THE QUIET CORNER     -     Political Opinions and Church Teaching    –      28 August  2003AD

         In a recent Providence Journal story, Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy took great exception to the latest statements of the Vatican on same-sex civil unions.   Calling the perennial teaching of the Church on homosexuality “bigoted” and “discriminatory,” Mr. Kennedy ranks his own private and personal opinion on a level with traditional Church teaching – perhaps even superior to Church teaching.

       The Journal read as follows:  On the issue of gay rights, Kennedy said the church has strayed from its teachings. "The church has its doctrines. I don't agree with this doctrine. I don't agree with many others," he said.  Kennedy continued a short time later: "The very foundation of the church is about love," he said. "This notion of discrimination is so far afield of what Jesus' life was all about."  Kennedy said his Catholic identity is important to him.  "The life of Jesus Christ influences my whole notion of public service," Kennedy said. "It's all about following the example of Jesus, of service, humility and love."  Kennedy continued: "I am speaking to you as someone who when I hear the Scripture, I get a very different message of what Jesus was teaching me than what the church seems to be representing."  Mr. Kennedy gets “a very different message” from his reading of the Scriptures and yet, as a Catholic, he experiences no compulsion to bring himself in line with the constant teachings of the Church. Apparently his opinion is equal to Church doctrine.  This is simply not the Catholic way. 

              Congressmen Reed and Langevin are not far behind Mr. Kennedy in their attitudes toward Church teaching and Church authority.  The same Journal article observes: As for the Vatican's edict, Reed said the Catholic Church was an important influence, but not the only influence. "In a pluralistic society, you have to listen to a range of voices," he (Reed) said. And Mr. Langevin is quoted as stating: "However, I believe in a strong separation in church and state. The greatest influence on a congressperson's decision must be the Constitution and the interests of his or her constituents. "

              If a person chooses to depart from Catholic teaching then he should have the courage to accept the consequences and deal with his decision on Judgment Day.  But nowadays some Catholics want to have their cake and eat it too.  They want to have their babies baptized, their homes blessed, their marriages celebrated, and their funerals performed in the Catholic manner. They want to be godparents at christenings, sponsors at Confirmation and witnesses at weddings.  And yet they regularly part company with the Church when it comes to weekly Mass attendance, Sabbath observance, the Real Presence, inter-Communion, Papal authority, divorce, co-habitation, second marriages, abortion, contraception, homosexuality, physician-assisted suicide, and many other life issues.  Again, their private opinion is rated equal with, and sometimes even superior to, constant Church teaching.

             Mr. Reed’s pluralism is just another label for Protestantism in which every man is his own priest.  The individual conscience, not Christian Tradition, becomes the arbiter of good and evil, truth and error.  Mr. Langevin’s respect for the interests of his constituents does not exempt him from respecting the Law of God which is often at odds with public opinion.  And Mr. Kennedy’s respect for the private interpretation of Scripture is itself “far afield” from the Catholic practice of interpreting Scripture only within the context of Apostolic Tradition.  The Journal itself added fuel to the fire by recommending in its next edition the democratic process observed by Episcopalians in their public discussions and communal appointment of bishops.  Well, Roman Catholic teachings and practices are not founded on public discussion.  Roman Catholicism is established firmly on Apostolic Tradition, entrusted by Christ to his disciples, interpreted authoritatively by our Holy Father with his fellow bishops, and received faithfully by his believing people down through the ages and throughout the world.

THE QUIET CORNER    -    The Church: God’s Instrument of Salvation      –     4 September  2003AD

       As in many older parishes, people that have not lived in St. Leo parish in decades will return to their ancestral roots to be buried.  Recently a funeral was arranged for a former parishioner and, at the wake, the family offered a page full of fond reminiscences of their loved one for possible inclusion in the homily.  The memories were all the expected ones:  good wife, understanding mother, supportive friend, dutiful worker, etc.  The last recollection offered, however, was really an eye-catcher:  She loved God and was very religious even though she never went to church.

        If there is a crisis of faith in the United States today, and I believe there is, the crisis does not center on belief in God.  Surveys continually reflect that seventy or eighty percent of Americans believe in God.  And most of them probably believe in the Judaeo-Christian God, YHWH, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Although many Americans might not have a lively faith, they do have a deeply rooted belief in a Supreme Being.  So the crisis of faith in the twenty-first century is not so much a loss of belief in the Deity.  Rather the crisis of post-modern faith reflects, especially among Catholics, a severe loss of faith in the Church as God’s instrument of salvation among men.

       American Protestants never were keen on viewing the organized Church as God’s vehicle of salvation.  For Protestants it has been mostly the individual conscience and the family Bible that has been the foundation of their faith.  And since the United States has been traditionally and popularly a Protestant nation, much of this exaltation of conscience and the Bible has worn off onto the Catholic community.  “Let your conscience be your guide” and “Show me were it says that in the Bible” are phrases found just as much on Catholic lips as in Protestant mouths.  Catholics themselves often make a distinction between God’s Law and Church law as if the latter were totally without authority.  So the organized Church has never held pride of place in popular American culture.

       Scandal in high places was a great catalyst for the first Protestant reformation in the sixteenth century.  Wayward churchmen offered a good excuse for diminishing the role of the Church in everyday life.  Lack of spiritual leadership was a great catalyst for the second Protestant reformation that took place in the English-speaking world in the eighteenth century.  The Anglican clergy had grown very complacent in their country manors and university study halls.  The Wesley brothers filled the resulting spiritual vacuum with a very private, interior religion that saw the established Church simply as a backdrop to one’s personal quest for salvation.  Undeniably the contemporary Catholic Church in the United States needs a reformation or at least a renovation.  The scandal within the priesthood and a perceived lack of leadership within the hierarchy, carefully noted by the media, are bound to affect Catholic belief in the Divine institution of the Church.

       But abuse should not take away use.  For all the dissenting theology and humbling accusations that have been leveled since the Middles Ages, the Church is still the ordinary means of salvation.  Granted, the Church is not very ordinary to the five billion people who inhabit the non-Christian world.  But ordinary does not always mean commonplace.  Ordinary here means ordained.  The Church is ordained, structured, instituted by God as His special means of salvation.  Faith in the Church, therefore, is normal, meaning normative.  It’s the rule.  True, there are exceptions to the rule.  God desires that “all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”   But the ordinary means of salvation remains the Holy Roman Catholic Church – a truth denied only at one’s peril.

       Sadly American society has come to see active Church life, the sacramental life, the life of organized religion, as just one spiritual option among many.  The Church, some profess, is just one of the many paths that lead to the fullness of life.  Rather, this side of heaven, the Church is the fullness of life.  For the true believer, there is no going around the Church.  There is just deeper and deeper involvement in her salvific life.

THE QUIET CORNER    -   The Cross in Christian Life      –    11 September  2003AD

       During the mid-century’s Cold War, when the Communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States stared menacingly toward one another across the planet, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen observed that the beleaguered citizens of the Soviet Union’s totalitarian bloc had “the Cross without Christianity” while the affluent citizens of the Western nations had “Christianity without the Cross.”  Perhaps the revered Archbishop looking at the United States today would observe that many Americans have neither the Cross nor Christianity.  Let’s face it -- Americans continue to live in moderately good times.  Our national crosses are light when compared to the rest of the world.  And Christianity itself, as practiced today in the USA, is certainly no burden.  It is hardly even a responsibility.  Religion has become more and more privatized, more and more a matter of personal choice, private convenience and interior attitude.   The Cross has been vanquished from American life.

              The Cross, the perennial public emblem of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christianity, has been has been increasingly eliminated from Christian observance and Christian practice.   The proliferation of Risen Christs in our Catholic sanctuaries – recently counteracted by Rome – is a subtle statement that suffering has no place in the modern Christian life.  The modern Christian should be surrounded by glory, achievement, success and fulfillment.  The man of sorrows that graced the altars of our youth has been banished to sacristy storerooms or church cellars.  The naïve optimism that characterized the years after the Second Vatican Council failed to take sin, suffering, and the Cross into account.

       This pre-mature anticipation of the Resurrection to the exclusion of the Crucifixion not only affected Church design, it has greatly influenced Catholic daily life.   Like the Jews and Greeks of the first century, post-modern Catholics are frankly scandalized by suffering.  Nowhere is this more evident than in family life.  The discipline needed for young, unmarried Catholics to maintain a chaste relationship before marriage is apparently too much of a Cross to bear.  Living together is just as much a problem for the churched as for the unchurched.  The suffering implied by just saying “No” is unthinkable for many nowadays.  Hence, the inevitable challenges of married life have become unexpected burdens for many individuals who look to divorce as a remedy.   Abortion is always a sad option but it is made even sadder when the motivation behind most abortions is not a crisis issue but a convenience issue.  And – let’s be blunt – the homosexual marriage issue rests on the refusal to accept that God has allowed a burdensome Cross to enter into some peoples’ lives.  And on a more universal level, the casual attitude toward Sunday Mass and Sabbath observance is a clear indication that the Cross -- even when it means not suffering but simply duty – is pushed farther and farther from the center of Catholic life.

       Christians in earlier centuries endured unavoidable sufferings that modern Western mankind has almost forgotten.  For all the criticism that might be leveled towards today’s American society there is still much for which all should be grateful.  It is rare to meet a person who cannot read or write.  Infant mortality and maternal deaths are minimal.  Social security gives some hope to elderly.  Famines and plagues (save AIDS) are virtually unknown in America.  Wars for the most part have been on other shores.  Life has not been the “vale of tears” that it was for most of our religious forebears.  Some crosses have been mercifully eliminated or held at bay.   Clearly previous Christian centuries endured sufferings that are unimaginable nowadays.  Certainly a theology of the Cross was a great asset in making sense of a life that was primitive, brutal and short.  Our more comfortable society has been released from many of life’s crosses and, hence, postmodern man feels released from the Cross itself.  Suffering is a scandal to be avoided rather than a Cross to be understood and even embraced.  If the Cross were not intended to be essential to the Christian life then God would never have chosen it as the central instrument of our redemption.            COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER    -   Sexuality, Personhood in Revelation      –    18 September  2003AD

       Sexuality is “irrelevant,” the Reverend Lauren Stanley announced decisively in a recently published column in the local press.  The Reverend Stanley, affectionately called “Mother Stanley” on a Virginia congregation’s website, is an Episcopalian minister, a bi-weekly columnist and a former Roman Catholic.  Even with credentials like these, this clergyperson sadly ignores the Sacred Scriptures and Christian tradition.  The Reverend Stanley underlines her rash instruction by insisting, “Nowhere in our catechism, nowhere in our creeds, nowhere in our doctrines can you find one word about sexuality.  Jesus didn’t talk about it, didn’t preach it, didn’t condone it and didn’t condemn it.”   Let’s examine the evidence.

       The overwhelming testimony of both the New and the Old Testaments is that God is a Father.  And there are few words in the English language more charged with authentic sexuality than the word father.  In revealing God as a father, the Judaeo-Christian tradition evokes all that is noble about male sexuality.  Like a sincere earthly father, God the Father is the source and sustainer of life.  The Father provides and protects and teaches and challenges his children.  Without an awareness of the true nature of male sexuality, the significance of God’s revealed Fatherhood is lost.   Similarly, the arrival of the man Jesus Christ in our midst as the Son of the eternal Father is hardly irrelevant.   Jesus is called Son because he is the image of his Father, the visible reflection of his Father.  All that men find noble and decent in earthly sonship – chiefly obedience, respect, cooperation – are found immeasurably in the Son of God.  Jesus’ male sexuality is the primary instrument through which he expresses his Sonship.   Certainly the name of the Holy Spirit is rich in sexual connotations as well.  The Latin word spiritus originally meant a lover’s sigh.  Spiritus was the sigh of satisfaction that occurred when spouses celebrated their complementarity in an embrace of love.  A man is fully and pre-eminently a man when giving of himself to his wife.  A woman is fully and pre-eminently a woman when accepting the husband’s gift of himself.  When man and woman thus achieve the fullness of their sexuality, they are overwhelmed with satisfaction – hence that sigh, that spiritus.  What more appropriate word could the Latin Church choose to depict the union of Father and Son than this evocative word spiritus?

       God choose words richly connotative of sexuality to reveal himself to mankind and he also choose episodes rich in sexuality to reveal man to himself.  The twin creation accounts in Genesis are replete with spousal imagery that emphasizes the creative and mutual aspects of male and female sexuality.  Mankind is most Godlike when engaged in intimate male/female interaction.  “Let us make man in our image and likeness…Male and female he created them.”   The life-giving and mutually-supportive aspects of the spousal relationship illustrate mankind at his best, at his most Divine moment, so to speak.  This effective giving and receiving between spouses is impossible apart from an alert appreciation of one’s own human sexuality.  Otherwise dominance and submission substitute for an authentic spousal relationship.

       What applies to the Holy Trinity and to human nature applies also to the relationship of Jesus Christ with his Church.   John the Baptist and Jesus Christ and St. Paul and the Book of Revelation frequently employ the image of Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Heaven is often viewed as a nuptial banquet.  Again the sacred authors of Scripture knew that the bonds inherent in authentic human sexuality were a most valuable tool in revealing the bond between Christ and his Church.  Like any worthy bridegroom, Christ laid down his life for the Church and thus gave life to the Church, his own life.  Like a bridegroom, Christ continues to nurture, sustain and protect his Church.  The Church, accordingly, receives her life entirely from Christ.  She has eyes for no other admirer.  Christ tenderly gives; the Church warmly receives.  (The priestly implications of this imagery should not be overlooked.)   Far from being irrelevant, sexuality is at the heart of revelation and at the core of the Christian life.                                                              COMPLETE!

THE QUIET CORNER    -   Anti-Life Politicians at Catholic Gatherings      –    25 September  2003AD

       A year ago a Catholic school in this state invited Senator Lincoln Chaffee to address its student body.  The topic was not especially controversial – the Senator’s recent visit to a foreign country.  Mr. Chaffee, like his father before him, is well known in the Catholic community to be no friend to unborn life.  His voting record is unbrokenly and unashamedly anti-life-in-the-womb.     Yet a Catholic school brushed aside his perennial pro-abortion stance in order to treat its students to a morning’s civics lesson.  At the time, I felt much displeasure at this affront to the Church’s constant teaching on the sanctity of life, and I hoped that, in lieu of common sense, pastors and principals would soon have a policy to follow regarding the introduction of pro-choice politicians into classroom and parish affairs. 

        Imagine my chagrin, in fact, imagine my consternation, when I attended a recent Catholic function where the guest celebrity was none other than Congressman Patrick Kennedy.         Introduced by a litany of the grants and funds that he had secured for his Congressional district, Mr. Kennedy then praised the assembled faithful for their community spirit and parish loyalty.  He then, campaign-like, made the rounds of the tables-of-eight shaking hands and posing for pictures.  Remember now that this was the same Mr. Kennedy who two weeks before had called the Vatican’s teaching on the nature and sanctity of marriage “discriminatory” and “bigoted.”  Recall also that two days previously Mr. Kennedy, along with Rhode Island’s other three members of Congress, declined to support a proposed constitutional amendment on the nature of marriage heartily endorsed by our nation’s Roman Catholic bishops.  The hypocrisy, the opportunism, the pretense of Mr. Kennedy’s participation in an otherwise fine Catholic event was, frankly, appalling.  I would have been offended had I been, say, a Republican.  As a Roman Catholic I was outraged. 

       Our church is not without controversy and its teachings are not beyond discussion.  No less an ultramontanist than George Weigel recently took issue with the Vatican’s pronouncements on the Iraq war.  Conservative Bill Buckley took great exception to Pope John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra a generation ago.  And frankly, I myself am not too keen on the seeing the Vatican go soft on the Tridentine Mass.  While Catholics might argue over war and capitalism and rubrics, the teachings of the church on other issues have been so emphatic, so enduring, so rooted in the natural law (as well as revelation) that they preclude dissent.

       Certainly abortion is one of these issues.  Certainly the nature and sanctity of marriage is another.  Certainly the exploitation of women, children, workers and immigrants is not a matter for debate.  Certainly suicide and euthanasia do not need to be re-investigated.  These are not primarily church issues.  They are clearly human issues.  And the weight of human tradition should be brought to bear on them.  Sadly, the media, the entertainment industry, and special interest groups determine acceptable morality nowadays much more than the natural law and the common good do.  The common sense of our ancestors has been replaced by the fancies of the individual, the mood of the moment.  “Who are we to judge?” the liberal Catholic politician asks nowadays about abortion, same-sex marriages, and assisted suicide.  Thus they effectively negate the sage, sane and saving judgments that civilized people have been making for centuries regarding life, marriage, livelihood and death.  The collective wisdom of the ages is sacrificed on the altar of individualistic convenience. 

       Catholic politicians who claim that they personally disagree with certain laws but feel compelled as elected officials to uphold such laws should ask themselves an important question.  While I might have to enforce these laws now as an office holder, what am I doing to change these laws?  Are Catholic politicians who are now working aggressively to change marriage laws to include homosexuals in the name of civil rights also working aggressively to change abortion laws in the name of the unborn?  I doubt it.  The former issue is viewed as progressive; the latter issue is dismissed as reactionary.  Sadly, morality has nothing to do with politics nowadays.   Popularity is everything.                                                                                                                COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER      -     Marriage: faithfulness and fruitfulness  –      2 October  2003AD

       The Catholic married couple reflects the love of God to the world in two special ways: fidelity and fecundity – faithfulness and fruitfulness – bonding and babies – love and life.  Fidelity or faithfulness, one of the twin pillars of a Christian marriage, is a totally irrevocable commitment.  The commitment made in marriage is a giving, not a lending.  The bride is traditionally “given” away by her father.  This is a symbol of the unconditional, non-retractable love expected in marriage.  Once given away there is no turning back.  The very words spoken by the bride and groom, “I DO,” connote total commitment: I do commit myself; I do accept total responsibility for this union; I do pledge undying love and respect.  Today’s Gospel passage, echoing the Old Testament, speaks of the two becoming “one flesh” or “one body.”  They are totally pledged to one another.  “Man cannot find himself except through the sincere gift of himself,” teaches the Second Vatican Council.  “He who loses his life for my sake will find it,” taught Jesus Christ. 

       A married couple is pledged to work their whole life long at this project of making a gift of themselves to one another.  To hedge in their commitment or to commit themselves unfaithfully to a third person is a serious violation of their vow of fidelity.  Admittedly, fidelity over the long haul of forty or fifty years is not easy.  Accordingly, married love becomes increasingly evident by a willingness to work at a marriage every single day.  Marriage is not for people who give up easily.  “Persons who give up because of the difficulties involved in marriage” one author wrote, “are actually giving up because of the difficulties involved in happiness.”   “Marriage can make a couple very happy,” another writer observes, “but not effortlessly happy.”  “Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome;” read the old marriage rite, “only love can make is easy and perfect love can make it a joy.”

       The parallel way a married couple reflects the love of God to the world is by their fruitfulness, their fecundity, their fertility.  When a married couple shares their love with children, it is a sign of true charity, a sign of confidence in God, a sign of generosity.  The truly Christian couple, the truly spiritual couple, will be open to new life.  While it is easy to have children in today’s world (marriage is no longer required), it is not easy, either emotionally or financially, to raise children in today’s world.  Parents that are attentive and nurturing to their children, supporting them in challenging times and disciplining them in difficult times, educating them in both religious and civil responsibilities, are reflecting God’s love to the world and deepening their own spiritual lives.

       Couples likewise reflect the love of God to the world through their fruitfulness when they exercise responsible parenthood, that is, when their lovemaking is chaste, respecting God’s design of love, respecting the cycle of fertility placed by God within the human frame.  The self-control needed within a Christian marriage to space births or to postpone births by relying on the natural cycle of fertility and infertility placed within the female body (rather than resorting to artificial devices that frustrate God’s plans and can even be harmful) vividly displays the love of God present within a couple.  Their Christian spirituality is made evident by their self-control, their self-sacrifice, their self-discipline.

       In both their practice of fidelity – their unfailing commitment to each other – and in their practice of fruitfulness – their openness to new life – the Christian couple identifies themselves with the Cross of Christ who give himself totally, even to death, for his bride, the Church.  In the many sacrifices entailed in married life and in the many joys that come to a loving couple, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ himself are clearly seen.  Jesus died sadly on Good Friday but rose happily on Easter Sunday.  Every time a husband or a wife dies, like Christ, to self love and sacrifices for the good of the marriage God is there with his promise of resurrection, of renewed life, of nobler and deeper love.

THE QUIET CORNER      -    Grace is not an effortless gift –      9 October  2003AD

     When I first became a pastor, I had been a curate for twenty-three years.  Four of those years I spent at Sacred Heart Church, Pawtucket, and nineteen of those years at Ss. John & Paul Church in Coventry.  When I was first ordained it was not unusual for priests to be celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary when they were assigned to their first pastorate.  I recall that as a student at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester in the 1960s my classmates from Brooklyn were told by their bishop that they would probably never be pastors.  In a complete reversal of that antiquated trend, here in the Providence diocese, priests are now becoming pastors only eight years after ordination.   That means these men will be pastors for over thirty-five years!  I’ll be done in seven years – seven years, five weeks and two days. 

       As a curate I always imaged a parish as something that a new pastor inherited.  Some old codger worked doggedly to build up an empire, then he died, and a new man came along and inherited it.  Everything was in place and the new shepherd merely took over.  Wrong!  A parish is not inherited.  A parish is created anew by each succeeding pastor.  Workers that were enamored of the former pastor might think it’s time for a rest.  Ministries that appealed to the former pastor might not square at all with the new guy.  Neighborhoods change.  Old timers move or die.  Newcomers show up weekly.  Buildings deteriorate.  The diocese institutes new programs.  Believe me.  Parish life is not inherited.  Like the mercies of God, it is created anew each morning.

       In today’s Gospel a young man approaches Jesus and asks, “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Perhaps, like a naïve curate, the young man thought that spiritual maturity and eternal life were going to be handed to him on the proverbial silver platter.  It is certainly true that the grace of God is indeed a windfall.  The Christian life is not something that the individual merits.  The Christian life, like a parish, is something entrusted to the believer to be developed, matured, and completed.  Grace, like one’s first parish, is a feather in one’s cap but it brings with it responsibilities, duties, obligations. 

       The Protestants are correct in insisting that believers are not saved by works, by effort, or by energy.  Jesus alone saves.  But grace does bring with it relentless demands that impact upon the believer everyday.  Any Christian that thinks that an initial conversion experience is the fulfillment of the spiritual life is in for a rude awakening.  Conversion is the just the beginning of one’s religious endeavors. Each person’s spiritual life is created anew every day. 

       All of us have read of “poor little rich girls” like Gloria Vanderbilt or Doris Duke who inherited vast sums of money but then spent much of their lives in a restless search for happiness.  It is axiomatic that inheritances, lottery winnings and windfalls do not bring lasting peace or joy.  In the long run, responsibilities are much more rewarding than riches. 

       Jesus’ answer to the rich young man is a list of responsibilities.  Respect for authority, respect for material goods, respect for marriage and family, respect for life, respect for the truth:  these are the steps that will lead to eternal life.  Or rather, these are the challenges that will deepen and develop the free gift of grace bestowed on the believer by God. 

       The successful spiritual life, like the successful parish, implies a lot of work, a lot of creativity, a lot of dedication, a lot of effort.  Grace might be the free gift of God but grace is not an effortless gift.  Rather grace is a challenging gift -- bringing great responsibilities but ensuring even greater rewards. 

THE QUIET CORNER     -     But the Kingdom has a price –     16 October  2003AD

      No one in the Gospel accounts is remembered in more contrasting fashion than St. John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple.  St. John is rightly recalled as the young man who sat next to Jesus at the Last Supper, tenderly resting his head on Jesus’ chest as he inquired about the identity of the Master’s betrayer.  Some would push this scene to its limit, appreciating St. John as an unusually delicate young man even to point of effeminacy.  Yet push the calendar ahead a few days and the reader discovers a St. John who is anything but delicate but rather a St. John who rather athletic.  It is the beloved disciple who outruns the hard working and no doubt quite fit fisherman St. Peter and reaches the tomb of Christ first on Easter morning.  It is also this same St. John who proves that his love for Christ is much more than mere sentiment and emotion by being the sole Apostle to remain with Christ during his agony, passion and crucifixion.  And the love of St. John for the Savior must have had its practical angle, too.  Remember that when Jesus wanted to provide for his mother Mary after his impending death, it was to St. John that Jesus turned as the responsible and resourceful individual who would look after and care for Jesus’ mother in her old age.

       Yet these pictures of the tender St. John and the dutiful St. John do not exhaust the Gospel’s recollections of this long-lived disciple, the only apostle not to die a martyr’s death.  St. John, along with his bother St. James and along with Peter the Rock and Simon the Zealot, was given a nickname by Jesus.  Apparently these two sons of Zebedee had quick, fiery tempers.  It was after all the Saints James and John who wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan town that resisted the preaching of the apostolic band.  These volatile young men were quickly labeled “boanerges,” that is, “sons of thunder,” by Jesus Himself.  Apparently it took little to get these former fishermen riled.  And not only were they short-tempered, they were obviously very short on patience, too, as today’s quite revealing Gospel passage would indicate.  They were eager, in fact, keen, to get ahead in the new Kingdom of God that was being formed before their very eyes.

       Although the Gospel accounts according to St. Matthew and St. Luke have the mother of St. James and St. John approach Jesus asking that her sons be given preferential treatment in the Kingdom to come, St. Mark’s Gospel account, read today throughout the Church, is probably more authentic.  By the time Saints Matthew and Luke put pen to paper, St. John and his brother were highly respected pillars of the Church, as St. Paul notes.  To portray them as ambitious status seekers might have scandalized the infant church.  The portrayal of the mother as eager for her sons’ advancement would be perfectly understandable.  Still it would seem that it was John and James themselves who wanted to get ahead in Christ’s projected Kingdom.

       Christ endorses the ambition of the brothers but he warns them that their eagerness may lead to surprises.  “Do you really know what you are getting into?” Jesus inquires of these two sons of Zebedee.  Can you accept the baptism that is about to engulf me?  Can you drain the bitter chalice that is being placed to my lips?  The brothers naively agree that they are willing and able to join him in the work of the Kingdom regardless of the consequences.  Jesus advises them to take a deep breath.  The fulfillment of his Kingdom will inevitably include these two men but they will be involved in inevitable suffering as well.   Even for the ambitious disciple, suffering is inseparable from victory.         The other ten apostles are scandalized at the ambition of the two brothers.  Or perhaps they are envious that John and James got the jump them, being the first to seek out Jesus’ favor.  Perhaps James and John were not the only disciples to have their fidelity to Jesus mingled with a bit of self-interest. 

       The prospect of eternal life is still very attractive to the believer – whether one sits at Christ’s right hand or at any distant corner of Kingdom.   The Eternal Kingdom is quite a prize under any circumstances.  But the Kingdom has a price, as Jesus warns John and James today.  Jesus’ life and Jesus’ words instruct us that affliction is the only sure door to eternity.                             COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER     -     Male Priesthood: God’s Will      –     23 October  2003AD

        An advertisement arrived in the mail (or was it in the e-mail?) announcing this coming Sunday as Priesthood Sunday.  Recipients were urged to pray for priests and to ponder the nature of the Catholic priesthood.  Certainly the priesthood has been the object of great scrutiny the past couple of years thanks to the sex abuse scandal, the gender issue and the matter of Church authority.  While a Catholic priesthood that is celibate, male and in charge may give some believers pause, it actually should give all believers hope.

       Celibacy has long been associated with the Roman Catholic priesthood.  Writings more technical than this Sunday homily can cite ancient counciliar documents and ecclesiastical decrees confirming this tradition.  More recently Pope Pius XII referred to celibacy as the jewel in the crown of the priesthood.  A celibate priesthood reflects two important elements of the Gospel message.  The unmarried priest reminds all believers of the universal love of God for all men and women.  In contrast to marriage which appropriately symbolizes and realizes the exclusive love of God for the individual believer (I, John, take you, Mary…), the priest is not aligned to any one individual in this world.  He is a living reminder of the wideness of God’s mercy.  The celibate priest is also a reminder of the eschatological aspect of Christianity.  No matter how worthy a marriage, family life or secular pursuits may be in this world, ultimate fulfillment comes only in heaven.  The unmarried priest bears witness to the promise of next world.

       When the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became a human being in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary two thousand years ago, God the Father had to make a choice.  In becoming human, the second Divine person had to be either a man or a woman, either male or female.  Unlike God who has no gender, humans do have a gender.  And God the Father chose to make the offspring of Mary a man, a male, a son.  It defies belief that God the Father would select the gender of the world’s Savior by the flip of a coin.  The gender of Jesus cannot be a matter of indifference, of ambiguity, or of arbitrariness.  The Good News of salvation begins with the Second Person of the Trinity taking a male human nature through Mary.  Maleness was the Father’s choice.  And since the Catholic priesthood continues the priesthood of the man Jesus then it makes sense to maintain the tradition begun by God himself.  Clearly there was a message in Jesus’ coming into this world as a male, as a bridegroom rather than as a bride.  Perhaps this message has not been pondered sufficiently by believers.  Perhaps the desire of some to broaden the priesthood of the future results from not having adequately considered the unique priesthood of the past, the priesthood of Christ.  The Roman Catholic priesthood is not a generic church function; Catholic priests are not chiefly presiders, or ministers or facilitators.  While priests do serve the Christian community, they first of all serve Christ, continuing the mission of Him who was and remains a man.  This historical link with the man Jesus is vital to the proper focus of the Gospel.

       Certainly there are qualified lay people who can sign checks, call the burner man when the parish heat fails, teach catechism, give marriage instructions and offer a prayer at wakes.  There are some lay people who are more eloquent than some priests and some lay people who are more prayerful than some priests.  So why should priests be in charge of church life from the humblest chaplaincy to the inner sanctum of the Vatican?  The Church is primarily a Eucharistic community.  Although the Church maintains schools and hospitals and missions and social agencies of all kinds, the Church primarily exists to offer Mass – it’s as simple as that.  The worship of the Father through the sacrifice of Christ continued sacramentally down through the ages is the Church’s main task.  All other Church functions – sacraments, beliefs, moral life, programs, structures – flow from and lead to the Mass.  With all due respect for the educational, cultural, social and moral obligations of the Church, Catholics remain a Eucharistic people.  The Catholic community’s link with the altar is primary and critical.  Hence the Catholic community’s dependence on the priesthood is inevitable and unalterable.                                                                                                                COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER     -    Centrality of the Tabernacle      –     6 November  2003AD

       Nothing is more hotly debated in Catholic liturgical circles today than the position of the tabernacle in a church.  The National Catholic Reporter will quote chapter and verse from papal and episcopal documents emphasizing that the tabernacle should be positioned in a place of beauty and honor, but definitely apart from the locale where Mass is celebrated.  A chapel of reserve is the ideal.  The Wanderer and Adoremus will cite the same chapter and verse indicating that a reserve chapel may be ideal for a cathedral or basilica visited by tourists but for parish churches the more central the tabernacle the better.  They underline words like prominence, honorable and visible to bolster their arguments. 

       Visitors to European cathedrals and basilicas and shrines, like the Lateran Basilica whose dedication is commemorated today, can readily recall tabernacles placed in positions that they would not expect in their own parish churches.  The sacramenthaus (Sacrament House) was a venerable feature found in many large Northern European churches.  The Sacrament House was somewhat akin to an ornate hanging sanctuary lamp – except instead of containing a lighted candle it would contain the reserved sacrament.  Sometimes hand-carved doves also containing the reserved Eucharist were seen hanging in smaller churches.  Yet the overwhelming experience of the devout visitor in America or in Europe during the last century and long before that was the familiar tabernacle enthroned elaborately or placed humbly in the heart of the sanctuary.

       For centuries the Eucharist quietly reserved in a prayerful spot in larger churches co-existed with the Eucharist prominently placed in the center of all the action in smaller churches.  So what is the liturgical fuss at the dawn of the new century?  The location of the tabernacle makes a powerful statement about the believing community’s Eucharistic theology.  Should the focus be primarily on Christ and His Presence or on the community and their actions?  Is the enduring Presence of Christ in the church more basic to the Christian life or are the communal actions of the Mass more fundamental to Christian living?  Presence vs. Action – this is root of the discussion. 

       The choice is, of course, a false choice.  Christ Present in the Eucharist can certainly share the believer’s attention with a reverence for the action of the Mass.  The Mass can truly be a resounding and deepening experience of community while at the same affirming the ever-Present Christ as the source of that unity.  Separating the reservation of the Eucharist from the eating and drinking of that same Eucharist is, sadly, a move that is more the result of politics than piety. 

       Some within the Church understand the Mass to be primarily the action of the parish community.  The priest is there simply as the presider – as several liturgical books indicate nowadays.  It is the people who offer the Mass:  they sing the hymns, do the readings, bring up the gifts, share the prayers, embrace one another, sometimes stand around the altar, assist with Communion, (even when priests are present) and engage in similar community-affirming activities.  From this perspective, when the community – the celebrants – departs the church building, all authentic Eucharistic activity ceases.   If Eucharistic wafers must be left behind then they should be relegated to a place of obscurity in a side chapel or wall nook.  Thus the near empty church is a reminder, for them, that the Presence of Christ depends on their actions.  Accordingly, Christ’s Presence is the fruit of their labors – their communal chatting before Mass, their reflections offered in lieu of the homily, their standing proud during Communion.  A prominent and worthy tabernacle containing the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ made Present at the hands of an ordained priest actually becomes a threat to their community centered theology.  Christian communities must recall, however, that it is not they who effect Christ by their communal celebrations.  Rather it is Christ who effects them and fashions them into a worshipping community by the sharing of his Eucharistic Body and Blood made truly and enduringly present by the prayer of the celebrating priest.

THE QUIET CORNER     -     The Reality of Death      –     30 October  2003AD

       “The only thing certain in this life is death and taxes,” the old aphorism read.  Taxes are still a certainty but death is no longer the fate it once was in the Christian world.  Although the Scriptures tell the believer with no equivocation, “It is appointed to every man to die but once and to be judged,” denials of death from other traditions are creeping into popular Western thought.  Re-incarnation, in which the human soul returns to earth in another body or, more likely, in successive bodies is given some credence in certain circles.  Many readers will recall Bridie Murphy, a celebrated case of re-incarnation from the 1950s.  How a girl who grew up in Brooklyn knew so much about 19^th century Ireland is still a mystery.  “The Re-incarnation of Peter Proud” featured another denial of death’s finality in nearby Springfield, MA.  The transmigration of souls is a belief that souls return to earth in less than human form, entering into animals and trees, to wit, the sacred cows of India.  In neither case is death final.

       Jewish notions of death in the Old Testament and to a great extent even today understand death to be a simple termination.   St. Edith Stein’s first inquiries into Christianity resulted from the dramatic contrast between her own family’s understand of death as the mere entrance into the pit, into the grave, into the suspended animation of Sheol, and the faith in the afterlife she witnessed in a Lutheran friend.  God was beginning to introduce some notions of life after death to the Jews in the centuries immediately before Christ.  “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they might be loosed from their sins,” is a consoling thought from the Books of Maccabees. 

       The Greco-Roman world did have some convictions about life after death.  But pagans tended to stress the immortality of the soul as opposed to the resurrection of the body.  Here the ancient pagan world had more in common with the Eastern traditions than with authentic Christianity.  Both the pagans and the Easterners looked down on the body.  The body was discarded in both the Eastern and the pagan traditions as a lesser form of life.  It was the soul that counted.  The body was expendable.  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ contradicted this common misapprehension.   Building on the Jewish appreciation of God as the God of nature as well as the God of the spirit, the Resurrection, hinted at in late Judaism and then experienced by Jesus Christ, truly sets Christian teaching apart from the pagans and the Easterners.

       In the end both the body and the soul enjoy eternal happiness with God in heaven.  Flesh and spirit, both equally God’s creation, are both invited the celestial banquet feast.  Discussed heatedly in late Judaism, belief in the Resurrection of the body is truly one of the core beliefs of Christianity, marking it out from all other faiths.  The Rite of Christian Burial, when properly celebrated, is a resounding affirmation of belief in the resurrection of the body.  The baptismal overtones of the Catholic funeral Mass are graphic: the coffin is sprinkled with the Holy Water recalling that first sacramental introduction of the believer to the Risen Christ in Baptism.  The white pall is placed over the deceased as the baptismal robe was once laid over the infant body.  The candle reminiscent of Easter eve is lit in a central spot.   After the Mass, the body is not so much buried as it is planted, sowed into the ground, to await a magnificent harvest at the end of time.  For the Christian, death is undeniably difficult but still unquestionably hopeful, as the baptized believer awaits the completion of the Christian life in the resurrection. 

        Much of the Catholic Rite of Christian Burial is being ignored more and more nowadays.  Wakes are inevitably shortened and often eliminated altogether.  The Mass is turned into a Memorial Service which looks to the past for comfort rather than looking to a future resurrection for the meaning of life.  Sometimes the Church service is forsaken for prayers at the funeral home or even at the graveside.  And sometimes even burial itself is neglected in favor of cremation and enshrinement on the mantel.  Loss of faith in the Resurrection and lack of appreciation of the Rite of Christian Burial undermines and obscures the Christian significance of death.                                          COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER     -    Judgment Day     –    13 November  2003AD

       Perhaps the least popular article in the Nicene Creed recited Sunday after Sunday in our Catholic Churches is the belief that Christ “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”  Belief in the Second Coming of Christ was very popular in the early Church even to the point of believers quitting their jobs to await the impending return of the Master.   Periodically in the Church history, the return of Christ has been thought to be imminent usually around the turn of a century or of a millennium or in the midst of calamities or disasters.  There was some slight enthusiasm for the Second Coming as the 1900s turned into the 2000s.  Novels and minimally circulated movies featuring former teen star Kirk Cameron have lately focused on the Rapture, an especially Protestant appreciation of Christ’s return.  Yet today’s average, Sunday-go-to-meeting Catholic has remained immune to any eagerness for, let alone fanaticism about, the eventual return of Christ, weekly public profession of faith in this belief notwithstanding.

       “It is appointed to everyman to die but once and to be judged,” wrote St. Paul basing his teaching on good authority.  Judgment, accountability, and justice were indeed favorite themes of Jesus Christ himself.  In fact, there are over three hundred references in the Scripture to Christ’s return on Judgment Day.  Christ’s mention of the thief coming in the night may have reflected an actual robbery in the vicinity of Jesus’ public preaching.  The Greek words seem rather specific.  The audience must have known that one of their neighbors had recently been caught off guard.  Similarly, the master’s return from a wedding banquet, catching the servants asleep or awake, is an oft-repeated Gospel motif.  The wise and foolish bridesmaids, all of whom slept but half of whom had made proper preparations ahead of time, are presented for the believer’s edification or warning, as the case may be.  The several talents, disbursed among various servants and intended for good use, will eventually be called into account.  And, of course, the most famous judgment scene is found in Matthew XXV, with its run-over imagery of the Son of Man, the King, the Shepherd, summoning the just and the unjust on the final day.

       Since this famous Judgment Day scene from St. Matthew’s Gospel account changes its imagery so thoroughly, shifting from the clouds of heaven to a royal throne room to pastureland in the Galilean hills, it might mean that Jesus told this story on several, perhaps many, occasions employing various metaphors and similes as best suited the occasion.  When St. Matthew finally put pen to paper, his mixed metaphors are perfectly understandable. Regardless of the blurred depictions, the theme of accountability for one’s daily choices is clear.

       St. Paul, whose reference to judgment began this homily, returned to the subject with equal fervor on several occasions.  St. Paul’s briefest yet clearest mention of the coming accountability is certainly these words: “God is no fool!  As a man sows, thus shall he reap.”   It’s as simple as that!    Whether it be the particular judgment at the end of the believer’s individual life or the general judgment of all mankind on the last day, Judgment Day will be a celebration of truth.  Since God is Truth Itself, he is the ultimate judge of good and evil, right and wrong.   The individual soul before God will have a rushing awareness of how well he has corresponded to the Truth of God made known to him during his lifetime.   The assembly of mankind before the judgment seat of God on the last day will equally have an awareness of how well or poorly the mass of humanity has responded to God’s overtures.  God’s justice will be satisfied toward those who have sadly persevered in their wickedness; God’s mercy will be displayed toward those who happily have repented of their sins.   A very consoling thought as Judgment Day inevitably approaches is the statement of the once Prior of Portsmouth, Dom Aelred Graham, OSB: “God’s justice is subordinate to his mercy.”   Certainly God is no fool, as St. Paul observes.  He cannot wink at injustice.  But God is also the merciful father, who runs down the path to embrace his wayward sons and daughters, unfailingly inviting them to repentance and rejoicing when they respond.

THE QUIET CORNER     -    Two Book Reviews     –     20 November 2003AD

       Two interesting books focusing on the same theme yet approaching it from different perspectives and arriving at vastly dissimilar recommendations for the future are The Liberation of the Laity by Paul Lakeland and The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America by Newporter David Carlin.  Both books survey the time from the Second Vatican Council to the present.   Liberation uses as its bases for discussion those very well known French theologians of the last century: Chenu, Congar, De Lubac and Danielou.  To my mind, going to France to look for guidance on the Church is like going to Mexico to study economic theory.  The Church in France has never recovered from the revolution and deals with a classic issue (anticlericalism) that the Church in America has never known – at least until recently. 

       Liberation also operates under what I consider to be a familiar but false hermaneutic.  Because the publications of Vatican II are official Church documents, traditional teachings are to be expected and so can be more or less discounted.  Liberal, innovative statements therefore deserve special attention since they would not ordinarily have been included by Vatican hacks.  I think just the opposite is true.  There was so much pressure on the Fathers of the Council to be ground-breaking and inventive that any traditional teaching included in the Council’s final deliberations deserves extra attention.  Liberation proposes compellingly and rightly that the task of the laity in the world is the transformation of the secular order.   Through science and technology, God’s material universe should reflect his design of love.  Peace, justice, and brotherhood through education, medicine, politics and commerce are indeed God’s work and indeed the work of Lay Catholics.  A distinction is rightly allowed between the task of the laity in the world and the task of the laity in the Church (what the French used to call Catholic Action). 

       After many fine and distinctive pages on the role of the laity in the world and in the Church, Liberation urges some guidance for the future.  He sees the Church simultaneously a monarchy, an oligarchy and a democracy.  While the author maintains a fitting role for the office of Peter as a sign of universal Church unity (monarchy) and while he obligingly holds the territorial bishop as the chief teacher of the local Church (oligarchy), he then proposes a vastly democratic face for the rest of the Church.  Popes, bishops and pastors would be chosen by election.  Representative government would characterize the Church at every level.  The local clergy come in for a particular short shrift.  All permanent parish staff have equal rank.  The leader of song, the director of religious instruction, the parish outreach coordinator, the finance manager and the pastor all have equal voice in parish affairs.  Isn’t this process exactly what the Providence Journal admired so much about the Anglican Church and even recommended for Catholic consideration a couple of weeks ago? 

       While Liberation speaks well and at length about the laity’s role in the world, the author is all wet when it comes to the lay role in the Church.  Using as his model The People of God imagery of Vatican II (actually a pre-Christian idea), he writes that the goal of the People of God is not worship but freedom.   Freedom is a laudably goal but freedom remains a means to an end; it is not an end in itself.  Sooner or later, mankind wants to make the ultimate choice and rest in God.  The goal of the Church then is to lead people through freedom to the worship of God.  It is this failure to appreciate the importance of worship that makes the author greatly undervalue the ministerial priesthood.  He dismisses without a single word of explanation the celibate priesthood and the male priesthood.   He replaces the Eucharist with Baptism as the central sacramental experience of the Church.   Scriptural images like the Mystical Body, the Vine and Branches, and the priestly role of Christ in Hebrews, are hardly mentioned. 

       In the end, Liberation, while well researched and well written, is neither fair nor balanced.  The author clearly has an agenda (which many of us do) and his scholarship serves his agenda better than the truth.  Next week, Mr. Carlin’s courageous reflections on the contemporary Church will be reviewed.                                                                                                                   COMPLETE

HE QUIET CORNER     -    Two Book Reviews II    –     27 November 2003AD

       Author and frequent letter writer David Carlin from Newport offers his readers The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America proposing that the Catholic Church in the USA was simultaneously hit with three momentous events in the middle of the last century.  The Second Vatican Council, no matter what the future benefits might be, was very unsettling for neat 1960s Catholicism.  The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s – sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll – changed everyone’s attitude toward authority, toward tradition, even toward respectability.  And, perhaps most importantly, secularism -- effectively symbolized by the striking down of prayer in public schools in 1962 -- placed the godless on an equal footing with the Godly.  It is Carlin’s contention that the Church in USA broke or almost broke under the strain of this triple blow.  Drastic measures must be taken to recall the Church to its former effectiveness.

       Professor Carlin argues rather sensibly if rather surprisingly that the strength of the pre-Vatican II Church lay in its clear appreciation of its enemy: Protestantism.  Protestants don’t believe in the Real Presence; good, we’ll build bigger monstrances.  Protestants don’t believe in Mary; fine, we’ll jiggle our rosaries all the louder.  Protestants have a married clergy; okay, it’s celibacy for us.  Protestants detest the Pope of Rome; great, we’ll make him infallible.  The pre-Vatican II Church was focused, observant and vigilant.   After Vatican II, the Church acknowledged no clear enemy.  Tolerance was the watchword of the day and the Catholic Church became a Church among churches.  Catholicism as another American denomination replaced Catholicism as an immigrant ghetto in the second half of the Twentieth Century. 

       It is Professor Carlin’s argument that the Church in the United States needs a new enemy and, mirabile dictu, one is readily at hand: secularism.  Carlin traces the rise of secularism as a respectable philosophy in the USA through the works of those secularist authors so familiar to us who went to school in the mid-century.  The books of Margaret Mead, John Dewey, Sydney Hook, and many other relativists popularized a philosophy without God.   The US Supreme Court and several local courts in successive decisions gave increasing legitimacy to atheism.  Within the Church, Modernism again proposed its anti-supernaturalist theology and, sadly, was welcomed by many.  The rise of secularism and the resurrection of Modernism is no co-incidence. 

       Once the bishops of the United States drop their “why can’t we all get along?”  attitude and courageously admit that Secularism is the enemy of the Post-Vatican II Church, things might start falling into place.  The very issues that pre-occupy so many grass roots Catholics must begin to be the pre-occupation of our bishops.  Carlin makes no apology for focusing on abortion as a critical contest between the Catholic Church and the secularist world.   Indeed in decades to come life issues will, or should, distinguish the Catholic Church from its unbelieving neighbors or, rather, its enemy, secularism.  Otherwise the Catholic Church will take its stand along side the mainline Protestant Churches of America, whose pulpits formerly occupied by the likes of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards are now occupied by the likes of Gene Robinson and John Shelby Spong. 

       The Professor is hopeful for the Church in spite of there being so much grist for his decline and fall mill.   Worth the price of the book is Carlin’s observation that the renewal of the Catholic Church in America depends greatly on “minimal lay influence.”  The reader will have to investigate the substance of that remark for himself. 

       “Decline and Fall” provokes the middle-aged or senior reader to ask, “Why didn’t we see this coming ?”   I lived through this experience and often felt the lure of denominationalism, tolerance, and liberalism.   Mercifully, the faith received in the 1940s and 50s triumphed over the faith revised in the 1980s and 90s.                                                                                                     COMPLETE  

THE QUIET CORNER     The Advent Wreath     –      4 December 2003AD

       The Advent wreath, a late arrival on the scene of American pieties, admirably expresses the tension within which Christian believers work out their salvation.  The dual symbolism of the four candles and the circular wreath easily represent time and eternity, earth and heaven, man and God.

The four candles are often understood to represent the traditional four thousand years during which the ancient Jewish nation awaited its Messiah.  For some numerological reason, the Jews, untroubled by theories of evolution or the age of creation, decided that four millennia were an appropriate expanse of time for mankind to endure the curse of original sin.  After the four thousand years, the Savior would arrive and the history of salvation would be altered for the benefit of all.  Hence the four Advent candles represent time, time spent here on earth awaiting redemption, time spent “buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage” – those many events that constitute daily life for men and women, believers and non-believers, everywhere.

       On the other hand, the candles of Advent could stand for the four corners of the earth – north, east, south and west, in case you’ve forgotten.  Usually arranged about the candle in a square, the vast expanse of earth is neatly outlined by the four luminaries, bearing quiet witness to the limits of man’s world.  Instead of symbolizing time, as outlined above, the four candles now symbolize space – not outer space, so familiar to our imaginations, but simply space here on earth, the ground, the territory, the land on which mankind has worked out his destiny since Eden. 

       In the end, time and space are two sides of the same coin.  Time and space are the limitations within which man and women are born, mature, marry, reproduce, age and finally die.  Time and space are the perimeters of our world, our life, our creaturely existence. 

       Hence the Advent wreath candles are a weekly reminder of the importance of time and space, that is, of daily human life here on earth.  These four candles remind the believing community each week of the importance of family life, the responsibility of spouses, the accountability for children, the

significance of employment, the meaning of community, the challenge of poverty and ignorance, the evil of war and the fragility of peace.  All those challenges, accomplishments, and failures that constitute daily life are recalled by the incremental glow of the Advent candles.  The authentic Christian may not avoid the responsibilities of time and space.  Like Christ Himself, the true Christian will take on flesh, will deal with reality, will get involved, and will interact with the surrounding world.

       Yet Christianity is not just high-class humanism.  The Advent wreath is, after all, chiefly a circle of laurel, a ring of leaves without beginning and without finish, an endless curve symbolizing eternity and infinity and, in fact, recalling God Himself.  In contrast to Advent’s candles, the evergreen wreath speaks of life beyond time and beyond space.  The wreath reminds the Advent worshipper of heaven,

of the supernatural, of the divine.  While the sincere Christian will be alert to the demands and challenges of earth, never turning away from an outstretched hand, the Christian will be equally alert to the hand of God summoning him to a higher life.  The eternal wreath reminds the believer of the world of the spirit, of man’s need of grace, of the reality of faith, of the power of prayer, of the horror of sin, and certainty of redemption.  Advent’s evergreen ring is a weekly summons to raise one’s mind and heart to God in worship, prayer and fellowship.  Then, fortified by an authentic encounter with God though the Church, the believer can return to the world of time and space, spiritually energized and divinely invigorated to face and deal with the challenges of daily life.

       Like Christ Himself, the God-man, every Christian holds a Divine spark within a human frame.  Man should not ignore his own human circumstances nor must he ignore the gifts awaiting him from above.  Both time and eternity must be on the mind of the Advent believer.

THE QUIET CORNER    -     Guilt     –     11 December 2003AD

       There is perhaps no more maligned expression in the English language than the word guilt.   Guilt nowadays is equated with mental illness.   Perhaps the guilty party’s mother was scared by a broom in the closet during pregnancy.  Or maybe the parish priest yelled at the guilty one during confession as a youth.  Or possibly the religion teacher was a bit overzealous in the teaching the Commandments.   The modern world needs some outlandish basis for guilt that will allow it to be dismissed as excessive, unfortunate, misguided. 

       But clearly there is nothing wrong with guilt.  Guilt is simply the soul’s way of letting the individual know that he has fallen short of his own ideals.  If I copy the answers off my smart classmate’s papers all through high school, I should feel guilty about graduating cum laude.  If I cheat on my spouse, I should experience guilt when my wedding anniversary comes around – if not before!    It is not the person who senses guilt that is mentally ill.  It is the person who never suffers any remorse that is mentally ill.  The person without guilt is a sociopath.  The person with guilt might be a fallen person, but that person still has values, ideal and goals.  Guilt can be a great spur to repentance, to reformation, to changing one’s ways.

       The Christian who experiences guilt should be aware that he has fallen short not only of his own ideals but, more importantly, of God’s nobler ideals as well.  The more vivid God’s call to excellence is for the believer the deeper and more pervasive will be the sense of guilt.  It is bad enough to fall short of our own standards.  But to resist God’s call to excellence should be a crushing blow to any believer.

        During the season of Advent, the figure of John the Baptist is projected large on the screen of Scripture.  John announces his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And John attracts great crowds along the shore of the Jordan.  Clearly it is guilt that has drawn these crowds to the preaching and ministry of John.  The self-centered crowds are told to share their food and clothing with the needy.  The tax collectors are instructed to be honest and forthright.  The soldiers are urged to be sympathetic, open-minded, and sensible.  John goes right to the heart of the several problems that are facing these groups:  The crowds feel guilty for ignoring their neighbors.  The tax collectors sense guilt for taking advantage their position.  The soldiers are uneasy about their strong-arm tactics.  John the Baptist knows that these guilt feelings can lead to contrition.  Guilt is the first step toward reform.  Guilt is the first awakening of conscience.  Guilt is the first sensation of hope.

        While the New Testament is never anti-Semitic (in spite of all the headlines one might read today), the Gospels can be anti-Jewish, in the sense that the early Christian community viewed Judaism as a rival church, competing for the allegiance of the Judean and Galilean populace.  But even in the midst of this rivalry, the Scriptures confirm that ancient Judaism was a very God-centered community.  YHWH was very real for the Jews.  God’s Law was the very core of their existence.   They were clearly a people of faith.  And so sin and guilt were very real for the ancient Jew.  The keener one’s appreciation of God and his Law and his teachings, the greater is going to be one’s guilt when God and his Law and his teachings are ignored or defied.  In other words, the ancient Jews had a sharp sense of sin, a keen appreciation of what God asked of them and of how far they had wandered from his invitation.  It was this sense of sin, this salutary sense of sin, that drove the Jewish crowds to the banks of the Jordan seeking some solace, some reprieve, some relief from John’s ritual bath.

        During the Second World War, Pope Pius XII lamented that the greatest evil of the day was the loss of the sense of sin.  Some nowadays perhaps wish that Pius had pointed out other evils but his observation was as insightful then as it would be now.  Mankind has nothing outside himself to which to aspire, nothing to which he might look up, nothing on which he might set his sights.  Hence he has no sense of falling short, of erring, of sinning.  Only a renewed sense of Gospel goals, of God’s Law, of perennial truths will restore man’s conscience, awaken a sense of guilt, and lead gradually to conversion.                                                                                                                            COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER    -     Christianity’s Obscure Origins –     18 December 2003AD

       During these last days of December, anticipation of the solemnity of Christmas is enlivening both the sacred and the secular worlds.  Even non-believers are caught up in the hubbub of Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, Christmas greeting cards.  No matter how indirectly, the arrival of Jesus Christ into history is still commemorated, still celebrated, still significant for much of the world’s population.  Yet, lest the holiday ambiance obscure the holy day atmosphere entirely, the Church pauses this last Sunday of Advent to remind all believers that the authentic celebration of the birth of Christ is not explained by bluster and bravado.  The skaters at Rockefeller Center, the glistening lights on the White House tree, and the carols by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir certainly pay some oblique homage to the Savior of the world.  But today’s Scriptures and today’s liturgy prefer to remind Christians that the essence of Christmas is to be found in humility, in obscurity, in insignificance. 

        Jesus was born not in his hometown of Nazareth which is today the fourth largest city in Israel but in the village of Bethlehem which the prophet Micah recalls in today’s first reading as being “too small to be among the clans of Judah.”  True, Bethlehem was the city of David, a southern Israelite community from which the shepherd king David took his origin.  But recall that the David in Bethlehem was only a teenage shepherd boy not the later king who would happily unite the tribes of Israel around the city of Jerusalem.  David’s rise to glory would occur only after leaving his native city.  Awaiting the coming of Christ, Bethlehem would remain in sleepy obscurity and quiet insignificance for centuries.

        Although the Christian centuries have been rightly kind to the Blessed Virgin Mary and have universally exalted her in devotion and lore, the maiden Mary, like the city of Bethlehem, began her role in salvation history in total obscurity and complete insignificance.  Mary was a young, single, unknown woman at the time of her visitation by the angel Gabriel.  She lived in Galilee, always considered a backwater by the more sophisticated Jews of Judea.  She was engaged to Joseph, a workingman, about whom even the Scriptures reveal very little.  Her only known relatives resided not in cosmopolitan Jerusalem but in the “hill country of Judea,” like Mary, living out their lives in obscurity and insignificance. 

        It is true that the young John the Baptist, still in the womb of Elizabeth in today’s Gospel, would go on to make a name for himself among the Jerusalem elite.  But John’s mission was to resist the advantages of Jewish society, to reproach the privileged and reprimand the influential.   He lived most of his brief life in the Judean wilderness, deliberately renouncing the tumult of the first century world, preferring self-discipline to self-indulgence and anonymity to celebrity. 

      In their own lifetimes Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachary, and the residents of Bethlehem were little known and little heeded.  They lived their existence in obscurity and insignificance.  Yet from them and from their faith came the Baptist, ”the greatest man born of woman,” and the Savior,  “the Son of God, King of Israel.”   The later Christian believing community, the Church we know, sprang from the faith in God and trust in his promises of these obscure Jews.  It was not secular resources and worldly capital that enriched Christianity in its infancy.  It was entirely the power of God that spawned the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth and loosed the Good News of Salvation upon the human race.   The obscurity and insignificance of Christianity’s first ancestors underline the Divine foundations of the Gospel message and the eternal origins of the Christianity community. 

       Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit through Mary’s thoughtful visit, exclaimed in joy, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”  These words should only be understood as prophetic.  At the time, there was no earthly way for Elizabeth to know of the spiritual good fortune that would descend upon Mary and Jesus in the years ahead.  It was Elizabeth’s supernatural faith alone that gave her a true appreciation of the impact of Jesus and the importance of Mary.  It is still supernatural faith alone that gives the modern believer the ability and the courage to distinguish eternal values from worldly ideals and spiritual principals from secular enticements.   Clearly, Christianity’s obscure origins emphasize its Divine establishment.                                     COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER    -     Privitization vs. Incarnation     –     25 December 2003AD

       American religious practice is viewed less as a corporate enterprise and more as a personal (i.e., private) experience with each passing year.  American religion is a simple matter of the heart, to be experienced in the intimacy of one’s home or in the company of fellow believers.  In some circles, the public expression of religious beliefs is actually thought to be offensive.  Thus France attempts to ban the wearing of Crucifixes, Davidic stars and Islamic garb in French classrooms.  Cranston’s embattled Mayor Laffey is harassed for opening city land to non-denominational holiday displays.  Television commercials are intent to wish “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” in lieu of the obvious but unspoken “Merry Christmas.”   Perhaps the most egregious departure from the traditional Christian appreciation of the Christmas season is the recently overheard felicitation, “warm winter wishes.”

       The privatization of religion is profoundly un-Christian.  Christianity by its very nature is incarnational, as the solemnity of Christ’s nativity vividly emphasizes.   In Jesus Christ, the Divine Word becomes human flesh.  Jesus Christ is the physical expression of the Divine Nature, God-made-man, Emmanuel.  With all due respect to our Protestant friends, Jesus did not come into this world simply as Word, to be contemplated with an open Bible in one’s lap or to be the subject of meditation in one’s mind.  No, Jesus came into this world with warm flesh and warm blood, very much a part of the human race.  He ate and drank.  He worked and rested.  He enjoyed company and relished quiet time.  He worshipped in synagogue and prayed on the mountain.  He was crucified, died and was buried.   The Gospel revealed through the public life of Christ was never meant to be private.  The city set on the mountaintop must never be hidden.  The light that is faith must shine before all.   The incarnational aspects of Christianity, introduced at the physical birth of Christ, would mature over time into the sacraments and sacramentals of the Catholic Church.  From its inception, Christianity was not just an object of personal belief.  It was intended to be preached, expressed, lived and shared in public as well as in private.  Frankly, the ultimate consequence of Christianity is a new Christendom, where Christ will be all in all.

        The incarnational and hence social nature of Christianity is completely at odds with the individualistic trend in modern society in which privacy and personal choice have dethroned the common good as the central consideration of mankind.  The Protestant consensus, which held together in this country until just after the Second World War and which Catholics for the most part shared (Revelation, Sunday rest, traditional marriage and family, sin, heaven/hell), has been decimated within Protestant mainline communities, greatly affecting American Catholicism as well.   The notion that there might be standards -- especially standards based on Revelation -- to which all men and women are answerable has become laughable in these first years of Christianity’s third millennium.  

        Yet this is the commission given by Christ to his followers.  The Good News of Salvation, the authentic Gospel message, is precisely that God has spoken to man through Jesus Christ and the core truths found in and revealed through Jesus Christ are intended for every creature.  Surely the Gospel is meant to be personal but never private.  Just as the Gospel is intrinsically destined to affect every fiber of an individual’s being so it is equally designed to influence every aspect of society:  church, politics, marriage, family, education, industry.   These thoughts are anathema of course to an era that has debunked God and his Revelation and instead exalted man and his private choices.   Clearly there is no common good nowadays.  There are only personal, private choices.  And to imply that there might be some institutional common ground – by erecting a Cross or a menorah or a crescent (or even an American flag) – is odious and provocative to the individual choice crowd. 

         Christians, especially Roman Catholics, must not acquiesce to the privatization of worship and morality that grows apace in this country and in the Western world.   Remember, Adam and Eve were the first to exalt private choice over God’s word.  Obedience to a higher law proved too great a burden for them.   Modern society’s refusal to acknowledge any authority beyond itself simply repeats the original sin of our ill-fated first parents.                                                                           COMPLETE

THE QUIET CORNER     -      Chastity: foretaste of the world to come      –      1 January  2004AD

       As the octave of Christmas draws to a close, the Church is intent to remember Mary, the Mother of God or, as the liturgy praises her elsewhere: Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God.  Certainly Mary is unique as a virgin-mother, the two words appear quite contradictory.  Yet it is clearly God’s plan that Mary be venerated as a perpetual virgin as well as an actual mother.  Both elements of Mary’s unique role in salvation history are worthy of meditation if her singular place in God’s plan of redemption is to be appreciated.

        The virginity of Jesus’ mother Mary must be understood more broadly than the simple purity our contemporary world might see.  True, Mary was pure and chaste and innocent.  She was spotless and inviolate, not only spiritually but morally, a suitable vessel for Jesus to be conceived.  In this she is a model of the unmarried woman who has chosen not to compromise her own integrity or the integrity of any spousal relationship she may later embrace.  In a society where chastity and its guardian modesty are considered naïve and old-fashioned, the innocence of Mary is commendable and recommendable. 

        Yet evangelical chastity connotes more than sexual purity and discretion.  The evangelical counsel of chastity, which the virginity of Mary anticipates, primarily bears witness to the reality of the next life rather than sexual caution in this life.  Marital fulfillment is the obvious vocation of the mass of mankind.  Ninety-five percent of people who can marry do marry.  Virginity and celibacy are clear exceptions within human societies.  The virgin clearly expects her (or his) fulfillment will be found elsewhere than in human intimacy.  Christian virginal fulfillment is found not here but rather in eternity.  The vowed virgin deliberately foregoes the legitimate pleasures of this life in order to increase her (or his) appreciation of the next life.   By forfeiting the delights of sexual experience in this world, the virgin deepens, sharpens, and focuses her (or his) appreciation of the joy promised in the next world.   Authentic Christian virginity is an eschatological witness:  evoking the fulfillment of heaven while resisting the lure of this world.   In this, Mary is truly the model for all Christians, married or virginal.  Every believer must accept that this world, no matter how comforting its pleasures, will eventually pass away and final fulfillment will come only in heaven.

        Mary is celebrated, of course, not only as a perpetual virgin bearing witness to the fulfillment of heaven but also as a complete, human mother with all the tender attributes that kindly word evokes.  The early councils of the Church argued frankly as to how seriously the motherhood of Mary should be taken.  Was she merely a physical channel through which some flesh and blood passed or was she genuinely a mother contributing from the core of her being to this new divine/human life delivered at Bethlehem?  The early Fathers decided that Mary was indeed a true mother, a mother not only of Jesus’ human nature but mother of Jesus, the Divine Person, himself.  Hence the solemnity that the universal Church celebrates today:  Octave of Christmas: Mary, the Mother of God.

        Mary as virgin/mother is accordingly a model of the Church.  The Church remains a virgin, refusing to embrace any earthly structure or institution as the ultimate experience in life.  Instead, the virgin Church saves her hopes of fulfillment for the next life.   No matter how successful the Church’s mission in this life might be, final victory will come only in the next world, in eternity.  Still, like Mary, the Church is a tender, loving mother.   The Church is jealous to share her life, her spiritual existence, with her children everywhere.  She welcomes them to life in Baptism, nourishes them in the Eucharist, heals them in Penance and the Anointing, strengthens them in Confirmation, sends them out into the world through marriage and orders.   Like Mary, the Church watches as her children grow “in wisdom, age and grace before God and men.”  While never taking her eyes off the next world, the Church is solicitous to work for truth, justice and peace in this world.

       Mary, virgin and mother, made way for the Church as virgin and mother.   In Mary the believer sees the eternal and the temporal, the heavenly and the earthly.   In the Church, too, man’s spiritual goals co-exist with man’s earthly responsibilities.   In Mary and in the Church, heaven and earth meet.

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The Quiet Corner           John & Jesus: Water & Fire               8 January 2004AD

       St. John the Baptist makes a clear distinction in today’s Gospel passage between his own ministry symbolized by water and the imminent ministry of Jesus Christ signified by the dynamic image of fire.   This water versus fire imagery is not to be taken as a hard and fast division between the two cousins.  After all Jesus would send his chosen Apostles out to baptize the whole world with water while the Baptist would view his own early role as warning mankind’s damnable chaff of the unquenchable fire to come.  The water and fire symbolism does overlap. Nonetheless, the work of St. John the Baptist is irrevocably linked with water while the vocation of Jesus Christ is described, in his own passionate words, as a consuming fire. 

       Both water and fire are images abundantly used in the Old Testament and are among the four basic elements, along with earth and air, appreciated even by pre-historic man.  The first creation outlined in Genesis was drawn from water.  The Spirit hovered over the waters and out of the watery abyss the universe was fashioned.  The Garden of Eden had four rivers, accounting for its lush resources.  The creation of God’s world anew at the time of Noah clearly evolved from water.  The flood destroyed the sinful world and water generated a renewed world.  Moses was born of water, snatched as an infant from the River Nile.  The Jewish nation was also born of water, led through the Red Sea by Moses and through the Jordan by Joshua. 

       Clearly water in the Scriptures speaks of new beginnings and such was St. John’s basic message: A new era is about to dawn.  A new world order is about to take shape.  A new creation is being effected by God.  Those Jews who thought that Christianity would mean business as usual, simply a continuation of the status quo, were to be sadly mistaken.  Christianity was a totally new enterprise, symbolized by both the water baptism of St. John and the later sacramental baptism from Jesus.  And for the believing Christian today, Christianity still cannot imply routine, habit or custom.  Authentic Christianity is always a new beginning, a fresh start, a repentance from the old ways and an embrace of a new way, God’s way.

       While water connotes beginnings, fire suggests consummation.  Scriptural imagery sees the world begin from water but end through fire.  Adam and Eve began their happy lives among Eden’s four rivers but concluded their sad lot blocked out of Paradise by the angels’ fiery sword.  Moses begin his career plucked from waters of Egypt but fulfilled his days by encountering God at the burning bush and amid the volcanic displays of Sinai.  Elias concluded his brilliant mission by being whisked to heaven on a fiery chariot.  Jesus’ public life commenced with his baptism at the River Jordan at the hands of his cousin John, united to the repentant sinners congregated there.  But Jesus’ mission was consummated at the Pentecost event, in which flashes of fire descended upon the heads of the gathered Apostles, a spiritual fire sent by Jesus who had returned to his Father precisely so the Spirit could arrive and bring the Church’s apostolate to its fulfillment.    

       The water ministry of St. John the Baptist was a work of promise.  His was a ministry of prophecy, bearing witness to the great events to come.  The shores of the Jordan were Christianity’s public starting line.  The ardent work of Jesus Christ would begin there and go on to ignite the spiritual fire that would guarantee final achievement.  In Christ, all promises would be realized, all prophecies fulfilled, all prayers answered.  In Christ, the end-times, often depicted as a consuming fire, would arrive.  After Christ, there are no new beginnings, just continued growth in the Holy Spirit, the fire of Divine love.

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The Quiet Corner           Marriage: Abundantly Blessed by God              15 January 2004AD

       Brittney Spears’ breathtaking fifty-five hour matrimonial experience was, to some minds, no more than a lark, a “been there, done that” escapade to be discounted as the fruit of Miss Spears’ immaturity or the result of her astute self-marketing.  To other minds Miss Spears’ misadventure is just another sad statement on the low estate into which marriage has devolved in this initial decade of the twenty-first century.  Alas, Ms. Spears is not alone in her disregard for the sanctity of marriage.  Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court has given its legislature six months to undue twenty-five hundred years of matrimonial practice in the Western world in order to accommodate same-sex couples who confuse mutual exploitation with complementary commitment.  And where would the entertainment industry be without marriage to abuse?  Today’s situation comedies are nightly variations on the themes of pre-marital, extra-marital, ineptly marital or not-even-close-to marital sex.  Nor does the average person get off the hook when it comes to the sorry state of contemporary wedded unions.  A divorce rate of over forty, perhaps over forty-five, percent in this nation does nothing to dispel the prevailing notion that marriage is no longer an institution but merely an individual choice, actually, an individual whim.

       This grim, post-modern depiction of matrimony stands in great contrast to the generous, abundant, profuse imagery that St. John employs in recounting the wedding feast at Cana.  Weddings in the ancient world were not the Mass at 3, reception at 6, home by 10 affairs current today.  Ancient marriage festivities continued for days, making any trip worthwhile.  The fact that Jesus, Mary and the “disciples” were present indicates a very extensive guest list.  And the consummation of all the wine provided is a further indication that this was no meager enterprise.  This was a lavish event.

       “There were at hand six stone water jars, each one containing fifteen to twenty-five gallons…” This would amount to one hundred and fifty gallons of wine or forty cases of wine by American standards.  Jesus is not being stingy.  Note too that when the waiters fill the water jars they fill them “to the brim.”  There is nothing tightfisted about Christ and his gifts.  Christ spares nothing when it comes to benefiting his clients.  The excellence of the wine should certainly be mentioned.  “You have saved the best wine until now!” the chief steward remarks exuberantly to the groom.  St. John concludes his vignette by observing that this was Christ’s first miracle and that “his disciples began to believe in him.”

      Every detail of this Gospel narrative – the extensive celebration, the excessive festivities, the compassion of Mary, the graciousness of Jesus, the abundant wine, the solicitous waiters, the excellent bouquet, the awed disciples -- connotes a deliberate liberality on the part of God in this new dispensation to be inaugurated through His Son Jesus.  “God does not ration the Spirit,” the New Testament reads elsewhere, and this is certainly the theme of today’s Gospel.  God is not miserly, mean or meager when it comes to his grace.  He is benevolent and bighearted, even extravagant, when it concerns His new dispensation.

       Since ecclesial and matrimonial metaphors are frequently coupled in the Scriptures, Christians should ponder St. John’s impressive nuptial imagery when they consider modern marriage and when they consider the modern Church.   God intends that neither matrimony nor the Church should fall on hard times.  God Himself established marriage “to realize in mankind His design of love”(Humanae Vitae).  And God Himself through Christ established the Catholic Church to realize in mankind His design of love.  God will not allow His own benevolent plans for these human institutions to be frustrated.  A believer’s continued respect for the tradition of marriage and a believer’s continued respect for the traditions of the Church, especially in challenging times, reflect this Gospel’s confidence in the abundant generosity of God toward these two divinely established institutions.    

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The Quiet Corner           Church Attendance; Sunday Observance              22 January 2004AD

       When I was a kid growing up on Highland Street in Woonsocket, there was one Protestant family living on my end of the street.  They faithfully attended the Baptist church on nearby Blackstone Street.  But during the months of July and August, there was no church service for them to attend.  Church actually shut down for the summer!  Even now I can recall the shocked disbelief that this seasonal cessation of Sunday services evoked in my keen Catholic conscience.  Not to go to church on Sunday was unthinkable in Catholic Woonsocket of the 1940s and 50s.  Attending Mass was simply part of life, like brushing one’s teeth in the morning or eating lunch at midday or going to bed at night.   Mass attendance was a given, never questioned and strictly observed.

       The sad and frankly embarrassing statistics revealed this past week regarding church attendance among Catholics and Protestants in the USA evoked the same shocked disbelief from my now senior Catholic conscience.  American Catholics were confronted with the scandalous report that Protestants now attend church with greater regularly than Catholics.  Slightly more than forty percent of Protestants go to church regularly while just over thirty percent of Catholic go to Mass at least twice a month.  Weekly worship among Catholics has slipped, or rather has cascaded, from a high of seventy-five percent in the early 1960s to the current low of thirty-five percent as the new century begins.  While recent scandals certainly have not helped to draw any believers into church, it would be a disservice to blame clerical abuse for current Roman Catholic propensity to stay in bed on Sunday morning.  Clearly the problem began mid-century and has worsened to the present sad state.

       Church attendance within the Christian community has varied tremendously over the twenty centuries since the Apostles first met for the breaking of bread.  At the time of the American Revolution only about ten percent of the population of the thirteen original states went regularly to church.  Church attendance and religion generally experienced a great revival around the time of the American Civil War.  And, of course, for America’s Catholic immigrants and their children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Church provided a social as well as spiritual focal point for their lives in the New World.  Institutional loyalty among the American population grew apace from the Civil War to the Second World War.  Fidelity to labor unions, to political parties, to fraternal societies, as well as to local parishes, was a hallmark of our parents’ and grandparents’ world.  Now Americans are lucky if they can organize a bowling league let alone fill a church on Sunday morning.   Something happened to transfer the American center of gravity from the institution to the individual, from religion to spirituality, from the AF of L to the ACLU.

       Church going was always a middle class pre-occupation.  The poverty-stricken and the filthy rich were never the core of any believing community.   Consequently, as American Catholics grew more affluent, that is, as their need for social, parochial, ethnic and educational support lessened, the central role of the Church in their life diminished.  Early Catholic Americans understood the Church to be their best support against the Protestant, Republican, managerial establishment.   The Church offered institutional support in this life as well as eternal happiness in the next.   Affluence changed all that.  The Rhode Island businessman or politician who was glad to go to LaSalle now sends his own children to Moses Brown or Wheeler. 

        Catholic affluence fosters Catholic independence.  Catholic independence engenders Catholic individualism.  Catholic individualism isolates a person from the Catholic community, from Catholic teaching, and from Catholic tradition, leaving the modern Catholic with the faithless values of secular society which are at best indifferent to Christian practice.  The chief problem with Mass attendance is not abusive priests or boring sermons or bland music.  The chief problem with Mass attendance is the secular indifference of our affluent American society.

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The Quiet Corner        Hubris: self-importance          29 January 2004AD

       If I get a call to Pawtucket Memorial Hospital on a cold or rainy or snowy night, I will often drive right up to the emergency room entrance -- which is clearly marked “Fire Lane – No Parking” – leave my car there and go about the business of anointing the sick and absolving the near dead.  This is a rather mild display of what commentators nowadays call “hubris.”   Hubris is an inflated sense of self-importance.  “Oh, I’m a priest. They won’t touch me,” thinks the busy pastor to himself as he sneaks through a yellow light or hardly slows down at a stop sign or sets his cruise control for seventy-five on Route 95.  Hubris is not quite as evident today among the clergy as it was in the days when police officers would glace at your license and remark, “Oh, I’m sorry, Father.  I didn’t know you were a priest.”   Those days are gone but hubris, overblown self-worth, is still very much a part of American life. 

       America has been struck lately by a number of very talented and successful and otherwise responsible people being indicted or nearly indicted for illegalities alleged or real.  Certainly Martha Stewart comes easily to mind.  Similarly, the officials at Enron and Halliburton and other large firms have a lot of explaining to do.  And the Rhode Island legislature obviously provides no end of eyebrow raising headlines – as does neighboring Connecticut’s governor.  Such corporate executives and distinguished legislators no doubt have much talent but they also have huge egos. 

       The common vice among these disparate people is, I believe, hubris.  These media celebrities and chief executive officers and public officials have undoubtedly done much good.  They have nurtured winning businesses and prospered large firms; they have transformed cities and strengthened communities.  But they also became victims of their own success.  Like the respected pastor who parks in the fire lane, they think they are untouchable.  They have such a litany of successes that they believe this dispenses them from the restrictions imposed on ordinary mankind.  “I’ve built up a multi-billion dollar business.  So what if I play fast and loose with a mere million.”  “I’ve been re-elected so many times that a shady deal here or there is of no account.”   Persons that fit this mold are important.  They are successful.  They deserve some credit.  But, when their sense of self-importance begins to outweigh their sense of responsibility, when their public status overshadows their personal accountability, then the trouble begins.

       Hubris, alas, is not limited to pastors, public officials, or presidents of corporations.  More and more a contagion of spiritual hubris seems to be infecting the average American Catholic.  Like the Pharisee in Christ’s parable, the average American Catholic can easily resist the more obvious sins of contemporary society:   “I’m not an abortionist, nor a pederast, nor a pornographer.  I don’t cheat on my wife or on my constituents.  I never skip the office or the factory or my route.”   These modest accomplishments, while valid and laudable, can become the seductive opportunity for the average Catholic to dispense himself from other responsibilities.  “Surely God will understand if I miss Mass just this once or twice.  And God won’t mind if my kids miss catechism this week or next.  And I’ve heard that talk on First Communion or First Penance or Confirmation a couple of times already. I won’t be missed. And I’ll go to Communion at this funeral even though I have been to Mass in six weeks.”  An exaggerated sense of one’s own importance, an inflated sense of one’s worth before God, an embellished appreciation of one’s own virtue, can lead the average Catholic to dispense himself from routine spiritual duties just as surely it can lead a CEO to fudge an expense account.

       “God will understand,” explains the average Catholic who occasionally misses Mass, who rarely goes to confession, who trifles with unsavory websites, who flirts with drugs, who overstates his insurance claims, who takes advantage on the road.  Good deeds and kindly gestures in certain areas of life seem to exempt a believer from total commitment in other aspects of life.  But virtue in some areas does not excuse vice in other matters.                                                                 COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner            The Creed: Core Beliefs             5 February 2004AD

        The Creed is as old as Christianity itself.  In fact, the Creed actually predates the Scriptures.  If one reads the New Testament carefully, succinct synopses of fundamental beliefs pop up now and again as reminders that Christianity is not content-free.  There are indeed core beliefs that the earliest Christians treasured and around which they formed their liturgical and moral lives.  Doctrines and dogmas have been part of Christianity from the start.

       The very earliest creed might be those final words of Jesus Christ spoken to his Apostles as he left them for heaven on Ascension Thursday.  Instructing his disciples to go forth to teach and baptize all nations, he insisted that they do so “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  By the time St. Matthew came to write his version of the Good News this Trinitarian formula had become a handy expression of Christianity’s central beliefs.  To this day, the various creeds of the Church (there are about twenty official creeds) still follow this triple division:  “I believe in one God the Father the Almighty…I believer in one Lord Jesus Christ the only Son…I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…”  Even the latest creed of the Church, the Credo of the People of God, composed by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, which fills six pages as a small pamphlet, still follows this three-fold outline.

       In the second reading for this Sunday from St. Paul first letter to the Corinthians, a portion of a creed, a brief formula about the Son of God appears.  “I handed on to you,” St. Paul writes to his converts, “ as of first importance what I also received:  that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture, that he was buried, that he was raised in the third day in accordance with the Scripture, that he appeared to the Cephas and then to the Twelve.”  Anyone reading these lines would certainly hear an echo of the words so familiar to any Sunday-go-to-meeting Christian:  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered died and was buried.  On the third day he arose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures…”  Both the Nicene Creed, quoted here and recited at every Sunday Mass, as well as the Apostles’ Creed, probably memorized as a child and now prayed before the Rosary, reaffirm the earliest beliefs cherished by St. Paul as unalterable faith convictions.  A previous generation had treasured these beliefs about Jesus the Son; St. Paul held them dear to his heart; and now he was reminding the Corinthians that they too should commit these words to memory, reflect on them often, and allow them to shape their eternal hopes as well as their daily lives.

       When the Roman Catholic Church proclaims each Sunday to be “apostolic,” it is her fidelity to these fundamental Christian beliefs valued by the Apostles that she is professing.  The Church acknowledges a kerygma (to borrow a word from the 1960s) which expresses the basic Good News found in the New Testament – the salvific death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The kerygma gradually evolved into the short creeds scattered throughout the Apostles’ writings, then into the already mentioned Apostles’ Creed, and eventually into the assorted Creeds developed during Christianity’s twenty centuries.  In spite of the obvious evolution, the message has remained the same.  As St Paul observed: “…I handed on to you…what I also received…”

       The core of Christian belief is, as St. Paul directs, an inheritance that is to be passed on to succeeding generations intact or augmented but certainly not diminished.    This spiritual capital, sometimes called the deposit of faith, when placed in the hands of wise investors returns a generous interest, guaranteeing, eventually, eternal life.   This treasury of Christian doctrine must be fingered, pored over, felt and appreciated by every believer.  Then it must be happily entrusted to subsequent ages enriching them in turn.

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 The Quiet Corner           The Uniqueness of Marriage           12 February  2004AD

 “Separate seldom means equal,” proclaimed the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court this past week, thus refusing to permit any legal distinction between same-sex unions and traditional marriage.  The judges decreed with a firmness of Biblical proportions that in Massachusetts “the two shall become one” regardless of sexual orientation.   The justices obviously view marriage as a universal civil right accessible to any two citizens who can slap down twenty-five dollars at the town clerk’s office.  There is to be nothing separate or distinctive or unique about marriage in the Bay State.  Any one may apply.

        In the years after the Second World War in the United States ninety-five percent of persons who could marry did marry.  During the Depression just before the war, the marriage rate had fallen off somewhat for obvious economic reasons.  And at the end of the twentieth century, continuing to the present, the marriage rate had fallen off again, cohabitation and free love being contributing factors.  Nonetheless, marriage is clearly the way of life embraced by most people.  So it is fairly easy to consider marriage merely as a routine procedure, a rite of passage, even a duty.  Restricting access to marriage in any way would seem to be a violation of personal liberties, an alarming blunder in today’s society.

       Unlike baptism or confirmation, marriage has the peculiar distinction of being both a secular and a sacramental enterprise.  It may be celebrated at the city hall by two unbelievers or at the local church by two faithful parishioners.  Both ceremonies still have the same legal importance.  Secular thinkers will therefore argue that so-called same-sex marriages do not threaten the sacramental celebration of matrimony at all.  A man and woman are still free to approach their pastor to solemnize their vows in church, while a pastor is free to refuse to witness the vows of a couple who violate Christian tradition.  In other words, so-called same-sex marriages are none of the churches’ business.  Believers do their thing and non-believers do their thing and everyone is equal.  No harm done.

       But harm is done.  And, sadly, harm has already been done.  The Christian world (and let’s be sure to include the American Catholic Church here) has long since acquiesced in admitting that marriage is nothing special, nothing unique, nothing separate from any other union.  By viewing marriage simply as the union between a loving man and a loving woman while failing to insist that such a union be uncompromisingly open to new life, the Christian world took the first step toward robbing marriage of its separateness, its uniqueness among relationships.  By stressing fidelity over fruitfulness or, let’s be honest, by curtailing fruitfulness altogether, believers forsook the Biblical understanding of matrimony and opted for a merely romantic notion of conjugal life. 

       The Bible touchingly directs a man to leave his birth home and to “cling to his wife,” becoming one with her alone.  Scripture sanctions no other intimate bond.  But it is when this male-female bonding leads to new life that the Bible sees it as the most basic and the most Godlike state in creation.  “God created man in His image, in the Divine image he created him; male and female he created them.  And he said to them, ‘Be fertile…’.”  Hence man most nearly images God when man and woman act as male and female toward one another, when their sexuality connotes not just intimacy but also fertility.  Christ for his part resoundingly endorses traditional marriage when he quotes the ancient text and then adds, “What God has joined together, let no man separate.”  In the mind of Christ, God, not man, instituted the traditional male/female marriage bond.

       Civil law in the United States may not be constitutionally bound by the words of Scripture.  But voters should know that tampering with the natural law (what “God” has joined together) can only lead to disillusionment and defeat.   God Himself created male/female marriage as the image of Divine love.  St. Paul saw male/female marriage as an exemplar of Christ’s love for his Church.  To insist that there is nothing special, nothing separate, nothing unique about male/female matrimony is to cheat and disappoint all society.                                                                               COMPLETE

 

 The Quiet Corner           True Dignity Comes from God           19 February  2004AD

       The most vivid memory of my student years running about St. Charles School yard in Woonsocket is the recollection of being slapped in the face by my classmate Francis Marrah.  The cause of the offense is long forgotten and it did not impede our friendship.  Francis was an avid stamp collector, as was I at the time, and I frequently accompanied him to matinee movies when we got of school early so the public school kids could attend released time.  Yet I can still feel that smart on my face and, even more, I can still sense the eyes of the other kids on me to see what my reaction would be.  I probably chased him around until he outran me.  Few things are more humiliating than a slap in the face.  The very expression “slap in the face” connotes an insult, a putdown, an affront.  Jesus begins his litany of humiliating offenses in this Sunday Gospel passage from St. Luke by citing a strike on the cheek as blow to one’s pride as well as one’s visage. 

       Jesus next cites public nakedness as a personally embarrassing circumstance.  The loss of one’s cloak might have left the wearer a bit colder but the loss of a tunic would leave him clad only in his undergarments.  Even in our libertarian society, public nakedness still has an element of shame.  Just ask Janet Jackson.

       Beggary is a third public insult that Jesus notes.  Jesus does not see the beggar as insulted but he sees the one being constantly harassed by drifters and vagabonds as the one who should get some relief.  Anyone who has tried to get into a church in Rome is frustrated by those gypsies who simply will not take “No” for an answer.  Parish priests get real savvy when the rectory doorbell rings and a stranger asks, “Father, do you have time to talk?”  A touch is surely in the offing.  Thievery is another violation of one’s self-respect.  Sensing that someone was fingering your possessions – going through your bureau, emptying your glove compartment, ransacking your desk – is very deflating. 

       A slap in the face, a public stripping, an intrusive request for funds, a burgled home – Jesus carefully lists the most insidious experiences that he can imagine.  Each of these disconcerting events strikes at the heart of human dignity, robbing the victim of his composure, his self-respect, his poise.  To be slapped publicly, to be naked openly, to be confronted constantly with an ungrateful hand, to be deprived suddenly of one ‘s possessions  -- such offenses are not easily taken in stride.  Yet Jesus’ advice to his disciples is, “Relax!  Don’t let it get you!  Take it easy!”  Jesus understands that no matter how humbling a slap in the face or a thief in the night or an ingrate stranger may be, no external event can rob the Christian of his interior, God-given dignity. 

       Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel are not meant to be practical advice.  His picturesque guidance to “turn the other cheek” is often wrongly elevated to the status of a new commandment.  Yet his insistence that one’s shirt should be given away with one’s coat is rarely taken literally.  And few people would argue that every ne’er-do-well on a street corner has a right to our funds.  Or that burglary is a negligible offense.  Jesus is clearly not replacing the Ten Commandment here with his folksy recommendations.  Actually Jesus is melodramatically overstating his case to make his point.  He is saying that under ordinary circumstances these admittedly discouraging occurrences would deflate anyone’s ego.  Yet the Christian has spiritual support that a slap, a disrobing, beggary and thievery should neither diminish nor even disturb.

        The Christian’s true dignity does not derive from the respect he has from his fellow men and women.  The Christian’s true dignity is not lost by any external assault.  The true worth of a Christian derives entirely from his standing before God.  It is neither self-respect nor human respect that in the end will give the Christian some real self-assurance.  The Christian is truly secure only when he draws his solace, his strength, his security from God and God alone.  Earthly hindrances do not bother the authentic Christian because he is firmly rooted in the unassailable life of God himself.  Trust in God, not reputation or status or social standing, is the true measure of the Christian.                  Complete

The Quiet Corner           RCIA Ministry           26 February  2004AD

       A family festivity brought me recently to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, just south of Fort Knox.  On the Sunday, I participated at the 10AM Mass at the local St. James Catholic Church.  Just after the Prayer of the Faithful and before the congregation sat for the collection and preparation of the gifts, seven or eight young adults rose from their pews, met at the sanctuary step, bowed to the altar and then proceeded down the main aisle to an education room in the front of the church.  The young men and women were catechumens, of course, being instructed in the Catholic faith in preparation for baptism at the Easter vigil.  Although they participated in the service of the Word at this Sunday Mass, they were not ready yet to join in the service of the Eucharist, hence their dismissal at the half-point of the Mass. 

       Scenes similar to this were being repeated all over the country as parishes prepare new converts for their full embrace of the Catholic religion at the end of Lent.  It would, however, be the rare parish in nominally Catholic Rhode Island to have eight unbaptized persons show up for reception into the Church.  Most Rhode Island parishes, I suspect, spend Lent preparing neglectful young Catholics for the sacrament of Confirmation which they failed to receive as teenagers.  This group, since they are already baptized, would not be dismissed from the service of the Eucharist at Mass.  The Rite of Christian Initiation, or RCIA as it is commonly called, is nonetheless observed fully or partially throughout most of the post-Vatican II world.

       One significant step in the revised Rite of Christian Initiation is the Rite of Election which will take place this Sunday preferably in the cathedrals of the world’s many dioceses or in the various parish churches.  At a point in the Sunday Mass, usually after the homily, the catechumens or confirmands are formally asked if they are ready to assume the full duties of the Christian life.   They display their assent either by standing if the group is large, or, as is done here at St. Leo parish, by signing their name in the Book of Life, left open in the sanctuary, which they approach individually.  Their signature is a gesture of public commitment to the religious instruction they are experiencing and to the life of the Catholic Church in general.  Hence, they sign on the dotted line, so to speak.

       This Rite of Election has a happily ambiguous title.  The Rite of Election is actually a rite of selection, a rite of choosing, a rite of decision.  But who is choosing whom?  Are the catechumens choosing God or is God choosing the catechumens?  While both answers are correct, the latter option should be preferred.  Election, or selection by God, is a fundamental Biblical theme.  All the great heroes and heroines of the Old Testament were called expressly by God for their assorted vocations.  The personal election of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Samuel are among the celebrated calls narrated in the Jewish Scriptures.  The Jewish nation itself was specifically elected by God from all the races of the world to be his uniquely chosen people.  Jesus reminds his Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper, “It was I who choose you…”  And every time water is poured on a neophyte’s head, God is electing a soul to enter into an especially intimate relationship with him.  

       So God always takes the first step in election.  But then by faith the believing catechumen makes a commitment to God.  Responding to God’s initial love, the new believer chooses to follow God’s personal plan for him or her by the full embrace of the Catholic faith.  So there really is a double selection here:  God chooses the believer and the believer chooses God.  The Rite of Election is a celebration of invitation and response, summons and reply, call and commitment. 

       As the numerous catechumens throughout the Catholic world look forward to baptism at Easter and as the whole Church unites around the paschal vigil service, all believers are reminded that it is God in Christ who has “called us out of darkness into his own wonderful light.”  Truly God has chosen us, and, thankfully, we have chosen God.

COMPLETE

 The Quiet Corner              The Passion of the Christ                 4 March  2004AD

       Thanks to the organizing skills of our assistant pastor, Father John A. Sistare, almost a hundred assorted parishioners from St. Leo parish witnessed the Mel Gibson production of “The Passion of the Christ” at the Showcase Cinema in North Attleboro this past Sunday evening.  The bus trip to the theatre was filled with the usual neighborly banter and chatter.  The return trip was noticeably thoughtful and recollected, even reverent.  Mr. Gibson, in my opinion, has achieved a frank, graphic and honest representation of the last hours of Jesus’ life totally undeserving of the disparaging cautions of his censorious critics. Passion has been libeled as anti-Semitic, unduly violent and unscriptural by the likes of curmudgeon Andy Rooney, talk-show shrew Liz Morancy, and even the Archbishop of Cincinnati.  I found these shrill observations to be groundless. 

       The film is not about Jews versus Christians nor even about Jews versus Christ.  The film is very clearly about an entrenched religious leadership (of whatever persuasion) versus the popular charismatic preacher.  St. Mark’s Gospel observes that the ancient religious establishment feared Jesus and “delivered him up out of envy.”  This, simply, is what the movie portrays: the envy of a powerful lobby towards the upstart who was stealing their thunder.  Race and nationality have nothing to do with it.  This is human depravity universally discovered in every time ad place. 

       The Gibson production does not pretend to be a documentary of the Passion as witnessed by a reporter with a microphone in one hand and a camcorder in the other.   This has caused some to observe that the film is therefore non-Scriptural.  Well, the venerable fourteen Stations of the Cross are open to the same charge.  Veronica and her soothing cloth are quite prominent in the Stations of the Cross but this good woman is nowhere found in Scripture.  The triple falls of Jesus that are integral to the Stations adorning our church walls are not enumerated in the New Testament but they certainly are in accord with the spirit of Jesus’ final hours.  And I believe that this could be safely said of Mr. Gibson’s film.  It never departs from the authentic spirit of Christ’s agony even if, in a few instances, the exceptional sign or symbol is inserted (e.g., a snake in the Garden of Olives). 

       The charge of excessive brutality is perhaps the most pervasive criticism directed toward this film.  Mr. Gibson’s own movie career has thrived on action-adventure films replete with bang-up car chases, smoking guns and shocking explosions.   As America’s film industry has becomes more feminized, replacing cowboys and Indians with adulterous encounters, violence has become the whipping boy (yes, a pun) of vocal liberals.  Unlimited sexual excess is defended in the name of free speech but a cop car smashing its way down a New York street is deemed intolerably irresponsible.  To those who fashionably allege that Passion is too violent, it should be pointed out that this movie does depict a scourging and a crucifixion.  There is no way a crucifixion can be made cinemagraphically agreeable.   Those who charge that this is not a pleasant picture should be reminded that this was not a pleasant event.

       Finally, and perhaps this is the motivation behind many of Mr. Gibson’s gain-sayers, The Passion of the Christ is profoundly Catholic.  The concurrence of the Crucifixion and the Last Supper – the body given on the Cross and the body given in the sacrament – is instructive.  The maternal and filial rapport between Mary and her Son throughout the Way of the Cross is for many the most heartfelt aspect of the movie.  There is even a hint of Mary as co-redemptrix:  “I wish I could die with you…”  Jesus as the agonized yet ever-trusting and determined Son of His heavenly Father is never off one’s mind.  The focus on Peter as spokesperson for the apostolic band is clear.  The sacramental significance of the blood and water flowing from Christ’s wounded side is notable.  The Resurrection, while appropriately understated, is unmistakable.   For the reflective viewer, Passion provides little enjoyment but guarantees much rejoicing.                                                                    COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner   The Transfiguration: Moses & Elias  11 March 2004AD

         Although the Transfiguration of Christ appears in all three synoptic Gospels, only Saint Luke informs his readers of exactly what Christ, Moses and Elias discussed on the mountain.  The sacred author writes that the prophets spoke with Jesus concerning “the exodus he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.”  An older translation read that they spoke of the “passage” he was about to undergo in the Holy City.  Indeed, Moses and Elias had undergone their own passages in their own challenging histories.  The passage of Moses, the Exodus event, was the defining moment of Jewish history.  The release of the Jews from slavery in Egypt, the forty year march in the wilderness, and the eventual arrival at the shores of the Promised Land was the stuff of Moses’ life.  Sadly, for the prophet it was a thankless task.  The Jews grumbled throughout the four decades, giving Moses nothing but grief.  For the prophet the journey was no mere passage, it was, in fact, a passion. 

         Elias fared little better during his time as the Lord’s prophet.  Elias had the unhappy task of dealing with the inept Jewish king Ahab and his pagan wife, the wicked Jezebel.  Elias was the sole practitioner of the old time religion in an era when Jezebel had introduced her pagan prophets into the heart of Judaism, the Temple itself.  Exhausted from his constant battle with the wicked queen, Elias actually went to the wilderness, sat under a tree, and longed for death.  This prophet, too, knew anguish, rejection and failure.  He had his passion.

         In light of their personal histories, it is little wonder that these two prophets should appear with Christ as he prepared for his own Passion in Jerusalem.   Moses and Elias offered comfort to Jesus who, like these two ancestors in the faith, would soon experience taunts, torture, and torment.  And why shouldn’t Jesus seek out consolation in these months before his inevitable trials?  Surely Jesus knew what was said of the Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures: 

 There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, One of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.  Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured,

While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.  We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.  Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.  Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any more of his destiny?  When he was cut off from the land of the living, and smitten for the sin of his people, A grave was assigned him among the wicked and a burial place with evildoers, Though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood.

         Persons wh are dismissive of the intense sufferings of Christ, preferring instead a Jesus who preached on the Mount or a Jesus who relaxed with Martha and Mary at dinner or a Jesus who cleverly frustrated the Pharisees on the street corners of Jerusalem, would do well to recall Jesus’ own memorial to Himself.  It was not any of these delightful moments that Jesus chose as his lasting memorial.  Rather it was precisely that moment of self-giving, the moment of his death, when the body was given and the blood was poured out, that Jesus singled out as the most memorable moment in his life, enshrining it sacramentally in the Eucharist.  Such is the way Jesus wanted to be recalled.  Measuring the incidents in Christ’s life merely by the lines they occupy in the New Testament flies in the face of Christian tradition, which, after all, settled not on happy times but on the Crucifix as the supreme token of Christ’s work on earth.  Perhaps previous generations of Christians were more in tune with the authentic Jesus of Nazareth when they sang with heartfelt sympathy:   Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, she beheld her tender child, all with bloody scourges rent.           St. Thomas Aquinas explains that the intensive sufferings of Christ reveal two basic truths: the extreme vileness of sin and the intense love of God.  Jesus’ Passion teaches the believer that sin is so bad that only Christ’s excruciating pain could adequately symbolize it.  The Passion likewise teaches that God is so intensely loving that he risked his own Divine Son to carry out this sorrowful mission.                                  COMPLETE

  The Quiet Corner        Marriage: Bonding & Babies      18 March 2004AD

       The redefinition of marriage and the same-sex partnership debate that is raging in the press and in our courts is the best thing that has happened to the Catholic Church in decades.  After forty years of dancing around the essence of marriage – companionship or children, fidelity or fruitfulness, bonding or babies – the modern Church is going to have to decide the issue and clearly define marriage once and for all in its own mind.  Is marriage intended first and foremost for the “mutual consolation of the spouses” as modern thinking would have it?  Or is marriage about the pro-creation and education of children as traditional wisdom has known it?  Even to suggest that offspring are the primary focus of a Christian marriage seems peculiarly archaic nowadays.  But this is precisely the dilemma that the Catholic Church, as well as civil society, faces.  What do we as Catholics mean when we say “marriage,” and do we consistently apply our conclusions to daily life?

       The Book of Genesis offers two distinct accounts of creation in its first two chapters.  The first account is the familiar choral presentation in which God creates the word in six days and rests on the seventh.  On that sixth day he creates “man” in His own image and likeness, “male and female he created them.”  Then God gives his first creatures the clear commission: “Increase, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.”  The mandate to pro-create comes immediately from the lips of God.  Man is created to populate.  The second account of creation has Adam created first and the rest of creation is placed at his service.  Unfortunately no “suitable partner” is found for Adam at that early stage of creation.  So God uniquely creates woman from the side of Adam.  A delighted Adam is happy with his new companion.  “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, cling to his wife and the two shall become on flesh.”  The mutual satisfaction of the spouses is the undeniable theme of this second Biblical narrative. 

       For the past few decades it has become customary to view these twin ends of marriage as separate but equal.  The pro-creation and education of children (increase/multiply) and the happiness of the spouses (one flesh) are the double goal of marriage in the modern Catholic mind.  Engaged couples are asked, when filling out marriage forms, “Do you intend to have children in this marriage?” as well as “Do you intend to be faithful in this marriage?”  But, while these ends may be equal, they may never be separate.  Actually, bonding through babies is the true cornerstone on which Christian marriage rests. 

       Regrettably, both Catholics and society often divide these two ends of marriage.  Cannot a couple marry only for love and not a litter?  After all, the marriage of elderly couples who are beyond child bearing age as well as the marriage of couples who are sterile are recognized as valid by the Church and by society.   But these deficiencies are accidental.  Nature, not a personal choice, has denied them children.  Over the last half-century, children clearly have become secondary in the marital bond and the affirmation of the spouses has become central.   Individual fulfillment has replaced dedication to family.  Personal satisfaction now rules the day.  But for the true Christian, intimacy must imply offspring.  This is why the Church insists instructively that every act of spousal intimacy “be open to the transmission of life.”   Consequently the modern contraceptive mentality, which separates intimacy from offspring, defies the Church’s traditional understanding of marriage and diverts intimacy from its true goal.   So-called pre-marital sex, cohabitation, adultery, divorce, abortion, contraception, and now so-called same sex marriages proclaim loudly that the happiness of the individual, without regard to the care of children, is society’s supreme marital value. 

       Separating the prospect of children from the pleasure of marriage exalts recreation over responsibility and companionship over conscience.   Marital indifference toward children, which signals the triumph of individualism, also heralds the demise of the family.                       COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        The Merciful Father       25 March 2004AD

       Last Sunday the Church’s liturgy consoled the faithful with the celebrated Parable of the Prodigal Son, which should actually be entitled the Parable of the Merciful Father.  After all, the Church does not simply want to titillate the congregation with tempting thoughts of the wayward son’s assorted dissipations.   The point of the parable is primarily the compassion of the father and only secondarily the compunction of the son.  Consider the recklessness of the father’s love that is not lost on the elder brother.  “I never disobeyed even one of your commands, yet you never gave me so much as a kid goat to celebrate with my friends.”  This is a point well taken.  Recklessness, foolhardiness, wildness as a quality of the father’s love is precisely the moral of this story.  It is not the prodigality of the son with his inheritance that should impress worshipper.  It is the prodigality of the father with his loving kindness that churchgoers should take away from last Sunday’s reading.   God is never grudging with his grace.  “God does not ration his gift of the Sprit,” St. Paul writes pointedly.  The Apostle observes that God is, in fact, “lavish’ in his generosity – a message that human beings, who can be so miserly in their estimates of one another, frequently neglect.

       However, in spite of all the evidence of Divine mercy, God is no fool.  The God who never abandoned the stiff-necked Jews in the wilderness and the God who sent his Son to the Cross while man was still in his sins is indeed a God of kindness and compassion.  But he is also the God of repentance and conversion.  And it is precisely because God is merciful and compassionate that he does not leave man wallowing in his sins but beckons man out of the pigsty of immorality and offers him a seat at the Master’s table.  God is sympathetic to man’s plight, but God also expects results when a man encounters the Gospel.  The worst favor God could do is to ignore man’s willful faults, to wink at man’s transgressions, to bless man’s sinfulness.  God is, after all, a Savior, a Redeemer, a Liberator.  Those who meet God should anticipate change, transformation and amendment.  To encounter God and be left in our sins would indeed be a cheat and a disappointment. 

       The incident of the woman caught in adultery, which forms this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, is likewise a practical instance of God’s displaying mercy toward the sinner.  The self-righteous religious leaders are famously put in their place when Jesus remarks, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Clearly, harshness toward the sinner is not Jesus’ style – nor should it be the style of his Church.  Yet Jesus not only puts the religious leaders in their place.  Jesus also puts the apprehended woman in her place:  “’Has no one condemned you, woman?’ Jesus asked.  ‘No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Then neither do I condemn you, you may go.  But from now on avoid this sin.’”  Plainly Jesus is not condemnatory.   He is not unduly critical or (God forbid!) judgmental.  Rather Jesus calls a spade a spade.  The master acknowledges the woman’s sin but he also recognizes in her the possibility of conversion.  In fact he invites her to conversion:  “From now on, sin no more!” 

       This meeting on the streets of ancient Palestine between a sinner and her Savior could have amounted to no more than a feel good encounter, a hail-fellow-well-met happening, a casual exchange.  But Jesus benevolently transforms a conversation into a conversion.  Jesus is firm but not stern.  He is sympathetic but not sappy.  He does not leave the woman in her sins but instills in her a new sense of self-worth, esteem and confidence.  Jesus reminds her gently of her own capacity for goodness, virtue and maturity – not in so many words but by his courage in taking on the prestigious crowd in her defense.  Jesus’ respect for her on his part generated a new respect for self on her part.  She left Jesus a changed woman. 

       Conversion is integral to the Christian life.  God invites each believer to leave behind man’s native sinfulness and advance into a life of virtue, goodness and communion with Him.  God is never judgmental; rather he judges sin for what it’s worth and graciously beckons every sinner to reformation, repentance and conversion.       COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner          Peace: the Fruit of Obedience          1 April 2004AD

       It has been pointed out (by Brian Stoffregen, a Lutheran no less) that nowhere in his Gospel account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem does St. Luke mention palm branches.  In fact, the Gospel according to St. John is the only narrative that explicitly states palm was used to greet Jesus.  St. Matthew reads “branches of trees” and St. Mark suggests “leaves from the field.”  I recall from my youth in Woonsocket that the Ukrainian churches in the neighborhood always distributed pussy willows on the Sunday before Easter.  Palm branches must have been rare in Eastern Europe.  In St. Luke, the honor paid to Jesus is having cloaks placed on the dusty ground so that he can ride over them toward the holy city.  Another curious omission from the Gospel of St. Luke is the word “hosanna.”  Of all the tributes connected with our Lord, this Hebrew word is certainly the one most closely associated with the Master’s arrival in the Judean capital on Palm Sunday.  (I had a cat for a number of years that I named Hosanna because she arrived happily at the rectory on Palm Saturday.)  Instead, St. Luke chooses to re-introduce an old theme that first appeared in the infancy narratives of his Gospel.  The disciples, echoing the angels at Bethlehem, sing out with joy, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 

       Peace is one of St. Luke’s favorite Gospel themes.  And clearly, peace is a favored theme of the entire Scriptures.  Indeed, peace would be the first Messianic gift bestowed by Jesus on the world just saved by his death on the Cross.  Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the priest/prophet Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be ennobled as “the Prince of Peace.”   The Baptist’s father Zechariah looked forward to the “way of peace” that the Messiah would inaugurate.  The elderly Simeon can face death “in peace” because he has witnessed the arrival of the Christ.  The angels famously sing out “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth,” as they break the news of Jesus’ birth to the Judean countryside.   Jesus would later weep over this beloved capital city because it did not know the things that were made for its “peace,” missing the time of its visitation. 

       St. John in his Gospel highlights the importance of peace as a Messianic gift by citing the very first words out of the mouth of the Resurrected Christ to his apostles:  “Peace be with you!”   These were also the last words out of Jesus’ mouth when he encouraged these same disciples at the Last Supper: “My peace I leave you.  My peace I give unto you.” These very phrases from St. John’s Gospel are incorporated verbatim into the Communion Rite of our Catholic Mass, singling out peace with God and neighbor as the indispensable quality needed for the worthy reception of the Eucharist. 

       The peace that St. Luke celebrates so profusely in his Gospel (that Lutheran clergyman lists fourteen occurrences) is not to be confused with tranquility, serenity, or even harmony.  Recall that Jesus himself said, “I have not come for peace but for division.”   The peace of Christ derives from the faith-based conviction that one is in total agreement with the Will of God.  Mankind lost this re-assuring peace when our first parents defied the Will of God and went their independent way.  Jesus rescued that gift of peace for a fallen world when he clung to the Will of God in the face of awesome difficulties:  “Not my will but thine be done.”   Jesus was never more at peace with God than when he was hanging on the Cross for the world’s salvation.  Still, there was no tranquility, no serenity, and no harmony on Mount Calvary.  Rather strife, enmity, and division were openly displayed there.  Yet Jesus knew peace there.  “In His Will is our peace,” Dante would correctly observe. 

      Inner peace is the fruit of obedience.  Mankind will never know peace as long as he flies in the face of God.  Jesus was the man of peace precisely because he embraced the Will of God without hesitation.  And his great gift to the world at Easter is the strength to know and follow the Will of God which will eventually lead mankind to peace – not the false peace or ease sought by the world but the joyous peace of conscience that comes from doing the right thing.                  COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner          Calvary: Christi’s Moment          8 April 2004AD

       One of the gripes leveled by the critics of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is that the popular film focuses on too narrow a portion of Jesus’ life.  The film is admittedly consumed by the last twelve hours of Jesus’ public life.  The action of the movie moves from Christ’s agony in the Garden of Olives to his last breath on the hill of Calvary.  It would have been beneficial, some critics suggest, if Mr. Gibson had added a few flashbacks of important incidents in Jesus’ life, giving a broader and truer portrayal of who this God-Man truly was. 

       Some reviewers propose that a substantial segment of the Sermon on the Mount should have been included in the production to convey the message of a compassionate and considerate Jesus.  Perhaps a shot of the transfigured Christ atop Mount Tabor could have been featured to underline the Divine Nature of the Master.  Or maybe a scene of Jesus enjoying himself at the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany would assure the viewer that Jesus was genuinely human, susceptible to the pleasures of family life like any other individual.  Indeed a more significant miracle than the mere healing of the high priest’s servant’s ear could have been selected to depict Jesus’ exalted status as the Son of God.  The multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the wilderness would certainly fit this bill.  It was, after all, Jesus most popular miracle, the only one recorded in all four Gospels.  Alas, Mr. Gibson did not share the insights of his many critics and his detractors propose that his film is the poorer for it – at least in their opinion.

       The discussion here relates to the most significant moments in Jesus’ life that would deliver to the average believer the most accurate yet succinct revelation of who Christ was.  Let’s just suppose that Jesus himself had chosen a single moment in his own lifetime that would expose most concisely yet most completely his true nature and mission.  Would Jesus have selected any of the above-mentioned significant events, important as they were?  He actually did not opt for any of them.  The truth is that Jesus did choose a certain privileged moment in his life and left orders that this moment should be memorialized down through the ages as the crowning and climatic moment of his earthly existence.

“The day before he suffered, he took bread in his sacred hands and looking

up to heaven, to you, his Almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise.  He

broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said ”Take this, all of you, and

eat it:  this is my body which will be given up for you.  When supper was ended,

he took the cup.  Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples,

and said, ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it:  This is the cup of my blood,

the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.  It will be shed for you and for

           all so that sins may be forgiven.  Do this in memory of me.’”

       Of all the precious moments in Jesus’ life the one he personally decided to ritualize was the moment of his death.  The moment His Body was given and His Blood shed, His moment on Calvary, was uniquely appreciated by Jesus beyond all other events.  By instituting His Body and His Blood at the moment of death in the Eucharist Jesus was making a personal statement about Himself and his mission for all time.   This is the matter in which He wanted to be remembered.   Jesus asked to be recalled as emptying Himself out of obedience to the Father, giving His Body, shedding His Blood, for the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of the world.  This sacrifice, Jesus knows, is the greatest work He will ever accomplish.  His passion and death leading to His subsequent exaltation by the Father on Easter are the entire Gospel message, the whole New Testament, the complete Good News captured in a single event.  To ponder Christ’s life-giving death is to realize the severity of sin, the value of grace, and the steadfastness of God.  Clearly then, Christ left His best statement about His life in the Eucharistic sacrifice.  The Eucharist is the entire economy of salvation captured in a single sacramental moment.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson was not so far off the mark after all.          COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Christ the Light of the World         15 April 2004AD

        Some nineteenth century philosopher remarked that if God did not exist, mankind would have to invent him.  It is true that having God around provides handy explanations.  How did we get here?  Where are we going?  What keeps everything orderly?  The same might be said of the Resurrection.  If Jesus had not risen from the dead, mankind would have to invent this return to life.  In fact, mankind invents the Resurrection regularly.  Society has all sorts of symbols of new life that it resurrects each springtime to re-assure itself that life is filled with hope.  The Easter egg is found nowhere in Scripture, yet we all understand the symbolism of the chick breaking out the eggshell just as Jesus broke out of the tomb.  The Easter bunny is another non-Scriptural affirmation of man’s desire for a new lease on life.  Apparently some bunnies loose the white fur that allows them to hide in snow in favor of a brown coat that lets them disappear into the shrubbery.   Spring flowers, of course, especially the Easter lily, are universal sign of new life, new hope, new beginnings.  A recent arrival on the New Life symbol scene is the butterfly.  Butterflies are never mentioned in the Bible, although Jesus does mention moths.  Yet the notion of a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon and flying off to an exalted life in nature does have its Christological overtones.

       Certainly Catholics do not have to turn to the harmless world of chicks and bunnies and butterflies for symbolism.  Clearly the Catholic Church’s favorite Easter symbol is the Paschal Candle.  The Easter Vigil is celebrated after sundown.  The world is enveloped in darkness.  The spark from a flint engenders a new fire.  The hefty Easter candle is lit.  Its flame is proclaimed throughout the church during a solemn procession.  The congregation passes the new fire from believer to believer.  The candle and its light are then celebrated in the impassioned Exultet.  Christ our light has dawned.  This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

       A true appreciation of the spiritual light which is Christ can only occur when one has a sincere appreciation of the moral darkness that envelopes the world.  Much of the world’s darkness is unmistakable:  terrorism, abortion, corruption in high places, drugs, violence, family abuse, pornography, the many forms of injustice and unchastity.  But there are other forms of darkness that do not always evoke a gasp from a believer.  Some forms of darkness masquerade as toleration, compassion and broadmindedness.  A specific darkness of this sort is the contemporary movement to eliminate God from public life.  Modern society would never insist that God has no place in one’s life.  That would be too obvious.  Rather God and religion are understood by modern American society as private undertakings, done in the seclusion of one’s home, celebrated within church walls.  Hence, prayers have not been said in public schools for some decades.  Sunday shopping is universal.  The Ten Commandments and manger scenes have become offensive to some eyes.  The phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance disturbs some consciences.  The Vatican’s delegation to the United Nations is considered controversial.  Some politicians insist that their religious beliefs will have no influence whatsoever on their governmental decisions.  Other politicians who speak from their Judaeo-Christian backgrounds are ridiculed as bigoted and intolerant.   A clearly secularist elite has successfully convinced many well-meaning Americans that public expressions of religion must be sacrificed on the altar of open-mindedness and tolerance.  Thus the devil, who also comes as an angel of light, has convinced many that the privatization of religion is the only compassionate stance in a pluralistic society.  “Thou shall not offend” is a new commandment that must never be broken, while the other ten may be ignored with impunity.

        While society assails religion from without, the Christian community assaults the faith from within.  Casualness toward the Names of God and Christ for entertainment purposes is shocking.  And no one complains.  Failure to observe the Sabbath in any fashion whatsoever is commonplace.  (Home Depot stayed open on Easter Day – anticipating few complaints.)  Mass attendance among many families is slipshod.    And this is all in the name of broadmindedness.  Believers must open their eyes to the outer darkness in order to appreciate the saving light which is Christ.       COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Church Founding Appearances       22 April 2004AD

       The appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection are often called “Church Founding” appearances.  Through these visits of the Risen Christ, any loose strings from the public ministry of Jesus were neatly drawn together to ensure that the Kingdom of God would happily continue to subsist in the Roman Catholic Church.   For example, last Sunday churchgoers witnessed the ministry of reconciliation being handed over by Christ to his Apostles.  This ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of peace, was established by Christ’s death on the Cross and is now exercised by his Church primarily through the sacraments of Baptism and Penance.  Again, the several meals that Jesus shares with his apostles after the Resurrection, whether at Emmaus or in the Upper Room or along the seashore, all have Eucharistic overtones.  Their reliance on the explanation of Scripture and on the sharing of food reflects a primitive outline of the Mass celebrated throughout the world today.

       Another loose end that Jesus wants to tighten before his return to the Father is the nomination of St. Peter as the visible head of the Church on earth.  It is persuasively clear to anyone reading the Gospels that Peter was singled out during Jesus’ public life for a role of leadership in the Church.  Peter, along with his brother Andrew and their co-workers, James and John, was the first disciple called by Jesus Christ at the beginning of his public career.  Peter, James and John witnessed alone of the Twelve the glory of the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and the final agony in the garden.  Invariably when a question is asked by Jesus or an action is demanded by some turn of events, it is Peter who takes the initiative.  It is Peter who bids Jesus to invite him across the water.  It is Peter who asks how extensive forgiveness must be: “Seven times?”  It is Peter who finds the temple tax in the fish’s mouth. It is Peter’s mother-in-law who is uniquely cured among the apostles’ relatives.  It is Peter with John who prepares the Last Supper room.  The denials of Peter are the only ones recorded in the Gospels even though all the disciples save John abandoned Christ.  It is Peter who impetuously strikes the servant Malchus’ ear.   It is Peter who rushes to the empty tomb.  And it is Peter who is single out by Christ for the first announcement of his resurrection:  “Go and tell Peter and the other disciples…”  And, most importantly, all four Gospel report the decisive confession of Peter in Jesus as the Messiah.  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  (Mt.16); You are the Christ (Mk.8); The Christ of God (Lk.9); You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Jn.6).

       And now, after the Resurrection, Jesus chooses to confirm all that has gone before in his unique relationship with St. Peter.  In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus exercises his ministry of reconciliation when he invites Peter to renounce his recent triple denials of the Master and to re-affirm resoundingly his love for Christ.  Even in the phrasing of Jesus’ reconciling questions, Peter’s relationship with Jesus is viewed as superior.  “Peter, do you love me more than these?” Jesus inquires of his old fiend three times.  Peter is somewhat embarrassed by the triple insistence of Jesus and so he pleads that Jesus knows everything; he knows well that Simon Peter loves him.  And then Jesus rewards Peter with a corresponding triple commission: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep, feed my sheep.”

       Jesus, himself the Good Shepherd, after the style of King David, the boy shepherd, now hands the ministry of shepherding over to St. Peter.  Peter is to shepherd the sheep (feed my lambs) but also to shepherd the shepherds (strengthen your brothers).  St. Luke reports the Master’s exact words to St. Peter: But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail: and when you are converted, strengthen your brothers.

       Clearly Jesus, and the sacred authors of Scripture, did not want to leave any doubt in anyone’s mind about the unique role that St. Peter and the Office of Peter would play in salvation history down through the ages.  Indeed it was in the mind of Christ Himself to make Peter, along with his successors, in the phrase of St. Leo the Great, “the primate of all the bishops.”  St. Peter’s unique and responsible role is irrefutable.  Certainly, there are no loose ends here.                            COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Humanae Vitae: Test of the Institution         29 April 2004AD

       In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued his historic and prophetic teaching on the regulation of births known as Humanae Vitae.  The Pope taught authoritatively that every act of sexual intercourse had to be “open to the transmission of life.”   The Pontiff’s teaching was not well received especially in some academic circles in the United States.   A number of Catholic moral theology professors had anticipated the Vatican’s approval of the celebrated “pill,” invented by a Catholic ironically, but no such permission was given.  My own seminary professor, Father Charles Curran, formerly of St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester but then at Catholic University, took the lead in vocal protest against the Papal instruction and was bluntly censured by Washington’s Cardinal O’Boyle.  Father Curran was not alone in second-guessing Rome’s directive.  The hierarchies of Germany and France offered the suggestion that Roman Catholics should sincerely familiarize themselves with the official teaching of the Church and then follow their own lights in applying it to their daily lives.  The Pope is presenting Catholics with an ideal, they said, but some compromise in practical, day-to-day life is understandable.  In other words, let your conscience be your guide.

       This birth control controversy almost forty years ago resulted in the triumph of the individual Catholic conscience over the legitimate teaching authority of the Church.  There is no other way to state this.  Cardinal O’Boyle was ridiculed by the Catholic elite and abandoned by the Catholic mainstream.  Father Charles Curran was applauded by the press and supported by the public.  Since then, the Catholic conscience, relieved of official Church guidance, has been led down the secular path of birth control, abortion, cohabitation, divorce and remarriage, pre-marital sex, and now same-sex marriages.  And what is true of Catholic sexual morality is reflected in other areas of Catholic life:  notably the rules on Sabbath rest and Sunday Mass attendance are observed by fewer and fewer Catholics. To borrow the metaphor of this Sunday’s Gospel, every Catholic is now his or her own shepherd.  Our true shepherds, our bishops, have about as much authority as a parish council.  In the popular mind, they have become advisors, not teachers, and, even less, leaders.

       In spite of consistent and often repeated statements on the part of our present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and his close advisors as well as the occasional utterances of the American hierarchy, the individual Catholic conscience is popularly understood to be the arbiter of right and wrong within the Catholic community.  The current controversy over politicians of Catholic background receiving Holy Communion when they adamantly propose and promote anti-Catholic practices, specifically abortion, highlights this misunderstanding.  Catholics might well discuss gun control, the just war, capital punishment, immigration law and environmental issues and arrive at disparate conclusions.  Catholicism has thrived on various schools of thought.  But the direct taking of innocent unborn life has never been tolerated by any authentic Catholic teacher and certainly not by any of the Church’s official shepherds.   The abortion issue – let’s be honest -- has become the litmus test of authentic Catholicism just as abortion is, sadly, the litmus test of secular feminism.   Abortion is the ultimate triumph of the individual over the community.  The aborting woman must triumph over her unborn child whose life she is about to take, over the child’s father whose contribution to new life she must ignore, over God who is author of every life, over the Church whose teachings are clear, over society of which this child would have been a member, and over history which until 1973 viewed abortion as an unspeakable crime.  Abortion is secular individualism in its profoundest sense. 

        Abortion is indeed anti-life, first and foremost.  But in today’s America, abortion is also anti-Catholic.  How any Roman Catholic can consider the ramifications of abortion and then present himself at the altar step as a member of the Body of Christ defies logic as much as it disregards the faith. And, personally, how a priest could hold a Host to the lips of someone who professionally, consistently and unapologetically favors abortion disgraces his faith as well as it demeans his logic.   

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The Quiet Corner           Now It Was Night    6 May 2004AD

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, Jesus utters what may be his most peculiar as well as his most profound words.   The scene is familiar to every Christian.  Jesus has gathered his twelve apostles together for the annual paschal meal.  The atmosphere is tense with the knowledge of imminent suffering and death.  St. John captures the ominous mood perfectly when he comments tersely: “Now it was night.”  Yes, indeed it was night, the dark night of satanic betrayal and devilish denial.  And yet, in the midst of this tragic supper as Judas steals out of the upper room to transact his nasty business, Jesus states clearly: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him.”         Jesus most surprisingly singles out this night of treachery as his moment of glory.

       Yet on further reflection, the history of salvation amply illustrates that it is precisely at those moments of challenge and even tragedy that the true glory of God is clearly manifested.   Abraham is today called “the father of believers” because he was the first man to comprehend the essence of our Judaeo-Christian faith.   God promised Abraham and his senescent wife Sarah that they would be the parents of a multitude of nations, as numerous as the sands of the seashore or the stars of the sky.  To anyone else, this promise would have been a cheat and a disappointment.  Abraham’s elderly spouse was well beyond her childbearing years and God’s pledge of progeny must have seemed very idle indeed.  Sarah is recorded as having laughed at the proposal.  Yet Abraham believed God in the face of this insurmountable challenge.   Abraham grasped that the God of our fathers was always the God who brought life out of death, light out of darkness and good out of evil.  From the beginning, there was a measure of irony in the Christian faith.  Thus the authentic Christian senses that it is always darkest before the dawn, so to speak.

       Abraham was not alone in “hoping against hope,” as St. Paul would later write.  Moses endured forty years of stiff-necked ingratitude as he led the Hebrew hordes through the wilderness.  Yet he kept faith in God who brings good out of evil.  An exhausted Elias stood in isolation before Jezebel and her pagan prophets as he tried to recall Israel to its original covenant with YHWH.  An angelic messenger fortified him with water and cakes so that he too could persevere in his faith in God who brings light out of darkness.  Jesus, on the night before he died, declared his faith, too, in God who would bring life out of death.  “Hope isn’t hope until the situation is hopeless,” wrote Chesterton with his perceptive irony, underlining the essence of Christian belief.

       A cursory survey of Church history confirms that, for the Christian, night inevitably leads into day.  The first three hundred years of persecution and martyrdom bore fruit in the conversion of the Roman Empire.  The four or five hundred years of barbarian invasions known as the Dark Ages solidified the monastic movement in the Western Church and led to a great age of learning.  The scandal of the Protestant Reformation evoked the Tridentine era of purification and discipline that lasted four hundred years.  The Church in our own day is experiencing the darkness of secularity as the Bible becomes a simple handbook, the sacraments mere festivities, the teachings of the Church meager opinions, and God a relic of another age. 

       Yet, with Jesus, the Catholic Church of the twenty-first century must squarely face abortion, same-sex marriage, diminished Mass attendance, political hypocrisy, ecclesiastical diffidence, religious indifference, racial unrest, commercialism, individualism and secularism and still be able to echo the words of her Master, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.”   Hard times have never meant Christian defeat; rather obstacles are the prelude to Christian victory.  Challenges foster authentic Christianity.  Trials have never diminished the faith in the past nor should they now.  God always brings good out of evil, life out of darkness, and life out of death.         COMPLETE

 The Quiet Corner          Spirit Continues the Work of the Son        13 May 2004AD

       The impression is sometimes given by Catholic art and folklore that the shepherds at the crib in Bethlehem understood the entire significance of Jesus’ humanity being united to his Divinity.  What later theologians would call the hypostatic union is reckoned self-evident to Jesus’ pastoral visitors.   Actually the full implication of two natures residing in one person was not sorted out for decades, even centuries.  Certainly the same is true of the Holy Trinity.  While the true Christian faith has always been Trinitarian and the framework of the Trinity is certainly found in Sacred Scripture, it would take centuries once again before accurate explanations were worked out to express in a popular manner the essential mystery of the Godhead.  The Apostles’ Creed, probably the most ancient Christian formulation of the faith, has a lot to say about Jesus, just a little to say about the Father and is satisfied with the mere mention of the Holy Spirit’s name.  Clearly the truths of the faith have not changed but they have significantly developed over the centuries.  And because these mysteries of our faith have been tested by theologians and the faithful alike over the centuries, the modern Christian can read with a clearer eye what to the earliest generations might have been just obscure Bible passages.

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel the Church’s liturgy begins to prepare the faithful for the coming feast of Pentecost by mentioning the Holy Spirit for the first time.  And not only does the liturgy mention the Holy Spirit but it also mentions the Father and the Son!  The passage, taken from Jesus’ Last Supper oration, is a marvelous celebration of the diversity and unity found with the Trinity.  Consider the words of Jesus:

“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name,

will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have told you.”

Jesus declares that the Spirit is sent by the Father to complete the work of the Son.  Observe that there are not three different missions, three different tasks, three different undertakings in the Trinity’s dealing with mankind.  Rather there is really only one eternal task.  The glory of the Father is the mission of all three Divine Persons and, consequently, the mission of the Church.  Jesus, the Son of the Father and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, came into this world to reveal the Father to the universe.  The man Jesus Christ is the sacrament of the Father’s eternal love.  When one sees Jesus, when one studies Jesus, when one embraces Jesus, one surely encounters the Father as well.  The man Jesus is the image of the Father in human terms, just as Jesus in his eternal Sonship is the image of the Father in Divine terms.  From both the human and the Divine angle, Jesus is the perfect Son:  he refers all things to his Father.    “Not My Will but Thine be done,” was Jesus’ motto not only in the Garden of Olives but all throughout his public life and, truth to tell, all throughout eternity as well. 

The Spirit, for his part, faithfully continues the work of the Son.  Although Jesus credits the Spirit with teaching the Church “everything,” the Spirit does not introduce a new Gospel.  Rather the Spirit will simply “remind” the faithful of all that Jesus has already taught about the Father.   Just as the Son was totally oriented toward the Father in both his Divine and human natures, so the Holy Spirit is totally oriented toward the Son’s message when it comes to instructing the world.  In contemporary terms, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all on the same wavelength; they’re with the program.  Although they are distinct personalities, they operate out of a common Divine nature: Three Persons in One God, as the time-honored catechetical phrase celebrates it.  The work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit, although different, have the one common focus: the revelation of the Father to the world.  As followers of Jesus and as a Spirit-filled people, the Church has the same mission as the Divine persons, namely, to reveal the Father’s love to the world.  

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The Quiet Corner          Faith & Works        20 May 2004AD

       Popular Judaism in the time of Jesus Christ defined itself in terms of the Mosaic Law.  If the believer kept the Law, then he was a good Jew.  Judaism was actually a deeper spiritual reality than the mere keeping of the Law.  The Sinai Covenant meant more than the Ten Commandments.  Yet, in everyday life, it was the observance of the Law that set the faithful Jew apart from the slacker.  Older Catholics can certainly identify with this phenomenon.  Time was when Mass on Sunday, no meat on Friday, fasting from midnight and a horror of divorce indicated the good Catholic.  The popular legalism of the pre-Vatican II Church clearly distinguished the conscientious Catholic.  The very first Christians, being largely converts from Judaism, faced a major decision as the Church began to attract Greeks and Romans into its membership.  Whether these new converts from paganism should be obliged to keep the old Jewish Law was a critical determination that rested on the shoulders of Christianity’s first generation.  The first reading from Acts of Apostles last week explained the early Church’s momentous decision not to burden the Church’s new members with the keeping of the old Mosaic Law.   This benevolence on the part of the early Christian community at Jerusalem was truly a radical commentary on the young Church’s self-identity.  The Mosaic Law, once imposed by God Himself, was now declared obsolete by the Church’s first leaders.  This self-confident manifestation of Church authority had monumental significance. 

       This month of May also boasts the feast of St. Matthias, the new Apostle appointed to take the place of the traitorous Judas.  Before Matthias’ election, only Jesus Christ himself had chosen and commissioned an apostle.  Now, with the election of Matthias, the early Church began to do what previously only Jesus had done.  The Church was indeed growing in self-awareness, in self-identity, in self-confidence.  The Church had the astounding courage to assume the role of Jesus Christ in history.  “He who hears you, hears me,” began to take on practical significance for our first ancestors in the faith.  Clearly the Church had been established to continue the work of Jesus Christ. 

       This coming Sunday worshippers will hear the fatal tale of the stoning of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr and one of the first deacons.  As an integral part of the sacrament of Holy Orders, the order of deacons made explicit in the first years after Christ’s death what was implicit in Christ’s establishment of the priesthood at the Last Supper.  The first Christian leaders believed that it was within their authority to appoint these first seven men to assist in the work of Jesus’ sacramental priesthood.  Again, what only Jesus had previously done, now the Church felt competent to do.  The Church was continuing the work of Jesus Christ down through the ages.

       The exemption of the Greco-Roam converts from the Mosaic Law, the appointing of a new Apostle, and the expansion of the priesthood into the order of deacons were all decisive and significant steps in the early Church’s self-development and inward maturity.   The early Church was not usurping the authority of Jesus Christ by making these vital decisions.  The early Church was actually acting on the authority of Jesus Christ by implementing in daily life the full meaning of the original Gospel message.  The Church is indeed the continuation of the Incarnation down through the ages.  The Church makes real in every generation the flesh and blood Kingdom of God originally announced and effected by Jesus Christ. 

       Ascension Day is not only the day of Christ’s leave taking, the commemoration of his happy return to the Father.  Ascension Day is also the day of the great commissioning, when Jesus would hand “full authority” over to his successors, the Apostles.  The Church must never shrink from exercising the fullness of this authority.    Today’s Church, like the early Church, must appreciate its own God-given power to teach, to serve, and, when necessary, to discipline the faithful.   It took courage for the first Christians to make critical decisions.  And it will always take courage for the Christian community to do the right thing.  Happily the resources are still available.           COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner          The work of the Spirit is reconciliation.                27 May 2004AD

       Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Luke the Apostle both write explicitly about Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit into the lives of the first Christian community.  Yet the two sacred authors tell their similar stories in widely separate ways.  St. John has Jesus convey the Spirit to the Twelve Apostles on Easter Sunday night.  “Then he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them.  Whose sins you shall retain they are retained.”  Often these words are linked with the institution of the Sacrament of Penance – and rightly so.  Yet Jesus is speaking here as well of the whole ministry of reconciliation which he was entrusting to this Church.  On that Easter evening Christ first wishes his Apostles, “Peace,” the peace he has just won by his death on the Cross, the peace that reverses the unsettling sin of Adam and Eve.  Then he takes the fruit of the Cross, reconciliation, and entrusts it to his closest associates, commissioning them to dispense healing and forgiveness to the world.   In St. John’s Gospel account, the arrival of the Spirit connotes a restoration of peace through healing and reconciliation.

       St. Luke’s colorful account of the arrival of the Holy Spirit occurs fifty days after Easter coinciding with the ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost.   This ancient festivity commemorated the giving of the Law to Moses on Sinai.  Clearly the earthshaking arrival of the Spirit on the Jewish Pentecost was no co-incidence.   Just as the Law was at the heart of Judaism, so the Spirit would be at the very heart of Christianity.  And once the early Christian Church received the Spirit, a new ministry would take shape.  St. Luke is very clear concerning the nature of this new Spirit-driven ministry.  “…repentance for the forgiveness of sins…” should be preached to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.  Pentecost was the beginning of this mission of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation.

        St. John and St. Luke, employing quite different details, arrive at the same conclusion.  The work of the Spirit is reconciliation.  The Spirit reconciles man to God and man to man.  The enmity that entered this world through the sin of Adam and Eve, alienating the creature from his Creator, is repaired by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The antagonism that arose in this world through original sin, dividing Adam the husband from Eve the wife – “The woman gave it to me and I ate it.” -- is mended by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This first sin of Adam and Eve would cascade down through the ancient years until the tower of Babel with its confusion of tongues would distance every man from his neighbor.  Truly, sin rent all society asunder.  Pentecost would happily reverse the catastrophe of Babel.  The confusion of tongues would be replaced by the gift of tongues, by which the various nationalities – Parthians, Medes, Elamites – would unanimously respond to God present in St. Peter’s moving words.  “What must we do, brothers?”  asks the crowd eager for reconciliation.  Mankind’s alienation is overcome by Christ’s healing gift of the Spirit.

        Healing was always integral to the public ministry of Jesus Christ.  His healing miracles were acted-out parables, acted-out sermons, foreshadowing the arrival of the healing kingdom inaugurated in St. John’s Upper Room on Easter evening and in St. Luke’s Upper Room on Pentecost Day.  The mutes who later spoke, the deaf who then heard, the blind who finally saw, the halt who miraculously walked, were visual and audible foretastes of the marvelous gift of healing and reconciliation that, through Christ and through the Spirit and through the Church, now permeates the universe.  Jesus’ miracles of healing were a pledge of the spiritual healing that would effectively reconcile man to God and men to one another beginning at Pentecost.

        Reconciliation in our contemporary world usually takes place between equals.  Spouses reconcile after some unfortunate disagreement.  Siblings reconcile after a family quarrel.  Reconciliation in the modern world is the result of mutual give-and-take.   Christian reconciliation, on the other hand, is entirely the work of God.  Christian reconciliation is not the fruit of negotiation.  Christian reconciliation results from conversion not conversation.  The scene of Christian reconciliation is not the bargaining table but the confessional.  Man humbly submits and God graciously sets right.  Pentecost celebrates this gift of reconciliation, won by God’s saving Son and conferred by his healing Spirit.                                                                                                                        COMPLETE

       The Quiet Corner          Trinity: God’s Inner Life          3 June 2004AD

       The solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, celebrated this coming Sunday, is the happy festival of God’s own inner life.  “God is love,” St. John writes simply and pointedly.   The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the believing community’s elaboration of this basic truth.  The Father loves the Son.  The Son loves the Father.  The Holy Spirit is this love between these two Divine Persons.  The Trinity then is an eternal communion of love, an unending giving and receiving within the Godhead itself, a total openness to and a total appreciation of the other’s perfections. 

        Bear with me as I describe the Divine Persons as “subsistent relationships.”  By this is meant that the Three Divine Persons do not make sense without one another.  The Father is entirely focused on the Son.  How could he genuinely be a Father if there were no Son with whom he could fully share his life?  The Son is totally focused on the Father.  How could the Son be truly a Son unless there were a Father for him to heed and obey?  The very fact that God through the Scriptures chose to reveal himself to mankind in relational terms like father and son confirms these observations.  God then consists of “subsistent relationships,” of enduring bonds, of eternal, mutual love.  The very words Father and Son substantiate this.

       The Spirit, for his part, is the relationship between the Father and the Son.  Just as the Father does not make sense apart from the Son, and vice versa, so the Spirit does not stand alone in the Trinity.  The Holy Spirit is the very love through which the Father reaches out toward his Son.  And the Holy Spirit is the very love by which the Son responds fully to his Father.  As Father John Randall often remarks in a folksy manner, “The Holy Spirit is the ‘WOW” between the Father and the Son.”  Indeed, God is love:  The Father loving the Son; the Son loving the Father; the Spirit being the channel through which this love is conveyed. Clearly God is love: a triple enduring relationship of Divine Persons.

       Human explanations for God’s inner life will always fall short of the Divine reality itself.  Mankind can describe God but he cannot define him.  God is always one step ahead of even the most insightful believer.  Quite generously, God himself has chosen the vocabulary with which mankind must work in his attempts to comprehend God.  “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Spirit” are Divinely inspired expressions which are ignored or dismissed at the believer’s peril.  It is certainly true that God is a Creator, a Redeemer and a Sanctifier.  These words, however, explain God’s nature, not his personality.  And it is equally true that the love of God has certain maternal qualities, like the mother hen gathering her chicks.  Yet to displace the Trinity’s venerable, traditional and inspired titles with fashionable and trendy nomenclature is, at best, naïve, or, most likely, rash, and, perhaps, even sacrilegious.   The authentic believer must daily ponder the relationship between Father and Son, and between Son and Father, reflecting on how human fatherhood and human sonship can shed light on the personhood of God.   Mankind’s insights into the Holy Trinity are chiefly the result of God’s self-revelation, never the mere consequence of sociological trends.

       The family of man, and especially the Christian Church, should particularly meditate on the place and role of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who became man in Jesus Christ.  The Divine Son’s personality never changed; he was and is always the obedient Son of the Father.  But after the Incarnation, after becoming flesh, the Son of God acted out his Divine Sonship in human ways.   The constant daily prayer of Jesus toward his Father, the conviction of being sent to do the Father’s bidding, the unfailing obedience to the Father’s Will even in the face of misunderstanding and death, the total respect for all of the Father’s work, even the least aspects of creation, Christ’s reliance on God’s providence, Christ’s eager return to the Father – these were all earthly manifestations of the inner workings of the Son, inner workings that the believer is invited to imitate.  The prayer, the mission, the obedience, the reliance of Christ on the Father are shared with each believer who bears the name of Christian.  For we are indeed “sons in the Son.”                        COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Multiplied Loaves & God’s Munificence         10 June 2004AD

       The multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the wilderness and the miraculous change of water into wine during the wedding feast at Cana share a number of common themes.  For Catholics, of course, the most obvious point of correspondence between the incidents is Christ’s use of bread and wine as the focus of these twin events.  Bread and wine would later become the sacramental emblems of Christ’s sacrificial banquet and his enduring Real Presence.  Although not much is made of the fish that Christ increased for the benefit of his numerous followers, the alert Christian will recall the post-Resurrection meals that Christ shared with his apostles on the beaches of Galilee.  These after-Easter meals are rich with sacramental and Eucharistic significance.  These meals became a sign of the Risen Christ’s continuing Presence within his Church.

       Beside the sacramental references that bread and wine connote to the believing Christian, there is another idea common to the multiplication of the loaves and the transformation into wine.  Generosity, abundance, liberality, munificence – call it what you will – the bounteousness of God through Christ is the most striking theme of these two miracles.  God’s largess is clear to one reading the Cana narrative.  It was a large wedding: Mary, Jesus and the twelve Apostles had been invited over and above relatives and friends.  The young couple’s liberality with their guests is obvious:  they ran out of wine.  The six stone water jars containing fifteen to twenty-five gallons speak for themselves.  They are, of course, filled “to the brim.”  And the wine turns out to be the best ever.  Every detail here bespeaks God’s generosity toward his people.  He is truly a God of plenty.

        The multiplication of the loves in the wilderness (the only miracle reported in all four gospels) underlines this notion of bigheartedness revealed at Cana.  First of all, the number of people involved is staggering by ancient standards.  Ancient demographics cannot be compared to modern population trends.  If Jerusalem had ten thousand inhabitants in the time of Christ, it would have been considered a major metropolis.  At best, Jerusalem was a small town and the villages of Galilee were even less populated. So gathering five thousand men (“not counting women and children” as the politically incorrect St. Matthew observes) was an outrageous assembly of people.  The event takes place not in the desertlike landscape of Judea but rather in the lush greenery of Galilee.  St. John notes descriptively that “there was much grass in that place.”  And not only are the men, women and children amply fed, but twelve baskets of fragments are gathered up after their refreshment.  Jesus’ careful instruction to his disciples to “collect the fragments lest they perish” is a further sign of God’s goodness.  Nothing goes to waste in the kingdom of God.  And finally the people are so impressed with Jesus’ practical concern for their well-being that they attempt to capture him and make him their king.  He characteristically eludes their grasp. 

        The two miracles together are an overwhelming endorsement of God’s generous benevolence toward his people.  The ancient Jews sang frequently of the “loving kindness” or “great love” of God the Father for his Chosen People.  The Hebrew “hesed ouimet,” that is, the kindness and mercy of God, is celebrated in psalm after psalm.  The deliverance from slavery in Egypt was God’s greatest act of benevolence toward his people and the Jews never forgot it.  To this day, the Exodus is the defining moment in Jewish history.  Recall that God fed the Jews during that long trek with the manna, the heavenly bread, and with the water from the rock.  Now Jesus will feed his followers with the true heavenly bread, his Body, and the true living water, his Blood.  God’s ancient generosity continues into modern times.

        It is surprising that, in spite of so much Biblical evidence, the generosity of God toward his people is a lesson poorly learned by believers.  Christians act as if they had to beg mercy from God rather than acknowledge that his abundant mercy is already available to the faithful.  The need to beg for Divine attention indicates a pagan more than a Christian mentality.  The true believer knows that he already has God’s kind attention and God’s generous assistance, amply confirmed by the preaching, ministry and miracles of Jesus Christ.         COMPLETE 

The Quiet Corner        St. Peter's Confession    17 June 2004AD

       The celebrated confession of St. Peter in Jesus as the long awaited Messiah is reported in all four Gospels.  St. Mark characteristically offers the briefest account.  He simply has St. Peter answer, “You are the Christ.”  But this does not indicate that St. Peter’s confession is unimportant for St. Mark.  St. Mark has St. Peter profess Christ as Messiah in the very dead center of his Gospel.  The eight chapters preceding the confession depict Jesus the wonderworker, Jesus the celebrity, Jesus the superstar.  Healings, exorcisms, and miracles abound to the amazement of the crowds.  After the confession, the Gospel takes a radical turn introducing St. Mark’s readership more and more to Jesus the Suffering Servant, Jesus the Crucified Savior, Jesus the Sacrificial Lamb.   With all due respect, St. Mark practices the old rouse of “bait and switch.”  Jesus’ miracles attracted the crowds; Jesus’ sufferings saved the crowds.

        St. Luke’s account of the confession of St. Peter is also fairly terse.  In this Gospel account, St. Peter responds to Jesus’ inquiry concerning his identity quite pointedly: “The Christ of God.”  As is typical of St. Luke, the incident takes place while Jesus was “praying alone.”  It is in St. Luke’s Gospel that Jesus is pre-eminently the man of prayer.  Such time spent in prayer is an indication of Jesus closeness to the Father.  Jesus and the Father were of one mind, one heart.  Placing the confession of St. Peter in this context of intimate prayer lets the believer conclude that Jesus’ dialogue with his disciples (“Who do you say that I am?”) was not just Jesus’ idea but also had the blessing of the Father in heaven.  As with St. Mark, this confession was a turning point for St. Luke as well.  St. Luke follows the confession of St. Peter with the memorable and thoughtful words, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me…Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”   Once one appreciates the true significance of Jesus Christ, he or she can expect challenges, trials, difficulties.  In this world, to know Christ is know suffering.

        Like St. Mark, St. Matthew locates the famous confession of St. Peter on the missionary journey to Caesarea Philippi, along the edges of Jewish influence.  But unlike St. Mark, St. Matthew posits a grand elaboration on St. Peter’s acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah.  For Roman Catholics, these words are among the most brilliant in the Biblical constellation.  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” St. Peter declares proudly and enthusiastically.  Jesus, for his part, does not emphasize the challenges and trials of such a confession for the Church at large as occurs in St. Mark and St. Luke.  Instead Jesus in St. Matthew’s Gospel explains the significance that this confession is going to have personally for St. Peter.  “Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my heavenly Father.  And I for my part declare that you are Peter and on this rock I will build y Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  This is the only time in all four Gospel accounts when Jesus blesses on individual:  “Blessed are you, Simon…” Surely anyone reading this passage with an open mind must conclude that words of tremendous significance are being spoken here.  Happily our Catholic Church takes these profound words quite seriously. 

       St. John, as might be expected, places the illustrious confession of St. Peter in a different but intensely appropriate situation.   Jesus has just finished his provocative sermon on the Bread of Life which constitutes chapter six of the Fourth Gospel.  The Jews as well as some disciples are horrified as Jesus’ proposal;  “How can this fellow give us his flesh to eat?”  A number of disciples abandon Jesus and his mission.  Jesus turns sadly to his closest friends and inquires, “Will you also leave me?”  St. Peter, speaking for the Apostolic band, proclaimed, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You alone have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Quite prophetically, St. John indicates that full acceptance of the meaning of the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, is the paramount test for accepting Jesus Himself.  A belief in Jesus that does not accept the full significance of the Eucharist is a disappointment, a cheat and an illusion.  COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Jerusalem through to Rome: Inevitable         24 June 2004AD

       Geography was very important for St. Luke, whose Gospel narrative is being read this liturgical cycle.  Both in his Gospel account and in his Acts of Apostles, a good grasp of the lie of the land is critical to appreciating the full significance of St. Luke’s writings.  While both St. Matthew and St. Luke begin their Gospels with the infancy of Jesus Christ, it is only St. Luke who squarely commences his narrative in “ a city of Galilee named Nazareth.”  St. Matthew does not mention Nazareth until after the return from exile in Egypt when Jesus was presumably a young boy.  That Jesus’ life journey should begin in Nazareth, about ninety miles north of Jerusalem, is critical to understanding St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ life.  For St. Luke, Jesus’ life will begin here in the womb of Mary in far away Nazareth (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”) and work its way inevitably and relentlessly to Jerusalem, the spiritual and cultural capital of Judaism. 

        In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, St. Luke notes carefully, “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem…”   For St. Luke, and certainly for Jesus, Jerusalem connotes the fulfillment, the completion, the realization of Christ’s ministry.  Nothing would deter Jesus from reaching Jerusalem.  Nothing would prevent him from arriving in that capital city.  Nothing would discourage Christ from accomplishing his God-driven mission to suffer, to die and to rise again.  The geographical path from northern Nazareth to southern Jerusalem represents the spiritual journey that Jesus Christ would endure to achieve his Father’s Will.  “He resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.”

       Jesus’ inexorable and ultimately successful passage from Nazareth to Jerusalem must be appreciated with an eye to St. Luke’s other New Testament work: The Acts of Apostles.  Just as St. Luke’s Gospel begins in Nazareth and works its way unalterably to Jerusalem, so the Book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and works its way steadfastly toward the City of Rome.  Rome was, of course, the very center of the ancient world.  Indeed, it was the hub of the universe.  If the infant Church were to accomplish its mission, then it had to set its face toward Rome: it had to reach the center of the world.  

       The Gospel according to St. Luke and the history of the early Christian community recounted in the Acts are both success stories.  Jesus reached Jerusalem and Peter and Paul reached Rome.  Their journeys were challenging and difficult but, in the end, they achieved their goals.  St. Luke wrote his Gospel and his history book to inspire the early Church and successive generations of Christians in their spiritual journeys.  Every believer has his or her personal Jerusalem, his or her personal Rome.  The path can be tortuous and treacherous; the way can be stressful and demanding.  St. Luke’s advice to believers is to persevere.  Jesus did it.  The first Apostles did it.  And every believer can do, relying of course on the grace of God.

       Jesus re-enforces St. Luke’s travel imagery in a series of maxims featured in today’s Gospel passage.  “I will follow you wherever you go,” boasts one eager disciple to Jesus.  Jesus warns the recruit that the journey is difficult:  “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Follow me, Jesus says to the novice, but be prepared for hardships.  He would say the same to us.  Similarly Jesus admonishes, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Once the journey to spiritual victory starts there can be no looking back. 

       St. Luke’s message is filled with promise.  The believer can reach Jerusalem.  The believer can reach Rome.  The believer can obtain spiritual success.  The road is rugged and dangerous.  The journey is long and arduous.  But Jesus’ advice remains: “Don’t look back!”         COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner        Thoughts on Leaving St. Leo’s             1 July 2004AD

       A few weeks ago, Father John A. Sistare, until recently my associate at St. Leo parish in Pawtucket, asked me what my most significant contribution to parish life was during my eleven years in Pawtucket.  I thought for a moment and then replied, “Installing air-conditioning the church.”    Perhaps there are times during the summer when parishioners think that raising the comfort level of the church in the hot months is my enduring contribution to church life in Darlington.   But this is a question that I have asked myself many times during my decade in Pawtucket.  And frankly it is an easy inquiry to answer.

       On the back wall of the church, over the main altar, is a near life size crucifix that has been in various locations in St. Leo Church over the decades.  In the early part of the last century and before, large crosses like this called Mission Crosses were frequently installed in churches as a focal point for the fiery sermons preached by visiting priests giving a parish Mission.  Tradition says that it was once at the front door of the church where parishioners would greet it with a kiss or pat of the hand as they entered church. At some point this Crucifix was removed to the lower church where a chapel was dedicated to accommodate the increased population of Darlington in the 1950s.  It hung quietly there until the mid 1990s.

       As soon as I saw this lifelike Crucifix in the lower church, I resolved someday to move it upstairs where it clearly belonged.  One year, just before Ash Wednesday, a local contractor made some adjustments to the sanctuary area and St. Leo’s Mission Cross was literally resurrected to where it shines now in spotlighted majesty.  The main altar, the tabernacle and this Crucifix are all in a line, each a reminder in different ways of the very heart of the Christian message:  “We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified…”

       The Crucified Christ over the altar at St. Leo church enshrines in plaster two basic Christian beliefs:  the reality of sin and the goodness of God.  Society nowadays, to be blunt, has lost all sense of sin.  People miss Mass repeatedly and then when they do show up they trot up the aisle to receive Communion as if no impediment existed.  People will pay good money to send their children to a Catholic school but forget completely their Sunday obligation.  Young couples are shocked when a priest might question why they are living together before marriage.  People work and shop on the Sabbath at will.  Popular entertainment is beyond the suggestive; it is explicit.  Etc., etc.  Alas, whether Catholic or non-catholic, nothing bothers us anymore.   Everything is O.K.  The Crucifix is a reminder that in God’s eyes, everything is not O.K.  Sin exists, and it needs to be admitted, repented of, and forgiven.  As someone wrote, “If I’m O.K. and you’re O.K., then what is Christ doing up there?”   The Crucifix is summons to repentance and a pledge of forgiveness.

       The Crucified Christ is, as well, a reminder of the goodness of God.  In a representation of Christ crucified, the faithful see enshrined that solemn and celebrated moment of self-giving, wherein Christ gave his body and shed his blood for “us men and for our salvation.”  The Crucifix underlines the love of God made visible, made tangible, in Jesus Christ and specifically in Christ at his moment of greatest challenge.  The body given and the blood shed, sacramentally enshrined in the Eucharist, are symbolically enshrined in our crucifixes.  There is no greater love, Jesus himself reminds us, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  The majestic crucifix over the altar at the parish of St. Leo the Great is a constant and evocative reminder of this great love, inviting parishioners to take advantage of Christ’s self-donating love and, just as importantly, to share Christ’s generous love with others.

COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner              Martha, Mary & Lazarus              15 July 2004AD

       St. Mary Magdalene has been accorded a lot of attention lately by her quiet role in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and, more so, by her celebrated, if spurious, role as the wife of Jesus Christ in the novel The DaVinci Code.  Tradition has it that St. Mary Magdalene was always a woman of great repute, whether that be the spiritual repute that she enjoys today as a saint or the ill repute that legend awards her as a demonized prostitute.  To add more confusion to the mix, Church historians are not sure whether the Mary Magdalene who washed the feet of the Savior and who stood faithfully by the Cross of Jesus at Calvary was the same Mary who is commended by Christ in this Sunday’s Gospel for her prayerful attention to his words as he enjoyed himself at her home.  The rather dynamic and dramatic Mary of Magdala stands in great contrast to the quiet Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who is chastised in this week’s Gospel passage precisely for her lack of dynamism:  "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." 

      In St. Luke’s narrative, Mary comes across as a bit shy and retiring – perhaps even lazy.   Martha, in contrast, is recalled as a bit cranky and shrill.  The human side of both women is very evident.  What must be especially remembered, therefore, is that today both women are revered as saints in the Church.  The feast of St. Mary Magdalene is July 22 and the feast of St. Martha is July 29.  Their brother Lazarus, in spite of his miraculous return from the grave, is not officially honored as a saint in the Western Church – although the Orthodox Church does rank him in the heavenly assembly.  The exaltation of the two women to the detriment of their brother seems to run counter to the latest modern theory that the early Church deliberately disparaged Mary Magdalene as a prostitute to lessen her popular appeal.   It seems that Lazarus is one who got the short end of the stick, so to speak.

       Nonetheless, these three siblings of Bethany, a village within walking distance of Jerusalem where Jesus would relax on his trips to the capital city, are a marvelous example of the how the human factor enters into even the deepest spirituality.  Canonized or not, these three pious Jews and early converts to the Gospel message, clearly illustrate the variety of paths that lead to Kingdom of God.   Lazarus was the great friend of Jesus, whose death brought tears to the Savior’s eyes.  Tradition has it that he later became the first archbishop of Marseilles in France, perhaps testifying to his zeal and enthusiasm for spreading the Good News for which his friend Jesus died.  Martha was the early Christian community’s hostess with the mostest, who, like Pearl Mesta, took great delight in welcoming, entertaining and feeding her contacts.  Martha remains a primal example of practical, Christian charity.  Hospitality was her ministry and comfort was her goal.  Mary obviously contrasts with her brother and sister, remembered neither as a missionary like Lazarus nor as an activist like Martha.  Instead Mary is the prototype of the Church’s contemplative life which continues to focused its attention on Jesus himself, sitting reverently at his feet, prayerfully appreciating his words. 

       The zeal of Lazarus, the hospitality of Martha, the recollection of Mary – these are all important Christian attributes.  Although they are quite different in their manifestation, they are united in their source.  It was his personal, intimate friendship with Jesus that led Lazarus to preach the Gospel in Marseilles.  It was her personal, intimate friendship with Jesus that moved Martha to make this itinerant preacher as comfortable as she could on his frequent visits to her home.  It was her personal, intimate friendship with Jesus that enticed Mary to hang on the Savior’s every word.  What made these three siblings saints was not their zeal or their kindness or even their prayer.  What made these three early Christians saints was their inward focus on Jesus – which then manifested itself in assorted ways. 

       Every Christian needs his or her own personal Bethany: not a place, but a frame of mind, an attitude, an openness toward Jesus as a personal friend, a soul mate, a companion on the journey.  It is relishing the presence of Christ, not any personal talent, that makes a saint.      COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner                The Church: God’s vehicle of Salvation                   29 July 2004AD

       “My relationship with God is direct and personal,” Congressman James Langevin remarked recently to reporters.  “The Church is merely a guest in that relationship,” he concluded.  There have not been more unCatholic words uttered since Martin Luther declared that every man is his own priest.  The notion that the Church can be peripheral to a Catholic’s spiritual life is, at best, a mistake or, at the worst, heresy.   For the authentic Catholic, the Church is not a mere spectator at one’s spiritual life; the Church is one’s spiritual life.  It is the Church that welcomes the believer into the worshipping community, cleansing him from our ancestral sin through Baptism.  It is the Church that nourishes the faithful on the Body and Blood of Christ.  It is the Church that restores the fallen soul to God’s good grace through the sacrament of Penance.  It is the Church that solemnizes marriages and confers holy orders.  It is the Church that strengthens the young adult through Confirmation and fortifies the elderly with the Anointing of the Sick.  It is the Church that affirms, teaches and protects the Word of God revealed in Scripture.  It is the Church that is the defender of the orphan and the widow.  A spiritual life that is maintained apart from these Divinely instituted rituals is sadly undernourished, if not entirely defunct.

        To view the Church as a witness to spiritual events that occur at arm’s length is profoundly to misunderstand the role of mediation in God’s plan of salvation.  God the Father has deliberately and consistently chosen mediators to bring his message of salvation to the world.  Whether it be the ancient promise made to Abraham or the old covenant revealed through Moses or, pre-eminently, the New Covenant realized through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God always employs human mediation to effect Divine consequences.  God invariably reveals himself through human words and human events.  This is the key to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ ( the Word became flesh ) and it is the key to Christ’s establishment  of the Church ( he who hears you hears Me and he who hears Me hears Him Who sent Me ).  Clearly, the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation down through the ages.  The Church extends the saving actions of Jesus Christ to people of every time and place -- through her words, through her sacraments, through her social commitment. 

        So close is the identification of the work of the Church with the work of Jesus Christ that the ancient Church fathers could state boldly that outside the  Church there was no salvation and that one could not have God for a Father unless one had the Church for a Mother.   These maxims might be interpreted more broadly and more benignly nowadays but their basic truth endures.  The Church is the channel through which every grace is bestowed on mankind.  Sometimes this bestowal is obvious: a believing community gathered around the altar of the Lord renewing the sacrifice of Christ.  Other times God’s generosity through the Church is quite mysterious:  almost 80% of the world remains unevangelized.  Nonetheless, it is through Jesus Christ and through his Catholic Church that the fullness of revelation will be brought to mankind.  There is no going around Jesus.  There is no going beyond Jesus.  He alone is God’s Son.  He is the sole mediator of the New Covenant.  He is the unique bridge between heaven and earth.  Indeed, the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone. 

        Just as surely as Christ is indispensable to the Father’s plan of salvation so the universal Church established by Christ and empowered to promote his ministry is indispensable.  To ignore the Church is to ignore Christ; and to ignore Christ is to ignore the Father’s unique revelation of Himself                                                                                           COMPLETE

 The Quiet Corner          Prayer          12 August 2004AD

       A request was made recently by a former parishioner of St. Leo parish. Pawtucket, to speak to the Men of St. Joseph at his current parish of St. Francis de Sales in North Kingston.  The topic broadly suggested was prayer – which just about left the entire economy of salvation at my disposal.  After some thought, my material began to focus more and more on a very traditional and not very innovative system of prayer familiar to all:  the rosary.  The rosary is the stuff of senior citizens fingering the beads before Mass and it is the stuff of Papal Encyclicals (every Pope since Pius IX has written a Rosary encyclical) -- and for good reason.  The Rosary, properly said, encompasses the three main forms of Christian prayer:  vocal prayer, mental prayer and contemplative prayer. 

        The rosary popularly is most closely related with vocal prayer.  The Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Glory Bes are the framework of the Rosary.  Until the new Illuminative mysteries of the Rosary were added, the fifteen decades added up to 150 Hail Marys – the number of psalms in the Bible.   The Rosary is called the Laity’s Psalter.  Vocal prayer or recited prayer or memorized prayer has long been important for Christians.  In the centuries before the printing press, memorization was the chief vehicle for popular prayer.  In the late twentieth century, memorization fell on hard times and consequently prayer fell on hard times.  Spontaneity was viewed as the only authentic source of prayer.  Yet vocal or memorized prayers have their place.  Formal, written prayers like the Our Father or the Act of Contrition or the Memorare represent in themselves centuries of Christian piety.  They summarize attitudes and motivations that it would take most believers decades to accumulate.  The key to vocal prayer is not the mere recitation of the words but the gradual internalization of these words.  What starts out from the memory is gradually absorbed into the heart.  Vocal prayer is a guide to authentic prayer, a first step in the right direction, a frame within which to work.

        Besides the Our Fathers and Hail Marys, meditation on the assorted Scriptural mysteries from the Annunciation to the Coronation is integral to the Rosary.  The pious soul must not only say the successive words, he must muse on the several events that form core of the Gospel message.  In fact, meditation on the mysteries is necessary if one is to gain any indulgence attached to the Rosary.  Murmuring hushed words is not enough.  The believer must kneel quietly and thinks over the life of Christ.  How does the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth impact my life?  What ramifications does the Resurrection of Jesus hold for me?  Does Mary’s Assumption into heaven speak to my generation?  Reflecting or pondering or meditating on the life of Christ necessarily deepens a person’s appreciation of Christ.  Ideas do have consequences.  Thoughts will gradually blossom into activity.  Mental prayer nurtures and matures the Christian life.  Mental prayer is certainly not limited to the Rosary for source material.  The Eucharist, the sacraments, the Bible, spiritual reading, daily life as well as current events and the beauties of nature are several launching pads for mental prayer. 

        One of the problems with the Rosary is that people end their prayer when the Hail Marys end.  Chances are their real prayer is only just beginning then.  By real prayer is meant contemplation.  The Rosary is a vehicle that allows the believer to focus his time, attention, and thoughts more and more on Christ.  Through the Rosary (and through other forms of mental prayer) the worshipper becomes absorbed with Christ.  He becomes pre-occupied with Christ, so to speak.  This is contemplation.  The word contemplation means to occupy the same space as someone else.  Through contemplative prayer, the Christian truly becomes one with Christ.  Words and even thoughts fade to the background as the believer begins to enjoy the simple presence of Christ.  He begins to occupy sacred space.  In the end, the fullness of prayer resides in the complete enjoyment of God’s many presences.  Albert Camus, the French existentialist philosopher who died mid-century, remarked that his closest communication was with his Spanish grandmother who spent her final years praying the Rosary.  The interior depth that Camus achieved by his study of philosophy was paralleled by his grandmother’s interiority achieved through the Rosary.  In quite different ways, they were both contemplatives.   Contemplation is not the prerogative of the few; it is a challenge for the many.  By God’s grace, vocal prayer and mental prayer, properly embraced, will flourish into contemplation.                                                            COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner           Faith vs. Works            19 August 2004AD

        Perhaps the most persistent argument within Christianity is the enduring debate over salvation through faith versus salvation through works.  Is a man saved by his beliefs or by his conduct?  Is it my inner attitude toward God that will get me into heaven or is it my outward charity toward my neighbor that will ensure for me eternal life? 

        In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, eager crowds are astounded when they are rejected at heaven’s gate for being unknown to the Master.  They argue that they prophesied and exorcised and healed in His Name.  Yet the Master protests that he does not know them.  They might have done the correct thing but their personal knowledge of the Master was minimal.  Yet the same Jesus who rejects good works as superficial or misleading in this Lucan context extols good works in the striking Matthew XXV judgment scene.  “I was hungry and you gave me food.  I was thirsty and you gave me drink…”  These immemorial words have become the support of do-gooders down through the centuries.  In fact, in St. Matthew’s depiction of the final judgment, the saved declare openly that they were not aware of Christ’s presence in their lives:  “Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you drink? or naked and clothe you?...”   Their relationship with Christ comes as a complete surprise.  They are “anonymous Christians,” to borrow a phrase from the mid-twentieth century.

        The problem of faith versus works even predates Christianity itself.  The Jewish Scriptures extol Abraham as the father of believers and a model of faith.  It was Abraham’s acceptance of God’s challenging Will in face of almost certain defeat that justified him.  “I will make you the Father of many nations,” God promised the aging, childless patriarch.  Abraham, as a man of faith, took God at his word.  Yet the Judaism of Christ’s time had devolved into a rigorous pursuit of ritual perfection.  Over the centuries. works had gotten the upper hand.  Prayers, fasts, ceremony, almsgivings and observances were the daily pre-occupation of the fastidious Jew.  Keeping the law was the mark of the saint.

        Older Catholics can well recall the days when Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, no meat on Friday, fasting from midnight, silence in church, no R rated movies, no dessert for Lent and an eagerness for indulgences were the emblems of the good Catholic.  Clearly the multiplication of good works was a noble enterprise for all pre-Vatican II Catholics.  And this in a Church which declared solemnly at Trent that “faith is the root and foundation of all justification.”

        The competition between faith and works, belief and law, the inner and the outer man is a sad but perennial development within religious history.  The truth, of course, is that mankind is saved neither by faith nor by works.  The popular Catholicism of the last century was just as mistaken as the Evangelical Protestantism of the Reformers.  Man is saved neither by his faith nor by his works.  Man is happily saved by God.

        Yes.  That neon sign that hung on the side of a church in Lonsdale for decades announcing, “Jesus Saves!” was correct.  (Vince Maynard, sometime chaplain at RIC, could never figure out whether the building was a church or a bank.)  Salvation clearly begins with God.  It was God who recognized man’s plight.  It was God who sent his Incarnate Son to redeem the human race.  It was the Son of God who died in man’s stead on the Cross.  It was this same Jesus who established the Church to dispense His saving grace to the world.  God is the beginning and the end of salvation.  

        This goodness of God discovered in the history of salvation should evoke from the soul a joyous acceptance of God’s favor (commonly called faith) and a determined eagerness to live and share this favor with others (commonly called works).  “Christianity is not a question of either/or,” Kierkegaard wrote, “it is a matter of both/and.”  Both faith and works are God’s instruments.                   COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner                Humility                 26 August 2004AD

     Jesus recommends many virtues to his followers.  He asks that they be merciful, peaceable, compassionate, poor in spirit, and watchful.  Yet Jesus claims only one virtue for himself, and that is the virtue of humility.  Recall Jesus’ familiar words: “Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart.”  Unfortunately humility is often confused with docility or even sheepishness.  Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens’ classic novel David Copperfield comes across as very humble, bowing and scrapping before his master with his “Yes, sir…No, sir” attitude.  As it turns out, Uriah Heep is not humble at all.  Rather he is an ingratiating schemer, hoping that his agreeableness will win over his master for his own advancement.  Nowadays he would be labeled passive-aggressive, coming across as a wimp but actually being a foxy grandpa.

        There is nothing passive about humility.  And the fact that Jesus claims this virtue for himself should tip the believer off to examine this misunderstood virtue more closely.  Jesus was not passive.  He might have been gentle and meek and sensitive and respectful.  But he was very aggressive when it came to doing his Father’s Will.  Jesus never compromised in the moral sphere and he never compromised in following God’s plan of salvation.  He was resolutely obedient to his Father’s arrangements.  His vocation was to exalt the Father, to promote the Father, to support the Father in all things. 

        In a sense, Jesus exalted the Father at his own expense. Jesus, who was after all a Divine Person (Son of God) and who had notable human talents as well (preacher, healer, miracle worker, teacher), always sought out the lowest place during his thirty-three years on earth.  He was born into a minority nationality in a lowly town, lived for awhile in Egyptian exile, grew to manhood in the obscurity of Nazareth, eschewed the Jewish elite for the working classes, died young as a criminal, and was buried in a borrowed grave.  Yet today he is remembered and honored and adored as the savior of the world!

        Jesus deliberately chose the last seat on life’s bus to show that his power was not the result of his own native talents but entirely the work of God.  Let’s face it.  From a human perspective, Jesus died a failure.  He did not convert the world.  He didn’t even convert the Jews.  His followers were scattered at the time his death, even returning to their former tasks, convinced that there was no future in preaching the Gospel. 

        Yet Jesus was anything but a failure from an eternal perspective.  By relying solely on God the Father and submitting his human talents entirely to God’s plan, Jesus was proclaiming that the source of all authentic spiritual success rested with God, not with man.  In choosing the last place (Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Calvary), Jesus actually revealed the first place (the Kingdom of God).  The last shall be first and the first shall be last, declares Jesus on numerous occasions.  And Jesus displays this inverse ratio most of all by his own life.  Jesus was indeed last; he emptied himself completely of every human dignity, becoming, as it were, a slave.  But for that very reason Christ was exalted by God.  He was raised up to higher dignity, entirely of God’s making.  “He who humbles himself shall be exalted,” Jesus promises his followers.  “And he who exalts himself shall be humbled,” Jesus cautions all other hearers.

        Humility then is anything but weakness.  In fact, humility requires great strength and determination.  The natural human inclination is to put oneself forward, promote one’s interests, and always to save face.  The genuinely humble soul abandons self-interest and assigns himself a distinctively lesser role than he deserves, relying on God rather then his own talents to see that he gets his just desserts.  In the end, humility is an act of faith.  Humility is the deliberate rejection of legitimate, natural endowments in favor of supernatural assistance.  The goal of humility is not simply to defer attention from one’s self; the object of humility is to draw attention to God – whence comes the believer’s true strength.  The humble soul chooses to make God, not his or her own gifts, the focus of the world’s attention.                                                                                                     COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner             Who is St. William?               2 September 2004AD

       When I was recently assigned as pastor of St. Francis and St. William parishes, one of the first questions I asked myself was, “Who is St. William?”  A search of the Internet came up with about 45 Saint Williams – monks, martyrs, missionaries and a metropolitan.  On my first visit to the parish I asked Father George Behan who our patron saint was.  He told me he was not sure but he thought that the saint’s feast was in early January.  I also inquired of a former pastor Father Nicholas Iacovacci but neither did he know which Saint William was our patron.  He had hoped that it might be one whose feast was in warm weather.  Parish documents indicate that the parish was actually named for Providence Bishop William A. Hickey, who died in 1933, the year St. William Church was formally established as a parish.  I went to the Rhode Island Historical Society to review the Providence Visitor for that era.  The Visitor simply states that in 1926 the celebrated Father John Sullivan, pastor of St. Matthew parish in Cranston, named his newly established mission church in Norwood after Bishop Hickey “in honor of St. William.”  The saga ends there. 

        The Internet lists two Saint Williams with feasts in January.  St. William of Dijon has a feast on January 1 and St. William the Confessor, Archbishop of Bourges, has his feast on January 10.  Since a pastor originally chose St. William as the parish patron, it seems fitting that a pastor should now specify who among the several Saint Williams is our special intercessor.  Using January as my only clue, I am nominating St. William the Confessor whose biography (taken from Butler’s Lives) appears below as our official patron saint.  Since St. William of Dijon’s feast comes on January 1, it would always be over shadowed by New Years Day and the Solemnity of Mary.   And frankly when people hear the name St. William of Dijon they think more of the mustard than of the saint. 

        Both of these Saint Williams had similar monastic backgrounds.  They were both saintly and zealous monks and abbots, very intent on reforming and improving their various monasteries.  But what impressed me most was the observation that Saint William the Confessor was noted “for his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and for the time he spent praying at the altar.”  Note also that he died “while at prayer.”  Since our parish church is the very center of our religious lives, St. William the Confessor’s devotion to Christ present in the Holy Eucharist is a mandate for us all to respect, worship and adore Christ sacramentally present in our churches.

        Saint William the Confessor was a member of the noble family of the Counts of Nevers, born in the 12^th century in Nevers, France.  His father Baldwin planned a military life for the young William. He was educated, however, by his maternal uncle, Peter the Hermit, archdeacon of Soissons, and was drawn toward religious life from an early age. He first was a monk in the Order of Grandmont.  He became a priest and then a canon at Soissons and finally a canon at Paris. He was noted for his austere life, for his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and for the time spent praying at the altar. Internal dissension in his religious order caused him to leave Grandmont for the recently formed Cistercian Order, taking the habit at Pontigny. He became abbot at Fontaine-Jean in Sens, France. And then he was elected abbot at Chaalis near Senlis, France in 1187.  He reluctantly assumed the position of archbishop at Bourges in central France in 1200, accepting the position only after receiving orders from the general of his order and from Pope Innocent III himself.    St. William then lived an even more austere life, defended clerical rights against the state, cared personally for the poor, sick, imprisoned and debauched, and converted many Albigensian heretics in his diocese to orthodox Christianity.  He died January 10, 1209 at Bourges, France, of natural causes while at prayer.  Witnesses claim he performed 18 miracles during his life, and another 18 after his death. He was canonized on May 17, 1217 by Pope Honorius III.

Saint William, you were a father to your monks and a shepherd to your people.  Pray now before God’s heavenly altar that we might form a truly Eucharistic community, alert to the Presence of Christ in our hearts and in our church, eager to share our Catholic faith with people everywhere, and especially intent on welcoming our disadvantaged brothers and sisters.  Amen

The Quiet Corner             Parables of Divine Mercy                9 September ad2004

       Rare is the person who would belittle the reading of Scripture.  Everyone would admit that even the reading of a line or two of the Bible would somehow profit a believer.  After all St. Peter does write that “all Scripture is inspired of God and useful…”  Yet even in the reading of Holy Writ, mankind betrays his innate self-centeredness.  The basic selfishness of the human person shines through in the midst of this very noble activity.  In this Sunday’s lengthy Gospel passage from St. Luke, Jesus proposes three parables that illustrate the nature of the Kingdom of God.  In fact these parables are intended to illustrate the nature of God Himself.  Yet after you hear these three parables this coming weekend, ask yourself what the three tales concerned.  Chances are your response will be, “The Lost Sheep,” “The Lost Coin,” and “The Prodigal Son.”  These references to the sheep, the coin and the son would certainly not be wrong.  These three stories do indeed allude to the sheep that has wandered dangerously close to a cliff or become enmeshed in a briar patch.  Jesus certainly does speak of a coin lost in a corner of room or hidden by a jar on the shelf.  And it is undeniable that the celebrated spendthrift’s return to his family home was a topic presented by Jesus for the edification of the crowds.

        While the sheep and the coin and the son are important, they are secondary characters in these three parables. The chief actor in these parables is God Himself.  God is the central figure in Jesus’ threefold lesson.  Man betrays his selfishness in reading these three stories because he does not first see God in them, rather he first sees himself.  Man identifies himself with the lost sheep, with the lost coin and with the prodigal son.  Man thinks these tales are about himself and his waywardness and his perversity.  But this line of thinking mistakes a subplot for the main plot.  The main plot of the parables is not man’s sinfulness.  The main plot is God’s mercy.  By right these three stories should be labeled, “The Good Shepherd,” “The Diligent Housewife,” and “The Merciful Father.” 

        The New American Bible begins chapter 15 of St. Luke’s Gospel on the right note by entitling the first two tales, “Parables of Divine Mercy.”  But then this Biblical translation slips back into a twenty century old bad habit by naming the familiar story of the father and his two sons simply, “The Prodigal Son.”  But the parable is not really about the son; the parable is about the father.  It is the father’s mercy, the father’s compassion, the father’s forgiveness that was Jesus’ chief concern in his instruction to the crowds.  Just as it was the zeal of the shepherd not the stupidity of the sheep that chiefly concerned Jesus in the first instance.  And just as it was the tireless energy of the housewife in discovering her lost wealth that Jesus wanted to emphasize in the middle instance.  The shepherd, the homemaker and the father were dominant in the mind of Jesus when he preached to the crowds.  When modern crowds leave their churches this Sunday it should again be shepherd, the homemaker and the father who are riveted in their minds and emblazoned in their hearts if they have truly grasped the message of Divine Mercy that Jesus originally intended.

        An authentic conversion begins not with man’s repentance but with God’s loving kindness.  The sheep didn’t know it was lost and the coin didn’t know it was misplaced until they were sought out by their owners.  The wayward son hadn’t uttered a word of apology when the father ran down the road, threw his arms around him and welcomed him back into the family circle.  Effective conversion begins not with the mere consideration of our own unworthiness but rather with a realization of the unfathomable benevolence of God.  It is God’s goodness not man’s baseness that is at the heart of the Christian religion.  “Where sin abounded, grace does more abound,” an older translation succinctly observed.  And it’s true.  A true believer should always be overwhelmed more by God’s love than by his own wickedness.  Never to rise above our own sins is just another form of selfishness, as was noted at the beginning.  And worse, it is profoundly to miss the meaning of the Gospel.  The Good News is precisely that the world has a Good Shepherd, a Diligent Housewife, a Merciful Father whose love is lavishly dispersed and whose forgiveness is recklessly dispensed.                                         COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner             Evangelical Poverty/Material Goods              16 September ad2004

        A couple of weeks ago the Sunday Gospel passage from St. Luke advised, “Neither can you be my disciple unless you renounce all your possessions.”  Such a total mandate for poverty has never been universally embraced by the Church.  It is true that the first generation of Jerusalem Christians did hold all their material goods in common.  Yet it is apparent that this romantic notion of shared goods was quite impractical.  St. Paul spent much of his missionary time raising funds for the saints back at Jerusalem whose idealism could not keep up with their needs.  Their experiment with Christian communism or Christian socialism was a flop.

        In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, St. Luke again returns to the theme of material goods.  This passage reflects a much more realistic and practical approach to material goods than is usually found in the third Gospel.  This Sunday St. Luke will extol prudence and practicality rather than penury and poverty. 

        In the parable of the scheming steward, Jesus adopts the unlikely perspective of praising a man for his apparent dishonesty.  The foxy manager takes advantage of the final days of his employment to adjust the invoices of his master’s debtors to reflect lesser, more manageable, balances due.  He craftily wins the favor of the local businessmen in the hope that when he is terminated from his present enterprise they will welcome him with open arms into their business ventures.  One unvoiced question is whether a servant known for dishonest dealings behind his employer’s back would be hired by anybody.  But, as with all parables, too much investigation obscures the point.  Jesus is not celebrating the man’s obvious dishonesty. Rather Jesus is recommending the man’s practical self-interest.  The servant has a compelling goal: keeping the wolf away from the door.  And, more to Jesus’ point, he takes sensible and realistic steps to ensure that goal: he uses his business contacts wisely. 

       Jesus, through the pen of St. Luke, does not condemn material goods.  Rather Jesus cautions his hearers about the wise use of material goods.  Material goods should be placed at the disposal of mankind for the building up of the human agenda.  Altogether too often, mankind is the victim of material goods, lured into purchases and tempted into transactions that serve no purpose other than the instant gratification of the buyer and the immediate wealth of the seller.  Money is spent, schedules are arranged, lives are lived, resources are employed neither wisely nor productively.  Even Christians are directed by the trends and fashions of the day rather than by the purposes and promises of eternity.

        Jesus is sensibly advising his disciples to have clear, spiritual objectives and to take the most practical steps to guarantee their fulfillment.  Jesus shrewdly observes that the children of this world – the business people, the entrepreneurs, the merchants, the brokers – leave no stone unturned to garner perishable, earthly wealth.  They take risks.  They work long hours.  They are uncompromising.  They are organized.  They are clever.  Consider the vast wealth accumulated by today’s modern celebrities in the sports and entertainment industries.   Although today’s celebrities might appear foolish and nonsensical at times, they are pretty often the masters of self-promotion, employing competitive tactics that would embarrass the Christian believer.  Jesus is not counseling his followers to imitate their unfeeling aggressiveness.  He is, however, advocating determination and deliberateness in extending the Kingdom of God.  The contemporary Church astutely admits that it needs goals and objectives, planning and development if it is to hold its own in this secularized world. 

        When Jesus Christ became man and took on a human body, he formed an undeniable bond between the material and spiritual universes.  The authentic Christian may not ignore the material world around him.  Yet just as Jesus placed the material at the service of the spiritual, so his Church must do the same.  Accounts, graphs, charts, plans and marketing are not the primary work of the Church.  Worship, prayer, ritual, preaching and catechizing are the Church’s primary tasks.  A sensible Church will nonetheless employ the good things of this world to advance the cause of the next world.      COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner             Stewardship              23 September ad2004

       Today’s Parish magazine reports of a pastor who was visited by a priest from another diocese.  The visitor asked how many volunteers the pastor had at his parish.  The pastor replied surprisingly, “We have no volunteers.”  The out-of-town priest inquired further, “Then how do you run a big parish like this without any help.”  “Oh, we have plenty of help,” the local pastor replied, “that’s because instead of volunteers, we have stewards.  The parishioners here view their services to the parish not as random good deeds but as their grateful & dedicated contribution to parish life.  Most everyone here renders some special service so we don’t need any volunteers.”  Church work is not just a question of volunteering.  Church work is a privilege and an obligation that flows from our baptism. 

        When a priest receives Holy Orders at the hands of his bishop, he knows that he will have the obligation to offer Mass, hear confessions, comfort the sick and bury the dead.  If a priest saw ordination simply as a single ceremony with no consequences, he would be quite mistaken. The same is true of the sacrament of matrimony.  A couple who looks upon marriage simply as a nice wedding celebration with no further consequences would be sadly mistaken.  Marriage demands companionship, support, exchange of ideas, and signs of affection.  Priestly activities flow out of the ordination celebration.  Marriage responsibilities flow out of the marriage celebration.  Likewise, parish activities flow out of our baptismal commitment.  Treating parish activities casually is actually treating baptism casually.  Instead, each one of us has seriously and joyously to live out our baptismal vows in community by praying for one another, by teaching one another, by comforting one another, by supporting one another.

       It should be observed that in this coming Sunday’s Gospel, the familiar tale of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man who is condemned to hell really has done nothing wrong.  The story does not say that his wealth was ill-gotten or that he was a particularly abusive person.  The reader is not even sure that the rich man was aware of the beggar’s presence at his gate.  And perhaps this lack of awareness, this insensitivity toward his neighbor, this failure to seize an opportunity to do good, was the tycoon’s fatal error.  The man’s wealth made him complacent, self-satisfied, smug.  His sin was clearly a sin of omission. Many well meaning Catholics might be open to the same charge.  It’s not what we’ve done, but rather what we haven’t done that will be our undoing.

       As Roman Catholics we belong to a worldwide Church, to a diocesan Church, to a parish Church and to a domestic Church.  As Catholics it is our baptismal duty to build up these various Church communities by what ever time, treasure and talent God has entrusted to us.  Even though we might attend Church week after week, our baptismal commitment is not complete until we actually begin to contribute to Church life, to build up our Church communities.  We can start by being responsible members of the domestic Church, by being good spouses, good parents, good children.  We can build up our parish Churches by taking active part in the liturgy, by teaching the young, by visiting the sick and elderly, by participating in the many areas of stewardship offered in parish life.  We can support our diocesan Church by looking to our Bishop as teacher and sharing in inter-parish activities.  And we can build up the universal Church by heeding the words of our Holy Father, by working for peace and justice, and by being mission-minded in our outlook.

       With all due respect, stewardship does not begin at a sign-up table in the foyer of our parish church or in the auditorium of the parish school.  Stewardship begins at our Baptism.  And as we grow in the Christian life from Baptism onward, we should develop an “attitude of gratitude” whereby we share with our fellow Christians the marvelous gifts of nature and grace that God has entrusted to us.   The rich man’s sin was his indifference toward his needy neighbor.  On the contrary, the Christian believer’s strength will prove to be his active embrace of both God’s Word and the demands of our day.      

COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner            St. Francis of Assisi             30 September ad2004

       On the 750^th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Pius XI praised him as “the most Christlike of all the saints.”  What a wonderful tribute to this popular saint who feast day is quickly approaching to rank so high in the heavenly assembly! 

              St. Francis, born Giovanni Bernadone, was the son of well-to-do parents in central Italy in 1186.  His father was a cloth merchant who traveled frequently to France for the latest patterns -- hence the saint’s nickname “Francisco” or little Frenchman.  St. Francis was a rascal of a youth, as self-indulgent as he was popular. As a young man, he went off to battle the rival community of Perugia but was stricken with a fever which gave him much time to reflect on the meaning of life. After his recovery, he stripped himself naked of his fine clothes in Assisi’s public square, dramatizing his break with his earthly father and declaring God as his true and only Father.  It is this overwhelming appreciation of God’s Fatherhood that characterizes all of St. Francis’ subsequent activities. 

        While a wandering vagabond, Saint Francis encountered Christ in the Crucifix that hung in the Church of Saint Damian.  The words from the Crucifix instructed Saint Francis to “build up my Church.”  Saint Francis took these words literally and began to repair dilapidated shrines in the neighborhood.  His zeal soon attracted other young men and the Franciscan Order known today began to take root.  St. Francis continued to live close to nature, refusing to own anything, living in the countryside, and spending long nights under the sky in prayer. St. Francis’ special trademark of poverty was a practical way of saying that he trusted completely in God’s Fatherhood to provide for him and his fraternal band.  He renounced every earthly resource.  Similarly, Saint Francis’ love of nature was never mere sentiment.  His care and concern for the world around him was clearly rooted in his appreciation of the Fatherhood of God who was, after all, the creator of the whole universe – animals and the environment as well as mankind. 

        St. Francis’ Christlike love extended beyond the Western European world to the Islamic sphere to the East.  He visited the Sultan in Arabia at great risk to life and limb.  With just a touch of irony, St. Francis, the little poor man, especially cherished the powerful and universal Roman Catholic Church which he saw as God’s vehicle for salvation in this world.  He sought out the endorsement of the Pope for his new community of little brothers or “friars.”  St. Francis also shared his spiritual insights with the courageous St. Clare with whom he established a contemplative, cloistered order of women known today as the Poor Clares.

       God rewarded St Francis for his Christlikeness by conferring upon him the Stigmata or wounds of Christ, thus graphically drawing out the similarly between Francis and the very Son of God himself.  St. Francis died at a fairly young age in 1225, declaring on his death bed: “Let us begin!”  He viewed all his labors as just the start of bringing the Gospel to every creature.  All who claim St. Francis as a patron should examine their own trust in God’s Fatherhood.  Is God truly our strength and our hope after the example of St. Francis?  Altogether too often, dependence on material goods and comfort drawn from earthly resources displace reliance upon God in the lives of even well-meaning believers.

       In this Sunday’s Gospel, the disciples wisely ask Jesus to “increase our faith.”  The apostolic band is not asking here for an increase of beliefs.  They are not concerned here about an enlargement of the data that makes up our religious creeds.  Rather the apostles are seeking a deeper respect for and reliance upon God as Father.  They might have asked for an increase of trust, or of confidence, or of hope.  In Franciscan terms, they were asking for a greater appreciation of the Fatherhood of God.  Like Saint Francis, they want to be totally reliant on the provident goodness and kindness of God.  No earthly consideration, neither fear of failure nor comfort in success, should diminish their unfailing trust in God.  These first generation Christians took the Fatherhood of God very seriously just as St. Francis would in a later age and as every authentic Christian must in any era.                                                  COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner                 Christ: God and Man              7 October ad2004

       Saint Paul masterfully summarizes the entire Gospel message with the few words from his Letter to Timothy that open this Sunday’s second reading:  “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my gospel…”   In a dozen words the Apostle reminds his readers of Jesus’ Divine connections and his human roots, of his supernatural aspects as well as his natural pedigree, that he is Son of God but also Son of Man.  Through Christianity’s twenty centuries the pendulum of faith has swung between these two pillars of the Christian religion: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary.

       Jesus is indeed the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the only Son of God “…God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God…one in being with the Father.”  Jesus himself never states flatly, “I am God,” because the Jews of that day would have thought he was God the Father.  The thought of a second Divine person could only be introduced gradually to the believing community.  Yet the Jesus met in the pages of the Gospel narratives is clearly Divine.  Unlike the later saints who would work miracles in the name of God, Jesus gives sight to the blind, hearing to deaf, speech to the mute and health to the crippled on his own authority.  Jesus is the master of nature, calming storms at sea and multiplying loaves in the wilderness and even restoring life to the dead.  Such mastery over the natural universe had previously been attributed to God the Father alone.  Jesus provokes the Jewish leaders by his audacious forgiveness of sins.  “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” the religious leaders of Christ’s day rightfully inquire, even as they resist the obvious conclusion.  Jesus shamelessly exalts himself even above the Sabbath – the premier symbol of the Mosaic covenant between God and man.  “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath,” Jesus boldly bates his already antagonized audience.  While the activities of Jesus confirm his Divine ancestry in the Synoptic Gospels, the words of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel leave no doubt that this man is much more than a teacher, prophet or miracle worker.  “I am the Light of the world…I am the Resurrection and the Life…I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…I am the Good Shepherd…I am the Gate…I and the Father are One…He who sees me sees also the Father.”  These phrases would be ludicrous on the lips of anyone other than Jesus.  What he has already proven by his deeds, he now authenticates by his words.  He truly is Emmanuel – “God with us.”

       Yet Saint Paul today rightly insists that believers not only consider the heavenly characteristics of Jesus Christ but also his earthly distinctiveness.  Jesus was indeed the child of Mary, the faithful Jew who frequented the synagogue Sabbath after Sabbath, who observed the Mosaic Law (as in this Sunday’s Gospel when he instructs the newly healed lepers to show themselves to the priests), who wept over his beloved Jerusalem even as he pronounced its doom, who enjoyed the company of Martha, Mary and Lazarus and was frustrated by the dullness of the Apostles and the stubbornness of the Jews.  And, of course, Jesus was the man of sorrows: betrayed, handed over, bruised, insulted, crucified, dead and buried.  The humanity of Jesus Christ is undeniable.  He was born.  He grew in wisdom, age and grace.  He had relatives and friends.  On occasion he was hungry and thirsty, as his encounter at the well indicates.  Sometimes he was angry, as at the Temple, and sometimes exasperated, as in his street corner dialogues with the Pharisees.  Jesus was a thoughtful man, feeding the famished crowds in the wilderness and asking that the little girl he just revived be given something to eat.  Jesus could be weary, catching a catnap “on a cushion” in the storm-tossed boat at sea.  And Jesus could even appear discourteous, as his rude dialogue with the Syro-Phoenician woman unavoidably displays.  “A man like us in all things but sin…” the Apostle rightly observes. 

        Each Christian generation must appreciate Jesus in his Divine essence and in his human nature.  The two-fold character of Jesus has its ramifications in every aspect of Christianity.  Thus the Christian balances himself between heaven and earth, between time and eternity, between the natural and the supernatural, between the Risen Christ and the Crucified Christ.   To neglect either is to misread the Gospel.       COMPLETE

The Quiet Corner                  Adoration Chapel               14 October ad2004

       Father Edward Flannery, distinguished author and one-time editor of the Visitor, once lamented in conversation that so many churches were locked up every day of the week except for a few minutes before and after morning Mass.  He recalled that as a youth he could stop into church anytime he wished – on the way to school, for Sunday & weekday devotions, for Saturday confessions, for assorted celebrations during the liturgical year, or whenever he just happened to be going by.  The church was truly the center of neighborhood life, he observed, both spiritually and socially.  The locked church was a sad commentary, he suggested, not only on neighborhood decline but more importantly on Catholic spirituality.  Behind locked doors, the Eucharist was not as central to Catholic life as it might be.

       Readers of the Quiet Corner may be aware that I have recently become the pastor of two parishes in Warwick: St. Francis on Jefferson Blvd. in Hillsgrove and St. William just off Post Road in Norwood.  Like London’s theatres during the blitz, St. Francis church proudly never closes.  Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the church’s doors are open and visitors to the Blessed Sacrament are rarely lacking.  The church is located on a busy thoroughfare, is attached to a school, and has few neighbors.  Perhaps these factors contribute to the security of the property.

       St. William Church, on the other hand, is located well off busy Post Road, in a residential neighborhood, backing up to a densely wooded area.  There has been a sad history of vandalism.  The church is fully alarmed.  In the few months I’ve been here I have caught kids on the roof of the church and have erased graffiti off various doors.  Being somewhat off the beaten path, the building can be a temptation to area urchins.  Yet the parish boasts a very large parking lot which might well be mistaken for an extension of Greene airport by an unfamiliar pilot.  Every dog in Warwick receives its daily exercise in this lot, speedily leading its master along on a taut leash.  Young children quickly lay aside their training wheels thanks to the expertise they accomplish on this vast expanse.  Weight conscious residents loose poundage as they pace around the circumference of the property.  Teenagers practice their pre-license driving techniques on the macadam.  Hence the thought occurs that with so many people making a path to this out-of-the-way parking lot, an equal number of people could certainly make their way to a chapel of adoration on the same property.

        I am happy to report that a convenient space at Saint William Church which started out as a baptismal area in the 1960s and became a reconciliation room in the 1980s, will now be a chapel where the public may spend some quiet time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  Religious items not used in decades have been resurrected from the church’s cellar to form an intimate, personal area where the faithful may pray, reflect and adore Christ present in the Holy Eucharist.  The chapel, located at the right front side of the church at 200 Pettaconsett Avenue off Post Road, will  open officially on Saturday, October 16, at the 5pm Mass and will welcome visitors daily thereafter at least from dawn to dusk.  “The Master is here and wants to see you,” Martha advised her sister Mary in the Gospel account, and now the parishioners of St. William parish similarly invite their neighbors and the public to spend a quiet moment at the feet of the Master in their newly renovated chapel. 

        This new Eucharistic opportunity fortuitously takes place as our Holy Father announces his year of the Eucharist.  "If the fruit of this Year is only to revive in all Christian communities the celebration of Sunday Mass and to increase Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass, this Year of grace will have achieved a significant result," the Pope observed as he issued his recent apostolic letter on the Blessed Sacrament.    St. William parish, as well as St. Francis parish, along with many other parishes around the diocese, is pleased to cooperate with the Holy Father as he re-states the Church’s perennial belief in the Real Presence.  “Remain with us, Lord,” the Pope begins his letter quoting the Emmaus disciples.  Through John Paul’s letter, the Lord seems to be reversing the invitation, insisting that we seize the opportunity to remain with him, sacramentally present in parish churches and neighborhood chapels.  

                                                                       COMPLETE