Tweeting Globally, Loving Locally

“Almighty God, grant that we may always conform our will to Yours and serve Your Majesty in sincerity of heart.” Last weekend’s collect begged God to grant us two things in His loving kindness: the exterior action of conformity and the interior attitude of sincerity. As usual, another both/and proposal: interiorly intend what God wills, and exteriorly act in accord with it as best we can.

“What God wills” is, in the broadest sense, everything that happens. He either chooses it if it is good, or permits it if it is evil. We are sometimes astounded at what God permits in this world, what He lets people get away with. But again, note two things: “I” am part of “people,” and the Lord doesn’t let anything “get away from” His notice, as if He had been out on break while it happened.

How could God permit His Beloved Israel to be the poor lad’s cap that the bully neighboring nations tossed about in the schoolyard? The kindest of those nations, the Reuben to Joseph, was Cyrus of Persia. He conquered Israel, but extended freedom of movement and worship to every land he acquired. Somehow the Lord of Israel was his leader too, despite whatever pagan statues were on his mantle.

Or how could the Son affirm His Father’s “abandonment” upon the Cross? Only thereby to draw forth from that greatest suffering the greatest love by which we exist and gather.

God willed the Pharisees minds subtle enough to have idolized their complex takes on the Law of Moses, enough to have crafted a scheme to trap Jesus. Yet they were no match, despite how thick they tried to lay it on Him. “You don’t care about anyone’s opinion, Jesus…but we do, so whaddya think?” Jesus remained unflustered in His response to their ruse. “Since this coin has Caesar’s face, it must belong to him, so give it back. But you have God’s face; you are made in God’s image, so give yourself back.”

How fitting, that the readings for Cycle A of the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which falls around the same time every year, fall now in a leap, major U.S. election year! Leap in faith we must to consider how the image in which we were made might speak to the image in which our coin is made. They’re connected, all right, because you and I are here, called not so much to carry change as to be it.

St. Paul points out how the Thessalonians have the virtues of faith, hope, and love, which we call the “theological virtues” because they pertain directly to God. They equip us for relationship with Him. Their infusion into the souls of the baptized allows the baptized to act as God’s children and to be hardwired for heaven. These virtues enable us to strive for holiness and virtue and to root out their contraries in every area of our lives, including politics.

Officials must strive, like their constituents and electors, to conform themselves to God’s will with sincerity of heart. They must genuinely represent and work toward the interests they profess, and their interests must be in step with the moral law. Unlike the Pharisees, they can’t have anything or anyone up their sleeve. They must not use people or positions as means to the end of occupying a seat in any branch of government.

Rightly have our Pope and Bishops reaffirmed the killing of innocent unborn as a primal scourge and sin. You can’t do much else in life if you aren’t allowed to be born. But “what you can do” isn’t all it’s about, either: that’s used to justify genetic and embryonic selection, embryonic stem-cell research at one end, and assisted suicide/euthanasia at the other end. It also leads to the attitude behind racism and other forms of oppression. Matter matters, because God informs it.

As my stalwart parish bulletin readers know, I go to the social media to inspire, to inform, and to entertain, and to seek the same from others. My favorite podcast is “Clerically Speaking,”* two younger priests talking about whatever you might imagine. In one of their features, they report quality Twitter content. 

One such presence, Fr. Joseph Krupp (@joeinblack), recently said this: “I’m getting calls and visits from people who want to convince me to preach in support of Biden or Trump. I’m using the opportunity to ask for help feeding the poor. No one has said yes yet. If we were as passionate about Jesus as we are about our candidate, it would change the world.”

Helping the poor is an aspect of parish life we cannot ignore. Now, it doesn’t have to happen on our campus for “the parish” to be doing it. When you help at home or somewhere else, keep in mind, that’s “the parish” helping the poor. Spiritual poverty matters alongside material poverty: all those works of mercy glorify God and help their intended recipients.

I haven’t preached much on abortion, at least directly, but over the years I have counseled women and men who were involved in abortions and have repented. Those conversations have changed me as a human being and as a priest. They show me how central Mercy is: God’s love bringing great good from great evil. The number of innocent lives affected, inside and outside the womb, cries out for greater awareness, acceptance, and action upon this truth.

I cannot understand how a politician can support unmitigated access to abortion or constrain citizens to pay for it. I further cannot understand how a politician might neglect the various fearsome conditions that encourage abortion. That leaves this voter in the lurch.

Our “consumer culture” has long formed us to use people and love things, when the Gospel would form us to love people and use things. We can speak of Jesus as “healer of nations” because He first healed people. People fed with the Eucharist must feed others spiritually and materially so those people can be strengthened to make good choices. Starving each other with empty or corrupt talk is no political path, nor should it fly within families.

Political involvement is good, but we must be cautious, especially in these days, to avoid a certain cult of political figures. Don’t be deceived into thinking “the right person” will prevent everything from falling apart. Because of the Fall of the human person, everything in this world is going to fall apart, as if by design. Don’t invest all of you, especially the worst of you, in candidates and parties engineered to disappoint. 

The political change we seek, like personal conversion, begins at home, with concrete service. Legislation and jurisprudence matter, yes, but concrete service is closer to you than the White House, Capitol Hill or Supreme Court. When Pope St. John Paul II spoke of a Culture of Life, he intended Catholics to be Catholics, people of good will to be such, by equipping mothers and fathers and children concretely as we alone can.

One more Tweet: Brother Simon, OSB (@monksimonosb), quoting a fellow Benedictine: “Until you are convinced that prayer is the best use of your time, you will not find time for prayer.” I must consider my personal relationship with God in prayer the most reliable place where God works.

Recall this weekend is World Mission Sunday. On 1 October we celebrated St. Therese of Lisieux, co-patroness of the missions, who from the age of 14 to her death 10 years later never left her convent. You get that? The missions, sustained by the prayers of an immobile mover of hearts.

Despite whatever happens in this election, whatever part you or I might choose to take in it, remember: God is in control. And you and I, do best to be available to Him as locally as possible in prayer and service, surrendering the control we’d like to have over the particulars.

*Much of the structure and some of the content of this proposed homily came from my listening to Episode 114 of “Clerically Speaking,” which I humbly yet forcefully recommend to your open ears. It's a "proposed homily" because Deacon Joe was scheduled to preach this weekend, yet I inadvertently prepared the above homily anyhow.

Where’s The Fire

Pentecost takes me back to two separate though related occasions in my life: number one (chronologically speaking) was my first “mock” homily, preached to my classmates and homiletics professor. It pretended to celebrate the Feast of the Visitation (31 May). The second day usually falls close enough to it: 8 June 2003, on which the Church celebrated Pentecost, and I my first Mass in Thanksgiving for having been ordained priest the day before.

The two feasts bear a profound relation insofar as Mary, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, was the first to communicate the Lord Jesus (who fully reveals Father and Holy Spirit as well) to the world, specifically to her cousin Elizabeth. The Holy Spirit, ever leading disciples “to all truth” (Jn 16:13), came upon Our Lady and the Apostles as a driving wind and tongues of fire.

This last manifestation—fire—was my chosen homiletic image for the Visitation. St. Luke tells us: “Mary proceeded in haste to the hill country” (Lk 1:39). In haste: the Greek μετὰ σπουδῆς pretty much means, “as if this were her business” (was she not her Son’s first and best teacher of what it means to be “about My Father’s business”? [Lk 2:49]). 

Sometimes when we see someone scampering about in haste, we ask them, “Where’s the fire?” Mary uniquely could have responded to such a perplexed passerby: “The Fire is within me.” She, the Bearer of Life, was the first “driving wind” to enlighten, embolden, and sanctify.

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The prophet Isaiah spoke of a “veil that veils all peoples” (25:7). We’ve been wearing masks that can obscure our voices, pinch our vision when we’re not wearing them properly, and in any case cause us layers of irritation—at the discomfort itself, yet also at the epidemiological and governmental reasons we’re wearing them. We want to shield not our sight or sound, but any possible droplets of COVID-19.

Meanwhile we show a certain obscurity and even obtuseness with our misuse of tongue and pen, fingers and feet. Hatred enters and escapes us, hardly veiled. We respire in fire, but of a spiritually destructive sort.

The latest ignition has been the riots in many cities across the U.S., but at their heart is righteous anger at police officers’ fatal violence toward Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, the most recent of millennia worth of racial violence. Had they not been black men, Arbery and Floyd presumably would not have been treated as they were, unto their humiliating deaths. Even though Floyd’ had exhibited actual criminal behavior, it received a gravely disproportionate response.

Widespread desecration and destruction are by no means a meritorious reaction; by proportionate means they are worth police response,.Yet dimly they reflect the burning of hearts for that justice which will bring true peace to the world (recall Pope St. Paul VI’s famous dictum: “If you want peace, work for justice”). It’s almost a type of what Saint Paul today referred to as “all creation...groaning in labor pains...as we wait for...the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:22-24). Not only do we not know how to pray as we ought, we also don’t know how to act, instead favoring to react.

Today I saw a photo of graffiti upon St. Patrick’s Cathedral: true profanation (L. pro+fanum, in front of the temple). True to form, I started reading the social media rejoinders. One: “All the churches in the world could burn down, and it wouldn’t be as bad as one child being molested by a priest.” Abusus non tollit usum, the Romans pithily reminded, but the kernel of truth and goodness here still obtains: human dignity is not to be violated, nobody no-how.

Return to Pentecost. As the Jewish feast of Shavuot it marks the collection of countless wheat sheaves into one granary. Eventually fire enters to transform wheat into bread. The Holy Spirit unifies and clarifies, undoing the original sin and its myriad offshoots. The primal defiance of God, further exemplified in the hate of one’s own brother, registered finally as a Babel-ing failure to communicate truth, goodness, beauty, and unity-within-diversity.

This the Spirit undoes in His descent of supernatural gifts (wisdom, fortitude, and the rest; Lk 4:18; Is 61:1), which in turn yield joy, patience, kindness, long-suffering, self-control, and other fruits (Gal 5:22). These gifts and fruits, uniformly sought and applied, would at last reconnect a disparate, disparaging humanity, turning prehistoric Babel into the new and eternal  Jerusalem. That is the hope dreadfully spelling itself out in the world in these days of viral vitriol. Clarify and purify the heart of the world, O Spirit-Fire!

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Almost a side note now, but something I never tire of telling: My alma mater of Nativity B.V.M. High School (Pottsville, PA) was built atop Lawton’s Hill, which once had been used as a KKK demonstration site. The chapel windows form a golden cross, which remains lit at night as if to redeem the crosses burned there years before. One way to make a statement, as to how the ardent devotion and service of Christians will channel the light of hope.

"Lest We Forget"; Of Michael Christopher and Christopher Michael

My latest Coronatide Consideration comes at the cusp of transition time, when the five counties in our diocese act in consort with civil authorities in permitting public Masses, albeit with still-appropriate safety precautions. The Gospel (Jn 16:29-33) packs the punch, which our deacon delivered deftly. As for my follow-up, I cannot say much, except everyone was left standing.

Jesus' disciples claimed to appreciate His long-awaited clarity, though He never meant to be murky to them. In fact, the Lord observed, they still won't get it, "for had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 2:8); they would never have done their part by abandoning Him at the moment of truth.

"Speaking plainly, with no more figures of speech"! I wonder where that would leave me, or any other poetically-plumed penman. Penmen of note like John McCrae of In Flanders' Fields fame, Recessional's Rudyard Kipling, or my man Hopkins' not-quite-titled "The Soldier," which starts with "YES."--fittingly expressing the consent of every redcoat and tar to their service.

In our day, to that last point, I would add "whitecoat" and "whitecap" to include nurses, doctors, and everyone in the way of this hidden harm, COVID-19. Many fallen heroes among them, too.

YES. Where would our world be without its poets? Some soldiers and patriots might opine poets' oft-controversial positions are posturings, virtue-signals, plain nonsense at best or subversive at worst. Casting things in a different light was never out of season, except in countries that weren't free.

The freedom in which we celebrated the Mass this morning was in some sense never withheld from us, although most bishops and priests considered it best to contain folks as much to their homes as possible, given how close quarters like churches can be flash-points for the sickness.

Today's open-air method is among the options when things officially open on 1 June. By then we will have an FM transmitter to spread the Word. (This morning I learned the transmitter is supposed to be coming tomorrow! Oh, to have been a little quicker to the draw when in other purchases a slower draw might have helped.)

Mass is at once a sacrifice, a banquet, and a memorial. The "Mystery of Faith" acclamation is ingredient to that part of the canon called Anamnesis (Gk, not-forgetting), according to Jesus' command to "do this"--take, break, bless, give, eat, and drink--"in remembrance of Me." Be with us yet, lest we forget, and do we!

Just as Memorial Day exhorts us not to forget the men and women "who more than self their country loved, / and mercy more than life," so every day's Memorial Offering mystically transports us to that moment of supreme truth, goodness, and beauty, the mountain of mercy that lends meaning to every sacrificial offering, large and small.

Please God, these days will remind us of the constant need for remembrance, in the Biblical sense that God remembers: acting concretely on behalf of the one in question.

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Sarah Coleman, top row, second from left; Helenann Welker, bottom row, last at right

My late mother was the best friend of Sally Coleman since high school and nursing school days. They both went on to be faithful and caring wives, mothers, and Licensed Practical Nurses.

They were so close, and so closely pregnant, that they made a kind of pact to name their children together. The first one to emerge was Michael Christopher Wargo (sharing her husband's first name); the second, a few months later, was Christopher Michael Zelonis (a name Mom had in mind and heart for years).

These two boys were in each other's company only a handful of times over the years, as their families' lives went on, fortunately enjoying periodic episodes of quality and quantity. This was much the case in the last fifteen years, after my Dad died in 2004. Mom had become an occasional beach bum in the Wargo pool. Many laughs and reminiscences shared, including a June 1977 birthday party of Michael when the two of us were in the same playpen--photo to follow. I met him as if for the first time at another party, years later.

Mom accompanied the Wargo family in moments delightful and difficult, especially when Michael, who had served his country nobly, took his own life on 20 May 2013, after an arduous struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which had taken a few family tolls prior to that day. As they do, every survivor was left holding the proverbial bag, mourning and speculating.

Many and varied are the battles of the "War at Home," as it has been termed, where servicemen and women still fall, often despite the best efforts of those around them--often amid a certain unawareness of those around them, or within themselves.

Mr. and Mrs. Wargo have since given their lives to foster mental health awareness and care for our veterans. They further honor their son's memory by volunteering for the "Valor Clinic" and "Mission 22," which has honored veteran victims of PTSD with steel silhouettes, including Michael's near the trailhead in his native Lehighton. I pass and pray often, while on the run. The templates of these soldiers are scheduled ("virus-permitting," Sally says) to repose permanently--appropriately, by name--in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, come October, having made a tour of duty in several spots.

Learning that my latest assignment would be in Lehighton was a joy, especially knowing the Wargos all my life, and even Sally's parents George and Margaret Coleman, who tolerated the precocious five-year-old who hung around George's typewriter stand at "the Auction" (the Hometown Farmer's Market). Margaret thought enough of me to buy me a religious item of my choosing at the one Catholic goods stand. I chose a crucifix, which I still have. God bless her, she still thinks of me so, with sharpest mind, in her 90s.

It was never far away: at my desk. St. Anthony has come through for me on lesser things with greater effort.

The pastoral delicacy surrounding self-wrought deaths is something that alas, not all priests, have exercised. I wonder sometimes, when it comes to any commendation in circumstances perhaps awkward, shameful, or volatile, how we do it. A Power Greater, no doubt, even when (only God knows why) that Power seemed utterly inaccessible to them, or they felt utterly unworthy of His regard--which in fact could never have been stronger, at any point.

Lord God of Hosts (armies), be with us yet, even when, for that final moment, we forget.

Containment Considerations 8: I Need Cash Now

A couple of weeks have transpired since my last isolation reflection, and this is the eighth of that unspecified series. Both of these facts suggest it has been going on far too long. It promises to continue, at least in this part of Pennsylvania.

For many people, the containment doesn’t seem to have been going on at all, whether that’s because their usual business hasn’t involved much physical contact to begin with, their business has become unusually affected with the result of more contact (such as our noble first responders), or simply because they have been flouting the governmental directives.

As a parish priest, the core dimension of my ministry has not changed in the sense that I have not stopped offering daily the holy Mysteries entrusted to me by my bishop nearly 17 years ago. I have not stopped celebrating the Sacraments, proclaiming the Gospel, or caring for souls. I’ve just had to do it differently.

The World Online, like every novelty, has intrigued me since I first laid eyes on it. Here’s another shiny boulevard of Evangelization and self-expression! Which of those two purposes I have appreciated and enlisted more, varies depending on when you ask me what I’ve done with it today. I’m nothing if not inconsistent!

Sometimes those purposes look and sound rather similar. To this point, following up on an earlier post in which I laid out my ecclesiastical heraldry, I’ve actually changed a major component: my motto. It’s my expectation that you don’t fool with this stuff once it’s in print, but I do nothing if I don’t defy expectations, alone or with others.

My previous sacred slogan was Matthew 13:52, in which, after Jesus laid out a series of teachings on the kingdom of heaven in the form of parables, He closed out with a simple simile as the last parable in that series (like this episode, the 8th).

Ever the teacher, Jesus asked His followers, “Do you understand these things?” Upon their affirmative response, Jesus said, “then every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings forth from his storeroom both the new and the old” (profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera).

For my purposes (and those of the kingdom of heaven, I dare say), as a "scribe" I start off—and end up—both a recorder and an interpreter. That’s always the case whether the writings are sacred or secular. Traditore, tradutore: The one who hands things on for posterity, hands them over for betrayal. Not to say the original meaning is entirely lost, but like the genetic phenomenon of microchimerism, someone else gets handed on as well: something old, something new.

In jettisoning the phrase profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera, I am not altogether parting with it. Even though it will not appear below the crest, it still shows up in my thoughts, words, and actions. That’s how my new motto was germinating while I was working with the old one, and not surprisingly, that’s how the old one has been working since I’ve started with the new one. The more I cling to either of them, the more I suspect I am doing so in error: No rest for the wary.

I have turned my mind, for now, to chapter two of Saint Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. He goes to some length and depth to make clear the purity of his ministerial motives. When it comes to human praise, he is not in it to win it. In verse seven, he compares the apostolic labors of his coterie to a nursing mother; in verse eleven, he compares it to a father's exhortation and insistence. There is something poignant to his inclusion of both parents in his comparison.

But the phrase that pays here is verse eight, where Saint Paul relays: "with such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us" (non solum evangelium Dei, sed etiam animas nostras). When it comes to mottos, either one is somewhat large. Normally I don't see many over five words. So this is par for my course: why say in 500 words what you can say in 1000?

Speaking of which: This post had a main point, and I'm just getting to it. In an effort to convey "our very selves" as sometimes I do more than the Gospel of God as such, I sneaked up to the choir loft before my Zoom Pastoral Council meeting last night to record myself playing on the organ the operatic theme for the cash advance company J. G. Wentworth.

My only intention, to line the collective pockets with a little levity. That said, if they wanted to send cash now for a new Allen organ, I wouldn't refuse it.

The video has garnered a generous response from my friends on both the Facebook and the Twitter. I'm certainly humbled and grateful. It goes to show the solidarity of people in crazy times. We're all going through it.

As for my talent: Knowing the caliber of musicians alongside whom I've been playing in concert bands for thirty years, I make no claims at proficiency. What I lack in talent, I compensate for in willingness and schmaltz.

I just spied a quote from St. Jane Frances de Chantal: "Hell is full of the talented; heaven of the energetic." If I can bring the two together, following the "both/and" principle of Catholicism evident in both of my motto selections, I might hit the middle ground of Purgatory--and even that is temporary in favor of heaven.

Moving back to the Gospel of God, I include here my homily from this morning, in which I tried to tie together the readings and saints of the day to my exploits from last night. If we can't view current events--especially music and other cultural expressions--in light of the Gospel, why do we even culture?