Poverty

 Poor Folk was the title Fyodor Dostoyevsky gave to his first book, which he pulled together from the portraits of his neighbors in the poorest quarter of St. Petersburg, Russia, that he had written to hone his craft.  In his early twenties, and this his first work published, he became a literary sensation overnight.  

His masterful Crime and Punishment, written twenty years later, is set in the same quarter, and many of its characters would qualify for the first book’s title.  This spring I re-read it because our Well-read Women graciously invited me to join them in discussing the book.  I also read a biography of Dostoevsky, which helped me to understand why the book had struck me so strongly when I had first read it in high school.   One of its observations was that he always wrote about people, lives, personalities, and gave no time to such distractions as scenery. 

Dostoevsky was animated by a concern for the poor, of which there was no shortage in his beloved Russia.  He also had an eye for their humanity, which made it possible for him to present them in the fullness of their characters, not just as poster-children for their plight.  The situations he described were breathtaking in their desperation, yet his characters were still people with personalities, actors in their drama, capable of love, however unlikely that was; and worthy of love, however undetectable that was.

Once I had put that massive reading project behind me, I took up a book of short stories by modern, U.S. Southern authors that I had put down a few years ago and then lent to someone.  It had been a little too grim for me, too often wallowing for the seeming pleasure of it in the theatrically rough and gruesome situations and actions of the characters it depicted.  My familiarity with the South helped me discern an exaggeration that turned me away from enjoying the authenticity that I admired.  But when the book came back, I took it up for another try, and the first story I randomly chose had in its introduction these lines:

“I think you see people writing now from a class of people that hasn’t spoken at all.  … The attitude … has been that poor people are like everybody else, only with fewer things.  Nobody dealt with just how animalistic your life can be when you don’t have anything.”

Which struck me, even once I had got past the modern American assumption of having invented everything from scratch.  So much of our entertainment for the past century has depicted the rich, even the effortlessly well-to-do: the beautiful, the talented, the well-dressed folk in their gorgeous homes, with no visible means of support.   The steady diet of the plight of the comfortable, whether played for laughs or tears, has led to the above assumption that savage behavior is the result of poverty.  It also implies that comfortable people are savages who need not act as such.  The conclusion waiting to be drawn is that if the poverty were eliminated, the savagery would disappear.   Which explains why so many modern Americans are convinced that they would be happier – and better – if only they had more.  

But Dostoevsky recognized that the fullness of human nature resides in the poor as well as the rich.  A proud man who has given himself to savagery can be raised to the full glory of human life when he accepts the humiliation of unmerited love.  From those who choose to sacrifice even in their destitution we can all learn the real nature of the drama that our comforts disguise.  

The politicians promise to eliminate poverty, while the Truth Himself promises, the poor you will always have with you. (Mt 26:11)  No wealth or comfort can disguise our tendency toward savagery, nor our capacity for nobility.  As Dostoevsky might have explained had he been from Alabama, the Poor Folks’s us.    

Monsignor Smith

 

It is accomplished

 Please let me take this opportunity to share with you some reflections that have occupied me as our parish school concluded this year in which we offered our students pre-K through eighth grade in-person classes, five days a week, since Labor Day, and weekly Mass too.  At the graduation Mass for our eighth graders, I was deeply moved to acknowledge what our school leaders, teachers, and staff have done, what was given to these kids in the year since our last class graduated without proper ceremony.   

What we gave these kids this year was not the result of a financial transaction, but rather of a prior and persistent commitment of this parish to provide to children the school, the structure, the safety, and the society that they require to rise up as fully formed human beings in the image and likeness of God.  Many people worked long hours every week this year, assisted by others far away or even long dead, to fulfil this commitment.  

Yes, we have to charge tuition to do this, but this is a parochial school, not a private one.  We operate at a deficit, not a profit, as every participant contributes to the possibility of the enterprise.  Our teachers give up the 20% more income they could be paid almost anywhere else;  the parish gives the same percentage of her offertory income.  It would be time consuming (not to mention unwelcome publicity for the ones who offer them) to list even half of the services that people offer freely, without charge.  There was no Covid tuition surcharge, no hazard pay.  This whole fiscal year, which ends with this month, we operated at the tuition rate we set and published back in January 2020, two months before the pandemic changed everything.  

Children need school.  Families need school.  The community needs school.  Our civic leadership failed everyone when they failed to stand and say, The children need school, who will give them school?  But it was not too much to ask of our people to sacrifice for the sake of the kids and their families.  I know, because when we planted our flag and said, The children need school, who will join us in giving them school?  they stood and said, Here I am.

It has so little to do with money.  These children need school and so we provided them with school, out of our resources -- personal, professional, and emotional, as well as material.   We are all keenly aware of the limits of our resources; we also have learned a hundred times over how precious and powerful everything we have to give is, when we offer it for the good of another.  Everyone involved could ponder the past year and provide examples, detailing how it was really, truly difficult.  But the funny thing is that now that we have done it, and see the kids who received everything we had to give, nobody seems to be inclined to count the cost.  

More than simply having something that almost none of their peers did, these kids have received what they needed to be themselves, to be fully human.  They received it from what we had to give, and thus also gained some understanding of the potency and the fragility of the project that is their life.  Like many a kid who grew up the Great Depression and didn’t know that their family was poor, these kids know who they are because they know that they were loved.  

The prevailing criteria of power and money can neither see nor explain what our school leaders, teachers, and staff did; it is intelligible only in the economy of love.  It was marked at every stage by sacrifice, personal and communal; and it bore fruit in abundant life, personal and communal.  No political, social, or philosophical system can love; but people can, souls can, where there is freedom.  Where there is also grace in Christ, love bears great fruit that will endure.  

Monsignor Smith

June

 June is the Month of the Sacred Heart.  The Solemnity was Friday, and along with yesterday’s Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it marks the end of the annual liturgical feasts that move because they are calculated from the Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, Easter.   

June is the Month of the Sacred Heart.  You will notice our Mary Altar of May is now occupied by our small Sacred Heart statue; our large one is over the main doors of the church, visible as you leave.  

June is the month of the Sacred Heart; it is a time for us to reflect on the reality of God’s love for us in Christ, and the nature and requirements of that love that He has commanded us to emulate. 

Below are two prayers that have helped me grow in my devotion to the Sacred Heart.  From His pierced Heart flow blood and water that give life to the world, the font and wellspring of the Church’s sacraments.  Pray these prayers to explore the mystery of reparation, which characterizes our participation in the Divine and redeeming love, during June, the month of the Sacred Heart.

Monsignor Smith

 

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

(said by St. Padre Pio for his intentions)

I. O my Jesus, You said “verily I say to You, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you”, behold I knock, I seek and I ask for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

II. O my Jesus, You said, “verily I say to You, whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, He will give to you”, behold in your name I ask the Father for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

III. O my Jesus, You said, “verily I say to You, heaven and earth shall pass away but My words shall not pass away,” behold I encouraged by your infallible words, now ask for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus to whom one thing alone is impossible, namely, not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of Thee through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your and our tender Mother.

Salve Regina. St. Joseph, Foster Father of Jesus, pray for us.

 

Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Oh most holy Heart of Jesus,

fountain of every blessing,

I adore you, I love you,

and with a lively sorrow for my sins,

offer you this poor heart of mine.

Make me humble, patient, pure,

and wholly obedient to Your will.

Grant, good Jesus,

that I may live in You and for You.

Protect me in the midst of danger;

comfort me in my afflictions,

give me health of body, 

assistance in my temporal needs,

Your blessing in all that I do,

and the grace of a holy death.  

Take it up

Taking up what was laid aside; isn’t that what we are all doing these days?  Have you had the experience lately of searching for, then finding, what formerly was a frequently used (or worn) item, and saying, How long since I last used this?  There is probably a lot of that going on these days.

There is also some laying aside of what we had taken up.   Here in the rectory, we kept a box of latex gloves near the bottom step in the hallway; it sat there for so long nobody noticed it any longer.  After stashing a few gloves with my shoe polishing kit, I just put it away in the tool closet.  My car-covid-kit still sits inside the hatch of my VW, with gloves and masks and wipes; perhaps it is time to put away some of that, too.  

There is much chatter about how the past fifteen months have changed people’s habits and priorities.  People assure one another that they realized who and what is most important in their lives, and adjusted accordingly.  Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that every change has been for the good.  Many a friendship has been left to wither, many a generous and life-giving practice prohibited.  

Here at Saint Bernadette Central, we are neither tip-toeing into the new normal, nor rushing heedlessly.   This past weekend, the first under the rules newly given us by our supervisors, was passing glorious.  Faces we had not seen in ages because they had not yet been back, because they had been away at college, or just because they had been covered, were beaming everywhere.   Best of all, this dramatic and difficult transition was marked by an authentic mutual care, one for another; not to crowd or frighten, nor to demand or accuse, but rather to offer everybody whatever would make it possible for us to worship together.  Joy!

This Pentecost gift of the Holy Spirit came right on liturgical schedule, as we received what we had lost in our ability to hear and understand one another despite the different languages and understandings that pushed us apart.  Just in time, too, for this weekend’s exaltation of the Holy Trinity, the being-with-ness of God in His inmost being, the Divine intimacy from Whom we spring and toward Whom we yearn.  Let us savor together the deep necessity of being together.  

Neither rushing nor creeping, we will be taking up again some old practices here at the rectory and in the church, and putting aside some things we took up to accommodate the exigencies of the moment and the months.  We shall be evaluating which things should be which, among these our current Mass schedule, in particular.  Please extend to us the same care and patience you are showing one another as we find our way, like the householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. (Mt 13:52)

We might be out of practice, and we might not achieve one hundred percent right out the gate.  But there is much we can offer to one another as, in earnest, we set about taking up what was laid aside.

Monsignor Smith

Let's do this! - right.

The day is here.  The leaders and guiders of church and state have eased back on the restrictions, and starting Friday evening, once again public worship is permitted in our parish church.  Praise God!   

Now what??

Realize that much still depends on you.  This new virus is still dangerous, and you have responsibility not only for your own health and safety and that of your family or household; but also, you have responsibility toward other believers who will be making their ways back to the Communion we all need to live.  So before you come to church, there are questions you have to answer.

Should YOU go to Mass?

You are finally allowed go to Holy Mass, but you do not HAVE to go.  Because of the health situation, every bishop in the country, including ours, has removed until further notice the obligation to attend Sunday Mass that normally comes with being Catholic.  

You should NOT come to Mass if: 

·      You are medically vulnerable because of your advanced age, susceptibility to infection (immune-suppressed), or other conditions and “co-morbidities.”  (That’s a word most of us didn’t use often three months ago!);

·      You have responsibility to care for someone who is vulnerable;

·      You have been in recent contact with infected persons, because of work or family;

·      You have some harmless condition that nonetheless might frighten other people, for example: violent coughing, or sneezing due to allergies;

·      You cannot get through Mass without a trip to the bathroom;

·      You are not ready to trust other people;

·      You are filled with dread, or your nerves frayed to verge of breakdown, after the long quarantine and daily terrifying news bulletins about the pandemic 

If any of these describe you, by all means, stay where you think you are safest.  We will continue to live-stream Mass for you each week; starting this Sunday, it will be the 11:00 Mass.

If you find yourself hesitant to attend Sunday Mass for any of these considerations, but eager to rejoin the Eucharistic communion, let me suggest what my own parents have been doing since churches reopened where they live.  They attended Mass on a weekday, when fewer people were present, then watched Sunday Mass on live stream.

Who should come to Mass with you?

Here at Saint Bernadette, we love it when everybody comes, and when everybody comes together.  However, you may not want to bring everybody just yet, under the circumstances.  You shouldn’t bring anybody who meets any of the criteria described above, including especially “cannot get through Mass without a trip to the bathroom;” and you may want to leave someone at home to care for them, or keep them company.

We also, very reluctantly because they are some of our favorite people, suggest that children stay home if they are at a stage when they can’t be controlled to keep them safe, and a safe distance from others, including other children; or from interacting with surfaces in a way that is unhygienic.  There is no age criterion – babes in arms are fine – but rather behavior and (self-)control. 

If there are people in your family who should not join us just yet, it should be easier to “tag-team” parental Mass attendance, again because of the added Masses in the afternoon.

Okay, you’re coming to Mass!  What should you do to get ready, before you leave home?

Before you come:

Print out your music and worship aid.  All missalettes have been removed from the pews, and we are distributing no bulletins or other printed resources.  We will send out by email (Flocknote) each Sunday’s music resource for you to print at home and bring with you. 

Bring disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer for your own use.  Professionals will be cleaning the church frequently, including between Masses, but you may feel better if you have the option to wipe some surface or item that catches your attention.  We will have hand sanitizer for the priests and helpers in the sanctuary, but we don’t have access to a supply large enough to provide for everyone to have what they need. 

Bring your mask.  You will want to wear it most of the time you are in church, and your neighbors will be glad you do.  

Use your own bathroom.  Of course we have bathrooms at church, and we will be working extra hard to clean them frequently, BUT: the single bathroom by the main doors of the church will be reserved for elderly and handicapped ONLY.  The downstairs bathrooms will be available to everybody, which is precisely why you may prefer to wait until you get home.  

When you arrive:  

Gather up all the items you brought with you, and put on your masks.   Enter the church through one of the doors that is propped open, or has an usher standing by it to open it for you.  

Be ready to be turned back.  It is unlikely but still possible that we reach a point at which no further participants should enter the church.  Be alert to this (small) possibility, and if you are informed that this is the case, please try again at another Mass later, or on another day.  We have added TWO extra Sunday masses to give you more options, and reduce crowding.

Find your seat(s).   Our church is very large, designed to seat more than 800 people.   Safe occupancy according to prescriptions will not be difficult to maintain without issuing tickets or requiring reservations, as some churches will, not least because many parishioners will be staying home for the reasons listed above, at least for the first weeks.

Every other pew in the church will be blocked off.  Where you choose to sit in the “open” pews is the other and even more important part of safe social distancing.

We live as families or households; we have all been quarantined as families or households; we attend Mass as families or households.  Within your group, be as close to one another as you want; but leave safe distance between yourself, or your group, and anyone who is not in your household.

If you have a large family or household group, claim an entire pew (in the nave, they each seat TEN; in the transepts, nine.)  Medium-sized (4-5) groups sit together at one end of the pew, leaving the other end of the pew available for someone else to sit.  If you are alone, or only a few (1 -3), please leave space and distance for others in the pew with you; and if you arrive first, please sit in the center of the pew, not at the end where someone might have to climb over you your past you.

How Mass will be different:

There will be some changes in the sanctuary, such as how many altar servers, where the lector is, and so forth.  And receiving Holy Communion will be different; see my letter “Place at the Table” from last week.  Other than that, some changes will affect you.

Most Masses will have no music; and the Mass with music will have little or no congregational singing.  And even though almost everybody will be wearing masks, it will be good to make your responses softly.  Loud singing and speaking have been implicated in spraying droplets – yuck!

There will be no offertory collection during Mass.  This, too, is for sanitary reasons, not because God cancelled tithing for Covid.  You should still make your offering – especially if you’ve missed some months.  Ushers will be holding baskets near the doors as you exit, into which you may place your offering.

For reason I hope to be obvious, there will be: 

·      NO offertory procession with the gifts to be consecrated; 

·      NO distribution of the Precious Blood in communal chalices; 

·      NO handshake of peace.

Speaking of exiting, please be cautious and intentional as you exit, and keep your family close.  Leave room between yourselves and others until you are out the doors.  Linger in your pew until the proper opportunity, and use the extra time to give thanks to God for the Holy Eucharist you just celebrated and received!

Then, once you have left the church, being careful and respectful, at a safe social distance, and enjoy the fellowship of your brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you have not seen in so long.  

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See you this weekend (WOW does it feel great to write that)!

Monsignor Smith

Place at the Table

We were made for this!  Yes, we were made to overcome the obstacles of Covid Crisis Reintegration, once again to be united in Christ.

Not only we, as people; but also our church:  the church we call home; the church built for us through the great sacrifices of our precursor-parishioners; the church in which we have all yearned to assemble once more with one another before God.  This church, beautifully laid out and constructed and adorned, is MADE for our reintegration in the sight of God.

Our church was made BIG, and there is room for all God’s children, as they say.  Or, as the Governor of our State (Commonwealth) has prescribed, there is room for 50% of God’s children, with the remaining space left over as a buffer for safety’s sake.  The seating capacity is over 800 souls; if you leave empty half the pews (already marked off) and leave space within the pews between households or families, we should still be able to assemble in good numbers.

Our church was made GENEROUSLY, to accommodate these children of God who want to come forward when the Good Shepherd spreads his table before us in the sight of our foes. (Psalm 23:5).  Not to be confused with our Holy Altar, which itself is large and worthy to bear the Saving Sacrifice we offer: five feet deep by eight feet wide and over three feet high.  The Communion Table is separate, accessible, and over a hundred feet long, to accommodate as many banqueters as possible.

What hundred-foot table am I talking about, you may ask?  It has been covered over for some years by brown carpeting, all around the sanctuary, so you might have missed it.  But when the Founders built our church, they gave it a table.  It has been here all along, and we need it now.  The communion table of walnut is supported by aluminum rails, marveled the author of the 1961 article “Church of Cruciform Design” about our new church building, shortly after it was constructed.  

The walnut communion table is clearly visible in the foreground of this photo
 from the 1961 article about our newly-constructed church.

So, we pulled up the carpet and refreshed that table:  over one hundred feet length of eight-inch-wide by two-inch-thick flawless beams of fine-grain walnut.  It’s gorgeous.  The aluminum “table legs” were destroyed, so they are replaced by powder-coated steel that echoes the bronze metal of the baldachino (canopy over the altar). 

It is amazing what you can find under some old brown carpet nobody remembers liking.

This is where the Faithful are to approach the Lamb’s High Feast: at the table.  This is where you take this, all of you, and eat of it: at the table.  This is what will give you a place safely and uncrowded to receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Him who is Life: at the Communion Table. 

The practice for the past forty or fifty years of having the priest stand in one place while the faithful move toward him to receive has become a chaotic danger in time of coronavirus.  Simply, it is hard to hit a moving target.  What is required for the sanitary and accurate transmission of Holy Communion is that the recipient HOLD STILL.

You may hold still and receive on the tongue: tilting your head (back) and opening your mouth (wide) and extending your tongue.  The best posture for this to work is kneeling (unless you are quite short), so our table has nicely cushioned pads on which you can kneel.

You may hold still and receive on your hands: left hand resting on right, mask already removed so you can immediately, before you move away, place Our Lord on your own tongue.  The best posture for this is STANDING, unless you are really tall, in which case the rail will not impede the motion of your hands as you receive.

After twenty-two years of experience, I am convinced that the safest and most accurate way to communicate the faithful with the Body of Christ is for the recipient to KNEEL and receive ON THE TONGUE, as long as the communicant kneels first, then waits for the priest to come to him and administer the sacrament.  Please note, this is very, very different from how people fling themselves down to kneel at the feet of a priest in a moving communion line; that’s a panic.  Avoiding that panic is where the table comes in.

That said, OF COURSE it is permitted to receive on the hands, as described above, which permission was granted at some point when I was in high school, as I recall.  This method can be safe too, but it requires that both hands be completely free -- no toddlers, purses, rosaries, infants, or canes may be in your hands or arms; and it requires that your hands be clean, otherwise the Sacred Host will touch whatever your hands have touched since last you scrubbed them.  Grabbing, clutching, or snatching the host will result in interpersonal contact – a big no-no under currents circumstances.  Helping you hold still is where the table comes in.

Since you are likely used to the moving-communion-line approach, you may be put off for a moment by how to take your place at the table.  But we are more than our furnishings, too: actual people will help you find and take your place at the table without crowding or causing concern to any of your brother and sister communicants.  This method is two millennia old and obviously intuitive, so after the first time or two, you’ll be a natural.

So, kneeling or standing, you will take your place at the table: your whole family together, a respectful space between you and the next person from a different household.  The table-legs are actually useful indicators of what makes a respectful and healthy distance.  

Holy Communion: the Body of Christ who looks like bread comes together with the members of the Body of Christ, who look like us.  And the two become one flesh.  

We were made for this.

Monsignor Smith

Frank Consideration

Let me take a moment to review with you where we stand as a parish.  I get questions all the time from people who are trying to figure out when we can have Mass, each of whom have seen something or heard something or read something, all of which gives them hope or frustration.  

Yesterday (Monday) about this time, Archbishop Gregory transmitted to the priests of the Archdiocese a letter informing us that he was starting today (Tuesday, June 9) permitting public Mass to be celebrated, with the restriction that not more than ten persons may be present, including clergy.

After the initial interest that raised, it became clear that this is precisely the situation under which we have been laboring since March, as we went into “Safer at home,” then “Stay at home” protocols mandated by the Governor of Maryland.  The Archbishop suspended public Masses starting March 14, as gatherings were limited to a number by the Governor.  First it was 250 (remember that?), then it went to ten.  It was clear that genuinely public Mass was not possible under those restrictions.

We had Mass during that time.  Each priest in the rectory offered a Mass daily, but behind locked doors.  As you know, we have been live-streaming a Sunday Mass each week – but we could not and cannot open it to public participation, since that would instantly exceed our permitted attendance.  We had a couple of funerals, which were trick as both of the deceased (Bill Lehman and Donna Brennan) have five children.  Numbers were tricky, but many family members and all friends were told not to come, and Mass was celebrated.

Maryland began Phase One of reopening on May 15 (yes, that long ago) at the direction of the Governor.  Religious gathering would be permitted at 50% of capacity of the building; that would be around 400 persons for us at Saint Bernadette.   Maryland entered Phase Two of reopening last Friday, June 5, which allowed more services to open, but did not change permissions for churches.

Though  you may think we are in Maryland, that is not a pertinent reality;  no, we are in Montgomery County, and our County Executive asserted that reopening on the Governor’s schedule was impossible, and even three weeks later, when he instituted his own version of Phase One, it was actually MORE restrictive of religious gatherings than “Stay at Home” had been for the state – no indoor gathering, at all, and no contact between congregants and clergy.  Montgomery County is the only jurisdiction in Maryland that has not yet already entered Phase Two, OR announced a date to enter Phase Two, OR specified what Phase Two might permit; the other holdout, Prince Georges County, has set June 15 and announced its plan.

So we remain under the tighter restrictions of Montgomery County, with no date and no criteria specified for when the next phase will begin, and no definition or what will be permitted.

The Archbishop’s letter arrived as this discomfort became acute.  It could be suggested that it would permit us to go back to the Governor’s original lockdown restrictions, rather than the County’s stricter Phase One prohibitions.  But ten people (including clergy) still would not make it possible for genuinely public Masses to resume.

The Governor’s office has acknowledged that under the Maryland constitution, County Executives have the power to impose restrictions of their own.  According to my observation, come Monday, that will make us the only county in the United States under this level of restrictions. 

Archbishop Gregory gave no indication that he has obtained or even requested of the civil authorities, including ours here in Montgomery, any change in the protocol.

Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of people locally and around the nation interact freely without regard to restrictions or limitations, and without legal consequence, or as yet observed health consequence.  You’ve seen the pictures.

We are obliged to wait – for at least a few more days; human hearts can bear only so much, and I am acutely aware of this reality.  We are not obliged to be silent, however; nor are we obliged to ignore what this says about our civil officials, and perhaps a few other people too.

 Monsignor Smith