"Well, some say life/Will beat you down"

Well, I made 4 of 5 Fridays in June, not a bad reboot. I think I more than made up for it by preaching twice during the week and posting those homilies. My rationale for posting my homilies is not, "Hey, look at what a great preacher I am!" My reasoning is something like, "I spent time and effort prayerfully preparing this and delivered it once. I might as well as post it and, who knows, maybe someone will benefit from it." I don't recycle my homilies.

It's been a nice week. I am home with only my 17-year-old son and our dog. We've cleaned the garage and done a lot of heavy annual yardwork that I had been too busy to get to before now. No little ora et labora, which is a great mode of existence. I have loved the three days of fairly taxing manual labor. I spent July Fourth pretty much by myself. I went to Mass, which was the reason for the homily I posted on Tuesday.

Last night, we went to see Wes Anderson's Asteroid City. I loved the film. There is, arguably, even a theme of resurrection that comes up at the end. I have to say, that Scarlett Johansson was incredible in the movie. She has certainly reached the full flower womanhood- if I am permitted by today's standards to both notice and to say so. There's a lot to this movie. I need to see it again.

Scarlett Johansson as Midge in ‘Asteroid City’. CREDIT: Universal

Looking at my planner last week, I was desperate to find the day when I don't have so many things scheduled moving forward. It turns out that day is this Sunday, 9 July. I will be doing 3 weekday Communion Services while my pastor is away for the next three weeks, but apart from that and preaching one Sunday, nothing over and above what I do routinely- which is more than enough by any sane standard.

I also watched Abel Ferrara's Dangerous Game. Without a doubt, it is Madonna's best performance as an actress. Like most of Ferrara's movies, it is pretty gut-wrenching. But, like a lot of Ferrara's movies, it is also quite deeply Catholic. By deeply Catholic, I mean Catholicism isn't just something added on, or artificially mixed in.

I am also back to Saint Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises and Von Balthasar's annotations of them. Today I ordered Gerald O'Collins' new book on the Spiritual Exercises. Without a doubt, there will be more to follow. Listening to a podcast that was an interview with Dr. Matthew Levering on Von Balthasar. In passing, he hit on something that I think makes Balthasar's work resonate with me deeply. That is the fundamentally Ignatian mode in which he works, which is somewhat voluntarist in nature. Not wholly or full-blown, or necessarily even over-blown.

Our traditio, what is it? I am sure at least one of my two readers is curious. Well, I was struck this week by hearing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Learning to Fly." So that, dear friends, is this week's Friday traditio. Maybe it struck me the way it did because it is quite consonant with Asteroid City.