Slip slidin'

For a thousand years in your sight
 are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

Slipping by in the middle of this past week was Veterans’ Day, a holiday disguised as a workday, a day little noticed and less understood in the ramp-up to the period blithely and blandly called The Holidays.  A commemoration of all who have served our nation in her military forces, whether in wartime or peace, whether at the cost of their very lives or merely of a few years of their personal whims and wardrobe, the day carries an imperative for us who daily benefit from that service.  

The date originates with the coming into effect of the Armistice that ended the War to End All Wars, though it accomplished that not even in part.  Today the radio played Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which he composed after that war as a lament for his lost friends, family, and countrymen.  Since something like a quarter of the men of his generation were consumed in that mud-caked conflagration, and the culture and possibly even the civilization in which he came of age were left eyeless and limbless on the city sidewalk, the great groaning of grief with which the cello opens the work is no exaggeration.  Who can lay blame for naming this catastrophic war after the hope and false promise that all that had been spent in its pursuit had accomplished a lasting peace? 

Nonetheless the great price was paid, and it is those who did so and have done so over all the years of our history as a nation whose gift we acknowledge and accept each Veterans’ Day.  That’s the spirit, anyway.  Once their service is fulfilled, they walk among us and rarely draw much attention.  This makes it both more difficult and more important to acknowledge what they have done.

Blink once and you miss him, Saint Martin of Tours also slipped by in the middle of the week.  In days past and cultures Catholic his feast was kept with greater solemnity than we Americans every did, providing an occasion for frivolity and fun toward the end of autumn and the harvest.  In every way an exemplary Catholic in the very earliest days of the Faith in Europe, Saint Martin was a veteran too.  He was a soldier of the Roman Empire and an astoundingly charitable one at that.  Into his very last days on earth, he was in combat with the devil.

Also slipping by in the middle of this past week was our Archdiocesan Priests Convocation, for which Father Swink and I joined the brethren and the Boss at a resort on the Eastern Shore for fraternity and professional development or suchlike.  Fr. Wiktor stepped in to deliver on Mass in our absence, except for the one when he had a class.  We got lucky there and found another canon law student, Fr. Isaiah Schick.  All that helped our absence slip by unnoticed.  

Usually coming every other year, this time only one year has passed since our last convocation.  Back during the Diseased Days, we skipped one year to go three years between meetings, breaking our rhythm.  It remains to be seen whether the every-other-year pattern will resume now that we are back in the old track, or whether this will become an annual event.  Fr. Swink and I have already noticed we are a little less excited about it since it’s only been a year since we were last together.  Don’t take that as cynical; it is simply in the nature of diocesan clergy.

You never know about these convocations.  Like many such things, there is always a double track: what it is supposed to accomplish and what actually comes from it.  One of the disadvantages of how insular the life of parish priests is how easy it can be to forget our common mission and common joys.  One of the advantages of our insular existence is how hard it is to remind one another of common discontents and disagreements.   With only twelve months elapsed since our last confab, which trend will emerge?

Nonetheless, a little time for reflection is helpful for us, regardless of how much or how little the speaker have to offer that interest us, a chance to listen is welcome for us who so often are called upon to speak.  It may even sharpen our senses and raise our spirits to charge into The Holidays, with the help of God.  We will not allow the opportunity to slip by unappreciated.

Monsignor Smith

Dissonance and Consonance

The Sanitary Candy Chute of Halloween 2020

When was the last time this happened?  This simple question opened quite the box of frogs this past Saturday.

You remember Saturday: gorgeous weather, playoffs on the field all day and Halloween at the door that night. Saturday was preamble to Sunday, which predictably brought All Saints Day and more surprisingly the extra hour of Standard Time – or was it the pawned hour of Daylight Savings Time?  Either way, I couldn’t remember the last time a weekend stacked all this one on top of another, so I looked for the last time Saturday was Halloween and Sunday All Saints, and there it stood in the book we hate to open: Anno Domini 2020.

This year the weekend-bookend fall of these dates brought excitement to the Holy House of Soubirous, as I always enjoy the stream of trick-or-treaters at the door.  As called for in the Ritual I made a cauldron of chili, the first of the season, so the boys could have their chow at the appointed time even if I were called to be at the door.  No sooner had I served them than the doorbell rang, and I was gone for twenty minutes before I returned for my first two bites, then the bell again and I barely made it back in time to see them finish their dessert.  Beginning before the evening Mass started at five and culminating in a solitary suppliant approaching out of the darkness just after nine o’clock, it was a delightfully manic evening.

Six years ago for the last Saturday Halloween, restrictions and reluctance were the order of the day.   Taking my duty seriously, I wanted everybody at my door who wanted a treat to receive a treat, so to dispel all fear and hesitation Mr. Dao rigged a PVC pipe from my second-story window above the front door.  I sat by the window and when the monsters arrived, I would use a pair of barbecue tongs (look, no hands!) to drop a candy bar into the chute, through which it would pass thence to emerge and fall into the basket wired to the porch rail below.  The ghoul would then hoot, claim his sanitary prize, and set off for other victims.  The number of trick-or-treaters was surely down, but their enthusiasm was way up.

This year for All Saints Sunday all the Masses were crowded, everybody in a really good mood.  They had plenty of sleep, arrived on time or even early, and lingered long outside after Mass enjoying the bright autumn and one another’s company.  In 2020, nobody was in a good mood, and Mass was still – again? -- for the few and unbowed.  Masks were not just for trick-or-treating then.  

The love of God can pull good out of evil, and human memory can emphasize the good to diminish the evil and its nasty aftertaste.  When was the last time this happened?  A simple question led me to remember the hilarity of the candy-safety chute rather than the masks and malice of that afflicted time. 

And yet.  That shadowed joy set contrast to the holiday weekend this year, spotless as the fair weather and the pied beauty of the trees.  237 tricksters presented themselves at my door and went away treated.  I cannot convey the hilarity.  Come morning, a vigorous throng mirrored the rejoicing multitude round the throne which no man can number, worshipping God and merging cries of blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might.  All Saints, indeed.  Glory upon glory, every time it happens.

Monsignor Smith

One and all

 

Laying out the calendar for the month to come, the one on which we schedule the priests to celebrate the Mass, I was called up short searching for saints.  Usually, I like to highlight a day or two for its feast; last month I noted JPII on the 22^nd, Simon and Jude on the 28^th, and a big favorite, Our Lady of Victory, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, on the 7^th.   But for November, I came up blank. 

Not that there lacks great liturgical days to mark, starting right out the chute with All Saint and All Souls batting first and second.  Christ the King Himself arrives three weeks later, then the next week, the First Sunday of (gasp) Advent.  (Yes, already).  There are civic days of substance to be kept as well, Veterans Day on the eleventh, and the national solemnity of Thanksgiving, parts one and deux, on the 26^th and 27^th.  I would be inclined to note Saint Martin, but the Veterans take all the space allowed for text on the 11^th.  Who else IS there in November?

In desperation, I inscribed the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.  Yawn. Truly that is desperate, even with the drumbeat of year’s end growing loud.  I finally had to look at a calendar and decided to include St. Leo the Great on the tenth, and the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (I am reaching I admit) on the ninth.   Then I recalled Saint Andrew, Apostle and neighborly patron, who breaks the purple pattern first thing Monday after First Advent.  Now the calendar looks more populated.  

The civil and seasonal celebrations are noteworthy and not to be underestimated.  I enjoy Thanksgiving as a genuine holiday that I can enjoy because it does not bring me also a load of liturgical responsibilities.  I take Veterans Day seriously and even stir in some of its original Armistice Day; though I am not a veteran, indeed because I am not a veteran, I am especially inclined to offer respect and gratitude to veterans.  Christ the King is a day of greatness, and First Advent begins what may be the most delightful liturgical time of the year; it is beyond me why anybody would trade its rich, multi-layered artistry of anticipation for the bell-ringing red and green rampage of generic, manic “happy holidays.”    

Still, I wanted for the month some personality or, more precisely, personalitIES.  I am glad I checked; Leo was man of the millennium in many ways, and his homilies still ring clear and true.  Andrew, clearly no slouch, got his brother the interview for the job of all jobs.  And do not neglect Martin, who has more churches and towns named after him in France than anybody else because he really was just that awesome.  It really does help to have names and faces to present the holiness to which we often refer as if it were an abstractable affect like happiness, or golden liquid that comes by the jug.

Think about your life’s sections or spans divided however you choose.  You will mark the times by any number of things – what you were doing, where you were living, the weather, the wardrobe, or (God help you) the politics. But inextricably mixed in with those other identifying factors you will also name the people who were with you.  Your mom and dad, your brothers and sisters, your best friend in fifth grade, your teacher, your coach, your big date, your wingman, your roommate, the first person to hire you, the only person to fire you, your son and your daughter, the one who said yes.  People with names and faces indelible in your mental lifescape, these are defining realities that give sense to everything else that you were thinking and doing and avoiding and accomplishing.  

This is why I was searching for saints’ names to populate the days of November.  In this month when heat and light dissipate, signs of life literally drop to the ground, and darkness defines the day as well as the night, great is the craving for company to be kept. 

So begins this month with the two “All” days, of saints and souls, because the roster falls short just as the need grows strong.  These “all” are not faceless throngs, nameless multitudes, but rather souls we know and love and need, names that come readily to our lips.  Faces and names, relationships that reveal us to ourselves, these are the people whose faces we seek and whose names we repeat in both memory and prayer, for whom and from who we crave more.  More time, even unto eternity; more together, even unto intimacy with neither grudge nor reticence remaining.  

Souls alike, and souls together, bound by happenstance or by love, our desire but a shadow of God’s desire but still strong, we remember what He has done in them and through them and make daily our petition that they with us be all saints.  

Monsignor Smith

Bright darkness, or dark lights

Many single candles, lit.  
Pray for France!

‘Tis better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness, as we all know.  It could be a motto as I adjust the timers in the sacristy to ensure that the floodlights on the church are lit from evening dusk to the dawn’s early light.  In this season of rapidly diminishing daylight, I change the setting every few weeks.  This very morning there was barely any light in the sky when I returned after the early morning Mass and gauged whether it was bright enough to hang the rectory flag.  It is tough not to curse these days when the darkness gains so much ground. 

But cursing I avoid, and lighting I undertake.   Normally in full ‘Dad mode’ around here, locking doors and turning off lights while monitoring the thermostats for any excess or shortfall, this time of year I begin instead to turn lights on, a low-wattage lamp here or strategic down-light there, for the sake of safety and to make our home more inviting.  

Last month it was a triumph of light in the City of Lights as Pope Leo XIV’s visit to France drew an outpouring of enthusiasm and devotion unexpected in that country so long given over to secularity, what the French proudly treasure as laïcité.  Huge crowds displayed not only enthusiasm for and interest in the person of the Pope, but also piety, prayer, and believe it or not penance, in Paris of all places.  Catholic commentators accustomed to finding their cynicism rewarded were gushing with delight and surprise.  

There were different reactions among the French commenting classes.  Some were aghast at the resurgence of ancient practices they though outmoded and abandoned; lines for confession on the sidewalks drew especial horror.  Perhaps pockets of such superstition persisted, they thought, in the darkness of France profonde;  but in the capital of continental sophistication it was unimagined.  

This month, a very different sort of darkness has since emerged and stormed the streets and cities of France, and a very different type of light.  The burning of shops and cars and city buildings marks the path of riotous mobs wrapped in black.  The plausibility of calling these protests by students was quickly eliminated by the nature, size, and organization of the forces bent on destruction.  This is something far more sinister.

It has been suggested that this disruption is ironic in its juxtaposition to the pious outpouring in the same places mere weeks earlier.  But few have acknowledged the real possibility that the rage was provoked by the public prayer and piety.  The beauty and peace accompanying the unexpectedly large Catholic crowds suggested a vitality that would be a threat to idealogues bent on disorder and destruction, requiring a response.

It is foolish to think that faith can be contained and carried on as only private practice, with each pursuing privately his personal preferences and publicly practicing accepted and expected civic virtues in mutual respect and acceptance.  Our friends in France are learning how short the lifespan afforded that tenuous practice.  Churches there have been set afire with increasing frequency over the past decade.  Where the true light is not nurtured, the darkness will assert itself and even claim dominion.  

Rituals evoking this back-and-forth battle are woven into our culture even now.  Being otherwise fully prepared for Halloween and the doorbell onslaught of hungry goblins, I confess that I no longer prepare a jack-o-lantern.  I don’t even know if a candle is still customary in the pumpkin to provide the glow to eyes and grin; perhaps it too has yielded to LED technology.   But even if it is not an actual single candle, this quaint practice retains some of that spirit of refusal to yield to the darkness, and rather bring fun to drive out fear.  

Light in the darkness can bring so much good that even a little is worth contributing to the effort.  But as cities we think civilized endure nights with that eerie and alarming glow around the corner or on the horizon, what are we to make of the fires the agents of darkness are kindling?

Monsignor Smith

Worth another look

Three years ago, I wrote about our founding Pastor, Monsignor William F. “Pete” Stricker.   This past week was the fiftieth anniversary of his death.  As we look to All Souls Day in a few weeks and prepare our lists or the altar for Masses offered for our beloved dead every day next month, I thought I would put somebody in front of you who should be on your list.  

What is the “MSR?”  Yes, that is a question I get occasionally, usually from new parishioners who are looking for the announced Community Sunday donuts and treats.   The Monsignor Stricker Room is our multi-purpose meeting room in the undercroft (that is, basement) of the church.  It is named for the founding pastor of our parish, whose visage presides over the proceedings in that room, or the mayhem, from a creditable oil portrait on the south wall.  

That portrait may be all you know of Monsignor Stricker.  You might expect that to be all I know of him, too, since I was in fifth grade in Alabama when he retired.  But no, I know rather a lot more.  When I first arrived here, the memories of Msgr. Stricker were still vivid and common, and I heard them all.  

The generation of parishioners who had benefitted from his shepherd’s care were always ready with an anecdote or observation about him. He wore white socks because of a dye allergy, and didn’t drive, so he would walk up to Woodmoor Center and invariably “find” (mooch?) a ride home.  He sang with the choir if he was not celebrating the Mass, and his love of good music laid the foundation for what we enjoy now.   Speaking of foundations, he oversaw the construction of the rectory and the church.

Every homily he ever preached is retained in perfect typescript in a heavy steel file cabinet in the rectory basement. Selected homilies were gathered into a little paperback, (Verbum Sapienti, that is “a word to the wise”) where I have delighted to read them.  He also published a book, still available in the second-hand market, called Keeping Christmas, An Edwardian-Age Memoir, about his youth in the German section of Baltimore.   

Cardinal Baum, for whom I worked for almost five years, remembered that early in his time as Archbishop of Washington, he had to ask Msgr. Stricker for his retirement.  Girded as he was for resistance from the famous curmudgeon, he was shocked when Monsignor gently agreed.  When Monsignor’s friends turned out for his funeral just a year later, Cardinal Baum inquired from where his nickname “Pete” had come.  They explained that in seminary in Rome in the 1920’s, young Stricker had been the captain or head of their camerata, the subgroup in which seminarians pursued all recreational activities.  He was our leader, our “Peter,” explained his classmate, who by then was Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago.  

His presence was so strong that not only parishioners remember him.  Neighbors and shop owners at the corner, kids who were friends of kids in the school, all knew and admired (in a vaguely intimidated way) the indomitable pastor of Saint Bernadette.  He was a large man with a powerful voice and a well-tuned intellect; he did not keep people guessing what he thought about things.   I have met non-Catholics who lived in the area and moved away fifty years ago who remembered him, and his name.

Monsignor Stricker retired as Pastor in 1975, to be succeeded by Msgr. David Foley.  He died the next year, on October 14, 1976.  With the help of the prayers of a grateful parish, may his soul and the souls of all the faith departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. 

Monsignor Smith

Where in the universe

 

In the tender compassion of our God

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

to shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.  (Luke 1:78-79)

It is Columbus Day Weekend, three days off with a lot of nice autumn weather scheduled.  There will be sales.  Ballgames.  Trips.  You know – the usual holiday weekend stuff.

Why is it a holiday?  Ask a school kid; I do not know how many can even tell you anymore that, “In fourteen ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

Aside from a widespread confusion about the difference between Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, I doubt there is any federal holiday to which less thought and appreciation is given than Columbus Day.  I admit that I myself do not think about it very much, and am embarrassed by my own inattention.

Sure, I know about the Castillian King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who financed the proposal of the Italian (Genoese) navigator with his theories of reaching “the Indies” by sailing west, instead of east around the Horn of Africa.  He pulled together three ships, which I hope everybody still knows were named the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, the largest of which was not as long as the average house in the neighborhood here.  And he landed on San Salvador, one beach that no one in this parish is likely to visit over the weekend. 

Does anyone say that he “discovered America” anymore?  That is so unfashionable.  Since the Americas, as these continents later came to be called, were inhabited, some question whether they wanted discovering.  His own awareness of just what he had discovered was a little slow in coming, and he was loath to admit publicly that he had failed to reach the Indies.

However aware of their own existence the native tribes of the islands he first visited were, I would submit that they too discovered something in being discovered.  By learning of the existence of other peoples from other places with other cultures and technologies, they learned something about who and where they themselves were.  Similar is how only in encountering and relating to others, from our infancy on, do we come into an understanding of our own identities.

Imperialism and colonialism are big buzzwords for what Columbus’s voyage represented and introduced to these lands.  I am not certain that anyone whose tribe fell victim to the Aztecs or the Incas would say that these concepts were particularly new, though.  Greed and the abuse of other human beings are remarkable only in how consistently they are present in every human culture and polity.  Recognized for what it is, it can be identified as original sin.

Which brings us to the one genuinely new thing that Columbus brought with him to these splendid continents when he came.  Not a thing, in truth, but a person, and a person who is both the response and the remedy to original sin and its universality among men of every race and land.

The good news of Jesus Christ, His presence in the Church, and His working in the Sacraments, first arrived with Columbus where heretofore none had known Him.  The evil spirits and petty gods to whom the native peoples enslaved themselves will never be completely driven from this land or any other, but thanks be to God, and with a little help from His Holy Mother at Tepeyac, these continents are marked for freedom.  No human being need fall victim to their depredations, for the Holy Savior – San Salvador – has manifested here the Divine Mercy.  That is something worth celebrating, not only one Monday, but every Sunday.

Monsignor Smith

Keepers

One Thursday afternoon in August when I arrived for our evening together, Mom handed me a little packet of papers with a simple explanation: I found these in your dad’s desk and thought you might be interested.  Over the past year she has persevered in sorting through everything in the apartment and finding what he saved that could now be discarded.  

Dad saved almost everything, at least as far as documents are concerned.  Window stickers and bills of sale for all the cars he bought, back to the early 1960’s.  Wow, the Dodge cost WHAT?   Interesting, but not really worth keeping now.

The packet mom gave me had several photos, including one I had taken in about 1975 of Dad at the wheel of his red Fiat Spider.  Now you know where I got my fascination with cars.  That is a keeper.  

There were all my report cards – from college.  Schools used to mail those to the parents of the undergrads, back in the day – can you imagine the gall?  I knew it happened but did not know that each semester’s grade sheet included a hand-written note.  I was shocked to see that all my freshman grades were accompanied by remarks from the president of the university!   After that, it was a dean who would add an observation.  Who knew these people were watching me?

In the mix was a baptismal certificate, judging by the date obtained as I began preparation for Confirmation, as well as a copy of the church bulletin from the day of my baptism that listed all five who were baptized.  From the certificate, I learned something I had not known, that the priest who baptized me was Father John Crawford.  Give me a minute here while I add his name to my All Souls list; done.  I also learned that the date I had in mind for my baptism wrong; I was off by four days.  September 20 makes far more sense since that was a Sunday back in 1964; I was twenty-three days old.  

Also listed were my godparents, John and Ceci Eichenlaub.  Uncle John is mom’s older brother, and Aunt Ceci (neé Spinola) is my only Italian relative.  After nine years living in Rome I now say that I am Italian by adoption; she does not object.  They lived nearby, busy with their three boys.  We were the ones who moved away after a few years to the distant and unknown South.

Aunt Ceci and Uncle John came to visit us there, once.  They came to my college graduation in Virginia, which was a great effort for them and great delight for me, and years later to my priestly ordination in Washington.  Despite their lack of enthusiasm for travel, they came once to Rome during my second assignment there and I was able to show Aunt Ceci the home of her parents and grandparents.  That was immense fun.

I always enjoyed visiting with them.  Occasionally we would overlap at the Eichenlaub cottage on Lake Erie, a happy place for them all their lives.  More often I visited them at their home, stopping any time I rode the Turnpike east or west.  Aunt Ceci would ply me and Uncle John with food in great quantity and variety while he regaled me with his latest discoveries about the history of our family, a result of the genealogical research that he took up in earnest after retirement.   One time he and I got in the car and visited several cemeteries to find the graves of diverse generations and branches of our family, including his own parents, only one of whom lived long enough for me to meet him, and he only a few short years thereafter.  He knew I would like that.  

Uncle John died quietly this past weekend, two months shy of his ninetieth birthday, after diminishing through a long series of issues and illnesses.  I’ll be slipping away midafternoon Sunday to drive up to Pittsburgh for the funeral.  I just wrote his name on my All Souls list, too, which is more than a paper for me to leave tucked inside my desk.

Monsignor Smith