Almond Cookies

Among the various quotes and greetings on Twitter for the feast of St. Francis yesterday, there was also mention of the almond cookies that are traditional for the day. I thought folks might be interested to know the source for the association of this special treat with the passing--the Transitus as we Franciscans say--of Francis of Assisi. Here it is in Assisi Compilation chapters 7 to 8:

Although racked with sickness, blessed Francis praised God with great fervor of spirit and joy of body and soul, and told him: "If I am to die soon, call Brother Angelo and Brother Leo that they may sing to me about Sister Death." 

Those brothers came to him and, with many tears, sang the Canticle of Brother Sun and the other creatures of the Lord, which the Saint himself had composed in his illness for the praise of the Lord and the consolation of his own soul and that of others. Before the last stanza he added one about Sister Death: 

"Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will, for the second death shall do them no harm." 

One day blessed Francis called his companions to himself: "You know how faithful and devoted Lady Jacoba dei Settesoli was and is to me and to our religion. Therefore I believe she would consider it a great favor and consolation if you notified her about my condition. Above all, tell her to send you some cloth for a tunic of religious cloth the color of ashes, like the cloth made by Cistercian monks in the region beyond the Alps. Have her also send some of that confection which she often made for me when I was in the City. This confection, made of almonds, sugar or honey, and other things, the Romans call mostacciolo.

Lady Jacoba was a dear friend of Francis. If you've been to the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, you have at the very least walked right by her remains, which are entombed at the level of the landing as you go down the steps into the crypt.

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Gaudete et exsultate: Little Choices

This holiness to which the Lord calls you will grow through small gestures. Here is an example: a woman goes shopping, she meets a neighbor and they begin to speak, and the gossip starts. But she says in her heart: “No, I will not speak badly of anyone”. This is a step forward in holiness. Later, at home, one of her children wants to talk to her about his hopes and dreams, and even though she is tired, she sits down and listens with patience and love. That is another sacrifice that brings holiness. Later she experiences some anxiety, but recalling the love of the Virgin Mary, she takes her rosary and prays with faith. Yet another path of holiness. Later still, she goes out onto the street, encounters a poor person and stops to say a kind word to him. One more step. (16)

Just as theology is the queen of the sciences, which are only complete and reach their full flourishing under its light, so holiness is the first form of health within which all other well-being finds its rightful place and fullness.

And just as our bodily health is preserved and nourished by little, everyday choices, so it is with holiness. As Pope Francis points out, it is these small options for a turn to prayer, for charity, and especially for being willing to suffer for the good of another, that set us on the path towards being the saints God wills and delights for us to become.

Padre Pio's Daughters

A conversation at lunch.

[Friar mentions a prayer group of friars' mothers in his home province called 'The Daughters of Padre Pio.']

Friar 1: That's very interesting. Being the mother of a friar makes you become a daughter of Padre Pio.

Friar 2: Well, the other day Cardinal O'Malley reiterated that a friar who has a child has to leave to be a father and fulfill his obligations to the child and mother. [So what of Padre Pio and his daughters?]

Friar 1: Well Padre Pio already left the Order.

Friar 2: ?

Friar 1: Well in the friar database [which is kept here in the General Curia] one of the fields is 'way of leaving.' [modo di uscita] And one of the choices [for filling the field] is death.

A Prayer For My Dead Confessors

One of the standard activities of a visit to our place in Yonkers is a trip to the friars' cemetery to remember and pray for our dead.

This is the section where the friars have been buried since I joined the Capuchins. When I was a postulant we were on the back row. A few others who have died since then are buried elsewhere.

I prayed a special gratitude for those friars who had been ministers of the mercy of God for me in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That is to say, my confessors.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
And let perpetual light shine upon them.

Requiescant in pace.

Eating in a Hurry

Yesterday there came around in the Office of Readings the instructions for the Passover in Exodus chapter 12.

This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you will eat it in a hurry. It is the LORD’s Passover. (Exodus 12:11)

The Passover is eaten like those in flight,  fleeing from the oppression and slavery of Egypt, reeling with God's plagues, into the long journey that will one day bring God's people into the Promised Land.

All Franciscan Souls Ramble

On Saturday, in the Mass I celebrated with the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto and in the Liturgy of the Hours here at home, we had the Commemoration of all the Franciscan Faithful Departed, or All Franciscan or All Seraphic Souls.

Sister Death presides over the friars' cemetery, Yonkers, New York

I like how we Franciscans have our own All Souls Day. It's like a family thing; just as in a family folks might take care to have Masses celebrated for their dear departed, so we Franciscans have a liturgical day for ours. I forget how we do it at home in the USA, but here in Italy this day always gets scheduled for the first totally free liturgical day after November 2. So this year, having duly celebrated the days for Martin de Porres and Charles Borromeo, it was this past Saturday.

The gospel for the Mass was from St. John.

All Souls

The first entry in the Martyrology today:

The commemoration of all the deceased faithful, wherein devout Mother Church--having just encouraged the fitting celebration of all her children rejoicing in heaven-- busies herself interceding before God for all souls who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and who sleep in the hope of resurrection, and also for all those from the beginning of the world whose faith is known to God alone, that, purged of the contagion of sin, they may merit to enjoy the eternal beatific vision.

For the first time in my priesthood, I celebrated today all three Masses of All Souls, according to the privilege granted to all priests by the bull Incruentum altaris of Benedict XVI. The first, concelebrating at the regular conventual Mass, I offered for the deceased of my family. The second and third I offered alone (according to the directions of Fr. McNamara, whom I tend to trust on liturgical questions) for all the faithful departed and for the intention of the Holy Father, as is prescribed. (I still feel scruples about celebrating Mass alone, and wonder if simply desiring to offer the sacrifice is a 'just and reasonable cause,' but priests seem to do it. It's not something I do often.)

All of these things--prayers for the dead, Masses offered for them--speak to me of hope and of a merciful God. A God whose desire for our salvation goes beyond the limits of our earthly life, providing even a means to be purified of our sins after our bodily death. That means we call purgatory, without affirming much else about it.

May all the faithful departed, as well as all the holy souls from the beginning of time whose faith is known to God alone, by his mercy, rest in peace. Amen.

A Martyr's Prayer

Today I am working on translating a letter from the Minister General for the occasion of the next beatification of martyrs of the Spanish Civil War (November 21, 2015 in Barcelona), which will include twenty-six Catalan Capuchins. One of them, a certain Fr. Modest of Mieres, composed this prayer for the friars to recite together while they were on the run:

In this moment and certainly in the hour of death, if I should find myself in the right circumstance, with the help of the divine grace that I humbly trust you will grant me, I accept, O my God, willingly, in a way that is pleasing, humbly and with whole heart, the death that you wish to send to me. Whatever it should be, I unite my death to the most holy death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that in this moment is being renewed in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and so united I offer my death to you, O my God, beseeching you humbly that you would condescend to accept it kindly, despite my wretchedness and misery, joined as it is to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the remission of all my faults and sins, and of the faults and sins of all people.

Amen.

Read the whole letter here (PDF).

Trees, Horses, and Crayons

One of the curious things about praying the Scriptures in a new language is that you are constantly reminded of questions of translation. Today there were two big ones.

First, this morning I started my week as lector for Mass. Practicing and then proclaiming the first reading for today (Acts 5:27-32, 40B-41) I was a little thrown each time by the Italian of verse 30, which translates xulon as croce, 'cross.' I'm much more accustomed to the word 'tree' here, as it is in the RSV or as it is heard in the American lectionary today:

The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.

It makes a difference whether you say 'tree' or 'cross' there, doesn't it?

Second, something else reminded me a fun story.

Today in the Office of Readings we have, in the book of Revelation, the opening of the first six seals. I took a course in Revelation back at the former Weston Jesuit School of Theology, one of a handful from which I emerged feeling like it had helped me understand Christianity better at a basic level. As we progressed through the book, for a little fun, but also, I think, to help us keep in mind the visual nature of the narrative (it is, precisely, a vision after all) the professor would hand out photocopies of pictures of Albrecht Dürer's famous woodcuts of the various scenes. One of the students began to return to the following class, having colored in the Dürer with her crayons. It was very amusing to me to see her trying to show her coloring to the professor. It seemed to me like the good Jesuit, a distinguished scholar of the New Testament, didn't know whether to be charmed or appalled. Or maybe that was me projecting.

In the course of the coloring project, a problem eventually arose when we came to the opening of the fourth seal and the appearance of the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. The first three Horsemen had been easy enough to color: white, red, black. But the fourth, the chlóros horse, had presented a difficulty. In English, it's often rendered as 'pale,' but chlóros might also suggest something like green. Not knowing what to do, the poor student had left the horse empty of color, but had brought her box of crayons along to class hoping that the professor might, in his expert opinion, choose for her the one that most approximated chlóros. I don't remember if a decision was made.

Perhaps the old pale/green/pale-green question of the fourth horse is further complicated by the fact that nowadays we associate the color green with life and flourishing, not with the identity of the fourth Horseman, Death. If we didn't keep our dead in refrigerators or put makeup on them, maybe it would make more sense to us.

I was reminded of all this during the Office of Readings because in Italian the fourth Horseman is said to be verdastro, a word I'm sure I didn't know before this morning. My most valued dictionary says it means, 'greenish, greeny.' I didn't know that 'greeny' was a word, so I guess I've made progress in two languages today.

Overheard: Morituri Te Salutant

As is said of Italians, they identify not as much with the modern nation-state that is the Republic of Italy, but with their particular historical regions and even neighborhoods. This exceedingly random conversation provides an example:

An Italian friar, playing--I hope--comes at me with a knife.

Me: You may kill me on May 29.

Italian: Why May 29?

Me: On May 29, the prova will be complete.

(The prova is my one-year trial period in this assignment. According to my interpretation of my letter of obedience, once it is completed I am free to declare myself free of the assignment and hence, of any particular holy obedience. Thus, I could be free to die in good conscience, at least as far as religious obedience goes.)

Italian: I could not kill you on May 29.

Me: Why?

Italian: May 29 is the day we were liberated from the aggression of Frederick Barbarossa!

Ends, Naps, Death

I haven't minded much having to pray in Italian; it's a pretty language in its way and it's lovely for singing. Though in this latter aspect, it's not quite Latin. After six months here I think I'm fairly well acquainted with the liturgy in Italian, though I'm aware that I have not yet heard nor prayed the Roman Canon. Funny, isn't it? Someone more innocent might think that in the diocese of Rome the Roman Eucharistic Prayer would be heard more. Also, as I've posted about before, I find it curious and a little bit amusing that after all the fuss and workshops and bulletin inserts at home regarding the pro multis, here in the diocese of Rome I concelebrate at a Mass wherein the cup is still 'poured out for you and for all.' I also haven't bothered to learn the quiet prayers of the Mass in Italian. And since I can't remember how they go in the new English translation, I just say them in Latin.

There's just one thing in the Italian liturgy that really irks me: the blessing at the end of Night Prayer. I guess I'm attached to the English: May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.

To me nighttime looks forward to death. It's the end of the day, when our day ceases to be subject to revision. We did what we did, we were who we were, for better or for worse. And so with our death; when it comes it marks the moment when we have made up our minds who we were and for whom in this life, and that's it. No more revision, no more re-invention. (Of course we believe in a God so gentle and compassionate that even if we fail to fully accept our sanctification in this life, a means is provided to continue the process afterwards, and this is what we call the doctrine of Purgatory.)

To me the night also looks forward to death in its emptiness, as an empty space that awaits a new light.

And so it just seems right and just and fitting to me to pray for my death at the hinge between the day and the night. That's why I just can't get used to the Italian version of the blessing: Il Signore ci conceda una notte serena e un riposo tranquillo. "May the Lord grant us a serene night and a tranquil rest." Riposo? That's just doesn't do it for me.  'Buon riposo' is what the brothers say to each other after lunch, in the sense of 'have a nice nap.' Now there's nothing wrong with praying for a night of tranquil repose; I often pray that I might sleep during the night. But I'm not that worried about it. More and more, whether I sleep or not during the night I feel the same during the day. I'm much more concerned about death. Not that I'm really afraid of dying, at least I don't think I am; I just want to do it well.

To be fair, the Latin is almost another thing entirely: Noctem quietam et finem perfectum concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens. 'May the Almighty Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.' I'll admit, I do like the 'end' here. It has a wonderful ambiguity; am I praying that my end as a historical person (i.e. my earthly death) might be perfect, or am I praying for my final end in eternity? The answer, of course, is both or at least whatever it is I need to be praying for. That's the beauty of ambiguous, mysterious language in prayer. It's what grace needs it to be. Fine, I'm happy to pray for my end, but in the end I like the English the best, when I pray for a peaceful death.

The Saints Know Our Troubles

From the Roman Martyrology for today:

"At Urgell in Catalonia, Spain, Saint Hermengaudius [or Ermengol, etc.], bishop, among the glorious prelates who took care to restore the church in the lands freed from the yoke of the Moors, who, at the effort and work of building a bridge with his own hands, fell and broke his head between the stones."

He is, according to Italian Wikipedia, the patron saint of bridge builders.

Midian, Jerusalem, Hypothetical Wives, Death

Yesterday morning some brothers came to collect me from Garbatella and bring me, at last, here to the General Curia. I'm not quite landed yet, though. The room which is to be mine isn't ready, so I'm in a guest room for the weekend.

I spent the rest of yesterday exploring and just taking it all in. I wandered over to the Collegio Internazionale and found again the English-speaking hang-out room, to which I had been introduced one night back in May when I first arrived in Italy. I wandered outside and found the long, sketchy, lizard-crossed path that leads to the bus stop. I can already tell that this will be a rich environment for 'overheard' posts, which I have always been told are favorites. Here are some from yesterday, and one from this morning:

Wandering around the Collegio, I met some students. In the course of meeting them, one asked how old I was. I told him that I was forty.

"As Moses fled to Midian when he was forty, so you have come to us."


At supper, one of the brothers was--I think--accusing another of feigning ignorance of certain significances of the recently concluded general chapter.

"Are you the only foreigner in Jerusalem who does not know about the things that have happened here in these days?"


Looking forward to this morning, for which the gospel is Jesus' teaching on marriage in Mark 10, one of the brothers quizzed the friar who was scheduled to preach.

"What will you say tomorrow? Are you going to tell us that we may not abandon our wives?"


At breakfast (I missed the context on this one) on the brothers announced:

"We have never been as close to our death as we are right now, this morning."

The Little Differences

At supper tonight I and one of the younger friars got into a funny conversation about our cultural differences.

It started as he was preparing himself to read the provincial necrology at the end of the meal and he asked if we did the same thing in America. I said that we did, but that it didn't take as long because our province was a few hundred years younger.

From there he asked me about the typical times for common prayer in an American friary. He was surprised to hear that Morning Prayer is typically a little later than it is here, while Evening Prayer is a little earlier. In fact, the liturgical day is just longer here in Italy. (Between the beginning of Morning Prayer and the end of Evening Prayer there are thirteen hours here in the Assisi friary; at a typical friary in my province at home there might be only ten.) Or maybe it's not that the liturgical day is longer here but that the night is shorter, what with some of the night being shifted to the little riposo in the afternoon.

After speaking of prayer, of course we turned to meals. My young Italian confrere was surprised to hear--though strict correlations don't quite obtain--that our idea of breakfast was something like their supper, that our lunch was more like their breakfast, and that our supper was the closest thing we had to their midday meal. He was most shocked to hear that we have our supper as early as six o'clock, and often even earlier, especially in a friary serving a parish. "But then when do you go to bed?" he asked with surprised concern. Clearly he thought that the earlier time for supper would mandate an earlier time for bed, and he seemed relieved to hear that we didn't have to go to bed at eight. Not that I haven't done it myself, both here and at home, but I'm odd in certain respects.

Like Vincent Vega said, it's the little differences. They have the same stuff here that we have at home, but it's just, well, a little different.

The Light

The other day after Mass I got into a conversation with a certain man who had endless questions. He was inspiring in a way, in that grace had put a devout curiosity into his mind and he was running with it.

One of the things that interested him was the idea you hear sometimes about a certain light that is experienced near or at the moment of death. He wanted to know whether I believed in this light, and what I thought it was. I had to say that I hadn't thought about it much, but the conversation came back to me when I was praying through St. Irenaeus in the Office of Readings this morning: "...to follow the light is to enjoy the light. Those who are in the light do not illuminate the light but are themselves enlightened by the light. They add nothing to the light; rather, they are beneficiaries, for they are enlightened by the light."

Maybe it's not that the light comes for us at our death. Maybe the light is here now, but we are insensitive to it, its visibility obscured by our distraction, confusion, and sin.

Perhaps it's not that the light appears at the moment of our death, but that the occasion of our death provides a finality and clarity that allows us to see the light that was always there. Death is the end of personal history, the moment at which our existence ceases to be subject to any revision; we have been who we have been, and there is no longer any changing it. No more choice for good, whether in heroic virtue or in the unglamorous little moments of charity out of which true love is built, and no more surrendering to the law of sin and death, by which we insist on our alienation and misery in so many ways. Perhaps the clarity provided by this finality, this done-ness, clears enough of our distraction away so that we may see the light that was always there.

The good news is that we can follow the light without being able to make it out clearly. We can be enlightened by it even though it still seems invisible. Though this interior illumination remains obscure for us in this life, my suspicion and my hope is that the light revealed at death will be recognized as the same illumination, only more clearly and fully visible.

May the Light from Light, as cloudy as his illumination may seem to me now with all of my distraction, confusion, and sin, not only enlighten my soul but set it aflame with the Love for which I and every creature was first spoken into existence.

Life in Fraternity

Fraternity is one of the big Franciscan things. St. Francis, when the Lord "gave" him "some brothers" said that the Lord revealed to him that he (N.B. not 'we') should live "according to the form" of the holy gospel. Francis called fire and the sun his brothers, and water and the moon his sisters, praising God for the fraternal bonds between all God's creatures.

Sometimes we have a shallow idea of Franciscan fraternity, reducing it to something like conviviality or worse, co-dependence or the (un)happy intersection of the bad boundaries of one with unhealthy emotional needs of another.

Therefore, I always try to be grateful to God when I'm able to participate in a real fraternal moment. I experienced one over this past weekend. I went with some of the brothers to a funeral Mass for a friar's mother. The friar was my vocation director, the brother with whom I met when I was inquiring into the Order, who encouraged me to apply, and who handled my application.

I concelebrated the Mass, and as I prayed the Eucharistic Prayer, offering the Sacrifice for this woman I had never met, I realized that I had nevertheless known her. I had known her in the faith that she had handed on to her son, a faith that had given him the confidence in God to be strong with me about my vocation when I was having doubts about my application. I knew her as a member of the Body of Christ offered to God in that Mass, and in every Mass at which I have assisted or which I have offered by the anointing of the priesthood I have unworthily received.

Back when I was first looking into the Capuchins, I could never have known and would never have imagined that thirteen years later, in offering the funeral Mass for his mother, I would have an intense opportunity to be brother to one of the friars who had been such a brother to me. But God knew it.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our sister bodily Death, from whom no one living can escape.

New Translation: Temptations to Idolatry

The Christmas season having ended, we find ourselves again in the tempus per annum, unfortunately Englished as 'Ordinary Time.' My first--and very influential--liturgy teacher used to refer to the typical day of low solemnity as the 'rainy Tuesday in Ordinary Time.' And so here it is. As the first day with the new translation when one is free to offer 'any Mass' as the Ordo puts it, a 'feria of the iv class' in an older dispensation, I decided to pray one of the new Mass forumularies for the dead this morning, offering the Mass for the the recently deceased father of one of the friars. Requiescat in pace.

After Mass I was thinking about how the prayers seemed like an improvement, and how they were more supplicative and contained less presumption about the deceased having already arrived at the beatific vision. But you know what? When I went back and looked at the old prayers, they weren't much different. I thought I would be writing a post about how the new prayers better recognized continued purification after death and the need to pray for the dead on their continued journey to the fullness of salvation. I was going to sing the praises of the new translation, saying that it would help restore a pastoral consciousness of the Last Things. As it turned out, there wasn't much in the old prayers to accuse them of failing in these things.

So I guess one has to say that the widespread error of presumption with regard to the state of the departed after bodily death is not the fault of the liturgy, or at least of the liturgy as the Church presents it (How the liturgy is celebrated, mis-celebrated, and abused is another matter.) Conversely, then, one has to say that the new translation won't auto-magically fix the problem. Thus we arrive, by extension, at a general principle: the new English translation of the Roman Missal will not magically solve all the pastoral and theological problems with which the Church is afflicted.

The new Missal isn't a savior. We have one of those already.

On Rules, Perspective, and Humility

Massachusetts is famous for its traffic rotaries. In other places these are more often called traffic circles or roundabouts, but here it's always a rotary.

I never knew this until one recent day when I saw the name on a map I was trying to interpret for some disoriented tourists, but the rotary in my neighborhood is called Murray Circle. It stands at the intersection of the Arborway/Jamaica Way and Centre St., as the latter snakes its way from Jamaica Plain to West Roxbury. Directly to the south of the rotary is the Arnold Arboretum.

On the part of Centre St. on the West Roxbury side of the rotary there are a couple of sets of traffic lights that are alternately red and flashing yellow. A sign next to each set indicates their purpose. It says that the signals are timed to require frequent stops, or something like that. Inevitably, some sarcastic soul will have affixed another adjective to these signs, indicating that the stops are 'needless' or 'pointless.'

To a motorist, perhaps the pauses do seem pointless and needless. But to me, it is very helpful that the drivers speeding into the rotary from the south-east are occasionally stopped.

At least once I a week I offer Mass at the Poor Clare monastery on the other side of the rotary from where I live. I would much rather walk there, as I love the early-morning quiet and solitude. If there is a place where I am most likely to leave this world quickly and decisively in the course of my ordinary daily life, it's trying to cross the rotary where the southbound Arborway leaves it. There's a crosswalk there, but very few drivers respect it. For a significant part of the year, it's not even quite light out yet when I'm trying to cross the rotary around 6:30 in the morning. It's only because of the so-called pointless and needless stops that I occasionally have a chance to cross the rotary and get to Mass, as these stops pause the speeding traffic entering at the closest point to where I need to cross. And lest anyone protest that the stops going the other way out of the rotary remain pointless, these are good too, in the way that they slow down the traffic altogether so that someone may cross.

So, before we call arbitrary or pointless some rule we are asked to follow, may we humbly remember that perhaps our particular situation does not reveal the whole picture.

New Translation: Similitudini Mortis

On a rainy Tuesday in Ordinary Time--that was my first, and very formative, liturgy teacher's shorthand for a liturgical day of low solemnity--I have a tendency to use Eucharistic Prayer II. If the Mass is being offered for a deceased person or persons, and I have not the liturgical or pastoral option to offer Mass in one of the full formularies for the dead, I tend to add the embolism for the deceased during the prayer.

This little prayer is one of many improvements in the new translation. Here's the old version:

Remember N., whom you have called from this life. In baptism he (she) died with Christ: may he (she) also share his resurrection.

And the new one:

Remember your servant N., whom you have called (today) from this world to yourself. Grant that he (she) who was united with your Son in a death like his, may also be one with him in his Resurrection.

It is the conformity of our death to the death of Christ which is saving, a conformity that God has accomplished in the Son by emptying himself into the misery of our death-bound condition in Christ. Of course the 'death like his' language comes from St. Paul and refers most specifically to our baptism. The translators of the older version were surely trying to bring out this baptismal connection. Our baptism is our dying into the death of Christ, passing mystically into the new life of the Resurrection. The whole of our post-baptismal, eucharistic life is the working out and flowering of this Resurrection mystery, culminating in the final letting-go into God that is our bodily death. But bodily death means little to the Christian; after all, we have already died in baptism.

Nevertheless, in having prayed this prayer a couple times now in the new translation, I'm led to pray for all of those in this world who die a death like the Lord's in a more plain and immediate way: lonely, humiliated, in physical torment, abandoned by friends and even feeling abandoned by God. Offering the Mass that is the memorial and re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, I remember that is for such that the Compassion of God stretches forth from the Blessedness of the Trinity to live and die in us.

In Praise of the Sick Call Crucifix

In one of the parishes where I have been helping out, confessions are heard in a little room that probably used to be sacristy storage or a flower room or something like that. Sitting in there the other day (there were no customers) I was looking at the crucifix on the opposite wall. I noticed that it looked like one of those old-fashioned 'sick call' crucifixes. I had only seen them in pictures, so with all of my convert curiosity (may I never lose it, Lord!), I took it off the wall to investigate.

Sure enough, the crucifix proper slid up to reveal the cruciform base with holes for candles on the arms and a slot to display the crucifix on top. In the middle cavity were the two little candles and a tiny bottle that I supposed was for holy water (I couldn't tell if there was anything in it.) These were wrapped in cellophane with some folded paper. I was very curious to know what was on the paper, but I didn't want to open the little package.

I put the thing back together and returned it to the wall. As I continued to sit there, I just reflected on it as an object. (There still weren't any customers.) I began to think about how intense and effective a symbol this sick call crucifix could be in someone's home--the rituals and prayers for the occasion of death being contained within the image of the Lord's own passion and death.

Indeed, it is our sanctification and our salvation that our own death--whether we are talking about the death we live in because of sin or the bodily death to which it all tends--is gathered into the death of Jesus Christ. As an object of practical devotion, the sick call crucifix held this fundamental good news of our faith within its own practical design. The moment of prayer and sacrament offered at our death is contained in his. The sick call crucifix displayed reminds us that our bodily death, whenever it comes, is nothing to fear, because we already died in Christ at our baptism. Like the little candles hidden in the crucifix, our death has been hidden in Christ since that day.