What a drag.

Things can be bleak in February

We have no grounds to be surprised.   God warned us about kings and rulers, and anybody else with earthly authority.  It’s all laid out in the Book of Samuel.

So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking a king from him. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. (1 Samuel 8:1-18)   And that’s not the worst of it, because that is just what kings demand rightly; it can and does get much worse when they take even more.

We have been warned, yet for some reason, we are taken aback when we learn of rulers and authorities using their office and responsibility to obtain personal gain, or to channel public funds to private interests that do not serve the people well, or at all.  Shocked as we are, we carry on by telling ourselves that they are outliers, not the norm, and our government, our leaders generally can be trusted.

But there comes to mind a word I learned long ago, probably when I was studying the history of the Soviet Union and its associated regimes: kleptocrat. It’s a combination of Greek particles that could be rendered a thief who is in chargeor one who governs by stealing.  Even worse is a kleptocracy, which is a whole governing class characterized by thievery, that is, taking for themselves what belongs to the people or nation or group they govern.

When a culture of kleptocracy lays hold of a society, it is difficult to shake free.  So many foreign places that Americans visit come with the warning that officials at every level expect bribes to do what one would expect of them because of their offices.  We may go along with it if we must for the sake of our vacation, but we shake our heads at the prospect of living like that.  We assume better of American officials, not least because we see how such a culture of thievery degrades the life of the society and impoverishes the people.  As long as we are prosperous and productive in our own country, we assume we are mostly free of the economic and social drag of kleptocrats.  But we are mistaken.

In the day of Samuel the Prophet, civil governance and religious governance were the same, and religious power just as likely to corrupt.  When Samuel warned the Jews about insisting on a king, and what they would get if they did, it was because his own sons were venal priests, and nobody wanted them to be judges, that is rulers, of Israel.   

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his first-born son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beer-sheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, "Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations."

The criminality of his own sons disappointed but could not have surprised Samuel, and not simply because he knew well the logical result of hereditary authority and power.  No, Samuel had come into his own position as religious and civil leader of Israel when the sons of his own predecessor, Eli the priest at Shiloh, proved to be rotten:

Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they had no regard for the LORD.  Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the LORD; for the men treated the offering of the LORD with contempt.  ... And this which shall befall your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you:  both of them shall die on the same day.  And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind; and I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. (1 Samuel 2:12, 17, 34-35)

The drag of kleptocracy is heavy wherever there is power, authority, and money, be they civil or religious.  Christ the King and Universal High Priest is our unique rescuer, with whom there is only the surprise of perfection and delight.

Monsignor Smith

 

What can make one believe

Not Obi-wan.

We don’t call it make-believe for nothing.   Whether its root be that you make as if you believe something to be true, or by your actions you make other people believe what you have invented, it is the pastime of children and the profession of actors in the theatre and the cinema.  When the audience contributes the suspension of disbelief, any number of improbable or impossible propositions can be enjoyed as entertainment.

Alec Guinness was one of the great classically trained British actors of the twentieth century, celebrated for his work on stage and screen.  Like many of his peers in the acting aristocracy, he undertook roles in American films because they paid better than the loftier pursuits of Shakespeare and such.  He brought both dignity and skill to his roles, leaving his mark in the minds of all who saw his work.  Thus he is indelibly associated with the character Obi-Wan Kenobi from the original Star Wars films.

One of his memorable lines from that first film seems to have found legs recently as I have heard people saying, These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.  He utters it gently but convincingly, and because the force can be effective with the weak-minded, the bad guys not only accept but repeat the falsehood he has told them.  

It could be argued that Alec Guinness could make one believe anything he uttered with masterful and articulate conviction, and that is indeed how he made his living.  But somehow I have an album of his reading of a number of Christian texts – medieval and modern poems, spiritual writings, and letters from saints.  I was listening to it as I drove around for errands the other day, and he delivers these words with richness and force. 

During his career, Alec Guinness became a Catholic, and spoke movingly of his faith.   One of the experiences that contributed to his conversion occurred when he was playing the role of a priest in a film, an example of make-believe helping to make him believe something that is, in fact, true. 

My album offers no citations for the Christian passages Guinness reads, but one of them impressed me enough that I engaged the infernal machine to find it.  Let me share it with you now, an excerpt from A Remaining Christmas, a 1928 essay by Hilaire Belloc.  I wish you could hear Guinness deliver it with the clarity and conviction of a man who can convince a storm trooper, These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.  It would help you recognize the truth that you are looking for and believe it -- which is very different from make-believe.

Monsignor Smith

Man has a body as well as a soul, and the whole of man, soul and body, is nourished sanely by a multiplicity of observed traditional things.  Moreover, there is this great quality in the unchanging practice of Holy Seasons, that it makes explicable, tolerable, and normal what is otherwise a shocking and intolerable and even in the fullest sense, abnormal thing.  I mean, the mortality of immortal men.

Not only death (which shakes and rends all that is human in us, creating a monstrous separation and threatening the soul with isolation which destroys), not only death, but that accompaniment of mortality which is a perpetual series of lesser deaths and is called change, are challenged, chained, and put in their place by unaltered and successive acts of seasonable regard for loss and dereliction and mutability.  The threats of despair, remorse, necessary expiation, weariness almost beyond bearing, dull repetition of things apparently fruitless, unnecessary and without meaning, estrangement, the misunderstanding of mind by mind, forgetfulness which is a false alarm, grief, and repentance, which are true ones, but of a sad company, young men perished in battle before their parents had lost vigour in age, the perils of sickness in the body and even in the mind, anxiety, honour harassed, all the bitterness of living—become part of a large business which may lead to Beatitude.  For they are all connected in the memory with holy day after holy day, year by year, binding the generations together; carrying on even in this world, as it were, the life of the dead and giving corporate substance, permanence and stability, without the symbol of which (at least) the vast increasing burden of life might at last conquer us and be no longer borne.

 

Don't miss it

Nothing to see here, folks -
or is there?

It was a very good question, from a very young person.  One of two young daughters who accompanied their mother to the Sodality luncheon on Sunday raised her hand and asked me, “How are you supposed to notice something you are not supposed to notice?”

With great ceremony the indefatigable honcha of our Sodalists, Sharon O’Brien, had just presented me with a donation to cover the cost of one of the two new altar cloths I had ordered.   Everyone in the room agreed it was a worthy donation and a much-needed upgrade.  What (almost) nobody in the room knew was that the new cloth had already been on the altar for six days.  

Everybody who eyeballed it with me after Mr. Dao put it there agreed it looks much better.  But the change evident to the average eye is minimal.  Honestly, beyond the people I told about it, nobody has noticed.  A whole week of daily mass goers, and a whole weekend of Sunday regulars had come and gone with nary a comment.  Sharon was one of those folks who had been to Mass and not noticed.  The same goes for most of the ladies in the room.  I confess to enjoying a mild taunt: You didn’t notice!

To assuage any guilt and make it clear that this was no grave shortcoming neither of the ladies nor of the altar cloth, I observed that the altar cloth is not something that SHOULD draw attention to itself.  It should elevate the dignity of the great altar when it stands silently in the midst of the church, and it should dignify and emphasize the drama of the saving sacrifice of the Eucharist and the splendor of the Body and Blood of the Lord Who rests upon it briefly on His way toward nourishing us.   It is rather like a frame that should reveal the painting, not draw attention to its own splendor.  All of this our new altar cloth accomplishes.

And then our young companion asked her question.  “How are you supposed to notice something you are not supposed to notice?”  The sodalists chortled thinking she had me hoist on me own petard.

But a good question merits a good answer, and my response is that one spots it much the same as one sees the great works of God.   Anything He has done or is doing, you will not notice in itself, unless and until you listen to what He has promised He will do, what He has done in the past, and how He accomplishes His will.   All God’s works point to God, not themselves, just as Christ’s signs and wonders revealed Who He is.  So even now, the works of God in our own lives can be a as a flash or flicker, or result in a substantial change that makes us ask, now when did that happen?

Most of our Sodality ladies have been at this long enough that they have had the experience of recognizing the love of God at work in their lives not as it happens, but only long after time and reflection – oh, THAT’S what He was doing for us!  Similarly, their regular attention at Mass to the proclamation of the Scriptures and the consistent working of the Sacraments, their long hours of prayer for all the intentions that have been entrusted to them, and their listening to the accounts of graces poured into the lives of the people with whom they share their faith; all of this listening has opened their eyes to the marvels God is doing.

Now that you have heard about it, your eyes will be open to our new altar cloth, and to the possibility of spotting the other new one when we put it on our holy altar, as they are visibly different one from another.  You can think to yourself how glad you are that our Sodality helped with this upgrade, then allow your eyes to return to their usual focus on the saving work of the divine Word being wrought on this linen white ground.

At the same time, you have sharpened a skill you may not have known that you have.  If you find yourself asking during some difficulty or dry period in your life, where is God in all this?  What is He doing, what does He want me to have, or to do, or to know?   That is reasonable, but the next step is, as the psalmist tells us, Be still and see that I am God (Ps 46:10 DR).   Listen first, then open your eyes and see the answer to your very good question.

Monsignor Smith

One deft stroke

In a city of museums, in a museum of countless paintings, there is one particular brush stroke.   That solitary streak of paint, combining several tints to render the tone of a woman’s skin, is a flash of the divine image and likeness at work in every work of art.

Just when I first saw Diego Velázquez’ The Needlewoman, I cannot be certain, so let’s just say back in the ‘eighties.  It may have been my visit to the National Gallery of Art as a college freshman in Washington for the weekend, or soon after I was graduated and moved here.  The room where it hung quickly became a favorite with its great Spanish paintings, including The Return of the Prodigal by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Jusepe de Ribera.  It is the only work by Velázquez in that room, the only one in the collection.  

It was the effect of repeated visits and lingering views that drew me in to the mystery of a portrait of a hidden face revealing a woman without a name.  This is no portrait of nobility, nor personage of note.  There is no crown or armor, no jewels nor sash.  No rosary or prayerbook marks piety; no landscape in the background identifies place or property.  The customary characteristics that reveal person and personality are absent or only alluded to; even the “windows to the soul,’ her eyes, do not open to the viewer. Her clothing is dark and simple; her gesture, her posture, her whole person is focused on a place outside of herself.  But what the work she holds is or will become is not identifiable, nor does it matter. 

Staring at the painting, we see something invisible.  And lest we miss it, at the very center of the composition, her finger firmly, confidently, and quickly pushes the needle home.  But look closely and see – there is no finger there.  I do not know how long it took me to realize that; no nail nor knuckle is depicted.  It is more of a streak, a flash, a hint, but also a depiction of far more than simply a dexterous digit.  

Showing more than the unnamed woman’s creative labor, Velázquez shows us what makes her and us not only human, but also like God.  The depiction is of diligence in pursuit of perfection.   The painting is a craftsman’s hymn to craft, an artist’s acknowledgment of art.  

The invisible reality shown so clearly by this artist is that human skill, knowledge, and labor is like God’s own in the work of creation.  Velázquez’ makes visible human dignity itself.  Seeing that, we see also how art is for man what the sacraments are for God.

Velázquez uses one thing, common enough and good in itself, to make present another thing.  Some oil and pigments are transformed into a finger, and far more than a finger: an intention, an effort, an ability, and an accomplishment. Using paint to make a finger is only one level of what he is doing. 

The painting is of a person, yes, but more than that, it reveals something universally human, and true.  To see what is true in the painting is to see what is true in us.  To recognize that universal reality rather than the identity of the woman is to receive the sacrament that is Velázquez’ art.  

God uses simple things to make visible what we need but cannot see, so we can find them and receive them. Forgiveness and healing, intimacy and nourishment.  Human beings use simple things to make visible what we cannot see so we can name them and acknowledge them: virtues and vices, sin and forgiveness, beauty, truth, and goodness.  Art reveals nature, both human and divine.

That solitary local example of the great painter’s work convinced me of the imperative to visit the Prado in Madrid, a goal I maintained for decades.  Finally just over a year ago, I was able to spend two days in that great gallery, basking in more of his paintings than I could count or recount.   But because this one has been on my mind this month, I stopped into the National Gallery to try to see it while I was in the neighborhood for the March for Life.  It is not on display!   Likely travelling to some distant exhibition, Velázquez’ work deserves its new admirers.  

Do not hop onto the Metro just yet, but she’ll be back sometime, our Needlewoman.  In the meantime, the infernal machine can bring some light along with its less savory freight, and you can marvel at her on your phone or computer on the National Gallery’s web site.   https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.88.html.  Zoom in on the brush stroke.

Monsignor Smith

Echoes in the Square

You could see a lot from our porch.

You know how I am about anniversaries.  You also know that I am getting to be old enough that what passes now for “historic events” overlap with my own lifetime, and sometimes even involve my participation.  With the turning of the calendar and the effort to write the correct year whenever I date something, all that ‘2025’ reminds me that twenty years ago this month began the historic year 2005, historic especially for the Church, and historic especially in Rome.  You know where I was then, don’t you?

2005 began peacefully enough for me, another year in the service of Cardinal Baum as his priest secretary.  I will say I was getting the hang of it, though I wouldn’t suggest I was getting good at it.  In previous years we had returned to Washington for Christmas, since the work the Cardinal was involved in generally was suspended for the long holiday.  This year, however, we had returned there for the funeral of Cardinal Hickey, who had died in late October, then remained at the Washington residence through Thanksgiving.  Cardinal Baum resided locally in Cardinal O’Boyle’s former house in Tenleytown, behind the old Immaculata High School.   We were back in Rome for Advent.

Commercial, cultural Christmas is not one of the things that Rome does particularly well, with fake trees and evergreen garlands, red bows and lights looking desperately out of place among the piazzas and palms of that gracious city.  The Vatican, of course, is another matter.  Saint Peter’s Square featured an enormous nativity scene, under construction since All Saints Day, and a six-story fir tree trucked in from some cold and mountainous part of Europe – was it Slovenia that year? – decked with silver and gold and lights.  This practice, which now seems so normal, had been introduced by Pope John Paul II to much acclaim and some dissent, as old-time Italian curialists could still be heard muttering about Quel’ Polaccaccia – that Polish horror.  

The Holy Father was increasingly infirm and in pain but would celebrate Mass unless under doctor’s orders to stay in bed.  I am not certain, but believe I went to Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Pope’s Christmas Eve Mass.  It would have been easy enough, as we lived just across the Piazza and I had standing admission to the good seats for any Papal events, even if I was not with the boss.  My Cardinal would not have gone to a late-evening event because of his own infirmities.  There is a special chalice that the Pope only uses for Christmas, and I seem to recall seeing it.  John Paul would enter and leave the Basilica on a rolling platform with a chair, since walking that far, or even standing that long, was now impossible for him. 

Our household would have had Mass together in our chapel.  That included not only Cardinal Baum and me but also Monsignor James Gillen, who had served the Cardinal as his secretary since 1974, and because he was born the same year as the Pope rather needed a helper himself, so that was the other part of my job.  Every Sunday, we watched the Pope’s Angelus address from his office window in the Apostolic Palace, but on Christmas Day he gave the Urbi et Orbi greeting – to the city and the world – from the central loggia of the Basilica.  While it was blaring from the televisions of my older housemates, I preferred to go out onto our balcony to see with my own eyes and receive unmediated the papal blessing.

We had a Christmas pranzone, a grand midday dinner, for several Cardinals and Archbishops in the service of the Holy See, some American, some retired.  It was a most festive occasion, and I realized what a privilege it was to sit at the edge of that remarkable group, several of whom had first met as helpers at the Second Vatican Council, all of whom had seen and participated in great events of the Church.  Cardinal Baum always treated me as a friend and equal in those conversations, but I knew my role was more like that of a subaltern, and helped with the table, and listened.  

While the meal was cordial and festive, I do recall that one of the participants raised an observation that was troubling, dark forces and contrary wills even then at work in the heart of the Church.  All grew serious for a while in addressing the phenomenon, then the holiday humor returned even though I was left a little rattled.

After Epiphany we settled into the routine of another year with meetings, Masses, and visitors.  Cardinal Baum already ‘enjoyed poor health’ as the old saying would have it, with the effect of spinal surgeries and macular degeneration compounding the challenges of age.  But then in mid-February he developed a case of shingles – on his face.  It was awful and he was in agony.  We booked a Monday flight to Washington and his local doctors.  The day before our departure, from our balcony to his window for the Sunday Angelus would be the last I would see Pope John Paul II alive.   

2025 will be a year of anniversaries.

Monsignor Smith

On reticence

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

My own mom is not the only mother who left this admonition graven on the minds of her children.  The impulse to criticize, to chastise, to mock or deride is strong in the hearts of men (and children), and the ease with which a sharp comment or snark come to mind and tongue is no credit to the (human) race.  To leverage a statement of another’s weakness or shortcoming to elevate oneself seems the easiest and most natural thing for one to do – child’s play, in fact.  Which necessity brings about the universal maternal monition not to do it.

When I was a freshman in college, I hung out with a bunch of guys with whom I had little in common except residential proximity.  My one buddy who lived nearby on the dorm next to a guy from Long Island, and they both joined the same frat with other Long Islanders, so I rolled for months with this New York-accented smack-talking mutual-mockery society that fashioned itself friends.  We mocked, derided, snarked, and laughed and laughed.  

Until: having noted how much of my talking was trash, that Lent I resolved to say nothing negative about anybody else either in earnest or in jest.  Suddenly while I was with these guys, there was nothing to say.  By spring, I was spending a lot of time reading on my own.  Sophomore year I started over with new friends.

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all can leave one with nothing to say.  But, since “nice” is not the same as “good”, much less “true”, perhaps we need more options.

The sin of detraction is when needlessly we relate negative things about another when the negative is true.  Saying something negative that is untrue is calumny, a different sin.  When we tell the new neighbors that the old lady on the corner is a miser, that is detraction; when we say that the young couple across the street are probably Chinese spies, that is (most likely) calumny.  Clearly, Christians should be avoid both.

However, there remains the possibility of making a negative and critical observation about another without incurring sin.  In fact, it can be right and necessary to do so under certain circumstances.  

A person responsible for training a new worker must report honestly the failures of the neophyte, in order that that trainee not be given responsibility he is unable to meet and so that remedial training be given.  Depending on the seriousness of the work, lives could be at stake.  Who wants a doctor who was trained by people who never pointed out his mistakes? 

In our disoriented society where to state that an action is wrong is often taken as asserting that the one who did it is a ‘bad person,’ we cannot lose sight of our ability and obligation to evaluate actions, starting with our own actions, and then the actions of people for whom we have some responsibility – parents, teachers, coaches, pastors.  We are obliged to correct and even reprimand, remedy and retrain.   But even then, to publicize or broadcast these shortcomings is usually unnecessary and often counterproductive.  Performance evaluations and parenting are both bad places to engage in mockery and shaming, but where criticism and correction are necessary. 

Similarly, when we observe bad action on the part of somebody for whom we are NOT responsible, there remains the likelihood that we have a responsibility to point it out to those who are under our care – our children, students, and trainees.  Do not buy his product, or, you should not follow her example or instruction, are both valid and even necessary sometimes, again as long as we be speaking to people for whom we have some obligation to instruct and guide.

Be wary of that man, his intentions, and his words, can be a harsh but necessary admonition, in all Christian love, in the circumstances where one has authority and obligation, where people count on one’s guidance.  More broadly, however, in simply social settings, If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Monsignor Smith

Holding On to Hand It On

Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20)
but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy our local attachments, too.

If you were sent with your family to live in a foreign country, what would you do as mother and father, heads of the household, to maintain the fabric and culture of your family?

I lived in Italy for long periods over nine years, so even though I was in a community of US citizens large (the seminary) or small (Cardinal Baum’s household), I know how it can go to pick up some local practices while carefully nurturing habits from home.  At the NAC we were well-known among the Romans for our Giorno di Ringraziamento (Thanksgiving) feast and our Quattro Luglio (Fourth of July) cookout.  When we came home to the US, the other guys made fun of us for our Italian affectations - yet they readily ate our pasta dishes.

So what of the local culture would you pick up, and what of your own culture would you nurture and maintain?   A lot would depend on just how foreign the culture is.

I thought of this on New Year’s Morning as I sat at my desk and saw cars filling the lot for the 11:00 Mass for the Holy Day.  Mary the Mother of God is a day that puts the Mass-goer at odds with the local culture, as New Year festivities before, during, and after the revelry consume most people’s day.   It was especially obvious that morning, when almost no other cars were on the road, nobody out and about even as midday approached, except the faithful assembling for Mass.  And the faithful did come, in numbers that surprised me.  All three of the Masses had good crowds, though predictably the 8:30’s was not large.

As is often the case when there is a big gap between what we are doing here at the parish and what most people around us are doing, it was a delightful time for everybody to be together.  People were cheerful and happy to be together, participating in the prayers and music, mixing and visiting afterward with the ease and comfort of familiarity and trust.  Meanwhile, 99.9 percent of the local population had no idea of what we were doing, or why.

Moments like that highlight how much like living in a foreign country are our lives as Catholics right here in twenty-first century Silver Spring Maryland USA.  One of my favorite early Christian texts is the Letter to Diognetus from around the year 200 AD, which makes the similarity clear:

And yet there is something extraordinary about their (Christians’) lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

Isn’t it funny that the author’s first choices to illustrate the difference (in 200 AD!) are marriage, sex, and not exterminating children?  Some things never change!  But that’s hardly the only thing that distinguishes us.  His whole thrust is that Catholics choose what of their own culture they cling to, and what of the local culture they accept and engage in.

It is not unhealthy for mothers and fathers to take stock of the local culture and make a similar evaluation.  How much of it should our family take part in, and what that is common here and now (“everybody else is doing it!”) should our family exclude?  And like every healthy migrant family, we should take particular care and make every effort to nurture and maintain the practices that strengthen and keep our family’s precious heritage, faith and eternal life in Christ.  

In such circumstances, it does not have to be a day when the bulk of the populace is either binge-watching or binge-drinking to make it a good day to take the family to Mass together, then share a meal with others who do the same thing – whether we knew them before, or only met them today.  The domestic church, the family, is the smallest unit of Christ’s Body the Church, so to identify the family’s home and to choose the family’s activities to be places where Christ is the foundation of the event is how best to maintain the fabric and culture of your family while we are passing through this foreign land.

Monsignor Smith