Guess where my prayers are tending? Funny how small New Orleans looks, but that marker is on my Mom's house, so it's pretty big to me.
Things this big, so phenomenally out of human control, can be really good reminders that we depend on God all the time, not just when confronted with massive storms. (In a way, I was tempted to think people were better off before storm tracking and satellite images!)

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Fear of the Lord

The most puzzling of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit has got to be "fear of the Lord." Fear does not sound like a positive thing: how can it come from the Holy Spirit? But today's Responsorial Psalm gives a hint of what the "fear of the Lord" means.

The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness.

The parallel structure of the Hebrew poetry equates "fear" with "hoping for his kindness." And if we wonder just what that means, the psalm continues by spelling out what is hoped for: deliverance from death, survival in times of famine. Concrete hopes! (Like the hopeful prayers of my family in New Orleans right now...)
The psalm also offers an interesting commentary of sorts on Mary's Magnificat. No one more than Mary was "chosen by the Lord as his own inheritance"; The Lord looked with favor" on her, and she knew that "his mercy is from age to age on those who fear him." To deliver his people from death, the Lord would "cast down the mighty from their thrones"; to "feed them in time of famine," he would "send the rich away empty."

"Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield,
For in him our hearts rejoice."
"My soul glorifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior."

Katrina Memories

It's weird for me, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to hear Mom on the phone talking about her evacuation plans. Three years ago, I had just returned from my parent's Golden Anniversary celebration when they left New Orleans at midnight (the first time they had ever evacuated the city for a hurricane). This time, it's just Mom, and she is ready to go: the frozen goods are bundled into big black garbage bags, so if the electricity goes out, the freezer won't be ruined. She's got her medicines and clothes ready to go. My sister, Jane, now has a husband (courtesy of Katrina--the one bright spot in the whole history of that hurricane), and they're ready to take the dogs and head for high ground. (Hopefully high ground.) My sister Mary, soon to be a grandmother, is heading for her daughter's house. (Luckily, "Grandma" is a nurse, in case baby Leah makes any surprise moves.) My nieces's husband is a firefighter, on duty until the hurricane threat passes. Another sister, plus a brother and his family, have their destinations in northern Louisiana.
But we're still praying Gustave away. Praying really hard.

You can read my Katrina archives here.

Still keeping busy

I didn't even realize until some time after 9:00 last night that I had forgotten to post anything for St. Augustine's feast day! And here it is the feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (the most macabre feast day in the year). Leave it to the Herodians, the most dysfunctional family in the ancient world, to provide the occasion for this secondary feast of the "greatest of those born of women." Since John the Baptist is my patron saint (my profession name is Anne Joan, after John), this is my "minor" feast day. (His birthday in June is my "major" feast day, thank you.)
Anyway, what was I doing so close to 9 p.m. that I forgot to blog? I was creating a video update about our recording project! Here you go:

God's sense of humor

In our family, when things go just slightly awry, we look at each other and say, almost in unison, "Gawd's sense of humor..." We got the expression (which we repeat with the orginal intonation) from a beloved Boston Jesuit who was a spiritual director and dear friend of my parents. I had one of those moments this morning. During my meditation and even through Mass, I kept getting insights about the spiritually dangerous phenomenon of setting personal non-negotiables that are really more strategies for protecting oneself from hurt or discomfort than they are about protecting objective values. (Not to say that self-protective strategies don't have their place, but it takes discernment to recognize when self-protecting becomes an end in itself.) Then, shortly after breakfast, I ran into a sister who had said something really dismissive and hurtful to me about a manuscript I had sent in. It seems that the editors want some changes. (How many, I don't yet know.) I made an appointment and then hurried to chapel to fit my Hour of Adoration in before the day's recording session... Then it dawned on me: during my meditation, God was, in effect, warning me not to dig in my heels with unnecessary "non-negotiables" that had nothing to do with His glory and peace to humanity! Gawd's sense of humor...
I kind of dread the meeting (Friday noon), so please pray that the outcome may really work for God's glory and peace to humanity!
Now I am almost late for the studio call...

Jesus is still at it in today's Gospel, taking aim at the practices of the scribes and Pharisees (but not at their teachings). The homilist this morning made a very good point about the tendency of people who are committed to holiness of life to overemphasize the external. This can lead to a scrupulosity that loses track of what today's Gospel sums up as "justice, mercy and fidelity."
This is easy enough to understand: It's much easier to focus on things that are more within reach, and external things are under our control. After all, "justice, mercy and fidelity" are attributes of GOD! It can be overwhelming to keep these things in mind as my actual vocation. But in today's first reading, it is Paul who encourages us: God wants to strengthen our hearts for this very thing.

St. Gregory, pray for us!

I know, it's really the feast of St. Louis, King of France... But the album we hope to begin recording today is based mostly in Gregorian Chant, so we are invoking St. Gregory for the project.
Today's Gospel can be frightening. Jesus comes across as scathingly harsh in revealing the emptiness that can hide behind pious practices. It seems it was really the nitpicking that sent him over the edge: "If you swear by the altar," the experts of interpretation declared, "you aren't really held to your oath. Only if you swear by the gift on the altar are you bound to your word." Jesus had a real problem with that: it made the gift more important than the altar! (Jesus had a problem with oaths anyway: "Do not swear at all! Let your 'yes' mean 'yes' and your 'no' mean 'no'," he said in the Sermon on the Mount.) I suppose that if you boiled today's Gospel down to the essence, the message would be "live in the presence of God!"

I'm back!

Back from retreat and back to the sound studio for a really exciting project. I have a few bars looping through my head (going on two hours now); appropriately enough, it is the "Ave Regina Coelorum" ("Hail Queen of Heaven," the chant for today's feast of the Queenship of Mary). This is one of the chants featured in the upcoming album, currently without a title (not even a working title!). Today we reviewed some of the music, practiced our Latin pronunciation and spent close to an hour in a photo shoot with Sr. Mary Emmanuel. She posed us this way and that, in this setting and then in another one. I was rather anxious the whole time, not just because of my sneakers (she wasn't doing feet, thankfully!), but because I was wearing the wrong color blouse (pale blue instead of beige!). I don't know how that's going to turn out. I didn't bring my beige blouse with me, thinking I could borrow one. (I didn't know that the photo shoot was today.) As the project continues, we hope to be keeping our choir blog up to date; maybe Sr. Emmanuel will provide some of those photos we smiled for today...

See you later.

Our community encounter week has been so packed, there has barely been time to wash the dishes. (Note that we did have time to eat! Priorities, after all.) Suffice it to say that I haven't done much more than micro-blogging. The encounter ends at noon tomorrow (Aug 14). We have time to wash the dishes (ahem!); the great silence of our eight-day retreat begins at 5:00. Naturally, Internet access falls under the category of "unnecessary conversations" that are not consistent with the best retreat practices. You are welcome to post your special intentions in the comments; I'll check them at about 4:00 (Eastern Time).
As a sign of the special grace I expect from this retreat, be it noted that the retreat begins on the 33rd anniversary of my entrance, and at near the hour in which I first walked through the convent door in suburban Boston. So please pray for me, too!
Blessings! See you in eight days.

Too good to miss

Here's Sr. Tracey's video rendition of our week in the recording studio...

Cookout for St. Lawrence Day

It wasn't planned that way, really. Tomorrow is our "free Sunday" when our encounter meetings are suspended for a day of rejoicing in the Lord. It just happened that one way we like to rejoice in the Lord as a community (especially when we are gathered from the four winds and are with sisters we haven't seen for quite some time) is to fire up the ol' grill. And it just happens that tomorrow will be the feast of St. Lawrence, known for all time as the deacon martyr who was grilled to death, but somehow maintained a wry sense of humor during the ideal. (He was the one who so famously said, "Turn me over now; I'm done on this side.")

From the retreat house

The last of the singers (that would include me) arrived at the retreat house last night for a week of community meetings (to be followed by our eight days of silence). As I was moving into the room I will occupy for the next two weeks, I found a peculiar object on the shelves (no real closets)in the room. It was carefully and quite neatly wrapped in a mattress cover. An old, red brick.
If that wasn't the Cure' of Ars' pillow, I can't imagine what it was doing in a retreat house room. But as long as the holy Cure' doesn't expect me to use it as a pillow, I think I'll be okay with it.

When Peter Was Satan

Today's Gospel is the famous "Get behind me, Satan" passage, where Jesus delivers a real zinger to Peter. Why? Because Peter was "thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do." And this right after Peter had been praised for what the Father had revealed to him about Jesus! Turns out, Peter had "rebuked" Jesus for predicting his suffering and death. Peter couldn't fathom that God might actually allow the righteous to suffer. It is almost as if Peter was scolding Jesus, saying "Hey, where's your faith?!"

Transfiguration, Real Presence and Reparation

Yesterday was the first I had heard of the recent rash of Eucharistic sacrileges being promoted, as it seems, by a professor of the [University of Wisconsin (Madison)] [CORRECTION: University of Minnesota: sorry about that, U Wis]. It seems that the man is asking folks to send him consecrated hosts so he can desecrate them with aplomb, publishing the manner in which he carries this out (so as to assure himself the greatest possible attention). I understand he is an equal opportunity offender, having simultaneously desecrated the Eucharist and the Koran. Clearly, there is some sort of personality disorder at work here: a kind of exhibitionism.
Rather than dismiss this ("What a loser!"), we are called to two responses. The first of these is, clearly, reparation, not only for the professor, but for those who are collaborating with his deranged project. Our reparation can take the form of the opposite of sacrilege: praise and adoration of the Eucharist and reverence toward the members of the Body of Christ. Our second response, one that has already been taken up by many, is to pray for this person. I am praying especially to St. Paul for his healing and conversion, because if such a person as this were to be converted, he could become an Apostle of the Eucharist, much the way Paul became the most unlikely Apostle of the Gentiles.
The Lord's presence in the Eucharist is almost the opposite of what today's feast of the Transfiguration celebrates. Until that moment on the mountain, our Lord's divinity was utterly hidden: only his human nature was apparent. Then, the glory he had with the Father before the world began manifested itself in that transcendent experience. But in the Eucharist, as Thomas Aquinas sings in "Adoro Te," both divine and human natures are hidden. All we see is a passive piece of bread (or a "cracker," as the sacrilegious professor insists on saying). But perception is not reality--certainly not in this case, nor was it during our Lord's earthly life!
And now, down to the studio.

Our midday break (for lunch and prayer) is almost over. During my Hour of Adoration, I was especially struck by today's Gospel: "Every plant not planted by my Father will be uprooted." I tend to interpret this as a "divine passive," which means that God is really the one doing the action. But it could also be the sheer nature of human initiatives that makes them susceptible to destruction. I found myself flipping pages to that other passage in the Gospel about the house that can't be shaken by wind or flood: the secret is that the house is built on the rock of God's word.

False hopes

Today's first reading (from Jeremiah) confronts the problem of false prophets: people who raise false hopes. And what kind of false hopes? The expectation, in times of suffering, that things ought to just return to the familiar patterns and structures and supports; that things will go back to "normal." It's understandable, of course: we judge what is "normal" by how things have been in the past. But we risk limiting our openness to God's creativity that way. Even in the biblical situation, when the false prophet was promising that the fixtures stolen from the Temple (the Temple of the Lord himself) would be restored, and worship would again proceed like always, God was hinting otherwise: the Temple would be destroyed, leveled to the ground. God wanted the people to be very clear on this, and not to base their hopes on a building, no matter how illustrious. Once that happened, God promised through another prophet, "Greater will the future glory of this house be than what it ever was before."
God's promises outshine our hopes.


On a different note:
We're getting ready for another day of recording; I posted a video of our work so far. Check our Singing Sisters blog for updates!

Still singing!

There's barely time to blog, tweet or plurk (never mind Facebook!) while we are working in the studio, but we are trying to keep the music blog updated, so please keep checking there for my whereabouts! If I get any particularly deep insights, or have any especially interesting experiences while here (and I can get to the computer), you'll still find it here, though!

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.