Ups and downs

This year's Easter decor:
lilies, hydrangeas ...and black bunting.

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! 

The ancient celebratory antiphon for Easter, not only Sunday but through the eight days of the Octave, leaves no room for confusion about the task at hand, nor the about the identity of the source of its mandate.  Giddy devotees of liturgy and law will enjoin, It is forbidden to fast on a feast! and commence suitable revelry.  This is neither inappropriate nor unseemly.

Yet Easter Tuesday morning, having left my car for some work and set out on a walk, I pulled out my rosary, squinted to mark the day of the week and thus identify the cycle of Mysteries it called for, and groaned: the Sorrowful Mysteries already?  So soon?  The great grief of Good Friday had been eclipsed by the eruption of joy Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, but here I was returning to the Passion and Cross.  It seems we still walk in the shadow of death, even as we rejoice in the light of the Risen Lord.

Even before that, though, the reality of our dwelling in the valley of the shadow had crashed into our week of exultation.  The day before, Easter Monday morning, I learned only after I had offered the 6:30 Mass that our Holy Father Francis had died hours before.  The newspaper I had one hour earlier brought into the rectory and laid on the kitchen island had as its lead photo the Pope in his Popemobile the morning before, with the caption Pope emerges from long convalescence for Easter Sunday.  The shadow of death defines the light.

Long have I been convinced that the day of one’s death can reveal the care or even favor of the Lord of the Living.  For the Good Shepherd to gather to Himself the earthly shepherd of His flock as the eight-day celebration of the Resurrection begins provides that the Church is obliged to rejoice even as she would turn to mourning. 

Our rejoicing in the resurrection is not untouched by our continued vulnerability to death, and our grief at the loss of a loved one is similarly changed by the confident and joyful hope of the resurrection.   By her own laws and obligations, the Church must celebrate Christ’s victory for the full eight days, and can only acknowledge grief as situational, occasional, or even incidental.  A funeral Mass is permitted in the Octave, and indeed Francis will be mourned with one and buried on Easter Saturday.  But all other Masses must be of and for Easter, only including a mention of our call for the repose of the soul of the Pontiff.  The memoranda and instructions flowing from national and diocesan liturgical offices over recent days have been detailed and clear.

It is clearly more than simple liturgical directives that guides our dispositions as Catholics.   Christ is risen, and that changes everything.  Even death is changed, but it is not eliminated.  Therefore, we do not grieve like the others do, who have no hope, as Saint Paul indicates to the Thessalonians (1 Thes 14:13).  In these days our rejoicing pushes away grief.

At the end of that Tuesday morning rosary, I recalled my prayer practice twenty years ago, after John Paul II had died.  I would add at the end of every Rosary I offered one Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be for the happy repose of the soul of our deceased Holy Father, and then one Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be for whoever was the man next to be called to the Chair of Peter.  I commend this practice to you now.  The former is our duty and our privilege as Catholics to offer prayers for our father who has died.  The latter is similarly an obligation but also a lifeline to tether us to the spiritual reality of life in Christ in the Church, and the great working-out of divine providence through the actions of the Cardinals over coming days.  It can inoculate us against the frenzied media coverage of this holy undertaking that presents it as resembling nothing so much as the mad scramble to bestow the Democratic Party nomination for president of the U.S., because alas, that’s the most important thing of which they know.  Thank God you and I know better, and more.

Yes, life in Christ is more.  The Church is a divine institution, not a merely human one, even as the human nature of its members be on full and sometimes gruesome parade.  Membership in Christ and headship of His Body have political and temporal dimensions, but more importantly, sacramental and eternal dimensions.  Christ is risen from the dead and we are raised with him, even as we walk in the valley of the shadow of death.  Our lives and our days are changed forever by Christ’s victory and our sharing in it, and even as grim realities perdure, certain days bring specific obligations.

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! 

Monsignor Smith

Death's empty victory

 

NOT an illustration from any how-to-succeed book.

The books that sell best on Amazon indicate that people want to know how to achieve success.  That is hardly a surprise.  Look at these titles: How to Succeed, or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune; Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals; and How to Succeed.  Some make it seem as if there’s one secret to mastering anything: How to Succeed in Everything: A Workbook.  Then, there is specialized success, too: for college, U Thrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life); for business, Driven: How To Succeed In Business And In Life; for children, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character; and even for a very small group of people: How to Succeed as a Federal Judicial Law Clerk. 

Relatively few people knowingly set their caps toward failure, and I have a sneaking feeling these alternative books are really just how-to-succeed books with contrary titles:  How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big; How to Fail: The Self-Hurt Guide; and How to Fail as a Therapist: 50+ Ways to Lose or Damage Your Patients.

Today we celebrate something great and life-changing that has occurred.   Has some success been achieved?  Who succeeded, and at what?

Think of where we stood just a few days ago: what had been achieved was total failure.  Jesus had failed to win hearts and minds to his side.  He had failed to avoid capture.  He had failed to have good people around him.  He had failed in his own defense.  He had failed, in fact, to survive.  He suffered, died, and was buried.

Nonetheless, even as He died, He announced It is accomplished.  Was failure what he had sought to accomplish, as if he were some precursor of one of the abovementioned how-to-fail books?  No.  He fulfilled all righteousness; He accomplished the will of His Father.  He succeeded in being obedient in every detail to what seemed to be a program to bring about His humiliation and destruction.  

But the will of the Father was not that His Son be destroyed; no, His will was that Jesus save souls who were doomed, including especially those who destroyed Him, by sacrificing Himself even unto His own complete destruction.  This is the great work that brought about what we celebrate today.

Already the separation of a few days makes it hard for us to remember that apparent catastrophe, as we welcome His victory.   But as we rejoice that Jesus has changed our own deaths into a pathway to His eternal life, let us remember how we got here.

By accepting death, Jesus conquered death; and by rising from the dead, He changed death forever for us who, unlike Him, are rightly doomed to die.  He did this by choosing freely to deny Himself every shred and vestige of success.  He took upon Himself the devastating results of every person’s grasping for the success they insist upon and crave.   

None of the above books, nor the people who buy and read them, would propose the Way of the Cross as a path to success.   But you and I have all the information we need to identify this very path to the one true and lasting success.  What looks to all the world like failure gives us confidence in our days of difficulty and failure.  

Submitting our will to the will of the Father, even when it seems to lead us to destruction, is the path to life.  Recognizing that acceptance and approval mean nothing if they distance us or separate us from the Cross is the path to life.  Yielding what we desire so that someone else may have what he need is the path to life.  Giving our life in love that another might live, thrive, and grow, is the path to life.  Being faithful to the one who is unfaithful, offering forgiveness to the one who has failed, is the path to life.  

Claim as your own the victory that Jesus succeeded in winning for us.  At the same time, recognize so-called failure as the only path to it, and be not afraid.  

Fr. Swink, Fr. Wiktor, and all of us here pray daily for your Easter joy.  As we rejoice today in the liberation from death that Christ our God has won for us by His submission to failure in all things but doing His Father’s will, please accept my humble wish that you and all your loved ones enjoy a blessed Easter, Feast of the Lord’s Resurrection, and of our victory. 

Monsignor Smith

What we take away, what we bring

One of the abiding mysteries of the diminishing religious practice of Catholics in our day is the persistent popularity of Palm Sunday.  Not being quite so cynical as those who insist that this enthusiasm is simply because of the “giveaway,” that is, the palms handed out and carried home; and only in briefest flashes of uncharity thinking some come just so the priest won’t greet them on Easter Sunday with, “How have you been since Christmas?”;  I peer more closely into the motivation of the increased throng at this Mass, the longest and arguably grimmest Sunday Mass of the entire liturgical year.

No, I think that the discomfort of attending Mass that is augmented on this day — the increased length, the increased standing, the increased emphasis on the sufferings of Jesus, the deep discomfort and more deeply resonant shouting of “Crucify him!”— that is precisely what makes it so right, so important to attend Mass this day.

Any other day of the year, that very discomfort, the inconvenience of mobilizing our families or just ourselves for Mass, of enduring what fails to entertain, of abandoning our leisure and our work for the purposeful purposelessness of ritual worship; all this chafes on any normal day, on “any given Sunday.”  The talk of sin, the talk of death, all seems such an intrusion on our day and what we want to get out of it.  

But this day, precisely that discomfort seems somehow to fit our needs, to answer some craving.  Holding limply our new-blessed palms, our half-hearted singing of All Glory Laud and Honor is just like our half-hearted singing on any other day; but this day, our half-heartedness is precisely what we have in common with the crowd: they greeted the Lord with enthusiasm, then condemned him.  Standing for the entire reading of the Passion wearies our feet and our patience, just as our weight shifts and our minds wander during the reading of every Gospel; but this day, that weary, weighty shifting, that desire to be somewhere else, puts us however momentarily in Christ’s own shoes.  

In fact, this might be the only day that Mass makes sense; for once we do not show up expecting to be encouraged or enthused over, to be coddled and congratulated.  We want no compliments; that would strike us as foolish on Palm Sunday and make us look away with embarrassment for whoever tried it.  No, we expect to encounter own our guilt this day; to stare at the wounds of Christ without turning our eyes away, to recognize the crown He wears is of our weaving, to admit the nails are of our forging, the pains of our hammering. 

We know each Sunday is a “little Easter,” which might lead us to expect unmixed joy on the other fifty-one of each year.  Smiles and delight should mark the members of the winning team, as the cheering resounds – right?  Instead, we find again, disappointingly, this cross, this blood, this death we thought we had already treated sufficiently.  We find our weight shifting in our shoes, and our attention wandering to where we would rather be.  We want more encouragement, more entertainment, more efficiency, and if we cannot find it here, we will seek it in other endeavors.  Mass becomes a burden.

Today we confront the reality of the burden that is our salvation, and Him who bore it.  We acknowledge what a grace and privilege it is to be able to do “not our will, but yours” in such a small way, with such great fruit.  The little difficulties of giving glory to God combine into a dying to ourselves that opens us to life purchased for us with blood.  Each “little Easter” is achieved only by the littler Calvaries we take up willingly: missing out on some fun, getting everybody into the car, or getting nothing out of the homily.  The pains we endure in approaching the saving meal are what we have in common with what the Saving Victim endured to put food on the table.  Today, when we expect the Cross, it all makes sense; but the rest of the year, when we would be inclined to avoid it, only this selfsame Cross of Christ will bring sense to our lives and bring us authentic joy. 

Hail the cross, our only hope.

Monsignor Smith

Passing

Twenty years after the death of Saint John Paul II, I share some reflections I wrote at the time, when I was in Rome as priest secretary to Cardinal William Baum.     

Wednesday, 6 April (2005) 11:30 PM

The coverage today said one million people viewed the Pope’s body in Saint Peters in the first twenty-four hours it was available.  Fifteen to eighteen thousand people are passing every hour now.  The lines to pay respects to the Holy Father are so huge that it is extremely difficult to get in or out of our building.  

But people know.  They have seen a real life.  They have seen John Paul and have seen Christ in him.  He showed them who they really are – the oppressed people of Poland and Eastern Europe, and of Cuba; the disillusioned and disinterested youth of the consumerist West, of France and Germany, of the United States; the people who know they are capable of love and of joy despite their poverty, in Mexico, in Africa, in the Phillipines.  They saw the truth about themselves, and they saw it because of him. 

And it changed the world.

I also marveled at what a privilege and blessing it is to have known John Paul.  What a priest!  What a father!  Up to his last breath he kept nothing for himself, nothing, but offered it all for the salvation of souls.  And even now, even in his death, he is still drawing people to Christ and His Church.  Lives are being changed.  

He has shown us what one single human life can be, when lived in fidelity to its creator:  rich and strong, true and irresistible.  To see him there, just one body, vulnerable as any of us, and to realize what he did with what he was given, makes it difficult not to think about that an amazing thing Man is.  As Saint Anselm said, “The glory of God is the living man!” 

The people out there, waiting in line in the streets for twenty hours to see a dead man, cannot be categorized in any way, not in age, not in culture, not in education or credulity.  They are just people.  And they, like most people, want to DO something about what they have seen and known.  So they come. 

Friday, 8 April, (2005) 6:00 PM

It could have rained.  But we didn’t get that.  Today, we had wind.  When I settled into my seat in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica at ten o’clock this morning, I thought, how nice.  There is a breeze!  … A little later, it stiffened and started knocking things over on the credence table, next to which I was sitting.  A processional candle went over and its glass globe smashed on the pavement...  I even saw it pick up the carpet runner several inches.  

The crowd made its presence known…It was a JPII crowd.  That crowd, along with the wind, was what I will remember about today.  They were not spectators, they were PARTICIPANTS.  They were THERE, and they made their presence, and their participation, felt.  For twenty-six and a half years, John Paul II had been telling them how precious they were, how important their very presence, how important their participation in the great mysteries of life and of God.  They believed him.  

There were crowds in every direction and all over the city… But these vast dimensions, and all the coverage, all the narrative, all the lights and cameras and action, all of it made it very tempting to overlook something: what happened today, though vast in scale, unprecedented in its participants, unheard of in its impact, was totally ordinary.  It happens all the time.  It is what families do.  It is what Christians do when we lose a loved one.  It is a part of life; necessary, and even good.  But by no means easy.  We lost a father.  Today, it just took a while to say goodbye.  

Because of the distances to be covered today, I brought the Cardinal in a wheelchair… It made it possible for him to participate in every aspect of the funeral without exhaustion or too much pain.

After we all sang the In Paradisum (“May the angels sing you into paradise”), the time came.  As the crowd chanted and sang and waved goodbye, and the pallbearers moved toward the coffin, I rolled the Cardinal back into the loggia, or vestibule, of the Basilica … We stood at the foot of the ramp, looking up at these huge doors.  Slowly they swung open, and revealed the side aisle of Saint Peters stretching hundreds of feet away...  It was deserted, and awesome.

We rolled up the ramp, up the aisle, and around the main altar.  By then the procession was coming up the main aisle.  The cross and candles and servers kept going, but the Cardinals and Patriarchs stopped in the aisle, stepped aside, and faced each other.  I could see the doors close.   Now the wind was left behind.  The crowd was outside.  The enormous bronze doors even shut out the sound of the solitary huge bell tolling above.  It was silent.  There was a long pause.

Then the Holy Father went by, borne on the shoulders of the twelve pall bearers.  He was followed by members of his household, the old old friends from Poland who count as his only family, and the eight cardinals who would accompany him to the tomb.  

As he passed, the Cardinals all took off their skullcaps.  We blessed ourselves.  In silence but for the shuffle of the pall-bearers’ feet, he continued on his way, the same way the cross and candles had led, over to the door that leads to the grottoes beneath.  The coffin grew smaller and smaller.  He disappeared from view.  It was the last I will see of him.

We all stood there for a while.  The Cardinals looked around, waiting for someone, some master of ceremonies, to tell them what to do.  No one was there.  After a few moments, they shrugged, and began to fall out of line.  

“The wind blows where it wills, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.”  (John 3:8)

Monsignor Smith