Red light, green light

Have you ever had the experience of being in an unfamiliar part of our splendid metropolitan area, trying to follow the instructions on your “whiz-bang” (my father’s nickname for smartphone GPS guidance), feeling the pressure of your schedule and the impatience of drivers around you, and deciding to ‘make your move’ in a complicated intersection (hoping it’s the correct street), looked up just in time to see the traffic signal change to red while you are still moving mid-intersection?  In addition to some embarrassment and anxiety about the possibility of being hit by cross-traffic, one likely reaction would be, “I hope there was no red-light camera.”

It would be a natural response.  First, because there are so many red-light cameras and speed cameras in our area – the District of Columbia and Silver Spring were two of the top three localities for traffic cameras in the whole United States in a recent statistical list, and there are more every month.  Secondly, those camera fines can be costly as well as inescapable: the “legal” presumption is that the camera is always right.  Thirdly, no conscientious person enjoys being responsible for illegal, incorrect, or inadvisable behavior, much less being observed while doing it.  But it does happen.  

So there you are, doing something you didn’t want to do and wish you hadn’t done, and your ‘hope’ is that there is no camera recording it.   What are the grounds for your hope?   Well, statistics, first of all: there cannot be functional red-light cameras in every intersection, even in DC; so there is an arithmetic chance that this was an intersection without one.  Secondly, your own ignorance: this is an unfamiliar intersection, and you have not already discerned it to be monitored by a camera (unlike our own familiar, fabulous Four Corners), and this leaves open the intellectual possibility that it is not.  These are grounds for some sort of hope, but they are flimsy.

Traffic cameras are inhuman and themselves give no ground for natural hope.  At least a traffic cop, a real person, allows room for the possibility of mercy when we have committed a moving violation; and that is a valid ground for hope.  We can hope in a person.

This week we began the season of Lent, the Great Fast of Christians everywhere in preparation for the Feast of Our Lord’s Resurrection.  The awareness that comes to me this year as we return to this recurring time we all know so well and sometimes dread, is that Lent is a long and demanding, communal act of hope.  

On our good days at least, we are conscientious enough to wish to avoid behavior that is illegal, incorrect, or inadvisable in the sight of God, yet we are frank enough to realize that we have failed to do that.   We are also capable of nurturing the false reassurance that nobody noticed, nobody minded, or nobody was actually hurt, up to the point when we admit to ourselves that is impossible.  Omniscient God, not notice?  The God Who has worked over the millennia of salvation history to reveal Himself and His Divine Law, not mind?  The Father Who sacrificed His only begotten Son, convinced that nobody was hurt? 

We have failed, and we know it. With that utterance of dismay, that tinge of grief, comes the admission, and we crack open the casing that contains what makes hope possible: repentance, and the desire for mercy; a chance, the possibility of trying again, of doing better next time and henceforth.  Do not define us by our bad actions!  We can be good, we can be holy, we can make you delight in us and in our deeds, oh God, really we can; just give us the chance, the grace to try again.

Lent reminds us that our hope is in a person, not our perfection.  That person is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Who is the Divine Mercy, Who invites us to turn to Him.  He has seen everything, all that we have done and failed to do; He has heard all of the excuses we nurture within our minds.  He has forgotten nothing, least of all the promises we made and quickly discarded.  And yet, His eyes are on us, His arms extended.  Turn to me, He says, return to me.  

He is our hope.

Monsignor Smith

 

Big Day in a Big Way

Mardi gras literally means Fat Tuesday, but the celebration it describes includes a lot more than just one day, and many, many different ways of being fat, all of them contrasting with the austerities of Lent.  If we were in Mobile or New Orleans, Mardi Gras would include three or four weeks leading up to the Tuesday itself; hereabouts, we are not that expansive, but Mardi Gras definitely includes this whole weekend.  Catholics, as most folks know, are always happy to find a reason to have a party.

During Lent, we put aside or “give up” many good things, in order to focus on the one truly good, God.  Luxuries, such as sweets and desserts; entertainments, distractions, and diversions (think music, video, and film), are all truly good, but are less good than God.   Even necessary goods, like meals, sleep, socializing, and warm water for bathing are less good than God.   By withholding in some measure a lesser good, we rediscover the sustaining goodness of God.  

But that’s Lent, and that’s next week.  Right now it’s Mardi Gras and we indulge in the goodness of these created things with the same earnestness that we fast and abstain, and maybe a bit more enthusiasm.

This year for Mardi Gras, the Archdiocese of Washington is going to celebrate the goodness of God and rejoice in the goodness of created things in a way I do not recall ever happening before.   On Tuesday, Cardinal Gregory will ordain two new auxiliary bishops for our local church, and there will be great rejoicing.

Just before Christmas, our Holy Father Pope Francis named two of our priests to be consecrated to serve as “helpers” to our Archbishop.   That seemed strange, since we had two, though down from our usual three.  But…four?   That was all cleared up a few weeks ago when it was announced that one of our auxiliary bishops, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, had been appointed Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana.  So, back to three auxiliaries, but wait – Bishop Dorsonville was scheduled to come here to confirm our kids on March first!  Fear not; the next morning I got a call from his assistant.  Bishop Dorsonville wanted to assure us he would be here for Confirmation.  He will not take possession of his new see until the end of March.  

So, here we are, bracing ourselves for the arrival of Lent, but first we have to consecrate two of our priests as Bishops.  If that is not a party, I do not know what is.   The bishops-elect, Juan Esposito-Garcia and Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, are both well known to me since they were seminarians.   Evelio was studying at the North American College in Rome when I was working there with Cardinal Baum.   I am not certain how I came to know Juan, but I have always gotten along well with him, and once almost managed to have him live here with me for a year while he finished his doctoral work; he is a canon lawyer.  

Anyway, an ordination is always a big deal, and a double ordination of bishops is a doubly big deal.   This is part of the “fat” in our Fat Tuesday this year; a richness of blessing and grace for the good of the local church.  

Now that “fat” will be on Tuesday proper, but in the broader interpretation of “Mardi Gras” we here in the rectory already have plans to enjoy some of the goodness of created things in the days before Lent brings its leaner graces.  In fact, some of them involve genuine “gras” – real duck fat cooked with meats and other ingredients into rich goodness, shared with a group of our brother priests.  There will of course be wine, and dessert.  It’s not Lent yet.

Enjoy the goodness of the earth in these days, so that we can together put them aside to focus on the even-better goodness of Heaven.  I will greet you on Ash Wednesday with,  Remember man that thou art dust; and unto dust thou shalt return.  But to grease the transition, God has given us Mardi Gras.

Monsignor Smith

Some things change,

You know I love to keep track of anniversaries.  This weekend (11 February) marks the 165^th anniversary of the visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Bernadette Soubirous at Massabielle by Lourdes, the home of that simple 14-year-old-girl who has become the heavenly patroness of our parish and school.  Back in 1858, nobody in that town except the priest, and he only barely, had encountered the title “The Immaculate Conception” by which the “beautiful lady” identified herself to the girl; and when Bernadette repeated that strange phrase to the priest, he knew from whom she had learned those words: the immaculate Mother of God. 

Other anniversaries on which I am keeping my eyes these days are the three-year markers from 2020, the year Covid marched in and changed our lives and our world.  We are still not shed of the more pernicious effects of that plague and our leaders’ response to it, but as even the federal government will soon admit the emergency is ended, we are not wrong to consider ourselves moved on to the next stage.  I may revisit certain events in their progression over coming months, that we may all learn from what we have experienced.

But three years ago this week, Covid was but a distant rumble, and I was on retreat in West Virginia, and preparing to conduct the Cardinal’s Appeal on the weekend of my return.   I wrote a letter to you all that reflected on my disposition toward asking for and encouraging giving on your part, and how I came to that.  The column attracted a lot of attention around the country as people picked up on my characterizations of certain famous churchmen.  You may not have realized that people in Nebraska and New York were reading and commenting on my little bulletin letter, if you do not follow “Catholic media” or whatever they be called.  Lucky you.  They all missed the point and purpose of my letter, but I am fairly confident that you, immersed with me in the proper context, did not.

Well, I am going to my hermitage in West Virginia the week, and when I return it will be time for our Annual Appeal, as you have already begun to realize.  So I want to share with you, again, a letter explaining my approach to such matters, and I am know that you in your charity will not take it as incendiary, but rather encouraging.  Click here to read Why, and Why Not.  Thank you for giving me that confidence. 

Monsignor Smith

The Whole World in Your

Among this week’s highlights in the international news was the loss in Australia of a tiny capsule, less than a third of an inch long, that contained radioactive material.  Somewhere along a 900-mile journey, the cesium-137 capsule not only dislodged from the mechanism in which it was a functional part, but slipped out of the vehicle transporting that mechanism.   It was “on the lam” for more than two weeks, though the announced search lasted but one week and culminated in its radioactive signature being detected by a vehicle carrying a detector passing by at about seventy miles an hour on the road several yards from where it lay.  So much for that excitement.

You would ask, as nearly everybody seems to be asking, how do you lose a radioactive capsule?  How do you mount it so tenuously, and transport it so carelessly, that its little bundle of deadliness could wiggle loose, slip through the floor, and bounce off into the weeds?  I daresay someone will be designated guilty of surpassing negligence, but since this is not governed by US tort law, I have no idea how astronomically high the financial liability will be set.

For my part, I found it not hard to understand at all.  You see, I routinely distribute the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ to hundreds of people.  I say I do it “routinely,” and I confess I do put a great deal of stock in the routine to provide the necessary caution and care of the precious element I handle.  Not everybody, however, invests that same caution, and that same care, in their routines of receiving it.  

Yes, there are (plural) routineS of receiving, and while each communicant may think he is doing the exact same thing in the exact same way every time, let me assure you, almost no two communicants present themselves in the same way to receive.  The altar servers who accompany the priests with the paten in the distribution can attest to the exciting and sometimes exhausting challenge of “reading” the signals presented by each communicant and successfully delivering the Lord to the communicant.

Since the pandemic, when we began distributing communion at the communion table around the sanctuary, it has been manifest that there are many advantages to this practice, not least of which is the hygienic benefit.  When the communicants are simply holding still, that is an enormous help to avoiding unwanted contact.  Many have rediscovered the ease and naturalness of receiving on the tongue while kneeling, which in addition to reverence also increases accuracy.

As it has been since the late nineteen-seventies or so, there is also the permission to receive on the hand, which also goes much better when the communicant is not moving.  There is a greater chance of unwanted contact when the hand receives the host.  The variety of shapes and sizes of the human hand is simply astonishing, let me assure you.  Add to that some hands that are not level, or are not open, and you begin to see the challenge.  Let a hand shake, slide, or shudder, grab, snatch, or clutch; let it close like a mousetrap or move away the minute the host makes contact, and that where it gets truly difficult and even dangerous.   The sacred host can roll or slide away, get knocked loose, break, or even shatter.  This is no way to receive Our Lord -- though admittedly He is not unaccustomed to it.

I used to suggest to people that receiving Holy Communion on the hand should involve the same level of effort and attention that would apply if someone were handing you your great-grandmother’s diamond engagement ring.  On a moving train.   While standing on the platform between cars.

Now I have a new comparison: a 5x8mm capsule containing cesium-137.  However, this little item entrusted to your care is worth all of your attention and every bit of caution you can muster not because it can bring illness or even death to many, but because it brings grace and even life to you.

Monsignor Smith

 

Check the heart

Two lives of towering significance in the Church have ended in the past few weeks, Benedict XVI, and Cardinal George Pell.  Because of my unusual portfolio, I had a stronger than average personal connection with them, for example, having dined with both of them.  But the personal loss is of tiny significance compared to the ecclesial one.  

The Church is a marvelous place to live in no small part because of the personal communion one finds there.  For example, I have on my office wall a picture of my seminary class.  Three have died (already!) and the rest of us are strewn about seemingly without pattern or purpose.  One of my friends, as you’ve heard, is now a bishop in Texas.  Another is in Rome, newly the rector of our own seminary there.   One whose anniversary celebration I attended last summer is pastor of a largely Mexican parish in East Moline, Illinois.  Others are arguably “normal;” one just got a new parish, but it’s on Staten Island just like every parish he has served over twenty-five years.  We’re in parishes in Bismarck and Minneapolis and Silver Spring.  But last year my “local” classmate, my buddy Father Mark Knestout, went from his parish in Bethesda to New York to serve the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations.

That’s a fair assortment and wide dispersion of a relatively small sample of American diocesan priests.  While the human experience of having studied together gives a recognizable connection that we all enjoy, there is a stronger and more vital connection, and that is our bond in Christ Jesus as priests of His Church. 

It is easy for modern people, and Americans especially, to lose sight of the reality that is the Church.  It could seem to be a large, international organization much like the United Nations, where Father Knestout now spends his days.  It’s true that both have large groups of people from all over the world who often seem to be working at cross purposes, and that both seem to fail miserably far more often than they succeed at preventing or ending war and establishing peace, and that both leave many people convinced that they would be at least as well off if they had nothing to do with them.  But while the United Nations is a nobly-intentioned and free association, it is also a merely human institution.  

The Church is a divine institution, that is, she was founded, initiated, defined and directed by Jesus Christ, God, Who continues to participate in, protect, perpetuate and perfect her in every time and place on earth.

While the people you or I spend most of our time with, and the people who speak with authority on goings-on about the world, regard and refer to the Holy Church as if she were simply another free association of well-intentioned folks with a mixed record of success and plenty of people in her leadership and her membership who seem to be anything but honest, much less holy, it is important that we see far more than that.

The unique and universal expression and incarnation of God’s will that all men be saved from sin and death is His Son Jesus Christ, and He Himself, the Risen One, is alive, present, and at work in the accomplishment of that will uniquely and universally in the Catholic Church.  

We who participate in the project, benefit from it and collaborate and cooperate with it, receive and share many human and earthly benefits in this communion.  Yet we dare not be unmindful of the divine and eternal gifts that are both the source and the objective of those earthly gifts.  Similarly, we must turn our eyes to the divine purpose that undergirds and sustains, propels and protects the Church in every aspect of her earthly existence.   

When I look at my assortment of classmates, whether gathered for a photo or dispersed across the face of the planet, I see one priesthood, and one High Priest, accomplishing one salvation.

When I look to Rome and see great and holy men finishing their earthly course, called to their rewards, I see signs of God’s care for His servants, for His faithful, for His holy and spotless bride.  So as we and the world watch for earthly events and human action that excite or appall, restore or destroy, I am moved to look, and call you to look, as people who have been told and who believe so that all this is so that the works of God might be made manifest.  Look, let’s look with eyes of faith, for the divine founder at His work, to see what He is going to do next.  

Monsignor Smith

Three Times

È ancora bagnato.  (It’s still wet.)

Marcel Riedi, Swiss Guard, had accepted my proffered Vatican identity card as, for the first time unaccompanied, I approached the entrance to the Apostolic Palace, residence of the Pope and location of the Holy See’s most sensitive offices.  He scrutinized my card inside and out, then held it by a corner and shook it at arm’s length: È ancora bagnato.  

It had been issued the day before.  I was new to my job as priest secretary to Cardinal William Baum, and His Eminence had taken me around the Vatican, to offices and entrances that I would need to know to assist him in fulfilling his job.  This time, though, he was inside at a meeting, and I was alone, coming to get him for the ride home.  He needed assistance simply in getting around.  The Swiss Guard, impressive in his most excellent striped uniform and confident in his authority, had stopped me to check my credentials.  È ancora bagnato:  He was totally messing with me.  I was such a newbie!  We both laughed.

Marcello and I became quite friendly over time, as I was frequently in and out of the places he guarded.  Several years into my service there, as I walked alone along some frescoed corridor, he stopped me.  Does your man speak Polish?  he asked me, referring to Cardinal Baum.  I told him he did not, and asked why.  Well, he was engaged to be married to a Polish girl, and had arranged for the wedding to be at Saint Stephen of the Ethiopians, a small fifth-century church at the foot of the Vatican gardens right behind Saint Peter’s Basilica.  Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II’s secretary and very Polish, had agreed to celebrate the nuptial Mass.  But the Holy Father had accepted, at the last minute, an invitation to visit some distant country, and Archbishop Dziwisz was obliged to accompany him, precisely at the time of the wedding.  

Marcello was desperately looking for some Vatican prelate who could help him out at short notice.   I wished him the best.   A month or two later, next I saw him, I asked about the wedding: Who’d you get?  Ratzinger, he answered.

__________________________________

A few days after the election of Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter, I had to run an errand to a liturgical-goods shop a few blocks from where I lived and even closer to the apartment where Cardinal Ratzinger had lived for the previous twenty-five years.  When I went in, the elegant older Spanish ladies who ran the place all leapt up and gathered around me excitedly.  They had seen the conclave and the presentation of the new Pope on the loggia of the Basilica.   They were thrilled, and they all had stories about their neighbor.

They said that everyone in the neighborhood had been sharing their enthusiasm for the new Pontiff and had tales of their personal encounters with him; not only the church-goods shopkeepers, but also the grocer, the baker, the fruit vendor, the office-supply shop keeper, and the one I remember best, the mailman.

They shared how he had told them that every time he had encountered the Cardinal Prefect in the street, His Eminence had doffed his hat and greeted him, “Buon giorno, Signor Postino.”  (Good day, sir mailman.)  And the Postino had objected:  But Eminenza, I should doff my hat to you!  And the Cardinal had simply replied, But it is important that I greet you, Signor Postino!, and doffed his hat again.  The Spanish ladies retold the mailman’s story with breathless delight. 

__________________________________

After the Cardinals in the Conclave of 2005 had chosen him Successor to Peter, Benedict invited the Cardinals to remain one more night together in the Domus Sanctae Martae, where they had been cloistered, then proceed together to the Sistine Chapel for the first Holy Mass of his pontificate.  This was the third morning they were in the guest house, and everyone was now familiar with the routine, but there was clearly a buoyancy and excitement among the assembled, whereas before there had been seriousness and concentration.  As I passed through the lobby after brushing my teeth downstairs (long story), the elevator doors opened and out stepped the new Pope, on his way to breakfast.  It was his first morning in the familiar white cassock and sash.  He saw me, smiled warmly, and greeted me as a friend.

Monsignor Smith 

The Meeting Place

 

31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E

Yes, those are geographic coordinates, the unique numerical indicator of a single spot on the surface of the planet Earth.  In that spot, there is a hole, and the hole is in the floor of a church, and the church has been there for 1,467 years; but even then, it took the place of another, older one that had served the same purpose for 230 years, then burnt.  What purpose does the church serve?  It stands over the hole, and the hole opens over that spot:  31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.

The floor around the hole is marble, but the marble is worn down and wavy like a dirt path in the forest, though even smoother and even harder because it is marble, after all.  The hole is surrounded by a star of metal, brass or bronze or even tarnished silver, to make it clear the hole in the floor is not a mistake or accident or problem waiting to be fixed, but rather the reason that the church is where it is.  The star is not very big across, less than a foot, so the hole, too, is small, but large enough to put your hand through it and get it back without getting stuck.  If you reach through the hole, you can touch the spot, 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.

People have been visiting that spot and touching that spot since before there was church or floor or hole.  31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E is the spot where Jesus was born.  Before that, and for a few decades afterward, nobody paid much attention to that spot.  But once it became known, even to a few, that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom (they had) crucified (Acts 2:36), every object and every place associated with him took on new and enormous significance.  People wanted to see where God had been, and especially where he had been born.

Most of us were born in hospitals, but not much over a century ago, many people were born at home, and to visit the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington is to visit the family home at the time.  I remember well the home in which my family lived from the time I was a year and a half old until I was seven, and when visiting my aunt and uncle who live nearby I will often drive past to see that place, where so much happened, and I remember so well.  One trip, though, I was with my parents, and we hunted down and they pointed out the apartment in which we had lived until I was eighteen months old.  That I do not remember anything from that time does not mean it was not the place where I was, my place from day two or three.   

Because we all need a place; we take up space.  It starts out small, as do we ourselves, and grows not only with our bodily dimensions but also with the size of our mind and our understanding.  Within our place, our house or home, we have our place to eat, our place to sleep: a seat at the table, and a bed, perhaps a room, of our own.  Over time, we become citizens of our neighborhood or community, our city, our throbbing megalopolis; but within this greater place we have one or a few spots that are uniquely and personally our place.  For even the largest among us do not need much space compared to the sprawl of the city, the expanse of the nation, the wide face of the earth.  In all that, no, we really just need a place, a point, a spot.

The immortal, invisible God Who is not so much “in every place,” but rather transcends space, chose to share with us this, our burden of requiring a place.  For that he took flesh and found his place in the womb of his most blessed mother.  There is a marvelous six-hundred-year-old carol that sings of that mother as a rose, a beautiful, delicate, fresh rose that contains within her tiny body the limitless God.  As songs often did that long ago, this one mixes some Latin in with the English; if you need help, res miranda = a wondrous thing; pari forma = equal in form; gaudeamus = let us rejoice; transeamus = let us go there.

There is no rose of such virtue 
As is the rose that bare Jesu, 
Alleluia. 

For in this rose contained was 
Heaven and earth in little space, 
Res miranda. 

By that rose we may well see 
That he is God in persons three, 
Pari forma. 

The angels sungen the shepherds to: 
Gloria in excelsis deo: 
Gaudeamus. 

Leave we all this worldly mirth, 
And follow we this joyful birth, 
Transeamus. 

Alleluia, res miranda, 
Pares forma, gaudeamus, 
Transeamus.

I love that expression, Heaven and earth in little space.  Doesn’t that just sum up beautifully how our God is?  So holy, so extensive and expansive, so able and effective as for there to be nothing and nowhere that is beyond him; by nature so far beyond us as to leave us gasping and flailing.  Yet he will not remain removed and remote, nor nebulous and numinous.  He makes himself small, even before us who are small; and having become small, he will be local.

The tiny infant who emerges from the womb of the roselike virgin is Heaven and earth in little space, but he still needs a place, even when there is no room at the inn.  He finds a place, between ox and ass, in a stable, in a stall.  He lies where feed should be, no place of his own.  That place remains, and remains his place.  You can go there, and through the hole in the floor of the ancient church, touch the very spot: 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.

But you need not travel so far round the globe and touch that spot, to find the wondrous thing, God who takes up space and makes his place where we can find him; where food would be, we make a place to take in us ourselves this Heaven and earth in little space.  Gloria in excelsis deo! 

God himself takes up space and needs a place, and makes a place where you can find him, recognize, receive and welcome him; where you can ask him, beg him, adore and thank him.  That is the place to be.  Let us go there!  Let us go there, go now to the place where this wondrous thing lingers for the finding; incomprehensible God, who takes his place in a tiny space.  Let us go there; let us rejoice, here. 

Blessed Christmas to you all.

Monsignor Smith