Keeping up with the Choir

We're going to try to maintain a blog from the studio, keeping the connection open all day so as we get breaks between songs any of the singers can update the blog. And post pics and video. So get your daily update on the recording project: Catholic Favorites, vol. 2. Maybe you'll even hear a snatch of a favorite of yours!

For the Greater Glory

On this feast of St. Ignatius, we are scheduled to begin a new music project (for the greater glory of God, of course). I just learned which songs are to be included in this new album, and it will certainly be a constant reminder to "seek first God's kingship" if all we do is pay attention to what we sing:
Adoro Te
All Creatures of Our God and King
How Great Thou Art
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
Let There Be Peace on Earth
The Lord Is My Shepherd
Magnificat
No Longer I
Now Thank We All Our God
O Bread of Angels
To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King
Ave Maria (I don't know which one)
Salve Mater Misericordiae (the typical translation was done by my old professor, C.J. McNaspy, SJ!)
Veni Sancte Spiritus

I'll do my best to post video updates and scenes, observing the limits of time and copyright. Check back often! And every time you do, say a little prayer for the people this project will touch.

Martha, Martha

I know I'm a day late on this, but on yesterday's feast of St. Martha I really wasn't able to do more than a laboriously entered phone message. Besides, I'm still thinking about what the Lord said to St. Martha! And I noticed something.
It is typical in Luke's Gospel for Jesus to repeat a person's name when he has a "good news/bad news" type of announcement. A call to conversion, in other words. It's "Martha, Martha", "Peter, Peter", "Jerusalem, Jerusalem." Even in the Acts of the Apostles, the Risen and Exalted Jesus follows the same modus operandi: "Saul, Saul."
Not only that! Jesus tells his hearers that if they don't carry out his message, one day they will be saying, "Lord, Lord!"
I also noticed an interesting pattern in that section of Luke's Gospel where we find the Martha/Mary story. Just a few paragraphs ahead of that, we have Jesus reminding the disciples, "Blest are the eyes that see what you see." (Boy does that apply to Martha!) Then someone asked Jesus about the greatest commandment in the Law. And Jesus had the man answer his own question: Love the Lord with everything you've got, and love your neighbor as yourself. The very next thing is the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is followed by Martha's frenetic hospitality of the Son of God, and then we get the teaching on how to pray (the Our Father). So there is a subtle "inclusio" of sorts as a commentary on the Law of Love: neighbor (good Samaritan) and God (Our Father) and in the very middle, the story of Martha in which Jesus is both "neighbor" and Lord, the "one thing necessary." Jesus sums up God and neighbor in himself, and the story of Martha and Mary becomes a parable of how to live the Law of Love.

Airport chapel

What a great service! Midway has a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament, too. And O Hare. Where else?

tada!

Sr. Laura and I met some wonderful people at the Catholic Family Conference in Elgin this weekend...
And here's Sr. Laura's finished version of St. Paul for the Pauline Year:

Now I'm heading to Boston (angels on the plane!) for a week of music and then a week of prayer; a week of meetings and then another week of music. I have a frightfully early flight tomorrow...
Please pray for us!

The mustard seed and biblical inerrancy

Today's Gospel always reminds me of the time I first encountered the possibility of error in the Bible (not doctrinal error, mind you, just inexact information). I was about nine, and was the proud and hope-filled possessor of some seed packets, purchased from the local "dime" store. Among the flowers I hoped would grow in our freshly prepared patch of backyard were zinnias. I ripped open the packet and poured the seeds into my hand: hundreds of tiny black dots settled into my palm. And I remembered the words of the Holy Gospel, "the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds."
I had seen mustard seeds (in those little acrylic bubbles). I looked again at the seeds in my hand. These had to be the smallest of all seeds.
Faced with the obvious fact that Jesus was plain wrong about seeds, I was in a quandary. Did Jesus, who was all-knowing, not know about zinnias? Was the Bible wrong about other things besides the relative sizes of seeds? Did any grown-ups know about this? I piously decided to ignore the discrepancy, but every time I hear this Gospel, well... now you know!

Scenes from my walk

On the road

Sr. Laura and I head out this evening for the Rockford Diocese's Catholic Family Conference in Elgin. When we get back Sunday afternoon, I will have just over a day to catch up and...pack for my trip to Boston! So you may not hear from me too much over the next five days.
Meanwhile, I have launched yet another blog, this time on behalf of our recording choir. It is hosted on St. Paul's Tube, a Pauline Family social networking site. Hopefully, during the recording sessions, we'll manage to post daily updates, video clips, reminders for prayer and the like.
One voice that may be missing on this album is that of Sr. Margaret Timothy Sato. I don't think she's missed an album yet, but this month she was named Provincial Superior--a role that can be pretty much all-consuming. Sr. Timothy, a native of Honolulu, takes the helm of the Daughters of St. Paul in the US and English-speaking Canada. Assisting her on the council are: Sr. Joan Paula Aruda, Sr. Marie James Hunt, Sr. M. Domenica Vitello and Sr. Karen Marie Anderson (who is presently also serving as director of novices). This is their very first week "on the job," so I know they would appreciate an extra dose of prayer.

Another book for your shelf

We have a clearance sale going on, which is (to my mind) the perfect reason to quickly read through a book or two before it sells out. One of the books I perused was Ruth Barton's "Sacred Rhythms." It's a kind of handbook on Christian spirituality: prayer, discernment, creating a spiritual "rule of life" (and even the examen of consciousness!). All very solid, very real-life oriented and very readable. What is particularly interesting to me is that Barton, who was brought up in the Baptist tradition, makes all this traditionally Catholic stuff very approachable for non-Catholics, to whom the language may be much less familiar. But her writing is not so focused on a Protestant audience that a Catholic would be distracted or unable to relate. It's just a good, solid and balanced treatment of key issues in our life with God.
Barton deserves kudos for her treatment of the Sabbath in our Christian life, and her helpful explanation of how to create a "rule of life" that sets our life on course in a way that coincides with our life with God, not setting "prayer life" and "real life" on parallel tracks.
As I mentioned, this was a book I picked up from our sale shelf; we have a few copies left (at 30% off!), so if you're quick enough, you might be able to snatch one up for yourself.

Mary, Mary

Today's feast of St. Mary Magdalen renews the problem of the many Marys in the Gospels. Mary Magdalen has suffered the brunt of most of the confusion, being considered a reformed prostitute by the churches in the west, and a virgin by the Eastern churches. And to tell the truth, the confusion is a bit warranted. Luke says that Jesus cast no less than seven demons from Mary of Magdala, and since the number seven represents completeness, that's like saying "all hell" was upon her before that deliverance. A "sinful woman" washed Jesus' feet with tears, dried them with her hair and perfumed them with fragrant oil. Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, also poured expensive perfume on Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair. There were no less than three Marys at the foot of Jesus' cross, and two who approached the tomb on Easter morning.
There was bound to be some confusion.
And maybe that's all right. Maybe the multiplicity of Gospel Marys means something for us. Maybe we should blend them all into one image of Christian discipleship, summed up in Mary, the Mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalen, apostle to the Apostles. Maybe we are all supposed to be those Marys, made one.

Jesus and Jonah

I meant to post about today's Gospel (better late than never!): how today we hear Jesus claim to be "greater than Solomon" and "greater than Jonah." And John the Baptizer said that Jesus was "mightier" than he, "ranked ahead" of him, and so on. I wondered at the terms "greater" and "mightier." What did the Greek say? Well, sure enough for John the Baptizer: he was saying that the one coming after him was "stronger" than he was. But Jesus claimed to be not exactly "greater" in our sense of greatness; the word in today's Gospel is closer to our word for "full, fullness." As would only be fitting of the one "in whom all the fullness was pleased to dwell."
Solomon and Jonah were "types" of Christ; Christ himself is the fulfilment. John was not a "type" of Christ, but his predecessor and the "best man" at the wedding that is yet to come.

Saints Alive!

So this is what pious surgeons do in their downtime...

Adoption Help

A piece in yesterday's Tribune mentioned organizations that offer grants to adopting families. Here are some of them:
The Gift of Adoption Fund
Shaohannah's Hope (Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman started this one)
The Asian Bridge (matching grants for families adopting from any Asian country)
Help Us Adopt

Yum

Thanks to Inge on Plurk, I found this delicious Italian recipe blog (from the Puglia region of Italy, famous for its olive oil). Even if you can't read Italian, you can savor the pictures.

The conversions of st paul

Sr. Laura is creating a new image of St. Paul
for the Pauline Year. It is taking place in her "studio" (aka "cubicle") right across the hall from my "office."
Just today she asked the Paulist priest who celebrated Mass in our chapel if he could be a "hand model" for Paul. (How appropos!) Here you can see the "portrait" taking shape.

Sr. Julia's back!

I brought the video camera down to New Orleans when I visited my family, and Sr. Julia was gracious enough to expound on "summer reading": fiction! I apologize in advance for the audio problems in the first part of the video. You would not believe what I had to go through with this! For a while, I thought it was going to be a silent movie. Thankfully, St. Paul and Bl. James Alberione got at least some sound working...

So Where are "The Nuns"?

A comment that appeared not only in this blog's comment box, but also in Karen's (and I suspect quite a few others--someone must have spent the day doing blog marketing for Sony) announced an upcoming music sensation, already signed with Sony: The Priests. Real ones. And they sing. Their first album will be released in November.
As readers of this blog know, "The Nuns" have released almost two dozen albums. We're still waiting for that call from Sony/BMG: maybe they'd be interested in our upcoming project?

Introducing....

As soon as I get a picture, I'll do the formal introductions! Meanwhile, I just wanted to give you an update on our community, which is in summer flux as we take turns for retreat, updating and so on. Sr. Helen will be returning from her retreat tomorrow; I'll be leaving for mine in two weeks (actually, we have a recording project first and then retreat). Sr. Helena (movie philosopher blogger nun) is taking a course through our "Pauline Center for Media Studies" in Culver City, CA. I'm sure she's loving those Pacific Coast sunbeams.
Meanwhile in Chicago we are hosting a Korean sister who is working on her English skills at a language school two doors away. Sister Triphonia is a theology student at the Gregorian University in Rome (many classes, papers, texts and tests are in English). She is slated for higher studies in moral theology, probably at the "Alphonsianum." (Don't you love how those Roman Universities have such saintly names? In addition to the two just named, there are: the Angelicum (St. Thomas Aquinas), the Antonianum (St. Anthony), the Claretianum (St. Anthony Claret, with a specialization in Religious Life), the Anselmianum (St. Anselm--or was it Ambrose? I'm getting confused. This university specializes in Liturgy studies), the Seraphicum (St. Francis), the Teresianum (St. Teresa--specializing in spirituality!)... I know there are more; who wants to fill in the blanks?

iConfess

Somebody had to do it.
Cajun geek Travis Boudreaux has created an iPhone application for the distracted penitent. (It also functions as a very small web site.)
Great work, Travis! Now, what about the priest's edition?

Listen Up!

I'll be making my retreat day on Sunday, but you can still hear me chatting away with Sr. Tracey and my fellow New Orleanian (transplanted to Georgia these twenty years), Ken Lampert. An interview recorded at the Atlanta Eucharistic Congress will be broadcast Sunday night (8:30 pm) on "The Catholic Hour," WDUN AM 550 (wdun.com). Ken, who grew up in the same Metairie parish I did, just a few streets away, says that the first half of the program will be on Saint Columban, and then you can catch me and Sr. Tracey on the air.

Oviedo: Wish I had Known

Found a book in our center yesterday about the "Sudarium of Oviedo," a bloodstained linen cloth that has been venerated in an historically ascertainable way for at least 1400 years as the "cloth that covered the head" of Jesus after his death. Interestingly, although this cloth was locked in an wooden trunk in Spain and maintained in one place since 1041, the bloodstains match those found on the Shroud of Turin (which never passed through Spain). Sudarium and Shroud feature the same microscopic pollens. And blood type AB (common in the Middle East; rare in Europe). The sudarium was moved from Jerusalem to Alexandria when Muslim armies were conquering the Holy Land; two years later, they were at Egypt's door, and the relic, in its oaken trunk, was spirited off to Spain. As the Muslims advanced through Spain, the trunk was sent off to more and more remote places, finally being secured in Asturias (the one region of Spain that was never under Muslim rule). Finally it was moved in 1041 (or 1014? memory fails me) to what became the capital of Asturias, Oviedo, and a Cathedral was built up around the royal chapel where the trunk of relics was kept.
I visited that Cathedral in 2006. With Karen (see picture taken with her magic camera).
I didn't know what I was missing as we were hurriedly shown around the church (whose guardians wanted to lock up for siesta). We should have been in adoration, but it seems that the caretakers of the relic were only following historical precendent in not alerting us to its presence or significance. (This makes sense, given the need to protect it from destruction. Even in the 20th century, it wasn't safe; during the Spanish Civil War, the relic chapel was fire-bombed. The oaken trunk, though, was not destroyed.)
Turns out that medieval pilgrims to Compostela would make a detour through mountains (Asturias is Europe's prime mountain-climbing region) to visit the Cathedral of Oviedo. A couplet that was common at the time (and that appears in various forms in other languages than Spanish) said that one who went to Compostela and the tomb of St. James without visiting the Cathedral of Oviedo was focusing on the "servant" and not on the "Lord."

Catching Up

I was planning to spend the day catching up on the post-travel backlog in my office. Instead, we learned that the mom of a friend of the community had died, so the day was ordered around a visitation held quite far from downtown Chicago. I got a little bit done earlier in the afternoon, but there wasn't much left for blogging. Hopefully I'll be back in full swing by Monday. (I'm making my July retreat day on Sunday, but I don't blog on Sundays anyway. As for tomorrow...we'll see!)
If you are in the Chicago area, come and visit our center soon. We are having a clearance sale and there are some fantastic titles on the sale shelf. I think that priests and seminarians would be especially excited about the books in the areas of liturgy and Scripture study, as well as spirituality.

Back to Chi-town

Yesterday was a pretty full day with Mom, running around the city and ending up at my brother's house for "the world's healthiest pizza" with his two tiny girls. Then, back home, I couldn't print out my boarding pass for today's flight to Midway. That discovery led to the realization that Mom's impossibly slow computer was simply maxed out. So I spent my last waking hours last night with Mom, deleting duplicate and triplicate folders of family photos. And then doing a defrag. (Mom's not just losing a daughter here; she's losing in-home tech support!)
So, "angels on wings" for the flight to Midway. See you in Chicago!

My recent experience with Facebook got me thinking about the precariousness of our online existence. Interestingly, yesterday (just as my problem was resolved) the paper had a four-column article on the issues involved "Online Freedoms Inconsistent." When we sign up for these free services, we are at the mercy of the service provider. We can be screened, edited, or (as I was) summarily booted out, and we have no court of appeal because this is a private enterprise. That's perfectly legitimate, but my experience this week told me not to take too much for granted. Just two days before I found myself exiled from the Facebook community, I published a post about a pro-life video that had been taken down by YouTube for violating unstated criteria. I kind of wondered if my FB experience was in some way related to my having put that post on my FB page and not only on my blog... In other words, is Orwell's Big Brother online?

As the AP article noted: "Community backlash can restrain service providers, but as Internet companies continue to consolidate and Internet users spend more time using vendor-controlled platforms such as mobile devices or social-networking sites, the community's power to demand free speech and other rights diminishes. Weinstein, the veteran computer scientist, said that as people congregate at fewer places, "if you're knocked off one of those, in a lot of ways you don't exist.""

About Face(book)

After some correspondence with the folks behind Facebook, and a 1.5 mb jpg of my passbook page, I am back on Facebook, presumably as "Sister Anne." I would check on it now, but Mom wants to go see the Hummingbird Lady of Metairie, and our time is short!
Glad this was taken care of; I was getting rather creeped out by the implications of what FB was doing.

Facebook Face-off

I tried to log onto Facebook today, only to be met with the curt message that my account had been disabled by an adminstrator because of a "fake name."
I used SrAnne as my name because Facebook had earlier deleted the "Sister" from "Sister Anne." I just wrote(disabled@facebook.com) to protest (mildly), saying that SrAnne was as close as I could get to my real name, given the restrictions on titles in FB. "Sister Anne" appears on my passport; doesn't that count as a "real" name?
So if you are wondering, as Jeff was, why I disappeared from your friend list, that's the reason. Want to help me (and other offending "srs") get back on?

Independence

Going to Mass on Independence Day got me thinking about what "independence" means for Christians. St Paul speaks about our freedom as children of God. So when did we declare our independence? We can't be independent of God, although there are some strands of spiritual thought that do incline that way. Actually, our "July 4" was our Baptism day, and we celebrate Independence Day every time we renew our baptismal promises. We declare our independence from Satan, from all his works and from all his empty promises. Even more, we "renounce" them.
Jesus has already won the victory: we are free at last!

I saw that the Vatican Congregation for Saints recognized a miracle attributed to St. Therese's parents, and also recognized the heroic faith, hope and charity of an Italian teenager who died in 1990. I had to look her up: Chiara Badano, from a family in the Focolare movement. Beautiful!

Seems a bit... intolerant, doesn't it?

I learned this morning that YouTube yanked an expose' video offline, claiming that the video violated their terms of use. Having viewed the four-minute clip, I can't say I saw anything at all that could have provoked such an action. What the video did, however, was expose the link between various aggressively pro-abortion organizations (including megalith Planned Parenthood) and an allegedly neutral documentary on abortion.
I'm not saying that the interview was handled in the best possible way. The gentleman couldn't wait to play his hand he missed the opportunity for a rejoinder when the woman from "The Decency Gap" insisted that the website he was quoting was old. (It had a 2008 copyright notice.) But, gracefully or not, the points were made and they are valid. And it is hard to imagine the excuse that was made for yanking the video.
So where are the voices decrying this unofficial censorship of unwelcome revelations? Sure, it's not government censorship, but when other private entities exclude ideological input, there are plenty of protests. It seems that Planned Parenthood & Co. has a lot of pull over at YouTube.

In case you are willing to brave it, here is the video that YouTube so heroically pulled in protection of... what? (GoogleVideo has so far been willing to face the consequences of keeping it available, which is odd, since Google owns YouTube; maybe because it is on Google.es?)

Doubting Thomas

Today is the feast day of no-longer-doubting Thomas. Interesting, isn't it, that he who refused the testimony of the other apostles that they had seen the Lord is traditionally considered the founding Apostle of India? Presumably, the people of that subcontinent accepted Thomas' testimony, "I have seen the Lord!" They walked by faith and not by sight, and still do.
Speaking of faith, I am reading an excellent presentation on the Catholic faith by George Weigel: "The Truth of Catholicism." It's not a new book, but it's my first chance to actually read it, and I am delighted with it. Weigel addressed the principal questions that people in our culture have when it comes to things Catholic, and he does it with panache. Is the Catholic Church condemning other religions or Christian communities with its claims? Is "doctrine" a "conservative" notion? Are Catholics the least free of all religious believers? Stuff like that. Weigel's book deserves a careful reading, something our culture doesn't seem to be too good at (one of the reasons the book needed to be written!).
I am also just finishing a fine book of Catholic spirituality: "Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions" by Albert Haase, OFM. I know, the title is pretty unappealing, but the book itself is well written, both solid and contemporary. I already have it lined up for a second read!
What is on your bookshelf for summer reading?

Begone!

"Begone!" When I hear that archaic word, I'm more likely than not to associate it with the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert, when he dismissed the enemy of mankind with that one-word command. But in reading today's Gospel, I realized that this rough dismissal was probably used more often to send Jesus himself away (or at least to try!). Today we hear Matthew's account of the healing of two demon-possessed men in the (pagan) region of the Gadarenes. When the demons left the men and entered a huge herd of swine (leading to the death of every last porker and an immense financial loss for the owners), the townspeople came out to where Jesus was and asked him, probably not too kindly, to leave the district. Even Peter, when he had witnessed the miraculous catch of fish, told Jesus to leave. (At least Peter added the motive, which was "for I am a sinful man.") "He came unto his own, and his own did not receive him."

I suspect that even in Gadara there were many people who heard the news about the demoniacs and the swine, and felt a glimmer of hope that Jesus would come to them, too. Perhaps it was only the herd owners, probably the leading men of the town, who insisted that "the whole town" rise up to expel Jesus. Maybe it did not occur to them that anyone would welcome someone who could "bear our griefs and carry our sorrows." And so they sent God away, and God meekly left.

Wall*E

Father Roderick was right: "Wall*E" is a very Catholic movie, from the rusty robot's discovery of a "partner like unto himself" (the roach certainly didn't qualify!) to the nurturing of life by E.V.E. (!) and the eventual new creation under human stewardship. And delightful all the while. I also loved Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth," sung during the credits.
This is one of those movies where the critics' "two thumbs up" really makes sense!