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09 May 2010 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle C

AT OUR HOUSE Sunday lunch was pasta. It always had been and I guess that I always expected that it would be. When I left home and went off to college, after the Sunday community Mass, the entire seminary population would gather in the dining hall for a big banquet meal. But it never was pasta, so I found that I was never satisfied. It might have been ham or roast beef or fried chicken. It didn’t matter. I was used to and needed my pasta on Sunday. Decades have passed. But give me a choice, and on Sundays I would most like to be with my family sharing heaping, steaming bowls of pasta like we used to. It doesn’t happen as often now. But when we do gather it remains a very special time for me. It is funny how something like a pasta meal can become so much a part of my identity, of who I am. So, too, our identity as Christians can be traced to our Baptism and our Confirmation and our reception of the Eucharist in what we called the sacraments of initiation that give to us the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s loving presence with us. Just as I learned to take my familial identity with me and have it be part of who I am even on those pasta-less Sundays, the days I am not with my family, so, too, my identity as a Christian rests in the realization of the Spirit, by virtue of all the sacraments, walks with me wherever my life’s journey takes me.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

christian identity

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Homily stories

26 May 2019 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle C

At our house, Sunday lunch was pasta. It always had been and I guess that I always expected that it would be. When I left home and went off to college, after the Sunday community Mass, the entire seminary population would gather in the dining hall for a big banquet meal. But it never was pasta, so I found that I was never satisfied. It might have been ham or roast beef or fried chicken. It didn’t matter. I was used to and needed my pasta on Sunday. Decades have passed. But give me a choice, and on Sundays I would most like to be with my family sharing heaping, steaming bowls of pasta like we used to. It doesn’t happen as often now. But when we do gather it remains a very special time for me. It is funny how something like a pasta meal can become so much a part of my identity, of who I am. So, too, our identity as Christians can be traced to our Baptism and our Confirmation and our reception of the Eucharist in what we called the sacraments of initiation that give to us the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s loving presence with us. Just as I learned to take my familial identity with me and have it be part of who I am, even on those pasta-less Sundays, the days I am not with my family, so, too, my identity as a Christian rests in the realization that the Spirit, by virtue of all the sacraments, walks with me wherever my life’s journey takes me.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

christian identity

Restricted
Homily stories

25 May 2025 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle C

At our house Sunday lunch was pasta. It always had been and I guess that I always expected that it would be. When I left home and went off to college, after the Sunday community Mass, the entire seminary population would gather in the dining hall for a big banquet meal. But it never was pasta, so I found that I was never satisfied. It might have been ham or roast beef or fried chicken. It didn’t matter. I was used to and needed my pasta on Sunday. Decades have passed. But give me a choice, and on Sundays I would most like to be with my family sharing heaping, steaming bowls of pasta like we used to. It doesn’t happen as often now. But when we do gather it remains a very special time for me. It is funny how something like a pasta meal can become so much a part of my identity, of who I am. So, too, our identity as Christians can be traced to our Baptism and our Confirmation and our reception of the Eucharist in what we called the sacraments of Initiation that give to us the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s loving presence with us. Just as I learned to take my familial identity with me and have it be part of who I am even on those pasta-less Sundays, the days I am not with my family, so, too, my identity as a Christian rests in the realization of the Spirit, by virtue of all the sacraments, walks with me wherever my life’s journey takes me.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

pasta sacraments christian identity

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