The Necessary

Even the Blaster Truck could not help us.

From the sublime to the … earthy?   From poetry to plumbing, from last week’s poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, this week I will share my reflection on life without a drain.  

Monday afternoon the signal came to the rectory staff from Anthony Dao, our maintenance man extraordinaire: don’t use any water, the main drain to the sewer is clogged.  Bad news, but hardly anything to panic about; Dao has fixed that before.   

Three hours later, the news got worse.  The drain “snake” he owned was too short to clear the clog, and the longer snake he RENTED was similarly ineffective.   So, we had to call for help.  It was already after hours, so it was going to be A Big Deal.  

The plumbers arrived with their professional equipment two minutes earlier than they had advised.  I was carefully eating dinner without making a mess or running water.  Two hours later, they left, unsuccessful.  They promised the next day they would send the heavy equipment.

Midday Tuesday I returned from lunch off the property (no dishes to wash) to find no fewer than four vehicles from the plumbing firm, the largest of which was the truly impressive and enormous Blaster Truck.  I was filled with all the comfort that overwhelming technological power provides.  

Two hours later, the trucks were gone, save one, whose lonely operator was moving about the lawn with what could be classified an electronic divining rod, seeking the path of the sewer pipe as it leaves the rectory.  The Blaster Truck had been useless, as there was no opening in the pipe under the manhole through which it could blast.  The feeble beeping of the divining instrument faded when quitting time came about.

The next day, Wednesday, this time early afternoon, an improved set of equipment was again defeated into bleating and beeps, and a promised call from The Manager.   As I write, I have just authorized a plan to break into the pipe at the bottom of the manhole and approach the problem from that end.  Only once the problem has been identified and located, can it possibly be remedied.  It could be a blockage, by material internal (something dropped into the drain) or external (roots), or it could be a break.  We wait in suspense.

Mass goes on, but the Holy House of Soubirous has been in a state of suspension.  The staff all dutifully stayed home, though there have been a few drop-bys to get something to work on.   Dao and I have taken turns waiting for the plumber; he is much more helpful to them once they are here than I am.  Meanwhile, the voicemails are piling up, but the regular mail has been thin.  If you have had a need or reason to inquire with our talented and helpful staff, please know that they are not avoiding you, or goofing off.   Well, if they ARE goofing off, it is only under duress.

The residents face a different problem.  Father Novajosky had felicitously scheduled this week to be away with his family; he left Tuesday morning, unbathed but unbowed.  Father Santandreu and I have established a “refugee campus” in the home of some gracious parishioners, where we sleep and shower before returning to our daily battles.  Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies are a powerful consolation!

The good news is that, for now, the church and school plumbing is functioning at top form.   If you see me scurrying toward the church during the days, I advise you not to try to engage me right then for a chat; better would be to try when you find me sauntering the other direction.  Other than that, my fondest hope is to be able to mention to you this weekend how it all resolved, but I think that to be fixed and finished by Friday is an uncharacteristically optimistic scenario for me to predict at this point.  So to you, I say what we used to hear from the television periodically when things went fuzzy, or even blank:

We are experiencing momentary technical difficulties; please bear with us.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Is and Ought

Reading a biography now of an author who wrote poetry when he was in high school, as if that were a normal thing to do, I wonder.  Was it because he lived with a poet, in a house that hosted poets?   Was it because he had friends – friends different from him, and from one another – was it because his friends wrote poetry, that he, too, wrote?   Was poetry what young people did a hundred years ago, in small-town America?   Was it because their minds were not filled with processed and packaged slogans and jingles, songs and rhymes, chosen by another?  Was it because poetry is what they read?  Was it because it is beauty?

I do not know.  I do know that poetry, of most every sort, has almost always eluded me: enjoying it, appreciating it, understanding it.  One time or another I have found, enjoyed, appreciated, or even learned a poem or two, and that has tantalized me, but sufficed.  One, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I recited from memory when in tenth grade; that, and another, I share with you now, because there ought to be more poetry.

Monsignor Smith

 

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'

 

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen 
justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 

Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, 

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost 

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust 

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, 

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes 

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again 

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes 

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, 

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

 

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

 

 

Not to be outdone

Well, THAT was exhilarating, now, wasn’t it?

The two weeks of Passiontide with its veiled statues and crosses; Palm Sunday with its sticks and shouting; the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Good Friday’s Solemn Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, and Holy Saturday’s Great Vigil; and lots and lots of confessions; it all sort of erupts into Easter Sunday morning, with the jubilant mayhem of kids, crowds, and Alleluias.  

When it all quieted down and I drove off the sunny, silent campus a little after two o’clock to visit my parents, I was amazed at how much had happened in the eight hours since I got up.  Somebody who just walked into our church that morning would have believed that all that excitement, all that joy, all that beauty, all that warmth and friendship, all that communion might just be the norm in this remarkable place.  

They would not be wrong, though we do not always have a tent on the lawn sheltering abundant treats, and an egg hunt, and flowers everywhere.  That is wonderful, but it is not the heart of our hospitality.  We always have friendly, welcoming people, eager to offer something good whenever someone enters.  But for Easter, they outdo themselves.

Just like we always have excellent altar servers who work hard and make sacrifices to make the liturgy beautiful.  But over the Triduum and Easter, they outdo themselves.

We always have rich, beautiful sacred music perfect for the occasion.  But over Holy Week and Easter, the amount of music, the range of expression, the depth of truth and beauty lead our singers – adults and children -- to outdo themselves. 

Our church is always well taken care of, and we are blessed to have splendid space, and high-quality liturgical furnishings.  But that big space requires a LOT of people to contribute flowers, and all that veiling and flowering and polishing and decking and arranging required many hands and much work, and our people outdid themselves.  Though few were around to watch it happen, we all enjoyed the results.  

I know the rectory looks quiet, even boring from the outside.  Maybe if you come in the front door, it looks as if some work might be done in there.  But let me tell you: everybody in that rectory, both my housemates and the staff, rose to the occasion, and that was a big raise.  They outdid themselves.  

All this, all this is right and just in the celebration of the pascal mystery, our incarnate Lord’s self-sacrifice and resurrection: more than we could have expected, and far more than we deserve.  That was the model for everybody of these past weeks, all so that some soul who walked into our church at any point over the holy days would be embraced by the power and love of God.  Maybe that soul will return; maybe he will go his way.  He may never give a thought, much less his thanks, to all here who outdid themselves.   But I thank you; and so do the many souls who, occasionally or often, find God in your gifts and in your giving.  

All that excitement, all that joy, all that beauty, all that warmth and friendship, all that communion is indeed the norm in this remarkable place.  It is exhilarating.  Truly He is risen, Alleluia!

Monsignor Smith

 

This is not the end

(Is it) Just like they say - nothing good ever lasts?

That’s another definition of eternity: two people, and a ham.

That is an example of my grandmother’s sense of humor; you may recognize it.   She and Grandpa were alone in their one-bedroom house by then, and that affected menu options.  

Some things seem to go on forever; ham and turkey leftovers are accused of it all the time.  MLB games (though they say they fixed that), and the NBA season.  The University Boulevard red light at Four Corners.  Election season.  My homilies.  Contrary creatures that we are, we spend a lot of our time waiting for things to be over. 

Lent, with all its restrictions and somber reflection on sin and death, can seem interminable, especially at the beginning, when every day of deprivation drags by as old habits of self-indulgence still govern our muscle memory.  Once we get into the new habit – whatever good habits we have taken up – it almost feels good, like physical exercise (or so I’m told). But at the same time, we want the effort, the exertion, the privation to be over, so we look forward to Easter.

But Easter is not the celebration of the end of Lent, like V-J day was to World War II, or Armistice Day for World War I.  Yes, Christ is victorious, but what he achieves by it is far more of a beginning than an end.  

Christ’s resurrection changes forever the order of things for us who are created in the image and likeness of God.  By rising from death, Jesus transforms the death to which we are all necessarily subject into a beginning rather than the end.   Death, then, though it still come for us, cannot and will not keep us who are in Christ.  His resurrection into glory is the beginning of our going to glory.   This glory we can know and enjoy even while still in our earthly life, giving us strength to participate in the victory. 

Christ’s resurrection already has transformed human history by making human beings, who are members of His body the Church, capable of victory over sin and death in their lives and in their deaths.  This is the witness of the Saints throughout the ages, and the work of the Church in nurturing a communion of souls who reveal the power of loving one another as Christ loves us.  One need only visit a land or society that has been deprived of the Faith and the Church to see the difference.  

Christ’s resurrection has changed every day for you and for me, as we bear within us the hope of mercy, as well as the capacity for mercy that He has poured into us.  Our failures do not define us or confine us any more than the tomb confined Him.  The sin to which we succumbed is not who we are; when we repent and look to Him, His triumphant grace changes our lives so that our own sin does not own us.  This knowledge, rightly called faith, fills us with joy.

Foolish mortals waste a lot of time waiting for things to be over, including Lent.  We also fear that the very best things cannot last, like the cherry blossoms or a toddler’s tender, innocent sweetness.  But again, Christ’s resurrection breaks the rules that we make for ourselves, as His good gift indeed reigns without end.  Longer than a Montgomery County red light or an extra-innings pitcher’s duel, the goodness He begins in our lives is everlasting.  

To celebrate His victory is to restore in us the awareness that we need no longer be foolish, for we are not entirely mortal.  Maybe this is why ham was for my family, and still is for many families, the main dish associated with Easter: as something that seems to last forever, it can be a reminder of eternity.  Christ has conquered death, and poured new life into us.  Easter is not an end, but the great beginning -- our great beginning.  Christ is truly risen, Alleluia!

Monsignor Smith