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

Limited visibility

The rich accounts grow, treasure abundant in words and meaning.  We have so much on which to feed in these downhill days of Lent, it seems a brash conceit to add more text or lines.  To explain, to explain!  Vain pursuit.  

Rather this week, an image in words.  It is time for us to train our eyes to see all that unfolds in the Scriptures and the prayers and the gestures that change in these days of waiting for the great change. Spend a while with Hillaire Belloc’s The Prophet Lost in the Hills of Evening to sharpen your vision in low light.

Blessed Lent.

Monsignor Smith

 

Strong God which made the topmost stars

      To circulate and keep their course,

Remember me; whom all the bars

      Of sense and dreadful fate enforce.

 

Above me in your heights and tall,

      Impassable the summits freeze,

Below the haunted waters call

      Impassable beyond the trees.

 

I hunger and I have no bread.

      My gourd is empty of the wine.

Surely the footsteps of the dead 

      Are shuffling softly close to mine!

 

It darkens. I have lost the ford.

      There is a change on all things made.

The rocks have evil faces, Lord,

      And I am awfully afraid.

 

Remember me: the Voids of Hell

      Expand enormous all around.

Strong friend of souls, Emmanuel,

      Redeem me from accursed ground.

 

The long descent of wasted days,

      To these at last have led me down;

Remember that I filled with praise

The meaningless and doubtful ways

      That lead to an eternal town.

 

I challenged and I kept the Faith,

      The bleeding path alone I trod;

It darkens.  Stand about my wraith,

      And harbor me – almighty God.

Come again?

Starting at over eight feet tall,
the heap of plowed snow under my bedroom window
lasted forty-four mornings.

Repetition is the mother of learning.  So they say.  But who needs to repeat things until he learns when we have Google, which I used to make sure I correctly remembered this very maxim?  

Electronic data may stand in place of facts remembered, but learning is far more than simple storage of information.  Learning indicates a knitting together of facts into understanding and ability.  This requires more than simply storage, no matter how “smart” one’s phone may be.

The readings of Sacred Scripture at Mass are long in these days, seeming to stretch longer every week as we move along in Lent toward the Mother of All Scriptural Readings, on Palm Sunday – the Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  You can’t try to tell me you haven’t noticed; every Sunday, the Liturgy of the Word seems to have more and more.  Why do we go through all this?  There is no new information being presented, no new facts.  We have heard all of this before. 

For every time you hear these Scriptures on Sunday, I have already gone over them several times, and sometimes many times more, just in that very week.  Although I am on my tenth or even sometimes fifteenth time preaching a set of these readings, I assure you that it never fails that something new appear to me.  Sometimes a word, phrase, or line seems so alien and unfamiliar that I even check to see if it was there the last time I read it.  Sometimes words so familiar come along that I need not even read them, but nonetheless, in that moment, they reveal something different and completely new.

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.  (Heb 4:12)  Time and time again we return to the words of Scripture so that we might encounter this Word, living and active.  We need to hear over and over again the mighty deeds of God read forth to us, on different days, when we are in different circumstances and dispositions.  The Word of God become flesh, Jesus Christ, reveals Himself to us in the words of Scripture re-read and re-heard in the midst of His Body the Church, united in worship.  There is no new word among the words, but the Word is at work, who makes all things new. (Rev 21:5)

We return again and again to this privileged place where the words are read and re-read in the context of communion.  What already was recognized is not lost, but often enhanced; and what earlier was hidden is now revealed.  We who would know our God need over and over to allow Him to speak to us, that we may hear His words of eternal life.  Repetition is the mother of learning.

And because learning is not only knowing, but also doing, there are other things we repeat, time and again.  Two weeks ago you all participated, again, in our Lenten Food Drive, to help food banks at sister parishes in the heart of DC.  This also you have done before, and this also will you do again.  This Lent, like the Lents before it, we look about to find what we can offer that is needed by a brother or sister or neighbor; the giving of alms is always similar but never the same.

Like learning Scripture, we are never finished addressing the needs of our neighbor.  Failure to repeat is a recipe for ignorance.  Repetition of Scriptures, repetition of charity; all this repetition is the mother of learning: of learning Christ.

Monsignor Smith

What's in the dustbin

Though His glory be obscured,
our God will not abandon the place
where He has chosen to dwell.

Long long ago as a rookie seminarian just finished with first year in Rome, I went to Siena to learn Italian.  Better late than never.   For four weeks I lived with an Italian family, went to class five days a week, and learned how to deal with a heat wave when there is no air conditioning anywhere.  I also came to love Siena.

In one of the third-string churches in town, I found a flyer at the entrance to a side chapel where a strange monstrance was enshrined.  Reading it in my newly-improved Italian, I learned that all unprepared, I had discovered the Eucharistic Miracle of Siena.

It was the day before the Assumption in 1730, and some thieves had stolen a ciborium and the sacrament it contained from the Basilica of San Francesco.  On the feast, the theft was discovered, and celebrations were cut off and replaced by prayers for the recovery of the sacrament.  Some days later, the sacred hosts were found in the bottom of an alms box in another church.  In solemn procession, they were returned to the Basilica.  Fouled with dust, dirt, and cobwebs because of their hiding place, they were unfit for consumption.  But a funny thing happened to those hosts: nothing.  They remained intact and did not deteriorate at all.  Years passed; the bishop put some new, unconsecrated hosts in identical circumstances, and after a short period found them rotten or eaten by worms, whereas the recovered hosts remained fresh.  Decades and even centuries have passed, tests have been performed as technologies were developed, and the sacred hosts remain intact and fresh to this day.

Now, when you hear of a Eucharistic miracle, you likely think of a broken host that bleeds and takes on characteristics of human flesh, like Bolsena-Orvieto, or Santarem.  Those are remarkable and dramatic and continue to hold up under scrutiny and skepticism over the centuries, to our own time.  But the miracle of Siena is moving in a different way, at least for me.

What is remarkable here is that the sacred species did NOT change, not at all.  It continues to resemble the simple bread as which it began, with only two ingredients, wheat flour and water.  The marvel is what does not happen that ordinarily would happen to anything so constituted.

The thieves were clearly after the valuable ciborium, likely silver gilt, and probably managed to get some cash for it from an unscrupulous dealer.  Its holy contents, however, the very body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, they threw away.  

But the local church, the priests and people of Siena, prayed for the return of the Lord in His sacramental presence, and were rewarded with His safe return. Jesus in His Eucharistic presence is vulnerable; that is why we say He is ‘exposed’ for adoration and require that adorers be watchers for His safety even as He watch over them.  

What God consecrates, He transforms permanently.  What Jesus sanctifies, He does not abandon.  The Sienese knew this and sacrificed their time and prayer on behalf of their suffering Savior, who then rewarded them with a manifestation of His abiding fidelity.  

The Eucharist is unique among the seven sacraments of salvation in that it is the only one that you can place on a table and point toward, the only one that remains when every person leaves the room.  The others occur in individual human beings, body and soul, where the work of His sanctifying grace is transforming.  In some of the sacraments, Baptism and Holy Order, this change is permanent and irreversible.  What God has sanctified at the request of the Church remains transformed; the change abides.

The life that God the Father has poured into you at Baptism, often at the request of your parents and always with the invocation of a sacred minister, remains holy and glorious.  He will not revoke that grace even if the life so changed be left to languish in the dustbin; the glory of the Son in whom He is well pleased abides and will abide.

Similarly, configured to Jesus Christ the High Priest by Holy Order, human lives remain vulnerable to the vicissitudes of sin, their own and that of others.  But even if the men so changed should forget that holiness, still their priesthood abides.  And if the Church herself should cast them away, that sacred and sanctifying reality still abides, ready and waiting to be retrieved from the detritus and cleaned of cobwebs and clinging filth.

God does not forget His sanctified gifts.  When the Church remembers and clamors for their restoration, He rewards that fidelity with an extraordinary manifestation of his own abiding and faithful presence, even and especially when the vessels be fragile.

Maybe a trip to Siena in 2030 to mark the tricentennial of nothing happening to the Eucharistic species that had been so carelessly cast aside would be a suitable pilgrimage and petition for the revelation of God’s fidelity in what man has smirched and squandered, and His own Church has left to rot.  Better late than never.   

Monsignor Smith