Sunday

Yesterday I was up north at the parish where I spend the weekends. I served at a couple of Masses and helped with a blessing of animals, in preparation for the feast of Francis this week.

As, praised be Jesus Christ and thanks to your prayers, I am to be ordained to the diaconate on saturday, I realized that yesterday was my last Sunday as a layman. Though I'm very happy about the ordination, I felt a little grief too.

I figure that, apart from the occasional blizzard or traveling misadventure, I've been going to the Sunday Eucharist for the past eight hundred Sundays or so. And I've participated in a lot of ways: Both before and during my religious life I've been a quiet member of the assembly. I've served as a reader, a cantor, and an acolyte. I've been monitor at Masses in Spanish. I've even been Master of Ceremony once in a while.

There's been a great variety and choice in my place in the Sunday assembly, but this is about to change. In accepting a hierarchical office and a particular place in the Eucharistic assembly, I realize that from here on in Sundays will be something new.

Every spiritual choice closes the doors to other options. But new doors open as well. To hold them all up in reverence and thoughtfulness, that's discernment.