The Poet-Pastor

Two official State of Tennessee Historical Markers flank the front entrance to Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, TN. The first recalls the Civil War, when Summit Hill was the site of Union fortifications during the 1963 Battle of Knoxville. The other, on the corner of Vine and Walnut, honors Fr. Abram Joseph Ryan (1838-1886), the famous Catholic poet and Confederate patriot, who served as pastor of Immaculate Conception from 1865 to 1867. Across the street, the residential row houses at 415 West Vine are named “Ryan’s Row,” in the former pastor’s honor.

Ranked as perhaps only a minor American poet today, Fr. Ryan was widely read and his poetry highly esteemed throughout the South in the post-Civil War period, and his religious poetry was very popular among Catholics. He himself, however, professed a rather modest view of his efforts: “These verses (which some friends call by the higher title of Poems – to which appellation the author objects) were written at random – off and on, here, there, anywhere – just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry.” However hurried, his output was impressive. As pastor, I have inherited a nicely leather-bound 1908 collection of my famous predecessor’s complete poems, and I count some 131 poems (a few of them posthumously published), some short, but many quite lengthy. The overwhelming majority of Fr. Ryan’s poems are religious in inspiration.

After a period of distinguished service as a chaplain in the Confederate Army, Fr. Ryan came to Immaculate Conception as pastor in 1865, shortly before Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, the event that inspired what was perhaps his most famous poem, The Conquered Banner. Reprinted repeatedly and memorized by Southern school children, that poem made him a household name in the post-war South. Fr. Ryan gave an original hand-written draft of the poem to the Ricardi family of Immaculate Conception Parish. After remaining in the family for several generations, it is now in the historical collection of the Knoxville Public Library.

See How Differently They Do Things!

On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully [Luke 14:1].

Now what do you suppose they were watching for? Were they like modern journalists, on the lookout for something they could trap him in, what we would nowadays label a “gaffe”? In fact, they were so busy observing Jesus, they probably didn’t notice that he was watching them, that he was noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table. They must have been taken aback a bit when Jesus took the opportunity to give them a lesson in manners.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth [Act 3, Scene 4], when Macbeth welcomes the various lords, he assumes that they all know who ranks where, and so says to them: You know your own degrees; sit down. Jesus, however, chose instead to offer alternative advice, based on the Old Testament Book of Proverbs: Claim no honor in the king’s presence, nor occupy the place of the great; for its better that you be told, “Come up closer,” than that you be humbled before the prince. [Proverbs 25:6-7]

Now, believe it or not, I actually know someone who did as Jesus suggested (whether or not that was his actual intention) – and it worked!

It was 17 summers ago when I was in abroad. The mayor of a major American city was visiting, and the local mayor was holding a lunch in his honor, to which a certain American priest was invited. As he told the story, he wandered into the banquet room and just sat down at a table where there were several empty seats. No one seemed to notice or pay any particular attention to him, until suddenly someone came up to him and said: “Father, here you are. You’re supposed to be at the head table!” So he followed her up to the head table, all the while noticing how the very same people who had not noticed or paid any attention to him a few minutes before were now suddenly very interested in knowing who he was!

Knowing my friend, I suspect his modest behavior that day came quite naturally. That’s just who he is! Others may be more manipulative, exhibiting an externally humble pose, all the while expecting a contrary compliment from others. What we now fashionably call poor self-esteem might motivate some to minimize their accomplishments in the hope of being contradicted by someone who will give them the praise they think they deserve (but are afraid to claim for themselves). Of course, this can be a problem, if your poor self-esteem turns out to be accurate, if your humility is not contradicted, if, when you take the lowest place, no one says, “My friend, move up to a higher position.” Most of us, I suspect, might be rather reluctant to risk confirming that we do in fact belong down there in the lowest place. So frightening is that prospect for most of us that, rather than risk it, we willingly spend much of our lives playing the dangerous game of competing constantly for the next higher position.

Jesus, however, was not primarily giving his audience a lesson in manners. The kingdom of God, Jesus never seems to tire of trying to teach us, is about the complete reversal of all our ordinary expectations. So this ordinary lesson in manners served for Jesus as an extraordinary lesson to help us break through all those barriers and preoccupations which stand in our way, inhibiting us from becoming the people God wants us to be.

Typically in the gospels, when Jesus is a guest at someone’s home, Jesus the guest tends to take over and act as host. This incident is no exception. So Jesus, having instructed his audience on how to be a good guest, goes on to give advice on how to be a good host – advice which says something to us about what kind of host he himself is, and which tells about God’s behavior toward us and the imitation God is inviting as our response.

The gospel began by telling us that the people were observing Jesus carefully. In some ways, the tragedy of so much of our history has been how much and how often we as Jesus’ disciples have failed to observe him carefully - and having observed him to imitate him.

False humility make life a little easier and ease the way for certain relationships to be more successful. But the true humility of Jesus’ disciples has a new and priceless dimension of meaning, ever since Jesus himself has revealed the humility of God toward us and has invited us to imitate him in that.

Jesus’ advice becomes this challenge for all of us who call ourselves his disciples.

Can people look at us and say: “See how differently they do things”?

Homily at Immaculate Conception, Knoxville, August 29, 2010.

Mother and Son

In the Roman Calendar, August 27 and 28 celebrate the most famous and influential mother-son combination (after Mary and Jesus) in the history of Christianity - St. Monica (331-387) and her illustrious son, St. Augustine (354-430), brilliant rhetorician, spiritual seeker, convert, Bishop of Hippo, and Doctor of the Church.

Both were natives of Roman North Africa. Monica's husband and Augustine's father, Patricius, was a small landowner and member of the town council, a pagan who became a Christian only late in life. Religiously, it was Monica, a devout, life-long Catholic, totally steeped in popular piety (as opposed to intellectual theologizing), who was the more influential. Everything we know about Monica comes from Augustin's Confessions, which minimizes Patricus' infuence and highlights Monica's. As Paul Tillich pointed out, in his A History of Christian Thought, Monica's influence on Augustine meant the inlfuence of Christian traditon. Tillich compared Augustine with Plato, who had written out of the traditon of the Athenian gentry to which he belonged, but which was coming to an end, whereas with Augustine the tradition was new. What we call Augustine's "conversion" involved a return to the religion of his childhood. Thus, Karl Adam (Saint Augustine: the Odyssey of his Soul) described Augustine's youthful religious conflicts as a fight against the Church already in his heart.

Despite her piety, Monica was a typical mother in her ambitions for her brilliant son, which was why no early marriage was arranged for him lest his upward mobility be hindered - something Aguustine regretted and criticized his parents for, believing that marriage might have helped him in his struggle against concupiscence. As a mature Catholic, Augustine appreciated the value of social institutions like marriage, which serve human well-being and direct it toward humanity's ultimate goal. As a bishop, one of his social tasks would be to arrange marriages for those entrusted to him, and he showed his support for marriage as a social institution by refusing legacies which would have benefited the church materially but would have gone against the norms of inheritance.

Perhaps even more important than not arranging a marriage for him was his parents' failure to have him baptized, because of the curious custom in North Africa at that time of delaying baptism. This would be an important lesson Augustine would take to heart later in life when he had to combat other rigoristic tendencies in the Church and strenuously advocated infant baptism.

The result was that, although a catechumen, Augustine was a anything but a committed Catholic Christian, when he left home at 16 to begin his brilliant career, during which he sampled the leading intellectual and religious ideas of his time, resisting in his intellectual sophistication the idea that the truth might lie in the religion of his mother. Yet his mother remained a presence, eventually even following him to the Imperial Capital, Milan, where both came under the influence of the aristocratic bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. It was Ambrose who finally bapitzed Augustine at East 387, bringing Auugustine's "spiritual search" to its proper end.

The transition from Augstine as seeker to Augustine as man of the Church also marked the end of Monica's presence in his life. Her role having been completed, as she herself asknowedged, she died at Ostia some months after Augustine's baptism. In one of their last conversations, Monica said to her son, "I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer: to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect, for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to become his servant" (Confessions, 9:10).

St. Monica is remembered in the Church as a model of virtuous motherhood and persevering prayer. Her son went on to become the leading figure in Latin Christianity's theological tradition, and is recalled today as Doctor gratiae, the "Doctor of grace."

St. Bartholomew's Day

In the Latin Church, today is observed as the feast of the apostle Bartholomew, traditionally identified with the Nathaniel mentioned in John’s Gospel. (The Eastern Churches generally celebrate St. Bartholomew on June 11; the Copts on January 1). He is traditionally supposed to have preached the Gospel in Ethiopia and possibly India and to have been martyred in Armenia. According to legend, he was flayed alive, hence his portrayal in Michelangelo's Last Judgment holding his own skin in his hand.

As if that weren’t gruesome enough, a number of famous historical calamities have occurred on this day. In A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 410, Alaric and his Goths sacked the city of Rome. In 1572, there occurred the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which some 70,000 Huguenots are supposed to have been slain. In 1814, the British burned the White House and the Capitol in Washington, DC, presumably in retaliation for the American attack on the Parliament of Upper Canada (Ontario) in York (Toronto). And in 1992, Hurricane Andrew did record damage in Florida.

It has not been a completely calamitous day, however. On this day in 1981, I (and seven others) entered the Paulist Novitiate at Mount Paul, Oak Ridge, NJ, (see photo above), and thus embarked upon an unparalleled experience of personal and spiritual growth, thanks to which I am here today as a Paulist, a priest, and a pastor. So, thank you, Saint Bartholomew!

The Narrow Gate

Since the 1870s, the Paulist Fathers have maintained a summer vacation home in the Adirondack Mountain Region at Lake George, NY. Our seminarians still go there, for example, after they finish their summer assignments, for a short stay before starting school again at the end of August. In the early years, before the Sacred Heart parish church was built, the Paulists celebrated Sunday Mass for the local Catholic community in a public building in Lake George Village. One Sunday, so the story goes, some unfriendly neighbors locked the door to prevent Fr. Hecker from celebrating the Mass there. Hecker, however, found an unlocked ground floor window, opened it, and climbed in, followed by his assembled congregation. Supposedly, he then took as his theme for his sermon, Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel [Luke 13:22-30], “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”

For the past several Sundays (prior to the Assumption), the Sunday gospels have highlighted Jesus’ instructions on the type of life his disciples should lead and the serious choices they may be required to make. So we should hardly be surprised that somebody finally asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” This was not some abstract academic discussion on a theoretical level about the total number of those who will make it into the kingdom. This was a practical, personal question about what is ultimately the most important thing of all – salvation. Having listened carefully to Jesus’ instructions and having felt the weight of his demands, we can easily empathize with the questioner and understand his concern.

Jesus was an expert at not answering a question directly and instead shifting the focus to the person asking the question. So, instead of entering into a debate about numbers and the salvation of others, Jesus focused on the questioner himself. He told him what to do: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” Strive, Jesus says, using a word that suggests intense energy, the intense energy of an athletic contest, for example. Even more to the point, do it now. The time to enter that narrow gate, the time to get with the program (as one might say it today) is now. We have only a limited amount of time in life. When it is over, we may well wish we had used out time better, used it to focus our priorities on the things that matter most. We may wish we had entered when we had the time, when the door was till open; but by then the door will have been locked, and it will be too late to change our minds.

As the 15th century author of The Imitation of Christ – perhaps the most widely read Christian spiritual book after the Bible – famously expressed it: “do not put off your good deeds until after your death … It is better to provide for yourself ahead of time and to send some good deeds before you … Now the time is very precious … Therefore study so as to live now that at the hour of death you may rejoice rather than fear.”

The key point in all this, of course, is that, however narrow the gate may be, as of now it is still open – open for us, open in fact for all sorts of people to squeeze through, from the east and the west and from the north and the south, says Jesus, echoing the astounding image in today’s 1st reading [Isaiah 66:18-21] in which the Lord says he will come to gather nations of every language. Just imagine all those Gentiles being brought to Jerusalem! Imagine Gentiles being transformed by God himself into priest and Levites!

Isaiah’s prophecy invites us to hear today’s Gospel in its fullness. The fact that the gate is narrow is a challenge, to be sure, but not a menace. We can, of course, come to feel menaced and so give in to discouragement.

Of course, if I think it’s all about me, then the gate is certainly going to appear much too narrow - much too narrow for the likes of me to squeeze through on my own. But, of course, it’s not all about me – or about anyone of us! It’s about God’s great plan for the salvation of the world. It’s about what God is doing – and is going to do. And it’s about my – and your, and his, and her, and our – wanting to be part of it, wanting to focus our lives on what matters most, here and now, day by day.

The opposite of despair, of course, is presumption, the perncious idea that one can just demand entry as if by right, no effort required, no response in return to God whose love alone opens the gate for us. We will avoid both despair and presumption when we appreciate that the effort involved, all our striving for salvation with the intense energy of an athletic competition, is, in this case, a team sport. Note that in Isaiah’s prophecy, people don’t just show up from all the nations. They are brought in by others sent out to get them, missionaries proclaiming God’s glory among the nations. We walk through the narrow gate together. And, as long as we are willing to help one another - and are willing to be helped in turn – that gate will prove wide enough.

Homily at Immaculate Conception, Knoxville. August 22, 2010