Wine Tasting

St. Mary's Women's Club had a wine tasting. Everyone enjoyed themselves. Lorie and Bruce Hurst hosted the event. We had Chardonnay with mac and cheese. Pinot Noir went with chocolate chip cookies. Dessert was apple crisp and cantaloupe with Cabernay Sauvignon. Everything was topped off with brownies made with Pinot Noir.


Need I say, I'm well satiated.

These wines were from HandCraft winery.  Excellent.  The recipes were good, too.  

Something funny happened during the wine tasting.  Since we all had brought our own glasses to the event, I just brought an old one.  It happened to be from 2005, when I visited the Horton Vineyards, in VA.  Now, picture this.  Here we are enjoying our glasses of wine and I pick up my glass and read, There is evil in every berry of grape ~ Koran.

Ah....another good reason I'm glad I'm Catholic.

After a few more sips, I see that the other side of the glass has something else written on it.  One barrel of wine can work more miracles than a church full of saints ~Italian Proverb.

Maybe it was the wine, but like we say on Face Book:  ROFLOL!  Because you see, St. Mary's is an Italian parish.  

St. Monica

Next to Ven. Pere Lataste, St. Monica is my favorite saint.  That's because my life has revolved around her in many ways.  Mainly, all my sacraments were received in St. Monica's Church.   Well, I continue to receive Holy Eucharist and Penance, here and there and everywhere, but the sacraments that you only receive once, were at St. Monica's.
    I've always used her as an example of womanhood, wifery, and motherhood.  She was a grandmother too, but no one mentions that.  But a good mother would be a good grandmother; that's reasonable.
    She is best known for persevering in prayer for her son, St. Augustine.  One time, my nephew, Fred, sitting next to me in a pew, in St. Monica's, was incredulous, upon hearing her story.  He exclaimed, "You mean she's a saint for just being a mother!?!!!!!"
    I give my sister credit for putting up with this brat.  Virginia must have been a very good mother for her son to think that all mothers just automatically care and sacrifice for their children.  St. Monica followed her son, Augustine, and prayed, sacrificed, and never gave up on him.  There are stories around today about St. Monica's perseverance.     One is that Bishop Ambrose told her not to worry because there was no way the son of so many tears could not be saved.  Another is that Ambrose told her to stop talking to Augustine about God, and start talking to God about Augustine.
    She must have been a nag.  Which is reason alone for liking her.  She should and could be, Patroness of Nags.  You wouldn't nag, unless you cared.
    There's even a Sodality dedicated to her.  Well, not dedicated to her as a person, but rather, to her ideal, i.e., praying for your lost children.  I even tried to start a St. Monica's Sodality in my own parish but it never caught on.  So I depend on my parish's prayer group to do the job of converting my family.
    Another reason, I've always thought of St. Monica is that my childhood friend was named Monica.  Yeah, she was named after our parish's patron.  You see, her dad was the church's sexton, and he named his daughter after the parish's patron.  We were soul mates and I could kick her because she won't "friend" me on FB.  But I understand.  She's probably forgotten all about FB, and me too, for that matter.  We've moved on.

Then again, St. Monica is all about perseverance.  So I'll never give up on Monica, nor my family.
 
     *   As a side note:  Fred grows up to marry a Monika.  ;-)

I Love My Parish

St. Mary's Franklin, MA

Let me count the ways I love you.
I love your depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, with palpable feeling:
for the ends of Being and ideal Grace,
for your namesake Mary, Immaculate,
for the smell of incense ever there,
for the taste of the Most Precious Blood,
for the sun-light thru the stained glass,
for the golden Baptismal font,
for the kiss of peace from a friend,
for the same worship of my childhood's faith.
I love you freely, as men strive for right;
I love you purely, as our praises touch your arches.
I love your incarnational God and faith.
I love your people who worship there;
I love your transubstantiation, my God.
I love you with a love I feel in communion
with saints -- I love you with my breath,
smiles, tears, of all my life! --and, if God
wills-my funeral Mass, be my place in death.

h/t with apology to Elizabeth Barrett Browning