RIP: Fr. Raphael Iannone, OFM Cap.

Homily for the funeral Mass of +Fr. Raphael Iannone, OFM Cap.

This is a humbling task. Certainly there are many of you, friars and otherwise, who knew Fr. Raphael better than I did. I mostly knew him as our postulant director at St. Michael’s, and as I reflected on what to say today, three memories of Fr. Raphael came to mind from that time.

First, let me tell you how I hit it off with Fr. Raphael at the beginning of the postulant year. Before this, when we were candidates, we had many of our discernment weekends at the old St. Francis friary in Garrison. Taking it all in on those stays, I noticed, among many other things, the images of the Capuchin saints in the hallways of the place. Often they had a crucifix. That’s easy, I said to myself, I have a crucifix. But they also often had, on a desk or somewhere around, a skull as a memento mori. That I didn’t have. So before entering the postulancy program, I looked in a science teacher supply catalog and ordered myself a realistic-looking plastic skull.

Then, when I was moving into St. Michael’s, Fr. Raphael saw the skull on my desk and asked me about it.

I replied, “I saw the skulls in the pictures of the Capuchin saints and I thought you needed one.” He looked at me, I looked at him, he looked at me, and then he just burst out laughing. I felt accepted right away. Fr. Raphael had the gift of making you feel that, accepted.

Here’s the second memory. Early on in the postulancy year my mother came to visit the friary. Now my family isn’t Catholic, so this whole friar thing that I’ve done with my life was a curious unknown to them. But this has never been a concern; the friars have always been friendly and hospitable, regular people. (This in itself taught me something about this group, about its generosity and openness.)

So my mother came down to St. Michael’s to see the place and have supper with us postulants and the friars. A few days later I called her to check in about it. How did she find the visit?

“Oh,” she said, “it was delightful. Everyone was so nice, they gave me a glass of wine, and both Fr. Bill (the other postulant director) and Fr. Raphael gave me a kiss. But I think Fr. Raphael meant it more.”

You can see it, right? Fr. Raphael just had that classic, Franciscan, earthy goodness.

My third memory is from closer to the end of the postulant year. I was walking by Raphael’s room, which was a sight in itself–the huge desk in the middle of the room, placed at a curious angle to the rest of the space, what he called his ‘rock collection’ over in a corner, and the World Wrestling Federation throw rug adorning the floor.

But that day there was an unusual sight: Fr. Raphael sitting behind the desk, looking uncharacteristically subdued and pensive. Was he ok? Should I ask? Maybe that’s not my place. He’s the director and I’m a postulant. He’s the guardian and I’m not even a friar yet. Maybe I should get one of the friars to see if he’s ok?

By God’s grace, the courage came, and I went in and asked Fr. Raphael if he was ok. For his part, he just opened up. He was upset because he had to tell one of the postulants to go home.

See, Fr. Raphael loved us, postulants in his charge, he really loved us. And it gave him great pain to have to tell one of us it was time to depart from the formation program.

As I’ve reflected from time to time over the years on this brief encounter between me and Fr. Raphael, I’ve come to realize that it was an important moment in my initial formation, in my learning about our Capuchin charism of evangelical fraternity, gospel brotherhood.

Because at that moment it was less a meeting between a guardian and a brother in the house, between a director and a postulant, and more just an encounter between two disciples of Jesus Christ, one who was bearing the cross of that day–that is to say the intersection of love and suffering in his own consecrated life–and this is also important, willing and vulnerable, like the Lord himself in the gospel we heard, to be seen in that intersection of agony and love–and another disciple given the grace to witness and give reverence to that embrace of the cross.

In this I learned that part of our charism, our mission as lesser brothers, is just that, to encounter, witness, and revere the intersections of love and suffering among ourselves and in the people and places we live in and serve, for this is to encounter and revere the Cross of Jesus Christ, the Cross which is the Sacrifice that saves the world.

Thank you, Fr. Raphael.

For the obituary, click here.

RIP: Fr. Stanley Marrow, SJ

(Original post from 2012)

Today there was news of the death of one of our favorite teachers, Fr. Stanley Marrow, SJ. A seemingly cantankerous but really very gracious old Iraqi, every student he ever had is full of his sayings.

The last time I saw Stanley, on a visit to the old Jesuit home, he showed me a manuscript that he had just completed. A commentary on 1 Corinthians, I think it was. He remarked how nobody would publish it. Not the conservative presses, he said, because his exegesis proved the non-existence of the sacrament of penance, and not the liberal ones, because he insisted on calling God 'Father.' In this, as in everything else, he was the consummate iconoclast. He was very insistent on the God the Father thing. When he thought our more progressively-styled school Masses were ashamed of it, he declined to attend, saying that he worshiped a different God. I remember once when he did come to a school Mass, he remarked that the music sounded like "something from a Moroccan whorehouse."

During the same visit that I mentioned above, Stanley told me that he was praying for death. But, he said, the answer to his prayers thus far had only been, "Please stay on the line; your business is important to us." 

Underneath all the humor, though, was a very serious scholar of the Scriptures, and that's something we younger folks sometimes forget. You don't just get to be an iconoclast. You have to work for the privilege, and work long and hard.

When I was a new priest, Stanley sent me one of the most beautiful and encouraging notes I have ever received:

Before all else, congratulations! One of my fellow-ordinands, a man of extreme emotional reserve, remarked after the ceremony, "Now I know what Rahner means when he speaks of the 'physical redundancy' of grace." I shall offer my Mass for you some day this week, and ask the "author of our calling" to make your priestly ministry the unfailing source of your peace and joy. God has blessed you with an abundance of gifts, and the great beneficiary of that abundance will be those he entrusts to your pastoral solicitude. May you find in your selfless service of them the infinite satisfaction of saying, "We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty."

The quotes could go on and on. But I always respected how he responded when he was asked how he saw his work as a professor of Sacred Scripture: he said that it was his mission to minimize the damage his students were going to do to God's people.

Requiescat in pace.

2025 UPDATE: I missed this until now, but the manuscript mentioned above was published. In the foreword, Fr. Thomas Stegman, SJ (may he also rest in peace), alludes to the difficulties.

Paul for Today's Church: A Commentary on First Corinthians

RIP: Joe Zepf

The other day I happened to see that Joseph R. Zepf had passed away at the age of ninety-nine. He was the best spiritual director I have ever had. He was wise, practical, and funny.

For his obituary, click here. I had no idea he had led such a rich life.

I connected with Mr. Zepf at some point in the later 1990s, during the period in between my times in religious life. In those days the Archdiocese of New York had a very neat spiritual direction matchmaking service. You went somewhere in Rye, New York and met with this sister. She asked you about your prayer life, its forms and rhythms and so on. She asked about your favorite saints and what spiritual books had most influenced you. Then she said, well, give me some time to pray and reflect on this. In my case she called a couple of weeks later, said that she was confident she had discerned the right director for me, and sent me to Mr. Zepf.

I met with him at a parish office in Port Chester, New York. I don't remember what parish it was. It was a bit of a drive from West Haven, Connecticut where I was living at the time, but very much worth it.

Those soon became the days when I was thinking about applying to the Capuchins. I had left the novitiate of the OFM at Christmas 1995 and though I continued to desire Franciscan religious life, the difficulties and confusions surrounding that experience had left me skittish about trying again.

One time I asked Mr. Zepf directly, did he think I should join the Capuchins?

"How should I know? If it's going to help you get closer to Jesus, then do it."

I entered the Capuchin postulancy in the summer of 2000. From where we were in East New York, Brooklyn, I was about the same distance to Port Chester as I had been in West Haven. Unfortunately, however, my Capuchin formators wouldn't let me keep Mr. Zepf. In their estimation, he didn't have the right credentials in spiritual direction. This annoys me a little bit to this day.

Lux æterna luceat ei.

RIP: Fr. Christopher Dietrich, OFM Cap.

Fr. Christopher Dietrich, OFM Cap.

Fr. Chris was one of those friars who kept to himself and did his own thing, so I probably would never have gotten to know him at all except that he was parochial vicar at Sacred Heart in Yonkers when I was sent there for my first assignment. I became the second parochial vicar, the 'junior' one I suppose you could say. He was very attentive to me when I was new, taking me on walks around the parish boundaries and telling me about the history of the neighborhood (he was a native), introducing me to different parks in the area that were good for walks (he was a great walker), and so on.

As a new priest with a head full of theory and theology but very little sense of what the sacred ministry looked like in day-to-day practice, I was careful to observe the priests around me in those days. I noticed that Fr. Chris was very much appreciated by the people as a confessor and preacher. He had a gift for the sort of folksy preaching that has long been associated with Franciscans.

Having gone to Fordham for college (where he came under the influence of Avery Dulles), Paul -- as he was known in the world -- entered the Order when he was twenty-two, making him a 'late vocation' by the standards of his time. I always got the feeling that this left him with a hint of alienation with regard to the brothers, as if he were an irregular member. It was something I began to identify with in my developing understanding of the particulars of my own vocation to consecrated life.

He was one of the few friars of my province who kept his religious name after permission (and encouragement, I suspect) was given to return to use of one's baptismal name. He liked to joke about how his patron saint had been removed from the general calendar, and disputed the allegation of non-existence by producing a relic of St. Christopher that was in his possession.

Fr. Christopher was also an ordination classmate of the late Fr. Benedict Groeschel, something I didn't realize until we had a celebration for Chris's fiftieth of priesthood and Benedict showed up.

Perhaps in your charity you could offer a prayer for the eternal rest of this friar and priest, my first colleague in the sacred ministry.

Requiescat in pace.

Deacon Ron

Deacon Ron baptized me:

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Quaker Hill, Connecticut. Summer 1992.

A few days ago I heard that Deacon Ron was nearing the end of his journey in this life, and since then the friars and I have been praying for him and his family. Today I see that he passed away on Thursday.

My initiation into the Catholic faith was rather irregular; I dare to say that I was born out of order like St. Paul. (cf. 1 Cor 15:8)

I was a dumb kid. I thought I was very smart, as young people often do after they have learned a little bit of this or that. But I was quite innocent, and, as the saying goes on the worst kind of ignorance, I didn't know what I didn't know.

But nevertheless, God was at work and I knew I wanted to become a Catholic, even though I had no idea what I was getting myself into -- and this is divine mercy; if it was all revealed to us, we might be overcome with fear. I have told my conversion story elsewhere -- light version here -- and how I came to be in the pastoral care of Deacon Ron.

He and his wife received me into their home with great kindness over that summer of 1992 when I stayed at school in New London and was employed by the reference department in the library. I must have seemed on odd figure to them, with my good old 8-hole ox blood Docs and I shudder to think what t-shirts ill-suited to the occasion, with a lot of book-learning about the faith (or so I thought) but quite short on any practical sense of such a Church being made up of actual people.

Nevertheless, Deacon Ron and his wife were extraordinarily gentle and welcoming, and from their example I learned more than I realized at the time. Deacon Ron was the first person I met who had a real personal devotion to a saint -- St. John Vianney -- and I observed how that fit into someone's ministry and prayer.

After Deacon Ron baptized me, while I was straightening up from leaning over the font, I heard him say, quietly but audibly,

"Beautiful."

It has always stayed with me; I think because I could understand, even somewhat at the time, that he wasn't exactly saying that it was beautiful that this random kid from up-at-the-college had been baptized, but that in this he was able to see through to divine beauty.

That is to say, in theological terms, that a sacrament had happened.

When Deacon Ron let out about the divine beauty he glimpsed in that moment, I learned something -- even if in such a way as to not be very aware of it at the time -- about the spirituality of the sacred ministry, the ministry which, some fifteen years later, the Order would assist me in discerning as my own path in religious life.

It was a very special joy for me when, still a very new priest, I had a chance to return to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where Deacon Ron had baptized me, and celebrate the Sunday Mass with Deacon Ron's assistance. And not to forget the particular service of being the wife of a permanent deacon, Ron's wife helped me out with the particular 'volunteer from the audience' shtick that I used in my homily that day.

You have passed away from us for now, Deacon Ron, but the fruits of your ministry and your good example remain. May St. John Vianney welcome you to your service at the Heavenly Altar.

Requiescat in pace.

Obituary here.

RIP: Fr. Joel Daniels, OFM Cap.

I got to know Fr. Joel when I was in the parish and he moved into the adjacent senior friars' residence. I found in him a sort of kindred spirit on a certain level. Since he was typically easy to find and very willing, for a while I adopted him as a confessor. He didn't care for visitors in his room, so he would come to my room to hear my confession. All I had to do was lay out my purple stole for him. Fr. Joel was the source of this 'From my Confessor' post. He was also my first confessor to use the longer post-absolution prayer:

May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, whatever good you do and suffering you endure, heal your sins, help you to grow in holiness, and reward you with eternal life. Go in peace.

I love that prayer. The Irish OFM at the Lateran, to whom I go sometimes these days, also uses it.

Fr. Joel once told me how he got permission to go away to study counseling. The pastor of the parish where he was went away for a week, and asked Fr. Joel to look after a certain parishioner. During the week, she had a mental breakdown. When the pastor (who was also the religious superior) returned, Joel pointed this out as evidence that he needed training in counseling.

One time in the middle of the night there was a knock on my door. It was Fr. Joel. He was concerned about a very elderly friar. He had overheard this friar asking for me late at night but then had also heard his health aide tell him that it was too late to call Fr. Charles, that he should go to sleep, and that they could call Fr. Charles in the morning. Fr. Joel was concerned that perhaps this friar knew he was near death and wanted me to hear his confession. So down I went to the elderly friar's room, where he was half asleep and recognized me right away. Oh good, he said, it's you, Charles. He then went on to tell me that he wasn't feeling well and asked if I could open the church for him in the morning and take the morning Mass. Now this friar's days of opening churches and taking morning Masses had long since passed into history, but even in the partial confusion of his old mind, he was still a solicitous pastor of souls. I said that I would be happy to cover for him in the morning so he could rest. I went back to my room fairly pleased with myself, having relieved the anxiety of two of my senior brothers with one little nocturnal visit.

Read Fr. Joel's obituary here.

Requiescat in pace.

RIP: Fr. Benedict Groeschel

In  the quiet of the afternoon of the feast of St. Francis I got the news that Fr. Benedict Joseph Groeschel, CFR, had passed from this life.

I met Fr. Benedict a few times over the years: a couple of times at Capuchin events, once on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the CFR novitiate in Newark, and once at a celebration of Confirmation at The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York, at which Cardinal Dolan presided.

As I prayed for Fr. Benedict's eternal rest last night, a couple bits of gratefulness came to mind in particular. The first was for a television series he had on EWTN in the early 90s. If I remember rightly, it was called The Truths of Salvation. I don't remember if I was watching it while still a 'seeker' or if I was already baptized, but that show provided a lot of my early catechesis. The other thing I thought of was Fr. Benedict's book, The Courage to be Chaste, which was a great help to me at one time.

Requiescat in pace.

An Inmate, a Decree, and a Donkey

The journey is a funny business with all its twists and turns. They all bear and speak of grace, though it's not always easy to see at the time. And grace itself isn't always easy. True, it's often consoling or even comforting. But just as often it's the pruning that the Lord promised. The pruning hurts, but it's also a sign that we have already borne fruit.

It just amazes me sometimes when I look back, how I could never have imagined what would become of me in this religious life, what would later become my relationship to certain brothers and sisters, places and times.

In the summer of 1995 I was a novice in the OFM, spending the summer at St. Bonaventure University. The weather was lovely, the group of novices was still in the 'honeymoon' phase, my prayer life was rich with experiences and consolations and I was full of the giddy pleasure of being finally a real religious, in the habit and everything. There I made my first Capuchin friend, a young friar on his way to priesthood. I coveted his theological knowledge, I admired what seemed like his confidence and I guess you might say, verve. In the lightness of those days I could never have imagined that eighteen years later I would be a Capuchin priest and he would be in prison for sexual abuse.

Seven years later, in the summer of 2002, I was on retreat in preparation for religious profession in the Capuchins. We were in a great old house of the Order in that part of the world, full of history and the old spirit of religious life in North America. It's true that in those days I gave little thought to what would become of me in the Capuchin Order, but I never could have imagined that eleven years later I would be sitting in front of a computer in a little room on the outskirts of Rome, filling out a form that would become the decree to suppress the same house.

I guess it's an ordinary grief of the journey, to watch what were the landmarks behind you crumble. On the positive side it produces a certain detachment in the knowledge that what presents itself as so pressing or attractive in this moment is also destined to a crumbling transformation into memory in the future, and it also reminds the soul that what we were really always drawn to, what we were always truly leaning on was the Spirit of God woven into all these things in his humility and with which they were shot through in his power.

It reminds me of the late spring of 1994. I had graduated from college and my parents had kindly given me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a graduation gift. I went with the pilgrimage office of the OFM, the Order I was soon to enter as a postulant. The pilgrimage was led by Fr. Callistus Bamberg, may he rest in peace. Towards the end of the trip he gave me the gift of a little olive wood statue of the Holy Family in their flight into Egypt; Joseph walking, Mary on the donkey holding the infant Jesus. He said, and this has always stuck with me,

"Whenever you look at this, remember that it's a journey."

RIP: Jeff Hanneman

I had known about his unfortunate illness, but I didn't realize how serious it was.

For better or for worse, Reign in Blood--much of the music for which Hanneman wrote--changed my life. I still listen to it sometimes. One time a while back I found myself listening to it on my little old iPod (which I have thanks to a gracious Yonkers bride who gave me an iTunes gift card) as I walked the path around the Collegio Internazionale San Lorenzo da Brindisi here in Rome. I stopped as I recalled how, twenty-one years before, my decision to become a catechumen had come out of a brooding daily routine that often included a nocturnal walk around the outer path of Connecticut College while Reign in Blood played in my Walkman. Maybe I'm boring. Maybe I know a classic.

Though at times the devil has gotten into it to stir up a vainglory that made me forget other, more important graces, it's still true that the music epitomized by what Jeff Hanneman gave us was indeed a remote preparation for greater graces God has given me, by making me realize that the ordinary thing, in this case the music that everybody else was listening to, wasn't what I really wanted.

Requiescat in pace. May his family and friends have strength and comfort in these days.

Tape Measures and Memorial Cards

Sometimes, just to keep me going, God gives the grace of a little awe at the journey.

Today I'm thinking of a night back in the late winter or early spring of 1995. We were postulants to the Order of Friars Minor at Holy Cross Friary on Soundview Ave in the Bronx. After supper we got in our van and drove over the river into New Jersey, where we visited the friary where the brother tailor lived. Juniper Capece, OFM. You couldn't forget him. There we were measured for the habits we would receive later that year as our novitiate began. I remember it being a fun time; Br. Juniper joked with us and gave us beer.

I have a picture of the two of us from that night; Br. Juniper has the tape measure around my neck, and is either speaking or laughing. I have a look of devout, awful solemnity about me. I still get tempted to the latter, though it feels so wrong to me now that it never sticks. The former I miss somewhat and wish I could find again.

Br. Juniper died a couple of weeks ago. Eighty years of life on this earth, sixty of religious profession. I still have the name tags from the habit I got from him. One of them is in my New American Bible. The other is in my Roman-Franciscan Christian Prayer. He also made me a Franciscan Crown for my habit. When I left the novitiate I sent it back so that he could give it to somebody else.

It graces me with a little awe when I think that on that night, in spite of my awful solemnity even given the beer and the fun, God knew that eighteen years later I would have left the OFM, spent some time on my own, praying, working, seeking him, that I would finally enter the Capuchins and twelve years into that find myself here in Rome.

On that same night there was also a kid who must have been a freshman in high school. Did he have any idea that in ten years or so he would enter the Capuchins and then, after some years, switch over to the OFM? I don't know if he knew. But I know that God knew it. And God knew that he would inspire this friar to send me a memorial card from Br. Juniper's funeral, all the way from Maryland to Rome, so that I could be encouraged by the memory of my journey and how, despite all of my distraction and nonsense and interior darkness and sin, it is God who leads me by the his own subtle and obscure light, his rayos de oscuridad, and suffers on the Cross so that I might have the courage to take the next step.

Thank you, brothers.

Br. Juniper Capece, OFM, requiescat in pace.

RIP: Fr. Leo Clifford, OFM

As I journey through a week busy with funerals, I learn that Fr. Leo Clifford died this morning. I hesitate to post on him, as I hardly knew him, but since I've been grateful to God for him at certain, particular moments in my own vocation, I thought I would.

Fr. Leo was assigned to St. Stephen of Hungary on East 82nd St. in Manhattan when I was sent to work there in my first postulancy. I was twenty-two years old, hardly two years a Catholic, and much more innocent than I knew. It wasn't an easy assignment. In all of my stress and the clash between what I had expected in religious life and what I found, I became grateful for Fr. Leo, who always had a kind word of gentle encouragement for me.

Ten years later, having been out of religious life and then back in again, I found myself as a student for priesthood here in Boston. Fr. Leo was one of the regular confessors at St. Anthony Shrine, where I would often go for confession. It was common among the brothers to remark on Fr. Leo's particular way with penitents in the confessional, and we all appreciated him.

In between these times, I was often reminded of Fr. Leo when his "Reflections" would be shown on EWTN.

One of his lines to penitents was something like, 'Your only sin is forgetting how madly in love Jesus is with you.'

May that same Jesus welcome you to the heavenly liturgy, Father, where you may celebrate his love for eternity. Amen.

Requiescat in pace.


UPDATE: The OFM has posted funeral information here.

RIP: Fr. Charles Repole, OFM Cap.

Last night the second-most senior friar of our province, Fr. Charles Repole, departed this life at age 96. He was one of two brothers from the same mother who entered the Order. His brother, known in religion as Fr. Celsus, died when I was a novice. Charlie seemed to miss him terribly. Or better, he seemed to find it somehow awkward and wrong to be in this world without his brother. I think Fr. Charles once told me that they were from St. Francis Xavier parish in Manhattan. Daniel, as he was born, entered the Order in 1936.

As a young priest, in the days before Skype, email, and probably the telephone in most places he was, he went off the missions of Nicaragua. He was immensely proud of his work in editing a trilingual translation dictionary in Spanish, English, and Miskito.

I first got to know Fr. Charles in my first assignment, when he was living at our residence for senior friars adjacent to the parish where I was working. He used to call me mi tocayo, which means, "my namesake." In order to avoid confusion around the friaries, I quickly became 'Charles junior' which another of the senior friars soon shortened to 'CJ.' He had his own anxieties and interior demons, but they never kept him from his natural gregariousness and earnest interest in people. For that I was always grateful for his good example. Descansa en paz, tocayo.

Follow this link for the full obituary.

Names in Books

I love having books that once belonged to someone else, or, even better, were once gifts between people I don't know. It makes me feel like the books connect us, and are some small sign of the communion of saints.

I have copy of the St. Anthony Guild Press edition of Bonaventure's translated Mystical Opuscula that seems to have once belonged to Nicholas Elko, sometime Ruthenian bishop of Pittsburgh, who was one of the council fathers at Vatican II and once wrote a cold war-themed historical novel. It's stamped with his ex libris, complete with an episcopal cross before his name, in a lovely sort of teal.

My set of the Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum seems to have once pertained to a Fr. Louis of the Capuchin community in Mons, Belgium, and my Liber usualis seems to have once been for the use of Fr. Ignatius McCormick, a famous curmudgeon of my own province.

My copy of Étienne Gilson's The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure bears a stamp from the "Catholic Library" at MIT. I wonder if such a thing still exists.

I don't even know how I came to have it, but I have a volume of Franciscan sources in Italian which was originally given to a Fr. Pio from a Fr. Bonaventure in Turin in 1978. As far as I can tell with my minimal Italian, the inscription is quite heartfelt and flowery.

I have what I think is a first edition copy of Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain inscribed to someone called Daddy "Ga-Ga" as a gift on Father's Day, June 19, 1949. In a different hand it also seems to be the property of a M.W. O'Connell. Were M.W. and Ga-Ga the same person? Who knows. Having been old enough to have a son old enough to give him a serious book for Father's Day sixty-two years ago, I suspect that Daddy "Ga-Ga" has left this world. May he rest in peace.

I also have a book with a hoax of a dedication. It's one of my history textbooks from college, and one that I've never been able to part with because of the hilarious selection from Alvarus Pelagius's De Planctu Ecclesiae which it features. In the front a couple of my college friends marked it up as an alleged gift from them to me on the occasion of my forty-fifth birthday, February 27th, 2017. That must have seemed like the unimaginable future back in the goofy bemusement of college, ca. 1992. Not so much anymore, I'm afraid.

Of course I also have a number of books inscribed to me: a 1987 edition of Stedman's Pocket Medical Dictionary, a first edition of Fight Club, and a beat-up, paperback copy of the The Idiot in which one of my best friends from high school wrote, "To Charles, may you cultivate blessed idiocy."

My Uncle Tim

Today has been a remarkable Ash Wednesday for me. For the first time in recent memory, it's been a quiet day of prayer and reflection. As a parish priest, it was one of the busiest days of the year. Now, as a student again, it's a very different sort of day.

As I took a walk I was reflecting on how the ashes of Ash Wednesday were probably my first explicit experience of the Catholic faith.

My Aunt Virginia, may she rest in peace, who was my maternal grandfather's baby sister, got married later in life to a Catholic widower. He thus became my 'Uncle' Timothy. When we were little they would often visit us around the time of my birthday at the end of February and the birthday of my two brothers at the beginning of March. (They are twins, and so have the same birthday, you see.)

Ash Wednesday fell within the nine or ten days between the two birthdays several times during my childhood, (i.e. 1976, 1979, 1981, 1984 (thank you, helpful chart in my 1962 Missale Romanum!)) and that explains why I remember seeing Uncle Tim with the ashes imposed on his forehead. I don't remember thinking anything of it, but the visual memory is quite vivid. There he is, sitting by one of the front windows, reading the paper, ashes on his head.

My Uncle Tim was a quiet and rather mysterious figure in my childhood, but always patient and gentle with everyone. By the time I joined him in the Catholic faith he was already quite sick with final illness and probably didn't even know. But I was able to assist at his funeral Mass as a Catholic Christian, and receive Holy Communion.

Requiescat in pace.

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.

Aperiat ei Dominus Paradisi Ianuam

One of the graces of this winter break has been time to reflect and journal for myself on my transition from parish ministry back into full-time study, along with my move back into the world of the student brothers still completing their initial formation in the Order.

Some of the interior challenges and struggles have been pretty intense. I'm still not at peace with how I am managing all of them. Thus, I have tried to make sure I remember and pray gratefully for all of the blessings and freedoms that my new situation has also brought. One of them is the ability to promptly offer Mass for our brethren who are recently deceased.

When a friar dies in my province of the Capuchin Order, each priest left on earth is supposed to offer a Mass for the deceased brother. This is easily accomplished by concelebrating at his funeral, but one can't always get to funerals. The parish where I worked was the same church in which our brothers' funerals were celebrated, but since I usually served as MC, I couldn't concelebrate.

As a parish priest, I found it somewhat difficult to find a time to offer these Masses for our deceased brothers. The parish had a very strong culture of individual Mass intentions, and there was never a scheduled Mass without one. Sometimes it would take me quite a while to find a day on which I was free to offer these Masses for deceased friars. I remember one spell when a few of our friars died not far apart from each other (we do everything as a group) when it took me about six months to clear out my queue of outstanding Mass intentions.

This is all different in my current assignment. I have scheduled Mass obligations on just three days a week, so I have plenty of opportunity to offer Mass for other intentions. So it's a beautiful blessing to have a morning like this one, a ferial day in Ordinary Time (a feria of the iv class, as they used to say) when I can not only offer Mass for one of our recently deceased brothers, but put on violet (we don't have black) and do so with a proper Mass for the dead.

The deceased was Fr. Ellis Zimmer, one of those friars whom you meet and just know he has found the secret to spiritual peace and joy. Requiescat in pace.

Liturgical Ramble of Joy and Disappointment

This post on kneeling at Mass over at Fr. Z along with Br. Matt's lovely reflection on the act itself have conspired to bring up a memory for me this morning. It's not all the fault of the posts; every year around Christmas some of my attention turns with gratitude and wonder to these same days in 1995, when I was dismissed from my first experience of religious life.

Right after college, not even baptized two years, I went off in my zealous first fervor and joined the formation program of another mainstream Franciscan community. I had a fine and growthful postulancy, but trouble came in the novitiate. I wasn't ready; I lacked spiritual roots and maturity in prayer. Worst of all, I did not understand or realize that I had these deficits. The novitiate didn't work out, and I was dismissed from the program. God bless my novice master and his assistant. It must have been hard for them, but it was some of the best pastoral care I ever received. I left on Christmas morning (after having said my breviary, of course.) It was a deeply destablizing and confusing experience, but in my prayer in those days it became the occasion for a new and much stronger spiritual foundation and attitude. The blessings and new spiritual beginnings given to me in the stark wilderness of those days became the spiritual foundation on which I stand even now.

Today, thanks to Fr. Z's post, I'm thinking of one the particularly difficult, but ultimately formative, moments in those days. On one of the days following Christmas I went to Mass. Perhaps it was St. Stephen or Holy Innocents. One of my parish priests stopped to talk to me, and asked me why I wasn't in my habit. I had to tell him of my dismissal. He didn't even stop to say anything about it, but immediately invited me to become an altar server. This parish was a little on the traditional side with regard to liturgy, and only used older adolescents or grown men as servers. Someone who had spent some time in religious life was an asset to the parish in this regard, Father explained.

Still very confused about my religious life not working out, I was very grateful for the invitation to serve Mass at the parish. It was something, at least, that I could do for God. So, on what must have been the feast of the Holy Family, I showed up in the sacristy before Mass and put on alb and cincture. I was assigned as cross-bearer. I was nervous but happy. But in the end it didn't go well. During the consecration I got a strong tap on the shoulder from the lector behind me. "Young man, kneel," she commanded with some aggravation in her whisper. After a year and a half in religious life, I had forgotten about kneeling at Mass. We never did. Why I wasn't reminded by seeing the assembly I don't know.

After the Mass, Father had a word with me. Didn't I know how to serve Mass? How could someone who lived in a novitiate not know when he was supposed to kneel? The invitation to serve Mass was rescinded. Father didn't say it, but it was clear to me that he was wondering if my inability to go to Mass properly had something to do with my dismissal from the novitiate. It didn't, of course, but the idea still hurt.

My experience on that Holy Family morning further added to my confusion. Over the years and as I have grown up as a friar, my experience that day has become emblematic for me of an abiding tension in my religious life. I have had a wonderful and blessed experience as a religious. I have met and lived with saints and characters. I have had the blessing of real friendship. The trust of the brothers and the generosity of our benefactors have allowed me to give the majority of my religious life thus far to the leisure of obtaining a theological education. I have lived in wonderful communities and spent two summers in Central America. Most of all, I have found among the brothers a place where God can work on me through my obedience to the fraternity to bring out some of my gifts for the sake of the Church. For all of these blessings I am exceedingly grateful to God and to the friars who accept me each day as a brother. But within all of this, in the area of divine worship, I have often found religious life to be confused and confusing, deformed and deforming. I rant about such things often enough, as readers know, and I don't want this post to be another rant. It's just to say that within the intense goodness of God and the tremendous blessings of my religious life, this one aspect has been confusing to me, and the sweet old lector having to hit me during the consecration has become a symbol of all of it for me.

The priest in the story has moved on to some other ministry, though from his Facebook profile I can't figure out exactly what it is. The lector has gone to her reward. Her funeral was the day after Thanksgiving. Requiescat in pace.

More on Fr. Sigmund

I'm back from Fr. Sigmund's funeral, which was beautiful in its way. Hearing the eulogy and talking to friars before and after the Mass, I recalled some details that I had forgotten about Fr. Sigmund's life.

Sigmund was present at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Having been there for five years, he used to say that he was scheduled to be shot the next day. After the war he dedicated himself to the hopefulness of the Esperanto movement, went all over the world promoting it, and was an Australian citizen when he finally came here to the USA.

I remember visiting Dachau. In the spring of 1993 I was supposed to be studying philosophy at NUI Galway. We had a month off for Easter, so this kid Travis and I went over to the continent and wandered around. We had no plan nor itinerary, so we were never lost or off schedule. Waking up in Munich one morning after a long evening of pretzel and beer consumption, we decided to make the short side trip to the concentration camp.

It was one of the eeriest experiences of my life. It was dusty and desolate. You didn't even want to talk. I remember seeing another tourist with his video camera going. It made me feel something like angry or sad. I wanted to say something to him, but again, I just didn't feel like speaking. I don't even feel much like writing about the experience now, but it does call out to me with something that I have come to believe, and which is at the heart of my own desire for God and conversion to Catholic Christianity: we human beings cannot trust ourselves to know what is good and right. We are too wounded. We need God.

RIP: Fr. Sigmund Klimowicz, OFM Cap.

This morning I learn that the blessings of the feast of St. Clare this week included the passing from this life of Fr. Sigmund Klimowicz.

I met Fr. Sigmund (or Zygmunt) when I stayed at one of our Capuchin infirmaries one summer. I went to work a little bit in the care of the brothers and also to prepare for the dreaded Weston Jesuit Latin exam that fall. Fr. Sigmund was a sweet old friar, still very Polish despite having lived many years in America, and very curious and interested in people. His eyesight was failing, so he wouldn't recognize you until you got close. Then, all of a sudden, "Ah! Carlo! Carlo Borromeo!"

Fr. Sigmund discovered that I was partly in the infirmary as a way to have an environment free of distraction to work on Latin. He approved, believing strongly in the value of language learning, but was disappointed that I was not learning Esperanto. It had been a long time since he had met anyone with whom to practice. He used to say that his own ability to speak Russian was a big help in surviving the concentration camp.

Fr. Sigmund (and if I remember rightly, some classmates with him) was a deacon when he was imprisoned. His stories from the experience were interesting. They were always horrifying, for sure, but were also tender in some ways. He once told me about how he made friends with a Jewish barber because he was the biggest and strongest man he could find. The guards were afraid of him, said Sigmund, so he felt safe with him. But then the story and the friendship ended when the man was shot.

My most memorable experience with Fr. Sigmund came on the day we celebrate the five Capuchins among the 108 martyrs of the Second World War beatified by John Paul II. As I perused the ordo (the little annual book that gives the details for the Mass and Divine Office of each day) in the sacristy that morning, Fr. Sigmund came in. He took the book from me and began to go through the names of the blesseds. This one he could believe was a saint. Another one was a pain to live with in community. This one had always been jealous of Sigmund for his better ability to speak Russian. At that moment I realized with astonishment that it was only chance that separated the old friar before me, living in the obscurity of a friary in upstate New York, from perhaps being among these martyrs being celebrated by the public cult of the Church. From that moment on I began to look on him as a living martyr, and myself as someone given the extraordinary gift of knowing him.

After liberation, Sigmund (and again, if I remember rightly, some other Capuchin deacons) had no province to go home to. So they set out, looking for somewhere to complete their studies and be ordained priests. I don't remember all the details of this story, but I do remember that this journey left Fr. Sigmund with an enduring grudge against the French. After their ordination (in Belgium, if I remember rightly), the friars eventually made their way to the USA and began a Polish ministry here.

Among all the blessings God has given me through my life among the friars, meeting Fr. Sigmund is among those for which I am most grateful.

Requiescat in pace.

Grief

This morning I offered a funeral Mass for a baby. He had two days in this life.

The grief and shock, the tragic wrongness of the whole thing, the pitiful little coffin, it was all so sad.

At the cemetery, while I was waiting for the funeral director to take me back to the friary, I started to think about God's Heart. Take the sadness of this funeral today and multiply it times just the children killed by abortion in one day, and that's a look into the Heart of God.

May he rest in peace.

RIP: Peter Steele

Things have been very metal for me lately, especially with the thrill of being interviewed on the subject yesterday by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times Arts section. I can only fear what will become of the tape of my outrageous utterances on the topics of the catholic imagination of metal and Christianity as the logical answer to the cosmic dread it celebrates, among many other things.

While out on errands today, I learned from WSOU of the death of the one of the great metal singers of our time, Peter Steele of Type O Negative. Last I heard he had rejected atheism and begun to identify himself as a Catholic. This is from an interview he gave to Decibel, as reproduced in his Wikipedia article:

There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what’s after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it’s a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can’t believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.

I think I also remember reading somewhere about how he went to confession after being away from the sacrament for thirty years. I can say that from the priest's perspective, those kind of encounters are precious and honored.

I pray that you had the grace of the sacraments at your passing, brother, and that you were sped by the Lord's mercy to the rest you weren't able to find in this life.

Requiescat in pace.

Type O Negative, covering the Neil Young classic: