Glory be to You, O God, glory be to You!

From the Liturgy of the Word at the Mass of Sts. Peter and Paul, St Peter's Basilica:

At the beginning of the liturgy.

Joint blessing with the Book of the Gospels.

An Orthodox deacon chants the Gospel.

Patriarch Bartholomew gives his homily.

Said it before, have no doubt I'll say it again: Christ will not permit His Church to remain so divided. Today, we've moved that much closer to reunion...however much remains to be done, and however long the rest of the journey takes. (It's only been nearly 1,000 years so far. After all.) There is still a lot to be done in reconciling doctrinal questions, and I'm certainly not prepared to pronounce on that!, but also there is so very much to be done in regards to the laity. To the suspicion between Orthodox and Catholic that's more to do with each other's long-since-alien traditions than anything else. The Roman Catholic Church in America did a fine job, back in the early 1900s, of driving Byzantine Catholics who were in communion with us back into the Orthodox Church: our bishops, for whatever reason, told Eastern European immigrants that only unmarried priests would be permitted to exercise their ministry. Which meant, in effect, that these immigrants who only had the married priests who emigrated with them had no priests, or very few; thus, no Liturgy and no Sacraments. Many of them, priests and laity, did not stand for it, and I can't blame them. There needs to be reunion, and one day there will be. But first there needs to be familiarity with and acceptance of each other at the common-person's level.

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O Savior, save us!

What is Christian hope, anyway?

This is.

Owf. My foot ith thtuck.

So, I'm coming back to drop the bill off with one of my tables. (Yes, my dear two readers who do not know me, I am a waitress. One of them lay 'Mary Catholics' who evidently need a nice, simplified, monosyllabic liturgy...but I digress.) Anyway - the two at my table were an older couple; pleasant; seemed to have been married quite some time. I notice that the woman is gone, and I suppose I had a questioning look on my face. Or maybe it was my hesitation. Or one of several other unsubtle clues in my body language. He explains that she's left; I, teasingly, ask, "Your wife left you?"

"Yes...she did. We're separated, but we're still friends."

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If you need me, sir, I'll be in China. Just call down that hole by your table. Thank you for dining with us...

All the World's a Snowglobe

"...when they could not find [Paul and Silas], they dragged...some of the brethren before the city authorities, crying, ‘These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also..." -Acts 17:6

In 1981, a group of people came to the Missionaries of Charity Brothers' house in Rome, informing Fr. Sebastian that "they were fed up with the structured Church and so they wanted to belong to the Church of Mother Teresa." He got them to sit down, and they had what I can only imagine was a very long, very gentle chat (with God no doubt chuckling quietly in the background). And then another chat, and another; and from those chats the Lay Missionaries of Charity were born.

However adequate or inadequate their education in the Faith was, those first members understood one thng very clearly. Mother was turning India, and the world, upside down and the Church as they knew it was not: they could not even connect the two. They didn't want "coffee-and-donuts" (or rather "coffee-and-cannoli") Catholicism. They wanted to belong to the Church that was out there embracing the dying and giving love and care to the most wretched, seeking them out where they were. They wanted to be where the Church was truly alive and fulfilling her Great Commission. They wanted to be told "Go, you are sent."

Serving 'the poorest of the poor', as Mother did and the Lay MC's also strive to do, is not always nearly so dramatic. Yes, many of the Baltimore group volunteer at the AIDS hospice and yes, the need is obvious there and in the surrounding neighborhoods of East Baltimore - but often it is a far subtler need. It's in those so wrapped up in self, in their pleasures, that they simply have no room for others or for Christ. It's in the college students I work alongside - and believe you me, there are no warm fuzzies in trying to love that bunch; in trying to see Christ in them no less than in the men at Gift of Hope House. Yet their need is all the greater...because they are not even aware of it, rushing as they do from one party to the next and comparing hangovers the next day before going out to do it all over again.

In America and Europe, with our padded edges and rounded-off corners - in public life and in church - that's our most common poverty: the spiritual, not the physical. Do we recognize it in ourselves, much less in others? Do we seek Christ as Paul and Silas did, as Mother did - to preach Him, and thereby to turn our comfortable, padded world upside down?

Scene from outside Monday night p&w

Random guy, describing New Orleans to us and somehow veering onto a Victor Hugoesque description of the sanitation system: "Every night, all the businesses put their garbage bags out in the street, and in the morning these trucks come and suction them up."

Me: "Oh, Baltimore has that too. The truck just never comes."

Seriously. There's a pile of trash bags a few doors down from the MC house that has, apparently, been there for three years. It's only remarkable for being the biggest pile...it's hardly alone. And a few doors down from that is one of the city bus-stop benches inscribed, as they all are, "Baltimore: The Greatest City in America." Mm-hmm.

Scenes from an Adoration Chapel

Setting: A quiet, peaceful, prayerful, Holy Hour. The way they all should be - even for the man snoring in the back pew, head tipped back against the wall. Almost...

***

Sir, I appreciate that you are wearing headphones. However, I am three rows behind you and I can still hear the words plainly. Do you think you could possibly turn down your Rosary? The book of Numbers is hard enough to read, all these tribal genealogies...Thank you!

***

Woman in pew behind me: "Oh! I thought you'd brought a sandwich!" Upon realizing that my change purse was not, in fact, a ham-and-swiss. That would *really* not be kosher!

Oh, fine. Before y'all give up on me.

Buffalo (from the city of) Buffalo (that other) buffalo (from the city of) Buffalo buffalo (as in bully), buffalo (as in bully) (other) buffalo (from the city of) Buffalo.

Take out the parentheticals and it still works as a sentence. Honest.

Blessed repose and eternal memory.

Melvyn Parnell, a resident at Gift of Hope hospice in Baltimore, passed away on Friday, June 6, from complications from AIDS. He was only 50; he'd been at the home for ten years.

I didn't know him when his health was - not good, but better; when he was still lucid and not in and out of awareness; when he was still eating and not on a feeding tube. He was in so much pain by the end - from the sores that covered his lower legs and cracked and bled; from his intestinal problems. For him, a simple bowel movement was a struggle, and something for us to celebrate - honestly. That was the condition he was in. Death was truly a mercy for him: release from suffering here; rest with God. He was in pain; he rarely could talk; he was bedridden save for when he was carried downstairs and placed in a chair in the common area.

I can't explain...what it was to have him there as part of the home. His condition was awful; death was a mercy; so why do I have any sort of regret or sorrow? The residence is poorer without him, very simply. We volunteers, and the MC's who run the home, gave love and care, and in his way he gave it back to us. There's no Melvyn to cheer Father on in his sermon ("Go for it!"); no Melvyn to tell the nurse-volunteer she's "bad-ass". No Melvyn to nod in mute assent when asked if he wanted to receive Jesus in Communion; no Melvyn - during his last hospital stay - to cover his face with the sheet and only lower it when another resident came to say hello. Another man from the home just went back in the hospital with recurrence of his leukemia. He won't be able to be at Melvyn's funeral; but he will be perfectly able to sit in his room with that reminder of death much too close to hand. He doesn't need that right now. He needs to hope. I'm worried for him on that front, from the mood he was in when I saw him last; just after he heard about Melvyn.

What is "quality of life"? Who are we to determine it? As I type, I can hear the Agnus Dei being sung at Mass over in the church: Lamb of God, given up to death for us. It's God's to determine - God who suffered as we do, as Melvyn did. I did pray that it would not be long for Melvyn; that his suffering would soon be over. But act to hasten that end? No. We are not allowed to play at being God, ever. We are only allowed to place ourselves in His hands, and trust to him for our good. And now, we are only allowed, able, to pray to God for Melvyn's rest with Him. We were only ever able to stand alongside him; it was always between he and God. In the end it was only that question that mattered, and that we could never answer for him.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may the perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo

No, my copy-and-paste function did not get stuck - the above title is in fact a grammatical English sentence, with the proper punctuation and capitalization. I'll give you a few minutes to work it out, while I go enter the numbers. If you'd rather, there's a training video you could watch - no? You'd prefer a cup of tea? Earl Grey? Hot? Or perhaps something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?

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As you may suspect from all of the above, I'm not in a terribly contemplative mood at present. Lotsa work, lotsa bills to pay. A good amount of the pressure is off, and I never thought I'd be happy to see a letter from the IRS...but I'm still recovering from an exhausting two/three weeks. (It's of no help, on the writing front, that I started a bit of writing that in very short order became much too long and broad in scope for a mere blog post.) I stopped by today to feed the blog, keep it happy and secure that it still has an owner who cares for it - just don't tell it I gave it junk food. It'll have something more substantial over the weekend.

Dear Reuters,

Yes, I know Christie. Yes, she is my friend. Yes, I have a personal relationship with her and even talk with her sometimes. I do not see her, no, but I have every faith that I will one day. At the beginning of July 2008, to be precise. We all know how often those dates prove to be wrong, yet I am convinced that Christie reads and understands every word that I write and will bring this to pass lest my faith be in vain.

I have yet, however, to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christie. Because Christie is my university classmate, and not my God. He would be, in the Latin and the context, Christi. Please, Reuters. I understand that you are not writing about Islam, thus accuracy in detail is not essential to life and limb...but still I beg you. Correct that photo caption.

Christ is making waves in Germany!

Corpus Christi procession in Seehausen, Germany. Hat tip to Amy Welborn for the photo!

So Philosophy, Astronomy, and Quantam Mechanics walk into a bar...

Me: [on phone to Elder Sister] "Oh, I found this book at the library called 'Is Pluto a Planet?' I may have left a slip of paper inside answering yes..."
E.S.: "Pluto isn't a planet."
Me: "Yes, it is. It's a planet."
E.S.: "It is a planet, and it isn't a planet."
Me: "It can't be both a planet and not a planet, [E.S.]."
E.S: "It's Schroedinger's planet!"
Me: "Schroedinger's planet...populated by cats?"
E.S.: "We don't know. Not until they're observed."
Me: [hastily changes subject]

And serious again.

Just - pray for Burma/Myanmar and Sichuan, China. Pray that their leaders remember that they are not the victims; they are not dying beneath rubble or for lack of food or clean water or shelter. Two disasters; one with maybe 100,000 dead and the other with as many as 20,000...two corrupt governments. Myanmar is evidently keeping the aid donated for its military and instead passing out rotted food, and China? I can't really expect much better. Their biggest concern is saving "face" ahead of the Olympics this summer - though maybe that will work in the victims' favor. They'll want to look good with all eyes trained on them. I lived in Yantai, China for five months...far north and east, on the Yellow Sea, but still. The people are not their government - but they don't...always...have the Western idea of compassion for the weak. I've seen how disabled people in China were discarded and treated as nonpersons, as a commonplace. (If you're in a wheelchair, well, hope you like your apartment!) That sort of callous attitude - it can't be isolated to one area. Or at least I don't see how it can. Pray for them. And send what help you can where you can.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord have mercy, Christ hear us. Christ, graciously hear us!

Well...maybe just a break from serious blogging.

In aid of absolutely nothing at all, I offer the following vignettes from Today At The Beach. The following account is absolutely true in detail and essential chronological order...any judicious omissions and quiet rearrangements are of course my own.

Act 1, Scene 1: At the Beach. Sunrise. East Coast Extra is convinced I'm Sawyer from Lost. That's what I get for sitting in a folding chair - at the beach - reading. Saying Morning Prayer, really, but does that stop him? No. He keeps coming over and demanding to know where the guns are; then, when I tell him they're "back at the caves," he stalks off yelling for Kate. (At least he doesn't cry?) He's not being conducive to quiet recital of the Office, AND he's blocking my view of the ocean sunrise. Especially that hat of his. Move it, Panama Jack!

Act 2, Scene 1: At the Beach. Afternoon. E.C.E. and I are having a spirited discussion. Elder Sister is threatening to crush us like the clump of sand she's holding if we don't cease discussing. Classically, E.C.E is now trying the same thing - and the sand went right in my face. Absolutely typical of him.

Act 2, Scene 2: At a Restaurant. Late afternoon. E.C.E. is insistent that I bear in mind that after sand got under my eyelid and scratched my cornea, he not only lent me his sunglasses, but offered to buy a pirate patch from CVS and decorate it. Elder Sister and I finally flushed out the sand in the sink here, however, so the tearing is about done and the swelling should go down soon. Still, he's right: I shouldn't forget that part. (Oh, alright, he was not responsible for the sand that got in my eye.)

Act 3, Scene 1: At the Hotel. Evening. E.C.E is threatening a blogging war. We shall see!

Psalm 63

O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory.

For your love is better than life, my lips will speak your praise.
So I will bless you all my life, in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul shall be filled as with a banquet, my mouth shall praise you with joy.

On my bed I remember you. On you I muse through the night
for you have been my help; in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.
My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.

*****

Stepping away from it all for a few days - specifically, stepping away to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, courtesy of my older sister (one of 'em) and East Coast Extra. A week at the ocean, off a small island, ahead of the real start to tourist season...Mmm. :) Back next week!

Love me, love my flock

*stretch* Great morning along the sea of Galilee. The fishing's been good, I had a nice invigorating swim, and Jesus was on the beach cooking breakfast while we were out in the boats. Perfect weather. Nice day for relaxing and casual conversation. Oh - Andrew, Christ wants me to walk down the beach with Him. Be a good little brother and work on gutting these fish, alright? Thanks. Won't be long, He's always got somewhere to be these days. Just a quick chat...

******

“Simon, son of John, do you love Me [without reserve*, and] more than these?” Do you love Me as I love you? Do you love Me more than you love these others? I could not ask for that total love unless I first had it for you. Can you return it?

“Yes, Lord, You know that I love You [as best I can*].” I love You as a man does a friend. And I do love You more than these. But still not totally; still not as You love me. Before, I would have said yes. Before I fled. Before I denied knowing You. Before You turned and looked at me.

“Simon, son of John, do you love Me [without reserve]?” I know your weakness. I knew it from the beginning, and I knew it when I called you. Can you not give Me the love I give you?

“Yes, Lord, You know that I love You [as best I can].” I know my weakness too; my sin is ever before me. I can only say that I will try my best to love You. Once I swore to You rashly. I will not do that again.

“Simon, son of John, do you love Me [as best you can]?” I do love you without reserve, and so I will accept whatever you can give. But are you giving Me all you can?

“Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You [as best I can].” Have You now ceased to expect as much from me? Am I less in Your eyes? I can only give what I can give. I can only say that I will try. You know that. You will send Your Spirit, and then my love will be strengthened: later, I will speak of that as being the beginning. But I do not yet know any of that. I only know my poor human love and my weakness. I only know my desperate need for You.

“Amen, amen, I say to you,…when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Indeed, you will be strengthened, and you will yet love Me totally. You will lay down your life for Me, in the same manner as I did for you, and there is no greater love than that.

"........." Next time, I'll gut the fish!

“Follow Me.”

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*(There are two different words at play here, in the Greek: 'agape', or unconditional, total love; and 'philia', the not-total love of friends. Christ asks for the one. Peter can only respond with the other.)

Veils

By Denise Spencer:

They sit alone,
in silver silence gleaming
through the thin, white shroud
that covers them with gentle folds.
Within them wait the wafers and the wine,
a symbol lingering through the years
to make a memory come alive.

He lay alone,
in shadowed silence resting
‘neath the thick, pale wrap
that bound Him up, His body dead.
But then within, the man began to stir,
returning through the door of death
to prove the power of our God.

I stand alone,
in spellbound silence wondering
at the thin, dim veil
that keeps Him from my seeking eyes.
Beyond, with arms outstretched, He beckons me
to rise above this wordly wall
and let my soul commune with His.

-Denise Day Spencer
denisedayspencer.wordpress.com

Help Neven Pesa become a priest

A university classmate of mine, Neven Pesa, has been accepted to a seminary in Pennsylvania and plans to enter this fall. Of course...the same pre-theologate studies that have helped prepare him for this have also gifted him with an enormous tuition bill that must be paid in full. By September. His full story can be read here, and I ask you to please give it a look. As I said before, if you can't give money, prayers are free - and you know you'll have his!

He's also selling an album he (mostly) wrote and recorded, samples of which can be found off his page. (Click here for the direct link.) He's Eastern Catholic, and the songs reflect that - some contemporary; some traditional Byzantine; with Hebrew and Croatian tossed in.

Still better than being lukewarm.

"Ice deserves no credit for being cold, nor fire for being hot; it is only those that have the possibility of choice that can be praised for their acts."

-Bishop Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ

A Modest Proposal

“There are 200 million poor in the world who would gladly take the vow of poverty if they could eat, dress and have a home like I do.” - Bishop Fulton Sheen

Compassion isn't just aiding those in need. Compassion is, quite literally, suffering with them. Not that we should simulate having a cyclone destroy our home or neighborhood, that would be a bit problematic, but there are a few smaller things we can do: very, very small compared to what the people of Myanmar (and many other places) are going through, but not quite nothing either. Best thing is, you save money that you can then send on to them! ;)

Need to save money for gas? - Is there a bus that'll get you there just as well? Can you walk instead? (Feet were invented long before the wheel.)
That book/CD/movie you want to get? - Does the library have it? Are used copies available on Amazon or like sites?
Want to catch the latest blockbuster? - Wait a bit: you've already lived many happy, fulfilled years without seeing it. It'll be at Hollywood Video before you know it.
Must buy organic or national brands? - Well...it's not going to kill you to buy store brand. Or canned goods instead of fresh.
Need to buy new clothes? - I worked at a Goodwill for a while. Trust me, you'll find bargains - it just takes a few minutes' work. And people will never know.
Need to buy new shoes? - Here I'm with the movies. Convicts/wanted men are forever escaping because nobody bothers to look at their nice, new shoes. They're down there, you're up here. (Somebody who talks to your feet is probably in need of your help too.)
Gotta have your Starbucks? - Coffee is just a caffeine-delivery system. Buy Folgers in bulk and brew your own.
Named Margaret Catherine? - Take your own advice.