The Inhabitant

Et verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis.  

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1: 14)

This marvelous declaration, this concise formulation summarizes the wonder at the root of our celebration of the nativity of the Son of God.  From His conception to His birth, Our Lord dwelt within the confines of his mother’s womb; among us, yes, though also not yet among us.  His emergence from that sweet shelter, His manifestation to the wondering eyes of shepherd, mute beast, and starsearching king, is entrance into the air we breathe and arrival into the life we live on this splendid earth our creator made and into the marred world of man’s making.  

Hidden in this phrase so familiar even in Latin is the English verb that describes the great action of God: to inhabit.  et habitavit in nobis.  Behold, He comes, not just to visit, but to dwell; not simply to insert Himself but also to make His own all that is ours, unto our very flesh.  He is not just passing through; He abides.  

The Living God does not just slip on a suit to disguise His splendor, he steps into a life He will make His own.  He will hunger and thirst, sleep and dream, yearn and relinquish.  He will enter friendships and see them lost; He will know mirth and grief.  He will gain strength and competence; He will be made helpless and die.  His birth is an entering into everything that we are and do, instantly making everything we are and do into something that God Himself is and does.  He inhabits not simply our home or our world; He inhabits who we are.   He is come to stay. 

What He will do in our life and with our life transpires over a lifetime and is accomplished on a Friday afternoon.   After three days’ time in the darkest place we spend our time, He transforms what He has made his own and with it all that is ours.  

His goal all along, why He chose to inhabit us (et habitavit in nobis) was that we be made able to inhabit Him.  His moving in to us is the making possible of our moving in to Him.  And He, the coeternal Son of the everlasting Father, dwells forever in the perfect mutual intimacy of the Triune God, Love indivisible and perfect.  The very Being that is our source is also our goal, a destination we can reach only in Him who participates in that Being.   “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” (Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation)

It would be easy to think that this means that Christ came to change us into somebody else.   But the opposite is true: He came so that we could be who we truly are.  He came from somewhere else as something else so that everything else that God enjoyed could be ours as well.  All else is ours in Christ, who inhabits us and makes ours what we did not possess.  The logical question is, what else?

By inhabiting us, Christ returns to us all that is meant to be ours from our very beginning, the creation of Man.  By inhabiting us, Christ returns us to intimacy with God and with one another in mutual charity.  By inhabiting us, Christ reveals and removes all obstacles to that intimacy, the obstacles that are inherent (original sin) and that are our own regrettable actions (actual sins).  By inhabiting us, God makes possible what we could never achieve of ourselves, and that is being ourselves, our true uninhibited, unburdened identities in right relationship with God and neighbor.  Now that is something else!

To look on that helpless infant we lay in our family manger scene is to see God inhabiting all that we are and inviting us to inhabit all that He is.  He became tiny so that we could be made great.  He is the Divine Inhabitant.  Let Him in, so that He take you up.

We who dwell here so close to the tabernacle, literally the tent or dwelling place of the Lord Jesus Christ, invite you to delight in welcoming Him who comes to inhabit our lives.  Fr. Swink, Fr. Wiktor, and all the fearless and faithful helpers here at the heart of the parish offer our prayers and warmest wishes for you, that your Christmastide be filled with joy, and the tiny and divine inhabitant be at home in you, and yours.  Merry Christmas.  

Monsignor Smith                                   

whose will they be?

Sometimes older things are cooler things,
especially when they show that
what stays the same is the important things.

 Fool! … The things you have prepared, whose will they be? (Luke 12:20) Our Lord warns against laying up treasure that moth or rust can destroy, but perhaps sadder still is treasure nobody wants.

It is a much-remarked phenomenon of our day that the “younger generation” has no interest in the heirlooms and careful acquisitions of their elders.  I have no idea whether this means Gen X, Y, Z, or…what next?  Alpha?  But the assertion is that these “young” people eschew furniture and dishes and art and artifacts that are precious to their parents, who have now come to the time of letting go, also called downsizing, and are eager to be shed of their precious but burdensome array.

The image of the new generation is one of digitally active, virtually connected, acquisitionally averse postmoderns who incline toward renting or app-sharing not only their homes and transport but also everything else that serves their purposes however long or briefly including the clothes on their backs.  The emphasis for expenditure is on experiences rather than objects.  

This leaves great ranks of suburban homes and urban apartments stuffed to the crown moldings with goods and goodies in the unique and eclectic tastes of their accumulators.  The china!  The dining room set!  That carpet!  The collection of objets in ceramic or crystal or carved with a chainsaw!  A few quick calls will reveal that you can sell some for pennies on the dollar, and the rest you cannot give away.  Suddenly it is clear why there are trucks with signs like “college hunks hauling junk.”

Is this mark of the new generation (sic) a symptom more universal disdain?   Does a loss of interest in the carefully accumulated spiritual and intellectual achievements of their elders accompany the aversion to the material accomplishments and accumulations of their forebears?  While the antique stores and eBay vendors present rank upon rank of marvelous objects that have served well their part in life and society, who is gathering up the ideas and understanding that made possible that life and that society?  

The easy instantaneous access to facts, information, and data has obviated the burden of recollection and even learning.  The digitizing of everything has made analysis and evaluation the result of electronic process, not habit of mind. And the perniciously named and facilely advanced “artificial intelligence” has by its artifice elevated algorithmically applied evaluation to replace thought.  The overwhelming advantage of speed and accuracy hides the complete absence of insight or originality.  Truth will be crushed by the manipulation of facts, and goodness and beauty suffocated. 

Of all that your parents and grandparents treasured, what has already been mislaid or abandoned like so many sentimental tchotchkes?  What that you assume to be precious has the next generation already discarded as useless and burdensome?

The birth at Bethlehem of the Son of God to the Virgin of Nazareth, Mary, occurred in obscurity of time and place, yet rather than passing unnoticed, was recognized and received by many who were eager and alert to great things to come from God.  Different from acquisitiveness, receptivity is an indispensable part of learning, a necessary disposition on the way to knowledge, understanding, and belief.  When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?  (Luke 18:8)  I guess the answer depends on whether you can find somebody willing to accept it, whether you remember from whom you got it, and where you put it.  

Monsignor Smith                                   

 

Unique and universal

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

It can make me feel self-conscious, in a way that is not good.  It seems I am always saying the same thing, over and over.  And I don’t mean “The Lord be with you”, or “In the name of the Father, and of the Son…”.   I mean when I talk.  When I preach, when I write, when I answer questions; all the things I say that I am responsible for crafting, all of it seems to be the same.

As we launch into Year A (Saint Matthew’s Gospel) of the Sunday lectionary cycle, I look to speak to these Scriptures for the seventh time since I arrived here as Pastor.  You’ve heard it all before!   The parables, the psalms, the glitches in grammar and the grandeur of the whole.  Do you come hoping for something new, something different?  My self-consciousness makes me want not to repeat, not to recycle a homily or a phrase or an image I have given you already.  But really, who remembers what I said in 2013?  I will tell you who does: I do!  And I hate to repeat myself; it seems so – unoriginal!

When I was in seminary there was a spiritual director, a Jesuit from Massachusetts, who asserted to us aspiring preachers that “You only have one homily.”  No matter how many times you preach, under what circumstances and on what scriptures, what examples you give or what stories you tell, you really only preach one thing.  He did not mean that we preach only and always the mystery of salvation in Christ, though that is something we should do.  He was telling us that every minister of the Gospel has a “thing” which he hammers over and over throughout his ministry.   The concept was both amusing and frightening.

What Fr. D. was trying to tell us, I think, was that we each have our vision of the mystery of salvation in Christ, constrained by our human limitedness rather than by any shortfall in the truth.  Like the three blind men encountering the elephant, we all come at it in a particular way, lacking the faculty to grasp the whole.  One may emphasize the trunk while another can only talk about the leg.  Both are, in truth, conveying elephantine reality.  

We are accustomed to seek what is new and different.  The so-called “news” is presented as something we never encountered before and did not expect.   But after the initial frisson of excitement that novelty elicits, we lapse into ennui.  Current events and pointed opinions presented as “news” gets us only so far.  

What should excite us as well as console us, not to mention shape and direct our every action and aspiration, is that God loves us and wants us to be happy.   He loves us so much, in fact, that he took human flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory; the glory of a father’s only begotten son.  And that glory is laid out in spectacular fashion in his suffering like us, with us, and for us.  We have heard it all before, but it is the only news that is genuinely good.

I have only so much creativity.  I read books, I read articles, I listen to music and immerse myself in art; I go for hikes to ‘bathe’ in the forest.  Every day brings something.  I pay attention – some would suggest too much attention – to distinction and difference and nuance.  So much variety!  My “takeaway”, the result, my conclusions are over and over again the same: how many thousands upon thousands of ways we people can get things wrong, and how unique and universal is the one thing that is right.  

As is the case in the elements of our ritual, where repetition and familiarity are both good and necessary for the experience and the expression, even the aspects of our worship that are the least programmatic, the least scripted – the parts I have to devise and provide – even these have an underlying sameness, rooted in the consistency of my limitations and the constancy of the universal truth of God in Christ.

Saint John Paul II said that Jesus Christ is the answer to every human question.  I have yet to find the exception.   That would mean that saying the same thing over and over, in different words and stories and situations, is actually the best remedy for being self-conscious.

Monsignor Smith

 

Squanderous

strewing the floor with our treasures,
littering His place with our concerns.

Practicality.  Efficiency.  Usefulness.  

These are all attributes that most people value highly.  In our day and our society, they make a product more valuable, and often contribute to our decisions to how we spend our days.   We choose to do what is practical in the most efficient manner possible, so that our results are useful to ourselves and others.   Sometimes, we use these criteria because we feel we have no choice – some things we would like to do have to be dropped from our schedule, or our budget, because they are not practical, wouldn’t be an efficient use of our resources, and no useful product or result would be obtained.

It is hard to think of a time of year when we are more likely to make hard decisions using these criteria than right now, what our modern society has come to call The Holidays.  There is so much that we hope to do, want to do, have to do, that we just cannot do it all.  Some things simply must be done; and some things must be allowed to slide -- they don’t make the cut.  Even the parties we choose to attend have to withstand the test of practicality, efficiency, and usefulness.  

I understand.  Really, I do.  My inner German, my training as a professional analyst, my dread of waste; all make me a sucker for such decision-making processes.  However, please allow me to take the opportunity to beg you: Do not to fall for this!

The counter-example I offer you is: snuggle time with your child.  This clearly does not fall on the winning side of the practicality/efficiency/usefulness contest.  Yet, somehow, it carries its own imperative, and bears its inarguable rewards.  Whether the child chatters aimlessly the whole time, asks a Big Question (Daddy, why do people die?), or just falls asleep, it has an immeasurable value.  I don’t think I have to explain to you or verify how this complete waste of time confirms and strengthens the identities and relationship of both participants.

The Sacred Liturgy of the Church similarly fails completely when put to the test for practicality/efficiency/usefulness.  Absolutely nothing is accomplished, and in fact much is lost.  Heck, at a good one, some of our best things get burnt up!  Whether you spend the time reeling off seemingly unconnected preoccupations to God, ask Him a Big Question, or simply settle into a restful peace, this time “squandered” bears great fruit in ordering your life rightly according to your identity and relationship with God and everyone else.

There is nothing practical or productive about worship.  Many words are said, but very little new information is conveyed.  The “Good News” isn’t that new, really.  Much is done, but little is accomplished.  And there are long periods of just ...being there.  Gack!  How unbearably inefficient and ...useless!  What’s worse, it requires pouring out before God our precious time and vital essence, strewing the floor with our treasures, littering His place with our concerns.  That simply doesn’t rate much in a busy society, especially in its busiest month, December.  

But right now is precisely when our worship teaches us that we will never know who we are and who He is, unless we put aside all our tasks and priorities for silence, stillness, and waiting.  It’s an audacious request, but He never fails to deliver on His promise.  

Remember that if you are trying to decide if you can “afford” to attend Mass.  The formerly fashionable concept of “quality time” never really filled the bill with toddlers, or with God.  He offers us holy time, life-giving time, if only we embrace its inefficiency, impracticality, and uselessness.

Monsignor Smith

 

More of the same

You were expecting maybe something different?

Fourteen years ago, the beginning of Advent in 2011 heralded the arrival of a new English translation of the Roman Missal.   This brought changes to some of the most common responses of the people at Mass, including “And with your spirit,” and “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” to the Gloria “and on earth peace to people of goodwill,” and the Creed “consubstantial with the Father”.  It was hard; change always is.

That change was accompanied by much preparation and went very well.  The changes were easily recognized to be improvements, and after months of effort they have all become familiar and reflexive.  But those months were marked by paying attention to the changes at the expense of participation in the liturgy.

It has been my experience that change in the liturgy draws attention to the change.   The Scriptures change from day to day, Sunday to Sunday, and this draws attention to the readings of the day.  That is good.   When the change draws the attention of the worshippers to wonder, what should I say or do now?  That is less good.  

Familiarity and expectation are important to the liturgy.  We say “Amen” a half-dozen times during each Mass, but always in response to recognizable cues, such as “Through Christ our Lord.”  It is a failure of the liturgical text to require an “Amen” without offering an appropriate cue.   These failures occur in the Missal notably in the tripartite or “solemn” blessing at the end of Mass.  There are three options for the celebrant under these circumstances: first, simply wait in silence for the unrequested response, possibly waving a hand; two, add the formulary that indicates the response, like “Through Christ our Lord;” or three, give some other cue, such as “Let the church say Amen.” There is another possible course of action, which I take most often: omit these badly formulated tripartite blessings.

Familiarity and expectation need not be so frequent and routine as the “Amen” to be liturgical and effective.   Certain actions occur only one time each year and are greatly anticipated for that reason.  Think of the imposition of ashes to begin Lent, or the return of the Alleluia at the Easter Vigil.   Any combination of tune and text, such as the chanted Entrance Antiphon for any Sunday or feast, offers recognition and delight when that day comes each year.  These variations are not random but are regular – they happen according to a rule – and are proper to the liturgy itself.

Other variations are less regular and, I believe, detract from the liturgy.  The Roman Missal is full of options and variety, and the training I received in seminary emphasized the necessity of knowing what all the possible variations were, as well as the reasons to utilize all or at least many of them.  There is more than a suggestion that “mixing things up” enhances the liturgy.

There are three possible greetings for the priest to say after the Sign of the Cross.  There are three possible forms for the Penitential Rite, and one of the forms has numerous if not innumerable different tropes that can be woven in with the Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.  We haven’t even arrived at the Gloria yet, which is required for some Masses, omitted at others, and optional for many of the rest, though there is at least some semblance of a rule.  

I have a friend who loves to mix it up at Mass.  He never ad-libs or invents anything; it is all according the Missal.  But he loves to pull out an unexpected option like a jack-in-the-box.   If I am concelebrating with him, it is distracting and confusing to me when he does this, not least because I do not have the benefit of having the Missal before me, that is, the text.  This has increased my conviction that every regular predictability contributes to the comfort and cooperation of all participants in the Divine Worship.

The importance of sameness to our worship has become more pressing on me the longer I have been a priest.   One year is the broadest range of variation we can compass before we require and return to the same.  Each year brings samenesses of time and season because of which they are intelligible and manageable: calendar year, meteorological year, lunar year, fiscal year, academic year, and liturgical year.  Our worship requires and offers sameness.

As I have in many previous years, I hope to write my letters this Advent about worship and liturgy.  Be ready for more of the same.    

Monsignor Smith 

Catastrophe

 

End of the Line

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!  (Rev. 22:20)   Thus ends the last book of the Bible.  This is the end, not only how the story ends.  Somehow this is also our desire, the desire of the Church, of “all the saints” (Rev. 22:21) Why would we desire the end?  

The end is the coming of the Lord, the final setting things right that will bring God’s justice and God’s mercy and bring an end to the murder, mayhem, sin, and shenanigans that come with the rule of men.  Confronted with all that is wrong in the world, we raise our eyes and pray, Come, Lord Jesus!  Come fix this mess; repair what is broken.

We take this language from the rhetoric of our time, which resorts often to claiming things are broken.  Our justice system is broken.  Our education system is broken.  But men are not machines, and human society is organic not mechanical.  Cars and computers break; human beings fail.  We fail early and often, and every program of human design requiring human participation will reflect this shortfall.  “It” is not broken; we are fallen.

At the beginning of our life, we expect and become better – stronger, smarter, bigger, wiser, more and more capable of more and more marvels.  We mature and identify what needs improvement about ourselves, and by focusing our attention and our efforts, maybe even obtaining help, sometimes we can turn our weakness into strength.  

Sometimes, however, we cannot modify ourselves this way; our best and repeated efforts fail.  This happens not only in extraordinary efforts like achieving a record in pole-vaulting or learning to write poetry in Chinese.  Sometimes our recurring failures are basic, like doing our job or loving our spouse. 

In a high-speed, high-functioning society, this sometimes magnifies unsatisfactory results to the level of catastrophe.  In any one human life, such failure is catastrophe.   Hence our prayer, Come, Lord Jesus!  Get me out of this mess. 

Standing honestly before the Lord, however, we realize that He did not promise to “fix” what is broken around us.  With time and grace, we object less to what is wrong with the world and more to what is wrong with ourselves.  We lament our failures, our inabilities, our disabilities we cannot repair or reform.  We grieve the damage we have done and the opportunities we have squandered.  Into this irreparable mess steps Jesus, God’s Word become flesh.

Recall that at Cana they were desperate.  They had no wine.  Jesus provided the best wine, which they never would have enjoyed if their inferior wine had lasted.  They would not have known Jesus was there, much less learned what He is here to do.  When all our efforts fall flat, our best and our worst, that is when God’s work occurs for us.   What happens after our failure is better than if we had never failed in the first place; our success would not only have been insufficient, but also catastrophic.

God comes to where we fall.  Christ is the sun that comes with healing rays (Mal 3:20a), rejoicing only the injured and disabled, the chill and the sick.  For any and all who stand athwart their world in triumph, that same sun is blazing like an oven (Mal 3:19).  

Wounds and weakness are where God happens, where our rescue happens.  To turn away from catastrophes of our own making is to turn our back on the Lord who comes.  To look at failure and fault and reject the people who “allowed this to happen” is to reject the good wine that only comes when we turn to Christ in desperation.  God fills empty vessels and empty hands.  

We are not broken in need of fixing; our best efforts and our world are not broken waiting for us to repair them.  We are wounded, unable to rescue ourselves from the deadly field where we have fallen.  We await a savior.  

What He brings when he comes to save us is better than anything we can imagine, much less achieve.   He comes with His gifts and his grace and makes us glad we fell, glad we failed, happy to have been helpless.  It is a mistake to ignore or avoid our desperation.  We can and should go there, stand precisely there, and call out:  Come, Lord Jesus!  Do not wait for, much less wish for, the end. 

Monsignor Smith

Rot not

Souls being rescued from damnation by a rosary

The Last Judgment, Michelangelo Buonarotti (detail)

He deserves to rot in hell. 

That is strong language, but not as uncommon as one might hope.   Hell is the last of the Four Last Things, and it is the BAD one – the very worst thing there is, in fact.  Fire and torment, deprivation and devouring, all of these things have described hell.   Also permanent, endless, and inescapable.  Eternal.  It is so bad we are inclined not to think about it.  If we do think about hell at all, to think that perhaps it may exist, we cushion the impact by asserting it is a possibility for a tiny few, and certainly it is not terribly likely for us.  Maybe we can invoke hell as the destination for somebody who has really, truly, and totally displeased us:  He deserves to rot in hell. 

The Scriptures are redolent with insights into hell, and Our Lord Himself mentions unquenchable fire, and where the worm does not die, a place worthy of every painful effort to avoid. (cf: Mark 9)  Maybe it is some sort of mental self-defense mechanism that we are most likely and best able to think about hell for other people.  Jesus wants us to think about hell, at least some of the time, and not only for our enemies.  So let’s split the difference, then, and think about hell for someone else – whom we love.

How about a friend?   A dear friend, somebody who has been good to us, somebody who has depended on our help with important things.  We look on that friend with eyes of love and desire our friend’s happiness.  But we know our friend well enough to know that all is not right, all was not right when the great Game Over came calling and ended all choosing and doing, when death arrived.  Picturing our fond friend suffering the consequences of some very bad actions or attitudes can make us desperate.  We can dismiss hell and its criteria entirely, or by some mental dishonesty exempt our friend from merited hell.  Then our Lord reminds us that hell is real and is not fungible.  Do we listen?

Picture a son or daughter, grandma or grandpa, suffering the consequences of his or her own worst actions.   Grandma or grandpa?  No way!  My son, my daughter?  I would rather die myself than let that happen to one of them.  Once we start thinking this way, our whole attitude begins to change.  We cannot change or eliminate hell.  We cannot change our friend or eliminate choices made and doings done.  What remains?   We remain, or, the rest of our days remain for us, and this is our field to achieve change.   

The Lord God looked on every mortal life with this same horror at merited destruction, and changed not the mortals but rather changed Himself, becoming mortal flesh and blood in His only Son.  And rather than see us suffer each our proper punishment He chose rather to die Himself, lest it happen to the ones He loves.  This is how rescue is achieved, and for all who have eyes to see it is an invitation to participate in that rescue.  

We must think about hell enough to realize it is the danger which will destroy the ones we love unless they be rescued.  We must identify and acknowledge the danger in order to desire and participate in the rescue.  Moved by thoughts of hell for someone we love, we recognize that in the power of the cross we are not helpless even in the face of death.  And to do this for someone who has hurt us?  That is what they call “next level.”

To choose and embrace a suffering, a sacrifice, for the benefit of another is to obtain release, partial or even total, from the very hell that is their purchased prize.  Our puny sacrifices, our fervent but frankly pathetic prayers, our grief and petition toward this purpose more than any other transport us to the company of Christ Himself as He hung upon the cross.   Looking at the faces of the crowd that demanded and participated in his death, He acknowledged they deserve to rot in hell.  But His love for them, for us, gave Him to resolve I would rather die myself than let that happen to one of them.  

Monsignor Smith