St. Elizabeth's Children

This morning in my homily for the feast of Elizabeth of Hungary, I preached a little on the shortness of her life--betrothed at age four, married at fourteen, widowed at twenty, dead at twenty-four--and on her infamous and murdered spiritual director, the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg.

Later on in the morning, one of the ladies in the parish office asked me if I knew what had become of Elizabeth's three children, none of whom could have been much older than nine years when she died.

All of this via surfing Wikipedia:

St. Elizabeth's first child, who should have been Hermann II, Landgrave of Thuringia, died as a teenager and never ruled, perhaps having been poisoned by his uncle.

Her second child, Sophie, became the second wife of Henry II, Duke of Brabant. They had two children, one of whom was Henry I, who, not without a lot of intrigue, became the founder of the House of Hesse, currently headed by Donatus, Landgrave of Hesse.

The third child, Gertrude, was delivered to the Premonstratensian convent in Aldenberg at the tender age of two. How's that for vocation discernment! Twenty years later she was elected abbess and reigned for almost fifty more. She seems to be listed in some places around the internet as blessed.

UPDATE: The blessedness of Gertrude is confirmed; she's listed in the Roman Martyrology on August 13.

Tastykake

The archbishop was just being interviewed by the large priest who is covering the bishop's meeting on the Catholic TV of the diocese of Rockville Centre. They were speaking about how Cardinal Rigali had given each bishop a Tastykake to settle a bet over the World Series.

Large priest: "Well, today I may have my first Tastykake."

Archbishop Dolan: "I find that hard to believe."

Watch the bishop's meeting here.

Sanctity Against Bitterness

"It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone else is keeping you from exercising your liberty. Who is this? It is you yourself." (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 110.)

One of the persistent temptations in the religious life is to give in to the unwillingness to take responsibility for our own mediocrity. You get into this life with a lot of pious imaginings and spiritual dreams all mixed up with a genuine desire for prayer and sacrifice. But eventually the disappointment comes. Sometimes it's just a mild malaise. In other cases it takes the form of a violent heartbreak. To be honest, I think the former is more dangerous on the spiritual level.

We are nagged by this feeling that our religious life isn't so different from secular life. Why don't I feel any holier or more religious? Sometimes we feel like the couple who let their engagement go on for too many years and then fall apart right after the wedding. We just felt more religious and devout before we lived under the same roof as the Blessed Sacrament. Many of us are better off now in terms of material comforts and securities than we were in the world, so how can we say that are poor?

The most dangerous temptation in all this is to blame somebody else. My lack of fervor is the fault of the brother who continually scandalizes me by walking into chapel and asking, "What week are we in?," announcing to all that he doesn't even bother to pray his breviary apart from the meager moments when we do it in common. I'm scattered and unrecollected because of the "culture" of the house or province, which I perceive as unprayerful and lax. It's brother grocery shopper's fault that I eat the wrong things, and the house's fault that I waste time watching TV or clicking around the internet. Back when I was in the world I didn't have to have TV or candy or beer in the house if I didn't want it, and I didn't have to deal with such distractions! Now it's the fault of these decadent brothers that I live in a state of dissipation and spiritual sadness!

This sort of thinking is a serious and dangerous temptation, because the decadent, lax, and unprayerful brother is you yourself. The devil is perfectly happy for us to be worked up about our sins and our faults, and even to be contrite and to experience something like compunction on a certain level, so long as we can do it in such a way as to absolve ourselves of any responsibility. Through this temptation the devil can turn perfectly laudable spiritual ambition into perfectly destructive interior acts of violence.

Are we annoyed that our daily world--even in religious life--is not set up to facilitate a life of prayer and virtue? Even worse, do we perceive that others are actively (though often not maliciously) working against spiritual values? Then we should surrender and join the club. It's called "the saints."

Pro Innumerabilibus Neglegentiis Meis

Like most mornings, I got up today, made some coffee, and then sat down with my breviary to pray the Office of Readings. That's when I noticed that I had forgotten to pray Evening Prayer last night; the ribbons were still set at the end of Sunday Daytime Prayer, Week I.

I know how it happened: At midday yesterday I knew that I would be at the funeral home in the afternoon for a wake, so I saved my Daytime Prayer for then, carrying a breviary along. But the wake went very quickly, and I was in and out in just a few minutes with prayers said and the funeral Mass planned. Once I got home and had the funeral Mass squared away, it was already late in the afternoon, and I still had the Daytime Prayer to offer. So I did, thinking I would then save Evening Prayer for after supper. Not so wise, it turned out, because I never remembered to get back to it.

This sort of thing provides a simple example for a reflection on guilt, negligence, and the locating of culpability in our lives. It is an objectively serious sin for me as a religious and a priest to neglect to offer one of the hinge hours (i.e. Morning and Evening Prayer.) On the other hand, I didn't miss the prayer on purpose, but simply forgot. But this doesn't mean that I am not culpable. The sin, however, lies not in "missing Evening Prayer" but in failing to live a life that is vigilant and mindful enough so that grave obligations are not simply forgotten.

In my experience as a sinner, penitent, and confessor, there are many situations like this in which actual guilt lies not in the sinful act or sinful negligence, but in the failure to organize the rest of one's life in order to avoid occasions of sin and provide occasions of faithfulness. I think this is often true of ingrained habits of sin, particularly around the areas of speech or chastity. The spiritual work called for is not to "stop doing x" but to find the willingness to re-arrange one's life and patterns of thought to reduce the maladaptive function of the sin or to rid oneself of its occasions. For this reason I often invite penitents to 'do a little detective work,' trying to notice when and under what internal and external circumstances stubborn bad habits are likely to materialize. Turning this reflection on myself, I'm reminded that the fatigue and unstructured quietness of Sunday afternoon needs to be an invitation into the mystery of prayer, not an occasion of forgetting who I am and what I have promised.

The End Times

As we take a lesson from the fig tree, we learn that the changing seasons give us a way to understand the final destiny of creation. Follow this link for my homily for this weekend.

When is the Feast of Mother Cabrini?

This is one of those for which I just don't have the background.

Here in the United States, tomorrow, November 13, is the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, given at the rank of obligatory memorial.

In my Extraordinary Form Ordo cum missis propriis dioecesium Civitatum Foederatarum Americae Septentrionalis, (i.e. for the U.S.A.) which--quite sketchily and revealingly--does not list a publisher, Mother Cabrini is also listed for tomorrow as a iii class feast with the notation "US." However, in the back of the book, it is noted that in the dioceses of Indianaopolis, Joliet, Green Bay, Alexandria, and in the "vicariate" of Alaska, this is a first class feast not for tomorrow, but back on January 3.

Indeed, Mother Cabrini does appear on January 3 in my EF Missals, but only as a commemoration during the Mass of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, whom I am meeting for the first time in the course of this little investigation.

As if this weren't confusing enough, Wikipedia--from which I have lifted this lovely photo--lists Mother's feast day as December 22. Now as everybody knows, this is no time to schedule one's feast day, as you will be perpetually impeded by the proper Masses and Offices that ramp up to Christmas.

The date of December 22 (1917) seems to be her death date, which is a venerable means of establishing a feast day. November 13 (1938) seems to be the beatification date. I haven't figured out January 3.

Will the real feast of Mother Cabrini please stand up!

Even further, for Franciscans who might offer Mass in the EF tomorrow, it is also the iii class feast of St. Didacus. If it is indeed also the iii class feast of F.X. Cabrini, I wouldn't know who gets the day and who gets commemorated, given that there is no way (that I know of) to establish precedence, e.g. if one was a martyr, etc. Usually a missal would just let you know, but since these days are in different parts of the missal, Mother being in the appendix of American propers, and under a different day besides, it might get confusing.

Perhaps I should go consult with her in person. She's only a bus and two trains away. (Westchester #2 to from Park Ave. and Shonnard Place in Yonkers to 242nd and Broadway, 1 Train to 168th St., A train back to 190th St.)

In the end, as I have written before, if we are to fulfill Benedict's desire for a 'mutual enrichment' of the two forms of the Roman Rite, as he wrote in his cover letter to Summorum pontificum, these are exactly the sort of things that will need to be worked out in time.

Overheard Fears

Erudite elder: "Do you know what's the number one fear of American priests? Conflict."

Me: "I think I'm more afraid of hell, but I'll admit that it's close."