A fitting celebration
Last night we had the opportunity to attend a Mass honoring Fr. Fred, the priest who married us. He is going off to be an Army chaplain. He spent a couple of years in the Army before he went to seminary and his dad was career Army. Now he’s going back as a much-needed chaplain. I read somewhere that the Army needs 300 priest chaplains and has 90. Fr. Fred’s parish, of course, and we will miss him. They did a bang-up job at putting together a wonderful send-off, and I’m glad we were able to be there - two kids in tow. (Yes, Foster Mulan has been here for a week. More on that later.)
Fr. Fred gave one of his usual strong homilies. It’s so nice to hear a priest talk about how much he likes being a priest. And, as was often the case when he was my pastor, some of his message hit very close to home and was exactly what I needed to hear last night. I’d been in something of a funk since the night before, and an hour of Eucharistic Adoration yesterday morning as part of IHM’s 40 Hours Devotion (in honor of the parish’s 50th anniversary and the building of our new church) didn’t help; but last night finally hit the reset button for me.
Not surprisingly, the Mass went long, and it really pushed Agent Murphy to his limits, given that it started around his normal bedtime. We thought he might go to sleep, as is fairly typical for him during Mass. But a new place provided just enough different stimulation (plus it was really warm in there) that he stayed wide awake. So we didn’t even try to participate in the reception afterwards. Fortunately, we got in position to be among the first in the receiving line to greet Fr. Fred. I gave him a hug and shoved the Agent into his arms and snapped a picture before we hit the road. Now one day when Agent Murphy is old enough to watch our wedding video and says he doesn’t know that priest, we can tell him that he met him once.
Agent Murphy was definitely over-tired. Riding in the car usually soothes him, but he shrieked for the first half of our 45-minute trip home before finally falling asleep. So we had a lazy morning today and skipped prayer vigil so we could all catch up on some sleep.
Tags: agent murphy, homilies