One deft stroke

In a city of museums, in a museum of countless paintings, there is one particular brush stroke.   That solitary streak of paint, combining several tints to render the tone of a woman’s skin, is a flash of the divine image and likeness at work in every work of art.

Just when I first saw Diego Velázquez’ The Needlewoman, I cannot be certain, so let’s just say back in the ‘eighties.  It may have been my visit to the National Gallery of Art as a college freshman in Washington for the weekend, or soon after I was graduated and moved here.  The room where it hung quickly became a favorite with its great Spanish paintings, including The Return of the Prodigal by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Jusepe de Ribera.  It is the only work by Velázquez in that room, the only one in the collection.  

It was the effect of repeated visits and lingering views that drew me in to the mystery of a portrait of a hidden face revealing a woman without a name.  This is no portrait of nobility, nor personage of note.  There is no crown or armor, no jewels nor sash.  No rosary or prayerbook marks piety; no landscape in the background identifies place or property.  The customary characteristics that reveal person and personality are absent or only alluded to; even the “windows to the soul,’ her eyes, do not open to the viewer. Her clothing is dark and simple; her gesture, her posture, her whole person is focused on a place outside of herself.  But what the work she holds is or will become is not identifiable, nor does it matter. 

Staring at the painting, we see something invisible.  And lest we miss it, at the very center of the composition, her finger firmly, confidently, and quickly pushes the needle home.  But look closely and see – there is no finger there.  I do not know how long it took me to realize that; no nail nor knuckle is depicted.  It is more of a streak, a flash, a hint, but also a depiction of far more than simply a dexterous digit.  

Showing more than the unnamed woman’s creative labor, Velázquez shows us what makes her and us not only human, but also like God.  The depiction is of diligence in pursuit of perfection.   The painting is a craftsman’s hymn to craft, an artist’s acknowledgment of art.  

The invisible reality shown so clearly by this artist is that human skill, knowledge, and labor is like God’s own in the work of creation.  Velázquez’ makes visible human dignity itself.  Seeing that, we see also how art is for man what the sacraments are for God.

Velázquez uses one thing, common enough and good in itself, to make present another thing.  Some oil and pigments are transformed into a finger, and far more than a finger: an intention, an effort, an ability, and an accomplishment. Using paint to make a finger is only one level of what he is doing. 

The painting is of a person, yes, but more than that, it reveals something universally human, and true.  To see what is true in the painting is to see what is true in us.  To recognize that universal reality rather than the identity of the woman is to receive the sacrament that is Velázquez’ art.  

God uses simple things to make visible what we need but cannot see, so we can find them and receive them. Forgiveness and healing, intimacy and nourishment.  Human beings use simple things to make visible what we cannot see so we can name them and acknowledge them: virtues and vices, sin and forgiveness, beauty, truth, and goodness.  Art reveals nature, both human and divine.

That solitary local example of the great painter’s work convinced me of the imperative to visit the Prado in Madrid, a goal I maintained for decades.  Finally just over a year ago, I was able to spend two days in that great gallery, basking in more of his paintings than I could count or recount.   But because this one has been on my mind this month, I stopped into the National Gallery to try to see it while I was in the neighborhood for the March for Life.  It is not on display!   Likely travelling to some distant exhibition, Velázquez’ work deserves its new admirers.  

Do not hop onto the Metro just yet, but she’ll be back sometime, our Needlewoman.  In the meantime, the infernal machine can bring some light along with its less savory freight, and you can marvel at her on your phone or computer on the National Gallery’s web site.   https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.88.html.  Zoom in on the brush stroke.

Monsignor Smith

Echoes in the Square

You could see a lot from our porch.

You know how I am about anniversaries.  You also know that I am getting to be old enough that what passes now for “historic events” overlap with my own lifetime, and sometimes even involve my participation.  With the turning of the calendar and the effort to write the correct year whenever I date something, all that ‘2025’ reminds me that twenty years ago this month began the historic year 2005, historic especially for the Church, and historic especially in Rome.  You know where I was then, don’t you?

2005 began peacefully enough for me, another year in the service of Cardinal Baum as his priest secretary.  I will say I was getting the hang of it, though I wouldn’t suggest I was getting good at it.  In previous years we had returned to Washington for Christmas, since the work the Cardinal was involved in generally was suspended for the long holiday.  This year, however, we had returned there for the funeral of Cardinal Hickey, who had died in late October, then remained at the Washington residence through Thanksgiving.  Cardinal Baum resided locally in Cardinal O’Boyle’s former house in Tenleytown, behind the old Immaculata High School.   We were back in Rome for Advent.

Commercial, cultural Christmas is not one of the things that Rome does particularly well, with fake trees and evergreen garlands, red bows and lights looking desperately out of place among the piazzas and palms of that gracious city.  The Vatican, of course, is another matter.  Saint Peter’s Square featured an enormous nativity scene, under construction since All Saints Day, and a six-story fir tree trucked in from some cold and mountainous part of Europe – was it Slovenia that year? – decked with silver and gold and lights.  This practice, which now seems so normal, had been introduced by Pope John Paul II to much acclaim and some dissent, as old-time Italian curialists could still be heard muttering about Quel’ Polaccaccia – that Polish horror.  

The Holy Father was increasingly infirm and in pain but would celebrate Mass unless under doctor’s orders to stay in bed.  I am not certain, but believe I went to Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Pope’s Christmas Eve Mass.  It would have been easy enough, as we lived just across the Piazza and I had standing admission to the good seats for any Papal events, even if I was not with the boss.  My Cardinal would not have gone to a late-evening event because of his own infirmities.  There is a special chalice that the Pope only uses for Christmas, and I seem to recall seeing it.  John Paul would enter and leave the Basilica on a rolling platform with a chair, since walking that far, or even standing that long, was now impossible for him. 

Our household would have had Mass together in our chapel.  That included not only Cardinal Baum and me but also Monsignor James Gillen, who had served the Cardinal as his secretary since 1974, and because he was born the same year as the Pope rather needed a helper himself, so that was the other part of my job.  Every Sunday, we watched the Pope’s Angelus address from his office window in the Apostolic Palace, but on Christmas Day he gave the Urbi et Orbi greeting – to the city and the world – from the central loggia of the Basilica.  While it was blaring from the televisions of my older housemates, I preferred to go out onto our balcony to see with my own eyes and receive unmediated the papal blessing.

We had a Christmas pranzone, a grand midday dinner, for several Cardinals and Archbishops in the service of the Holy See, some American, some retired.  It was a most festive occasion, and I realized what a privilege it was to sit at the edge of that remarkable group, several of whom had first met as helpers at the Second Vatican Council, all of whom had seen and participated in great events of the Church.  Cardinal Baum always treated me as a friend and equal in those conversations, but I knew my role was more like that of a subaltern, and helped with the table, and listened.  

While the meal was cordial and festive, I do recall that one of the participants raised an observation that was troubling, dark forces and contrary wills even then at work in the heart of the Church.  All grew serious for a while in addressing the phenomenon, then the holiday humor returned even though I was left a little rattled.

After Epiphany we settled into the routine of another year with meetings, Masses, and visitors.  Cardinal Baum already ‘enjoyed poor health’ as the old saying would have it, with the effect of spinal surgeries and macular degeneration compounding the challenges of age.  But then in mid-February he developed a case of shingles – on his face.  It was awful and he was in agony.  We booked a Monday flight to Washington and his local doctors.  The day before our departure, from our balcony to his window for the Sunday Angelus would be the last I would see Pope John Paul II alive.   

2025 will be a year of anniversaries.

Monsignor Smith

On reticence

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

My own mom is not the only mother who left this admonition graven on the minds of her children.  The impulse to criticize, to chastise, to mock or deride is strong in the hearts of men (and children), and the ease with which a sharp comment or snark come to mind and tongue is no credit to the (human) race.  To leverage a statement of another’s weakness or shortcoming to elevate oneself seems the easiest and most natural thing for one to do – child’s play, in fact.  Which necessity brings about the universal maternal monition not to do it.

When I was a freshman in college, I hung out with a bunch of guys with whom I had little in common except residential proximity.  My one buddy who lived nearby on the dorm next to a guy from Long Island, and they both joined the same frat with other Long Islanders, so I rolled for months with this New York-accented smack-talking mutual-mockery society that fashioned itself friends.  We mocked, derided, snarked, and laughed and laughed.  

Until: having noted how much of my talking was trash, that Lent I resolved to say nothing negative about anybody else either in earnest or in jest.  Suddenly while I was with these guys, there was nothing to say.  By spring, I was spending a lot of time reading on my own.  Sophomore year I started over with new friends.

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all can leave one with nothing to say.  But, since “nice” is not the same as “good”, much less “true”, perhaps we need more options.

The sin of detraction is when needlessly we relate negative things about another when the negative is true.  Saying something negative that is untrue is calumny, a different sin.  When we tell the new neighbors that the old lady on the corner is a miser, that is detraction; when we say that the young couple across the street are probably Chinese spies, that is (most likely) calumny.  Clearly, Christians should be avoid both.

However, there remains the possibility of making a negative and critical observation about another without incurring sin.  In fact, it can be right and necessary to do so under certain circumstances.  

A person responsible for training a new worker must report honestly the failures of the neophyte, in order that that trainee not be given responsibility he is unable to meet and so that remedial training be given.  Depending on the seriousness of the work, lives could be at stake.  Who wants a doctor who was trained by people who never pointed out his mistakes? 

In our disoriented society where to state that an action is wrong is often taken as asserting that the one who did it is a ‘bad person,’ we cannot lose sight of our ability and obligation to evaluate actions, starting with our own actions, and then the actions of people for whom we have some responsibility – parents, teachers, coaches, pastors.  We are obliged to correct and even reprimand, remedy and retrain.   But even then, to publicize or broadcast these shortcomings is usually unnecessary and often counterproductive.  Performance evaluations and parenting are both bad places to engage in mockery and shaming, but where criticism and correction are necessary. 

Similarly, when we observe bad action on the part of somebody for whom we are NOT responsible, there remains the likelihood that we have a responsibility to point it out to those who are under our care – our children, students, and trainees.  Do not buy his product, or, you should not follow her example or instruction, are both valid and even necessary sometimes, again as long as we be speaking to people for whom we have some obligation to instruct and guide.

Be wary of that man, his intentions, and his words, can be a harsh but necessary admonition, in all Christian love, in the circumstances where one has authority and obligation, where people count on one’s guidance.  More broadly, however, in simply social settings, If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Monsignor Smith

Holding On to Hand It On

Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20)
but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy our local attachments, too.

If you were sent with your family to live in a foreign country, what would you do as mother and father, heads of the household, to maintain the fabric and culture of your family?

I lived in Italy for long periods over nine years, so even though I was in a community of US citizens large (the seminary) or small (Cardinal Baum’s household), I know how it can go to pick up some local practices while carefully nurturing habits from home.  At the NAC we were well-known among the Romans for our Giorno di Ringraziamento (Thanksgiving) feast and our Quattro Luglio (Fourth of July) cookout.  When we came home to the US, the other guys made fun of us for our Italian affectations - yet they readily ate our pasta dishes.

So what of the local culture would you pick up, and what of your own culture would you nurture and maintain?   A lot would depend on just how foreign the culture is.

I thought of this on New Year’s Morning as I sat at my desk and saw cars filling the lot for the 11:00 Mass for the Holy Day.  Mary the Mother of God is a day that puts the Mass-goer at odds with the local culture, as New Year festivities before, during, and after the revelry consume most people’s day.   It was especially obvious that morning, when almost no other cars were on the road, nobody out and about even as midday approached, except the faithful assembling for Mass.  And the faithful did come, in numbers that surprised me.  All three of the Masses had good crowds, though predictably the 8:30’s was not large.

As is often the case when there is a big gap between what we are doing here at the parish and what most people around us are doing, it was a delightful time for everybody to be together.  People were cheerful and happy to be together, participating in the prayers and music, mixing and visiting afterward with the ease and comfort of familiarity and trust.  Meanwhile, 99.9 percent of the local population had no idea of what we were doing, or why.

Moments like that highlight how much like living in a foreign country are our lives as Catholics right here in twenty-first century Silver Spring Maryland USA.  One of my favorite early Christian texts is the Letter to Diognetus from around the year 200 AD, which makes the similarity clear:

And yet there is something extraordinary about their (Christians’) lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

Isn’t it funny that the author’s first choices to illustrate the difference (in 200 AD!) are marriage, sex, and not exterminating children?  Some things never change!  But that’s hardly the only thing that distinguishes us.  His whole thrust is that Catholics choose what of their own culture they cling to, and what of the local culture they accept and engage in.

It is not unhealthy for mothers and fathers to take stock of the local culture and make a similar evaluation.  How much of it should our family take part in, and what that is common here and now (“everybody else is doing it!”) should our family exclude?  And like every healthy migrant family, we should take particular care and make every effort to nurture and maintain the practices that strengthen and keep our family’s precious heritage, faith and eternal life in Christ.  

In such circumstances, it does not have to be a day when the bulk of the populace is either binge-watching or binge-drinking to make it a good day to take the family to Mass together, then share a meal with others who do the same thing – whether we knew them before, or only met them today.  The domestic church, the family, is the smallest unit of Christ’s Body the Church, so to identify the family’s home and to choose the family’s activities to be places where Christ is the foundation of the event is how best to maintain the fabric and culture of your family while we are passing through this foreign land.

Monsignor Smith

Images of the Invisible

This week brings less a letter than a photo essay.  Pictures or images are suitable this weekend, as we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord – the “showing forth” of the one true God, the Word become flesh, the invisible God become visible, the image of the invisible God.  

The Epiphany of our Lord is multifaceted, though most of us think only of the Three Wise Men, the Kings, the Magi from the East, who follow the signs in which they are experts that point the way to the new-born King, and the come to adore and offer gifts.  But the other two aspects are just as significant, revealing the Godhead of Jesus to a wider and less specialized audience.  The second is Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, demonstrating His command over nature and substance, as well as His concern for people’s joy; and the third is His Baptism, in which the heavens opened, the Spirit descended like a dove, and all present heard the voice of the Father say, behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!  

For all of us in the rectory, it has become a favorite tradition to assemble the Parishioner Tree, where we hang the Christmas cards that arrive from throughout the parish.  We started because it seemed such a shame merely to look once then put aside these marvelous images of the love that makes up the smallest units of the Church, the family, also known as the domestic Church.  This way, we all enjoy seeing them for several weeks, every time we pass through the front office.  The tree is right by the counter at the front door, so anyone who comes to request a Mass intention can enjoy it; last weekend, one substitute letter-carrier was quite delighted.  It will stay up for a few more days, so stop by now to check it out for yourself.  

The cards are a help to identify faces and names of newer parishioners, and sometimes just to figure out who goes with whom – oh, he is her dad!  We learn about travel to exciting places, children who have moved on from the family home, and maybe even have kids of their own.  We have cards from “distinguished alumni” of the parish who still send cards after they have moved away, even as far away as North Carolina and Pennsylvania.  There’s nothing like a photo of a lanky teenager who was seven years old last you saw him, and the baby who was born after they moved away who is now eight years old, to mark the passage of time.

Let these photos help motivate you.  The threefold Epiphany multiplies to many, many more smaller epiphanies in these manifestations of God’s presence in the Church.  The images reveal the presence of divine love abiding in the flesh and blood of our families united by the Holy Eucharist.  Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!

Monsignor Smith