The Sheepgate

O'er the ramparts we watched

Even if you were here that morning, you probably did not notice.  A couple of Sundays ago, I stood outside the 7:30 Mass to greet departing worshippers and noticed a chap handing them papers from a folder.  I walked over, and not recognizing him, introduced myself asked what he was distributing.  He handed me a political tract, clearly home-made, text on white paper.  I asked him to stop distributing it, and when he argued with me I identified myself as the (legal) property owner and asked that he leave the property.  He asked that he be allowed to wait for his ride, two people who were still in the church, and I relented.

You would think that would have been enough, but no, he kept trying, and his two friends when they emerged kept trying, to push their message.  Our exchange grew rather more pointed until they finally left.  They assumed that I was preventing their propagandizing because I disagreed with its content, but that is not so.

The people assembled here to worship God in the Holy Mass – you -- are a very attractive opportunity.  You are not only disposed to be faithful and virtuous, but you are open to what you see and hear here in a way that you cannot be, if you are prudent, once you depart.  You are attuned to the voice of God and His teaching through the Church, calling you to goodness and holiness, and surrounded by people who wish to be called, as you wish to be called, to fulfill your highest and best potential, which is to be like God.  

Because of this, you have an enormous target on your back.  Do-gooders and fundraisers all want “a piece of you.”   Who better to ask for support, personal, financial, or electoral, than you?   Your priorities are known and can be mirrored back to you; your earnestness is manifest because of your presence when so many lounge elsewhere.  You are filled with the grace of communion and your sense of solidarity with your brothers and sisters is at its peak.  You are, in a word, ripe for the picking.

Approaching you with their plea here, moreover, enhances their status, burnishing it with ecclesiastical and even Divine approbation.  You are well-disposed to whatever request you receive here, because if it’s at church, it must be okay …right?

In a word, yes: it must be okay, to be here at your church.  It must be BETTER than okay, in fact.  It’s not enough to seem charitable and worthy; no, any organization that asks for your support here has to meet the full range of ecclesiastical standards for fiscal accountability and reporting.  Anyone inviting your participation must be integrated into the Church’s moral and behavioral standards, similarly meeting requirements for safeguards and reporting (not only child protection, but definitely that).  Any advocate of any cause or initiative must be in conformity to Catholic doctrine and approved by the appropriate ecclesiastical authority.  And there may be no taint of political partisanship regarding candidate or party.  But even all that is not enough to gain access to you.

Why?  First of all, because that is not why you are here.  I know many parishes where there is a speaker every month who is raising funds or advocating involvement.  But even with programs in conformity with all of the standards above, is it really what Sunday morning Mass is for? 

Weekly I receive mailings offering to provide a priest who can cover Masses (while raising funds for his organization); asking to be allowed to speak at our Masses about the plight of one group or another, or the benefits of one program or another; from people who want to sell you things or ask you for donations.  I turn almost all of them away, because I am the shepherd of the flock.

You may not always notice it, but I am careful even in my own preaching and speaking to emphasize the teaching of the Lord Jesus through His Church, and put at least an audible asterisk to distinguish what is merely my own opinion.  The teaching of Christ and the saving doctrine of the Church are so beautiful, so necessary, and so true, but have such a narrow window into your world that I am loathe to crowd it with anything else, much less allow your good faith to be abused by hucksters, shysters, or opportunists.  

The people who showed up a couple of weeks ago to sway you to their views probably assumed I chased them away because of what they were proposing.   It was indeed pernicious and vile, but I chased them away because you are not on offer for anybody’s project or proposal.  You are Christ’s holy people, assembled to worship Him, and I will defend you from all abuse, even when you do not notice.  

Monsignor Smith

A Room with a View?

From not-exactly the glass-enclosed nerve center....

“Expansive view includes parking lot” is not something any realtor would advertise to make a property or home attractive.  But my second-floor sitting room with its multiple windows offers precisely that, and I want to tell you that this is a feature, not a bug.

I can keep tabs on the 6:30 Mass attendance, even when I am not the celebrant.  I can see how confessions are going, to discern whether I need to go over to the church and help.  One recent Saturday, the one with the constant and heavy rain, I was convinced that few hardy souls would come out for a sacrament that can be postponed so easily.  But no – I looked out about halfway through to see eight cars in front of the church, then to watch them leave, one by one, then be replaced by another group.  Fr. Brillis wondered how I knew how many penitents he had shriven!

I can watch the daily drama of school drop-off with its choreography of minivans, sports car, pickup trucks, and Catholic assault vehicles (CAV’s), often able to guess the level of chaos in the passenger section and distractedness in the driver’s seat.  

This week the lot was shining and empty with the snowfall that cancelled school and kept Mass-goers home.  I watched to snow removal expertise of Mark Macpeak’s landscape team deftly clear the lots and the surrounding sidewalks, more than half a day before the heavy front-end loader arrived on a flatbed truck to start clearing Blair’s lot across the street.  

Just Saturday, I saw the Holy Name guys expertly dismantle and remove our outdoor creche.  You and your kids may have enjoyed that Nativity tableau up close, from the little plaza in front of the church.  But you may not have known how many people venture onto the property from the boulevard to admire the scene of the birth of the Savior from the warmth of their cars, sitting sometimes for quite a while in, you guessed it, the parking lot.  The Sunday of Epiphany, the week before, Fr. Brillis and I drove by on our way to the annual priests’ dinner that evening.  There was a car sideways in front of the creche, and as we passed I saw I a cell phone camera held up to capture the happy scene.

In more mundane moments, I can tell which of the school administration and faculty are working late – or early; I can spot when some disabled vehicle or confused driver has rolled up our driveway looking for respite, often from the madness of the beltway.  And I notice when one of our regulars or neighbors is crossing the property at highway speed.

The view changes come spring, when the great maple trees burst into leaf and my view becomes more constricted but more arboreal; less of the parking lot, and more  park-like.  That has its pleasures as well, but not the practicality and drama that are the benefit when the trees are barren. 

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot, is the refrain Joni Mitchell wove into her environmentally-plangent ballad Big Yellow Taxi, way back when I was a kid; more recently Counting Crows seems to be responsible for the rendition that is currently heard.  It’s a catchy song, but at least in our case, nobody paved paradise.  

Daily I call down God’s blessing on whoever decided not to pave all the way from the church doors to the boulevard, but rather left grass, to which was later added trees; many, splendid trees.  Those doors open into the very forecourt of heaven itself, whose splendor and delight are better even than the paradise from which our forebears were cast out.  And that we may dare to tread these sacred precincts, outside the gates of heaven there is a place to park.  We have paved the way to paradise, and put up a parking lot!  It bears watching, a truly expansive view.

Monsignor Smith

 

  

Fast-moving water

One of the things that startled Father Brillis as he moved into the rectory last month was that the administrative offices of the parish are right here in our home, the rectory.  That is a natural and even organic thing for older parishes, in which the growth of administrative load was met first by adding one assistant to the priest(s) who had overseen the parish, then later by the addition of more helpers, more specialized, to address the increased obligations.   First, you put one more person in the rectory, then several more.   In such places, the front office can still be identified as a parlor, the conference room, a dining room; and the meeting space, a basement.  Newer parishes have a parish life center with purpose-designed offices and conference rooms, and the priests live in a separate house, sometimes not even on the campus.  This model is what Father Brillis experienced before he came.

Here, we have the older model; our campus has A School, A Church, and A Rectory, with a few multi-purpose spaces shoehorned here or there.  This may not be ideal for privacy or even domesticity, but it does make for a seamless integration of the priestly and lay elements of the administrative team.  Maybe sometimes a seam would be nice?  The situation was exaggerated over Father’s first weeks here, because it was Christmastime, and the rectory was almost just like a home for the (staff) holiday, then returned to Grand Central Station Mode upon their return.

Many parishioners never set foot in the rectory, and never deal with any of the staff in person.  This is not abnormal by any means, but it might disguise one thing about our parish that has been evident to even these occasional, or casual, rectory visitors.   The staff is …different.

No, not that they are different from you or me (which they are, but that is okay); but rather, they are different people than were our staff six months ago.  We have had complete turnover in the administrative staff of the parish since last July first.   This was not the plan.

Last summer, we had known for a while that Ron Farias, our business manager, would be retiring, and we found out that Jackie Nguyen in our tuition office would need to phase out over the coming six months for medical reasons.   Then Jackie’s situation changed rapidly, and she had to withdraw completely.  The good news for you that know and love Jackie after her two decades of work here is that finally now (January) it looks like she will get what she needs.  Don’t stop praying for her though!

Over a few months, we brought on Jennifer King, who sits at Jackie’s desk, and Theresa Deere who will be the parish bookkeeper, but in our office only two days a week.  The division of labor and responsibility clearly needed to shift around a bit, and Carol Gangnath, our receptionist, took on added importance as continuity in addition to picking up administrative responsibilities.  

The good news is that since the start of January, Jennifer is here full time, after splitting her time and talent between us and her previous employer all last autumn.  She and Theresa are excellent and have quickly taken hold of the multi-tailed monster that is the parish’s need machine.  The hard news that rolled in right before Christmas was that the surgery that Carol needed and planned for April had been moved up to January!  Poof – she’s gone, our unique staffer with historical knowledge.  

Now, don’t blame Carol – she got an opportunity and we all wanted her to take it despite her fears for its impact on us.  And she’s been working from home to coach, assist, and advise.  And she will be back.  Not only that, but we found a spiffy stand-in, willing and able to take the heat of our front office for the duration of Carol’s absence.  Many rectory regulars have already met Susan Sumner, who not only started at very short notice, but also started during the Christmas holidays.   Over-and-above effort, that.

Father Santandreu moved out at the end of July.  Father Schrenk, who joined us in late August, moved out in early December.  Even Father Brillis, who moved into the house less than four weeks ago, now has departed for a four-week visit to home and family.  Father Novajosky, whose official responsibility is study and school, is my prop and stay.  

Anthony Dao, our parish maintenance magician, and Elena Santos, our housekeeper, are still here, thank goodness.  Norma Thomas, technically a volunteer but functionally an integral part of the office, still is here before the sun rises each day. Ted Ewanciw, the principal, and his staff; Jasmine Kuzner, the DRE, and John Henderson, our music master, all abide, and they show up frequently in the rectory; but they have their own spaces elsewhere.  So not all is flux.  Just ALMOST all.  

I have grown accustomed to having my life, and not only my work, be bound up with our dedicated staff.  Over the years, so have you.  Talk about seamless: reduced-resources, personalized, parochial over-achievement right here at your disposal, in one handy location.  Meet them, get to know them, give them a little time, and watch grace build upon nature.  Father Brillis will get used to it, too.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Immoveable and Moveable Feasts

In common use, an ‘epiphany’ is considered a light-bulb moment, the instant the idea comes, the understanding is achieved, or the realization dawns.  That has almost nothing to do with the manifestation of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, to all the world, which is what we celebrate liturgically in these days.  Nonetheless, I have enjoyed some epiphanies over the past few weeks.

First of all, Christmas-on-a-Monday is even harder than I remembered it.  Even with priests helping – the newly-arrived and rapidly coming up to speed Fr. Brillis Mathew, and Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, both contributed mightily to the sacramental worship of our parish.  Still, I was thumped by the effort.

And if you doubt me on the seriousness of that, talk to any of our musicians, especially john Henderson.  After the last Mass on Christmas day, he bolted for the airport for some time with his family.  He had just led seven (7) Masses with music in 28 hours.  Ask our singers, who worked in the morning, and the middle of the night, then the morning again.  

Or you can find and ask one of the many volunteers who ‘turned’ the church after the end of the last Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, about 12:15 PM on December 24^th.   Flowers, candles, banners, greenery, statues, and equipment most normal people do not even know exists all had to be wrestled out of or into our church and arranged to maximize Christmas splendor.  Most of the work was done by 2:00, but there was some fine-tuning and vacuuming going on even as three o’clock approached.  Everyone who arrived for the five o’clock Vigil Mass of Christmas, and every subsequent Mass, was rightly blown away by the beauty and dignity of our festive decorations.

The second epiphany may be that in some cases, harder is better.  The pristine beauty and pregnant possibility of Fourth Advent exploded into the fulfillment of Christmas rather like angel choirs appearing in an instant over the flocks we had been watching for a lifetime.  The visual transformation was not lost on people who in some cases had been in the church only four hours previously. 

The music was amazing, especially the children’s choir at the Solemn Mass of Christmas Day.  Father Brian Kane, native son of our parish home on a visit from Nebraska to his mom and dad, heard the choir and orchestra practicing for the Christmas Eve Mass and asked me who these people were.  I leaned out of the sacristy and looked around and told him, except for the cellist and maybe one other, they were all of our parish.  And the transcendent beauty of the Midnight Mass is enhanced by the darkness, even as it adds another degree of difficulty. 

A third, if recurring, epiphany is that none of this has any impact at all on the energy and excitement of the children.  That, I am sure, is for the best.

One of the consolations, if you can call it that, I found in this is that the first day of the new year, invariably the octave day of Christmas, falls also on a Monday.  There is a very distinctly mega-Monday feel to that morning after all the secular, often forced revelry has dwindled in the last hours of dark and the steel-gray January dawn asserts itself, staying silent rather than reveal anything that is to come.  Though not obliged, clearly it is best to go to Mass, where the purpose of time itself and the promise of each day and each new year is laid before us to adore and receive.

Christmas-on-a-Monday has come and gone, not to return until 2028.  My thanks to all who labored under its distinctive burdens to make it rich and rewarding for all of us who celebrated it here, parishioners, neighbors, drop-ins, and visitors.  Now, to look forward to the next calendar crash:  Ash Wednesday vs. Valentine’s Day.  God help us.

Monsignor Smith