What are you bringing?

It was an inspiring television spot.  The organization Catholics Come Home has put together a number of “evangomercials,” short videos reminding people of the nature and identity of the Catholic Church, of the content and impact of the Catholic Faith, and the indispensable benefits of attending Mass.   (click here to see Catholics Come Home evangomercials)  The first one I looked at made me go to their webpage to review some of the others.  I liked them all well enough, but one scene from the first one stuck with me; it made me wonder.

It was a brief clip of a family being greeted by a priest, who was vested for Mass.  The dad was reaching out to shake Father’s hand, and was wearing a shirt and tie.  

Yeah, and? You might say; what happened next?  But that was it.  He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a tie.   At first, I chuckled.  Nobody wears a tie to Mass anymore,  I thought.  Well, okay, there are a few I can think of, but still.

I’ve grown accustomed to this.  Compared to our Alabama Protestant neighbors, my family was not big on dressing up when I was a kid, for church or anything else.  We did have “church clothes” that were nicer than what we wore any other day of the week (including to school), and my dad usually wore a tie, as I recall.  That was a long time ago; society, and clothes, have changed.

Nowadays, I go to church all the time, and for Mass I almost always wear my cassock.  But for Sunday Mass and Holy Days, I dress up.  My Chaplain’s cassock (the one with the purple buttons and piping) and good shoes, a crisp white shirt often with French cuffs.  Fancy, right?  Is it to show how important I am, or how sophisticated?  No.  It is because Sunday Mass is the most important part of my week and “upping my game” in wardrobe both shows others and reminds me what a really big deal Sunday Mass truly is.  Christmas and Easter, weddings and other personal celebrations are opportunities for me not to slack off in my preparation but to show how important they are to me and the Church.  

This is my own wardrobe “vocabulary” and as such only one part of how I communicate the significance of the sacred actions of the Church in which I am privileged to participate with and for you.  I do not dress any better or “fancier” for the Archbishop, the President, or the Pope than I do for Our Lord and for you when you come to Sunday Mass.   

So that’s what I do, and it’s no skin off your nose.  Not everybody – hardly anybody even – thinks that way anymore, and I understand that and have grown comfortable with it.  But then I saw that“evangomercial” with that family and that guy wearing that tie.  And it made me think.  

You, we are all so busy; we all have so many activities and obligations and opportunities and things we have to do that it often does make our head truly spin.  Especially for families with little kids and the unpredictabilities of family life to manage, simply getting everybody into the church is a triumph, and you know I rejoice with you in that.  The Church – and this parish church – place no obligations whatsoever on you about how you present yourself before the Holy Altar of God; well, maybe we do ask that you avoid anything too revealing or lewd, or with actual vulgar words or images printed on it.  That’s a pretty low bar though. 

What if you raised the bar a bit on yourself?  What if you wore a tie and sport coat to Mass every week, and a suit on big holidays?  What if you polished your Sunday shoes on Saturday evenings?  Women’s wardrobes have morphed to the point that I cannot even guess what the equivalent would be.  But what if your kids saw the effort you put into preparing yourself for Mass?  What if the neighbors saw you leaving the house dressed like that?  What if people saw you in the bakery or the grocery store afterwards still in your church clothes?  

But most of all, what difference would it make to you if you “upped your game” in wardrobe and grooming for Sunday Mass?  What if you prepared yourself externally  to a higher standard?  Would it affect how you were disposed internally ?   Would you get more out of Mass if you put more into it?  

There’s only one way to find out what happens next.  Excuse me while I go polish my shoes.

Monsignor Smith

Playing with House Money

The master commended the dishonest steward for his prudence.

Now, that’s just wrong.  That is our first response – and the response Jesus is looking for among the ones to whom He tells today’s strange and confusing parable. We start with a crook – a steward caught ripping off his employer – and he ends up a hero?  What could Jesus possibly be trying to convey?

Our protagonist, the steward, is not exactly sympathetic, but we have clue to his motivation when he says: I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. Too soft, too old, too weak to earn an honest living by his labor, he is also too proud to ask for the charity of others.   He is honest at least in his self-assessment. 

Though his time is almost up, he has a few days or even hours left in which he is still steward of the master’s resources.  What is there to do but use his power to make other people’s lives better in hopes that in future they will return the favor?     

His master, who will pay the bill for this, approves, commend(ing) the dishonest steward for his prudence.  That’s weird.  Then Jesus weighs in, and He seems to approve too:  the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light.  How can that be right?

This parable follows immediately after last week’s about the Merciful Father and his Prodigal Son, and the Found Sheep, and the Found Coin. Who is welcomed by the Father? Who is carried by the Son and Shepherd? Who is found by the lamp of the Spirit carried by the woman?  Who, that is, is justified to enter the Kingdom of God? 

The clue comes when the steward is honest with himself: I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.  He describes precisely every one of us.  And the steward’s master and our Lord commend him for how he solves the problem: by using what is not his to get what he needs.

Like the steward, we are too weakto gain what we need -- salvation; justification; entrance into the Kingdom -- by our labor.  We just cannot do it.  Inexplicably, we are also ashamed to beg; to throw ourselves on the mercy of God and repent, that is, admit how selfish, stubborn, and disobedient we have consistently been.  We simply will not do it.  So, like the steward, we are up the proverbial creek.

This realization dawns on us, as on the steward, only when we realize that everything we think we control now (our lives and goods and time) does not belong to us, but to our divine Master.  He grants us seemingly total control over all this, BUT: for our misdeeds, He will take the stewardship away from us.  We will die. 

So, here we are:  too weak to dig and too proud to beg.  What shall we do?   Use what we control for these brief moments (our lives and goods and time) to make other people’s lives better in hopes that in future they will return the favor by helping us.  This is how to make friends for (our)selves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive (us) into the eternal habitations.  

I admit it:I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.  In fact, I should make a sign that says so and hang it over my desk.   Maybe you should too.  It will help us remember what we are to do:  make friends for (our)selves by means of unrighteous mammon.  There is nothing for it but to use what we control for these brief moments (our lives and goods and time) to do the works of the Lord, so that when it fails (He) may receive (us) into the eternal habitations.

That’s right: The master (will) commend (us) dishonest steward(s) for (our) prudence.

Monsignor Smith

The Company You Keep

Here come the Monday Train!

You know I like trains, at least if you’ve been reading this for more than a year or two.  But there are exceptions to that, and one of them hit us this week: the Monday Train.

Though last week was the second our school was in session, it began with quiet Labor Day.  This week was the first full week after summer ended, and it began with the first full-strength Monday of the new season.  It came through the rectory like a mile-long load of coal from West Virginia pulled by four CSX diesels.  You have heard, perhaps, of being thrown under the bus?  That’s nothing compared to being hit by the Monday Train. 

By the time Monday noon rolled around, the staff and I were gasping for breath and laughing at how manic it had become, and how suddenly.  Phone calls, drop-ins, follow-ups, deadlines, and situations!  It was such a lovely summer of manageable days and quiet afternoons, leisurely lunches and good humor.  And it is OVER.

That’s not to say we didn’t get any work done over the summer; quite the contrary.  There was a steady, even measured chipping away at the quarry walls as we hewed out the necessary blocks of diligence and accomplishment.  In-boxes were emptied and loose ends tied; reports were signed and submitted; plans were considered and chosen.  All this was accomplished under a remarkable torrent of turnover among the priest residents of the place; for details, see my previous letters. Let me assure you, it was no mean feat.

Which brings me to the happy point of sharing with you the amazing amount and quality of work done for you, for me, and for Jesus by the folks who work here in the rectory and in the administration of our school. When I write that, it would seem that there be a cast of thousands, but they are astonishingly few.  Stakhanovites would blush with shame to see how paltry their production next to the workload effortlessly carried by gentle, smiling church folk.  

Ron, Jackie, Corine, Norma, Carol, and Dao here in the rectory do things in an afternoon that a building full of bureaucrats could not pull off in a month.  The same arithmetic applies to Mr. Ted Ewanciw’s “tiny but mighty” team of Molly, Karyn, Kate, and Nicole over in the school, but let me focus for now on the folks here around me. 

Each of them fulfills what would be two or even three jobs in any other organization.  Each of them has an astonishing roster of “other duties as assigned” which they work out without anyone having actually to assign them.  The range of details and projects, the amount of special consideration and accommodation they routinely apply to the people they assist, and the level of good humor and generosity they maintain in the face of This Particular Supervisor would leave you somewhere between astonished and indignant if I could possibly list it all.  

Not only do they take remarkably good care of me, but you should ask our two new rectory residents how they are managing to adjust to life around the parish.  Let me just say that the staff has admirably cushioned the impact of their new situations, as near as I can discern.

Never was it so obvious to me how much I count on the people who serve in this rectory office, so clear how hard they work for you, nor so manifest their conviction that the Lord has called them to this particular intimacy with Him in their daily work.  This should bring joy and gratitude to you, as it does to me, especially when comes the Monday Train.

Monsignor Smith

Not beyond our reach

So much at stake

It is rare enough for our nation and its news outlets to maintain sustained attention on a situation in a foreign country.  Our notoriously short attention span, lack of interest in anything that does not directly affect us, and near-complete thrall to the infotainment industry’s agenda of selling us consumer goods and political panic preclude our awareness of and interest in what is happening far away.  But somehow, Hong Kong has slipped through this near-impermeable barrier.

Far away from us, so why are we paying attention?  Why does news from there still merit front-page photos and top stories on every program and site?  Is it that we recognize our common humanity manifest in the striving of the millions who march against oppression?  Is it out of suspense as to how long recurring mass demonstrations can be sustained before one side or another (the demonstrators or the demonstrated-against) does something to tip the entire situation into chaos?  Is it out of the same sort of morbid fascination that makes people keep watching the ocean swimmers in the movie Jawseven as doubt about the eventual outcome dwindles and disappears? Or, against all reason and experience, do we secretly nurture hope that it all might resolve and turn out well?  

Let me give one reason why you and I should transfer our motivation to that last possibility, the hopeful one: Father Joseph McCabe, M.M.

Fr. McCabe, to refresh your memories, or to inform you who are new to the parish, lived here for two and a half years until June 2015. A Maryknoll missionary priest from Long Island, he obtained a Canon Law degree from Catholic University and made a big contribution to – and quite the impression on – our parish.  Hardly your usual student priest, he was in his mid-sixties already when he arrived, after decades in the missions of Tanzania and the Russian far east, and another decade in service of the Holy See in Rome.  If you weren’t here then, ask someone who was: he was a force of nature.  

Once he achieved his degree, his assignment was to become Judicial Vicar for the diocese of – you guessed it – Hong Kong.  For four years I have enjoyed his stories about that city, his parish work there (dozens in RCIA every year! near-constant weddings!), and his rectory life.  He also has become superior of all Maryknoll personnel in the whole region, including southeast Asia and Australia.  

After a long, anxious silence, Fr. McCabe recently wrote me. He is okay; but life in Hong Kong is changed and difficult.  There is hope, there is fear, nobody knows whom to trust or where there is safety.  Both demonstrators and demonstrated-against frighten and threaten.  Nobody knows what to expect, when or how it will end, but they must and do nurture hope that it all might resolve and turn out well. 

Not only because he must and will stay in Hong Kong, and not only because he has grown to love and care about many people there, but also because it is what he as a priest does and what we as Christians do, he begs for our prayers.  He knows, though not everybody there knows, that prayer to God is a powerful force for good in this life and in this world.  He knows, though not everybody there knows, but we do if we pause long enough to consider, that you and I are not powerless to contribute to the outcome of this spectacular and historic drama playing out on the other side of the planet.  He knows, though we can easily forget or be distracted, that our common human nature binds us to every soul there, and our common baptism binds us to every Christian soul there and around the world, and to the divine life of the Holy Trinity, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in all His glory and power.

With this great power comes great responsibility.  The lives and futures of one whom we know well, and millions whom we know by our shared human need for life and liberty, teeter precariously in the balance before our very eyes.  We are not helpless spectators; let us pray.

Monsignor Smith

Workin' it

These days, socialism of one sort or another seems to be on the menu again, and it presents itself as the friend of the worker.  Many executives and operatives of labor unions seem eager to agree, lending their political support to candidates who promise to re-order society to benefit the worker.  As we mark that holiday weekend that is the US version of what in Europe and elsewhere happens on “May Day,” the first of that month, it is good to reflect on what Christ reveals to us about human labor.

Pope Saint John Paul II spent almost forty years of his life living under various forms of socialism in his native Poland – first National Socialism from 1939 -45 under the German Nazi occupation, then Soviet socialism under Russian occupation and their puppet regime until his election to the See of Peter in 1978.  In 1981, eight years before the latter’s collapse, he issued his encyclical Laborem Exercens on the meaning of human labor.

The Church finds in the very first pages of the book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth.  An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express ... the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itself.  These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of the Creators original covenant with creation in man.  When man, who had been created in the image of God ...male and female, hears the words:  Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world.  Indeed, they show its very deepest essence.  Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth.  In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe. (no. 4)

John Paul II never was exactly easy to read.  I remember struggling with his encyclicals as they came out; so rich their thought, so complex their philosophical grounding.   But did you catch that?  Human labor is the activity in which man reveals his identity in the image and likeness of God, the creator.  

One of my favorite things about being pastor is getting to know the various workers – craftsmen, contractors, and artisans – who do the work to maintain the fabric of our parish; for example, the HVAC contractors who installed and maintain the heating and cooling equipment in our rectory and church.  I love what they do for us, and I love getting to know them who do it.  I guess Pope Saint John Paul II would remind me that it is because in their work they reflect all they have in common with our Divine Creator.  I would acknowledge that it is much easier to see the resemblance in them than it is in, say, bureaucrats – even church bureaucrats!

Unfortunately, socialism, in or out of fashion, reduces labor and therefore the human laborer to a merely material reality.  This overlooks fully half of human identity, the spiritual reality, and results inevitably in the devaluation of human labor and the destruction of human dignity.  History reveals socialism’s “perfect” 100% record on this front, whenever, wherever, and by whomever it has been implemented. Workers can recognize that is a false friend, indeed. 

So, as we celebrate Labor Day by refraining from labor, let us thank God for revealing our likeness to Him in our work, but also most perfectly in His Son; and make that the measure of anyone who claims to be our friend. 

Monsignor Smith

Crowning moment

This week, we celebrated the Queenship of Mary, a feast that marks the octave-day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and its logical conclusion and goal.  Without the same solemnity and obligation of the Assumption it can pass unnoticed, but the day brings light to us as our Blessed Mother so often does.

It is illumined these days by the rising sun, neither as early nor as northerly as it was in the summer solstice already two months past.  Still it shines in its earliest moments into our church through our stained-glass Coronation of the Virgin, the window of Our Lady’s Queenship.  

During the thirty minutes of the six-thirty Mass, the light increases in that window’s muted tones, which fascinate me in every light, every season.  Not as strong nor as vibrant as the colors of our other windows, its shades are rarely found side by side, like turquoise with ochre.  Its place in the corner keeps it from direct sun most of the time, yet it is not dark so long as a trace of light be in the sky.  

It’s the window I see when I come into the church from the chapel, and as I return to the sacristy from my confessional.  It is beautiful.

Again and again I marvel at the genius and goodness evident in our church’s restrained decoration.  That one window, no more prominent and half so bold as the others, earns and enjoys its place at the terminus of our stained-class cycle.  Every other deed of God and colorful, illuminated moment in the life of our Savior leads to it in art as in life.  What Jesus obtains by His saving deed He bestows upon His Holy Mother, and she, in turn, offers to use it for us.  Her end is our goal, and that last window depicts our destination.

It is strange, at first, to celebrate this conclusion, this consummation at this time midway through the year.  August on both calendars, liturgical and civil, is neither beginning nor end; if anything a pause, a broad place flattened by heat and lassitude.   But while the life of Christ guides our Advent-starting liturgical calendar, the life of Mary accompanies our most practical calendar.  

She enters heaven this week, but soon enough we will mark her birth.  The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin we celebrate on September 8, and the cycle resumes, just as our cycle resumes with Labor Day, the First Day of School, and the first day of work, that bring the return to long pants, hard shoes, and long commutes.    

Soon enough, dear friends, soon enough.  But before you settle in to that daily grind and routine, look up, raise your eyes to the prize that awaits.  That window and the Lady depicted in it show the goal of every day on all our calendars.  What she enjoys, she longs to share, and that beauty lights our way.  Hail, Holy Queen!

Monsignor Smith

Comes and goes

It is hard to believe this, but we have another change in the cast of priestly characters in the Holy House of Soubirous.  That’s right, we have yet another transition in the population of our rectory.  Brace yourselves!  If you pay close attention, you will be able to amaze your friends who went away for long periods this summer by explaining to them what priests were here, and when, and for what reason – and then introducing them to the ones who are here now. 

Father Michael Russo, who was ordained in June and assigned here, moving in July 10 as Parochial Vicar pro tempore, will be coming to the end of his temporaand moving out of the parochial vicar suite in our rectory.  

Father Brad Berhorst, a priest of Jefferson City (that’s in Missouri) who was also ordained in June (just two weeks after Father Russo) will be moving into the student rooms of the rectory.

The funny thing is, both Father Russo and Father Berhorst will be studying for advanced degrees at Catholic University of America over the coming year, Father Russo for one year to get his License in Systematic Theology, and Father Berhorst for two years to get his License in Canon Law. They will probably see one another on campus.

We will not have a Parochial Vicar; Fr. Russo’s assignment is to get his degree.  I will be the only priest assigned by the Archdiocese of Washington to be at Saint Bernadette.

However, Father Berhorst’s bishop, who also has assigned him to get his degree, wants him to gain experience of priestly life in a parish, and has assigned him not only to live here, but also to be engaged in the life of the parish.  Which means he will be doing more than just helping with Mass and confessions, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his completing his academic work on schedule. 

What’s more, Father Russo is really happy to be a priest and wants to do priest things too, so that he gain experience of priestly life in a parish.  It seems that you all have been utterly charming and generous toward him over his six-week sojourn, and maybe his time in our rectory has been a little (a lot?) more promising than the thought of another year in the institutional halls of Theological College at CUA.  So, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his completing his academic work on schedule, he will be helping out around here too.  

So even though Father Russo is technically moving out of the rectory and back into the dismal and dank corridors where he just served his years of seminary time, don’t say good bye!  Say instead, hurry back!  Or maybe, see you next week?  Schedules and balancing all have to be worked out, but let him know that the more you see of him, the happier you’ll be.  I think it would be great to have him around as much as possible.  In fact, I may just encourage him to leave as much of his stuff as he wants right where it is in the parochial vicar rooms.

You should also welcome Father Berhorst, and assure him that not only are you glad to have him here with us, but explain that you’re pretty confident he’ll like it here.  In fact, you can give evidence for the hope that is within you: Be on the lookout for another weekend visit from Fr. Nick Zientarski, to emphasize how much Saint Bernadette loves her student priests, and how much priests love being at Saint Bernadette.   That is not at all hard to believe.

Monsignor Smith