Needy and needed

In this our age of marvels of human accomplishment in technology and society almost daily transforming the details of life, comfort, and survival, there is one accomplishment that stands above all the others.  It has no screen nor power cord, uses energy generated neither by fossil fuels nor by renewables, and does not involve space travel.  No, the greatest human accomplishment is human life, that is, a new one: a baby.

Funny, you say, for a chaste celibate to say that, and you may be right.  But laugh with me, not at me; I am amazed, astounded, and delighted at the reality that regularly and routinely and with very little fanfare, relatively speaking, experienced veterans and absolute rookies alike bring forth from their communion a brand new human person, whole and entire, never before seen even in part or portion.  Wow.

Perhaps because of the universality of this amazing accomplishment, it does not receive the attention or amazement that it deserves.  It may be also, I must acknowledge, because of the world-weariness that comes with sophistication, of which our age enjoys entirely more than is healthy; and the cynicism borne of so many novelties announced that fail to deliver anything truly new, much less good.  Only God can create a person; but in the wisdom of God, he allows and requires that human beings help Him in this creation. 

The great blessing of our parish is the recognition of the goodness of this essential human participation in the divine work of life.  It starts with the news, a whisper in my ear at the church door that we have a little one on the way, or, alternatively, beaming and bouncing children announcing Mommy is having a BABY!  

Outside our communion but close around us, such developments are widely held to be a penalty, a punishment, or a problem.  Accusatory glances and dark countermeasures are offered without circumspection or concern.  Because of this, news of the miracle is withheld or reserved, becoming instead a cause of caution or even embarrassment.  

This discouraging effect is doubly damaging since the awareness of this great new creation growing within does bring genuine concerns, real problems and quandaries, and that most basic of human questions, self-doubt: am I up to this?  How to explore and share fears and dilemmas in the face of opprobrium?  How to find help or encouragement where there is only destruction on offer?  Genuine wonder and delight before the splendor of human life includes candor about the difficulties as well. 

Last year at one of our parish events there was present a family with a new member, a child whose age was still measured in weeks, rather than months.   To watch the excited reactions and responses among two groups of our parishioners was a wondrous thing: those most affected were the adolescent girls, and the experienced fathers, who took turns holding, bouncing, attending to and delighting in the little bundle of humanity.  Mom was delighted to have her hands free for a moment, rightly confident that not an instant of neglect or indifference would come near the child.

This is what I see among our parishioners of every age.  A genuine delight in the coming of a new human life into our world and our community, accompanied with genuine care for the needs of the people who are now and will ever be responsible for this demanding creation.  These two aspect are not counterbalanced opposites, but rather the integrated whole of healthy understanding and engagement.  

A unique and unrepeatable human person is a complicated organism, and needy, especially – though hardly exclusively – when fresh and new.  The first man on the moon was once a helpless infant; the discoverers of penicillin and the polio vaccine both had to be nurtured and nursed.  The hand that sculpted the Pietà and painted the Sistine Chapel was once a tiny clenched fist. The voice that enchanted multitudes at one time could only squall and burble.  Every pair of eyes that ever searched for truth and beauty was once slow to open and focus.  Every human life that ever crafted, produced, or offered anything good began as an infant who could only require and receive.

The marvel of every infant is the mystery of unknowable unicity, the beginning of something original in the truest sense: a life that will originate realities that endure through history and eternity.  What better reason could there be for us to offer care, and love?

But love is not transactional, a down-payment toward eventual return.  No, love is itself that most marvelous capacity in each human life, perfect when offered without hope of repayment.  This, too, is a gift an infant gives.

This is how God comes.  Shed of his power and majesty, confined by every human need, yet He offers us the very power that defines the Divine: He allows us, invites us, empowers us to love as God loves, both to delight and to care without any expectation of gain.  He teaches us, as a new child teaches us, what we are capable of, what we are for, and what gives us genuine joy and satisfaction: to love without counting the cost.

It is so refreshing and so human to live among people who not only know this, but live this.  It is not some imposition from without, some demand or duty placed by authority and checked by enforcement, but rather the revelation of our God who loves us and wants us to be happy.  The old English carol Masters in this Hall gets the point across quite clearly:

This is Christ the Lord,

Masters be ye glad!

Christmas is come in,

And no folk should be sad.

No folk should be sad, indeed.  The little ones are the greatest among us, because their need invites, even cajoles us to exercise our resemblance to God.  Pray God turn the eyes of the “masters” around us, who fear the loss of autonomy a child brings, who fear the loss of their “mastery” an infant demands.  Let them see what we know and enjoy, that our hope and our help comes to us as one who is helpless; by Him are we “holpen”, that is, helped.

Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!

Nowell, sing we clear!

Holpen are all folk on earth,

Born is God's son so dear:

Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!

Nowell, sing we loud!

God to-day hath poor folk raised

And cast a-down the proud.

I thank you for sharing your children, and your delight in them, with me and with one another.  Together we thank God for sharing His child with us, and likening His delight in you and me to His delight in Him.

Marvel with me at new life, squawking and squalling in a bundle.  It is the Lord!  May the blessings He brings be in your homes and in your lives, and the joy of His Nativity unite you with loved ones far away.  Blessed and merry Christmas.

Monsignor Smith

Got you covered

First try & better bet

A long time ago, it already seems, I consecrated all the congregational hosts in a large, deep paten, more of a bowl actually, that was directly before me throughout the action at the altar.  During the pandemic I switched to having only the priest’s host on a flat paten in front of me, and all the others (the ones for y’all) at the back of the corporal in a ciborium, that is, a footed vessel with a lid.  The lid is removed only at the consecration of the hosts, a short time with relatively few, carefully spoken words, so it protects the hosts from any contamination that might come from my mouth as I sing and speak at greater length and volume the extensive prayers proper to the altar.

The ciborium was for untold centuries the only permitted eucharistic container, with strict instructions for when the lid be removed.  It is almost as if the Church understood that the food for the faithful needs to be protected and preserved both before and yes, even after it becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, to protect it from damage or infection.  Freshly aware of my own ability to incur and transmit germs, I continue to use the ciborium.

When I was in middle school, my parish introduced the novel and fashionable practice of putting all the altar breads, or hosts, in open containers out on a table in the vestibule along with the large bowl in which they would be carried to the altar.  Tongs were provided for parishioners to move “their” breads into the bowl.   There was no such set-up by the other doors, so it never helped get the right number of hosts for those attending; but it added much-valued “participation.”  It also added a great opportunity for contamination and mishap of every sort, and was abandoned after a few years.  

Recent events have made me more aware of incongruities such as these that had filtered into our liturgical practice and fashioned our expectations over the past five decades.  Resuming corporate worship after the lockdowns were eased then lifted presented a necessity of reevaluation for practical and sanitary, that is, health purposes.  

Many people, even some of my own seminary classmates, look at me like I am crazy when I explain that the most safe and sanitary way to give someone the sacred host is on the tongue, especially to one who is kneeling.  That is most likely because they have rarely if ever done it.  For anybody my age or younger, reception on the hand was the only option their entire Catholic lives, and any thoughts of receiving onto the tongue was considered in terms of cooties or the plain weirdness of old people.  But in reality, since circumstances made it part of my practice as a priest, only very, very rarely (once a year?) might there be disconcerting contact while communicating someone on the tongue.  

And honestly, during those many long months when we were all working so hard not to have physical contact with other people, I realized how hard it is safely to lay our Lord into the wildly varied, unpredictably presented and occasionally grabby human hand without some flesh-on-flesh contact.  It really helps if the communicant – the recipient – is holding still rather than moving toward me, which our current method of communion also achieves.  But even that level of care that fails to take account of the inevitably direct link of the host in the hand, about to be consumed, with everything that the receiving hand has touched since last it was washed.  Ick.

Which is also why I think it best not to shake hands right before communion, at least not with anybody not in your family or domicile, with whom you already share everything anyway.   The liturgical handshake is a late 20^th-century innovation anyway; for millennia the “kiss of peace” involved hands placed on shoulders or elbows, and cheeks passing one another like ships in the night.  A genial and gracious bow would be a prudent offering.

None of these practices guarantee your safety; I hope most of us realize just how that catchphrase can be and has been misused to manipulate our minds and behavior.  They are, however, a considered and careful praxis that minimizes unnecessary and unhealthy sharing while making available the unimpeded physicality and communality of our sacramental salvation.

That large, deep paten, more of a bowl actually, that I formerly used for all parish Masses was one I had commissioned to be made for my use before I left Rome for priestly ordination.  The impractical, unsanitary vessel is in storage, but with me every day are the words I had inscribed arounds its edge, one of the three admonitions from the ordination rite: Conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.  

 Monsignor Smith

Nobody expects

It's as if someone sent Saint Bernadette flowers for her birthday -
and it's still three weeks until her birthday!

SURPRISE!

It’s that time of year when everybody is expecting presents; to sneak up on somebody with a gift who is not expecting one is quite the accomplishment. Well, we have been sneaked up on.  This week arrived here in the Holy House of Soubirous A NEW PRIEST.  His existence was known to me; his trajectory was known to me; but I had not met him, and his arrival was a complete mystery to me until last week when I got the call: here he comes!

Father Brillis Mathew has been assigned to be Parochial Vicar here beginning this weekend.  His timing is excellent; in fact, in the technique commonly used in modern manufacturing of complex items (such as cars), this is what is known as Just In Time (JIT) delivery.  That makes for a minimum of time on the shelves for components; it makes for minimum time to learn the ropes for Fr. Brillis.

Father arrives just in time for the big push of final Advent preparation (including a lot of last-minute confessions, it would seem), and that most bone-crushing of all possible calendar events, Christmas on Monday.  I hope he is a heavy lifter!

Father Brillis is no stranger to our area, though he is not a priest of this Archdiocese nor has he ever served here before.  His previous assignment was nearby in a parish in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, but Baltimore is not where he is from.   He is a priest of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia, a territorial jurisdiction of the Catholic Church covering the countries of the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen.  But that is not where he started; no, he was born and spent his childhood and youth in Kochi, Kerala, in southwest India.  Rumor has it that he has yet another name, a family name, that is complex enough he does not even try to use it here.

He has lived on other places, too, including London, and Rome, where he prepared for priesthood.  It turns out that we have some friends in common from the Eternal City, which demonstrate afresh that Rome is the place of unity for the universal Church.

As is always a challenge when a gift arrives, there is the immediate dilemma: where are we going to put him?  For the moment, he is shoe-horned into our guest rooms.  Even the parochial vicar’s office has become a scullery of sorts, filled with overflow objects from the kitchen, and office supplies.  

In what may be yet another surprise, since I do not get the impression he mentioned it to many people, Father Alek Schrenk, with us since August, has decided to move back to campus housing at Catholic University.  He assures us that this is not because of any noisome habits or hygiene deficiencies of me or Father Novajosky, but rather because of that most noisome aspect of life in our DMV: traffic.  He did rather step into a perfect storm as construction of the long-awaited Purple Line finally kicks into high gear.  The work zone for this marvel of transportation engineering extends in perfect impenetrability across every possible path to CUA from Four Corners, and beyond.  It is rather like no-man’s-land after the battle of the Somme.  Father Schrenk staggers home each day showing early signs of PTSD.

So he will be leaving us, already gone by the time you read this, though he may consent to come assist with Mass here in future, he assures me.  He might even be cajoled into staying for dinner.  

The Fearless Father Novajosky has also left already, but only for Christmas break with family back in Connecticut.  He will be back for Holy Family and the New Year, as is often the case with him, welcome help when I need it most. 

That means as of this weekend, as of NOW, there are all these gaps in the schedule into which Father Brillis will find himself thrust.  He assures me he is ready, willing, and able, even chomping at the bit to practice priesthood among the good and holy people of the parish.  As I always ask of you for any priest who finds himself living with me, I beg your prayers for him.  And even without my asking, I know you will surround him with your customary Sant Bernadette Welcome.

SURPRISE!

Monsignor Smith

The Faith of One Smith

Three gently smiling cherubs look up from its base, their sweet faces contrasting with the regular grid pattern on which they are set.   Delicate and lively organic swirls and figures alternate with classical, architectural details of precise proportion up the stem that opens into the floreate surround of the smooth, simple silver cup that is lightly gilded within.  None of its perfection is machined, but rather all is fashioned and finished by human hands, two of them, using the simple tools and elaborate techniques proper to the silversmith.  

This silver chalice Monsignor Stricker owned came to me roundabout by way of a priest to whom he had given it decades ago.   The man who restored it for me told me it was over two centuries old, and bench-made in France.   Though I have used it occasionally here in the church, you have most likely not noticed it was different from any other chalice.  It is beautiful, but that is not why I draw it to your attention.  

France in the early nineteenth century was reeling from a decades-long effort to eradicate the Faith and the Church that had begun with the revolution in 1789.  After that led, logically of course, to the Terror, a Corsican Corporal rose to the top of the savage heap and commenced to demolish the civil order of all Europe.  He sacked the Vatican and abducted the Pope, and asserted himself Emperor of it all.  Predictably, priests and bishops behaved badly, many of them abandoning their posts or even signing on to the new Cult of Reason or the suborned patriotic “church.”  Faith, morals, sacraments – those were all so “passé”; the New Order was the future.  Many faithful clerics fled for their lives, some to the fledgling United States.  One of them became the third Archbishop of Baltimore.  It may be because of this connection that the French chalice found its way to Baltimore, where it found its way to Father William Stricker, who grew up there.  But that is not why I draw it to your attention.

What that chalice contains and conveys to me is the faith of one man far away and long ago, who poured his work and skill and time and resources into making a beautiful object of the highest quality that had no possible use or value whatsoever except to cup the Precious Blood of the Lord in the divine worship of the very Church that looked to him and many around him to be on the verge of being driven out of existence.  Whether he sold it to a priest who was fleeing toward the promise of America, or sent it there in hopes of its finding altar and priest, he bestowed his handiwork on a future he had no material evidence would ever be.

For the past five centuries, a belligerent rationalism combined with persistent hubris has labored mightily to dismantle, dismember, or dilute the Faith and the Church whose charge it is to nurture and nourish.  To make ourselves the deciders of what is good, to make ours the judgment of right and wrong, to assert the God’s Word is a lie is a ripe temptation always on a branch just high enough to congratulate ourselves for being able to reach it.  While many of her gravest threats have come from without, the Church has never pretended that membership offered an exemption from this temptation. 

Pope Pius VII, for five years a prisoner of Napoleon, is reputed to have told the little man: “You want to destroy the Church, but you will not succeed at what her priests and bishops for centuries have tried and failed.”  He was prescient about the denouement of Bonaparte’s reach.  It falls to us to pray that his observation about the efforts of her bishops and priest not be out of date.  To us falls the obligation to cherish and preserve all the good that has been handed down to us.  To us falls the burden of bearing with ridicule and insult from the avant-garde waving the flag of the future.  Moreover, even when isolated, it falls to us to do the work, to fashion and craft both lives and objects that have no other possible use but to nourish and nurture a persevering and faithful Church.

Monsignor Smith

Yes to both

Where do you keep them?  The things you use to make your home ready for Christmas, that is.  My family kept ours under the basement stairs, because they came out only once a year.  Ah, the long Philco radio box full of decorations!  It was ancient even then.  Now, here at the parish, we have rectory decorations and church decorations in the respective boiler rooms.   There are all those trees that arrived on the truck from Quebec last Sunday, that will move from our front lot into homes around the region.  These are things that help all of us enjoy Advent and Christmas.  I don’t know about you, but for me, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without things.

One of the features I enjoy about Frederick, Maryland, is the antique shops there that are filled with all sorts of household goods and furnishings from eras recent to revolutionary.  The sheer amount and quality of the goods there is indicative of one of the observed characteristics of the rising generations: they don’t want their parents’ things.  

This may be a sign of a new asceticism, but I doubt it; the same generations are Olympically self-indulgent of consumables, entertainments, and experiences such as vacations and adventures.  They are also intensely engaged with technology, of which they like to possess the latest iterations.  I think, rather, it is a symptom of a disdain for things: stuff.

This is weird, I know, but bear with me.   There is an old joke about “There are two kinds of people in the world:  People who separate everybody into two types of people, and people who don’t.”  Well, it is human nature to simplify everything into an either/or, perhaps because making something simpler should make it easier.  One of these great “divides” was the old Manichaean division of everything into material (bad) and spiritual (good), which can sound authentic at first, but leads quickly to body (bad), soul (good).  

How do we know that’s a problem?  Well, God has a body.  So it can’t be all bad!  When the eternal Son took flesh in the womb of His Virgin Mother, He was NOT mixing bad with His good.  No, He manifested the goodness of human flesh by taking it to Himself, and that same flesh was raised from the dead and assumed into heaven.  Body, good!

So working back, if the body is good, then material can be and is good too, because the body needs material to survive and thrive.  You know, food and hygiene, shelter and medicine and the like.  Stuff. 

Jesus, Who is good, needed stuff, and you and I need stuff.  Jesus utilizes our universal need by using things, material objects and items, to give us spiritual and even divine gifts.  We call these sacraments.  Bread and wine become His body and blood for our spiritual nourishments.  Water, oil, and other basics all have a role to play in restoring, repairing, and fortifying our immortality.  Body + soul, material + spiritual.  That is us!

This reveals something about the role of things in our lives.  Things have connections and connotations; things connect us to other things, and other non-material realities.  Things present and re-present experiences and effects that would otherwise be impossible to manage.  A dinner plate from your grandmother’s china can initiate a flood of memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and arouse an authentic surge of love and affection.  Love and affection are both stubbornly immaterial, yet material objects play an indispensable role in our experience and understanding of both.

Objects can and in fact should be good in their own right, too, by being whole and unspoiled, by being beautiful and well crafted.   Even then, they manifest the goodness of human genius and labor and craft, of artisanship and artistry. 

Yet humble material, too, can accomplish a noble, even holy purpose.   There was hay in a manger once, and it gave comfort to the newborn King.  For years that Philco radio box meant to me Christmas with all its festivity and family fun, and the memory of it erupting unbidden just now, something I had not thought of in thirty years or more, awakens a gratitude for an experience and understanding of life where love of family and the love of God were tangible and delighted in, in actions, words, smells and tastes, and yes, things. 

In the digital age when anything, including beauty and truth, can be digitally simulated, the flawless sheen of virtual reality is your first clue that it is anything but reality.   Things, simple things like food and drink, lights, trees, and boxes, connect us one to another, and to the living God.  Where do you keep them?

Monsignor Smith