Not just stripes

Let’s run it up the flag pole and see who salutes. I don’t know if people still say that when they have an idea and want to propose it for consideration.  But it’s a good reminder that just because some banner is up the pole, not everybody will, or should, salute.

You know I’m an old Boy Scout, so I take my responsibility toward the flag of the United States very seriously.  I try to take my flag down before sunset, and put it up after sunrise, and even bring it in out of the rain.  I’m always attentive to the way the US flag is displayed among other flags, that it has the position of honor; and when hung it must (must) have the field to its own top right.  I have worn the flag on uniforms, but never as the pattern of a shirt, much less shorts, as has become so popular with the Maryland state flag.

I have lived for years in other countries and have known the surge of pride and relief to see the US flag flying above an embassy, military installation, or cemetery.  

That flag means something and I insist on respect for it; just ask anybody who’s left the flag on the ball field flying and neglected long after the game ended.  Symbols are important, and this nation’s flag is due the respect of all citizens.  We are obliged to salute.

There is no other flag competing for my loyalty.  Sure, I love the (so-called) Vatican flag, but our God, the Faith, and the Church are better represented through other symbols. The yellow and white is a great way to show affection for the Holy Father and respect for his Petrine office, but makes no claims on our fealty as Catholics.

Rebellions and invasions attempt to replace one flag with another, a symbol of the victory they desire.  Let’s run it up the flag pole and see who salutes takes on a different meaning in those circumstances; saluting indicates sympathy with, or submission to the new order.

One sees all manner flags flying or hanging about these days; only some go up with the expectation, nay, the demand that people salute.

One of the joys of having a school and a scout troop around here is that I can freely and honestly join in saying, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America...

This week as we celebrate our national holiday provides as good a time as any to recommit to salute our national banner - and refuse to salute any other.  Oh say, can you see?

Monsignor Smith

Origin & Goal

Where do priests come from? was one of the things I didn’t know growing up in Alabama.  I assumed it happened in Ireland, since Birmingham was mission territory and most of our priests were from far away.  I have learned much since then, and nobody in this parish has reason to wonder after last weekend.  We have all been schooled in where priests come from. 

Priests come to us from the Archbishop.  It is the Archbishop of Washington, for about a month now Archbishop Gregory, who sends us priests, or rather, assigns them to us for a period of time.  As we saw at the splendid Priesthood Ordination Mass last week, the Archbishop also makes new priests; this year, ten of them.  And he is sending one of them to us!

Father Michael Russo, ordained last week, will begin his assignment here on July 10.  However (BIG however) he has another assignment too: to complete his License in Theology at Catholic University.  So he will be returning there about the third week in August, after only five or six weeks with us.  That’s not far away, so we shall see what happens after that.  Perhaps if you all help him learn to love Saint Bernadette we will see more of him throughout the year!   It’s an unusual situation – one I don’t recall occurring before – but we shall all learn together how it can work for the good of us who love God. 

Priests come, and priests go.  An assignment from the Archbishop is a fact of priestly life, and our own Father Ben Petty is no exception. He learned that he will go to Saint Mary in Landover for ten weeks, then back to Rome to finish his License (second graduate degree) over the coming academic year.   

Priests come from all over the world.  Last year, the Archbishop sent us Father Emmanuel Magro, a priest of Gozo in Malta.  As you heard from his own lips two weeks ago, this year he is being sent to somebody else – to Blessed Sacrament in Chevy Chase.  He will be here with us until July 10, the date all this summer’s priest assignments take effect.  We shall have to do something to express our gratitude for his time with us!

It just so happens that this month marks the fortieth anniversary of Fr. Magro’s Ordination to the Priesthood, and he will offer a Mass of Thanksgiving to celebrate that milestone, here in our church, at the 11:00 Mass on Sunday June 30. Then we will all retire downstairs to the Monsignor Stricker Room for a reception to mark that event, and bid him a fond farewell.   As usual, we will welcome helpers to make that reception more special, but everybody: y’all come!

After Father Ben Petty’s Ordination, we showed our pride and joy in him with two beautiful receptions here, and a marvelous Mass, which together poured out all the things that make this parish so important to him: love of God and neighbor, beautiful music, great liturgical ministers, over-achieving hospitality, and good-natured affection.  What a great time!  Last weekend revealed to all who have eyes to see where priests come from, and right there with his family, and friends, and teachers, there were the people of this parish, where he discerned Christ’s call to him. There is no reason to wonder any longer:   Priests come from Saint Bernadette!  

Monsignor Smith

Birds of a Different Feather

Mindlessly we parrot the language and embrace the values thrust upon us by the chatter of the age.  Words that held little moral significance a few decades ago now are emphasized and embraced as values of first priority: diversity, transparency, and inclusivity.  We apply them to ourselves and to our faith as if they were some authentic measure of goodness; we stake them out as goals for ourselves, and for others.   Yet rarely do we stop to wonder wherein their goodness lies, or even if there be any good at all.

This week, let us examine that momentarily-supreme yardstick of all human endeavors, inclusivity.  If it is such a good thing, why do so many people still yearn for exclusivity?  To judge by advertisers, exclusive offers and exclusive opportunities are still the best, and exclusive clubs are the ones people strive to join. 

Inclusivity was not always desirable.   A family or tribe provided safety and mutual care, and all others encountered mistrust or murder.  A town was built to keep out everyone who did not already live there; that’s where we get all those quaint walled cities everyone flocks to see in Europe.  An association still defines itself by the qualifications it holds for membership; who would get excited about Nobel Prizes if you got one for just showing up in physics class?  

So where’s the value in inclusion?  What makes it a good thing?  I submit that its authentic goodness can only be understood in the light of this weekend’s feast: The Most Holy Trinity.  God is inclusive.

God is three persons in one God, and in His inmost being He is self-giving and receptive in communion.  Because this is His very nature, His self-giving extends to us in His creation of us in His image and likeness.  His receptivity into communion draws us into a “club” for which we lack the qualifications:  better even than the Nobel Prize, He offers us to share in His divinity, that is, all that makes Him (and not us) God.  It is unmerited inclusion!

Herein lies the root of any goodness in inclusion: the Triune God does it.  That in which He includes people (divine life); what makes inclusion possible (the complete self-sacrifice of His Divine Son); and how we accept this astonishing offer (repentance) are all essential to understanding what is good about inclusion.  Behind the contingent good, these are the authentic goods.  

In a secular age, people who lose sight of God lose sight of what makes inclusion good, that without which it is indifferent or even harmful.  This weekend, the Church reminds us of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who teaches us and helps us to include others in every good we have, even unto our families.  Those who do not know the Triune God, do not do this. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen. 

We rejoice in having one of our family included in the unique divine reality, in the Holy Priesthood of Jesus the Son of God, Who is both Priest and Victim.   His is the unique true Priesthood, complete and perfect, lacking nothing; yet He includes one of our own parish sons in His Priesthood.  He does this not for any merit recognized, but rather for our brother’s salvation, and for the salvation of the world.  And Father Ben Petty’s participation in that Priesthood will be one more life engaged in the rescue of us and our fellows from the mindlessness of parroting secular virtues.  In his self-sacrificing Priesthood, we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:16) 

Monsignor Smith

Our House is a Very Very Very Fine House

Over the years I have been here I have grown spoiled, and so have you, to enjoy the company of priests who are engaged in graduate studies. Wishing to remain in a parish setting, they both reside here and practice their priesthood here.  Last August, that habit received a disappointing jolt when Father Jason Grisafi petitioned his bishop to drop the graduate study part of that equation so he could dedicate himself to the practice of parish priesthood.  None of us begrudge him that decision, but in our selfishness, we regret that it took him to a parish other than ours.  And so he returned to The Island That Is Long, and the student-priest room in the Holy House of Soubirous went empty through an entire academic year. 

But now in that room, once again there is the creaking of the study chair, the midnight oil being burned, and books arriving to line the shelves.  The savvy parishioners have noticed that a third car is parked once more in front of the rectory.  We have a student priest!

Father Jason Williams of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has been assigned by his Archbishop to pursue a degree in Canon Law at the Catholic University of America by participating in their “summer-only” program. There are online and distance requirements over the other three seasons, while the student priest remains in his home diocese and fulfills his regular duties, but he must come to campus for three intensive eight-week summer semesters that span June and July.  For that, Father Williams needs a place to live, and we just happened to have one close to campus.

“Intensive” is no understatement, as I saw when Father Joe McCabe was in the Canon Law program and living here some years back, so do not expect to see much of Fr. Williams around the place.  But he will be celebrating Sunday Masses and helping here and there during the other days, providing that welcome “third voice” in the rotation and bringing a welcome energy to the mix in the rectory.  Please welcome him if you see him – but let him go study if he seems anxious.

Please try to attend the Priesthood Ordination at 10:00 AM this Saturday (15 June) at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at which our own Ben Petty and nine others will be ordained Priests by our new Archbishop.  

The first thing a newly ordained priest does is, of course, offer Mass.  A new priest’s First Mass is especially joyful and brings to all who participate particular blessings and indulgences.  Father Petty’s first Mass will be here at our 11:00 Parish Mass on Sunday (Father’s Day).  

After the Mass, come to the festive reception in the school hall.  Many folks have already volunteered to help with food and hospitality for the event, so come hungry – and ready to welcome Father Petty’s family and friends.  If you haven’t already, contact Margaret McDermott or Jasmine Kuzner to offer help.   

It is a great grace to receive the blessing of a newly ordained priest.  Father Petty may be exhausted by the events of the weekend, but that grace will not be exhausted.  He will be around for much of the week after the ordination, too, so maybe you’ll be blessed to have him as celebrant at the daily Mass you attend.  And for a few days, we will have yet another priest in the rectory.  How spoiled we are!

Monsignor Smith

The Perennial Annual

After the Friday afternoon text announcing they had gone to the hospital to begin delivery, after word Saturday afternoon that a c-section might be necessary, finally came the text: (name of newborn boy). 5/25/19 @ 1536hrs. 19" 6.7lbs. Mother and baby doing great.

It was great to be included in the young dad’s excitement at the arrival of his firstborn, and of course the conversation continued, with pictures.  But after a few days I reflected on the information he had included:  not only the date, but also the precise time at which the lad emerged.  That date will be one of his favorite days of the year, his birthday – a day of gifts, perhaps a party when he’s young; and as he gets older, greetings and messages from friends he hasn’t seen in a while.  Not a year will go by that he, and his parents, fail to observe its significance.  Many happy returns of the day.

On Sunday evening as I prayed Vespers in the chapel, I pulled out a holy card from my prie-dieu and placed it on top.  It had a picture of a young priest on it, with the date of his birth, and the date of his death: May 27, 1995.  He was a seminarian when I met him; I served his Ordination at the Cathedral; and I looked him up at his first parish assignment to share with him my intentions of entering seminary.  He was very supportive, and helpful; we exchanged letters throughout my first few years of seminary.  He wrote to me about his cancer, and about its remission.  Then right before I returned from Rome after two years away, the call came that he had died of it.   Twenty-four years later, I still have the letters, and I still “keep” the day. 

On Holy Saturday evening, after we have kindled a new fire and placed the flame atop the decorated Paschal Candle, we carry the Light of the Risen Christ into church and share it with all the baptized who are present to keep the Great Vigil of the Lord’s resurrection.  The Exultet, the great Hymn of Blessing to the Easter Candle is sung: This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.  This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.  This is the night that even now throughout the world sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones. This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. … O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to the human.  How we calculate it is complicated - the first Sunday after the first Full Moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox – but every year, not only do we keep the day but from it we also determine other days: Ash Wednesday is 46 days before, Pentecost is forty-nine days after, and all the other days between we also keep.

On the fortieth day – any sequence of forty being significant in God’s revelation of His working in our world – the Risen Lord ascended into heaven.  He left the Apostles scratching their heads in wonder and consternation, and once more they retreated in fear to the upper room, and locked the doors.  But after nine full days of prayer – the first novena – the promised Spirit came upon them and taught them everything, reminding them of everything He had told them.  

All that God has done for us has changed our world and our history, marking forever the progress of our days.  It is good to be reminded of what we have already been told, even when we fail to keep the day.  Men of Galilee, why do you gaze in wonder at the heavens?  This Jesus whom you saw ascending into heaven will return as you saw him go, alleluia.

Monsignor Smith