Make No Copies of This Novena

One of the little jobs around the church is to occasionally throw away the self-perpetuating novena prayers that show up in the pews or by the vigil lights. They are usually pieces of paper with detailed instructions on exactly how to pray to some saint or other, and often guarantee the granting of one's intentions if the conditions are fulfilled. The reader is instructed to make a certain amount of copies of the same paper, and to leave them in so many churches. The number is usually a nice theological amount like three or seven. The one circulating in our church right now guarantees the favorable intercession of St. Martha, and demands that nine copies be made and left in nine churches.

Of course one cannot expect to have one's prayer heard without following the precise instructions regarding copying and distribution. Therefore, it's easy to see how these viral novenas (apart from being superstitious) could use up an immense about of paper.

In order to witness against this superstitious waste of paper, I am thinking of starting my own self-replicating novena to St. Francis. Instead of making copies of the paper and leaving them in churches, it will instruct the pray-er to seek an opportunity in the course of his or her life to save some paper by avoiding an unnecessary instance of photocopying, using both sides, etc. Then, the same sheet may be left in another church, without copying it.

Follow this link for a draft. Feel free to print and use, but only once.

Book Review: The New Men

One of the brothers passed on to me Brian Murphy's The New Men: Inside the Vatican's Elite School for American Priests. It's not a new book, but I liked it so much that I want to recommend it.

I started the book because I thought I might learn something about the mysterious high echelons of the diocesan priesthood here in America, or at least something about what it's like to be a seminarian. As a religious, especially one who studied not in the seminary but at a "school of theology" where a lot of my most interesting and intellectually challenging classmates were Catholic laywomen, I'm pretty ignorant of both topics.

If you are also interested in a glimpse into these hidden worlds, I don't think this is the book for you. I didn't feel like I learned much about seminary life or the elite clerical world. Fortunately, though, The New Men does something much more valuable and interesting.

The chapters, set loosely around the liturgical year, follow the lives of a handful of first-year seminarians at the North American College in Rome. We also meet their rector, Timothy Dolan, now archbishop of New York. They are grateful, prayerful, and in love with God. Their lives illustrate the very varied backgrounds and personalities out of which the Holy Spirit draws vocations.

They also struggle mightily. They pray and reflect as they wonder if they can accept priestly celibacy, or if they can even 'do it.' One works through the question of being called not to the diocesan priesthood but to the life of a monk. Another tries to make a responsible discernment about where he is meant to be, only to run afoul of some the ugliness of church politics. Not without some agony, each works to know what of himself he needs to bring to his vocation, and what of his former life must be left behind and cut off. They work on their prayer. To see this last element, which most of us (quite rightly) keep so private, is one of the real treasures of the book.

I would recommend the book to anyone who would appreciate an insight into the joys and struggles that go into the discernment of a vocation in the Church. Priests and religious do not just fall out of the sky or hatch somewhere fully formed. These seminarians knew much joy and wonder, but some wrenching struggles as well.

As I finished the book on the bus today, I found myself wanting to pray for the men I had met, to thank God for their willingness to be on the journey with the Lord. I suppose that most of them would be priests now, though some not. Probably at least one of them will reappear as a bishop one day. Whatever it is they are up to in the Lord, I thank God and them for the humanness, honesty, and love of God. To be a witness of these is the real gift of The New Men.

St. Charles Challenges

As they do each year, the words of St. Charles Borromeo hit me hard in the Office of Readings this morning:

One priest [or anyone] may wish to lead a good, holy life, as he knows he should. He may wish to be chaste and to reflect heavenly virtues in the way he lives. Yet he does not resolve to use suitable means, such as penance, prayer, the avoidance of evil discussions and harmful and dangerous friendships.

That's the story of my own Christian mediocrity. I think that I desire holiness and to devote myself to God, but when it comes to the innumerable little unglamorous, daily decisions to use the "suitable means" to get there, the project falls apart. And so the flaw is revealed: it is not God or sanctity that I am in love with, but the idea of being holy. Oh yes, sanctity and the image of oneself as devout can be as much of an idol as anything else, and perhaps even more insidious because of the inherent dishonesty.

When we fall in love with someone, we make it our constant aim to seek the company and the good pleasure of the beloved. So it must be with God. All of the plain and unnoticed decisions about our speech, our schedule, our work and recreation must be arranged around our desire to be with and to please Him.

For the saint preaches sermons by the way he walks and the way he stands and the way he sits down and the way he picks things up and holds them in his hand.

(Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 193.)

Judas Maccabeus vs. Gaudium et Spes

At the beginning of this thirty-first week of Ordinary Time we arrive at one of the oddest and most challenging counterpoints in the whole of the liturgy: the two day juxtaposition, in the Office of Readings, of 1 Maccabees and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World of Vatican II. I didn't catch much of it this year, yesterday having been All Souls and opting for John XXIII's beautiful homily for the canonization of Martin de Porres today, but I did the readings anyway because they strike me so strongly each year at this time.

In the reading from Maccabees today, the great Mattathias is so filled with zeal to follow the Law that he not only kills the messenger bearing the king's demand of cultural assimilation, but even another Jew who was going to comply. He and his fellow zealots, after having left the city in order to protect the purity of their religious observance, go about destroying pagan altars and forcibly circumcising any uncircumcised boys they find.

After having meditated on all of this, one then turns to Gaudium et spes and is exhorted to "cooperate, willingly and wholeheartedly, in building an international order based on genuine respect for legitimate freedom and on a brotherhood of universal friendship." We are to "cooperate actively and constructively with other Christians" and to share resources "without being uniform and inflexible."

It's the classic question of how people of faith who value religion are supposed to relate to the unbelieving, persecuting, or lax world around them. Do we separate ourselves so as to protect the purity of our life, or do we assimilate to the world a little so as to include more souls in what really matters? What is our duty to the lapsed or unobservant among us? Do we come at them honey or vinegar, with cooperation or separation, with 'relevant,' 'updated' activities or a bomb?

Is it good to have a Catholic politician, even if they don't seem to believe and work for everything the Church teaches? Or is it an unacceptable scandal?

Christians have always enjoyed the right of 'plundering the Egyptians;' we may take the tools of the unbelieving world and use them for the benefit of the Gospel. (What else does it mean to be a Catholic blogger?) But in our relationship to the world, how willing are we to risk allowing its errors to infect the purity of our faith? It's a hard question, to know where to draw the line. If we run up into the mountains and refuse any relationship to the earthly city, we will fail to be the missionaries that we are called to be. But if we live in too close a spirit of cooperation with the unbelieving world, we will soon find--as we have!--that the faith becomes distorted by those of us who start to accept and support the world's crimes and absurdities, like abortion and gay "marriage" respectively.

There have always been Christians firmly planted all over the map on this question, and it remains a challenge for each individual and community.

Appreciating Generational Differences

Much has been written about the generational conflicts we are going through in the Church and in religious life; it's the "70s priests" against the "neo-cons," the "John XXIII Catholics" against the "John Paul II Catholics," the so-called "spirit of Vatican II" against the so-called "reform of the reform," etc.

I was discussing these questions with an astute older priest yesterday, and he put it something like this: 'We grew up in a culture that valued conformity and was overly defined and regimented. So when the reforms of the Council came, we found our spiritual identity in our liberation. Guys your age, on the other hand, grew up after the Vietnam war and other events took away our moral clarity about our nation, after some of the darker sides of the sexual revolution began to appear. You attended educational institutions in the grip of the 'dictatorship of relativism,' as Benedict calls it, and just as we reacted against strictness and found our spirit in our liberation, you came to find your 'liberation' and spiritual identity in the struggle to have something solid and structured to stand on in the midst of the moral and cultural vertigo.'

Of course all this has been said before. I only rehearse it again because I thought that Father's articulation was particularly clear, and especially because I think we need to appreciate the source of each other's spirituality. We can argue about liturgy or canon law or whether to wear a religious habit until the end of time, but it won't help us at all unless we can appreciate and give thanks to God for the spiritual place in which someone else found their God.

Mass in the Friars' Cemetery

A group of us decided to offer one of the Masses of All Souls in the friars cemetery.

Here's Fr. Walter, 97 years old and still praying strong

Br. Michael proclaims the first reading.

The gifts are prepared.

Orate Fratres!

The Doxology

Special thanks to our photographer!

Metanoia

From a thank you note from a newlywed whose marriage I witnessed:

"You made me change my mind and views about the Catholic religion."

That could go either way!

The Welfare of the Dead

You can say what you want about how the faith is faring in our time, but an observance like today reveals the fundamental human concern for the welfare of our beloved dead. People come out for Mass, stuff money into All Souls' Novena envelopes, write the names of their deceased into books of intentions, and visit cemeteries.

It's just a basic thing; just as we could not have understood someone telling us about the breadth and sights and sounds of this world before we emerged from the womb, so we can barely understand the new life into which we will be born at our bodily death. We pray for those who have preceded us into this mystery as an act of care, charity, and concern. We hope in Christ for their peace and rest.

Today at the early Mass I proclaimed St. Luke's account of the miracle at Nain:

Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him.As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, "Do not weep." He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, "Young man, I tell you, arise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, "A great prophet has arisen in our midst," and "God has visited his people." This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region. (Luke 7: 11-17)

For me this gospel reveals so much of the personality of God. The miracle Jesus performs is not for the sake of the one who seems to receive it--the young man--but for his mother, who was going to be alone and vulnerable in the world without him. "Jesus gave him to his mother." The miracle is performed in order to preserve a human relationship. Jesus is unwilling to allow the bodily death we have brought into the world with our sins to interfere with human love. This good news always comes out for me in one of my favorite prayers from the entire liturgy, which comes from the beginning of the wake service:

"We believe that all of the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel in death."

Because God has emptied himself into our humanity in Christ, human love is lifted up as a revelation of divine Love in the world. God would not allow divine Love to simply evaporate from the creation just because of something as meaningless as our bodily corruption and death! Rather, the good news for the dead and for us who mourn is that upon our death and final purification, God harvests to himself all of the love and care we were in this life and makes them indestructible in eternity. Salvation is preservation in the sense that God does not allow the revelations of Love whom we become in this life to be lost.

All Souls Day

Visit those cemeteries! A plenary indulgence, applicable to the souls in Purgatory, is offered today and each day of the octave of All Souls, for those who do so, devoutly praying for the departed and the intentions of the Holy Father. The normal conditions apply, of course, namely confession and Holy Communion, plus or minus a week from the visit. On today itself, the same indulgence is offered for the same when visiting a church or oratory.

Don't forget that later in the week the first Thursday indulgence for the Year of Priest is available as well!

Here I am, ready to fulfill the apostolic constitution Incruentum altaris:

Catholicity

The great observances of All Saints and All Souls which we begin to celebrate tonight are a perfect opportunity for us to recall, reflect upon, and give thanks for the catholicity of the Church, which includes both Heaven and earth. Follow this link for my homily for this weekend.

Happy Halloween

This wonderfully complicated day cannot pass without some tribute to the greatest of Rock and Roll's guilty pleasures, the Misfits, and their eponymous song. Here it is (sort of) in German:

Discoveries

Imagine my delight when I was setting up for a wedding today and came across this box hidden away in our sacristy:

What could be in it to help me understand such a historic and exciting time?

A hard hat, a piece of slate, some crumpled notes, and a bunch of rubber bands.