Check the heart

Two lives of towering significance in the Church have ended in the past few weeks, Benedict XVI, and Cardinal George Pell.  Because of my unusual portfolio, I had a stronger than average personal connection with them, for example, having dined with both of them.  But the personal loss is of tiny significance compared to the ecclesial one.  

The Church is a marvelous place to live in no small part because of the personal communion one finds there.  For example, I have on my office wall a picture of my seminary class.  Three have died (already!) and the rest of us are strewn about seemingly without pattern or purpose.  One of my friends, as you’ve heard, is now a bishop in Texas.  Another is in Rome, newly the rector of our own seminary there.   One whose anniversary celebration I attended last summer is pastor of a largely Mexican parish in East Moline, Illinois.  Others are arguably “normal;” one just got a new parish, but it’s on Staten Island just like every parish he has served over twenty-five years.  We’re in parishes in Bismarck and Minneapolis and Silver Spring.  But last year my “local” classmate, my buddy Father Mark Knestout, went from his parish in Bethesda to New York to serve the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations.

That’s a fair assortment and wide dispersion of a relatively small sample of American diocesan priests.  While the human experience of having studied together gives a recognizable connection that we all enjoy, there is a stronger and more vital connection, and that is our bond in Christ Jesus as priests of His Church. 

It is easy for modern people, and Americans especially, to lose sight of the reality that is the Church.  It could seem to be a large, international organization much like the United Nations, where Father Knestout now spends his days.  It’s true that both have large groups of people from all over the world who often seem to be working at cross purposes, and that both seem to fail miserably far more often than they succeed at preventing or ending war and establishing peace, and that both leave many people convinced that they would be at least as well off if they had nothing to do with them.  But while the United Nations is a nobly-intentioned and free association, it is also a merely human institution.  

The Church is a divine institution, that is, she was founded, initiated, defined and directed by Jesus Christ, God, Who continues to participate in, protect, perpetuate and perfect her in every time and place on earth.

While the people you or I spend most of our time with, and the people who speak with authority on goings-on about the world, regard and refer to the Holy Church as if she were simply another free association of well-intentioned folks with a mixed record of success and plenty of people in her leadership and her membership who seem to be anything but honest, much less holy, it is important that we see far more than that.

The unique and universal expression and incarnation of God’s will that all men be saved from sin and death is His Son Jesus Christ, and He Himself, the Risen One, is alive, present, and at work in the accomplishment of that will uniquely and universally in the Catholic Church.  

We who participate in the project, benefit from it and collaborate and cooperate with it, receive and share many human and earthly benefits in this communion.  Yet we dare not be unmindful of the divine and eternal gifts that are both the source and the objective of those earthly gifts.  Similarly, we must turn our eyes to the divine purpose that undergirds and sustains, propels and protects the Church in every aspect of her earthly existence.   

When I look at my assortment of classmates, whether gathered for a photo or dispersed across the face of the planet, I see one priesthood, and one High Priest, accomplishing one salvation.

When I look to Rome and see great and holy men finishing their earthly course, called to their rewards, I see signs of God’s care for His servants, for His faithful, for His holy and spotless bride.  So as we and the world watch for earthly events and human action that excite or appall, restore or destroy, I am moved to look, and call you to look, as people who have been told and who believe so that all this is so that the works of God might be made manifest.  Look, let’s look with eyes of faith, for the divine founder at His work, to see what He is going to do next.  

Monsignor Smith

Three Times

È ancora bagnato.  (It’s still wet.)

Marcel Riedi, Swiss Guard, had accepted my proffered Vatican identity card as, for the first time unaccompanied, I approached the entrance to the Apostolic Palace, residence of the Pope and location of the Holy See’s most sensitive offices.  He scrutinized my card inside and out, then held it by a corner and shook it at arm’s length: È ancora bagnato.  

It had been issued the day before.  I was new to my job as priest secretary to Cardinal William Baum, and His Eminence had taken me around the Vatican, to offices and entrances that I would need to know to assist him in fulfilling his job.  This time, though, he was inside at a meeting, and I was alone, coming to get him for the ride home.  He needed assistance simply in getting around.  The Swiss Guard, impressive in his most excellent striped uniform and confident in his authority, had stopped me to check my credentials.  È ancora bagnato:  He was totally messing with me.  I was such a newbie!  We both laughed.

Marcello and I became quite friendly over time, as I was frequently in and out of the places he guarded.  Several years into my service there, as I walked alone along some frescoed corridor, he stopped me.  Does your man speak Polish?  he asked me, referring to Cardinal Baum.  I told him he did not, and asked why.  Well, he was engaged to be married to a Polish girl, and had arranged for the wedding to be at Saint Stephen of the Ethiopians, a small fifth-century church at the foot of the Vatican gardens right behind Saint Peter’s Basilica.  Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II’s secretary and very Polish, had agreed to celebrate the nuptial Mass.  But the Holy Father had accepted, at the last minute, an invitation to visit some distant country, and Archbishop Dziwisz was obliged to accompany him, precisely at the time of the wedding.  

Marcello was desperately looking for some Vatican prelate who could help him out at short notice.   I wished him the best.   A month or two later, next I saw him, I asked about the wedding: Who’d you get?  Ratzinger, he answered.

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A few days after the election of Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter, I had to run an errand to a liturgical-goods shop a few blocks from where I lived and even closer to the apartment where Cardinal Ratzinger had lived for the previous twenty-five years.  When I went in, the elegant older Spanish ladies who ran the place all leapt up and gathered around me excitedly.  They had seen the conclave and the presentation of the new Pope on the loggia of the Basilica.   They were thrilled, and they all had stories about their neighbor.

They said that everyone in the neighborhood had been sharing their enthusiasm for the new Pontiff and had tales of their personal encounters with him; not only the church-goods shopkeepers, but also the grocer, the baker, the fruit vendor, the office-supply shop keeper, and the one I remember best, the mailman.

They shared how he had told them that every time he had encountered the Cardinal Prefect in the street, His Eminence had doffed his hat and greeted him, “Buon giorno, Signor Postino.”  (Good day, sir mailman.)  And the Postino had objected:  But Eminenza, I should doff my hat to you!  And the Cardinal had simply replied, But it is important that I greet you, Signor Postino!, and doffed his hat again.  The Spanish ladies retold the mailman’s story with breathless delight. 

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After the Cardinals in the Conclave of 2005 had chosen him Successor to Peter, Benedict invited the Cardinals to remain one more night together in the Domus Sanctae Martae, where they had been cloistered, then proceed together to the Sistine Chapel for the first Holy Mass of his pontificate.  This was the third morning they were in the guest house, and everyone was now familiar with the routine, but there was clearly a buoyancy and excitement among the assembled, whereas before there had been seriousness and concentration.  As I passed through the lobby after brushing my teeth downstairs (long story), the elevator doors opened and out stepped the new Pope, on his way to breakfast.  It was his first morning in the familiar white cassock and sash.  He saw me, smiled warmly, and greeted me as a friend.

Monsignor Smith