You Know it's a bad day at Mass when...

10) The usher tells you that he's been inspired and is going to call his mom when he gets home to thank her for putting up with him for all those years.

9) In describing what took place during the offeratory, you use the word "headlock" in a sentence.

8) Calories burned during mass via the trips to the bathroom equal or excede the value of a Dunkin' Donut's Boston Cream.

7) At the sign of peace, you get a lot of pity handshakes from fellow parishioners.

6) The woman behind you says, "Some day you'll miss this." and you think, "Not any time soon."

5) Kneelers. Toddlers. Echoes.

4) Going up the aisle for communion, a child wails, "When is it OVER?!"

3) The Eucharistic minister tells you, "There's only a drop." and you take the cup saying "Amen" and taking that drop because you need every bit of grace you can get.

2) You stare in wonder at all the well behaved children and have the eerie thought that the reason You get this battle is God knows this won't deter you from showing up next week.

1) Every one of these things actually took place within the span of one mass.

Follow-up: Why didn't you leave and come back later?
1) Three kids serving on the altar and
2) car was trapped by other cars illegally parked.
3) I did actually leave the main church three times in an attempt to regroup (during songs). Each time, it took for about all of five minutes.

Finally, when mass is over and you trudge to the parkinglot, you discover there is a black Acura parked in the firelane trapping you at the Church hall for the next hour with the bumper sticker "Chose Civility" on it's window.

Everyone here had to work to get to mass such that calling the police seems somehow anti the spirit of Lent. So the kids get to have doughnuts after all that while you wait for the parkinglot to clear and it seems that you should offer it up in sublimation because all of these little problems are merely a toe being poked into the sand of the 40 day dessert.  All you can do is sigh and say man, sublimation sometimes just really really, well it doesn't stink but man does it have to be this hard?

And then unbidden, it hits you that in the end, when you see your self truly and acknowlege that you misbehaved this much in real life yourself; that in the end, God is nice enough to still let you have a doughnut when all is said and done.

I Made the B-team

A year ago, I applied for the B-team Catholics,a group of Catholic bloggers --you submit and if you are accepted, you get this nifty B-team Catholic Blogger widget to add to your blog. I got accepted. Now I have to figure out how to install said nifty widget. Anyway, here was my application.

If the saints are the All Stars, then aren't we all b-team Catholics?

I mean, aren't we all sitting on the bench waiting, hoping, in some cases even praying that somehow we will be the star of an ABC afterschool special? You know, the one where the really mean but exceptionally talented popular girl insults us publicly in the lunch room about our pathetic athletic skills and we cry in the bathroom but then in the game, she gets hurt and we're put in while she recovers? Then, in a string of no less than miraculous events, we play well enough to not completly lose the game for the team such that the former real mean girl recognizes our worth both as a player and a person and the whole crowd cheers as we score the winning point with our oddly awkward serve.

Making the B-team Catholics of bloggers would be like the denoument of the show, where the whole team goes out for ice cream and the coach awards the player of the year trophy to the orriginally thought stinky players who turn out to be a loveable bunch of scrubs that everyone underestimated. Cue music, credits and fade out.

Please don't make me sit on the bench for both games. I'll work on my serve and being able to set and bump and spike I promise! Or make me manager. That's right, I won't even be on the team, I'll just be with the team. I'll carry equipment. I'll clean up. I'll pass out snacks. I won't even eat one. Just, let me ride on the bus with all the really cool people please?

Sherry Antonetti, Catholic mom, blogger and B-team wantabe.

Why We Fast

Today, I got to shake things up a bit at our house. My youngest decided he needed a trip to the Shady Grove Spa, (nickname for all hospitals in our home), courtesy of his Pediatrician. So this Halloween, I'm pretending to be a mom of one, and their dad is pretending he works from home.

We arrived at 4, were admitted around 9 and I wanted food. (It was 11 when I expressed this idea that I should eat something). The cafeteria was closed but the vending machines remained.

One of the machines sold burritos and microwave fries and frozen pizza and one more thing, a "Fish and Cheese" sandwich. Being in a hospital, maybe you could take the risk on food poisoning, but I couldn't help but think the two dollar couldn't cut it as a Filet O Fish sandwich had to be in that machine as part of a lost bad bet or possibly, a dare.

Maybe there were some strict Catholics who needed a viable option for abstaining times of the church calendar year. The problem with that idea, there are no days of fasting in the Fall. Old Fish and Cheese sounded almost as bad as Preemptive Fish and cheese. I could not imagine how desperate one would have to be to eat such a thing.

It did however, encourage me to skip dinner. Fasting is good for the soul, particularly when the dish served is Sole.

p.s. Paul is doing very well. This is just part of the process of moving towards his eventual heart surgery.