The CatholiCity Message
Volume III, Number 23 – August 26, 1999
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
We've got a lot of exciting new stuff for you this week...
1. PRETTY WEAK WEEKLY
We apologize that this "weekly" message has been a "bi-monthly" for the past two or three months. It will never be a "weekly again" due to its own popularity and the number of readers. It is now being sent to tens of thousands of folks compared to a few thousand when it first began, while the number of hours in the day has remained, shockingly, the same (24). We have received over 10,000 responses and letters every year–it's become quite a task merely to read them, much less answer them. Nothing but change ever stays the same on the World Wide Web.
2. JOHN THE BAPTIST'S NICKNAME
Hey, wasn't John the Baptist's nickname "the Baptist?" Well, sure, it was, yet the early Fathers of the Church also called him "The Forerunner," for obvious reasons. His middle name, however, has remained unchanged throughout the centuries ("the").
JOKES OF THE WEEK: FOOD
"The coffee business is getting so ridiculous. There's a new coffee company that delivers overnight. It's called Federal Expresso."
Bill Jones
"My wife can't cook. She uses a smoke alarm as a timer."
Carl Suskind
"He dreamed he was eating shredded wheat and woke up to find the mattress half gone."
Fred Allen
"The lady at Burger King told me I could have it my way. So I left and went to Wendy's."
Scott Wood
Question: What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
Answer: Make me one with everything.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"As the esteem of good men cannot be taken away by false accusations, so it cannot be won by the attention of flattery."
Saint Bernard
BONUS QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Nobody is excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven except through human fault."
Saint Thomas Aquinas
3. QUIRKY MEDITATION ON WHATEVER
We'd reckon that the past 16 months have been the most difficult of our lives, for various reasons which would take too long to go into. Hour after hour, day after day, month after month of hard work, stress, tension, second-guessing by (a few, not nearly all) friends and family, spiritual warfare, problems, even persecution. We've developed a saying: "What doesn't break you makes you stronger." We get back up and we move forward. We pray. When you let us know about your own problems, we truly empathize. That's not a bad thing. After living a pretty typically soft American life of comfort, we don't regret any of the crosses we've carried over the past year. You can't know it until you live it, but the Cross is a blessing. It's a paradox of meaningful pain. It's the only path to the Resurrection. Suffering is the fertilizer of the soul. It humiliates, and within humility is pristine, concentrated truth. We praise God for it all. So let's pray together, all 15,000+ of us:
"Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen."
See you next "week."
Yours in Christ,
Your Friends at CatholiCity
