Decades

The decahedral vaulted nave
of Saint Gereon Church in Cologne has ten sides,
which makes it just like one decade,
and one of a kind in my experience.

Now once I mention decades it would be perfectly laudable if you were to assume that I am speaking of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Indeed, the mysteries associated with the ten-counts of Hail Mary should be foremost in our minds in this month that we began by crowning Our Lady in the church.  But my reference is less pious, and honestly less impressive than the mysteries of our salvation in the life of the Divine Son of the Holy Virgin.

Before we kicked off the Month of Our Lady here last weekend with First Holy Communion and the May Procession, I slipped away to the southern Shenandoah Valley to the scene of my undergraduate education.   That effort was completed four decades ago, and I spent a few days enjoying the beauty of the place and the company of classmates and faculty in my reunion.  All the attention was heaped on the classes marking fifty and twenty-five years, but the keynote speaker for the kickoff was one of us, so we got the spotlight for a minute.  He was both affectionate and brutal, calling us out on a few things of which we might not choose to boast.  He did, however, ratify my recollection that classes were really hard.

Four decades is nothing to sneeze at and was a good reason to travel, but how about five?  Later this week I will slip away for an overnight in Wheeling, West Virginia, for the golden jubilee of priestly ordination for Bishop Mark Brennan.  Originally a Washington priest, he served as Vocations Director here when I first applied as a tentative and possible future priest.  That’s a pretty important role in the unfolding of my vocation, and like many of my peers I remain quite fond of him.  Now, you might suggest that a trip to Wheeling is hardly a posh vacation, but don’t forget that my dad’s family is from there and I am happy to have the occasion to revisit the place of many happy memories of my grandparents.  My hotel will be across the creek from the campus where my parents first met.   

Four decades and five, now how about two?  Later this month our own Father Larry Swink will achieve the twenty-year mark since he was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ.  A local boy in the truest sense – he grew up just up the road – it is good that he is at home now here with us.  Be alert for an opportunity to celebrate his priesthood later this month; Saint Bernadette is the best at throwing a party, but we are still pulling it together.

Four, five, and two decades, no small measure of time and life.  This is the function of the decades of the rosary, too, which mark out the events in the life of Our Lord at the same time they measure the minutes and meaning of our own.  Every day and every life reveal the love of God in the working out of His Divine will, our salvation, so the distinction between types of decades fruitfully blurs.

The gratitude that is the fruit of such reflective counting brings us back around to the beginning of the lives for which we are grateful, and on this Mother’s Day there is no more fitting gift and celebration than to offer a Rosary for our Mom and her intentions.  Five decades cannot be better spent.

Monsignor Smith

Priority

The first communion on the road

Which came first? is the opening line in an ancient riddle.   This weekend, first things come to mind.  It is the most beautiful weekend of the year as the seasons announce life coming back to the earth, and our children present themselves to receive for the first time the Author of Life Himself.  It is the time of First Holy Communion.

This is a great and glorious instant in the lives of our first communicants and their families, but that very first-ness brings both excitement and promise – promise of more, promise of second and third and beyond.  There is a lot of first-ness to be found in our relationship with Jesus.

The first thing the Church did, back before she even knew herself to be the Church, back when she became the Church, in fact how she became the Church, was to celebrate the Eucharist.  The disciples who had encountered the risen Lord on the first day of the week, then again eight days later, continued to worship God on this new day in a new way.  Not with Sabbath-worship on the seventh day, but with thanksgiving to God, and the breaking of the bread, on the first day.

The Sacred Scriptures describe this first action of grace, so they themselves clearly come later, that is, not first.  Communion with Jesus is the root and foundation of the Church, first when He passed through locked doors to say and give “Peace to you,” then as the Apostles anointed with the Spirit took bread and did this in memory of Him, saying, “This is my body.”

It is clear that to be in the Church, to live the life of grace, we need that communion – our bodies to be in union with this glorious body. This must come first, before we can even hope or attempt to do “what Jesus would do.”  Before the doing, before the imitating, there must be something else there, first.

This firstness is not, of course, something that the Church could make or take, but that Christ himself must and did give.  The firstness of this giving is essential to the communion, for it cannot be earned or bought or won.  Communion is necessarily something for us to receive, and the first foot forward is that of Him who gives.  Look at the faces of the children who come.  They bring nothing but their receptivity to what they He will give, and to Him Who gives.   Having received they return, their eyes alight with the gift to Whom they give their own flesh.

Also this month we celebrate the first giving of flesh, as we mark or devotion to our mother Mary, who gave her flesh to Him who became flesh and dwells among us.  This first giving is the first first communion, as God Himself, the Eternal Word, took flesh, and dwelt in the tabernacle, the Tower of Ivory that is His most pure mother.  For the unique response to the giving God is likewise to give, which makes room for that great first giving.  No one has done it better, but we all strive to imitate what she did, to give our flesh to be one with His flesh, to renew what she did first.

It is my hope that giving these first Communions to these receptive and rejoicing communicants is to kindle not nostalgia for something that was and will be no more, but delight and desire for what is coming into being, and what will be done.   Not only I, but parents, and grandparents, neighbors, friends, and cousins, all watch and see and smile, knowing the momentousness of this meeting, the union of heaven and earth in an innocent soul.

It is my hope that this also be their desire, as well as mine: to enjoy that same moment, not the firstness, but the communion.  That desire itself is a gift, given freely and without prejudice, nurtured in all who would receive, who would take the gift by giving themselves, giving their flesh to Him whose flesh gives life; to know, to enjoy, to experience this same second that comes second, flowing forth from the gift of God, who came first.

Monsignor Smith

Simplicity

It's not wine yet!  But with a little work, 
more time than you'd expect,
and a lot of local genius,
it will be very good wine.

How tiny a thing, and simple.  The bits of bread that fill the golden vessel to be offered upon our altar have precisely two ingredients, wheat flour and water.  

There is one more essential element that one might call an ingredient: human genius.  They do not grow on trees, these breads, nor fall from heaven in the night as did the manna flakes in the time of the Exodus.  The grain grows of its nature from the ground and the ear ripens to bear its fruit only after the field is cultivated and the grain sown.  Still then it is not ready to eat, for it must be prepared and ground into flour before it can be mixed with water and baked into bread.   All this is the work of human hands and know-how.  Simple, perhaps, but discerned and learned and perfected, not to be taken for granted.  

Similarly, the wine in the chalice is pure grape wine with no additives.  Yet wine does not flow of its own accord from the vines; rather, after cultivation and collection the grapes are pressed for their juice which is then subjected a process of very few steps of near infinite adjustability governing time and temperature, exposure and containment that produces a whole new and marvelous thing, astonishing, but still simple, with one ingredient.

Though both bread and wine are simple and universal, they do not occur of nature itself, but rather by man’s fruitful manipulation of the fruit of the earth: “the work of human hands” to which we refer as we offer them to the blessed Lord God of the universe.  Natural, but not occurring of themselves in nature, and simple, but not elemental, once made they become the elements of the great thanksgiving by which we receive the Risen and Victorious Son of God in His flesh and blood. 

All the great mysteries of our salvation, the sacraments, are rooted in goods found everywhere and at all times of human history.  They appear and are applied to the comfort and consolation of human life only as the result of human effort and understanding.  Water gushes from springs and flows in rivers, but to wash with it requires human effort and intention.  Olives grow and ripen on trees, but only after hands have pressed them for oil and applied this salve to a wound can their fragrant ointment do its healing work.  These found goods require human genius among their ingredients, so to speak, at that natural level, before our saving God both reveals and imputes the divine genius that provides for our good at the supernatural level.  

The logic of the divine Word become flesh and dwelling among us is exclusive as well as expansive.   The infant lying in the manger, son of the Virgin Mother, is the one Savior of all the fallen; the many infants lying in their beds, children of loving mothers, are not.  This, not that; bread, not meat; wine, not milk.  

Bread is everywhere and of wide variety, but it is one very specific thing, and nothing else will do.  Wine is both unique and universal.  Wheat bread and grape wine are indispensable definitions of the instruction and occurrence of the flesh of the divine Son of the heavenly Father and the Virgin Mother, the blood of the unique and universal Redeemer of the world.  

Marvelous to contemplate, easy to recognize and receive, our Eucharistic Lord is both the source and the result of instructions that are not complicated, though by no means easy.  Love one another as I have loved you is remarkably specific; and do this in memory of me  leaves no room for improvisation.  Expansive and exclusive.  Nothing else will do the work for which He sent His Word, at which He will not fail.

Next weekend in our parish, the risen Lord Jesus will come to become one with, to commune with some of our children for the first time in their young lives.  He will be adorable and admirable.  Docile to the will of His Father, He will be the bread that came down from heaven.  He will be food for them, entering their bodies and raising up their lives.  From the golden vessel to the tip of their tongue, His flesh will make them glory.  How enormous a thing, and simple.  

Monsignor Smith

Contrast

Was Paul Simon right when he sang 
that everything looks worse in black and white?

Twenty-five years ago, Newark and Pittsburgh were cities characterized by their large and strong Catholic populations, and their bishops enjoyed local celebrity and civic influence.  When those men in succession were named Archbishop of Washington, they rejoiced in the obvious promotion but were visibly stunned to learn that their local influence and celebrity had been much diminished.  Arrived with fanfare in this city of many important people, when venturing beyond the embrace of ecclesial enthusiasm, each suddenly found himself to be just another man in a black car.   

Fifty years ago, Birmingham, Alabama, was precisely the opposite.  Catholics were a tiny minority.  As I was growing up there, I saw residual streaks of ignorance and suspicion toward Catholics, but perhaps surprisingly, no open hostility in public or in print. 

The real surprise came when I moved “up this way” for college and encountered for the first time undisguised and public anti-Catholicism when I subscribed to the Washington Post.  Its reporters and opiners, erudite and arrogant, were disdainful toward both the Faith and the faithful, dismissing the influence and importance of the Church and her ministers.   

In more recent times, this difference has only widened.   Birmingham and environs are home to a strong Christian culture, by no means Catholic in the majority but now enthusiastically embracing the Catholics in their midst.   Local ‘Bible Christians’ recognize and receive Catholic clergy with respect and warmth even if their understanding of the realities of priest, bishop, and diocese may be a little spotty.  

Whereas in our own throbbing metropolis, the diminution and marginalization of ministers and faithful has only expanded beyond the outsider “Romans” to include any who take Christianity seriously.  Yes, some ecclesial communities outside the Catholic communion have seen the leadership of their institutions take up dispositions more ideological than theological, following the siren song of public affirmation.  Despite this, there remain subordinate or independent communities and many faithful Christians who continue to nurture faith, sustain hope, and do the work of charity, even though they often suffer some penalty for not subscribing to the official program.

Despite the attacks and the attrition, and although Washington never was and still is not a “Catholic city” in the old way, the Church here is alive and active in a new way.  There exists here and now a robust and dynamic combination of parish churches and personal and professional associations, building up the Body of Christ in the background of better-publicized activities in the nation’s capital.  This subtle if not clandestine presence is populated by serious and active Catholics whose faith shapes their activities in the city and the world, and who are willing and eager to welcome, fortify, and help form members of the Mystical Body, the Church.

If this encouraging reality is not recognized nor remarked upon in the high-volume channels of communication and chatter, neither does it shrink before the narrative that does enjoy the spotlight.  Christ is truly risen, alive and at work in the hub of this empire as He was in many other earlier empires.  You and I know where to look and what to do, and our hope is in Him and His truth.  Disadvantaged perhaps, we are not discouraged by official disapprobation or public disregard.  

What startled those capable churchmen a quarter century ago when they arrived in our city comes as no surprise to us who have been here awhile longer.  The Catholic Church enjoys here no pride of position, and still less privilege.  Respect and warmth aplenty are afforded her clergy, but among the lowly, the faithful, and the ones who serve.  The great ones, the ones who aspire to be great, and the merchants of celebrity and significance are proud in their conceit.  There is no ground to lament their disdain, nor to curry their favor, for the strong ones who control the cult and culture of our nation’s capital and see city, Washington, lay their victims on other altars, and make their offerings to different gods.

Monsignor Smith

The Human Touch

Craft.  Artisanal.  Home-made.  Small batch.  Hand-made.  When used in marketing, all these terms indicate that a product is better and the price will be higher.  But if you have to explain how you know whether the label is true, it can be hard to put your finger on any evidence.

On Holy Saturday morning as I was instructing our neophytes for the rites that would bring them through the sacraments of initiation into the life-saving communion that we enjoy, something resembling chaos was unfolding behind me in the sanctuary.   What had been desolate and barren for Good Friday was blooming with new life for Easter as flowers and plants and textiles and candles and carpets were moved into place by a platoon of cheerful laborers.  I pointed out that every element of the great liturgy that evening, which would change their lives with an abundance of grace, was done by actual people who wanted them to have the very best.  Every word spoken or sung, every action and element would be prepared and proffered by human hands and hearts.  

The worship of God cannot come from a can, recording, or package, and neither can the welcome that springs from and offers the knowledge of the love of the Risen Lord. 

The neophytes that morning saw what looked like a small army of helpers, but it was a fraction of the real force that labored here over the past weeks.  They did not see the That Man Is You Guys arrive at dawn for their weekly meeting, which ended with their carrying upstairs and into the sanctuary ‘the garden’ from the Stricker Room altar of repose.  Careful parishioners had prepared and erected that garden altar on Holy Thursday morning, two days after a different group had unloaded and checked the flowers and plants from the florist’s truck.  

Two evenings each week, our choirs had rehearsed and prepared all the unique music for the once-a-year splendors of the Holy Week liturgies.  Our altar servers also had rehearsed for the complex and demanding work that they would deliver so that all of us could answer in the affirmative that great sung question, Were you there?   

The hospitality on the lawn and the manic egg hunt that finished just as the rain began in earnest required planning and preparation and participation, much of it by people you may not have seen or perhaps noticed.  Coordinators and volunteers and leaders and followers before, during, and after made it all happen.  And the home-made treats were not only the best, but also the best loved.

What I pointed out to the neophytes that morning was that the heart of the faith that embraced them that night was human as well as divine, so very different from the mass-produced, synthetic, or virtual realities that are so common everywhere else.  This should awaken in them, and all of us, a spirit of gratitude to God who feeds us using human hands as well as gratitude for the many hands that together prepare the feast.  

I am grateful for all this selfless service, and I hope we all are, because recognition of this reality brings with it recognition of our obligation to serve and offer the work of our own hands as well.  A high standard has been set for us, and an invitation given us.  To do the work of witness and worship fortifies communion, as it brings us to common purpose in what can only be accomplished together.  Whether the smaller communion-within-the-communion is the altar servers negotiating tasks in the sacristy, choristers having a laugh with the ones with whom they have developed a common voice, or the personal care that accompanies the catechesis of the OCIA team, the life won for us by the risen Christ is something shared.  

A product marketed as being hand-made likely was not made entirely by hand, nor is it any better.  What, then, is the true indication of authenticity, the sign of excellence that marks the best there is?  Paradoxically, it is the flaw, the imperfection, the slight asymmetry, or imprecise repetition.  Such elements can be cynically designed, engineered, and mass-produced, but their sterility reveals the counterfeit.  

What we enjoy here is not a product to be consumed, but a gift received that grows and gets better when given away.  The toppled pot, the missed note, the fingerprint that is out of place or the exuberance that is out of step: a keen observer could have spotted any of these imperfections in our Holy Week and Easter celebrations, inside the church and out, because everything was prepared and made with love by people who were on scene, in the moment, and striving to provide the best.  The mark of authenticity is the flaw; the evidence of love is the wound.  You can put your finger on it.

Monsignor Smith

When the strife is o'er

Winner! - and losers.

How do you define victory?  For most of us, we default to something like what Ronald Reagan said was his plan for the Soviets in the Cold War: We win, they lose.  It shocked people who had grown accustomed to détente, but arguably he achieved it within the decade.  That formulation is called a zero-sum game.  For one player to achieve, another must fail.  For there to be a winner, there must be a loser.

Winning also has the aspect of vindication, that is, of being proven right.  Right can be either factually correct or morally just.  Both types of right are popular to claim, easy to assume, and all too rare to demonstrate or achieve.

Victory need not involve a human opponent, though, for one can overcome an obstacle, meet a challenge, or conquer one’s own fears.  Victory can be complicated.  There is the Pyrrhic victory, in which the victor in the battle suffers such great losses that it obtains the same consequences for him as defeat. 

To be able to achieve victory, one must be able to describe it.  How else will you know what you are fighting for, and how will you know when you have won?  It is a step that cannot be omitted.  I have begun re-reading a comprehensive history of the American Civil War and am reminded how many different categories and definitions of victory were nurtured by the political and military leaders as well as the populace in the days of its undertaking.  Some were idealistic, some delusional; very few were realistic, and none so much as resembled what the eventual victory would look like and achieve, much less what it would cost.  There is nothing new under the sun, says Qoheleth. (Eccles. 1:9)

This great day, Christ Jesus’ victory breaks this seemingly cyclical tyranny of sameness to make all things new. (Rev 21:5) The astonishing thing is how much his victory resembles defeat, and even our celebration of his triumph does not omit his betrayal, suffering, and death.  

The ancient text of the Eucharistic Preface of the Holy Cross unfolds the complexity. For you placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the cross, so that where death arose, life might again spring forth and the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might on a tree be conquered through Christ our Lord.

There is no parade of conquering forces nor of conquered enemies now subjugated.  Has it ever caught your attention how differently Our Lord behaves in victory from such conventional patterns?  He does not rise from the grave to punish his betrayers, but rather restore them to His friendship.  He does not smite those who plotted His death, nor the mobs who howled for it.  He does not parade His conquering strength, nor even once smirk, I told you so.  How unlike our visions of victory is His great victory!

We omit none of this in sanctifying these days with the very holiness of our Savior, for we cannot enjoy the accomplishment without engaging the anguish.   And we cannot know or understand much less set our sights on our own victory unless we accept this definition, this description of it. 

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 15:53-57)

Détente is not a plan nor a path to survival, much less success.  Our enemy is not human and still desires nothing short of our defeat and our death. Yet here we are.   Death with life contended: combat strangely ended!  Life's own Champion, slain, yet lives to reign.  (Easter sequence) Our champion, who is human and divine, has destroyed death for us and given us victory, defined and delivered.  Every day we embrace what He accomplished, we grow in our understanding of the freedom won for us, freedom especially from fear.  Today, newly aware of the cost, newly fortified with the life and love of the Victor, God, we realize together This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad it!  Alleluia.

Monsignor Smith

A face in the crowd

Ecce Homo ("Behold the man")
 by Valentin de Boulogne

For all our prized intellect and will, for all our cherished individuality and freedom, we human beings do occasionally reveal that at least partially we are herd animals.  No, nobody enjoys flying coach or ‘cattle class’ and the feeling of being treated as less than human.  But it is hard to go even a day without video from nearby or some faraway country showing a broad public space filled with thousands or even tens of thousands of people, massed and moving and often shouting as one single beast.  

Sports rivalries and packed stadiums are at the light end of the mob spectrum that runs thence toward dark and dangerous.  Even in a lighthearted assembly, people can get worked up with victory or defeat and do something en masse that none of them would ever do solo.  When the mood does turn dark, the words and the deeds can become truly terrifying and even, in a peculiar way, inhuman.  

This madness of crowds can appear spontaneously or after careful connivance and manipulation, and while it is exhilarating for the participants to be swept up into ‘something bigger than themselves,’ it is properly terrifying for any bystanders who manage to maintain some personal and emotional distance from the frenzy.  What begets that fear is not only the danger that the roiling crowd presents, but also the evident change that has overtaken its members who mere moments earlier were so recognizably and fully themselves.  A tremor of a different sort of fear can shake the participants when the mob disperses, and its members remember themselves and wonder with revulsion what came over them.

Rather than warning you  to excuse yourself from such an assembly before it become a riot, I invite you to enter the mob as its bloodlust rises.  Only one specific mob, I should clarify; the one that gathers round the praetorium and roars for the blood of the innocent man Jesus.

In this our annual experiment in crowd psychology we try on, like a garment, the madness that all too easily fits us tailor-made, woven as it is of fear and self-preservation, colored by indignation at the mere suggestion that we be sinful, and cut to the false consensus of mutual congratulation.  All these vices inhibit our intellect and our will and constrain our freedom; together they fabricate the false fraternity of hypocrites.  We are not proud of them nor even comfortable with them, but we are afraid to find ourselves naked without them. 

The One who has none of these vices nor any other stands alone before us stripped, beaten, and bleeding in His mute pity for us, which only fuels our rage.  Yes, rage.  How dare anyone suggest we be the guilty ones.

It is the Passion of the Lord, not merely read but inhabited by us who are the Body of Christ.  We do this to ourselves on purpose, in a controlled environment and with a strong lifeline round us all to pull us out of the abyss.  Recognizing after the fact our role in the events of this day, a tremor of a different sort of fear shakes us when we come to ourselves and wonder with revulsion at how we could ever have been a part of such an action. 

The One being manhandled to His death by the savage crowd directs to their highest purpose both intellect and will, placing individuality at the service of the multitude to whom He is bound by His human nature, and perfecting freedom in obedience.  While we rush on helpless to save ourselves from ourselves, He anchors the lifeline that draws us up from the abyss, retrieves and restores us to our own humanity, and delivers us from the madness of the crowd.

Monsignor Smith