This week's Roamin' Catholics: Body & Soul - one night, one morning and two perspectives...
HIS:
This week had us continuing our Gaithersburg/Germantown
swing but reversing our order a bit. Apparently it isn’t good enough to
check a parish’s website for mass times….More on that in a moment. This
week also included two masses. As everyone probably knows, Wednesday was
Ash Wednesday. The start of the Lenten season. I rousted Mary from
a peaceful slumber at 5:00 am on Wednesday to make it to Mother Seton (our home
parish) for a 6:30 am mass to receive our ashes. For those who don’t
know, the ashes symbolize mourning, mortality and penance. All things to
reflect on during the 40 (actually 46) days of Lent. The priest (or
Eucharistic minister) traditionally says, Remember you are dust and to dust
you shall return (Genesis 3:19) as they make a cross with their thumb
dipped in ashes on your forehead. Ashes are an ominous sign, and we use
them on Ash Wednesday to remind ourselves of our own impending deaths. Death
may come sooner, or it may come later, but it will surely come. Something
that was vividly brought to light later in the day. We were given much to
reflect on with the tragic events in Parkland, Florida. Lent reminds us
to live according to God’s ways and to repent of our sins. It is a period
of reflection. I think we can all agree that we have a lot to reflect on
these days. No feeding the body on this past Wednesday as is our practice
on the weekends. Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence.
Fasting = only one full meal for the day and Abstinence = no meat.
On Saturday, we intended to attend the 5:30 vigil mass at St
Martin of Tours in Gaithersburg. A mass and church we used to attend
fairly regularly before we started going to Mother Seton in Germantown.
Because we hadn’t been to St Martin’s in some time, I thought it would be wise
to check their mass schedule. Fool proof, right? So I thought, but
the best laid plans often go awry. It was about 5:17 and the parking lot
was full already. It didn’t dawn on us right away that the mass time may
have been bumped up, but when we couldn’t find a single space, we began to
wonder. We checked the website again and confirmed the 5:30 start
time. Mary called the parish office number and the recording stated that
the Saturday vigil mass began at 5:30. Check and check, so what was going
on!? I asked Mary to check masstimes.org for something close by that
might have a 5:30. That site also reflected the 5:30 start time.
WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY IS GOING ON!!!!!!! Alright,
alright, just trying to add a little levity, it wasn’t that big a deal.
We decided that we weren’t meant to go to mass on Saturday evening, so we
decided we would proceed with feeding our faces, uh I mean our bodies instead.
Mass would have to wait until Sunday morning. As we drove to the chosen
dining establishment, Mary checked the St. Martin’s website more thoroughly and
discovered an announcement. On Saturday, February 17th, there
would be a Lenten retreat which would include a bi-lingual mass set to begin at
5:00 pm followed by dinner in the church hall. This was all for the
best. It was snowing and it was better to get home earlier than usual to
be off the roads. Things happen for a reason.
Turns out there are several highly rated Mexican restaurants
in and around Gaithersburg and we are slowly trying them all. Who knew
gas station tacos could be so good or you could get a quality flautas from a
food truck (been there done that.) This week we chose Tortaco in Gaithersburg.
Rated 4.9 stars on Yelp, it seemed like a place worth trying. Can
the crowd be wrong? In fact, we walked in and the proprietor (working the
register) said welcome to the place everyone is talking about.
Indeed. The portions were small so we got several to try and took it to
go. The crowd wasn’t wrong. We found the Sopes, Tacos and Tortas
delicious. Big enough to be satisfying but small enough to try a variety
of items. Definitely worth a return visit.
The readings this week translated for me as God’s covenant
is unbreakable. We must honor that and live according to his
teachings. Lent is a time of reflection and evaluation of our
lives. It is a time to look inward and recognize who we are and what path
we are on. The readings help bring that home.
HERS:
This week's feeding of the soul hit another timing snag (see Week 1). Our plan was to attend the 5:30 mass at St. Martin's Church in Gaithersburg, however, when we entered the parking lot at 5:15 it was completely full and nobody was walking into the church. Hmmm... had they changed the mass time? Our handy masstimes.org confirmed a 5:30 mass, but we couldn't find a place to park even if there really was a 5:30 mass, so we headed to our body feeding destination... Tortacos - also located in Gaithersburg. It was a good thing we decided to stay close to home this weekend. We were in the midst of a snowstorm (translation to our readers north of us, we had 2" of snow, no biggie).
We selected Tortacos based on two things... St. Martin's has a large Spanish population, and it seemed only fitting that some version of Spanish food was in order for the evening and also, it got a 4.8 out of 5 rating online. The restaurant itself was more of a fast food joint with no ambiance to speak of. The owner took our order and he was very friendly and when we told him it was our first time there, he helped by explaining what some of the foods were. We ended up ordering take out, mostly because our home ambiance is much more inviting and because we knew we had margarita mix at home. We ended up sharing a torta (I'm sure Lou will explain what everything is in his version), a taco and a sope... oh, of course there were chips and guacamole too. And due to my Notebook movie selection last week, Lou informed me that "I owed him" and we ended up watching Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I think Taron Egerton is adorable, so I didn't mind one bit. So much for owing. Shhh... don't tell Lou.
So our lack of a Saturday evening mass brought us to the 7:00 am mass on Sunday - back at St. Martin's. Some quick history... we used to go to St. Martin's for many years when we first moved to Gaithersburg some 20+ years ago and even volunteered at their pantry that distributed food to needy families, but we had not been back in many years. The church is traditional but more simple than other churches we have attended.
The 7:00 mass was sans music, sans greeting your neighbor and sans long homily. Overall, it was a pretty generic mass, and actually made me miss having a little bit of music - familiar music, that is. My one sentence synopsis of the homily is this... We all have our own version of hell; we have to repent for our sins to stay out of hell. There really isn't too much else to tell.
As a sidenote, we found out that the 5:30 Saturday mass had been changed to 5:00 due to a retreat that was taking place on February 17th.
Ending with our Soulfie:
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