New Record!

40.06 MILES BABY!!!!

That's the longest bike ride I've ever made in my life!

I had three Masses up at St. Benedict's in Duluth, GA, this Sunday and got down to Peachtree City where my folks live right at about 3PM.  We grabbed a quick bite and then suited up for what we knew was going to be an endurance ride.  Four hours later, we had pounded out just a smidge over 40 miles!

It's hard being on a bike seat that long.  I invested in some quality cycling shorts that have a seat-shaped gel cushion sewn into them.  It helps, but after 4 hours, let's just say you're really ready to be out of the saddle.

This was the first ride I've done where donations were on the line.  I've currently only got two pledges, but I kept thinking to myself, "If you hit 40 miles, that's $20 that the Cancer Home gets!" and I keep pedaling away.

Besides the "saddle sore," I wasn't too exhausted post-ride.  If dad would have wanted to go another 10, I probably would have groaned and pushed on.  But I need to be able to that 40 mile ride TWICE, plus some.  I've got a lot of work to do!

If you'd like to help me train harder click this link to go to my donations page!  Even if you pledge a penny for every mile I train, it will encourage me to push harder!

A little easier

Praise the Lord for Google Forms!

You can now fill out this online form to make donating to my century ride for OLPH Cancer Home all the easier.  No need to email me, just fill out the form.

Click HERE to register your donation!

Your donation goes to support the efforts of the Dominican Sisters who run a cancer home for the terminally ill.  They rely on God's providence to support them as most of their patients cannot afford insurance or quality medical care, and I am certain the Lord put them on my heart as worthy recipients of these fundraising efforts.  

Thanks for supporting the patients, the Sisters, and me and my dad!!!  Every mile counts.  Every dollar counts.

Peace in Christ,
FrM

Ride on!

24.22 miles this morning!  It was a nice ride, with a short stop at my former employer, the flight school at Falcon Field airport. I served as fleet crew chief there, basiclly charged with keeping the flight school's planes clean inside and out. Cleaned lots of bug guts off leading edges!  

Please visit my previous post (www.atlcatholic.blogspot.com/2015/04/lets-get-it-started.html) to find out how you can support Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home!!!

Let's Get It Started!

Greetings friends!

After 3 months of basic training, with around 200 miles under my belt, it's finally time to start soliciting your support for the ride.  I shared the idea of offering any donations received in support of a century bike ride with Sr. Damien of the Hawthorne Dominicans who staff Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home, and she was enthused and grateful in advance for anything contributed by this little endeavor.

After a family meeting, it was decided that logistically we can't do Tahoe, so my dad and I are going to ride in the Fletcher Flyer Century in the beautiful hills around Asheville, NC.  Same date, Sunday June 7.

Here's the backstory to the whole ordeal.  Do give it a read if you've got the chance!

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home in the shadow of Turner Field, Atlanta.

If you would like to support the Cancer Home with my dad and me, here's how you do it!  You've got 3 options.  Read through the options then click the link to the Google Form at the end!

1)  Straight-up donation

Very straight forward...send in a one-time, tax deductible donation to the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home.

Make a check out to OLPH Cancer Home and mail it to me* at:

Fr. Michael Silloway
Catholic Center at GA Tech
172 4th St. NW
Atlanta, GA  30313

You can register your donation on the Google Form.

2) Donation per training mile

This is best option, in my humble opinion: make a pledge to give a donation based on how many training miles I pound out from today, April 19, to the ride on June 7.  I estimate 300-400 more miles of training, but it may be more.  You can pledge anything, $0.10/mile, $0.25 per mile, $1.00/mile, whatever you'd like.  You will be kept up-to-date with the training progress through this blog and an email reminder the final week before the century.  This will challenge and motivate me to push hard and train with intentionality.  Each mile is more money for the patients and Sisters at OLPH, and is tax-deductible.

You can register your pledge amount on the Google Form.

3) Sponsor me and my dad

There are a few significant expenses associated with doing a century that would normally be covered by the organization one rides with (or discounted because of participation with a major organization).

Sponsorships include:

a) Registration for the Fletcher Flyer Century Ride for Fr. Michael Silloway $45.00
b) Registration for the Fletcher Flyer Century Ride for Lyndon Silloway $45.00
          These expenses generously provided by KENT & JEN POLZIN!!  THANK YOU!!!
c) Lodging in Brevard, NC, 2 rooms for 2 nights $200

Please send a check made out to me and mail it to:

Fr. Michael Silloway
Catholic Center at GA Tech
172 4th St. NW
Atlanta, GA  30313

Sponsorships are not tax-deductible.  This would be a gift from you to me.

You can register your donation on the Google Form.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for your participation in this endeavor!  Whether or not you can give financially, please offer a prayer for the cancer patients in the care of the Dominican Sisters at OLPH, for the Sisters themselves, and for my dad and me!

Here's the link one more time to access the OLPH Century Donations Google Form!

*Donations to OLPH are mailed to me so that I can account for all of them.  Each week, I will make a visit to the Sisters to leave the donations.  There will be a running tally here on the blog of fundraising progress.

An Invitation

I just wrote this up for the St. Pius X Catholic High School community, but thought it might be good to post elsewhere.  Nothing huge, just a brief explication (oooh...big words!) on the Triduum.

Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ!  I just wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the very special nature of these last days of Lent: so special, in fact, that we even close down the school and start Spring Break early.  Many of you will be traveling, so I would like to highly encourage you to visit www.masstimes.org to find the parish closest to your vacation destination.

Have you ever participated in your parish’s Triduum services?  Please consider the following my strongest recommendation, highest encouragement, and most sincere invitation!

The liturgical celebrations of the final three days before Easter Sunday are known as the Sacred Paschal Triduum (from the Latin tria  “three” and dies “day”), wherein each of the three days follows precisely what was occurring in Our Lord’s life some 2,000 years ago.  The Triduum is one act of worship spread out over the three days of Our Lord’s Passion.

On the evening of the first Holy Thursday, Our Lord met with His apostles in the upper room to celebrate the Passover.  He gave them His greatest commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) and washed their feet as a sign of the type of leadership they were to exercise in His name.  Then He gave the greatest gift of all, Himself as the Eucharist, as He took the unleavened Passover bread and the chalice of wine for blessing and said, “This is my body which is given for you…This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20).  He was then betrayed, arrested, and imprisoned overnight, so the surplus Eucharist consecrated for Good Friday will be taken out of the main body of the Church and placed at an “altar of repose” where people will gather to keep vigil with Him before his Passion. There is no final blessing at the end of Mass…just a procession to the altar of repose.

Then on the first Good Friday, the Lord was brought to His trial and punished with death by crucifixion.  The liturgy that day begins without the sign of the cross as Mass normally does, to signify that we’re still in the midst of the same prayer we began the day before.  The whole Passion narrative from the Gospel of St. John is recited, and, after the homily, everyone is invited to venerate the cross.  What a profound moment to show our gratitude to Jesus for sacrifice of love He made for us!  It’s perhaps a little awkward to walk up and kiss the cross, but what the cross of Our Lord shows us is that humility is the true way of love!  Then the Eucharist consecrated the day before is brought into the Church for the faithful to receive.  This was why He died, that we might have life.  The Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion ends without a final blessing…Jesus has died, but the event isn’t over yet…

During the day on Holy Saturday, nothing happens in the Church.  In fact, the altar itself is stripped bare.  No Sacraments at all are celebrated, for Our Lord is in the tomb and we are meant to spiritually go there with Him.  Holy Saturday should be a quiet day and a day of preparation.  As the evening draws near, a fire is lit outside each parish, the “paschal fire” from which the Easter Candle is lit.  This candle, representing the Christ, the Light of the World, is processed in to the darkened sanctuary of the Church, and the flame is shared from it to each person in the Church.  And the Easter Vigil begins.

This epic conclusion to the Triduum is unmatched in beauty, power, and grace.  It is the liturgy above all liturgies, the Mass above all Masses!  Special (and more numerous) readings that highlight the most significant points of Salvation History…Creation, the sacrifice of Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea, Ezekiel’s “I will give you a new heart,” just to name a few will be proclaimed.  Then the alleluia, which we’ve omitted all of Lent, comes back in force as we hear of the empty tomb and Christ appearing in the flesh and alive.  This Vigil is the main Mass in which new Catholics are made, as people make a profession of faith and join in full communion with the Church around the altar of the Lord.  Some, who were never baptized, receive that great Sacrament alongside those adults being Confirmed and those receiving their First Holy Communion.  The Church celebrates the “new birth” of these her newest members.  As the Mass draws to a close, we receive for the first time in three days the concluding blessing, and we’re sent to proclaim Christ risen from the dead to every corner of the world.

Friends, these next few days are the most important in our entire year.  I invite you to go to these celebrations if at all possible.  The Lord died and rose not only for the world in general, but also for you in particular, and through these holy celebrations, I’m quite certain He has graces to give you.  So please enjoy your Spring Break, and put the Lord smack in the middle of it!

Training Week 2

Training is beginning in earnest.

Two weeks ago I participated in an indoor training event where you attach your bike to a device fittingly called a "trainer," which essentially turns your pavement shredding machine into a stationary bike.

So there, inside the basement gathering space of an historic Atlanta church, we pounded out not miles, but certainly tons of sweat and calories.

Having missed an opportunity to do a group ride on Saturday because I was simply exhausted after the March for Life, I went yesterday to the area the group rode and kind of made up my own route.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

That's right!  This fat boy tore up Brookhaven's neighborhoods and logged 15 hard-fought miles on this Atlanta suburb's hilly roads.  Peachtree-Dunwoody Rd was particularly obnoxious to ride up, but I made it.  I tell myself as my legs burn and my heartrate hits 180 "Don't get off this bike!  Don't you dare get off this bike!"  It works for now...

The ride took, as you can see on the screenshot, almost an hour and a quarter.  Come June, I will need to be able to pull off 6 and 2/3 of those 15-milers to reach a century...also taking into account the ascents around Lake Tahoe and the altitude, most of the ride being well above a mile high, where the air is a good bit thinner and the heart has to work harder to oxygenate the muscles.

Since I haven't made much progress in the organization of the new team, I don't yet have names of the cancer patients or the sisters who care for them, so I offered the pain and the 4 mph uphills for the intention of the Lord leading the way, that he would, as this plan unfolds, upon up the doors we will need opened, and give us strength to persevere.

As I think about all that needs to be done, I realize how big an undertaking it will be to make this training and the realization of the event happen.

At this point in the game, though, my biggest worry is how anyone, no matter how great their endurance, can sit on a bike seat for that long.  The heart will calm down, there will be a coming decent to relax the legs, but that seat, that piece of marble covered in thick plastic, is always there...uphill or downhill, coasting or peddling, it's right there ready to bruise and wound and to mock you.

Pray for this endeavor!  Pray for the people of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home!  Pray for the Sisters that love and care for them!  And, if you can spare a prayer, pray for my bottom!

I'm off to log some more miles today.  Till next time,

Peace in Christ,
FrM

HUGE

Friends, earlier today I found myself in a HUGE dilemma.

After seeing and being inspired by my dad's fight with cancer through faith, family, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team in Training, I decided to join him and the Team to train for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride...a century (100 mile) ride around Lake Tahoe in June.

Click here for the more on the context and reasons for participating.

I recently set up my fundraising page and earlier today sent out the link on Facebook.  Within 2 minutes I had donations coming in!  I was getting really excited.

Then a friend sent me a private message saying that LLS doesn't have the best track record with human life issues.  So I did a little research.

It didn't take long to find LLS's connection with (thankfully failed) legislation to promote more funding to embryonic stem cell research (story here).  Then a Facebook friend lead me to this quote:

"LLS recognizes that medical research must balance risks and benefits. Based on the leading scientific and bioethical advice available, and our mission, The LLS Board of Directors adopted a Policy on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research in June of 2005. LLS updated the statement of our position in November of 2010. LLS supports the use of human ES cells for research and the development of therapies whenever the proposed research is judged meritorious by appropriately constituted scientific review committees and the Board of Directors of LLS."

This unattributed piece of information was then confirmed by a quote from the CEO of the LLS in an email to the American Life League, using the exact same language as above:

"LLS supports the use of human ES cells for research and the development of therapies whenever the proposed research is judged meritorious by appropriately constituted scientific review committees and the board of directors of LLS."

(Citation from ALL)

So, that was that.  (If you want information on why Christians should be against embryonic stem cell research, check out the USCCB website where there is a plethora of resources and information).

I was put on the spot, I had the information and I had to make a decision.  Part of me knew that I couldn't support LLS and ask others to do the same.  But, in total honesty, another part of me wanted to just ignore the information I had found and say, "well it's not like all the money raised goes to killing embryonic humans...maybe the money I raise won't go to that stuff."  

Rationalization.  That's all it was and I knew it.  I was trying to justify my participation and to avoid the difficulty of having to back out of the Team and of having to tell my dad who has benefited so much from the camaraderie and possibly even the results of some of the good things that LLS funds.  I'll do a post sometime soon about the ADULT stem cell success my dad has had in his cancer treatments.

Then came the fact that I had to contact the two people who had already donated! My Facebook friends have such great hearts!  So eager to help, so ready to give and support.  I sent them messages and they completely understood why I was backing out and taking the donation page offline.  

Then I had to call my dad.  I sent him an email first, perhaps, as I thought, to soften the blow of telling him that I wouldn't be training with him and the Team.  He responded and told me to call.  Oh boy.  Here we go.  How was he going to take it?  He has been through no fewer than 10 century rides with this team...that's 1,000 miles of ride events and many thousands of miles in training with them.  The best I expected to hear was, "Michael, I understand, and you are free to do what you need to do."

That's not what happened.

As I bumbled over my words and tried to present my backing out of the Team as gently as possible, not wanting to offend but at the same time wanting to present my position firmly, at one point my dad interjected, "And I'm with you."

I choked back tears.  

And I pitched my idea...

What if we formed a team for life?  A team that exists to train for the ride and to raise funds, not for research per se, but for actual cancer patients here in the Atlanta area.  Money going STRAIGHT to people suffering, without passing through a massive organization with intimate ties to the destruction of embryonic life?  What if we could form a team to support Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home here in Atlanta?

Read through their website and you my friend will be the one choking back tears.  The Hawthorne Dominicans who run the place are dedicated to giving hospice care to cancer patients of any creed, race, or nationality who can no longer afford treatment.  

I've celebrated Masses there and visited their residence.  The sisters there are simple, holy, joyful women of Christ.  Caring for the terminally ill poor is no easy task, yet they do it with such a love as if each patient were Our Lord himself.

So what if we still did the ride, still trained our butts off, all the while asking for support for this beautiful mission of the Church?  What if we formed a team of cancer survivors and supporters of cancer patients to ride and raise funds for the sisters' mission??

I feel the Lord moving here.  Deeply.  He's up to something HUGE in this heart.  

But before I go any further, I should probably contact Mother Superior and the priest chaplain there...