Keeping up with the Daughters

Last night's Oscars kept me up way past my usual bedtime, and boy am I paying for it today!  I kind of had to stay up--out of keen interest in any of the movies (the only nominee I saw this year was "Toy Story 3" and that was on a seat-back screen on the flight across the Atlantic!). Really, I stayed up because we had guests with us specifically for the Oscars, and because this is my only real "media literacy" education, aside from living with Sr Helena, who is a walking media literacy textbook. Except they don't really use "text" books for media literacy... Of course, just watching Sr. Helena watch the Oscars was entertaining. She was tweeting during the Oscars (you can find her tweets here), and whenever a nominee was named that she thought was especially deserving, she would stand up behind the computer with her arms waving, shouting out cheers.
We almost missed her for the Oscars, though: she and our "vocations team" (I guess it's more correct to call them the "discernment team") were with the postulants in Aggie Land last week in what has become a kind of annual tradition. The discernment team holds there own annual meeting right at the Catholic Center at Texas A&M, but they combine it with some live action in terms of meeting actual discerners (or would-be discerners) and other young adults in their natural environment. Sr Helena just got back on Saturday, but not after an interesting encounter in the Houston airport: a Cardinal (from the Vatican!) was passing through with a small entourage after some meetings. He saw Sr Helena hunched over her keyboard in the airport cafe, editing video with headphones on, oblivious to all else, and basically stood in front of her until she noticed him. If I am not mistaken, when I was in Rome, it was this same Paolo Sardi who, as a "lowly" bishop, would say the 7:00 Mass at St. Peter's, on the altar in the right transcept. He gave such fabulous (and brief! not even 2 minutes!) homilies, the nuns who had been waiting for the basilica gates to open up (7 on the dot) would literally hike up their habits and run up the aisle of St. Peter's to get to his Mass. (The celebrants had their own entrance and were usually already more than halfway to the altar, accompanied by two chierichetti, by the time the front doors were opened.) So there was Cardinal Sardi, witnessing the Pauline charism at full speed ahead. Before leaving, he gave Sr Helena one of the new papal rosaries with Pope Benedict's coat of arms in the centerpiece and on the rosary case. (Somehow she forgot to mention that she had four sisters at home in Chicago...)

What's up

Sr Barbara and I spent the day at Maria High School, assisted by the intrepid volunteer Joseph (God bless you with that hundredfold, Joseph!), as we ran a book exhibit for the Catholic leadership day. For me one of the highlights was standing in the high school cafeteria, eating my packaged lunch and listening to Cardinal George at his best: responding to questions submitted to him on index cards. He would pick up a card, read the question aloud and just give an off the cuff, but highly nuanced (and usually really witty) answer. Among other things, he called for "more intelligent public conversation," saying that the nature of the news media is to focus on controversy, on opposition, on conflict itself rather than on the ideas. We as Catholics have to learn not to feed into that or be limited by that!
The inevitable question about women's ordination came up: how long before we see this (if ever)? The Cardinal explained that in the reformation communities, ministry is a function, a service, but in Catholicism, we do not have a sacrament of ministry, but a sacrament of Orders. And sacraments are not about functions, but about signs. The "sign language" of Orders is meant to communicate the presence of Christ the Bridegroom. The Church doesn't have the possibility of altering this embedded meaning. Then he took a very interesting cultural approach. In every age and culture, the Church has taken on much of the cultures it has entered, but there have also and always been aspects of the culture that the Church could not assimilate. For us Americans, absolute equality of access to anything by anyone has become not just a value but is assumed as an absolute right. We may not like it, the Cardinal said, but the fact remains that Jesus was not an American... And in this very counter-cultural area of the limiting of ordination to men, we have to remember, he said, that the real "hierarchy" in the Church is that of holiness. "When I get to heaven," the Cardinal said, "a few years after I die..." (I don't think too many people caught that wry aside)... We were all baptized for this,  and we all have "equal access" to the means of grace. Do we take advantage of that access? Do we make the most of it?

Tomorrow Sr Martha will return to Boston, and Sr Raymond Marie (another singer!) will come to Chicago to help out for a few weeks. We are looking forward to Sr Lusia's return after her cancer treatments (looking good), but in the meantime it is delightful having our sisters take turns helping us to keep the doors open.  Thanks, Sisters!

Please pass the salt

I distressed Sr Frances no end this evening when I sat down to supper. She had prepared a carefully seasoned turkey meatloaf, with a side of peppers, onions and mushrooms. One look at my plate, though, and her face fell. I had liberally adorned my untasted meatloaf with ketchup. Foodie I may be, but my secret love in the kitchen is ketchup. Desert island and only one condiment allowed? It's going to be ketchup. Good old, all-purpose, on-your-scrambled-eggs in the morning or you meatloaf at night ketchup. But for Sr. Frances, ketchup is only something you put on something that's insipid and dried out. I had to really convince her that when I saw the meatloaf, my reaction was, "Oh, boy!  A platform for ketchup!"
Flavor makes a difference. When it comes to a choice between sweet and savory, the salty food will always get my vote. But we've heard so much about the evils of a high sodium diet that Jesus' words about salt needing to be salty lose some of their flavor on first hearing. What does he mean about salt "losing its flavor"? Could it be related to the first part of today's Gospel, where Jesus speaks of the blessing those will receive who give merely a cup of cold water to someone just for being a disciple? I mean, how could a disciple of Christ be recognized, if not by a certain newness, a certain savory quality that was apparent through everyday activity? (It's not like they wore gold crosses on neck chains back then, or pious t-shirts...) So if we blend in so much with the rest of society that without the chain or the t-shirt no one would realize we believe all that Jesus stuff, it could be time for a re-salting. Impossible in the mineral world (I presume), but not in the world of grace. In fact, when I went to Communion today, I asked for extra salt!

O.R.

My sister Mary is an operating room nurse. "OR" has a very specific meaning for her. But when a religious sees "OR" (perhaps on a hymnboard in the chapel), he or she will probably interpret that in a very different way, as in "Office of Readings."
The Office of Readings is part of the Divine Office, but not of the Liturgy of the Hours, interestingly enough. The "Hours" are assigned to actual "hours" (more or less) of the day: morning, noon, evening, whereas the Office of Readings, which originated (and in monastic communities is still celebrated) as a nocturnal vigil service, can now be prayed at any time of day. It is, you could say, the liturgical setting for mental prayer (meditation), and consists of three psalms (or, more likely, one rather long psalm divided into three parts) and two readings (one Scriptural, one from the Church's vast library--the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, writings by or about the saint of the day, official Church teachings...).
The second reading in the OR for today's feast of St. Polycarp features one of the most astounding and edifying texts in the whole Christian tradition outside of the Bible itself. It is the eye-witness account of the martyrdom of the elderly bishop of Smyrna, and includes his last words (spoken as he was tied to a stake to be burned to death). I invite you to read them slowly. This dates to a time in the Church's liturgical history when the presider at Mass would pray the Eucharistic prayer more or less spontaneously, without a set script. But you can see from Polycarp's last prayer that the "pattern" for the Eucharistic prayer became the pattern for his own life. Would that the Eucharistic prayer would become the way we interpreted (and lived) our own life, too!

Lord, almighty God, Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have come to the knowledge of yourself, God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight, I bless you for judging me worthy of this day, this hour, so that in the company of the martyrs I may share the cup of Christ, your anointed one, and so rise again to eternal life in soul and body, immortal through the power of the Holy Spirit. May I be received among the martyrs in your presence today as a rich and pleasing sacrifice. God of truth, stranger to falsehood, you have prepared this and revealed it to me and now you have fulfilled your promise.

I praise you for all things, I bless you, I glorify you through the eternal priest of heaven, Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. Through him be glory to you, together with him and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

BTW: The little responsory following this reading is another liturgical gem. It is taken from the book of Revelation, chapter 2--the letter "to the angel of the Church in Smyrna."  Read that passage in the light of today's saint: Polycarp is said to have been a disciple of St. John. Was he the "angel" of the Church in Smyrna at the time the seer wrote to give advance warning of persecution? 

For the full eye-witness account given in today's OR, go to Universalis and scroll down....

Built on a Rock

Today's Gospel coincides in a sad way with the headlines about the earthquake in New Zealand. There, on the other side of the world, a city built not on a hill or on a rock, but on a foundation of sand and silt, suffered loss of life and immense structural damage.
Unless you are an architect or engineer, I suspect you wouldn't tend to think about foundations all that much.
But Jesus seems to have thought a lot about foundations.

He told the parable of the person who paid God lip service, but didn't actually do God's will and said that such a one was building on sand. When it came to making sure his flock would have a home in this world, Jesus built his own house on rock: "You are Peter and on this 'rock' I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."
The opening prayer for today's feast of the "Chair of St. Peter" emphasizes that the "foundation" on Peter's profession of faith is at the service of the unity of the Church. That's why we have a Pope; that's why Peter still has a "chair" from which to teach.

...only by prayer

There's a line in today's Gospel that I heard somewhat differently today. It's the story of the healing of the epileptic boy. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus has just come down from the Mount of the Transfiguration, when he is met by a distraught father and his own equally distraught disciples. The man had brought his son for healing, and while Jesus was on the mountain with Peter, James and John (not to mention Moses and Elijah), the rest of the 12 attempted to do what they had been able to do when sent on mission by Jesus: anoint the sick with oil and heal them. But the boy was in the same sad state as before.
Clearly, something was amiss. But what?
After Jesus healed the boy and "raised him," the disciples made some discreet inquiries as to the cause of their earlier failure. Jesus told them, "This kind [of demonic possession] can only be driven out by prayer."
I always assumed that Jesus was telling the disciples (and me), "Pray better." But today, my attention was more on the boy's father, and his prayer. Look at how Jesus worked with the man, urging him to make a daring act of faith to the point where he cried out, "I do believe! Help my unbelief!"
Could that be the prayer that brought about the miracle of healing?

Sr Julia (part 2)

Enjoy "the rest of the story" (at least up to the point where the memory card was exhausted)...
As usual, I had other technical issues to deal with, too! (No Hollywood career for me...)

Sr Julia tells her story (part 1)

I've used three different programs to try to get the footage from last Friday's talk in New Orleans into a web-accessible form. I'm not even sure I'll ever get the whole thing put together, because I tried three times today to run it, and it keeps stopping in the middle. But let's see how much there is on this take:

Video streaming by Ustream

Lenten special

Almost in time for Lent (it's being released just after Ash Wednesday), Pope Benedict's reflections on that last crucial week in the life of Christ--and his Resurrection. This is Volume 2 of the Pope's reflections.
Order it now and get a 20% pre-publication discount! (This could also be a good gift for people in RCIA.) Order by phone M-F 10 a.m.-6 p.m. S 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. 312 346 4228  Offer ends March 14!

From Drop Box

Singing Sisters

Remember over the summer, I wrote about the Decca talent search (the next big music sensation: singing nuns!)? Of course, they chose an ancient monastery that has the purest Gregorian chant sound--not our 3rd millennium version. But the BBC broadcast the reality TV segment about the search, and our friends in the UK say we're on it. Unfortunately, you will only be able to see this if you actually are in the UK. (Can someone out there make us a bootleg copy?!)

Scammed!

The community is facing the embarrassment of having been taken for a ride by a scam artist. It happened on Monday, right at closing time. A man came in, saying he worked right across the street at...and he named a local business...whose name is featured in a second story window. Long story short, he had no way of getting to his car, which was parked at Armitage and Cicero (that's almost halfway to O'Hare from here), and would it be at all possible for someone to give him a ride, even though it would take about two hours in rush hour traffic? From that outrageous proposition, he suggested that if we had a bus pass to loan him, he would return it the next day and repay the amount spent. But when we produced a bus pass, suddenly it became very urgent that he be at O'Hare by 9:00 and how was he ever going to do it and couldn't we please in some way help him? In the end, he got away with a bus pass and taxi money. (Naturally, he hasn't been back.)
Unfortunately, it is hard to just send someone away with a "Good-bye and good luck" when you are wearing a religious habit and working in a religious setting. The sister who walked into the trap (literally) was pressured on several sides: the unexpected "need"; the late hour (right before closing); and the genuine desire to  be of service--to someone who clearly was not going to leave the premises unless his pleas were addressed. From hindsight, it is easy to see the man's maneuver for what it was. By starting out asking an over-the-top favor, he worked his way down to getting just what he really came for: a bit of cash in hand (cash we really can't afford to spare); Sister was basically paying the guy to leave.
What galls me even more is that every time I find myself rehashing this in chapel, I remember that I ought to be praying for the dude.
Got any suggestions for dealing with the next scam artist who walks in the door?

Better late than never!
Just a thought about today's first reading: the (abbreviated) story of Noah and the ark. It's one of those omnipresent symbols--how many birth announcements have you received that depicted a whimsical Noah's ark full of oh-so-precious animals? But I am beginning to wonder how many people who use the image could tell you the story. (Not that I have anything against Noah's ark birth announcements; the more the merrier. Noah's ark is all about life!)
It's like the Adam and Eve temptation story: you find it suggested in all sorts of commercials. Even the word "temptation" in a food context is really a reference to the Garden of Eden. But I have a strong suspicion that the reference is lost on a good many people.
As the week goes by, we will get to the  point when God symbolically lays down his weapon (his crossbow, with which he shot his lightning-bolt arrows) and says that from now on, the bow in the sky will remind him that the waters of a flood will never again cover the whole earth. It's the Covenant with Noah. I just love that whenever an observant Jew sees a rainbow, he or she says a little prayer praising God for remembering and keeping the covenant. This custom of blessing-prayers for every occasion is one of the best things we inherited from the Jewish culture. The "eternal rest"; the "angel of God'; the "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" are among the Catholic forms of everyday short prayers, along with a whole litany of invocations that end in "have mercy on us" or "pray for us" (depending on who is invoked). But the Jewish tradition focuses most intently on praise, and that is something we need to relearn from them.
How can we recover and spread that custom of "pious aspirations" in a contemporary manner?

Home again, Home again

So I left home this morning, and now I am.. home. Still unpacking a bit; getting ready to play catch-up starting tomorrow. Spent the day of travel reflecting mostly on the first reading--Cain and Abel. (What an odd reading for St. Valentine's Day, which our Mother Paula always called "the feast-day of charity"!)
The way the liturgy matched the Genesis reading with Psalm 50 really sheds light on the question that many people have about just why God didn't accept Cain's sacrifice:
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you, for your burnt offerings are before me always.... Why do you recite my statutes, and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?”
Bottom line: Cain didn't really offer a sacrifice, because the ritual was saying something his heart didn't mean. God's words to the crestfallen Cain sound like a good teacher's encouragement: "If you do well, you can hold your head high." Unfortunately, the student didn't seem to take any responsibility for himself. (He never even admits to the killing!) I found myself understanding Cain a little more by focusing on those words, though. It hints that Cain was looking for a sense of self from exterior things, from what people (or even God) thought about him, how he "measured up." As long as that was how Cain functioned, Abel never stood a chance.

Tidbits

Sr Julia gave "her" story as the speaker for the local Magnificat women's prayer group breakfast yesterday, and I got most of it on video. Until the 8 gb card ran out.... And since that time I have been struggling to get the HD video processed on a subnotebook. Not pretty! And just as I had most of it at least converted to the format the video editor can use, Microsoft Update forced the computer to restart. Bye-bye, video.
It's back now, having been running on the computer all day while my family tried in vain to lure me across the lake to see my toddler great-niece. (My voice mail box is full of messages in that lilting baby voice saying, "Hi, Aunt Anne!" so it was really hard to resist!) I also had to start packing, cleaning stuff up and getting Sr Julia (again!) on video talking about books for her "Best Catholic Books" blog. (I'll tackle that when I get back to Chicago!)
Anyway, I had hoped that by last night I would be able to stream Sr Julia's talk and then post it here and on Facebook, but that's not going to happen until... I get back to Chicago, I suppose. Which is scheduled for Monday.
Meanwhile, the readings are continuing with Genesis. It is so very rich (especially when you read it through the TOB lens Pope John Paul gave us). Today I was struck that while in the first reading, the man is told how hard he will have to work to find food that he will only eat "by the sweat of the brow," in the Gospel, Jesus has his apostles hand out food freely to people who had not labored for it, but who had been following him for three days, listening to him preach. Truly, "man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God"! There was also the very poignant scene of Adam and Eve hiding from God. A while back I found myself musing that in some way it might be valid to say that the sin of disobedience was not nearly as offensive to God's majesty and goodness as the mistrust that was manifest in hiding from him. Julian of Norwich tells us what their disposition could have been: the little child who fell into the mud running to its good mother and saying, "Oh, Mother, look how I have soiled my garments!" (I wonder: How differently might history have unfolded if our first parents had run to God in the Garden that afternoon?)

Final Words

http://www.mychurchevents.com/calendar/calendar.aspx?ci=G1F0L6K5L6H2O9L6I3My last New Orleans talk is this evening; it will be a very condensed introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours. (You can join us live at 6:30 Central Time, but you will have to provide your own coffee and cookies when refreshments are served.)
Yesterday, Sr Agnes, Mom and I drove over to Slidell for an evening talk on Eucharistic Adoration at St. Margaret Mary parish. It was a rather harrowing drive in rush-hour traffic during a torrential rain--and the ride home was even worse. (Imagine crossing a span of a couple of miles with only your headlights and those little street-surface reflectors to mark the lanes, knowing that the inky darkness on either side was the lake that had sent that very bridge floating away during Hurricane Katrina.) But the parish itself was spectacular.
The 6:30 evening Mass was just ending in the "chapel" (the size of a small church, the adoration chapel probably seats at least 150). After my talk, the teens would have their Eucharistic praise and worship hour. The homeschool families have a children's holy hour every Friday morning.
I gave my talk about Eucharistic Spirituality in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and the people were extremely receptive. St. Margaret Mary's was the first parish in the Archdiocese of New Orleans to begin perpetual (24/7) Eucharistic adoration. (Mom's parish, St. Clement of Rome, was second. That was about 25 years ago.) That means there are a minimum of 168 people committed to making a weekly holy hour at an appointed time (though many people sign up for one hour per month, and many parishes try to have two adorers per hour). You can only imagine the kind of spiritual energy this generates in a parish, and St. Margaret Mary's was a good example of that (take a look at their events calendar for February!).
After tonight's session (in the book center), it's time for me to start packing up my stuff. Chicago awaits! (Will the sun shine there?)

Fruit on the trees

It's almost glaring, the way the Gospel for today seems to outright contradict the first reading. Mark depicts Jesus teaching about the Kosher laws and declaring all foods clean, "incapable of defiling a person." But in the Garden of Eden, God definitely warned "the man" that if he ate from "the tree of knowledge of good and evil," not only would he be defiled, he would DIE.
Pretty drastic difference.
And yet it's not that different after all. If you read the whole of today's Gospel passage, you would find a whole ugly list: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice... All forms of the "knowledge of evil." Because in the Bible, knowledge is never something abstract. You only know something if you experience it.
Sad to say, we all know what happens next in the story. All those evils Jesus listed with such distaste came to live in the human heart, and they've been pouring back out ever since. It almost makes us want to blame God for putting the tree there in the first place.
But there had to be a tree of "knowlege of good and evil" in the Garden, because God made man free. Not free for evil, but free for good. And the only way he could "know" that good was by choosing to make it part of himself. Eating it, as it were.

Recommended: Simone Weil's remarkable, if eccentric, essays on eating in (I think)
Waiting for God

In the image

Creation continues in today's first reading; the famous "God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." This, after God had already filled the waters of the see with abundant living creatures, most of which (except maybe sponges and things like that, but what do I know?) were created male and female, as were the birds of the air and the creeping things of the ground. Even some of the green plants, we now know, come as one or the other. Obviously, the Bible is signaling that there is some way that this last creature stands apart from the rest. We get another take on the same signal later in the book, in the second creation story--the famous one with the rib. It's worth reading Pope John Paul's extended meditations (here's another one) on these passages.

This side of creation

For some odd reason, the Year 1 Mass readings hopped over the weekend from the end of Hebrews to the beginning of Genesis. That always catches me off guard--which can be a good thing: taken by surprise, my expectations are also elsewhere, so a reading (or a "chance" meeting, or an odd passage in a book) can deliver more than it would have if I had been ready for it.
"In the beginning... and God said, 'Let there be light. God saw how good it was. Evening came and morning followed, the first day."
As I read those very familiar words (the reading took us halfway through, to the end of the fourth day with the creation of the "lights in the sky"), I was struck at how slowly the story unfolds. It is as if the Bible were saying that God really took his time with this creation project. I would have done things so differently! Light. (Check.) Sky. (Check.) Land/Sea (Check and Check.) God didn't resort to multi-tasking, either. (There was no reason for the earth not to bring forth an abundance of green plants while God was dealing with the lights in the dome of the sky.) Instead, it was as if each "day" there was a whole new project, a new idea. And God was not only not in a rush to get it all done, God went about the process deliberately, leaving lots of time simply to contemplate "how good it was" and to enjoy it. That's what the Responsorial Psalm highlights, too: "May the Lord be glad in his works!"

It's an invitation to joy and enjoyment; to work and to contemplation. And it comes most appropriately for us on a Monday, as we resume our work.

New resources for geneological studies

My maternal grandmother and aunts used to make a day of it: visiting courthouses and parishes out in the Louisiana countryside, they tracked down our ancestors--not just a few generations back, but across the Caribbean and then across the Atlantic, to France, Switzerland, Spain... and across the centuries (to about the 12th century). My brother got the same bug, but since our mom's side is pretty well documented, he took up where Dad's research left off; he and his son left for Ireland the day after Christmas.
As complicated and time-consuming as those studies were, my relatives at least can look records up by last name. For many other Louisianians, that has been the stumbling-block to looking up the family tree: their ancestors were slaves, and slaves often didn't get the courtesy of a family name. Or official records, in most cases.
Church records are a bit of another story. Not that there were last names, but at least there are detailed records of baptisms and marriages, because before the Louisiana purchase, the New Orleans area knew nothing of separation of Church and state: Baptism was the law, and the Church kept all the records.

Of course, they were hand-written records, kept on fragile paper and in ink that fades with time. But the Archdiocese of New Orleans has begun to offer those faint records a kind of electronic permanence by scanning the registers, page by page. Not that they'll be easy to peruse: you'd have to have some clue already as to the dates and names of the people you are looking for (the online documents are pdf format), and spelling changed (or translated!) names from French to Spanish and back again (depending on who was in the Cabildo--or in the rectory--at the time?)--and then you'd have to deal with the way the ink bled through as both sides of the sheet were filled with sacramental details that often included words like "mulatto" "esclabo" "esclava" "libre" and even, poignently, "esclabito primero."
As sad as the context is, having these records available online can serve as an act of reparation for the racism that was so uncritically tolerated (and even shared) by Church personnel. The first volumes to be completed (dating to 1777) went live on Tuesday (appropriately enough, the first day of Black History Month--and of Catholic Press Month).

Streaming video again tonight

Tonight I'll be talking about Eucharistic Adoration and how the liturgy hints at how to make a Holy Hour. It fits right in with our Pauline spirituality, of course! (Here in the New Orleans bookstore, the sisters have enough committed adorers to have exposition of the Blessed Sacrament every Thursday.)
Join us live at 6:30 Central Time! (Presuming the ustream service is working...I'm having trouble logging in.)
Did you watch last week's?

A Word from St. Joseph

Today is the first Wednesday of the month, and our community usually follows a tradition we adopted from (I believe) the Carmelites in dedicating this day to St. Joseph. It helps that this year, the first Wednesday of February falls on a feast day commemorating an event in which St. Joseph actually took part: the Presentation of the Lord. Not that he had a speaking role, or even that he gets an independent mention in the story as narrated by St. Luke--but that is typical of Joseph. (We don't have a word of his recorded in the Bible.)
Be that as it may, I thought I would invite St. Joseph to be a guest blogger today, even if that means secretarial duties for me.

What would you like to write about today, St. Joseph?
You probably expect me to talk about my experience that day at the Temple with Mary when Simeon and Anna recognized our Son, but I have something else in mind, because so many people who will be reading your blog are praying to me about employment and housing issues. As a workman myself, I really feel for those who have been out of work for a while, or who are worried about their unemployed family members.
Yes, I am in that number myself: praying to you for relatives who are looking for a job.
It can be really demoralizing: not just the "not having a job," but having to live with that insecurity. As I look back on my life with Jesus and Mary, I remember times when I was "between jobs," too. There were things to be done around the house, but they didn't always put food on the table, and a growing boy--well, you know how they are around food. (Jesus never did multiply fish and bread at home!)  You just don't know from day to day when (or if) the situation is going to change. And you don't really know what to do with all that "free" time you suddenly have. That can be demoralizing, too. As if your time was suddenly not worth anything anymore. That's what I want to focus on.
Oh, please go on.
You can only submit so many job applications in a day...
So I would like to invite those Catholics who suddenly have too much time on their hands to spend some of that time, maybe an hour or half-hour a week, in working with me on a special project.
What are you working on?
As you know, I was named Patron of the Universal Church by Bl. Pius IX. I need some collaborators in shoring up the buttresses of faith.
What tools would that involve? What skill sets?
First of all, no extra tools are necessary; there is work enough for everyone. The primary skill set is an open heart and a willingness to spend an extra hour or thirty minutes before the Blessed Sacrament, receiving the Word of God and then interceding for the Church, especially for the many people who have been alienated from the Church because of the sins of her ministers or the compromises her members have made with those parts of the popular culture that they are supposed to be transforming in the light of the Gospel.
Yes, there is the need to spread the Gospel, to evangelize, but I am going to let Paul direct those projects. As a home-builder, my special concern is that the Church on earth be a place where people can dwell securely. We need a team of master-builders to contribute what they can to this effort: prayer is within everyone's reach, but not everyone has the flex-time to actually make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. This is where the job-seekers have a real advantage.

I hate to be so blunt, Joseph, but what can you offer these people for their time?
I remember the Sabbath days at home in Nazareth: the freedom to just be with Jesus in the company of his mother... I'd be happy to share some of that experience with those who join me and the rest of the heavenly host in adoring, praising and listening to him. Because, really: what advantage do we in heaven have over you on earth except that we see what we both (in heaven and on earth) possess in Jesus?

Well, thank you very much for sharing your invitation with us today, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. And...don't forget my relatives and the other job-seekers, especially those whose families are in the greatest need.

Walker Percy movie

Last week, Sr Margaret Christopher;  and I went with my mom and aunt to a screening of a documentary on the New Orleans writer Walker Percy. My dad had been a kind of fan (mainly, I suspect, because Percy was a famous local who brought his Catholicism to the fore in so many ways). I've read three of Percy's works: The Moviegoer (his first and most lauded),Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome. I didn't really "get" The Moviegoer, but the other two really worked for me. I see them as "Theology of the Body" novels. (Maybe one day I will do a TOB presentation on that! I'll have to re-read them a few times, though...)
Anyway, the movie.
The screening was at Loyola, where the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing has its home. The writer/director gave a few words of introduction, and there was the promise of a panel discussion following the film. Alas, we were too tired to stay for that. I was almost too tired to stay awake for the whole movie. (Truth to tell, they didn't really need the full hour for the content. Or maybe I just didn't know what people were saying when they talked about how existential The Moviegoer was.) Be that as it may, I did find some wonderfully stimulating insights in the movie. I especially enjoyed the snippets of interviews with Robert Coles, one of my favorite writers. (I wish he would do a biography of Carryl Houselander; he does such marvelous studies of Catholic-type mystics.) In the end I brought home a copy of the DVD (thanks, Mom!). (One of the sisters in Boston is a huge Percy fan; she is the type who knows just how existential The Moviegoer is.)
Are you (or could you become) a Walker Percy fan? Want to know more about this influential Catholic novelist? Here's the movie site.
And here's a link to Coles' biography of Percy. Factoid: The Thanatos Syndrome is dedicated to Coles!