Views of a new Catholic in an old world, on the joy and inexhaustible meaning found in the Faith.
As our sons enter their teenage years, the challenge of imbuing them with Catholic Christian values is becoming more difficult. How do I live in the world as a Christian when my tendency as a Christian is to protect my sons by running and hiding with them? I just got off the phone with one of my dearest friends. As usual, talking with Martha illuminated me. Today's hour-long chat included mention of a tattooed, pierced truck driver. Not the one at left, but someone like him.
I interviewed a devoutly Catholic man yesterday for non-Catholic reasons. He told me that for people like him and me, both nearer 60 than 50, each day boils down to "a choice between Dunkirk and the Alamo." When you get into a situation, there are two outcomes: You get your boats off the beach and live to fight another day, as at Dunkirk; or you make your last stand, as at the Alamo. Meaning, we're getting near the end of the line, and now it's only a question of, How long?
In 1964, Pope Paul VI launched the World Day of Prayer for Vocations with this prayer: “O Jesus, divine Shepherd of the spirit, you have called the Apostles in order to make them fishermen of men, you still attract to you burning spirits and generous young people, in order to render them your followers and ministers to us." Since then, Catholic parishes around the world have been praying for vocations every fourth Sunday of Easter. Despite the prayers of faithful Catholics, the number of religious priests, brothers and sisters has relentlessly declined in the United States. But lately: signs of hope.
When someone wrongs me, it's easy to be right. Being merciful, however, is hard and necessary. What it takes for me to be merciful is to try my best to contemplate that person, who for the moment I consider my enemy, from more than my own perspective. I know I never will be able to behold a fellow human being as God does, because He exists beyond the limited dimension of time and offers us immeasurable love. But I can try to recognize more dimensions of my enemy than I already do.
The beautiful thing about Catholic life, if you love it, is that everything streams into it: literature, music, theater and art, politics, science. Everything can remind one of the beauty of creation. Everything can be a sign of Christ's presence. Even music you know nothing about.
Two Popes of the early Church sit on opposite corners of the portico ceiling of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Today, we celebrate their feast days. The two men served as Popes two centuries apart. What they share is that their pontificates occurred during times of great torture and persecution for professing Christians under Roman rule. Reflecting on the lives of Popes Cletus and Marcellinus puts into perspective the trials the faithful now are facing.
Guest Post by Warren Jewell
Christ has no body now, but yours.
The joint was jumping as I entered the Cathedral of the Holy Cross last Saturday, April 17. The nave was filling for the 2010 Boston Catholic Men's Conference, and I was attending for the first time. I didn't expect a rockish sort of band singing faith songs in front of a video screen that flashed the lyrics or hundreds of men on their feet, sort of swaying, sort of clapping, depending on their age and level of inhibition. I certainly didn't expect to find myself beside Dick from Foxboro and wonder what had happened to my faith when I turned fifteen.
I live in a time and a country where many Christians take their faith for granted. If it hadn't been for brave souls such as St. George throughout history, however, despots might have destroyed that faith.
More than once, I've had my heart shattered. In my late teens, my first love left me without warning. In my late twenties, I lost my former college boyfriend to a drug overdose. In my late thirties, I nearly lost my beloved husband to a terror attack. Since then, until most recently, I have been haunted by a recurring dream that my wonderful, loyal Greg would not marry me, despite the life we've built together. The shock of nearly losing my husband has echoed in my heart. Only now, in my late forties, do I realize that the sorrows I've carried have woven themselves into the tapestry that is me. A recent encounter with my teen-aged self taught me that my sorrow has been a helpful companion.
At the Boston Catholic Men's Conference on Saturday, 1,000 men seated in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross were challenged to "go all in" in the great poker game with Jesus Christ. This challenge applies to you and me, whether we have a huge stack of chips in front of us or just a pair of white ones, like the widow with her mite. English poet John Milton (1608–1674) was completely blind by the age of 44—not as serious a calamity as Beethoven's deafness but certainly a handicap to the author of Paradise Lost. His chips were depleted.
Our oldest son told me once: "Mom, life is not an opera." Oh, I don't know about that. My older sisters and I called ourselves "The Singing Salerno Sisters" when we were growing up. We sang constantly: pop songs, church pieces and folk music. When I became a mother, singing my babies to sleep was merely the end of a day spent singing to them. Now, I sing while schlepping our boys to their activities. I sing (not too loudly) to relieve my stress in the grocery store line. I sing while waiting for the tank to fill up at the gas station. All my singing, however, largely has been done in private. I hadn't sung in any kind of group for at least a decade until I joined our church choir this fall. Because the choir is so small—two voices to a part—I've had to rethink the way I sing and the way I live.
Webster was kind enough earlier this year to send me a gem of a book about developing one's interior spiritual life. This is one of those books, like St. Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle, that is so deep, so lovely and so helpful that one certainly cannot read it in one sitting, or even a chapter at a time. In fact, I have been reading it sentence by sentence, pausing to take notes and meditate on how the book's message speaks to my own circuitous pilgrim path.
I spent Saturday morning at the Boston Catholic Men's Conference in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in the South End. No, that's not me at left. That's Danny Abramowicz, former NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints, author of Spiritual Workout of a Former Saint, and creator of the EWTN show "Crossing the Goal." "Coach Danny" and his "teammates" were the featured speakers at the conference. What follows are my notes from their talks.
I seldom travel on business but Wednesday I did, a one-day round trip to Nashville. I had about twenty minutes to speak at a sales conference, and eighteen hours to think. Flying above the southern Connecticut coast in the early east light, I marveled at the land and river waters undulating away from the plane to the left, toward Long Island Sound. I turned from the view to my reading, the Easter edition of Traces, worldwide journal of Communion and Liberation (CL).
I was in Nashville Wednesday, but I did not stop by the Grand Old Opry, or I might have heard Mary Gauthier offer this beautiful prescription for what ails us. I offer this in response to Frank's posts about the abuse scandal, including yesterday's "conversation" with Gen. George Washington. I don't know the answer to the current situation, but I'm sure mercy is part of the recipe.
Sometimes, my faith lets me roll with what life presents to me. At my college teaching job yesterday, one of my students approached me at my desk in the middle of class as students were revising their work. It was clear he wanted to talk, and he didn't need privacy. Several other students listened in on the conversation.
My sojourn in the wilderness lasted forty years, from 1967, when I left the Episcopal Church, until 2007, when I wandered into a Catholic one. Many things tried to pull me apart during those years, and many meanwhile sustained me. One of the latter was the poetry of Walt Whitman, which I used to memorize and recite while out walking, striding along much as he did 150 years ago.
Today my heart is heavy. I was daunted to discover over the weekend what happens when parents are too busy, too distracted, too "successful" to bother rearing their children. The details are immaterial, but the consequences are clear: some children whom I have known since they were in diapers have lost their innocence far too soon.
I'll be 59 this summer, the last age at which I reasonably can say that I'm not an old man. You may say that 60 is the new 40, but if you ask my 20-ish daughters about 40, they'll say it's the age to start shopping for caskets. As a Catholic, though, I'll be happy to be 60, happier still to be 70 and 80, if I'm even destined to get there. As long as I'm going to Mass every day, I'll be the happiest old man in town.
I "met" Julie Cragon a few weeks ago when I stumbled onto her blog, Hand Me Down Heaven. She is a married mother of six and runs a large Catholic bookstore in Nashville, the same store her parents ran when she was in college. We talked about her writing a guest post for YIM Catholic. When she discovered after she'd finished her post that I, too, had just written about Guardian Angels, Julie worried we'd have to postpone hers. To me, this is just another way God makes connections.
I used to think how lucky I was not to have been a Catholic early in this decade, as the abuse scandal was first coming to light in Boston. Only now, it's worse, and I realize how shallow that so-called luck of mine is. Now, the daily, weekly drip, drip, drip of revelations—two months ago Ireland, last month Germany, yesterday Norway—is just exactly torture. And my Pope, about whom I have written so often with admiration, is right under the drain spout. What to do?
Sometimes, I think of Catholics as a billion introverts. We Catholics are not known for proselytizing on street corners.We don't tend to feature stereo speakers or percussion sections at our Masses. In general, our church bulletins are modest affairs featuring outdated fonts. Many practicing Catholics have rich interior lives but are tight-lipped about their beliefs. We tend to follow advice widely attributed to St. Francis: "Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words." So I was stunned to drive past an LED sign advertising Eucharistic Adoration at Saint Thomas the Apostle Church in Old Bridge, New Jersey. My first thought? Whoa. That's in really poor taste.
I'm not sure. This might have been the first poem I ever loved. And it was a Catholic poem, 40 years before I became a Catholic. William Merriss was the English teacher of all English teachers at my junior high school, and he, though probably not a Catholic (I don't know) taught me Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet and, it turns out, a Jesuit. God bless Mr. Merriss.
Not until I read Julie Cragon's blog Hand Me Down Heaven Sunday afternoon did I realize Easter Sunday was also the feast day of Saint Isidore of Seville. The twinning of Saint Isidore's feast day, April 4, and Easter Sunday this year is fortuitous. This learned archbishop, who died on April 4, 656, succeeded his brother Leander as Metropolitan See of Seville at a time when Spain was in disarray and awash in heresies. His life story lets us know that for centuries Christian witnesses have helped to restore the Church by synthesizing contemplation and action.
At the Great Vigil of Easter this year, I teared up during the Litany of the Saints. Standing in the choir loft, I could see the entire parish, many of whom are dear friends, as we all pleaded with our heavenly companions to pray for us. At this time of immense crisis in our beloved Church, never has this plea for heavenly help felt more powerful and necessary.
Though it says "Posted by Webster," this post was written by Frank. We're having technical issues. . . .
You might have noticed during the three days of the Easter Triduum, the fragrance of incense came and disappeared and then returned, hewing closely to the story of Our Lord's Death and His Resurrection. We Roman Catholics have been using incense for more than a dozen centuries. We use incense as a symbol of our prayers rising to heaven. We imagine the fragrant scent rising and pleasing the nostrils of God. I love that our Church cares enough about sanctification that it has a special name for the people who incense a church: thurifers.
A glorious Easter morning to you! The tomb is empty! Our Lord and Savior is alive! In the midst of this joyous celebration, Our Lord has a request for us,
Before Thomas Alva Edison graced the world with his gifts, the only way to record a human being's voice was in one's memory. There was no way to preserve a moving image. Despite his intensive efforts to record his own life and the lives of others through his development of sound recordings and moving pictures, Edison met the same end we all will: he died. A visit to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey, Thursday morning made me grateful for the man and also for my faith in a world beyond this one—a faith that Edison, for all of his brilliance, lacked.