Retreat Report

This afternoon we have returned home from our annual community retreat. It was held, as has been usual in time my time here, at our house in Frascati in the hills outside Rome.

Ah Rome. She's pretty from a distance, no?

For me the grace of the retreat was to pause and take a look at my life and vocation at this particular moment, especially in light of some changes in the recent past (e.g. loss of a spiritual director) and looking forward to changes that are on the way (e.g. the General Chapter this summer). My prayer was mostly about who I am at this point and the discernment of what God desires for me going forward.

For the days of retreat, I found myself most of the time in one of two places. The first was the Capuchin church adjacent to the friary:

San Francesco d'Assisi, Frascati. Consecrated 1579.

There I prayed, reflected on things, and sometimes just sat with the Lord. It was cold enough in there that even I wanted a sweatshirt, so there wasn't much danger of any other friar interrupting my solitude!

My other spot was in the friary rec room, where I read, journaled, and tended the fireplace in the later afternoons.

What a rich source of metaphor for the spiritual life! Long-time followers of this blog will remember my sufferings during a period of my religious life when I gathered with confreres to pray around a fake fireplace (supplied with real tools; 'Lord, close my lips' must be my prayer about that), despite the fact that the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a number of nearby places.

During the retreat I finished Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Fr. Martin Laird, O.S.A., which had been recommended to me by a confrere, and I read most of Cardinal Sarah's The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, which is a prayerful, beautiful book. I recommend it.

The Penitent Who Hates The Pope

A pastoral issue came up during table talk among the friars recently: what to do for a penitent who comes to confession and says he hates Pope Francis.

For my part I don't think this has ever happened to me. Back when I was assigned to pastoral ministry, which was during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, I don't remember anyone ever confessing hatred for him either. Perhaps there was less overlap between the faithful afflicted with hatred for Pope Benedict XVI and the faithful who go to confession. But that question goes with another topic.

The question stuck with me and I gave it some thought.

Preacher to the Popes: Father Cantalamessa

This was filmed in February 2016 here at the Capuchin General Curia and at our friary in Frascati, outside of Rome. I was happy to be able to help with some of the arrangements and other practical matters. The director, Ashley Zahorian, had a genuine and devout passion for making known the ministry of the our confrere in his service as Preacher to the Papal Household.

(In the clip, in addition to Fr. Cantalamessa himself and others, you get to see Br. Mark of the Just a Brother blog, and Br. Clayton, who shows up now and again in my tweets as my 'boss.')

It's a project worthy of support. Check out the full website here.

Out of the Well

"Which of you, having a son or an ox that fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?" (Luke 14:5)

That's us, poor children of God and his dumb creatures who have fallen.

And just as the answer to the question is everyone, so Jesus does it too, drawing us up from our fallenness through the well of baptism, and on a sabbath day too, the Great Sabbath, Holy Saturday,  when he descends into the hell we have provided for ourselves with our sins and draws up our humanity, united to his, as the New Creation of which his Resurrection is the dawn.

"I Know Nothing Due To Holy Obedience"

An Irish priest sent me this gem of a footnote on Capuchin ignorance from Ulrich L. Lehner's Monastic Prisons and Torture Chambers: Crime and Punishment in Central European Monasteries 1600-1800.

(click to enlarge)

God Is Love

I remember once back in Yonkers I was caught off guard in need of a Sunday homily. A missionary priest was coming to make an appeal and was to preach at all the Masses for this purpose, so I hadn't prepared anything that week. His flight, however, was delayed, and he didn't make it in time for the Saturday vigil Mass.

So at the time of the homily I explained to the assembly how I was stuck. On the one hand, I was not willing to take them and my duties as a priest so lightly as to preach without having prepared. On the other hand, it was a Sunday Mass, and therefore the faithful had a right to a homily.

My solution: I brought and read a little passage of St. Augustine's comment on the gospel for that Sunday.

The Divine Mission of Brother Wicked Treasurer

Yesterday Pope Francis spoke to priests, religious, seminarians, and permanent deacons in the cathedral in Bologna. He took a couple of spontaneous questions. Here's part of one his answers to a religious who asked about, among other things, the 'psychology of survival' that the Holy Father has mentioned before. Here's part of the Pope's reply: