PathToHoliness

Another town, another church. This time it’s Nashville, TN. I’m here for the CMA Music Festival and attending Mass at Holy Rosary Catholic Church.

It’s right near the hotel I’m staying in. They even had a Saturday morning Mass! You’ve got to love that.

In the media center at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway we have 2 Sunday Masses! I got my picture taken with the priest who said Mass but neglected to get his name.

This is part of the IRL Ministry and I’m really glad we have the opportunity.

We pray for the safety of the drivers, teams and fans here today.

With all the hype over the Da Vinci Code movie I don’t think I need to say anything other than that it’s a good time to learn more about the founder, St. Josemaria Escriva.

I have links in the right sidebar to websites where you can find a lot of truthful information.

Or you can visit these: St. Josemaria Institute, Scepter Publishers

I’m in Indianapolis this week for the Indy 500. Near to my hotel is St. Luke’s.

I attended Mass yesterday morning. It was a school Mass and filled with kids in uniform.

Tomorrow I’ll attend Mass in the Indy track chapel. They have IRL Ministry formed to have interfaith services as well as Catholic Masses.

I just wanted to say a Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers. Most especially to our Lady!

The priest at the Mass I attended today gave a tremendous blessing to all mothers there.

He lamented the ones who have been placed in nursing homes with no one to visit them, especially on their day. In his native country they keep their elders in their homes and feel honored to be able to take care of the person who brought them into the world and took care of them.

I’ve been wondering when someone would do this. If you pray morning and evening prayer, you can now subscribe to it with Praystation Portable. A priest reads the prayer and it’s fed out the day before so you can download it to your computer and/or iPod ahead of when you need it.

To subscribe in iTunes or whatever podcatching software you use here’s the url you’ll need: http://feeds.feedburner.com/praystationportable

I had to make reservations here in Phoenix very late for this conference and had no idea where I’d wind up.

I was pretty happy to find out that I’d be in a historic old hotel named after my patron saint. It’s the Hotel San Carlos (St. Charles) on Central St.

Very interesting. They even have a picture of Pope John Paul II going by the hotel in his Popemobile in 1987. The caption they put on it is something like, “Pope says, same hotel, same room.”

On another trip. This time to Phoenix, AZ. This is the beautiful church I get to go to while here. It’s right across the street from the convention center where I’m covering the Clean Cities Congress.

They only have a noon weekday Mass but I think I can make that!

There’s a big Cinco de Mayo festival going on downtown here this weekend too. I walked through it last night after attending the Phoenix Diamondacks game. Besides all the festivity and fanfare I came back with one main impression. There were so many young people out who all seemed to be having a good time. However the clothes and some of the actions they were exhibiting on the street were scandalous. I know it is hot out right now but let’s just say that one of the biggest challenges anyone has today is holding on to purity.

I pray for those who were dressed so inappropriately, the people who designed and sold that stuff and the people who find it a real temptation to at least impure thoughts.

During my morning reflection time I was thinking about role models. Especially as it relates to our priests. I know the media would like us to believe that they supply the models for us but that’s not really true and I think there’s even been research to prove it.

Our priests can have such a tremendous influence on their flock. Look at some of the example from history. During this century with Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Fulton Sheen and of course, St. Josemaria Escriva. Individuals who lived a holy life and have helped shape millions of people. That’s why our priests need to realize how important their role is and we need to support them doing it.

I know many priests and many of them have problems just like we do. They’re men. Like all of us they need support and they aren’t perfect. We need to encourage them and offer to help them in any way we can. One way we can start is with our prayer. Then we need to make sure we don’t publicly criticize them, even if we don’t like every word they say. I like to call them “Father lastname” and not by their first name as I hear a lot of people do. If you see them with their collar on, compliment them. We need to see more collars.

That’s all. I support our Pope, Bishop and priests. I hope you will too.

There’s an interesting story on Opus Dei done by Voice of America. It’s video with several streaming or download options. You can find it on this page.

It’s 4 minutes long and is just one of many, many stories being done in advance of the movie release of The DaVinci Code. I haven’t read the book and have no desire to see the movie. But you can’t seem to escape media coverage of both. If you believe the news reports, people are taking a fictional book and believing what’s written in it as fact. That’s hard to believe.

That would be like watching a tv sitcom and believing that the characters are “real life.” Do people actually buy into that? I don’t and frankly don’t waste too much time anymore with tv or novels. I have read a lot of fiction in my day and have never believed the stories portrayed reality. I’m much more apt to believe that the reporters doing all this coverage just want to do a story that casts doubt on Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. I think that the rise in forms of personal social communication like blogging is, in part, because people are fed up with reporters deciding what the news is and using their medium to push their personal viewpoints.

So let’s see what happens when the movie comes out.

I subscribe to a blog on advertising called Adjab. It’s all about new advertising that they find interesting. A recent post was titled, “The Pope as ad man.” Chris, the writer, has an interesting take on how important it is to companies to have the Pope wear, use or exhibit their product. It’s called product placement in the advertising world.

The post includes a link to a Wall Street Journal article on the subject. Chris also points to a story about Polish television banning erotic and violent advertising when he visits. Too bad the Pope can’t be everywhere at once, eh?

I think I’ve tried to approach this website like I do my professional news blogs and it just doesn’t work. I think this needs to be more about personal reflections along the path to holiness. So that’s what I’m going to try next. It takes a while to find your voice.

Today I was reflecting on how much people, our culture and the media seem determined to find someone to blame for everything. It’s always got to be someone else’s fault that something happened that they don’t like. It doesn’t even have to be a disaster.

As a media professional I’m completely ashamed of the way the industry has evolved. It doesn’t matter to me if we’re talking about CNN, Fox News or the local newspaper or radio station. I’ve even watched CNN and Fox side by side while working out in the gym. More than once they’ve had the exact same stories on at the same time. Maybe the slant is a little different but not really that much.

It really doesn’t matter what topic you pick though. They’re all playing the blame game. Politicians are the worst too. How sick are you of one investigation after another? Who even cares anymore? One of my favorite sayings of Josemaria Escriva is that, “At best, it’s a waste of time.” In other words, it’s probably worse than that.

Part of our call to holiness involves doing “our” work the best we can. Not wasting time wondering if someone else is doing their’s the best they can. I sure hope more people do this. Instead of focusing on who did what and to whom, let’s pray for that person or entity that we don’t like or who we think did something wrong. Let’s make the first thing we do when we see something we don’t like a positive prayer. Then secondly we can realize our own failures and shortcomings before we start to cast blame.

The Pope had a wonderful message of peace for Easter. Here’s an excerpt from his Urbi et Orbi:

May the Risen Lord grant that the strength of his life, peace and freedom be experienced everywhere. Today the words with which the Angel reassured the frightened hearts of the women on Easter morning are addressed to all: “Do not be afraid! … He is not here; he is risen (Mt 28:5-6)”. Jesus is risen, and he gives us peace; he himself is peace.

This past week was a very busy and interesting one. I attended the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in Chicago. It was huge and easy to see that this is a growing business area. There are so many good things that people are doing with biotechnology research. Especially in the food and agriclture arena. At the same time it’s very easy to see a negative side. For us Christians that’s most evident in the push to do embyonic stem cell research. As a reporter at the meeting my focus was agriculture but it was easy to see the messages from companies touting their stem cell initiatives as essential for human health. This is troubling. In those cases it seems like money is ruling over the science and just plain common sense.

It gave me a lot to pray about.

It’s a beautiful Palm Sunday here in mid Missouri. Holy Week has started and we’re getting close to the anniversary of the greatest event in the history of the world. That’s how the priest on my retreat describes Easter. Having the God made man, Jesus, die for our sins and then rise from the dead so that we might have eternal life has got to be the biggest event in history. No other event has such long lasting effects. Nothing is longer than eternity.

Here’s a link to the Vatican’s Holy Week 2006 web page. It says today is the 21st World Youth Day. Pope Benedict has a message for our youth.

My dear young friends!

(Full Text of Message)

I pray that you may have a very blessed Holy Week.

After a nice peaceful retreat last week it has sure been a busy week and Holy Week promises to be more of the same. I’ll be blogging the BIO 2006 Convention in Chicago starting tomorrow night. This is going to be interesting.

Why do convention planner have to include Sunday activities? I try to avoid it as much as possible. In fact, most of my day on Sunday will be driving to Chicago but there are activities going on there. I just won’t participate in them until the official opening reception in the evening. I know that a lot of companies and organizations I participate in really do try to avoid Sunday. We need that day to spend some time with God!

Hopefully on my drive I can review my notes from the retreat and my resolutions. I’ve been trying to keep them. That’s always the hard part.