Today I'm working on my term paper on St. Bonaventure's Tract on Preparing for Mass. I'm just finishing an exposition of the first chapter, which concludes with advice on forming the proper intentions for prayer.
For whom should we pray at the altar? Bonaventure offers a little list to help us remember:
"Propose to pray for the Pope, the cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, doctors, rectors, priests, clerics, monks, religious, monasteries and all of Christ’s servants; for kings, generals, princes and all the nobility; for virgins, widows, orphans, pilgrims, prisoners, the afflicted, the crippled, the sick and for all the people of God; also for the pagans, schismatics and heretics, that they may return to the true God and to the unity of the holy Church."
I guess that's everybody.
November 7, 2010
The Moral Complexity of Friary Cooking
Cooking for the brothers can be a daunting task, as can be eating their cooking at times. The moral excellence of friary cooking is a complex judgment, but I believe it can be narrowed to a function of four interacting values:
1. How talented and/or knowledgeable of a cook a brother happens to be,
2. How conscious and aware he is of 1., above,
3. Whether he puts effort into the meal, and
4. Whether he makes an inordinate mess, depending on local community standards.
Therefore, the best case scenario for friary dinner is when the brother cooking that day knows how to cook, knows that he knows how to cook, makes an effort at it, and cleans 'as he goes' so as not to make a big mess.
Beneath this best case scenario the situation grows far more complex. For example, the moral judgment on messiness depends somewhat on the other factors; brothers who make a great meal are often forgiven their messes, while those who prepare average or yucky meals are not. Conversely, an average cook is helped much by being clean.
The talent and knowledge that make a brother a good cook are not absolute either. A brother who doesn't know much about cooking but who masters one or two plain suppers will be appreciated far more than the good cook who doesn't make much effort to please.
The most dangerous friary cook is the brother who thinks he knows how to cook but in fact does not.
1. How talented and/or knowledgeable of a cook a brother happens to be,
2. How conscious and aware he is of 1., above,
3. Whether he puts effort into the meal, and
4. Whether he makes an inordinate mess, depending on local community standards.
Therefore, the best case scenario for friary dinner is when the brother cooking that day knows how to cook, knows that he knows how to cook, makes an effort at it, and cleans 'as he goes' so as not to make a big mess.
Beneath this best case scenario the situation grows far more complex. For example, the moral judgment on messiness depends somewhat on the other factors; brothers who make a great meal are often forgiven their messes, while those who prepare average or yucky meals are not. Conversely, an average cook is helped much by being clean.
The talent and knowledge that make a brother a good cook are not absolute either. A brother who doesn't know much about cooking but who masters one or two plain suppers will be appreciated far more than the good cook who doesn't make much effort to please.
The most dangerous friary cook is the brother who thinks he knows how to cook but in fact does not.
November 4, 2010
Kitchen Rules
People are full of rules. Sometimes they are aware of it and sometimes not. No area has such intense rules as around food, and hence the kitchen. Thus, the kitchen is the location of a great many little cold wars and quiet but strenuous struggles in community life. For example:
One brother thinks that there always has to be a box of plain crackers on the counter. Crackers are akin to cookies, right? The cookie jar is on the counter, so the crackers should be there too. Another brother thinks that crackers belong in a cool dry place like the cupboard. So the crackers are constantly about this round trip from counter to cupboard.
A similar pattern emerges with the dish soap. One brother thinks that dish soap is like hand soap; it belongs next to the sink. Another thinks that dish soap is more at home with the other cleaning products, which everyone knows go under the sink. So the dish soap is always about an analogous cyclical journey.
One brother thinks that the butter belongs outside of the refrigerator, another one in.
One brother believes that the sink rag must be folded square and laid over the divider between the two sides of the sink. Another one is convinced that it must be left in a triangle shape draping over the front. Still another is convinced that it is gross to use a rag more than once, and so rejects both options and puts all wet rags into the laundry basket.
One brother thinks that the dish drain rack is where you put clean dishes to dry. Another brother thinks that it's where you put dirty dishes that can't be put immediately in the dishwasher. Still other brothers, when they get to be superiors, avoid this whole ugly debate by forbidding dish drain racks altogether.
Another question is the nature of kitchen counters. One brother imagines that light food preparation can be done on the counter without the mediation of any other surface, e.g. you can put the two pieces of bread that will anchor your sandwich right on the counter and proceed to dress them. Another brother believes that the counter is the place where you have to put another surface, like a cutting board or a plate, whereupon you may then prepare food. The latter sort of brother comes to be tempted to indulge disdain for the former, thinking him gross. The same issue goes, similarly, on the question of whether you can leave directly on a counter the spoon or fork you had used to put something into a bowl before putting it the microwave, retrieving it afterward for eating purposes.
One brother thinks that there always has to be a box of plain crackers on the counter. Crackers are akin to cookies, right? The cookie jar is on the counter, so the crackers should be there too. Another brother thinks that crackers belong in a cool dry place like the cupboard. So the crackers are constantly about this round trip from counter to cupboard.
A similar pattern emerges with the dish soap. One brother thinks that dish soap is like hand soap; it belongs next to the sink. Another thinks that dish soap is more at home with the other cleaning products, which everyone knows go under the sink. So the dish soap is always about an analogous cyclical journey.
One brother thinks that the butter belongs outside of the refrigerator, another one in.
One brother believes that the sink rag must be folded square and laid over the divider between the two sides of the sink. Another one is convinced that it must be left in a triangle shape draping over the front. Still another is convinced that it is gross to use a rag more than once, and so rejects both options and puts all wet rags into the laundry basket.
One brother thinks that the dish drain rack is where you put clean dishes to dry. Another brother thinks that it's where you put dirty dishes that can't be put immediately in the dishwasher. Still other brothers, when they get to be superiors, avoid this whole ugly debate by forbidding dish drain racks altogether.
Another question is the nature of kitchen counters. One brother imagines that light food preparation can be done on the counter without the mediation of any other surface, e.g. you can put the two pieces of bread that will anchor your sandwich right on the counter and proceed to dress them. Another brother believes that the counter is the place where you have to put another surface, like a cutting board or a plate, whereupon you may then prepare food. The latter sort of brother comes to be tempted to indulge disdain for the former, thinking him gross. The same issue goes, similarly, on the question of whether you can leave directly on a counter the spoon or fork you had used to put something into a bowl before putting it the microwave, retrieving it afterward for eating purposes.
Me at BC: An Examination of Conscience
Apparently, it's no secret that I'm not having an easy time with my interior consent to being at Boston College. On the one hand, it's been going very well; my professors have been helpful and very encouraging, I have found my fellow students to be interesting and friendly, and the libraries and their staffs have been great. But there's still a certain resistance inside; I notice it in little ways. For example, I find myself arranging my commute in ways that minimize my time on the campus and its buses. I take the long way so as to arrive at the edge of the campus where my class is held, and then leave the same way.
So what's going on with me? I've been trying to puzzle it out. Of course some it is the standard worry about Catholic colleges having given up on their Catholic identity. The mother of a prospective undergraduate recently told me about how she was totally turned off by the admissions office, which was, according to her, constantly apologizing for the Catholic nature of the school, and assuring her son that he was in no way expected to live a Catholic life while a student. Mom was horrified.
This sort of thing is old news. It concerns me, but I don't think it's quite the thing that gets to me. So I've been praying for some insight. Yesterday, while I was walking to the Chestnut Hill T station, I think my prayer was answered.
I'm a college convert. The immediate roots of my own conversion to Christianity and sacramental initiation in the Catholic Church were in the college campus, undergraduate life. And here's the trouble: I got to be a Christian, on the natural level, largely as a reaction against the experience of college. The atmosphere of material affluence was a real culture shock at the time. Yes, I had grown up with educational and cultural privilege, but without a sense or experience of the material wealth that seemed to surround me when I got to college. In the midst of it I used to think about the poor of the world or those suffering in the first war in Iraq (which was going on at the time), and I felt the sting of conscience and I began to desire a life of responsibility.
The consequence-free playground of alcohol, drugs, sex, and rock and roll soon seemed to be a false and empty liberation, especially as I became aware of its darker sides: poisonings, rapes, abortions.
Having become a metaphysical optimist through the course in Plato I took when I was still in high school, I was scandalized by a search for truth and devotion to learning that ignored or even denied the Truth Itself. Even philosophy fell short. In Philosophy 101 the professor consented, with triumphal glee, to the students' conclusion that there was no 'meaning of life,' but only 'meanings in life.' It wasn't good enough for me. I turned to religion.
From all this, then, it's easy to see how it was that I found in Catholic Christianity (and it's Franciscan expression) a suitable means for rejecting and reacting against my surroundings. I think this is the real reason I feel uncomfortable at BC; at the root of everything I've done with my adult life is an attempt to reject and find an alternative to the world of 'college.' So to be on the campus with all of the kids feels very wrong to me.
So, I beg the question. What in all this is important for me to own and protect, and what am I called to let go of? Surely I don't need to be determined by who I was when I was nineteen or twenty. On the other hand, though, I need to be true to myself. What should be kept, and what should be left? These questions must be the next, careful discernment.
So what's going on with me? I've been trying to puzzle it out. Of course some it is the standard worry about Catholic colleges having given up on their Catholic identity. The mother of a prospective undergraduate recently told me about how she was totally turned off by the admissions office, which was, according to her, constantly apologizing for the Catholic nature of the school, and assuring her son that he was in no way expected to live a Catholic life while a student. Mom was horrified.
This sort of thing is old news. It concerns me, but I don't think it's quite the thing that gets to me. So I've been praying for some insight. Yesterday, while I was walking to the Chestnut Hill T station, I think my prayer was answered.
I'm a college convert. The immediate roots of my own conversion to Christianity and sacramental initiation in the Catholic Church were in the college campus, undergraduate life. And here's the trouble: I got to be a Christian, on the natural level, largely as a reaction against the experience of college. The atmosphere of material affluence was a real culture shock at the time. Yes, I had grown up with educational and cultural privilege, but without a sense or experience of the material wealth that seemed to surround me when I got to college. In the midst of it I used to think about the poor of the world or those suffering in the first war in Iraq (which was going on at the time), and I felt the sting of conscience and I began to desire a life of responsibility.
The consequence-free playground of alcohol, drugs, sex, and rock and roll soon seemed to be a false and empty liberation, especially as I became aware of its darker sides: poisonings, rapes, abortions.
Having become a metaphysical optimist through the course in Plato I took when I was still in high school, I was scandalized by a search for truth and devotion to learning that ignored or even denied the Truth Itself. Even philosophy fell short. In Philosophy 101 the professor consented, with triumphal glee, to the students' conclusion that there was no 'meaning of life,' but only 'meanings in life.' It wasn't good enough for me. I turned to religion.
From all this, then, it's easy to see how it was that I found in Catholic Christianity (and it's Franciscan expression) a suitable means for rejecting and reacting against my surroundings. I think this is the real reason I feel uncomfortable at BC; at the root of everything I've done with my adult life is an attempt to reject and find an alternative to the world of 'college.' So to be on the campus with all of the kids feels very wrong to me.
So, I beg the question. What in all this is important for me to own and protect, and what am I called to let go of? Surely I don't need to be determined by who I was when I was nineteen or twenty. On the other hand, though, I need to be true to myself. What should be kept, and what should be left? These questions must be the next, careful discernment.
November 3, 2010
Theses on Getting Along in Community
(A collection in progress)
1. Pray for the other members of the community every day. Not only is this the right thing to do before God, but it practices the disposition of charity toward them.
2. Presume the best motives in others.
3. Presume that others are quietly putting up with your awkwardness, idiosyncrasies and annoying behaviors that you aren't even aware of. Try to do the same thing for them.
4. Do not avoid conversations that tend toward gossip or detraction. Instead, by your own speech, try to turn them positive.
5. Do not take responsibility for the feelings of others, nor try to make anyone else responsible for yours. Do not surrender your moods and emotional states to the control of others.
6. Commit to some form of prayer or spiritual practice that helps you transcend moodiness and dis-identify with the flux of your own thoughts and feelings.
7. Seek always ways to be helpful around the house, but also be careful of enabling anyone's learned helplessness or negligence.
8. Be free to challenge anyone who is having trouble accepting help or kindness. Be humble enough yourself to ask for help when you need it. Be humble enough to accept compliments and kind words. Those who refuse to accept love deny others the chance to practice charity.
9. Use humor wisely. It can be a powerful too for speaking difficult things in a safe way, but it can also be used to belittle or to prevent what needs to be said from coming out.
10. When you cook, pay attention not to what they say at table, but to whether anyone eats the leftovers. That's what indicates whether they liked it or not.
11. Be approachable and available. If nobody ever asks you for help or if they can talk something over, it might be because you seem unapproachable.
1. Pray for the other members of the community every day. Not only is this the right thing to do before God, but it practices the disposition of charity toward them.
2. Presume the best motives in others.
3. Presume that others are quietly putting up with your awkwardness, idiosyncrasies and annoying behaviors that you aren't even aware of. Try to do the same thing for them.
4. Do not avoid conversations that tend toward gossip or detraction. Instead, by your own speech, try to turn them positive.
5. Do not take responsibility for the feelings of others, nor try to make anyone else responsible for yours. Do not surrender your moods and emotional states to the control of others.
6. Commit to some form of prayer or spiritual practice that helps you transcend moodiness and dis-identify with the flux of your own thoughts and feelings.
7. Seek always ways to be helpful around the house, but also be careful of enabling anyone's learned helplessness or negligence.
8. Be free to challenge anyone who is having trouble accepting help or kindness. Be humble enough yourself to ask for help when you need it. Be humble enough to accept compliments and kind words. Those who refuse to accept love deny others the chance to practice charity.
9. Use humor wisely. It can be a powerful too for speaking difficult things in a safe way, but it can also be used to belittle or to prevent what needs to be said from coming out.
10. When you cook, pay attention not to what they say at table, but to whether anyone eats the leftovers. That's what indicates whether they liked it or not.
11. Be approachable and available. If nobody ever asks you for help or if they can talk something over, it might be because you seem unapproachable.
November 2, 2010
Against Presumption and Pelagianism
All Souls' Day, or as we now call it in English, the Commemoration of the All the Faithful Departed, is the Church's great day of prayer for the dead. The Office of the Dead is prayed in the Liturgy of the Hours, and all priests have the privilege of offering the three traditional Masses according to the apostolic constitution Incruentum altaris sacrificium of Benedict XV. One Mass may be offered for a particular intention, but the second and third have to be offered for all the faithful departed and for the intentions of the Pope, respectively.
To pray for the dead at all is to affirm the Church's doctrine of purgatory, or at least something akin to it. For, if one of the faithful departed finds himself already among the saints in heaven enjoying the perfectly delightful and satisfying vision of God, what sense could it make to pray for such a one? It is rather he who should be praying for us. And if the dead find themselves--God forbid--in hell, there is no point praying for them anyway.
Thus, to pray for the dead presumes some kind of continuing journey after our earthly death, some kind of sense in which the dead can still be 'on the way' to God. The Church expresses this in the doctrine of Purgatory. So often Purgatory is looked upon as a gloomy and morbid concept, but the case is precisely the opposite. Purgatory is an exceedingly positive and encouraging doctrine, and an expression of the near, but not quite overwhelming, goodness and gentleness of God.
To explore this a little, we can see how Purgatory is a good corrective against two dangerous errors of our time: Presumption, on the one hand, and a kind of Pelagian deism on the other.
I offered about seventy funeral Masses in my three years as a parish priest. The typical (expressed) attitude of the mourners was that the deceased was already at peace in Heaven. Now I don't claim that this a strictly theological assertion; much of it is a justifiable attempt to find some comfort in an expressed faith in God. But, on the other hand, sometimes I felt a little presumption in all of it and a failure to accept the possibility that the deceased might not have been ready for the brilliance of heaven and perhaps could use of our prayers wherever he found himself on the continuing journey. Against the presumption of Heaven (not to mention the fear of hell), Purgatory stands as an expression of the mercy and gentleness of God. Even if we have not succeeded in surrendering to the grace to become saints in this life, even if we have not managed to become good before we die, God provides a time or a means (we don't know, and the Church doesn't define it) by which we may continue this journey, already solidly begun, after our earthly death.
This brings us to the second error for which Purgatory is a sound corrective, what I'm calling Pelagian deism. Sometimes people express this idea in which this life is construed as a kind of test. We have this time on earth, by which we are free to make choices that shape our final destiny in the life to come. This is true as far as it goes, but it often contains a very impoverished concept of salvation. God is not an impartial actor in this scenario! He doesn't set up this life and then leave us alone to choose either Heaven or hell. Against this view, I quote (as I often do) the beginning of Hilaire Belloc's Pelagian Drinking Song:
Not at all. God chooses Heaven for all of us. It's not about whether we end up with more goodness and badness in the ledger by the time we die, but about how we find the humility to accept the grace of salvation. God wants to give all of us the infinite blessing of the beatific vision. He is, quite literally, dying to give us Heaven. The only way to go to hell is to obstinately refuse to accept the gift. God is so passionate about our salvation that, even if we have not succeeding in fully accepting the happiness and sanctity He wants to give us in this life, God provides a further purification after death in order to bring us to the destiny He desires for us.
So, just a we pray for each other to become saints in this life, we pray for the dead who continue--by the gentleness of God--on this same journey to the life of the saints in heaven.
To pray for the dead at all is to affirm the Church's doctrine of purgatory, or at least something akin to it. For, if one of the faithful departed finds himself already among the saints in heaven enjoying the perfectly delightful and satisfying vision of God, what sense could it make to pray for such a one? It is rather he who should be praying for us. And if the dead find themselves--God forbid--in hell, there is no point praying for them anyway.
Thus, to pray for the dead presumes some kind of continuing journey after our earthly death, some kind of sense in which the dead can still be 'on the way' to God. The Church expresses this in the doctrine of Purgatory. So often Purgatory is looked upon as a gloomy and morbid concept, but the case is precisely the opposite. Purgatory is an exceedingly positive and encouraging doctrine, and an expression of the near, but not quite overwhelming, goodness and gentleness of God.
To explore this a little, we can see how Purgatory is a good corrective against two dangerous errors of our time: Presumption, on the one hand, and a kind of Pelagian deism on the other.
I offered about seventy funeral Masses in my three years as a parish priest. The typical (expressed) attitude of the mourners was that the deceased was already at peace in Heaven. Now I don't claim that this a strictly theological assertion; much of it is a justifiable attempt to find some comfort in an expressed faith in God. But, on the other hand, sometimes I felt a little presumption in all of it and a failure to accept the possibility that the deceased might not have been ready for the brilliance of heaven and perhaps could use of our prayers wherever he found himself on the continuing journey. Against the presumption of Heaven (not to mention the fear of hell), Purgatory stands as an expression of the mercy and gentleness of God. Even if we have not succeeded in surrendering to the grace to become saints in this life, even if we have not managed to become good before we die, God provides a time or a means (we don't know, and the Church doesn't define it) by which we may continue this journey, already solidly begun, after our earthly death.
This brings us to the second error for which Purgatory is a sound corrective, what I'm calling Pelagian deism. Sometimes people express this idea in which this life is construed as a kind of test. We have this time on earth, by which we are free to make choices that shape our final destiny in the life to come. This is true as far as it goes, but it often contains a very impoverished concept of salvation. God is not an impartial actor in this scenario! He doesn't set up this life and then leave us alone to choose either Heaven or hell. Against this view, I quote (as I often do) the beginning of Hilaire Belloc's Pelagian Drinking Song:
Pelagius lived at Kardanoel
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.
Not at all. God chooses Heaven for all of us. It's not about whether we end up with more goodness and badness in the ledger by the time we die, but about how we find the humility to accept the grace of salvation. God wants to give all of us the infinite blessing of the beatific vision. He is, quite literally, dying to give us Heaven. The only way to go to hell is to obstinately refuse to accept the gift. God is so passionate about our salvation that, even if we have not succeeding in fully accepting the happiness and sanctity He wants to give us in this life, God provides a further purification after death in order to bring us to the destiny He desires for us.
So, just a we pray for each other to become saints in this life, we pray for the dead who continue--by the gentleness of God--on this same journey to the life of the saints in heaven.
November 1, 2010
Et Erigens Se Iungit Manus
My three years as a parish priest convinced me of many things. One of them is that extraordinary spiritual phenomena are not as rare as we often think. Many people have experiences akin to visions, locutions, the voice of God giving consolation or direction in dreams, among many other sorts of things. Folks just don't talk about such things that much, either because we have been taught to disbelieve them, or because we don't want to be made fun of or labeled. On the positive side, such experiences represent a kind of intimacy with God, and intimacies are always secret in one way or another.
Extraordinary experiences can be a great encouragement or consolation, but they can also be the occasion of certain temptations and dangers.
Here's one that has arisen in my own life in recent months: when I receive the Host at Mass, I often bring my joined hands to my face for the moment of meditation (per the older rubric). Sometimes, just for a instant, I notice on my fingers the smell of the Sacred Chrism. Of course the anointing of my hands from my ordination is long washed away--on the natural level--but once in a while, there's the smell.
Why should this happen? The anointing is still there on the spiritual level. As I once heard in a humorous but perhaps helpful analogy, the anointings with Sacred Chrism which we receive in Baptism, Confirmation, and priestly ordination penetrate the surface and end up on the bones, as in the case of Wolverine's adamantium-bonded skeleton. (Perhaps it seem silly, but this is an image young people can get.) Sacraments are outward signs of interior grace, after all, but the interior and exterior are mysteriously joined in the mystery of the Incarnation itself. Why am I given this little gift of seeming to notice, on the natural level, the supernatural grace of the sacrament signified through the anointing of my hands? Perhaps it's an encouragement.
But we can't let such encouragements turn into distractions. I can't be thinking about all this during Mass, apart from momentary interior acts of faith or gratitude. Most of all, I can't look forward to such a thing or become disappointed if I don't get it. Grace, when grabbed for, disappears. God refuses to be a commodity, and resists any way that we try to come at the spiritual life with a consumer mentality.
Extraordinary experiences can be a great encouragement or consolation, but they can also be the occasion of certain temptations and dangers.
Here's one that has arisen in my own life in recent months: when I receive the Host at Mass, I often bring my joined hands to my face for the moment of meditation (per the older rubric). Sometimes, just for a instant, I notice on my fingers the smell of the Sacred Chrism. Of course the anointing of my hands from my ordination is long washed away--on the natural level--but once in a while, there's the smell.
Why should this happen? The anointing is still there on the spiritual level. As I once heard in a humorous but perhaps helpful analogy, the anointings with Sacred Chrism which we receive in Baptism, Confirmation, and priestly ordination penetrate the surface and end up on the bones, as in the case of Wolverine's adamantium-bonded skeleton. (Perhaps it seem silly, but this is an image young people can get.) Sacraments are outward signs of interior grace, after all, but the interior and exterior are mysteriously joined in the mystery of the Incarnation itself. Why am I given this little gift of seeming to notice, on the natural level, the supernatural grace of the sacrament signified through the anointing of my hands? Perhaps it's an encouragement.
But we can't let such encouragements turn into distractions. I can't be thinking about all this during Mass, apart from momentary interior acts of faith or gratitude. Most of all, I can't look forward to such a thing or become disappointed if I don't get it. Grace, when grabbed for, disappears. God refuses to be a commodity, and resists any way that we try to come at the spiritual life with a consumer mentality.
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