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

Choices in the Garden

Green light, red light

There is something about an apple.  More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self.  

Witness the famous computer company, whose logo identifies the fruit but emphasizes the bite that has been taken.  Ah, the forbidden fruit – right here in your hands.  All the time, demanding your attention.  Directing your day.  Tracking your location.  Listening to your conversation.  Predicting your decisions.  Selling your attention.   Well, maybe there was more truth than intended in their advertising back in the day when they chose that logo.  

Unlike many other fruits, apples are durable.  They do not bruise as easily nor rot as readily, they travel well, and can be kept for longer periods of times and under less controlled circumstances.  Like potatoes and root vegetables, they can be stored in the cellar to provide sustenance through the winter.  

Annually it is part of my autumn routine to visit orchards and buy large quantities of apples.   Right about now, I should be heading west to get a half bushel of eating apples and a half bushel of pie apples from among the earlier varieties to be harvested.  Then, after Veteran’s Day, I drive a bit further and buy a full bushel of my favorite eating apples, plus some more pie apples, that are among the latest varieties to be harvested.  Last year this bushel lasted into March, despite how much Fr. Swink enjoys devouring one on frequent occasion.  

But this year I am not sure what I will do, because there is no apple harvest. None. It was destroyed in late April by a hard frost.  All along the eastern edge of the Appalachian range, some of the finest apple orchards in the country are coming up empty.  

As some people welcome the end of summer and the cooler temperatures of autumn that arrived this week as if commanded by the calendar, it is easy to forget what a long, cold winter and late, cold spring we had this year.  I feared at the time that the stone fruits would suffer, as they often and easily do, and sure enough, peaches plums and cherries were obliterated while we waited in vain for the weather to warm.  But that is more common, unfortunately, as stone fruit trees blossom early and are vulnerable.  

But apples!  MY apples!  What has happened here?  I have already resorted to buying apples from the grocery store, shipped in from God knows where.  I guess they are fine – see the durability of apples, referenced above – but they are not local and they are brutally expensive, especially compared to the price per bushel at the orchard.  What sadness.

Still I connive to find a better option, some other supplier of apple varietals in the bulk and at the price I prefer.  Whether such connivance bear fruit, I do not know.   But the sad fact is that this entire catastrophe was thrust upon us months ago while we were paying attention to other things, pursuing other goals, and yearning for other rewards.  Only now is inflicted the privation that was prepared then.  Cherries were missing in June and peaches in August, but the sting of apples’ absence hits in October and November.  

There is nothing that we can do to change it.   Some friend of mine with whom I shared my lament suggested that there must be something that can be done in the orchard during the freeze to protect the apples, like they do in Florida with the orange crop, spraying them with water that encases the fruit in protective ice.  But we cannot go back to late April and change things, nor does such a method exist anyway.  The organic reality is irreversible and irretrievable.

Like the bite out of that fruit on the logo in everyone’s pocket, there is no going back, no un-doing what long since has been done.  The genie stands surly outside the bottle, preparing new destruction.  Only after time has passed are consequences revealed, most shockingly when the decisions and the actions were our own.  Regrettable results make us rue the day, crying for a do-over that remains out of reach.  

There is something about an apple.  More than most other fruits, it has significance beyond its simple self.  Before and after the bite, it reminds us of sin. 

Monsignor Smith

Deflect artifice

It was the lead story on the paper’s web page today, again.  A ranking bishop in the conference formulated policy imperatives regarding it, again.  And our Archbishop finally told us last week who the keynote speaker at our fall priest’s convocation this November would be: the United States priest expert in it.  

Try as I might, I simply cannot get excited about it.  It was the subject of our new Holy Father’s first encyclical letter.  I confess I made one good try at reading that and did not get very far.   In all the infotainment outlets, the new buzz about it involves words like annihilation – of the human race, that is.  As the meme goes, that escalated quickly.

I would not presume to speak for anybody other than myself, but I think about it as technology, and not even as “a” technology, but rather as a technological development, possibly even an incremental one: the next step along the developmental path.  Yes, even incremental developments have personal and social impact.   

Think of the step from the ability to produce practical, reliable flying machines to safe, regular, accessible passenger air travel.  Sure it makes a difference.  It has made a difference in my life and our world.  Some of its impact has been negative even if we except episodes like 9/11.  Most of its impact has been positive. As a technological project, it is still a work in progress.  Will it expand to space?  Will it be abandoned to reduce use of petroleum products?  Will become ever more affordable, or prohibitively expensive?  Will it ever be perfectly safe?  Will it ever be comfortable?

Our technology for processing data and simulating material reality is growing by leaps and bounds.  The human capacity for artifice and susceptibility to it seem to progress hand in hand.  We suspend disbelief to be entertained, whether by our own elementary school children presenting themselves as George and Martha Washington or Tom Holland swinging through urban canyons on webs that shoot from his cuffs.  Ha ha that was fun.  The entertainment ended, disbelief is once again taken up and is perhaps our best tool.  Virtual reality disappears when the goggles come off and your real work remains still undone.  And artificial intelligence is not and never will be.  Intelligence, that is.  

The best disposition to maintain in the face of the self-aggrandizing and self-exaggerating computation and simulation of information technology now claiming for itself the name of intelligence is, I think, to nurture authentic intelligence.  Read a book, write a letter, paint a picture, and memorize a poem – then compose one yourself.  Sing a lullaby – or the post-Communion hymn in church!  Teach a child to bake cookies or mow the lawn.  Grow a garden, every year.  Play a game or compete in a sport.  Build a bed or a shed.  Get better at something you are already good at.  Be a mom, or a dad, or a friend.  Pay attention to the person in front of you and try to figure out what he will do next.  There is technology in all of that, and real intelligence as well.  

There was a panic a few centuries back about the invention and proliferation of the crossbow.  Yes, it did have an impact and some of that was negative, but then there was Agincourt.  Human genius will always outperform mere technology.  

The more intelligence you nurture in your life, the less susceptible you will be to the siren song of the artificial kind, and the more able you will be to use it and prudently.  Prudence; ah, now there is something we priests could stand to build a convocation around.

Monsignor Smith

 

Safe not sound

Speaking of things that you don’t see coming, one of the worst is when something that you use every day without any problem suddenly functions not at all.  No symptoms of a coming breakdown, no catastrophic impact causing damage, just – bam.  A door daily walked through become a steel wall.

Precisely that is what happened Tuesday when the safe in our sacristy ceased to function.   More accurately, I suppose it was the lock that ceased to function, or rather, ceased to do anything BUT lock.  The dial spins, the combination can be entered, but the tumblers do not tumble into place and the gentle click of the latch opening is never achieved.  

This all happened Tuesday as we were preparing for the afternoon Mass.   Unexpectedly we were cut off from many of the things that we use for Mass: chalice and ciborium, server’s paten and, startlingly, the key to the tabernacle.   Fortunately we could retrieve substitutes of the first three items from the chapel sacristy, and Mass proceeded without incident.  But it was imperative to be careful about the host count because without access to the tabernacle, there is no way to retrieve additional hosts if needed for waiting communicants, nor to repose superfluous hosts after distributing.  Massgoers were a bit unsettled by my obvious “head count” at offertory.

In my experience here, there has never been a problem with the safe.  That reaches back fully twenty years, and possibly twenty-eight.  Only one half of the sticker remained from the locksmith who had last worked on the safe.  Fortunately, we were able to identify him from only the first word of his company name.  The locksmith who returned our call quickly clarified that his dad would have been the last one to visit us, as he had taken over the work ‘only’ twenty-three years ago.

Even as I write, he is in our sacristy tapping and rapping at the unyielding steel door.  Our walk-in safe is the envy of most priests who see it, with room inside for everything from chalices and ciboria to relics, big ol’ monstrances, the spare tabernacle, and cases of altar wine.  Keeping them locked away is vital for different reasons for different items, as some of them are ancient and irreplaceable, simply precious because of their materials, or in all cases except the wine, sacred.  These objects have been consecrated to the worship of God and have held Him Whom we adore.  

Practically speaking, it is a reminder of how thing-centric is our worship, as our God condescends to dwell among us.  From the first moment he needed swaddling clothes and a manger, then eventually dinner and a diaper, the Word become Flesh does not disdain our material encumbrance.  Since the Three Magi arrived and proffered their gifts, the things that point to His identity and are put to His purposes have been costly in their own right.  We give him our best, ideally, so we must take care of things to take care of Him.  For some of these things, we need a safe.

Unfortunately, they are a little TOO safe just now, equally unreachable for purposes divine or dastardly.  Still the reminder is welcome of how vital is the operation of a valiant and venerable (78-year-old!) piece of equipment, and how routinely we become accustomed to flawless function, until one day it doesn’t.

Monsignor Smith

Clear and blue

Out of the clear blue sky.  It’s an expression that means without warning or preliminary indication, something happens that there is no way to anticipate or expect.   

It was a beautiful morning just past eight o’clock when I arrived at my post in the Archbishop’s office.  The volunteer drew my attention to a strange report from New York City and we looked to the television.  There was the shining city with its two towers, one of them inexplicably billowing black smoke from a gaping hole in its side.  Then while I watched a passenger jetliner crossed the screen and punctured the other tower.  Debris flew and more smoke rose against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. 

I crossed the hall to alert the Archbishop, a New Yorker by birth and constitution.  His attention fixed on the events now filling every screen, he was pained and paralyzed for the only time in our long acquaintance.   After the first tower fell, I suggested he take the noon Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine, one of the very few of my suggestions he ever adopted.  

I do not remember when we learned of the attack on the Pentagon, or the plane downed in Pennsylvania.  By the time we all went together to the Basilica we knew that a single horrible attack had landed four devastating blows, and there was no reason to think there might not be more.  

You know how I am about anniversaries, so you will not be surprised that I have had my eye on the approach of this one.  Last week I had a long conversation with the priest friend who was with me and the Archbishop throughout that day, recalling as well our trip together two weeks before to that same city for a baptism and a wedding in the Archbishop’s family.  He introduced us to people and places important in his life, including some that would not survive the attack.   This week I had dinner with former parishioners, still friends, one of whom had been in the Pentagon when the plane hit.  Talking about what we recall of that day and what we did, our understanding at the time and what we know now, how we felt then and what feelings we nurture still, helped prepare me to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary fully and well. 

Two subjective experiences remain clear from that day of objective horrors.   The first is that as the Archbishop read us the homily he had prepared, every fiber of my being wanted to object, but I had already spent my single shot of usefulness in giving advice.  One word still sticks in my craw even these years later: he called what had happened a tragedy.  That is misleading, even wrong.  It was an attack.  It was a crime. It was in every sense literal and actual an atrocity.  Its consequences would indeed be tragic, and they are still playing out today.  It was however no tragedy, but rather a freely chosen evil act.

The other experience I recall with full clarity is that while we went about the rest of that upended day, I made calls to let family know I was okay, and to check on the parish and some friends.  While the Archbishop donated blood at Providence Hospital, I waited pacing outside the doors in front of television crews desperate for something to transmit.  I realized with clarity that somewhere else far away, in many places in fact, there was rejoicing at the same scenes that brought us horror.  Even before I saw the video confirmation, I mentally pictured the dancing in the streets that in fact was juxtaposed with our cities’ boulevards and ballparks, schoolyards and streets filled with demonstrations of grief.  

These are only a few of the concrete recollections that accompany me whenever something calls to my mind the murderous terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  As the quarter-century marker arrives, I bring all this to mind to discover what good God and man have brought from that day of evil, and what other changes for good or ill I can identify.

The cheerful optimism that dominated our vision and expectations of human behavior twenty-five years ago has been schooled by evidence and events sufficient to make us wary of certain types of promises and appreciative of genuine differences among people and cultures.  More has changed than simply airport protocols.  We share not only the skies but also our cities and our streets with people whose categories for good and evil, human and inhuman are not only different from but opposed to ours.  Whatever actions and events erupt from the friction that follows may well shock and dismay us, but it will not come from Out of the clear blue sky.  

Monsignor Smith