Pilgrimage Report: Pray For Vocations Pilgrimage – June 2018

Note: I’m writing this a few weeks after the fact.

I had just returned from a weekend in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma spending time with monks (you can read about that here), when it dawned on me that the following weekend would also be a full weekend as well! With a wedding on Saturday and a freshly ordained priest’s first Mass on Sunday, I couldn’t help but think about vocations. Therefore, I thought I’d go on a “Pray for Vocations” pilgrimage as I locally attended the wedding, and drove 2.5 hours for the priest’s first Mass. Rather impromptu without a whole lot of planning. Sometimes being a pilgrim for less not only involves less time and less money, but also less preparation as well!

Basically, I decided to make this a pilgrimage a few days before the wedding. This is not a problem because I am still going on a type of journey towards encountering God in the Mass and in those I encountered over the weekend.

For some background, the bride in Saturday’s wedding used to be one of my former students when I first started out as a high school youth ministry volunteer and catechist. She recently graduated from Texas A&M (my university! (WHOOP!)) and her husband went to A&M as well. She’s also a subscriber of Pilgrim for Less! 🙂

The priest whose first Mass I attended the day after wedding is an acquaintance from college, but I reconnected with him when I went to Mother Teresa’s canonization since he was studying at the North American College at the time. He showed me around the NAC while I was there. While I wasn’t able to attend his ordination due to the wedding, and I can’t bi-locate, I opted to just attend his first Mass. His name is Fr. Paul-Michael, and I encourage you to follow him at his Facebook page so that you can see highlights of his ordination and first Mass as well as his journey through his vocation. As of the time of this writing, he’s preparing for his own personal retreat up at Clear Creek Abbey.

Pilgrimage Details

Location: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (Keller, TX), Good Shepherd Catholic Community (Colleyville, TX), St. Mary’s Catholic Center (College Station, TX)
Time Required: Saturday, Sunday
Cost: $
Transportation: Car
Accommodation: None
Essentials: Car, Tissues (or really…I should have packed some…)

Itinerary

• Saturday
  • 1200 Leave
  • 1300 Wedding Mass
  • 1400-1800 Wedding Reception
• Sunday
  • 0500 Leave and drive
  • 0630 Breakfast at Cracker Barrel
  • 1930 Drive
  • 0900 Arrive at St. Mary’s Catholic Center
  • 1000 Mass
  • 1130-1330 Reception
  • ~1700 Arrive home

Map

Points of Interest

Saturday – Wedding

For Saturday morning, I went about my normal day. I got up really early morning to hit up the gym to lift some heavy things and to flail around in the swimming pool a bit. Morning Prayer then breakfast. Chores around the house. I might’ve worked on Pilgrim for Less a bit. Paid some bills. You know, the usual.

I left my house at about noon to get to Mass at least 30 minutes before the wedding started so that I could grab a favorable seat and maybe socialize with others. It was super hot because it was June in north Texas. I kind of questioned my choice of wearing a suit, but decided to suffer through the day wearing one. When I got in my car, I cranked up the A/C and prayed a Rosary for the spouses-to-be and their marriage.

After arriving at the church, I ran into many parish friends, including some I hadn’t seen in a while. Being the social person that I am, I hung around the narthex of the parish briefly catching up with my favorite seminarians, fellow catechists, and other parish members of whom I’m well acquainted. I took my seat in the pew on the bride’s side of the church and sat quietly while awkwardly looking around every so often to see who’s who in attendance for this wedding.

Minutes before the starting of Mass, while thinking about how old I feel because the bride was a former youth/student of mine from when I first started volunteering, I kept repeating in my head “don’t cry; don’t cry; don’t cry; don’t cry…” And I wept. Slightly. And manly-ly. Then the procession started and in walks the groom. And I distinctly remember, even writing about this a few weeks after the fact, the huge smirk of joy and happiness on the groom’s face as he led the procession of the wedding party, parents and grandparents, and liturgical entourage down the center aisle. Seeing that, I was like, “wow that’s cool”. Of course, when the bride walked in, I had to repeat my mental litany of “don’t cry” as she walked down the aisle.

I also remember looking up during the Mass and seeing all the familiar faces, especially on the bride’s side since she basically grew up with a bunch of us. And I thought how incredibly cool it is that a good solid handful of our parish is here on this day to celebrate this joyous moment. Like, I knew probably 90% of the people on the bride’s side of the church. Incredible. I can’t think of a time where that has happened for a wedding NOT involving my own family member.

It was a beautiful Mass and ceremony. Of course, due to my pursuit of the faith and applying my engineering mindset to understand what the heaven goes on at Mass and the rite of marriage, the entire thing felt very legit, joyful, and beautiful.

The Gospel reading they chose for the Mass was the wedding at Cana, where Jesus and His mother were partying at a wedding and they ran out of wine. The servants freaked out, Mary interceded and told them to do whatever her Son tells them. He told them to go fetch huge jugs of water that He turned into wine. And the part that stood out for me from the homily is how the servants comment about this wine. The water-turned-into-wine, according to the servants and attendees, is way better than the stuff they consumed prior. And that’s why they say “you have saved the good wine until now” when most people would have served the good wine first. The priest related this to marriage and how this time in their lives is the good wine saved until now. Whoa. Mind blown.

WHICH IS SO FITTING BECAUSE!!!
…without knowing what the reading was and what the homily was about, several weeks prior to the wedding I had purchased a wine opener off their Amazon registry. Wine. Opener. Gospel about wine. Homily on the wine. WHAT. So crazy. Well played, Holy Spirit. Well played.

After the Mass, I socialized some more.

So, to be honest, I forgot to bring a card so I made a run to Walmart on my way to the reception. Being that it was hot and being in a hurry, I didn’t have much time to peruse the available cards. But then I saw it–a card featuring two wine glasses dressed as a bride and groom and a non-cheesy message inside. Perfect! In my message, I added a few bits tying to the homily and my usual “I hope/pray your marriage is a visible sign of love that is free, full, faithful, and fruitful” because I’m St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body like that. And these are the same signs of love they publicly announce in the marriage rite anyway.

Wedding Reception

The wedding reception was fairly standard but awesome. The catering was done by one of my fav local restaurants, and the DJ was playin’ classics. I got to catch up with the young man of whom I’m the Confirmation sponsor for, which was really nice since it’s been a long while since I’ve talked to him.

But then…the groom. That smile. That joyful smile. The entire time. He basically wore that smile the entire reception. I don’t know why that particularly stood out to me, but it did.

Due to the A/C of the reception hall not quite catching up with having many people in attendance and it being hot outside, it was rather warm the entire time. I pretty much called it quits for dancing after doing the Cupid Shuffle and decided to socialize instead. Though I ended up nearly losing my voice because I was having to nearly yell to talk to people because of how loud it was, but it was totally worth it.

At the end, we gave a tassel-ly farewell to the bride and groom. Prior to this point, in all my socializing, I heard multiple times that the best man and brother of the groom had literally just come from Japan, and someone introduced me to him. We talked Japan for a good while including nerdy Catholic things about where to find Mass and Japan’s Christian history.

Then I went home to my own bed! I was exhausted, and I knew I would have another big day ahead of me in a few hours.

Sunday – First Mass

This day started pretty early. I woke up at about 5AM to pack for my day trip/road trip down to my college, and I was out the door just before 6AM. Then I went and gas and proceeded on my way. I debated how spiritual of a road trip I wanted to have, but in the pursuit of trying to stay awake, I opted NOT to drive in silence. Instead, I decided to catch up on my queue of Catholic podcasts that I subscribe to. It worked out quite nicely because I was listening to Jennifer Fulwiler’s show’s podcast, and she had some hilarious takes on decapitated rattlesnake bites and how spiders are not your friends, even if Peppa Pig says its okay (episode is here).

One of my traditional stops driving down to my university is the Cracker Barrel north of Waco, TX. It’s about here where I have to switch highways. Normally I use the Cracker Barrel as a restroom stop, but I decided to grab some breakfast here and chillax a little bit and let some caffeine kick in.

So I don’t get to return to my college too often (in our lingo, that would be considered “bad bull”). In fact, last time I went was at the beginning of 2017 when I was a speaker for a graduating college senior retreat hosted by my college parish (coincidentally attended by the bride in yesterday’s wedding!). Texas A&M and College Station have done a lot of renovations and construction of new buildings, and the entire North Gate district looks so much different than what it looked like when I was in college. Therefore, driving down University Dr. towards St. Mary’s, I nearly missed the turn towards the church because of construction, and my usual visual markers for the street I’m supposed to turn on weren’t really there! No worries, because there was hardly any traffic on a mid-Sunday morning in the summer so I had room for error and hesitant turning of the steering wheel.

I arrived at St. Mary’s at about 9AM, but the Mass started at 10AM. I decided to hang around the student center for a little while. I was tired due to the wedding the day before and getting up early to drive. About 30 minutes before Mass started, I decided to head on in to the church to claim a spot in a pew. Like at the wedding, I did a lot of awkward looking around to see who all was attending this first Mass. Thankfully, I was able to recognize a small handful of familiar faces. In fact, a St. Mary’s staple, a few years older than I am who I only met after college, ended up sitting next to me with his girlfriend.

The entire time we were waiting for Mass to start, my priest friend was rehearsing the logistics of celebrating Mass with a healthy handful of his brother priests, and seminarians.

Up on the altar were reliquaries containing relics of St. John the Baptist, whose feast day was that Sunday, and of the True Cross. Um, wow. That’s super intense! Why? Because these relics are rather uncommon or rare. So what a blessing it was for all, especially for Fr. Paul-Michael, to have those relics present.

Much like the wedding, I found myself also repeating “don’t cry” during the procession because I think it’s just awesomely cool that I have another friend who got ordained and is now celebrating his honeymoon Mass. He did very well as he didn’t mess up. The homily, which is traditionally given by a good priest friend at a newly ordained’s first Mass, was quite excellent.

My other “don’t cry” litany for this day was the part where Fr. Paul-Michael gave traditional gifts to his loved ones. I nearly cried at my other priest friend’s first Mass when he gave the cloth to his mother, and likewise for this one. What made it also pretty emotional is that Fr. Paul-Michael lost his father last year and couldn’t present the purple stole to him, so he gave it to his homilist, who was integral in his vocation as a spiritual father.

First Mass Reception

I probably can’t iterate how much I was being social this particular weekend. Because being social and catching up with old friends at receptions and such were very much the thing for me to do. This reception was no different. But it felt a little more awkward because the people I talked to aren’t people who I don’t normally run into on a frequent basis unlike my parish peeps at the wedding the day before. But no matter. It was still a good time.

What was really cool is that Fr. Paul-Michael had a lot of representation from his family. Big Filipino family. I can relate, haha.

Towards the end of the reception, I was able to briefly catch up with Fr. Paul-Michael and receive his blessing. And that was awesome!

After bidding several farewells, I started my journey back towards home.

The drive home was more of a “whew, time to just exist and be”, and I didn’t really focus on making it penitential and spiritual. I was already on a sort of spiritual high experiencing the joy and awesomeness of the wedding and first Mass. I stopped by multiple gas stations for restroom and snack breaks since I was getting sleepy and needed snackage and caffeine. Also, I stopped by West, TX, which is most frequently known for their Czech bakeries right off the highway. Naturally, I stopped at one of them in order to bring home some fruit kolaches for my parents and brother. These baked goodies are in addition to multiple take-out boxes of fried chicken strips that I really like that are found in my college town. My car smelled like some weird combination of fried goodness and fruity something. Not even mad.

Stats and Achievements

• Total Distance Drove: 28 miles / 358 miles (386 miles)
• Total Cost: $53 ($18.35 gas; $34 food, includes buying food to bring back home to parents/brother)
• Total Time: Saturday and Sunday
• Times Nearly Crying: 9+
• Cupid Shuffle’d: 1
• Fresh Priestly Blessing: +1

Response

Being Catholic, I know the importance of vocations or living out your life of holiness in particular and called ways. The vocation of marriage is so important because it images God’s love of his people and how society flourishes. The vocation of priesthood is so important because it images God’s love of His Church and how the Christian life flourishes. Since I was able to attend both a wedding and a fresh priest’s first Mass in the same weekend, it seemed very obvious to me that this was a great opportunity to pray for vocations. So where I could and remembered to do so, I prayed for vocations.

Overall, I think the resounding theme for the weekend was joy. Even now, a few weeks later, that is the word I immediately think of when I think back to this weekend. Joy.

How joyful it is for us in the Church to have awesome witnesses to the sacraments of holy orders and marriage. How joyful the spouses are and how joyful the priest is in serving Lord in their particular ways!

And so as I go about my own daily walk with Lord, I must remember to have joy–especially when trusting in His will for my life and how He calls me to be holy.

Let’s continue to pray for good and holy vocations and for us to discern God’s will in our lives so that we can be who we are created to be and set the world on fire!

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