Scenes from the Eucharistic Congress

There was a lot going on uptown yesterday. In the process of seeking out parking, we kept running afoul of a 5K race and a realtors' convention, but at last we found a garage with enough clearance for the van and were just in time to see the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament round the corner:

You've got to love the Knights of Columbus: they do show up from a distance.

Here's our own Father B at the head of the procession:

I always think that there is something . . . what's the word I want? Beautiful, of course, and also manly, in a way that nothing else quite is, or in a way that's different from all the other things we think of as manly, in the sight of a rank of priests and servers impeccably vested and engaged in a purpose which has nothing to do with us -- face it, girls. There are things we do that they can't do, and which they think beautiful precisely because they can't do them. There have got to be things which they do which don't reference us, though they don't exclude us, either. It's just that there are times when it's right that we're bystanders. There's a beauty, also, in seeing men -- who so often in our culture are forced to be ironic, that is to say detached, and also encouraged to be childish -- be serious in every detail of their being, because every detail is directed toward God. It's beautiful to see women this way, too, of course, but I suppose that being female, I see these things in sharper relief in men and can admire them unreservedly, without worrying about having to be that way myself, at least in the same way. It's like being free of worrying about what I'd look like in a three-piece suit. Sometimes detachment is a good thing, the kind of detachment Jane Austen might have called "disinterestedness." And I like it that these examples are available to my sons, as a way for men to be.

But back to the procession. Here are the girls who made their first Holy Communion this year: my friend's daughter was in the crowd, though I don't see her in the picture. They were very seriously strewing rose petals from their baskets, and I only regret that I didn't snap a picture of the boys, who were strewing theirs rather less seriously, like into each other's hair.



Here's the Blessed Sacrament -- I snapped the shot with my zoom just before we all knelt.


After that, it was a lot of Here Comes Everybody, with banners:





At the Congress itself, we did a lot of milling around in the vendors' hall, and the Offspring posed with the Holy Father:




And ate cheesecake-on-a-stick --

-- because it's what you want when that's what there is.