Whatever homilist..

…got to my page via the search words “Gaudete Sunday” and “jokes”…

..please…

…don’t…..

Please?

What does Mary tell the City?

Another beautiful address from the Holy Father today.

And when you read it - it was posted in full at AsiaNews - you will see Pope Benedict’s manner of communicating in full, powerful display. He takes this devotion – the practice of honoring Mary through reverencing the statue of the Immaculata up high on a column in Piazza di Spagna – and invites us to look it in both the plainest and profound ways. (I am thinking how the plain leads to the profound and loops back again because of a marathon FO’C re-reading this weekend, but more on that later). He says:  This is Mary in the City. What does Mary say to us in the City?

(It reminds me a bit of his Corpus Christi homilies, given before the procession between St. John Lateran and S. Maria Maggiore)

Dear brothers and sisters!

In the heart of Christian cities, Mary constitutes a sweet and reassuring presence. In her self-effacing style, she gives everyone peace and hope during the happy and sad moments of life. In churches, chapels or the walls of buildings, a painting, mosaic or a statue stand as a remainder of the Mother’s presence, constantly watching over her children. Here too in Piazza di Spagna, Mary stands high, on guard over Rome.

What does Mary tell the city? What does her presence remind us? It reminds us that “where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more (Rom., 5:20), as the Apostle Paul wrote. She is the Immaculate Mother who tells people of our time: Do not be afraid, Jesus defeated evil, uprooted it, freeing us from his rule.

When do we need such good deeds? Every day, in the newspapers, television and radio, evil is told to us, said again, amplified, so that we get used to the most horrible things, and become desensitised. In a certain way, it poisons us, because the negative is never fully cleansed out of our system but accumulates day after day. The heart hardens and thoughts become gloomy. For this reason, the city needs Mary, whose presence speaks of God, reminds us of Grace’s victory over sin and makes us hope even in the humanly most difficult situations.

Those who invisible live or rather survive in the city. They make it to the front page of newspapers or the top of TV newscast—they are exploited until the end, for as long as the news and the images are newsworthy. Few can resist such a perverse mechanism. The city first, hides then exposes them to public scrutiny, without pity or with false pity. Everyone would like to be accepted as a person and considered as something sacred, because each human story is a sacred story that deserves the utmost of respect.

Dear brothers and sisters, we are the city! Each one of us contributes with our lives to its moral climate for better or worse. The border between good and evil runs across everyone’s heart and none of us should feel entitled to judge others. Instead, each one of us must feel duty-bound to improve ourselves. Mass media make us feel like “spectators” as if evil only touched others and that certain things could not happen to us. Instead, we are all “actors” for better or worse, and our behaviour influences others.

We often complain about air pollution, that in some parts of the city the air is unbreathable. That is true. Everyone must do his or her part to make the city a cleaner place. However, there is another kind of pollution, which the senses cannot easily perceive, but which is equally dangerous. It is the pollution of the spirit, which makes us smile less, makes us gloomier, less likely to greet one another or look into each other face . . .

The city has many faces, but sadly, collective factors lead us to forget what is behind them. All we see is the surface. People become bodies, and these bodies lose their soul, become faceless objects that can be exchanged and consumed.

Mary Immaculate helps us rediscover and defend what is inside people, because in her there is perfect transparency of soul and body. She is purity in person in the sense that the spirit, soul and body are fully coherent in her and with God’s will. Our Lady teaches us to open up to God’s action and to look at others as he does, starting with the heart, to look upon them with mercy, love, infinite tenderness, especially those who are lonely, scorned or exploited. “[W]here sins increased, grace overflows all the more.”

I want to pay tribute publicly to all those who in silence, in deeds not in words, strive to practice the Evangelical law of love which drivers the world forward. There are so many of them even here in Rome. They do not make the headlines. They are men and women of all ages, who realise that it is not worth condemning, complaining or recriminating; that it is better to respond to evil doing good; to changes things; or better, to changes people, hence improve society.”

Dear Roman friends and all of you who live in this city! Whilst we are busy in everyday tasks, let us listen to Mary’s voice. Let us hear her silent but pressing appeal. She tells each one of us that wherever sin increases, may grace overflow all the more, first in our hearts, and then in our lives! Thus, the city shall be more beautiful, more Christian and more humane.

Thank you, Holy Mother, for this message of hope. Thank you for your silent but eloquent presence in the heart of our city. Immaculate Virgin, Salus Populi Romani, pray for us!

Image source. A rainy day in Rome.

St. Nicholas comes

A little late, but here’s my annual reminder of the great St. Nicholas Center site.

The Miracle of Father Kapaun

Here’s something to keep your eye on next week.

The Wichita Eagle will be running a week-long series on the life of Father Emil Kapaun, a Kansas priest who served as a chaplain during the Korean War, and whose cause for canonization has been presented. The series begins on Sunday, and the newspaper’s webpage is ready to go and  has a very impressive set of links to all kinds of resources related to Fr. Kapaun’s life.

H/T: Kansas Catholic

A Serious Man

Started this post almost a month ago…then it just sat…

By which point (now) the film, seen by hardly anyone in the theaters, is probably about ready for a DVD release.

I had been looking forward to the release of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. It’s not that I’m a huge Coen brothers fan – I lean to the “empty formalism” end of Coen discussion – but they what they produce is different, at least, amusing, and always has fun actors.

And considering this had a purportedly religious theme – a contemporary Job – sure, I’d go see it.

The film is, indeed, a loose retelling of Job in the context of the Coen brothers’ childhood landscape – the 1960’s suburban-Minneapolis/St. Paul Jewish community.

It’s pretty harsh – on God and on the Jews, both.

(the film starts oddly – with a mid-19th century visitation of a (maybe) dybbuk…for what reason I am not sure, except perhaps to illustrate the concept of a haunting of sorts.)

This fellow, Larry Gopnik, a tenure-seeking physics professors, married, with two children and a brother living with him, is beset by troubles. His wife announces that she is leaving him, his children are not what he would want, his brother is a strange idiot-savant of a sort who eventually gets arrested on sodomy charges.  Plus, he is blackmailed by a student and his father.

He goes to 3 rabbis with his question – why is this happening?  They respond with various degrees of incompetence and inadequacy, ranging from the trendy empty to the traditionally empty, clear allusions to Job’s friends, who, as you recall,  are not helpful at all.

And if you wanted to scream at the end of No Country for Old Men (or The Sopranos, for that matter) , the end of A Serious Man will delight you. Not.

(I actually didn’t mind the end, though. It was life. You just never know what’s going to happen, and that’s nothing but true.)

I enjoyed the film while I was watching it for a few reasons. I liked trying to figure out what the Coens were about as it went along.  The actors were great and interesting. The era – those late ’60’s – is the era of my childhood.

(I have to say my favorite bits were those in which the department head comes and leans against Gopnik’s doorframe and they do their obscure little tenure dances. It was funny on its own terms and also reminded me of Gary Cole’s classic bits in Office Space, oft-imitated in our house…Yeah….that’d be great….)

If you want a more detailed synopsis you can find it any number of places, but here’s my basic issue with the film (beside the unrelentingly negative portrayal of Jewish life and Jews – there have been lively debates online about this, by the way, with some holding that the Coens are clearly nothing but self-hating Jews to others applauding them for getting the supposed vacuity of this type of American Jewish life and practice just right. I have no idea. Let’s just say, it’s not the most comfortable film experience ever, even if you’re not Jewish.)

Oh, back to my basic issue:

Job’s pain prescinds from a certain assumption: that Job has been faithful, devout, loves and serves God.

There’s the agony of Job. He believes. He loves. He serves – and he’s been taught that the consequence of that type of life is blessing. But there’s no blessing to be had. There is a theological and philosophical grounding for his questioning.

In A Serious Man, we have no such ground for the protagonist. We know little about him and from what we can see and deduce, his religious life before the events of the film has been marked by not much more than superficial ritualism and identity politics.  Sure, the guy has questions, but they’re not the pressing, life-shaking questions of Job, who has believed certain things, not just about life in general, but about God and the world specifically.

A Serious Man ultimately falls short (fails? Yes.) because it purports to explore theodicy – the tension between God and the evil that befalls his creation , but the explorers – neither the protagonist nor the creators – seem to care much about God in the first place.

So…about that empty formalism…

Ready

We went to Mass with the Sisters. It’s simple and focused. There’s a bit of that concrete-expression-of-time-and-space- universality-in-ancient-languages-that-shall-go-unnamed-for-the-sake-of-those-who-have-counterrevolutionary-vapors-at-its-mention going on. No one’s trying too hard, they’re all just praying with body and soul because it’s the way they live their lives, and so there we are. Besides the sisters, there were about 20 people there, fewer than usual because there was no retreat that weekend.

The celebrant was ancient, still walking, albeit with support, still reading, albeit with the aid of a lighted magnifier. After he proclaimed the Gospel, he took a seat in the presider’s chair, moved to the front of the altar, but before he began his homily, he directed one of the sisters to come up and re-read the Gospel, this time from the Catholic RSV, I believe. He allowed as how he preferred it to the NAB.

And so he preached, we prayed on, the Mass was ended, and we went in peace.

I met him afterwards – he said we had met before, and he remembered Michael, and he remembered that I had requested Mass intentions a couple of months ago, and he remembered the dates, too, including February 3. He remembered that date.

We talked to my friend – my college roommate – who is a sister there, met the dog, and drove on home.

At some point over lunch, Joseph said,

“What was that long word the priest kept saying during the homily?”

I froze, internally, because at the beginning, Father had spoken about abortion – veiled, but spoken of it, and I didn’t want to have that conversation yet.

But that wasn’t it, for he went on, trying to remember:

“Infi-…infi – “

Ah

“Infinitesimal,” I said. “it means really, really small. He was saying (and he was) that our time on earth is really small compared to eternity, the time we’ll spend with God in heaven.”

A couple of Christmases ago, we went to Divine Liturgy at a tiny Byzantine Rite mission in Seymour, Tennessee. It was the first time at an Eastern Catholic liturgy for any of the kids, including the older ones. It raised all kinds of questions and made a lasting impression.

My oldest will still break out with “The doors! The doors!” or “Wisdom! Be attentive!” at times.

Michael remarked at the time that this indicated, to him, something liturgy should do – raise questions, make us curious, alert us to the reality of Mystery, because in liturgy, we meet God, and God, even as He meets us, remains Mystery.

Ineffable?

I was struck by the fact that the “big word” caught an 8-year old’s attention, made him curious, and prompted him to think and wonder.

The word was beyond him, but its bigness and complexity and its repetition indicated to him that it was an important word, worth saying a lot, and therefore worth asking about, seemingly out of the blue, over lunch.

It would take him someplace.

Infinitesimal… into eternity.

Near the end of the homily, the priest spoke of Fr. Robert Fox, who had died up in Hanceville the week before. Two of their sisters and another priest had visited earlier in the week and reported back that Father Fox, bearing the burden of an oxygen mask, had indicated to them that it was impossible for him to speak with them.

..but then had talked for an hour or so…

And what did he say? The elderly priest, sitting in front of the altar, a huge crucifix looming behind him, clutching his cane, said that Fr. Fox had said, in essence, that he was ready.

“I am ready,” this priest repeated, and there his voice seemed to break. Perhaps it was the weariness of the aged voice, perhaps it was emotion of a different sort. It was hard to tell.

He rose, slowly, and with care, and shuffled back to the altar under the crucifix.

“I am ready,” he said one more time before he got there.

Waiting

The Holy Father’s homily from the first Vespers of Advent is finally available online. Please read it and share.

If time is not filled by a present gifted with meaning, the waiting runs the risk of becoming unbearable; if something is expected, but at this moment there is nothing, namely, if the present is empty, every instant that passes seems exaggeratedly long, and the waiting is transformed into a weight that is too heavy because the future is totally uncertain. When, instead, time is gifted with meaning and we perceive in every instant something specific and valuable, then the joy of waiting makes the present more precious.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us live the present intensely, when we already have the gifts of the Lord, let us live it projected to the future, a future full of hope. The Christian Advent thus becomes an occasion to reawaken in ourselves the true meaning of waiting, returning to the heart of our faith which is the mystery of Christ, the Messiah awaited for long centuries and born in the poverty of Bethlehem. Coming among us, he has brought us and continues to offer us the gift of his love and of his salvation. Present among us, he speaks to us in many ways: in sacred Scripture, in the liturgical year, in the saints, in the events of daily life, in the whole of creation, which changes in aspect if he is behind it or if it is obfuscated by the mist of an uncertain origin and an uncertain future. In turn, we can speak to him, present to him the sufferings that afflict us, impatience, the questions that spring from the heart. We are certain that he always hears us! And if Jesus is present, there is no time deprived of meaning and void. If he is present, we can continue to wait also when others can no longer give us their support, even when the present is exhausting.

Dear friends, Advent is the time of the presence and the expectation of the eternal. Precisely for this reason it is, in a particular way, the time of joy, of an internalized joy, that no suffering can erase. Joy because of the fact that God became a child. This joy, invisibly present in us, encourages us to walk with confidence. Model and support of this profound joy is the Virgin Mary, through whom the Child Jesus has been given to us. May she, faithful disciple of her Son, obtain for us the grace to live this liturgical time vigilant and diligent in waiting. Amen.