and lead you into the holy city

After her husband Jorge recovered from a near-fatal illness, they went together on the anniversary of the apparitions (12 December) to visit Tepeyac in gratitude to Our Lady of Guadalupe along with the two million pilgrims there in those days.  
She brought me this tile as a memento.

It was just two weeks ago that we learned she was ill; then we got word over the weekend that she had died.  Delfina Castro was the business manager here at Saint Bernadette for years, from before I arrived as Pastor until just six or seven years ago.  She said she was retiring then, but did not really, not entirely.  She continued to work – as she put it, “to help out” -- at Saint Bernard of Clairvaux parish in Riverdale.  

She was very good at her work and was well known and respected among her peers and the administrators at the Archdiocese.  She taught me an awful lot as I learned the ropes of being a Pastor.  She also loved the church and was keenly attentive to the needs of the people of the parish.  I know she is still well-remembered by many. 

The following is a letter I wrote about her ten years ago, and I share it with you again now to awaken memories.  Please pray for the happy repose of the soul of Delfina Castro, and for the consolation of her family and all who love her.  May the angels sing her into paradise.  

Monsignor Smith

Delfina is after me again.  She just left a stack of checks on my desk to sign so that we can pay bills this week.   This morning it was a bank form so I could approve adding the new treasurer to the signature card of a parish organization’s account.  There was also a question about someone’s annual leave.

Delfina (Castro) is our business manager here.  Of course, since we have an administrative staff of four (including the volunteer) she does a lot more than any single job description can describe.  For example, she does a great job arranging flowers.

Honestly, Delfina is not always after me.   Most days, people are after her.  At some point a teacher will come by to deal with a withholding or insurance issue, but usually it is the phone – vendors and such.  Then there are the folks who take responsibility for all the groups in the parish who make things happen.  First and foremost among these is, of course, the CYO, but the Tuesday Club and the Home School Association are in a dead heat for close second.  Add to that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the school Gala, the Fall Festival, a new account for our Haiti mission, and the upcoming youth pilgrimage or a class field trip, and pretty soon you have a crowd.  

One of the coolest things about the entire process she oversees is the incredibly precise tracking of donations.  Now there are plenty of folks here who throw whatever cash they have loose on their persons into the collection baskets, but that is neither a complicated nor a large sum to track.  

But the minute someone hands in a check, or an envelope, with an identifiable name on it, and (or) a designation for the donation, every detail gets recorded.  We have folks who give large checks with detailed lists of what amounts(s) should be taken from them for an array of purposes.  We get hand-written names on those “welcome” envelopes, or “memo” lines on checks that explain what the donation is for.  We have second collections and special collections, bequests and sacramental offerings, donations for repairs to the rectory, memorial gifts and offerings for altar flowers on a particular weekend, and anonymous help with a specific family’s tuition bill.  

Every gift goes precisely to its designated use, and nowhere else, down to the last penny.  And at the end of every January, every donor gets a detailed report suitable for presentation to the IRS.  If people only knew how much work goes into that incredibly conscientious stewardship of their offerings to God!   But in a way, that’s the easy part, and definitely the joyful part. 

The Archdiocese demands a lot of her time too, as she deals with Human Resources and the Controller’s office and all the technical systems associated with them.

And speaking of systems – hoo-boy have we had a couple of years!  In its serene wisdom, our Archdiocese a few years back introduced a sweeping new program of technology to manage data for accounting, personnel, payroll, and school data.  You will be shocked – shocked I tell you! (unless you regularly read Dilbert in the comics) -- to learn that this massive rollout did not go smoothly.  The technical people had a lot of harsh things to say about Delfina, whose fault they said it all obviously was.  Now, however, suddenly the Archdiocese is announcing that the new systems do not work as intended and maybe we shouldn’t all be using them after all.  

So after two years of being, shall we say, not in a position to control some portion of the information and technology that we need to manage the material aspect of this huge parish organization, Delfina and I finally have recovered (mostly) from the impact of mandated and problematic technological changes.

Delfina is after me again – thank goodness!

Nothing too yucky, nothing too boring

Saint Bernadette Soubirous would pray
before this image of Our Lady in her parish church in Lourdes,
so compellingly that Our Lady came to her in person.

What is there that a mom cannot do?

As a professional observer of moms, I would say that there is almost nothing a mom cannot do.  That is, there is hardly any need real or imagined of her child which a mom cannot address, respond to, and ameliorate.   We have all seen it in action: sickness, danger, injury, and annoyance can all be eliminated with the wave of the mighty maternal hand.  There is no distance a mother will not cover to reach her child, or to convey her child, to obtain what is necessary.  Vehicle optional.  

Before they become mothers, when they are merely women, I think the range of their future powers is hidden even from them.  Some things are too yucky, some things are too boring, some things are too hard or too heavy for them to consider themselves capable of doing.   Such reticence disappears almost instantly upon the manifestation of the child, and the child’s need, and the power of mom is revealed.

Tact, connivance, and persuasion all come within a mom’s portfolio, even if never before was eloquence one of her gifts; her very words are as strong as her mighty deeds, and her child knows it and shows it.  But not only the voice is so energized.

Eyes in the back of her head are commonly recognized as a mother’s gift, which sounds like exaggeration until you have seen it happen.  Alert to disaster, mockery, and mischief, those eyes cannot be spotted by any observer, but the one whom they have spotted has no doubt as to how he was nabbed.

These maternal powers never really go away.  Their use, and therefore their manifestation, dwindles as the real or perceived need for them diminishes over time.  Whether the child grows in strength, wisdom, and ability, or merely thinks she has, that child flees the mighty power of mom in search of freedom and self-determination.  It is the way of things.  

What then of mom and her helpful and protective impulses?   There is one power she has that never diminishes, but rather grows even as the material control of child’s well-being eludes her.  

That power is prayer.  There are few things so powerful as a mother’s prayer.  

Earnest, devout prayer of a mother is so powerful that it has a special place in the arsenal of the universal Church: the Hail Mary, in which we ask the Mother of our Lord, who is the mother of the Church and thus our Mother, to pray for us.  From the moment the angel of the Lord appeared to her at Nazareth, through the wedding feast at Cana where she made discreet mention, They have no wine, the intercession of our mother Mary has been shown to be efficacious.

In this time of cynical scientific materialism and how-to books on everything, do not forget how powerful is prayer.  The mercy and providence of God are ordered to our good; how can His work on our behalf be anything other?  To participate in that, to ask for that, to plead for that is possible for anyone who shares even partly in that benevolent desire.  Who is more benevolent on earth than mom?  Who, then, is more attuned to the Father’s loving care for us than the mother whose love expresses itself in care?  

Moms, your powers are astonishing to all who see them, not least yourselves.  Please do not wait until they have been rejected by your little ones to resort to prayer, your best power.  Start while they are tiny.  Pursue prayer while they are growing.  Enlarge your prayer as their abilities expand, and their interests extend.  Pray now, let them see you pray, let them know the source of your power, and its limits.  Let them see whose side you are on.  Who else loves them, wants them to be happy, and wants them to live forever – even more than you do?   Who has more power to make it happen, more even than mom?  Pray to Him. 

Because there are things, however few, that a mom cannot do.

Monsignor Smith

Into Moderate Silence

Today at lunch, Father Brillis was moved to reflect on the importance of the voice as revealed in Sacred Scripture:  Didn’t John the Baptist say, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness?" Father Novajosky confirmed his suspicion.

In fact, the camel-hair-clad precursor did announce just that in his own, honey-hinted, locust-breath voice, and there is fruitful reflection to be had from the Church Fathers on the distinction between the voice (John) and the Word (Jesus) and the powerful relationship between the two. 

What moved Fr. Brillis to these rhapsodies will come as no surprise to you who were at the nine o’clock Mass last weekend, as you saw – or heard, more accurately – the beginnings of what has made for a most unusual week:  I have lost my voice.  

Probably precipitated by pollen-enraged sinuses, the damage that I did to my pipes by powering through a busy weekend filled with what I call ‘strong talking’ left me with very little vocal power when Monday morning dawned.  I think the school Auction Gala Saturday night was the final straw; it was fun, certainly, but three hours of talking over the din of music and chatter and clatter of people having fun together was absolutely devastating.   Of course I said Mass anyway on Sunday but did not sing (thank you for holding your applause), and that afternoon I instructed our First Holy Communion class on the how and why of receiving the Medicine of Immortality, the Most Holy Eucharist.  Add the other demands of a pastor’s busy weekend, and there was very little left to work with come Monday.

I have received advice from a parishioner formerly thus afflicted, a friend whose mother is a speech pathologist, my doctor, and almost everybody else who has learned of my affliction.  Most of it was pretty good advice, too, and in addition to mitigating the sinus cascade as best as possible, the key seems to be what the speech pathologist mom called “vocal rest.”

So Father Novajosky has heroically taken my daily Masses, and I cancelled some appointments and declined some phone conversations.  So much of my ‘job” involves talking.  I know, I know, you thought it was just a thing about ME that I seemed always to be talking – well, you may not be entirely wrong, but you’re not entirely right either.  Priesting is very verbal work, even when not preaching.  Pastoring, too, requires no few verbal interventions.

Speaking of misperceptions, in past days some wits have volunteered that nothing would be more difficult for me than a silent retreat.  WRONG.  I love them, I seek out times of silence and savor them when I get them.  My penance of the moment is not really silence, though, just reduced talking, but I admit I delight in it as well.

This is day three of my self-limitation, but folks here in the rectory will still holler greetings and questions to me from the next room.  I can’t ANSWER you! – I want to say but cannot.  Last evening I learned how hard it is to watch a baseball game under these limitations.  Some things just make me want to shout.

But I restrain myself.  I have another big weekend coming up and hope to be back on my game in time for Grandparents’ Day Mass on Friday.  At First Holy Communion Mass on Saturday, I will have to stand up and welcome Cardinal Gregory on behalf of our parish.   But no, I did not get him to come just so I would not have to preach, though that will be a welcome benefit.  The customary progression through sundry First Holy Communion luncheons and receptions and picnics may have to be modified according to my condition.

You will know as soon as anyone how goes my recovery.  Mindful of the old joke of the patient who asks the doctor treating his wounded hand, will I be able to play the piano?, I have refrained from asking, will I be able to sing at Mass?  But for the time being, Fathers Brillis and Novajosky are carrying the conversations at lunch. 

Monsignor Smith

not a destructive drug among them

Do not court death by your erring way of life, 

nor draw to yourselves destruction by the works of your hands.  

Because God did not make death, 

nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.  

For he fashioned all things that they might have being, 

and the creatures of the world are wholesome; 

There is not a destructive drug among them.  Wisdom 1:12 - 14a

The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is a book from 2020 by Christopher Beha that a friend recommended, and I enjoyed it, if that be the right phrase; at least, I was glad to have read it.  The title implies that things do not go well for at least some of its principal characters, but more impressive is how badly things go for all of them largely because of, yes, their own actions.

The title is explained in the book as being something like a statistic in baseball, a way of keeping track of a range of actions like a balk by a pitcher, because, of course, baseball has a statistic for everything.   But it is the title that came to my mind now not in the context of baseball, but in our daily lives especially in these days we now inhabit and endure.

This is a particularly sinister season in our society when so much that is common and good frays, unravels, or is dynamited by individuals and groups with goals that are neither.  At home and abroad, we see the folly or even malice of the presumption that of its own, society can and will be civil.

Look abroad, look at home, look around and you will see plenty of evil afoot and ascendant.  Unfortunately, that is the easy part – to see evil in other people’s actions, and in other places.  The hard part, but necessary, is to look for where it has taken up residence in our own lives and actions.

If politics or persons distress us, the first order of business is not to change them but rather to evaluate ourselves, our own actions, and our own words.  Our principal contribution to the health and success of our society is our own personal fidelity to truth and goodness, and our own labor for one another’s good.

The work of charity in thought and word is enough to keep us busy day and night, within our families and our neighborhoods.  To encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thes 5:11), as Saint Paul admonishes the early members of Christ’s body the Church, is not only an idiosyncrasy among Christians, but also the task of Christians in a society and a world not ordered according to the knowledge and love of God.  That’s right, it is a task, it is work: the work, and our work.  

If we put ourselves to this work, it will take our time and effort, and we will not have room in our day to accuse, detract, or defame people.   Yes, all that tearing-down of one another takes time and vital energy from us.  Time we spend reading or listening to the latest offense or outrage, time we willingly spend laying blame everywhere but on ourselves, costs us and everyone who loves us.

Much of our misery, and the misery that we observe in the people around us, is the result of our own actions and words.  Any and every sin in reality is a self-destructive act, a path chosen by the self for the purposes and goals of the self that are disorded, and result in the harm of that same self.  Almost but not all self-destructive acts cause harm to others as well.  We can avoid them if we believe the word of the One Who Loves Us, who points us in direction of building one another up because it will build up a society that will resist evil and defend what is good.  

Do you want this year to go well for our parish, our school, our county and our country?  Encourage one another and build one another up, and avoid every other use of your time and effort as if it were inscribed on The Index of Self-Destructive Acts.

Monsignor Smith

Jesse made me do it

Not a surprise that he was gone, really; more of a suspicion confirmed with a glance at the all-knowing machine.  Nonetheless there was surprise that I had heard nothing of it, five years later.  

The most ordinary of circumstances, Father Novajosky and I were talking over dinner at the kitchen island of books we had read long ago and reread later, authors we returned to after having been introduced to them in high school.  J. D. Salinger came up, somehow, as by some tortured route we went there from “Field of Dreams”, the movie, and its associated books and authors.  If a body meet a body coming through the rye…ah, Holden Caulfield.

We read Catcher in the Rye, of course, but also Franny and Zooey, I think, and maybe some stories too.  I still have the books.  We did other normal English-class things as well, like diagramming sentences; it was normal then, anyway.  I could always escape the test for that by diagramming correctly on the first try the paragraph-length sentence written on the board.  Writing on the chalkboard was normal then, too.  

‘Tis not deep as a well, nor wide as a church door, but – ‘twill serve.  I am worm’s meat!  He had me read Mercutio as we worked through Romeo and Juliet.  When we had to recite a poem from memory, I chose Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty: Glory be to God for dappled things…

Southern literature was an emphasis in that Alabama classroom.  Amarantha, Amarantha, how beautiful with shoes! I can still hear him declaim in his strong accent.  It was he who famously introduced us to Flannery O’Connor without mentioning (I swear!) that she was Catholic.  A Good Man is Hard to Find for ninth graders is hard enough, but Wise Blood in tenth grade?  Hair-raising and possibly unwise, as it turned me off Flannery for a long time – or what seemed like a long time, since it was all of seven years before I tiptoed back into her writings while exploring short fiction by modern Catholic authors.   

That started me reading her other stories, and her letters, then over time, urged on by new enthusiasm for her amongst culture-conscious Catholics, yet more stories, her prayer journal, her other short novels.  Admiration and amazement grew, but the hair-raising never went away.  Still, a deep aversion to Wise Blood kept me from going back to it until just last year, when I re-read it and then, one night with Father Santandreu, watched the John Huston film of the same name.  Oh my.  Nobody needs redemption who has a good car!  Now, I wear it rather like a badge of honor that I read it as a fifteen-year-old; perhaps it’s a red badge of courage, that left a scar. Thanks to him.

He was my high-school English teacher, four years’ worth.  Two summers, before junior and senior year, he offered the coming year’s course to a group of us who met one day each week at a local library, to free up a period for other pursuits during the academic year.  Senior year, that pursuit would be “English 13,” the only English course I had with any other teacher, as four of us met with the principal in her office to learn The Modern Novel at the rate of one book each week.  Thereby hangs a story, too, of course, but for another time.   

Last saw him almost twenty years after graduation, in 2001, at the funeral of a friend close to both me and him, who died young and in the worst way.  When I entered, a Catholic priest at an Alabama protestant funeral, a strange beast indeed, he greeted me from among a group of students from those high school days and had to say his name when I was slow to recognize him; perhaps the missing mustache threw me.  I was embarrassed to need the help, but truly delighted to see him.  That was a hard moment, however, and not a time to catch up.  We never did get a chance.  He wasn’t at our next reunion, in 2012.

He spent his youth in, and as an adult later returned to, Morris, Alabama, a place so rural, so remote and redneck that we kids couldn’t comprehend it then in the late years of the Carter administration, there in the blossoming suburbs of the big city of Birmingham.  I would say right confidently that nobody round these parts now days could picture or imagine.

But he could teach, and teach he did, all these and many things besides.  I am grateful; God rest ye, Jesse Booker.

Monsignor Smith

Cultural consistency

Whoa… time to rein in the horses of celebration!  Nine days of solemnities in a row, Easter and its Octave plus the Annunciation on Monday, more if you start with the Vigil on Holy Saturday, which of course we did around here.  Not only at Mass with Gloria and Sequence, and the Liturgy of the Hours too, but also throughout the tasks and respites of the day.  

My festive lunch with priest buddies on Easter Monday, and splicing the mainbrace with friends that evening, some glorious meals in the rectory and out as well, all with dessert and extra delights we might ordinarily eschew; all this, and the beginning of baseball.  I confess it’s been hard to slow the wagon, taking a funsize bar from the jar on Carol’s desk each time I pass, and pretty decent dinners here in the Holy House even on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Perhaps no dessert this time…or maybe just a little less.

These feasts are our culture, as much as our fasts, and both are rooted in our worship of the incarnate God, with the Church and in the Church.  Culture’s root is cultus, or cult, as in the worship that gives structure to our days.  Our feasting is not merely an extension of our liturgy but part of the same fabric.  It is not simply good to have a culture; it is essential, that is, life-giving; of our essence, to have the culture. To step away from the particular (and occasionally peculiar) givens of Catholic culture invites in an anti-culture that does not give life but rather deforms and disfigures it.

Culture warrior is a pejorative pasted primarily by ideologues of secularism on us who have the culture, the worship-based life and understanding of who we are and what we are for that the fullness of faith has given us.   We fight because we must fight, not against their silly constructions and poisonous destructions, but to embrace and live the mystery revealed to us and in us.  It is always a fight to live in the light of the living God, but as you might suspect, on the side “of the angels” there is help to be had in that fight.

One of the attributes of the Holy Spirit poured into us, good measure, shaken together, and overflowing into our laps is robur ad pugnam, that is, strength for the fight.  This help from God long predates the foolish and feckless assertions of the so-called science-based regime that is merely the modern manifestation of age-old materialistic hubris at the service of raw will-to-power.  The living God knows better than we the inclination we mortals have toward enslaving ourselves, and others along the way, to our aspirations of lordship over creation.  He drops sacramental worship into the world like a lifeline for us to grasp and wind around our flailing arms lest we drown in a sea of self-serving like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  

The sacramentality of our salvation is not limited to but rather begins with the Sacraments of which we have seven.  That is, God uses things we mortals can see and touch to make present realities we would otherwise miss.  Because of the beauty of Creation, and the beauties of our own creations, we know that life, human life, is beautiful even when that beauty is hard to discern.  The human body as we have received it is not some adjustable, external costume for us to don, disguise, and doff at will, but rather the place where grace and glory erupt and endure.  We know what wombs and wounds are for, and we rejoice to recognize that they are indispensable to God for our redemption.

We, like God, use tangible things, things we receive, treasure, and save; things we invent, create, and enjoy to show and share our love with one another.  God is good; Christ is risen in the flesh, and we have in our bodies a share in life eternal.  Maybe we should give the horses their head for a while longer on this road we travel.

Monsignor Smith

 

Making it happen

April showers are welcome for what they promise by way of future flowers, and those of us who rejoice in the fragrant fruit of the Paschal Mystery know well enough that we must first pass through the perfect storm, that is, all the work that makes Holy Week and Easter possible.  You can’t have one without the other, as a song used to remind us about some other intertwined mystery.  

The rectory staff hammered away with increasing enthusiasm as the Holy Days approached, providentially welcoming Carol Gangnath back after her hiatus.  Susan Sumner, who graciously stepped in to help during her absence, was here through Wednesday of Holy Week and there could not have been a better time to have both of them overlapping together.

The transformation of our sanctuary was almost as dramatic as the resurrection itself, though made possible by many hands rather than the digitus Dei.  Melissa Franklin, Sharon Haley, Liz Beegle, Julie Wilson, all the Daos, Margaret McDermott, and Jasmine Kuzner were our fern, frond, and flower wranglers for both gardens, round the altar of repose and in the main church.  The latter smelled awfully good when I entered at six this morning.

Preoccupied as I am about liturgical excellence, I confess I was positively relaxed much of the time this year, knowing I could count on John Henderson’s careful touch at the musical helm, with all of our singers and choirs (especially the youth choir – are they awesome or what?) providing beauty in abundance.  Likewise all our altar servers were prompt, attentive, enthusiastic, and skilled, with two veteran hands leading them: Daniel Dao and Isaac Daniel, both of whom know not only what to do, but how and why.  Cathedrals look upon our crew with envy.  Our lectors were superb.  Let me also acknowledge that Father Novajosky happily took up some of the trickier roles and rendered them flawlessly.

Fearlessly going where brave souls feared to tread, rookie Toni Henries-Ross took responsibility for organizing and supervising the splendid hospitality on the lawn, aided discreetly by the veteran organizer and queen of the egg hunt, Jasmine Kuzner.  It is a wonderful time to be together, and we need to offer folks a reason to slow down and enjoy it together with us.

It was great to confer the Sacraments of Initiation upon seven souls at our Vigil, Jorge Gaston León; Fitz, Kiernan, & Maura Bader; Kyle Curley; and Addison & Penelope Kerdock.  Thoughtfully prepared with their families by DRE Jasmine Kuzner, the six young folks clearly delighted in the grace of the Communion.  Jorge, whose road was a smidge longer, was no less delighted.  Let’s not forget that the Vigil began with the excellent fire-work of a new crew of Scouts, led this year by the Barclays.  

Let me point out that I am under no delusion that I labored alone.   My fellow priests put their shoulder to the wheel of shriving, and spent hours in the confessional caring for penitents making first confessions, first-in-a-long-time confessions, and confessions of every sort in between.  

Rejoicing now in the Octave and making time for tasks I had put aside during the preceding weeks, and maybe a bit of baseball, it is time to look to the Things of Spring – First Holy Communion, Munchkinball, Gala and Graduation.  Before you know it, we will be processing through the neighborhood with the Blessed Sacrament.  But before we get into all that, let’s be glad for the April showers, and rest a spell, joyfully, in the knowledge that, still today, Christ is risen.

Monsignor Smith