So, a minute before one of our Masses this past weekend as Confessions were going on in our wonderful old style confessionals in the back of the church [with windows in the doors], I couldn’t help but be distracted by an unusually totally squared away guy, alone, utterly on-edge, of all things looking much like J Edgar Hoover, pictured above, just a bit older. The usual crowd slowly meander to their usual seats. He basically ran to the usual seat for such guests as himself. We don’t even need to put a RESERVED FOR SPECIAL PEOPLE sign on that seat, a few pews up from the back on the right side. Pretty much that’s where such guests go 100% of the time. I think people leave it empty as a courtesy for these guys, so frequent are they our guests. Not that this guy was, you know, special.
After he sat down he never once lifted his head again, never once made eye contact, frozen in place, hypervigilant, messing with something attached to his belt at the back of his strong-hand-hip, messing with his shirt just there. Checking if his shirt was covering not his hip-carried phone but what was IWB just there under the phone? Dunno. But always a red-flag. It’s important to notice this kind of behavior. I noticed he then recorded the homily without ever looking up once while I was preaching, not to the tabernacle, not when I would point over to our Lady of Guadalupe on the far side of the sanctuary, everyone rustling about to get a good view, but not him. He was frozen, eyes wide open, fixed. Waaay tooo careful. Surely just recorded for his family, right?
As I do in such cases, I directed our altar boy (a doctor in this seventies), to process out to the back of the church after Mass instead of just heading for the sacristy. I wanted to talk to this guy, you know, to welcome him, make him feel more at home.
“HEY, WHERE ARE YOU FROM?!” said I loudly as he pointedly raced by me after Mass, again no eye contact until I had said this. He instantly stopped and turned around and said just as loudly, a bit gruffly: “FLORIDA!” – you know, in such a way that there’s no way I can ask from where in Florida.
Sorry, but I can’t resist. These kind of interactions are often rather… unique… I asked if he had a cabin up in these parts and he said No, but that he was with a group that had cars. So I mentioned how various motoring groups come up to drive the curvy mountain passes, Bugatti, Porsche, Corvette, Mini, etc. He said, No, they were just driving their cars unto paddleboats, which he repeated three times as I looked dumbfounded at such a statement. I didn’t say that we have no such thing in the entire region. In telling me such a whopper (as far as I know, maybe it was for some movie shot) I’m guessing that he was telling me that he also has an ulterior motive for being there.
I’m not saying the guy was special in these days of ludicrous accusations about all Catholics, accusations insisting on Type 5 Assessments coming from federal bureaus, but it’s one of those Zero Dark Thirty things: “A 100% [it’s him]. OK, fine, 95% because I know certainty freaks you guys out, but it’s a 100.”
Bad language…
So, having said all that, here’s the homily that’s obviously evidence of terrorist activity that this guy was so careful to record. After all, we’re RTCs, Radical Traditional Catholics. Oooo! Radical (we actually believe) Traditional (looking to the Holy Spirit) Catholics (God is All in all).
And, oh! Mary! So dangerous. She’s a good mother. Ah, yes, praise of motherhood. That will surely get us into trouble.
By the way, I apologize in advance. My homilies are totally off the cuff. Rambling. Repetitive. I never know what I’m going to say. This is me, spilling my guts about what I think was going on with Jesus about His mission and His Mother:
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
That was a beautiful homily. Thank you.