5/12 + JP2 = Zzz

Have you ever wondered what a priest does all day?  Ask my father, and he'll tell you we only work on weekends...so he'd surely be pleased to see my Saturday line up:

6:30am     Get up, shower, do laundry, eat breakfast, pray
10:00am   Funeral Mass [St. Joseph's Church]
11:45am     Anointing in the ICU (emergency pager went off as I was leaving the cemetery)
12:05pm    Confessions start 5 minutes late [Notre Dame Church]
1:00pm      Wedding Ceremony [Notre Dame Church]
2:00pm     Lunch
3:00pm     Confessions [St. Joseph's Church]
4:00pm     Grocery shop
5:00pm     Baptism [St. Joseph's Church]
6:00pm     Supper (cook first, then eat)

Whew!  The sacramentally astute will note that that's five sacraments in the twelve hours or so listed there.  Grace was just a-flowin' around here!

Today--besides being busy--is the very first feast of Blessed John Paul II.  (October 22 was chosen since it was the day of his installation as Pope back in 1978.)  In the midst of my crazy schedule, I nearly forgot about today's commemoration...till I was standing at the altar and realized I was offering Mass with a chalice first used by him during the Jubilee Year 2000.  Then, since the second round of confessions were moving a little slow, I fished my rosary out of my pocket...only to realize that our late Holy Father had blessed those beads in 1992.  (The rosary was a gift from the bishop very shortly after I entered the seminary.)  And then, after I was into that rosary a bit, I realized that the Luminous Mysteries upon which I was meditating had been promoted by none other than--yup, you guessed it--JP2.  So when it came time to make supper and enjoy it, I knew it was time to pull out this candle which a parishioner kindly brought back for me from his beatification back in May.

Viva il Papa!  But now I want to go to bed...