Man, Fully Alive

This past month, I took the trip of a lifetime to Yellowstone National Park. It was incredible. The first day we traveled the southern loop, which is full of geysers and hot springs. This is also where you can find “the Grand Canyon” of Yellowstone, an amazing series of waterfalls in a deep gorge with hiking trails and paths along it’s jaw dropping twists and turns. The next day we explored the northern loop, which is prime for wildlife sightings. We saw SIX bears, three coyotes (wolves?), and countless elk, bison, and pronghorn.

At the tail end of that trip, I journeyed to Mobile, Alabama for the Ordination Mass of my dear friends, now Fathers Andrew Jones and Gil Pierre. (Look them up, go to their churches, they’re the best.) It was one of those good for the soul trips, full of reunions with college friends, good quality down time, and plain old GRACE from the Sacraments.

On the plane ride home, I was considering the awe and wonder I’d experienced over the last week. I cannot describe the beauty I encountered in Yellowstone, and pictures don’t do it justice. (Go! You’ll thank me!)

More breath taking than anything I saw in Wyoming is MAN, fully alive, in his vocation to serve God’s Church as a priest. There was ugly crying (hint: it was me) when these men held up a piece of bread and proclaimed, “This is my Body.” In this moment, and in every Mass, God miraculously turns bread into himself. In the person of Christ, these men, too, give of their bodies, their entire livelihoods, so that I can participate in the Banquet of Life. And that, my friends, is more beautiful than all the mountains, beaches, winding rivers, and fields of bluebonnets on earth.