Of the Novus Ordo

"The careful reading of the Conciliar Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilum shows that the rash changes introduced to the Liturgy later on, were never in the minds of the Fathers of the Council." - Cardinal Ranjith (http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2011/12/cardinal-ranjith-time-has-come-powerful.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewLiturgicalMovement+%28The+New+Liturgical+Movement%29)

Hymn at Vespers, Common of Pastors

Continuing with trying to promote the use of proper texts instead of alii canti apti [sic], here is a translation of Sacrata nobis gaudia, the hymn in the LH at vespers for the common of multiple pastors. This one is much more cleaned up than my previous offering, which as of yet needs to be worked on. This could stand for improvement, but is singable. It is in long metre, as is the Latin original. The translation is mine, guided by our Latin professor at SJV, with the assistance of some of my classmates.

Here is the Latin original:

Sacrata nobis gaudia
dies reduxit annua,
laudantur in qua debito
cultu duces ovilium.

En pro gregis custodia
nullos labores neglegunt,
tutantur illum, sanius
impertientes pabulum.

Arcent lupos e finibus,
procul latrones exigunt,
replent oves pinguitudine,
ovile numquam deserunt.

Tot nunc potiti gaudiis,
gregum duces sanctissimi,
nobis rogate gratiam
apud tribunal iudicis.

Aeterne, Christe, pontifex,
tibi sit aequa gloria
cum Patre et almo Spiritu
in sempiterna saecula. Amen.




And my translation:

Joys sacred to us do return
yearly this hallowed day in which
these leaders of the flock are praised
with honour and due revèrence.

See, in their keeping of the flock,
not one effort do they neglect,
guarding the sheep, providing
nourishing, healthy sustenance.

They keep the wolves out of the fold,
the robbers they drive far away,
they fill the sheep abundantly,
the flock they ne'er abandon.

Having achieved so many joys,
most holy leaders of the flock,
solicit grace for us before
the judgement seat of God most-high.

Eternal high priest Jesus Christ,
to thee be equal glory with
the Father and the Spirit sweet,
in time and in eternity. Amen.

Hymn at Lauds, common of Pastors

Our holy mother Church has provided hymns for us to sing during the Liturgy of the Hours, hymns which are truly prayer, lifting our hearts and minds to contemplation of God. But the American Liturgy of the Hours by and large provides us with hymns such as "Morning has broken" and "Day is done, but love unfailing". Some of these are nice enough in themselves, but some are wretched. Even those nice in themselves have nothing to do with the text of the hymns which the Church has provided for us.

I've spent a few months trying to find English translations of the hymns in the Liturgia Horarum, and finally found that the Mundelein Psalter has most of them. The ones that it hasn't, I am trying to translate myself. So starting off this project, I have the hymn used at lauds on the common of pastors, when multiple pastors are celebrated.

Hi sacerdotes Domini sacrati,
consecratores Domini fideles
atque pastores populi fuere
impigro amore.

Namque susceptae benedictionis
dona servantes, studere, lumbos
fortiter cincti, manibus coruscas
ferre lucernas.

Sicque suspensi vigilesque, quando
ianuam pulsans Dominus veniret,
obviaverunt properanti alacres
pandere limen.

Gloriae summum decus atque laudis,
rex, tibi, regum, Deitas perennis,
quicquid est rerum celebret per omne
tempus et aevum. Amen.

These holy and sanctified priests of the Lord,

were consecrators of the Lord’s faithful ones,

and they were good shepherds of the Lord’s household

with unwearied love.

For they undertook to give sanctified gifts

to the members of the household, were zealous,

with strongly girded loins and with hands shining

to bear the trimm’d lamps.

And thus raised up and keeping watch, as wise ones,

when the Lord comes knocking upon the house-door,

they have met swiftly and eagerly to lay

open the threshold.

Glory, most-highest honour, and also praise,

to you, king of kings, eternally divine,

who is eminent and celebrated through all

time and forever. Amen.

Metaphysics, part five

This class confirmed that reason can conceded the process of evolution all the way up to the appearance of humans. But the emergence of human beings requires an act of creation on God's part, because we have a spiritual soul which cannot arise from matter.

Each human soul is a new creation, direct and without mediation, by God. So for every human person who exists, God had to create their soul at their conception; God is directly involved in the beginning of every human life. So we know that there is no such thing as an unwanted child: God knows what he's doing, and he has to cooperate for a human to come into being.

Science has found out that most children die in the womb, even before they attach to the mother. So all of us probably have siblings we don't even know of, and I've found it can be very heartening to ask at Mass for their intercession.

The five properties that are characteristic of absolutely every being are that it 1) is one 2) acts 3) is intelligible 4) is good 5) is beautiful. Intelligibility, or truth, relates to our intellect; goodness relates to our will; and beauty relates to both our intellect and will.

Metaphysics, part four

Arguments for the existence of God:

First argument:

1. Given any conditioned being, there must exist at least one self-sufficient being. (This is based on infinite regress. If you look for sufficient reason in conditioned beings, you won't find it. There has to be an unconditioned (self-sufficient, uncaused) being that can cause all other beings.)
2. No being can be self-sufficient unless it is qualitatively infinite in perfection.
3. There can only be one such being infinite in all perfections. (If there were more than one, one would have to lack something the other has, to distinguish them, and would not be infinite in all perfections.)
4. Therefore this being is the unique and ultimate source of all being; this we being we call God.

The beings we observe are all finite, and a finite being cannot be self-sufficient because it would have to pre-exist itself (to determine the essence it would have). And things just can't pre-exist themselves. A self-sufficient being has to be infinite, because it can't possess any perfection in a limited way.


Second argument:

1. When there is intrinsic similarity among beings, there must be a source of that feature; and that source must have the feature infinitely.
2. A beings have existence.
3. Therefore there is a single source for existence, which exists infinitely.



Characteristics of God we can know through reason include: self-sufficiency; infinite fulness of all perfections; unique; eternal; un-composed; immaterial; immutable.

God's motive in creation is to share with us his goodness. His motive can't be to acquire anything or become better: he's infinite; as infinitely perfect, he has no needs. God is the end (purpose) of creation: out of love for his goodness, he had a desire to share it with others, and so he created us and the angels. So, it is our duty to honour God because we can see that he didn't need to make us.

God's omnipotence:
This means that he is the ultimate source of all power (potency), not that he can do anything. He cannot microwave a burrito so hot that even he cannot touch it. Sorry folks.
He doesn't violate the principle of non-contradiction (A is A, not not-A), and can't do anything that implies limitation in his part. So, he can't be run faster than anything else, because running itself is a limitation (because only material beings can move from one location to another).

God's omniscience:
This was probably the most confusing part of the class, and I don't really get it.
But according to the text: there is a difference between saying God "foresees" our free acts and saying he "sees" them. If he foresees our acts, this supposes he sees them in time before they happen in time; if he sees our acts, this indicates he sees them in their presentiality, not before they happen, because he is outside time in an eternal Now: he simply sees them as they are actually taking place. God's omniscience takes place in eternity, not in time. He knows us so well that we knows what we'll do, and this doesn't denigrate our free will. It's just that nothing we do can surprise him. If you've ever known what your spouse or sibling was gonna do when you said something to them, that didn't affect their ability to freely choose what they did. It just means you know them well, and can predict what they'll do. Well, God knows us way way better than we even know ourselves, so he can perfectly know what we'll do. And he wills for us in response to our actions. He has a will for us that is unchanging, and yet contingent on what we choose to do. At every step of the way, even when we screw up, he has a will for us that we can co-operate with. This all is very encouraging, because even when you've turned away from him in sin, he has a will for you, and way for you to cooperate with him and still live a good life. If you make a poor decision, he will work with you, he has a will for you, so you can pick up the pieces in the best way possible. And since we can't surprise him, it makes going to confession a lot easier. He is not surprised that I fell in the same way I always do. He knew I would do it. But he absolved me for it last time, knowing I would do it again. Even the priest himself, in his humanity, I suppose isn't all that surprised when we show up with the same sin in the confessional over and over.

Metaphysics, part three

There are two kinds of changes: accidental and substantial. In an accidental change, there is change in a being, and that being remains what it was from the beginning through the end of the change. A kitty growing into an adult cat, or the colour or amount of my hair changing: I'm different, but I'm still me. A substantial change is a change where the being at the end of the change is no longer the same being, but a different one; here, the essence of the being changes. Just to be provocative, an example of this kind of change is Transubstantiation. The principle of self-identity in a being is its substance, what it is; the principle of change in a being is its accidents. Substance is the being, and accidents are the things predicated of a being.

For angels, since they are pure spirit, the principle of individuation is form, rather than matter. So each angel is its own species: they aren't related to one another, as we are. Each angel is radically distinct from all the other angels. Since only matter individuates human persons, our bodies are, again, a very important part of us, and help form our identities.

The principle of causality states that every being that lacks the sufficient reason for its own existence in itself, must have an efficient cause (ie something which by its action is responsible for the existence of the first being). Other formulations of this statement include:
*Every being that begins to exist needs an efficient cause (because a being that does not exist cannot cause itself to exist). This is used as an argument for God, and is what brought me out of atheism into deism: The universe began at the Big Bang. So there wasn't the universe before the Big Bang. So God must exist, as the cause of the Big Bang/the state of existence of the universe.
*Every being composed of essence-existence or matter-form requires an efficient cause, because there has to be some outside efficient cause that unifies them in composing the being: The co-principles can't exist on their own, so they can't cause each other; the components don't include each other; so something has to bring them both into being.
*Every finite being requires an efficient cause; finite beings participate finitely in existence, and their participation refers back to the being that possesses existence infinitely.

From these formulations (and some I left out) a self-sufficient being has six characteristics: it will be uncaused, eternal, unchanging, simple, not a part of any system, and qualitatively infinite in perfection.

Cause and effect are a single event; they can't be separated from one another in time, or their actual connection to each other is broken.

St Thomas teaches that God's existence can be demonstrated, from those effects of his which are known to us.

Metaphysics, part two

Continuing on with the nuggets of what we learned in metaphysics:

The act of existence is a maximum, and not a minimum; nothing can be added on to it. Anything that isn't does not exist, so existence can't be added on to. So its partner, essence, must not be something added on to existence; rather, the essence of a being limits that being's participation in the act of existence, limiting it to particular modes. For example, as a human person, my participation in the (infinite) act of existence is limited to human modes: I'm not infinite, I have a body, I can't fly, etc.

Four implications we can draw from the relationship between essence and existence are as follows:
1) Every being has a kinship with every other being, because they all share in existence, and are images of God, who is their source.
2) All beings have intrinsic value, because they exist.
3) There is both community and difference between creation and God: God isn't limited by essence, but creating things are similar to God because they participate in existence, which is from him.
4) Material beings are more restricted than spiritual beings--because they are extended in dimensions, they are never fully present to themselves at any given time (as are spiritual beings), but only across the dimensions of space and time.

Our human bond:
There has to be two distinct co-principles in the essence of every member of the human species. Why? Because if there weren't, then the essence that made Carl a human would make every human, Carl. But there are plenty of humans who aren't me, so something has to be in my essence making me both similar to other humans, and distinct from other humans (ie, myself). And the fact that all humans do have a human essence, in common, is what made possible the Incarnation. If there wasn't a common human nature, or essence, then the Second Person of the Trinity could not have assumed our nature: there would be no common human nature to assume. And what is not assumed, is not saved. (I think that's Jerome.)

So what are these two distinct co-principles in the essence of every member of a species? Form and matter. Human form (the human soul) is what makes each of us similar to all other humans: it makes us a human being, and not some other kind of being. Matter is what distinguishes each human from every other person; my body, the fact that I take up this space at this time, is what distinguishes me from all of you.

This shows us why the body is so important. To be human is to be soul and body. We're not just our souls, we are soul and body. Our bodies are important because they have a big role in our formation as person: they tie us to a particular time and place. This is why studying philosophy is so important--it keeps you from going off the deep end. I heard a whole series of sermons at a "Bible church" that were on this topic: "You are a spirit, who has a soul, and lives in a body". Based on the Bible, an elaboration on a verse (5:23) from 1 Thessalonians. But without a grounding in philosophy and the use of reason, people can come up with crazy-a ideas when they read the Bible.

An interesting objection to the form/matter composition is that if my soul is individuated only by being united to my, particular body, then after I die how can my soul be individuated from all the other souls of dead people? The author of our textbook basically said, who knows? Maybe the resurrection of the body takes place immediately after death, in some other dimension we can't correlate with. I wasn't satisfied with that. There's a resurrection of the body, and there are plenty of corpses of people whom we know to be in heaven. But St Thomas had an explanation that pleased me. He pretty much says that after a lifetime of being tied to a particular body, the soul has picked up some individuation, which it retains even after it is separated from its body. The relationship endures, and is so profound that the soul won't be totally comfortable until it is reunited with its body. This goes to show why ghosts and corpses are so weird and unnatural: they're half a person. They're meant to be united, and only united are they a human person.

Metaphysics, part one

Metaphysics was one of my favourite classes this semester. I'll provide highlights of what we learned:

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that thinks about what is common to every being, every thing that exists; it asks what are the universal properties of being as such. It looks at the deep underlying bond of unity among all beings, despite all their distinctions: that they are.

It is based on the supposition that being is understandable (intelligible). Though this can't exactly be proven, it is a reflection of human experience. Our mind has an insatiable appetite to know and understand, so it is only natural that things are understandable. Everything we accomplish is based on the assumption that being is intelligible, so to deny the intelligibility of being is folly.

One of the basic datum of metaphysics is the principle of sufficient reason: every being must have the sufficient reason for its existence in itself or in another being. If we didn't maintain this principle, then we wouldn't be able to problem-solve--it maintains that beings must have causes (or explain themselves).

We were introduced to the distinction between existence and essence: existence is the existence of a thing, and essence is the subject which exists.

We can know the world as it really is, though not completely. We can really know the world because beings by their nature reveal themselves, what they are like--otherwise we wouldn't know them, which we do. But we can't completely know the world because no single act of a being can completely express its nature, and we have a limited capacity for comprehending all the information conveyed by an action.

We saw the shift from ancient and medieval philosophy to modern philosophy: prior to the shift, there was a focus on objects studied, to a focus on subjects, the person's interior experience of being. In modern and contemporary philosophy the concern is how minds work, whereas before, philosophers could actually get to knowledge of beings.

The participation doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas is that the bond of unity among all being is that they all participate in the act of existence, which derives from God.

Essence and existence are distinct (not the same, nor do they come from the same source in the being) but inseparable metaphysical co-principles. If they were not distinct, then every being would be the same thing. They are inseparable because they cannot exist apart from each other; one's existence depends on the other, and vice versa. Existence is the principle of similarity among beings: every being has existence. Essence is the principle of dissimilarity.

Review of Rhetoric

In Rhetoric we looked at a couple speeches I found worthwhile. The first is Mama T’s (Bl Teresa of Calcutta’s) speech on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, which you can read here. The thesis of her speech was that true peace is love; it is of the heart. She chose to highlight the threat to peace that is abortion: "These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself."

The second noteworthy speech was what I presented on in class: Pope Benedict's speech to Parliament at Westminster Hall, available here. The subject was the role of religion in the public sphere; his thesis regarding this is that "the role of religion in political debate is...to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles."

Early on in the speech, Benedict refers to St Thomas More. This man was sentenced to death in the very place Benedict was speaking. He was one of the few high-ranking persons to openly oppose Henry VIII and his Reformation; he is an example of subordinating duty to the state, to duty to God. Though he was a servant of the king, he ordered this service rightly in relation to his servitude to God.

Benedict later shows how religion and reason must go together, and not be separated. Religion without reason has led to the errors of sectarianism and fundamentalism, while reason without religion had led to the slave trade, Hitler and Stalin. Both of them are faulty on their own, so they need to go hand in hand.

He reminded the British of their valuing tolerance, non-discrimination, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion, and then showed how their recent actions towards Christians have violated these values: for example, wanting to get rid of public celebration of Christmas and arguing that Christians in public roles (eg health-care professionals and legislators) should have to act against their conscience.

Homily: St Jerome

Today we commemorate St Jerome, Doctor of the Church. He is known for translating the Bible into Latin, for which he had to learn Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He grew up speaking Illyrian, whatever that is, maybe Albanian. Jerome, in Latin Hieronymus; Geronimo, happy name day.

He had a marked temperament. He was very choleric, and had strained relations even with his friends. He corresponded with numerous people, including with Augustine, who was extremely patient, and ended up estranged from his best friend, Paulinus. He is usually depicted in a Cardinal’s garb with a lion and striking his breast with a stone. He’s very dour looking up there. He lived for many years in Israel, in the desert. He was a desert father, in a sense. The most important thing about him is that he lived the vita ascetica—he lived with that stone. This vita ascetica is the one thing I want to say about Jerome. He wrote a work on virginity, On Virginity. Many women came from Rome to live around him in the desert, and people talked about him a lot because of this. But he knew, lived, and taught the value of chastity. To be chaste is to be on fire with love, with love of God. Acting on torrid passions is cold, it is icy cold. The world around us tells us all about the glories of sex, as it did in Jerome’s time. Rome in Jerome’s time was decadent with regards to sex, like some places we might know today. Even inside the Church, people talk about the wonders of sex; it’s a wonder Catholics haven’t written tantric manuals. But that is not the tradition. We speak of sex with great reverence. Augustine knew what it was to be a slave to sex. Origen, who lived slightly before the time of Augustine and Jerome, knew the dangers of sex. He was rather more zealous than Jerome, but he was a great theologian. Jerome, Augustine, and Pope Benedict all highly revere him. It is only his zealousness that has kept him from being named a saint; if you don’t know about this already, you can ask Sam later. Augustine knew the relief of chastity, after years of orgy.

To be chaste is to be most on fire with love. Virginity is a way of life, of the heart. In looking at Jerome’s On Virginity I saw where the Church fathers spoke of becoming virgin again: it is a matter of the heart. Only love can conquer lust; only love can conquer lust. Chastity and virginity are not about a physical state, but about your heart. It has to do with all 24 hours, not just the one hour when temptation comes. You can’t live, be, however you want in those 23 hours and expect to keep from falling in that one hour. Sure, a cold shower helps at that hour, we have all the natural means available to us, but we must at all time cultivate chastity in our heart. Be on fire with love. Be consumed with longing for the Lord, as in the first reading today.

I get into conversations with people about the spirituality of the diocesan priest versus the spirituality of the religious priest. I think that really, on a gross level, there is one spirituality, because there is one Spirit, the Holy Spirit. But I do believe that diocesan priests are called to be desert fathers, like St Jerome, leading people into the desert to purity of heart.

Many people translated the Bible before Jerome, and after. That is not the important thing about him. It is his asceticism. There was a medieval pope who said, “Jerome, but for that stone you would not have been canonized.”Jerome’s asceticism is all that matters about him.

Homily: St Wenceslaus

St Wenceslaus was a duke, in Bohemia. One thing, there's no "slaus" in the Eastern European languages; his name really is "Wenceslav", much nicer. "Slaus" is a Anglicization, or Latinization of "slav", which means "glory". In the Russian liturgy you'll hear them repeat "slav, slav, slav". We probably use "slaus" from "laus", or praise. The Slavs came from three brothers, who got to the Carpathians and divided up: one went west, forming the Czechs, one north to form the Poles, and one east to form Russia. These were then evangelized by Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were Slavs or Greeks. The Czechs were also evangelized by missionaries from Germany. A generation or two after this evangelization was when Wenceslaus lived. His father was Christian, but his mother and brother were not. He was raised Christian by his grandmother, Ludmilla, herself a saint. He was duke of Bohemia, reigning from Prague. He was killed by his brother Boleslaus at the church doors, after feasting with him. His last words were of forgiveness to his brother. This is what the Christian life is, a life of forgiveness.

The readings are full of misery today; they are very Jewish. Job curses the day he was born, that he is male, that he nursed. The reading there clearly shows a belief that it is better to be dead than to be alive, there is so much misery in life. The Psalm is more of the same: I cry out, I clamor, a call for help, being surfeited with troubles, near death... "With all your billows you overwhelm me"...it's like being buffeted with a wave when you're body-surfing. These readings are just full of the misery and suffering of life. And that is the good news, because the faith encounters the misery of life. The Jews had a real sense of misery, that the Gentiles did not. The Gentiles did not encounter misery, they tried to gloss over it and ignore it; they had great heroes. If the story of David had been written by Gentiles, there would have been no Bathsheba.

In the Gospel today Jesus is among the Samaritans, but is going to Jerusalem. He is going to Jerusalem, even though Mount Zion is nowhere near as impressive a mountain as is the Samaritans' Mount Gerizim. Of course, in Israel, none of the mountains are really impressive. No offence to our Wisconsin brothers, but it's a little like going to Holy Hill. But he was going to Jerusalem, and because of this they would not welcome him. He was going to Jerusalem, which is the place of his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. By uniting our misery with his passion, we too can redeem the misery and suffering in the world.

Homily: St Matthew

I know we are pressed for time today with the photos, so I will limit my homily to a few thoughts.

We are about four weeks into the semester, and I've noticed that it is showing on some of your faces. There's difficulty and frustration. Living in community isn't easy. We can't get along with anyone for a long time, without the Holy Spirit. And you're subject to formation, and I know that will make you feel helpless. Institutions are imperfect. You all are trying to be good, to win approval. But we do each need to hear a different drummer. Keep one ear open to that different drummer, without ignoring the drummer that keeps you in line. We need the institutional drummer to help us keep going and get things done, so strike a balance between the two.

Our Lord today tells us, "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners", and that he desires mercy. You don't have to go seeking out sin to experience mercy. We are all far worse than we think. Be merciful, and experience God's mercy. Expect God's mercy. God's mercy is like water drops falling from the sky, or like the beautiful trees in autumn. You would sin gravely if you don't go look at, spend time with the trees. Go, and sin no more.

Lectio Divina: Lk 16:1-13

And he said also to his disciples: There was a certain rich man who had a steward: and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said to him: How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship: for now thou canst be steward no longer. And the steward said within himself: What shall I do, because my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. Therefore calling together every one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first: How much dost thou owe my lord? But he said: An hundred barrels of oil. And he said to him: Take thy bill and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? Who said: An hundred quarters of wheat. He said to him: Take thy bill, and write eighty. And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater: and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater. If then you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon; who will trust you with that which is the true? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's; who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.



I went in a few different directions with this reading for today, none of them particularly in-depth.
First, I realized that the steward and his master really had different interests. A good steward would have his interests aligned to those of his master. So how am I to go about aligning my interests with Jesus'? I came up with prayer, loving him (though I don't know exactly how on that one), and asceticism.
The master commends the steward for acting wisely; in the NAB this was "prudently", which made me think of shrewd, and Jesus' words to the 12 in Mt 10 to be as cunning as serpents and innocent as doves. I don't think I have a great portion of the virtue of prudence, owing in no small part, I imagine, to my youth. The week prior to doing this lectio I was cantor at my parish house, so I got to choose hymns for lauds and vespers. At the seminary, custom is that we only use the common of saints when we absolutely must. I prefer a liberal use of the commons, and so I imposed that as cantor. There was never a good chance to warn people ahead of time, and while my goal was a good, I was concerned I may have been imprudent about my means of achieving that end. That experience was I think why the bit about prudence caught me so much in this reading. How am I to develop prudence? I came up with praying for it, sheer experience, and in particular situations asking the Holy Spirit what I ought to do. Josh offered the advice that virtues are habits, so in a given situation ask 'what would the prudent man do', and then do that; eventually by doing this I'll develop the habit of prudence.
The ending bit, about being unjust in small things then in big things, was discouraging. It's all to easy to cut corners, particularly in unimportant areas of obedience. For example, chapel casual at the seminary does not include sandals, only shoes. I typically wear sandals with socks for chapel casual. I thought that this week a good way to put this gospel into practice would be to mortify myself and wear real shoes when I'm in chapel casual, rather than my beloved Birks. It's a minor minor point, but I have grown in the past week, mortifying myself over something really stupid, but which really does annoy me to no end. I forced myself to be faithful in a small thing, so hopefully I'll get better about being faithful in the big things.

First Philosophy

We've started our school year at St John Vianney, and I am at the very beginning of the academic track, first philosophy. I'm really enjoying my classes, though the reading for them has tended to keep me quite busy. My classes are: Rhetoric, Latin, Metaphysics, Intro to Liturgy, Logic, and Personalism. Personalism is a fascinating class; personalism was a Catholic movement around the 20s and 30s which focused on persons rather than things, as a response to the rise of both fascism and communism.

Homily: St Boniface

Back to my interrupted series, of homilies from our 30 day retreat by my favourite priest:


The Election, vocation, and priesthood are on my mind today. I'd like to talk about priesthood. Growing up I didn't really like priests. Some of my relatives had gone into schism, and therew as a general distrust of priests. There were very good priests when I went to university, though. The first was elderly, and very humble. At the university very few faculty are humble, and this Jesuit had a high position there. He didn't really have the qualifications for it, but that's where the Jesuits sent him; that's just the way they did it in those days. When I went on the cruise, we had classes, and then when I got back the school didn't want to give me credit for that year. So this priest wrote the courses and credits on my transcript, and that was that. The second was very kindly. The guys who lived on his hall would bowl down the hall, right outside his room, loudly playing the 1812 Overture. This priest came out of his room, and all he said was, "Can't you listen to something more tasteful?" The third once told me something, I won't tell you what it was, but it was a hard truth lovingly but firmly put. These men were always there for us. I stayed for a time with a Protestant minister and his family. I saw that his family always came first before his people. But priests don't have this family to attend to. What struck me about those priests was that they were always, always, there for us, even when we didn't care, or were bowling in front of their room.

One more man I want to talk about, he wasn't a priest, he was a layman. He had come to the States as a stowaway, and lived here illegally working as a stone mason for many years. He was like a father to me. Eventually he returned with his wife to Italy, and when I was there studying we were like family. I would come over every weekend for dinner. When I was going back to the States, he was walking me to the station, a man of 92, and this is what he told me: "Don't talk much, listen a lot, and do the good that you can."

Homily: Birth of Mary

Let us commemorate the illustrious birth of the glorious Virgin Mary, for the Lord has looked with favor on his lowly servant. He sent his angel to announce to her that she would conceive the Savior of the world.

Today is the feast of the Nativity of Mary, and our beloved Jesuit preached to us today at the seminary, so I am interrupting the flow of his homilies from the 30-day retreat to present this one, on the day of its delivery:

Dn Dygert did such a good job with that genealogy. We go through that whole thing, and find out that it isn’t even Jesus’ ancestry. Its that of Joseph, Mary’s husband, of whom Christ was born.
For that whole list, nothing new is really happening; its just more of the same. Abraham, Rahab, David, most people’s lives have some drama, but are largely the same. Mary is something new, and that’s what we’re celebrating today. There was the excitement of the first temple with David and Solomon, but then God’s presence left the temple and the people were dispersed everywhere.
Mary is the new thing, the only thing, we have to offer the world. Everything else is more of the same.
Everything starts today, in the birth of this woman who is the beginning of God re-creating the world; in three months we celebrate the Immaculate Conception, where God sanctified, raised up the marriage embrace and made it bear this holy fruit.
God made it very clear that to enter the kingdom of heaven we have to become like little children. Most people don’t want to enter the kingdom of heaven; even most Catholics don’t want to enter the kingdom of heaven; we’re much more comfortable here, with what we can see, paying off of mortgages; making plans for success and seeing them through. Our brains handle that easily. But we have to be oriented to the kingdom of heaven, not the kingdom of earth. We’ll pray shortly “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”, not “as it is on earth”. Mary was childlike.
Mothers teach their children. Mary had such an influence on Jesus, teaching him for the 33 years of his life. Don’t mothers teach their children so much? Even to smile. Coochie-coo.
We don’t know much about Mary, except that she said yes. And that’s all we really need to know. We know of her because we are part of her family. That family formed when Jesus said to her from the cross “woman, behold your son”, and to John “behold your mother”. The family that was formed around her on Pentecost. She said yes to God. This is all we need. To say yes to God. And saying no to the devil helps, too.

Homily: St Charles Lwanga and Companions

Here we are in the middle of retreat. One of my friends has noticed that once you get over the hill, you pick up speed. So, the retreat days you'll find, will go a bit faster now.

On this retreat we want to be developing a taste, a sense, for the things of God. Great breakthroughs may happen, though they don't for most. And that's ok; they can be forged by the devil. Develop a taste for the things of God. Persevere--be present to God, to nature, the good meals we're given, your 21 brothers, none of whom have stabbed anyone yet. You have this time to be with God, away from the world, from town, where people are screaming at eachother, comitting adultery, and getting divorced. Develop a taste for the things of God. Be able to return to the world with this taste in your mouth, because its often hard to tell whether something is of God or not. You want to be able to have an instinct if something is fishy. It's a matter of discernment.

I'm the only priest here without Irish blood in me, but I was formed among Irish Catholics. When I returned to Confession, my confessor asked if I was Irish. When I was 27, a Jesuit novice, I was sent to NY to work with poor hispanics, and on the subway I saw for the first time an Irish face that was not Christian. I was disconcerting to me; the Dying Gaul. I was speaking to a seminarian from Mexico; we don't have a lot in common, I'm not a bit Mexican, I don't even like Mexican food, but we were mourning the deaths of people we knew who had lived without electricity. It's different, even their eyes, having not watched a television, or played video-games; no offence to you all. We live in a world of incredible changes; there is really a dizzying pace of change. That you're all here is a miracle, it really is. The world is going in a completely opposite direction, and you've heard God calling you to this place to spend a month with him.

My favourite aunt is an atheist, though one with morals. One day she asked what I believe, and I spent a couple hours telling her. When it was all over, she said, "What a lovely imagination you have!" But she does have morals. In the 50s she was what you called a "career woman"--had a job, no kids, not married--what you now call a woman, I suppose. Well in the 50s she was living in NYC with a roommate. One night this roommate decided to entertain a man overnight. The next day she kicked her out. This same woman, by the 80s, was saying that abortion is permissible. "Things change, and you have to go along with it." In the world, morality, things, had changed. Now her husband, a scientific agnostic, has told me that "technology isn't all that they thought it would be." You're being sent out into a world where stuff is more important than people. There is constant change; there is nothing to hold on to. The only way to cope is to go with it. Things do change--we aren't all wearing cassocks, and women aren't going about in hoop skirts a la Gone with the Wind. You need to learn what legitimately changes, and what doesn't. Decide what you'll give your life for. My aunt gave up everything. You need a healthy sense of mourning.

Now to today's saint, Charles Lwanga. In Uganda in the 1880s, the king would use his attendents, and he was a sodomite. Charles and his companions refused the king's advances. So they can be called martyrs for chastity, for sexual morality.

In the world today there is so much depravity, so much misery. When I was driving a cab in Hawaii, I worked the overnight shift, and then we cabbies would go get breakfast together. Well one of these guys was a "kept boy". He asked me to take him to the airport one time, and on the way there he told me, "You're the only friend I've ever had." We went to breakfast together six times! Our was probably the only non-sexual relationship he had had for some time. So what is friendship in Christ? You must be men of love. Be a best friend to people. Be a man of liberation, of joy. You must be rooted in Jesus. Look to the loving relationship of Jesus and the apostles. They had intimacy because their relationship was non-sexual. We need the ability to be intimate. Beg the Holy Spirit to enter into your relationships. Bring the love of Jesus to your people. Bring love to people seduced by a counterfeit. The closest embrace knows no touch.