The Destruction of the Al-Askari Shrine in Samarra

A shrine in Iraq was reduced to rubble, its distinctive golden dome now a sulphurous shell.

Aside from the importance on the suffering this has caused afresh in Iraq to the people there, there is a rather strange and, I believe, important story attached to this bombing. It is a story that reaches across history, prophecies in two faiths, and geography: from Iraq to Portugal to Israel, from Rome to the plain of Armageddon.

We will start with the birth of a little girl in Anno Domini 606 or 614, depending on the tradition you consult. She was to become the favorite of Mohammed, whom the Muslims name “Prophet”. Perhaps she was pretty, but it seems on all accounts that she was very virtuous and sensitive, a lady whose tears over her husbands’ taking of another wife are venerated, whose silver, symbolic burned and suffering hand is worn reverently around the necks of millions of Muslims. Her suffering and patient forbearance are celebrated; her sadness and depression at the end of her life, due to the evils she saw around her seem to resonate with us Catholics: she is called ‘second to Mary, Mother of Jesus’ in Muslim tradition. Her name was Fatima.

Fatima’s sons were the catalyst for the eventual split between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims; for the children of Fatima are considered by the Shi’ite Muslims as the true successors to Mohammed, the Kaliphs. The ensuing history of Fatima’s progeny bear out the legacy she left of suffering and tears. Her husband and sons, down to the 12^th Iman, were fighting and losing their battle to retain their heritage as Kaliphs, or successors to Mohammed. I refer here to some better-explained history:

The line of Mohammed through Ali and Hussein became extinct in 873CE when the last Shia Imam, Al-Askari, who had no brothers disappeared within days of inheriting the title at the age of four. The Shias refused, however, to accept that he had died, preferring to believe that he was merely "hidden" and would return. When after several centuries this failed to happen, spiritual power passed to the ulema, a council of twelve scholars who elected a supreme Imam. The best known modern example of the Shia supreme Imam is the late Ayyatollah Khomeni, whose portrait hangs in many Shia homes. The Shia Imam has come to be imbued with Pope-like infallibility and the Shia religious hierarchy is not dissimilar in structure and religious power to that of the Catholic Church within Christianity. Sunni Islam, in contrast, more closely resembles the myriad independent churches of American Protestantism. Sunnis do not have a formal clergy, just scholars and jurists, who may offer non-binding opinions. Shias believe that their supreme Imam is a fully spiritual guide, inheriting some of Muhammad's inspiration ("light") . Their imams are believed to be inerrant interpreters of law and tradition. Shia theology is distinguished by its glorification of Ali. In Shia Islam there is a strong theme of martyrdom and suffering, focusing on deaths of Ali and, particularly, Hussein plus other important figures in the Shia succession. Shi`ism attracted other dissenting groups, especially representatives of older non-Arab (Mawali) civilizations (Persian, Indian, etc.) that felt they had not been treated fairly by the Arab Muslims.

Sunnis and Shias agree on the core fundamentals of Islam - the Five Pillars - and recognize each other as Muslims…. However, there remain significant differences between the two forms of Islam and these are what tend to be emphasized. Many Sunnis would contend that Shias seem to take the fundamentals of Islam very much for granted, shunting them into the background and dwelling on the martyrdoms of Ali and Hussein. (From “The Origins of the Sunni/Shia split in Islam” by Hussein Abdulwaheed Amin, Editor of IslamForToday.com)

Fatima’s legacy is like a live wire in Muslim history. Her last son, or descendant, was the 12^th Iman, Al-Mahdi. He was a four-year-old when his father died and he was taken secretly to a cave, to be hidden from those who wanted to take his life and end the succession. He disappeared only a few metres from the place where his father and grandfather were buried. The Shi’ites wait for him to return. The place of the sirdab(cave) of disappearance and the burial of the last of Fatima’s children is the Al-Askari shrine in Samarra, which was destroyed a few days ago.

The level of anger of the Shi’ites is commensurate to what they have lost: the dignity of the shrine of the 12^th Imam, who is for them, the savior to come, who will lead the Muslims to victory against the Christians and the Jews. There are many prophecies associated with this 12^th Imam and his return; that in between the two times that the Jews master the world”, a great leader:

The term "MAHDI" is a title meaning "The Guided one". Mahdi is a normal man who is going to follow the true Islam. His name will be Muhammad and his father name will be 'Abdullah. He is a descendant from Ali and Fatima (daughter of the prophet Muhammad) so he will be descendant from al-Hasan or al-Husain. Mahdi will be very just and his capital will be Damascus. Allah told us that Jews will master the world two times (we live now 1998 during the first one) and Mahdi will appear between those two periods and will rule through the last one. Mahdi is NOT a prophet but he is the final Rightly Guided Khalifa. Mahdi will lead Muslims to a great victory against the Christian Romans (i.e. All the white Europeans including the Americans). This great war is called al-Malhamah al-Kubrah or Armageddon. It will end up with a great victory to Muslims against Romans after six years. Muslims will take over their capital Rome (this can be any city). In the seventh year, the Antichrist will appear and a greater war will start between Jews and Muslims for 40 days (longer that usual days) and will end when Jesus (pbuh) will come and Muslims will kill all Jews. All people will convert into Islam. Peace will pervade the whole world. (From “Who is Imam Al-Mahdi?” onwww.islamicweb.com/history/mahdi.htm).

Thus the Shi’ites, arguably the more apocalyptic of the Muslims, are reeling in shock and anger at the destruction of what is probably their most holy site, next to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. The references to Armaggedon are interesting; for Armageddon is actually a plain outside of Jerusalem, which is named as the site of the last battle, the battle fought before the Prince of this world is destroyed en fin.

What surprised me to find in my research is the apocalyptic references to a Muslim occupation of Rome- meaning, symbolically, the Muslim victory over the Catholic Church, specifically; yet Jesus is spoken of as returning and establishing peace. It seems incongruous, yet this makes sense, because as the great historian Hillaire Belloc stated, Islam is really a Catho-Judaic heresy, an ‘unbalancing’; therefore, mixed theology and irrational mixtures are to be expected.

From the Muslim perspective, namely the Shi’ite, the Last Days are to be ushered in with the re-appearance of the 12^th Iman and the victory granted to Muslims all over the world. If one has been following the news at all, it will become obvious that the Muslim world is in turmoil from many causes: war in Iraq, terrorism, a clash with Western secular culture (think ‘cartoon’), the proposed strangulation of democratically elected Hamas in Palestine, and strife mounting between the two strains of Islam.

From the perspective of the Faith, we may be witnessing the labor pains increasing, to speak apocalyptically. At the least, we must increase our prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of the Muslim- which Hillaire Belloc states is practically and humanly impossible. It must be a work of the Lord, in His mercy.

We travel now from Jerusalem and Armageddon, from Rome, to a small village in Portugal, which I believe, holds the hope for the Muslim and the Catholic alike. We go to a village named Fatima: legend states that the village was named for a young Muslim girl who converted to Catholicism; she, in turn, must have been named for the Lady Fatima, Mohammed’s daughter.

Here, in this little farm village called Fatima, Our Lady, the Mother of God, appeared. She was sad, saddened by sin and evil, as it was recorded that Mohammed’s daughter was. But Mary, unlike Fatima, is our Mother, and called the most blessed of women- by the Muslim as well as the Catholic. She called for repentance, for suffering to appease God and to convert sinners. All of us are sinners, but I place emphasis on the word ‘convert’ because that seems to call to those outside of the Faith.

Eight years ago, when I was converting to the Faith established by Our Lord, I was standing in the vestibule of St. Mary’s Church in Annapolis, Maryland. There was a woman there with me, head covered in the Muslim way; and she was crying. I asked her why: she said she was Muslim but wanted to convert to the Faith. Surprised, I asked her what had brought her here to this church, so out of the blue. She replied, “It was Our Lady Mary- she brought me here.” I smiled, and told her that I, too, was coming into the Faith. So Protestant and Muslim met in the vestibule of St. Mary’s. I often think of her, and wonder: was she one of the small, first drops of rain- the first of millions of Muslims to come into the Faith?

Archbishop Sheen was a prophetic voice: anyone who has listened to his tapes, especially on abortion, will recognize this gift in him. He spoke once, about Fatima. With passion, he shone light on the fact that Our Lady came to Fatima, a name so symbolic to Muslims, most especially the Shi’ite (who are most probably the most anti-Western, and conflate Western culture with Catholicism). He believed that Our Lady of Fatima would be instrumental, perhaps essential, in the conversion of the Muslim.

This scenario reminds me of the situation in Mexico when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared. She came to the hill of Tepayac, the hill reserved for the “Snake-Goddess”- here we have a similar pattern to Fatima, in that Our Lady came to a place that the Indians would recognize as significant, a feminine presence, and yet Our Lady, with the power of her Son, converted them; by the millions in a space of a few years. Also interesting is that “Guadalupe” is an Islamic word, from a river so named in Spain during the time of the Moors.

So in these days of turmoil, let us gird ourselves in the Faith, keep our lamps lit and pray- especially now for the conversion of the Muslims. With God, nothing is impossible.

Ring of Flowers, Ring of Thorns: A Reprint

The white ring of flowers is placed over her new black veil, and there is the heavily warm silence of rejoicing; a moment of true quiet, like the oddly hot and silky Santa Ana winds in a Santa Barbara night.

She then appears in the hall under the church, resplendent in her grey and black habit, her face joyful but shy, but her expression a bit flat- as though all the clapping and attention were too much for her. The slightly far away look is of one who is used to the safety of the habit and the convent, a translucent pansy, a greenhouse creature, a woman of prayer, a Spouse of Christ.

The rest of us, with heart-skins roughened by jobs, parenting and trying to be good spouses, have witnessed her marriage to Christ. A friend turns to me and muses, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be married to Christ?” I smile, thinking it a nice observation, considering the event. She goes on. “No, really. Really. To be able to have a spouse that you could really give your whole being- no reservations, no doubts, no anger at another imperfect human being.” Was it jealousy of another’s choice? “ No, not jealousy. I mean, I know we are all meant to be all for God, but I just think it would be easier to go to Him as a spouse, instead of always feeling torn-torn, between your duties and feelings about your own spouse, and your desire to give yourself to God entirely. It’s confusing, to say the least.”

Out of all the images, sounds and ideas of that day, that Profession of Vows, it was the strange dichotomy between the ring of white flowers on a new black veil, and the scratched gold ring on the worn hand of that woman which stayed with me. The question kept coming back to me, “How do you get to Christ as a spouse while married?”

In John Paul II’s play, The Jeweler’s Shop, there is a very powerful moment: a woman is wandering the streets at night, dazed and in emotional pain. Her marriage is a wrecked house, her faith its cracked foundation. She has decided to complete the ruination by finding a lover in the worst way possible: like a prostitute. A car pulls up. She looks at the man, his face disfigured by the rivulets of rain falling down the window. She reaches out for the door handle, and he opens the door. Jarringly she realizes that, although he looked totally foreign before, he suddenly has the face of her estranged husband. She backs away and stumbles down the street. Her clumsy flight is stopped by a priest sees her and who providentially, knows her from years past, when she was a young bride. My memory of the play is that she confesses her intentions and the vision of her husband’s face, in the place of a man she was hoping would somehow 'save' her from her misery; she tells him of her feeling that God has abandoned her. The priest replies, “Daughter, the face of the Lord will, in this life, have the face of your husband- and none other.”

It is a profound statement, at many levels, and more profound than I can hope to illuminate. The depth is such that it must be lived in order to understand it. The vitriolic reaction would be one, most likely of dismay; a disillusionment of romantic visions about Our Lord. And perhaps this is exactly what is good. The Lord was “A man of Sorrows, afflicted, not of comely feature..” Most of us may not have recognized the Lord in His earthly life, because He chose to be so ordinary- as familiar as the face of the spouse. The Jews, especially the ones more deeply steeped in the laws and religious practices at the time, missed Him, because He was the “son of a carpenter”. He must have been tanned, shouldering rather simple clothes, fitting in with the semi-poor of the time. It must have been impossible to recognize the Word, except perhaps if you observed Him more closely, and listened more closely. Perhaps if you watched the children with Him, or looked deeply into His eyes and saw the stars, or, as songwriter Bruce Cockburn says, “saw the way the dust swirled around His feet.”

It is this way with love. In his seminal work, I and Thou, the Jewish phenomenologist Martin Buber describes from many viewpoints the phenomena of two persons, two Others in a face to face relationship. It is the deepest relationship but in human terms, fraught with the most danger of becoming too narrow, into becoming narcissistic or other-worship. The great Catholic philosopher, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, in his book Man and Woman, baptizes Buber’s insights on the I and Thou relationship as only a great Catholic philosopher can achieve. It is not the “we”, the “side by side” relationship of friendship, wherein we look out at something together and share it. The I and Thou relationship is essentially different from this. It is a “face to face” relationship. Two persons are engaged with eachother, a holy relationship to the exclusion of the outside world. It is such a profound relationship because it , as Buber elucidates, produces fecundity- in other more pedestrian terms, this relationship is the catalyst for fertility, physical fertility in the begetting of children, and as Hildebrand develops, spiritual fertility: begetting love and true sight; begetting grace and changing each other into a unity, a new creature. So we would have had to look at the Lord this way in His earthly life, in order to recognize Him, and we must look at Him this way now, in the humble appearance of the Eucharist. Our souls, whether we are male or female humans, are female in the I and Thou relationship with God.

Our grand and glorious destiny is to become a new creature in Christ, in this I and Thou relationship. The story of Israel in the Old Testament is a forerunning image of this relationship God wants with each of us personally. One only has to read the passages in the Old Testament wherein God seeks after the straying Israel as a husband seeking his wife. By far the most distilled essence of this I and Thou relationship of God to Israel, God to Our Blessed Mother, and God to each one of us, is contained in the Canticle of Canticles. The I and Thou relationship is a running theme throughout God’s relationship to man, from the Old Testament to the Apocalypse.

Marriage is simply the incarnational, natural counterpart to this God-to-man relationship. It is one of the down-to-earth, natural ways which Our Lord uses to develop the understanding of the relationship He wishes to have with each of us. In a marriage, the I and Thou relationship still retains its ability to produce fecundity on both the physical and metaphysical levels. We beget children, and we become one flesh with another, we can fecundate the spouse’s spiritual growth. Dietrich Von Hildebrand says that rather than love being blind, it rather sees more clearly who the other is, sees things that no one else can see. In other words, in the I and Thou relationship, we see the truth about the other; and it is beautiful, tragic, glorious and frustrating all at the same time. Only in the I and Thou relationship with God are we compelled to fall to our knees in utter adoration at what and Who we see; with another human being, we are compelled mostly to nurture and to pity: and ultimately, by sowing unselfish, sacrificial love, to help in the salvation of the spouse. In phenomenological terms, as married persons, we are to cultivate the I-Thou relationship with the spouse in order to learn how to love God, and to help the other by forgiving, affirming and healing. Then, the marriage should develop again, back into a “We” relationship: but now the “We” is looking together at God, encouraging in the spouse the I-Thou relationship with Christ. In short, we are to aid the spouse to become a Spouse of Christ, by being the incarnational healing and love for that person.

The purpose of human marriage is multiple. We are angel-beasts, we have instincts and were told to be fruitful. The Church has always taught that the primary purpose of marriage is to co-create with Him new life. This is profound enough all by itself, but there are other purposes: companionship, an economic partnership, the making of a home, and a domestic church. What about the spiritual aspect of marriage? This is something that has been somewhat neglected, except perhaps by John Paul II; indeed, his writings on human marriage and the body are perhaps his greatest legacy to us. Somehow, mysteriously, the I and Thou relationship in a human marriage is the doorway for most people into that archetypical I and Thou relationship with God for which every person is created, the Beatific Vision. How is this? Here, I am venturing into my own musings: In a marriage, we see the truth of another person, and in their eyes, we see the truth about ourselves. In many, if not most cases, this is a painful progession from illusions to reality. What we do when we reach the reality, in all its failures and ugliness, is what we do with Our Lord on His cross, and the crosses in our hum drum daily life. When we reach the bottom of another’s personhood, when we see the truth, the beauty and potential alongside the selfishness and boorishness, we must make a choice. Many marriages end here, and the progression is away from an I and Thou relationship to a narcissistic existence, or to an abyss, which must be filled at all costs; or to repentance amidst the ruins. This journey into the depths of another is parallel to the journey of God with Israel. They saw Him first from afar, a cloud of fire. Then they heard His voice, and they knew He fought for them and punished them. Their knowledge of Him was from afar, but He was looking at them in particular. And they began, in their prophets, to look at Him. They made vows to forsake all others for Him, and He dwelt with them in the Holy of Holies. And then He came as a Man and He came as a humble Man, and He loved, and He became as a malefactor for love, He became the lamb of slaughter, He was lifted up like the snake in the desert, and they knew him not.

In a marriage, what happens when we look at the other, and we realize that we know him not? It is because love, in all its forms, eros, agape, storge, but mostly caritas, leads us to this place and then gives us a choice to go on, or to turn away. Our eros and agape and storge are all burned in this purgatory of the I and Thou relationship, and we are left with caritas. It is caritas which takes us beyond the bottom, and then we begin to discover the baptized forms of eros, storge and agape. And then, then, will we be ready to venture past the I and Thou relationship with a human spouse, and together with that spouse, become a “We” relationship again: but on a profound level, whereby we see God together. Our hearts will have been burned in the fire of a marriage, and then the gold of choosing to love in the face of suffering and disillusionment will shine out to God. C.S. Lewis wrote a book which he said was his personal favorite. It is called Till We Have Faces, and is the story of a soul’s journey from spiritual blindness to being able to see the truth about herself and the one she loved, and then finally to seeing God. The climactic line in the book, I think, sums up the spiritual purpose of marriage: “ How are we to meet God face to face until we have faces?” The I and Thou relationship of marriage is meant to give us faces, give us the truth about ourselves, to rip away all the roles and facades we are taught to assume- and then the relationship asks us to love from within that place of truth. Only from there can we truly see God.

Note: This article is an excerpt from a book on which I am currently at work (TRWK)

A Grain of Wheat Falling

Shadow is often used to portray death- for death is always obscure to us, and dark, and we also keep it obscure in this modern world, even when it breaks down our doors. Like the shadows that seem to prey on us from the far end of the room at midnight, death waits in the recesses of our minds, minds cluttered during the day by deeds and words: but it waits.

St. Alphonsus Liguori exhorts us all, in Preparation for Death, to look carefully at that shadow, to bring it to the light, to examine it and to think about it: daily. Morbid? Depressing? Impossible? Perhaps, alone. For that seems to be the hardest thing about death: we travel through that darkness alone- no friends and family, no wealth or even the recommendations and testimonies of those we count on- we go alone, clothed only in what love we have seeded and watered. Even so, even in fear and trembling, St. Alphonsus asks us to deal with our own death. Why?

It is the same reason that “the best examination of conscience is to look at a Crucifix”. Death is a result of sin, the sin we all share as mankind, as well as our own sins. Only Our Lord came to take the punishment of eternal damnation from us who have accepted Him as Savior; yet we still pay the penalty of physical death, we still face our particular judgment. It is far better that we begin to face that judgment now, daily, to ask God to know ourselves and thus change with His grace and help, before it is too late. I am thinking especially of the words of Our Lord: “Do not let a man who has something against you take you to the court: negotiate with him on the way, so that you are not thrown into prison.”

Daily facing death is intimately connected with dying to oneself, if our dealing with death is not morbid or self-pitying, self –centered. For in this facing of death, we see ourselves more honestly. When we picture ourselves before the King of the Universe, a King-Judge, what do we see? We must ask for the grace to see ourselves as God sees us and for the grace to not remain standing, but to fall on our knees and clamor with joy because Our Lord is willing to save us- save me! Let this preparation for death make us honest, humble, and only too willing to “decrease so that He may increase”: to accept and rejoice in suffering because, as St. Gianna Molla told her husband after she had been revived (before her final death a few days later): “We are not fit to appear before the Lord without suffering.”

But how? How do we deal with death each day, in a holy manner, with peace and joy? St. Gianna was not speaking out of servile fear, but rather inspired and holy love of God. She understood clearly that we must undergo suffering for love, and to die to ourselves so that we may live for God unselfishly. I do not think the selfish see God- they are not able, they have not been willing or accepted the grace to be able to see beyond themselves. And I say this with trembling, for I am a cesspool of self-pity and selfishness.

So how? How do we accomplish this- this walking in the shadow, this dying to self?

Let us look to Our Lord, for He is our primary example. His life is an instruction in a holy abasement, a holy death. I construct my thoughts here from Fr. Doze’s book: In His twelfth year, Our Lord went to the Temple in Jerusalem. The mighty Temple! The golden House of God, filled with prayers symbolized and actualized with sacrifice and incense. His House! Here, here was His Father’s business; and He stayed, and stayed, teaching and loving His priests and the people coming to obey His commands- commands of liturgy, of religion. He knew their hearts. But still He stayed.

His mother comes, she comes on the third day, a day forever appointed as a day of metamorphosis. She comes, with St. Joseph the Shadow, and she says: “My Son, why have you done this to us? Your father(my emphasis) and I have been looking for you for three days.”

Our Lady uses the term for father, earthly father, for the shadow-father, for St. Joseph. An oversight? No. And Our Lord’s immediate response, “Didn’t you know where I was? I must be about My Father’s( my emphasis) business” is followed by an action that doesn’t seem to correspond to His words: And He went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient unto them, and He grew in grace and wisdom. Surely both actions: staying in the Temple and going down to Nazareth, subject to His earthly mother and foster father- surely both are the will of God; for He obeyed His Father “in all things”.

In His going down to Nazareth, down into obscurity and obedience, He showed what it meant to die to self. In His submission to His own creatures, He showed what it meant to die- but a death with an end, a purpose, and a death that brings forth life, like the grain of wheat falling to the ground. It was a foreshadowing of the Cross, and this going down to Nazareth was an example He left us of a carrying of that Cross in daily life.

In going down to Nazarethin submission, He also left us a profound example of humility; that this fruit, this virtue, is a hallmark of God’s presence in a life. A ‘daily dying’ is intimately connected to humility and is a real connection to God: “If you wish to be My disciples, then take up your cross and follow Me.” The hallmarks of a saint, a person living in love with God, are humility and love.

In taking Our Lord down to Nazareth, St. Joseph comes into stark relief as the carpenter of daily death, alongside his well-known role as the Patron of a Happy Death. He is the protective shadow, who leans over us as a loving presence and teaches us with gentle, hard-worn hands, how to die well; how to die as he did: with his hand in Our Lady's and his heart given to Our Lord.

St. Joseph is teaching me how to stay in the day, to die to my vain imaginings and desires for others or for my past or future. Everything is to be left to God, everything I do from the washing of the dishes to the writing I am doing now, is to be done for God!

Sitting in church, at Holy Mass, I was at the point where I wished to be received into the Holy Family: to be within the bosom of that holy and joyful, comtemplative and humble trio. I wished to go down to Nazareth. It was no accident that it was the feast of the Holy Family, although I had not anticipated this. I was simply ready, had read and prayed, and knew; and there I was, sinner and insect, hoping for entrance; and there was St. Joseph, his hands bringing me in.

Like Our Lady, St. Joseph remains silent and obscure, because he points to God so effectively.

O Glorious St. Joseph, silent and humble, Shadow of the Father, pray for us.

Elements of Shadow

I love the title of Fr. Doze’s book: St. Joseph: Shadow of the Father. For what is a shadow? It can be a poor image of a reality, like we creatures when compared to the Holy Trinity. It can also be thought of having some essential attachment to that reality, like an element that places the reality in a context for us: as artists know, shadowing brings texture, shows from which direction the light comes, and also shapes the face, provides some indications to the special character of the face and body, the clothing.

A shadow also hides, obscures, provides proof of shelter from storm or strong sun. A shadow also helps us to hide ourselves, to die. Within a shadow, we can no longer see ourselves, but can more easily focus on reality; our eyes are able more clearly to see what is in the light.

St. Joseph is all these elements of a shadow. But he was no ordinary shadow: he was, for Our Lady and for Christ, the Shadow of the Father. Poor creature though he was, like St. Bernadette, he was chosen for the greatest task next to that of Our Lady. He was the physical image of the Father for the child Jesus, he was the human face of fatherhood, he held Our Lord as a baby, received His tiny hands into his rough carpenter’s hands, helped him to walk and talk, and taught him his trade; he took him to the synagogue and prayed with Him, to Him. When one lets this sink in, St. Joseph suddenly becomes a very important shadow; he was the vessel the Father chose to help the Son learn about fatherhood and the human language in which to describe it. I speak no heresy when I talk about the Son learning: for the Church has taught that the Son did indeed learn, in His human nature. So He learned. He learned to plane a board and make a ladder. He learned how to pray the traditional prayers, he learned as a son learns from his father. And the face on that fatherhood, the human face, was that of St. Joseph.

For Jesus, St. Joseph was also the shadow that obscures, hides, protects. He did this as fathers do, in watching at the entrances and providing food and shelter; he also did this in an extraordinary way by the journeys to Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt; but in a deeper way, he did this by being ordinary. In providing a father’s face for the world, he protected both Mary and Jesus from attention at a time when the Holy Family was meant to be just that, and only that: a family. He was the shadow that provided the space for the family to be sanctified by the Child-God. We will talk further about the depth and beauty of the Holy Family; but to understand the great role of St. Joseph in being ordinary and humble is to begin unlocking the secrets of this great and silent saint.

"Don't you know St. Joseph is my father now?"

Deep in the recesses of the convent at Nevers, when St. Bernadette still walked alone in the gardens, there stood a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Joseph, foster-father of Our Lord. She spent hours praying there, and would often pray the rosary, the rosary as Our Lady personally taught her near the water in Lourdes- in the convent gardens in front of a statue of St. Joseph.

One day, a sister heard her saying “Ave, Maria…gratia plena…” in her low and quiet voice, while looking up at the bearded face of St. Joseph. “Sister”, the nun exclaimed, “ are you in the wrong place?” Bernadette turned with a wry smile: “ I don’t think Our Lady minds in the least, sister. There is no jealousy in heaven.”

There was a deeper stream of life happening beneath this sweetly humorous remark, which Bernadette, in her reserved manner, did not gurgle about like a talkative village woman. For she was learning to live in Nazareth, in the bosom of the Holy Family. “Did you not know,” she said once, “that now St. Joseph is my father?”

In his book, St. Joseph: Shadow of the Father, Fr. Andrew Doze, Chaplain at Lourdes, elucidates how the life of St. Bernadette- from extreme poverty and illness, to persecuted visionary, to celebrity, to nun, to her holy death and beyond- is a living example of the spiritual life we are all called to live. It is a life within the Holy Family, a life of contemplation with Our Lady, of learning the daily death to self from the quiet hands of St. Joseph, a life centered on adoration of the Christ, the Savior.

St. Bernadette understood in a thousand acute ways what it means to die to self. How did this tabula rasa, this blank slate-soul, learn this lesson that we are all afraid of in the beginning of the spiritual life? We do not know with what grace and knowledge, knowledge of the soul rather than the reason, she was infused. Like St. Joseph, St. Bernadette pales beside the visions and message the Lord wished to give through His Mother. Like St. Joseph, she disappears behind a veil (the convent) when the ministry of Lourdes begins.

Like St. Joseph, the largely silent pattern of her life speaks louder than her words.

So, under the patronage (I pray) of St. Bernadette, let us embark on a journey to know Glorious St. Joseph better.

Pouring Love Down an Empty Well: A Reprint

I first met Terry when I first ‘met the family’ of my husband to be. He came down the stairs, eager to see me, but hiding the eagerness under a veil of sleepiness. He was a big man, and for some reason, I was repulsed by him. He seemed messy; he was informal to the point of it being embarrassing. I made the internal judgement that he was ugly, but that I’d try to like him.

I last saw Terry six days before his death. He was eager to see us, but again hiding it, under a very real veil of morphine. He was messy again; but I was crying, and I didn’t think he was ugly. I wanted to wash his face and comb his hair, but he said he would do it as it would give him something to do. That made me cry more, silent tears of pity and grief- because I couldn’t imagine he could wash or comb anything with his swollen, shaking, gangrened hands. As we prepared to go, he opened his eyes and mouth to whisper, “’Bye sweetie” and I cupped his cheek in my hands and leaned over to kiss him on his rough cheek. I never saw or spoke with him again, because on the next Saturday, without anyone but a nurse, he quietly passed away.

Terry reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Grey for some reason. He’d started out as a handsome, talented youth who made it to the Pros in football; a man who’d married a lovely young bride and fathered three handsome, talented children, taught school and loved it, played golf as much as he wanted, gardened in the large yard of his nice home, and watched TV in his den in the evenings.

But there was an ugliness, hidden under the surface. His marriage was a battlefield, replete with well-placed and coveted mines to hurt the other. His oldest son has a difficult time relating well to his family; his beautiful daughter had almost died from drugs; and he saw his youngest son, my husband, as a moral, bible-beating wet-blanket whom he did not know at all, and whom he mocked. Now, assuredly, not all of this was Terry’s fault; but it was his response to the responsibility of a father which seemed a fault with horrible consequences. It seems to me now that he was a damaged man, a man frightened of being responsible for other people’s lives and happiness. I think he loved them deep inside, and so thought that if he ran away, into activity or inside the TV, that he would do less damage. The wife and children had tried, in various unhealthy ways, to get his love- or at least his real attention. I think Terry survived the fear-producing situation by running from it in a myriad of ingenious ways: games of any kind; a blasting TV even at mealtime; furiously growing every kind of shrub, tree, flower and herb possible (which required many hours outside); and pouring his heart into the students and collegues at his school, instead of actively and toughly loving his family. All of this activity, this running, from the realities of life, gradually took its toll on the look of him. He looked mussed and sweaty, heavy jowled and stressed. There was no peace in the lines furrowing their way to permanence on his face.

In the years that I knew him, I went through the possibilities for the reason for this running, this hidden grotesqueness. Evil? Possessed? Once we tried putting Holy Water in his hamburger. He did jump up right after eating it and charge out of the room. My husband, my mother-in-law and I looked at eachother, and then sheepishly realized that he always did that. Mentally unstable? I walked out into the garden one fall day and found a large circle of plastic decoy ducks, lopey on their runners, like ice skates left to dry. Going inside, I announced very solemnly to my mother-in-law that she could stop being angry and just have pity, because he was crazy and maybe needed care. She laughed kind of forlornly and informed me that he was just creative. I then began to see, just a little bit, the real man inside Terry. He was creative, he was quirky, and had an absurdist sense of humor, which my husband inherited, and which I loved. There was the boot with dirt and flowers peeking out from the tongue at the top; there was the ingenious little golf course in the garden; there was the collection of cool old bar signs, the wacky B movies. . Alright, then. Was he just mean? Or selfish to the point of missing the whole point of life?

At this point in my relationship, if you could call it that, with Terry, I struggled with the temptation to think that it would be better if he were not there, even dead, because there was so much dysfunction and pain, so much anger and hate running in the veins of the family life, that I just wanted it to be over. I now look back with shame on that, because I missed the point as much as he had missed the point. The point is to love. To love where there is no love, to hope where there is darkness, to kiss the repulsive and so to begin, with God’s grace to transform it with love. Only then can you begin to see the truth about a person’s worth, his worth to the God who died a horrifying and grotesque death for him.

I cannot remember now when I began to love, and found the point. Perhaps it was when I realized that he was creative; or the day I looked out and saw him letting the dog kiss his face and just smiling and smiling; or the loneliness I began to see, the anguish at an argument with my husband; or the for-no-reason present of boys’ pajamas we received in the mail (we had two girls at the time), with a small note, “Love, Granddad”.

I began to see someone who had missed the point, the point of loving, partly because he didn’t know how, or was too frightened for some reason. I began to see the complexity of the person, and the complexity of the situation he was in, which can only be seen through love- through charity, a gift of God, and then cannot ever be seen as clearly as God sees. So I began to try and talk, to listen, to call and talk to him just for him, not just in passing. I began to tell him I loved him and to tell him that my husband loved him, too. I began to see I was pouring water down into an empty well. How much time I’d wasted in looking for the reason the well was empty instead of just pouring the much-needed water and leaving the mysterious to God.

As his body began to give out, I realized that he was being shown mercy by being forced to stay with his family, forced to need our care. He was slowly humiliated, and became more and more physically grotesque, reality banging at his door in so many hard ways. But to my eyes, now bettered by love, he became lovelier. He also became nicer, to all of us, and complained really quite little in light of the physical and emotional anguish brought on by a death sentence in a rotting body. I began to hear things he said differently, too. I noticed small details which only someone who loves can see, like the effort he made to thank me for helping them pack for their new home; the pain of leaving his beloved garden; and the child-like need to stay with us, his world now, when he knew deep down that he was dying.

A week before his death, I was driving with two grey friars, Franciscans, to the hospital to see Terry. I was trying to do everything I could for him, because I loved him and wanted mostly for him to have a happy death, in friendship with God. My friend and director, Fr. Sylvester, was one of the grey friars in the car with me. I told him about Terry’s life, and mostly that I felt he had an immense drive, out of fears, to deceive himself about reality. I was afraid for his soul, and wanted him to have a chance for a good confession. Looking very medieval with his hood up around his face, Fr. Sylvester recited the rosary with me, and invoked many saints. I felt we were going into a battle.

Terry was happy to see us, but he was very groggy and in and out of sleep. Fr. Sylvester started talking to him, and Brother Giuseppe and I waited in the hall. When we came back in, I saw Terry’s eyes, they were alight like yellow fires, like a child’s in front of the Christmas tree as it is lit. He reached out his hand to me, in joy, I thought, and great affection. I held his hand and stroked his hair, tufted up like black and grey tumbleweeds. I can’t remember what we said, but I remember Fr. Sylvester giving him a rosary. That rosary stayed on that bed, wrapped around a sidebar, and it must have been there the minute he died, as it now hangs on his wife’s headboard, and she says the rosary with it now. I see that with God-given eyes of love. What wonders you behold, what small beauties which tell a tale which is often so different from what is obvious. When we forget love, we are blind, but we think we see, which is an even deeper blindness.

Also on Terry the instant of death was a brown scapular. It stayed on him, and I pray, it was like a chain of love, drawing him on to God’s love, friendship and mercy, through the gentle hand of Our Lady.

Looking back over the seven or eight years I knew my father-in-law, I only wish I had judged less, listened to other’s talk less about him, and asked God earlier to help me love him. Although I began praying for him from almost the first time I met him, I prayed as an objective observer, or a pitying acquaintance; I should have asked God to help me to love, and started pouring the water of love into his empty well as I was praying. Without love, I venture to say, my prayers were worthless; and I probably played a part in hindering his chance for heaven. So, Terry, your memoriam for me, in my life, is one of conviction: Conviction to love, to pour myself out in love, only with God’s grace, in the dark and the deep, the empty and the ugly. And perhaps I myself will be cleaned and filled through doing it, because I am a deep, dark, empty and ugly well too; only through God, through Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ are we made whole. He deigns to let us assist Him in loving each other, and this is the most important task of our lives, next to loving Him.

May you reach God’s embrace, Theodore James- and may I meet you again there, some fine day.

A Rocking Cradle

There are many issues in the world that are heating up, but a few require prayer.

As always, I am getting my information from news medias, largely the BBC, but also from good websites like Seattle Catholic, who in turn get their information from a wide variety of sources, from Asian sites to Italian, to Australian and American.

The issues I see as ominous are: the strengthening social laws in Europe and the Philipines on religious life; the more frequent and more legal-like demands of militant homosexuals in Europe and the Middle East; and the oil/nuclear crisis blooming in Iran.

These seem like diverse problems, and they are: but they are all potentially conspiring to produce a very frightening situation for those with moral and religious standards.

In Europe, the abortion/liberal culture has resulted in a population unable morally to carry itself into the future. With the diminishing population of these formerly Catholic nations, has come a need for a work force, and filling this gap have been people from Africa and the Arabic and Middle East, most of them Muslim. Today, we see a two-cultured Europe, each part diametrically opposed. We see on the one hand, ghettos in many European cities filled with Muslim families, many of them having more children than their European counterparts; these young people grow up in hard economic conditions, and like the young black people in the ghettos of cities like New York and Los Angeles, they look for their identity in their ancestral roots and express them in a tribal/gang language. They are trying to survive; they see the injustice and the status quo around them in a Western society: and from this outside view, some of them do not get sucked into the materialism, but rather they see the corruption, the oppression, the immorality, the hypocrisy of words like "freedom" and "democracy" and "free market".

Many of them, in search of survival for their identity, misplaced as they are, look to their ancestors and the glory days of their former lands. When they look, they see Western troops occupying Iraq, placing pressure on Iran not to develop nuclear capability, and Israel building a Great Wall across Palestine with the silence of the West a deafening statement of cooperation.

Not all of what they see is reality; it is hard to ever see reality, because we are so dependent on images and news channels which have themselves a viewpoint, and a mandate to sell crisis. Often what is being filmed is, in reality, a tempest in a teapot. However, the damage is done when people's viewpoints are shaped by those images. The tempest then is let out of the pot and becomes a real storm. However, a lot of it is very real, and the real suffering no one often sees. Also, in such a 'small' world, we forget too often the very deep and old cultural differences and divisions: we do not all see the same thing alike, nor speak of it in the same way. Babel still holds sway, the one exception being within the family of Christ and His Church.

The young Muslims in Europe band together, much like the sixties generation over Vietnam; but their heritage and their religious narrative is much more lethal rather than immoral self-destruction. They strike out at the corruption in Western culture, but like vigilantes: thus was the killing of the filmaker Van Gogh (descendant of the painter) , who produced artistic pornography, porn with a message against religious and social fundamentalism, this just being one example of many incidents, not the least being the terrorism so prevalent. Now the governments are reacting: the banning of traditional religious Muslim wear. This, I believe, will be like putting kindling on an already burning fire. Also, there are incidents of Christian homeschoolers being threatened with losing their children in Germany, and nuns having to discard their headgear in the wake of the French "headscarf ban". Also, Catholics and Christians who are unwilling to take part in an abortion may have trouble getting through medical school or may lose their license to practice. In the Philipines, a vote is being taken on a population control policy that has been labelled "China-lite". And this in a country that is thought to be a majority of Catholics!

Meanwhile, in the Western nations, and in Israel, the homosexual lobby is gaining incredible strength- and as E. Michael Jones stated, the homosexual is the ideal secular/liberal citizen, fulfilling perfectly the twin demands of no children and materialism. Magistrates in Europe are threatened by legal suits and loss of jobs if they do not recognize the legal rights of homosexuals to marry eachother. I am not, here, condemning the soul of the person who calls himself homosexual, but rather the actions, personal, moral and legal, that are so damaging to him, to society, and are now beginning to be the prow of religious oppression.

Thus, there is a "clash of cultures"- or a clash of militant secular, individualistic pluralism with belief in God, belief in a moral and legal code that governs all people, belief in natural and theistic laws.

Now, put into this mix the nuclear crisis that is brewing in Iran, in an already volatile Middle East: and add a large handful of tension in the fact that most of the oil, oil that greases the economic machine of the world, comes from this area. I have also read that it is an over-looked fact that the oil in the earth is running out.

This brew sounds bad. The interesting thing to me is that all of these seemingly diverse and non-connected streams are now playing on eachother to create a new tune: I call it "Clamp-Down". I mean, it seems to me that the secular answer to this will be the few controlling the many, with the excuse that this will be the only way for people to survive.

The good news? God is in control. And as Our Lady of Pomain said, "My Son is moved by prayer." And to me, it seems that there will be a more black and white choice: for our Faith, or for the secular government- and to those with good will, it will become apparent that the only faith with any humanity, with any Godliness and charity and moral cohesion is the faith in Christ and His Church. The choice will be more clear than it has ever been, and this is a good thing.

As a friend said once, "It has never been easier to be a saint: all one has to do now is practice the Faith."

I finish with the thoughts of Yeats, in one of my personal favorites:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Wafts of Frankincense

We must not forget to stay, in spirit, around The Crib- from Christmas Eve until Epiphany; for it is on the “Little Christmas”, at the coming of the Three Kings, that Our Lord showed Himself to the gentiles, indicating that He had indeed come for all peoples, for “all men of good will”. If we leave The Crib, we miss this momentous event:

They come, those Three, more-than-kings, the Wise of the East. Their faces are inscrutable, hard lines etched in well-traveled countenances; one bears a design of dark kohl, a lattice-like mask around his eyes; another a robe bearing fantastic scenes embroidered in gold thread- not gilt, but real, gold-leaf thread. He shimmers like a living sunrise as he approaches on his knees. The other two take his well-intuited cue and also fall to their knees to shuffle slowly forward. Servants behind them, bearing bundles well-concealed, fall to their knees as well, unquestioning, following their masters. It is a silent, strange scene, the breathing and the drag of robes over small pebbles and discarded leaves.

These Three, reverently coming forward, are passing from the light of the torches (a strong and soldierly light, harsh and flickering) into the star-shadows of the small shrubs and towering cypresses that surround the tiny cave. Suddenly Joseph is there, holding an oil-lamp, peering into the dark to find out who is approaching. He sees the strange sight of the kings and their retinue. They stop. He looks into their eyes, holding all three in his glance, and then slowly nods his head, both in welcome and in humble respect.

Slowly, entering over the threshold, the lip of the cave that holds the thresh inside, they still themselves in reverence. St. Joseph is standing to the right of the manger, now carefully filled with wool and binding cloth, gifts from the shepherds. He has gently touched Our Lady’s shoulder, she who was dozing with the Holy Child in her arms. She wakes, and turns slowly, trying not to wake the Baby. As He sleeps, the Three Kings gaze upon the Child, upon the Mysterious King. Their Eastern eyes do not stray in confusion at the poverty and ignominy of the place, the clothes, the manger, and the animals; for they know that mystery and true greatness is not to be understood; that something larger than the world can indeed inhabit this tiny cave.

They know, too, that something in this Mystery is about a King who will give His very life for His beloved, this God who will empty Himself for His creatures; they know of the ancient pagan kings who were sacrificed to the gods to assuage wrath on a suffering tribe, and the subsequent ‘shadow kings’, or substitute sacrifices-and so they bring myrrh, a precious scent used for burial rites. They know, too, that this Mysterious King is far greater, far higher, than the ancient pagan kings, higher then themselves as the cypress trees to the blade of grass- therefore they bring Him frankincense, a precious sap, crystallized and used only in the liturgies of prayers to the Most High God.

These three, they bring their homage, their wisdom, their intuition, their most precious gifts, symbolic of their graced-understanding; but most of all, they bring hopes-hope of salvation for the gentiles.

Epiphany is the day for the world to cry out again, in hope: to send our prayers up like the wafts of frankincense: but they must be precious, careful and loving, like St. Bernadette’s beautiful Sign of the Cross. It is the day for the world to let go of its gold, putting its wealth at the feet of Christ the King, in His service. It is the day to hand the box of myrrh to glorious St. Joseph, to ask for our daily and final death to be taught to us by him. It is the day for the world to gaze anew at the Holy Family, and ask the Lord for forgiveness, and to rejoice that His answer is not sent, but that He comes Himself: to the Crib, to every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass- and again as Judge at the end of time.

The Strawberry-Picker Church

The newly plowed rows flicker by, looking like a fan from the car window; the miles of strawberry fields are carefully tented in white awnings, catching the strong California sun, like sails full of wind. There is a richness in the air, air full of fertilizer and chlorophyll, and the wealth of the ocean. The valley is like an oyster, framed in by low, eucalyptus-laden mountains, and the Pacific Ocean just over one side of the crown. In the middle, a pearl rises; not towering over the valley like a sentry, but planted in it, like the people and the plants who have grown here for so many years. The pinkish brightness of the stucco walls, the tiled roof and tower, the softly arched windows filled with small jewels of glass all present a still and majestic presence in the middle of the well-used land and hard-earned families of the farm valley, like Our Lady sitting at her distaff, the Mother of God in a small Galilean town.

As the Pearl-Church comes closer, it is apparent that there is a small estate, a conglomeration of monuments, school, small chapel, rectory, and houses of the dead all clustered around the skirt folds of the Mother-church. Rustic trucks, driven and used in their true capacities, patiently await their masters in the parking lot, like the horses outside in times long past.

The steps leading to the main church fan out like an apron, bleached and warm in the strong sun, afforded no shade among the fields; and the three sets of great doors are similarly bleached, and strong. Inside, the church is resplendent in her painting of Our Lady above the high altar; the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue, Our Lady of Fatima; windows of the saints given by groups and families, like “The Society of the Holy Ghost”. St. Philomena stands quietly in the back.

This church, this pearl of the valley, has not been wreckovated. The rows of pews still stand facing the altar in humility and not circled around (making the parishioners stare at each other during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass). The focus still remains the priest and the altar- largely due to the efforts and resistance to changes by some of the parishioners.

They come, now, the parishioners. They enter quietly and reverently, for the most part, covering their foreheads in Holy Water. There are Portuguese families here, ergo the important place near the altar of Our Lady of Fatima, the Portuguese who came escaping poverty and religious persecution of early 20^th century Portugal; there are the descendants of those who ran from the sand-winds of middle American depression in the 1930’s. If one has ever read John Steinbeck’s novels, one can grasp a little of the great suffering that these people faced in their forced immigration. They came here, to this valley and others like it along the Central Coast, and found some relief. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren cling to this valley now, and to their memory, buried next to this church in the tombs.

Their faces are brown, and wrinkled, and they stand in the pews like sheep, next to the many Hispanic folk who’ve come, also escaping poverty in their home countries. The Hispanic, though, are really claiming what was settled here by their race first: the Indian who lived here, the Spanish priests who evangelized and built the missions, and the cowboys and field workers.

Sadly, though, because of the vernacular allowed in the Mass after the sixties, the division between Hispanic, Portuguese and eclectic Caucasian is deeper now, not less: it is lingual division, which cuts more cleanly because language is the mother of understanding. Sadly, now, many people come in to Mass, not knowing truly the reverence due to the Sacrifice: the wearing of jeans and casual clothes is less common here than in other Novus Ordo churches but still is an indication of the intrusion of secular culture. Sadly, it seems the Society of the Holy Ghost has disbanded; the altar rails are gone and the priests often make sermons that instill doubt into the minds of their flock.

This church, the Pearl of the Valley, bright as it appears, is under the clouds of Satanic battle. It is a good place, a Holy Place, and a sign of Christ for the hard-working, the strawberry picker and the flower-grower, for the immigrant stranger and the generational families. Therefore, like so many other Holy Places like it, it is under attack- a soft, sick, subtle attack, a cultural and dogmatic attack.

But the sky is blue; the children slide on the railings down the wide staircase in the sun; where are the bombs? Where are the clouds and the acid rain?

The wreckovaters came, bombing: and were stopped, by the grace of God. The ill-formed priests come and go, with their clouds of confused faith; some good priests have come, too. The acid-rain of a self-oriented and blasphemous culture rain all around; and the wet of it sometimes is brought into the very sanctuary of the church. The parishioners themselves have lost some of their edge, their understanding of the stakes involved in the keeping or losing of their faith. But they are there, most it seems, in good faith, at the mercy of their shepherds (as Our Lord said it would be). So it is the shepherds who stand on the knife edge in these times, and many of them were themselves lost in the wake of a modernist revolution, in the ambiguities of these times.

Yet, yet. The Strawberry-Picker Church lives on: in the eyes and folded hands of the old man in the front; the quiet man who suffers and prays at the drops of Christ’s blood left in the carpet on the floor; the choir that sings chant and the priest who looks around, looks for places to heal and bind up in his flock; in the children who are living to see the rotten fruits of the revolutionary times and perhaps, will look for Tradition as a refuge; in the silent witness of the dead in their tombs, so close to the place where people gather to talk after Mass, sharing their joys, sorrows, new babies and marriages. You see, the Strawberry-Picker Church has not left Tradition completely, even with the best efforts of the liturgical bombers and the modernists- she carries Tradition with her, she is built on the many lives of those who now lay asleep on their stone beds; she is built in part, on the history of the work, suffering and lives of those who have escaped to this valley by the ocean. She is besieged, but not dead, not invalid, not lost- I cannot think it, being there on a bright Sunday at Mass, with the sounds of Gregorian chant swirling gently out the open window, to join the fertile air outside.

Pilgrimage for Advent

Today, under the cerulean California sky, we marked the first day of Advent: and it seemed perfect, a very peculiar kind of perfect. Our donkey was a Volvo, a rather temperamental motorized donkey of a car. It doesn’t like me; won’t start for me when its owner is in the passenger seat (so he has to get out and start it for me). We were setting out on a pilgrimage, and I hadn’t been to my hometown in fifteen years- a farming town in the San Joaquin (“Joachim”?) Valley of California- and it was sort of on the way to our object, a small Vietnamese Catholic church in Sacramento (“Sacrament”), where it is said a statue of Our Lady is weeping.

We began our pilgrimage at the Mass, in St. Joseph’s Shrine of Santa Cruz (“Holy Cross”), and drove our donkey/ Volvo through the mountains; one hundred miles later, I saw the town where I’d suffered into adulthood. It had been such a prison to me, even though there were people there I’d loved. Everything was there, but changed, and it seemed broken down and sad, a trashed and empty sort of place. The only spot of beauty was St. Mary’s Church, and I was so happy to come back there with my new Catholic eyes, and see the shrine to Fatima and the small Catholic ecclesial estate nestled into that sad little town. I also remembered with new force my sinful and desperate existence there, those ten or so years. Seeing old places like that can bring anew the state one was in when last there- and my memories, although full of the angst of a young person searching for love and comfort, were of a sinful life.

Leaving there, we traveled on to Sacramento. On our way, we saw a sign for a new housing development: “Anatolia”, it said, in large, curly letters. We looked at each other in some wonder, because our daughter’s name is Anatolia. What are the chances? So we thought perhaps this was a glimmer of a star for us and we kept on in the gathering dusk.

Finally, the midnight blue donkey got a rest as we stood in front of the large, white, cement statue of Our Lady. It was cold in that parking lot, in the rural darkness south of Sacramento. Suburbans full of Hispanic families and Cadillacs with Vietnamese families pulled in behind us, to join the small crowd in front of the statue. The many-belled sounds of the “Hail Mary” in Vietnamese blended in strangely with the sounds of Spanish. I waited by the car for awhile, and stared at the statue, and wept for the life I’d led, and for all those who were still enslaved in lives like that: desperate, alone, submerged in shadows of guilt and anger that can’t be waved away except in the great grace of repentance and conversion. I just wept for my sins while the back of my mind wondered why a statue would be weeping tears of blood at a Vietnamese church in Sacramento, out in the fields. Why not St. Patrick’s on Fifth Ave? And I wondered if it were true. But from a distance, I could not see the tears of blood, I could only see the crowd of people, looking and praying and holding candles in the air. I could only see the white figure of Our Lady, not looking cement-and-paintlike, but ethereal and simple; and I lived that sadness for sin, my own mostly- how many people had I hurt or helped to lose-and for the blindness of the world.

I went closer and saw the rivulets of dried blood, where the tears had come down. It seemed so-so earthy. But the dried blood brought me, brought us, brought all these people, to pray. And I didn’t worry too much about gawkers- after all, there is so much else to gawk at, why would you choose a statue and The Church of Catholic Martyrs, a Vietnamese parish? And I didn’t worry too much about fanatical sign-seekers: aren’t we all that, really? And I didn’t worry too much about the blood and whether it was a hoax or not, because I remembered Fatima, and Lourdes, and La Salette: that the Lord is sad, and offended- and asks us to do reparation for others and ourselves.

Advent: coming: the coming of the Lord in mercy, as a babe in a small-town stable. Joseph and Mary, beginning their journey to Bethlehem, traveling on a non-descript donkey back to that small town, that sort-of hometown to Joseph. The darkness of the rural roads, the small houses and huts and the smell of dung; the Holy Family picking their way through the crowds of Bethlehem: a Savior has come into the world, to this dark and sad place. Advent is a time for penance, and gratitude, for He wishes to be born in the sad and small places that are our hearts without Him.

A Meditation on Silence

St. Pio at Consecration

The Faces of Silence

There is the Empty Silence: 

when the little hands waving out the car window disappear down the road 

and suddenly the home seems a loosely-knit box of nothingness 

and it must be filled by music or the washing of dishes; 

when the streets are empty at three am 

and there is still a long way to go; 

when train times come and the station is suddenly bereft of its purpose; 

the long winter months in age and illness.

There is the Full Silence: 

when last note of the piano has dissipated 

on a particularly beautiful piece 

and before the applause begins; 

the silence around the dying person’s bedside, 

just as the soul leaves the pupils lax; 

in a crowd when everyone is waiting in solidarity 

for the TV to flicker 

and for the talking head to explain what has happened; 

the longer the silence, the more profound the moment.

The Full Silence is essentially the Silence of Prayer. 

The Holy Spirit revolves in a circle around the Full Silence, 

as the Logos descends, the Silence increases. 

The priest bends low over the bread and wine, 

his voice lowers into the Secrets, 

and the altar servers carefully take the books back and forth, 

the water and wine, 

and their very attempts at quiet movement tell us 

that the centrifugal is closing in 

on the spot on the altar over which the priest is bowing, 

becoming the naval of the universe. 

The bells ring out,

 like a best man tapping his wine glass with a knife.

This is a moment of grace, 

when we can match the air of our inner self 

to all those around us, and to  the Silent Lord;

for those who have cultivated the silence of the heart, 

which is to listen to God,

recognize immediately that it is the same silence,

the same atmosphere of the Full Silence 

They can put their hearts there too, on that altar,

know they are in the presence of fullness of being.

A Primer on Catholic Social Teaching

By Michael Turner

My Friend,

Glad to help out a little with cash flow - please don't make a big deal out of it.

In my cultural milieu, this open sharing of our needs and the ability to open up a little bit with the cash represents a closeness and brotherhood I want to be a part of. From my own messed up family background, I am more open (and needy) for Catholic family. Our baptism has made us closer then my own blood brothers and we don't even know each other that well!

A little sharing of cash represents for me a way to put flesh on my deep belief that we are supposed to share more with each other as Catholics. Part of the problem with nominal Catholics is that they fall into the '“worship of nothing' culture and one aspect of this in the Wild West is a very lonely rugged individualism. Every one of us is supposed to be on our own outside of some head-trip of "community" in Church. It has been very disappointing for me to experience in the last couple of years people who I had expected to be my brothers or sisters when every thing was going good and "charismatic", walk away from our "friendship" when times got tough for me.

It is a dance for me between yearning for Heaven where we will all be sharing everything and recognizing the righteous limits and separateness of our families here. In an ideal context, which has been glimpsed a few times in history, I believe we should share everything in common. Nobody wants to go there, but I still think it has to be the ideal we strive for. If one is broken, we should all come alongside and help him out until he is made whole. When your barn burns down- that is, when, not if, because hard times come to each of us- I want to be in a position to come over right away and help you rebuild. Who thinks like this in the Catholic world?

It is a radical Gospel call I hear, so hard to live out in practical ways, but a clarion Gospel call for me. How can I get myself into a position where my life is well-organized enough- as in the Amish concept of Ordnung -"0rder"- that I can respond freely when others need my help?

We had a big flood here in Santa Cruz in 1982. Mennonite farmers from the plains of Canada heard about the flood and drove their tractors and trailers down here to help dig out mud-filled homes. I have always wanted to have it so together that I could do something like that for Jesus.

So...we "Catholics" make a lot of money on each other and live these superficial lives in "Catholic Communities" with each other but there is no teeth to our Gospel. The worship of the nothingness has held most of the field amongst us. We are very weak and self-serving and frankly quite useless in the hands of Almighty God. If He called would we hear? If we could hear, are we ready to respond?

Come Lord Jesus,
Pierce our selfness,
Blow away our worship of nothingness
Fill the temple of our souls,
With the glory of your Presence.
Come to fill our houses of worship
With the Splendor of your Truth.
Have Mercy on us
Return us again to our first love.
As you crack us open,
Make permanent our new relationship of dependence on You
In your great mercy,
Allow us not back into the seclusion of our own ways.

In Christ,

Your Catholic Brother

Narnia and "Mere Christianity"

Are the Chronicles of Narnia good reading for Catholic youth? Some might look at this askance: “What? With all the other junk out there? If my child wants to read these, of course!”

Can we take a step back from judging everything based on the reality that the culture is so bad? Relative judging has its place, but perhaps when we do this, we miss the reality of the thing itself that we are judging- and we accept more than we should. Therefore, we look at these books for the good that they offer, the richness of awakening faith; the beauty of a majestic Christ-figure- and for the weaknesses they hold; which, I think are important for Catholic parents to be aware of in reading the books with their children, and in going to the movie coming out 9 December.

The Chronicles of Narnia do not portray the fullness of the faith, because in large part, their author never, as his friend JRR Tolkien lamented, “…came all the way into the Church.” C.S. Lewis was born into a Protestant Irish family in 1898. Culturally, and religiously, this means that he grew up in a milieu of Christian hating Christian, in an era when people walked on the other side of the street from the local Catholic Church so as not to ‘get too near the idolatry’.

Lewis himself lost his faith as a young man; perhaps it was largely a cultural faith and not imbedded in his soul. But as Tolkien said later, “It seemed that he never quite lost the Ulster Protestant in him, and could not get past seeing anything but the negative from a priest” (my paraphrase). Yet perhaps the memory of the battling between Catholic and Protestant in the neighborhoods of Ireland lay buried in his memory, awakening later with his own awakening in faith. Lewis was a middle-aged bachelor and Professor of Literature at Oxford or Cambridge (honestly- I can never remember this tidbit!) when he met Tolkien. Among other things, it was their literary group and a late-night conversation about the reality of ‘mythos’ with Tolkien that changed Lewis’ soul. He suddenly saw everything as spiraling outward from the Great Myth, the True Myth of Christ; everything suddenly only made sense in the Light of the Lamb.

Lewis, passionate, supremely intelligent and of strong will and purpose, went on a Crusade of his own: like St. Francis of Assisi, he wanted to go and preach peace: especially among Christian folk. He crafted an idea of Christianity called “Mere Christianity”. He preached this on radio, book and lecture- and became quite famous in the process. Tolkien, meanwhile, Catholic genius that he was, describes both the genius of Mere Christianity and its weaknesses in one great play on one of Lewis’ own images. “Mere Christianity”, he said, “like the hallway running the length of a great house, does not encompass the rooms off itself. Instead of attempting to open those doors- to the Orthodox, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, etc- it prides itself on being too simple for those conflicts of ‘complicated doctrine’. Yet, it remains in the hallway, missing perhaps the fullness and richness of Truth and Faith behind one of those doors.” I would extrapolate further to say that Lewis’ ultimate understanding of 'Mere Christianity' is what St. Paul calls "the milk of infants". The Apostle further calls us to grow beyond that simple milk, to eat the Food of Christ: the Eucharist, the Traditions and fullness of the Church: these being proper food for the maturity of Faith- the Faith of the Saints.

Thus, the Chronicles of Narnia are beautiful, but as milk for infants in the Faith. That is to say that the books are real tools for a child’s understanding of Christianity- the use of allegory (using symbolic figures to stand for real events and people) and the inclusion of cultural things like “Father Christmas” in the first book make the basic message of the Faith understandable to baby Christians (adults included).

Thus, there are many important things missing that will produce a stunt-growth effect, if the reader is not moved past Narnia. The idea of a Church, or priesthood continuing the Sacrifice of Christ are missing; the notion of intercessory prayer; the Mother of God; if one starts thinking of all the things not contained in the books, even symbolically, it is easy to understand the weaknesses of the Chronicles.

But do not, I think, underestimate the beauty, and the majestic presentation of Christ. Also, Lewis knows how to portray evil in its selfishness and banality, even so that children can be disgusted without being scandalized. My weakened faith kept its small spark alive, in large part, because Narnia had been a real place to me as a child; and I was in love with Aslan, and yet understood whom the lion was meant to portray. So whilst critiquing Lewis, I remain indebted to him and he has my prayers- prayers that he finally understood Tolkien when they met again- hopefully both in the right place!

Read the books, go to see the movies (if they are faithful renditions without any Disney Funny Business). But point yourselves and your children out of the hallway and into the door of Fullness: The Catholic Faith, by graduation to the great Catholic novels, the stories of the saints, and the spiritual classics.

Finally, talk about what is missing with your seven-year-olds and older. This will elicit their first experience in Catholic apologetics!

The Landscape of Traditionalism: Part Four

It was 1969, and the rain pelted the little car as it sped through the Brazilian countryside. It was night, black as it only gets out in the country on a rainy night. In the little car there was a bishop, driving erratically. He was weeping with great sobs hacking at his chest, and with that and the rain and the dark, he was having trouble finding his way to the seminary. Finally the headlamps caught the edge of a simple stone building, and the weeping bishop tried to wipe his face fruitlessly in the rain as he parked the car and hurried into the foyer of the building. There, in the gaze of astonished professors and seminarians, he sank into a chair. They had never seen him like this, and they rushed to him in one movement. "Senor- Padre- Que-"

Bishop Castro del Mayer, a true and firm, loving Shepherd of the Brazilian diocese of Campos, raised his wet cheeks to them and asked for a glass of water. In the ensuing busy fluttering of cassocks, the head of the seminary sat down next to the Bishop. "Que ha pasado?" he asked softly. The Bishop, who for years now since the Council, had tried to maintain stability and faith in his poor diocese, who had endured ridicule and contempt at the Brazilian Bishops Council for his cautions on the new developments coming out of the documents of Vatican II, looked back sadly at his old friend. "The Holy Father has promulgated a New Order of Mass. How could this be done to the Holy Sacrifice?"

The Second Vatican Council, ecumenical and pastoral, had produced many documents relating to the directive of Pope John XXIII, the directive of "aggiornomento". It is this which I think is now called "The Spirit of Vatican II". What is it? An opening to the world: the Catholic Church had, especially since the days of Martin Luther's 99 theses, been seen as a fortress, a Mother with her arms crossed tightly to her breast, in defense of doctrine and Tradition alike. But the modern world, in the 1950's, had drifted away from a frontal attack and in the West was complacently buying everything it could get its hands on, and in the East, constructing its own fortresses, satanic ones. Perhaps one could say that Catholics in that era might have been a bit institutionalized- perhaps not. There are differing opinions.

At any rate, Pope John XXIII was an optimistic man and he wanted the Church to reach out to the world. There are, though, two senses of aggiornomento- one is to come out of your fortress and invite people in, to show the joy of Christ as it flows within what is peculiarly Catholic- the other way is to begin to tear down the walls of the fortress in hopes that the world will welcome you as "leaven".

How can I, a sort-of educated laywoman, judge which is the better? So I take the example of another layman, Mr. Davies and I look at the Spirit of Vatican II in light of Tradition. What we see then, is that no council was ever called for pastoral reasons in a time where there was no crisis to be attended to; and that the manner of rejecting the schemata and then writing creatively in committees was also never done before. It seems that although the Council was a true Council, it was an occasion perhaps, for devilry.

Mr. Davies calls this devilry "time bombs"- and as I understand him, he meant that the documents, although containing no heresy in terms of Faith and Morals, contained loose ends- or ambiguities which could later be exploited. By whom? Those who, although within the fortress, were bent on rebuilding the Church in their own images. Thus, although the Council may have been called with much hope and potential for mission work to a secularized West, the type of "aggiornomento" which was adopted was the tearing down of the walls, obstensibly to help Catholics become leaven and open the inner rooms of God's Church to those who did not understand Her. The danger of course, which has come to pass, is that Her identity would become actually hidden, that She would begin to appear like everything else around Her.

Thus began a process of making all the aspects of the Church more palpatable to the world- and most importantly, the centerpiece of Catholic life, the Mass. Protestant advisors were brought in to make suggestions on how the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice could be edited to be more agreeable to ecumenical services with Protestants, and so the ensuing directive from the Council for the Novus Ordo Missae was in effect, a banishing of the Traditional Latin rite. Within the document, therefore, was a rather ambiguous directive that the Novus Ordo should itself contain options which would make the rite more specific to the culture and to the occasional Protestant who might stop in.

Pope Paul VI was following the ambiguously stated directives buried in the official documents of the Vatican II when he promulgated the Novus Ordo Missae. It contained no error, or heresy: Mr. Davies makes it abundantly clear that the Novus Ordo is indeed a valid Mass, and legally promulgated by a Pope. Even further, if one goes to a Novus Ordo Mass done as Pope Paul VI promulgated it, it is hard for the casual observer to see the difference between this and the Traditional Latin Rite. But there are some tragic differences, like the loss of the Last Gospel and the prayers at the foot of the altar, and it is the novelty and the sweeping away of the divinely-crafted Traditional rite, this novelty introduced into the very fabric of the Novus Ordo through the instructions and 'options', that is the fundamental problem. Also, there have been many, many abuses and heretical practices that have been illicitly introduced into the liturgies: Altar girls, communion in the hand, changes of the prayers, and worse-much worse: most of which have gone without reform and disciplinary action from the proper hierarchy.

Why did Bishop Castro del Mayer weep?

It was the reasons for the Novus Ordo, it was the Spirit of Vatican II mentality that had begun to take hold everywhere in the Church by 1969; and the intelligent Bishop saw the handwriting on the wall when he saw the options and the open doors contained within the instructions for the Mass. He saw, in the future, priests and liturgists crafting the clothes of Christ to fit their liking.

In 1969, the promulgation of the New Mass was like a lit match dropped on dry tinder, and the education of future Catholics of the true nature of their faith was the wood. This fire signaled a fracturing within the Church, and now we have a landscape of different kinds of Catholics, each not sure whether the other is still Catholic; there are many who've fallen off Peter's barque altogether for various reasons, mostly grounded in confusion and bitterness, in a sense of abandonment akin to despair. And of course, there are those who have simply become indistnguishable from the secular culture around them. They think they are Catholic, but they are not in form or essence. This seems to me to be the greater tragedy.

It is a tragic landscape; and yet Pope John Paul II used to talk about a new springtime in the Church. But I think that there was more to what he was saying than what appears to be a statement totally out of touch: once again, we look at both his statement and at the landscape of the Church in the light of Tradition. In Christian history, in the Tradition of the Church, God brings a new springtime out of hardship and loss. The new flowers of spring, the uncountable blades of new and sweet grass grow from a soil watered by the blood of martyrs. It has always been thus. Resurrection is born out of Crucifixion.

I have read somewhere, perhaps in the writings of St. John Bosco, that the Church has a life in the world as did Christ. It had its infancy and childhood, it's flowering of teaching and spreading- and perhaps now, we are witnissing the Crucifixion. The Church was left open to enemies by Her own, is now not known by Her own. Her apostles are fleeing, the devastation and ignomy is too great to bear: but Mary is there, still, and the Apostle of Love. A Catholic has to see the Blood of Our Lord poured out from a pitcher into cups; and another Catholic has to wonder if his chapel is really part of the Church; priests have to suffer the loss of their rightful place, their sacrificial role which defines them: and Our Lord has to wait patiently in a Tabernacle that no one can find, in a Eucharist in which eighty percent of His children have no faith or real understanding- mainly because the liturgies tell them nothing about Him there, Body and Blood.

But Resurrection comes out of Crucifixion, in the Right-side up Kingdom of Christ, hope is ever born anew even in the wreckage. St. Joseph is there, Guardian of the Church, Guardian of the Faithful. Our Lady is there, in the surety of the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. "But those days will be shortened, lest even the elect be deceived, if that were possible." And what, Traditionally, marks the elect(they are called saints, too)? Look back in the Tradition to learn from the saints: Dependence on Our Lord, the intercession of His Mother, and above all: humility. Never to presume to pass judgment on Christ's Vicar, but to have the courage to speak out humbly to defend and to protect the vulnerable. To reach out to the people in the world, indeed, but with the "aggiornomento" of the peculiarly Catholic. To love the Tradition and to suffer for even the smallest thing which is Our Lord's.