I was ordained a priest 44 years ago today as I post this, on June 7, 1980. The next day, Sunday, my first Solemn Mass as the Principal Celebrant was June 8th which that year was also the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.
Today, Friday, June 7, 2024 is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which always falls on a Friday.
Now for the brain-teaser: How many times in 44 years has my anniversary of ordination to the priesthood fallen on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus?
14 comments:
Trick question, folks....Father McDonald was actually ordained 104yrs ago, just ask any of the kids who had first communion with him.
Happy anniversary, and (all together with Bob) thanks for the memories.
Without going and counting, at least 6?
No go must be exact!
I'll add this to the list of things AI doesn't know...yet.
Neither does Alexa or Siri!!!
I come up with THREE - 1991, 2002, and 2013.
Good for Father K!....I tried back-tracking to Easter Sunday dates so that I could tben know Trinity Sunday dates so I could find the second Fri after each of the Trinity Sundays and check them against perpetual June calendars...
but all I came up with was the far simpler Grand Unified Field Theory allowing construction of a time machine where I could visit each one and find if it matched the ordination date. If I'm not back by 2045, don't hold dinner for me.
I have gotten pretty good at refining peculiar Google searches, paring them down to the necessary basics.
I was led to a personal website - some people have odd hobbies - that has the liturgical calendars going waaaay back and waaaay forward.
Thanks! Great detective work!
Well, Father McDonald, if you've seen one, you've seen them all....do you recall noticing the other three at the time?
I, too, was trying to employ Fr. MJK search techniques but couldn't find a collection of calendars and going year by year was too tedious.
As for odd hobbies, that one ranks up there.
Well, as for odd hobbies, likely most folk use some manner of computer program to calculate such tables since before the internet (and we all know about computer programmers), and with the internet they are able to widely publish these tables with Father McDonald specifically in mind.
Back when I was in college, our campus mainframe was an IBM loaded with punch cards, and had a computer science major for a roomate, while across the hall was another CS major. The guy across the hall wrote and punched out a program card by card which generated an entire year of the Playboy calendar using only Xs and 0s on a loooong spreadsheet, while my roomate figured out how to hack his newly invented programmable TI calculator so that he could guess a randomly generated number first time and every time.....they are a strange lot.
While the normal people here only argue about how many candles or lace or no lace, or eating with hand or face...NORMAL hobbies, not something frivolous like calendar tabulations useful to other people.
Father McDonald, Deo gratias that He raised you to serve as His holy priest.
Thank you for your holy service to God and His Church.
Father, I recall having noted the following via a telephone conversation that I had with you. From: Saint John Chrysostom:
"...God has bestowed a power on priests greater than that of our natural parents. The two indeed differ as much as the present and the future life."
"For our natural parents generate us unto this life only, but the others unto that which is to come."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
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