Today is Ascension Thursday even if we now celebrate it in most of the United States on Sunday. It brings back memories of boarding school when we would all be in the Chapel before noon to pray and imagine the scene of Our Lord ascending into heaven. Then at noon we would sing a hymn in French, "Beau Ciel" and then finally be ushered out and down to a festive meal. I think we had a special schedule as it was a Holy Day of Obligation and we would not have had regular classes, but I do not remember. Still, something of the atmosphere of the noon prayer time has remained with me all these years. I will be in the Chapel today before noon at the University as I think it is a time to thank Jesus again for these forty days after Easter when He goes about giving consolation and joy.

I will save the list of books that I am sharing with you until tomorrow, but do want to mention again the book I am reading this week. I did not buy it but it is worth reading. It is Michael Crosby's "Repair My House: Becoming a "Kingdom"Catholic. Orbis, 2012. It is a book that points out all the models of the Church are working except for the first, the Institutional Model. That is what needs reform and then we will be able to accept that all of us are evolving in an expanding universe and all of us are connected. Crosby adds the model of a family and shows how loving one another is something that means reaching out to the most wounded, the outcast, the one who needs us.