From convocation

Hey everybody,

Today’s the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.

Well, sort of.

I was out of the office yesterday, and I’m out still today, because I’m giving some talks at a convocation of priests from two dioceses in the Upper Midwest.

I had the opportunity last night to spend time with many of those priests as they held a tournament, playing a complex card game which was brought to the United States by German immigrants in the last years of the 1800s, and is kept alive on the snow-swept prairies of our northern national borders.

I did not enter the tournament, because I don’t know how to play, and a high-stakes presbyteral card night hardly seems the place to learn, especially since it’s a partner game, and I couldn’t ask anyone to sacrifice their run through the tournament to take a newbie as partner.

Instead, I enjoyed drinks and conviviality with many of these men, and I was reminded how blessed we are in this country by the sort of priests who think nothing of routinely driving three hours to offer Mass for disparate communities — or, if they do think something of it, who do it anyway, because