Today Fr. Fisher III celebrated
his first Mass on a holy day of obligation since his ordination on May 18th of
this year. He is a second career priest and gave an excellent homily on the
Assumption that covered Mary as the second Eve and that she is the true Ark of
the Covenant. Adding to the beauty of the Mass he chanted the liturgy. I wish at
least that all Sunday Masses were chanted since, for me at least, it helps to
depth of the sacrifice of the Mass.
The Assumption of Mary was something that
I semi-struggled with on my way into the Catholic Church. I grew up in Portland,
Or and this city has to be one of the least churched. I had no religious
education other than Jesus hand puppets. My father who I greatly admired called
himself a “retired Christian” and was and is an agnostic. Belief in God was
something that I never encountered growing up. Neighbors, friends, school all
existed as if the question of God had never come up. Even into my late thirties
I had no inkling of differences between Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, etc.
I mainly read science fiction and at least in the books that I had the universe
could go on quite nicely without a God or thinking about the possibilities of a
God.
When I did start to read the Bible I had the scripture alone bias, not
from any Protestant taught bias, but from the assumed bias that I saw from TV as
“the bible teaches this” or “the bible teaches that”. Since I couldn’t
explicitly find the Assumption of Mary in the Bible, I thought that they must be
wrong on this one. Luckily I started listening to Catholic Answer Live and
reading good solid apologetics. I became convinced first of the authority and
truth of the Catholic Church before I accepted the Marian dogmas. I love the
description of theology as “faith seeking reason”.
