No post

Mar 29, 2010 | Latest

Blessed Triduum.  

Next post will be April 5.

Palm Sunday, 2003

Mar 20, 2010 | Latest

PALM SUNDAY, 2003

This is from a letter home written seven years ago on Good Friday.

   I thought with Easter so late this year that we would have warm weather during the latter part of Lent for sure,  but today it is in the 30’s and misty.  We have had some spring-like days, but mostly it has been chilly during Lent.  The few warm days brought out all the blossoms, so the trees are beautiful and the tulips and daffodils have all bloomed.  Right at the beginning of April we had a few snow flakes, then just a couple days later it was 80 degrees. But there is something much more important than the weather that I want to tell you about on this Good Friday.

   On Palm Sunday, one of our graduates died – David Payne who graduated in 1989.

   He had suffered much during his life.  He had kidney problems from when he was very young, and he had been on dialysis since he was three years old.  He never grew very tall:  he was 4’10”.  In the last year or so he had really aged.  A doctor said he had the body of a very old man even though he was only 32.

   I visited him in the hospital once in this last illness – he was on a respirator and couldn’t talk, and he was heavily sedated, but he knew I was there and knew who I was.  His sister came in at 6:00 to say the Angelus with him.  It looked like great effort for him to fold his hands, but he did, and then she unfolded them for him when we were done.

   Earlier that day the priest from our parish [Father Cilinski] came to see him and brought the Blessed Sacrament.  David couldn’t receive because of the respirator, but Father let him hold the pyx Our Lord was in.  As Father was leaving, David signaled that he wanted to write something.  (I do not see how he was capable of writing anything – all movement seemed very laborious and he looked so weak.)  But he wrote on a pad of paper, “It is a great blessing to be able to hold our Suffering Lord and Servant of us all.”

  While I was in the ICU room with him, I felt completely humbled.  I think David was very holy, and even though he was lying in the hospital bed with monitors everywhere and the respirator hooked up to him, he was so superior through his inner strength.  It was an overpowering experience.

   David went to Mass every morning that he could.  I am sure it was a great suffering for him that we was unable to go to Mass as he became weaker.  And every Saturday for as along as I can remember he would pray in front of the abortion clinic in Manassas for the end to abortion.

  The Seton choir got to sing at his funeral.  I was so glad we were able to do that.  A priest was with David when he died, and his whole family was there also.  His sister told me that they sang Hail Holy Queen as he drew his final breaths.  We sang that at the Mass as well.

Jezum, ufam Tobie

Cor Contritum

Mar 10, 2010 | Latest

COR CONTRITUM

   Before I get to the “heart” of the matter, there’s a few things I want to mention.  Last Thursday a car drove into a yard with its horn blowing.  This is always a little annoying.  Then I thought, “Maybe it’s the census taker.”  I am not sure why I thought this – it had been a month or more since several people had e-mailed me to beware of fake census takers who might rob me blind.  So, as I walked out the door and down our ramp, I kept repeating to myself, “Name, rank and serial # only,” just in case.  Out from the car popped a lady declaring, “Your friendly neighborhood census taker.”  She gave me the envelope with the census in it and asked me to verify the address.  (Did I dare?)  I am a little worried about this census.  On the envelope our road was wrong, our town was wrong and our zip was wrong.  (Well, it was the right zip for the wrong town they had.)  So every line was wrong except “Resident”.  She wrote the corrections in a big book, then I wished her fun censusing.  She said, “It is not fun driving around on these lonely roads all by myself.”  If she had been a regular reader of this blog, she might have read Father Chiapa’s thoughts on our “lonely roads” and had a whole different attitude about her census taking.  The 6 billion plus of the world don’t know what they are missing!  I am glad that the United States does not following the old Roman Empire custom of having each citizen return to the city of his ancestors.  This census would really be a burden if I had to lead a donkey that Mom was riding on somewhere. Soon Mom and I will be officially counted in the 2010 Census.   Seventy years from now you can access the information we put down on our form.   That’s the law.

   I think I might be the most surveyed American.  Two years ago during the election time, I was surveyed quite often, and often the exact same questions were repeated.  Since then telephone surveys have continued.  One surveyor told me that I had given the best answers she had ever heard. I guess practice makes perfect. I’ll  have to add that comment to my resume.   Fairly recently I was taking a survey about Morgan County medical services.  The surveyor would ask a question, I would say I needed a little time to think about that, and she would say that she would just put down that I thought everything was fine, giving me no time to think.  She must have been being paid by the survey. The most recent survey was designed for those 18-34, but the surveyor went ahead and did the survey with me.  This one was supposed to be about my driving habits, but it seemed to be mostly about drinking and driving.  I was asked how much I thought a DUI would cost me.  I said $250.  Then I asked her what the right amount is.  She said she didn’t know because she had never had a DUI.  I think it is always good when being surveyed to turn the tables on the surveyor. 

   Getting closer to the “heart” of the matter, I was thinking back to DAC Athletic Directors meetings of old.  One year the meeting fell on Ash Wednesday.  Every single A.D. told me I had something on my forehead.  Then I also had to explain to them why I would not be eating the lunch.  One from a Christian school made some remark about Catholics.  I asked, “Don’t you do penance and fast?”  The response: “We are a resurrection people.”   I wish I had had the following in hand for each of them ______________________________________________

From a conference given by Abbot Andre Louf.

    When I was a novice, a French Abbot visited us and gave us a lecture on humility.  He spoke about the seventh degree of humility – the monk must think of himself as the last of all and the most unworthy sinner.  “Naturally,” he says, “this is a great task, and yet it can be achieved.”  I was listening with all my ears.  “It is simple,” he says, “we need only to realize:  I am really worse than that criminal or murderer, for had that murderer received the same graces as I, he would have made much more profit from them.”  But I ask:  when a person speaks like this, what does he mean?  What is his position?  How do we know we have received greater graces?  Perhaps it is a fact that to be a murderer is the greatest grace!  Are not the murderers, the sinners and the prostitutes to enter first the Kingdom of God?  The word of Jesus is very simple and very enlightening.  It presupposes that there a break-through can occur, that grace can take its stand precisely over weakness, that it is allied with this weakness.

   Only the one who touches rock-bottom, the ground of his being can be spontaneously and deeply true, and truly humble.  Our deepest need is not attainable by will-power.  Grace has its point of insertion in our weakness at the point where we are helpless.  Somehow, there must take place a break-through to our deepest weakness.  Then at last a beginning can be made.

   Perhaps the real decadence should be seen first, and before all, in our inclination to live in pursuit of a lofty ideal [of] human perfection, which, in actual fact, stands as a screen between us and our weakness.  We would then necessarily lose contact with grace which can only operate in our weakness.  A saying of Kierkegaard is relevant here:  “The greatest Christian heresy is to believe that the opposite of sin is virtue.  No, the opposite of sin is grace.”

   Ascesis means in Greek “to exercise oneself.”  Is this an exercise of one’s strength, a test of one’s possibilities?  I don’t think so.  Ascesis means a self-exercise in grace, and because grace is only, and always, rooted in our weakness, therefore this ascesis is, and must be, an exercise of our weakness, an acting out in oneself of the mystery of weakness and grace.  The ascetical life is an exploration of our own weakness in the concrete.

   An apothegm:  Someone poses Abba Moses the question:  “What is the value of our fasts, our vigils, and our obedience?”  (This is a typical question, i.e. why practice asceticism?)  Abba Moses replies:  “The aim of fasts and vigils and obedience is to discourage a monk, so that he may give up self, that he may be led into humility.”  This is quite remarkable!  He is to feel the extent of his own helplessness in this way and so come to the conclusion:  this is really beyond me.  The apothegm goes further:  “When he bears this fruit, a monk touches the heart of God and God comes to the rescue with His miracle.”

Jezu, ufam Tobie.