The Dignity of the Priesthood

One of the things which I always noticed about my dear spiritual Father were his hands. My first reaction, when I was very young, was fear. They were huge, far larger than the hands of a man of his stature are ordinarily, but I soon came to realize that they were gentle. As I got to know him better, I came to see that they were not a source of fear, but that they were a conduit a grace and peace as I watched those hands bring Christ to people and people to Christ. They were used for the extraordinary as well as the mundane. The hands which brought the Eucharist and anointed the sick also washed dishes and dug in the garden. As his body grew weak, those hands were used more and more to steady himself. The hands which had given me every Sacrament grew bruised from injury, illness, and medical procedures, but even in his last days he used them to bring Christ to others. Finally, I saw those consecrated hands for the last time as they lay still: holding the rosary which he had prayed so often.

Today would have been my dear friend's 53rd anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. At his 50th anniversary the poem, "The Beautiful Hands of a Priest" was read and I would like to share it here.

The Beautiful Hands of a Priest

We need them in life's early morning,

we need them again at its close;

We feel their warm clasp of friendship,

we seek them when tasting life's woes.
At the altar each day we behold them,

and the hands of a king on his throne

Are not equal to them in their

greatness; their dignity stands all alone;

And when we are tempted and wander

to pathways of shame and sin,

It's the hand of a priest that will absolve

us----not once, but again and again;

And when we are taking life's partner,

other hands may prepare us a feast,

But the hand that will bless and unite

us is the beautiful hand of a priest.

God bless them and keep them all holy

For the Host which their fingers caress;

When can a poor sinner do better than

to ask Him to guide thee and bless?

When the hour of death comes upon us

may our courage and strength be increased.

By seeing raised over us in anointing the

beautiful hands of a priest!

Over the last week, I have come to realize that I love priests because I love Father, I love Father because I love Christ, and I love Christ because Father made him present to me.

It would seem impossible that anyone who claims to be a good Catholic could look at the funeral of a priest as an occasion to show disdain, but that is exactly what happened and it pained me greatly because of the disrespect it showed not only to this priest, but to all priests. The reason: Ordinary Form vs. Extraordinary Form. It was only one person, but it was a person who claims to love Christ and His Church, but who entered the Church during the wake clearly because he was forced to by his parents. See, he believes in the Extraordinary Form only. He looked at the body of the man, the whom he claims fed him politically correct fluff and was responsible for his poor catechesis as a child, and the priests in attendance with disgust - as though he thought himself superior to the clergy (who in his mind are clearly heterodox, if not heretics).

This man was young when Father left our parish, so it is likely that he never realized, or at least does not remember, the orthodoxy and fearlessness with which this priest preached the faith. He does not remember the fiddleback chasubles which, until I left my home parish, I thought were used at every church. He was unaware of the devotion with which which Father celebrated the Sacraments, his faithfulness and fidelity to his priestly commitment, his unwillingness to mess with the prayers of the Mass, and the self-empyting sacrifices he made for his parishioners, and his lifelong vocation which began when Father was a very young child. Instead, he only remembers the Charismatic Masses, the willingness to let his parochial vicars experiment with the "latest fads" which were sure to engage the young people (most of which would cause Father to roll his eyes as he declared them as insipid), and his deep desire to engage the laity in parish ministry and the life of the Church. I have heard many traditionally minded Catholics describe Father as being soft. "He should have been tougher", "he should have refused Sacraments to those he deemed unworthy", "he should have put his foot down unweildingly and made it clear that he didn't care what his parishioners thought" - "he should have made it clear that he was the boss."

There were times when he did all those things, but for the most part, he was a priest of gentleness and compassion. A good shepherd, who loathed needing to be harsh, and always sought to be the gentle, welcoming face of Christ. He always saw every person who came to the Church for assistance as a soul to be welcomed and loved and he truly believed that love and compassion would draw that person to Christ far better than a harsh rebuke - the rebukes were saved for other times.

Father was raised and ordained in what is now called the Extraordinary Form and celebrated the Sacraments for the first decade of his priesthood in that manner. He would often speak about both the beauty and the imperfections of the Traditional Latin Mass as well the excitement and confusion that surrounded Vatican II. He would never be called a traditionalist, but he was happy to see the Church returning to so much of what had fallen by the wayside after Vatican II. In his last years, we spoke often about his theological opinions and even after knowing him for so many years, I was often surprised by his traditional views which I did not know he held as well as the progressive views he held. Through these conversations, I came to see where a many of my own opinions came from and why people always fail when they try to fit me into their stereotypical theological box.

You don't have to agree with everything a priest does and says, and there are often plenty of times when criticism is warranted, but we must never lose sight of the innate dignity of the character of the priesthood which is present on the soul of every priest and always show honor to the priest. As St. John Chrystostom wrote "he who honors a priest, honors Christ, and he who insults a priest, insults Christ." 

“What a priest unites in himself is what tears him apart. At every moment of his life he must answer two callings and entirely satisfy each of them without ever sacrificing either . . .. Transcendent yet incarnate; here is that same fundamental dualism which . . . constitutes the mystery of the Church and the paradox of Christian humanism.”

Cardinal Suhard

I have known faithful priests and unfaithful priests, orthodox priests and heterodox priests, priests who are liturgical masters and priests who are liturgical nightmares, but one thing always remains: they are deserving of respect because of their priesthood. We should pray for them all, offer support to the good and faithful, and offer direction to the troubled. We must be patient and forgiving of their failings, even when they anger us and never place ourselves in the position as the judge of their souls always remembering that they are consecrated to God and the Sacraments come to us through their hands. Although there are a few who are truly bad, the vast majority are good men who are doing the best they can with what they have to work with in their own human fraility.

I will leave you with this quote:  

"You must never forget that priests are, and that they remain, men.

God does not perform a miracle to wrest them from the human state.

The priesthood does not of itself give a person the power to do everything or to excel in everything. It is important to remember this lest you fall into a very old error . . . that of dehumanizing the priesthood and consequently of setting the priest outside of ordinary life.

That does great harm for by thus isolating him, as unbelievers do, to the exclusive realm of ceremonies . . . he is deprived in good part of his reason for being. If men refuse to pass through him, he no longer can be, at least fully, their mediator."
Cardinal Suhard


 Jesus, Savior of the world, sanctify Thy priests and sacred ministers.

Mourning With Abandon

One of the benefits of being Portuguese is the ability to grieve with abandon. It is commonly accepted and even expected. This grief does not cause shame on the mourner or an uncomfortable feeling in those nearby as they look for a quick exit. Rather, it draws the onlookers to compassion as they approach and offer comfort. It is reflected in the culture and particularly in the music.



Here is a translation of the lyrics to the fado song “Grito”(The Scream) which is posted above

Silence!
From the silence, I make a scream
All of my body hurts
Let me cry a little.

From shadow to shadow
There is a heaven…it’s so collected
From shadow to shadow
I have lost my direction

Oh sky!
Here I am without the light
Here I am wiithout a star
I cry more

When I try to follow it
And I,
whom the sun has forgotten
the one the world has lost

I only cry now
Because the dead no longer cry
Loneliness!
Even this is always with me

Always as my companion
A deep bitterness
Oh loneliness,
you, who were scorpion

Oh loneliness,
You have bitten the head.
Goodbye
I have already gone far beyond this life already

From what I had already set
I am sorrowful shadow
Leaning against a wall.
Goodbye

Life which is so hard.
Come death which takes so long
Oh, how I hurt
the loneliness is like insanity.

These sentiments are very different from what I have seen at so many "American" funerals where grief is expected to be neat, clean and moderate. You know, the "grieving without smearing my mascara" where people tell you to "be strong" when you are really dying inside. To me, that feels so unnatural and even unhealthy because it is a denial of the truth. It also isolated the mourner and prevents him from getting the support which is so deeply needed.

One of the things that was the most comforting to me was that I was able to give into my grief at my dear friend's recent funeral was that I did not have to put on the “happy or brave or whatever face”, but I could drown myself in the moment without distraction and grieve freely. I will admit to breaking down into a wet ragdoll at the wake service as the casket was closed and several times during the funeral Mass only to find other mourners whom I knew, but were not as close to my friend as I gathered around me and literally giving me their shoulders to cry on. They understood the intensity of our friendship and so also understood the intensity of my grief.

Even a week later, although the pain is decreasing, it is far from gone. Healing takes time and we cannot force it to happen before it’s time, but this grief does not mean that I do not have faith or that I am despairing – it simply means that someone whom I loved is now missing from my earthly life and that causes a pain which is far more than a metaphor. It is the real physical pain of grief. A broken heart is called that because it perfectly describes the physical sensation which accompanies a great loss. This must not be denied.

The song does a good job of describing the feelings of deep and early grief. Those feelings and thoughts which rush to us in the silence - to the point where we want to be alone and quiet even though the silence draws out the pain. We walk in darkness and even though we know that heaven is waiting to recieve our loved ones, we are lost in the darkness and cannot see our way. We know we are in darkness and we are searching for the light. It can feel as though the world has abandoned us and God has forgotten us because we cannot see beyond our own grief. The lonliness never goes away and even when we appear to be going about as usual, the pain and the anger remain. The poison flows through us like the bite of a scorpion and we can lose sight of hope. We long to be with our loved ones again and for the pain to cease and it can truly feel as though we are losing our minds.

However, as Catholics, the story does not end there. As the Scriptures tell us, “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (Thess 4:13-14). This hope allows for the time of grief described in the song to pass and for healing to begin. I know that I will see my friend again and we will always have a deep and abiding connection because I will pray for him always and I know that he will be watching out for me from Heaven just as he always did on earth. Even so, a piece of me will be missing until we are together with God.

The Ministry of the Congregation

It seems that most Catholics have forgotten about the ministry of the congregation. We have become so obsessed with "doing" something at Mass that just being at Mass is seemingly considered insignificant.

Last night my husband and I had dinner at a very nice little Portuguese restaurant. It is a family owned place where the tables are placed as close as possible to each other in order to fit as many people as possible into the restaurant. Towards the end of our dinner a party of four was seated on the side of us. They entered into a long, and loud conversation about a funeral. Apparently the mother of one of the women had recently died. While I did not try to listen on their conversation, given that she was sitting close enough for me to touch her, it was hard to not overhear. A few of the quotes that caught me attention were, "It was so nice, every grandchild had something to do during the Mass. I didn't want them to just sit there."

But that isn't why I am writing this post. The next quote is, "My grandaughter sang for the Mass. I couldn't believe it when I heard her. I knew she had a nice voice, but I didn't think she could really sing. I was shocked that she was so good. I only asked her because I didn't want her to be the only one without something to do".

Comment #1) Simply having a "nice voice" doesn't make someone qualified to sing at Mass.
Comment #2) If you didn't think she was good, you shouldn't have asked her to sing.
Comment #3) What's wrong with being part of the congregation?
Comment #4) No one is supposed to "just sit there" at Mass. They are supposed to pray and respond.

Yes, it is nice when family members can perform certain functions during the Mass, but I don't understand the obsession families have with getting everyone involved. Especially when they are putting them in roles where they are unprepared and unqualified. Personally, I am tired of funerals where "my sister's friend's daughter's friend's cousin with a really nice voice" comes to sing. Usually the person doesn't have a nice voice and many times they can barely sing on key. In addition, they seldom know the hymns and sometimes ask me to teach it to them. Add to that the "singers" who are close family members such as grandchildren who start crying in the middle of the hymn and it's a recipe for disaster.

My advice to everyone is: leave the funeral music to the professionals.

I am lucky that my parish has a policy on visiting musicians. They MUST be employed as liturgical musicians in a Catholic parish, and I MUST get a bench fee. Oh, and I do check up on them. However, even with that policy, a few still slip by. People claim to be employed in parishes when they are not and I have even had priests lie and tell me that certain people are employed when they are simply substandard choir members or not even attached to the parish in any way.

So, what is the deal with the obsession with "doing something"? I think we have focused so much on the ministry of lector, cantor, EMHC, etc, while we ignored the ministry of the congregation. In essence we have set ourselves up to literally preach to the choir. The congregation does not just sit there. They have an active role in the Mass. They sing the hymns which are appropriate to them, they respond to the prayers of dialogue, the proclaim the acclamations, most importantly they like everyone else in the Mass, they worship the Lord in Word and Sacrament. So much for just sitting there.

To all of you who make up the congregation, you are needed. Don't let anyone think you are just sitting there.

On The Decline of the Funeral Homily

Followers of this blog will be aware of my fondness for a certain theology professor, Fr. David Lewis Stokes. Fr. Stokes recently wrote an article for the Providence Journal which has been picked up by newspapers across the country. The topic was how the decline of the funeral portrays our changing view of death.

Only Fr. Stokes could make the analogy that we view death as a cruise ship and heaven as "the predetermined destination of a cruise ship".

Of all the elephants galumphing around our culture’s living room, none is more significant than the change in our rhetoric of death. By this I mean the metaphors and similes by which we speak of the dead.

You have only to listen to a funeral homily, squirm through a eulogy, or read “verses” offered in memoriam to realize that there has occurred a seismic shift in our cultural imagination. Heaven now lies before us devoid of geography. Death has ceased to be a drama.

I’m not suggesting that our fascination about “spirits” and the “spirit-world” has diminished. Far from it. The trend of TV shows about angels, etc., reveals that this fascination with the “beyond” flourishes. Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife remains a bestseller. You have only to drive through a suburban neighborhood to see how Americans have transformed even Halloween into a bizarre kind of dia de los muertos.

To name the specific elephant in question, let me be blunt: However fascinated most Americans are in the “afterlife,” the fact remains that those grand themes, once the raison d’etre of mainline churches and pulpits — that is, death, judgment, heaven and hell — have vanished from the very religious communities that first articulated them. They are just plain gone. Preachers and theologians, politicians and toastmasters may trot out the occasional words — but now for ornamentation, not out of any necessity.

To understand just how dramatic this shift in our rhetoric, consider three examples. When a dying John Donne crawled into his pulpit in 1631, he preached a sermon entitled “Death’s Duel.” What makes it one of the greatest sermons in the English language is its rhetorical force. It is an explosion of metaphors and images of incredible specificity. Donne rendered life as a perilous journey and death as our foe “even from the womb.” He left his congregation in no doubt that each individual’s appointment with death is the most serious engagement in life.

When John Bunyan’s stalwart Christian of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) finally reached sight of the Celestial City, he finds himself plunged neck-deep into a river of dread. “And . . . a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him.” There was no immediate entrÉ into heavenly bliss. Heaven was a city to be won after arduous struggle, not the predetermined destination of a cruise ship.

As late as 1865 Cardinal Newman could publish The Dream of Gerontius, a dialogue between a dying man, angels and the demonic, which became something of a Victorian bestseller. Far from being a pious bit of Catholic triumphalism, he rendered death as no less than “this emptying out of each constituent / And natural force, by which I come to be.” The poem expresses a dread of death worthy of Dante or even Jean Paul Sartre.

Contrast these with the following contemporary tropes — gleanings typical of American pulpit: “Tom may be gone, but he will live on in our hearts.” “Aunt Bertha is in a better place.” “After years of hardship, Uncle Fred is finally home.” “We don’t know why Sally was taken from us so young, but someday we will.” Or, my own favorite, proclaimed over a woman who had made the lives of her children and grandchildren absolute hell, “For Edith the great symphony of life continues now among the stars.”

I have no doubt that many people have found comfort in such statements. The significant thing, though, is that compared with the specific rhetoric of a Donne, Bunyan or Newman, these tropes refer us ultimately to ... well, uh ... nothing.

They point to a landscape without topography or content. They imply that a human life is not so much a drama to be acted with the utmost ethical seriousness but a pleasant odor that will eventually dissipate. The only traditional image that seems to have hung on is that when we “pass” we enter into a bright white light. But within this light ... who can say? (Frankly, heaven for me has always been autumnal and filled with deep shade.)

But why should it matter? We forget. How a society renders death and the “beyond” says everything about how it renders life and the here-and-now. The ways in which we picture what happens to the dead determine the ways in which we picture our own lives — the ways in which we engage in ethical reflection.

A life pictured as a cruise that will encounter the occasional storm is very different from one whose destination is pictured as fraught with demands, uncertainties, and the abiding shadow of possible moral failure.

The reason that most mainline churches have ended up focused on politics or sexual expression or “an aesthetic experience,” is simple. Without a rhetoric of the “beyond,” what else is there to talk about?

And the reason that sustained ethical reflection is scarce among most theologians is obvious. Now that life’s drama has no final act of any depth, life itself cannot but be pictured as one discrete scene after another.

Sadly, our modern dilemma is that we cannot return to a lost rhetoric without making it artificial. Those well-meaning preachers and speakers who try to “follow an antique drum” have come to seem to me about as “genuine” as a costumed guide at some colonial theme park.

No doubt we may rediscover the rich and mysterious topography of the “beyond.” But if we do our rhetoric will be decidedly different.

Poets and novelists, painters and artists, as well as the itinerant mystic, are always stumbling into it. Just don’t look for it to come from the American pulpit.