Sunday Ramble

I really appreciate Sundays in my current assignment. It seems like we make an effort to put work on hold for a day and just take some quiet. After Mauds*, four empty hours of morning stretch out wonderfully before dinner. I tend to use the time to read, to clean out my inbox by answering those emails that are a little more personal or for whatever reason were more suited to a quieter moment, and to write real letters. Today I came to the end of all that with some time still remaining before dinner, so I went to the chapel to say Midday Prayer (which we don't have in common on Sundays) and to pray a little.

I was praying about how my moods and emotional states still have too much of an effect on my discernment and where I imagine myself to be with God. Whether I feel good or lousy on the emotional level, either way, interferes with the clarity of my prayer. I can even start to mistake these states for my spiritual condition. I prayed for a greater sense of faith, as something that I stand upon, or that grounds, or is behind or above--pick whichever metaphor works for you--all of that.

What came to mind was a set of events in my life: my baptism, my religious profession, my priestly ordination, and how, in God, these moments held within themselves everything that came after them for me, much of which I never would of imagined. On that tired old Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1992, when Deacon Ron poured water on my head and invoked the Blessed Trinity, everything that has come of my Christianity was contained in that brief moment of water and word: the twists and turns the journey has taken me on, the fellowship, the loneliness, the sensations of being lost and then found, or found and then lost, the joys and regrets, the friendships made and the friends lost. There were present all the prayers I would ever say, and the few of them that have been truly prayerful. Even all the sins I have committed since that moment were present in my baptism in a certain way. For, as I'll never forget, I once asked a spiritual director where God was when I was sinning. And he looked at me like I was the sad, ignorant case that I am and said, "He's on the Cross, suffering with you."

In the double-moment of my religious profession, first on a Saturday Morning in Yonkers, New York, and then, four years later, on another one in Middletown, Connecticut, my whole life as a Capuchin friar was present, my joy at receiving the mercy of this vocation and the salvation God has worked for me through it, my struggles to know how to observe the Rule I have promised, the burning desire for obedience, poverty, and chastity God has put in me set against the shallowness of my efforts to put them into practice. In that moment were all the joys and consolation I have had from brothers who have been true brother to me, as well as the injuries I bear from those who have hurt me. And there are all of my meager attempts to be brother to the brothers the Lord has given me, and all my failures to live up that simple title. And there is so much more, all of it every way that my whole experiment of finding myself in this journey of Christianity has come to be inextricably woven together with the example and words of St. Francis of Assisi.

In my ordination to the priesthood, in that moment when Seán O'Malley laid his hands on my head, anointed my hands, and prayed over me the prayer of consecration, everything my priesthood has been was present. There were the infinite graces of each Mass I have ever offered, there was whatever truth and encouragement the Holy Spirit was ever able to give to God's people through my small efforts at being a diligent preacher, there was the privilege of hearing every confession I've ever heard, as well as the awesome, saving healing of every absolution I have ever given, the forgiveness of God--stronger than sin and death--given from Jesus Christ to St. Peter and then passed down through the hands of so many and finally into the unworthy, dingy vessel of my voice.

I realize that I stand on those moments, and that whatever else should become of me as a Christian, as a religious, and as a priest, from right now, on this rainy Sunday afternoon until I should die, sooner or later, flows from them and, in a sense, is those moments. And I think this is what we mean when we talk about things as sacraments.

I arrived at such a confession through recalling a reflection on faith I used to have from time to time when I was working in the parish. A certain collection of circumstances led me to have, during the middle set of my three springs and summers as a parish priest, a lot of weddings. I think there was a spell of fourteen weeks, if I remember rightly, during which I had at least one every weekend. So that meant a weekly rhythm of rehearsals and wedding liturgies themselves, not to mention many last-minute phone calls from anxious brides and a few near-misses with paperwork arriving from other dioceses. So during this time, as a result of reflecting on what I could say for wedding homilies, shtick for rehearsals, and little catecheses for meetings, I had a lot of opportunity to reflect on what marriage might mean as an act of worship and faith. And it was just this that began to strike me, that a marriage was an expression of faith. In giving themselves to each other precisely as sacrament, what the couple were proclaiming to the Church and to the world was their faith that what they had found in each other was going to be stronger, more important, and more durable than a future that they didn't and couldn't know. It was to say that the goodness of the Creator had come to be reflected in their union, that they had found in each other the original blessing--a blessing not forfeited by original sin nor washed away by the flood, as one of the nuptial blessings puts it--that was the gaze of God upon his creation when he knew it to be good. God is love, and so to be in love always touches upon God and his eternity, which is why lovers always say, 'forever',whether they know what they are saying or not. The experience itself demands the closest imitation we have of God's eternity, our total self-giving, our unqualified 'forever.'

So in my own reflection for myself today, I find something similar. If I really believe in sacrament and it what the Church means by public vows, I too have to know that there was more faithfulness present in my baptism, religious profession, and ordination than a 'faith' that I could have been aware of in my own subjective desire or fervor or relative lack thereof at those moments. This is because our 'faith' isn't about how we feel or even how we think, in the sense of the depth of our intellectual assent to the articles of the faith, but about our willingness to let the faithfulness of Jesus Christ make a home within us, both for our own salvation and for that of others as it may please the Holy Spirit to work it through us.

May you attain full knowledge of God's will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come. (Colossians 1:9b-11, reading for Evening Prayer, Monday of Week I)

*"Mauds" is the name I give to the liturgy that results from combining Morning Prayer with Mass, as a portmanteau of 'Mass' and 'Lauds.' For more information see my post, "On the Various Forms of Prass."

Sundays and Celibacy

Today was one of those Sundays when I both open the church in the morning and close it in the afternoon.

At six this morning I went to the church to set up for the first Mass. Once I had everything set up, there was almost enough light to offer Morning Prayer, so I made my meditation first and then opened my breviary. All this before turning on the lights or opening the church. (As anyone learns fast, you can't open the church too early in the morning, because no matter how early it is, someone will start coming at that time and then resent you when it's locked.) It's such a privileged solitude to sit, locked in and alone with the Blessed Sacrament and the paschal candle in the dim, early morning natural light. I am unworthy of the privilege of being able to pray this way.

Then I open up and everything gears up. I offer two Masses in a row, have a break, and then have four babies to baptize. In the course of the day I probably greet a couple hundred people. I promise to pray for all kinds of intentions, sign bulletins for children and sponsor forms for adults. I bless a couple of rosaries, and hear reports from retreats.

Then, at about four in the afternoon, having wrapped up the baptismal paperwork and some other random stuff to get ahead on the week, I go back to the church and find it empty once again. I grab the arcane set of keys that open the poor boxes and the vigil candle donations. I collect all of the crumpled money and put in the right bags. All quiet. I check the holy water bucket and decide that it can get through the week. (I don't know what people do with it, and maybe I don't want to know. We go through several gallons a week.) Then I put off the lights, lock up, and sit down again in the solitude to offer Evening Prayer. I'm back where I started, there in the dark with my breviary and my Lord. Before the Our Father I try to remember all of the intentions I was given today; a complicated pregnancy, a blood test tomorrow, another young man who said, "Please pray for my attitude."

I know I repeat myself and write about this over and over, but it continues to strike me at deeper levels: the starkness of the shift from intense social-ness to total solitude in the life of priestly ministry. The day begins and ends with solitary prayer in the sacred space of this church, but in between the same space is filled with people and noise and music and prayers.

It speaks to me of celibacy. It isn't a life of separation from people. On the contrary, I feel very embedded in the fabric of this community and its neighborhoods. But what I offer in all those relationships begins and ends with the God I meet in my solitude. Whatever I have to offer emerges from this mysterious and exclusive intimacy that I clumsily call prayer. It is an exclusive Relationship, for sure, but an exclusivity that wants to become fruitful, if that makes any sense. Maybe I'm not saying it right. I'm pretty tired.

Dust. Wind. Dude.

The other day I was sitting in church at the end of the day, when the afternoon sun comes in low through the windows on the St. Joseph side. One of the windows in front of me as open, and the sunlight was beaming through. In the sunbeam I could see particles of dust hanging in the air or moving about. This sight fascinated me when I was little, and I still enjoy it.

As I continued to consider the illuminated dust, I noticed how strong a metaphor it is for ourselves. We are hardly anything, unnecessary and entirely contingent. That we are anything worth noticing--indeed anything of beauty--it is only because at certain moments we catch the Light and become illuminated by Grace. We would be dirt on the floor, except that the quickening heat of the Light bears us up so that we might float on the currents of the Spirit, Who blows where He wills. To have this habitually is what holiness means.

'Dust to dust,' as someone will pray of us one day as our bodies are committed to the earth, but in this time in between, we have a glimpse of the world to come as particles of dust made beautiful, shiny, buoyant, and warm in the Light.

Sunday Vespers and Benediction

Yesterday afternoon we tried something "new": Sunday Evening Prayer with Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Benediction. The parish had observed the Pauline year through a number of successful events, and we thought that Evening Prayer I of the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul would be a good way to conclude the celebrations.

Many of our older parishioners remember Sunday Benediction, though I have never had a good idea of how widespread it once was. My Baronius Press 1962 hand Missal has proper texts for Vespers each Sunday, so I suppose that public Sunday Vespers was also more common at one time than it is now.

This morning I am wondering why this practice more or less disappeared. Given the strong recommendation of the liturgical reform to find ways to make the Liturgy of the Hours the prayer of the whole people of God, it seems odd that one way it was already being done should abandoned.

On the one hand, Sunday Vespers and/or Benediction has a lot to recommend it. It would seem to fulfill the mandate mentioned above, and to me it would also round out the whole celebration of Sunday very well. To me each Sunday has three liturgical hinges marked by two celebrations of Evening Prayer with Morning Prayer between them. In almost all parishes the first two moments--if not the Hours--are observed pretty regularly, with the vigil and morning Masses of Sunday respectively. In some places there are also Sunday evening Masses, but--at least in the part of the world I live in--these seem to be disappearing quickly. The third liturgical hinge moment of Sunday, marked by Evening Prayer II, seems to get lost. The public celebration of Vespers and/or Benediction would seem to restore this liturgical moment of Sunday.

Of course it has to be said that few priests look forward to obligations on a Sunday afternoon or evening. For parish clergy, the period from Saturday afternoon to Sunday noon is pretty busy. Saturday night is a common time for parish events and celebrations that keep you up late. After a short rest it's time for the early Mass on Sunday. By the time the Sunday schedule is persolved, you can feel pretty beat. On top of this, Monday is the traditional day off for pastors, making Sunday afternoon a getaway day for many.

Sitting in the Dark

Sometimes on Sunday I go back to the church in late afternoon or early evening to say my Vespers and just sit for a while. We tend to close up and lock the church on Sundays after Masses are over in the early afternoon. I really love the place with the lights off, and feel bad for most of our parishioners because they never get to experience it; we almost always have some lights on at least in the sanctuary and around the side altars. I always notice the windows--the Mysteries of the Rosary--more without the lights.

Now that I've been here for a couple of years I realize what a subtle gift it is to open up the church around six in the morning a couple of days each week. Over the course of the year there are so many variations in the light, from a superabundance in these days when we approach the nativity of John the Baptist, to an utter lack on the other side of the year, as we near that of our Lord. The church is "oriented" more or less south-south west, so the dawn arrives in the back of church on the Blessed Mother side, and the day disappears off to the St. Joseph side of the sanctuary.

The church is generally open during the day, usually from about six in the morning until seven or eight in the evening. I'm so grateful that we do this. People visit too; in the course of day I notice many people making visits and praying. Lots of them I don't even know, but some I can count on to be there at certain hours offering their rosary or Divine Mercy chaplet. The anonymity of it all helps me to remember that the community of prayer is larger than we know or are supposed to know. I don't need to know their struggles and anxieties and searing sadnesses, and they don't need to know mine in order for us to pray for each other. I try to remember all these folks I don't know when I pray my office (most of which I do on my own) or my own rosary. Oremus pro invicem.

"Solitude is a hard won ally, faithful and patient. Yeah, I think I know you." --Henry Rollins

At night, after we lock up, is special to me too. There you can sit in real darkness, with just the vigil light keeping watch--and making up for our negligence--before the Blessed Sacrament. That, to me, is a special darkness. Perhaps it's because prayer is a kind of darkness, or because the Light of God is so overwhelming to our mind that we experience it as an obscurity. St. John of the Cross talked about contemplation as rayos de oscuridad, rays of darkness.

City churches are sometimes quiet and peaceful solitudes, caves of silence where a man can seek refuge from the intolerable arrogance of the business world. One can be more alone, sometimes, in church than in a room in one's own house. At home, one can always be routed out and disturbed (and one should not resent this, for love sometimes demands it). But in these quiet churches, one remains nameless, undisturbed in the shadows, where there are only a few chance, anonymous strangers among the vigil lights, and the curious impersonal postures of the bad statues. The very tastelessness and shabbiness of some churches makes them greater solitudes, though churches should not be vulgar. Even if they are, as long as they are dark it makes little difference.

Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge. Places where they can kneel in silence. Houses of God, filled with His silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily. Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and do not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

There can be no contemplation where there is no secret.

--Thomas Merton, "Learn to be Alone," in New Seeds of Contemplation, 82-83

The Paschal Quiet

Easter Sunday afternoon, one of those moments as a parish priest when there is a sudden shift from activity and sound to quiet and stillness. From the Vigil last night and through the four Masses today, I've greeted hundreds of people, sang many hymns, preached twice, sprinkled two congregations, and done seven incensations of altars and Gospels, not to mention offering the Sacrifice three times.

And after all of this intensely social and sometimes feverish activity, these last few hours of the Paschal Triduum* arrive with complete quiet and solitude. Masses are done and the people have gone. It doesn't even seem like there is anyone in the friary; the brothers are perhaps asleep or have gone to visit someone.

I can see how some priests get trapped in loneliness. The ministry is very social; you make both friends and enemies in abundance, and attract flatterers and disciples. But at the ends of the day you are alone. So if you start to identify yourself with the support you receive from the people you serve, you put yourself in a dangerous place. You will be lonely when there is no one around to fulfill your need to be helpful, your need to be needed. As one of my friends in the Order described this caricature of ministry, "There I was, hard at work, doing for God what he couldn't do for himself."

But loneliness is a temptation, a running away from the invitation of solitude. The longer I go in my Christian journey--and here I am in the last hours of my seventeenth Paschal Triduum--I realize more and more that part of the charism of celibacy is an invitation to a certain kind of prayer that is jealous, exclusive, and very secret.

Amen. Surrexit Christus Vere. Alleluia.

*Sometimes people forget that the Triduum doesn't end with the Easter Vigil but extends through Vespers of Sunday. As far as divine revelation is concerned, a day goes from sundown to sundown; i.e., "Evening came and morning followed, the nth day." So the 'three days' of the Paschal Triduum commence with the Mass of the Lord's Supper, which replaces Vespers on Holy Thursday Evening, and close with Vespers on Sunday.

Extraordinary Form

Perhaps you will find this hard to believe about me, but yesterday I went to a Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite for the very first time.

When Summorum pontificum came out, I thought that I should at least acquaint myself with it, given that under certain circumstances the faithful are now allowed to ask for it in their parishes. So I bought a new edition of the 1962 hand missal, and put the Extraordinary Form in my calendar for each Sunday afternoon. Yesterday I finally got around to going.

It was a Low Mass, so there wasn't much to it. I was pleased to find that I was able to follow along pretty well in my missal. A couple of things really struck me about the whole experience:

First, the people were really dressed for church. Most of the men and boys had jackets and ties, and most of the women and girls were wearing dresses and chapel veils. Sundays are a lot more casual where I work! Second, I can see how this rite wasn't made for the sensibility of frequent communion. When each communicant receives the proclamation Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat te animam tuam in vitam aeternam it makes for a rather long process.