Retro This Week

I leave at 4:30am to get to the airport. Flying off to Salt Lake City for a Retrouvaille weekend. David and Maria Elena Byron, regular readers here, will be the stage three couple. I am delighted to spend my anniversary with some real friends.

Retrouvaille is a ministry to troubled marriages. I could not think of a better way to celebrate my anniversary of ordination than by working in a ministry of reconciliation.

Please, Please, Please. Some of these difficulties can only be healed by prayer. The more we all pray, the more can be done. St. Gaspar would tell us that all can be accomplished by prayer. Could you do me a favor and put some promise of prayer in the conversation/comment. I will print them out for Sunday morning for the couples.

Retrouvaille is being held this weekend in the following places:

Alberta, Edmonton
Oakland, CA (in Spanish)
Jacksonville, FL
Orlando, FL
Wichita. KS
Salt Lake City, UT
Memphis, TN
Detroit, MI

Pray for all these couples.

posted by Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, C.PP.S. on 10:28 PM link

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Inappropriate Music

Have you ever had the opportunity to try to pray with music that you suddenly had theological disputes with? I was faced with that recently at the Retrouvaille International Convention when I was presiding at the closing Mass. The song in question was Jerusalem, My Destiny, by Rory Cooney, published by GIA.

Much of it was ok. But there were a few lines that I could not sing, simply because they were not true.

Here are the lyrics:

I have fixed my eyes on the hills
Jerusalem, my destiny!
Though I cannot see the end for me,
I cannot turn away.
We have set our hearts for the way;
This journey is our destiny.
Let no one walk alone.
This journey makes us one.

I am sorry, the journey is NOT our destiny, and it is Jesus who makes us one on the journey, not the journey itself.

Just because the song is in a Catholic hymnal and published by a Catholic publisher does not make the song Catholic. I did not think the music good enough for liturgy, but we are not talking about music here, just the text. The text is heresy. It takes the focus off of the Lord and places it upon us.

posted by Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, C.PP.S. on 1:50 PM link

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