The Church is Young

Did you know that this is the longest possible Advent? Since Christmas is on a Sunday this year, we have four full weeks of Advent, which started on the earliest possible date, November 27. Of course, that does not change the number of Advent Sundays, which I usually use for bulletin letters to share with you some insights into the Sacred Liturgy.

There is no shortage of material on that subject this year, since we have begun to use the new Missal. If you look back, this is what I was talking about last Advent; and I was using this space for the past few weeks to help make sure you were ready. I am not sure how much I helped, but I do want to say: you did a great job. Thank you.

Everybody approached the challenge of the change with great good nature and generosity. That in itself is a gift of the Spirit and an indication of your gracious disposition to receive the gifts the Church offers you. I am very proud of our parish.

I received many comments after the debut Masses last weekend. What surprised me the most was that three people commented something to the effect of: That’s the new translation? I already know that; it is the way I learned the Mass growing up – in Spanish.

I emphasized that the new translation is more faithful to the original Latin than the first English Missal. But because of that new fidelity, we now say the same things in English that Catholics around the world say in French, Spanish, German, Igbo, Japanese, and Hungarian. Unlike before, when the English said similar things, we now say the same words in the same way. What a gift!

The other thing was the questions that people asked: What does it mean when we say, Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof? (That is a direct quote from Matthew 8:8, when the centurion wants Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant.) What was that big word in the Creed,…consubstantial? (The Creed was formulated carefully by the Church Fathers at the Council of Nicaea almost 1700 years ago, to be the very, very clear formulation of Christian belief. That is the English form of the precise word chosen to assert that God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, are of the same substance. )

So now that we have these new texts, I have no shortage of explaining that I can do here, and in my homilies, because it brings to light so many elements of our Faith and prayer that had been hidden or disguised before. The fact that the text is new and different means we will be noticing these words and expressions more readily, before we make them part of our reflexive participation. So this is a wonderful time for all of us to deepen our knowledge and understanding.

Meanwhile, we have to get good at this by Christmas, so we can lead everyone who comes then in the new prayers. You could not help but notice how we priests were glued to the text, craning our necks and straining our eyes to read every word, whereas before we had many of the prayers committed to memory. I felt like a newly-ordained priest again, anxious not to make a mistake. This long Advent, beginning our lifetime of knowing and loving these words of the Holy Mass, is a wonderful time for us all to be young again together.

Monsignor Smith

Who Would Prevent Advent

It is all over now: the fabulous display of reds and oranges on the “October Glory” maple trees on our front green. Where the CYO and Scouts will be setting up the Christmas tree lot this weekend, there was the most splendid array of color and life that made us all pause as we came or went from church or school over the past few weeks. Not only we stopped; numerous passersby on University Boulevard pulled into our parking lot and wandered around, grinning, marveling, and taking photographs.

One parishioner came up to me after Mass one Sunday when the trees were ablaze and said, “whatever you do as Pastor, don’t cut down those trees!” I laughed and pointed out that I may reluctantly do just that to one or the other, as I did this spring with one dying maple, but as evidence that I have no intention of eliminating them, I showed him where I have also planted three or four new ones.

Another parishioner stood with me one morning as I was enjoying the trees (see, I told you we all stopped and looked – I did it every day for two weeks!). She said she had just been speaking about them to Bishop David Foley, who was the second Pastor of Saint Bernadette (1975 – 1983) when they were planted. He had laughed and told her that until then, that space was simply lawn, and when the trees were planned, a group of parishioners noisily complained, and insisted they liked the lawn just as it was, and did not want its simplicity and perfection spoiled.

We can laugh now about those folks who did not want the trees planted, wondering at what we all would have missed if they had got their way. I am sure the lawn was beautiful. I know it was useful – for years, the parish hosted a carnival out there that drew folks from all over. I am still grateful to the founders of the parish for not paving it all into one huge parking lot stretching all the way to the boulevard. But I am just as grateful for those trees, that give us privacy and buffer the noise from the roads seven or eight months of the year. And two weeks of the year, they are our own local Natural Wonder of the World.

When you have something good – very good, even – it can be hard to imagine that any change would make it better.

This weekend, the Church around the world changes something, something that was very good: how we celebrate Mass in English. The new translation changes your responses and all the prayers that we priests have to say. At least at first, we will all have our noses buried in our books or pew cards, stumbling through unfamiliar words that do not come naturally.

It will be hard for everybody. Some folks will grumble privately, others object publicly, that this is an affront or a mistake. But the Church is still guided by the Holy Spirit; and hundreds of talented, knowledgeable, and faithful people, who love the Mass and love you, have worked for decades to bring this to this point, where not to change would be a disservice to not only us but to future generations as well.

As deep as your love for the Mass, as beautiful as your experiences were of Jesus with the old translation, I promise you that this will only enhance and improve that love, that beauty, and your future experience. Just as our maple trees made our beautiful lawn exponentially richer and more marvelous, so will this change bring you more beauty, more truth, and even more color. Your love for the Mass is not over now; this is a new Advent.

Monsignor Smith

Springtime in November

Most people think of spring cleaning, but here it is late autumn, and I am hard at it. It started with my bedroom, then my study. Aside from a few odds and ends, the clutter is principally in one category: reading material. Once I throw out the magazines, file the articles, and put the maps back, that leaves: books.

Books I read and loved, books I started and never had the oomph to finish, books I swore I would get to, and books I cannot figure out why I have; books I pulled to check a point for a homily, favorite books I revisited after many years, and books I never want to see again. They all have to go somewhere. I shelve them, share them, or most painfully of all, sometimes just get rid of them.

This fall, though, this project extends from my shelves to the sacristies, since in two weeks time we begin using the new English translation of the Missal. The new Missals for the church, the chapel, and for our offices have been coming in over the past few weeks, and they are wonderful – large, beautiful, well made liturgical books. But that presents a dilemma of its own – what to do with the old ones?

We have two in the sanctuary of the church, and one on the altar in the chapel. But we also have old copies in the sacristy cabinets that wore out or began to fall apart and were no longer fit to be used in the Sacred Liturgy. Nobody rebinds books anymore – trust me, I have looked. Not only missals, though, but also lectionaries accumulate. We changed lectionary translations back in 1999 (remember that?), and it comes in different volumes – Sunday, weekday, Years A, B, & C, etc.), so we have piles of the old version stored, plus newer ones that already were used to the point of disintegration.

I hate to throw away any books, but these are sacred books, so they cannot just go in the trash. So we have kept them. But with this new change, we just don’t have the room for more of that.

We will continue the parish practice of keeping an archival copy of these important books. We still have a 1965 Missal, which is the version from right after the Second Vatican Council that has both Latin and English in it. Hardly anyone even remembers those; even fewer actually have one. We will keep one copy of the old lectionary, and at least one copy of the Missal that will conclude its forty years service this month. I will carefully save any other volume that could be historically significant. On my shelves, I’ll keep my personal copy that Cardinal Hickey inscribed and gave to me the day he ordained me a Priest.

But all the others are stacked and ready to be disposed of properly. How is that, you ask? Some authorities have suggested burying them in the church cemetery. We don’t have a churchyard, so I am going to take a page form my Boy Scout training and burn them, with decorum and respect. We have a high regard for these books, after all.

The Missal that I bought for myself in Rome as a seminarian so I could begin learning how to say Mass, I will consign to the flames. We have been using it at the chair in church since its predecessor became unusable a few years ago. I knew the change was coming and saw no need to pay for a new one or keep that copy on my shelves.

All this cleaning because we are getting new books. After the initial awkwardness of changing the language we use at Mass, the new Missal translation will kindle a new awareness in all of us of the beauty, riches, and depth of our most perfect and powerful prayer, the Mass. So I expect this fall cleaning will bring about a new springtime, after all.

Monsignor Smith

Getting religion

What, you didn’t know that I am not religious? I got that impression Sunday.

Technically speaking, I am not religious but secular. I just googled that and learned that there are a number of essays out there in which believing Christians would be included under the term “religious”, and atheists under “secular.” I am NOT that kind of secular.

According to long-standing Church understanding, however, “religious” are people under vows within a specific religious community, what you might know best as an order: Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans and the like. Their members, men and woman, ordained or not, are religious: nuns, monks, brothers, and yes, priests.

I, however, am not under vows and not a member of an order. I made solemn promises, not vows, when I was ordained, and am attached to a place, not an order: the Archdiocese of Washington. One of my promises was obedience to my bishop – currently Cardinal Wuerl, already my third Archbishop since ordination. Another was celibacy. The third was prayer – to pray the Liturgy of the Hours (the Divine Office) daily, in union with and for the Church.

The vow of poverty is a mark of life “in religion.” It is not a measure of how well they live, or how much they have, but the distinction that everything they have is provided by and property of the community. Some communities provide more than others.

Not me. I get paid a salary, the amount of which is fixed by the Archdiocese. The line between parish funds and my personal funds is very, very clear. I pay taxes, including Social Security (15.9% -- oof!). I invest in my retirement fund, a 403(b) instead of a 401(k). I have excellent health insurance, but make the co-payments. I make charitable donations, including to both the parish offertory and Cardinal’s Appeal.

You see how worldly that sounds -- mired in a lot of the same considerations you are? We don’t just live among you, but we live like you. I have to keep track of all this stuff – vowed religious do not. That’s why we’re called secular. In Church law it is considered a “less perfect” form of life than being “in religion,” which means that if we want to “upgrade” to religious life (e.g., go join a monastery) our bishop cannot stop us (though he can slow us down).

You may not lie awake thinking about this, but it is worth your attention for a moment. It came up in the context of the collection for the Retirement Fund for the Priests of the Archdiocese. Like many pension funds, it is severely under-funded now. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, since we are not supposed to retire until we are 75!

Some parishes are run by religious priests; some have schools staffed by religious women. Some folks go to colleges or universities run and staffed by religious communities, men or women.

For most folks, the principal encounter with Christ, His Church, and his sacraments, is through a secular, that is diocesan, parish priest. We are not dramatic; we are simply here. We tend the household of the Faith. Your friendly, neighborhood priest is likely not religious; not in that sense, anyway.

Now that I have admitted that I am not religious, I hope you won’t be startled if I continue to try to get all of you to be more so.

Monsignor Smith