Four-day weekend

I’ve got a couple of days off in advance of the weekend (and a week of upcoming business travel). The weather is gorgeous so I’ve been in and out of doors constantly. The pups, for their part, are also enjoying the sunshine (see below).

Tomorrow night is the first formal session of our current marriage preparation cohort. We had a meet-and-greet a couple of weeks ago and the four pairs are just lovely people. I am very much looking forward to sharing this bit of formation with them. We’re using Beloved by Augustine Institute and it seems every bit as well done as Symbolon, which we used at my former parish for OCIA content.

Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn showed up today and it goes in queue right after Italo Calvino, which is right after Austerlitz.

I’m preaching the fourth Sunday of Lent, and for year A, the mass readings for that day are aligned with the Scrutinies so I only need to prepare a single homily.

I have a deep love of the Scrutinies - three Gospel readings which profoundly meditate on growth in Christian discipleship, the movement from darkness into light, and the Paschal mystery. Our faith, taught Benedict XVI, is not merely a system of intellectual propositions to which we intellectually assent, but rather an encounter with a person. This encounter moves our horizon of understanding outward, growing to encompass more that is true, real, and beautiful. Once this horizon is moved, it can only be moved back by our willing so - our decision to cast our eyes back to the ground or to retreat back into the darkness of the cave. To return to a life of the furtive sins we carry around with us like so many leaking baskets of sand.