The Necessary

Even the Blaster Truck could not help us.

From the sublime to the … earthy?   From poetry to plumbing, from last week’s poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, this week I will share my reflection on life without a drain.  

Monday afternoon the signal came to the rectory staff from Anthony Dao, our maintenance man extraordinaire: don’t use any water, the main drain to the sewer is clogged.  Bad news, but hardly anything to panic about; Dao has fixed that before.   

Three hours later, the news got worse.  The drain “snake” he owned was too short to clear the clog, and the longer snake he RENTED was similarly ineffective.   So, we had to call for help.  It was already after hours, so it was going to be A Big Deal.  

The plumbers arrived with their professional equipment two minutes earlier than they had advised.  I was carefully eating dinner without making a mess or running water.  Two hours later, they left, unsuccessful.  They promised the next day they would send the heavy equipment.

Midday Tuesday I returned from lunch off the property (no dishes to wash) to find no fewer than four vehicles from the plumbing firm, the largest of which was the truly impressive and enormous Blaster Truck.  I was filled with all the comfort that overwhelming technological power provides.  

Two hours later, the trucks were gone, save one, whose lonely operator was moving about the lawn with what could be classified an electronic divining rod, seeking the path of the sewer pipe as it leaves the rectory.  The Blaster Truck had been useless, as there was no opening in the pipe under the manhole through which it could blast.  The feeble beeping of the divining instrument faded when quitting time came about.

The next day, Wednesday, this time early afternoon, an improved set of equipment was again defeated into bleating and beeps, and a promised call from The Manager.   As I write, I have just authorized a plan to break into the pipe at the bottom of the manhole and approach the problem from that end.  Only once the problem has been identified and located, can it possibly be remedied.  It could be a blockage, by material internal (something dropped into the drain) or external (roots), or it could be a break.  We wait in suspense.

Mass goes on, but the Holy House of Soubirous has been in a state of suspension.  The staff all dutifully stayed home, though there have been a few drop-bys to get something to work on.   Dao and I have taken turns waiting for the plumber; he is much more helpful to them once they are here than I am.  Meanwhile, the voicemails are piling up, but the regular mail has been thin.  If you have had a need or reason to inquire with our talented and helpful staff, please know that they are not avoiding you, or goofing off.   Well, if they ARE goofing off, it is only under duress.

The residents face a different problem.  Father Novajosky had felicitously scheduled this week to be away with his family; he left Tuesday morning, unbathed but unbowed.  Father Santandreu and I have established a “refugee campus” in the home of some gracious parishioners, where we sleep and shower before returning to our daily battles.  Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies are a powerful consolation!

The good news is that, for now, the church and school plumbing is functioning at top form.   If you see me scurrying toward the church during the days, I advise you not to try to engage me right then for a chat; better would be to try when you find me sauntering the other direction.  Other than that, my fondest hope is to be able to mention to you this weekend how it all resolved, but I think that to be fixed and finished by Friday is an uncharacteristically optimistic scenario for me to predict at this point.  So to you, I say what we used to hear from the television periodically when things went fuzzy, or even blank:

We are experiencing momentary technical difficulties; please bear with us.

Monsignor Smith

 

 

Is and Ought

Reading a biography now of an author who wrote poetry when he was in high school, as if that were a normal thing to do, I wonder.  Was it because he lived with a poet, in a house that hosted poets?   Was it because he had friends – friends different from him, and from one another – was it because his friends wrote poetry, that he, too, wrote?   Was poetry what young people did a hundred years ago, in small-town America?   Was it because their minds were not filled with processed and packaged slogans and jingles, songs and rhymes, chosen by another?  Was it because poetry is what they read?  Was it because it is beauty?

I do not know.  I do know that poetry, of most every sort, has almost always eluded me: enjoying it, appreciating it, understanding it.  One time or another I have found, enjoyed, appreciated, or even learned a poem or two, and that has tantalized me, but sufficed.  One, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I recited from memory when in tenth grade; that, and another, I share with you now, because there ought to be more poetry.

Monsignor Smith

 

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'

 

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen 
justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 

Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, 

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost 

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust 

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, 

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes 

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again 

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes 

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, 

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

 

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

 

 

Not to be outdone

Well, THAT was exhilarating, now, wasn’t it?

The two weeks of Passiontide with its veiled statues and crosses; Palm Sunday with its sticks and shouting; the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Good Friday’s Solemn Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, and Holy Saturday’s Great Vigil; and lots and lots of confessions; it all sort of erupts into Easter Sunday morning, with the jubilant mayhem of kids, crowds, and Alleluias.  

When it all quieted down and I drove off the sunny, silent campus a little after two o’clock to visit my parents, I was amazed at how much had happened in the eight hours since I got up.  Somebody who just walked into our church that morning would have believed that all that excitement, all that joy, all that beauty, all that warmth and friendship, all that communion might just be the norm in this remarkable place.  

They would not be wrong, though we do not always have a tent on the lawn sheltering abundant treats, and an egg hunt, and flowers everywhere.  That is wonderful, but it is not the heart of our hospitality.  We always have friendly, welcoming people, eager to offer something good whenever someone enters.  But for Easter, they outdo themselves.

Just like we always have excellent altar servers who work hard and make sacrifices to make the liturgy beautiful.  But over the Triduum and Easter, they outdo themselves.

We always have rich, beautiful sacred music perfect for the occasion.  But over Holy Week and Easter, the amount of music, the range of expression, the depth of truth and beauty lead our singers – adults and children -- to outdo themselves. 

Our church is always well taken care of, and we are blessed to have splendid space, and high-quality liturgical furnishings.  But that big space requires a LOT of people to contribute flowers, and all that veiling and flowering and polishing and decking and arranging required many hands and much work, and our people outdid themselves.  Though few were around to watch it happen, we all enjoyed the results.  

I know the rectory looks quiet, even boring from the outside.  Maybe if you come in the front door, it looks as if some work might be done in there.  But let me tell you: everybody in that rectory, both my housemates and the staff, rose to the occasion, and that was a big raise.  They outdid themselves.  

All this, all this is right and just in the celebration of the pascal mystery, our incarnate Lord’s self-sacrifice and resurrection: more than we could have expected, and far more than we deserve.  That was the model for everybody of these past weeks, all so that some soul who walked into our church at any point over the holy days would be embraced by the power and love of God.  Maybe that soul will return; maybe he will go his way.  He may never give a thought, much less his thanks, to all here who outdid themselves.   But I thank you; and so do the many souls who, occasionally or often, find God in your gifts and in your giving.  

All that excitement, all that joy, all that beauty, all that warmth and friendship, all that communion is indeed the norm in this remarkable place.  It is exhilarating.  Truly He is risen, Alleluia!

Monsignor Smith

 

This is not the end

(Is it) Just like they say - nothing good ever lasts?

That’s another definition of eternity: two people, and a ham.

That is an example of my grandmother’s sense of humor; you may recognize it.   She and Grandpa were alone in their one-bedroom house by then, and that affected menu options.  

Some things seem to go on forever; ham and turkey leftovers are accused of it all the time.  MLB games (though they say they fixed that), and the NBA season.  The University Boulevard red light at Four Corners.  Election season.  My homilies.  Contrary creatures that we are, we spend a lot of our time waiting for things to be over. 

Lent, with all its restrictions and somber reflection on sin and death, can seem interminable, especially at the beginning, when every day of deprivation drags by as old habits of self-indulgence still govern our muscle memory.  Once we get into the new habit – whatever good habits we have taken up – it almost feels good, like physical exercise (or so I’m told). But at the same time, we want the effort, the exertion, the privation to be over, so we look forward to Easter.

But Easter is not the celebration of the end of Lent, like V-J day was to World War II, or Armistice Day for World War I.  Yes, Christ is victorious, but what he achieves by it is far more of a beginning than an end.  

Christ’s resurrection changes forever the order of things for us who are created in the image and likeness of God.  By rising from death, Jesus transforms the death to which we are all necessarily subject into a beginning rather than the end.   Death, then, though it still come for us, cannot and will not keep us who are in Christ.  His resurrection into glory is the beginning of our going to glory.   This glory we can know and enjoy even while still in our earthly life, giving us strength to participate in the victory. 

Christ’s resurrection already has transformed human history by making human beings, who are members of His body the Church, capable of victory over sin and death in their lives and in their deaths.  This is the witness of the Saints throughout the ages, and the work of the Church in nurturing a communion of souls who reveal the power of loving one another as Christ loves us.  One need only visit a land or society that has been deprived of the Faith and the Church to see the difference.  

Christ’s resurrection has changed every day for you and for me, as we bear within us the hope of mercy, as well as the capacity for mercy that He has poured into us.  Our failures do not define us or confine us any more than the tomb confined Him.  The sin to which we succumbed is not who we are; when we repent and look to Him, His triumphant grace changes our lives so that our own sin does not own us.  This knowledge, rightly called faith, fills us with joy.

Foolish mortals waste a lot of time waiting for things to be over, including Lent.  We also fear that the very best things cannot last, like the cherry blossoms or a toddler’s tender, innocent sweetness.  But again, Christ’s resurrection breaks the rules that we make for ourselves, as His good gift indeed reigns without end.  Longer than a Montgomery County red light or an extra-innings pitcher’s duel, the goodness He begins in our lives is everlasting.  

To celebrate His victory is to restore in us the awareness that we need no longer be foolish, for we are not entirely mortal.  Maybe this is why ham was for my family, and still is for many families, the main dish associated with Easter: as something that seems to last forever, it can be a reminder of eternity.  Christ has conquered death, and poured new life into us.  Easter is not an end, but the great beginning -- our great beginning.  Christ is truly risen, Alleluia!

Monsignor Smith

 

It could never happen here

Ecco homo ("Behold the Man") by Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632)

Three years ago, Palm Sunday 2020, was the first time that we sent out a livestream video of Mass.  “Two weeks to stop the spread” had continued past three weeks and now stretched toward a distant and unknowable vanishing point.  We could not simply wait.  I asked Thad Ruszkowski for help with the technical side; he and Mike Ward ran cable from the school to connect to the internet, and he and Karl MacMillan assembled all the equipment they were able to beg, borrow, or buy, and launched the transmission.   Fr. Russo set up a YouTube channel, and he and Fr. Berhorst concelebrated with me.  For reasons I cannot recall we started at 7:30 that morning.  Lights, camera, action – right?

If you were watching that morning, you were almost as surprised to hear the Crowd part of the solemn reading of the Passion as Karl and Thad were when they realized that they had to say it.  Unlike subsequent Masses, which started at 11:00, and we were joined by Fr. Petty for a few weeks, had John Henderson on the organ and our section leaders singing, and had Daniel, Christina, and Jessica Dao serve, there was no music, no server – it was a grim affair.  

We all noticed noise at the doors of the church at some point during the Mass, but not noise like someone was trying to get in.   When we unlocked the doors afterward for the faithful to visit the church, we found taped to the door a bulletin on Maryland State Police letterhead.

Groups of more than 10 people in a gathering or at an event are prohibited.  This includes social, community, spiritual, religious, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events.

If the requirements of the Governor’s Executive Order are not complied with, the Maryland State Police and our law enforcement partners will take the appropriate enforcement action, in consultation with the local state attorney’s office.  Violation … could result in a misdemeanor conviction and up to one year in jail, or a fine of up to $5,000 or both.  

My jaw dropped.  My first thought was relief that our doors were obediently locked, and our number inside under ten; then, sympathy for the trooper who, doubtless against his every impulse and training, had to do this most outrageous and unthinkable-in-America thing.  I took the notice, and kept it.

It was indeed a hard time.  There was real fear, and there was real danger.  There was also ignorance, mendacity, and self-interest, and these shaped and motivated many a consequential action.  A notice forbidding worship, placed on the doors of a church, by the police?  In our home town?

The Church is the Body of Christ on earth.  As such, it should surprise us not at all that the Church also suffers.  This is not merely the sadness of God that His people are cut off and carried away from Him; it is not merely the lamenting of His ministers that they are prevented from fulfilling their sacred functions.  It is also, and perhaps first of all, more than a disservice, but rather an injury to each and all of the people whom Christ has made His own.  It is the diminishment of grace and goodness in the lives of all the faithful; a trauma, a debilitating wound that has immediate and lasting effect in their lives and in society.  Souls, beautiful immortal souls, fall into desuetude, and death.

This is not China, where recent decrees have made it harder or even impossible for Catholics to worship at all there.  This is not Nigeria, where roving bands of jihadist militants burn Catholic churches with the worshippers inside them, fire into crowds outside of churches, and abduct and often murder priests and Christian schoolchildren.  This is not Nicaragua, where Communist tyrants imprison and expel the clergy, dismantle the communities, and disperse the people.  This is not Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Bangladesh.  And yet: the motivations and manipulations for Catholics to stay away from church are real, insidious, and sometimes even governmental.

It would be naïve and even foolish to continue to assume goodwill or good faith on the part of many of our leaders, official and unofficial, or even all our neighbors.   Yet we know that the cross of Christ Jesus is our only hope, and the only path to life and redemption for us and them.  We know that Christ humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Because of this, God greatly exalted him.  

To let drop the Faith because the Church suffers would satisfy and succor only your worst enemy.  Come; let us take up our cross and follow Him.  Three years have passed, and it is Palm Sunday 2023.  Jesus enters Jerusalem, where awaits the Cross.

Monsignor Smith

 

What you see and what you get

Though no artist was present to see it, the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary is depicted in art just barely less often than the Crucifixion and the Nativity.  The pivotal moment of our history is also a beautiful moment, and every artist worth the name has tried his hand at depicting, “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.”  One such effort, by Orazio Gentileschi, has sneakily become my very favorite by the odd tactic of placing itself before me on a book cover in my confessional.  In fact, I think in my version it is flipped left-right for the sake of the cover’s composition, but I’ll share it with you the way I see it.

The Archangel Gabriel both kneels before and springs toward the young Virgin in her bedchamber, as she modestly gathers her blue cloak around her red dress and holds up a hand in a demure gesture that conveys not as much hesitance as acceptance.  The messenger holds in one hand a rod sprouting lilies, a sign of the recipient’s fruitful virginity, and with the other indicates the source of the divine initiative.  Making visible Gabriel’s promise of divine overshadowing, the Holy Spirit like a dove comes through the open window along with radiant beams that warm and light the Virgin’s face, and leave the angel’s in shadow.  

I had been staring at this picture for years while listening to sins, before I noticed that there were at least five colors of white in it.  The crisp linen white of the sheets is clearly different from the lacy white cuffs and collars on both angel and Virgin; the fresh white lilies, completely different yet again.  The angel’s downy white wings stand in sharp contrast, seeming almost gray until your eyes discern the effect of shadow, and the similarity yet difference of the bright white dove’s soft purity.  

And then there is all that drapery.   Fabric falls in folds throughout, a painterly tour de force and a common mark of a genre of painting that, honestly, has never really done much for me.  Well, until now, anyway, as I recognize all that crumpling and cascading as not only beautiful, but eloquent and explanatory. 

Look at the wardrobe on that angel erupting into Mary’s quiet and contemplation.  His cloak is luminous ochre rather than gold, but rich all the same.  His tunic is a marvel: rosy, silky, and iridescent.  All this is topped with ginger hair (of course?) and together makes him stand out as the visitor in this scene.  

The blue cloak that envelopes the Virgin echoes the distant and divine blue that is the origin of the dove’s descent as God’s own grace falls upon her.  Then that enormous scarlet curtain behind the bed is not simply some decorator’s trendy choice but rather the falling and manifold abundance of the Spirit Himself, red like the fire of Pentecost, finding and filling the Virgin with the Divine Word Who takes flesh from her, resonating in the red of her own tunic, half-hidden beneath the blue cloak.

For a pile of paint that has been still and solid for four hundred years (exactly – since 1623!) there is such swirl and motion as make mind and eyes spin.  The richness of the scene concentrates the riches of art and creativity in which man, art’s creator, is revealed to be the image and likeness of his Creator God.  The artist’s insight and expression find their source and their goal in the beauty that is God’s goodness in giving us His only begotten and co-eternal Son, come to save us.  This scene has captivated me for years as the resting place for my eyes, while my ears do the work of the merciful Redeemer in receiving the repentance of souls in search of absolution and mercy.  

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.  The Annunciation, March 25, almost always falls during Lent, and this year splits the weekend with the Sunday that begins the time of Christ’s Passion.  As you look at the veils that hide the images of the Christ and His saints, let them remind you not only of His precious blood, shed for our sins, but also of the hiddenness of so much of the life and death of that same Redeemer.   

And we have seen His glory.  Hiddenness is not the same as invisibility, as God’s work is not only visible, but indeed manifest in creation, whether in the created creators of the art that makes the unseen, seen; in the wine become blood; or in falling folds of the very fabric of divine communion.  

Monsignor Smith

 

Crcksstbzzzzzzzzzzz

Yes, I have playlists of my own music stored on my phone, and usually at least one audiobook too, and my car has excellent Bluetooth.  No, I never subscribed to satellite radio after the introductory period ran out when the car was new; the stations available turned me off.  So when I am driving, unless it is during one of the frequent periods when I am happy to be in silence, or the infrequent times I am talking on the cell phone, I listen to the radio.

WTOP can be useful for traffic and weather.  I have been known to enjoy a Nats game on 106.7 The Fan.  American University has a station (88.5?) that often plays excellent bluegrass.  But by and large, I am a classical fan.  

Nowadays every “feed” is personalized and customized, whether it be streamed music and video, the products advertised and offered, and even the so-called “news,” are honed by the omnipresent algorithms to be “just what you want to hear”  -- which often includes just what (they) want you to hear.  This honestly become oppressive.  

It can be liberating to relinquish my input and simply listen to what the station programs for everybody.  The music on our local WETA is usually okay, but the programming is better on WBJC, 91.5 out of (gasp) Baltimore.  And with that distance comes a distinction:  reception.

Here around Silver Spring, I am close enough to get fine reception, but the same is not true as I move around the metropolitan area; and when I head for the hills for my day off, it gets really spotty.  Moving north on I-270, the signal begins to weaken, and static interferes.  Usually I am enjoying the music enough to stay tuned despite the static.  Sometimes, I catch myself enjoying the static, or more accurately, I enjoy listening to good music through static.  

I am not sure why I appreciate static on the radio.  I am not old enough to have listened to baseball late at night from distant Chicago or New York stations on my transistor AM radio.  I am reminded of the daring ones under propaganda and misinformation of communist oppression huddled around a forbidden receiver to hear Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, or Radio Martí.  Now those beacons of freedom are shut down otherwise neutered, and all the misinformation anyone can dream up is available right here at home.  That’s why I stick to classical music, with a helping of static on the side.  

More than just nostalgia, there is something real about it.  It reveals something about where I am.  As I head into the District, the signal weakens, but if I head north up I-95 it stays strong well into Delaware.   Oddly, it is quite strong over in Loudoun County Virginia when I am heading to or from my parents; I think it’s a higher elevation.  As I drove down the western slope of South Mountain toward Hagerstown, I lost it completely, but a few miles further west it came back, staticky but listenable, as I emerged from the mountain’s shadow.  

There was the day when I was on the other side of the radio broadcast; I worked at the campus station all four years of my undergraduate time.  “This is WLUR, 91.5 FM, and you are listening to Classical Showcase.”  I learned a lot about music in that time, and a good bit about microphones, too, which has come in handy in ways I could not have foreseen - but I digress.  During those years the digital recording revolution was sweeping the world, and compact discs brought crystalline recordings without the hiss and pop of long-playing vinyl and their needles and tonearms.  We oohed and aaahed, and my Christmas present my senior year was a disc player, so I could spend what little money I had on my very first CDs.

Here we are, not yet forty years later, and my housemates make fun of me whenever I refer to discs of any kind, CDs or DVDs or any other such obsolescent media.  I disregard their mockery, and do not mention my old LPs, which of course I kept.  Oddly enough, there seems to be a revived enthusiasm for vinyl; not only old records (antiques?), but new music is produced in this cumbersome, fallible format, which leads me to believe that not only old people, but also newer generations see the value of pops, hisses, and imprecision.  Digital media, it seems, are not only pristine, but they also eliminate nuance and richness by reducing everything to their binary code, ones and zeroes.

Maybe, hearing the evidence of the medium through which we are listening, whether it be static on the radio or imperfections in the record, reminds us of the mediating reality of the medium – there is something, and maybe someone, between us and what we are trying to hear.  Even though we cannot separate the one from the other, we can distinguish between them.  In our days of digital immersion, online experiences, and the so-called “metaverse,” it is helpful not to get fooled into thinking that the medium is the message, or that the virtual is real.  Now that people’s perceptions of events are held up as concrete and compelling, it is helpful to be able to distinguish between event and experience, in the hope of holding onto the real instead of the imagined.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (Jn 1:14)  God sent His Son, not a representative, interpreter, or message; nor artifact, book, or facsimile.  All of these things, though, can help us to Him; and a little static can reveal the difference.  

Monsignor Smith