God's Good Health to Max Weismann!

Today's Mass* and all my prayerful thoughts go with my friend and mentor Philosopher Max Weismann. Max heads the Center for the Study of Great Ideas and is one of the genuine stand-up guys in Chicago. Max stands in tall company with my Mom and Dad, Mary's Mom Alice & Chuck Holm, Nora, Conor, Clare, Willie & Kerry Winters & the Kids, Tom Mahoney, Bob Hylard, Nick Novich, Bart Winters, Charlie and Kate Olson, Jim Frogge, Tamara Holder, George Applegate, Mike McGill, Jack Higgins, Bernard Callahan, Chris and Mary Fogarty, Tommy Ward, Mike Holmes, Big Curtis Banks, Rich Lindberg, Rose Keefe, Thomas Hayes, Marquis Ball, Marty Tully, Tom Roeser,All my Cousins( in the hundreds), Mike Kennedy, Pat Buck, John B. Powers, Billy Higgins, Eddie Carroll, Boz O'Brien, Terry McEldowney, Mike Houlihan, Mike 'Pickle' Joyce, Mike and Anne Cullen, Steve Swerdeloff, Mike McQuade, Frank Nofsinger, Christine Flowers,Steve Rhodes, Mary Ann Roti, Rick Kogan, Rich Furlong, Jim Farrell, Dick Prendergast, and all the Leo Alumni, Patti Bidwill, Billy Helm, Lisa Hwang, Mel Cooney, Jim & Betsy Kennedy, La Lumiere School, The Kids at Leo, Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, Jim Durkin, Ed Maloney, Kevin Joyce, Skinney Sheehan, John Sheehan, Mary Terese and Steve Riordan, Elias Crim, Steve and Susan Jordan, Father Gallagher, Father, Gene Smith, Gino Ford, Cardinal George, Bishop Ray Goedert, Bishop Gorman, Joe Gorman, 6th District Chicago Police Department, Jack Quinn, Mary Pat McWalters, Mike Miller, Seb, Hasan, Tyrone, Tyrell, Mike, James ( all of 1440 N.Lake Shore Drive), Angel of the Pump Room, my Brother Kevin and Sister Joan, Jim and Gail Cleary, Mike and Shelby, My Nephews, Ollie and Martin McGarry, Joe Epstein, Gary Saul Morson, Kevin Baker, Dan Kelley, Anne Leary, John Rubery, Asher Fein, Sy Blitzstein,and the beautiful and elegant Terry Sullivan -to name a very few of the great people I am blessed to share my life on this earth. These people put the balm on Christ's wounds.

*Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 10:35-45.

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."
He replied, "What do you wish (me) to do for you?"
They answered him, "Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left."
Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"
They said to him, "We can." Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared."
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Each of us prays in many different ways and I like to group all of the people I love into a bouquet of support and love for Max Weismann as he faces two tough surgeries this week.

Each of us has a Gethsemane, but they all should be prayers that merge as one.

God's Blessing and health to you, Max! From all of us!