tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45127959045658054932024-03-15T21:11:47.442-04:00Pastor's Corner MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comBlogger660125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-7723266447435205672024-03-15T21:00:00.001-04:002024-03-15T21:00:00.145-04:00I bind unto myself this day the strong name of the Trinity<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 11pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrYxzAxOoX_9mhXrwq89Ohj8CppehXowqutWbZ3i20FqsdAY_YX-GSsCW7oBBrO_oV4JQjZRiXRxhkNuE0v4auYGLAJregpuimeLYnu_qTbuOMzFEmgTDDfZp3KJMC4Yvxq9s3IbAvFv6kLCDra0eusoW4tL3CcR914mqrg5oHRP5VXlEFkq-fpFkhU_Q/s2560/Croagh-Patrick-1-scaled-965170190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1451" data-original-width="2560" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrYxzAxOoX_9mhXrwq89Ohj8CppehXowqutWbZ3i20FqsdAY_YX-GSsCW7oBBrO_oV4JQjZRiXRxhkNuE0v4auYGLAJregpuimeLYnu_qTbuOMzFEmgTDDfZp3KJMC4Yvxq9s3IbAvFv6kLCDra0eusoW4tL3CcR914mqrg5oHRP5VXlEFkq-fpFkhU_Q/w400-h226/Croagh-Patrick-1-scaled-965170190.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Saint Patrick's idea of a good place to spend Lent</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Would Saint Patrick be encouraged, or rather find it strange that his name annually is on the lips of every retailer, restauranteur, and party planner in this faraway nation?</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> Unlike “Christmas”, “Saint Patrick” is a name and a concept that the most secular around us seem to invoke readily and often. Add that the reality that this evangelizing saint's strict regime of fasting and penance could not be more distant from the spirit that expects “dispensation” to eat meat on a Lenten Friday when his day falls there, and he may as well be the patron of ironic twists. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Always falling in the middle of Lent, his feast generates much celebration and precious little consideration of what the saint himself said or did. There’s no green glitter here, nor corned beef, nor beer, but your observance of your heritage – <i>as a <u>Catholic</u></i> – should include reading his own words. <i>Slainte!</i></span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT Italic"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 11pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT Italic"; font-size: 22pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburnia. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments. We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved. The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth. It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognized my failings. So, I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God, and he looked down on my lowliness and had mercy on my youthful ignorance. He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That is why I cannot be silent – nor would it be good to do so – about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is because there is no other God, nor will there ever be, nor was there ever, except God the Father. He is the one who was not begotten, the one without a beginning, the one from whom all beginnings come, the one who holds all things in being – this is our teaching. And his son, Jesus Christ, whom we testify has always been, since before the beginning of this age, with the father in a spiritual way. He was begotten in an indescribable way before every beginning. Everything we can see, and everything beyond our sight, was made through him. He became man; and, having overcome death, was welcomed to the heavens to the Father. The Father gave him all power over every being, both heavenly and earthly and beneath the earth. Let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, in whom we believe and whom we await to come back to us in the near future, is Lord and God. He is judge of the living and of the dead; he rewards every person according to their deeds. He has generously poured on us the Holy Spirit, the gift and promise of immortality, who makes believers and those who listen to be children of God and co-heirs with Christ. This is the one we acknowledge and adore – one God in a Trinity of the sacred name.<a name="C05_eng"><o:p></o:p></a></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He said through the prophet: ‘Call on me in the day of your distress, and I will set you free, and you will glorify me.’ Again he said: ‘It is a matter of honor to reveal and tell forth the works of God.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Although I am imperfect in many ways, I want my brothers and relations to know what I’m really like, so that they can see what it is that inspires my life.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">… I pray for those who believe in and have reverence for God. Some of them may happen to inspect or come upon this writing which Patrick, a sinner without learning, wrote in Ireland. May none of them ever say that whatever little I did or made known to please God was done through ignorance. Instead, you can judge and believe in all truth that it was a gift of God. This is my confession before I die.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Saint Patrick</i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">born in Roman Britain in 387; died at Saul, Ireland, on March 17, 461</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></i></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-57109831779378354122024-03-08T21:00:00.069-05:002024-03-08T21:00:00.154-05:00Revealed in voices, places, and faces <p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9cv7lcBEJz4ecbk08sdE_t_8xWo4jcORetBvjS7Gtclg_XPRxAadL53id6OJPAkfudMobvm0KmV-8NBF91jwuNa-MK-r4rPDG2AbyWJQlPB_FhycMBFQN6ryHmUg2KmE47V90Zxrg9oVcr-ZZt5DIjkbzuZE2fsxOlfhyphenhyphenI08PI8XiFnXYftgLKWSeNTw/s4032/velabro.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9cv7lcBEJz4ecbk08sdE_t_8xWo4jcORetBvjS7Gtclg_XPRxAadL53id6OJPAkfudMobvm0KmV-8NBF91jwuNa-MK-r4rPDG2AbyWJQlPB_FhycMBFQN6ryHmUg2KmE47V90Zxrg9oVcr-ZZt5DIjkbzuZE2fsxOlfhyphenhyphenI08PI8XiFnXYftgLKWSeNTw/w480-h640/velabro.jpeg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Why, it must be Thursday!**</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Christ used stories because we have stories; the Church gives us Christ’s life and all Scripture broken down into stories because stories fit into our lives.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span><span>Not only are we able to recognize and understand the story of salvation, and the parables of Jesus, because they have reflections in our own stories, but also so that the holy stories become part of our own stories.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Lent lays out the story for us in one long, familiar pattern, where each day and its stories come on a schedule that help us recognize how far along we are on the path, the Great Fast of Forty Days. Ash Wednesday reminds us to beware of doing religious acts for other people to see, right before we smirch our faces. The first Sunday, Christ is in the desert; and the second, He is transfigured. The three-year cycle scrambles the next several Sundays from year to year until we find our feet firmly in the Passion, and while clutching our palms, we know again where we are, and where Christ is. We hope there’s less distance between us than when first we started.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the weekdays of Lent suffer no variety of programming, bringing the same Scripture to the same day year after year. On Thursday of the first week of Lent, as I read the Gospel of the Rich Man and Lazarus on his doorstep, I was transported to a moment in the late 1980’s, when I heard Fr. Brainerd (remember him?) proclaim and preach it. Jesus’ story that day begins, <i>There was a rich man who dressed in purple and linen</i>; which is exactly how Fr. Brainerd, as the priest must necessarily be, was dressed for that Mass. Yes, I remember; Thursday was the day that after work I went by metro to the Cathedral for Mass. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As I may have told you before, each day of Lent has a <u>place</u> attached too, a church in Rome where the Stational Mass is offered, according to ancient tradition. From my seminary days through my later assignment there, I would trek each Lenten day to the appointed church for the dawn Mass (in English) organized by the North American College seminarians. That’s nine Lents, and some of the churches are inseparable in my mind from the days and their scriptures. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Tuesday of the second week of Lent brings Christ’s Gospel admonition to <i>call no man on earth your Father</i>, a loaded moment for a church full of current and future priests. The church that day is Santa Balbina, one of the least popular, least attractive churches on the rotation. It’s a simple, ancient, heavy church built into the back slope of the Caelian hill, which has risen over the intervening millennium or so, that the interior of the church is more like a basement, and a damp one at that in the Roman winter morning chill. The cracked walls are lit by bare bulbs hanging on wires from the undecorated ceiling; its one glory is a magnificent if anomalous inlaid marble throne against the wall behind the altar. That Gospel reading takes me straight there every year, bringing a chill to the back of my neck, but sparing me the long walk along the Tiber and Circus Maximus.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Monday of the fifth week of Lent is at San Crisogono, one of the original churches in the stational lineup, which means it goes back to the fifth century. You should visit the excavations beneath the current, medieval church when next you are in Rome, but you won’t -- because this isn’t even the most important or beautiful church in its own neighborhood of Trastevere, much less in the city. Anyway, the Old Testament reading that day, the longest first reading in the whole lectionary, is the story from Daniel of Susanna and the two dirty old men. My first year there, my classmate (now-Msgr.) Tom Cook of Winona, Minnesota, declaimed it with such relish and emphasis that every year, it is his voice I hear say: <i>Your fine lie has cost you your HEAD!</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Finally, finally, in my last year as a pilgrim in these Lents, I was called as a substitute for a priest who became ill, and was able to be principal celebrant and homilist at Mass for Wednesday in the fifth week of Lent, at the church of San Marcello. One of that church’s most striking features is an enormous fresco of the crucifixion which is on the back wall above the entry doors, which means I got to appreciate it from the ambo and altar. The Gospel for that day is from John 8, <i>You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.</i> That very excerpt is carved into marble over the main entrance of Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. Coincidence? You make the call.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Unrehearsed, unresearched, these moments come to me clear as light. Such is the power of liturgy and God’s Holy Word to break through the prison of our present moment and transport us into the Communion that is outside of time yet unabating in our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The story of our salvation, the stories that Jesus told to His disciples and that they have told to us, become entwined with our own stories when we encounter them in moments of grief or joy, in our need or in our distraction, recalling us to the awesome truth that no matter where our feet stand on this earth, our eyes and ears behold the very mysteries of heaven. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">**<i>The church interior pictured is that of San Giorgio in Velabro, the Station Church for the second day of Lent, the day after Ash Wednesday. The connections, of course, are more complicated than that. </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Just a few weeks before my seminary class arrived in Rome at the end of August, 1993, in a "warning" to Pope John Paul II after his strong condemnation of "the Mafia" (for lack of a better word for Italian organized crime), two powerful bombs were detonated, one of which blew to bits the ancient carved stone portico of this church. San Giorgio was closed for years thereafter as the portico and church were restored, and the Stational Mass was moved to a nearby church, usually the bizarre, octagonal San Teodoro, whose vinyl, high-backed benches resembled nothing so much as school-bus seats. But I digress. At some point the Lenten pilgrims got into San Giorgio again, I THINK before I finished seminary, maybe my fourth year. </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>No less significantly, this is the church in which Father Ben Petty, son of this parish, delivered his first homily to family and friends on the day after he was ordained deacon in 2018 at St. Peter's in the Vatican, so by his gracious invitation I have also celebrated Mass at this altar. </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;"></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Notice that the church is off-square, and the walls of the nave not parallel. You can see it clearly using the grid on the church ceiling for comparison. </i></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-15572993749096744432024-03-01T21:00:00.004-05:002024-03-01T21:00:00.142-05:00Just a leg to stand on?<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrtymAJuMUzS6NK8LJKF2ooq6CebA09B-cighd8NplNQZ0j4gtN9NgJKF4xM7tjngHaaNkjdyoDvyFpPdDbSoqufX3cHPxe5TbtgVIs5LJibwkBt120q1K5CMzEaIOLlDX7YpHdh9sevvgxcqSwQBUP4Ff4Sg6-6_bDo2_EJhsnYmUaacC-oHAJjcGkts/s400/Attachment-1.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="290" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrtymAJuMUzS6NK8LJKF2ooq6CebA09B-cighd8NplNQZ0j4gtN9NgJKF4xM7tjngHaaNkjdyoDvyFpPdDbSoqufX3cHPxe5TbtgVIs5LJibwkBt120q1K5CMzEaIOLlDX7YpHdh9sevvgxcqSwQBUP4Ff4Sg6-6_bDo2_EJhsnYmUaacC-oHAJjcGkts/w464-h640/Attachment-1.heic" width="464" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Sitting in the barber chair this week I heard the fellow sitting next to me telling his barber about what he was and was not doing for Lent. I was moderately delighted and even surprised that somebody “in the outside world” even knew it was Lent and was speaking about it beyond his most intimate circle. <i>Wow, church-talk, right here in the barbershop!</i></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sometimes, from our island of sanctification here on the boulevard, I look at the flow of traffic and the souls it bears along, and I wonder how many among them even know the great and saving work of God in Christ that is being accomplished here, and how many would recognize the culture nurtured by the sacraments and liturgy that we allow to shape the fabric of our lives. The intimacy with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that forms and informs us; the conversations with the Holy Mother of God that pour out so earnestly; the sadness for our sins, and the expectation and extension of forgiveness. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not everyone enjoys this divine light and celestial music in their busy modern lives; not everyone in their desperation or their satisfaction knows to whom to turn with petition and with thanks. This grand reality of diversity which we celebrate with increasing uniformity admits by its own definition us who worship God, with the many who do not worship God, and not only because they come from foreign lands or alien cultures. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Into this polyglot conversation, we joyfully admit that we “do something” for Lent, rather like rooting for the team from our childhood hometown. Perhaps it is our contribution to the picturesque expectations of the to-each-his-own crowd. But if we stop to think about it, already it’s been a few weeks since we remembered that Lent, the Great Fast, has three equal legs, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Maybe, just maybe, by this time we’ve settled for That Thing We Gave Up and we’re calling that Lent. Rather than hope this one-legged stool can keep us upright, perhaps now is a good time to review, refresh, and renew our participation in what we know can and should shape us for the whole year.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Privileged to pay pilgrimage to Fatima for the first time this past autumn, I was both moved and encouraged by the events that occurred there, and the personalities who participated. Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children out in the rustic and rugged landscape where they followed their charges. They were young, but serious beyond our imagining about their responsibilities to their families, and about their faith. Our Lady asked of them one thing: that they pray.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But they already prayed. They prayed almost constantly; it’s how they passed the time while they were together. They prayed alone, too. They skipped school to visit the church and pray more. Yet Our Lady asked them to pray. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">They were not insulted by the suggestion that their prayer was insufficient; they did not argue that they were already quite prayerful, possibly even as much as was prudent. No, they listened to Our Lady’s request and with renewed fervor set about praying – <i>for those who did not pray</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">By the power of the Holy Cross on which the sinless Son of God died for all our sins, we, you and I, like the children of Fatima, can offer our sacrifice not only for our own sins, but also <i>for the sins of others</i>. We can deny ourselves pleasures for the good of <i>other people</i> who seek only pleasure. And we can pray for people who do not pray. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This powerful work of reparation, which is grounded in and modeled after Christ’s saving act on the Cross, is our participation in and emulation of the divine charity that is our only hope. To pray for those who do not pray, to offer sacrifice for those who do not worship, to attend to the glory of God for the benefit of those who pay Him no mind, this also is the invitation of Lent. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Almsgiving is the material work of charity and bears great fruit toward the forgiveness of our own sins. We give from what we ourselves were planning to use, a self-denial that is not limited to fasting. And yet, Jesus asks for more, though not material: prayer, the sacrifice of time and attention and care and love. Is it harder to sacrifice our limited time, our precious attention, for someone who does not care for nor love us, or for someone who does not care for nor love God? Yet Christ does both, and insists that we too do both. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is a shock to encounter faith and prayer anywhere outside of church because it is, in reality, uncommon. Lent calls us not only to do penance for our own sins, but also to offer sacrifice on behalf of those who do not worship, and to pray for the ones who do not pray. We are graced to know that our very lives depend on our communion with Christ; this knowledge compels us to pray for all who do not share this awareness, and the joy it bestows on us; to pray for them as if <i><u>their</u></i> lives depend on it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: medium; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: medium; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-36177779344819009442024-02-23T21:00:00.008-05:002024-02-23T21:00:00.130-05:00The consolations of Februarsophy<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i>(With apologies to Boethius)</i></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i> or, </i>a Rhapsody in Bleak</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCeX6BqRyvLF0Le2dNXVXA2aeuq7TZ263M-qCYWG7QsSApb6N5DKhP1hqoYsLRka31-LALzkUTOgU0A49aDCLKvCfoO5yWOyZRhlBu0M6h2uO0WbVQexfuZkf0WzwVBSq5V0XjG7PyF32dzXlc-ifrk4ILzulOtneY-MSYr7wrIxzr3KwSC4Xk9xxHzs/s4032/IMG_9224.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCeX6BqRyvLF0Le2dNXVXA2aeuq7TZ263M-qCYWG7QsSApb6N5DKhP1hqoYsLRka31-LALzkUTOgU0A49aDCLKvCfoO5yWOyZRhlBu0M6h2uO0WbVQexfuZkf0WzwVBSq5V0XjG7PyF32dzXlc-ifrk4ILzulOtneY-MSYr7wrIxzr3KwSC4Xk9xxHzs/w480-h640/IMG_9224.HEIC" width="480" /></i></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>The snowdrop is a modest flower, <br />blooming low to ground, and casting down its gaze</i>.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>If ever there were a month that elicits yearning for consolation, it would be February, the month that wears both crowns: shortest, chronologically; and longest, experientially. One of my favorite comic strips yesterday had its two high-school-boy lead characters grappling with this very burden. </span><i>Is this the 39<sup>th</sup> or 46<sup>th</sup> of the month?</i><span> asked Pierce; </span><i>February, you’re killing me!</i><span> groaned Jeremy. </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">February can seem to go on forever, as we tire of winter and yearn for spring. The days grow longer, but the cold gets stronger, a friend’s mother said. This leap year, we have even one more day of it – though not a 39<sup>th</sup>, much less a 46<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And yet. There are signs throughout the bleak month that God’s mercies are not spent, and it is precisely the bleak backdrop that makes them stand out for us to observe, and marvel. Sunrise and sunset times are not abstractions for daily Mass-goers; already now, there is light in the sky before the 6:30 Mass, and it is still bright after the 5:00 ends. Like a freight train beginning to move, the lengthening of days began imperceptibly back in midwinter, but now picks up speed to an encouraging pace, as we added fifteen minutes of daylight at both ends of the day just in the first two week of the month. Soon enough, it will be barreling through the equinox.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sundry bulbs send up their shoots in response to the sun, though the chill make us disbelieve they know what they are doing. The tug-of-war between light and cold shows by the rectory doorstep, where the hyacinths emerge crazy early, nurtured by the sun-warmed bricks on the south-facing front wall; yet the Lenten rose (hellebore), burgeoning and blooming right on time, is flattened by an overnight freeze. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Father Novajosky rejoices to be able to begin his daily walks earlier and earlier, bundling up at first and warming as he goes. February sun brings welcome brightness without the withering wrath of summertime; barren woods reveal their stark structure. The still-low sun sends its now stronger light to raise sharp contrast, that even bare bark reveal its beauty. The sunlit call of open fields and hilltop vistas is an invitation to relish and delight, not a lure to immolation for all who dare leave the protection of shade. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ash Wednesday this year clove the month in two; but annually and more digestibly, two great days divide it into thirds, the gift of two great men; the births of Lincoln and Washington reminding us both of what we have received as a nation, and of what we are capable. The 12<sup>th</sup> and 22<sup>nd</sup> are still always on my mental calendar, heedless of the printed ones, as I find more fruit in remembering them than just generic “presidents.” And speaking of the 22<sup>nd</sup>, even when Lent starts this early, the liturgical calendar gives us the Chair of Peter to celebrate, unshakeable greatness that Christ built up precisely where He was thrice denied.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZayzGOMHIttj04QQyDb1nHqOhTMr8Aoh7EcqPkn-PY-iNTXwqJrYUWK10A7uu8c6W2BdztutCn7aRkqxyMdcewMpvoS9BjCNPNzI5QbCkTWl3y-rqcV6jXC300Oin-oIAE1_0o7rMbhjPs8nHgE_USUhZludemqfnsjA0r3sINFHubt-1gMRrhu7S09s/s4032/IMG_9219.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZayzGOMHIttj04QQyDb1nHqOhTMr8Aoh7EcqPkn-PY-iNTXwqJrYUWK10A7uu8c6W2BdztutCn7aRkqxyMdcewMpvoS9BjCNPNzI5QbCkTWl3y-rqcV6jXC300Oin-oIAE1_0o7rMbhjPs8nHgE_USUhZludemqfnsjA0r3sINFHubt-1gMRrhu7S09s/w400-h300/IMG_9219.HEIC" width="400" /></i></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Snowdrops cling to the anonymity of the crowd, springing up <br />not in isolated splendor, but rather huddling together <br />in random and irregular patches.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Yet a civic holiday is a welcome respite, too, and I took a page from Fr. Nova’s book to walk in some woods along a path I had never tried. And <i>mirabile vistu</i>, there I found snowdrops, the earliest of early bloomers, before even the crocus come. Though I hear it can be domesticated, it is most delightful in the wild, where it springs up in inexplicable and unexpected patches, just when you think all is dead and dry. Vigorous and delicate at the same time, the snowdrops announce that even February need not be fatal, much as the start of Lent promises us of our sin.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In desolation, the tiniest gift is an abundance. This is the wisdom, the delight, and the consolation to be found for all who have eyes to see, standing out against the bleak backdrop that is February.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-71956500158407548012024-02-16T21:00:00.007-05:002024-02-16T21:00:00.238-05:00Mel Who?<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixG3hDu16HPQ9vf6XabM04AhOlkKjmeOQAjSpRFYfYeni-upt8IKhfgKQ9YjOWB1P4IALaiiwQv3De1Cswj5PaKey_IWXj8P3M3YwX_n85qvvv1tJSd8wg0Gtfti-k00jvU2_JlvY_Mo3t52GehLZtm1MwdwwezwRsX4uWkRo5wkYGO6JfdEgwLCsHPvQ/s2048/St-Melchizedek-Lawrence-OP-3786423961.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1342" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixG3hDu16HPQ9vf6XabM04AhOlkKjmeOQAjSpRFYfYeni-upt8IKhfgKQ9YjOWB1P4IALaiiwQv3De1Cswj5PaKey_IWXj8P3M3YwX_n85qvvv1tJSd8wg0Gtfti-k00jvU2_JlvY_Mo3t52GehLZtm1MwdwwezwRsX4uWkRo5wkYGO6JfdEgwLCsHPvQ/w420-h640/St-Melchizedek-Lawrence-OP-3786423961.jpeg" width="420" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">You hear of him at Mass all the time, because his name in is the Roman Canon, when the priest says: <i>Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance,</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i><i>and to accept them,</i><i> </i><i>as once you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just,</i><i> </i><i>the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith,</i><i> </i><i>and the offering of your high priest <b>Melchizedek</b>, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Maybe you recognize his name from Psalm 110, the famous “Dixit Dominus” (The Lord said to my Lord):<span style="color: white;"> </span><i>The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." </i>From the harp of David himself, this statement has such enormous significance that is expanded in the letter to the Hebrews, of which we hear a great deal during Holy Week: <i>We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.</i> (Hebrews 6:19-20)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This New Testament text points back to the story of Abraham, when among the many difficulties he encounters in following God to the fulfillment of His promise, Abram’s kinsman Lot and his family and possessions are taken by an enemy. Abram raises a force to rescue him, and after defeating the enemy, and while returning with his kinsman and all the goods from his victory, <i>Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; <b>he was priest of God Most High</b>. And he blessed him and said, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.</i> (Genesis 14:18-20)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in -0.7pt 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is the first time in Sacred Scripture that anybody is called a priest. <i>He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest for ever. See how great he is! </i>(Hebrews 7:2-3) Jesus is the perfect and eternal high priest; the author of Hebrews wants us to see the connection.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in -0.7pt 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Saint Cyprian of Carthage stated outright what you should be discerning from these same texts when he wrote in about 250 AD: <i>In the priest Melchizedek we see the Sacrament of the Sacrifice of the Lord prefigured, in accord with that to which the divine Scriptures testify, where it says Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed (Abram). That <b>Melchizedek is in fact a type of Christ</b> is declared in the psalms by the Holy Spirit, saying to the Son, as it were from the Father: “Before the daystar I begot you. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in -0.7pt 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Over the past few weeks, between the harangues about the Appeal, I have spoken of <i>tithing</i>, that is, offering to God one-tenth of everything. That’s a word not often used in our time, or in our churches. Where does this come from, some medieval churchman looking to fund his grandiose plans? Some megachurch preaching a “prosperity gospel?” Rather, it originates with Abram before he was even Abraham, in the book of Genesis of all places. You know, “In the beginning.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in -0.7pt 5pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What is<i> <u>the offering</u> of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim? Melchizedek … brought out <b>bread and wine</b>. </i>Melchizedek is the first priest, and a type and promise of the great High Priest Jesus Christ. Abram was heavy laden with spoils from his great victory,</span><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-32992498000328594242024-02-09T21:00:00.022-05:002024-02-09T21:00:00.248-05:00Beyond basic accounting<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwRr5f0QlRx4Kgtm6HoSBaXvXr3DEkR4wFxj0VwdPrUnmM-ZQIKgqGnhptlrmic42VbbNSYpjFuLfDHsOMcepStQMFWkJiMyvatC-9dfo_qkYmXqGqhs7iUgmp8SmZgnNQ3_8i3FC7ZERMhDsR3xHNvQwhKJWwfFSfFhEnozVcybjPk7kUeM_r_Ia0x4/s4032/carrying.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwRr5f0QlRx4Kgtm6HoSBaXvXr3DEkR4wFxj0VwdPrUnmM-ZQIKgqGnhptlrmic42VbbNSYpjFuLfDHsOMcepStQMFWkJiMyvatC-9dfo_qkYmXqGqhs7iUgmp8SmZgnNQ3_8i3FC7ZERMhDsR3xHNvQwhKJWwfFSfFhEnozVcybjPk7kUeM_r_Ia0x4/w480-h640/carrying.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Among the rosary chapels in the ambulatory of the Basilica, <br />the mosaic for the fourth Sorrowful Mystery clearly juxtaposes <br />Christ carrying his cross with Issac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Would you rather that God tell you</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> <i>personally</i> what you are to sacrifice this Lent?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sacrifice. Oblation. Expiation. Progressively these words are less familiar, less intelligible, less often heard. Sacrifice; that one we might understand. It is something you give up in order to obtain a different, better thing. We may “sacrifice” desserts in order to obtain a slimmer figure, or “sacrifice” time at home to obtain advancement at work. Such transactional understanding reflects our economic and commercial dispositions, describing a <i>quid pro quo</i> between parties that are otherwise equal, or peers. Sacrifice, then, is the price one pays.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This price-paying takes on added significance when someone other than the one paying receives the benefit, such as the supreme sacrifice our military personnel have made for the freedom and prosperity you and I enjoy. Sacrifice can kill you. Yet even that undeniable sacrifice does not carry the full weight of the term that we use in the context of our actions before God.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Expanding our vision to include not only our peers and equals, but also our creator God, sacrifice is what we owe and offer to God <u>because He is God</u>, not because He will owe or grant us anything in return. <b>It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion. <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 2099.</i></b> As St. Augustine observed, <i>Every action is a true sacrifice that is done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness</i>. This <i>clinging to God </i>changes us as we enter the <i>communion of holiness; </i>and we participate in blessedness, which equates both to happiness and to holiness.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Abram’s sacrifice of Genesis 15 illustrates this clinging to God, Who, desiring to form His own special people among all the idolatrous nations, chose Abram for its head and called him by this name, which means <i>father of many nations</i>. When Abram bemoaned his childlessness, he responded to God’s instructions and <i>brought</i> (God) <i>all these</i> (a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon), <i>cut them in two, and laid each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. … When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land…” <o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But the <i>clinging to God</i> is taken to its height in Genesis 22, when God commands the re-named Abraham to sacrifice his late-obtained and only son, Isaac. <i>When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." <o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As explained to us in Hebrews 11<i>, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; ... By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, … He considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence he did receive him back, and this was a symbol. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The sacrifice of Abraham points directly to the sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus, which is transactional in the sense that it obtains at the expense of His own life, life and freedom for someone else (you and me). More than that, Jesus <i>clings to God</i> in doing His Father’s will. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Jesus’ offering the sacrifice specified by the Father, His <i>obedience</i> in offering Himself, should make us wonder, what is the sacrifice that God asks of us? The short answer is, that very sacrifice: nothing more nor less than the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Will it kill us?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Do not tremble in fear. Because we are bound into Christ’s body by Baptism, we <i><u>do</u></i> offer this very sacrifice when we participate and partake sacramentally in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, both offering and receiving Jesus’ self-offering in our Communion. This relieves us of the need to offer ourselves in bloody sacrifice, yet at the same time it bestows on us the ability and obligation to bind our own, lesser sacrifices into His one effective sacrifice. Amidst our daily actions, we <i>cling to God in communion of holiness.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Calling to mind Abraham and all our forebears in faith, ask yourself what would you sacrifice for the health, for the very life of your children? How would you respond if God Himself were to ask you quite individually and specifically for some sacrifice that in appearance would cost you their lives, or your own? Then, in the light of this awareness, reflect on what God, through His Church, actually <i><u>does</u></i> ask you to do during Lent. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You need not offer God the price of your life, nor of your sins. He has paid that bill and exceeded its cost in expiation of all your sins and mine, grave and small. You need not redeem the lives of your children and loved ones by sacrificing to God something that you otherwise need to survive; their redemption and ours is already purchased. But how will you, in this season set apart for the purpose, <i>cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness? </i>Let go your grip on whatever else you cling to, whatever lesser good, and take hold of God’s promise of mercy in faith. Though it will not kill you, this<i> is a true sacrifice.</i></span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-40899953928785221862024-02-02T21:00:00.001-05:002024-02-02T21:00:00.141-05:00Don't miss the boat<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmV0klLwXqJVgaY7-em7aJmDCYhvQBCRe0M-KLD-NkmZHM4E7sIDykDX-k0gXhbzeAivDuH07nAo0AL3NBMzEZar3SpQDy7qf6ph9MprQzvmzZ-J_-lTjvFLN5ELK0YZ3iYm27uFYZoQ-H2McKUsSsslYBCHyMIast_EPZx-kgDTLcSQ-8fgL_WmaDUUU/s4032/IMG_9083.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmV0klLwXqJVgaY7-em7aJmDCYhvQBCRe0M-KLD-NkmZHM4E7sIDykDX-k0gXhbzeAivDuH07nAo0AL3NBMzEZar3SpQDy7qf6ph9MprQzvmzZ-J_-lTjvFLN5ELK0YZ3iYm27uFYZoQ-H2McKUsSsslYBCHyMIast_EPZx-kgDTLcSQ-8fgL_WmaDUUU/w400-h300/IMG_9083.HEIC" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Thar she goes</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Sea travel has faded from our lives much like train travel, though both were at their times the normal way to cover great distances.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> This did not diminish the drama of boarding and sailing, with its slow-motion separation and setting out for the open unknown, and similar scenes played out on railroad platforms as well. Automobile and air travel are the most common now, and neither offers parting travelers nor those being left behind that stage for farewells. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Boats and ships are still around, though not used for getting from point A to point B so often anymore. Just up I-95 from us is the Maryland Cruise Terminal, where people board ships to depart and then be returned to their starting point. They can leave their cars in the parking lot there to await their return. On a recent visit to Fort McHenry, as I approached I had the chance to see a cruise ship docked and boarding, then watch it set out to sea past the fort while I was touring there. The parking lot for that cruise line was full of cars, an indication that a cruise was underway. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Right here in Four Corners, we have a ship that most people do not notice. The long part of a church where all the people assemble is called the <i>nave</i>, which is the Latin word for ship. The universal church is referred to as the Barque of Peter, or Peter’s Boat, in yet another nautical reference that calls to mind Christ climbing into Peter’s boat to preach to the crowd on shore. It is also reassuring to remember the Peter and all the disciples were safe during the storm when Christ was in the boat with them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The ship reference is not only to past moments recalled in the Gospels, but also describes a reality in our moment. We can find safety no matter the raging tempest about us when we remain in the vessel with Christ aboard, that Peter steers, and we our need for a vessel arises because we are on a journey, from where we are to where we want to be. The ship of the Church carries us through the perils of life and across the boundary of death into new life, and as such delivers us to our destination. Having our lives conform to the Church and her teaching, participating in the sacraments that fill us and re-fill us with divine life, is how we remain “on board” this ship.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When we enter the passenger section of the ship of Saint Bernadette, the nave of our church building, it is a participation in the larger life of the universal Church, but it is also a journey in its own right. More like a cruise than crossing the seas, we set out knowing we will return to the same place from which we set out, but also knowing that like all travel, this will change us. We are borne to the presence of the Living God, and we cross the threshold of Heaven to enjoy the Communion of the Holy Trinity. After this blissful visit comes the call “All ashore,” and we must debark once again into this valley of tears. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Aside from a few parishioners who are driven to Mass by family members who deliver them to the door, there is not even a perfunctory farewell from those who remain ashore. Does anybody see you set off for Mass, and then return? Is there anything in your manner, in your words upon your return that would make them wish to travel with you?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Our parking lot provides a wealth of information, as I have recently discussed here, and the large number of cars here indicates a ship has set sail filled with travelers on Sundays as well as Holy Days that are unknown to the uninformed. Does that arouse curiosity or interest, I wonder? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the rains came and lifted the ark that Noah had built to the derision of his neighbors, how long did it take for them to regret that they had failed to join him? Our God has a history of providing the vessel that will save His people from destruction. It is good to keep this in mind as we board our own, local rescue craft. There will always be perils and storms, but we know in whom we have put our trust. And even though we more commonly cover distances by airplane or automobile these days, we know that our best hope for our biggest trip is to remain in the boat.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: medium; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: medium; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-27195187397232491812024-01-26T21:00:00.008-05:002024-01-26T21:00:00.418-05:00The Sheepgate<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB2GxQnEi9gdsoxnxrrr7qpMSCa2k5j6EuxOFhb0GOCFqiYaqmeafEfNsPcWchWjDq1cf8QPCAk2NuQnMYi6b4MZKK6FF1qC6cOml9c3NGW9EDDOS7JU5aX8X-aBb2y63f1IN-zTbnRcYzRrkXCzhx68cYR__edsqkyrTBOjzZpd9avLs8Qz-6zvMjSg4/s4032/Ft%20McHenry.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB2GxQnEi9gdsoxnxrrr7qpMSCa2k5j6EuxOFhb0GOCFqiYaqmeafEfNsPcWchWjDq1cf8QPCAk2NuQnMYi6b4MZKK6FF1qC6cOml9c3NGW9EDDOS7JU5aX8X-aBb2y63f1IN-zTbnRcYzRrkXCzhx68cYR__edsqkyrTBOjzZpd9avLs8Qz-6zvMjSg4/w400-h300/Ft%20McHenry.HEIC" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>O'er the ramparts we watched</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Even if you were here that morning, you probably did not notice.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> A couple of Sundays ago, I stood outside the 7:30 Mass to greet departing worshippers and noticed a chap handing them papers from a folder. I walked over, and not recognizing him, introduced myself asked what he was distributing. He handed me a political tract, clearly home-made, text on white paper. I asked him to stop distributing it, and when he argued with me I identified myself as the (legal) property owner and asked that he leave the property. He asked that he be allowed to wait for his ride, two people who were still in the church, and I relented.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You would think that would have been enough, but no, he kept trying, and his two friends when they emerged kept trying, to push their message. Our exchange grew rather more pointed until they finally left. They assumed that I was preventing their propagandizing because I disagreed with its content, but that is not so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The people assembled here to worship God in the Holy Mass – you -- are a very attractive opportunity. You are not only disposed to be faithful and virtuous, but you are open to what you see and hear here in a way that you cannot be, if you are prudent, once you depart. You are attuned to the voice of God and His teaching through the Church, calling you to goodness and holiness, and surrounded by people who wish to be called, as you wish to be called, to fulfill your highest and best potential, which is to be like God. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Because of this, you have an enormous target on your back. Do-gooders and fundraisers all want “a piece of you.” Who better to ask for support, personal, financial, or electoral, than you? Your priorities are known and can be mirrored back to you; your earnestness is manifest because of your presence when so many lounge elsewhere. You are filled with the grace of communion and your sense of solidarity with your brothers and sisters is at its peak. You are, in a word, ripe for the picking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Approaching you with their plea here, moreover, enhances their status, burnishing it with ecclesiastical and even Divine approbation. You are well-disposed to whatever request you receive here, because if it’s at church, it must be okay …right?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In a word, yes: it <i><u>must</u></i> be okay, to be here at your church. It must be BETTER than okay, in fact. It’s not enough to seem charitable and worthy; no, any organization that asks for your support here has to meet the full range of ecclesiastical standards for fiscal accountability and reporting. Anyone inviting your participation must be integrated into the Church’s moral and behavioral standards, similarly meeting requirements for safeguards and reporting (not only child protection, but definitely that). Any advocate of any cause or initiative must be in conformity to Catholic doctrine and approved by the appropriate ecclesiastical authority. And there may be no taint of political partisanship regarding candidate or party. But even all that is not enough to gain access to you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why? First of all, because that is not why you are here. I know many parishes where there is a speaker every month who is raising funds or advocating involvement. But even with programs in conformity with all of the standards above, is it really what Sunday morning Mass is <i>for</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Weekly I receive mailings offering to provide a priest who can cover Masses (while raising funds for his organization); asking to be allowed to speak at our Masses about the plight of one group or another, or the benefits of one program or another; from people who want to sell you things or ask you for donations. I turn <i>almost</i> all of them away, because I am the shepherd of the flock.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You may not always notice it, but I am careful even in my own preaching and speaking to emphasize the teaching of the Lord Jesus through His Church, and put at least an audible asterisk to distinguish what is merely my own opinion. The teaching of Christ and the saving doctrine of the Church are so beautiful, so necessary, and so true, but have such a narrow window into your world that I am loathe to crowd it with anything else, much less allow your good faith to be abused by hucksters, shysters, or opportunists. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The people who showed up a couple of weeks ago to sway you to their views probably assumed I chased them away because of what they were proposing. It was indeed pernicious and vile, but I chased them away because you are not on offer for anybody’s project or proposal. You are Christ’s holy people, assembled to worship Him, and I will defend you from all abuse, even when you do not notice. </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-88088035496473580162024-01-19T21:00:00.010-05:002024-01-19T21:00:00.139-05:00A Room with a View?<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3zbymjsBPUlFABj4hSNE1Jvb9RGg9Uo8QrGIrWE1ADLWdYv5vaeFrKhNzmkJXlMQDZbvi1vrGv_arKqUx5qibbxT44hQZHpOexJtc8no-fBls_bkW6tyC83JUHR9hnJFioD_D-0UWTGhMW8d-sxbxO3IMbbFKEBEUzCQz2KQJzYEccBdHYteypGyZjg/s4032/IMG_9160.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3zbymjsBPUlFABj4hSNE1Jvb9RGg9Uo8QrGIrWE1ADLWdYv5vaeFrKhNzmkJXlMQDZbvi1vrGv_arKqUx5qibbxT44hQZHpOexJtc8no-fBls_bkW6tyC83JUHR9hnJFioD_D-0UWTGhMW8d-sxbxO3IMbbFKEBEUzCQz2KQJzYEccBdHYteypGyZjg/w400-h300/IMG_9160.HEIC" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>From not-exactly the glass-enclosed nerve center....</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />“Expansive view includes parking lot” is not something any realtor would advertise to make a property or home attractive. But my second-floor sitting room with its multiple windows offers precisely that, and I want to tell you that this is a feature, not a bug.<o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I can keep tabs on the 6:30 Mass attendance, even when I am not the celebrant. I can see how confessions are going, to discern whether I need to go over to the church and help. One recent Saturday, the one with the constant and heavy rain, I was convinced that few hardy souls would come out for a sacrament that can be postponed so easily. But no – I looked out about halfway through to see eight cars in front of the church, then to watch them leave, one by one, then be replaced by another group. Fr. Brillis wondered how I knew how many penitents he had shriven!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I can watch the daily drama of school drop-off with its choreography of minivans, sports car, pickup trucks, and Catholic assault vehicles (CAV’s), often able to guess the level of chaos in the passenger section and distractedness in the driver’s seat. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This week the lot was shining and empty with the snowfall that cancelled school and kept Mass-goers home. I watched to snow removal expertise of Mark Macpeak’s landscape team deftly clear the lots and the surrounding sidewalks, more than half a day before the heavy front-end loader arrived on a flatbed truck to start clearing Blair’s lot across the street. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Just Saturday, I saw the Holy Name guys expertly dismantle and remove our outdoor creche. You and your kids may have enjoyed that Nativity tableau up close, from the little plaza in front of the church. But you may not have known how many people venture onto the property from the boulevard to admire the scene of the birth of the Savior from the warmth of their cars, sitting sometimes for quite a while in, you guessed it, the parking lot. The Sunday of Epiphany, the week before, Fr. Brillis and I drove by on our way to the annual priests’ dinner that evening. There was a car sideways in front of the creche, and as we passed I saw I a cell phone camera held up to capture the happy scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In more mundane moments, I can tell which of the school administration and faculty are working late – or early; I can spot when some disabled vehicle or confused driver has rolled up our driveway looking for respite, often from the madness of the beltway. And I notice when one of our regulars or neighbors is crossing the property at highway speed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The view changes come spring, when the great maple trees burst into leaf and my view becomes more constricted but more arboreal; less of the parking lot, and more park-like. That has its pleasures as well, but not the practicality and drama that are the benefit when the trees are barren. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>They paved paradise and put up a parking lot</i>, is the refrain Joni Mitchell wove into her environmentally-plangent ballad Big Yellow Taxi, way back when I was a kid; more recently Counting Crows seems to be responsible for the rendition that is currently heard. It’s a catchy song, but at least in our case, nobody paved paradise. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Daily I call down God’s blessing on whoever decided not to pave all the way from the church doors to the boulevard, but rather left grass, to which was later added trees; many, splendid trees. Those doors open into the very forecourt of heaven itself, whose splendor and delight are better even than the paradise from which our forebears were cast out. And that we may dare to tread these sacred precincts, outside the gates of heaven there is a place to park. We have paved <i><u>the way to paradise</u></i>, and put up a parking lot! It bears watching, a truly expansive view.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: medium; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> </p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-45450780238953214092024-01-12T21:00:00.001-05:002024-01-12T21:00:00.255-05:00Fast-moving water<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh8dW-WZyOERNGbzTPpK4L2yqknM2EPAbmHpfopiTHWuo66nKQWhbTJnO8MZfoUMRTPqDvIg9ZX3Bi1NuoVU2zYVL7rG5OUJTMcIcgSOcfE8cP4dC53Dxsrv9k93S0jhHgjZf0xd-DWuDqfbt823iJAuiucErSs_64O5qo53qOdVnXbhxKPzwn0l2A6t4/s3264/winterwater.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh8dW-WZyOERNGbzTPpK4L2yqknM2EPAbmHpfopiTHWuo66nKQWhbTJnO8MZfoUMRTPqDvIg9ZX3Bi1NuoVU2zYVL7rG5OUJTMcIcgSOcfE8cP4dC53Dxsrv9k93S0jhHgjZf0xd-DWuDqfbt823iJAuiucErSs_64O5qo53qOdVnXbhxKPzwn0l2A6t4/w400-h300/winterwater.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />One of the things that startled Father Brillis as he moved into the rectory last month was that the administrative offices of the parish are right here in our home, the rectory.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">That is a natural and even organic thing for older parishes, in which the growth of administrative load was met first by adding one assistant to the priest(s) who had overseen the parish, then later by the addition of more helpers, more specialized, to address the increased obligations.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">First, you put one more person in the rectory, then several more.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">In such places, the front office can still be identified as a parlor, the conference room, a dining room; and the meeting space, a basement.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Newer parishes have a parish life center with purpose-designed offices and conference rooms, and the priests live in a separate house, sometimes not even on the campus.</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">This model is what Father Brillis experienced before he came.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Here, we have the older model; our campus has A School, A Church, and A Rectory, with a few multi-purpose spaces shoehorned here or there. This may not be ideal for privacy or even domesticity, but it does make for a seamless integration of the priestly and lay elements of the administrative team. Maybe sometimes a seam would be nice? The situation was exaggerated over Father’s first weeks here, because it was Christmastime, and the rectory was almost just like a home for the (staff) holiday, then returned to Grand Central Station Mode upon their return.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Many parishioners never set foot in the rectory, and never deal with any of the staff in person. This is not abnormal by any means, but it might disguise one thing about our parish that has been evident to even these occasional, or casual, rectory visitors. The staff is …different.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">No, not that they are different from you or me (which they are, but that is okay); but rather, they are <i>different people</i> than were our staff six months ago. We have had complete turnover in the administrative staff of the parish since last July first. This was not the plan.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Last summer, we had known for a while that Ron Farias, our business manager, would be retiring, and we found out that Jackie Nguyen in our tuition office would need to phase out over the coming six months for medical reasons. Then Jackie’s situation changed rapidly, and she had to withdraw completely. The good news for you that know and love Jackie after her two decades of work here is that finally now (January) it looks like she will get what she needs. Don’t stop praying for her though!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Over a few months, we brought on <b>Jennifer King</b>, who sits at Jackie’s desk, and <b>Theresa Deere</b> who will be the parish bookkeeper, but in our office only two days a week. The division of labor and responsibility clearly needed to shift around a bit, and Carol Gangnath, our receptionist, took on added importance as continuity in addition to picking up administrative responsibilities. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">The good news is that since the start of January, Jennifer is here full time, after splitting her time and talent between us and her previous employer all last autumn. She and Theresa are excellent and have quickly taken hold of the multi-tailed monster that is the parish’s need machine. The hard news that rolled in right before Christmas was that the surgery that Carol needed and planned for April had been moved up to January! Poof – she’s gone, our unique staffer with historical knowledge. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Now, don’t blame Carol – she got an opportunity and we all wanted her to take it despite her fears for its impact on us. And she’s been working from home to coach, assist, and advise. And she <i><u>will</u></i> be back. Not only that, but we found a spiffy stand-in, willing and able to take the heat of our front office for the duration of Carol’s absence. Many rectory regulars have already met <b>Susan Sumner</b>, who not only started at very short notice, but also started <i>during the Christmas holidays</i>. Over-and-above effort, that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Father Santandreu moved out at the end of July. Father Schrenk, who joined us in late August, moved out in early December. Even Father Brillis, who moved into the house less than four weeks ago, now has departed for a four-week visit to home and family. Father Novajosky, whose official responsibility is study and school, is my prop and stay. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Anthony Dao, our parish maintenance magician, and Elena Santos, our housekeeper, are still here, thank goodness. Norma Thomas, technically a volunteer but functionally an integral part of the office, still is here before the sun rises each day. Ted Ewanciw, the principal, and his staff; Jasmine Kuzner, the DRE, and John Henderson, our music master, all abide, and they show up frequently in the rectory; but they have their own spaces elsewhere. So not <i><u>all</u></i> is flux. Just ALMOST all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have grown accustomed to having my life, and not only my work, be bound up with our dedicated staff. Over the years, so have you. Talk about seamless: reduced-resources, personalized, parochial over-achievement right here at your disposal, in one handy location. Meet them, get to know them, give them a little time, and watch grace build upon nature. Father Brillis will get used to it, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-36457341136474597502024-01-05T21:00:00.004-05:002024-01-05T21:00:00.136-05:00Immoveable and Moveable Feasts<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb7GRtyd6Ztr6qPRkvx_xkjKP6Zlfb5wNZamlbBPSmqd5sNFYIvcJCDEd9shGNKNZXXCy5u6T2ZzO77DzW6CJqPmKfyUmVWStoRhzNsjroSifgYd5Hnm729ln8iLCUzsZ9PCFcITavVDEpDQDBBv9GdBe8vEoq4JNpxcjLzMVWJHigLvm2krbDOrBceSE/s4032/king.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb7GRtyd6Ztr6qPRkvx_xkjKP6Zlfb5wNZamlbBPSmqd5sNFYIvcJCDEd9shGNKNZXXCy5u6T2ZzO77DzW6CJqPmKfyUmVWStoRhzNsjroSifgYd5Hnm729ln8iLCUzsZ9PCFcITavVDEpDQDBBv9GdBe8vEoq4JNpxcjLzMVWJHigLvm2krbDOrBceSE/w480-h640/king.jpeg" width="480" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />In common use, an ‘epiphany’ is considered a light-bulb moment, the instant the idea comes, the understanding is achieved, or the realization dawns. That has almost nothing to do with the manifestation of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, to all the world, which is what we celebrate liturgically in these days. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed some epiphanies over the past few weeks.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">First of all, Christmas-on-a-Monday is even harder than I remembered it. Even with priests helping – the newly-arrived and rapidly coming up to speed Fr. Brillis Mathew, and Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, both contributed mightily to the sacramental worship of our parish. Still, I was thumped by the effort.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And if you doubt me on the seriousness of that, talk to any of our musicians, especially john Henderson. After the last Mass on Christmas day, he bolted for the airport for some time with his family. He had just led seven (7) Masses with music in 28 hours. Ask our singers, who worked in the morning, and the middle of the night, then the morning again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Or you can find and ask one of the many volunteers who ‘turned’ the church after the end of the last Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, about 12:15 PM on December 24<sup>th</sup>. Flowers, candles, banners, greenery, statues, and equipment most normal people do not even know exists all had to be wrestled out of or into our church and arranged to maximize Christmas splendor. Most of the work was done by 2:00, but there was some fine-tuning and vacuuming going on even as three o’clock approached. Everyone who arrived for the five o’clock Vigil Mass of Christmas, and every subsequent Mass, was rightly blown away by the beauty and dignity of our festive decorations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The second epiphany may be that in some cases, harder is better. The pristine beauty and pregnant possibility of Fourth Advent exploded into the fulfillment of Christmas rather like angel choirs appearing in an instant over the flocks we had been watching for a lifetime. The visual transformation was not lost on people who in some cases had been in the church only four hours previously. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The music was amazing, especially the children’s choir at the Solemn Mass of Christmas Day. Father Brian Kane, native son of our parish home on a visit from Nebraska to his mom and dad, heard the choir and orchestra practicing for the Christmas Eve Mass and asked me who these people were. I leaned out of the sacristy and looked around and told him, except for the cellist and maybe one other, they were all of our parish. And the transcendent beauty of the Midnight Mass is enhanced by the darkness, even as it adds another degree of difficulty. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A third, if recurring, epiphany is that none of this has any impact at all on the energy and excitement of the children. That, I am sure, is for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One of the consolations, if you can call it that, I found in this is that the first day of the new year, invariably the octave day of Christmas, falls also on a Monday. There is a very distinctly mega-Monday feel to that morning after all the secular, often forced revelry has dwindled in the last hours of dark and the steel-gray January dawn asserts itself, staying silent rather than reveal anything that is to come. Though not obliged, clearly it is best to go to Mass, where the purpose of time itself and the promise of each day and each new year is laid before us to adore and receive.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Christmas-on-a-Monday has come and gone, not to return until 2028. My thanks to all who labored under its distinctive burdens to make it rich and rewarding for all of us who celebrated it here, parishioners, neighbors, drop-ins, and visitors. Now, to look forward to the next calendar crash: Ash Wednesday vs. Valentine’s Day. God help us.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-35245550494319991012023-12-24T17:00:00.001-05:002023-12-24T17:00:00.248-05:00Needy and needed<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje_lU4Gj5s74JYWg6AgGmx4ptBOkXI-oaR_lckCCcJXG5cKkOmb2ntz3II7ePrrlLsquyybpbFuPufIKVYgA3VVqtm_FcqHFa4mwDyHtD5328IMPe1tLS5zVOIWQrbcnHVFyRXYqnwXkTS-RPRGXJA_wqMRvk7ajj1kdt5vFc-CmhO26VbuKpEsm_bhGE/s1920/Federico_Barocci,_Nativity_(Prado).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1511" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje_lU4Gj5s74JYWg6AgGmx4ptBOkXI-oaR_lckCCcJXG5cKkOmb2ntz3II7ePrrlLsquyybpbFuPufIKVYgA3VVqtm_FcqHFa4mwDyHtD5328IMPe1tLS5zVOIWQrbcnHVFyRXYqnwXkTS-RPRGXJA_wqMRvk7ajj1kdt5vFc-CmhO26VbuKpEsm_bhGE/w315-h400/Federico_Barocci,_Nativity_(Prado).jpg" width="315" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />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.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 <i>we have a little one on the way</i>, or, alternatively, beaming and bouncing children announcing <i>Mommy is having a BABY!</i> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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: <i>am I up to this</i>? 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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 <i>Masters in this Hall</i> gets the point across quite clearly:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is Christ the Lord,<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Masters be ye glad!<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Christmas is come in,<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And no folk should be sad.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 “<i>holpen</i>”, that is, helped.<b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nowell, sing we clear!<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Holpen are all folk on earth,<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Born is God's son so dear:<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Nowell, sing we loud!<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">God to-day hath poor folk raised<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And cast a-down the proud.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-10808590124099025332023-12-22T21:00:00.012-05:002023-12-22T21:00:00.140-05:00Got you covered<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbtouUZU7blbJAjxz59PgSsegeABCrOk-SWbY7930zD10cAOGCblpHPJmgahAbgIKg_yH7HPvOpmMDGeKQXiwIyrqJTPJhAJDNMb34XHyDrbfy_t1e97K15LK5dD_RN9OTCLMaS7Xu-kD6aWSjfPQKH80CftR6OEyyOLdR39mm_HPmaZi3Uh6XBKW1JZA/s4032/IMG_9120.HEIC" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbtouUZU7blbJAjxz59PgSsegeABCrOk-SWbY7930zD10cAOGCblpHPJmgahAbgIKg_yH7HPvOpmMDGeKQXiwIyrqJTPJhAJDNMb34XHyDrbfy_t1e97K15LK5dD_RN9OTCLMaS7Xu-kD6aWSjfPQKH80CftR6OEyyOLdR39mm_HPmaZi3Uh6XBKW1JZA/w400-h300/IMG_9120.HEIC" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">First try & better bet</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />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.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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<sup>th</sup>-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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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: <i>Conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-4474760339757846502023-12-15T21:00:00.001-05:002023-12-15T21:00:00.133-05:00Nobody expects<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8dxgXJFGbxy4qcl7ziud3qYDJP1cYIXWT_TsqH_fLbyUrCMMlqyTo-eKrG66JW4aE441kgk9AjJ4cWH8IslJ88pCXpnvq-f3PI_319CBlKENXaY0AMKjlT4_mvG50MOF-Rn30qGjijUcTrx_bS6oYrb1jMNR9vHen6294P_TkAqg03kiETCOKVukWu3Q/s4032/IMG_8295.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8dxgXJFGbxy4qcl7ziud3qYDJP1cYIXWT_TsqH_fLbyUrCMMlqyTo-eKrG66JW4aE441kgk9AjJ4cWH8IslJ88pCXpnvq-f3PI_319CBlKENXaY0AMKjlT4_mvG50MOF-Rn30qGjijUcTrx_bS6oYrb1jMNR9vHen6294P_TkAqg03kiETCOKVukWu3Q/w480-h640/IMG_8295.jpeg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>It's as if someone sent Saint Bernadette flowers for her birthday - <br />and it's still three weeks until her birthday!</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />SURPRISE!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">SURPRISE!</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-24590820508330969252023-12-08T21:00:00.004-05:002023-12-08T21:00:00.135-05:00The Faith of One Smith<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1T-mp3tpaApFNsWYJsgcrBIDpiCivCL8H0CDx7gR819B3abLhbypR_9gjdKkAsuJCPdCml4QGShtc6ew9tBIueAqqsAM0dEAIO2El4NGS2kj6reIS5V8hDuvVQziTrl9qPgacOWG4VitYxJVGbG3WAvtRhnit8RQg5uquXRGA5mCuVXSw-y0E0C0s2HM/s2592/IMG_0425.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2592" data-original-width="1936" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1T-mp3tpaApFNsWYJsgcrBIDpiCivCL8H0CDx7gR819B3abLhbypR_9gjdKkAsuJCPdCml4QGShtc6ew9tBIueAqqsAM0dEAIO2El4NGS2kj6reIS5V8hDuvVQziTrl9qPgacOWG4VitYxJVGbG3WAvtRhnit8RQg5uquXRGA5mCuVXSw-y0E0C0s2HM/w299-h400/IMG_0425.JPG" width="299" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />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. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-63751429848970890662023-12-01T21:00:00.008-05:002023-12-01T21:00:00.172-05:00Yes to both<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2uqDFV13FHXotCt-C4kDAm-0e1Sbg164zg6fHjs0bkCiiEVGmdInEf3hZujCY66SojZRmsCFE_DBFwLDywpDreEf7LjAdq7MgpA2n0-EZVChTtzvRFQDVvPbDKOBKCSC9ufYupgQwrq_TOhxwII10eNT3htYD-qKeMnQyxakC7TbJzDWn86Lly_hJ5Vw/s4032/IMG_8213.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2uqDFV13FHXotCt-C4kDAm-0e1Sbg164zg6fHjs0bkCiiEVGmdInEf3hZujCY66SojZRmsCFE_DBFwLDywpDreEf7LjAdq7MgpA2n0-EZVChTtzvRFQDVvPbDKOBKCSC9ufYupgQwrq_TOhxwII10eNT3htYD-qKeMnQyxakC7TbJzDWn86Lly_hJ5Vw/w480-h640/IMG_8213.jpeg" width="480" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />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.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 <i>sound </i>authentic at first, but leads quickly to body (bad), soul (good). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">How do we know that’s a problem? Well, God has a body. So it <i><u>can’t</u></i> 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!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 <i>sacraments</i>. 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!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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?</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-57388141022040468422023-11-24T21:00:00.001-05:002023-11-24T21:00:00.145-05:00Too many notes<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv_OZAyAbz9yY4gagnA5JWZ6C4zAvll72vrHHWWSNc-IDx08NR2hQXf4yxSecOIN6Zuc-rLMEoTq86KpLFdJg2okd0veRtKPg7cf4F4gNA3mUWZjezLtCVlcztYzyaqyPtCbifV9-9q4QUBkZsqkwfY_Olj5WE9hYm9Kq_VvxPTDFoPnwXa_Wo6Wdh8bM/s259/ASal.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv_OZAyAbz9yY4gagnA5JWZ6C4zAvll72vrHHWWSNc-IDx08NR2hQXf4yxSecOIN6Zuc-rLMEoTq86KpLFdJg2okd0veRtKPg7cf4F4gNA3mUWZjezLtCVlcztYzyaqyPtCbifV9-9q4QUBkZsqkwfY_Olj5WE9hYm9Kq_VvxPTDFoPnwXa_Wo6Wdh8bM/w400-h299/ASal.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Antonio Salieri was a pretty good composer; popular, too. He had a prominent and comfortable job in the Vienna court of Emperor Joseph II of Austria–Hungary, which city was a major center, even <i>the</i> center, of musical culture in its time. It was, as a musician might say, a good gig.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Before the theater major came to the university radio station (WLUR 91.5 FM) where I was the director of classical music programming, I had already found Salieri because he was an unknown contemporary of Mozart, and I was always looking for more obscure composers whose work I could program. How had his “good gig” settled into near-oblivion, a curiosity, a footnote?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That theater student, a senior, was preparing the thesis presentation he was to perform for the departmental jury: a selection of monologues, one of which would be a soliloquy by Salieri from Peter Schaffer’s hit play, <i>Amadeus</i>. He came looking for a recording of the third movement of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds, K. 361, the “Gran Partita” to use for the soundtrack. You can hear what he said about it in this clip: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpH6yWqTDz8" target="_blank">Click here for Salieri</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That was before the hit film version of <i>Amadeus</i> by Milos Forman featuring Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. That was before I was familiar with the premise of Schaffer’s play, that Salieri’s life-long gratitude to God for his musical gifts turned to anger and vengeance when he realized that he had <i>just genius enough</i> to recognize the true genius, Mozart, even as his own music remained popular with the undiscerning masses. On that shocking but simple awakening turns the play, the movie, and one possible understanding of an important chapter in musical and human history. The suggested subsequent effort to murder Mozart is secondary and even unimportant.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Schaffer’s penetrating insight is not unique to the particular person and situation of Salieri; if it were, I doubt the play would have had such success. There is something recognizable to everybody, I think, about Salieri’s bitterness about being just gifted enough to recognize the greater gifts of another.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is hardly uncommon to be able to recognize what somebody else does wrong. The popular phrase, “Everybody’s a critic!” does not spring up out of a vacuum. People who have never been president even of a neighborhood committee can be very confident – and sometimes very correct – in observing the mistakes and failures of the President of the United States. That is hardly a gift, great or otherwise. Perhaps it is a gift to figure out how to make a living doing it – but I digress.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is more rare, and more difficult, to be able to discern and describe what somebody else does well; not only very well, but exceptionally well. To be able to do that, one must know quite a bit about the work in question, and what its essential elements are, as well as its nuances. In other words, to be able to identify the elements and efforts that make someone exceptional, one has to have been pretty good himself. Perhaps this is why among all the professional sports commentators on every broadcast network, there is an effort to have at least one who has played the game at the highest level.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To see someone else doing what you yourself love to do, even live to do, and see him doing it at a level you yourself have tried and failed to achieve, can be a crushing blow. To have that experience as all around you are congratulating you on your excellence, while failing to notice the excellence of the other, would create an ironic dissonance that would be unsustainable for most of us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Yet, most of us could understand Salieri’s dilemma in Schaffer’s depiction of it. Why is that? Perhaps, it is the shuddering realization that not only are we not as good as other people think we are, or even not as good as we wanted people to think we are, but we are not nearly as good as even we thought we were. Our gifts and abilities have raised us only to the level of being able to see where we should be, but are not. How can these abilities, then, be construed to be gifts at all?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As we close this month in which we contemplate our own end and the judgment that will come, it is healthy to recognize God has called us not to dominance, but to holiness. Comparing ourselves to others, or even to some formal measure or abstract standard, brings dissatisfaction and even misery. We should cultivate sufficient virtue in ourselves, and sufficient holiness, to be able to recognize and respect it in others, without raging when we fall short of their example. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is no divine punishment to know what we have done badly. Our weaknesses, our mistakes, our shortcomings are transformed by the grace of God into our encounters with mercy. His mercy reveals to us the perfection of love, simultaneously making it possible for us to participate in that same perfection. Christ’s excellence does not dominate us, but rather delivers us. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">God has given me eyes to see and a heart to understand; abilities and gifts, failures and faults. The time of judgment is near; the time of repentance is now. <i>I must become a saint; my Jesus expects it!</i> It’s better than a good gig. </span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span> </p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-28873604904337229502023-11-17T21:00:00.001-05:002023-11-17T21:00:00.275-05:00But not a singer<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbpTixunq2LuW6bS33Kxu9UvNEr5oMdKGsHJByQJ2-nI1ljz4pjCCcH07H6iP-_DpnraGGXUd9EAzZHAaM0Lr14Yyvrfp4bbpZDBDyaZ-wDKQjL_9tb25hQ-rIRCNdw2nAcuFdt6YW_LcVNOfqRvFm2SQWem8MjTJ_1By_DWiM8dEb8exROFERm2FZvNI/s1600/thompson.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbpTixunq2LuW6bS33Kxu9UvNEr5oMdKGsHJByQJ2-nI1ljz4pjCCcH07H6iP-_DpnraGGXUd9EAzZHAaM0Lr14Yyvrfp4bbpZDBDyaZ-wDKQjL_9tb25hQ-rIRCNdw2nAcuFdt6YW_LcVNOfqRvFm2SQWem8MjTJ_1By_DWiM8dEb8exROFERm2FZvNI/s320/thompson.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />It’s a bit out of line, but having reflected on Monsignor Stricker, the indomitable and inimitable Founding Pastor of our parish, I want to jump to my immediate predecessor, Father William Thompson, the Fifth Pastor of Saint Bernadette. When what was supposed to be a column about all five of my predecessor Pastors filled up very quickly with the muchness that was Stricker, I assumed I would write next about Bishop David Foley (or “Monsignor Foley” as many around these parts still remembered him) since he was, after all, the Second. But I have already written about him on several occasions, and for reasons I do not entirely understand, Father Thompson has been very much on my mind the past few weeks, when both liturgically and privately my prayer has been directed toward the faithful departed.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Father Thompson was also my first pastor, since I was assigned here just after my ordination to the Priesthood. He had been here only one year at that time, and he had spent part of that year in a continuing education program for priests that was given in Rome, at the North American College where I was finishing seminary, so we had already met. His previous assignment had been Saint Mary, Bryantown, to which he had been assigned when he returned to the Archdiocese from his decade as a chaplain in the Navy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Large and loud like Monsignor Stricker, and his speech peppered with nautical terms after two turns in the Navy, one of his nicknames among the clergy was “Battleship Bill.” With ten years enlisted service and ten years as an officer (chaplain) he was a classic “mustang.” He had enlisted while still a teenager, having been invited to leave several of our distinguished Catholic high schools. After ten years’ service, he went back to school, continuing straight through seminary to be ordained in 1971, then after a time returning as a chaplain. He always figured that Cardinal Hickey treated him so well because after his retirement from the Navy, he came back to the Archdiocese to serve, whereas many chaplains, with their comfortable pensions, find more leisurely pursuits after separation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Father Thompson did not check all the boxes for the textbook exemplary priest. However, among my seminary friends and classmates who compared notes frequently in those early years, I was unanimously recognized to have the Best First Pastor. Not least among the reasons, but hardly the only one, was his generosity to me. That includes gifts; I still routinely use the lovely embroidered pall he gave me a few months after I arrived, and he fed me very, very well. More memorably, he treated me with respect, offered me friendship, and allowed me to thrive as a priest who was discovering just what an awesome thing that is. As you might expect, this parish was itself an excellent teacher for a priest, by the expectations and requirements of her people. He was not jealous of people’s affection, but rather was happy when I found welcome here. He was also generous to my priest friends, treating them as worthy of his time, attention, respect, and affection. Altogether, that put him head and shoulders above what many of my peers received. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It was a magnificent first assignment, almost making necessary a predictably difficult second one. As it turned out, when his time as Pastor here ended, mine began. We remained friends, getting together for dinner, though not nearly enough. He diminished rather steadily and died in 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The names on the list vary as I mentally mention souls I remember at Mass, or when one of my other prayers concludes with “and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.” Most often, I lead with “Jack and Kay and Carl and Martha,” my grandparents. Cardinal Baum and Cardinal Hickey both get frequent mention. Other family, various friends, recent losses, people from the news pop up in their turn. And yes, of course I remember Bishop Foley often and by name, as he also became a friend and generous mentor to me. For some reason this November, most likely gratitude, but also because I hope someday someone will do it for me, Father Thompson has often jumped to the front of the list. <i>May the souls of all the faithful departed, especially Bill Thompson, through the mercy of God rest in peace</i>.</span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-30685251269919562682023-11-10T21:00:00.004-05:002023-11-10T21:00:00.157-05:00More than a name <p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWBG4RhLQl7GvDOCqO3wxPhOXMXmSASaV0R-kWrGhdCiBKxteplv3dMU7-ioHrbuUA7WI_nLI26INzSGn1VTlVWTxNP3YQzfVYFwyKSWcmkV52o-s8P1Puam1-epKA_K73sr7wnbfQbJRsVIcky26tKHNXTM0aSidy1jyvM-FOE0xts5UgJ3J-1aYUSaU/s4032/stricker.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWBG4RhLQl7GvDOCqO3wxPhOXMXmSASaV0R-kWrGhdCiBKxteplv3dMU7-ioHrbuUA7WI_nLI26INzSGn1VTlVWTxNP3YQzfVYFwyKSWcmkV52o-s8P1Puam1-epKA_K73sr7wnbfQbJRsVIcky26tKHNXTM0aSidy1jyvM-FOE0xts5UgJ3J-1aYUSaU/w300-h400/stricker.HEIC" width="300" /></a></i></div><i><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">What is the “MSR?”</span></i><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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, Msgr. William F. “Pete” Stricker, whose visage presides over the proceedings in that room, or the mayhem, from a creditable oil portrait on the south wall. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That portrait may be all you know of Monsignor Stricker; he retired after twenty-seven years as pastor almost <i>fifty years ago</i>, in 1975, and died in 1976. 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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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, (<i>Verbum Sapienti</i>, 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 <i>Keeping Christmas, An Edwardian-Age Memoir</i>, about his youth in the German section of Baltimore. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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 <i>camerata</i>, the subgroup in which seminarians pursued all recreational activities. <i>He was our leader, our “Peter,</i>” explained his classmate, who by then was Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Why am I sharing this with you now? It is November, and we remember and pray for our beloved dead. This past Sunday, one of our Masses was offered for the repose of the souls of the deceased Pastors of Saint Bernadette; it is the least we can do. For my letter this week, I thought I would share some stories about my venerable predecessors to put some flesh on their dusty old names and pictures. But as you can tell, Monsignor Stricker used all the space I had. Imagine that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And that is what, and WHO, the Monsignor Stricker Room is. </span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-66017528502429569372023-11-03T21:00:00.016-04:002023-11-27T14:02:59.517-05:00It seemed like a good idea at the time<p><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuVHg4mN2P_I2ZbeaZXENH-ZguPbeXNHpcoCCOEbS8AuGU3GEoV0MmTP5oxC3P04-2Zi_swZgpPgnPBPPucRMt5u59aLkf8od5VIvdUBKTqeb2nsjA5xDK5e69go2qXfpsNWc8P8vBk-IPnBvIeC8PttcxnZ4BOUD5AArkIJRy4YktAAmVOEFasSqtbNw/s1000/lastJudgmentDelli.smal.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="by Richard Stracke" border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="1000" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuVHg4mN2P_I2ZbeaZXENH-ZguPbeXNHpcoCCOEbS8AuGU3GEoV0MmTP5oxC3P04-2Zi_swZgpPgnPBPPucRMt5u59aLkf8od5VIvdUBKTqeb2nsjA5xDK5e69go2qXfpsNWc8P8vBk-IPnBvIeC8PttcxnZ4BOUD5AArkIJRy4YktAAmVOEFasSqtbNw/w400-h241/lastJudgmentDelli.smal.jpg" title="The Last Judgement, fresco, Old Cathedral of Salamanca" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #171717; caret-color: rgb(154, 160, 166); color: #9aa0a6; font-size: 12px; text-align: start; white-space: nowrap;">The Last Judgment, fresco in the Old Cathedral of Salamanca, image by Richard Stracke </span></td></tr></tbody></table><span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Here we are in the month of judgment.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span><span>That sounds like no fun at all, but really, isn’t it better to spend some time every year thinking about judgment than to spend all eternity wishing we had?</span><span> </span><span> </span><span>Because all this month, in the Gospel readings at Mass, we will be hearing Jesus draw our attention to judgment, and remind us that it is real, and our time to be judged will come.</span><span> </span><span> </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Does he want to scare us? Not so much, I do not think, as he does want to remind us of our power and freedom. We are able now to choose the good and avoid what is evil; that is an awesome power and a glorious freedom. Should we not decide how best to use it?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There is a theory out there, not new but neither has it passed out of currency, that the key to making a good judgment is to choose whatever accomplishes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This theory is called <i>utilitarianism</i>, and it sounds awfully good up front, but has been flagged by the Church as very, very dangerous and false. The shepherding rod-and-staff warns us who know Jesus to avoid falling into this trap precisely because it can make doing evil seem to be doing good. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now it is rare for a moral theory to display its inherent weakness in such a way that even the casual observer can see it. But lucky us! The sinister side of this siren’s song is revealed for all to see even now.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried is an object lesson in the defectiveness of this attractive theory, and it is clear to all because the scale on which he applied it in his own undertakings is so huge that it is impossible to deny the devastating consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now, the trial is still ongoing, and I make no claim to know whether the young man committed the crimes of which he is accused. That is not necessary to judge. However, simply on the basis of the motives and methods to which he himself has testified and even broadcast to the world, he has acknowledged himself to be a utilitarianist on the grandest of scales.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the category of financial instrument known as “crypto” he attracted huge amounts of money from investors. The explicit and promised return for that investment was profit, though there was the acknowledged risk of some loss, as with any investment. At the same time, he freely announced that his goal in garnering profit to himself was to give it away; to use his resources for good. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>As a recent article in <i>Forbes</i> magazine explained, <i>Effective altruism–known as EA—helped to facilitate Bankman-Fried’s rapid rise as someone with a vision beyond simply making money. Unlike other crypto moguls who praised decentralization and libertarian ideals, Bankman-Fried professed a plain old desire to do good with his lucre. His crypto (companies) were, in Bankman-Fried’s telling, nothing more than a way to make as much money as possible so that he could give it all away… Practically overnight, he made himself into effective altruism’s most famous proponent and one of its biggest financial contributors, …. “In the end, my goal is to do as much good as I can for the world,” Bankman-Fried </i></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXDH46iNC64&t=1008s" target="_blank" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXDH46iNC64&t=1008s"><i><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration: none;">explained</span></i></a><i><span> to </span></i><span>Forbes</span><i><span> earlier this year. “I’m part of the effective altruism community.”</span></i><span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The accusations against him are that the money he used was not his own to spend; that the resources were not even his, to use as he saw fit. There are many experts trying now to determine to what extent this is the case. Because it was his announced intention so to do, did the investors consent to his use of their funds for this purpose? Did he break any laws in reporting, management of resources, designation of funds, and so on?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But before that question is even asked, there is clearly a problem. He gathered resources from other people in order to garner growth for them, and instead deployed that wealth toward some other purpose. There are many, many unhappy people who will not receive their desired return, nor, conceivably, even the return of their original investment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Mr. Bankman-Fried’s situation is even more complicated because much, maybe even most, of his “effective altruism” was in the form of political contributions. This is complicated because, first, it may be seen as a way to obtain influence with the politicians to whom he contributed, and status among the governing classes if his favored causes and candidates were to win; and second, because it reveals an underlying presumption to know which politicians and policies will accomplish “good.” Without checking which politicians or parties or proposals he supported, you and I both, as seasoned observers of the world, can raise a hand of caution about trusting any politician to seek, much less to accomplish, anything good. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One of the keys to understanding how he got himself into this position is to know something about his parents, both professors at Stanford Law School. Academically, they <i>share an interest in using tax law as an instrument of social fairness</i>, and <i>they describe themselves as “utilitarian-minded.”</i> (from a recent New Yorker article). They raised the kids, Sam and his brothers, according to their moral vision – a <i>utilitarian</i> moral vision. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So this very bright, talented, charismatic, and motivated young man suddenly finds himself on trial for enormous crimes committed while he assured himself and everybody who was watching him that <i>he was doing good</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Without knowing how that civil judgment will fall for him, it is not hard to look at the wreckage of his life and the fiscal situations of many, many people to realize that what he was doing <i>was not good</i>. Even if his goals were virtuous, his methods were harmful. There were also serious flaws in his evaluation of which goals would be virtuous, and he clearly failed to ascertain which methods and instruments were virtuous. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Parents, teach your children well. God has given us knowledge of the truth, the treasury of the Church’s moral reasoning and instruction, and the ability to discern good from evil. No human enterprise or calculation can improve upon nor escape the reality of divine truth. Ill-intentioned or even ill-considered actions on your part or mine will not play out on a scale as vast and as public as this unfortunate young man’s have; yet even if they remain hidden, the devastation wrought by our self-delusion will cry out to God for vengeance. Far better to consider such things now, in the month we have set aside for such reflection, than to regret them later, possibly forever.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-32664374836026684182023-10-27T21:00:00.009-04:002023-10-27T21:00:00.162-04:00At the door<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRz7blT4q_5nFg6YJNRuihyphenhyphen-byRHjjGga8FnHVwDplvyVBdKirg4AffOjGqUwr2BRWAakCIdb7OcHt2VDhFNnGAa3PcpLK8f3PM-lLe5kl9FUXvCAKURjYYNrFBeO0y0lAYU73QXzGbjvwuOxHbO45FdmNlxAx70VagGCXPyku20oqMHuOBd5Z1Qm_y8/s1691/1200px-Hans_Holbein_-_Dance_of_Death-_The_Bishop_-_1929.150_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1691" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRz7blT4q_5nFg6YJNRuihyphenhyphen-byRHjjGga8FnHVwDplvyVBdKirg4AffOjGqUwr2BRWAakCIdb7OcHt2VDhFNnGAa3PcpLK8f3PM-lLe5kl9FUXvCAKURjYYNrFBeO0y0lAYU73QXzGbjvwuOxHbO45FdmNlxAx70VagGCXPyku20oqMHuOBd5Z1Qm_y8/w454-h640/1200px-Hans_Holbein_-_Dance_of_Death-_The_Bishop_-_1929.150_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art.jpg" width="454" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Death comes for the Archbishop (with apologies to Willa Cather)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Before our modern dependence on text, images were a staple of the diet that nourished the Faith.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Now everybody has heard how those beautiful stained-glass windows catechized the illiterate, but the Church long understood that the value of visual images was not confined to those who could not read text. Not least because reading was not the only medium for the verbal expression of faith, as song and spoken prayer reinforced what was heard as homily or instruction, but also because images are powerful in their own right to reveal the truth.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As the link between word and meaning dissolves before our eyes under the stream of corrosive misuse, diluting overuse, and twisting abuse, it is a good time to rediscover the power of images to reveal and convey truth. As we head into November, the month when we reflect on the Four Last Things, let’s start with the first Last Thing: Death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Last year I was in New York to see the exhibit at the Morgan Library of works by Hans Holbein the Younger, and among the striking things there were his woodcuts for Dances with Death. This was a recurring form, partly comic and partly serious, showing how death comes for everybody. In his day, the late fourteen and early fifteen hundreds, death was no more welcome but much more frequent, and there was no hiding from the reality. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5HyPoMK-mlAb6wWZgVWKyhLZMpCrLPt3nAczRPETtPcp0hqHYUp2tzBvHmccWOyPKHsSN7lUHGzSutIEjAtZCYAjYH5XrQ_RrL9jM9LC27P9NF2GEwkyScSHtA2I7acUh9wkH9x-LIoS33OiOVy2Fo8j9WMP8PN7o3AJaz0ZgM1pZMySZJkfZLrydaEc/s800/empress.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="605" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5HyPoMK-mlAb6wWZgVWKyhLZMpCrLPt3nAczRPETtPcp0hqHYUp2tzBvHmccWOyPKHsSN7lUHGzSutIEjAtZCYAjYH5XrQ_RrL9jM9LC27P9NF2GEwkyScSHtA2I7acUh9wkH9x-LIoS33OiOVy2Fo8j9WMP8PN7o3AJaz0ZgM1pZMySZJkfZLrydaEc/w484-h640/empress.jpg" width="484" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Empress was caught unawares.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The woodcuts can make you chuckle unwillingly, as death, a grinning, grabbing skeleton, summons the oblivious empress or startled bishop, takes a chubby monk under his arm, or shows up at a joust to vanquish an armored knight. The trademark hourglass, signifying “Your time is up,” is always nearby. Not the funny papers as we have come to know them, these illustrations nonetheless amuse and entertain while revealing that one experience of human life is truly universal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtXB_cO6ok5aWUFJDXbT4AmaAaeoEl791_MW5PR-jdBbgY4vcAd1iJ9OzyrIqc9VOEAHn1GI2ye1dSf1Sf5W6oYDsG0tDpRX0IXqcl0GNMiLVdcOYXF3ciWU-EwSiZEx2UhF9XjIQ-8jV9osDUa5GLyYeE7NpnWzOj_DdUiclQJsHoA-OiGJMXiIeyJuQ/s939/monk.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="700" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtXB_cO6ok5aWUFJDXbT4AmaAaeoEl791_MW5PR-jdBbgY4vcAd1iJ9OzyrIqc9VOEAHn1GI2ye1dSf1Sf5W6oYDsG0tDpRX0IXqcl0GNMiLVdcOYXF3ciWU-EwSiZEx2UhF9XjIQ-8jV9osDUa5GLyYeE7NpnWzOj_DdUiclQJsHoA-OiGJMXiIeyJuQ/w478-h640/monk.jpg.webp" width="478" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nobody expects him to come for them.</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">More recently, I recalled this art form when confronted with a similar expression at the Prado in Madrid. Without any preparation, I found myself staring at a large canvas depicting an army of skeletons laying waste the earth and all who are in it. Gruesome, clever, ironic, and truly horrible deaths are inflicted individually by rioting skeletons, some in shreds of costume, with weapons, tools, or just main force. An army of skeletons in unyielding phalanx moves across the composition; a crowd of wailing, resisting victims is herded into the gaping maw of an enormous coffin. Cities burn in the distance. There is no respite or relief to be found. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The work is “The Triumph of Death” and artist, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, was a contemporary of Holbein. Look it up; you can view it online at the Prado’s site <a href="https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-triumph-of-death/d3d82b0b-9bf2-4082-ab04-66ed53196ccc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. It was the time of the so-called reformation, the rebellion of the protestant theologians and their princely allies against the Church. Sin and death, redemption and salvation were on everybody’s minds; it was what people talked about in the pub or at the fountain. This vivid, engrossing depiction of the inescapability of death would have brought mortality clearly to mind in everybody who saw the painting.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now, you may find that repellant, but honestly, such lofty sentiment is a modern luxury. Our contemporaries are lulled into thinking that “we” have mastered death, or at least banished it to respectful and predictable boundaries. But the grinning skeleton lingers and lurks, mocking us, too, for our obliviousness. In some corner of our mind, we know how close he can be, and that none of us is ever out of his reach. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is why it is good to look this ghoul straight in the eye (sockets) and recall that while he will indeed have his fun with us, we will have the last laugh. Death has not been eliminated from the earth or from human experience, but it has been <u>changed</u>. Christ has conquered death and transformed it from the end into a beginning of new life for all who by Baptism live in Him. For us who are members of Christ’s risen body, we already have eternal life coursing through our veins, and we know that life is stronger than death.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is what I see behind our traditions at Halloween. Little kids play at frightening us, dressed up as the scariest things we know, even as death or demons. Then we laugh in one another’s faces, and give treats to reward the effort. At the same time we remind one another of death and its fearsomeness, we also remember that we are rescued from fear.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.</i> (Mt 10:28) To think about dying, to remember death, is to apply Christ’s prescription and turn away from the sin that can strangle the eternal life that has been poured into us, to eliminate the distance we have allowed to grow between ourselves and Christ our rescuer. To place confidence anywhere else, in technology or progress or our own plan of life, suffocates the Spirit whose breath is eternal life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is good to think about our own mortality, so we can remember our immortality, and the One who offers it to us. We can say this over and over, but sometimes it can be much more effective just to look at the pictures. Or the costumes: trick or treat! ...<i>But deliver us from evil.</i></span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-69880708359655496652023-10-20T21:00:00.005-04:002023-10-20T21:00:00.144-04:00My brother's keeper<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8UgpLM0YVQDzFLSx9jF-hNj1SfK31jaq1_F1hTLSqpnDppyDoF3Z55G4HYKprcZpiLNPKClSXRMA8FPyZrz8AiphhWJ4Gd_ZqnnCLV_KtQfgc4snrrtyyaL-z4xkydvY09v3a2cHSg4REkYpKaGf4YNpFe1pYI1f18G4oYTKr1RaIvtDnAk_3hCyyrY/s4032/twilight.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8UgpLM0YVQDzFLSx9jF-hNj1SfK31jaq1_F1hTLSqpnDppyDoF3Z55G4HYKprcZpiLNPKClSXRMA8FPyZrz8AiphhWJ4Gd_ZqnnCLV_KtQfgc4snrrtyyaL-z4xkydvY09v3a2cHSg4REkYpKaGf4YNpFe1pYI1f18G4oYTKr1RaIvtDnAk_3hCyyrY/w400-h300/twilight.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />As I enjoyed a somewhat diminished scrum of tiny soccer players surrounded by their friends, families, and supporters this past Friday evening, I marveled at how much earlier darkness came. It is shocking at this time of year how the daylight dwindles, and I did some research that revealed that this was not just my imagination. This Friday, the second-to-last for munchkinball on the field, will have the same amount of daylight as February 19: eleven hours. Now, I am pretty sure you picture February the same way I do: cold and dark. The remarkable fact that we are outside playing at all, much less into the evening, reveals that length of day is not the only thing that affects our temperatures and weather. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Similarly, moral analysis requires that we take into account more than one factor. The goodness or evil of a given action is more difficult to discern than many people credit. The classic example is when one person takes a sharp knife and slices open the belly of another person. Good action or bad action? Well, it depends, believe it or not. If one is a gang member fighting with a member of an opposing gang, for example, that is bad. But if one is a surgeon and the other has acute appendicitis, it can be good. The intention (to remove a diseased body part) and the circumstances (medical training, danger of death) both affect the value of the act itself (cutting a person open).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">These are basic elements of moral analysis. I am not a specialist in morality, but I do have to do some pretty keen analysis since I work in the confessional. Sometimes I get to tell people that what they are confessing is not sinful, but more often, I have to help diagnose specifically what is sinful about a person’s actions or behavior. That diagnosis not only locates culpability (guilt) but it helps the person target what needs to change. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it can be quite nuanced. Either way, it ends well, with mercy and hope to avoid repeating the sin.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">There is a grievous failure or even a complete lack of moral analysis in our public life now, as the default judgment is based on the person or actor. Is the person who did the deed our friend, our favorite, on our team or on our side? Then it must have been good, or if unarguably illegal or bad, excusable or even necessary under the circumstances. Is the person who did it one of them or theirs, on the other team, or simply repellent to us? Then his every action will be condemned. The so-called moral judgment is based entirely on the identity of the actor. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That is not moral judgment at all, but bluster at best and raging ideology at worst. It is the opposite of the fruitful moral seriousness of the confessional, where every soul recognizes his own ability and culpability for sin, and seeks mercy and help to repair the damage. Our identity as human beings marked by original sin makes actual sin something almost none of us can claim to have eliminated from our behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some actions are intrinsically evil always and everywhere. Intention and circumstance can mitigate guilt, but not eliminate it in those circumstances. In most cases, however, a careful weighing of the action, the intention of the actor, and the circumstances in which the action occurred are necessary to determine the goodness or badness of an action. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This complex analysis is best turned toward our own choices and actions, but the necessity of judging the actions of others is not reserved to those of us who sit in the confessional. Sometimes, we must acknowledge that certain actions are evil and that the person who committed that evil, whether from our team or family or from the other team, has done a grievous wrong. As Christians, the purpose of this analysis is to call sinners to repentance, that they find mercy and conversion, that is, change of life. Because it is the act that is evil, and not the person, we can and must hope for that conversion, and even work for it, primarily but not exclusively in prayer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Every mom or dad who has had to correct a son or daughter knows that our team, our family, and our favorites all do rotten and regrettable things, and that our opponents are capable of outshining us in virtuous behavior. These are the judgments that are necessarily part of every healthy human relationship, and especially every loving one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is not only in private matters, however, that we are obliged to take seriously the task of moral judgment. Actions can and must be judged according to the criteria that we have discerned and defined, and the world cannot be divided into Our Team whose actions are right because they are ours, and The Other Team, who is evil. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It is complicated but necessary work, and it should lead to circumspection and humility, because there are only so many of hours of daylight left for us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-79266113542846466872023-10-13T21:00:00.004-04:002023-10-13T21:00:00.147-04:00the darkness has not overcome it<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_NpOHqsAufIyudvRYkcSZha3DaV4syE11BcCow0KfFmhDu5wzHO3lH2PtFvDce2hQdLhvarPQF9u0Xw815B17bUpOQuunmsPryrqMHlLe9jsHRJTOVpBxC9VCg5L45fuPwCDsk9tqpl_IH_nLpzOt8gvazJkac_MM_QECm0Q6acVghSHNfsWLKO4IUog/s4032/nightporch.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_NpOHqsAufIyudvRYkcSZha3DaV4syE11BcCow0KfFmhDu5wzHO3lH2PtFvDce2hQdLhvarPQF9u0Xw815B17bUpOQuunmsPryrqMHlLe9jsHRJTOVpBxC9VCg5L45fuPwCDsk9tqpl_IH_nLpzOt8gvazJkac_MM_QECm0Q6acVghSHNfsWLKO4IUog/w480-h640/nightporch.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even in darkness, this campus is beautiful.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Soccer practice had ended and the field was dark and empty as I made my rosary stroll before bed. It was half past nine but already the place was August-still. Not a creature was stirring, save the omnipresent rabbits. Father Novajosky’s car stood alone in the front lot, for the principal’s was finally gone. The cleaning crew had departed, but of course there were two police officers in their cars alongside the school. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The leaves, still green, enhanced the hush with their rustle as their shadows flitted gently across the handsome façade of the school. What a good-looking building! Like the convent with which it was built in the mid-1940’s, it is solid as a rock and will stand long after you and I have slipped away. Right after the war, there was an abundance of both labor and construction materials, and plenty of both went into these buildings.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But do you know what else went into them? Sacrifice. The people of the fledgling parish were young, many having just purchased homes. They were not rich, and had no surplus wealth. Yet of their lack they gave to build these buildings. Over twelve years, they would add a rectory and a fine church building, also solid and suitable for their roles, and yet more classrooms for the school. Two decades of sacrifice.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Together these sturdy, stately buildings embrace and define our beautiful grounds where children play in the grass on the ballfield and under trees that with their flaming glory when they die light up the zip code. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The church is consecrated, the school and rectory blessed, but the constant course of divine grace that flows through the sacraments celebrated here is augmented and enhanced by the earnest prayers that are offered not only in petition and thanksgiving by adults, but also and especially in earnest by the children. For help on a test or in a friendship, for an ailing grandpa or an ailing pet, the prayers of children go to the top of God’s inbox, ahead even of those of saintly nuns. Simple and straightforward, they sanctify the fabric of the days and the buildings that bear them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Having that evening opportunity to see the structures in the stillness, I was also reminded of two people who helped make possible the place we all enjoy. This weekend marks the anniversary of Monsignor William Stricker, who died on 14 October back in 1976. He was our founding Pastor, from Saint Bernadette’s establishment as a parish in 1948 until 1975, and in that capacity oversaw the construction of all these buildings. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">On 11 October, Wednesday of this past week, the Church celebrated the feast of Pope Saint John XXIII, “Good Pope John” who called and convened the Second Vatican Council, but died in 1963, before it was completed. He acceded to the Chair of Peter in 1958, and was the fresh new Pope when our church building was built; you can see that same year inscribed on its cornerstone. Because of this, his coat of arms with its tower and lion hangs on the wall behind our sanctuary. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">1958 is not all that long ago, historically speaking, though no small amount of water has passed under the bridge in the meantime; 1976 even less so. You will run into people here who remember both Pope John and Msgr. Stricker with both clarity and affection, though they are fewer than when I first arrived, and some of the clarity may be diminished. But these lives, too, are bound up in the fabric of our facilities. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Our parish buildings are durable and beautiful, even at night, and our buildings, our grounds, our entire campus is shot through with sanctity that shines in the valley of the shadow of death. The fruit of selfless sacrifice, every wall and window, every hall is hallowed, conceived, sustained, and ornamented by prayer both public and private. Holy lives have touched and directed the upward reach of our spire and our school, pointing to the gracious goodness of our Creator. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This place, this little corner of creation, God’s Own Twelve Acres, is holy, glowing with grace and goodness, a refuge to the sorrowful and a rebuttal to the arrogant, beautiful inside and out, even in the darkness. </span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="border: none; font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-67192925236039691182023-10-06T21:00:00.004-04:002023-10-06T21:00:00.133-04:00Hold that thought<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-p7SDqIGlQ1pqRXjGPXJzQggLY9IcS15QU6D1GRTEFl0pTCpdttms_YEobaDVEKtRO0VsnjRFW4Ft9OT2sZGz0Nt4FTKD9SSLhOaUiZthVNpQMxRyrJgZboMtbICJK_uITrp8Sja1if0o9fjN6aBixy5vBYXondLd_zKXrq9WGV50Zd7b8c6F8ZYl8mE/s4032/domesun.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-p7SDqIGlQ1pqRXjGPXJzQggLY9IcS15QU6D1GRTEFl0pTCpdttms_YEobaDVEKtRO0VsnjRFW4Ft9OT2sZGz0Nt4FTKD9SSLhOaUiZthVNpQMxRyrJgZboMtbICJK_uITrp8Sja1if0o9fjN6aBixy5vBYXondLd_zKXrq9WGV50Zd7b8c6F8ZYl8mE/w400-h300/domesun.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />Come to think of it, that was fun. I mean our Fall Festival last week; it was an absolute blast. The weather was beautiful – almost hot, but not quite - and everybody I saw was having a terrific time and ignoring their phones. There were things you rarely see these days, such as children playing together outside with other kids they only just met, or fifty people gathered around one television to watch a single football game. It was just good, old-fashioned being together. I saw a number of people I didn’t know at all, and I hope they were our neighbors from the ‘hood who otherwise do not tread on our campus. They saw a good side of us! </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A lot of people worked very hard to make it happen, especially the Genius Committee under the leadership of “queen” genius Elizabeth Narsavage. There were some key sponsorships too, such as the Knights of Columbus who always provide the beer tent, the beer, and the proceeds therefrom. Let’s not forget the ponies who patiently offered their backs for riding! It is not a fund-raiser, you know, but a community builder; though we do try to come out at least a little bit ahead. We will find out for sure after all the bills are paid, but it looks good from here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">All the work and all the people and all the variables add up to what I think can be characterized as a “simple pleasure.” There is something about all those people being together in festival form that is simply elemental to human thriving. I hope it helped you thrive, and that it helped the parish thrive. I know it was attractive to anybody in search of a thriving community! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Perhaps this is the sort of thing that falls under the grouping Saint Paul formed in his letter to the Philippians that we hear at Mass on Sunday: <i>Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. </i>(Phil 4:7-8) Sunday was lovely and gracious in this sense; and to think on it is a source of cheer and consolation to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It has been a week filled with actions, events, and efforts that continue to stun and sadden not only me, but so many earnest and otherwise unselfish people who simply want to see the nation and their neighborhood, the Church and their family thrive. It seems such a modest aspiration, familiar to so many but clearly no longer universal. Was it, really, ever thus? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Perhaps. But all that was, is now, and ever shall be, is Christ’s grace and truth. He is the light that has not been overcome by darkness. He is become flesh, and dwelt among us. Our own eyes see that light among us in the midst of the simple pleasures that mark our communion, including but by no means limited to our Fall Festival. Surely, clearly, when we kneel in adoration or stand to sing praise is this excellence revealed; but so is it as well in the lovely and gracious times marked by children laughing and parents laughing harder; shrieks and giggles, and easy familiarity even with folks we don’t know very well. <i>Think about these things.</i> Think about these things!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT Italic"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span><span style="font-family: "PT Serif Caption", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4512795904565805493.post-25702801523500499752023-09-29T21:00:00.009-04:002023-09-29T21:00:00.146-04:00All generations shall call her blessed<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuT6POp0xDLZwXoLoiKeQM1Wrr_GizHO0k_xAiyhS1SRD3dZT0xh8NSDnPYN3lsLVhQ57r0Vw6yttSafRqZgTVze-o6X_LzvsSHw2IUEe2YCSu8OnLX4Mpg86NPw2odoJeyEOlPHnM7VNx5-dHbeXCGJWuHRHGYucuyezFCveIUcs4ZGEN1-5Ze7f5uwc/s320/pony.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuT6POp0xDLZwXoLoiKeQM1Wrr_GizHO0k_xAiyhS1SRD3dZT0xh8NSDnPYN3lsLVhQ57r0Vw6yttSafRqZgTVze-o6X_LzvsSHw2IUEe2YCSu8OnLX4Mpg86NPw2odoJeyEOlPHnM7VNx5-dHbeXCGJWuHRHGYucuyezFCveIUcs4ZGEN1-5Ze7f5uwc/w400-h300/pony.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Come on out! Our Fall Festival is this weekend, and you and your friends need to be there.<o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One of the most important parts of the Festival is the attendance of kids, ideally lots and lots of kids, including kids with families who aren’t usually here, or even have never been here before. Neighbors, coworkers, family members who live a few suburbs away, and even a few strangers should all be invited and encouraged to come; most people are on the lookout for something different and delightful to do with the family. </span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It takes more than a bouncey house (though there will be one) to make kids excited and their parents comfortable, though. What you will have heard about as we have asked and asked for more is the <i>volunteers</i>. Here at Saint Bernadette we are blessed with an enormous number of people who are gifted at and dedicated to providing all that children needs be happy, healthy, and safe. I marvel at the moms, the dads, the teachers, and the coaches who demonstrate an elevated awareness of and care for kids, whether their own, their friends’, or even ones they’ve never seen before.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One recent Friday evening on the back field, during CYO Intramurals (what I call Munchkinball) I marveled at the swarms of young people who moved about in something resembling elaborate choreography. There were the little ones in uniforms on the field, discovering the joy of soccer through a particularly coach-intensive tutorial. But besides these who were registered for this structured activity, there were others. Their older siblings moved about in small packs delineated by age and (usually) boys or girls. Several un-structured and un-supervised games of basketball were pursued enthusiastically. Younger siblings, too, ran, shrieked, giggled, played with one another, and alternately tried to elude or find their parents. The swings and the other playground equipment attracted these kids and engaged them one with another. In the midst it all, the parents (not engaged in coaching) seem blithely to be enjoying one another’s company.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But making possible what looks like chaos, albeit joyful, is a constant, conscious, and careful level of attention and care and communal responsibility that makes the joy possible, and safe. The moms, the dads, the teachers, and the coaches are united not only in helping a lost little one find his mom, or soothing the anguish of a fall, but also in vigilance against anyone who would take advantage of these happy, trusting children.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Undergirding it all, we have structures, programs, evaluations, and criteria such as VIRTUS and background checks in which our coaches, teachers, volunteers, and many moms and dads willingly cooperate. But what makes that work, and what conveys the confidence to make such fun possible, is the adults’ elevated awareness of and care for kids, whether their own, their friends’, or even ones they’ve never seen before. No government organization can arrange for that; one cannot train or pay a staff to provide it; nor can you ask it of an ordinary group or community. That is why having it here is a marvel, and why it is a necessity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Not only do I admire all of you whose generosity and vigilance make our events open, inviting, and safe for families and their children, but I invite you to renew and intensify the conscious and careful responsibility that you so freely share. It is you who make possible so many of the best things we do around here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The more I hear people comment on the weather, the more convinced I am that it’s NEVER what it’s “supposed to be” in late summer and early autumn. But you know what? We like it anyway, and maybe even partly because of that. Let’s move forward with confidence. It will be great to welcome visitors and friends to our Fall Festival, knowing it will feature something that they cannot find many other places: kids, ideally lots and lots of kids, including kids with families who aren’t usually here, or even have never been here before, and all of them safe. </span><span style="font-family: PT Serif Caption, serif; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Brush Script MT Italic"; font-size: 22pt;">Monsignor Smith</span> </p>MsgrKBSmithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12973698212849744791noreply@blogger.com