Anticipation is agony.
Decades ago there was a very funny commercial for Heinz ketchup that used the song “Anticipation” while showing the agonizing wait for the red goo to come out of the bottle. It worked because it resonated with experience; everybody hates to wait.
In early February, I began making calls to stained glass companies about restoring our windows. After four visits and four estimates; the testing for, confirmation of, and bids to remove the asbestos; after choosing the contractors and compiling the necessary documentation; after submitting it to the Archdiocese through the pre-consultors meeting, the consultors meeting, and the office of the General Counsel; after the approved contracts were allowed to sit on a desk for a month; after scheduling a time when both contractors would be available to work; finally, this week, scaffolding went up, workers appeared, and things started to change. Now I cannot wait to see one completed window! I cannot wait for you to see what a difference this will make! Daily I go to examine the progress; anticipation is agony.
Last August 16, a year ago this week, I first met with Tom Moran to discuss a capital campaign for the beautification of the church. After requesting the required permission from the Archdiocese, we began meeting with parishioners in September, had receptions in October, and spoke to all the Masses in November. The response was amazing, and by early January you had pledged over a million dollars to make it happen. Already we have half that in an account accruing interest. For months already, people have asked eagerly when the work is starting; anticipation is agony.
In 1992, I entered formation for the Holy Priesthood of Jesus Christ. In my first seminary, I found faculty and students who laughed at the “old” beliefs of the Church; who mocked devotion and authentic liturgy; who disregarded Christian moral teaching; who reveled in camp and gossip and innuendo; and a dominant homosexual culture (too large to call a subculture) that devoured many it desired and destroyed the vocations of many who dared to challenge it.
But at the same time and in the same place, I found others who desired to live and serve the fullness of the Faith, who rejected the corrosive attitudes and behaviors so clearly of a piece with the horrible abuse by priests of young people, the very first examples of which had recently come to light. We were not in a position to correct or to change the faculty or students senior to us; we were able only to resist them, and to resolve never, ever, to cooperate in that evil.
It was not exactly the same, not as bad even, at my next seminary; but the same dynamic, if on a different scale and a different schedule, was at work there, and around the Church in the U.S. Now, there are more of us; priests for ten, or twenty, or in some places even thirty years. We have not by revolution or rebellion seized the Church; but in the slow passage of time and responsibility, where she has given any of us the gift of governance, there is authentically zero tolerance for this poison.
The Sexual Revolution that rocked the Christian West in the late 1960’s found its advocates even in the Church. The exaltation of the sexual appetite overrode the yearning for holiness in the presentations of serious scholars and the pitches of striving hucksters. Everything old was cast aside for the titillation of everything new, and a Church who had left her windows open admitted more than just “smoke from the fires of Hell” (as said Blessed Pope Paul VI).
It takes days if not weeks for a professional cleaning service to clean a home that even the smallest fire has tainted with smoke. The stink of that evil vapor that penetrated the Church at every level still emerges to shock and disgust us, even when the events themselves are decades old.
Last week I said of our stained-glass, “It is hard to say just yet how long the project will take; we will know better after the first few windows have been completed.” The exact same is true of the work of walking this deep corruption out of the divine institution that is the Holy Church. We have accomplished much in recent decades, but we still uncover things that require added effort.
We are not helpless; but just like our window project, we cannot skip a step to speed the process. Each priest, every Catholic should heed the advice found in the ancient Letter attributed to the Apostle Barnabas: When evil days are upon us and the worker of malice gains power, we must attend to our own souls and seek to know the ways of the Lord. In those times, reverential fear and perseverance will sustain our faith, and we will find need of forbearance and self-restraint as well. The power to fight evil is in the Lord and His commands, and he has entrusted both to us. This is an enormous project, but it is also long underway. And we know how it ends!
How long, O Lord?! Anticipation is agony.
Monsignor Smith
