Retreat Report

Last week I was at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts for my annual retreat. I've been there for retreat many times, but had not been for twelve years (living in Italy, Covid, and so on). It was a very good week with lots of time for prayer, reading, and reflection.

The monks made some improvements to the retreat house over its Covid closure, including an expansion of the retreatants' dining room, which used to be a little cramped when there was a full house. They also cleaned up the inner courtyard, which, if I remember correctly, was rather overgrown before. It's lovely now and you can sit out there on a nice day.

I had one of the rooms on the west side of the retreat house that have a little tiny enclosed backyard, I guess so you can pretend you're a Carthusian. The weather was good all week so I was able to leave my back door open at night (there's a screen door) and enjoy the cool air and the sounds of nature.

The back door to my room from my little backyard

It was good to see the monks again, and I recognized a few of them from past visits, though I don't know their names for the most part. They had aged, as I suppose I have as well. One monk introduced himself to me when we were cleaning up after lunch one day, and explained how he had followed his brother, a TOR Franciscan, into religious life. He said that he had been in the monastery for fourteen years, which means he may have been a novice the last time I was on retreat there. He then explained how he had only recently been ordained a priest, within the last year. I thought of asking him for his blessing, but I was worried about the other retreatants getting the idea and it becoming a scene. But maybe I should have done it. As old Fr. John Proppe, may he rest in peace, once told me, "The blessing of a new priest is worth wearing out two horses."

I saw that there was a novice. Novices stick out in choir with the white scapular. On Thursday there also appeared in choir a tall young man in secular clothes, with a beard that would make a Capuchin novice proud. Maybe he's discerning. One time when I was walking into church I saw the novice helping him find his place in the book, and that gave me delight. Let's pray for the two of them and thank God for their vocations.

The meals were in silence, of course. On my past retreats we have listened to an audio book, but this time it was music. On one day we started listening to N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography, but after that it was back to music. There was no explanation for this. I was a little disappointed because I had found the beginning of the book entertaining. Then I thought I would buy the book and finish it myself when I got home, but I haven't done it yet. I have to decide if I'm curious enough for $15.95 (Kindle edition). Maybe the monks and the publisher are in cahoots. They get you hooked on a book, and so forth.

There were two special events during the week. The first was the solemnity of the dedication of the abbey church on the first full day of the retreat.

At the first vespers of this observance, which was the first evening of the retreat, we retreatants were pretty confused about where we were in the psalter, but we seemed to have figured it out by lauds in the morning. I overheard someone saying that there were certain candles around the church that are only lit on this day each year.

The second special event was the resumption of communion under both kinds, presumably post-Covid. While the priest monks were vesting for Mass on the last morning of the retreat, a monk approached us retreatant-concelebrants in the corner of the sacristy where the albs and stoles are set up for retreatants. (When you register for a retreat, you are asked your height so that an appropriate alb can be set out for you.) The monk instructed us that, starting on that day, we would not receive by intinction, but should consume the host and then drink from the chalice. This went fine for us concelebrants when the time came, but something seemed to go wrong with the logistics of the communion of the other monks and the people in the visitors' galleries. I saw the abbot gesturing to the various priest monks who were ministering Holy Communion as if to redirect them to certain places. He also seemed to be trying to get the attention of the principal celebrant as he descended to the monks and retreatants who were lined up, but in vain. At this the abbot let out what seemed like a sigh of resignation. So it's not just friars, I thought. At that moment I recalled a previous conversation with the monk who was the principal celebrant, in which he exclaimed, "I am a free dancer." It seemed like an odd thing for a Trappist to say. That story is back in this post. 

There was a full house of eleven retreatants. Five of us were priests, or at least five concelebrated at Mass. Of the other six I gathered that two or three were permanent deacons. There seemed to be a couple of groups of two or three on retreat together. Retreatants there together always means more talking, unfortunately, and we were admonished about this in the middle of the week. It was far, however, from the worst group in this regard I have been with on retreat at the abbey. That's another story. I seemed to remember that at previous last breakfasts before departure we were allowed or instructed to talk so one could meet the others he had been praying with (and hopefully for) all week, but in any case it didn't happen this time. It was the usual music, so I finished the retreat without getting to know any of the other retreatants. I prayed for them, though, during the week, for their openness to and discernment of the graces God desired for them during our time at the abbey.

Whit Monday and Tuesday

Every year at this time there are the usual lamentations about the loss of the Pentecost Octave and the renewal of certain legends thereon.

For myself, I remain without a strong opinion. On the one hand, I think an octave is a good, solid, traditional practice that could put Pentecost (rightly) up there with Easter and Christmas. On the other hand, Pentecost is preceded by a novena, the original and primal novena even, and maybe this holds that function and should be privileged as such.

In any case, somewhat à propos of the question, there's an interesting note in my Italian ordo:

In the places where, according to custom, the faithful participate in the Mass on the Monday and Tuesday after Pentecost, the readings of Pentecost Sunday are used again, or those proposed in the Rite of Confirmation are proclaimed.

(Without prejudice, of course, to the Monday now being the obligatory memorial (with the power to displace any other obligatory memorial) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.)

Personally, I don't have any experience of the Pentecost Monday and Tuesday that the Italian ordo mentions. Maybe folks who do can share about them in a comment.

Gaudete et exsultate: The Examination of Conscience

May the Lord set the Church free from these new forms of gnosticism and pelagianism that weigh her down and block her progress along the path to holiness! These aberrations take various shapes, according to the temperament and character of each person. So I encourage everyone to reflect and discern before God whether they may be present in their lives. (62)

In obedience to the Holy Father, I have tried to make this examination of conscience that he encourages. And I admit that I feel rather stuck at least with regard to how I guess it is supposed to apply to me.

(Just as a caveat I want to say that in my opinion the terms pelagianism and gnosticism are used rather loosely in the document. But that would be another post.)

Of the dangers presented under "new pelagians," the one that I suppose would apply to me is "a punctilious concern for the Church’s liturgy." (57)

Blessed Maria Francesca Rubatto

Today in Rome it's the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a feast day because she is one of the many patron saints of Europe, except where I happen to be offering Mass this week, at the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto, where today is the feast of their foundress, Blessed Maria Francesca (Anna Maria) Rubatto (1844-1904).

Mother Rubatto

Their General Curia is on the other side of the Villa Borghese from where we are and the priests here who sign up take weekly turns offering the weekday Mass there. I've appreciated getting to know them; they seem like a great community. It's too bad we don't have them in the U.S.A.

So I could prepare for the Mass today, the sisters lent me a copy of the liturgy for the day. Since not much was going on in the office--August in Rome you know--I made a translation of the reading offered for the Office of Readings.

The Many Patron Saints of Europe

One of the things you notice living the liturgy here in Europe is that they have a lot of patron saints. Six, in fact. And so their feast days come around with some regularity:

• Cyril, monk, and Methodius, bishop, February 14
• Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor, April 29
• Benedict, abbot, July 11
• Bridget of Sweden, founder (and mother of a saint, Catherine of Sweden), July 23
• Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr (Edith Stein), August 9

Seeing that tomorrow is one of these feast days, I did a little looking around and discovered that all of this heavenly patronage is of fairly recent articulation.

(Franciscan) Liturgical Abuse Rant

Recently I've had some occasions to think about liturgical abuse.

Some of it, I think, is just pride and vainglory on the part of clergy. I need to do things my way. I need to get my theological or, horribile dictu, political tagline or slogan into the Mass, etc. But like most expressions of clerical vainglory and pride, these are often more laughable than dangerous.

But there's another form of liturgical abuse I've encountered in my Catholic life, in certain religious houses, schools, and parishes. It's the liturgical abuse that derives from the intuition that the liturgy as the Church presents it does not properly express who we are as a community, and therefore has to be adjusted or changed to fit our needs and identity.

Perhaps my experience of life as a Franciscan friar provides an example.

Wretched Flesh Heaped Up In A Corner

Today was my turn for the Sunday Mass at the Bethlemite Sisters' old folks home. I enjoy taking my turn. The Mother Superior leads the singing from the back pew with her very particular voice. The Sister Sacristan is very funny. To save washing I guess, she has a large collection of little boxes in the sacristy in which she keeps each priest's purificator from Mass to Mass. Mine used to be labeled P. Carlo tedesco, "Fr. Charles [the] German," to distinguish me from my confrere P. Carlo italiano. I guess at first they thought I was a German. Now my box says P. Carlo tedesco USA.

USA! USA!

Anyway, today I think it was the hottest Mass I had ever celebrated. The weather report says it's only 90 degrees out today, so that's not hot enough or Italians--left to their own judgment--to turn on the air conditioning. (For Italians and air conditioning, see various reflections easily searchable online, which I need not duplicate for fear of falling into fraternal uncharities.) I don't think it was any cooler in the chapel.

Lawrence of Brindisi on the Vestments

I suppose my deficiencies as a Capuchin friar are many. For example, I like to say that my physical inability to grow a proper Capuchin beard is my Pauline thorn. Another one is that I have never really known--and nor has any confrere been able to tell me clearly--why the lone doctor of the Church of our Capuchin reform, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, should be especially a doctor of the Church.

So for a long time I have thought that I ought to read what he wrote and find out for myself. Therefore it was my delight to discover one day that the house where I find myself now has a set of St. Lawrence's works in the English translation of Vernon Wagner, OFM Cap. So as I have had time and inspiration, I have started to read some of them.

Here's a fun passage on the meaning of the priestly vestments from the sermon, "The Eucharist as Sacrifice."

But the priestly vestments of the Church are totally representative of the mystery of redemption. Do you not think that a vested priest resembles Christ? Do you not see that the thin amice that covers his head is the most pure flesh of Christ which covered the Word of God? God is the head of Christ. (1 Cor 11:3) And the alb which is totally white, can it represent anything besides the innocence and the immaculate holiness of the entire life of Christ? It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens. (Heb 7:26) Does not the cincture express what was said by Isaiah: Justice shall be a band around his waist. (Is 11:5) And does not the maniple speak to you of the indomitable patience of Christ throughout his entire life and especially in his passion? Does not that stole around his neck appear to you as a symbol of that yoke which Christ spontaneously took upon his shoulders in obedience to his Father in order to suffer and die for our salvation? For us Christ became obedient to death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:8) And does it not seem to you that the chasuble, which is a single piece of cloth but divided into two parts, one in front and the other in back, represents the Church old and new, one in faith, two by reason of various rites and customs, both signed with the cross, because both and the other are redeemed by the power of the cross of Christ and by Christ on the cross? O what great mysteries are contained in the Mass!

(St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Feastday Sermons, trans. Vernon Wagner, OFM Cap. (Delhi: Media House, 2007), 633)

It's interesting how Lawrence identifies the stole with the yoke of Christ, while the vesting prayers locate this association with the chasuble.

Anaphora

I begin to realize that this religious life is made of different seasons. At the beginning were the first steps (and missteps!) in praying and living in community. Then there was the settling into the longer period of studies, with its own particular spiritual delights and pitfalls. Then the time of being a new priest in a parish, a time lush with people, variety, and spiritual gifts, but also capable of producing great theological and pastoral frustrations. Now--and for almost four years now!--I have the life of a secretary in the General Curia, a more hidden kind of life, closer to the interior of the brotherhood of the Order, more monastic in both its spiritual opportunities and dangers.

Get Up, Lazy

Just some thoughts for Laetare Sunday. Rejoice, Jerusalem, and come together, all you who love her.

If we haven't done so well with Lent so far, St. Augustine, in the Office of Readings today, reminds us that there is still time:

Get up, lazy! The Way himself has come to you and roused you from sleep; if then you have been roused, get up and walk.

We still have time to make something of our Lent. On this day especially we remember that rejoicing in the Lord is our strength. (Nehemiah 8:10)

The end of the second reading at Mass (if we're using Year B) from Ephesians also comes to our help in this regard, reminding us that the good works of our Lent are not our own:

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

The 'good works' have been prepared in advance. And what is this? It is the one good work that is the passing of Jesus Christ from death to life. In Holy Communion we receive this Passover of the Lord into our bodies and into our lives. The passage from the misery of sin that we have insisted upon for ourselves and one another to the life of the new creation has come to make a dwelling in us and its power has become available to us, that we may be transformed in it and surrender to God's work of transforming the world through us as members of Christ's Resurrected Body.

This is what it means for us to be the Church of God, that we may we live in the work of salvation God has prepared and accomplished in Jesus Christ.

The Glorious Exchange

They recommended it to us when we were students, but I've rarely preached on one of the orations for a Mass. But I did on Monday (December 29) so taken I was with the Prayer over the Gifts (is that what it's called in English?):

Receive, Lord, our gifts,
which exercise a glorious exchange,
that, offering what you have given, we may win you yourself.

That's my translation. Maybe someone can post how the English really goes (I don't have an English missal here) and we can see how close I got.

That 'glorious exchange' is the joy of Christmas. We who have so little to give receive a gift greater than we can contain or comprehend: God himself. In the mystery of the Incarnation, God abandons his divinity into our humanity, lifting it into the mysterious inner life of the Blessed Trinity himself. This is the gift of which St. John speaks in the Gospel of Christmas Day: "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God; who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13) Our rebirth in God becomes available through the birth of the Word of God as one of us.

When we realize the depth and greatness of the gift we have received in Jesus Christ, no response makes sense but to give ourselves totally to him. Our giving of ourselves to God remains a gift ever meager and poor; God's gift of himself to us remains ever greater than we can think or imagine. As St. Francis puts it in the Letter to the Entire Order, "Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally."

Second Sunday After Christmas

Journeying through my twenty-second Christmas season since my baptism, I find myself celebrating a liturgical day for the first time, namely the Second Sunday after Christmas. In the U.S.A. the second Sunday after Christmas is Epiphany, but here in Italy--so as not to offend the Befana, I'm sure, such that she brings you coal instead of candy--Epiphany remains on its traditional date of January 6. Last year, my first Christmas in Italy, January 6 fell on a Sunday.

So I was very curious to experience the Mass of this day which I had not known until now.

Gaudens Gaudebo

I was relieved yesterday by the resolution of a liturgical dubium that had been troubling me. Everyone was acting as if today, December 8, was going to be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception when it seemed to me that it should be the Second Sunday of Advent. After all, consulting the 'table of liturgical days' in the front of your breviary or missal clearly reveals that a Sunday of Advent enjoys precedence over almost everything, including solemnities of Our Lady.

On the Way with the Empress

This blog has been pretty quiet lately. The truth is that I had something of a rough landing back here in Rome; as soon as I got back I caught a cold. Combined with the jet lag, it made for some miserable days. For three nights I was up at midnight, no longer able to sleep and troubled by one of various, persevarating fever/anxiety dreams. If Martin Luther said that Romans were 'polished deceivers,' I have found this to be quite true regarding Roman colds. At the beginning you think, 'O.k., I have a cold, but this one doesn't seem like it will be so bad.' But then, on day three or so, it gets quite yucky.

Fortunately, things here are still more or less in a mode of summer quiet. In these days we have been observing the orario super-estivo, the 'super summer schedule.' This means, among other things, that instead of the regular observance of Morning Prayer at 6:30, a period of meditation following, and then Mass at 7:15, we just have Mauds* at 7:15.

In the celebration of Mauds, the psalmody of Morning Prayer replaces the Penitential Act of the Mass. Thus, the presider has to manage somehow the somewhat awkward liturgical seam between the greeting after the Sign of the Cross, The Lord be with you... and the beginning of the psalmody. Being attentive to such things, I'm always observing how the various priests do this, thinking on what might be the best way, given that that neither the Missal nor the Liturgy of the Hours (as far as I can tell) gives any direction. When it was my turn to be principal celebrant last Sunday, I kept it simple and only said something like, 'Dear brothers, let us begin our Sunday celebration, praising God with the psalmody.' I don't know I feel about that, though. It's the sort of liturgical line that reminds one that he is offering Mass without the deacon that ought be there to give such liturgical monitiones.

In any case, the friar who ended up as presiding celebrant for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross today has won this little challenge as far as I'm concerned. After the Sign of the Cross and the greeting, he said something like this:

'Dear brothers, we celebrate today the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. With the Empress Helena we are on pilgrimage to the Holy Land; she to the earthly Jerusalem, we to the heavenly one by means of praying the psalms.'


*Since the Roman rite seems to have no proper name for it, 'Mauds' is the name I give to the liturgy that results when Mass is combined with Morning Prayer, a portmanteau of 'Mass' and 'Lauds.' For more information, see my post, "On the Various Forms of Prass.'

with blessed Joseph, her Spouse

I must be a little out of it, or busy, or preoccupied, or distracted--'all of the above' perhaps--to have missed something as sweet and lovely as the addition of St. Joseph to the Eucharistic Prayers last month.

It's a beautiful thing for the whole Church Universal of which St. Joseph is patron; that is, the Church at rest in Heaven, the Church suffering the purifying hope of purgatory, and the Church here on earth, still struggling on the earthly pilgrimage. But it's also a particular joy for those of us who have a devotion to St. Joseph.

Proper Calendar of the Diocese of Rome

Here in Rome today is the feast of Pope St. Leo IX, who is remembered mostly for being pope at the time of the mutual excommunication of the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054. It was the occasion of my discovering something I've been mildly interested in finding since being here: a proper calendar for the diocese of Rome. I don't know how up to date it is; one notices right away that it isn't recent enough to include Pope Blessed John Paul II. Of course there are a lot of saints that also appear on the universal calendar but are celebrated at a different level of solemnity in Rome. And, of course, I can't help but point out the presence of two Capuchins.

Nevertheless, here it is, after the jump. Optional memorials are in italics, feasts in capitals, solemnities in boldface capitals, como Dios manda.

Black Smoke Rant

Maybe it's a random thing to rant about, but I was disappointed with the first black smoke of the Conclave last night. Not that I expected it to be anything but black, but it just seemed to be a little over the top in its volume and blackness, billowing away long after everyone had gotten the point.

Sede Vacante 2013, Day 1

Here in Rome, of course, the pope is our local bishop, so as of suppertime last night we have neither.

That's a new situation for me as a Catholic. There's only been one other papal interregnum since my baptism, that of April 2005. In those days I was living in Boston and we were very happy with our local bishop, the still only recently arrived and not yet Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley.

Fortunately, by divine or human design (or some mysterious combination thereof; oh, the mystery of Christianity!) the friar to whom it fell to be first concelebrant for Eucharistic Prayer II this morning was not only a real Italian (though a Milanese, not a Roman) but also someone who seems pretty careful about liturgy.

And so went the beginning of the intercessions:

Ricordati, Padre, della tua Chiesa diffusa su tutta la terra:
rendila perfetta nell’amore
in unione con il nostro Papa N.,
il nostro Vescovo N., e tutto l’ordine sacerdotale.

Which, in English, would go...

Remember, Lord, your Church, spread throughout the world, 
and bring her to the fullness of charity, 
together with N. our Pope and N. our Bishop and all the clergy.

Clever or Corny?

Well, there's a creative tension in which I have long and bemusedly dwelt. But this past weekend it also occurred to me as a question about something in particular with regard to liturgical planning.

Up until now in my religious life, I have never lived in a place where the liturgy runs like such a well-oiled machine. In most places, God bless them, I have experienced the liturgy as a functioning machine, though perhaps in need of some oil. Sometimes it's been a machine for which somebody seems to have lost the manual. Sometimes it's been a machine with missing parts, other times a machine into which someone has tried to fit some ill-fitting replacement part, either homemade or taken from some experimental prototype found among the pet projects of a deceased mad scientist. Sometimes it's even been a time machine.

Anyway, fun metaphor. But I digress.

Of Bridesmaids and Tabernacles

Making the rounds on Facebook today was a picture of a group of bridesmaids. Wearing strapless dresses and photographed from behind while sitting in a pew in church, the viewer might easily imagine that the poor things were wearing nothing at all. Of course I was amused; many times I have endured the jarring experience of observing a group of bridesmaids while presiding at a wedding, unable to recognize the anxious creatures as continuous with the group of pretty young women I had met in the same role two evenings before at the wedding rehearsal, so transformed they were by unflattering dresses, fussy hairdos, and too much makeup.