Say, a decade!

A blessed new year to you – liturgical year, that is; the cycle of worship that walks through the history of our salvation in Jesus Christ begins again with the violet vestments and the first candle in the wreath.  Happy First Advent!

This year marks a full decade – ten years, ten Advents, Christmases, Ash Wednesdays, Easters, Ascensions, Pentecosts, All Souls, and Christ the Kings – since we introduced the new English translation of the Missal, the words and prayers of our Eucharistic worship.  The change was so momentous that I began preparing you for it by writing detailed bulletin letters a full year before the change, so you would know what to expect, and why it was happening. 

If you want to see what that looked like - I know I did - you can click on these links to read my letters from eleven years ago, where I 'broke the news' about what was coming, and laid out some of the things to be expected:   1st Advent 2010 'Gears to Shift' ; 2nd Advent 2010, 'Words and Music'.  I also enjoyed reading 'the Sunday after', my observations in the bulletin the week after we unleashed the new Missal.  Who knew it would make me feel like a new priest again?   2nd Advent 2011, 'The Church is Young'. 

One of the things I promised was that you would get ‘your Spirit’ back, and indeed you have.  After all this time, the response to “The Lord be with you,” comes naturally and effortlessly as “And with your Spirit.”  Oh, sure, occasionally, especially at funerals or other special events with people present who haven’t been to Mass much in the last few years, I will hear a few say “and also with you.”  But largely the new language has become our own.

Ten years ago October, we anticipated the change by introducing the new service music for the new texts, so we would be ready to sing when the change occurred.  The tunes for the Lord have mercy, Glory to God, Holy Holy Holy, and Lamb of God changed to accommodate and embrace the new texts.   Some churches are still (still!!) using old musical settings with the new language shoehorned into it.  Every time I am at a parish that does that, I hear about half the people default to singing the old words – music does that.  That is why we insisted on new music.  

Now after ten years, we are blessed with three excellent settings that we all know well, all crafted and composed by our own talented music directors.  Since Labor Day, we have been using the chant-style Mass of the Holy Helpers, which John Henderson gave us.  Last weekend, for the great year-end feast, we sang the grand and festive Mass of Saint Bernadette, by Richard Fitzgerald.  He composed that at the time of the change, and it was the first one we learned.  Now it just sounds like home.  

I think the hardest change was the Creed, partly because we do not sing it and thus do not have the help of the tune to keep us on the new words. “Consubstantial” is a real mouthful, and drew a lot of comments in those first months as folks grappled with it.  Other formulations throughout that long text changed too, and those are the ones for which I still need to have the printed text in front of me, and I still have to be careful.  

Many, many more changes are in the texts that the priest alone says, and I am happy to say that for me they have become second nature.  There are a couple awkward phrases now and then that just can’t be right (English) – one on Pentecost, as I recall – but little things like that are to be expected in such an enormous work even with care and precision.  

Despite the readiness and general willingness that greeted the changes, I think that some folks got annoyed, and maybe still do, becoming a little bitter that things changed from what they knew and loved before.  We all know how easy it is to let such sentiments push us away from the practice of the Faith, even if it be unconscious.  If you know anybody who fits that description, Advent is a great time for you to invite them back into the flow of the Faith and the soul-healing reality of our liturgical worship.  

So we started working on this eleven years ago this weekend, and now all readily recite the invitation to our Eucharistic Lord to “enter under our roof,” without reading a card or book.  Congratulations, and happy anniversary!  Oh, and – happy new year, too.

Monsignor Smith

Despised and rejected by men

In our time, the weight given to accusations of many sorts, and the instantaneity of transmission of accusations of every sort, have multiplied the impact of false accusation to people in every walk of life.  The burden is for all who are falsely accused that it is literally and logically impossible to prove a negative, that is, to demonstrate beyond doubt that something does not exist or did not occur.   Even when the accusation later be found unsupported, it cannot ever be demonstrated to be false, and therefore can never be expunged from memory or opinion.  This crushing and inescapable burden does grave damage not only to their lives, but to their communities and relations as people pull away from one another in opprobrium and suspicion.

The accusations that fly are not limited to actions that are objectively wrong and harmful, but include now also dispositions that are subjective in nature, such as being ‘offensive’ or ‘hurtful’, based on the supposition that if someone is hurt even in feelings, there must one who is guilty of inflicting the hurt.  These accusations are often accompanied by an assertion of motivation, such ‘racism,’ ‘hate,’ ‘sexism,’ or even just ‘insensitivity,’ all of which are now treated as grave crimes despite the pure impossibility of demonstrating their nonexistence.  

The recklessness with which these accusations are made, and the readiness with which they are accepted, is a sign of sickness in our culture and our communities.  It is difficult, if not impossible, to remain merely a spectator in what has become a national pastime akin to blood sport.  We will be drawn into this mob-driven mutually assured destruction unless we cling, conscientiously and consistently, to the life-giving commandments given us by God.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Ex 20:16) The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others.  This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is the truth and wills the truth.  Offenses against the truth … are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2464)

As simple as that seems, because it is so simply stated, it requires both moral instruction and constant vigilance to avoid doing what may seem harmless but in fact does the very damage described by the commandment:  

Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury.  He becomes guilty:  of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;  of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them; of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them. (CCC 2477)

To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. (CCC 2478) 

Common as it has become in our day, the burden of false accusation is no mere hypothetical, either to me or to many of my friends in the Church.  When the accusation remains private, it still does violence.  When the accusation is comparatively minor and not life-ending, it is still soul-crushing as by its very nature there is no escape.  When the accusation is accepted and believed, that acceptance can never be erased.  At the very least, one is left wondering, how could anyone who knows me believe that I could do such a thing?   

Living as we do in a time and place where calumny is the chief product of one of our largest industries, and detraction an expected element of almost every conversation, rash judgement is nearly impossible to avoid, but only nearly.  For with God, nothing will be impossible. (Lk 1:37)

Offenses against the truth … are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant.  That means, they make our lives hell.  “The accuser” is a name given to the Devil himself, and we all long for the day when we hear a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. (Rev 12:10)  The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let him who hears say, "Come."   He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!  (Rev. 22:17, 20)

Monsignor Smith

Behold

Apropos of nothing and everything, this week my mind turns to beauty.  These days are replete with beauty as color creeps across the face of the parish, in her trees and shrubs and leaves.  The long-angled light of late autumn emphasizes the brightness by juxtaposing shadow and dialing down the brightness of the sky to a deeper blue background and beyond.  Every glance of sunshine is more radiant while there is such shortage of it, bounded by the growing darkness, and it cannot heat or hurt with the intensity of summer. 

I went out to the grocery store today and took the long, slow road in order to enjoy the beauty that drapes our streets and neighborhoods.  Still in November, I could roll down the windows and enjoy the fresh air; it was rich and lovely.  I have never heard anyone describe Silver Spring by leading off with ‘beautiful’, but that would be a grave omission these days.

Beauty speaks to us of the truth of faith in revealing the love and care of the Creator, the sublime artist whose every work is directed toward revealing Himself to us.  No system or synthesis can produce the harmony of unicities that is an autumn maple, a snowfall, or a running brook.  This is manifest when we who image the Creator and are able to create undertake to produce beauty.   Nothing is so complex as simplicity, nor so arduous as beauty.  

We crave beauty and respond to it, some more than others of course, but it is a human thing to do.  It is a false and divisive thing to say ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.  Beauty is a bond that unites us, and the one who beholds beauty alone pines for someone to whom to say, Look! and from whom to hear, Ah!  Beauty begs to be described yet often begets silence.  Beauty can be inarguable.

St. Thomas regards beauty as a property of being, a feature of reality, whereas the Enlightenment makes it a colorful subjective ‘value’ pasted over the penny-plain objective ‘fact’. For Kant, to say that the San Marco altarpiece is beautiful is merely to voice one’s feeling of pleasure at seeing the San Marco altarpiece; nothing in the painting corresponds to the judgement. By contrast, for Thomas, a thing is not beautiful because it is loved; it is loved because it is beautiful. Our minds through our senses perceive the beauty of Angelico’s altarpiece; they do not produce it. Beauty is not read into works of art, God’s and men’s; it radiates out of them. As Gerard Manley Hopkins says, it ‘keeps warm / Men’s wits to the things that are’.  (From The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty by John Saward.)

My first years as a priest, I found myself depleted at the end of a day in which I spoke and wrote and responded and explained and conversed and socialized and attended.  The well was dry.  What I needed was beauty.  A string quartet by Beethoven, even one movement of a quartet, could refresh me. 

But beauty is not an occasional visitor, nor hidden somewhere in an album; all creation is shot through with the beauty of truth and goodness and love.  We are given to see and know and respond to beauty, as well as make beauty, and even be beauty, for our Creator God did marvelously create the dignity of human nature, and yet more marvelously re-create it, through Christ our Lord. 

For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who exists, nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his works; but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.  If through delight in the beauty of these things, men assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them.  And if men were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is he who formed them. (Wisdom 13:1-4)

Monsignor Smith

 

A people set apart

For my letter to you this week, I want to send you a letter from someone else.  We aren’t even sure who wrote it, only to whom it is addressed.  Known as The Letter to Diognetus, it is one of the most eloquent and illuminating early Christian texts.  It dates to the late second or third century, meaning it was written when Christianity was still persecuted in the Roman empire, and is obviously intended to explain the faith and life of Christians to an interested pagan. The second paragraph below is particularly powerful.  I share the fifth and sixth “chapters”, hoping you will find this sheds light on our role in the world in our own time.  

Monsignor Smith

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their 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.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.