I once had the opportunity through a grant to the Archdiocese of St. Louis to meet with an executive business coach on a couple of occasions. There were many important lessons about management that I learned from my coach but probably the most important thing he taught me was the importance of expectations. It was his belief and mine now that most of the problems in parish life as well as in business come from a lack of clear expectations. The topic for today?s Spiritual Ponderings is the 5 precepts of the Catholic Church or you might say the 5 expectations of the Catholic Church of its members.

We are now in the midst of our fourth week of Spiritual Randomness and this week’s topic is the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Into our third week of Spiritual Randomness and the topic today is different heresies (or bad thinking and beliefs) when it comes to creation and God. These six heresies are addressed in the Catechism paragraph 285. I would like to expound on them a little bit more.

And now another random topic, I have always been fascinated in how numbers play a role in church architecture. For example the number eight can symbolize the eight beatitudes but also new creation because there were seven original days in creation and the early Church proclaimed the Resurrection to be on the 8th day. Many of the things in the Church are designed to have three of something for the Blessed Trinity or four of something for the four Gospel writers. I recently came across something that gave power to the number six and then it pointed out that a lot of chalices are made with a base that has six sides. According to this book the number six represents the six attributes of God and they are the topic of this week's spiritual ponderings.