Week Ending 5 Octubre

I'm joining up with Wanda and others who find "Week Ending" a lovely way to preserve the memories of our daily lives.

This past week was the beginning of 2 weeks of teaching and celebration in honor of Nuestra Senora del Pilar (our parish's patroness). Today the main mass was specifically aimed at the children of the parish, and Padre explained the history and meaning of Our Lady of the Pillar. The pillar stands for faith, and beyond that, it stands for Jesus, on whom we rely as our firm foundation, the Pillar who holds us up.

However, that's starting at the end. The weekend began with the conclusion of 24 hours of adoration, which I am thrilled to say was well attended, even in the wee hours of the morning. As usual, on Friday afternoon I went with the team (2 religious sisters and 3 of us lay folk) to bring the mass to a couple of ranchos that our parish is responsible for.

By the time we got back a "peregrination" was almost at the church, so I took a couple of photos and went in for mass. "Peregrinacion" literally means "pilgrimage", but what it involves is a march with an image of whatever is being celebrated, in this case Our Lady of the Pillar. After mass there was an additional time of prayer and worship, but I was too tired to stay, so I went home and zonked out. Not too surprising since the Pirate and I had been at the church from 3am to 4:30am for adoration.

On Saturday I made a cake (with maseca - corn flour) to celebrate Padre's 16th anniversary of his ordination, since he and our seminarian Martin would be coming over for lunch on Sunday afternoon. The stuff on top is peaches in a brown sugar-brandy-cinnamon sauce. As you can see, I forgot to take a photo until after we'd eaten some. Also, I used white peaches (that's all that was available) so there wasn't much color in the finished product.

Then our friend Diego took us to see a guy he knows who grows and sells plants. There are a number of these "informal nurseries" in our town, where there are all sorts of plants arrayed plastic grow bags in someone's front yard. Each "vivero" (nursery) has its own specialty - desert plants, sun-loving plants, shade-loving plants, etc. The one we visited on Saturday had mostly shade-loving plants, which I love. However, since our trees aren't big enough to provide shade, it's pointless to buy plants that love shade, since they just wither in the desert sun. However, we did buy several papaya plants, since they do fine in the sun.

The man's house was fascinating, and I took as many pictures as I could to help with ideas for the house we'll be fixing up for vacation rentals.

At 4:00pm there was a healing mass, which the worship team (therefore the Pirate) played for. All the really sad cases in our town were there - the people in wheelchairs, people blind or with amputations from diabetes, those with mental disabilities, etc. The intercessors team from our Grupo de Renovacion (the charismatic group) served by wheeling people in, sitting with them, and making sure that they were well cared for, as well as praying silently during the service.

After the mass, the worship team stayed to practice some new songs for the children's mass, which would be the main (noon) mass the next day. Then home, water the plants, make some dinner, and off to bed!

Sunday morning I realized that Friday the 4th was the first Friday of the month - time for "3 Reasons I Love Being Catholic", the linkup over at California to Korea and Back. So I spent the time before mass writing a post for that. We usually get to mass 1/2 hour early because the Pirate has to set up the sound equipment, but when we arrived there today at 11:38am, the church was already totally beyond packed, and the worship leader was teaching the kids several new songs. Oops! We quickly got to our places and found that we'd only missed about 10 minutes. The church was filled with energy and joy - kids were waving banners and shouting "Viva Jesus!".

Padre's homily, as mentioned in the beginning, was about the history and meaning of Our Lady of the Pillar, and he made it very clear to the children that the one we worship is Jesus, He is our foundation the focus of our faith, and Mary serves to point the way to Him.

In addition to the children, a group of bikers from Cabo San Lucas came to have their "motos" blessed. Padre knows several guys in this bike club and they wanted to bring the whole group up to our town for Padre to bless them, which he did after the mass. I couldn't get near enough to get a photo of it, but Padre said that after he blessed them all they took a group photo, with Padre in the middle on someone's chopper.
Then it was back home to prepare for lunch with Padre and Martin. Since he had two more masses to do (one at 6pm at one of the neighborhood chapels, and one in the main church at 7:00), Padre didn't have time for a cooking lesson (totally understandable, no?), but he brought all the fixings for chicken tinga tostadas. He had made the chicken tinga himself, and promised to do a "Cooking with Padre" lesson on it once the celebrations are done (maybe in the second half of October).

And then each went to his own bed for a long nap - except for me, of course!