Well now that was an exciting week, wasn’t it? Who knew the turnout would be so huge. I gave away every one of the 240 candy bars I bought and then some to the mobs of trick-or-treaters who came to my door on Halloween. What a group! What a delight. I want to thank all the middle-school cool kids who admitted you knew me, and all the parents who loaded the van to bring your little ones a little bit out of their ordinary footprint so that I could see them and put Skittles in their bags.
Friday started early with the All Saints Holy Day Masses. Perhaps not quite as encouraging a throng for that as for the candy, but God was glorified in His Saints and at the end of the day I was wore out like a hall carpet.
That same day, great news came from Rome that our Holy Father Francis named Msgr. Fredrik Hansen as co-adjutor Bishop of Oslo, his home diocese in Norway. Why is that Scandinavian event good news for us in Silver Spring? Well, for the past two years, Msgr. Hansen has helped out here, most noticeably on weekends in August when help is much needed, but also at other times. I met him in New York just as he was entering the Sulpicians and the faculty at St Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.He became a friend to me and the other denizens of the Holy House over time, as he came just to visit for Saturday dinner, or help with weekend Masses too. All of us who know him are thrilled for him and for Oslo, though it might make things hairy here come August.
In grim news, also over the weekend people handed over to Fr. Wiktor several hosts they found on the ground in front of the church. We carefully took them and disposed of them reverently and appropriately.
If you ever wonder why the priest watches you or the person receiving Holy Communion next to you as you receive and consume the host, it is an expression of our care for Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament. No, we do not expect many – or even any! – of you to make off with the host and fling it to the ground; more likely an accident happen that leave Our Lord on the floor rather than under your roof. But every once in a while somebody does something genuinely bad. It happened before, several years ago, when every week we would find a Sacred Host in the envelope holder on the back of one of the pews. Now this.
Care for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is one of the greatest gifts He gives us priests, from maintaining the security of the tabernacle to catching Him when he falls during Holy Communion. It is rather as if Our Lady were to hand the Infant King to you, a shepherd, while she stepped away for a moment. With time and age, I grow more aware of the saving presence and its precarious disposition. So much that God bestows on us is precarious while it depends on our care!
In the few years we have been using the patens under chins and hands at Holy Communion time, I have been astonished by the accumulation of little tiny bits of the Body of the Lord when the paten returns to the altar for purification. Once you have seen this, you cannot unsee it, as the saying goes, and my carefulness only increases.
You too can join your care to the custody of Our Lord, Who makes Himself small so that we may offer Him our attention, care, and love. Review your practice of receiving the Lord, which may have become a little too routine over the years, not to say slapdash. Make certain that you are careful and attentive and still, your posture and disposition entirely focused on the great and fragile gift you are receiving. Move slowly, pay attention, and remove all causes of collision or ejection from your moment of encounter and embrace. Be grateful and careful.
I know some people think this week was exciting for some other reasons, but none of that is revealed or resolved as I write this. We have bad news enough in the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament here, in our sacred precincts. Yet even in this we are not helpless to right the grave wrong, as we can make reparation for the indignity thrust upon our Lord and be reminded of our responsibility to care for Him when He comes to us.
There is good news aplenty, too, for the Church is alive and thriving here in Four Corners with large numbers of children who have parents and teachers who bring them to Mass after they cavort for candy. The universal Church is thriving and growing in a land from which she had long been excluded, and a successor to the Apostles arrives to his Norwegian flock by way of our distant parish. The Faith is alive and at work here and now.
And that should put proportion to any other excitement you had this week. Praise God!
Monsignor Smith
