Here are 3 more lessons God is teaching us. 8.            God is faithful                 I have never been a great athlete.  I was always a little overweight and I suffered from a mild coordination problem.  Sadly this made me very unpopular growing up and most of the time in elementary school and a good part of high school I was the social outcast.  I remember one weekend though one of the boys in my class invited me over to his house to play.

Let us continue our look at God’s ability to shape us through the liturgy. 6.            Ministry of Presence                 My first night as a priest in my first parish assignment my pastor handed me the keys and took off for a month’s vacation.  I remember saying a little prayer that night asking God to allow me to get through the night without having the emergency line ring.  The emergency line was a special extension that would ring the phone by my bed and wake me up.  The line was reserved only for cases in which someone needed a priest because their love one was near death.  About two in the morning I was awoken by the ringing coming from my bedroom phone.  Knowing that this meant there was someone in the hospital that was near death and needed a priest, I prayed that this particular time the situation would not involve a child.  God did not answer that prayer either.  On the phone was the father of a one year old who was dying with cancer.  He and his wife were hoping that a priest would come to the hospital and say some prayers with them. 

            Let us continue to look at some of the hidden ways God is shaping us through the Mass 3.            God desires to be a part of my life.                 A priest, who gave a parish mission that I attended, made a statement that really struck me.  The priest said that when our parents found out that they were going to have a child, all they could do was wish for a boy or a girl.  They had no power to make sure the child would be a boy or a girl and they definitely had no control over the personality that would come with this child.  God when cooperating with our parents wished for you!  Jeremiah so beautifully wrote: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jeremiah 1:5). 

I had a classmate in the seminary who in every class would ask the same question: “Is this going to be on the test?” Every time he would ask that question, I could not help but think that he was somehow missing the point of education that the seminary was trying to provide us.  Anyone can pass a test but we were supposed to do something more with the knowledge that we were gaining.  We came to learn in order to be changed as a person.  If God was willing we would use the knowledge that our teachers were trying to import on us to be God’s instruments of healing and peace.  As priests our greatest tests would never be reciting Church dogmas to the people we served but rather helping them understand how these dogmas applied to their lives.  Some of the greatest lessons, I learned at the seminary, I was never tested on and I am not sure if the seminary could even develop a test that would show that I learned that material.  My Spiritual Ponderings for this month is a reflection on the Mass and ten life changing lessons that I believe God is trying to teach us through our attendance at Mass.