[an old post, updated]
Today is my twenty-fourth anniversary of baptism. I don't think I had any idea what I was getting into that Saturday midday when I walked up out of the basement of Freeman Hall at Connecticut College, made my way out the Williams St. gate and went down to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Quaker Hill. Perhaps it's part of the mercy of God that I had little idea. In any case, the Holy Spirit knew what he was doing and that's what matters.
As always, this anniversary reminds me to thank God and pray for all the people he has given me along the way, those who have been bearers of the graces God has willed in his generosity towards a lukewarm disciple like myself.
August 12, 2016
The Forms of Charity
This week I've been staying at our place in Yonkers, New York. For reading I took from the library their copy of John of Meerle's Seraphic Spirit and Life, which is a beautiful old book of Capuchin-Franciscan wisdom and spirituality.
I thought I would share this passage on the different expressions of charity:
I thought I would share this passage on the different expressions of charity:
When therefore charity is directed to God, it called love of God, when towards our neighbor, it is love of one's neighbor; if it shares in the afflictions of others, it is called compassion, when it shares the good fortune of others, it is congratulatory love; if charity is patient in adversity, it is called patience, if it renders good for evil, it is benevolence, if it is not proud and does not exalt itself above others, it is humility, if it yields to authority as is becoming, is is obedience, if it moderates and restricts the requirements of the body it is temperance, if it abhors whatever is licentious, it is chastity; by renouncing the things of this world it becomes the spirit of poverty, by distributing riches to the poor it becomes generosity, by making us wait courageously and without annoyance for a promised good it is longanimity; when making us discern carefully between what is good and what is better, or between bad and worse, it is called prudence, when keeping us from excess in delectation or pleasure it is moderation, when preventing us from being cast down by difficulties it is strength, when we believe what is to be believed it is faith, if we confidently expect what faith promises it is hope. (p. 117-118)
July 27, 2016
Fr. Jacques Hamel
Of course we find ourselves yesterday and today praying for Fr. Jacques, for his eternal rest and in thanksgiving for his vocation and ministry and for the eternal reward of his labors and witness. Nor do we forget to pray for the other hostage who was hurt. And we pray for the men who murdered Fr. Jacques, that they may find the rest that perhaps they didn't know in this life, that they may find a truer face of the merciful God than perhaps they had known.
Fr. Jacques would have begun the Mass, leading the people in the prayer of the Sacrifice as he had done thousands of times before. Could he have known as he did so on a proverbially plain Tuesday of Ordinary Time that he would be brutally murdered before it was over? And yet everything I've read about him says that he had lived as to prepare for such a moment, in generosity and priestly dedication.
We all have this call before us. In this world, increasing hostile to the God revealed in Jesus Christ, there will be more martyrs in the traditional sense. But all of us who are believers will face some kind of martyrdom, some invitation to suffer, to be limited, cut short or cut out for the sake of the Gospel, whether by those committed to religion that doesn't realize it has been delivered from the blood-drinking gods of human invention by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ or by those whose secularism becomes intolerant and dogmatic--as it must, for it has nothing to stand on but its self-referential insistence on its own truth, even as it often denies that there is even such a thing as 'truth.'
It is our task to be prepared for this moment, that we also may be found faithful. The Lord himself invites us to witness. The world needs it desperately, for it has no idea how to respond to its violence. It has no idea how to respond because it has lost any place from which to speak or reason, any foundation on which to stand. That foundation, that place to begin, can only be the living God, the self-emptying God revealed in Jesus Christ, and the more the world forgets him, its own Creator, Source, and Ground, the more God himself will look for martyrs.
Fr. Jacques would have begun the Mass, leading the people in the prayer of the Sacrifice as he had done thousands of times before. Could he have known as he did so on a proverbially plain Tuesday of Ordinary Time that he would be brutally murdered before it was over? And yet everything I've read about him says that he had lived as to prepare for such a moment, in generosity and priestly dedication.
We all have this call before us. In this world, increasing hostile to the God revealed in Jesus Christ, there will be more martyrs in the traditional sense. But all of us who are believers will face some kind of martyrdom, some invitation to suffer, to be limited, cut short or cut out for the sake of the Gospel, whether by those committed to religion that doesn't realize it has been delivered from the blood-drinking gods of human invention by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ or by those whose secularism becomes intolerant and dogmatic--as it must, for it has nothing to stand on but its self-referential insistence on its own truth, even as it often denies that there is even such a thing as 'truth.'
It is our task to be prepared for this moment, that we also may be found faithful. The Lord himself invites us to witness. The world needs it desperately, for it has no idea how to respond to its violence. It has no idea how to respond because it has lost any place from which to speak or reason, any foundation on which to stand. That foundation, that place to begin, can only be the living God, the self-emptying God revealed in Jesus Christ, and the more the world forgets him, its own Creator, Source, and Ground, the more God himself will look for martyrs.
July 23, 2016
Latin Doubts Changing World Ramble
There are those who like to think that liturgical Latin has been making comeback. Not that it needs to of course; as goes the oft quoted section 36 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, Linguae latinae usus, salvo particulari iure, in Ritibus latinis servetur. "Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites."
Recent experience has made me doubt, however.
Recent experience has made me doubt, however.
July 18, 2016
Prayer Ramble Lament for the World
In these days I have been mourning with the world. So many attacks, so many murders.
When I first came to Rome you could walk right into three out of the four major basilicas in Rome: the Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul's. And I did so, pretty often. Since the attacks in Paris last year, you have to go through security. It's a reminder of the world we live in and those who have been murdered in it.
How do I pray? What is my lament to God?
When I first came to Rome you could walk right into three out of the four major basilicas in Rome: the Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul's. And I did so, pretty often. Since the attacks in Paris last year, you have to go through security. It's a reminder of the world we live in and those who have been murdered in it.
How do I pray? What is my lament to God?
July 16, 2016
The Franciscan Theology of Fundraising
The Franciscan traditions provides Franciscan friars with a simple and robust theology of fundraising.
Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of St. Francis, records his words:
"There is a contract between the world and the brothers: the brothers must give the world a good example, the world must provide for their needs. When they break faith and withdraw good example, the world will withdraw its hand in just censure."
(Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul / 2nd Life of St. Francis, XL/86:4, trans. Placid Hermann, OFM)
Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of St. Francis, records his words:
"There is a contract between the world and the brothers: the brothers must give the world a good example, the world must provide for their needs. When they break faith and withdraw good example, the world will withdraw its hand in just censure."
(Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul / 2nd Life of St. Francis, XL/86:4, trans. Placid Hermann, OFM)
July 15, 2016
Feast of St. Bonaventure
By gift or blessed coincidence, my turn to preside at the community Mass fell on today, the feast of our Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure.
I had some time to spend with him, so I returned to some texts and thought about what I might give for a homily. In the end I landed on Bonaventure's account of St. Francis descending the mountain after the experience of the stigmata:
I had some time to spend with him, so I returned to some texts and thought about what I might give for a homily. In the end I landed on Bonaventure's account of St. Francis descending the mountain after the experience of the stigmata:
After true love for Christ transformed the lover into his image, when the forty days were over that he spent in solitude as he had desired, and the feast of St. Michael the Archangel had also arrived, the angelic man Francis came down from the mountain, bearing with him the likeness of the crucified, depicted not on tablets of stone or on panels of wood carved by hand, but engraved on parts of his flesh by the finger of the living God. (Major Legend XIII:5)
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