Betty Beguiles is hosting a Honeymooon Tale Link-Up! Check out her site for more stories.

This blog post is about our honeymoon…there will be talk of romance and intimacy, but of course, no details, (duh!). I don’t intend to scandalize with what I have written but wanted to share the story of our honeymoon.

Joshua and I were married seven years ago this month, so the memories of our honeymoon have been floating around in my mind quite a bit this past week.

We did not have a lot of money when we were married but wanted to go on a honeymoon somewhere. I tossed out Tabasco country, but Joshua shot me down saying it would be too hot. (He was right, October in the deep south is still shorts and tee-shirt weather). We ended up deciding on  a cabin up in the Arrowhead of Minnesota, outside of a town called Ely and it was a great decision.

Our reception was purposely planned on being short (only about three hours), as we did not want to be out to late and really, we were just married, we had things we wanted to do. Our original plan was to leave the reception and drive to Chicago and spend the night at a hotel there, go to the Cathedral for Mass the next morning then head up to Ely. We ended up scratching the Chicago part and spent the first night as husband and wife at our house.

This was really wonderful, actually. We arrived home from the reception, me in my dress and Joshua in his tux. Our neighbors, smiled at us and waved. Joshua attempted to carry me over the threshold, but my dress made it very cumbersome, so it wasn’t very pretty.  We then prayed a rosary together, in our wedding finery. The rest of the night was just wonderful, being married and not having to have Joshua leave and being able to fall asleep next to him seemed like heaven.

The next morning we went to early Mass (730) and planned on leaving right after to drive up to Ely.  We ended up being stopped by quite a few people after Mass to congratulate us and by Father to tell us to get our coffee table (a gift from a dear friend, Ben, who came from Ohio to MC the Mass) out of the sacristy. So with a bit of a late start and a swing by the house to drop it off, we headed up to Ely.

We stopped for lunch/dinner at a burger king (romantic I know) somewhere in central Wisconsin, got it to go and headed on our way, again. The drive seemed to take a lot longer than we had planned and we arrived at the cabin quite late, after mid-night if I recall correctly. We saw snow flakes while driving! Snow, in early October!

The next morning we woke up to a nice quarter inch dusting of snow and I had only packed sandals and tennis shoes…and since we were heading out to Mass, the sandals were the option, so there you go, sandals in snow. Since it was the Feast of St. Francis, it seemed fitting. We went to Mass then to breakfast at a small cafe in Ely, then to the grocery store to stock the cabin.

Then it happened. Joshua was starting to feel pretty yucky. We suspected food poisoning and well, with the timing, we are pretty sure it was from the BK. So, Joshua spent the rest of the day on the couch and I read.

The next day, my period started.

We attended Mass each day that week. On the day that Mass was at the mission parish close to an hour away, we planned to go hiking and had a good time in the woods, just walking around. I knew then that when we had kids, Joshua would be the one leading the pack in doing dangerous things, like oh, climbing the rocks overlooking Lake Superior.

The day we went hiking, we also ate at a little mom and pop roadside restaurant where we were the youngest people by far. That was also that day that I convinced Joshua to drive to Thunder Bay, Ontario. (When you grew up metro-Detroit and watched Channel 4 news, Chuck Gadica always told the temp in Thunder Bay, and it was always much colder there.) So off to Thunder Bay we drove. These were the carefree days, before a passport was needed to get in to Canada, just your drivers license got you over the border.  Sadly the customs agent or border patrol did not tell us about the paper mill between the border and Thunder Bay. Oh, wow, they aren’t pretty smelling things, I’ll tell you that.

Thunder Bay is, well, let’s just say, I don’t get to make spur of the moment, on the road, hey let’s look at that decisions in our family because, well Thunder Bay didn’t have much going on. I am a lover of Canada, so I enjoyed just being in Canada, but really, aside from the waterfront park, not much to do, that we knew of.

We tried canoing the next day but it was cold and I am not a very good canoe-er. Well, to be honest, that’s the story we tell, but really, I was super-duper, crampy. (sorry my one guy reader, but hey, you should know about these things too.)

When it came time to leave our little cabin in the big woods, we took a slow, meandering route home, spending the night in Medford, Wisconsin, my Grandpa Kress’ home town. We also stopped in Ladysmith and Gilman, WI, where my mom was born and where my grandparents were married, respectively. While in Medford, we went to visit some family at the Catholic Cemetery. We then stalked the old family homestead, then headed down to Stetsonville, WI where my grandpa’s brother, Monsignor Alphonse Kress was buried.

Our way home included a trip up to Door County (which really, probably cemented the “I don’t get to make spur of the moment, on the road, hey let’s look at that decisions in our family”, because it wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought it would be.

That evening we had dinner with our friend, the now Father David Schalk, but then just Dave, at Grandma V’s in Libertyville, Illinois and he took us on a small tour of Mundelien Seminary.

So that was our honeymoon. Simple, wonderful, grace-filled with a bit of trial.

Cam over at A Woman’s Place is hosting a custom rosary giveaway. Check out her blog and enter to win!

Below is the Homily from Fr. Basil Nixen’s First Mass, given by Fr. Cassian Folsom, OSB.

Tears, The wood of the Cross, the Word & The Eucharist

Author

Fr. Cassian Folsom, O.S.B.

Liturgical Date

EF: Dominica XV post Pentecosten

Readings

Gal 5:25-26; 6:1-10 & Lc 7:11-16

In Today’s parable of the dead man in Nain—which seems like a coincidence, but is actually Divine Providence— the Word of God is addressed directly to the newly-ordained priest, Fr. Basil.  (I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome the parents, relatives, and friends of Fr. Basil who have come from far and wide to be with him this weekend.)

 

1. The funeral procession, sad and painful, presents first of all, the figure of the widowed mother who is crying.  The Lord Jesus, moved by her tears, performs the miracle.  We see here the tears of the Church for the spiritual death of her sons.  “The wages of sin is death,” says St. Paul (Rom 6:23) and the Church groans and cries with her lost children, who due to sin are dead, and are taken to the tomb.  Therefore, these tears represent the intercession of the Church for sinners.

 

1. The widowed mother’s son lay in the coffin and “had the hope of rising,” says St. Ambrose, “because it was transported on wood.  The wood of the coffin, after Jesus touched it, began to be beneficial for life, so that one had the proof that salvation had to be restored to the people through the wood of the cross” (Exp. Ev. Sec. Lucam V, 90: vol. 1, p.429).  The wood of the coffin is a symbol of the cross.

 

1. Then, the four men, the bearers of the coffin, stopped to hear the Word of God.  The Gospel says: “Jesus came and touched the coffin, and the bearers stood still” (Lk 7:14).  Then, Jesus said, he pronounced the Word: “Young man, I say to you, arise!” (Lk 7:14).  Therefore, at the Word of God corpses rise.  See how powerful the Word of God is!

 

1. The Gospel says, “The dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother” (Lk 7:15).  What does it mean, “he gave him to his mother” if not that the Lord restored him to full communion with the Church, a communion which was broken by sin and death.  This communion has its highest expression in the Eucharist, the sacrament of charity and unity.

 

If the parable in itself has this profound meaning, what does this communicate to us about the role of the priest in the Church?  Precisely because in the sacraments, the priest acts in persona Christi, he has the task of raising the dead and restoring them to their mother, the Church.  He does it through the tears, the wood of the Cross, the Word, and the act of giving the risen sinner back to his mother.

 

1. First of all, the priest must weep for the spiritual death of the children of the Church.  He must shed tears, understand them, and feel compunction for sinners, for the lost sheep, for the poor people who in the moral life don’t know how to distinguish the right hand from the left.  Many people are spiritually diseased, or worse, die because of these diseases, and who takes care of it?  The priest must intercede for the sinner, with groans and tears.  Maybe the priest-monk is more sensible to these things because he has been formed in the school of compunction, by the recognition of his own vices and sins.  Thus, he understands human nature and so has compassion.

 

1. The priest knows that the spiritual deceased can be saved only through the wood of the coffin, or in other words, through the cross.  There is no other way.  The suffering, the pain, and all the difficulties of life are for us an instrument of salvation and allow us to participate in the cross of Christ.  The priest must preach Christ crucified—but before preaching it, he must experience being crucified with Christ in his own flesh (cf. Gal 2:20), in order to be able to preach with conviction.

 

1. St. Ambrose says, “The dead rise at the Word of God.”  The priest must be rooted in the Bible, shaped by the Word of God.  The monastic formation of lectio divina is a good preparation for the priestly task of preaching.  Then, the preaching cannot remain on the surface of things, it cannot be the word of the priest, but must be a word of salvation which comes from God.  In this way, those spiritually sick, or rather, those spiritually dead, will rise when they hear the voice of the Lord saying: “Young man, I say to you, arise!”

 

1. In the same way in which the Lord gave the risen young man to his mother, the priest must give the reconciled sinner to the bosom of the Church.  Through the sacrament of penance, the priest serves as an ambassador of reconciliation, and restores the penitent to the Church.  Reconciliation in this case means re-establishing full communion with God and with others, and as we know, the Eucharist is this communion par excellence.  The role of the priest is not only to consecrate the Eucharist, but to restore penitents to this great sacrament.  In the liturgical assembly, they can experience the freedom of being children of God, they can adore the Lord.  In fact, this act of adoration is the highest expression of its very actualization, the recovery of its very own identity.

 

Conclusion:  the dead man of Nain, who rose for a period of time, had to die again, and in this lies the great different between Christ’s resurrection and the resuscitation of the son of the widowed mother.  The resurrection of Christ is a definitive victory over death—Christ does not die again—and the priest must be a herald of this resurrection, the true gospel and the foundation of our hope.

May Fr. Basil become a priest resplendent of the highest quality, having at his disposition these many tools:  tears, the wood of the Cross, the Word, and the Eucharist.

Aside from being the most handsome, wonderful, caring and helpful husband in the world, he is a great web-designer! He designed me a new theme for this here blog. I love it! What do you think!?

 

At our new house, we have a land line. We haven’t had a land line in years and do not really see the point of one as both of us have our cellphones. We do have to have one here because the only internet available here is DSL. So, we have the landline and a phone hooked up to it. We don’t use it and I don’t honestly know the number. Joshua may as he says it would be nice to be able to get a hold of me in the event that my cell dies (or is on vibrate in another part of the house). It is also nice to have the safety net for calling 911 if we need to. Oh and I signed up for the do not call list as soon as we were issued a number.

So my problem? The people who had the phone number before us, the X family doesn’t seem to like to pay their bills. We get calls all the time from collection agencies, dish network, hospitals and various other creditors asking for members of the X family.  When I get a live person, I tell them that this is no longer the number for the X family and to please quit calling. Those people have and it is nice, however, we get a lot of recorded calls with the request to return call to a certain number and ask for a person.

Folks, I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck do not have time to return those phone calls.

So what do I do? No, really, what do I do? I cannot get these people to quit calling. Even if I feel like I have made a dent in the calls, another collection agency pops up. Part of me thinks these people are still giving out our number as their number because the calls just won’t stop.

Any suggestions?

 

 

I wanted to let you all know that I poured myself a cup of iced coffee this morning and sat down to do schoolwork with Karol. I took two sips and realized that it was much much much too cold to enjoy it. This, while sad because I was in need of some caffeine, was a happy thing because it meant that it was cold this morning.

We had to close the windows this morning and put on long pants. I actually made chili today, because it just felt right. Ah, fall.

 

A taste of Northern weather this weekend:

 

It is really small, but it says tomorrow night it will be 45 degrees! Awesome, I cannot wait to sleep with the windows open!

Today our dear friend was ordained to the Holy Priesthood! You can listen to the ordination here by clicking on the podcast labeled “AD MISSAM IN OF DE SABBATO FOR 24. SEP 2011”

It never fails that shortly before traveling somewhere, I have dreams about things happening before the trip to prevent me from being able to go.  Well, Joshua and Karol are leaving for Italy tomorrow and I have been preparing things for them. (Joshua is currently en route back from my old stomping grounds, Detroit. So he will empty his suitcase and fill it up to head out tomorrow.)

This morning Karol came to my room and somehow managed to kick me in the head (while he was sleeping) which woke me up. I moved him off of Margaret and away from my head, then laid there for a bit. I finally drifted back to sleep when I had this dream:

Karol, Joshua and I were traveling to Italy. I was a last minute addition, so I had to throw things together and get ready. We were almost to the airport when I realized that I did not have my passport. I ended up having to stay in a shack and live off of wheat crackers with Benedict while trying not to be noticed by the people who lived near the shack.
This dream has me worried that I don’t have everything together for Karol. Clothes (dress, travel and casual) check. Books for the plane and train, check. Passport, check. Shoes (dress and causal), check. (I even washed his sandals). Hair cut, check. Clipped nails (toes and hands), check.  Bath will be done tonight.  What am I missing?

Karol does not know he is going yet either. Those of you with children will know why we haven’t told him. We plan on telling him tonight. I have a friend who requested that we video tape telling him, so we will and I will attempt to share it here.

In other news, Margaret decided that today would be the day to knead gum in to her hair. I did the peanut butter trick and was able to get some of it out, but in the end I had to cut 2 inches off. It is in the back, underneath most of other hair, so I don’t think it will be noticeable.  It is the first time her hair has ever met scissors. Sadness.