Strange fun

The Strategic Candy Reserve is ready to be deployed.

Next weekend is going to be a strange one.  Strange means unusual and good in this case, an array of familiar things in unaccustomed places.

Every year I look forward to Halloween.  Anticipation starts in late August, when Mr. Dao, the fixer of all that is broken around here, begins to plan the acquisition of our Strategic Candy Reserve.  I recall the previous Halloween to ascertain whether its stockpile of sweets was sufficient – last year’s was not – and adjust our procurement accordingly.  That evaluation leads me to recall in slow-motion the rapid-fire barrage of silliness and delight that happens here as small, shrieking trick-or-treaters surge in near-ceaseless waves to the door of the rectory, subsiding into sporadic appearances of inarticulate adolescents too aware of their age to don costumes but still young enough to want candy.  It is a hoot and a half.

Halloween is a big secular holiday nowadays; whoever thought that there would be such a thing as Halloween lights?  We know it is rooted in the sacred worship of the Church.  The night for all this mayhem is set in anticipation of the next two days, in which holy people and holy prayer cast out any demons or devils, and even the fear of death itself.  That’s why they get this one evening to romp.  

Goblins romping to the rectory are advised to recall that because it is a Friday, Our Eucharistic Lord will be exposed for adoration in the church from 4:00 until 8:00 that evening.  They are welcome to stop in and offer a prayer if they want, costumes and all, thereby revealing their true identity as beloved children of the living God.  But whether they enter to pray or simply romp past the doors of the church, they should keep a respectful quiet.

That all occurs on Friday this year, because for the first time since 2014, the Solemnity of All Saints falls on a Saturday.  The bishops of our national conference do not wish to burden the faithful with excessive worship and have lifted the obligation to attend Mass that day.   Nonetheless, we will offer an extra Mass at eleven that day for anyone who does not find rejoicing in the Saints to be a burden.  The regular Saturday evening Mass will have prayers and readings proper to the solemnity, though most folks attending that will be fulfilling the obligation for Sunday.

Consequently Sunday is different, too, as the Commemoration of All Souls falls that day.  The Mass at eleven will be our annual parish Requiem, in which we remember by name those we have lost and buried over the previous year, with the prayers of the Mass set to marvelous music by Gabriel Fauré.  All our Sunday Masses will be Masses for the Dead, in which we fulfill our obligation to offer prayer and sacrifice for our dear departed – and maybe some not-so-dear, too, as it is salutary to pray for souls who have nobody willing or able to pray for them by name.  

There will be an extra hour in the weekend as well, as we fall back into Standard Time.  You may use the hour to rejoice in the Saints for the Solemnity on Saturday evening, to get more sleep overnight, or to pray for the Souls in Purgatory on Sunday, or even some combination of the three.  However you spend the extra hour – it’s really just been held for us in escrow since March – make certain to set all your clocks back when you go to bed Saturday, or else you’ll be early for Mass on Sunday.  We can’t have that, can we?

Sunday afternoon, after all is accomplished, the curtain of darkness will descend earlier than accustomed on this strange and wonderful weekend.  

Monsignor Smith

Consummation

How can it be a good thing when something beautiful comes to an end?  To find out, I would ask any of the dozens of people who have told me they can’t wait for the autumn.  

Summer is beautiful, fruitful and lush.  This year’s summer was especially marvelous, with startlingly few of its weeks given over to the deadly Triple H – hot, hazy, and humid – and remarkable stretches of, well, perfection.  We had enough rain that the trees and even the grass stayed green, but no shortage of sunny days and mild evenings and even fresh breezes.  Habitual complainers were frustrated by the privation of grounds for complaint.  

August is the most wonderful month of the year, as you have heard me assert on many prior occasions, but already weeks ago even I began sniffing for that dry smell in the air that indicates that the fall has commenced.   Why would a lover of summer like me be eager for the indicator that it is ended?

Was Mae West correct when she said Too much of a good thing is wonderful?  Or is the very goodness of a thing enhanced by its own finitude?  Or, perhaps, is every truly good thing by itself unsatisfactory and eventually wearisome?  

My life is blessed by full engagement with people at every stage of life.  Fifth graders and fifty-year-olds; couples awaiting the birth of their first child, and couples watching their youngest child’s graduation; brash teenagers and cautious elderly.  All of it, all of it is beautiful, and that beauty is enhanced by being so freely and generously mixed together here at the parish, especially when we worship.  But every beauty and all that beauty is bound to end, and we remind ourselves of that, especially when we worship.

The very goodness of our earthly life is emphasized and even enhanced by its finitude, and, like every truly good thing, by itself unsatisfactory and eventually wearisome.   Our eagerness for the change in seasons is a reminder that we can and should look forward to a change in our lives as well. 

Every season has its beauty, and every season is necessary for the nurturing and preparing of the seasons that follow it with all their differences.  But our lives transcend this cyclical reality wherein each beauty returns in due season; no, our days progress with unrepeatable originality toward an unexperienced completion.  At every stage of our lives a hidden beauty, a glory all our own, is being shaped and strengthened by God’s grace and our cooperation with it. 

When we look back at a lifetime like we look back at a summertime, we are able to see and appreciate not only the visible beauty that marked its days and has now faded.  We detect also the hidden beauty that was nurtured and prepared, hidden at the time but manifest when the seasonal splendor has fallen or faded.  We recognize what was always present but only now shows its value, the unique beauty of a human life fashioned and lived in anticipation of the life that neither changes nor ends.  Though we never noticed, it was always there; though we never would have asked for it, it is the only thing that satisfies.

How can it be a good thing when something beautiful comes to an end?  When the end is the beauty it was meant for all along.   

Monsignor Smith

 

Tell me what happened to him

He was here a minute ago

A demanding couple of weeks got me away from my ongoing reflection on words, but I find myself coming back to this basic element of the communication and consideration that marks us as human beings.  

Our public language has been leached of all moral content, and this privation has been transferred to our personal conversation and our institutions.  The classic example is the misapplication of the word tragedy, which came to my attention twenty-four years ago when an archbishop of my acquaintance described the 9/11 attacks as a “tragedy.” Indeed, that day brought tragic consequences to the lives of people affected, but that was no tragedy – that was an attack and a crime.  These words have moral weight and acknowledge and assign guilt.  9/11 was not an assortment of consequences, but rather an action with an agent who committed a crime, and not only by breaking a statute or law.

Such verbal sleight of hand appears also after such an action, further hiding or ignoring the true nature of what occurred.  If a widow says “the days since the death of (my) husband” have been hard, she is being charitable and preserving her own equanimity.  But if what happened is more accurately and more fully described and the dead man’s murder, then most likely the motives for using a value-neutral term “death,” as if it was from a cerebral aneurysm rather than a bullet fired in malice, are mixed at best.  Using value-free terms shifts the action and therefore the responsibility to the one who died rather than the ones who inflicted death upon him. 

This shifting of responsibility has been underway in our discourse for decades.   If our society cannot call a murderous terrorist attack by its proper name, how can we order our behavior as members of society?  When we focus simply on the consequences of an action, especially the emotional consequences, we ignore agency and intention and fail to identify the real responsibility.  When our strongest term of approbation is to say that an action is inappropriate, or that people are not comfortable with it, we have lost the ability to teach our children basic morals.  When these words express our evaluation of actions, they shape the evaluation of actions.   Everyone reduced to using these terms becomes impoverished of the moral faculties that are proper to responsible human beings.  

This poverty is what we cannot survive, and what we dare not bequeath to our children.  At our most recent meeting, the school principal and I were considering an intentional change of the words we use in defining and addressing student behavior.  Common terms like inappropriate do not accomplish the instruction and formation that we are obliged to give the children and the families of our community, and do not allow the teachers and administrators to hold their charges or themselves to the moral excellence to which they and we are called.

Right and wrong, good and bad, generous and selfish are objective criteria that we have the faculties to discern and to define.  Immoral is just as discernible and just as definable and hurtful.  Forbidden is a term that has real weight whether is it situational (touching a newly frosted birthday cake) or absolute (other kinds of touching).  These words need to come readily to our lips when we speak of human actions, including our own.  We need these words to decide what we can and should do, and to teach others who depend on us for guidance what they can and must do.  

Conversations about what actions are right and good and what actions are wrong and bad should indeed happen in serious reflection and mutual charity.  But we who live in Christ Jesus have been given the treasury of truth revealed by God that is the absolute standard and ultimate foundation of every evaluation and action.  We cannot demand that the whole society accept this whole truth, but neither can we accept the demand that there be no moral evaluation, no personal guilt nor innocence, no obligation or responsibility, but only perceptions and expectations that are completely fungible.  The only tool we have for exploring and explaining reality as a society is the most marvelous tool we have, and that is words.   When words cease to obtain, we cease to live as human beings. 

Monsignor Smith

Ordinary and extraordinary.

Let us cross over to the other side

Please let me take this opportunity to thank you all for your kindness to me and my family over the past weeks.   Your concern and your prayers were a prop and gift to us, in a way simultaneously startling and organic.  Ours is a family small in number, but the connection nurtured by grace and sacrament here in the parish extended and embraced our family, effectively multiplying both membership and affection.

Earlier this year, for the twentieth anniversary of the death of Pope Saint John Paul II, I shared with you some of the notes I sent from Rome, where I was privileged to be a close participant in the events around his funeral.  As I was preparing for my own dad’s funeral, I was reminded of something I had written then, and I want to share with you now what I wrote the evening of April 8, 2005.

But these vast dimensions, and all the coverage, all the narrative, all the lights and cameras and action, all of it made it very tempting to overlook something: what happened today, though vast in scale, unprecedented in its participants, unheard of in its impact, was totally ordinary.  It happens all the time.  It is what families do.  It is what Christians do.  It is simply what we do.

This is what we do when we lose a loved one.  We take him to the altar.  We welcome our Lord and God who comes in the Eucharist, right into our midst. Then we all stand up and in one voice present the one we have loved and lost to that same Lord.  Take him home!

And then we bid him goodbye. 

All this is ordinary, in the sense that it is a part of life; necessary, and even good.  But by no means easy.  We lost a father.  Today, it just took a while to say goodbye.  

Ordinary, and extraordinary.  Death is universal, loss of a loved one, universal; loss of a mother or father after a long life, good and even holy, is not universal by any means, and therefore worthy of extraordinary gratitude.  To be surrounded by prayer and faith in the midst of that is extraordinary indeed, and cause for even greater gratitude.   God bless you all.

Monsignor Smith

Be our defense

His is still one of the most popular names for boys, even in this era of innovation in naming children.  But otherwise, Saint Michael seems to have come into hard times over the last half-century.

Everybody knows Saint Michael the Archangel – or at least they should know him.  He wields the flaming sword and drives Lucifer and his rebel angels out of heaven and away from the presene of God because of their refusal to serve.   He appears at various junctures (e.g., the Book of Daniel) to bring the help of the Host of God to the assistance of those who do serve him.  For this prominent and recurring role in salvation history, he is known not only to Christians, but also to Jews.  Even Muslims know who he is.  Because of his unique talents and responsibilities, he is the patron saint of law enforcement and paratroopers, among others.  

I bring him to your attention because this Monday, September 29, is his feast day.  Since the revision of the liturgical calendar in 1970, he has to share his day with Saints Gabriel and Raphael, the other two Archangels, who themselves have distinctive missions and characters, though no longer their own feast days.  This day customarily designated the beginning of the fall academic semester at the ancient universities of Europe, which is why in England it was (and may still be) known as “Michaelmas Term.”  And I can’t get our own school to wait even until after Labor Day to begin the term!  You can see why St. Michael’s Feast would be prominent in people’s minds then – and not so much anymore.

Saint Michael has a great prayer, too, which is enjoying a merited resurgence these days.  It was recited together by the priest and congregation after all Low (spoken, not sung) Masses until the liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican Council, one of the few elements of Sunday worship that was is English, rather than Latin.  Everybody knew it!

I commend the prayer to you all now.  The only folks who have no need of it are the ones who do not confront evil. Who of us can claim that privilege, or live in that bubble?  Learn it and, as the saying goes, use it early and often:  

Prayer to Saint Michael

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!

Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,

and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,

by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan

and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world

seeking the ruin of souls.  Amen

Offer this prayer when you are afraid or in danger, or when you confront temptation to sin.  Pray it in your desire for salvation, that you be defended against anything or anyone, any sin or any sabotage, that would separate you from the service of the saving God.  

Offer this prayer also for all those who daily choose to serve, often in one uniform or another, who protect you from evil in this world: evil in nature, and evil in the hearts of men; evil abroad, and evil at home.  Offer this prayer for our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, who confront evil daily in their lives because of their loyalty to Christ.  This is the charge of this great Archangel, who has demonstrated his willingness to fulfill it throughout the ages in response to the needs of those who call upon him.

Saint Michael defends all who are willing and eager to recognize and respond to Him who alone made us and saves us, not as Lucifer did (Non serviam!) in rebellion and rejection, but as God’s own Son did, in obedience: Not my will, Father, but your will be done.  I will serve.  This is the profession we can make to unite ourselves to this great Archangel, and moreover, to Christ Himself.  

“Hard times” are precisely where he is best deployed.  Remember, the first we know of him was when the very courts of heaven were under attack from rebel angels, rumored to have been one quarter of the total.  He is good when the odds are bad!  Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!  

Monsignor Smith

 

Hangin' around, Nothin' to do but frown

For all my days on this earth there has existed a popular fascination with theories of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President J. F. Kennedy.  From the earliest investigations of credentialed government panels, through blockbuster films by Hollywood aristocracy, through stated priorities of the current presidential administration, the murmur and hum has persisted that some organization foreign or domestic was behind it.  

 Just a few months ago I found a chapter of a valedictory work by a great American novelist given over to his own calculations and convictions on the subject.  That the scenario he spun was credible and compelling speaks more to his greatness as a novelist however old and cranky than it does to what is likely to have occurred.

For all these days I have remained skeptical of these theories.  No one of them has captured the high ground of probability and evidence, and all of them have settled into the homogenous murk of suspicion and excitement in which all conspiracy theories are consigned to dwell.   Never have I understood what keeps these miasmic creations alive.  Never, that is, until today.

For all this last week the tune of a long-ago song by The Carpenters has been in my mind as I have had to explain to people that rainy days and assassinations always get me down.  How to refocus on the tasks of the moment and the goodness of God has eluded me.  Every drop of information, every reaction and discovery have brought new waves of sadness and disappointment.

I did not know the murdered man at all.   I had heard his name but never his voice, nor seen his image, nor even read one solitary statement by him.   These have all been put before me in the minutes and days that followed and compound the shock and grief.  Who does this to such a one?  

The discoveries that followed bring no consolation.  The one who did this to him, how he prepared and did it, why he said he was doing it, how he came to be captured and his picture displayed everywhere.  There, finally, we have not resolution or release, but the obstacle: this nice young man from a nice family looking frightened and sullen but otherwise normal in his suicide-prevention dress.  How could he have done this?

What happened to him? Who talked him into this?  Who turned him into this?  What was being poured into his young brain, what ideology or technology or twisting external influence deprived him of his own self-knowledge and self-love and self-preservation until he woke up from the horrible trance alone and naked in a cell?  Whom was he serving, to whom was he listening?  There must be some system, or some syndicate.  It was them clearly, not any of us.  There has to be a them, because to look at him is to see a human being, to see one of us.  

This is where the conspiracy theories come in.  They are a coping mechanism for which people reach to deal with the great evil that was done by somebody with whom they have too much in common; with whom, in fact, we have everything in common, our very nature.  It is more than familiarity, more than similarity that we see.  We see our very selves.  And we are horrifying.

Our capacity for delusion is accomplice to our capacity for evil.  We are all too willing to relinquish our hard-bought self-knowledge and self-love when there is an opportunity for self-aggrandizement.  For everything we know and understand and treasure about ourselves has been purchased for us by our God at the price of His Son.  When we see what He endured, we look not only at what we are worth, but also what we are capable of doing.  We could any one of us lay down our lives to save another; and we could any one of us nail to a cross the very one who is coming to save us.  

It was the killer’s family that showed me who they are, and thus the other side of who we are.  For his own family realized what he had done, and his own family insisted on what he had to do about it, at great and lasting cost to themselves.  Now his family is riven by simultaneous affection and revulsion, love and horror, compassion and conviction.  In your charity, pray for them all.  In this prayer, you will find the selflessness that is our lifeline, however thin the thread.

After wondering for decades why conspiracy theories about assassinations continue to have the power to arouse passionate advocates, I think I finally understand.  These people are all trying to prove that he couldn’t have done this on his own, which is their way of asserting that I couldn’t have done this on my own.   Though they try for all their days on earth, still they fail. 

Monsignor Smith

Says WHO?

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”  That’s Confucius. 

I found these lines in an opinion article this week and was delighted to know that Confucius and I have at least this one thing in common.  Now, Confucius was clearly a pretty smart guy, and is famous for being an observant guy, and is especially known for being able to say things well.  But while that is the point where my knowledge of him comes to an end, it also is precisely the point which so fascinates me.  How is it possible that you and I can recognize and nod at an insight from a thinker who lived 2500 years ago in a society and language so different from our own?  

What brings a thought from the mind of Confucius into my mind across that vast gulf of distance and difference?   Words do it.  These words do not function discreetly as individual shipping containers, but within the system of language they make possible this most marvelous of human activities, communication.   Words can do this between two people in physical proximity and spoken conversation with one another, they can do it across time, by being written or recorded, and across distance, by being carried or transmitted, and even across different languages by being translated by one or more people who know both languages and can identify the different words that convey the same meaning. 

You do not have to be a sage like Confucius to have an idea or notice a phenomenon worth the attention and consideration of another person.  That idea, or that observation, can be instantly introduced to another person by the expression of words.  Cookies! or, Fire! are both very succinct ways to put a thought in somebody else’s mind and elicit an appropriate response.  Isn’t that amazing?

A word is not the thing itself (we could always simply wave a plate of cookies or point at the smoke or even flames) but it somehow conveys the understanding of the reality just as well, and maybe even more effectively.  Employ the right word, and the thought moves from your mind into the consideration of your conversational partner.  

Now when the thought in your mind is more complicated than a tasty treat or a mortal threat, more complicated words, and more of them, are called for, but they do the same work.  The word is not itself a cookie, but the word evokes the complex (and wonderful) reality that is a cookie.  

Interestingly enough, not only can a word convey an idea or observation from one person to another, but also a word helps us understand and work with ideas within our own minds.  To name a thing is to give it a handle by which we can lay hold of it, and a complex phenomenon with a simple name (oh, let’s say, nostalgia, or maybe harmony) is then itself a tool we can use to build more complex concepts or decipher difficult problems.  Before we marshal words to convey anything to another person, we use them to shape, organize, and understand our own thoughts.

This process of naming is essential to and characteristic of human beings.  We do it so naturally that we can take it for granted and fail to marvel at what we are doing.  But because the process can fall into the background in this way, it is possible to lose sight of the importance of integrity and coherence to the personal and social function of language.  

What if I say Cookies! and you think of some electronic tracking marker on the internet?  And what if I say Fire! and you think I mean the building is burning -- but I simply wanted to scare you into departing?   There can be confusion, but there can also be intentional misuse of words.  Besides different words that sound alike or words that have multiple meanings, think of how exaggeration, omission, and elision can contort the function of language.  Think of irony, mislabeling, and even outright lies.  The whole enterprise of communication is undermined, possibly even intentionally.

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”  And if the affairs being carried on are essential to human thriving, then woe is us. 

Monsignor Smith