Last Sunday – Christ the King

Mont Ste. Michel

Bulletin Letter from 11/27/19

I’m often asked what I think of the current trials and tribulations of the Church. While everyone wants to blame everyone else for everything, and Priests are a lightning rod for controversy and polemic discussions, the fact is that in the grand scheme of things we know that the story of the Church ends well. And classically speaking, if a story ends well it’s a comedy. 

So we can look at the Church as an unfortunate comedy of errors in our time.  This is why Dante Alighieri wrote “The Divine Comedy”, and not “The Divine Tragedy”. It fell to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write the latter, and his story – a trilogy – ends in the modern period of the 1800s in protestant New England. If we only look at the present, we’ll never see what the Lord has in store for us. We live in the present, with the hope of a glorious future. 

The story of the church isn’t a tragedy, but personal histories can be. I’m bothered by the trials of the Church, but I’m more concerned with souls falling away from Jesus Christ and from the Faith. The trials of the Church are affecting people’s faith and their lives in very negative ways. If someone falls away and decides that they are Buddhist, new age, agnostic, or whatever – why should anyone be glad about that? If the Church promotes that in any way, why should a priest be glad about that? 

Several years ago the nun who was president of a national assembly of women religious, said that they were moving beyond Jesus Christ. Many priests thought this was a wonderful statement in our enlightened times. But they also had a noted new age thought leader speak at the same assembly, who promoted moving beyond Jesus Christ into territories once abandoned by the enemy of our souls, who is far more subtle and deceptive than most realize. Such things are horrifying and should be to everyone who knows and loves Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ is Lord, or He isn’t. Each person has to decide that for a fact, take up their cross and follow Him. Or they need to move on and see if the grass is truly greener on the other side. People fall away from the Church all the time. But when push comes to shove, they want Holy Communion on demand, they want a Catholic burial, they want the “Last Rites”, they want the spiritual help and consolations that ritual worship offers, they want a priest present, they want to know how to pray, they want Faith, they want a relationship with God and to know how God truly is. They want to earnestly search for the fruit of the divine work, so they may receive more abundantly of the healing effects of the Lord’s goodness.

Make up your minds to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. It’s my own challenge as well. But let your yes be yes, and your no be no. It’s never really the time for waffling.  

Well that’s a Fine How do Y’do.

As anyone who’s ever been to this site can tell you, clearly things have changed.

I had been getting into a sort of groove, and getting things going when, all of a sudden, the website disappeared again.

To be fair I did change hosting servers twice in the process. The first time I had to re-do a lot of things and set course in a new direction, which was taking shape and getting there. But the second time, everything disappeared (again) and when it re-appeared, the wonder workers at Kinsta had put my entire blogging history online together in one single spot.

And in the meantime, everything I had blogged about while taking a new direction disappeared. It’s still there somewhere, and I’ll find it. But I have a lot to do in the meantime aside from blogging, and that’s what’s taking precedence.

To catch anyone up:

-My Niece died in 2017 – Cassie was my only niece, and I’m obviously single, and she was a lot like a daughter.

-A lot of other issues had to be dealt with.

-The Rectory had a rat infestation and subsequent gutting and renovation ( It was truly horrible.)

-The Church here was starting a historic renovation, with everything that entails.

-As things were settling down our manager retired.

-We’ve had a lot going on in general.

I eventually realized I had to be well also and had to spend some time regrouping. So many beloved here are ill or have died. It’s a wonderful, brilliant, energetic, and poignant place. And then I was asked to chair a committee for the Archdiocese. Realistically, nothing is going to stop so I can keep a weblog.

But with that said. God is great, and hope springs eternal. The world needs hope above all, and I do believe that we have much in which to place our hope.

As for this site, I guess we’ll see. So much is going on, isn’t it?

Stay tuned.

+

Mid the Bleak Midwinter

oranges

In the middle of winter, when the sky is dark and the rain is falling all around so that it feels like you’re in the middle of an ocean – life is perfect. I am just nuts about winter weather here in Louisiana. If I lived in Wisconsin I doubt I could take it, though. I mean, I have my limits. And we have oranges.

True, winter has only just started.

Rain is a good thing and you’ll never – well, rarely – hear me complain about it. If it never rained, the place wouldn’t be so green.

That being said, I’m not quite sure why I’m not cozy in bed with a good book on this rainy morning, and am instead jittery with caffeine posting pictures of oranges – unedited at that because photoshop is not responding to my promptings – on my strange little website.

It has to do with prayer. Because in the last few weeks I’ve become aware of the need to reorient my life ever more towards Jesus Christ. And it has to do with Faith, because I’ve come to consider that the Church is very confused right now. For a time I’ve let that confusion cloud my mind. But, in respect to the integrity of my state in life, and my station here, there can be no confusion.

We (the clergy of the Archdiocese,) took a workshop awhile ago which focussed on the differences amongst the various generations of clergy. Which are huge. It’s obvious to any observer that the differences are huge between someone ordained to the Priesthood in, say, 2004, and someone ordained to the Priesthood in, say, 1978. So, we have one priest saying one thing, one saying another – one bishop saying one thing, one saying something completely different – one Pope saying one thing and one saying something another.

Priests here have said that a reason Deacons were so avidly introduced back in the day was to pave the way for married clergy. Some have said “We’re not going back! If you don’t like what we’re doing you’ll just have to wait until we die!”

I mean, this is crazy talk. No one can dwell seriously on it. Except for the fact that they’re deadly serious when they say it and it affects all of us.

So. I do what I can out here on the peripheries at our sprawling ruralish parish, filled with the full breadth of human experience on any given day. And I’m filled with wonder when considering the scriptures, the sacraments, the promises of life itself.

I’m certainly not waiting for anyone to die. That’s crazy talk.

I’m off to listen to the rain, though. And to give thanks for so many blessing in this life.

Pure as the Driven Snow

Snowy Day 8

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

To begin with, today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which commemorates the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary was born without sin. To paraphrase St. John Chrysostom, we shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about this, as it defies nature and logic, and is obviously a supernatural gift from the Lord God Himself.

Rather, it is a fact which should bring us to quietness, pondering the mystery. Preserved from the stain of sin from the moment of her conception, Mary has been described at times as being pure as the driven snow.

Which brings us to today, which was one of those very rare snowy days in Louisiana.

snowy day

We are about as geared to snow as New York is geared to hurricanes.

And so many people have said – we never see snow like this!

This is kinda nuts for here.

 

But it happens, and it’s beautiful.

Just like the Immaculate Conception happened, and it’s much more beautiful.

I know. But it’s been a long day.

And so, from our little town, a glimpse into our Feast Day here – filled with Masses, Holy Hours, beautiful meals with friends, smoked turkeys, French Onion soup, fires, Rosaries…   Blessed Feast Day.

St. Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc

From the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913:

Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), Blessed, by her contemporaries commonly known as la Pucelle (the Maid); b. at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; d. at Rouen, 30 May, 1431. The village of Domremy lay upon the confines of territory which recognized the suzerainty of the Duke of Burgundy, but in the protracted conflict between the Armagnacs (the party of Charles VII, King of France), on the one hand, and the Burgundians in alliance with the English, on the other, Domremy had always remained loyal to Charles.

Jacques d’Arc, Joan’s father, was a small peasant farmer, poor but not needy. Joan seems to have been the youngest of a family of five. She never learned to read or write but was skilled in sewing and spinning, and the popular idea that she spent the days of her childhood in the pastures, alone with the sheep and cattle, is quite unfounded. All the witnesses in the process of rehabilitation spoke of her as a singularly pious child, grave beyond her years, who often knelt in the church absorbed in prayer, and loved the poor tenderly. Great attempts were made at Joan’s trial to connect her with some superstitious practices supposed to have been performed round a certain tree, popularly known as the “Fairy Tree” (l’Arbre des Dames), but the sincerity of her answers baffled her judges. She had sung and danced there with the other children, and had woven wreaths for Our Lady’s statue, but since she was twelve years old she had held aloof from such diversions.

It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her “voices” or her “counsel.” It was at first simply a voice, as if someone had spoken quite close to her, but it seems also clear that a blaze of light accompanied it, and that later on she clearly discerned in some way the appearance of those who spoke to her, recognizing them individually as St. Michael (who was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: “I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you.”

“… Joan, either to defend her modesty from outrage, or because her women’s garments were taken from her, or, perhaps, simply because she was weary of the struggle and was convinced that her enemies were determined to have her blood upon some pretext, once more put on the man’s dress which had been purposely left in her way. The end now came soon. On 29 May a court of thirty-seven judges decided unanimously that the Maid must be treated as a relapsed heretic, and this sentence was actually carried out the next day (30 May, 1431) amid circumstances of intense pathos. She is said, when the judges visited her early in the morning, first to have charged Cauchon with the responsibility of her death, solemnly appealing from him to God, and afterwards to have declared that “her voices had deceived her.” About this last speech a doubt must always be felt. We cannot be sure whether such words were ever used, and, even if they were, the meaning is not plain. She was, however, allowed to make her confession and to receive Communion. Her demeanour at the stake was such as to move even her bitter enemies to tears. She asked for a cross, which, after she had embraced it, was held up before her while she called continuously upon the name of Jesus. “Until the last,” said Manchon, the recorder at the trial, “she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her.” After death her ashes were thrown into the Seine.”

Ste. Jeanne D’Arc, priez pour nous.