Let this holy building shake with joy

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven,

exult, let Angel ministers of God exult,

let the trumpet of salvation

sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!

Did you ever wonder what the moment of Christ’s resurrection sounded like?  Partly because no person besides Jesus witnessed its happening, we have trouble picturing what the Resurrection looked like, though many artists have attempted to depict it.  The soundtrack, however, is readily available: the Easter Proclamation.

Better known as the Exsultet, the first word in its Latin form, a single voice, often a deacon or priest, sings the Proclamation at the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter.  The New Fire has been kindled and brought into the pitch-dark church as a single flame atop the Paschal Candle, the light of the Risen Christ piercing the darkness of the tomb.  After this living flame has spread to the candles in the hands of the worshippers, the great candle is placed in its candelabrum in the sanctuary, and in the flickering glow begins the song of praise.

The first time I heard the Exsultet I was a freshman in college.  I was at the dinky parish church near our campus for my first Easter Vigil, trying to make it to the whole Triduum despite my semester exams.  That church had precious few resources, liturgical or otherwise, but that year one of the French professors sang the Exsultet, and beautifully.  

Unfamiliar with the text and knowing little Latin, I was nonetheless unquestionably moved and even changed by the sung Proclamation.  It communicates radical joy and transformation like no other work of human genius or art.  The great composer W. A. Mozart was so moved by it that he is known to have said that if he had composed the Exultet, he would have no need to compose anything more. 

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her, 

ablaze with light from her eternal King, 

let all corners of the earth be glad, 

knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

All the earth is affected. Not only is Christ transformed in glory by this event, but moreover all creation is changed in both substance and experience.  Death was universal, but for mankind, now it is different.  No longer the end, it has been given the possibility of beginning something new and glorious. 

Our birth would have been no gain

had we not been redeemed.

The Exsultet rejoices in the most basic truths of our salvation, reminding us that without salvation by Christ we would be born into a prison without hope of escaping: the prison of Sin, Original and Actual, inescapable and fatal.  We can decorate it and make it comfortable, but for us mortal men and what power we have, there is no way out.

In what is perhaps its most famous assertion, it celebrates even Adam’s sin, which brought about our sad situation, but thus makes possible our joy.  

O truly necessary sin of Adam,

destroyed completely by the death of Christ!

O happy fault,

that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

Easter answers the oft-recurring questions, How could God have allowed such a simple, solitary act to expel all of us from His presence in Paradise?  Is He so eager to punish?  This puts a very fine point on the mystery in which we rejoice, which the Church often cites throughout the year:  O God, who wondrously created human nature, and still more wonderfully redeemed it!  

Lest we get lost in the cosmic significance of it all, it is clear that this great act of God our Father is deeply personal, both to Him, in what it cost, and to you and me, for whom He paid such a great price:

O wonder of your humble care for us!

O love, O charity beyond all telling,

to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!

Not surprisingly, the Easter Proclamation is yet another part of our liturgical patrimony whose promise was restored in the much-improved translation of the Missal, introduced back in December 2011.  One feature that pleases many is that the bees are back.  Yes, bees: remember, this is a hymn for the dedication of a great candle:

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father

accept this candle, a solemn offering

the work of bees and of your servants’ hands…

This is particularly welcome news around here at St. B’s, since the mascots of our school and all our athletic teams are the Bees.

Like the Resurrection itself, the Exsultet happens only once, and at night – each year in the Sacred Liturgy, at least.  But thanks be to God and His holy Church for this single song of praise, which for a millennium and a half has let us know precisely what the Resurrection sounds like.  Uncountable voices unite to proclaim what God has done for us, rocking the very foundations of the world, shaking this very church each Sunday.

Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,

arrayed with the lightning of his glory

let this holy building shake with joy,

filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.

Amen!  Alleluia!  May this Divinely-given joy fill your homes and your lives throughout the year.  Joined by Father Brillis and Father Novajosky, and all who work here at the heart of your parish to keep the song going, I wish you Blessed Easter.  Exult!  

Monsignor Smith

How much is enough?

Enough!   It seems such a simple word, but it can be powerful.  Used in self-defense, it can stop us from over-indulging, as when we find ourselves drawn back to a heavy-laden buffet; or being over-served, as by an indulgent grandma, aunt, or barkeep.  Used for governance, it can announce that the threshold has been reached beyond which penalties will be imposed, such as to a carload of rowdy children.  But also, and often, it is the word of condemnation.

Some people use it to condemn themselves.  I do not pray enough, they say in confession.  I do not love my children enough, or I am not patient enough with my kids, they say.  They grieve their shortfall.

I ask you, though, what I often will ask them: Who does pray enough?  How much prayer is enough?  Only Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Who does love enough?   Who is patient enough?  Again, only God and His sinless mother manage that; this is why we are so attached to them.  With quantity impossible to set, as for prayer, or love, or patience, the accusation of not enough is guaranteed to condemn.   

If this is how we accuse ourselves, then we damn ourselves to continual misery, since we are in fact constitutionally incapable of loving God, our neighbor, or even our spouses or children enough.  We are all wounded by Original Sin, which leaves as its scar a large streak of selfishness and limitation.  Nonetheless, we can be aware of our insufficiency, and grieve. 

It is different when we fail in a specific, discrete act that CAN be counted.  In such cases, to use the word is a deception, for example to say, I don’t go to Mass enough.  Our obligation is clear to attend Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, unless impeded by specific circumstances like sickness.  More accurate, and more honest, would be to confess: I missed Mass last week for no good reason; or, I forgot about the Holy Day last month; or, I haven’t been to Mass for seven years, except when my mom came to visit.   The hidden benefit of such quantitative honesty is that having named our specific shortfall, we can identify and achieve the necessary and specific remedy. 

The obverse type of obfuscation would be, I lied too much.  How much is the right amount (enough, but not too much) of lying?  Zero!  So, I lied several times, is a more honest self-analysis, and an error we can amend, with the help of God.  

Our culture has lost sight of the reality of Original Sin, and thus the universal insufficiency that characterizes the human race.  The scientific and technological models of predictability and tolerances has been thrust onto human beings, and our laws and our society frequently and freely pronounce judgment on whether someone did enough.  This ambient attitude can hobble us in our mission to grow in grace and virtue.

It can also damage or destroy the very fabric of our community and society.  If of ourselves no human being can ever do enough, then we are always vulnerable to accusations of insufficiency.  If someone is injured on your property, then you obviously failed to do enough to prevent it.  According to our legal system, that makes you liable.  If terrorists fly an airplane into the World Trade Center, clearly someone failed to do enough to prevent it.  But who failed?  The government?  The airlines?  The architects?   According to our norms, we must find out, so liability can be assessed, penalty imposed, and money flow.  

Remembering in honesty our creaturely weakness, we know we never can or will do enough.  I cannot do enough to prevent an elderly Mass-goer from falling and being injured approaching our church, though I pray that no one be injured that way.  Any time you read an article declaring that someone did not do enough – to prevent an injury, or death; to solve a problem, or make something fair; to avoid injustice, or thwart evil – say a prayer for that person as you recognize, there but for the grace of God go I!   For from this analysis there is neither defense nor reprieve.

All power lies with those who publish and accuse people’s insufficiencies.  Whoever admits to having not done enough is already condemned.  In our persistent insufficiency, all that remains for us to hope is that we not be found out.  Yet before God, we know that hope is vain.  

Moved by this awareness, we must admit: I do not do enough.  I stand condemned.  And yet.  This day the Son of God handed Himself over to be crucified, in fulfillment of His Father’s will.  He handed over His spirit, and said, It is finished.  It is consummated.  It is accomplished.  This, and this alone, is sufficient.  

I am redeemed; it is enough.

Monsignor Smith

I bind unto myself this day the strong name of the Trinity

Saint Patrick's idea of a good place to spend Lent

Would Saint Patrick be encouraged, or rather find it strange that his name annually is on the lips of every retailer, restauranteur, and party planner in this faraway nation?  Unlike “Christmas”, “Saint Patrick” is a name and a concept that the most secular around us seem to invoke readily and often.   Add that the reality that this evangelizing saint's strict regime of fasting and penance could not be more distant from the spirit that expects “dispensation” to eat meat on a Lenten Friday when his day falls there, and he may as well be the patron of ironic twists.   

Always falling in the middle of Lent, his feast generates much celebration and precious little consideration of what the saint himself said or did.  There’s no green glitter here, nor corned beef, nor beer, but your observance of your heritage – as a Catholic – should include reading his own words.  Slainte!

Monsignor Smith

My name is Patrick.  I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many.  My father was Calpornius.  He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburnia.  His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner.  I was about sixteen at the time.  At that time, I did not know the true God.  I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others.  We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments.  We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved.  The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth.  It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.

It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith.  Even though it came about late, I recognized my failings.  So, I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God, and he looked down on my lowliness and had mercy on my youthful ignorance.  He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil.  He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.

That is why I cannot be silent – nor would it be good to do so – about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity.  This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven.

This is because there is no other God, nor will there ever be, nor was there ever, except God the Father.  He is the one who was not begotten, the one without a beginning, the one from whom all beginnings come, the one who holds all things in being – this is our teaching.  And his son, Jesus Christ, whom we testify has always been, since before the beginning of this age, with the father in a spiritual way.  He was begotten in an indescribable way before every beginning.  Everything we can see, and everything beyond our sight, was made through him.  He became man; and, having overcome death, was welcomed to the heavens to the Father.  The Father gave him all power over every being, both heavenly and earthly and beneath the earth.  Let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, in whom we believe and whom we await to come back to us in the near future, is Lord and God.  He is judge of the living and of the dead; he rewards every person according to their deeds.  He has generously poured on us the Holy Spirit, the gift and promise of immortality, who makes believers and those who listen to be children of God and co-heirs with Christ.  This is the one we acknowledge and adore – one God in a Trinity of the sacred name.

He said through the prophet: ‘Call on me in the day of your distress, and I will set you free, and you will glorify me.’  Again he said: ‘It is a matter of honor to reveal and tell forth the works of God.’

Although I am imperfect in many ways, I want my brothers and relations to know what I’m really like, so that they can see what it is that inspires my life.

… I pray for those who believe in and have reverence for God.  Some of them may happen to inspect or come upon this writing which Patrick, a sinner without learning, wrote in Ireland.  May none of them ever say that whatever little I did or made known to please God was done through ignorance.  Instead, you can judge and believe in all truth that it was a gift of God. This is my confession before I die.

Saint Patrick

born in Roman Britain in 387; died at Saul, Ireland, on March 17, 461

 

Revealed in voices, places, and faces

Why, it must be Thursday!**

Christ used stories because we have stories; the Church gives us Christ’s life and all Scripture broken down into stories because stories fit into our lives.  Not only are we able to recognize and understand the story of salvation, and the parables of Jesus, because they have reflections in our own stories, but also so that the holy stories become part of our own stories.

Lent lays out the story for us in one long, familiar pattern, where each day and its stories come on a schedule that help us recognize how far along we are on the path, the Great Fast of Forty Days.  Ash Wednesday reminds us to beware of doing religious acts for other people to see, right before we smirch our faces.  The first Sunday, Christ is in the desert; and the second, He is transfigured.  The three-year cycle scrambles the next several Sundays from year to year until we find our feet firmly in the Passion, and while clutching our palms, we know again where we are, and where Christ is.  We hope there’s less distance between us than when first we started.

But the weekdays of Lent suffer no variety of programming, bringing the same Scripture to the same day year after year.   On Thursday of the first week of Lent, as I read the Gospel of the Rich Man and Lazarus on his doorstep, I was transported to a moment in the late 1980’s, when I heard Fr. Brainerd (remember him?) proclaim and preach it.  Jesus’ story that day begins, There was a rich man who dressed in purple and linen; which is exactly how Fr. Brainerd, as the priest must necessarily be, was dressed for that Mass.  Yes, I remember; Thursday was the day that after work I went by metro to the Cathedral for Mass. 

As I may have told you before, each day of Lent has a place attached too, a church in Rome where the Stational Mass is offered, according to ancient tradition.  From my seminary days through my later assignment there, I would trek each Lenten day to the appointed church for the dawn Mass (in English) organized by the North American College seminarians.  That’s nine Lents, and some of the churches are inseparable in my mind from the days and their scriptures.  

Tuesday of the second week of Lent brings Christ’s Gospel admonition to call no man on earth your Father, a loaded moment for a church full of current and future priests.  The church that day is Santa Balbina, one of the least popular, least attractive churches on the rotation.  It’s a simple, ancient, heavy church built into the back slope of the Caelian hill, which has risen over the intervening millennium or so, that the interior of the church is more like a basement, and a damp one at that in the Roman winter morning chill.  The cracked walls are lit by bare bulbs hanging on wires from the undecorated ceiling; its one glory is a magnificent if anomalous inlaid marble throne against the wall behind the altar.  That Gospel reading takes me straight there every year, bringing a chill to the back of my neck, but sparing me the long walk along the Tiber and Circus Maximus.

Monday of the fifth week of Lent is at San Crisogono, one of the original churches in the stational lineup, which means it goes back to the fifth century.  You should visit the excavations beneath the current, medieval church when next you are in Rome, but you won’t -- because this isn’t even the most important or beautiful church in its own neighborhood of Trastevere, much less in the city.  Anyway, the Old Testament reading that day, the longest first reading in the whole lectionary, is the story from Daniel of Susanna and the two dirty old men.   My first year there, my classmate (now-Msgr.) Tom Cook of Winona, Minnesota, declaimed it with such relish and emphasis that every year, it is his voice I hear say: Your fine lie has cost you your HEAD!

Finally, finally, in my last year as a pilgrim in these Lents, I was called as a substitute for a priest who became ill, and was able to be principal celebrant and homilist at Mass for Wednesday in the fifth week of Lent, at the church of San Marcello.  One of that church’s most striking features is an enormous fresco of the crucifixion which is on the back wall above the entry doors, which means I got to appreciate it from the ambo and altar.  The Gospel for that day is from John 8, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.  That very excerpt is carved into marble over the main entrance of Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.  Coincidence?  You make the call.

Unrehearsed, unresearched, these moments come to me clear as light.  Such is the power of liturgy and God’s Holy Word to break through the prison of our present moment and transport us into the Communion that is outside of time yet unabating in our lives. 

The story of our salvation, the stories that Jesus told to His disciples and that they have told to us, become entwined with our own stories when we encounter them in moments of grief or joy, in our need or in our distraction, recalling us to the awesome truth that no matter where our feet stand on this earth, our eyes and ears behold the very mysteries of heaven. 

Monsignor Smith

**The church interior pictured is that of San Giorgio in Velabro, the Station Church for the second day  of Lent, the day after Ash Wednesday.  The connections, of course, are more complicated than that.   

Just a few weeks before my seminary class arrived in Rome at the end of August, 1993, in a "warning" to Pope John Paul II after his strong condemnation of "the Mafia" (for lack of a better word for Italian organized crime), two powerful bombs were detonated, one of which blew to bits the ancient carved stone portico of this church.  San Giorgio was closed for years thereafter as the portico and church were restored, and the Stational Mass was moved to a nearby church, usually the bizarre, octagonal San Teodoro, whose vinyl, high-backed benches resembled nothing so much as school-bus seats.  But I digress.  At some point the Lenten pilgrims got into San Giorgio again, I THINK before I finished seminary, maybe my fourth year.   

No less significantly, this is the church in which Father Ben Petty, son of this parish, delivered his first homily to family and friends on the day after he was ordained deacon in 2018 at St. Peter's in the Vatican, so by his gracious invitation I have also celebrated Mass at this altar. 

Notice that the church is off-square, and the walls of the nave not parallel.  You can see it clearly using the grid on the church ceiling for comparison. 

Just a leg to stand on?

Sitting in the barber chair this week I heard the fellow sitting next to me telling his barber about what he was and was not doing for Lent.  I was moderately delighted and even surprised that somebody “in the outside world” even knew it was Lent and was speaking about it beyond his most intimate circle.  Wow, church-talk, right here in the barbershop!

Sometimes, from our island of sanctification here on the boulevard, I look at the flow of traffic and the souls it bears along, and I wonder how many among them even know the great and saving work of God in Christ that is being accomplished here, and how many would recognize the culture nurtured by the sacraments and liturgy that we allow to shape the fabric of our lives.  The intimacy with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that forms and informs us; the conversations with the Holy Mother of God that pour out so earnestly; the sadness for our sins, and the expectation and extension of forgiveness. 

Not everyone enjoys this divine light and celestial music in their busy modern lives; not everyone in their desperation or their satisfaction knows to whom to turn with petition and with thanks.  This grand reality of diversity which we celebrate with increasing uniformity admits by its own definition us who worship God, with the many who do not worship God, and not only because they come from foreign lands or alien cultures. 

Into this polyglot conversation, we joyfully admit that we “do something” for Lent, rather like rooting for the team from our childhood hometown.   Perhaps it is our contribution to the picturesque expectations of the to-each-his-own crowd.  But if we stop to think about it, already it’s been a few weeks since we remembered that Lent, the Great Fast, has three equal legs, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.   Maybe, just maybe, by this time we’ve settled for That Thing We Gave Up and we’re calling that Lent.  Rather than hope this one-legged stool can keep us upright, perhaps now is a good time to review, refresh, and renew our participation in what we know can and should shape us for the whole year.

Privileged to pay pilgrimage to Fatima for the first time this past autumn, I was both moved and encouraged by the events that occurred there, and the personalities who participated.  Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children out in the rustic and rugged landscape where they followed their charges.  They were young, but serious beyond our imagining about their responsibilities to their families, and about their faith.   Our Lady asked of them one thing: that they pray.

But they already prayed.  They prayed almost constantly; it’s how they passed the time while they were together.  They prayed alone, too.  They skipped school to visit the church and pray more.  Yet Our Lady asked them to pray.  

They were not insulted by the suggestion that their prayer was insufficient; they did not argue that they were already quite prayerful, possibly even as much as was prudent.  No, they listened to Our Lady’s request and with renewed fervor set about praying – for those who did not pray.

By the power of the Holy Cross on which the sinless Son of God died for all our sins, we, you and I, like the children of Fatima, can offer our sacrifice not only for our own sins, but also for the sins of others.   We can deny ourselves pleasures for the good of other people who seek only pleasure.  And we can pray for people who do not pray.   

This powerful work of reparation, which is grounded in and modeled after Christ’s saving act on the Cross, is our participation in and emulation of the divine charity that is our only hope.  To pray for those who do not pray, to offer sacrifice for those who do not worship, to attend to the glory of God for the benefit of those who pay Him no mind, this also is the invitation of Lent.  

Almsgiving is the material work of charity and bears great fruit toward the forgiveness of our own sins.  We give from what we ourselves were planning to use, a self-denial that is not limited to fasting.  And yet, Jesus asks for more, though not material: prayer, the sacrifice of time and attention and care and love.  Is it harder to sacrifice our limited time, our precious attention, for someone who does not care for nor love us, or for someone who does not care for nor love God?  Yet Christ does both, and insists that we too do both.   

It is a shock to encounter faith and prayer anywhere outside of church because it is, in reality, uncommon.  Lent calls us not only to do penance for our own sins, but also to offer sacrifice on behalf of those who do not worship, and to pray for the ones who do not pray.  We are graced to know that our very lives depend on our communion with Christ; this knowledge compels us to pray for all who do not share this awareness, and the joy it bestows on us; to pray for them as if their lives depend on it.  

Monsignor Smith