The Terrible Reality of Beauty

Barber's "Adagio for Strings, #11" is a beautiful piece. It is deeply gripping, stirring, and evocative. The theme first played at the very start magnifies with intensity at each repetition throughout the piece.

This YouTube video shows a performance of the adagio interspliced with images from the BBC and ABC News. The performance was four days after September 11, and the images are taken from that and subsequent days.

I include this video because it makes an important point in a very tactile way. Ever since the Fall, human history has been the history of exile from the true life God intended for us, our quest to regain it, and ultimately, God's restoration of that life to us when we could not attain it for ourselves. Human history - and each of our lives - is a canvas painted in shades of tragedy and hope, so it is no coincidence that the two themes speak to us so powerfully as individuals and in groups.

Lent is a time during which we are asked by the Church to re-engage these themes in a more profound way: we examine our conscience, we clarify our own limitedness, we touch the wound, prod it, remind ourselves that sin and death are real and at work in our lives.

Suffering, pain, and tragedy aren't all bad though, as the modern world supposes. They are the natural consequence of sin, and aren't to be avoided. They are also the context in which is set all heroism worthy of the name. Sports "heroes" aren't typically heroic at all, but athletic, and we do a great disserve to ourselves and our children who admire them so if we confuse heroism and athleticism. Athleticism is admirable, and even noble, but it has nothing on heroism, and really, fundamentally, is worthless except as a training ground for heroism.

Heroism might be best described, in my thinking, as entering into the lion's den. A heroic man or woman feels fear and pain, sins and dies - but does not let these little tragedies interfere with hope. The hope in question varies from context to context. It may be hope that "it will all work out for the best," or hope that a life might be saved, or that a person might be brought to know the love of Christ. Fundamentally, all these hopes are tied into the object of our highest hope - the hope of eternal life in blessed, joyful union with God. It is this hope that instills true meaning in the lesser hopes, and it is all these hopes that make our hearts soar in the midst of tragedy. Hope fuels heroism. Who is left unmoved remembering Lenny Skutnik,* who swam into the frozen waters of the Potomac to save a stewardess trapped freezing to death in the wreckage of a Florida Airlines Flight 90?

Or more recently, the firefighters who went into the burning towers on September 11?

The terrible reality is that sorrow and beauty are often intermingled - maybe even, to some extent, necessarily intermingled in this age we live in, the Age of the Cross.  A project, like that of the Enlightenment, to uproot the one will inevitably uproot the other with it.  It is much better, perhaps, to simply train for the one and create the other.  So while we continue to wait in joyful hope for the Resurrection, it is important to touch bases from time to time with suffering, sin, and death.  In the Church, we call the forty days allotted for this purpose, "Lent."

*(For those of you who don't know about Lenny Skutnik, you can see the story on YouTube, of course, by clicking here. In brief, when rescue efforts failed to save Priscilla Tirado from the Potomac, he dove into the freezing waters and pulled her out, at immense risk to himself and without guarantees for her.)

How Religious Communities Heal Hearts

Anchoress, thanks for this video from the Boston Globe.

It got me thinking. That's always dangerous. A beautiful couplet of books, The Man on the Donkey, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, by H. F. M. Prescott, show a similar dynamic.  The pair of books unfold and draw together the lives of disparate historical and fictional characters living in the time of Henry VIII.  In them, a battered and abused girl is sent to a convent so that she will no longer burden her older sister by existing.  Previously, the convent had been portrayed as worldly and petty in its aspirations: life was filled, apparently, with bickering over rugs and boasting over which sister had the most gold pins to hold her veil upon her head.  As the abused girls moves into the convent, the reader begins to see another side.  In this world vastly kinder than the one into which she was born, the girl begins to blossom as a person, having encountered simple, untangled and unmanipulative love for the first time.  I myself was startled by the ease with which the author, without ever re-representing or changing the personality of the convent, shows it first from one perspective, and then from another: worldly than it ought to be, but a haven of sanctity compared to the world.

During my time in seminary I saw something of the same dynamic.  Many of the men, myself included, thought the place very much more worldly than it ought to be.  Yet visitors were always and uniformly amazed by its quiet warmth, friendliness, hospitality, and the ease with which a heart lapses into prayer in that place.  We did not live in a place of lollipops and sunshine, and there weren't love-bombs, either... which is probably a good thing.  But there was a place where genuine love could gradually, organically grow and bring about real healing and a real kind of new life in the men that arrived there.  I saw it happen.  I recall one man who was very poorly socialized, a bore and boor, and very quickly found himself nearly isolated in that house of 150 Christian men because of it.  I suspect it was not the first time people had a hard time saying, "Well, that's just So-and-so.  You know how he is," because for most people, even good people, at some point, enough is enough.

But I also think of a friend of mine, a man who lived across the hall from me - well liked and popular because intelligent, athletic, easy-going, responsible, and kind.  This man told me that he was not going to just watch So-and-so crumble and fall away.  He couldn't bring himself to think, "Good riddance."  I also know that the petty unkindness and gossip against the unpleasant man became so bad that a very popular, well-respected, and high-ranking faculty member addressed So-and-so's class in his absence.  He told them that the faculty were aware of So-and-so's problems and issues.  There was no need to keep pointing them out to the faculty or to each other.  It was best just to be a friend to So-and-so, and to pray for him.  At first, I thought it unprofessional or even reckless of the faculty member to address the class so openly about what would probably be considered their classmate's personnel matter.  At least, that's what it would be considered in the world.  But there, in that house of God, it was a personal matter - and personal matters sometimes require far more delicacy than personnel matters, and sometimes far less.

Lastly, I think about how I watched, saw with my own eyes, the growth of So-and-so.  An irritating mannerism fell away.  A new friend was made.  Someone invited So-and-so to join in.  Another perplexing behavior was moderated.  So-and-so made another friend.  People stopped saying things harshly about So-and-so behind his back.  More people were willing to invite him to more things.  It became clear that he wasn't so stupid as people thought at first, even if a bit more uncouth than they liked.  People went from defending him on principle to defending him on the basis of his actual strengths.  It turned out he was athletic enough that, his abrasive characteristics diminishing, people didn't mind - no, actually wanted him on their team.  He started to enjoy his studies.  More prayers were offered up for So-and-so, doubtless, than anyone on earth will ever know.  For that matter, So-and-so went from being known for the amount of time he spent in front of the community television to being a man noted for the discipline of his prayer.  A man who looked like he wouldn't last the first year because he was so aggravating has since progressed well on the way to being a good and holy priest, certainly of great use to the People of God.  In that seminary, that house where seedlings are transplanted like stalks of rice, that man came alive in a new way.

So it is with the Church as a whole.  In the rock tumbler of our shared life in the Spirit, we are first to grind down sharp edges, then polish natural virtues, and at last glow like gems of holiness.  It is not a romantic thing, but a gritty thing.  Well, it is romantic in the sense of being adventurous, but not in the sense of being smooth or suave.  Temptations do not flee the life of holiness, but flock to it like moths.  We in the Church are called to live in a way different than that found in the world outside.

For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, (Romans 12:4-21).

We will not always do it very well, but our company should be a place where people will encounter the healing touch of Christ made present in His people, in His priests, in His word and sacraments.  It might not happen all at once, and it certainly will not happen without bumps and bruises along the way... but the more we rely on Jesus to make it happen, the more surely we will see progress before our very eyes - the more we will see souls open and blossom in a way the world can barely conceive, let alone imitate.

For that matter, a Christian family is supposed to be very much the same sort of thing as a Christian church.

It's Over - But Really, It's Just Beginning

Well, folks, it's over. Christmastide, that is. Now we are back in the day-in day-out of ordinary Christian living marked governed by the ordinary ordinances of Ordinary Time. And it's no coincidence that this period begins today with the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord. Isn't it baptism that begins all of our lives in the Lord?

Here is the first reading from today's Mass (Is 42:1-4, 6-7):

Thus says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.

I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

So many messages for the Christian life:

"Here is my servant whom I uphold": God upholds us, as a Church and each of us individually.  We can rely upon Him.  He does that not upon our own meritorious character, but because of our intimate union with His Son: the "chosen one" with whom he is actually "well pleased."  In the beginning, all of creation was "very good," (Gen 1:31) but sin damaged all of creation very badly.  Now, in Christ, we can be a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) that is again pleasing to God the Father (Heb 13:20-21).

The Christian follows Christ in bringing forth "justice to the nations," but he does not do it with riots, rebellions, crying out, or "shouting... in the street."  Instead, the Christian brings uprightness to the nations without breaking even anything as fragile as "a bruised reed."  The ways of the world are not the ways of a Christian, who is always on guard to be delicate, delicate with souls, lest he "quench" the "smoldering wick" of someone's embryonic faith.  He persists in his pursuit until the very edges of the world, the "coastlands" hear his teaching - because they are eager for it.

The LORD, the great I-AM, calls us "for the victory of justice."  He grasps us by the hand as a father takes his little boy, his little girl, and leads them step by step.  The distance seems far to us only because we are small, but our Father is very great, and he will grow us, form us into Christian men and women.  We will serve as a living covenant, a living sign of the commitment of God to His creatures and of those as of yet unruly creatures to their God.  The very way we live our lives - uprightly, doing what is right whatever it cost us, merciful to the weak and the poor - will make us a "light for the nations."  Our life in Christ will "open the eyes of the blind" so that they too can come to know His immense love for them.  People who are "prisoners" to the "confinement" and "darkness" of sinful ways of life - irresponsible borrowing and spending, excessive eating and drinking, shallow and broken relationships, promiscuity, lies, wrecked families, dependency on glamorous false solutions to life's problems - these people will see Christ in the conduct of our lives, and they will come to follow Him and be saved.

Or not.

The difference could very well be in how effectively we set our egos out of the way and let Him work in us.  We will do this setting-aside by taking up our cross daily (Lk 9:23) and following Him, even if it is to a place we would rather not go (Jn 21:18).  In this daily voluntary setting-aside of our desires when we cannot legitimately set aside our sufferings, we will know joy.  Joy is not ecstasy.  Daily ecstasy would be too much to bear for us right now anyway.  Joy is knowledge of the of the acting of God, of the providence of God, kingdom of God, in our daily lives.  It does not make the suffering go away, but it makes everything fit into a big picture, and makes even our sufferings sufferable.  Ordinary Time is the time to practice this daily joy in the midst of daily suffering for the daily sanctification of the world.

Ordinary Time doesn't sound so ho-hum now, does it?

A Thought During a Long Run

During my distance run with my roommate tonight, I had a thought at some point. But I'll share that in a minute.  At the start, we offered our run for different intentions.  In the last miles, we started offering particular miles for different people and different intentions. That helps me, and perhaps him, to stay tough during my runs. Running is largely mental, and so is toughness. People whose first contribution to a conversation about long-distance running is, "I could never do that," probably won't. But they could, even in a wheelchair. During the Marine Corps Marathon last year one of the things that inspired me most and made me most emotional during the run was to see how men in racing wheelchairs, and without functioning legs, could keep up with the runners. Some of them were born without legs. Some of them lost their legs in the war. They tended to get passed on the uphills, but man, did they compensate on the way down! And ten dollars says that not one of them spent the race saying, "I could never do that."

So here's the though that occurred to me: "Toughness and gentleness are not at odds with each other, but in fact are complementary virtues." When we say someone is tough, we usually mean that he or she can take a beating, can get knocked around, and still get back up. "Tough" is a very different thing than "violent," or "aggressive," or "harsh," and its contrary opposite is not gentleness, I think, but weakness or cowardice. "Tough" might be a modern word for something like "having perseverance," or "having fortitude."

Now, someone who is tough knows how to take a knock and not get knocked down, or at least how to get back up. A tough person knows what it is to suffer in the way that a coward does not. A coward goes to any length in order to avoid suffering, perhaps because of fear that it will break him, or perhaps out of simple decadent complacency in comfort. This evasion of suffering can obviously lead very quickly into all sorts of sins. The coward refuses to suffer, never learns of what mettle he's made, never knows triumph, what the Bible calls glory, what we are all made for - perhaps because he cannot conceive even the hope of glory. When we reject weakness and suffering, we will begin to reject it, resent it, in others as well.

On the other hand, the tough person knows what it is to suffer. He has quite likely suffered amply, suffered in a way that a coward preempts by saying, "I could never do that." It is no coincidence that children come to birth before they come to the point of hurting their mothers' hearts. The woman's soul is prepared for suffering by the suffering her body has already learned to endure. This capacity can make them seem amazingly hard to a soul more repelled by pain. "How can she kick her own daughter out of the house, just for doing drugs, or bringing strange boys home overnight?" The tougher person knows that there is a good out there, worth attaining, and greater in goodness than the intervening suffering is in badness. So the tougher soul hardens itself to push through pain and suffering, and wins the prize. (Think of Rom 5:3 or 8:18.)

Precisely because these tougher souls, women in pangs and men in racing wheelchairs, know what it is to suffer, I believe they have a greater capacity to accept it in others. They may not choose to do so, but I think they have a greater capacity to be genuinely patient with others' weakness, suffering, and sorrow. They certainly have a greater ability to help others endure their own difficulties. In an unexpected way, the spiritually tough person is much better at being spiritually gentle. And precisely because our bodies and souls are so thoroughly interconnected, a lesson we learn in one can help us to live better in the other.

So many modern "solutions" to problems come from a rejection of suffering. "I could never carry my child to term, having it remind me of the man that raped me," and others, accustomed to similar thinking, ignore the child's humanity and innocence and concede abortion in cases of rape. It's easier. Less suffering. I-could-never thinking. "But grandma is so old and weak, and tired, surely this disease will torture her to death if we do not put her out of her pain," and others, accustomed to similar thinking, ignore the fact that rather than comforting and loving her, they will only do the work of the disease. It's easier. Less suffering. I-could-never thinking.

The insanity is here: the coward who betrays his comrades to avoid being shot in battle might very well be shot after the battle, and if he isn't, will probably wish he had been, so great will be his interior agony, his self-loathing, his division. For it is a plain truth that we are either at war with sin or at war with ourselves. We can never be at peace with sin because peace is contrary to the nature of sin. The part of our soul that wants goodness will then wage war against the part of our soul that has made a pact with sin, agreed to rationalize and protect it. And the agony of a house divided, of a war within one's soul, of doing evil and hating evil at the same time, is far worse than simply dying. But we often select it because it seems easier, more pleasant, better, especially in the short term. But in the long term, it is a worse sort of death. It is disintegration of the self, the death that does not die, and in the very end, it is hell. Likewise, after the glamor of sin has lost its luster, the couple that have divorced rather than dig into their problems are rarely happier, even if their daily lives seem more manageable. The father who has rejected his homosexually-inclined son "as a matter of scriptural principle," is not at peace.  Nor is the mother who tells the same son that such abnormalities are normal, in order to be nice.  They have successfully split Solomon's baby in two by choosing either to hate the sinner or to love the sin, but they have not successfully saved their son as both of them have intend.

And let's face it: our culture hates suffering. According to Yoda (in Star Wars - you know, the little green dude), suffering is the worst evil. So it is in Buddhism. But in Christianity it was suffering on a cross that saved the world. Aside from the purely natural benefits of enduring suffering to attain a great good on the other side of pain, we who are baptized into and united with Christ have an amazing opportunity; we can offer our suffering in union with His to help Him to redeem the world (Eph 3:13; Phil 3:10-11; Col 1:24; 2 Thes 1:5). That is amazing. And we must remember that people are not the enemy, nor is even suffering, but the I-could-never thinking is. Just as a physically tough person can help a physically weaker person to attain new heights, we Christians, who know that Christ is the Helpmate of us all, should help others to attain new height by persevering through the more profound difficulties that are spiritual and moral.

We not only have to fight for laws that outlaw bad "solutions" to very real problems, but we also have to help those who are spiritually weaker, more vulnerable, more afraid, to learn to endure the difficulties of life by enduring them together. That is what "compassion" means in Latin, "to suffer with," not "to magically make suffering go away." It is what our Lord did by becoming human, and it is how we humans are to serve the Lord. Right now, crisis pregnancy centers and old folks' homes seem especially the places to be - the front lines of our spiritual warfare against I-could-never thinking. The reply to such thinking that arises everywhere and especially in such places must always be, "Ah, but you can do all things with Him who strengthens you," (Phil 4:13). And it must be followed by, "And I'll help you do it."

Tying it all together, in those last miles of the run, my roommate and I prayed for the grace to be made tougher, and we offered our little, voluntary sufferings in union with Jesus' for people about whom we care a great deal especially some people that Jesus is currently asking to voluntarily endure involuntary sufferings. Because running is largely mental, and the mental is half of how we engage in the spiritual, the devil can certainly try to slip in, to break morale, entice us to sin. When a pain the hip or in the glutes interpreted itself as, "Wouldn't it be best to stop now?" I grit my teeth, prayed for Jesus' help, and said, "F*@# you, devil. Go to hell! This mile's for so-and-so. They need it and you're not going to get it," and I pushed into the pain a little. And like the pangs of childbearing, these littler pains pass too. Now, the devil defeated - at least for a few minutes - and the post-run milkshake-and-burger-dinner inhaled and the endorphins making my heart happy in spite of stiff legs, because of stiff legs, I am starting to feel a little sleepy.

Here's what I will pray, I think, before I sleep:

Heavenly Father, please make me tough, so that I can run this race of life the way you want me to, with a gentle heart filled with love for you and those you give me. And now as I lay me down to sleep, please refresh me for another day of service to you, and grant me in my service whatever joys are necessary to sustain me in it, and to bring others to you by it. I ask these things in Jesus' Name. Amen.

Sorry for rambling so long.  It was a long run - there was lots of time to think.  In case you're curious, there's just

I'm weak and liable to spend lots of the next nineteen days thinking, "I could never do that," rather than "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."  So let's keep praying, OK?

Rest in Peace, Eunice

Eunice Kennedy Shriver died on Tuesday, and today will be buried from St. Francis Xavier, Hyannis, Massachusetts. Her legacy was immensely important to me personally – she strove to help the world see the strengths of persons with disabilities, rather than as a series of shortcomings or challenges. Her efforts were largely in response to the condition of her sister Rosemary, who seems perhaps to have been mildly mentally retarded or ill until a failed lobotomy, secretly ordered by her father, reduced her to utter incapacity. Eunice and her brother Ted Kennedy were both present when their sister Rosemary passed away in 2005.

Until recently, Eunice and Ted have had very different approaches, though. One cannot doubt that both loved their sister as best they knew how. That is natural. But Eunice was convinced that every single human life was a good thing, no matter what else. She personally advocated with president after president, starting with her brother. Even though she was a card-carrying Democrat, she was an outspoken supporter of the pro-Life cause within and outside of the Democratic Party. Ted, on the other hand, along with much of the political members of the Kennedy clan, has been a strong advocate for abortion. Abortion says nothing if it doesn’t say, “Some lives aren’t worth living.”


Persons with severe disabilities challenge our easy status quo. Normally, each of us is self-sufficient. We each can take care of ourselves, and occasionally help each other out as need arises. But a person with a severe difficulty, especially a mental one, needs constant help. Oftentimes they need help for the most basic functions of life. That means we around them must pitch in, get outside of ourselves, and learn to be patient, and gentle, and do extra work. Unlike “the rest of us,” it is not possible merely to coexist with the handicapped. They need too much. That is why we will either learn to love them or we will decide to kill them.

This morning, listening to NPR on the way to work, I heard some Democrat pundits fending off accusations by those hostile to their plans for healthcare reform. They brought up the accusation that they or their approach would kill all the people with Down syndrome. “Ha! Come on!” was about all they could say. Of course they don’t support killing all who have Down syndrome. They just support extensive neo-natal testing. Oh, but wait, they also support abortion on demand, and especially in difficult situations. And of course they support, many of them at least, government funding for abortions. Hmm… one wonders why there are so many fewer people being born with Down syndrome now than in the past.

But let’s get back to Ted and Eunice. Ted’s approach is the politically expedient one (for now), and it is also the more pleasant one, that is, the one that allows social pleasantries to do most of the work. After the abortion (say, of a child with Down syndrome), social pleasantries can go into full gear. It wasn’t a child, but a choice. There was no abortion (such an ugly word), but merely the premature termination of a pregnancy. The child who never existed didn’t have a perfectly livable condition with which millions of people worldwide live happily; rather, there was a severe defect. The doctor and family did not conspire to murder for the sake of convenience a child entrusted to their care by God Almighty, but rather, they sent home to Good and Gentle Jesus a precious little one who otherwise would have struggled greatly. Do you see, dear reader, how the game is played? False words cover over the truth, and one can try to look at oneself in the mirror again.

That’s not how Eunice’s approach works, though. In Eunice’s approach, a child is born into difficult circumstances. Sometimes the circumstances are extrinsic to the child – like poverty, or an ill mother or missing father. Sometimes the circumstances are part of who the child is – like mental disability or a permanent medical problem. The child’s life is filled with frequent or even constant hardship. Those close to the little boy or girl must learn to sacrifice in new and intense, profound ways: sleep is lost, money is spent on extensive necessities rather than on yearned-for luxuries, vacations are altered or sacrificed, hopes and dreams are modified or abandoned (that’s the hardest part). It is too much for one person, so the family, friends, neighbors, and local leaders all have to pitch in together. Cooperation makes an overwhelming set of challenges manageable. New virtues are acquired that were never before needed, or are developed when before they would have been slight: patience, tenderness, discipline, flexibility. Heroic effort is needed for basic steps. Those around the child eventually learn to be amazed and joyful at very little bits of progress – oh, how a person with handicaps struggles for such little gains. I remember my amazement to discover that my own handicapped sister had learned to tie her shoes. That she was fifteen years old wasn’t my interest, but only, “Hey, Ma! Look what she can do! Did you see that? Did you already know she could do that? Holy cow! That’s great, Keelin! Good job!” In Eunice’s plan, we learn self-sacrifice, cooperation, affection. We learn love. And as the child grows and prospers modestly, or not, we learn to see a rhythm in reality, a meaning in the muddle. We learn to see how one event happened before another, though we would not have so arranged things, and that the arrangement that actually happened was, in fact, arranged. We come to see that there is a plan in the universe, and a Planner. Ultimately, in the life of a child with disabilities, we come to see the face of God.


But it’s not romantic, and it’s not easy. There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to be shed along the way, or else everyone would do it. We need grace – the life, strength, joy of God shared with us from on high – or else we will go the path of least resistance. We will go the way the pagan world, the world without God, has always gone. The Jewish prophets were the first to object to the murder of the weak and marginalized. They were the first to insist that personal comfort and domination by the fittest were not in accord with God’s will, with deepest reality. Christians have taken up that objection, that insistence – though some of us have been seduced into murder by pleasant words. If we do not learn to pray, to return to God, to seek His help, we will end by killing those who interfere with our plan for happiness. We will go Ted’s way.

Now, on a closing note, I’d like to be fair to Ted. It is easy for a good heart to be seduced. Moreover, he now has brain cancer, and wasn’t even able to attend his sister Eunice’s funeral Mass. His cancer has certainly incapacitated him. He was there for Rosemary, after all. Maybe his struggle with cancer and the prayers of his sisters in heaven will help him to come to know the love of God in a more profoundly penetrating way than he has before.

Eunice, thank you for all you did. Yours was a monumental life. Now you are with your Rosie and can know her as God has always known her. Please pray for us who still journey here below.

P.s.: Today Eunice's family issued a powerful statement that well summarizes a powerful life. She visited Rosemary regularly. She advocated persistently for political and social measures to improve opportunities for those with handicaps to enjoy their full human potential. She strongly challenged consciences and gently coaxed contestants. She built the Special Olympics from a backyard affair (literally) to a global showcase of talent in which each individual is fostered and cheered on. Until the last years of her life, she and her husband, Sargent, hosted a summer camp for children with and without disabilities at their home in Rockville, Maryland, so that the children could grow with each other.

"Inspired by her love of God, her devotion to her family, and her relentless belief in the dignity and worth of every human life, she worked without ceasing - searching, pushing, demanding, hoping for change. She was a living prayer, a living advocate, a living center of power. She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy."



P.p.s.: Another thing strikes me about Mrs. Kennedy Shriver. In every single photograph of her that I can find, she is smiling. It seems as though her path, though it be harder, is happier.

Click here for the biography on her website.

Being Kind is Good

Click here for interesting article about kindness among a generation reared to believe that we humans are nothing but wild animals in a competition for survival. Especially among conservatives, kindness has gotten a bad rep because of what is (rightly, I think) perceived as mealy-mouthed duplicity by relativists who use "kindness" to rationalize every sort of immorality under the sun.

But that's not what kindness is. Kindness does not equal "nice". Kindness is about being gentle and considerate, even when one must do something unpleasant or painful. Just as a nurse can be gentle while giving an injection, a parent can be kind while teaching discipline, and a priest or governor can be kind while laying down the law. St. Paul tells us that love is "patient and kind," (1 Cor 13:4). It is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22), he writes, by which we commend ourselves as servants of God (2 Cor 6:6). God has been kind to us by showering us with grace (Eph 2:7), and that we are to do likewise for each other as Christians (Eph 4:32; Col 3:12). Likewise, he writes that we should be kind to all (2 Tim 2:24).


The "progressive" totalitarians think it is "kind" to coerce families into this health-care package or that, to foist gay marriage onto communities that are nauseated by the thought, and so on. It is notable, though, how unkind government and large corporations are to deal with, even when they are "doing it for our own good."

Telling somebody "no" might be the right and loving thing to do in a situation, but that is a hard love to accept. Kindness is perhaps the attitude that permeates and points out the loving motivation of actions which otherwise might not be so obvious. Kindness manifests affection. Who doesn't like to receive a little random act of kindness, or an extra thoughtfulness from someone we 'know' loves us? Who hasn't had an easier time accepting a hard truth because it came to us from one whom we knew to love us? We damage the effectiveness of loving actions when they are poisoned by harshness or insensitivity, and perfect our loving actions by doing them kindly.

We in the Church should always strive to increase our love and make it more evident by bathing it in manifest kindness.

Eighteen Kids, No Joke... Just Love

You gotta check out this video interview from WashingtonPost.com. The family has eighteen children, and they love it! Most of us aren't as saintly as they seem to be, for sure, but one has to wonder - maybe it's the willingness to love that we lack, sometimes. Certainly our life circumstances and emotional capacities don't lend themselves, usually, to such a big family... but I wonder how willing I am to stretch myself.

AIDS Worker Says Africans Don't Need Condoms

I just picked up on this awesome article in Zenit's newsfeed from last week. Thanks to Dara for posting it herself.

I've heard the AIDS worker from Meeting Point Kampala speak. Her name is Rose Busingye and she is a part of the Communion and Liberation movement. She is amazing, and so is the work of Meeting Point. These people know what they are talking about. It is a little reported fact that of all African countries, Uganda, with its Christianity-friendly government, has led the way in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. In fact, in Uganda, the disease has been brought almost to a standstill, not by condoms or other prophylactic measures, but by chastity-related education.

Losing Your Life

Before I put up posts on the priesthood, prophecy, and kingship of the Christian lay faithful, I have a brief observation to make.

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?" (Mt 16:25-26).

Many people may prance through life happily doping themselves up and dodging reality. They might try to do things their own way, and then find diversions and medications to cover up the pain - TV, sex, drugs, exercise, career, whatever. But we Christians do not have that option. We will either give up Christ's way or give up our own way. We can try to play it both ways, to serve both God and Mammon, but we will end up hating one or the other (Mt 6:24). Something has to give way, and if we continue to serve Christ, but have a hard time dying to ourselves, then Christ will kill us.

That sounds horrible, but I mean it, though not as it might sound. What I mean is that as we cling to him, he will will continue to work on us, to cut out the sick and cancerous parts of our souls. If we are recalcitrant and backslide, it will take longer to die to ourselves, but as long as we keep clinging to Christ, He will keep killing us, peeling away the things that we use to hide from Him, to hide from reality.

When we have finished dying to ourselves, or maybe even as we learn to die to ourselves (oh God, bring it sooner), a new sort of Life begins to grow in us. That Life is Christ in us, the engine (if you will) by which we are propelled into an eternity of joy. But the old way of living has got to die first.

Casting Out Among Outcasts

Today's readings at Mass (Lv 13:1-2, 44-46, Ps 32:1-2, 5, 11, 1 Cor 10:31-11:1, Mk 1:40-45) have a very simple theme in common: outcasts and how we treat them. The first reading prescribes the ritual treatment of leprosy during a time in which a connection between disease and sin was presumed. For fear of disease and sin, the leper is to remain outside the wandering Israelites' camp, outside the oasis of civilization in a harsh world, until such time as their leprosy is cleared up. While the connection is not certain, it is not stupid, either. As evidence consider that many, but not all, who have cirrhosis of the liver have it from drinking too much. And just as some diseases are catching, so we can learn sins from each other as well. In the Gospel reading, St. Mark recounts our Lord's own trouble with leprosy. He did not catch the disease, but because he healed people with it, he came into such demand that he could not go into towns but had to stay outside in the wilderness. In an unexpected way, he took the consequences of the lepers' disease upon himself. This acceptance of their disease prefigures his acceptance of the sins of all humanity. It specifically prefigures his crucifixion on a barren hill outside Jerusalem.

"There are a lot of people in our world who are hurting," we were reminded by the recorded voice of the Archbishop this morning at every parish in the archdiocese. Some of these people are hurting because of sin, theirs or others'. Some of them are hurting because of dumb bad luck, as much as such a thing exists. Most people are hurting at least a little from both, and some people are hurting tremendously from both. And where there is one, especially the dumb-bad-luck, leprosy kind, we still instinctively assume that the other kind exists as well - that the person has sinned and brought it upon themselves. Homeless people must be either lazy or crazy, we assume - and oh, how our tightening economic straits might soon prove us wrong on this point! We don't want to "judge" HIV/AIDS patients, sure, but we don't want to touch them either, do we? How must that feel, to be looked at ten thousand times in a day, always with a frown, or a smirk, or with averted eyes - and never to be touched, or held, or kissed?

Jesus made no such assumptions, though. He simply went among them and did what He could (which was a lot!) to heal them when they came to Him. And He still does. We in the Church, incorporated by holy baptism into His mystical body and nourished on His Body and Blood, ought to do likewise. It takes some practice, to be sure, because our base instinct is to spend our time and energy on ourselves and to shrink from marred skin and open sores, both physical and spiritual. But remember our Lord's instructions to the fishermen who had thus far caught nothing: "Cast into the deep," (Lk 5:4). Those fishing instructions were nonsensical by the world's standards, but pulled in a catch that could only be seen as a manifestation of the power of God. Generosity of spirit, together with a gift of time and energy, both grounded in prayer and the sacraments, can do amazing, amazing things. If you'd like to see an example of this power of love, I recommend a visit with the Missionaries of Charity. In there houses people presumed about to die have been healed more by love than by medicine. The order founded by Mother Teresa to cast out into the deep, among the poorest of the poor, to those who are avoided by "civilized" folk. The Missionaries have a some houses here in DC: a hospice for poor people on Otis St NE and a soup kitchen and women's shelter on Wheeler Rd SE; and over 500 homes in 133 countries around the world.

The Church will continue to wake up and reclaim Her proper place in the world - priest, prophet, and king - only as much as we, Her children, do so. But what does it mean for the baptized person to be a priest, prophet, and king? I think I'll make that the subject of my next three posts.

Ok, So Don't Laugh... But Every Once in a While

I am listening, as I type, to "Black Eyed Peas" and Justin Timberlake (I know, I know, we all have our little vices) singing a song called "Where is the Love?" The song is composed as a prayer to our Father in heaven, and urges the listener to integrity, forgiveness, and prayer. Among its little unexpected gems is the statement, "If you never know truth, then you never know love."

Every once in a while a pearl of truth falls out of our vacuous pop culture, like a moonrock from outer space.

I enjoy those little surprises. If you like them too, then I recommend the new Batman movies (Batman Begins and Dark Night) for some excellent moral theological gems. While I am recommending things, let me add the movies Bruce Almighty, Children of Men, Walk the Line, and Hotel Rwanda for excellent studies of the process of conversion and redemption in the life of otherwise not very good men. I would be remiss not to add Sophie Scholl, a true story of one woman and a few friends standing up to the Nazi machine, and relying quietly on rock-solid faith to do so. In the movie, Sophie prays briefly at one or two points, and her prayers are among the most moving I've ever heard. These movies aren't for children, but for an adult that realizes the world isn't perfect and neither are its characters, these movies are refreshing for their positive yet realistic view of human nature and the drama that is life.

OK. You caught me. I added those movie recommendations so that you wouldn't think I'm a big dork for having Justin Timberlake on my iPod. I promise, that's the only song of his that I have. And the iPod was a gift.

Happy Birthday, Humanae

Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on the regulation of births, had the 40th anniversary of its release today. Here are some excerpts and a link to the document:

1. The most serious duty of transmitting human life, for which married persons are the free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has always been a source of great joys to them, even if sometimes accompanied by not a few difficulties and by distress.

At all times the fulfillment of this duty has posed grave problems to the conscience of married persons, but, with the recent evolution of society, changes have taken place that give rise to new questions which the Church could not ignore, having to do with a matter which so closely touches upon the life and happiness of men.

2. The changes which have taken place are in fact noteworthy and of varied kinds. In the first place, there is the rapid demographic development. Fear is shown by many that world population is growing more rapidly than the available resources, with growing distress to many families and developing countries, so that the temptation for authorities to counter this danger with radical measures is great. Moreover, working and lodging conditions, as well as increased exigencies both in the economic field and in that of education, often make the proper education of a larger number of children difficult today. A change is also seen both in the manner of considering the person of woman and her place in society, and in the value to be attributed to conjugal love in marriage, and also in the appreciation to be made of the meaning of conjugal acts in relation to that love.

Finally and above all, man has made stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature, such that he tends to extend this domination to his own total being: to the body, to psychical life, to social life and even to the laws which regulate the transmission of life...

17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.

Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.

Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than by the respect due to the integrity of the human organism and its functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the "principle of totality" illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII...

18. It can be foreseen that this teaching will perhaps not be easily received by all: Too numerous are those voices -- amplified by the modern means of propaganda -- which are contrary to the voice of the Church. To tell the truth, the Church is not surprised to be made, like her divine Founder, a "sign of contradiction", yet she does not because of this cease to proclaim with humble firmness the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical. Of such laws the Church was not the author, nor consequently can she be their arbiter; she is only their depositary and their interpreter, without ever being able to declare to be licit that which is not so by reason of its intimate and unchangeable opposition to the true good of man.

In defending conjugal morals in their integral wholeness, the Church knows that she contributes towards the establishment of a truly human civilization; she engages man not to abdicate from his own responsibility in order to rely on technical means; by that very fact she defends the dignity of man and wife. Faithful to both the teaching and the example of the Savior, she shows herself to be the sincere and disinterested friend of men, whom she wishes to help, even during their earthly sojourn, "to share as sons in the life of the living God, the Father of all men."

Thank you, Holy Father Paul. Sorry we didn't listen. Please pray we finally learn.

Read the entire encyclical at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6humana.htm.

Personality Map

Ok, so one of my roommates, Kaz, and I go back and forth about the usefulness of different personality inventories. I think he would agree that I tend to be the more skeptical of us. Beyond that, he tends to favor the broader categories of the Four Temperament typing, whereas I tend to go for the more fine-tuned Myer-Briggs personality typing. He seems to think the tests more directly useful for revealing something of your personality to yourself; I tend to think they produce lists of adjectives which may apply, or not, and which you can use to do something of a self-inventory. Anyhow, today I stumbled upon and took this one while running some tests at work that left me a little downtime. It's called your Personal DNA and it produces a nice quilt-like map, or else a kind of thermometer-on-LSD, either of which graphically describes your personality. Another cool feature is that your friends can describe you and then you can see their opinions of you, and they can see your opinion of yourself. I've put my "personality map" on the righthand sidebar of this page. It's kinda fun, and kinda revealing, and kinda obtuse - like me, and probably like a lot of my friends. No offense, guys.

Coincidentally, I am not sure which label this post should go under, so I just threw down a bunch that didn't seem entirely unrelated.

The Passions and the Flesh

This excerpt is taken from a little devotional book that I found at the Maine, NY house of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. It is called A Month with Mary.

Seventeenth Day
The Passions and the Flesh

"Mary [says]: The demon penetrates into you by means of the passions and, if you do not deny yourself, your battle against the demon is vain and fruitless. A passion is a disordered movement of your physical being or of your soul which makes you forget the high supernatural end to which you tend and reduces you within yourself. It is the keel desire for relief, for comfort that you look for in the mire because mire is all you see around you when you lose sight of your ultimate end.

It is a reaction to the law of God when you don't see its beauty and harmony; it is a rebellion against God when you seek pleasure, peace and happiness outside of him. Sometimes deluding poetry dazzles you and you dream of reaching high peaks of glory and pleasure when in reality you are falling into the abyss. Sometimes you see nothing but this present life and fail to recognize that all is passing... then you concentrate on everything on this earth, on your material well-being and go about seeking the deceptive love of creatures, riches, comfort, applause, pleasures, amusements. The demon is waiting for you at the pass in these dark narrow straits along your way; he presents objects which attract you; he upsets you with images which get you stirred up and thus he catches you in your own snares in order to drag you into his abyss. Don't deceive yourself; combat your passions as soon as they manifest themselves and fly the occasions which make them take on giant proportions!

If you live in the world and flit around like an inexperienced butterfly around flames, you will get burnt. Close your eyes to the distorted visions of your lower nature, your ears to the vain words of men, your heart to the vain affections of the senses. Nourish your soul on truth, nourish it on Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. It is in the eternal Truth and eternal Love that the passions drown and die. The more you know God, the more you live by faith, the more you lift your gaze above, the more you immerse your heart in Jesus, the less you feel the weight of your flesh and the delusions of the false mirages of the passions. Converse with God because in him you will experience the beauty of your final end and the miserable attractions which you feel in yourself will vanish into nothingness.

ASPIRATION: O Mary, give me the grace to seek God and to delve deeply into the beauty of eternal truth.

LITTLE WORK: Deprive yourself for the love of God of some amusement that seems harmless to you. Often an amusement is like the spark that ignites the fire of the passions in the heart."

Happy Anniversaries

Ok, so last night I watched "A Man for All Seasons," in honor of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher Day. Just this morning, getting ready to post something about one of my favorite saints, I remembered that I had already written something about him. Here it is.

As it turns out, that was the very first post of my blog - posted one year ago yesterday. So, in addition to the anniversary to being the anniversary of the martyrdom of St. John Fisher, recusant bishop of Rochester, it is also the anniversary of my blog - I know, a truly momentous occasion.

I reread my post on St. Thomas and St. John, and can't really think of much else to add. Last night I also decided to start reading a modern critical history making use of newly available sources of St. Thomas's life, times, and writings that seems very good, from Ignatius Press: The King's Good Servant, But God's First. The author promises to draw out St. Thomas More's deep spiritual life in a way that previous biographies have neglected.

It's been quite a week at work and also socially for me, and I've found prayer time scarce. It occurs to me that time isn't ever any more or less scarce, but only that for some reason I let important things: God, sleep, balancing the checkbook, etc., slide to lower places of priority. St. Thomas More, in the movie at least, seems to have been expert at keeping first things first, which is the skill at the heart of the virtue of prudence - the habit of knowing the most important thing, and how best to get it. Maybe if I ask enough, St. Thomas will lend me a bit more. Lol.

St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, pray for us.