Merton’s vision corner and the (locked) Cathedral. Someday I’ll make it there for Mass and a visit to their museum. I also want to visit the Merton Center at Bellarmine.
River from the pedestrian bridge over the Ohio, between Kentucky and Indiana. I was a little surprised they didn’t have any touristy “welcome to Indiana” or Kentucky signs on either riverbank. But a great walk and riverfront park nonetheless.
Street festival, and object in the yard which I identified as a flagpole with the help of Google Lens, so it’s good for one thing at least.
Here I drew him celebrating the Asperges rite before Mass; the text of the psalm recited seemed especially resonant: Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, O Lord, and I shall be cleansed; Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. The altar boys assisting the priest are themselves lepers; one holds the bucket of holy water and the other grasps the edge of the cope in a way that reflects the scene depicted on a wall hanging behind him: the cure of the woman afflicted by an issue of blood, touching the hem of Christ’s garment.
The plants and animals that appear in the ornamental border and halo are ones that lived on Molokai in the time of St. Damien. Most of them are endemic to Hawaii, and some are now extinct.
The damask pattern is my own design. Explicitly religious pictures seem not to have been used commonly in medieval fabrics, perhaps because of the impropriety of cutting them. Here I have chosen images that are whimsical but suggestive of the overall subject of the pictures. These include pigs and crabs (a reference to the Mosaic doctrine of uncleanness that was made obsolete by the New Covenant), and thorns to indicate suffering.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”. The brief conversation we heard in the Gospel passage, between a man identified elsewhere as the rich young man and Jesus, begins with this question (cf. Mk 10: 17-30). We do not have many details about this anonymous figure; yet from a few characteristics we succeed in perceiving his sincere desire to attain eternal life by leading an honest and virtuous earthly existence. In fact he knows the commandments and has observed them faithfully from his youth. Yet, all this which is of course important is not enough. Jesus says he lacks one thing, but it is something essential. Then, seeing him well disposed, the divine Teacher looks at him lovingly and suggests to him a leap in quality; he calls the young man to heroism in holiness, he asks him to abandon everything to follow him: “go, sell what you have, and give to the poor… and come, follow me” (v. 21).
“Come, follow me”. This is the Christian vocation which is born from the Lord’s proposal of love and can only be fulfilled in our loving response. Jesus invites his disciples to give their lives completely, without calculation or personal interest, with unreserved trust in God. Saints accept this demanding invitation and set out with humble docility in the following of the Crucified and Risen Christ. Their perfection, in the logic of faith sometimes humanly incomprehensible consists in no longer putting themselves at the centre but in choosing to go against the tide, living in line with the Gospel. This is what the five Saints did who are held up today with great joy for the veneration of the universal Church: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Francisco Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damien de Veuster, Rafael Arnáiz Barón and Mary of the Cross (Jeanne Jugan). In them we contemplate the Apostle Peter’s words fulfilled: “Lo, we have left everything and followed you” (v. 28), and Jesus’ comforting reassurance: “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time… with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (vv. 29-30)….
….Jozef De Veuster received the name of Damien in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. When he was 23 years old, in 1863, he left Flanders, the land of his birth, to proclaim the Gospel on the other side of the world in the Hawaiian Islands. His missionary activity, which gave him such joy, reached its peak in charity. Not without fear and repugnance, he chose to go to the Island of Molokai to serve the lepers who lived there, abandoned by all. Thus he was exposed to the disease from which they suffered. He felt at home with them. The servant of the Word consequently became a suffering servant, a leper with the lepers, for the last four years of his life. In order to follow Christ, Fr Damien not only left his homeland but also risked his health: therefore as the word of Jesus proclaimed to us in today’s Gospel says he received eternal life (cf. Mk 10: 30).
On this 20th anniversary of the Canonization of another Belgian Saint, Bro. Mutien-Marie, the Church in Belgium has once again come together to give thanks to God for the recognition of one of its sons as an authentic servant of God. Let us remember before this noble figure that it is charity which makes unity, brings it forth and makes it desirable. Following in St Paul’s footsteps, St Damien prompts us to choose the good warfare (cf. 1 Tim 1: 18), not the kind that brings division but the kind that gathers people together. He invites us to open our eyes to the forms of leprosy that disfigure the humanity of our brethren and still today call for the charity of our presence as servants, beyond that of our generosity.
(written when he was still a Blessed. Loyola has never done a revised edition, which is unfortunate.)
Speaking of Hansen’s Disease, a few years ago, I read The Colony, which is about the history of the leper colony at Molokai. It’s quite fascinating, and perhaps the most important figure I’ve learned about was one who was quite well known during the early part of this century and who now has, following his presently more famous colleagues, Sts. Damien and Marianne of Molokai, his canonization cause in process, the diocesan phase having been completed a few months ago.
In late July 1886, a ship pulled into Molokai, Hawaii’s leper colony. Father Damien de Veuster always greeted the newcomers, usually lepers seeking refuge and comfort. But one passenger stood out, a tall man in a blue denim suit. He wasn’t a leper; he was Joseph Dutton, and at age 43 he came to help Father Damien. The priest warned he couldn’t pay anything, but Dutton didn’t care. He would spend forty-five years on Molokai, remaining long after the priest’s death of leprosy in 1889.
Joseph’s journey to Molokai was full of twists and turns.
For about a year or so after the war, Dutton remained in government service and oversaw the morbid task of disinterring thousands of Union soldiers who had died while serving in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Each body was placed in a coffin and hauled to national cemeteries established at Shiloh and Corinth. Dutton described this as “delicate work,” having to pinpoint and retrieve the scattered remains of soldiers only identified by crude markers. “So far as possible I made it a rule to be present at the disinterment of every body,” the meticulous officer stated. By the end of his assignment, Dutton claimed that he supervised the removal of 6,000 bodies.
Once his cemetery duties ended, Dutton became superintendent of a distillery in Alabama. The once-promising quartermaster, possibly battling depression from a recent divorce and the grim cemetery work he had been tasked, found relief in the bottom of a bottle. In 1870, broke and alone, he drifted to Memphis, Tennessee, looking for work. He took a job as a clerk with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. Afterward, he served as a special agent for the War Department investigating claims of persons who had remained loyal to the Union. His drinking got out of hand, and sometime between 1875 and 1876, Dutton decided enough was enough and swore to never take a drink again.
By the age of 40, now sober, he began to seriously consider his purpose in life. He turned to religion and was baptized a Catholic in April 1883. He took the name of his favorite saint, Saint Joseph.
Father Damien—then a patient himself—greeted him as “Brother” on July 29, 1886, and from that moment until Damien’s death on April 15, 1889, the two maintained an intimate friendship. Dutton dressed Damien’s sores, recorded a statement about the priest’s purity, and worked tirelessly to honor his memory and legacy in following years. He led the movement to name the main road “Damien Road” and wrote both personal letters and newspaper columns about his sacrifice. Included in Dutton’s collection at Notre Dame are strips of Damien’s cloak, other liturgical vestments, and several finger towels that he saved in envelopes.
In his 44 years in Kalaupapa, Dutton touched thousands of lives through his selfless service. He headed the Baldwin Home for Boys on the Kalawao side of the peninsula, where he cared physically and spiritually for male patients and orphan boys. From laboring as a carpenter and administrator, to comforting the dying, to coaching baseball, Dutton immersed himself in his community without accepting credit; to him, work was always about answering God’s call instead of personal fame or selfish desire.
He is one of the many American “saints in the pipeline” about whom I presented at a local parish last fall. Here’s his slide. Full set of slides available here.
I have to leave in a bit for a family-related jaunt up north (not as far as NYC, but still north). While I’m there, I hope to finish up my NYC blogging and do a lot of reading.
ESSAY: “Mary: Evolution of a Bookworm” by Joel J. Miller: “It’s unlikely the historical Mary could read at all, but medieval Christians transformed her into an icon of literacy,” often showing her with a book in hand, whether as a child learning to read from her mother, Saint Anne; at the Annunciation, with the book of Isaiah, the Psalter, or a book of hours splayed open on her lap; or teaching her own child, Jesus, how to read. Drawing on the research of Laura Saetveit Miles, author of The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England [previously], Joel J. Miller discusses how images of Mary reading “rode a wave of rising female literacy and simultaneously encouraged its expansion.”
Like most people, we used to think that you have to drive to reach interesting, beautiful remote places. Then we discovered how much of the country is walkable by public transport, particularly by rail. These are some of the walks done by Steve Melia, aka the Green Travel Writer, between railway stations around Bristol, where he lives. The purple and blue lines are day walks. The orange ones involved an overnight stay.
Railwalks.co.uk was formed when Steve met Daniel Raven-Ellison the founder of Slow Ways and Andy Stevenson, creator of Point2 Guides and whose research area is walking guide materials development at the University of Worcester.
But valuable as these perspectives may be, it was another insight that finally compelled me to write this post. Two or three weeks back, Audrey Watters wrote in defense of walking in her excellent newsletter about fitness tech, Second Breakfast. The title of that installment was a line from the filmmaker Werner Herzog: “The world reveals itself to those who walk.”
That’s a wonderfully concise and profound observation. Of course, I was inclined to agree with the sentiment because it captures something I have been articulating, at much greater length, for some time now. The world is not simply present to us in its fullness and depth by virtue of the fact that we are capable of glancing at it. Instead, if we are to see the world, we must attend to it with care, patience, and even love.
This kind of attention can only unfold under certain conditions—solitude, silence, stillness—and in relation to certain virtues—humility, perseverance, charity. Among the conditions conducive to attentiveness I would also include deliberate slowness. Past a certain speed, we simply cannot perceive the world in depth…
….To walk, then, is to inhabit a fitting scale and speed. It is the scale and speed at which our bodies are able to find their fit in the world, and the world rewards us by spurring our thinking and disclosing itself to us. Perhaps this is the deeper fitness we should actually be after.
Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?
…might just be one of my favorite Scripture verses. An arresting, pointed reminder.
Why are you standing around? What are you looking at?
In leaving, Jesus is profoundly present. Just before he left this earthly realm, he gave quite specific instructions…be my witnesses…make disciples of all nations.
A reminder:
In this age of easy global media reach, in this age that celebrates individual achievement and impact, we are tempted to think that of course the ideal way to be obedient to Jesus’ instructions is to make a difference and set the world on fire.
Well, yes. Sort of.
But don’t forget where that starts.
It starts in our lives, in our particular state in life. It begins with, first, our own relationship with God, our own stance, our own openness, our own humility. And then the circles widens: family, neighbors, fellow workers.
To fulfill our duties in ordinary life, letting the love of Christ live and grow in us, bringing Christ to each and every interaction whether it be washing dishes, conducting a meeting, comforting a child, hammering a nail?
To do that? Even those quiet, ordinary tasks are ways to be his witnesses to all nations.
We all live hidden, “unhistoric” lives, lives hidden from the world, yet lives that change the world around us for good or ill in untold unknown ways. We have a choice—to live a hidden life of deceit or of integral holiness. Nothing is hidden from God, nor even man entirely.
I’m going to use my own space right here to offer a bit more of a review, with some more specific comments and yes, critiques.
Short take: A+ for effort and intention, no question. A regretful B- for execution. The CWR piece gets to the heart of why – that there’s a huge internal missing piece, I think. Or at least a failure to connect some dots.
The problem is made clearest in the dramatization of the stories. I highlight a couple of issues over there – fundamental ones – but I’ll go into a bit more detail here. In short, for the most part, the dramatizations fail to communicate the heart of the story.
A caveat, first. This isn’t necessarily about what the stories “mean.” As Flannery herself said….
When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making state¬ments about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully.
When a professor wrote to her offering an interpretation of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she responded:
The interpretation of your ninety students and three teachers is fantastic and about as far from my intentions as it could get to be. If it were a legitimate interpretation, the story would be little more than a trick and its interest would be simply for abnormal psychology. I am not interested in abnormal psychology. . . .
The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.
My tone is not meant to be obnoxious. I am in a state of shock.
So there is a fine line here – to avoid a reductive, simplistic “theme” or “message” – but also, to acknowledge that a story does carry meaning and it’s possible to dramatize a story and lose that – say, if in The Gift of the Magi Della sold a silver dish to fund Jim’s gift, and not her hair.
So let’s look at a couple of the stories as dramatized in Wildcat.
(Before I get going, I”ll say that I think the vignettes of “Parker’s Back” and “Good Country People” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” were better than those I’m going to dissect below, but even they suffered from not getting to the core of the thing.)
First off, “The Comforts of Home.” If you’ve seen the movie, you might expect me to go especially off on this one, but I’m not going to at all because I think I understand what Hawke is doing here. I had hoped to be able to ask him about it at the Q & A in NYC, but as it turned out, it was not an audience talkback, but just an interview by a reporter from Indiwire. And he pretty much ran off afterwards (much to the irritation of a gaggle of professional autograph seekers I passed outside later, who were loudly complaining about how quickly he’d jumped into a waiting car when he emerged from the theatre.).
Anyway – As Wildcat opens, we see a fake movie trailer for a film called Star Drake which is really the short story “The Comforts of Home” – it’s in black and white in the most lurid, sensationalist 50’s melodramatic formatting you can imagine. Very entertaining. But of course, with also very little relation to the actual story. What I think was going on here was a message to the audience and a reflection of the way in which O’Connor’s stories have often been received: with an emphasis on the grotesque, the violent and the sensational, and with everyone pretty much missing the point.
Just wait, I felt it was saying to me – you don’t get her. You think this is what she’s about with the nymphomaniac and the gun? You’re wrong, and we’re going to give you a clue. Just watch.
It’s strange and disorienting and not immediately or easily comprehensible. Just like Flannery’s writing, which is the point. This is the entry point, and it makes sense. A disorienting entry point to meeting a disorienting writer. I liked it.
But as the film proceeds and the story vignettes are interwoven with aspects of Flannery’s life that, it is suggested, inspired them (problematic for reasons I write about here), the deficiencies of the film’s vision emerge. Let’s talk about two of the dramatizations in particular: “Revelation” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
Perhaps you know the outline of “Revelation.” We meet self-satisfied Ruby Turpin in a doctor’s office. Ruby is forever dividing humanity into categories, judging them, and being really thankful that she is not in one of those lower categories – especially not Black or white trash, but Jesus gave her a choice, yes, she’d choose the former – a nice, clean Black woman would be fine. While waiting, her smugness becomes quite evident in her conversations. There’s a college girl named Mary Grace reading a Human Pscyhology textbook, and she becomes so enraged by Ruby that she throws the book at her, throttles her and calls her “an old warthog from Hell.”
At the end of the story, after Ruby has stewed over this, she goes to feed the pigs on her farm. She’s still angry, an anger that is directed, no longer at Mary Grace, but at the universe, for she intuits that the girl’s accusation has come just might be a sign. Filled with rage, she shouts, “Who do you think you are?”
The color of everything, field and crimson sky, burned for a moment with a transparent intensity. The question carried over the pasture and across the highway and the cotton field and returned to her clearly, like an answer from beyond the wood.
She opened her mouth but no sound came out of it.
And after, comes the vision – the famous vision of the varied, ragtag, messy march to Purgatory as “even their virtues were being burned away.”
Even their virtues were being burned away. That is, anything – even our self-perceived goodness – that builds up our pride, our conviction of self-sufficiency, superiority and our sense that we are not just like everyone else.
In Wildcat, we get the waiting room scene and a truncated peak at the final vision that does not include that critical moment of the echo – which is the moment that shocks Ruby, that reveals the sin of her pride, that voice demanding back to her: Who do you think you are? We’re left with a sense that Ruby is, yes, shocked into some kind of awareness, but the essential element of cutting the life out of her pride is missing.
“Everything that Rises Must Converge” suffers from the same problem but, I think, even more so.
The story is simple: Julian and his mother are on a bus, on the way to her “reducing” class because the doctor has told the mother that she must lose twenty pounds. The mother is your garden-variety patronizing racist and Julian is your garden-variety patronizing anti-racist (which actually is just another manifestation of racism).
Short version: the mother is proud of her hat and, of course, racist. A Black woman gets on the bus with a little boy – and she’s wearing the exact same hat. During the ride, Julian is thinking and articulating various presumably anti-racist thoughts, but it is really all just a manifestation of pride. Whether or not he believes anything he’s saying, the reason he’s saying it is to feel and express a sense of superiority to his mother.
As they get off the bus, Julian’s mother decides to give a coin to the boy. Julian begs her not to, knowing how the Black woman will receive the gesture. Julian’s mother forges ahead and yes, the Black woman wallops her with her purse. The action shocks Julian’s mother, sends her into an almost catatonic state, which Julian ignores at first, continuing to lecture her about her sins. And then, the mother collapses:
Stunned, he let her go and she lurched forward again, walking as if one leg were shorter than the other. A tide of darkness seemed to be sweeping her from him.
“Mother!” he cried. “Darling, sweetheart, wait!” Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, “Mamma, Mamma!” He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed.
“Wait here, wait here!” he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. “Help, help!” he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.
So when you read this story, what is evident is that Julian’s arrogance and pride is just as much the subject of the story as his mother’s – perhaps even more. And yes, in the Flannery mode, both Julian (the Apostate?) and his mother’s pride is shattered only when it’s, well…shattered.
In Wildcat, the basics of the first part of the story are dramatized, and Julian’s (played by Maya Hawke, awkwardly) smugness is apparent, but it is a minor note in a story in which the mother’s racism takes center stage – as the dramatization is juxtaposed with moments of bigotry and pride Flannery observes around her (producing a reductiveness I look at here). When you read the story, you are struck most of all, though, by Julian, and our attention is drawn to him and our hearts are broken by him when he realizes, all too late, what he done and what he had failed to do.
The film’s version doesn’t indicate any of this, with its focus on the mother to the exclusion of Julian’s own prideful presence.
I’ve spent a lot of time on this, and don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed Wildcat and very much appreciate what the Hawkes have done here. The moments focusing just on Flannery herself are very, very good and Maya Hawke should be nominated for awards for her performance. There are some moving moments – a couple that indeed made me well up. I enjoyed the film and will go see it again when it hits Birmingham later in the month. I also understand the limits of what anyone can do on film in regard to spirituality without being pedantic or preachy – heck, I spent hours and hours and hours over the past few months talking about it!
So yes, so many of the pieces are there: her faith, her sense of distance from the world around her, her writing process and struggles, her illness, the nature of her fiction. All of that makes the film worthwhile. But what bother me is the failure to connect all of those elements with the account that Flannery herself gave of her life, vocation and writing. It’s unfortunate that a viewer of Wildcat with no previous knowledge of Flannery, would come away from seeing the film with, I suspect, no better idea after than before as to why in the world she sent her first story collection to Sally Fitzgerald with the message:
Nine stories about Original Sin, with my compliments.
I saw two plays in NYC, both from the hand of Amy Herzog – her adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (directed by her husband, Sam Gold) and Mary Jane, starring Rachel McAdams.
(People are puzzled with me because I didn’t stagedoor for McAdams – well, it was cold and I really don’t know who she is…You don’t know who Rachel McAdams is? Um, not really…..)
(Practically speaking – I bought tickets a couple of hours before curtain via StubHub at about (I think) $50 less than face value.)
Mary Jane premiered in 2017 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play in 2018, but this production is its Broadway debut. This also is McAdams’ Broadway debut, and while her performance was in general quite wonderful, the flaw in it was her volume. It seems to be better than it was when the show opened (judging from discussion board comments and reviews), but she still struggled to make herself heard and understood – at least in the first mezzanine level.
Carrie Coons played the role in the Yale production, and I can see how she would bring a quite different vibe to the part – a steeliness, in contrast to McAdams’ strong, but always just-wavering-a-little cheerful strength.
Mary Jane is, on the surface, a simple play. It’s a 90-minutes, no-intermission story about a single mother parenting a seriously disabled toddler son. Herzog and Gold had a daughter, Frances, born with nemaline myopathy, a muscular condition, who died in 2023 at the age of 12.
The play begins in Mary Jane’s Queens apartment, then, after a crisis, shifts to a hospital. (The apartment set raises up in a single piece for that.)
We never see Alex, Mary Jane’s son. He is in the apartment bedroom, and we know of his presence through the interactions of other characters with him, as well as the noise of medical equipment and procedures. When the action shifts to the hospital, we see a figure, back to us, in a bed.
The play is episodic, in a way, a series of interactions between Mary Jane and various other figures – the apartment superintendent, a nurse, that nurse’s college student niece, and a mother of a disabled infant come to Mary Jane for, as it were orientation. In the hospital all the same actresses play different characters: a doctor, a music therapist, a hospital chaplain (Buddhist nun) and the Orthodox Jewish mother of another hospitalized child. All of the actors were fantastic, especially in their distinct, dual roles.
These interactions are opportunities to explore various aspects of Mary Jane’s experience: the learning curve, the physical demands, the frustrations and fears, the strength required to fight for her child’s life, the love and the mystery the whole experience evokes.
I liked it for the same reason some don’t. The dialogue is quick and casual, mostly non-expositional – that is, we are plunged into the middle of the situation, just watching, and so we’re not having things explained to us – the elements of Alex’s condition and situation emerge in bits and pieces in the course of ordinary conversations.
Through it all, Mary Jane is, as we say, a rock. I’m not sure what to make of this. Her cheerfulness seems almost delusional sometimes. It is as if she were to allow one question or moment of sadness in, she just might break.
My takeaway was that caretakers in challenging situations are often asked – or people wonder without asking out loud – how do you do it? Herzog’s play, rooted in her own experience, is perhaps an answer: this is how. This is what it’s like, and this is how what seems to you to be a foreign, frightening country, becomes simply daily life.
The end, though. I admit, I didn’t know a lot about the play before going in and I was a little afraid there was going to be a euthanasia or even quality-of-life angle, but there was nothing of the sort. So while I won’t reveal exactly what happens at the end, I will say, it’s none of that.
Instead, there’s a vision of sorts – a migraine? Something actually spiritual? Both? It’s open-ended, as are Mary Jane’s and Alex’s fates. Does one of them die? I overheard a lot of discussion on this score as I left the theatre. I have no opinion on that, but what the rather mystical ending indicates to me is that while throughout the play we have been witness to the ordinary, this ordinary – as is the “ordinary” each of us lives, no matter our circumstance – is a way – the only way we have – to be able to actuallysee.
I’m back from a few days in New York City, and rather than present you with a huge wall ‘o’ text recounting the time, I’m going to divide it up. I have other pieces to work on anyway, so these will be like little breaks in the workday.
Let’s fulfill the expectations and start with, of course, churches. Some I visited intentionally, a couple I just stopped in on the way from one place to another.
I arrived at LGA at 9:30-ish on Wednesday morning, dropped my bags at the hotel and set to wander, I was annoyed because the museum I had planned for the beginning of the day – the New York Historical Society – was closed for a private event that day. Well, I’d figure something out.
Sacred Heart was on my way to where ever it was I was going – a beautiful church.
Attractive organ pipes. Who knows if they are used.
This statue was unusual. Image of Mary cradling the infant Jesus sometimes imply a pieta moment, but this was quite explicit, and a little strange, I thought.
While I was there, a man came in, stopped at the welcoming/porter desk at the entrance, purchased two candles, placed them in front of statues, prayed, walked meditatively around, and left.
Open churches are evangelization. They speak, they welcome, they give space to encounter God. Yes, security is always an issue, but if a parish actually values evangelization, keeping your church building open during the week and letting people know it’s a place they are welcome should be a priority.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Twice – once right after I went to Sacred Heart and was contemplating my next move, and then Sunday morning for Mass before I left.
I love to go to St. Patrick’s to contemplate the hordes of tourists from all over the world circling the space, encountering the signs and symbols of the Christian faith, perhaps being given food for thought, a nudge, an openness to what all of this expresses. I think it’s fantastic.
Also fantastic was the organ rehearsal going on. I’d hoped to perhaps catch a noontime music recital somewhere during my visit – and I got one:
As I said, I went to Mass there on Sunday as well – it was 8am (I had an 11:30 flight), no music, it was fine. Although, hey, in case you didn’t know, you can donate to the Cathedral using your phone? Did you know? Well, they’ll remind you:
(Hey, you can donate…in case you didn’t know…)
Back to Wednesday: What do to in place of the closed museum? I was meeting my son in the late afternoon, so I didn’t really have time for a big museum, so I decided to head up north to see a sight I’d always wanted to visit, but never had a chance to:
The Episcopal Cathedral of New York, etc. A great history, a massive structure, an underwhelming impact. On me, at least, but then I admit my prejudices.
Is it my imagination, my wishful thinking, my fantasy that these non-Catholic churches feel empty to me? Is that Real Presence a Real Thing do you think?
(For the record, I felt the same sense of vacantness at York Cathedral.)
Anyway, I’ll attribute the few visitors to it being well off the tourist path. I did find it interesting, though, mostly from an historical perspective – its origins and construction – and then how they’ve tried to reconcile the Anglican/Episcopal tradition with the Anglican/Episcopal fixation on the Current Thing.
(For example, what was originally the Religious Life Bay is now the Earth Bay. )
A bay? Well, the main sanctuary is surrounded, not by chapels, but by “bays” – each with a particular subject – the original bays each focused on a specific nationality or ethnic group, and those extending down the nave to various themes.
The dome was never meant to be permanent; rather, it was a temporary topping over the crossing’s four gigantic granite arches until a spire could be erected, at which point it was to be removed…
…
The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company built the dome by overlapping layers of terra-cotta tiles — more layers near the base and fewer toward the (thinner) center of the dome — and binding the base with a steel tension ring. The firm completed the job in 15 weeks, including vaults below the crossing floor.
Because the dome was only provisional, however, it was never given a proper outer covering; instead, asphalt was slathered on top.
So yes. Worth seeing for many reasons – architecturally and historically – but this Roman felt it to be a cold, empty space, with the emphasis on space.
Since the cathedral was practically right next door, of course I had to check out the goings-on at Columbia…but more on that later.
I was pretty mad at myself because I stumbled upon this Friday morning at 8:30, just as the 8am Mass was finishing up. Wish I’d figured that out and arrived earlier.
I had been to part of Christmas Midnight Mass here , but wanted to return for an entire liturgy. Sunday morning was not going to work out because of my flight, so I stopped by Saturday morning for their Dominican Rite Mass.
50+ in attendance, mostly under 50, present company excepted. The Mass was celebrated at a side altar.
Such a gorgeous, gorgeous church. Dominican, in case you didn’t know. Someday I’ll get there for a full Sunday liturgy.
We’ll start with the more confusing one – James. As is the case with (in English) “Mary” – there are a lot of “James” in the New Testament narratives, so sorting them out is a challenge. And perhaps not even really possible.
Today’s feast celebrates James “the Lesser” – as opposed to James the Greater, brother of John, one of the first four apostles called by Jesus, present at the Transfiguration, feast June 25, etc.
Thus, St James’ Letter shows us a very concrete and practical Christianity. Faith must be fulfilled in life, above all, in love of neighbour and especially in dedication to the poor. It is against this background that the famous sentence must be read: “As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead” (Jas 2: 26).
At times, this declaration by St James has been considered as opposed to the affirmations of Paul, who claims that we are justified by God not by virtue of our actions but through our faith (cf. Gal 2: 16; Rom 3: 28). However, if the two apparently contradictory sentences with their different perspectives are correctly interpreted, they actually complete each other.
St Paul is opposed to the pride of man who thinks he does not need the love of God that precedes us; he is opposed to the pride of self-justification without grace, simply given and undeserved.
St James, instead, talks about works as the normal fruit of faith: “Every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit”, the Lord says (Mt 7: 17). And St James repeats it and says it to us.
Lastly, the Letter of James urges us to abandon ourselves in the hands of God in all that we do: “If the Lord wills” (Jas 4: 15). Thus, he teaches us not to presume to plan our lives autonomously and with self interest, but to make room for the inscrutable will of God, who knows what is truly good for us.
Now, Philip. I think this GA talk really highlight’s B16’s catechetical skills. We don’t know that much about Philip, but Benedict takes what we do know, and hones it down in the most practical…pastoral way:
The Fourth Gospel recounts that after being called by Jesus, Philip meets Nathanael and tells him: “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (Jn 1: 45). Philip does not give way to Nathanael’s somewhat sceptical answer (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”) and firmly retorts: “Come and see!” (Jn 1: 46).
In his dry but clear response, Philip displays the characteristics of a true witness: he is not satisfied with presenting the proclamation theoretically, but directly challenges the person addressing him by suggesting he have a personal experience of what he has been told.
The same two verbs are used by Jesus when two disciples of John the Baptist approach him to ask him where he is staying. Jesus answers: “Come and see” (cf. Jn 1: 38-39).
We can imagine that Philip is also addressing us with those two verbs that imply personal involvement. He is also saying to us what he said to Nathanael: “Come and see”. The Apostle engages us to become closely acquainted with Jesus.
In fact, friendship, true knowledge of the other person, needs closeness and indeed, to a certain extent, lives on it. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that according to what Mark writes, Jesus chose the Twelve primarily “to be with him” (Mk 3: 14); that is, to share in his life and learn directly from him not only the style of his behaviour, but above all who he really was.
Indeed, only in this way, taking part in his life, could they get to know him and subsequently, proclaim him.
Later, in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, one would read that what is important is to “learn Christ” (4: 20): therefore, not only and not so much to listen to his teachings and words as rather to know him in person, that is, his humanity and his divinity, his mystery and his beauty. In fact, he is not only a Teacher but a Friend, indeed, a Brother.
How will we be able to get to know him properly by being distant? Closeness, familiarity and habit make us discover the true identity of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Philip reminds us precisely of this. And thus he invites us to “come” and “see”, that is, to enter into contact by listening, responding and communion of life with Jesus, day by day.
Then, on the occasion of the multiplication of the loaves, he received a request from Jesus as precise as it was surprising: that is, where could they buy bread to satisfy the hunger of all the people who were following him (cf. Jn 6: 5). Then Philip very realistically answered: “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (Jn 6: 7).
Here one can see the practicality and realism of the Apostle who can judge the effective implications of a situation.
We then know how things went. We know that Jesus took the loaves and after giving thanks, distributed them. Thus, he brought about the multiplication of the loaves.
It is interesting, however, that it was to Philip himself that Jesus turned for some preliminary help with solving the problem: this is an obvious sign that he belonged to the close group that surrounded Jesus.
On another occasion very important for future history, before the Passion some Greeks who had gone to Jerusalem for the Passover “came to Philip… and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus’. Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew went with Philip and they told Jesus” (cf. Jn 12: 20-22).
Once again, we have an indication of his special prestige within the Apostolic College. In this case, Philip acts above all as an intermediary between the request of some Greeks – he probably spoke Greek and could serve as an interpreter – and Jesus; even if he joined Andrew, the other Apostle with a Greek name, he was in any case the one whom the foreigners addressed.
This teaches us always to be ready to accept questions and requests, wherever they come from, and to direct them to the Lord, the only one who can fully satisfy them. Indeed, it is important to know that the prayers of those who approach us are not ultimately addressed to us, but to the Lord: it is to him that we must direct anyone in need. So it is that each one of us must be an open road towards him!
There is then another very particular occasion when Philip makes his entrance. During the Last Supper, after Jesus affirmed that to know him was also to know the Father (cf. Jn 14: 7), Philip quite ingenuously asks him: “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied” (Jn 14: 8). Jesus answered with a gentle rebuke: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father: how can you say, “Show us the Father?’ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?… Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (Jn 14: 9-11).
These words are among the most exalted in John’s Gospel. They contain a true and proper revelation. At the end of the Prologue to his Gospel, John says: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1: 18).
Well, that declaration which is made by the Evangelist is taken up and confirmed by Jesus himself, but with a fresh nuance. In fact, whereas John’s Prologue speaks of an explanatory intervention by Jesus through the words of his teaching, in his answer to Philip Jesus refers to his own Person as such, letting it be understood that it is possible to understand him not only through his words but rather, simply through what he is.
To express ourselves in accordance with the paradox of the Incarnation we can certainly say that God gave himself a human face, the Face of Jesus, and consequently, from now on, if we truly want to know the Face of God, all we have to do is to contemplate the Face of Jesus! In his Face we truly see who God is and what he looks like!
The Evangelist does not tell us whether Philip grasped the full meaning of Jesus’ sentence. There is no doubt that he dedicated his whole life entirely to him. According to certain later accounts (Acts of Philip and others), our Apostle is said to have evangelized first Greece and then Frisia, where he is supposed to have died, in Hierapolis, by a torture described variously as crucifixion or stoning.
Let us conclude our reflection by recalling the aim to which our whole life must aspire: to encounter Jesus as Philip encountered him, seeking to perceive in him God himself, the heavenly Father. If this commitment were lacking, we would be reflected back to ourselves as in a mirror and become more and more lonely! Philip teaches us instead to let ourselves be won over by Jesus, to be with him and also to invite others to share in this indispensable company; and in seeing, finding God, to find true life.
As I said, they are random – just to give you a taste of the style of writing and the focus. The chapters in the book, each focused on a particular traditional Catholic prayer, are a mix of history and spiritual reflection.
Charlotte was Both 
