billy Graham and was converted.  He chose to follow Christian teachings.  But not really.  He became a Christian in name only but failed to change his “mobster” ways.  Sacrifice.   All of this in 11 minutes and 44 seconds. I think he was saying that your words and actions have to coincide to call yourself a Christian. The example that comes to mind is if you go to church and then swear at someone in the parking lot after mass for driving too slowly, then your words and actions are not in sync.

As a sidenote, I had a discussion last Sunday with my sister-in-law and my nieces about what constitutes a "good" homily in our personal perspectives. We all agreed that the shorter the better...usually if one goes beyond the 5-10 minute mark than a lot of history of the Catholic Church lessons usually sprout up. Most important, we all agreed, that we needed and wanted a good "take away"... some sort of message that would help get us through the week. Although past the 10 minute mark, I will grant the Monsignor some slack since his take away was very good.

With respect to dinner (feeding our body), we dined at Seasons 52 in Columbia.  This was more about economics than finding a Five Star dining experience.  Before Christmas we had dinner at a Seasons 52 in Tysons and they gave $25 coupons to entice us to return in the new year.  Given that each of us had one, we were able to get $50 off our bill.  Who doesn’t love a bargain? I do! We thought the atmosphere was great. As was the case last week, we sat at the bar. Initially, we thought that we would only be able to use one coupon between the two of us, so we made it look like we were just meeting there for the first time so we could use both. Yeah, don't judge, we were looking for a great bargain! My Catholic guilt got the better of me after about 10 minutes, so I asked if we could use both and was told as long as we spent $50 between us, we were good. Thank goodness, I was beginning to feel like Claire and Phil on Modern Family. Dinner was good but I wouldn't go any further than that. We shared a salad and then I had the Shrimp & Grits and Lou had the Beef Ribs. I feel like we nourished our souls more than our bodies this week, and that is not a bad thing!

Spinach salad with blue cheese and pears.

Lest we forget, this week's Soulfie... yes, it was sunny and 61 degrees yesterday! If that's not God's work, I don't know what is!


As always, thanks for reading!

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