BBS

The first week of May brings anticipation of many beautiful things to come, not least of which is First Holy Communion, next Saturday.   But for me it brings also a specific memory, an anniversary in fact: thirty-five years since I started my First Real Job.

There were six full years between my graduation from college and my entry into seminary, and even if the gap year had been a thing in those days, six would have been out of bounds.  So I had a real job: career track, federal paycheck, and all the trimmings. It took me a while to get it, almost a full year for security clearances and background investigations in addition to the more ordinary bureaucratic process and hurdles.  But after living in this area since September, part-timing, temping, and contract working, finally on Tuesday May 5, 1987, I put on my jacket and tie (we still did that in those days) and went to work.

So while most of you know my life now is very different from most of yours, there was a time when it was not so; and I have experienced many of the realities of professional workaday life, such as cubicles, commuting, running out of annual leave, and having a really bad boss.  

Yes, Bad Boss Syndrome (BBS) is the memory that comes back to me, because my very first assignment gave me fascinating, challenging, worthwhile work; talented, interesting coworkers; a rich social life; and a horrible boss.  I share with you not my own unique assessment, but a twenty-year consensus.

Not only did my first branch chief dislike and disadvantage me personally (as was widely acknowledged at the time) but the same branch chief made life miserable for a number of my peers and colleagues.  To be a staffer who was favored was almost as horrible as to be one who was disfavored.  

As evidence that this is not simply a case of sour grapes from a malcontent, about twenty years after I left the organization, once I was a priest and a pastor, I was contacted seemingly out of the blue by three of my former coworkers; they wanted to let me know that the selfsame manager had been officially and somewhat ceremoniously removed from eligibility ever to manage people again.  They contacted me in acknowledgement of my disproportionate suffering, and to let me know that the madness was finally ended. 

To give one example of my experience of BBS, I have one strong, physical memory.  After my first year of work for the bad boss, that manager had been moved to another branch, then later I had been moved to another branch; so I had enjoyed over a year with reasonable supervision and direction.  But the whole division was to be reorganized, so at a meeting of all sixty or seventy of us, the new assignments were read aloud.  My name was in the final group, and the manager was to be ... yes, that one.  I became physically ill.  Everybody saw it.  They all knew what it meant, and I received condolences from dozens of people in the next hours and days.  I remember that feeling.  

The symptoms of Bad Boss Syndrome are demoralization, discouragement, and depression.  None of these bolster the impression that the employee is a good one, which only makes the situation worse.  It is a vicious circle from which there can seem to be no escape.

So when I see the faithful people of this parish, and your constant concern and effort for your families, your neighbors and your friends; when I pick up on signs of strain at work or professional frustration, I know those signs.  I may not know all the specifics, but I understand the situation.  In such circumstances, relationships keep us going; our obligations to provide for our family both in the short term and the long; our obligations to our coworkers and perhaps to the mission of our organization.  These are the motivations that force us to endure BBS, and make it possible for us to endure.

My pre-priest career was much more besides a bad boss.  My final three years with the organization provided what I needed to discern clearly my vocation.  For me, that was a genuine happiness with my life, and a real satisfaction with my work, which confirmed for me that in following this strange and wonderful call to priesthood, I was not running away from anything.  Not failure, not loneliness, not a bad boss. 

Even that dreadful experience has been turned to the good by our gracious God.  Bad bosses will come, but they will also go.  Let me share with you the one boss, the supreme supervisor, the unchanging overseer, who suffers it all for us, who suffers it all with us, and whose reign does not pass away.  It is our relationships of love, and this relationship of divine love, that provide what makes it possible to endure, and anticipate the many beautiful things to come.  

Monsignor Smith

All together now

Please let me use this space to drop a little note of thanks to everybody who worked a little harder, pushed a little more, came a little earlier or stayed a little later, gave even more time or even more effort, got even more creative, smiled, greeted, encouraged, and otherwise made possible all the wonderful experience that was Holy Week and Easter here at our parish.

I know Ron, Jackie, Corine, and Carol here in the rectory were all going at it hammer and tongs to make sure everything was ready.  Similarly, the list of things Dao did, moved, fixed, removed, installed, cleaned, carried, and mowed would take this whole space – and even more if we included what he got his family to do.  

Norma runs a tight sacristy, and Kathy Hellerman and Julie Wilson worked hard to meet her standards.  Melissa and Peter Franklin, Liz Beegle, Four Henry, and their team did great things with the flowers, first in the ‘garden’ in the Stricker Room, then in our radiant sanctuary.  Thanks to all who gave toward those flowers, and the Easter bulletins are still available to see the dedications of those gifts.  

Among the guests who were here for the Triduum, many mentioned the beautiful music that John Henderson and our singers provided; okay, actually, they gushed and swooned.  Likewise they were wide-eyed at the skill and reverence of our altar servers.  Having been around for the rehearsals and practice sessions, I can tell you that an amazing amount of work and concentration went in to that.  I thank them all.

The Hospitality on the Lawn Easter Sunday morning was warm and wonderful despite the chill breeze; Liz Dooley, Juliet Marandure, and the Home School Association helpers were here awfully early and moved a lot of coffee, treats, tables, and decorations to make it seem so effortlessly welcoming.  And Jasmine Kuzner and her helpers provided the Egg Hunt in which there were no tears, I was assured, because nobody however small or however tardy failed to find eggs.  That was a LOT of eggs!  I think I am not the only one who finds the happy madness of that egg scramble to be an enhancing additive to Easter joy.  

Especially during the Holy Week liturgies with their long, impactful Scriptures, I was reminded that we have the best lectors in the metropolitan area.  The Holy Name guys helped out in their usual low-key ways, but most visibly in carrying the canopy over our Eucharistic Lord as we sang him to the garden to keep watch, and pray.   The ushers helped with logistics and visitors and the collection, which our even more low-key but diligent counters delighted in counting.  Let me also thank everyone who gave a something extra to the Easter collection, which is of particular value to the parish.  

My housemates, Fathers Novajosky and Santandreu, did yeoman’s work – and there was plenty of work – in the sanctuary and in the confessional.  But you know, I get the impression that they are beginning to feel very much at home here, and really enjoyed being with you all throughout the festivities, whether liturgical or social.  And I don’t blame them!  And as you might begin to suppose, they are good company here in the house, too, and for that I am grateful.

And speaking of being good company, I also want to thank everybody who greeted, welcomed, or struck up a conversation with somebody they did not already know who came to join us for the feast.  Perhaps, just perhaps, we will all have the chance to do the same with them as they return again, and regularly, to rejoice in the fruits of the Resurrection here with for months and months of Sundays.

And while we all look forward to people joining us regularly, let me just acknowledge how deeply moved I am by your presence here, particularly through the longer, richer liturgies of the Paschal Triduum.  Your devotion invigorates my own; the sacrifices that you make to be present in the holy days make our sacrifice of praise at the altar so much more powerful.  For the faith that God has given you, and that you share with me and with all of us, I am deeply grateful.      

Monsignor Smith

Changed not ended

How good it is to be back.

People are back in church, smiles are back on faces, and our tents and treats are back on the front lawn where they belong.  It is the resurrection of the Lord, Easter Sunday; and we are back.  Alleluia!

How good it was to stand in the familiar places and mark the familiar moments as we moved through Holy Week.  How good it was for all of us to be at it again, together, entering into the mystery of our salvation in Christ.  We knew where it would take us; we knew where it would end, in victory; and that it would be today, Easter Sunday.  

Until recently it would have been normal to say we do this every year, but there was an interruption of that soothing pattern over recent years as lockdowns and prohibitions intervened and changed what people did for a few years there.  That was universally unpleasant, so all readily acknowledge the relief and refreshment of the return to the regular, revolving yearly pattern.  

Similarly, as I looked out my window this week and saw the small scarlet buds and winged seed pods appearing on the red maple tree I planted there some twelve or fourteen years ago, I was reminded of the beauties of this area in general and this campus in particular.  The weeping cherry trees, the daffodils and hyacinths, the flowering plums, tulips, and dogwoods, and all that greening green grass.  Such a spot, such a view!  Nature in her cyclic way is returning and refreshing life right before our eyes.   

Because we do this every year, with every winter bringing Lent, and every spring bringing Easter, it is easy to think that this, too, is cyclic, and a return.  But as familiar as the birds and the flowers, as familiar the hymns and the egg hunt, the resurrection is not at all familiar; nor is it cyclic, or a return.

Sin is familiar.  Selfishness and strife are familiar.  Death is the same-old same-old.  We thought that we had made progress, real progress, and moved past war, at least among “civilized,” western nations.  But here we are again, appalled by fresh visions more lurid than those of the history books to which we thought we had consigned them.   

So, the return of the return is not what we are celebrating.  Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, and back to the life that would again eventually end in death.  Jesus Himself, however, does not come back to life; He goes through death to new life.  His resurrection from the dead is something completely new, and unrepeatable; it breaks the age-old cycle of sin, and death.

Jesus is risen, not returned; and His resurrection is our rescue from endless return.  Christ will never die again, and by our Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion in His death and resurrection, we are remade into something new, and every aspect, every instant of our lives is unrepeatable. 

We are united with Him on His one-way walk, going not in cycles or circles, not into and out of recurrent alternating phases of grief and joy.  By His suffering, ours is transformed and transforming; through it now is our path toward the glory that we have always desired and even craved, because it is the fulfillment, the perfection for which we were conceived and created.  

People are back in church, smiles are back on faces, and our tents and treats are back on the front lawn where they belong.  It is the resurrection of the Lord, Easter Sunday; and we are back.  Yet, you and I – all of us bound into one in the risen Christ -- we are also never going back, back to the helplessness and hopelessness of nature in general and our nature in particular.   

Christ is risen, truly He is risen – Alleluia!  How good it is to know we are never going back.

Monsignor Smith

Things fall apart

Failure.  What a day to celebrate failure.

This weekend, we as a church assemble unusual numbers, possibly augmented by the promise of free “swag” in the form of green branches, to mark what has become one of the hallmarks of the entire ecclesial undertaking: failure.

The first place our eyes fall in their search for failure is on Christ Himself, the one who attracted our Hosannas, who drew his disciples and aroused in them such hopes for success; the Messiah, after all, was expected to deliver Israel form all her oppression.  The Christ, the Anointed One, was to bring the help of God and deliver the long-elusive victory.  Then it all crashes to pieces in His humiliating death on the cross.  

But, even as we see all the indicators that Jesus has failed, we recognize what brought about the other failure of this day: the failure of the disciples.  The ones closest to the Lord, carefully prepared and even forewarned, looked at Christ’s Passion, and they saw failure, too; which in turn prompted their failure.  Peter denied Him, the other apostles fled for their lives, and we know that the next time they would assemble it would be in secret, and in fear.   Arguably, this is the first failure of the Church, even before the gift of the Holy Spirit confirmed them as the Church.  

But even as we watch in horror, we know that what looks like failure is in fact part of the plan.  We know that this is, in fact, the great undoing of man’s every failure since the creation of the world.  In fact, the reason we go through this every year is to remind ourselves what the path to victory looks like, that at a certain point, and by certain standards, it looks like failure.  Christ’s rejection by the people He came to save, His condemnation, torment, and execution, is the path to victory because it is undertaken in obedience to His Father and in love of the very ones Who reject Him, and all the ones who fail Him.  

Which means that even as He dies on the cross, Jesus does it in order to repair the damage done by the failure of His apostles and His friends, their failure that He foresees and predicts.  And once He is raised from the tomb, the first thing He does is bring that reparation to bear on the ones who failed Him.  That very experience of restoration after failure is part of the identity of the Apostles, who became the Church when the Holy Spirit at last did cascade onto them. 

Which should remind us that it is part of our identity, too, as part of the Church, and that it is woven into the very being of the Church herself.  All her members, even her most illustrious and important members, fail one another, and fail the Lord whom they aspire to serve.  Apparent failure is a recurring motif throughout of the life of the Church up to our own time.

This weekend’s exercise in reliving that first failure should fortify us against the despair that looms whenever the Church seems to be shot through with sin, malice, or incompetence; when civilization itself, built on the foundations of Christian faith, lapses into the worst sort of barbarism and mutual destruction; and when we ourselves, so blessed by grace and revelation to know our Lord and be filled with His Own nourishing life, lapse into inexplicable rottenness.  

The precedent of this failure, too, we relive every year, as we prepare to relive its redemption.  There is no better way to nurture our gratitude for that first seeming failure and all it cost our Lord, than to apply for our portion of the purchased restoration, which we do by admitting all our own failures to the Lord in the Sacrament of Penance, and hearing those hard-won words spoken to us: your sins are forgiven.  

Oh happy fault, oh necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so great a redeemer! (Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation).  This is how we celebrate failure.

Monsignor Smith

Cross of Gratitude

The Church is an awfully small world; more like a big family, really.  

My good friend and classmate in seminary and ordination for this Archdiocese, Fr. Mark Knestout, recently was called to work for the Holy See in her Mission as Permanent Observer at the United Nations.  For this purpose, about a month ago he moved to New York.  Because he is my friend, I am obliged to go visit, to investigate and “approve” his new situation.   Because there was an art exhibit there that I was eager to see (portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger), I went last week.  

The mission is headed by a Nuncio who is an Archbishop, just as is the Papal Nuncio to the United States here in Washington.  Archbishop Gabriel Caccia received me graciously as my friend Father Knestout showed me around the Mission offices.  He was working in the Vatican – at a high level – when I was in Rome serving Cardinal Baum, though he and I did not encounter one another then.  

I also went to visit my old seminary rector, who is now the Archbishop of New York.  I have always been fond of Cardinal Dolan, and he has always been very good to me.   I figured I would just spend a few minutes with him in the midst of his busy schedule, but he was in an expansive mood, and then he invited me to join him for other events that morning.

He had scheduled a press conference in his cathedral, creating an opportunity to bring attention to the ongoing devastation of Ukraine.  He invited the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations; Archbishop Caccia, the Holy See’s ambassador to the UN, Archbishop Boris Gudziak, Archeparch of Philadelphia of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Father Peter Vaccari, head of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.

Cardinal Dolan introducing the speakers at the press conference:  
Abp. Gudziak, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN; Abp. Caccia; Fr. Vaccari

Each of the speakers reflected movingly on the suffering of Ukraine, how the Ukrainian people are fortified by their faith, and the work of the Church there to help in every way possible.  It served well its purpose of preventing this grave wound from passing out of the short attention spans of Americans like me.  

After that event, we returned to the residence and Archbishop Gudziak, whom I had never before met, were able to talk about friends we have in common, including one whom you may meet here in our parish within a few months.  All this went on much longer than I had anticipated, but these people really did have much to do, and they moved on quickly, leaving me to make my way to the crypt of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral to offer Mass. 

It did make me laugh that even when I slip away for a few days’ break I find myself hanging out with not one, but three archbishops.  Old habits die hard!  But it was the most natural thing in the world, because they were all old friends, or close friends of old friends.  In the ecclesial version of the game “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” it seems that it takes only one or two degrees to reach almost everybody.

The Cross of Gratitude

The backdrop for the press conference in the cathedral was a large, roughly carved wooden crucifix next to a Ukrainian flag.  When I investigated, I learned that this was the “Cross of Gratitude” conceived and carved in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2005, and sent on its pilgrim way to prepare for the jubilee year of the Passion of our Lord (2033).  The cross has already been to Rome and many European capitals, and is making its way through the United States.  

Is it a coincidence that Ukrainian Catholics seventeen years ago fixed upon the Cross of Christ to express their gratitude to God and bind them into union with the wider Church?  Is it a miracle that this is the sacramental reminder in our midst today of the faith of our brothers and sisters currently under violent and criminal attack?  

Not especially, I think.  The Church is an awfully small world; more like a big family, really, in which when one member suffers, everybody hurts.  The only degree of separation one from another is how far any of us drift away from the Cross of Christ.  No matter how isolated we become, when we look upon the Cross and see that God’s Son is united with us in our suffering, our communion is restored not only with Him but also with our brothers and sisters who suffer.  And we pray for and with our brothers in sisters in Ukraine at the foot of the Cross of Gratitude.

Monsignor Smith