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22 January 2012 Last week`s reflection focussed on our just ended celebration of the Nativity of Christ our Lord which is celebrated over several days and in differing ways (rather like the explanatory rites at Baptism) so as to understand more deeply the mystery and blessing of the Son of God`s putting aside his godhead, emptying himself to become a servant to us. The humility that Jesus shows us ought to be the model of our own lives. Humility is a somewhat difficult word. Contemporary men and women want to be seen as humble, but simultaneously reject and flee from the reality of actually being humble. As LaRochfoucauld dry commented centuries ago: `When we turn down a compliment it is not because we are humble, but because we want to hear it again.` True humility has nothing to do with appearances, but with attitude. Etymology might help a little. The word humility comes from the Latin humus, soil. Humus is not just dirt, mind you, it is dirt that is fertile, that is full of nutrients, minerals, and other things plants need to grow. Where that fertility (the ingredients, that is) comes from is the purification and decomposition of the garbage that gets tossed on it. Humility, then means to be like the earth. To take the garbage the world throws at us and turn it into a garden, to take the trials, tribulations, struggles and burdens and make of them a field that produces much fruit, to take the death and decay we see all around us and turn it into life and beauty. To be like the earth, who does not complain of the (wholesome) refuse thrown upon it, but transforms that refuse into a source of life. That is how we who want to be humble, truly humble, must become. There is, of course, unwholesome refuse. We talk about it more and more frequently these days as we turn our attention to the problem of pollution that seems to plague the world, that seems poised to make our planet incapable of supporting life. We have to be careful with what refuse we accept and endeavor to change: some of it just can`t be make fruitful and sterilizes the entire plot like acid, salt, or other chemical dumped carelessly on the earth. Humility does not mean to be a doormat; we need to understand what kind of garbage we are facing before attempting to convert it. Fr. David, SA 15 January 2012 My Dear People, Over the course of the past month and a half we have celebrated the festival of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ and its attendant mysteries. We have heard the good news of the world’s immanent salvation announced to Zacharia as he offered incense in the Holy of Holies before the Mercy Seat of God. So too we have been told of Mary’s visit from the angel Gabriel, and how Joseph, her husband, was prompted (as was his namesake) by dreams to what God had in mind for himself, his wife and her child. The welcome and worship of the Gentiles for the infant in Bethlehem and the treachery of Herod have been brought again to our minds by the feasts of Epiphany and Holy Innocents. Even our own call to witness to the reality of the Good News of the Lord has been reinforced by the feast of Stephen the Proto-martyr, on the very day following Christmas. On each of those days, no matter the focus, no matter the joy or wonder, we have celebrated by calling to mind the Lord’s Death on the Cross for our salvation. Celebrating someone’s birth by reciting the story of his death may seem an odd thing to the eyes of the world, the world which does its utmost to deny death and to hide its reality from our eyes. Nonetheless this is how we do it because without his freely acceptance of the Passion none of the foregoing would be of any interest or use to us at all. It is only in the handing over of his own body, the outpouring of his own blood, the sacrifice of his very life that even begins to illustrate God’s love for us, and allows us to celebrate these other glimpses of his glorious plan for our salvation. As we continue now in our new year let us remember the history of our salvation as proclaimed day by day in the sacred liturgy, let us be present to the Holy Spirit still being poured out into our world for the forgiveness of sins, let us contemplate glory and rejoicing of the He comes again so that our memory of his first coming may not outshine glory of his second. Continue, please, to pray for us day by day, as we do for you. Father Art and I (and Father Henry too, though no longer among us) need the support and uplifting that your prayers provide in an often hectic and overwhelming world. All your cards, gifts and greetings have given us the strength of knowing that we are not alone in the struggle, but surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who testify to God’s love for us, and to theirs as well. Thank you all from the depths of our hearts. Fr. David, SA 11 December 2011 On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week the children of St. Joseph the Worker School trooped over to the church and celebrated penance services: grades 3 and 4 on Monday, grades 4 and 5 on Tuesday, and grade7 along with the chamber choir members who had missed their day on Wednesday. Each child had the opportunity to reflect upon what effect behavior has on the personal relationship we are all called to have with God. Next week, December 19-23, we will celebrate a penance service each evening from 7:30. In the past each of the local parishes held a general session that all the priests of the area assisted with, but last year it was decided that as each priest was going to hear confessions each night it would be just as effective and easier to manage if each parish had a penance service every night with only their own priest(s) participating. This would save the priests travel time and at the same time afford each penitent the opportunity to confess to a priest who will not likely recognize their voice simply by going to a different church. There was always a lot of “cross-border confessing” so it seems to work better this way for all involved. In the past thirty years confession has been less and less utilized as a sacrament. While there are some who religiously confess once per month or even once per week or more, the majority of Catholics (at least in my experience) come only at long intervals. While there is no obligation to confess weekly I would submit that for some this sacrament might be of more benefit were it celebrated more often. The problem is that many if not most people fail to see it as a celebration of God’s love and tender mercy, but look at it rather as a trial during which they are likely to be scolded by the “judge” or priest. We all need to get back to seeing it more strongly as the former. What happens in confession? The penitent speaks to God in the person of the priest, admitting his or her own faults, failings, weaknesses and transgressions. The priest, in turn, proclaims God’s forgiveness: he does not dole it out but proclaims it as something that God has already accomplished. He then absolves the penitent, removing any centures that may have been placed according to the confession at hand, in effect saying: “Yes, you’re one of us alright; come to the table and eat.” The church is a funny kind of organization. If you are not a sinner you can’t get in. If you’re not a sinner we don’t want you. Far from being a clubhouse for saints the church is a hospital for sinners. The sacrament of penance is a formal and liturgical way in which we express to God and to each other that we recognize our own personal need of that hospital and come to know that we are not alone in our frailty. In this celebration we have a personal encounter with Christ (if the priest is doing his job) in which we are assured of God’s love and mercy to those who repent. So please take advantage of this opportunity to confess in the coming week. Any of the Catholic Churches in Richmond and Ladner will receive your contrition and proclaim the Good News of Salvation in Jesus our Redeemer. David, SA 27 November 2011 Not only will the responses coming back from the laity sound unfamiliar at first, the very tone of the language we will be using at the altar will be less familiar and more elegant, posh or highfalutin. It will no longer sound like everyday English, but more like “Sunday best.” The level of formality in the language of the altar will seem off-putting at first, as though God has somehow drawn away from us, no longer family but more reminiscent of a Ruler, Lord and Judge. God’s role as King and Judge must never be forgotten or ignored, but the salvation won for us by Christ has made us also members of the family, heirs of the kingdom, intimates of God. The previous translation did a better job of capturing that easy familiarity we are invited to with our God. The new translation produces more a feeling of inferiority that requires a linguistic humility, which to me smacks of sycophancy understanding our FATHER, who graciously and generously bestows his gifts on us, as more severe in his expectations of us and miserly in his bestowal of graces. To me, and I don’t want to give the impression that this was the intent of the translators or even of the formulators of the texts over centuries, it has the feeling of being a street beggar trying to cajole some cash out of a wealthy person who wants nothing more than to get rid of a nuisance. I fear that the new emphasis on elegance, deprecatory self-referencing, and a pleading tone will adversely affect the renewed spirituality that Vatican II strove to accomplish. The more we get used to using this tone with God the less we will feel his closeness, tenderness and generosity. That, at least, is my humble opinion, and I pray that I am wrong about it. When forced to address one’s parents as “Father” or “Mother” the warmth of the relationship implied by “Dad, Pop, or Mom” evaporates. Considering that Jesus taught his disciples to call God “Abba” (Daddy) this return to strict formality seems to me to be counter-productive. Once again, notice the disclaimer that this is simply my emotional reaction and not a position I am attempting to assume, promulgate or encourage in anyone. Quite to the contrary, my purpose here is to point out that there will be considerable emotional and psychological ramifications to the change of language, and we each need to be vigilant in identifying what inner movement the language is eliciting in us. When we face that initial jarring to our psyche we can better deal with it if we call it by name and make up our minds to maintain familiarity with the divine, a relationship of trust, love and gratitude rather than one of fear, suspicion and having to beg for our needs. Our Father asks us to respect him, yes, but does not require us to bow and scrape before him. Let us all approach him with respect and awe, but also with the comfort and familiarity of a child who knows that his Father loves him. David, SA 20 November 2011 Last week we considered the “reason for the season” we are about to enter as of Vespers next Saturday. Vespers is the prayer in the Divine Office which is celebrated in the evening (ideally at sundown). During the week we usually don’t advert to the fact that liturgically a new day has begun (in the creation narrative of Genesis we read “there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” This is why since the Vatican Council we are allowed to anticipate the Sunday obligation, because at sundown on Saturday Sunday has begun. This is reflected in the Liturgy of the Hours by the celebration of the ‘First Vespers’ of Sunday, as is also done on major feast days. Hence, we never celebrate Vespers of Saturday because every Sunday is a major feast (the writings of the Fathers of the Church insist that it is, in fact, the primal feast that supercedes all others). The Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours, is the “official” daily prayer of the Church. It consists of seven hours (not indicating duration but the time of day at which each hour is celebrated). The sequence for Sundays is then, Vespers (evening prayer), Compline (bedtime prayer), Matins (office of readings traditionally done in the early morning while it is still dark), Lauds (literally ‘Praises’ celebrated at sunrise), then Terce, Sext, and None (pronounced like “known”) which correspond to the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day or 9:00 am, 12:00 noon, and 3:00 pm, usually now referred to as “Mid-morning, Noon, and Mid-afternoon” prayers. Except in monasteries only one of these three “minor hours” is normally observed. In the Eastern Churches the particulars differ from liturgical family to family, but the rhythm remains constant. The whole exercise represents the Church’s efforts to “sanctify time”. The sanctification of time simply refers to the desire to strengthen in our consciousness the notion that we live in a “holy” time, a time made blessed for God’s having entered and shared it with us, the time in which we should “seek the Lord while He may be found.” We frequently enough think of Advent and Lent as holy times, holy seasons, but don’t seem able to grasp that the seasons which follow each season of preparation are actually more important than what we’d been preparing for. The season of Christmas (from December 25 to Epiphany (January 6, where it is not transferred to Sunday) is of greater significance than Advent; Easter (fifty days from Easter to Pentecost) is far more important than Lent for our understanding of the history of salvation. Even “Ordinary Time” is important because it means to remind us that God is with us ‘ordinarily,’ that is, from day to day, not only at “special times” or on “special festivals.” Next Sunday, the First of Advent we will observe a special celebration in the afternoon from 4:00 to 6:00 to welcome the season and assist us in our wholehearted entry into our new liturgical year dedicated to sanctifying time in our individual lives. 6 November 2011 Over the past few months I have tried to share with all of you some insight into the new translation of the Missal that will be inaugurated at the end of the month on the First Sunday of Advent. That day has been designated because it is the first day of our liturgical year, a rather obvious date for new beginnings. I have shared the rationale for creating and publishing a new translation, and have tried to explain why some of the familiar texts of the current translation are being reformed, even if on the surface it will appear that they are reverting to an older and less comfortable form. Last week we looked at the whole notion of liturgical sense in the west as opposed to the eastern churches, that in the east there is a lot more mysticism and poetry whereas the Latin experience is to avoid mysticism and poetry in favor of a stripped down theologically precise ceremony. Our “anti-flowery” attitude inherited from St. Hippolytus certainly informed the present English translation, and is only slightly backtracked on in the new one. We also spent some time considering the desire to make the language of the liturgy correspond more closely with the words of Sacred Scripture. The close relationship between Scripture and liturgical language is a fairly obvious value to preserve, but it too carries its own problems. Perhaps the best example of that is found in the Institution Narrative where the phrase “for you and for all” has been replaced by “for you and for many”. The “new” phraseology corresponds perfectly with Matthew’s account of the event, but has the unfortunate and unintended result of planting in the minds of the uninformed hearer that there are some for whom Christ did not die, simply because “many” and “all” do not mean the same thing. If is, of course, heresy to claim that there is anyone excluded from the sacrifice of Christ, but the very language now mandated seems to promote the condemned position, thence requiring a great deal of catechesis explaining what the Church’s position is…that there is not, never has been and never will be a single person not included in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Language can, on the other hand, be elegant and “classy” without being flowery or overly poetic, and the translators had as part of their rational a desire to clean up some sloppy wording in the language used for the past thirty-five years. It remains to be seen whether they have succeeded at that. |
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Fr. David's Corner
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