It is often noted that traddy types are more observant than regular Catholics, but some time ago I heard an anecdote about an exception. (Since the context is the individual's funeral, I delayed posting it for a few years.)
The gentleman was no longer interested in going to church after all of the changes in the latter part of the last century, and this was distressing for his wife. An account of how this tension was resolved was presented at the funeral.
One of [the] granddaughters made a beautiful eulogy, at one point explaining that her grandpa didn't like to go to church, but her grandma wanted him to. So when grandma took grandpa to church, he translated all readings and hymns into Latin on the spot and read/sang them loudly that way, which caused grandma not to make him go to church anymore.
Being traddy in order to get out of going to church. That's a new one!
Riffing on the case of Dr. Tim Whatley, who was accused of converting to Judaism "just for the jokes," one of my classmates in the Order once mocked me with the accusation that I entered religious life "just for the bizarre stories."
The story of the Capuchin friary in Jerusalem is one such story.
Back in the 1930s, responding to the beginning of the twentieth-century flowering of Biblical studies, someone in the Order decided we ought to have a house of studies in Jerusalem, where brothers could live while they studied Sacred Scripture or patristics at the local institutes and universities. Ten years or so later, it was all ready to go.
But in 1947, before any friars actually studied there, it was commandeered by the British as a military headquarters as the British Mandate was coming to an end. Then, during the 1948 war, the Israelis took it over in the same way. Once independence was established, instead of returning our new house of studies to us, the Israelis turned it into a psychiatric hospital.
This continued for about fifty years. Israel paid a small rent to the Order for the use of our building, but did not raise it once the whole time.
However, in order not to lose the property through adverse possession, the Venice province of the Order kept a couple of friars assigned there the whole time, staying in small, adjacent building where the custodian and his mother lived as well!
At some point in the 1990s, someone decided that enough was enough and the Order hired a Jewish lawyer and sued the government of Israel. The judge not only returned the property to the friars, but awarded all the back rent, adjusted for time and inflation, back to 1948.
It will now be renovated and turned into a guest house for Capuchins and folks with them on pilgrimage to the Holy Places.
UPDATE: Fr. Kevin, the guardian, introduces the house:
Today at church they were giving out nice holy cards of the 'Miraculous crucifix that is venerated in parish basilica of St. Teresa on Corso d'Italia in Rome':
I've spent plenty of time in the basilica in the five years I've lived in this neighborhood, but I had not known that this crucifix was said to be miraculous. At first I noted the non-italiano standard spelling crocefisso. I checked with the Accademia della Crusca online and they say it's fine. But what struck me especially was the curious message on the back of the card:
I am the light, and you don't see me.
I am the way, and you don't follow me.
I am the truth, and you don't believe me.
I am the life, and you don't seek me.
I am the teacher, and you don't listen to me.
I am the boss, and you don't obey me.
I am your God, and you don't pray to me.
I am your great friend, and you don't love me.
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.
After morning Mass at our neighbor, the basilica of St. Teresa of Ávila, I returned to the house and entered the refectory. There I saw everything set up for the brothers' breakfast like any other day, except for one extraordinary thing: there was some salami. On a Friday.
In my seven years here, I have observed that Friday abstinence is one of the most invariable rules of Capuchin Italy. It is more unassailable than the Capuchin beard or the strict following of Franciscan poverty. It is even more durable than liturgical law that, when disregarded, results in what the Church warns is grave abuse. Capuchin Italy observes Friday abstinence on solemnities that fall on a Friday as well as on Easter Friday, which some might call incorrect or even impious. The only exception I have ever witnessed is when Christmas falls on a Friday, and that, of course, at the expressed wish of the founder.*
All that is to say that I was quite shocked to see the salami. I thought to myself that the Capuchin General Curia could not have descended to such a level of laxity over just one month of my absence for vacation. So I began to wonder: how long will it take, once the friars start to trickle in from their conventual Mass, for some friar, in his loving concern for the souls of the brothers, to remove the salami to a back refrigerator or some other hiding place?
So I timed it: six minutes and twenty-five seconds, which is a longer time than I would have guessed.
*When there was a discussion about not eating meat, because [Christmas] was on Friday, [St. Francis] replied to Brother Morico: "You sin, brother, when you call 'Friday' the day when unto us a child is born. I want even the walls to eat meat on that day, and if they cannot, at least on the outside they be rubbed with grease!"
He wanted the poor and hungry to be filled by the rich, and oxen and asses to be spoiled with extra feed and hay. "If I ever speak with the Emperor," he would say, "I will beg him to issue a general decree that all who can should throw wheat and grain along the roads, so that on the day of such a great solemnity, the birds may have an abundance, especially our sisters the larks."
(Thomas of Celano, 2nd Life of St. Francis, Chapter 151, FA:ED II, 374-375)
An Irish priest sent me this gem of a footnote on Capuchin ignorance from Ulrich L. Lehner's Monastic Prisons and Torture Chambers: Crime and Punishment in Central European Monasteries 1600-1800.
[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.
Over the last couple weeks a visiting friar has displaced me from my regular place in choir. Not a big deal, though I don't like my little choir-cubby ruffled.
One friar noticed my suffering and said,
'Well, brother, there are many displaced persons in Rome.'
Back on the feast of All Franciscan Saints, long-time internet friend and sometime fellow American in Rome Fr. Daren J. Zehnle tweeted this lovely image of some of said saints from St. Francis of Assisi church in Teutopolis, Illinois:
(It looks like a nice parish by the way. See their website here.)
That's St. Bonaventure, of course, to Our Lady's left. You can tell because of his red cardinal's hat, which he has rightly doffed in such heavenly company and deposited on his little cloud. So right away I wanted to know what his book says. You couldn't quite make it out in the photo, though you can tell that it says something. So I asked Fr. Daren to find out, and now he has come back with a closer photo, in which you can see that it says crucifixus.
Now I was intrigued. Certainly St. Bonaventure speaks often enough of the crucified, but usually--at least in my memory--in a declined form. I couldn't remember any instance of it in the nominative, as in the book in the picture.
But sure enough a little searching surfaced what must be the page of the book Bonaventure is holding open. It's from chapter nine of the Major Legend of St. Francis, on Francis's "ardor of charity and desire for martyrdom."
Christus Iesus crucifixus intra suae mentis ubera ut myrrhae fasciculus iugiter morabatur in quem optabat per excessivi amoris incendium totaliter transformari.
"Jesus Christ crucified always rested like a bundle of myrrh in the bosom of [St. Francis's] soul, into Whom he longed to be totally transformed through an enkindling of ecstatic love."
This weekend the clocks turn back here in Italy. Here they call Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time ora solare and ora legale, respectively. 'Solar time' and 'legal time.' The change in the fall is a week before that in the USA. Not that this affects me much, but I do notice that regularly expected emails start to arrive at different times, and I have to remember the difference when tuning into radio programs from home. In the spring the difference is two weeks.
So I was reminded of a cute story. One of the senior friars would go through some stress twice a year because he could never remember how to change the time on his watch. It was of the inexpensive, digital variety. Brethren were consulted, manuals were searched for online, etc., and eventually the biannual crisis would be resolved.
So one time I suggested to him, given that his watch was of a very inexpensive kind, why didn't he just get another one. He could set one to EST and the other to DST, and then twice a year he would only have to switch watches.
The friar seemed to appreciate the solution. But then he raised the following objection:
One of the brethren brought to my attention this excerpt from William Dean Howells's Venetian Life.
The islands near Venice are all small, except the Giudecca (which is properly a part of the city), the Lido, and Murano. The Giudecca, from being anciently the bounds in which certain factious nobles were confined, was later laid out in pleasure-gardens, and built up with summer-palaces. The gardens still remain to some extent; but they are now chiefly turned to practical account in raising vegetables and fruits for the Venetian market, and the palaces have been converted into warehouses and factories. This island produces a variety of beggar, the most truculent and tenacious in all Venice, and it has a convent of lazy Capuchin friars, who are likewise beggars. To them belongs the church of the Redentore, which only the Madonnas of Bellini in the sacristy make worthy to be seen.
On a Saturday morning one of the General Councilors of the Order was mopping his room. As I passed in the hallway, he remarked that in the olden days the General Definitors (as they were until recently called) would bring along to Rome a brother famulus to assist them with such things.
As I thought upon this as I started to clean my own room--it is a duty explicitly defined by the Statutes of the General Curia and customarily fulfilled on a Saturday--I began to wonder if it wasn't because the Church has largely abandoned the Roman Canon (e.g. Eucharistic Prayer I), and so no longer prays pro famulis, that the brothers were no longer found ready to be famuli.
One gives himself to obedience for the sake of some spiritual benefit, of course. And if the spiritual benefit disappears, what use is the obedience?
One of the brothers shared this fun story with me:
Br. So-and-so came to us after graduating from MIT. One time
back in 1952 I showed him an article I had written for my high school
magazine explaining in detail how the rocket scientists,
given enough money, could send a manned space craft into orbit around the
earth, and from there to the moon and back. He said: "You can
believe that science fiction stuff if you want, but take it from me, a
graduate of MIT, it can't be done. To escape from the gravitational pull
of the earth, you have to add more fuel, which adds more weight, which
requires more fuel. It just can't be done."
Now far be it from me to be a liturgical innovator, but yesterday I celebrated the Mass of a liturgical day previously unknown in the tradition of the Roman Rite, the Mass of Ash Sunday.
Here's how it happened.
It was my turn to go and celebrate at the chapel of a certain group of sisters. I am very grateful for my turns when they come around. The folks who come to the Mass there are of a certain age, and it reminds me a little bit of when I used to go for Mass at Monastery Manor and Finian Sullivan Tower back in Yonkers.
While I was setting up for Mass, Sr. Sacristan asked me if I would be willing to impose ashes for anyone who had missed out on Ash Wednesday. Sister had saved a little bowl of ashes just for this possibility. Now back in the parish I would probably have said no to such irregularity, but at this place I'm a guest, I can see that some of the people (being of a certain age, as I said) have mobility issues, and I know how big a deal it can be for people to 'get their ashes.'
So I imagined that at the end of the Mass I would make an announcement, inviting anyone who had not received their ashes on Ash Wednesday to stick around a moment, whereupon I would go to the sacristy and put aside the chasuble so as to mark this extraordinary ash imposition as something apart from the Mass of the First Sunday of Lent.
It didn't happen that way.
As soon as the Liturgy of the Word was completed with the presidential prayer at the end of the Universal Prayer, Sr. Sacristan came up the aisle with the ashes in order to remind me of what I had agreed to do. So there it was. I turned to the assembly and said that if there was anyone who had not received ashes on Ash Wednesday, I could impose them now. One person got up, then a few more, and after another moment the whole assembly was in line for ashes (except for the two or three sisters.)
When I concluded the imposition of Ashes for Ash Sunday, I went to the sacristy and washed my hands (which is much easier with the dry ashes they use in Italy, as opposed to the ash and water paste commonly used in the States) and then went to the altar to continue with the offertory of what had been the First Sunday of Lent.
So I guess, the birthday of the American brother having come around, the brethren wondered what special thing they might do for him. The result was my finding this when I arrived at my place in the refectory for dinner:
And according to the holy Gospel, let it be licit to eat of all foods that are set before them. (Rule, III:14)
Not for nothing, but the other brethren had gnocchi and steak.
Today at the Poor Clares I offered the Mass of St. Hyacinth Mariscotti, about whom I know nothing.
Sister sacristan gave me the following brief account of Hyacinth's life and holiness, from which I drew great encouragement.
Here's what sister told me. I have not checked any of it, but I do try to capture sister's hilarious tone in telling the story:
When Hyacinth was growing up, she went to a certain convent school. The sisters found her to be a difficult and conceited child. Everyone found her very trying and annoying, and the sisters were glad to be rid of her when she graduated.
Having grown up, she wanted to marry some important man, but was spurned. Out of spite, she decided to become a nun. (I guess there were wider limits on what counted as a 'vocation story' in those days.) When she returned to the convent seeking entrance, the sisters were alarmed. Somehow or other she was admitted, and the sisters discovered that the difficult and conceited child had grown into an even more difficult and conceited woman.
After some years of religious life, Hyacinth had some sort of illness, and had a conversion experience. She apologized to the sisters for all of the years she had been such a pain, started to do penance, and thereafter became an exemplary religious.
I find this story very hopeful. May God grant me to accept such a grace of conversion!
Two years later I find myself in a very different sort of life, one aspect of which is praying the Divine Office from the Liturgia delle ore secondo il rito romano e il calendario serafico, i.e. the Italian version of the Roman-Franciscan Liturgy of the Hours, and it turns out to have a little blurb on good old Hyacinth. It seems she was an Orsini, which is no small thing, and was baptized Clarice.
A quote claims to be from a "little diary" in her own hand, in which Hyacinth describes the first fifteen years of her religious life, saying that it was "of many vanities and stupidities in which I have lived in sacred religion."
Depending on how you count, I'm up to either twelve and a half or thirteen years of religious life, so there's still hope that I might accept the grace of conversion from a life of vanity and stupidity!
Verse [1] 14: The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
116. Note first the "flesh" here stands for man figuratively, according to Matthew's text, "No flesh would be saved" (Mt. 24:22), and "No flesh will be justified from the works of the law" (Rm. 3:20). The Evangelist preferred to say "The Word was made flesh," rather than man, to commend the goodness of God who assumed not only man's soul, but also his flesh. In this he strikes at the pride of all those who when asked about their relatives respond by pointing to one who holds an important position, but are silent about their own descent. When asked, they say they are nephews of such and such a bishop, prelate, dean or the like. There is the story of the mule who when asked who his father was answered that his uncle was a thoroughbred, but out of shame hid the fact that his father was an ass.
From his commentary on John, quoted from Edmund Colledge, OSA and Bernard McGinn, trans., Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, (Paulist, 1981, Classics of Western Spirituality series). The editors note that the story is from Aesop.
As I walked into the breakfast room this morning, the other American in the community gave me the standard festive greeting in Italian, 'Buona festa!'
Grasping about in the dimness of my consciousness, the first thing I thought of was not Thanksgiving, but the feast of St. James of the Marches.
Indeed, I'm a little scandalized that we are not observing St. James today, who for reasons I couldn't possibly fathom comes to us as an optional memorial. But I guess one must admit a diversity of opinion regarding who may consider himself a proper heir of the Observant reform.
St. James, pray for us! And a blessed Thanksgiving to everyone at home.
