4th Day of Christmas: Holy Innocents & Babies Saved By Christmas Carols

    Today, the 4th Day of Christmas, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates the slaughter of all male children in Bethlehem under two years old by King Herod's soldiers.  Herod had learned from the Magi that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem, and feared that this Messiah would depose him.  As it happened, the Messiah (Jesus) escaped, and Herod went to his eternal reward (whatever it may have been) while Jesus was still an infant. You can read my post on the Holy Innocents (and Holy Innocence) HERE at Principium et Finis.

Massacre of the Holy Innocents, Ludovico Mazzolino

    My post on the other site explores the ramifications of this terrible event in more detail, including its reflection in the modern day abortion industry and our pornified culture. Here I would like to focus briefly on the connection of the Holy Innocents to an article on Lifesitenews.com, “Pro-life Christmas carolers save six babies in Orlando, more in other areas by touching hearts with their singing”.  The article details some amazing rescues, not only in Florida, but across the country:

Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler described for LifeSiteNews how three different couples turned around and walked away from abortion this year as carolers sang outside Family Planning Associates abortion center in San Bernardino, California.

A compelling feature of the story is that the Christmas Carols themselves seem to have been the decisive factor in changing the minds of people who had come to the clinics intent on aborting a child:

. . . At least one couple was greatly moved by the hymns.

“What impressed me about this report is they actually stopped to tell the caroler group that they changed their mind,” Scheidler stated.

“The couple told them, ‘It was because of your caroling that we decided to keep our baby,’” he said. “The singing was the only thing that happened to change their mind.”

A group in Illinois reports similar results:

"We're having a baby! We changed our minds," a woman called out joyfully to Northwest Families for Life group caroling Tuesday, December 20, in conjunction with Pro-Life Action League’s “Peace in the Womb” Caroling Days in Wood Dale, Ill.

When they met the couple at the car, the group’s co-founder, Maria Goldstein, told LifeSiteNews, the man said to them with a big smile on his face, "Thank you. You're doing a great job!"  

“What exactly was the "great job" we did?” Goldstein said. “We didn't counsel them on the way in; we didn't talk them out of the abortion; we weren't able to show them pictures of developing babies.”  

“All we did was show up, pray, and sing,” she continued. “Maybe they heard our carols inside and felt God tug at their hearts. I guess that really is a "great job!" We got to bring the power of God to this dark place. God is good.”

    God is indeed good.  These stories of the babies saved by carolers cast an interesting light on both the Nativity of Jesus and today’s Feast of the Holy Innocents.  The Incarnation and Nativity came about because, while our efforts are necessary  - “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17) - they are not sufficient.  In the end, we can’t save ourselves, or anyone else, all by ourselves: only the power of God can do that.  In the Life Site story, the Holy Spirit working through sacred Christmas songs changed hearts that were not moved by human arguments.

    The fate of the children killed by Herod’s soldiers in Bethlehem likewise illustrates this point.  Nobody was able to save them from unjust slaughter, they were too young to have any intellectual knowledge of God, and, since Jesus himself was still a baby, baptism was not available to them.  And yet the Church assures us that these little ones did not die in vain, and that they enjoy the reward of Heaven (you can read a short, concise explanation here). They were beyond the help of human agency, but “with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).  If we do our part, God will do the rest.

    An interesting note: at one time, the story of these poor murdered children itself inspired a large number of songs.  The best known today (the only one, in fact that is still regularly performed) is The "Coventry Carol" (lyrics below), dating from the 16th century.  The spare, hauntingly beautiful rendition in the clip below is performed by Valeria Mignaco and Alfonso Marin.

1. Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.
By, by, lully, lullay.

2. O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

3. Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.

4. Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For Thy parting, nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,
By by, lully lullay.

Merry Christmas! The First Noel

May God Bless You with a Very Merry Christmas!

. . . and may you enjoy this beautiful rendition of the traditional Christmas song "The First Noel", sung by the University of Utah Singers.

Christus Natus Est, Alleluiah!

Altarpiece of the Birth of Christ by Duccio di Buoninsegna

Bach/Gounod Ave Maria (Andrea Bocelli)

The Annunciation, by Frederico Barocci

     As my final posting of Advent I'm offering this gorgeous rendition of the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria recorded by Andrea Bocelli.  While this setting for the Hail Mary is more understated than the better-known Schubert Ave Maria, it is no less moving or beautiful.
     The melody was originally composed as an improvisation over Bach's Prelude Number 1 in C Major by mid-19th century French composer Charles Gounod. As is the case with Schubert's composition, the music was not originally intended as a setting for the Ave Maria; in both cases, however, the resulting combination seems almost perfect.
     On this final day of Advent, it seems fitting to look back, as this musical prayer invites us to do, on  the earlier events in Mary's life that culminate in tomorrow's glorious Nativity of Our Lord.

Today you will know the Lord is coming, and in the morning you will see His glory!
     

For more Advent music, please see “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming (Frederica Von Stade)” from the blog Principium et Finis.

St. Servulus, Tiny Tim, & The Nativity of Jesus

St. Servulus listening to the Scriptures

   One understandable drawback to the great liturgical feasts, such as the magnificent celebration of the Nativity at Christmas, is that lesser observances can be overlooked in all the excitement. For instance, today’s Saint, St. Servulus: he is worth remembering for his own sake, but his life also gives us some very fruitful matter for meditation on the penultimate day of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas itself. Let’s take a look at the story of St. Servulus, from the 1894 edition of Butler’s Lives of the Saints (an account based on a homily by St. Gregory the Great):

December 23.—ST. SERVULUS.

SERVULUS was a beggar, and had been so afflicted with palsy from his infancy that he was never able to stand, sit upright, lift his hand to his mouth, or turn himself from one side to another. His mother and brother carried him into the porch of St. Clement's Church at Rome, where he lived on the alms of those that passed by. He used to entreat devout persons to read the Holy Scriptures to him, which he heard with such attention as to learn them by heart. His time he consecrated by assiduously singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God. After several years thus spent, his distemper having seized his vitals, he felt his end was drawing nigh. In his last moments he desired the poor and pilgrims, who had often shared in his charity, to sing sacred hymns and psalms for him. While he joined his voice with theirs, he on a sudden cried out: "Silence! do you not hear the sweet melody and praise which resound in the heavens?" Soon after he spoke these words he expired, and his soul was carried by angels into everlasting bliss, about the year 590.

Reflection.—The whole behaviour of this poor sick beggar loudly condemns those who, when blessed with good health and a plentiful fortune, neither do good works nor suffer the least cross with tolerable patience.

   Servulus is certainly an admirable model of heroic virtue.  In spite of a lifetime of constant suffering, he was filled with gratitude to his Creator, and was completely devoted, as signified by his name (Servulus means “little slave”). Moreover, despite his own absolute poverty, he was keenly aware of the need of others.

Bob Cratchit & Tiny Tim

   But there’s more to the story of this saint and his feast day, coming as it does right before the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord.  When I first read Servulus’ hagiography, in fact, a passage from Charles Dickens immediately came to mind.  I was thinking of the scene in A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Present is showing Scrooge the Cratchit family’s Christmas dinner.  Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit, has just returned from church with his sickly son Tiny Tim.  After Tim is whisked off by his siblings to see “the pudding singing in the copper”, Bob has the following exchange with his wife:

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Tiny Tim sees himself as a living image of Christ’s mercy, reminding the faithful that the Nativity they’re celebrating is not just the birth of a baby, but the Incarnation of the God of Mercy as a Man. St. Servulus is also an icon, pointing out precisely who the Babe in the manger has come to be. He reminds us that in taking on human flesh, Jesus is taking to himself all that is human, excepting sin.  That very emphatically includes human suffering. It is often said that when God took on human form, he sanctified humanity. Likewise, since Jesus has participated in our pain and sorrow, through that suffering we can unite ourselves to the living God. St. Servulus puts flesh on the words of St. Paul: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions (Colossians 1:24).”  Small wonder that the suffering saint could hear the voices of angels even before he left this world for the next.

    In two days we will be celebrating Christmas, the birth of our Savior, which is indeed, as the angels tell the shepherds of Bethlehem, “good news of a great joy” (Luke 2:10).  St. Servulus reminds us that He comes not so much to save us from the hardships of this world, but to save us through those hardships, so that we can be eternally happy with Him in the next.

    May your Christmas be a merry one . . . and God Bless Us, Every One.

The Christmas Conversion of St. Thérèse

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 16 December 2014 on the blog Principium et Finis. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

The future St.Thérèse (r) and her sister Pauline

 In the lives of the Saints we can find some amazing stories of conversion: the Risen Lord literally knocking his persecutor Saul to ground and blinding him, in order to raise him up as St. Paul; the rich and spoiled son of an Italian cloth merchant who needed a year in a dungeon as a POW followed by a near fatal illness before he cast off self-indulgence to become St. Francis of Assissi; the vain and vainglorious Spanish nobleman who had his leg nearly shot off with a cannonball, and then went through months of excruciating recovery, before he could begin to see God in All Things as St. Ignatius of Loyola.  How startlingly different, and yet how strikingly the same is the conversion of the little French girl Thérèse Martin, now St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, as she tells it her autobiographical Story of A Soul: 

     I had a constant and ardent desire to advance in virtue, but often my actions were spoilt by imperfections. My extreme sensitiveness made me almost unbearable. All arguments were useless. I simply could not correct myself of this miserable fault. . .  A miracle on a small scale was needed to give me strength of character all at once, and God worked this long-desired miracle on Christmas Day, 1886. . . 

     Now I will tell you, dear Mother, how I received this inestimable grace of complete conversion. I knew that when we reached home after Midnight Mass I should find my shoes in the chimney-corner, filled with presents, just as when I was a little child, which proves that my sisters still treated me as a baby. Papa, too, liked to watch my enjoyment and hear my cries of delight at each fresh surprise that came from the magic shoes, and his pleasure added to mine. But the time had come when Our Lord wished to free me from childhood's failings, and even withdraw me from its innocent pleasures. On this occasion, instead of indulging me as he generally did, Papa seemed vexed, and on my way upstairs I heard him say: "Really all this is too babyish for a big girl like Thérèse, and I hope it is the last year it will happen." His words cut me to the quick. Céline, knowing how sensitive I was, whispered: "Don't go downstairs just yet—wait a little, you would cry too much if you looked at your presents before Papa." But Thérèse was no longer the same—Jesus had changed her heart.

     Choking back my tears, I ran down to the dining-room, and, though my heart beat fast, I picked up my shoes, and gaily pulled out all the things, looking as happy as a queen. Papa laughed, and did not show any trace of displeasure, and Céline thought she must be dreaming. But happily it was a reality; little Thérèse had regained, once for all, the strength of mind which she had lost at the age of four and a half.

     On this night of grace, the third period of my life began—the most beautiful of all, the one most filled with heavenly favours. In an instant Our Lord, satisfied with my good will, accomplished the work I had not been able to do during all these years. Like the Apostle I could say: "Master, we have laboured all night, and have taken nothing."

     More merciful to me even than to His beloved disciples, Our Lord Himself took the net, cast it, and drew it out full of fishes. He made me a fisher of men. Love and a spirit of self-forgetfulness took possession of me, and from that time I was perfectly happy.

The Lord didn’t need to knock Thérèse down, beat her up, or have her shot in order to get her full attention; all he needed was to allow her to overhear a couple of stray comments from the father she loved so dearly.  That wounded her deeply enough to reveal to her the reality of her own selfishness, and to open her up completely to Christ’s Grace.  The meaning of conversion, after all, is to “turn around”, away from a way of life dictated by our own desires to one truly centered on God.

     Now, most of us need a wake-up more like the one which was granted to St. Paul or St. Francis; perhaps not quite as dramatic, but most of us, I suspect, are much more wrapped up in our sin than was little Thérèse Martin.  But that is precisely why the Little Flower’s conversion stands out: even someone who seems to be doing just about everything right is still in need of conversion, and not just in one instant, but continuously over a lifetime (and of course she did experience much greater suffering later in her short life). Sin will always be trying to turn us back. 

     St. Thérèse’s conversion story reminds us of something else.  There will always be opportunities for conversion.  We don’t need to go out looking for trouble, because we will all have ample opportunity to experience The Fall in our lives.  The more enmeshed we are in sin, however, and the higher the walls between ourselves and God, the harder our fall must be.  Wouldn’t it be better to come to Christ like Thérèse did, without too much collateral damage to ourselves and to others?

     Finally, St. Thérèse learned to turn her hurt and disappointment into generosity of spirit, her selfishness to selflessness.  When I think back on her Christmas of 1886 I am reminded that I need to ask my Lord for the Grace to do the same. O come, O come Emmanuel!

Awaiting the Arrival of the God Who is Man (movie Arrival)

God Only Knows

  What would we do if we were God?  “Well”, we might think, “what wouldn’t I do!”  I'm sure we could all think of things we would do differently if it were up to us.  Hunger, disease, suffering . . . who needs those?  Gone! Looks easy, doesn’t it?  

The Fall of Phaethon by Ferrau Fenzoni

It looks easy, that is, until we start to think about it a little more deeply.  Holding the entire infinitely complex universe in being requires multi-tasking of a sort we can’t even imagine.  To get just a glimpse of the problem, consider ancient Greek story of Phaethon. Phaethon was a young man who eagerly leapt at the chance to drive the chariot of the Sun - what could go wrong?  Plenty, as it turned out: the foolish, overconfident mortal couldn’t control the Sun god’s horses, and left the world a smoking ruin.  We have seen real-world parallels in more recent times in the calamity that has consistently resulted even from more down-to-earth ambitions, such as planned economies (see: North Korea, mass starvation).

    And yet we can’t seem to help ourselves.  We all understand what Phaethon’s crash is supposed to tell us, and nobody will deny that our intellects are finite.  We still seem to think, however, that we can judge the mind of God.  For instance, we have all heard objections to Christian beliefs phrased as, “Why would God do that? Why would a good God allow suffering? Couldn’t God have made a world without sin? Wouldn’t an all-powerful God find a more direct way to make his wishes known?” and so on.  All such objections can really be reduced to: “That’s not what I would do if I were God!”  But we’re not God, and a God capable of creating an entire universe ex nihilo can’t help but be something, or better yet someone, of an entirely different order than ourselves.  

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways

    Understanding the radical difference between our Creator and ourselves is essential to accepting and working within our own limitations.  Explaining it to an unbelieving world, however, presents something of a challenge to Christian evangelists.  One the one hand, an infinite God is necessarily beyond our comprehension in many respects; on the other, as sceptics have correctly pointed out, simply dismissing difficulties with “The Lord works in mysterious ways!” can be an awful convenient way of skirting potential problems . . . and will persuade precisely nobody.   And yet we Christians are called to “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).   

Louise (Amy Adams) attempting to communicate with alien in Arrival.

    My sons and I watched a film recently, Arrival, which raises similar questions.  Arrival is the story a linguist named Louise Banks (played by actress Amy Adams) who is called upon by the U.S. government to attempt to communicate with the occupants of one of twelve UFOs that have come down to Earth.  Like the Star Trek episode “Darmok” (which I discuss HERE), this film explores the difficulties, and potential rewards, of learning to comprehend not simply the language, but the very different thought processes of beings whose way of understanding is profoundly different from ours. As far as I know, the makers of the movie did not have any any specifically Christian intent, but there are some interesting connections.  Bishop Robert Barron has published an insightful essay in which he uses Arrival to explore the way in which God speaks to us through the human writers of Holy Scripture.

How Can We See God?

    Bishop Barron addresses himself to a specifically Scriptural question; when I saw the film, it led me to think about some other aspects  of God’s self-revelation as well.  Let's start, however, with "Darmok", the Star Trek episode mentioned above: here we see human beings interacting with utterly alien creatures who are nevertheless at a roughly equal stage of development.  In Arrival the aliens are clearly much more advanced than the earthlings in a number of respects, but they still struggle mightily to make themselves understood.  Their human interlocutors need to work just as hard as they do to make a connection, and the whole project nearly ends in world-wide disaster. In some ways their more developed technology and (for lack of a better term) more developed awareness makes them even more threatening and inaccessible to humans, making the task of establishing communication that much harder.

    Let’s consider now the situation of the Infinite God, immeasurably more advanced than the aliens in Arrival.  How can this gap, infinitely wider than that between the movie aliens and humanity, be bridged? Suppose he were to reveal himself to us directly, as the doubters demand.  How would He do that? If  a being so radically beyond us were somehow visible, would we even understand what we were looking at? Also, if other creatures can frighten us, how do we react to an entity more powerful than the entire universe itself?  As God tells Moses, “No one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).  How can He reveal himself to his creatures without overwhelming them?

The Face of the Living God

The Crucifixion, by Leon Bonnat

An all-powerful God, fortunately, who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves, can do what otherworldly aliens, however advanced, cannot: he can speak to us clearly through our fellow humans. We see this pattern throughout Salvation History, from Abraham through Moses through the prophets.  Even here, however, it was all too easy for people to reject God’s messengers; after all, weren’t they only men as well?  Jesus Himself explains this difficulty, and the solution to it, in a parable:

There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  (Matthew 21:33-37)

In Jesus Christ, then,  the Eternal, Infinite God comes to us in human form.  As Jesus says in another place:

He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10)

In Jesus Christ God does reveal himself directly, but in a form we can truly understand, as a fellow creature with whom we can identify. When we look at Christ we look at God, “For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

His name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God With Us (Matthew 1:23)

    Even that, however, is not the whole story. Let’s return to Jesus’ parable from the Gospel of Matthew,  and see what the wicked tenants do when the the Father sends his Son to them:

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.' And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Matthew 21:38-39)

The Annunciation of the Shepherds, Jules Bastien Lepage

    In real life, as we know, the true Son is indeed killed on the Cross, then proves his Divinity by rising from the dead: a clear, tangible sign.  Through his Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, he shows us not only what sort of God he is, but also what sort of men and women  we can be if we follow his example.  And in fact he has continued to communicate to us through men and women who have followed that example over the past two millennia, and we now venerate these people as Saints.

    The Incarnation, then, is the Big Breakthrough that the Aliens in Arrival can’t hope to accomplish, the Breaking Through of the Infinite God into our world in the form of a finite man.  God’s answer to the problem is suffering is that, as a man, He shares in our suffering; if we in turn join our suffering to his, we can spend eternity with Him far beyond the pain and sorrow of this world.  That’s a better solution than anything we could come up with on our own.

    For this reason the Incarnation is, as the Angel tells the shepherds of Bethlehem, “good news of a great joy which will come to all the people” (Luke 2:10). That is why we devote these four weeks of the Season of Advent preparing for the arrival (adventus in Latin) of the Messiah in the form of the baby Jesus: He is the One Man who truly knows how to be God.

A Tale of Two Sundays: God's Love is Universal

This Throwback Thursday post was first published on Sept 5th 2015

The Universal Church

The Martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch

   The word “catholic”, meaning “universal” (from greek κατά, “according to” and ὅλος, “the whole”) has been associated with the Christian Church almost from the beginning.  It’s first surviving written appearance is in the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in the year 107 A.D., less than eighty years after the death of Christ.  The matter-of-fact way in which he uses the term suggests that it was already familiar to his readers.  In chapter 8 of his letter to the Smyrnaeans, for instance, he says:

Let that celebration of the Eucharist be considered valid which is held under the bishop or anyone to whom he has committed it. Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.

The term initially was meant to identify the Church, along with all the doctrines and practices, that was authoritative for all Christians, as opposed to heresy, from the Greek αἵρεσις, “a choosing”.  A heretic was someone who chose only certain things from the Universal Church, while rejecting others, thus cutting himself off from the ecclesial body and the tradition established by Jesus Christ himself and handed on by his Apostles.

    We can also say that the Church is "catholic" in other senses as well.  It is “universal” in that it embraces the entire history of Christianity, for instance: not only the experiences of our forebears contained in Holy Scripture and the generations of believers since the Bible was codified, but also those believers themselves, who still participate in the life of the Church as members of the Church Suffering in Purgatory and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.

   The primary place in which those of us alive here on Earth (in the Church Militant) experience the catholicity of the Church is in the Holy Eucharist, where we are all joined to our One Lord by partaking in His Body and Blood (hence the term “Communion”).  I have suggested previously [here] that the use of Latin in the Western Church reinforced, in a very effective, concrete way, the reality of that communion, but it is the Mass itself (and really Christ through the Mass, particularly in the Eucharist) that unites us.  Whether we attend the Extraordinary form in Latin or the Ordinary form in any language you could name, we are participating in the One Sacrifice of Calvary, and also in the liturgy that unfolds eternally before the throne of God in Heaven.  I had a beautiful reminder of how the Mass can embody the catholicity of the Church over the past two Sundays, when I and my family celebrated the Eucharist away from our home parish.

At The VA Hospital

Togus VA Medical Center, Augusta, ME

    The first Mass was was at a Veterans Administration hospital, where every Sunday volunteers from the Knights of Columbus, along with their families, take turns bringing wheelchair-bound veterans to the Eucharistic celebration.  The veterans seemed to appreciate our company, and it was a very moving experience for us.  The Liturgy itself was inspirational as well, in spite of the unadorned, institutional blue cinder block walls of the non-denominational chapel.  There was only one tangible external detail, aside from the priest’s vestments, to remind us of the transcendent nature of what we were doing: father placed a crucifix in front of him on the altar, on which he fixed his gaze as he offered the Eucharistic Sacrifice.  Pope Benedict has recommended this practice in response to the criticism that the Mass versus populum (facing the people) gives the impression that priest and congregation are addressing each other, rather than together directing our prayers to God.  This is the first time, at least that I can recall, that I’ve seen a priest adopting Papa Benedetto’s simple expedient for orienting ourselves toward our Our Lord with this arrangement. The Gospel reading on this particular Sunday was the Bread of Life Discourse from John Chapter 6, and Father spoke eloquently on the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  While he didn’t deal explicitly with our surroundings, our gratitude for God’s gift of his own body to us was all the more powerful for the testimony of the severely disabled men worshipping with us, who had also sacrificed their bodies for others.

At The College

The Chapel at Thomas More College

    This past weekend we attended a very different Mass at Thomas More College in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  It was a beautiful celebration of the Ordinary form, simple and understated but still incorporating many traditional details that brought to mind the timelessness of the Eucharistic Liturgy, and which helped to redirect our attention from ourselves to our Lord: celebration ad orientem, some of the prayers in Latin, an altar server holding a patten under the chin while we knelt for communion, etc. (for a fuller discussion, see my post here on a previous Mass, which was the same in most particulars).  On this occasion, the second reading was from the letter of James:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this:

to care for orphans and widows in their affliction

and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

And Father accordingly spoke in his homily of the need for us to live out our faith, and particularly our obligation to make the love of Christ a reality in our lives.

God Is Love

The Crucifixion by Marco Palmezzano

    There is an interesting symmetry here: in the first Mass, with few external signs of the transcendent, and which many of us were attending for the purpose of “caring for” (as the Apostle James says) the hospital patients, the Gospel and the homily invited us to look beyond the here and now to Jesus Christ. In the second mass, where much loving attention was devoted to the external details that emphasize the reverence due to the Real Presence of the Second Person of the Trinity, we were asked to direct ourselves to the material needs of the less fortunate among us.  

    The common thread is love: Christ’s love in offering himself for us, our love for him as expressed in the reverence of our worship, and our love for each other as manifested in our care for others.  The Beloved Disciple tells us that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), and Jesus himself says:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35)

Piety and Charity, then, aren’t opposites, or even separate: in fact, for followers of Jesus Christ they are inseparable, two sides of the same coin.  And we encounter them in every Mass, wherever it is offered, and whatever it looks like.  God’s Love is universal.