1918, Sisters and Church Closings

From yesterday’s NYTimes: 

A few years ago, I set out to research my grandmother’s early childhood in Philadelphia, looking for clues about what the world was like in the first precarious years of her life. I knew that she was born in October 1917, that she had lived through the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 as a baby, but I was unprepared for the harrowing details I uncovered in my search.

Reading about the fall of 1918 left me grappling with a series of images of the outbreak as it was experienced locally: hushed streets, shut doors, bodies piled up in basements and on porches because the morgues had run out of coffins. Businesses and public spaces citywide were shuttered, including churches, schools and theaters. In a single day, on Oct. 16, more than 700 people in Philadelphia died from influenza.

But as I read the first alarming headlines about the coronavirus in January, what came to mind from my family research was one particular document, an oral history published in 1919 by the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia to preserve living memories of the Spanish flu. “Facts unrecorded are quickly lost in the new interests of changing time,” its author began; here, he meant to “gather information for the future.” Within these unassuming pages, I found the story of an extraordinary act of generosity and compassion, carried out at the height of a pandemic. Titled “Work of the Sisters During the Epidemic of Influenza, October 1918,” within this document was evidence of the enormous human capacity for personal sacrifice in the name of public good.

In early October, the Red Cross warned that Philadelphia did not have enough nurses to treat and minister to the sick, whose numbers were growing rapidly. “The nursing forces of the city have been depleted by the war. There was a serious shortage in many of the hospitals before the epidemic broke upon us,” an official cautioned. “Now it is a matter of life and death.” It was in this tense atmosphere that the archbishop of Philadelphia called on nuns in his diocese to leave their convents and take up posts caring for the sick and dying across the city.

You can read the entire document here.

 

Really – go read. 

 

There is a summary in the journal of the ACHS from 1919, which includes this note about church closings and the use of church property to treat the sick:

Letter of the Archbishop Authorizing the Opening of Parish Buildings, Halls and Schools for the Use of the Sick, also the Nursing and Relief Work of Uncloistered Sisters. Archbishop’s Residence 1723 Race St. Phila. October 10, 1918.

During the Influenza Epidemic, permission is given to utilize church edifices, particularly halls and parochial schools, as hospitals. Permission is also granted for un- cloistered Sisters to serve as nurses. If need be, the aid of the St. Vincent de Paul Societies should be utilized in each parish. The members of these Societies can help to nurse the patients and also open kit-chens to provide soup and other foods for the sick. These foods could be brought to the doors of the suffering by messengers, particularly by the school-boys. It is left to each pastor to devise the best means to combat the epidemic in his own parish. Priests and nuns are advised to obtain and use masks whilst attendng those attacked by influenza. Very affectionately yours, D. J. Dougherty, Abp. of Phila.

 

In connection with the closing of churches during the epidemic the following points seem to deserve notice and record :

First – The action of Pastors and Rectors of churches was in accordance with the orders of civil authorities – the State Board of Health, city and local departments of health and public safety – as directed by the letter of his Grace, the Most Revē Archbishop, which follows :

Archbishop’s House 1723 Race St. Philadelphia October 4th, 1918.

Rev. Dear Sir: We hereby direct your attention to the order of the Board of Health, issued on Thursday, October 3d, which prohibits the assemblage of all persons in the churches and schools of Philadelphia until further notice. Yours faithfully in Xto., D. J. Dougherty, Archbishop of Philadelphia .

Second – In many, probably all, the city churches this order was given during the afternoon and evening of Thursday, October 3, when usually there are many Confessions in our churches in view of Communions for the ” First Friday “. The notice to close was generally brought to the church or the rectory by the police then and there on duty. Some of the churches were closed, as reported to the compiler, at 6 o’clock p. m., others at 8 o’clock. Permission was granted in some at least of the churches to allow the people to come to the church on Friday morning, October 4, for Holy Communion. This permission was granted when requested by ‘phone from departments of health or public safety.

Third – While formally and legally closed, the doors of churches were not locked, and attendance at private Masses during the week and on Sundays was not forbidden. Devout and prayerful visits in acknowledgment of the Real Presence, in the churches of the business section of the city were apparently quite as regular and frequent as in normal times.

Fourth – Some of the city churches tried to meet the difficulty by Mass in the open air on Sunday, October 6 and 13. There was no prohibition or public protest against this, so far as the compiler has been able to find; but the practice did not meet with general approval, and, after the second Sunday was discontinued.

Fifth – City churches were closed October 6, 13, 20. The permission to open churches for Sunday, October 27, was followed by unusually large crowds for Confessions on Saturday evening, October 26. The list of the dead in the announcements at Masses on October 27 seemed almost interminable; in some churches more than one hundred names. Outside the city the date for ” reopening ” the churches varied according to different views taken by local boards, and different interpretations given to the action of the State Board of Health in ” lifting the ban “. Some country churches followed the order of city churches and assumed the right to open October 27; others in the same townships, and under the same local boards, did not reopen until November third.

 

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St. Patrick

 

What is this and what does it have to do with St. Patrick? See the end of the blog post…

From The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints:

How do you teach a classroom that’s as big as a whole country? How do you teach a whole country about God?

St. Patrick’s classroom was the whole country of Ireland and his lesson was the good news of Jesus Christ. How in the world did he do it? Well, it was only possible because he depended totally on God.

….

God gave Patrick the courage to speak, even when Patrick was in danger of being hurt by pagan priests who didn’t want to lose their power over the people.

Patrick’s most famous prayer shows us how close he was to God. It’s called “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.” A breastplate is the piece of armor that protects a soldier’s heart from harm.

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left.

I also have a chapter on the beautiful Lorica prayer – or St. Patrick’s Breastplate in The Words We Pray. You can dip into it here and buy the book here. It’s one of my favorites of those I’ve written.

Here’s the last page of the chapter:

The point of St Patrick to me has always been he went back. He (like Isaac Jogues and many others) returned to the people who had caused him much suffering. Why did he return? Because he knew, first hand, that they needed to hear the Gospel. The Gospel is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Who better to bring it to them?

St. Patrick’s Breastplate in a Wordcloud. Wordcloud made via this. Feel free to share.

The photograph at the top of the blog post is of St. Patrick’s Well in Orvieto, Italy, taken during our 2016 trip. No, St. Patrick never traveled to Italy, and no one thinks he does, either. The assumption is that the name of this very deep, intriguingly constructed well is derived from the awareness of “St. Patrick’s Purgatory” in Ireland, a cave so deep it led to Purgatory.

This incredible 16th century feat of engineering is 72 meters (174.4 feet) deep and 13 meters (43 feet) wide. Two staircases circle the central opening in a double-helix design, meaning that one person (or donkey carrying empty buckets) can travel down the staircase in one direction and never run into another person (or donkey carrying full buckets) coming up in the other direction. Seventy-two arched windows in the interior wall of the staircase filter light through the well and illuminate the brick and mortar used to seal it.

Why does a tiny town on top of a plateau of volcanic rock (or “tufa”) have such a thing? For the same reason it has such a stunning duomo! After the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, Pope Clement VII was held hostage in Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome’s holy fortress, for six months. He finally escaped dressed as a servant and took refuge in Orvieto. It was the perfect spot with its vantage point over the valley.

It didn’t, however, have a reliable source of water without descending from the plateau, something the Pope feared could be a issue if it were sieged. To solve the problem before it existed, Pope Clement VII commissioned Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, a visionary young Italian architect, to create a well that was at that time called “Pozzo della Rocca”, “Well of the Fortress”. Research had already been done to find the most suitable spot for a well and so the design and construction of Pozzo della Roca was begun immediately. It was finished 10 years later in 1537, under the reign of Pope Paul III.

It wasn’t until the 1800′s that the well got its new name, as it reminded some of the “well” or “cave” in Ireland called “St. Patrick’s Purgatory”.

(I always like these vintage books more for the art than the text….)

Finally, you might be interested in this, dug up from the Internet Archive: A Rhymed Life of St. Patrick by Irish writer Katharine Tynan:

Irish nationalist writer Katharine Tynan was born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, in 1859. She was educated at the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine and started writing at a young age. Though Catholic, she married a Protestant barrister; she and her husband lived in England before moving to Claremorris, in County Mayo. Tynan was friends with W.B. Yeats and Charles Parnell.

Involved in the Irish Literary Revival, Tynan expressed concern for feminist causes, the poor, and the effects of World War I—two sons fought in the war—in her work. She also meditated on her Catholic faith. A prolific writer, she wrote more than 100 novels, 12 collections of short stories, reminiscences, plays, and more than a dozen books of poetry, among them Louise de la Vallière and Other Poems (1885), Shamrocks (1887), Ballads and Lyrics (1891), Irish Poems (1913), The Flower of Peace: A Collection of the Devotional Poetry of Katharine Tynan (1914), Flower of Youth: Poems in Wartime (1915), and Late Songs (1917). She died in 1931.

 

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7 Quick Takes

—1 —

Time flies, flies, flies. A week ago at this time, I was in in New York City, and now here I am in Alabama, with an entire busy week behind us and more to come: Son playing four Masses, with two upcoming, two jazz lessons, one organ lesson, a biology class and who knows what else.

First shift over on Ash Wednesday morning.

— 2 —

I’m in the Catholic Herald this week on fasting. You can find that here.

I’ll be in Living Faith next…Wednesday. You’ll be able to read that here.

— 3 —

Everybody likes to talk about their Lenten food. In case you’ve missed it, I updated the Gallery of Regrettable Lenten Food, having found, truly, the vilest recipe of all – a “Cantonese Tuna” recipe that somehow involves Miracle Whip.

But that’s not on my list.Not this year, anyway.

First day – Wednesday – I took the easy way out. Publix had refrigerated Rana ravioli on sale, so I grabbed a bag of spinach and ricotta, boiled it up, tossed it with sauce, and there you go.

Tomorrow, I’ll put forth more effort. I made no-knead bread dough tonight, so it will be ready to go. I caramelized onions and did my slow-oven fake sun dried tomatoes. Lunch tomorrow will be a caramelized onion-fake-sun-dried tomatoes-feta frittata (with the bread) and dinner will be this lentil soup (with the bread).

Don’t worry. I’m sure every other Friday in Lent will be some variation of…cheese pizza. 

Or maybe I’ll go the extra mile and try to find something with that luxury look and taste:

— 4 —

Let’s drift around our favorite place – the past – and see what Lent-related nuggets we can dredge up.

Well, here’s something – from The Furrow, which was an Irish Catholic publication, a rather charming report on “Lent in Rome” from 1950 – which was a Jubilee Year. The author’s focus is on the Stational Churches.

I’ve got jpegs of the last three pages here (click for a larger view), and a bit of transcription below.

What you might notice is a counter-argument against the claim that no one before the Second Vatican Council actually knew anything about participation. Not a thing.

Neighbouring colleges or religious houses provide the essential core of chant and ceremonial ; the people do the rest. A point to be emphasized is that it is a definitely liturgical ceremony, and therefore not the same kind of thing as Rosary and Benediction in Ireland.

An outsider attending these Stations is struck by two things : the numbers regularly present and the active manner in which they attend. A cross-section of the crowd in any Station church is representative of all classes and types : well-dressed professional people stand side-by-side with the poorer workers in mufflers and shawls and overalls. There is always a number of clerics, priests and students, from various foreign colleges, taking advantage of the occasion to visit these historic churches, some of which, like St. Anastasia or St. Pudentiana, are only opened to the public on such days. Cardinals have been known to attend the Stations incognito, dressed quietly in black, like any private worshipper. Nuns, sometimes with groups of school-children, are faithful followers of the Stations. Not only do the people attend the Station in their own district but many follow them throughout Lent from church to church.

To be present at one of these Stations is to see another aspect of the Roman religious character and one that may not always be appreciated as it ought. The people here can take part in a liturgical function, and they do ; in fact, they seem to have a natural aptitude for liturgical worship that one would like to see amongst their Irish counterparts. One is constantly surprised in Rome at the number and the type of quite ordinary people who are familiar with the Latin of the liturgy, and to hear old men and women who look as if they might just have been sweeping streets or selling fruit, joining in Latin hymns with obvious ease and devotion. Most of them bring their books or leaflets to the Station and repeat the invocations of the Litanies after the choir, making nothing of rather difficult phrases such as, Ut regibus et principibus christianis paean et veram concordiam donare digneris. If there is a procession, all attach themselves to it, and even if the result is somewhat straggling, it sorts itself out as it goes along.

 

…It is customary during Station time for each church so privileged to display all its relics and other treasures, an opportunity which the public, clerical and lay, never misses. The end of the ceremony is the signal for a general movement round the church into the side-chapels and sacristy and down into the crypt. Nobody has any awe about entering the sanctuary or passing across the altar to examine the reliquaries or admire the mosaic of the apse. Comment is free and the ordinary Romans adopt an obviously proprietary attitude about their churches and their artistic treasures. Typical were three, old, poorly-dressed women with shopping-bags dangling from their arms, who were holding a lively discussion on the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, as pictured in a celebrated fresco in the basilica of St. Clement. They were probably ignorant of composition and colour and such technical points, but they knew what the picture was about and responded to its meaning.
Meanwhile, Lent and the accompanying spring weather, has also brought an increase in the flow of pilgrims to Rome The brightly-coloured touring buses which whisk them from basilica to basilica are now a familiar feature of the streets and the piazzas in front of the churches. From a casual observation it would seem that the Germans have been the most consistent pilgrims so far and that the English-speaking countries lag far behind (at least at the time of writing, in early March). There is scarcely a day that one does not see these Germans–mostly plain, neatly-dressed, quiet-mannered people such as one might see going to Mass in an Irish village—intent on the main business of their visit, praying with devotion and singing their hymns in splendid unison. From various parts of Italy the local Catholic bodies and confraternities are sending groups of pilgrims regularly. The general feeling, however, is that the real invasion is yet to come, and, in fact, that Easter may well see the peak-period. Amongst those who are particularly interested in the movement of pilgrims is the flock of opportunists who infest the Jubilee centres, gathered like vultures over the battlefield—enterprising men and youths, who are ready to change your money or to sell you souvenirs or novelties or spurious Parker pens or to take your photograph against the background of St. Peter’s. They have a smattering of every language and are never at a loss—some have even tried a few words of Hebrew on particularly unresponsive clerics, who are poor game, anyway, and know too much, especially about fountain-pens.

— 5 –

Let’s keep going – to the 18th century.

This, from the American Catholic Historical Society (in 1888), reprints a Lenten exhortation from 1771:

This Exhortation was issued by Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner, Vicar- Apostolic for the London District. As the British- American Provinces were under his spiritual jurisdiction and directed by him, this Exhortation and the annexed Regulations for Lent were addressed to the Catholics of the Colonies. In 1771 these could only have been publicly read in Catholic chapels in the Province of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, Lancaster, Reading and Goshenhoppen. In Maryland they could only have been read to the Catholics assembled to hear Mass in private houses.

You can read the entire exhortation here, but I’ll just take a bit of space to point out, as I do in the Herald article, that lamenting contemporary Lenten laxity is nothing new:

But, Oh ! how much has the modern Church, yielding to the weakness of her children in these degenerate ages, departed from this rigor of her ancient discipline ; contenting herself now, with regard to the exterior observance of the fast, with only insisting upon three things, viz. : First, the abstaining from flesh meat, during the forty days of Lent ; sec- ondly, the eating but one meal in the day ; and, thirdly, the not taking that meal till noon. But if she has thus qualified the rigor of her exterior discipline, she has never ceased to inculcate to all her children the strict necessity and indispensable obligation, of their recommending the exterior observance to the divine acceptance by the interior penitent.

You can read the regulations here.

In reading them you might note – as in the exhortation – again, that no, past Catholic practice was not focused on “rigidity” at the expense of authentic interior spiritual experience. There was a conviction that any regulations served to deepen one’s communion with God as well as with others, since fasting frees us from our own needs – for others.

Here also it is to be observed, that as this allowance of eating flesh on certain days this Lent is made purely in consideration of the necessity of the faithful, it ought not to be abused for the indulging of sensuality, by making feasts on those days ; or by serving up promiscuously flesh and fish, etc. But that the spirit of mortification and penance should still regulate the Christians at meals this penitential season : and that what is wanting to the strictness of the fast, should be made up as much as possible by other exercises of self-denial, or by more prayers, or by larger alms ; which at this time we most earnestly recommend to all the faithful in proportion to each one’s ability by reason of the pressing necessities of the poor.

— 6 —

From my favorite email newsletter, the Prufrock News, comes a link to this New Criterion piece onF. Scott Fitzgerald’s favorite priest:

Mostly forgotten by history but unforgettable to those who knew him, Father Cyril Sigourney Fay was an “exceedingly fat” man of great personal charm. He had a buoyant personality and childlike faith beloved of Fitzgerald, Henry Adams, Cardinal Gibbons, and Pope Benedict XV.

For Gatsby’s Daisy Fay Buchanan, Fitzgerald borrowed the names of Father Fay and Margaret “Daisy” Chanler, whom Henry James judged the only truly cultivated woman in America. More brazenly, Fitzgerald stole a poem from one of Fay’s letters and inserted it without attribution into his first novel, This Side of Paradise. As penance for his theft, he dedicated the book to his priest-mentor, who appears barely disguised as Monsignor D’Arcy:

Monsignor was forty-four then, and bustling—a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the color of spun gold, and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into a room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled a Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention.

…

Fay’s light humanitarian work in Rome concealed his diplomatic meetings in the Vatican with the Cardinal Secretary of State and Pope Benedict XV. Fay reported on the efforts to lobby the American and British governments to allow Vatican participation in the peace conference negotiations. Benedict XV took a personal liking to Fay and his frank assessments of the Catholic hierarchy. He was also amused by the sight of the chubby American priest dressed in the uniform of a wartime major, which the pontiff personally insisted Fay wear during his audiences. During their final meeting, Benedict surprised Fay by granting him the purple of a Monsignor as a Domestic Prelate. Daisy Chanler was happy for her friend but admitted this made him look like “an enormous peony floating about.”

In 1919, Fay died suddenly from the Spanish Flu, a few days after Teddy Roosevelt. Fitzgerald was devastated. “I can’t tell you how I feel about Monseigneur Fay’s death,” he wrote to Shane Leslie. “He was the best friend I had in the world.” Fitzgerald smiled to think how the Monsignor would have enjoyed his own requiem mass, with Cardinal Gibbons vested “like an archangel in mitre and cope” in the full solemn splendor of the Roman Rite. Leslie reviewed This Side of Paradise in The Dublin Review and noticed how the novel accurately described Fay’s funeral: “All these people grieved because they had to some extent depended upon Monsignor. . . . These people had leaned on Monsignor’s faith, his way of finding cheer, of making religion a thing of lights and shadows, making all light and shadow merely aspects of God. People felt safe when he was near.”

— 7 —

Here’s the beginning of the account of the Temptation in the Desert – always the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent – from The Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories.

Remember, those stories are arranged in sections according to the liturgical season in which one would normally hear that particular Scripture narrative. So, this is in the “Lent” section.

EPSON MFP image

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

And from another source – a 7th grade religion textbook, originally published in 1935 (my edition is 1947):

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Ash Wednesday in the desert…and for 12 year olds

From previous years, but still worth a read!

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How did I happen up on this? In the usual, wandering way. I went to archive.org and typed in “ash wednesday” in the search box, and after wading through a bunch of sermons and pamphlets (including one I had written!), I happened upon this, and stumbled into a huge rabbit hole.

In that rabbit hole I was introduceed to one Baron Ferdinand de Geramb, (probably) born in Lyons, but of Hungarian descent. An adventurer, a soldier, a prisoner of Napoleon, and eventually…a Trappist. From the old Catholic Encyclopedia:

In 1808 he fell into the hands of Napoleon, who imprisoned him in the fortress of Vincennes until 1814, the time when the allied powers entered Paris. After bidding farewell to the Tsar and Emperor of Austria, he resolved to leave the world. It was at this time that he providentially met the Rev. Father Eugene, Abbot of Notre Dame du Port du Salut, near Laval (France), of whom he begged to be admitted as a novice in the community. He pronounced his vows in 1817.

After having rendered great services to that monastery, he was sent, in 1827, to the monastery of Mt. Olivet (Alsace). During the Revolution of 1830 de Géramb displayed great courage in the face of a troop of insurgents that had come to pillage the monastery; though the religious had been dispersed, the abbey was at least, by his heroic action, spared the horrors of pillage. It was at this time that Brother Mary Joseph made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return in 1833, he went to Rome, where he held the office of procurator-general of La Trappe. He soon gained the esteem and affection of Gregory XVI, who, though he was not a priest, named him titular abbot with the insignia of the ring and pectoral cross, a privilege without any precedent.

Abbot de Géramb is the author of many works, the principal of which are: “Letters to Eugene on the Eucharist”; “Eternity is approaching”; “Pilgrimage to Jerusalem”; “A Journey from La Trappe to Rome”, besides many others of less importance and of an exclusively ascetical character. They were often reprinted and translated. His style is easy and without affectation. The customs, manners, and incidents of the journey which he describes, all are vividly and attractively given, and the topographical descriptions are of an irreproachable accuracy. Even under the monk’s cowl the great nobleman could occasionally be seen distributing in alms considerable sums of money which he had received from his family to defray his expenses.

I spent a good deal of time skimming through the book to which the search took me: A Pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt and Syria.  It is quite evocative, as this excerpt about Ash Wednesday shows:

 On the 20th I was awake long before dawn. I went
out of my tent, and seated myself at the entrance. My
Bedouins, at a little distance, were sleeping around some
half-extinct embers. At the slight noise which I made
their camels raised their heads, but laid them down
again immediately on the sand. Silence reigned around
me. It was Ash- Wednesday, a day specially set apart
by the Church, to remind its members of the curse pro-
nounced against the first man after his fall, and in which
his whole posterity is involved. I picked up a handful
of the dust of the desert, marked my brow with it, and,
giving myself the salutary warning which it was not pos-
sible for me to receive at the foot of the altars of Christ,
from the lips of one of his ministers, I pronounced these
words : — ” Recollect, O man, that dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return.”

Then, joining in spirit and in heart the Christian
people, who, on this day more especially, beseech the
Lord ” to have pity upon them according to his great
mercy’ I waited for sunrise, meditating upon that
awful sentence of death pronounced upon the human
race, the execution of which none can escape, and which
it will by and by be my turn to undergo. It has often
been the case, my dear Charles, that I have felt deeply
moved and violently torn from the things of this world,
while listening to the powerful words demonstrating
their nothingness, issuing from the pulpit amidst the
doleful solemnities with which the holy season of penance
commences ; but I declare to you that this desert, where
the plant itself cannot live ; this soil, which is but dust,
and from which the blast sweeps away in the twinkling
of an eye all traces of the footsteps of man, telling him
that thus shall he be swept away by the blast of death;
this universal silence, not even interrupted like that of
the grave by the voice of grief or the song of mourning;
those ruins, and those empty sepulchers ; those carcasses
of kingdoms and of cities, which had just passed before
my eyes ; and that holy Bible, which related to me the
crimes of generations upon the spot where they were
committed, explained to me the transitory nature, the
paltriness, and the term of human life, and showed to
me, as still dwelling in the heavens, Him who will have
man know that he is the Lord, and that He infallibly
overtakes by his justice the presumptuous mortal who
disdains his mercy — all this spake to my soul in much
stronger language, in a language the energy of which
no words can express.

---

Now…for the 12-year old….

 

…1935 style.

More from a 1935 7th-grade text, part of the The Christ Life Series in Religion.

Note, again, how the child is treated as a full-fledged member of the Body of Christ, with responsibilities and the capacity to know his or herself and receive grace fruitfully and grow in union with Christ. No pandering, no dumbing-down. Nor is it about rule-following or a shallow embrace of external actions, as our caricatures of pre-Vatican II life tell us it must have been.  It is, as the textbook says, about becoming “more intimately united with Christ.”

Read and contrast to the prevalent contemporary understanding of Lent, which is that it’s about focusing my efforts so God can help me get my life together and feel better about it all.

There is a difference between the two emphases. Subtle, but real between “strengthening the soul’s life” and “having a great Lent.” It’s all about the focus. Is it about me or about Jesus, the Gospel and our mission, as parts of his Body, in a broken world?

And news flash: there is not much about Lent in the CCC, but what is there emphasizes that yes, it is still a penetential season. 

(click on graphics for bigger versions)

 

As living members of Christ’s Mystical Body we must participate in all His life. Today this means waging war on those passions which have been gaining ground in our soul and usurping the reign which belongs to Christ alone. Only a coward flees from a call to arms in a just cause. We, who in Confirmation have been sealed with the Spirit as soldiers of Christ, must fight courageously under His leadership. Is there any special self-indulgence weakening our spiritual life? Let us have entire confidence that with God’s grace we can overcome our faults.

Lent is a time of action and spiritual growth—not a time of gloom and repression, but a time of strong positive effort. Through our vigorous efforts of this season, we grow stronger spiritually, for we become more intimately united with Christ. It is in the Mass, above all, that we receive the grace we need in order to be victorious in the struggle upon which we are entering. Is it possible for you to assist at daily Mass during Lent, offering yourself with the divine Victim to atone for sin and to gain renewed vigor? Exactly what spiritual gains will you aim to make during this Lent? Join in the prayer of the Church today “that our fasts may be acceptable to thee and a means of healing to us. Through our Lord”

 

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Organ Donor

 

I’ll be posting snippets and observations from our NYC trip last week over the next few days.

(No, I don’t take a blog/social media break for Lent. This is my work, so…no.)

One of the many highlights of our trip was the opportunity, on Thursday afternoon, for my organist son to meet and play the historic (built in 1868)  Erben Organ in the Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Here’s the website for the organization supporting maintenance and restoration of the organ.

And the Cathedral website.

Lana, of the Friends of the Erben Organ, was very generous with her time. She met us in the afternoon after we’d stuffed ourselves in not one, but two different Chinatown spots, talked to us about the history of the instrument, showed us the distinct factors of this type of tracker organ, led us around the back to see the innards, both in rest and in motion as she played, and then let my son play – no organ shoes were packed, so it was socks on the pedals.

For those of you not familiar with organs – and I don’t claim to be familiar, just vaguely aware – most organs, even pipe organs, that you see and hear today are electric and/or digital – since the two major actions of the organ – the movement of the air through the pipes and the connecting between the keys and the valves – are powered by electricity.

Of course, before the advent of electricity, this wasn’t possible. So organs were entirely mechanical. The key/valve action was by tracker action, and the air moved through the pipes by human-powered bellows.

(You may have seen old, smaller “pump” organs – in which the organist has to manually, with his or her foot, pump a large pedal to keep air flowing through the instrument. In larger organs, it would take another person to do so – in the case of the Erben Organ, there was a large wheel at the back to turn that would activate the bellows. Now, that element is electrically powered.)

There are pros and cons to electrical v. tracker action organs. My limited understanding is that an ideal instrument is a combination of both.

Playing an historic tracker action organ certainly is a different experience than playing a modern digital pipe organ, though. As my son said, he had to work a lot harder to produce sound (because of the force required to push the keys, in contrast to the light touch required for an electrical instrument), and because of that, the experience was more like playing a piano – which he, honestly, prefers to organ – than his usual instrument at church/work.

The pipe organ really is an amazing instrument – when you think about the large pipe organs that were being built even in the 14th and 15th centuries, the level of technological skill and knowledge required is astonishing.

Here’s the Facebook post on the afternoon, and here’s the Instagram post from the Friends, and from me, which includes a bit of video.

Please support them if you can – and support all your local church musicians and sacred music endeavors!

 

 

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Lent for the Kids

Here are some images from beginning-of-Lent related material from a couple of my books.

The entry on “Ashes” from The Loyola Kids Book of Catholic Signs and Symbols. 

EPSON MFP image

EPSON MFP image

EPSON MFP image

EPSON MFP image

The beginning of the account of the Temptation in the Desert – always the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent – from The Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories.

Remember, those stories are arranged in sections according to the liturgical season in which one would normally hear that particular Scripture narrative. So, this is in the “Lent” section.

EPSON MFP image

Loyola Kids Book of Bible Stories

 

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With Charity

This is a bit of a repeat, but I took the time to transcribe some of this from a scan of the book, so I thought it merited a separate post.

I wrote about Quinquagesima Sunday, and shared scans on the day from the 1935 7th-grade religion textbook, With Mother Church, from the Christ Life Series in Religion.  I’ve rescanned in a larger format and transcribed part of the text, for easier reading and quoting.

Remember – this is written for 7th graders. These days, we appeal to 7th graders by anxiously assuming that we must entertain them and constantly assure them of how fantastic they are and assure them that we’re offering them something appealing – as consumers, in other words. This is not the case here, is it? The 7th graders are treated respectfully, as full members of the Body of Christ with responsibilities and a role that contributes to the good of the whole, and are encouraged to be attentive to the Scriptures and prayers of the day’s liturgy, see their relationship to their lives and daily struggles, and to live in their framework.

Also note, belying the stereotype of those bad-old-days of-rules-and-rigidity, the theme of charity, aka, love. Also, the sensible, Gospel-rooted understanding of love – which is not about feeling awesome, excited, warm or …anything, but all about living in communion with God’s will – responding in love to His love. 

(Remember the first reading would have been Paul’s words on charity from 1 Corinthians 13) 

Thus we find that the perfect observance of the law of charity will make us perfect Christians. But how can we know that we have charity? Perhaps we do not feel a sensible love for God such as we feel toward our parents. Our Lord Himself has told us, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). This is the test. The first three commandments, you know, relate directly to God; the others, to our neighbor. Hence, “if any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar” (I John 4 : 20).

In time of temptation do we pray and resist because we do not want to break God’s commandments? Then we have charity. If, through weakness, we fall but are sorry and resolve not to sin again, then we have charity. If we are longing always to do the will of God, we shall certainly please Him by loving and bearing with our neighbor. God created and redeemed him and loves him in the same manner as He loves us. During Lent frequently offer the eucharistic Sacrifice, in which you are intimately united with Christ and with your neighbor in Christ through the sweet bond of charity.

Today is the final part of our preparation for Lent. Let us remember that our penances and good works depend for their value on our charity. On the last Sunday before Lent Christ Himself invites us to go up to Jerusalem with Him, and He says, “All things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of man, for he shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon; and after they have scourged him, they will put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again” (Gospel). Face to face with the mystery of suffering, we must pray for light to understand and charity to endure. With the blind man in the Gospel let us cry out, “Lord, that I may see.”

This program of suffering and penance must not cause us to be fearful or sad. If it does, our repentance does not spring from charity or love of God. In the Tract today we join King David in saying: “Sing joyfully to God all the earth; serve ye the Lord with gladness. . . . He made us, and not we ourselves; but we art his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Only through frequent union with Christ in His Sacrifice, can we expect the grace to be generous and joyous in our Lenten penances. In the Postcommunion we are shown where to expect to find the light and strength necessary for victory. “We beseech thee, almighty God, that we who have received this heavenly food may by it be safe-guarded from all adversities.”

 

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