Teeming with life

When visitors to our parish stop to say hello to me after Mass, the one comment most frequent is how many young families we have.  That may be an edited version of commenting how many children were at Mass, and how noticeable they were; but either way I joyfully acknowledge it.  Yes, it can be a little rowdy in the pews; isn’t that a marvelous part of worshipping God?

Last week at the end of my Masses, I reinforced the announcement about the upcoming (next week!) Fall Festival.  Invite people, I urged, who do not usually come here because they are not Catholic or not local, if you think they might enjoy a family-friendly afternoon.  It dawned on me to make the point not only because families with children have too few options attuned to their needs and that welcome them, but also because so many people, like those Sunday visitors from other dioceses in other parts of the country, no longer have any opportunity to be around families with children.

A few months ago, Timothy Carney, a local writer, gave me a copy of his most recent book.  I have known him since he was a solo young professional in the city (when I was in Chinatown); after that he was a parishioner here for a year or two when his family was getting started.  He then moved over by Saint Andrews for a longer time, and finally now is in Falls Church, Virginia (so his new pastor tells me).  His book starts with a description of our parish’s Friday Night on the Field, what I call munchkinball.  He makes it his lead example of what there is not nearly enough of, that is, time for kids to be kids together, and adults to let them do that while enjoying one another’s company.  

Among other things, this decisively sets apart from all that surrounds us in this, our little garden patch of heaven under the maples.  In our metropolis, children are scheduled, supervised, channeled, and contained, isolated and exempted from the general flow of society.  Their carefully chosen companions tend to be exactly their age and socio-economic group, and their activities directed and evaluated.  Parents provide transportation.  

The name of Tim’s book is Family Unfriendly, and he diagnoses this as one of the symptoms of what is terribly unhealthy about our culture.   I admit I have not finished the book, but neither have I read only the parts that mention our parish.  He has a genuine insight, and I commend it to your attention.  

For years I have heard some of the negative experiences of our parish parents who find dirty looks or open criticism when in public places with their children, more than two at a time. But my own experience makes me suspect there are also other people, possibly many of them, who have a different attitude and a different reaction to seeing families and children.  

With no children of my own, I have nonetheless become accustomed to the environment here at the parish where kids are woven into the fabric of every gathering.  Sure, we have a school where kids take classes, and we have sports leagues where kids play in organized and supervised teams.  But that’s not the ONLY place the kids are; no, they are everywhere, and very often doing entirely their own thing, but also sometimes interacting freely and appropriately with people of other ages from other families whom they may or may not know terribly well.  Many if not most of them freely interact with me, always forthrightly, almost always politely, and in a manner that is best described as ‘childlike’.  (There’s an endorsement of being ‘childlike’ somewhere from somebody important, but I cannot lay hand to it just now).  This is one thing I enjoy most, and that I miss most on the rare occasions I take a vacation that lasts into a second week.  

What about the other people like me, who do not have their own children or whose children are not nearby, but would find it invigorating and encouraging to be in an environment where kids are being kids in a happy and healthy way, and their parents are letting them enjoy it?  It is so beautiful, so human, and so normal, it is hard to fathom how and why we have let it become so rare.

It is a matter of pride and delight for me when those visitors comment on the youthful rambunctiousness of our Sunday Masses.  I hope you, too, find our family-friendly parish and her young, energetic members a source of pride and delight, which you invite people you care about to share and enjoy.

Monsignor Smith

 

What do you know?

I believe precisely in order to understand. 

This statement from Francis Cardinal George, late Archbishop of Chicago, struck a chord with me as I read his posthumously published book, A Godly Humanism.  It resonated with a train of thought that had been chugging around in my head for the past few weeks: from the Big Bang onward, every event and element in the universe originates with and points to God, our origin and goal. 

Throughout the quarter of a century he served as bishop, Cardinal George was widely recognized to be the most intellectually capable member of the US hierarchy.  I was blessed to encounter him early and often during that time, and always found him kind and personable.  Frank and direct would also describe him, as his intellectual rigor revealed itself in unhesitant honesty.  All of this made him stand out among the many bishops I knew.

As Cardinal George prepared for death by the cancer that had come back for the third time, he meditated on the relationship between the realm of the intellect and the realm of faith, and their seeming clash in our nation and culture.  He found both to be bound up inseparably not only in his own life, but in human nature and experience.  It is insight from personal experience that he offers in his book.

He responds graciously and eloquently to the common assertion that faith and reason are opposites.  I am so grateful for this, because it has been bothering me lately.  There is so much science and discovery and insight out there, and every shred of it points to magnificence of its Creator.  Everything beautiful and everything dangerous, everything thunderous and everything still, resounds with the genius and glory of God.

In a time when we have a popular television show called The Big Bang Theory, with characters who are nerdy and supposedly extremely smart, most people do not know that the eponymous theory originated with the scientific work of a priest, Fr. Georges LeMâitre, SJ.  The intelligence and learning of the characters on the show include no interest in God, much less any concern for Divine instruction that would shed light on how they should live.  The smug and willful ignorance depicted is both widespread and pernicious.

To call oneself “agnostic” is fashionable, but how many realize that etymologically, it simply means “without knowledge?”  In common usage, it indicates a conviction that one cannot know about God, and therefore one does not know, and should not behave as if he does.  On the contrary, ignorance of God not only requires a great deal of effort to maintain, but must also first be taught or instructed.  

One of the phrases that Cardinal George brings out is the ancient formula, credo ut intelligam: I believe that I may understand.  It is the exact opposite of what so many people assert now, the proposition that one must choose either to have faith, or to have knowledge.  He explains: Because there are things beyond human understanding, faith is a vision of reality larger than that given by our own experience.  It’s a way of understanding something that reason couldn’t discover.  Once (divine) revelation has helped us to see things we wouldn’t see without its data, then we can begin to understand what has been given us by using the power of reason.

The irony is that faith, specifically Christian faith, is the root of so much of our scientific knowledge.  The foundation for the scientific inquiry that has brought about our technological mastery was and remains our confidence in the God who is intelligible to us, and in whose likeness we are able to know Him and all His work.   Therefore, you and I are better able to understand any and every science, any and every aspect of reality, because we study and believe in God.

This is why I nurture, protect, and value my faith, and why I ground every consideration and decision in what it teaches me.  Because I believe precisely in order to understand. 

Monsignor Smith

 

Resonances

Well, this week has been a bit manic, and the moment for your letter arrived too fast after other moments that were claimed or spent or demanded.  It’s not a bad thing to read and reflect, to wrap our minds around words deeper than first they seem.  It trains our brains for the Word, and helps our hearts find truth.  I hand the baton to Czeslaw Milosz, an old favorite who can be counted on to lay it out before us.

Monsignor Smith

 

Account

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle's flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own — but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it's late.  And the truth is laborious.

 

Window

I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree
translucent in brightness. 

And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with
fruit stood there. 

Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of what
happened in my sleep.

 

And Yet The Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, 
That appeared once, still wet 
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, 
And, touched, coddled, began to live 
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, 
Tribes on the march, planets in motion. 
“We are,” they said, even as their pages 
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame 
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth 
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more: 
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant, 
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. 
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, 
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

 

 

Sons of the Father

Father & son

Labor Day evening, I came home from my folks’ early enough to slip in with Fr. Novajosky and watch the end of the first episode of Ken Burns’ video series, The Civil War.  I knew what was coming and could almost recite along as the narrator read Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife, Sarah, professing his love and accurately predicting his death in battle.  He had so hoped, he said, to have seen with her their boys “grown to honorable manhood,” one of several poignant phrases that never loses its resonance.  

Prescinding for the moment from the value of ‘manhood’, let’s simply leave it as a differentiation from ‘boyhood’ and move to the real question here: ‘honorable.’  As often as we hear the word ‘honor’ used in our own time, do we give any thought to what it meant in our country a century or two ago?

In his book, Young Washington, Peter Stark recounts many of the adventures and episodes in the young adult life of the first president, and frequently cites with bemusement and disapproval the young man’s stated desire to obtain ‘honor’.  Understood in a way that jibes with modern use, it could be taken to mean fame or celebrity, approval, and maybe even fortune.  Today’s cynicism would call his efforts ‘brand management.’  In his shallowness, Stark attributes shallowness to the sine qua non of our nation’s founding.

But in pre-modern American culture, as in a millennium and a half of Christian culture before that, ‘honor’ was more akin to respect and rectitude, a hard-won reputation for doing the right thing, the good thing, the selfless thing, when it was hardest, because it was right and good and selfless.  Honor was the basis of trust, and the requisite for leadership.  It was the greatest asset that a father could bestow on his children, but it could also be squandered or lost by either generation.  George Washington’s family in his youth presented him with such an honor deficit. 

Recently I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that lightly treated the phenomenon of young adults sharing or inquiring after one another’s FICO credit scores as an element of dating or mating.  This is a desperation move by servants of technology in a commoditized society, and its many shortcomings are evident.  This is what is left to a society that values only being ‘true to oneself,’ rather than any real goodness or truth.  It is a vain attempt to fill the gap left by the abandonment of honor.

People are confused now when all the time they hear silliness like the announcer’s invitation before ballgames to “Please stand as we honor our country with a performance of the national anthem.”  We stand for the anthem out of obligation, for our nation’s honor is not dependent on our salute, but rather the reverse.  We salute our nation who bestows on us the honor of being her citizens or her guests, and when we stand for her anthem, we honor our debt to her.  This behavior is simply honorable but does not garner honor for us, who fulfill the most basic of obligations at little real expense, or even effort.

Honor is not something we bestow on another by our intentions, efforts, or accolades.   When we say we honor our beloved dead, we are honoring our debt of life, and honoring our obligation as Christian souls to pray for them.  We are especially indebted to all whose death obtained anything good for us, like freedom or safety or another day of living, and to fail to repay that would be dishonorable for us but detract nothing from them or their honor.  Be wary of anything proposed ‘in honor of’ someone, or worse yet, a Mass offered ‘in honor of’ any mortal. Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor and glory… 

Fr. Nova was taking up this classic and moving video series as part of his recent wading into that troubled period of our nation’s history.  Knowing my long-time interest, he shares things he learns or encounters, and thereby sparks from me a torrent of thoughts, recollections, and observations that you would think by now he would know enough to be able to dodge.  Such a torrent you might just be enduring even now as you read this.

But Fr. Novajosky has been a good companion these three years because he has not shied away from such complex questions, nor has he refrained from sharing his insights and erudition with me on questions both consequential and recreational.  I think both of us, indeed all of us in the rectory and the parish, have been spurred to do what is right, good, and selfless on more than one occasion because of his participation here these past three years.  His is indeed an honorable priesthood.

Monsignor Smith