Happy Monday! I hope you had a good weekend. Among other things, I did the annual poison ivy and Virginia Creeper purge from the yard and Garden of Weedin’. Our house is surrounded on three sides by woods so the little buggers inch their way under and through the chain-link fence and proudly display their shiny three-leaf and five-leaf selves. Thankfully even after a large garbage bag full of the vines I still don’t have any blister bubbles on my hands and forearms. Maybe I got lucky this year. Or maybe after so many tubes of Tecnu Poison Ivy and Oak Scrub, and Ivarest cream I’m finally immune. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful to not be itching.

Also, this weekend and today were the celebrations of two very special anniversaries. Today would’ve been my mom and dad’s wedding anniversary. Mom passed away in her early 60s so she and Dad didn’t get to celebrate the milestone 50^th, but my sisters and I still celebrate and honor the years they did have together.

Someone who is celebrating a 50^th anniversary though, is my brother-in-love Fr. Steve Blum, having been a Catholic priest for 50 years … so far.

Both these remembrances are the fruition of sacraments, rites within our Catholic faith tradition. For those of us who attended parochial schools in the 60s, the Baltimore Catechism was our religious textbook. In Lesson 23 (yes, I still have an old 2^nd edition copy of the book) the word sign is first defined: A sign represents something other than itself; a sign is something which we can see or hear which tells us of something else which we cannot see or hear at the moment.

Knowing that definition helped us first and second graders better understand the definition of sacrament: an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. It indicates that Christ is in action, working in our souls to produce grace. (per question #304 in the book)

When I think of Mom and Dad, and Steve I see how the sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders filled their lives with grace.

Mom and Dad absolutely adored each other. One sees it in their photos from their early years as hubby and wife, and in their later ones after my sisters and I were out of the house. We three girls knew from their raucous laughter that spilled out of both of them at a moment’s notice. That love and light was grace. But that’s not to say there weren’t some really dark times. Other pictures show Mom at the edge of her depression, eyes sunken and lacking their joy. Each of us girls challenged our parents in different ways. While those years were a small percentage of the whole, they were significant. Grace came in patience, forgiveness, and letting go.

Mom and Dad had servant hearts, always looking out for others. There was grace in that compassion and self-sacrifice. One of the lasting images I have of my parents–one I didn’t even see but Dad told me about–was him sitting next to Mom’s casket when no one else was there, and saying the rosary ‘with’ her. There is grace in prayer.

I met Steve after he was ordained so I’ve only known him as a priest. He was the ‘family priest’, called upon to officiate our weddings, and his nieces’ and nephews’ baptisms, and family funerals. There was grace in those priestly duties, but it felt heightened with the layer of relationship he had with all of us. Steve was a puppeteer and his children’s homilies were legend. Watching him gather children around him at the foot of the altar, their rapt attention as he explained the Gospel, always brought to mind the scripture passage, ‘Let the children come to me.’ He embodied that love and openness. That grace. But I also remember my ex and I talking to him about buying our first home–the excitement wrapped in apprehension over such a huge step, and Steve was completely at a loss about how that felt. While he understood the logistics and everything that went into buying a home, but having always lived in a rectory he’d never had to worry about it–not the financial part, the decisions, etc. He didn’t know the emotions of going through it. There was grace in that humility.

I think of these three people regularly, how blest I’ve been with them in my life, but on these special occasions of their sacrament anniversaries, even more so.

I’m reminded each week at mass that I too am a person of sacraments … especially these Sundays of Easter as the priest ‘douses’ us with holy water in remembrance of our baptisms. But I don’t believe only those of us who’ve been formally blest through a rite of sacraments have grace. I believe grace flows from a place of connection with something sacred, whether that’s a recognized Being or the belief that all creation itself is sacred. It flows from a heart that strives to bring goodness into the world.

May you have a wonderful week and may grace reach you wherever you are. I hope to see you next Monday!