This morning I am going through various things that I left to worry about after Easter. One of them is an invitation to speak "on a spiritual topic" at a prayer breakfast of an organization of Catholic widows and widowers. I am given no limits or guidelines. Hmm. Well, the date is June 13, which would be the feast of St. Anthony were it not a Sunday this year. Perhaps I will speak on St. Anthony. Where can I find some of his writings? I know that there are new English translations of his sermons, but I don't see them in the catalog of the seminary library and for some reason the only way I can find to order them online is from Italy. I'm not paying forty euro plus FedEx to prepare for a prayer breakfast. But then I see that maybe I can labor through a sermon in Latin at this site. But which one? Ah, June 13 will be the third Sunday after Pentecost in the EF, so there it is.
That's how my mind works. It has a logic to it, but to know the nature of that logic is the amusing question. As Dr. Woody used to yell at us in hermeneutics class, "Please don't say 'there's a sense...' 'There is a sense' in which a pig and a cow are the same thing. The point of philosophy is not to tell me this, but to tell me in what that sense consists!"
6 comments:
wonders which St. Anthony....
you could talk about the last things....that might go over well with widowers...
oooo you could talk about how to properly plan your Catholic funeral...
hmmm...maybe these are topics to avoid ;)
If you check out Scribd there are sermons by St Anthony in English.
Thanks for the tip, From George! Good to meet you.
I am thinking that a good topic might be that of the spirituality of older folks. This spirituality is born of life experiences including the death of a spouse.
As a widow myself, I am not thinking particularily of the "last things", but of a living spirituality. Perhaps a different type of spirituality than what I had as a young person or a middle aged one; and one I can continue to grow into as the years go by.
Sounds like your mind works as a stream-of-consciousness. I like the initial theme of St Anthony-- one of my favourite desert fathers. Although I'm not too keen on the desert, especially in the mid-west. There was a movie about these people who's car broke down there and they were attacked by these monster-like creatures. And believe me, I'm not one for horror movies, but this one scared the pants of me! Almost worth the 5 bucks for popcorn I had to shell out. No idea WHY food is so expensive these days.
Aaaaaaaaagh! Father Charles...you're contagious!!!!!
"On a spiritual topic" leaves you almost too MANY choices, doesn't it?
Good luck - at least you have oodles of time to prepare!
Post a Comment