Let it fly

For my seminary classmates, 1994 was the year that we did not set foot in the United States, because those were the rules.  As a result, it was the year that the Fourth of July did not happen.  Well, you know the date came and went, but wherever I was just then – Spain?  France maybe?  -- I was having a good time in a great place, but it was not the same.  On my second assignment to Rome, over four years I became accustomed to being in somebody else’s country for our national day.  It did not have the same sting as that first time in 1994. 

I have had epic Fourths of July.  When young, foolish, and living within walking distance of the National Mall, I enjoyed the concert and fireworks on the capitol lawn.  I have mingled at an elegant party of Important People on a balcony a mere block from the White House.  At my bachelor apartment, I pulled together my local friends with extended family visiting town for a fifth of July wedding in a great convivium that adjourned to the roof in time to see in the distance the fireworks of the Mall.  

The best ever was the Bicentennial in 1976.   The Tall Ships.   The Freedom Train.  The neighborhood parade with bicycles decorated by all the kids.  The Flags of the Revolution project for my whole sixth-grade class.  I got the “Bicentennial Camper” rocker for my Camp Sequoyah patch on my first-ever summer camp with Troop 21.  The Bicentennial-edition everything, even, I think, cars.  

The coming into existence of the United States of America is a never-before-in-human history event, and statistically as well as sociologically likely to be a never-ever-again.  Not being omniscient but also not being ignorant of history and life experiences very different from my own, I am firmly convinced that this existence is a good thing on a scale and at a level of impact unmatched by any other human undertaking.  (Before you extend that “just a minute here” finger at me, let me observe, graciously, that the Church is a divine institution.)  Yet I seek no controversy here; I am willing to let that assertion go by the by, undefended.

I will content myself to assert that the existence of the USA is a very good thing for me, personally, and for mine, however you want to parse that possessive.  This is my country, and this is our country.  It is our home, our patria – our fatherland.  As a matter of piety we owe our country love and devotion.  As a matter of honesty we have so much, even everything for which we must give gratitude.  My heart swells at the National Anthem, to which we indeed owe an obligation of respect, and therefore stand and salute.  Patriotism is the debt we cannot pay down for it enriches us far more than it costs.

Look, I am a Boy Scout.  In fact, I am that Boy Scout who would wear his uniform to our high school’s football games each Friday night to raise the flag at the beginning, and then lower it respectfully afterward.  Twenty-five years later, it seemed natural to take responsibility for the flag that flew in front of my seminary in Baltimore for my solitary year there.  I don’t care who calls me a nerd, it is important.  

One of the Catholic commentators I most greatly admire and enjoy solemnly intoned that, as America turns 250, we could all use some humility, austerity, and personal repentance along with the bombast and celebration.  I cry Foul! Wrong you are sir!  This is precisely what we must avoid.  

The toast at a wedding is not the time to make recriminations.  A rehearsal of grudges has no place at a birthday party.  And a eulogy is so called because one speaks well of the deceased – de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.  This is more than manners; this is the fabric that binds families and nations.   

Ours is not a Catholic nation, but Catholics have thrived here beyond the dreams of their forebears and continue to contribute indispensably to the greatness of our country.   From her storehouse of wisdom, our Holy Mother the Church can contribute a more pointed directive, a more foundational principle that can calm the turbulence and reduce friction in these days when everybody has an opinion and some of them are negative.  Remember, brethren, it is forbidden to fast on a feast.  

I may just join Father Swink in a beer this week – a domestic one at that.  Our cuisine will not be haute, but spirits will be high as we mark this great anniversary and celebrate our truly great nation.  To all my fellow citizens who find themselves abroad on this day, I send a greeting and a prayer; may you come home when you will, rejoicing.  To the rest who are somewhere, anywhere in this enormous land, I shout with Saint Peter on Mount Tabor: ‘Tis good, Lord, to be here!  God bless America, and deliver us from evil.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Escape hatch

Big rivers have to come from somewhere;
even the mighty Potomac starts small.
It may be Almost Heaven,
but it isn't Paradise.

Known as the Garden of Eden, or even Paradise, the original habitation of Man in the order of God’s creation was perfect in every way.  No pests, no predators, no problems.  No shortages nor sadnesses.  What could possibly go wrong?   

Since the Fall and that whole by-the-sweat-of-your brow-shall you-live consequence, Paradise has been not only a happy memory but also a goal: to restore or re-achieve what every human descendent of that first couple, Adam and Eve, somehow remembers well enough to desire.  

When our forebears set forth upon this continent a great new undertaking, they had reason to recall Paradise, and to imagine its recovery.   The broad and fertile land was not pest- nor predator-free by any means, but it was rich in opportunity for the sweat of one’s brow to achieve the requirements for life.  

Having recently and for the umpteenth time crossed the Millard E. Tydings Bridge over the Susquehanna River and marveled anew at how big is this river that most people would not name if asked for five or even ten big rivers in our nation, I wonder at the courage that it took to undertake to eke out a subsistence from this hugeness, and the vision that resolved to order and erect a society that encompassed it.

Two hundred and fifty years have passed since a small and representative group took responsibility for that enormous project onto their own shoulders. One might think this necessarily another act of hubris, of men taking to themselves what is forbidden to mortals.  But they were all familiar with both that ancient Fall and the Redemption that is its remedy, and wary of grabbing the fatal fruit.  In their modesty, they left for every inhabitant of this nation what Adam and Eve enjoyed in their Garden days: respect for the intellect and will, and the freedom to act upon these in pursuit of what is good.  So began the experiment in ordered liberty that has so benefitted us, and the world.

While daily surrounded by the benefits and blessings that have accrued because of their audacious action, many manage to preoccupy themselves and one another with the opposite, the past failures and the perduring problems.  These have not only survived in our republic, it is asserted, but indeed have grown to define and degrade the entire undertaking.  

How sad, and how wrong.  Paradise long since lost, any pest- and predator-free place would also be devoid of human freedom, and in fact of human beings.  People are not problems, but we do have a knack for causing them by misusing our freedom.  To categorize any one human life as a problem is the temptation that deprives us of what we have in common with that person and our Divine Creator. 

Rebuilding Paradise and re-achieving problem-free living invariably leads to the elimination of more and more actual people.  Shortages and sadnesses are endemic to our human condition.  They can either drive us apart or bind us more closely one to another.  In this nation the burden of responding to them and remedying them falls to us, the people.  The apple still hangs tantalizingly on the branch, and there will always be a voice in every ear suggesting you’ve been robbed and I can help you.  All will fall for it some of the time, and some will fall for it all the time.  Social upheaval ensues.

Perfection, while it lasted, included freedom.  Deprived of perfection, we still crave and protect freedom.  Anything can go wrong, but we are free to respond and rebuild.   Paradise this is not and never will be.  We know our limitations, yet our aspirations are limited only by our willingness to sweat our brows.  We have a republic, if we can keep it.  

Monsignor Smith

Thank you Father Martin!

 

Fun while it lasted.

The gifts bestowed by someone who came before, we are obliged to protect and preserve.   That should not be a controversial assertion, but in our era of innovation novelty often prevails over preservation.  

In the Church, what has been handed down is the most precious of our possessions.  The Faith and the Sacraments, the Church herself; all are the very opposite of innovation and novelty.  Their source and their value are eternal!  This rubs off in more practical affairs in the life of the Church, such as our own rectory where everything old and good is preserved and protected until it can fulfill its role no longer.  Things can get a little shabby in the latter days.  The deck on the back of the rectory is a fine example of this. 

Even though the deck juts out over the parking lot and gets the direct sun in the summertime, it has been a popular place for residents both short- and long-term.  The acquisition at the encouragement of Fr. DeRosa about 2010 of a decent table and chairs, followed by a new retractable awning, made it much more inviting and useful.  We put the grills out there, which means I cook out there.   

Peggy and Lewis Hicks, while they were the floral elves of the rectory surrounds, introduced the bamboo screening that provided the privacy we need to be on the deck and not on display.   The also showed what some flowers and plants can do to spruce up the otherwise bare space, which lesson I took to heart.  The flowers bloom outside the window next to my desk, as well as the kitchen window, and boost morale.  

The staff likes to have lunch out there when I am away; it has nothing to do with being unable to hear to doorbell or the phone, they assure me.  Father Jason Williams of Cincinnati, a student here in the summers of 2019 and 2021, spent about six hours a day out there doing schoolwork.  More recently, Fr. Wiktor and Fr. Tran both enjoy it as a “second desk” for their academic pursuits.  Rectory dinners become more convivial and last long into the cooling evening once we take the trouble to set the table out there.    It has become a major part of our rectory life.

Margaret Gamache, who has been a parishioner here for decades and was one of the first lay teachers in our school, informed me at a recent Finance Council meeting that our deck was installed under Father Bernard Martin, the Third Pastor of Saint Bernadette.  She offered no precise date, but did assert that he enjoyed it, which means he had time to use it.  Fr. Martin was named Pastor in 1987, retired in poor health in 1997, and died mere weeks later.  A working estimate for when the deck was built would be 1991, plus or minus a few years.    

That mean our deck lasted 35 years!  This explains why it was getting a bit rickety.   Anthony Dao, our maintenance factotum, had replaced components as needed over recent years.   The stairs up from the carport were alarmingly unstable.  It was time. 

You will notice the replacement deck going up over coming days, because by the time you read this the old one will be gone.  The big change will be the materials; we will be using modern synthetics for the decking and lattice screens.  This means it will last even longer than if it were wood.  

There is no reason not to plan for a lengthy lifespan for the deck on the rectory.  The church tends to keep what is good for as long as possible, for the good of all who come after us.  

Speaking of the good that we have received, our nation is marking a milestone anniversary this year on Independence Day, which falls on a Saturday.  Even though it is the usually the quietest time of the year hereabouts, I have decided we need to do something to acknowledge this great gift of God and our forebears.  There will be a celebratory Mass on Saturday, July fourth, at 11:00, to render thanks for what we have received and prayers for help to be good and generous stewards.  What we receive and treasure, we are more likely to maintain and keep, so help us God.  Because all the best that we have was given us by the ones who came before us.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Road Work

Photo from Mary Phillips Quinn;
if you have any pictures or videos of our procession,
please share them with the rectory.

He really isn’t heavy, if you will grant the allusion to a cliché from the 70’s.  Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and the monstrance that held Him, were not hard to bear last week as we took him to the streets and sidewalks of our Four Corners neighborhood.  

I think the guys who carried the canopy dealt with a lot more actual weight, plus several gusts of wind that billowed the canopy like a sail and threatened to carry off course both the canopy and its bearers.  I am not sure how they recovered from their efforts afterward; I think it involved much stretching.

Conversely, I hope the procession itself was an occasion of recovery for our neighbors.  A glimpse of the sacred and the coming among us of the Divine awaken an awareness of human dignity in hearts dulled by the mundane and morose delectations of the day.  

One of the best experiences for us in the procession was seeing the reactions from the people who were not expecting to see such a thing.   Neighbors working in their yard or called to the window by the beautiful singing looked up at first with curiosity and maybe suspicion that then became relief and delight.  People in the parking lot of Safeway knelt or made the Sign of the Cross.  Occupants of cars stopped on the highways waved and deployed their phones to record what they were seeing.  Nobody complained!  One of the servers mentioned a driver who had the music blasting loudly from his open car windows, who then when he saw the procession turned it down.

It can be too easy for us who are familiar with the Body and Blood of Christ to focus on our opportunity and obligation to come to Him and forget the proactive reality that is before us.  We focus on what we accomplish by our own freely chosen actions.  We come to Mass.  We prepare ourselves for Holy Communion.  We give our time and attention to the Lord’s presence in the tabernacle, or in ourselves once we have received Him.   We take time to pray afterwards before we move on to other things.  All these actions of ours are real, and not negligible.  

However, it is easy overlook what He is doing, our Eucharistic Lord.  He comes first, before we come to Him.  He calls us to Himself, reminds us where to find Him, and how to obtain what we need from Him.  We take steps, but first, He is a light to our steps.  And so while sweat, strain, and soreness may be evidence of what we did for the procession, it is more revealing and more reveling to look for the signs of what He was doing.

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what pleases me, achieving the end for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11) The Word become flesh dwells among us and goes on walkabout to find those lost sheep He talks about.  What a thrill to be with Him as He goes!   What a grace to be able to lend our flesh and blood to the work of His Body and Blood.  Seeing the reactions from the people who were not expecting to see such a thing is but one of many clues to the sanctification that Our Lord Jesus worked during the procession last Sunday.

Whether you were singing or wrestling with an unruly canopy, walking, praying, or just trying to keep up, when you realize that you were participating in the sanctification and salvation of all the many souls in Four Corners, at home here or just passing through, it becomes clear that He was not heavy at all.

Monsignor Smith

Want to know what love is

June is the Month of the Sacred Heart.  This year the Solemnity falls on Friday, the twelfth, and along with the next day’s Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it marks the end of the annual liturgical feasts that move because they are calculated from the Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, that is, from Easter.  That’s the original meaning of the phrase “movable feast.”   Move as however it might, the Feast of the Sacred Heart always falls in June. 

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

June is the month of the Sacred Heart; it is a time for us to reflect on the reality of God’s love for us in Christ, and the nature and requirements of that love that He has commanded us to emulate and made it possible for us to emulate.  Love one another as I have loved you.  

It is good to be Catholic, to have the divine reality arrayed across the calendar in ways that make it possible for us to understand, to remember, and to celebrate all that God is and does.  Other people associate certain months with other things, none of them as true and beautiful as life in Christ.  

This year, our nation’s bishops have decided to consecrate the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  There are resources available for you to participate in the consecration at the USCCB website and linked from our Flocknote. 

Mark this month by exploring the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by entering into the mystery of God’s love enfleshed and inflamed.  Below is a prayer that has helped me grow in my devotion to the Sacred Heart.  I also like the Litany of the Sacred Heart.  From His pierced Heart flow blood and water that give life to the world, the font and wellspring of the Church’s sacraments.  Prayer to the Sacred Heart leads us to explore the mystery of reparation, which characterizes our participation in the Divine and redeeming love, during June, the month of the Sacred Heart.

Monsignor Smith

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

(said by St. Padre Pio for his intentions)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mornings

The priest is the pontifex, that is,  
the one who builds the bridge between God and man.

Twenty-five years ago, I met young Lawrence Swink on the day he arrived to be accepted by the Cardinal Archbishop to become a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington.   As part of my work as secretary, I had set up the appointment and brought him and the other candidate up to the outer office, then took each of them individually in to meet with the boss and receive the good word.

He looked sharp in his grey suit and tie, the uniform he wore in those days before the collar and cassock.  He was confident and eager, but not without a certain trepidation that any reasonable person would have before being ushered into the inner sanctum of such a lofty personage, one who was about to deliver a judgment and set out a future course.  I tried to be reassuring and encouraging, as I remembered well what he was experiencing.

Nine years earlier, I had been in the same position in the same offices when a different secretary led me in to see a different Cardinal Archbishop, who then warmly welcomed me to the program and explained to which seminary he had assigned me.  There was another man with me that day, similarly in suit and tie and similarly embarking on the path to priesthood: a young Dan Leary, someone of whom you may have heard in more recent days.

Five years after accepting him to the program, the same Cardinal Archbishop ordained him a priest of Jesus Christ at the basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  I saw that all happen, too; in fact, I had a very good seat.  I smiled at the memory of the eager young man in suit and tie and had every confidence that our time of working together was just beginning.  Little did I know just how together our working would one day be!

This week in the kitchen we now share, Father Swink showed me a photo he had just received on his phone.  It was from the first baptism he performed as a priest at Saint Mary of the Mills Church in Laurel, which was his first assignment.   I immediately recognized the two sets of parents, if not the radiant infants they happily held.  Both families are now regulars at Sunday Mass here, and while the babies are now grown tall as we are, the parents, like Father Swink, still look exactly like they did in the photo.  Pretty much, anyway.

A lot changes in twenty years, but most of it is circumstantial rather than essential.  Father Swink is still baptizing – he had two baptisms just this weekend – and still doing the work of priesthood with all the gusto he can muster.  He is still very much the same person he was when I met him that morning in 2001; most of what has changed stems from that other morning in 2006 when the hands of the bishop and the grace of Holy Order configured him to the person of Jesus Christ, the sovereign High Priest.  Grace builds on nature, and what an edifice stands on that foundation.

It is good to look back over the years and see what has changed, and what has not.  God’s grace continues to surge through the priestly ministry and person of Father Swink, eliminating any distance in time or space between us and the saving power of Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, and ascension.  Twenty years is but the blink of an eye compared to that distance, but two decades of such daily work is worth marking with gratitude and joy.  

We are both still the same guys who first met that earlier day, with one of the few notable changes being that now he sees me every morning, and I him, and very often at least one of us and sometimes both are not nearly as well dressed.  

Monsignor Smith 

More than just decoration

The ones who most need to remember
are the ones who benefitted most.

 Our nation’s annual array of federal holidays presents some that integrate easily into the life of the Church and the practice of the Faith.  Clearly Christmas is the most Catholic of them, with the perduring Madonna and Child stamp from the U.S. Postal Service illustrating this reality.  Thanksgiving acknowledges God and our obligation to render Him gratitude, an essential Catholic activity even if the once-a-year focus originated outside the Communion.  Yes, Abraham Lincoln’s religious disposition is an interesting question, but for another day.  After those two, the suitability of the other holidays becomes increasingly tangential, except for Memorial Day.

Originally known as Decoration Day, this is the holiday on which citizens would turn out to clean up and festoon the graves and monuments of the ones who had given their lives in the defense of our national integrity and freedom.  Burial grounds and markers are not unique to Christianity, but the whole concept of a cemetery, a word synonymous with dormitory, is uniquely Christian.  It is there that the mortal remains of the departed rest in peace, that is, sleep, in anticipation of the heavenly resurrection.  To visit these resting ones and care for their resting place is a most Christian activity.

It was 1971 when the name Memorial Day was fixed to the last Monday in May, a name that emphasizes another Christian and Catholic activity, remembering these departed ones.  The Church has a whole month dedicated to it – November – but she does not begrudge an added day for this specific group of people so worthy of remembering.  

We as Catholics know what to do with these memories that we nurture and share.  We allow them to lead to prayer for the forgiveness of their sins, the happy repose of their souls, and the consolation of the ones who love them.  The same gratitude that we stir up for our own dear departed every November is kindled now in May, but directed toward those who gave so much to protect and defend what we enjoy and treasure.  The best thanks we can give them is to offer for them what we now have that they now need: intercessory prayer.

Remembering and its opposite, forced forgetting, have been recurring themes for me this year.  After a period in our nation when monuments have been defaced or destroyed rather than decorated, and on my own undergraduate campus portraits and dedications removed and statues hidden, I have more than once confronted empty space where once there was an evocation of a person to be remembered.  This erases not only the memorial of the ones depicted, but also of the people who held their memories at such great value as to be worthy of the effort and expense of memorialization.  Generations are elided into oblivion.

Much as I regret it, I wish this destruction were limited to the hurly burly of our civic and secular culture, but it prowls in the life of the Church as well, where we should know better the obligations of memory and the grave disservice of forgetting.  

To remember the good that anyone has done, whether it benefit us personally, our families, or our nation, is to incarnate the very remembering we both desire and expect of our just and merciful God (cf. Rev. 14:13).  To allow our grateful memories to be added to the divine memory is to lend our mortal lives to the divine work of the Redeemer, making a sacrifice of propitiation unto the forgiveness of sins.  (cf. 2 Maccabees 12: 43-46)   While the opportunity to imitate our heavenly Father and share in His merciful forgiveness should be positive motivation enough, we also know and should dread the consequences of refusal. (Matthew 6: 15)

It would be vain foolishness to suggest that the ones we remember in gratitude on Memorial Day had no sins or lived their whole lives in ways worthy of emulation.  But it is yet more vain to think that we are able to assess the value of their lives, and even more foolish to withhold memory and gratitude according to our own criteria.  The yoke of grateful memory is easy, the burden of charity is light.  

This civic holiday catches us Catholics at our best.  Not only are we culturally and practically experts at feasting, but more specifically we bring our grateful memories to the Eucharistic feast that obtains for the ones we remember what we desire and hope for ourselves.  Remember this, and do not forget.

Monsignor Smith