If you have ever had a baby, you have likely had that depressing experience where you, positive that the really baggy pants that were your comfy, hanging around the house on Saturday afternoon, go-to comfort item, try to squeeze into them only to stop mid-thigh because they simply aren’t making it up.

If you have never done this, I don’t want to hear about it.

Today’s temps are expected to be in the mid-70’s (don’t hate me because I live in Florida – I didn’t pick it), so I pulled out a pair of black capris that fit me 2 summers ago, but definitely did not work even back in November (when wearing capris was still an everyday thing).  With trepidation, I cloistered myself in the bathroom with another pair of pants so that I could emerge dressed, one way or the other. 

Fortunately for my ego, the smaller size did, in fact, fit.  Not, perhaps as well yet as they did 2 summers ago, but the color is slimming and I feel optimistic that the rest of my pre-baby wardrobe may soon emerge from mothball storage (that’s a figure of speech: I wouldn’t know the first things about mothballs).  So nice to get “new” clothes without spending a dime.

And, for my added enjoyment, I put my hand in the pocket and found a very clean $10 bill. 

Double woohoo.

Alligator OK to eat on Lenten Fridays, archbishop clarifies – you have to live in the South to not ask yourself if these people are serious.  Alligator is on most menus down here.

Euphemism of the day: “terminal sedation.”  No, really, kids…Dad is just singing his favorite Ramones’ song.

 Of the myriad of things I gave up for Lent (like Facebook), the one that is hardest for me is not getting on the scale every day.  I’ve considered simply moving it to an out-of-sight location, but there’s no challenge in that.  It’s all about impulse control.

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Someone writes:

I have to ask: what’s your stance on the parish Lenten fish fry?

Does anyone else struggle with this a bit? Maybe I am over-thinking it…I don’t mean to sound more Catholic than the Pope, for lack of better words.

I’d love to hear other opinions on this.  My own thoughts are a work in progress.  Here’s what I’ve been thinking.

 Each of the last 5 parishes where I attended Mass had Stations of the Cross on Friday nights.  Three of these parishes also had some sort of meal prior to it.  Of the two that did not, I did not attend Stations at one because of little children.  At the other, I only attended a few times because my daughters had dance class on Friday evenings.  This church did not have a large turnout for stations (at most 30 people in a parish of over 800 families).

At the 3 parishes that did have meals, including my current parish, both the meal and the Stations were well attended.

Two parishes were at military chapels: small, close-knit communities.  At both, the event was billed as “Soup and Stations,” and the meal was a potluck soup and bread/rolls.  At one, the event was very family-focused and many people brought cheese pizza, mac and cheese, and other meatless dishes in addition to soup.  The kids played and had a great time; the adults kibbitzed; it was fun! At the other, PB&J was made available “for children only” and a dim view was taken if you weren’t on board with the sacrificial nature of the event.  The kids still played and adults talked, but it was a bit less rowdy, in part due to the demographics of fewer families with little children and in part due to the “Friday-penance” attitude.

At both of these parishes, just about everybody who attended the meal also attended the Stations.  The chapel was filled – not uncomfortably filled like Sunday morning Mass, but certainly not empty.  Compared to the parish that did not have a meal, and had very few attendees, I have to believe that a shared meal and social hour – whether it is fun or more sober – increases participation in the Stations.  Note that the Stations themselves were as reverent as can be expected due to the age of the participants in every parish I attended.

Briefly, I will note that the one parish where I did not participate in the Stations and which did not have a Friday meal, instead, if I recall correctly, had a soup dinner on Wednesdays during Lent.  I believe the idea there was to keep Friday Stations as quiet, reverent, and introspective (how can I personally love Christ better?) and to use our love of fun and community to add a joyful sacrifice on Wednesdays by eating a small, meatless meal on an extra day when it is not required.  I do not know how well either of those events was attended, but I suspect that many people did go.  It’s just how the parish was. 

Last night was my first experience with a fish fry.  I can see how it is a tremendous fund-raiser for a parish: two adult and four kid dinners cost me nearly $40.  They had a line out the door most of the time, and they even had a drive-thru for take-home fried deliciousness.  Because this was the first Friday in Lent, my parish also had activities for the kids, all seasonally appropriate, as a Lenten “kick-off”.  I did raise an eyebrow at the face-painting.  I have no idea of the profit margin, but I imagine, assuming you have the right people running things, that it is quite good, and multiplied out by 6 Fridays, makes the venture quite lucrative.

And it’s not like they take the money and buy BMW’s with it.  It goes to the ministries and other charities or church overhead.  And the church was full for Stations, too; not everybody stayed, of course, but many did.  So, people gave up money they might not have otherwise and they prayed at a time they might not have otherwise…I have a hard time saying it’s wholly wrong.

However, what is the purpose of Lent?  From the Catechism of the Catholic Church we have this:  

1438    The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice.These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works). 

and from the Gospel of Matthew:

9:14-15  Then the disciples of John approached him and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast (much), but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

Penance, self-denial, fasting…these are not words that go along with fun.  And the imagery of a wedding feast ended and the guests in mourning for the bridegroom certainly bolsters the idea that we should not party our way through Lent.

How does your parish do Fridays in Lent and how do you feel about it?

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This blog post took me ALL DAY to write.  This is why:

Instead of blogging, I should have been lowering his crib mattress:

But that’s tomorrow’s all day project.

I usually get a large number of requests for this file.  I have formatted it to print in booklet form.

Stations of the Cross for Children

If you have trouble getting the document through that link, email me and I will send it to you.

I left pages blank and encourage you to have your children create their own illustrations for each station.

Over and over, I hear good Catholics who say that not eating meat on Fridays is too easy, and therefore, they feel they should pick something different.

If on Fridays you substitute shrimp and lobster for spaghetti and meatballs, I almost might agree.  Consider eating like a poor person and have a bowl of plain rice.

For those of us seeking a good retort to those who don’t want to follow the Church’s law on abstaining from meat on Fridays, I offer the following:

But Samuel said, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to the Lord’s command?  Obedience is better than sacrifice, to listen, better than the fat of rams.”  1Samuel 15:22

Obedience is better, because obedience, for most of us, is harder.

A few weeks ago, I sent an email to my boys’ Scout troop about camping over a Sunday and not providing an opportunity for the boys to attend Mass.  Since the troop belongs to my church, I included our pastor on the distro list.  A few hours later, he sent this response:

 
Your Pastor

 I was elated by this support.  

The following day, the leader who questioned my son’s reason for not going on the trip sent an apology and a sincere explanation that he in no way meant to dissuade Fritz from his religious convictions.  Of course, I know he did not.  Unfortunately, though, the bad example remains, and actions speak louder than words.  He did mention planning for future camp-outs, so I do have hope that when they look at a calendar and talk about what trips they will do, somebody, somewhere, will say, “You know, if those Reitemeyer boys can’t get to Mass, they won’t go.”  And maybe countless other parents will be happy, not knowing why exactly the troop started making little changes, but just grateful that they did.

“They apparently couldn’t start it,” Bean said. “I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch, because it’s a standard transmission.”

I hadn’t planned to get involved in the discussion and was only peripherally aware that the boy, about 9 years old, was arguing with Peter and Mary about the existence of the Tooth Fairy.  Peter and Mary did not seem to be overly interested in the conversation, and Peter had just last week, on the occasion of Mary losing her first tooth, been instructed to keep his opinions about the Tooth Fairy to himself.  I focused my attention on Fritz’s last soccer game, and felt that the conversation in front of me would eventually fade away to other subjects.

But then the boy turned to me and demanded, “Tell them that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real.  Tell them that you are the one who gives them the money!”

“I’m not going to tell them that,” I replied.  Really, I didn’t want to get involved.  Keep in mind that losing teeth is not an extremely big deal in this house.  The going rate for most baby teeth is a quarter, and even my 5 year old knows that isn’t a tremendous amount of money.  Often payments are late…days late…especially if the teeth came out of the mouth of a 10 year old.  But when you are 5 and you go to bed with a tooth under your pillow and the next day it has magically transformed into a coin, it’s pretty cool.  I generally don’t give specifics about the process.  “Put it under your pillow.  They say there’s a fairy who leaves you money for it.  See what happens.”  

But I couldn’t get into the nuances of the imagination with this kid. 

“If you don’t, you’re a liar,” he said.

“But I didn’t say anything…” I tried to object.

“And liars go to the fiery pit of hell!” he declared.

Well, now.  I wanted to explain that liars actually speak lies, and that remaining silent is not the same thing as lying.  I also would have liked to point out that honesty does not consist of always speaking everything you know to be true all the time.  Or openly sharing your opinion with everybody.  And make-believe/fiction is morally legitimate.  But having been officially labeled as one of the damned, he probably wouldn’t have listened.  And he was too busy moving on to his next topic: Santa Claus.

First he said, “Santa Claus isn’t real.”

Peter objected, but the kid tried to shout him down, and turned to me to see how I would respond to that one.

“Santa Claus is another name for St. Nicholas who lived in Myra, which is now Turkey,” I told him.

“He was an evil man,” he told me, “Santa is another name for Satan.”

“No, St. Nicholas was a very good man,” I said.

“No, he’s Satan!”  “Is not.”  “Is too.”  “Is not.”  “Is too.”

Really, this is what I was reduced to.

Finally another mom, unrelated to him, told him to stop arguing.  I was embarrassed.

And I do feel a bit bad about countering another parent’s catechesis of her children.  But if you tell your kids stuff that simply isn’t true, and then set them loose to tell other people that they are going to hell if they disagree, oh, well.  I’m sorry to have to correct your understanding of the history of Santa Claus, and I’ll happily loan you a book or two if you wants some facts.  I agree, Santa Claus, as is commonly portrayed in today’s media, might possibly be a force for materialism and gluttony.  But he’s not Satan.

An email I plan to send:

Happy New Year!

My computer has been returned after a virus had made my life online very difficult.  That was one reason why my blogging – blogging?  what’s that? – has been so sparse.

My dad asked me last week, “What is up with your blog?”  He misses the updates on his grandkids.  I know others do, too.  So, though blogging had dropped in my list of priorities following the birth of George and the beginning of school, I think it needs to move upward slightly.  Once or twice a week won’t kill me, right?

Funny…I have such conflicting resolutions this year: more blogging…less time online.  The reality of modern life is that access to email and my online calendar is important.  Last minute changes in activities means not checking email could result in being in the wrong place at the right time.  Or the right place at the wrong time.  Maybe we just need to stop doing things outside the house….