Moments of Grace

Update to this old post below. As part of my World Day of Prayer for Vocations homily this weekend, I used the story of the kid in the library. Just for fun, I looked him up to see if I could find out what he is up to thirty years later. I found his LinkedIn page. He's an employment counselor. How fitting!

Old post:

The other day there was a program on TV about St. Maria Goretti. At one point it showed a picture of the priest who gave Maria her first Holy Communion. He looked like a regular, unremarkable priest. I was thinking about him a little. In all of the joys and struggles of his life, whatever they were, in all of the highs and lows of his vocation, that particular moment, when he ministered first Holy Communion to Maria Goretti, was probably one of the most important moments of his life. What I mean is that it was so from God's perspective, from the point of view of the larger economies of grace.

I think that we're often unaware of the way God wishes to make instruments of us in particular moments with one another. God knows that it works better this way, without the interior tangles of pious self-awareness. In the economies by which God pours out his own sanctity in the world, we never know how God is making use of us.

Here's an example from my own life. When I was a senior in college I was considering religious life. There was another kid among the philosophy majors who had been a seminarian. I didn't really know him. One night we ran into each other in the library. He asked me if it was true, that I was thinking of entering religious life. I said that it was. "Good luck with your vocation," he said.

For him it was surely an offhand comment, but for me it made a big difference. Your vocation. It made the whole business real. I had been considering religious life, for sure, but as my idea. The idea of being a Franciscan friar attracted me, and so I was thinking of trying it out. I remember standing there after the guy walked away, jarred by the idea of having a vocation, a call from God. He had named something for me with a clarity that I hadn't known. God used him to accomplish an important grace for me at that moment, probably without his having any idea.

This is why it's good to pray that God guide our speech and interaction with others, and that we work whatever spiritual practices we need to stay open and attentive when we are with one another. Nevertheless, we may not be aware of the graces God works through us, and mercifully so. God keeps us ignorant of these movements a lot of the time, saving us not only from temptations to vanity but also keeping us from messing up the plainness of grace with the clumsiness of self-conscious piety. So we may get to heaven and find out that the most graced moments of our lives were things we hadn't even thought about. In fact, we may as well presume that this will be the case; it will help us to be humble on this pilgrimage and keep us from taking what we know of ourselves as graced before God, which is very little, too seriously.

Advent Ramble

Advent brings a new year of grace with its promise of a new beginning for each of us. May we enter into this privileged season that the Church calls a time of "devout and expectant delight." (Universal Norms for the Liturgical Year)

In my early experience of religious life it was beat into us that Advent wasn't a penitential season. Like a lot of what I was taught early on, this needs more nuance. Certainly Advent is a time for metanoia, for turning our attention toward the One who is our deepest delight, to a stance of devout expectation for the God who is arriving fresh in each moment. As John the Baptist will cry out on the Second Sunday of Advent, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

At hand. The Kingdom is perpetually about to be. This is the patient and humble God who awaits the friendship of those who will surrender to his kingship in their hearts in whatever the next moment is for them, whether it be prayer or work or rest, or especially a moment of encounter with another soul.

This attentiveness to the God who is arriving, this adventitious God, is the spiritual work of those of us who live in this graced and blessed time in between the first and second comings of Christ. Advent invites us to a contemplative attentiveness in this in-betweenness, as we look back with joy to the humility of the incarnation and forward to the glory of the final fulfillment of everything in Christ.

This attentiveness in quiet prayer is what makes a space for God to be born anew in our own hearts. And if our hearts are sometimes dark or cold, let us rejoice all the more, for that is just the sort of place God wills to be born.

As one of my Capuchin formation directors told us at the beginning of Advent, "Let us begin again for the first time."

Preparing the Way of the Lord

“John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Luke 3:3)

John the Baptist is one of the central characters of Advent; he is the Forerunner who prepares the way of the Lord. By repentance and the forgiveness of sins we too prepare ourselves as a place for the Lord to be born anew. By repentance, because when we let go of sin and attachment we make room in our minds and hearts, preparing a space for God within. By receiving forgiveness, because it is by experiencing God’s mercy that we are able to mirror that mercy to others; knowing God’s mercy in our own lives, we become ourselves the way that the Lord prepares for divine mercy to come into the world.

(reflection prepared for our vocation office's social media)

Life After Traditionis Custodes

The other day I received a request: would I be willing, at some point in the near future, to celebrate a Mass in the Extraordinary Form?

First of all, I presume what was meant was would I celebrate a Mass according to the 1962 Missal, what was called the 'Extraordinary Form' before Traditionis custodes.

As I started to consider the request I came to realize that the motu proprio doesn't seem to address my situation. The letter gives direction to two kinds of priests:

Art. 4. Priests ordained after the publication of the present Motu Proprio, who wish to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, should submit a formal request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before granting this authorization.

Art. 5. Priests who already celebrate according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 should request from the diocesan Bishop the authorization to continue to enjoy this faculty.

I take the sense of Article 5 as celebrating in this way regularly or habitually. I have never celebrated Mass in the Extraordinary Form publicly. Ordained right around the time of Summorum pontificum, I learned the older form, curious as I was about this new faculty granted by Pope Benedict, practiced, and celebrated privately a few times. But I haven't done so since leaving the parish assignment in 2010 (I had access to a number of fitting altars there). I also tried to learn the Breviarium Romanum and prayed some of my hours from the Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum sometimes, especially for the little hours, until on my reading of Universae Ecclesiae I decided that such mixing and matching wasn't really allowed.

In the end I'm glad for these inspirations because I learned a lot about the Mass and even got free chant lessons at one of the Extraordinary Form groups in Boston during my period in the doctoral program at Boston College. And perhaps the "mutual enrichment" that Benedict hoped for in Summorum pontificum has thus been accomplished in my priesthood. Given the closeness I feel to the Pope Emeritus, to know that would give me encouragement and comfort.

So where does Traditionis custodes leave a priest found already ordained upon its publication but not celebrating according to what was, until that day, called the Extraordinary Form? I'm honestly not sure. Am I like a new priest, needing the permission of the bishop confirmed by the Holy See in order to celebrate with the 1962 Missal, or am I like a priest who was celebrating this way upon the publication of the letter, needing only the authorization of the bishop? Or am I, as I suspect on my reading of the spirit of Traditionis custodes, neither of these things, but simply someone who has lost the faculty to celebrate in the older form, period, and without any justification for seeking to have it back.

Comments welcome.

Easter Sunday

(Reflection prepared for our vocation department's social media)

Today we wake up to a new world, a new creation that is risen within us by virtue of what happened last night at the great Vigil in the Holy Night: we were either baptized or renewed the promises of our baptism. This new life rising within us cries out and shakes us awake with the great Easter slogan: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above! (Colossians 3:1)

The Resurrection of the Lord and our baptism into the new creation it inaugurates are the deepest of mysteries; this is why Mother Church gives us the longest of her privileged seasons—the fifty days of Easter—to journey into them.

Today on Easter Sunday there is just the announcement—Christ is risen! Over these fifty days the Easter mystery will unfold into how the Risen Lord is present to us—the Good Shepherd, the Bread of Life, and so on—until we arrive at the great day of Pentecost and the celebration of the Risen Lord’s abiding and animating presence in his Church, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Temple, Priest, and Sacrifice

 (Reflection prepared for our vocation department's social media)

3rd Sunday of Lent

“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19) So replies Jesus to those who protest his cleansing of the Temple. But they don’t realize “he was speaking about the temple of his body.” (2:21)

What is a temple? In the most general terms, it is a place or structure where sacrifice is offered, typically by priests, who are persons appointed to offer such sacrifices. Jesus Christ is all of these things at once: “the priest through whom we are reconciled, the sacrifice by which we are reconciled, the temple where we are reconciled, and the God to whom we are reconciled.” (St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, Office of Readings for Friday of the 5th week of Lent)

By our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ and our communion with him in the Eucharist, we enter into the Temple of his Body and his priesthood enters into us, enabling us to be “built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5) This is the priesthood shared by all the baptized. As we continue the journey of Lent, may we enter anew the Temple of the Lord’s Body that his priesthood and his Sacrifice may find a home in us.

What Kind Of Sinner?

 (Reflection prepared for our vocation department's social media)

Wednesday of the 1st week of Lent

The people of Nineveh were said to be wicked enough to have their wickedness rise up before God (Jonah 1:2) and yet Jesus offers them as an example of repentance. (Luke 11:32) And their conversion was indeed thorough; even the animals had to fast and wear sackcloth! (Jonah 3:7-8)

This can serve to remind us—notwithstanding our often sloppy speech about spiritual things—that saint is not the opposite of sinner. A saint is just a sinner who has refused to let the experience of sin—the boredom, frustration, and unhappiness of its ‘empty promises’—harden and close his heart, but instead has allowed this pain to break his heart open, open to God and to his fellow sinners in their suffering.

On this our Lenten journey toward either baptism or renewal of our baptismal promises at Easter, let us make up our mind to be that kind of sinner.