Another resolution:

A not hot shower in the morning.  This, I expect could have a two-fold benefit of saving time and waking up the body.  I'll try it on Day One of Lent, tomorrow.  Let's see if this puts me in the kitchen with the coffee before 5:30 AM.

I Love Preaching

Lately, I'm discovering the responsibility of preaching to be an increasingly humbling obligation.  The better I preach, the more effective the homily, the more awesome the responsibility.  My sense of the enormity of the obligation is accelerating as my improvements merely sputter along sometimes good sometimes meh.

This should cause me to double-down on prep.  I admire a friend who seems so committed to improving the preaching constantly, week in and week out.

Nothing to report on the resolution for 1 whole week.

"St. Nick"
Gozzoli

Let's let it be, in terms of reporting here on it.

For one thing it plays fast-and-loose with the border between "useful writing exercise" and "too much information."  Out of respect for that border.  That'll be all for now until at least 3/1 on the resolution.

I'll have to find something else to get wordy about in the meantime.  Wish me luck figuring out what that might be.

Blogging about the struggle to get up on time...it's what I know

"Madonna" Campin

The struggle is what I know.

I won't call it a "snooze" because it was within the parameters of what I've been preparing.  Instead of 4:45 AM, got up—reset the alarm for 5:00 AM, went back to sleep and got up at 5:00 AM.  Successfully.

The tricky thing about getting up at 5:00 AM instead of 4:45 AM is that there is very little room for false steps.  I should've mentioned, today is a school day.  So I have to be standing inside the gym at the school when the bell rings at 7:40 AM.  If I'm late for the bell it may as well be a Saturday, for all intents and purposes.

This morning I was in the kitchen at 5:28 AM starting the coffee.  Those 28 minutes were key.  If I can make it in 25 minutes, even better, but that hasn't happened yet, ever—that I can remember.  Certainly not this year.  What I've done to this point is I've taken 30-45 minutes to do what I should only take 25-30 minutes to do.  This schlepping was to allow myself enough time, but it was also costing me 75 minutes of sleep lost per-week.  If I can get those 75 minutes back and convert that extra sleep into a 25-30 minute hustle, then I've made some real progress.  I will have gained an additional 75 minutes of free time per-week.

"Time is souls."

One thing I like about Campin's "Madonna" here is how small the Christ child is.  Much littler and younger than is typical elsewhere.  Also, Our Lady has got great hair.

"Be Children of your heavenly Father..."

Here's the upshot form last Sunday.

5:15 AM because no school today

This worked out, just in enough time.

5:15 AM wakeup.  I'm thinking that this is as late as it's going to get on days when I want to pray the canonical hours at their proper times as well as include the half-hour of mental prayer before Mass.

Anything later than 5:15 AM and stuff gets punted to after Mass.  And that's lame.  That's there if I need it.  But if I don't need it, it's lame.

So: 5:00 AM on Sundays; 4:45 AM Monday through Friday; and 5:15 AM on Saturdays and on non-school days.

Lets try this for a couple of weeks.

And, I can always fall back to 4:45 AM everyday if I need to.  And 4:30 AM is the early end of normal.  Both of which I may need on any given day.

And I'm leaving 5:00 AM everyday on the table as a goal.  But I'm not there yet.

5:00 AM This Sunday

5:00 AM wakeup worked today (Sunday).  I'll try it again next week.  5:15 would've meant too much of a rush for the hours which are already suffering from my bad habit of going too quickly.  4:45 AM may still be necessary, depending.  But I'll give the 5:00 AM another try next week.

By the way, the 8:00 AM version of the homily was an improvement over the night before.  And (I'm updating this after the 10:00 AM) the 10:00 AM was better still.

The transitions need to be sharper.  That's because the main points are not well defined.  So, here's what they are:

What's the Sermon on the Mount?
What's Divine Filiation?
How does Divine filiation help us love our enemies?

That's the flow of the homily.  Transitions, then, should be.

"Love your enemies" will be too hard if we've missed the whole point of the Sermon.  Let's take a step back and look at the Sermon on the Mount for a minute.

Jesus reveals a bombshell about God: he's our father.  "Luuuke, I am your faaahtherrr." "NOOO!!!"

Now that we see God is our Father, here's why "Love your enemies" makes sense.

Preaching this Sunday

"Meeting" Fra Angelico

I went big picture.  Divine Filiation.  And I pretty much stayed big picture.  I'd like to tweak it.  Bring it into a concert example.  Otherwise it's tough to relate to.

The Gospel is "Love your enemies." And "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."  It's the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.

I gave a birdseye of the Sermon on the Mount.  It's the "teaching of Jesus Christ.  It's authority unlike anything anyone had ever heard before.  But this is especially true about God as Father and we a Children of God.

I ended up rather thinly referring to the exact content of the pericope itself.  That is, it was a theme of the homily only towards the end.

Letter

My Dear Spiritual Sons and Daughters in the Lord,

The Gospel reading at Mass this Sunday is taken from the portion of the Gospel of Matthew that is called “The Sermon on the Mount.” They are words which Jesus speaks to his followers to teach them how God wants them to live their lives.

Jesus’ teaching gives us the right mindset we need to approach all of the parts of our lives with the mindset of God himself. Jesus goes on at great length in The Sermon on the Mount. The portion which we hear this Sunday concerns how we should respond to those who make life difficult for us. Keep in mind how we make life difficult for God.

Tisi, "Virgin"

Some people make life hard for us. How should we deal with them? Should we respond by making life hard for them in return? That may seem only fair. But is their a still more excellent way? Indeed, there is a still more excellent way. And this is the way that Christ expects us to follow. And if we want to enjoy heaven, then we had better follow it. It is the way of Jesus Christ himself. It is the way which reflects the love of God.

In order, first, for any of Jesus’ encouragements to make sense it is important for us to remember that God in his great goodness wants to rescue us from being lost forever. And more than that, he wants to make all of us his sons and daughters. God doesn’t have to do this. God would have been perfectly justified allowing us to remain in our condition of having lost the blessed eternity forfeited by our first parents. But God is so good. He shows us how we can regain that happiness by his own great act of forgiving us who had so dreadfully wronged him.

As a condition of our newfound sonship, God expects us to return good for evil when others offend us. This expectation is reasonable because we are showing how similar we are to our Savior. When Jesus says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil,” “Give to the one who asks of you,“ and “Love your enemies,” He is really asking us to treat each other the way God has treated us. He is calling us to resemble by the perfection of our love for others, by our mercifulness and by the holiness of our lives the perfection, mercy and holiness of God.

We must have this mindset if we want to be called Christians. Let’s keep listening to Jesus’ words and acting on them.

Sincerely Your Spiritual Father in Christ,

Fr. Drew

Pronounce the words

Lorenzatti, "Man of Sorrow"

Let's look at the goal, the New Year's resolution, from within a broader perspective.  To pray the canonical hours is firstly and foremost a resolution "to pray." I've been focussing a lot on the peripheral, logistical elements of setting up the time to pray.  Necessary.  But I can't lose sight of the fact that this is supposed to be prayer.  It's supposed to be a direct interaction of an intimately relational sort with the living God.

This is where all of the little things such as when and how and where and what I'm saying yield the one big thing: communing with the Almighty.

Good to keep in mind as I continue to tweak the "lesser things." They're "lesser," however, not because they lack a strong relation with the bigger thing.  But because they're more susceptible to alteration for the sake of the preservation of the bigger thing.

Pronounce the words clearly.  Not slurred.  This is a lesser thing with a strong relation to the greater thing.

Saturday Mornings

Masaccio, "Madonna Casini"

7:25 AM and done with Prime.  35 minutes until Mass.  Wondering if it's worth trying to budget another 15 minutes of sleep on Saturday Mornings.  That would push wake-up to 5:15 AM. Perhaps worth a try as long as the morning office doesn't get rushed.  A larger data set would help me make that call.  I'll wait a couple of more Saturdays.  The same could go for Sundays, although, Matins is slightly longer.

It's the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Less than five minutes to post

Gozzoli "Augustine"

This is the same kind of post as yesterday.  I've got less than five minutes to get something on the blog between finishing Prime and leaving for school.  So this is it.

This resolution is starting to shape up.  Nicely, too.  5:38 AM and 61 minutes for ML.

Coffee and headlines were quicker.  But the up and atom time dragged more than it did yesterday.

An early morning mortification could be a remedy for that.  In addition to getting to bed ontime.  Last night was good there.

A quick post

"Pieta" Lippi

I'm in between Prime and getting ready to jump into the car to go to school for the morning prayer.  This is like a five minute window.  It seems too brief and volatile to be reliable for much more than a quick post or what have you.  But here it is.

Thank you note yesterday? Yes.
Matins and Lauds started at 5:42 AM and went 56 minutes.

A friend stopped by late last night, he was driving past the rectory and thought to call.  It was great to visit wit him.  Lights out was about 10:00 PM

An adjustment to the schedule

It's affecting blogposts, too.

4:45 AM is the wakeup time for the next week.  5:00 AM on Saturday.

"Joan of Arc," Siemiradzki

I'll clock Matins and Lauds for the week, too.  This morning, it began at 5:40 AM and lasted 55 mins.

The 4:45 AM instead of 4:30 AM gets me an extra 90 mins of sleep per week since I had pervious not been getting to bed any earlier.  It should also preempt the Saturday morning binge-sleep-fest that's been the last several Saturdays.  That consisted of sleeping in until after 7:00 AM.  That kind of oversleeping would be akin to gorging oneself if I hadn't  otherwise failed to get to bed on-time.

Why not 5:00 AM?  For that to result in a hurried recitation and flying out of here to get to school, I'd have to both skip the quick coffee 'n brief headline check as well as be absolutely prompt at every turn in the morning out of the gates.  Each moment between 5:00 AM and 7:30 AM would need to be right on time with great alacrity.  Perhaps that's something to work towards.  If so, then 5:00 AM could buy me an additional 105 mins of sleep per week.

But for now, I'll give myself a bit more time (another week) to perfect the execution of this morning routine.

It affects blogposts, because with a 4:30 AM wake I was blogging with coffee and headlines before ML.  Where this wore down was with the loss of 90 mins of sleep per week.  I liked that I could do it and may return to it depending on how important the blogging is to me.  But for now, these posts will be with "second breakfast."

Sputterin'

Not on the resolution, which is the Canonical Hours, but on where blogging/internet fits in.

I've been trying lately, as in two or three of the last three or four days (it didn't happen Saturday), to front-load the prayer.  Which means 5:15 AM Matins straight through Lauds, half-hour meditation, and finishing Prime at right about 7:00 AM.  That's worked a few times.  This gets me back in the rectory almost an hour before mass.  It also shows how much extra time there is in the morning, viz.  not more than 60 mins.

I'd love to use part of those 60 blogging and checking headlines.  We'll see where that goes.  Hence, until the regularity, these posts are suddenly hit and miss.

Thats all for now.

A tweak to the Morning: Hodie nunc.

Correggio, "Four Saints"

The idea is to defer the internet, headlines-checking until after the morning prayer.  I could've seen this coming, but there you have it.

The coffee in the morning is taken physically standing-up.  I can check a quick headline on the phone while drinking it.  But no laptop and no sitting down.

If I'm doing well, this morning I was in the kitchen at 5:01 AM (good), then I'm starting Matins at 5:15 AM.  I'll then go right into Lauds, as usual.  Then right into the half-hour of mental prayer followed by Prime.

This is what I tried this morning and I finished prime right at 7:00 AM.  And, voila, 30 minutes until I've got to get in the car to go to school.

These first posts, then will be published right at about 7:30 AM, I'm thinking.

Also, in case you're wondering if yesterday I wrote any thank you notes—even a single one—the answer is no.

And lastly, if you're also wondering whether the time indicated below corresponds to the time I closed my laptop, got up out of my seat and left to go to school after having made it happen this morning, the answer is
yes.

Resolution Update

I owe an update on the resolution.

If Prime is at 7:00 AM, that's fine.  The half-hour, then, should start at 6:30 AM, obviously. Then it's just a matter for dialing in on "how long" it takes to pray Matins & Lauds.  I've clocked that at about 60 minutes, or 5:30 AM.  Which means this morning as I type this, I'm already late, as you'll see at the bottom.

I like the 4:30 AM wake up and the 5:20 AM fast.  I was in the kitchen this morning, dressed and ready for coffee at 5:00 AM.  Very good, I'd say.

Also, in case you're wondering if yesterday I wrote any thank you notes—even a single one—the answer is yes.

And lastly, if you're also wondering whether the time indicated below corresponds to the time I closed my laptop, got up out of my seat and left to open the Church (or hop in the shower—if it's a Saturday) the answer is yes.

Visiting my millionaire friends

Lippi, "Annunciation"

"Mi Amor."  "Mi Alma."  "Mi Corazon."

This is how a lover addresses the love of his life.

The sick and the homebound, I need to think of this way.  May I never put them off just as I would never expect a lover to put off a chance to be with his beloved.

Or, would a millionaire miss a chance to go around introducing his millionaire buddies to his new trillionaire friend?  Were his trillionaire friend to want to know where all the cool millionaires hang out, how thrilled would he be to show him.  Just so, I bring Jesus to the sick in their homes.  Because I'm a millionaire.  They're millionaires.  And Jesus wants to be with them.

Guard against activist as against despair

There was a moment over the last several exhausting days where I noticed a temptation subtly and quietly rear its ugly head. (Is that a contradiction? Is "rearing" by definition neither subtle nor quiet? If it is a contradiction, then it was all the more alarming that I noticed it. Anyway.)

I've been working on praying those Hours. Life being as busy as it can be sometimes impinges on my ability.  This was especially so after receiving some dispiriting news.  So, amidst the hustle and bustle of what has to happen anyway, I noticed slippage in the dignity, attention and devotion with which I want to go about everything, especially the prayer.

Now, I know that the whole name of the game is learning to turn an otherwise really busy moment into a substantial case of love.  The moment becomes a stage, and the show that must go on must be played to the best audience of all, the Trinity, Our Lady, the Holy Souls, all the Saints, the ones immediately present.  Don't dog it just cause you're tired, or cause you're reeling from a bad report.  Keep at it.

That's all.

Took the Wind Out of My Sails

Amazing what some contrary news can do to you.  There I was, moseying along, writing my blog, morning after morning.  When, bam, contrary news.  And next thing you know four straight mornings went by without a peep.  What happened?

Let's review.  Don't lose the contrary news.  That came in on Friday morning, just a few hours after the last post.

But before the contrary news, what happened Friday evening?  I got in late after dinner with an out of town friend.  Which was great.  That was a long day.  March for life.  Lots of traveling all around the city, on foot (with newly-resoled shoes), in the car.  The hours were way off.  I borrowed from the Ordinary Form just to make it happen.

"Saint Christopher" by Dirk Bouts (1468)

Wednesday afternoon the first wave of contrary news hit, but I didn't notice it until Thursday afternoon.  Friday morning the second wave hit and it turned into total damage control.  I spent three hours writing the bulletin article about the matter.  (I'm not going to say, at this time, what the matter was outright, because that's not even the point.)  I've found sometimes that bulletin articles can be exhausting.  I'll have to figure out why another time.  That bulletin article was particularly exhausting, I was under the gun to be on the road to meet my friend.  That probably helped matters.  But the point of these last two paragraphs is to say, Friday was a long day.

So Saturday was a bit of a mess as a result in addition to being a busy day.  I was exhausted from the day before.  I slept in.  I had a couple of meetings.  Tried to get things ready for the evening Mass.  I thought to anticipate that I'd be held accountable for the matter of the contrary report by tackling it head on.  So I prepared to preach on it too.  This took more energy.  So Sunday morning I was distracted but it.  Monday, too, I was in some kind of fog.  Monday afternoon was the meeting where I was held accountable for the contrary report.  I was prepared for it.  It went well, thanks be to God.  But the whole thing was exhausting like I've never been exhausted before.  I'll figure out why some other time.

Even the recovery after-the-fact has taken a moment.  The Hours have helped, though I noticed I've had less vigor for them in the recitation itself.  Less chanting and more mere pronunciation—and sometimes even that was rather lame.

But we're moving now in the right direction.  I know time will help.  The hours are great for keeping me moving along.  Visiting the sick and teaching the children have also been wonderfully restorative, again, thanks be to God.

In observing my response to this contrary report I hope to be better prepared for the next one.  Not that I'm inviting them, but because I know they will come.

Thou, therefore gird up thy loins and arise, and speak to them all that I commanded thee. Be not afraid at their presence: for I will make thee not to fear their countenance. For behold I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Juda, to the princes thereof, and to the priests, and to the people of the land. They shall fight against thee, and shall not prevail: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee. (Jer 1:17ff)

Today and tomorrow are "thank you note days."

Also, in case you're wondering if these last 4 days I wrote any thank you notes—even a single one—the answer is yes, maybe one.

And lastly, if you're also wondering whether the time indicated below corresponds to the time I closed my laptop, got up out of my seat and left to open the Church (or hop in the shower—if it's a Saturday) the answer is: yes