Our First "Guest Star" Roamin' Catholics Adventure

One evening, two perspectives... presenting this week's Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul...

HERS:

I'd like to begin with two sidenotes regarding Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul. 

First, my dear cousin told us that Roamin' Catholics was a category on Jeopardy a little over a week ago. I asked her if we were mentioned (joking of course). She replied no, but thought that maybe one of the writers of the game show were following our blog! Lol.  Now, wouldn't that be something?

Next, a new friend was asking about our blog and when I told her about it and said I felt I was lacking in my religious journey she said something that I really needed to hear. She said that she thought the point IS the journey. She went on to say He has given us the ability to choose our path and to explore and to search and to seek to understand Him... and to bring oneself closer to Him. (If you're reading this... thank you!)

On to this week's journey...

Earlier this week, Lou said to me, "Let's do something different for Roamin' Catholics". I love proclamations such as this from my husband because they usually mean something interesting. He suggested that we go to St. Rose of Lima Church which is exactly 2 miles from our home and afterward he would make me a Valentine's dinner of my choosing. I loved one part of his suggestion and almost dreaded the other.

Saturday was rainy and dreary all day and it reflected my mood at the thought of going to St. Rose Church. We've been there before on occasion and there is something about the Church that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it was the time we went and the singer boldly proclaimed, "The song goes like this... I should know... I wrote it". Or perhaps it was the time we attended mass and had to go through some liturgical cross training exercise where we stood in line and had to bless the person behind us in line and that person would bless the person behind them, and so on. Perhaps it was the time we attended and the priest promised to keep the mass short due to the unprecedented hurricane threat to our region. A "short" mass at St. Rose is an hour. Or maybe it was the time we went to purchase a Christmas tree there at one of their annual tree sales and there was hoopla with blessing the tree and saying a prayer. I never thought of a Christmas tree as a religious symbol. Or maybe it was the time we went and we were asked to bring our offertory envelope to the basket in the front of the church. Yeah, I think that was what pushed me over the edge.

Wearing our red, we attended the 5:00 mass celebrated by Fr. Justin Huber and assisted by Deacon Al Opdenaker. The "church" (and I use that term loosely) looks unlike any other Catholic church I've ever seen. It is modern and in some ways feels like a gymnasium. If it were much larger, I would expect Joel Osteen to give one of his sermons here.

When you enter, there is a huge stone waterfall type vessel filled with holy water that trickles into a lower grate. It is beautiful.

The altar is in the center of the church and there is a podium in front of altar.The altar and podium are an unusual combination of stone and curved ironwork that are also different from anything I've seen at any other Catholic church.

Before mass began, one of the ushers approached us and asked if we would like to present the gifts to the priest at the altar. For all non-Catholics reading this, the "gifts" include the bread and wine to be consecrated into Jesus' body and blood as well as the money collected from the parishioners. I took this as a sign that we were being welcomed into this parish and perhaps I should keep an open mind.

Mass began with a song and after, the priest asked any visitors to the parish to stand so the congregation could welcome them. Lou promptly put a hand on my knee - as if after 25 years of marriage I didn't know that he would not want to stand - not to mention that I had no intention of standing anyway. Next, we were asked to greet everyone around us. Ok, we have done this at other parishes so we are getting used to it. Can we get down to business now? Lol.

The theme running through the First Reading and the Gospel was that of lepers and leprosy. In the First Reading, lepers were banished from the general population and in the Gospel, Jesus touched a leper to cure him. The homily (for those new to the blog, this is my favorite part) this week was not about the Cardinal's Appeal. Yay! Fr. Huber's homily gets a high score in my book. He talked briefly about leprosy and disease and how that often is related to sinfulness in the Bible. He then talked about sin and how God does not banish us when we sin, but rather, we pull away from God due to guilt or sadness or whatever other reason. He talked a bit about the 10 Commandments and how these relate to our relationships with other people and when we break a commandment we are pulling ourselves away from others. The more we sin, the further we push ourselves from God's love. He suggested that what we need to do when we sin is to bring ourselves to God for forgiveness. I thought this was a well prepared homily, it tied back to the readings, it provided a message to which I could relate, and was appropriate in length. I'd give it a 9 out of 10, only because there is always room for improvement!

Overall, I think my dread about attending St. Rose was in vain. Aside from too much singing, I enjoyed the mass and would go back - at some point...

Next, onto our Valentine's dinner. Let me just say, I love my husband dearly and love that he is full of surprises. When we got home, I turned my back for a moment, and when I turned around he was like a magician with a bouquet of flowers in his hand...  I love that he knows I am not a rose girl. I like simple flowers and loved the lavender mums he surprised me with. He then asked me to get something out of the refrigerator where a Valentine's Day card was waiting next to the bottle of iced tea. A few of you will chuckle when you find out what I requested for dinner - because you know that this is one of my favorite things. Dinner was cheese and charcuterie with a bottle of pinot noir from one of our favorite wineries in Napa Valley... V. Sattui.

The meal was simple and delicious and put a smile on my face. As if that weren't enough, I suggested watching a movie for our Valentine's evening. I chose a movie from 2004 that I never got to see - The Notebook. I appreciated that Lou did not give me a difficult time regarding this Nicholas Sparks' love story/chick flick... in fact, I think he even enjoyed it...a little.

I feel blessed 💗

HIS:

This week’s jaunt kept us close to home while feeding both body and soul.  With Valentine’s Day approaching and it falling on Ash Wednesday this year, I proposed that we celebrate St Valentine over the weekend vs. on Wednesday.  With both of us in agreement we decided to do our traditional Valentine’s dinner at home.  To feed our soul, I suggested that we visit the parish closest to our home.  One that we haven’t been to in several years, St. Rose of Lima in Gaithersburg.  This was followed by charcuterie at home.

When we first moved to Gaithersburg, St. Rose was the closest parish to our townhouse.  While we attended there when we were first married, it didn’t fit what either of us viewed as our Catholic vision and we ultimately worshipped at other parishes in the area.  A lot has changed at St. Rose since those days.  There is a new pastor, new priests and a new church.  The church is built in a modern style in the round.  The first thing I noticed as we walked into the sanctuary was the baptismal fount to the left.  This also doubled as a vessel to receive holy water for blessing ones self as you enter a church.  The fount was truly impressive in the stillness of the water.  It was fed from the bottom that caused the water to gently overflow into a drain on the bottom.  Even though the water was overflowing the sides of the vessel the tranquility of the water on the surface was mesmerizing.  The other thing noted was that the water was warm.  Typically, holy water is room temperature, which means more often that not, it is cold.  As you move further into the church, it was hard to figure out exactly where to sit to get the full effect of mass.  The celebrant sat to our right, the lectern was to our left and the altar was center right.  Very different set-up.

I must admit, I often times have some difficulty interpreting the message of scripture readings.  This week is one of those times.  I struggled a bit with the themes in the first reading and the gospel referring to leprosy.  As I look at all three readings along with the psalm, my take away is that we should conduct ourselves more modestly.  Don’t make a big display of things in our lives.  This is perhaps an important lesson to be learned in the world today.

We stayed really close to home this week in nourishing our body!  We had dinner at home.  As mentioned previously, we celebrated Valentine’s day early.  As is our tradition, we eat at home instead of fighting the crowds on what we often refer to as amateur day.  We had a mixture of charcuterie along with trying some of the skills obtained from a cooking class we took back in November.  In addition, we opened a “Saturday” wine obtained from one of our visits to Napa Valley, California several years ago.  We enjoyed a V. Sattui 125^th Anniversary Pinot Noir.  The wine was only eight years old, the winery is the one celebrating 125 years….  The culinary cooking adventure we attempted were scallops on puff pastry.  This is one of those things that the ingredients are mostly in the name so its kinda hard to mess up.  That said there is a little bit more to it.  The appetizer includes a slice of sweet potato, which we substituted for potato, as well as bacon and brie.  I think we were both in agreement that the dish needs the sweet potato to enhance the flavor.   Dinner also included prosciutto, brie, artiggiano (cheese from Wisconsin), pecans, fig spread, grapes, salmon pinwheels and pita chips.  Delicious!  The best part of the evening was enjoying it all with my sweetie and not having to drive home afterwards.  Following dinner we were both notebooked!  If your not familiar with this term, this were a girl (Mary) makes a boy (Louis) sad and emotional from watching the movie, The Notebook.  At the risk of losing my man card, all I will say is have a box of Puffs Plus handy….for your best gal when you watch the flick! 😉

And of course, we end with our Soufie...