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.
When you live in a landscape framed and defined by Scripture, the great Tradition and the lives of the saints, stories like those of St. Camillus de Lellis become no longer shocking. You see how God’s grace and power reaches into every corner of human life, into the corners of life of every kind of human person, and you can so very easily understand that you, too, have a place, that this Word is very near to you.
Living in the flesh – as Paul calls it – meaning, the worldly world, the material world of just things and people without reference to the One who loved us into existence and in Whose Image we are – you don’t get this. You look out and you see winners and losers, successes and failures, the talented and the schlubs, and you know who matters in that world and who doesn’t, who might as well just give up.
And maybe, you can’t help but suspect, you’re in that latter group.
And you shrug and watch that purposeful, meaningful world climb past, regretful and maybe even envious, and perhaps even hopeless and a little bit lonely. There they go, doing important things.
But that’s not real. That’s not The Real. Living in the Real World – God’s world – you know this. It’s so close to you, it’s what you breathe, that gift. Sure, you may struggle with some of it, wondering and wandering, but if your primary reference point is this crazy Word of God filled with the small and weak plucked out for greatness and the sinners starting over and the dead blinking in the light – and then day after day meeting his small, weak, sinful once-dead saints living those same stories again and again…
…life looks different, and you can live it in a different way.
God’s interaction with our lives is ongoing and surprising. As long as there is life on earth, there is no final moment, no perfection, no end to the journey, and it is wrong to attempt to characterize any one moment as the irreformable manifestation of God’s will.
We encounter God, we journey with him, we turn off and away, we forget, we go our own way, and need to be brought back. Again and again and again.
As schools gear up for starting again (some in just three weeks or so around these parts,) please consider purchasing these for gifts and recommending them to your local public library, Catholic parish program and Catholic school!
In the Catholic liturgical calendar, every month has a special devotion to which it’s dedicated. Here’s a list.
July is dedicated to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus.
In theLoyola Kids Book of Seasons, Feasts and Celebrations, there’s a final section of the months of the year, the special devotion for each month noted, as well as 2-3 notable feasts – mostly saints’ – celebrated during that month. Here’s the beginning of the July section.
From the very outset of our pontificate, in speaking of daily devotions we have repeatedly urged the faithful (often in eager tones that frankly hinted our future design) to cherish warmly that marvellous manifestation of divine mercy toward individuals and Holy Church and the whole world redeemed and saved by Jesus Christ: we mean devotion to his Most Precious Blood.
From infancy this devotion was instilled in us within our own household. Fondly we still recall how our parents used to recite the Litany of the Most Precious Blood every day during July.
It’s an interesting letter, more for what is indicates about the thinking about liturgical reform on the cusp of the council than about the Precious Blood. You can sense all sorts of threads being woven, different, but related concerns bubbling: not wanting to weaken popular devotion, but also wanting to make sure it’s soundly rooted and coherent, wary of a devotional hodge-podge, emphasizing that yes, it flows organically from you guys, but remember who’s got the final say, and finally, an anxiety about the impact of the Church and Catholics on the world – this should make you stronger witnesses….but don’t forget we’re in charge….make it vigorous, but don’t go crazy, please.
(Remember, this is the first page of the entry. There’s a second page, facing, with a more in-depth explanation)
Of course, devotion to the Precious Blood has a firm place in Catholic spirituality, as distasteful as it might be the modern mind. But then we get – as we often do- to the irony of the discomfort. Many of us grew up hearing it was important to focus on Jesus’ humanity – well, there you have some humanity: blood.
One of the many saints with a special devotion to the Precious Blood was Catherine of Siena. In my book Praying with the Pivotal Players,written to accompany Bishop Barron’s first Pivotal Players video series, I’ve got a chapter on blood. An excerpt and then page scans:
Blood. Some of us are wary of the sight of it or even repulsed, but in Catherine’s landscape, there is no turning away. The biological truth that blood is life and the transcendent truth that the blood of Christ is eternal life are deeply embedded in her spirituality. We see these truths in the Dialogue, in passages like the one above, and even in her correspondence.
For in her letters, Catherine usually begins by immediately setting the context of the message that is about to come: Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in his precious blood….
The salutation is followed by a brief statement of her purpose, which, by virtue of Catherine’s initial positioning of her words in the context of the life-giving blood of Jesus, bear special weight and authority: in his precious blood… desiring to see you a true servant….desiring to see you obedient daughters…desiring to see you burning and consumed in his blazing love…desiring to see you clothed in true and perfect humility….
In both the Dialogue and her letters, Catherine takes this fundamental truth about salvation – that it comes to us through the death, that is, the blood of Christ – and works with it in vivid, startling ways. She meets the challenges of describing the agonies and ecstasies of the spiritual life with rich, even wild metaphors, and the redemptive blood of Christ plays its part here. For as she describes this life of a disciple, we meet Christ’s friends, followers, sheep, lovers as those drunk on his blood, inebriated. They are washed in the blood and they even drown in it….
Why highlight these saints so often when there is so much…news happening?
Simple: Because through the saints, we learn how to be disciples. We learn how rich, textured and diverse Catholic life is. Because saints lived in the past, when we make reflecting on the life, work, witness or writing of a saint part of our day, we situate our faith more properly than we do if we situate our faith only in the present moment.
In short: We grow more from a few moments of being quietly attentive to the real world around us, consciously situated in the greater cosmic context of traditionally-centered faith, than we do from one more session of racing through scads of information and opinion via a screen. I know I do, at least.
Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.
St. Irenaeus is an important link in tradition’s golden chain. He probably composed his works when he was very old, in the late 100s in the land we now know as France. When he was a young man, though, he lived in Asia Minor, where he studied under the holy bishop Polycarp, who had himself converted to Christianity under St. John the Apostle. Irenaeus treasured the stories of John that he had learned from his master. His few, small anecdotes are a precious witness to the life of the apostle.
And all of Irenaeus’s life gave witness to the teaching of the apostles. The man was steeped in Scripture, steeped in liturgy, in love with the Church and all of its glorious structures of authority. In Irenaeus’s voluminous writings we find it all: the Mass, the papacy, the office of bishop, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the condemnation of heresy. One of my favorite lines from his work is this, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.” This is the most primitive form of the axiom that later Fathers would state as “Lex orandi, lex credendi.” The law of prayer is the law of belief. The liturgy is the place where living tradition truly lives.
Then Bishop Barron, with thoughts that challenge the common contemporary claim (sometimes said aloud, other times implied) that the Faith as shaped through the centuries and handed down to us is an obstacle to the workings of the Spirit.
Now this regula veritatis, Irenaeus insists, was not so much his work but that of the apostle John, the mentor to Polycarp who in turn taught Irenaeus himself. “For John, the disciple of the Lord … wishing to put an end to all such ideas (Gnosticism) … and to establish the Church in the rule of truth” handed on this formula. Time and again, Irenaeus characterizes his work as the handing on of the apostolic teaching; in fact, his short summary of the Adversus Haereses bears the straightforward title Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.In a word, the regula does not represent a philosophical consensus or an externally imposed matrix of interpretation,but rather the apostolically ratified distillation of the essential biblical worldview, the fundamental metaphysics that St. John and his companions insisted must undergird the biblical story. This is why, for Irenaeus, these “doctrinal” claims are not the least bit distorting but clarifying. Indeed, apart from them, the biblical witness would remain opaque and the essential story murky and open to misinterpretation. To suggest that the regula fidei should be set aside in order to allow the authentic intention of the biblical authors to emerge would have struck Irenaeus as so much nonsense.
As can be seen, Irenaeus did not stop at defining the concept of Tradition. His tradition, uninterrupted Tradition, is not traditionalism, because this Tradition is always enlivened from within by the Holy Spirit, who makes it live anew, causes it to be interpreted and understood in the vitality of the Church. Adhering to her teaching, the Church should transmit the faith in such a way that it must be what it appears, that is, “public”, “one”, “pneumatic”, “spiritual”. Starting with each one of these characteristics, a fruitful discernment can be made of the authentic transmission of the faith in the today of the Church. More generally, in Irenaeus’ teaching, the dignity of man, body and soul, is firmly anchored in divine creation, in the image of Christ and in the Spirit’s permanent work of sanctification. This doctrine is like a “high road” in order to discern together with all people of good will the object and boundaries of the dialogue of values, and to give an ever new impetus to the Church’s missionary action, to the force of the truth which is the source of all true values in the world.
Repeating what I said yesterday about Cyril, if you have a mind to study the Church Fathers via these talks either as an individual or as a parish study group, feel free to use the free pdf of the study guide I wrote for OSV. For example the reflection questions for the section on Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen are:
1. These thinkers of early Christianity did not shy from engaging with non-Christian thinking. How would you describe their relationships to it? What seems to you to be their standard for what elements of non-Christian thinking to accept or reject?
2. Apologetics is still an important part of Christian expression. What issues have you experienced as being areas in which you or others you know are called upon to offer an “apologia”? Are there any resources you have found particularly helpful?
3. All of these thinkers — and most in this book — emerged from the East, the birthplace of Christianity. What do you know about the Eastern Catholic churches today? Have you ever attended an Eastern Catholic liturgy?
4. Irenaeus battled Gnostic heresies in which only an elite had access to the ultimate saving spiritual knowledge. Can you see any currents of this element of Gnostic thinking in the world today? Do you ever catch yourself thinking along these lines?
5. These thinkers were engaged in very creative work, but work that was very faithful to the tradition they had been handed by the apostles. What kind of creative, faithful ways of teaching and expressing faith are you aware of today? If you were in charge of evangelization for the Church in your area, what kinds of approaches would you encourage?
6. Justin Martyr felt that certain elements of his pagan life had actually worked to prepare him for his Christian life. Are their any elements of your life before your fuller coming to faith that you feel have prepared you for deepening your faith today?
7. Ignatius and Origen both longed for martyrdom. What do you think about that?
8. Several of these thinkers indicate the importance of the bishop of Rome. How do you see the importance of the papacy expressed in the Church and the world today?
This is one of my favorite stained glass windows in town.
It was, for a long time, just a blur of colors on my right when I attended Mass at this parish. But over the last couple of years, we had occasion to spend a lot of time in this church building as the parish staff graciously allowed my son to practice piano and organ there, and I finally paid attention to it.
So, let’s take a look.
It’s a Pentecost window, of course. At the center top is the Holy Spirit, showering down those gifts on those gathered in the upper room.
To the left is another figure – St. Francis Xavier, the patron of this very parish. He’s surrounded by symbolic respresentations of the Far East and the people whom he served.
The same Spirit, the same gifts, the same courage given to every link in the chain, from the upper room, through the various branches of the Communion of Saints that leads us to this spot here, in this church building, in this community, on this planet at this moment in time. And this is where you start – right here – and then keep moving, led by that same Spirit to speak – where ever you land.
Here we are – For help in preparing the kids, and perhaps ourselves, let’s go to one of my favorite sources – this wonderful old Catholic religion textbook.
The short chapter on Pentecost is lovely and helpful.
This volume is for 7th graders.
What I’m struck by here is the assumption that the young people being addressed are responsible and capable in their spiritual journey. They are not clients or customers who need to be anxiously served or catered to lest they run away and shop somewhere else.
What is said to these 12 and 13-year olds is not much different from what would have been said to their parents or grandparents. God created you for life with him. During your life on earth there are strong, attractive temptations to shut him out and find lasting joy in temporal things. It’s your responsibility to do your best to stay close to Christ and let that grace live within you, the grace that will strengthen you to love and serve more, the grace that will lead you to rest peacefully and joyfully in Christ.
(The book is structured around the virtues. Each section begins with an event from Scripture that illustrates one of those virtues, followed by stories of people and events from church history that do so as well)
Finally, Veni Creator Spiritus – or Come Holy Ghost, as most of us know it. I have a chapter on it in The Words We Pray.A sample:
One of the post-Vatican II (here we go) tropes I lived through was the consistent denigration of physical expressions of faith, from medals and holy cards to church buildings themselves. People these days comment on this, but they never really seem to grasp the motivation – they rumble on about wreckovation and revolution without any attempt at all to look at what was actually being said and written at the time.
It was actually pretty simple: All of that stuff was an expression of, first, an immature faith that required “props” and externals. Secondly, all that stuff was time bound – it did not express the faith of Modern Man. Third, all of that stuff functioned as a distraction, a diversion. It lulled people into thinking they were practicing the faith, that they were faithful, but actually all they were doing was sitting in a pretty building, listening to nice music, not even actively participating, the horror. Fourth, it was essential that people get past all that to understand and live the reality of Church, which is the people of God, not a building.
It was absolutely necessary to strip all of that away so that we would grow up, recognize Christ in each other and in the community, witnessing to Christ in the modern world as modern people, who of course, as Modern People, have no use for those externals. They’re put off by all of that. That stuff is not what’s going to attract Modern Man.
Well, they were wrong, weren’t they?
This is a false dichotemy. For church buildings are witnesses to the presence of Christ in the world: in the middle of a city, in a neighborhood, in a suburb, on a rural road in the midst of cornfields.
And people – yes modern people in the 21st century – still see them, go to them, and experience them as such, even if they don’t believe. Even if it’s just functioning as a prop or a background –
…that prop or background is the most powerful and immediate way to connect action or an inner state with important, essential human experiences and promptings: contemplating love, death, meaning, purposeand connection.
And it’s not just cultural baggage. There really is something integral about the sights and sounds of traditional Christianity, east and west, that organically evokes and connects even non-believers to these truths and sensibilities.
So in John Wick 4 – you not only have John, in a candle-doused church (I mean…who lit all those candles? Who’s maintaining them? Okay, it’s a movie, I know….) musing to Caine, the blind assassin – Donnie Yen is the best part of the film, I think – about whether or not he can communicate with his dead wife, but you also have this….
I wish I had a screen shot – one might eventually turn up, but it hasn’t yet – but one of the final scenes of John Wick 4 has John sitting on the stairs in front of Sacre Coeur, the gleaming white church in the background, and not just because a huge fight scene has taken place on the 222 steps leading up to the basilica, but because….it’s an important moment. What’s below is a shot of filming from this website.
Whether the filmmakers intended it or not, whether it was chosen just because it was cool and because of those steps, this moment happening in this place carries a meaning that it wouldn’t if it were happening in front of another iconic Paris landmark like the Eiffel Tower. They can’t help it. It’s just there: built into the building that stands as a witness in the midst of the city, in the thick of the chaos, violence and death.
If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know that the nest has been mostly empty since last summer. Oh, people come and go on breaks, and this summer I certainly won’t be sitting around here alone, jazz on the Spotify, worshipping the sun.
And I do wish we all lived closer together. But everyone is off doing what they should be doing right now, and that’s the way it should be.
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a female acquaintance after Mass here, telling her about the Italy trip, and she stopped me – “You went…by yourself? Not on a tour?” Yes. No. “You went alone?” Yes.
Now this woman is married and of course enjoys being with and traveling with her husband, so it’s understandable that traveling alone isn’t part of her mental landscape. I get it. If I were married, I’m sure I’d feel the same way. I did, in fact.
But even married women like to go off by themselves. I met one on the plane back from Italy. There was a group of middle-aged to almost-elderly women who had just finished two weeks in Morocco. One of them sat next to me, and we had great conversations off and on over the many hours in the air. The group, she said, was of solo female travelers, most of whom were, indeed married, but whose spouses didn’t have the same bug. So a couple – or more- times a year, they went off in a group. The trip before this had been South America.
But my seatmate said, too, that even though she enjoyed the group – she also liked to take trips on her own (I guess her husband really doesn’t like to travel – or perhaps can’t – she was probably in her mid-70’s), and was currently planning her next. A group can be fun, she said but sometimes you just want to experience things on your own, and you don’t want the burden of wondering and worrying about other people’s needs and wants.
“I have no trouble,” she said, “going into a restaurant or bar by myself. It’s…wonderful.”
The rest of this post is going to meander and probably spiritualize in a predictably tedious way, so I’ll pause and be very practical for a moment. Let’s talk about safety and security.
Driving a thousand miles by myself…going to Mexico…going to Naples…driving alone in Italy…did I feel safe?
Absolutely.
Just hearing the words “Mexico” and “Naples” makes some nervous, but I’ll tell you – I was in and about downtown Denver in November, and I felt more ill-at-ease and a creepier vibe there than I did in either of those other places – and I wasn’t alone there. Walking around Naples at night felt safer to me than walking around downtown Denver during the day.
But specifically: I’m not stupid. I don’t wander around staring at my phone (which is not an Iphone, so extra layer of theft protection there) oblivious to my surroundings, a ready target. I don’t wear jewelry. I give off a vibe of awareness and attention. I go where there are people.
And I have five people at home who know, every day, my general whereabouts. I don’t know if my phone can do any locater thing, but what I do is text them most mornings and let them know my plan – I’m going to Herculaneum today. Because in case something happens – and things do happen – believe me, you don’t have to lecture me about the unexpected – they’ll at least know where I was supposed to be that day.
Now, back to meandering.
Of course, personality affects your interest in or comfort with traveling alone. I’m an only child, and normally completely content alone. I’m an introvert, which means that my energy and recharging comes from being alone, too. The best way to understand that, I think, is to think, “What do I need to do to feel like myself? To feel really present in the world?” For some, it’s interacting with others – they don’t feel alive unless they’re engaged with other people. I had one kid who was very much an extrovert of that type, and believe me, until I figured out the personality type differences at the heart of our differences, it was..challenging.
For me and other introverts, it’s alone time. If I’ve been with people all day, I need about two to three hours to myself in the evening to settle in and reconnect with myself, and not feel as if I am somewhere out there that needs to be gathered in. That’s why, when the kids were here, I was such a night owl, usually up until at least midnight, usually later. Now? I’m quickly, weirdly, tumbling into Old People Hours – I don’t go to be super early, but I’m not unsettled until after midnight anymore, either. I’ve been mostly alone all day, so…I don’t need that late night alone time. Makes sense.
So where was I?
Oh yes. So that only child-introvert-Harriet-the-Spy personality means that traveling solo through life is my natural state. I’m always alone in my head. Not – I hasten to say, especially for my family’s sake – that I don’t like it when they’re here. Not at all! In fact, even though the solo state is natural – it nonetheless feels somewhat incomplete. When a car pulls up or even a phone rings and it’s one of them, it feels as if a missing pieces has fallen into place. It feels right when the door closes and I’m alone, it feels right when they’re back.
The adjustment for this new traveling solo stage has come, not with any sense of awkwardness or discomfort, but with purpose.
And that was hard. It was hard because for fourteen years, I’d done so much travel with the two youngest (now both in college), and the choices of destinations were rooted in three factors: any particular interest of theirs (Mexico and Central America, for example), cost and my sense of what might be a good…yeah…educational/formation experience.
It wasn’t just about culture, history and nature, either. When we set out on our traveling life, I had another purpose: I wanted them to see and live in the reality that there was much more to life than, say, the 5th grade at Our Lady of Sorrows School in Birmingham, Alabama.
Not that that was a bad place, at all. But after raising three much older kids and witnessing their navigating through adolescence and young adulthood and getting a sense of how the American social landscape was shifting: getting, ironically, more insular, enabling narcissism, self-involvement and self-concern, not to speak of tribalism – I thought that one of the best gifts I could give these guys was to remove them from that for periods of time and help them see that the world was a very, very big place, with lots of people with lots of different viewpoints and lifestyles and that yes, as Rick says,
And yes, the first two solo trips were just a little difficult because that period had come to an end.
I was a little at sea as to what to do and why I should do it. I missed my fellow-travelers and while I didn’t miss much of the logistics and the interest-balancing andfor sure didn’t regret spending 2/3 less (at least – I’m very low maintenance) on travel – I actually did miss being a part of my kids’ experiences as they discovered a new part of the world.
I enjoyed and got a great deal out of seeing new things with them and partly through their eyes.
So now…what?
During those first two trips, especially, I battled conflicting emotions: glad to be somewhere, interested in what I was seeing, grateful for the freedom, guilt about privilege, guilt about self-indulgence, wondering if I could live in this new place, missing all of my kids, not just the two frequent travel companions, thinking about what they would and wouldn’t enjoy about this new place, plotting on a return with one or more of them, wondering if this was at all justifiable, so aware, again, of the privilege that screams from even having these questions at all.
There were, indeed, times, when I was a little sad – sad that those days were over, because you know what? They were fun. I really enjoyed taking those guys all over, and I’ll probably be sitting here when I’m 80, looking at those pictures over and over again, no doubt.
The nostalgia, though, is quickly overtaken by the goodness of the present moment. Everyone is doing well. Oh, there are struggles, and serious ones, but there always have been and always will be. I’m glad everyone is where they are, doing what they’re doing.
Do you see where this is going?
Because it’s not just about one woman’s attempt to put her empty-nest solo traveling in perspective.
It’s not even just about the empty nest – although any newly-minted empty nester probably understands.
It’s about any change, any transition, I think.
For me, the answer to my questions are evolving. For right now, anyway, I am really not alone. The two youngest adults are in and out and we’ll be hanging around together, with some comings and goings, most of the summer, really starting now with all the spring breaks and Easter breaks and graduations. The fall is up in the air, as well, depending on other people’s decisions about their lives.
Some people preach a gospel that we’re all better off following our dreams and organizing our lives – and the lives of others – around our individual dreams and goals, even as parents, making sure the family system is one that facilitates our success. Okay, fine for you, but I try – try – to make my framework for living, especially as a parent, and even as a parent to adults – as something I call “radical availability.” On the phone, to shoot over and help with the kids or help you move – I’m there. Being available to my kids? That’s something I’m never going to regret.
So, my days as tour guide might be mostly over, but I can and want to host and facilitate and hang out at night while during the day everyone’s gone off and done their own thing during the day. But then there’s that next generation, rising fast, too, and just about old enough to take a trip and start the journey…
Someone said to me a few months ago, as I was mulling over all of this, Stop! You deserve this time! You’ve worked hard for your kids and given them a lot!Relax!
Well, I don’t know if “work hard” describes me in any way, even as a parent. But even if it did, I’m not sure I could agree. My time on earth wasn’t given to me for self-indulgence – even the introvert, content to be wandering the streets of Naples alone, knows this. There has to be fruit that serves others in some way – even if it’s something as simples as: this refreshes you and gives you more energy to serve or you’ve learned something that you can teach someone else or share or you were in this place at that time, and you encountered that person, and you both were enriched or one more lesson in: you’re not the center of the world or you learned how to navigate a difficulty and a challenge which will help you help someone else someday.
Oh, and then there’s you people: You can write about this and maybe someone reading it will be helped, entertained, educated or inspired.
Not that I’m settled into this as the complete answer, no more challenges needed or desired. I’m not nestling into some identity as “middle-aged traveling woman.” I am keenly aware that the space that I am privileged to inhabit now, first, could be gone tomorrow. Life changes, as we know, on a dime.
But I also know that this space is not just for me. Because the spaces we live in – as they change, evolve and shift – are never just for us, because of course, that space is always shared.
Charlotte was Both 