Friday Fish Fry and Stations

One of my more happy early childhood memories is of going regularly with my mother, many a Friday, to the fish market just off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. My immigrant grandparents had come from a Sicilian port city and appreciated good fish. So I ate lots of fish growing up (and a particularly tasty fish soup that my mother used to make). And at that time too Friday abstinence (the prohibition of meat on Fridays and certain other days in the Church's calendar - e.g., Christmas Eve) was one of those immemorial practices that seemed to have always been and always would be. But then in the 1960s came an unexpected change in Church law - one which Andrew Greeley recognized as a major mistake - and the familiar "Fish on Friday" practice of Friday abstinence became (except in Lent) a thing of the past in the United States. 

In 2011, the Bishops of England and Wales wisely restored the ancient practice of all-year Friday abstinence. They declared: “Every Friday is set aside by the Church as a special day of penance, for it is the day of the death of our Lord. The law of the Church requires Catholics to abstain from meat on Fridays, or some other form of food, or to observe some other form of penance laid down by the Bishops’ Conference. The Bishops [of England and Wales] wish to re-establish the practice of Friday penance in the lives of the faithful as a clear and distinctive mark of their own Catholic identity. It is important that all the faithful be united in a common celebration of Friday penance. Respectful of this, and in accordance with the mind of the whole Church, the Bishops’ Conference wishes to remind all Catholics in England and Wales of the obligation of Friday Penance. The Bishops have decided to re-establish the practice that this should be fulfilled by abstaining from meat. ...In all these ways we unite our sacrifices to the sacrifice of Christ, who gave up his very life for our salvation."

Anyway, we ate lots of good fish and cooked it well in my Italian-American childhood home. But it wasn't until much later that I encountered the American Catholic  "Fish Fry." I can recall exactly when it was. It was 1977, and I was a newly hired Assistant Professor at a midwestern university, where the faculty dining room served a "fish fry" (fried cod, french fires, and cole slaw) for lunch every Friday. Much more recently, however, I have come to experience the Friday evening "Fish Fry" as a standard Lenten parish activity. So, like many other parishes in many parts of the country, we will have a "Fish Fry" before Stations of the Cross this evening and every Friday during Lent - thanks to our wonderfully active local Council of the Knights of Columbus.

 

If my Friday "Fish Fry" experience came relatively late in life, the association of Lenten Fridays with the Stations of the Cross goes all the way back to grade school. In those days (the mid-late 1950s), practically the entire parish school would attend the Stations at the end of the school day, filling up the big upper church (or the even bigger lower) church every Friday afternoon in Lent. The priest, accompanied by a crossbearer and two acolytes with lighted candles would walk from station to station and lead us in Saint Alphonsus Liguori's meditations and prayers (after which the service would conclude - as almost all "popular devotions" did in those days - with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament). For many of us, I think, the best part was singing a verse of the Stabat Mater as the priest proceeded from one station to the next. What made it especially fun was how we seemed to sing that hymn as mournfully and lugubriously as possible!

 

A "Fish Fry" can also be lots of fun, and it can certainly contribute enormously to helping to build parish community, itself a significant contribution to the New Evangelization.

But above all Lent would hardly seem like Lent without the Stations! 

"Devotional exercises which are harmonious with the Lenten season are to be encouraged, for example the Stations of the Cross. These devotional exercises should help foster the liturgical spirit with which the faithful can prepare themselves for the celebration of Christ's Paschal Mystery" (Paschales Solemnitatis, 1988).

Lent's Prosaic Thursdays

After the crowds and intense interest in Ashes yesterday, Lent today starts to settle down into whatever will be its normal pattern for the next six weeks. In Rome, today's station church is San Giorgio in Velabro. Located in a section of the city associated with the mythic infancy of Romulus and Remus, Rome's founders, the church itself has been associated with the soldier saint and martyr George since the 8th century. (The photo on the left was taken there after the early-morning English-language station Mass from two years ago.)

The connection with the soldier and martyr Saint George may account for what was the traditional Gospel account for today - Matthew's story of the Roman centurion in Capernaum who entreated Jesus to heal his seriously sick servant and whose famous words, Lord, I am not worthy, we recite at every Mass before Communion. The Missal of Paul VI broke with the ancient Lenten lectionary and assigned different daily readings to many of the Lenten weekdays, without regard to the traditional stations. So today, instead of Matthew's story of the centurion, we will be hearing Luke 9:22-25 - Jesus' first prediction of his passion, which is actually perhaps even more appropriate at the beginning of Lent (and one whose image of spiritual combat the soldier and martyr Saint George himself would likely identify with at least as much as with the story of the centurion). 

After, as it were, letting his disciples in on what was going to happen to him, Jesus in today's Gospel goes on to say to all: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”

The distinctive "daily" in Jesus' challenge to follow him through self-denial changes what might otherwise sound like a once-in-a-lifetime giving oneself over to Jesus into an ongoing, continued commitment to discipleship experienced in the daily routine of the here and now. Undoubtedly, the challenge of discipleship can call for dramatic, dragon-slaying heroics at times, but more often it is experienced in the undramatic day-to-day struggle to align oneself with the will and plan of God. Hence, Lent lasts 40 days not just one. It's not just the poetic intensity of one Ash Wednesday but a lot of much more prosaic Thursdays.

Ashes

Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.
 

All over the Latin Christian world those words are being repeated today.  They will be said to the Pope himself when he receives his ashes this afternoon at the Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill, the ancient stational church for this day. (The photo on the left is from the 6:45 a.m. English-language stational Mass at Santa Sabina on Ash Wednesday two years ago, at which I concelebrated  to begin my unique Roman experience of Lent.)

 

Ash Wednesday remains one of the most popular days in the Church's calendar - this in spite of the fact that we live in a therapeutic age which prizes comfort and feeling good about oneself and whose therapeutic mentality has radically infected everything (even religion). Yet somehow, Ash Wednesday with its sobering message of the reality of human limits and its solemn challenge to repentance still works, still cuts through the poisonous political platitudes and psychobabble of our age to speak spiritual truth against the power of self-love.

So popular has Ash Wednesday become that many Protestant Churches now also administer ashes on this day. In some cities, some churches offer "Ashes to Go," giving ashes outdoors to accommodate those too busy or otherwise reluctant to come to church. While undoubtedly well intentioned, such efforts may run the risk of trivializing something precious - its preciousness attested to by its continuing attractiveness. After all, ashes are not an end in themselves. The point of receiving ashes is to respond to the call to repentance, something we must overcome our routine busy-ness or reluctance for.

Today, the Church invites us to take an honest and critical look at ourselves - at where we are, where we are going, where we would like to be going, and how to get there.

And so the Church prays today: O God, who are moved by acts of humility and respond with forgiveness to works of penance, lend your merciful ear to our prayers and in your kindness pour out the grace of your blessing on your servants who are marked with these ashes, that, as they follow the Lenten observances, they may be worthy to come with minds made pure to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of your Son. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

 

Democracy's Discontents

On this date, 225 years ago, the Constitution of the United States went into effect (which is why US Presidents used to be inaugurated on this day from 1793 through 1933). The constitution has, in many respects, stood the test of time - quite an accomplishment. Even so, all is anything but well around the world for constitutional democratic governance in this 21st century. Thus latest issue of The Economist has a special 6-page essay entitled "What's gone wrong with democracy?"  Its analysis is not novel, so much as it is a serious summation of what many have increasingly noted and commented on.

The article begins by noting that, although autocrats may be driven from office, viable democratic regimes seldom succeed them. This is in contrast to what seemed for a time to be a steady march of democratic advances in the late 20th century - Greece (19740), Spain (1975), Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985), Chile (1989), and the Central European democracies that were (re)born after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Even though 40% of the world's population, more people than ever before, live in countries that will hold free and fair elections this year, democracy's global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone into reverse."

To account for this, the authors suggest the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the rise of China. The former revealed fundamental weaknesses in the political systems of the West and their self-confidence, generating a corrosive cynicism instead. Meanwhile, China has proven false the old assumption that democracies do a better job of raising living standards. For many, the Chinese model may be quite attractive. The Chinese themselves seem to find it so. And they argue that democracy may be destroying america by institutionalizing gridlock, trivializing decision-making, and producing second-rate presidents. On the other hand, post-Soviet Russia, while hardly successful like China, has clearly evolved in an anti-democratic direction. And both the failed Iraq War and the failures of the "Arab Spring" have done much to discredit the promotion of democratization abroad.

All this has highlighted how complex democracy is - its dependence on institutions that must be built up over time and that also don't seem to be working as well as they should in places where they are in fact long established. Once again, there is the sad example of extreme polarization and gridlock in the U.S. And in Europe there is the cautionary tale of the increasingly undemocratic bureaucratic EU. And overwhelming everything is the ancient critique that seems to have come true that democratic electorates serve their short-term interests rather than the long-term good of their societies. Now that times have become hard, the conflict between the short-term interests of the present and investment in the future can no longer be avoided and is tearing at the heart of Western democratic societies - all further exacerbated by an increasingly corrosive cynicism about politics. Thus "dependency forces government to overexpand and overburden itself, while the disdain robs it of its legitimacy. Democratic dysfunction goes hand in hand with democratic distemper."

All of which suggests a need to return to the history and founding principles of democracy. There has been an excessive modern tendency to reduce democracy to elections, ignoring the larger political culture that needs to be in place (e.g., constitutionalism, limited government, limits on majority rule, etc.). 

The authors cite several positive examples of societies' trying to restrain their appetites - among them California's initiatives to counteract the consequences of its direct democracy ballot initiatives and it move to open primaries and reapportionment by commission.  There is, they recognize, a danger in delegating power away from the people. but they also argue that "Self-denying rules can strengthen democracy by preventing people from voting for spending policies that produce bankruptcy and social breakdown and by protecting minorities from persecution."

Does that sound a lot like Aristotle and Polybius and the American Founders?

Seeking First the Kingdom of God

These last four Sundays before Lent, the gospel readings have been taken from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which was all about the “kingdom of God” and what it takes to be a committed citizen of that kingdom. When it comes to citizen ship in the kingdom of God, Jesus is quite exclusive: “No one can serve two masters.” No surprise there! Nor should we be surprised when Jesus singles out material wealth as the alternative attraction that can undermine our commitment to God’s kingdom. “You cannot serve God and mammon,” Jesus asserted, without much qualification or nuance.

Now obviously Jesus understood we all need material things – just to live, let alone to live well. In Jesus’ society, as in most societies for most of history, mot people were poor and most of their energy just went to making a living. Jesus and his disciples themselves depended on the generosity of others. And any number of Jesus’ parables praise hard-working people, whom Jesus proposes as a model for our religious life as well.

At the same time, we all know how corrupting wealth – particularly the preoccupation with wealth can be. The growing divide between the rich and everyone else, that is tearing apart the fragile fabric of our own society certainly illustrates this. 

Of course, this problem and concern about it have been with us for a long time. In a 4^th-century homily, appropriately entitled On Avarice, Saint Basil the Great challenged his hearers with these words: The bread that you possess belongs to the hungry. The clothes that you store in boxes belong to the naked. The shoes rotting by you belong to the bare-foot. The money that you hide belongs to anyone in need.

Basil’s challenging words – and Jesus’ own original words of warning – were not abstract or theoretical. They were – and are – addressed to all of us who aspire to be disciples, addressed directly and personally to all who would be citizens of the kingdom of God.

We hear similar language from Pope Francis, when he warns against a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Pope Francis continues: The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us. [EG 54].

Lent, which begins this Wednesday, has traditionally been a time to refocus on what matters most by re-calibrating our attitude toward so many of the things that, if we are not careful, can come to dominate and define us. Just to recall the three familiar Lenten practices, traditionally proposed and emphasized by the Church – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – already says so much about what Lent is all about.

Lent challenges us to focus on what is important – to put our preoccupation with wealth and other such things back in some perspective. We do this all the time – or at least try to, if we are reasonably sane and focused – in our ordinary activities, distinguishing what is of ultimate importance, what is of long-term value, from what is a short-term sideshow. Jesus wants us to do the same (and even more so) with what is most important – to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

 

Homily for the 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 2, 2014.