If you recall, I spoke of Brother Justinian on a previous blogue, back in February of ’07.
Sunday in church, TLW and I had a Justinian moment. That is a moment while in church; you do something that would cause you to report to Brother Justinian’s office. Better, you should put a pistol to your head than go to Brother Justinian’s office for disciplinary reasons!
What happened? Glad you are still reading. It seems that we have a Nigerian priest who is 6’ 24” tall, and weight 50 lbs, with his moustache, who can’t speak a word of English, at least that I can understand. The only words I can interpret are Aver (ever) and Bluuud (blood). Today he decided to give a speech or sermon if you will on the history of either Samarians, Samoans, or maybe it WAS: Girl Scout cookies.
As we sat there, I thought of how lucky I am to be deaf, not being able to hear, let alone understand the sermon. Being how this is so, I thought about Sir Winston Churchill, as a member of Parliament, who berated another minister for turning up his hearing aid. It seemed that Sir Winston felt that you shouldn’t put yourself at a disadvantage in those circumstances.
At one point, TLW, (The Little Woman) whipped out a small notepad and started
to scribble something. After scribbling, she handed me the note. At first, I thought it might be a prescription for ugliness, but no, she wrote: “This is torture.” Being my religiosity had taken over, I responded in an appropriate manner, in keeping with the circumstances. Grabbing the notepad, I responded: “Amen!”Immediately after making that notation, I could almost feel Sister Hairy Mary breathing down my neck, as she whisked my off by my right ear to the principle’s office of Brother Justinian.
Please remember all those that need our hopes and prayers, including my brother-in-law, John.
4 comments:
Funny blog. We have the same problem with priests that are hard to understand. I have problems focusing on the sermon when I CAN understand it. We have a little old priest who looks at his watch after every sermon he gives as if to check if he's punished us long enough. (I'm sorry Brother Justinian, please don't whack me.)
I was thinking, since the problem is so wide spread, why not have the diocese print out a sermon that everyone can read along with the priest, or better yet, read at their leisure?
At the risk of a lightning strike for blasphemy, 90% of the sermons I do understand are not worth printing. What we really need are some priests with something interesting to say. Most of ours just paraphrase what's in the readings until enough bobbing heads in the congregation tell them we've had enough.
This past Sunday, we had to go to a different church because of our schedule. It was a Spanish Mass - from beginning to end - nothing translatd - with a Mariachi band - with standing room only - pretty cool!! Dennis knew a lot of Spanish from 3 years in H.S. but my 3 years of Latin were of no help.
SS-I-L
PS We're really going to miss MaryAnn. It was so nice having her here near us besides we figured it would be a double draw for you guys to visit.
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