Omigosh! It was him!!

I am still wishing I had made it to Mozart's Requiem on Friday night for All Souls, but after several nights of not getting much sleep and being in constant motion, I just didn't have the juice to go. The last Requiem I went to was 2.5 hours long. I would've been asleep in the pew.

Then I find out that Father Zuhlsdorf was at St. Agnes for the All Souls Mass.

However, all is well and I saw him this morning at the 8:30am Mass! Father Z used to be a fixture at St. Agnes, but the last time I saw him (and a hundred of his close friends) was at Monsignor Schuler's funeral. I had sent him an e-mail earlier this year with a question I had and at that time he said that he would certainly be at St. Agnes over the summer. Well, I wasn't at St. Agnes all summer and I don't think Father Z was either. (Don't go getting the impression I know Father Z, because I don't!).

Anyway, with all the upheaval at the parish in the past few years, it was nice to see him there. Kind of like old times.

And, what was his homily on, you ask?

"Let me cut to the chase. 'How have you troubled yourself to see Jesus?'"

Father Z talked about how rich we all are, every one of us. He said that Luke's gospel contained two stories of rich men. The one we had today with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) who, despite his wealth, inconvenienced himself by crawling up in a sycamore tree to see Jesus and was willing to give a huge portion of his wealth away. The other rich man, when told he had to give up his property and follow Jesus, went away sad. Father Z reminded us of the story about how it is it more likely that a camel can get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven...and we are all rich. Father Z said that we should be willing to be inconvenienced to see Jesus because it will be an even bigger inconvenience to lose Heaven.