Did we know what we had

Appalachian beauty

Way back on Independence Day, in my homily I emphasized two aspects of our republic that were manifestations of the truth revealed in Christian doctrine; one of them was the immeasurable value and impact of a single human life.  The lofty example that day was none other than George Washington, the sine qua non of the American experiment, the unique and indispensable man. 

That life is a historical reality I have long contemplated and admired, studied and discussed.  Washington’s broad shoulders bear such scrutiny and his profile fits well into that frame.  Suddenly this week I was caught off guard by a very different profile whose very familiarity disguised its significance, but nonetheless another demonstration of the marvel of incarnation.

After a few days of searching, I cannot find memory of a day or time when I did not know who Dolly Parton was.  Her public life coincided almost exactly with my entire life up to this week when her death startled me and many with me.  I am not quite sure how she crept into my consciousness; maybe radio playlists ranged more broadly in those days. 

We weren’t country music people, my family or my friends, but we were in the footprint, and Hee Haw was near-weekly viewing.  As a kid I knew Porter Wagoner, whose program first brought her national attention, but whose trajectory tended quickly downward as her star broke away and took off.  Variety shows were a television staple then, as well, and the variety of entertainers featured was broad.  Everything distinctive about her fixed her image in the minds of even people who didn’t pay much attention to her genre of music, often as a humorous character.  Even among schoolkids, she was famous, she was funny, she livened up the punchline for any joke.   Then she started doing movies, where she wasn’t only funny – she was good.  

Only much more recently, having known so long who she was, did I find out what she was.  A life-long faithful wife (sixty years) of a reticent man.  An entrepreneur of near boundless energy and skill, turning Dollywood from a regional joke into a destination and example.  Not only a conduit but an engine of development and enrichment for the people of her impoverished mountain home.  She didn’t just make them proud, as was her stated goal; she made their lives better, too.  And she did things for people; not only her people, but more people than we can identify or count.  In everything, in the least likely place imaginable, a life of celebrity, she was a person of extraordinary generosity and grace.

Maybe fifteen years ago I heard Jolene playing and was startled by what an awesome song it was, and how deeply printed it was on my memory from four decades previously.  Not merely a singer, but also an authentic and relentlessly productive songwriter, throughout her long career she gave us so much that was not merely admirable and enjoyable as music and entertainment, but also experiences that were recognizable and true.  All of them drew us in to what they expressed without one nasty, vengeful, threatening, or even harsh word or sentiment.  More extraordinary generosity and grace; this comes into focus only after the fact.  

Obituaries mention her impoverished childhood, her large family and their Pentecostal church providing the foundation for her musical development.   Not in anything I heard her say was she ever explicitly evangelical, and yet.  Her disposition and her every action were clearly rooted in a familiarity with Christ,  and a knowledge of His life, and from that an understanding of her own.  There along with the rhinestones and big hair and slightly bawdy humor in which she mainly made fun of herself, she revealed a deep and developed conviction of what her life was for, and how precious to her was likewise your life, mine, and ours.  

This reality, recognized or not, is the root of the sentiment now sweeping the nation: thank God for Dolly Parton.  Her life and its impact are yet another example of universal and incarnate truth, as it is to be found only in America.

Monsignor Smith

All the light you can see without

Awesome shot of last week's solar eclipse
from Mallorca, Spain, by my brother-in-law Urs Schoop.  
Used without permission.

Just because the lights are off does not mean it is dark. 

We have just traversed the stretch of weeks on either side of the solstice that offers the most marvelous skies and morning light already at half past five when I walk over to the church for early Mass.  Inside still it is dimmer, but the illumination is underway and the stained-glass glows, the colors of the windows entering the dance with the colors of the sky as the gentle and golden light fills the contours and corners of the holy place from every direction and none over the next spectacular half-hour.

The routine of the others who come to the church first thing is to find and flick the switch that ignites a bulb or three, the blaze of which paradoxically casts the church back into harsh shadows and darkness.  I groan.

Just as some people swear they cannot hear unless the voice be amplified through a loudspeaker, there will always be people who are convinced it is dark unless the electric lights, and all of them, are switched on.  In so doing, they often demand their own disadvantage.

When I was a Boy Scout, we once had a night-hiking exercise in which we found our way along unfamiliar paths by designated markers as we went.  It did not take long for my group to discover that our flashlights were not helpful; instead, they blinded us to everything except what was in the bright small disc of their beams.  Practicing ‘light discipline’ and keeping all the lights in the group switched off allowed us to see revealed the sky itself with moon and stars, and the gentle illumination they provided to the piney woods through which we picked our way.  Once eyes grew accustomed to the light present in the darkness, there were both greater awareness and fewer surprises as we made our way toward the goal.    

As it has long seemed obvious to me that with less amplification, there is more that I can hear, so it is that up to a certain point with less artificial light there is far more to see.  How could light-discipline be applied fruitfully to our days to enhance our sight in other ways as well, to help us see what would otherwise go unnoticed, and perceive what under normal circumstances is invisible?  If stilling the noise around us is the first step to hearing the voice of God, what artificial light sources must we switch off to see what He is showing us?    

The adage about lighting a single candle still applies when there is complete darkness.  Just this week as the approaching equinox began to exert its restrictions on our daylight, holding back the sun more and more each morning, I have reluctantly resorted to switching on the bare minimum of lights myself when I open the church, for the sky stays mute and unyielding in its inked solidity.  I regret this violence, but the church would otherwise be too dark, and while that is something I can othertimes enjoy, it is impractical for the folks with work to be done and prayers to be said before the morning sacrifice is offered.  Only just before go-time at 6:30, through the sacristy windows that give out to the field, the rising sun sets fire to the treeline along Saint Lawrence, no small spectacle itself.   That, too, comes noticeably later each morning.  The slope of day’s decline grows steeper as the season’s change comes nearer.  

As summer dwindles and its sweetness yields to autumn and its decay, night claims more and more from our days.  Remember, though, before you reach for the switch earlier and earlier each evening: just because the lights are off does not mean it is dark. 

Monsignor Smith

So much foam

 

Can you imagine what she would say?

They didn’t talk like that back then.

It is one of the aspects of any production that can turn me away most quickly: anachronistic dialogue.  That is, one of the characters says something that a person would not have said at the time and place being depicted.  Whether a movie or other video production, stage play, or book, if one of the characters speaks in a way that is not consistent with the setting of the drama, for me, the whole thing collapses.

Ironically, it is our own time that stands out in the arc of history as the anomaly.  There are many things that characterize speech both public and private in our time that would never have occurred at any other time in recorded history. 

Neither during the Civil War nor the Revolution, nor in medieval times nor in Roman times, would anybody have spoken about his own feelings at all, much less as much as our modern depictions would lead one to believe. The constant gushing about affections and disaffections, hopes and dreads, and disappointments real and imagined, not to mention the endless romantic soliloquys that pass for plot drivers and denouements, simply would never have been uttered in any but our own self-obsessed time.  They say such things make for good cinema, but even that I question heartily.

Almost every other society that has managed to survive for any time on the face of the earth has valued some degree of form and formality in its discourse.   We have projected our insistence on constant and unrelenting casual familiarity onto situations and civilizations that would have found such a thing repellant.

And when, I have to ask, did everybody become such a potty-mouth?   Soldiers in the trenches didn’t use language so vile as one customarily hears from four twenty-somethings sitting together at a baseball game.  To project such shameful behavior onto other people in other times only amplifies the manifest disrespect.

Almost thirty years ago, well into the era of films that depicted everyone at all times as if they were simply twentieth-century southern Californians in different period costumes, there was a movie that was different.  I saw it because it was about the Civil War era, not because it had Spider-man (Tobey Maguire) in it.  Ride with the Devil depicted life during that time of conflict and irreconcilable differences that were political as well as personal, but in western Missouri far from the battle fronts and capitols.  It was shocking that all the characters, even the ones depicted as young adults, spoke like denizens of the nineteenth century, which made their actions more intelligible because they clearly thought like denizens of the nineteenth century.  It was shocking and refreshing all at once.

Speech not only reflects and transmits thought, but also makes thought possible.  We consider our age enlightened and point to astonishing technology as proof, but the speech one hears most often suggests that our concepts and considerations and our ability to apply them have deteriorated, because our language certainly has.  

Dialogue that is post-modern in form and content renders all the characters engaged in it as puerile, selfish, and ignorant.  This may be intended as a judgment on our forebears’ shortcomings, but in effect it delivers a devastating assessment of our own.  They didn’t talk like we do back then.

Monsignor Smith

Up to snuff

Too far gone?

What’s new?  people used to ask before the more personal and probing How are you? became the norm.  The response used to be the news, before ‘the news’ became something else entirely, less informative and anything but new.

Many summers past I have sung the praises of August for its languor and its leisure.  Still I rejoice in this most wonderful month of the year, but languor is in short supply.  It seems that new stuff is the order and object of the days.  

In the school, LED lighting takes the place of fluorescent tubes that most of us associate with classrooms.  It will be a great improvement that none of the kids will notice, being preoccupied with seeing and learning.  There is new paint too, though we did most of that last year; and flooring, startling because I thought we already did that.   Maybe sixteen years of wear makes carpeting old?

If that be then case then twenty years made the carpet in the rectory offices beyond old and almost disgusting, or so the staff insisted.  So new carpet has arrived here as well, under bookshelves, desks, and file cabinets no less, all heavy and hard to move.  Some new paint is coming too.  Once the smell fades the change will be hard to spot, save that things will no longer look old.

You all saw the new deck, which is both great improvement and no big change.  The improvement is that it will not collapse under us as we come and go or linger round the table; the sameness is everything else – same size and shape, same features (no elevator, fountain, or self-cleaning function), save the improvement that the materials will last much longer before this new deck becomes old enough to require replacement.

Things fall apart, but first they get old.  First repair, then replacement are the requirements of having the care of things.   Think for a moment about your kitchen appliances, which seem to age out much faster now than twenty-five years ago.  How exciting can a new dishwasher or refrigerator be, except that it actually fulfill its function where its predecessor ceased to do so?   Once the memory of the tattered and decrepit past has faded, the new and functional elicits no more joy than yet another hot day in August.  Where is the fun and excitement of newness in all this? 

Stairs that do not make you fear disaster, lights that do not hum and flicker attract no wonder or awe nor move hearts to gratitude, but rather by the absence of grave shortcomings elicit a contentment that all is as it should be.  The absence of applause and excitement is not disappointing in these circumstances.  Everything renewed is simply doing what it is supposed to do, being what it is supposed to be.  

And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." (Revelation 21: 5)  The God who did so marvelously create us did still more marvelously REcreate us, through Christ our Lord.  That adds no features, nor electronics, nor Bluetooth; no fresh new color or radical redesign.  Simply by the mercy of God, we are made not different creatures, but fully and perfectly ourselves, doing what we are supposed to do, being what we are supposed to be.  

August this year is filled with the necessary tasks to achieve the near-invisible improvement of refreshment and restoration.  Some few will notice, but fewer still will want to be informed when, resuming our routines at the end of summer, they make the inquiry, What’s new?

Monsignor Smith

Handwriting

Not a screen in sight.
This parlor cries out that it was made for writing notes.  
Who am I to ignore that?

This weekly letter lacks a manuscript made with my hands that involves ink and paper and handwriting purposely put together to reveal thoughts become a new thing.  I confess I type on a keyboard connected only by ether to a screen on which said thoughts take shape in light and dark but without substance.  This accomplishes a great deal in efficiency and legibility but leaves tangibility and durability wanting.  Bright shiny and ephemeral is rather less that I would hope to have to offer you, but there it is.  

You are good to bear with this underachievement, having been conditioned to it by almost all the communications offered to participants in modern life.  Every institution that sends me bills is constantly banging away at me to “go paperless” if I have not been forced already to submit to that disappointing regime by the terms of our original contract.  I assume your lot is the same.  

Being freshly returned from a trip abroad, I have taken advantage of the speed and convenience of direct digital communications to share information and images, often as quickly as I experienced them myself.  Each day I conveyed a passel of pictures and explanatory notes of What I Did TODAY For My Summer Vacation with a small group of volunteers who asked for such harassment.  The digital version of ooohs and aahs followed quickly by return mail, that is, text message.  

However satisfying this semblance of direct connection, I wanted more and better, so I sent three hand-written cards by post.   They required five, seven, and ten days, respectively, to arrive in the hands of their intended recipients, which seems an awfully long time compared to the agonizing seconds we wait for a return text message, but once the time had elapsed, these people actually held something in their hands that had come from mine.  

Some years ago, my younger sister took up once again the lost practice of sending postcards from her travels, most often to our parents but also occasionally to others of us whom she likes.  Her handwriting (printing actually) is charming and legible, and she has a knack for a cheery and informative message in a line or two.  How much more engaging it is to find that on the refrigerator door and examine it than to look at phone or screen held out to see.  Not a facsimile but a genuine thing to hold and turn.

At various and unexpected times over the past decade mom or dad handed me a stack of cards that I myself had sent them, a good example being the ones I wrote near daily during my first ever trip abroad, the eight weeks’ adventure that was my spring semester in Germany junior year - that would be 1985 for you history buffs.  Postcards of cathedrals, castles, and train museums with a line or two about fellow students, host families, and culinary adventures were almost all my parents had to go by to guess that I was alive and thriving.  It seems so little compared to the flood of conversation for today’s connected generation, but forty years later they endure to provide me with evidence and experiences I had long ago laid aside.  Try THAT with a text chain!

Because of these recent reminders of the superiority of material messaging, I am trying to make more of these missives, however brief, to draw together physical and personal realties for my far-flung friends and family who are like me awash in electronic stimulation and information.  Here is a thing for you, it says; I made it.

Quickly and quietly this letter has coalesced wysiwyg before me, and with a flick and a wish it will go to Carol at the reception desk, who will send it along with similar speed but no more weight to the publishers of the bulletin, who will then make it appear on paper. Hundreds of copies will then be boxed and delivered (UPS) to our doorstep, and artfully arranged by the doors of the church for all and sundry to take as they arrive and leave for Mass.  It will be posted online as well, ethereal and ephemeral but accessible, including on the “blog” that is my Pastor’s Corner of the parish web site, where it will be joined by a photograph of some or little pertinence and be viewed by people near and far some of whom I am convinced are what they call “bots.”   But there are regular bulletin readers who prefer the paper to have and to hold.  I only wish I could offer a manuscript.

Monsignor Smith

Preoccupation with temperature

 

Better than a cartoon

It’s hotter than hell out there!

Well actually no, it is not.  Then again, maybe it is.  Heat?  Flames?  I am not sure.  Some suggest an abiding, inescapable cold.  But hell will be infinitely worse, whether in temperature or some other form of misery.  It is an apt comparison, nonetheless.  

Funny, isn’t it, how many people get scandalized at the use of the H–E-double–hockey-sticks word?  The convention against saying “hell” casually, in polite company or in in front of children, is reasonable, but only in a comparable sense to our obligation not to swear or take the Lord’s name in vain.  

Similarly, we must not invoke damnation in vain – that is, casually, for dramatic effect, or as an oath.  But damnation not only is a very real possibility, but something which I have set my life to helping people avoid, and it would be a fatal hindrance if I were to fail to mention it in the most effective language possible.  So why do folks expect such vocabulary never to pass the tender lips of a priest, as if it would be in everyone’s interests to maintain everyone’s comfort?

Unfortunately, it is precisely to our own comfort that our interests are too often turned; mine are, anyway.  Yet even I bridle at the common expectation that I refrain from mentioning hell.  So while I don’t pepper my speech much less my homilies with hell and damn, it is vital that I draw your attention to their very real possibility for all of us.  

The cartoonist’s image of hell, with its flames, pitchforks, and always-descending escalators, may be reasonably dismissed by modern, educated folk.  But it would be foolish and dangerous to dismiss the reality of an unending, inescapable pain and grief that those images attempt to present.  My favorite reflection on hell is The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis.  This slender novel is an absolute delight (not what one might expect) and I devoured it in two hours.  Read it; it will rock your world.  More to the point, it will focus your attention outside of your world and my world, this world, and onto the real questions of how you will be spending eternity.  Though in honesty, I must admit that the great cartoonist Gary Larson had some pretty good insights, too.

Damn is even less useful a verb most of the time, since if God is its subject, it is too easy to escape with the logic that “a loving God would not do that to me for (insert offense here).”  Of course He wouldn’t do that to you!  He would save you by the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of His Son.  But you and I can do it to ourselves, or more accurately, can demand it for ourselves.  Our every decision and every action can be either a liberating step toward salvation revealed in Christ, or it can be a damning step toward, well, hell.  

We have constructed an air-conditioned cocoon for ourselves that we allow to lull us into thinking that we have mastered not only nature, but also, even more implausibly, our own eternal course.  Hurricanes, tornadoes, and the shortcomings of Pepco regularly shatter our Potemkin comfort.  Even that is temporary, and we easily return to our complacency.  How dare we?

Meanwhile, it is blistering, withering, suffocating, and altogether unbearable outside, but most decidedly not hotter than hell.  God is giving us this day, and this moment in it, as an opportunity to repent and be delivered from all that misery by His gracious mercy!

All of a sudden, it’s not so bad outside.

Monsignor Smith

Not for nerds?

I am not making this up: “The Cool Church”.  I found it while out visiting my sister in Tucson.  It’s not far from her house, and apparently it is one of a chain – there is at least one other like it. 

After the heat wave last week, we can all appreciate the appeal of a cool church.  If this one in Arizona stays fresh and comfortable even in the crushing desert heat, they obviously have a more powerful air conditioner than I do, though in my defense, they also have a significantly smaller building.  

While it may be true that inside it is not hot, I doubt it is the intention of folks who named their church.  I have to wonder whether they want to identify their place as the popular church – that is, well liked, especially by all the people who are themselves popular, which is sort of what “cool” meant in high school. Maybe like some innovative gadget or other promising novelty, this church might make some folks marvel that it is “cool” because of some new invention.  They also might want to announce that they are not that bothered by or interested in the things that some other church is, since there is an aspect of the word that means certain easygoing unflappability, a carefree aspect. 

Doubtless, these folks named their church this because they wanted to make it attractive, make it sound popular, new, and probably even “laid back,” or some other word that means that it makes no demands. Aside from the promise of refreshment, I must confess that few of its characteristics have anything to do with the real Church.

What is attractive about the genuine Church, what she teaches and what she does, is attractive because it is true, not vice versa.  In fact, sometimes the truth is not readily appealing, and not popular at all.  The Church is popular in the sense that is of and for people, but her foundation and design are from God; she is a divine institution.  Popularity in the sense of being well liked is hardly a criterion, since from her very beginning Christ’s Church has been made up of unpopular people, the marginal and excluded, the poor, sick, or ugly.

And while the Church incorporates and embraces everything that is truly human, and that includes many innovations over the centuries, the divine element of her nature is eternal and unchanging.  Every human life has a fresh encounter with revelation in Christ Jesus, which is called the Good News because the newness of the experience, not anything recent or invented about the message.  Everything that is essential about salvation through Jesus has been consistently present in the Church for two thousand years now, even though that hardly makes it old news.

‘Laid back’ is a term I have never found any evidence in the Gospels for applying to Jesus or His followers. Jesus was most often calm, indeed, but He was always simultaneously intense.  He had a deep and abiding concern over the life of every person He encountered, and relentlessly set His face toward Jerusalem to save us from our own sin and its consequences.  He sacrificed his own life – not just his own ease, but His life!  How is that “laid back?”  And who can forget the whip of cords?

So, while you know I am very proud of our HVAC in the church and relieved that it held up during the high temperatures of last week, you won’t hear me trying to convince anyone that the church is “cool.”  Nothing finds a place here at Saint Bernadette because of its popular appeal, or because it is new and exciting. Nonetheless, you and I get pretty excited about it, excited enough to take its demands seriously. 

No, the faith of the Church is hard to consider cool.  But whatever you find here in our outpost of the Church, you can be certain that I am not making it up.

Monsignor Smith

Over-under

None for me this time, thank you.

Well now THAT was fun; a festive weekend for the national holiday.   I confess that I underachieved when it comes to most of the big public events.  I did, however, fulfill all righteousness by eating hot dogs and going to a baseball game, riding in a Chevrolet no less.  Hamburgers, ice cream, corn on the cob, and local lager also were on the menu.  Don’t even ask about pie; it was entirely too hot to bake anything and besides, the apples will not be in for months.  The menu was not the only thing that ran the gamut: the weather went from withering heat to gusting downpour and eventually yielded to a cool misty Monday morning-after.    

On the Fourth of July itself, the festive Mass for the nation that we added drew a crowd that was not large, but everyone was glad to be there, offering prayers of gratitude and intercession for our country, leaders, and fellow citizens.  I get the impression a lot of people were away for the weekend; not only were all our Masses underpopulated, but even the Beltway looked like our pews at 8:59 on any given Sunday morning.  Oddly, even the high temperatures did not cause lines to form for the cool, dark confessionals.

I underachieved in some categories for a simple reason: it was a weekend.  A friend was incredulous after the ballgame Friday evening when I told him that cookouts and fireworks were not on the schedule.  My other friend at that table, also a parish priest, sided firmly with me.  Mass and confessions and an extra Mass and more confessions then another Mass…that’s how weekends are for us.  Next time the Fourth falls on a Thursday, then we can relax and enjoy.   

I did make sure Father Tran got the benefit of his Washington sojourn; he viewed the midnight fireworks from a well-placed rooftop in the company of his classmates.  But he also did his part around here; he took the morning Mass on the Fourth and the latest Mass on the fifth to make it work.  When he returns to east Texas he will know where he was in summer school.

Those of you who have not fled the DMV will have noticed that Father Swink is back in the house and on the schedule.  His recovery is continuing according to schedule, but that schedule does not yet indicate “all better,” much less “cavorting like a teenager.”  We are trying to keep his yoke easy and his burden light, so to speak, to make sure that this stage of his convalescence bears good fruit in future health and ability. 

Some of you even got to see Father Wiktor as he spent a few days here between driving back from his diocesan home in Mississippi and flying for a long visit and some academic research in his natal home in Poland.  He will be back here in time for fall term.  

Father Wiktor and I had a quiet dinner together Saturday evening before turning in early to be ready for the work that Sunday morning brings.  I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of distant fireworks, clearly a display for the ages.  I felt a twinge of regret for underachieving in that regard and missing a good party.  I did not awaken, though, in the wee hours when Father Tran came home after his patriotic adventure, and I was well rested and ready to leap into the saddle for confessions, and Mass, and baptisms, which is the festivity where I do my best to avoid any underachieving.

Monsignor Smith

Let it fly

For my seminary classmates, 1994 was the year that we did not set foot in the United States, because those were the rules.  As a result, it was the year that the Fourth of July did not happen.  Well, you know the date came and went, but wherever I was just then – Spain?  France maybe?  -- I was having a good time in a great place, but it was not the same.  On my second assignment to Rome, over four years I became accustomed to being in somebody else’s country for our national day.  It did not have the same sting as that first time in 1994. 

I have had epic Fourths of July.  When young, foolish, and living within walking distance of the National Mall, I enjoyed the concert and fireworks on the capitol lawn.  I have mingled at an elegant party of Important People on a balcony a mere block from the White House.  At my bachelor apartment, I pulled together my local friends with extended family visiting town for a fifth of July wedding in a great convivium that adjourned to the roof in time to see in the distance the fireworks of the Mall.  

The best ever was the Bicentennial in 1976.   The Tall Ships.   The Freedom Train.  The neighborhood parade with bicycles decorated by all the kids.  The Flags of the Revolution project for my whole sixth-grade class.  I got the “Bicentennial Camper” rocker for my Camp Sequoyah patch on my first-ever summer camp with Troop 21.  The Bicentennial-edition everything, even, I think, cars.  

The coming into existence of the United States of America is a never-before-in-human history event, and statistically as well as sociologically likely to be a never-ever-again.  Not being omniscient but also not being ignorant of history and life experiences very different from my own, I am firmly convinced that this existence is a good thing on a scale and at a level of impact unmatched by any other human undertaking.  (Before you extend that “just a minute here” finger at me, let me observe, graciously, that the Church is a divine institution.)  Yet I seek no controversy here; I am willing to let that assertion go by the by, undefended.

I will content myself to assert that the existence of the USA is a very good thing for me, personally, and for mine, however you want to parse that possessive.  This is my country, and this is our country.  It is our home, our patria – our fatherland.  As a matter of piety we owe our country love and devotion.  As a matter of honesty we have so much, even everything for which we must give gratitude.  My heart swells at the National Anthem, to which we indeed owe an obligation of respect, and therefore stand and salute.  Patriotism is the debt we cannot pay down for it enriches us far more than it costs.

Look, I am a Boy Scout.  In fact, I am that Boy Scout who would wear his uniform to our high school’s football games each Friday night to raise the flag at the beginning, and then lower it respectfully afterward.  Twenty-five years later, it seemed natural to take responsibility for the flag that flew in front of my seminary in Baltimore for my solitary year there.  I don’t care who calls me a nerd, it is important.  

One of the Catholic commentators I most greatly admire and enjoy solemnly intoned that, as America turns 250, we could all use some humility, austerity, and personal repentance along with the bombast and celebration.  I cry Foul! Wrong you are sir!  This is precisely what we must avoid.  

The toast at a wedding is not the time to make recriminations.  A rehearsal of grudges has no place at a birthday party.  And a eulogy is so called because one speaks well of the deceased – de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.  This is more than manners; this is the fabric that binds families and nations.   

Ours is not a Catholic nation, but Catholics have thrived here beyond the dreams of their forebears and continue to contribute indispensably to the greatness of our country.   From her storehouse of wisdom, our Holy Mother the Church can contribute a more pointed directive, a more foundational principle that can calm the turbulence and reduce friction in these days when everybody has an opinion and some of them are negative.  Remember, brethren, it is forbidden to fast on a feast.  

I may just join Father Swink in a beer this week – a domestic one at that.  Our cuisine will not be haute, but spirits will be high as we mark this great anniversary and celebrate our truly great nation.  To all my fellow citizens who find themselves abroad on this day, I send a greeting and a prayer; may you come home when you will, rejoicing.  To the rest who are somewhere, anywhere in this enormous land, I shout with Saint Peter on Mount Tabor: ‘Tis good, Lord, to be here!  God bless America, and deliver us from evil.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Escape hatch

Big rivers have to come from somewhere;
even the mighty Potomac starts small.
It may be Almost Heaven,
but it isn't Paradise.

Known as the Garden of Eden, or even Paradise, the original habitation of Man in the order of God’s creation was perfect in every way.  No pests, no predators, no problems.  No shortages nor sadnesses.  What could possibly go wrong?   

Since the Fall and that whole by-the-sweat-of-your brow-shall you-live consequence, Paradise has been not only a happy memory but also a goal: to restore or re-achieve what every human descendent of that first couple, Adam and Eve, somehow remembers well enough to desire.  

When our forebears set forth upon this continent a great new undertaking, they had reason to recall Paradise, and to imagine its recovery.   The broad and fertile land was not pest- nor predator-free by any means, but it was rich in opportunity for the sweat of one’s brow to achieve the requirements for life.  

Having recently and for the umpteenth time crossed the Millard E. Tydings Bridge over the Susquehanna River and marveled anew at how big is this river that most people would not name if asked for five or even ten big rivers in our nation, I wonder at the courage that it took to undertake to eke out a subsistence from this hugeness, and the vision that resolved to order and erect a society that encompassed it.

Two hundred and fifty years have passed since a small and representative group took responsibility for that enormous project onto their own shoulders. One might think this necessarily another act of hubris, of men taking to themselves what is forbidden to mortals.  But they were all familiar with both that ancient Fall and the Redemption that is its remedy, and wary of grabbing the fatal fruit.  In their modesty, they left for every inhabitant of this nation what Adam and Eve enjoyed in their Garden days: respect for the intellect and will, and the freedom to act upon these in pursuit of what is good.  So began the experiment in ordered liberty that has so benefitted us, and the world.

While daily surrounded by the benefits and blessings that have accrued because of their audacious action, many manage to preoccupy themselves and one another with the opposite, the past failures and the perduring problems.  These have not only survived in our republic, it is asserted, but indeed have grown to define and degrade the entire undertaking.  

How sad, and how wrong.  Paradise long since lost, any pest- and predator-free place would also be devoid of human freedom, and in fact of human beings.  People are not problems, but we do have a knack for causing them by misusing our freedom.  To categorize any one human life as a problem is the temptation that deprives us of what we have in common with that person and our Divine Creator. 

Rebuilding Paradise and re-achieving problem-free living invariably leads to the elimination of more and more actual people.  Shortages and sadnesses are endemic to our human condition.  They can either drive us apart or bind us more closely one to another.  In this nation the burden of responding to them and remedying them falls to us, the people.  The apple still hangs tantalizingly on the branch, and there will always be a voice in every ear suggesting you’ve been robbed and I can help you.  All will fall for it some of the time, and some will fall for it all the time.  Social upheaval ensues.

Perfection, while it lasted, included freedom.  Deprived of perfection, we still crave and protect freedom.  Anything can go wrong, but we are free to respond and rebuild.   Paradise this is not and never will be.  We know our limitations, yet our aspirations are limited only by our willingness to sweat our brows.  We have a republic, if we can keep it.  

Monsignor Smith

Thank you Father Martin!

 

Fun while it lasted.

The gifts bestowed by someone who came before, we are obliged to protect and preserve.   That should not be a controversial assertion, but in our era of innovation novelty often prevails over preservation.  

In the Church, what has been handed down is the most precious of our possessions.  The Faith and the Sacraments, the Church herself; all are the very opposite of innovation and novelty.  Their source and their value are eternal!  This rubs off in more practical affairs in the life of the Church, such as our own rectory where everything old and good is preserved and protected until it can fulfill its role no longer.  Things can get a little shabby in the latter days.  The deck on the back of the rectory is a fine example of this. 

Even though the deck juts out over the parking lot and gets the direct sun in the summertime, it has been a popular place for residents both short- and long-term.  The acquisition at the encouragement of Fr. DeRosa about 2010 of a decent table and chairs, followed by a new retractable awning, made it much more inviting and useful.  We put the grills out there, which means I cook out there.   

Peggy and Lewis Hicks, while they were the floral elves of the rectory surrounds, introduced the bamboo screening that provided the privacy we need to be on the deck and not on display.   The also showed what some flowers and plants can do to spruce up the otherwise bare space, which lesson I took to heart.  The flowers bloom outside the window next to my desk, as well as the kitchen window, and boost morale.  

The staff likes to have lunch out there when I am away; it has nothing to do with being unable to hear to doorbell or the phone, they assure me.  Father Jason Williams of Cincinnati, a student here in the summers of 2019 and 2021, spent about six hours a day out there doing schoolwork.  More recently, Fr. Wiktor and Fr. Tran both enjoy it as a “second desk” for their academic pursuits.  Rectory dinners become more convivial and last long into the cooling evening once we take the trouble to set the table out there.    It has become a major part of our rectory life.

Margaret Gamache, who has been a parishioner here for decades and was one of the first lay teachers in our school, informed me at a recent Finance Council meeting that our deck was installed under Father Bernard Martin, the Third Pastor of Saint Bernadette.  She offered no precise date, but did assert that he enjoyed it, which means he had time to use it.  Fr. Martin was named Pastor in 1987, retired in poor health in 1997, and died mere weeks later.  A working estimate for when the deck was built would be 1991, plus or minus a few years.    

That mean our deck lasted 35 years!  This explains why it was getting a bit rickety.   Anthony Dao, our maintenance factotum, had replaced components as needed over recent years.   The stairs up from the carport were alarmingly unstable.  It was time. 

You will notice the replacement deck going up over coming days, because by the time you read this the old one will be gone.  The big change will be the materials; we will be using modern synthetics for the decking and lattice screens.  This means it will last even longer than if it were wood.  

There is no reason not to plan for a lengthy lifespan for the deck on the rectory.  The church tends to keep what is good for as long as possible, for the good of all who come after us.  

Speaking of the good that we have received, our nation is marking a milestone anniversary this year on Independence Day, which falls on a Saturday.  Even though it is the usually the quietest time of the year hereabouts, I have decided we need to do something to acknowledge this great gift of God and our forebears.  There will be a celebratory Mass on Saturday, July fourth, at 11:00, to render thanks for what we have received and prayers for help to be good and generous stewards.  What we receive and treasure, we are more likely to maintain and keep, so help us God.  Because all the best that we have was given us by the ones who came before us.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Road Work

Photo from Mary Phillips Quinn;
if you have any pictures or videos of our procession,
please share them with the rectory.

He really isn’t heavy, if you will grant the allusion to a cliché from the 70’s.  Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and the monstrance that held Him, were not hard to bear last week as we took him to the streets and sidewalks of our Four Corners neighborhood.  

I think the guys who carried the canopy dealt with a lot more actual weight, plus several gusts of wind that billowed the canopy like a sail and threatened to carry off course both the canopy and its bearers.  I am not sure how they recovered from their efforts afterward; I think it involved much stretching.

Conversely, I hope the procession itself was an occasion of recovery for our neighbors.  A glimpse of the sacred and the coming among us of the Divine awaken an awareness of human dignity in hearts dulled by the mundane and morose delectations of the day.  

One of the best experiences for us in the procession was seeing the reactions from the people who were not expecting to see such a thing.   Neighbors working in their yard or called to the window by the beautiful singing looked up at first with curiosity and maybe suspicion that then became relief and delight.  People in the parking lot of Safeway knelt or made the Sign of the Cross.  Occupants of cars stopped on the highways waved and deployed their phones to record what they were seeing.  Nobody complained!  One of the servers mentioned a driver who had the music blasting loudly from his open car windows, who then when he saw the procession turned it down.

It can be too easy for us who are familiar with the Body and Blood of Christ to focus on our opportunity and obligation to come to Him and forget the proactive reality that is before us.  We focus on what we accomplish by our own freely chosen actions.  We come to Mass.  We prepare ourselves for Holy Communion.  We give our time and attention to the Lord’s presence in the tabernacle, or in ourselves once we have received Him.   We take time to pray afterwards before we move on to other things.  All these actions of ours are real, and not negligible.  

However, it is easy overlook what He is doing, our Eucharistic Lord.  He comes first, before we come to Him.  He calls us to Himself, reminds us where to find Him, and how to obtain what we need from Him.  We take steps, but first, He is a light to our steps.  And so while sweat, strain, and soreness may be evidence of what we did for the procession, it is more revealing and more reveling to look for the signs of what He was doing.

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what pleases me, achieving the end for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11) The Word become flesh dwells among us and goes on walkabout to find those lost sheep He talks about.  What a thrill to be with Him as He goes!   What a grace to be able to lend our flesh and blood to the work of His Body and Blood.  Seeing the reactions from the people who were not expecting to see such a thing is but one of many clues to the sanctification that Our Lord Jesus worked during the procession last Sunday.

Whether you were singing or wrestling with an unruly canopy, walking, praying, or just trying to keep up, when you realize that you were participating in the sanctification and salvation of all the many souls in Four Corners, at home here or just passing through, it becomes clear that He was not heavy at all.

Monsignor Smith

Want to know what love is

June is the Month of the Sacred Heart.  This year the Solemnity falls on Friday, the twelfth, and along with the next day’s Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it marks the end of the annual liturgical feasts that move because they are calculated from the Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, that is, from Easter.  That’s the original meaning of the phrase “movable feast.”   Move as however it might, the Feast of the Sacred Heart always falls in June. 

June is the Month of the Sacred Heart.  You will notice our Mary Altar of May (Mary’s month is May, the month of mothers) is now occupied by our small Sacred Heart statue; our large one is over the main doors of the church, visible as you leave.  

June is the month of the Sacred Heart; it is a time for us to reflect on the reality of God’s love for us in Christ, and the nature and requirements of that love that He has commanded us to emulate and made it possible for us to emulate.  Love one another as I have loved you.  

It is good to be Catholic, to have the divine reality arrayed across the calendar in ways that make it possible for us to understand, to remember, and to celebrate all that God is and does.  Other people associate certain months with other things, none of them as true and beautiful as life in Christ.  

This year, our nation’s bishops have decided to consecrate the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  There are resources available for you to participate in the consecration at the USCCB website and linked from our Flocknote. 

Mark this month by exploring the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by entering into the mystery of God’s love enfleshed and inflamed.  Below is a prayer that has helped me grow in my devotion to the Sacred Heart.  I also like the Litany of the Sacred Heart.  From His pierced Heart flow blood and water that give life to the world, the font and wellspring of the Church’s sacraments.  Prayer to the Sacred Heart leads us to explore the mystery of reparation, which characterizes our participation in the Divine and redeeming love, during June, the month of the Sacred Heart.

Monsignor Smith

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

(said by St. Padre Pio for his intentions)

I. O my Jesus, You said “verily I say to You, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you”, behold I knock, I seek and I ask for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

II. O my Jesus, You said, “verily I say to You, whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, He will give to you”, behold in your name I ask the Father for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

III. O my Jesus, You said, “verily I say to You, heaven and earth shall pass away but My words shall not pass away,” behold I encouraged by your infallible words, now ask for the grace of…

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put all trust in Thee.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus to whom one thing alone is impossible, namely, not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of Thee through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your and our tender Mother.

Salve Regina. St. Joseph, Foster Father of Jesus, pray for us.

Mornings

The priest is the pontifex, that is,  
the one who builds the bridge between God and man.

Twenty-five years ago, I met young Lawrence Swink on the day he arrived to be accepted by the Cardinal Archbishop to become a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington.   As part of my work as secretary, I had set up the appointment and brought him and the other candidate up to the outer office, then took each of them individually in to meet with the boss and receive the good word.

He looked sharp in his grey suit and tie, the uniform he wore in those days before the collar and cassock.  He was confident and eager, but not without a certain trepidation that any reasonable person would have before being ushered into the inner sanctum of such a lofty personage, one who was about to deliver a judgment and set out a future course.  I tried to be reassuring and encouraging, as I remembered well what he was experiencing.

Nine years earlier, I had been in the same position in the same offices when a different secretary led me in to see a different Cardinal Archbishop, who then warmly welcomed me to the program and explained to which seminary he had assigned me.  There was another man with me that day, similarly in suit and tie and similarly embarking on the path to priesthood: a young Dan Leary, someone of whom you may have heard in more recent days.

Five years after accepting him to the program, the same Cardinal Archbishop ordained him a priest of Jesus Christ at the basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  I saw that all happen, too; in fact, I had a very good seat.  I smiled at the memory of the eager young man in suit and tie and had every confidence that our time of working together was just beginning.  Little did I know just how together our working would one day be!

This week in the kitchen we now share, Father Swink showed me a photo he had just received on his phone.  It was from the first baptism he performed as a priest at Saint Mary of the Mills Church in Laurel, which was his first assignment.   I immediately recognized the two sets of parents, if not the radiant infants they happily held.  Both families are now regulars at Sunday Mass here, and while the babies are now grown tall as we are, the parents, like Father Swink, still look exactly like they did in the photo.  Pretty much, anyway.

A lot changes in twenty years, but most of it is circumstantial rather than essential.  Father Swink is still baptizing – he had two baptisms just this weekend – and still doing the work of priesthood with all the gusto he can muster.  He is still very much the same person he was when I met him that morning in 2001; most of what has changed stems from that other morning in 2006 when the hands of the bishop and the grace of Holy Order configured him to the person of Jesus Christ, the sovereign High Priest.  Grace builds on nature, and what an edifice stands on that foundation.

It is good to look back over the years and see what has changed, and what has not.  God’s grace continues to surge through the priestly ministry and person of Father Swink, eliminating any distance in time or space between us and the saving power of Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, and ascension.  Twenty years is but the blink of an eye compared to that distance, but two decades of such daily work is worth marking with gratitude and joy.  

We are both still the same guys who first met that earlier day, with one of the few notable changes being that now he sees me every morning, and I him, and very often at least one of us and sometimes both are not nearly as well dressed.  

Monsignor Smith