For Lent I gave up the kneeler. You know that cushy padded mechanism you thunk down throughout The Mass so your knees don't end up looking like your grandma's elbows and feeling like Lino's back? Yep, I gave it up while also taking on two daily Masses a week. And I score myself an A for it. It was grace giving in that I actually suffered during the Mass. (No Fr. Jim's homiletics joke necessary) And also it was humiliating because it made me no taller than the 8 year old next to me who likely gave up popcorn for Lent.

I also gave up facebook for Lent and that was different. It had the double effect of also making me a more frequent contributor to this blog. I score myself a B- on this one since I looked for any excuse to forgo this sacrifice. For example, My Parish, St. Joseph, celebrated its patron's feast on a Wednesday. We got to wear red and everything! "What the heck" I said "It's a feast day. Hello facebook" It was grace giving in that I realized how not cool I really was because I'd go on and find that no one paid any attention to me anyway.

I took on learning a new programming language, C sharp, for no good reason other than I hope to build business systems used to curtail world hunger. Sadly, I scored a D- learning C sharp. This gave me the grace to realize how dumb I really was, just when I started thinking otherwise.

Thank you, Jesus, sincerely. I'm done trying to figure out how you operate and am just happy that you do!

Happy Easter Season everyone!