Annual Mass for Deceased Paulists

Shortly before her death at the old Roman port city of Ostia in 387, St. Monica said to her son, St. Augustine: “Lay this body anywhere, and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be” (Augustine, Confessions, IX, 11).

At least here in the northern hemisphere, thoughts about the end come quite naturally at this time of the year - as the sun rises a little later every morning and sets a little earlier every afternoon.  Amid withered leaves and barren branches, there is a melancholy sense of time passing by - as yet another year draws to a close. In our Catholic tradition, the month of November is dedicated in a special way to remembering those who have died, and to praying for the departed who may still be in the process of being purified from the effects of their sins.  Just as remembering the dead is an important human duty, so too praying for the dead is an important Christian one. When we remember those who have died, we acknowledge our common humanity with them. For, like us, they lived and loved and worked, succeeded and failed, hoped and dreamed – both for themselves and for their families. And, like them, we too must eventually die. Our Christian faith, however, redefines for us the universal experience of dying and unites us with those who have gone before us not just in our common humanity but in what the Apostles’ Creed calls “the communion of saints.”

Recalling his early years and the period preceding his conversion, the founder of the Paulist Fathers, Servant of God Isaac Hecker wrote: “When, in 1843, I first read in the catechism of the Council of Trent the doctrine of the communion of saints, it went right home. It alone was to me a heavier weight on the Catholic side of the scales than the best historical argument which could be presented.” [“Dr. Brownson and Catholicity,” Catholic World, 1887]. Hecker wrote that in 1887, almost at the end of his life. Would that we all had such a strong, life-long appreciaiton of the communion of saints!

Conscious of the powerful bond that links us all together through space and time, a bond unbroken even by death, the Church continually invites the living to remember the dead and to intercede on their behalf, even as the saints in heaven intercede for us who are still on earth. Today, we Paulists remember in a special way those who lived together in our religious community – those we were privileged to know personally and the many more who preceded us and whose legacy we have been privileged to continue. We pray that, with the wise ones of whom the Prophet Daniel spoke, having devoted themselves in life to leading many to justice, they too may be like the stars forever [Daniel 12:3]. We pray that they - and all the faithful departed - may be purified from the effects of their sins and live forever with the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the angels and saints in the kingdom whose cause they sought to serve on earth.

Homily for the Annual Mass for Deceased Paulists, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 3, 2012.

The Souls

Yesterday, All Saints Day, the Church celebrated that part of the communion of saints traditionally known as “the Church Triumphant” – not just the Church’s many officially recognized saints, but all those holy ones, known and unknown, who have attained the goal for which we on earth still strive. Living now forever with God, the saints help us by uniting their prayers with ours, thus uniting their intercession for us before God.

Today, All Souls Day, our focus is rather on all the rest of those who have died in God’s mercy and who were pleasing to God at their passing from this life. Every day, at every Mass, but especially today, we pray that they may be welcomed into the light of God’s face and be given kind admittance to his kingdom, along with the saints already in glory.

Last summer while vacationing in New York, I visited Gate of Heaven Cemetery where 2 of my grandparents, an uncle, an aunt, my father, and most recently one of my sisters are all buried. Remembering is a profoundly human activity. To remember our relatives and friends who have died is to acknowledge the importance of their lives - and the common humanity we share with them. To remember those who have gone before us in faith is to celebrate the different ways in which the grace of God touched and transformed each one of them - and the hope we share with them.

We also remember today all those parishioners who have been part of the life of our parish community, who quite literally built this parish - if in no other way than by virtue of their personal presence. The Parish Death Registers record the names of those, whose funerals have been celebrated here in our parish. What an extensive human history those names represent! Some, we confidently hope, are already among those saints honored yesterday, while others may still be undergoing a process of purification, prior to their entrance into the full joy of heaven, and so may be the beneficiaries of our intercessory prayer on their behalf. What a wonderful network of holy souls whom we hope today to help by our prayers - and who in turn we hope are praying for us!

All those people, most of whom none of us have ever met! Today, however, we remember them all.

They have all gone before us in faith, in hope, and in love. And today, we remember them all.

Homily for All Souls Day, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 2, 2012.

The Saints

In November 1887, the founder of the Paullist Fathers, Isaac Thomas Hecker, wrote: “When, in 1843, I first read in the catechism of the Council of Trent the doctrine of the communion of saints, it went right home. It alone was to me a heavier weight on the Catholic side of the scales than the best historical argument which could be presented. … The body made alive by such truths ought to be of divine life and its origin traceable to a divine establishment.”
 

By 1887, some 44 years had passed since Hecker’s encounter with the Catechism and its exposition of Article IX of the Apostles Creed, “I believe in … the communion of saints,” but the passage of time had done nothing to dull the impact of what he had found there.  Appropriately so, since the Communion of Saints celebrates the bonds that connect us - not only across space, but even more profoundly across time. Uniting past and present, it permeates the Church’s worship and punctuates the Church’s calendar with its many feasts and memorials of saints, culminating today in this great annual celebration in honor of all the Saints. All Saints Day celebrates in particular that part of the communion of saints known as “the Church Triumphant” – not just the thousands of saints officially recognized by the Church, but all the holy men and women, known and unknown, who have already attained the goal for which we here still strive. Living now forever with God and praising him for ever in heaven, the saints - that great multitude from every nation, race, people, and tongue of whom we heard in today’s 1^st reading [Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14] help us by interceding on our behalf, uniting their prayers with ours. In the words of the familiar hymn: O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle; they in glory shine; yet all are one within your great design.

The regular reference to and invocation of the saints, not just today but in every Mass, signifies our communion, as the struggling Church on earth, with the triumphant Church in heaven, and reminds us that the Church’s mission in this world is to mirror (however imperfectly) that heavenly community and so transform the world - with love and forgiveness - according to the hope that is Jesus Christ’s great gift to his Church and the Church’s gift to the world.

As one of the seasonal turning points in the ancient Celtic calendar, November 1 was once the beginning not only of winter but of a new year, the eve of which was a frightening in-between time when the spirits of the dead were thought to roam about and possibly even try to haunt their old homes.  Bonfires and jack-o-lanterns (originally carved out of turnips) were part of the defense of the living against assaults from the other world. The celebration of all the Saints on November 1 represented the Christianization of that old seasonal holiday - a celebration of Christianity’s triumph over paganism and of Christ’s victory (as exemplified in the saints) over the demonic forces, which had hitherto held people in fear.

Deliberately celebrated on this day after Halloween, All Saints Day celebrates the hope that replaces fear, exemplified in the lives of the saints and experienced by us in our continued communion with them – a communion which challenges that great opponent of human hope, death, by connecting us not only with the saints already in heaven but with all who have gone before us with the sign of faith. 

Homily for All Saints Day, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 1, 2012

Hurricane Sandy

100 years ago, a great floating city, the "Unsinkable" Titanic, filled up with ice-cold ocean water and sank. This week, my hometown, the great city by the sea, New York, was inundated by its own unprecedented flood of ocean water. As I write, the city's essential arteries - the subway tunnels, the underground power lines and steam pipes - remain flooded. The Titanic tragedy was a man-made calamity, exacerbated by perfect natural conditions (a moon-less night and calm sea). Hurricane Sandy was the ultimate natural disaster, a "perfect storm," totally transcending human control, although ameliorated by effective emergency planning and activist government at both local and federal levels.
 

Watching the images of disaster unfold on TV this week, one naturally worried about one's family and friends. So, during the storm itself, I called the Paulist Mother House in mid-town Manhattan - relatively unscathed compared to those in more exposed areas of the city or the Jersey coast. My relatives scattered throughout Westchester, Manhattan, Long Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all lost electric power, but are otherwise OK. 
 

September 11 made New Yorkers acutely conscious of vulnerability and interdependence. This apocalypse, however, came not from an act of war but rather weather. One of the reasons we all like to talk about the weather and complain about it is because we can't control it. It's just there. At best, most of the time, we comfort ourselves by taking shelter from nature's fury. Hurricane Sandy has reminded us how ephemeral our shelters are, how vulnerable the structures we rely upon, how interconnected and dependent we are on one another, how helpless we are alone, how desperately we need government to keep us together and marshal our common resources for the common good.
 

Sandy's wind, rain, and snow continue to spread north and west and south. Even at this distance from the coast, we see snow in the Smoky Mountains and rain here in the valley. No one is immune from nature's terror. Guns don't defend us, and profits sink under the floods. 

The Return of the Fanon

Now I’ll be the first to admit that this is something that interests only a very miniscule segment of the world’s population. And, compared to the impending Storm of the Decade or even our national election, I'll readily also admit  that it really ranks way down on the scale of ultimate importance. Still, I am happy to number myself among those who rejoice in Pope Benedict XVI’s recent restoration of the Fanon at Solemn Papal Mass at St. Peter’s. (The Pope wore it for the first time a week ago at the Mass for the canonization of seven new saints).

The use of the Fanon dates back at least to the 8^th century and was used continuously at solemn Papal Masses until the dismantling of the papal liturgy several decades ago. The Fanon is essentially a kind of circular shoulder-cape (kind of like a mozetta) worn by the pope alone, consisting of two pieces of white silk ornamented with narrow woven stripes of red and gold.

There are, to my mind, two good reasons to celebrate this restoration of the Fanon. The first is, simply put, tradition. All ritualized behavior - social, political, religious - incorporates aspects that are of limited or no present practical purpose, but which are retained simply because they signify continuity with the past. To be clear, there was certainly much that was good and beneficial in the late-20^th-century liturgical reforms, but a certain rationalistic tendency crept in along with the good and beneficial – a rationalistic tendency that evidenced little appreciation of what ritual really is.  In the end, of course, a totally rationalized liturgical ritual is inconceivable. Just as we still light candles on the altar, even though electric lighting is available, traditional actions (and vestments) from the past remain an important component of liturgy.

Of course, some inherited traditions do get changed over time and for good reasons. For example, the offensive omission of the Flectamus genua in the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews was rightly corrected by Pope Pius XII in 1955. But, when change is not really needed, then it is generally better not to change. That is because continuity itself has a social value – and nowhere more so than in the liturgy, in which we are being united with all the People of God, not only of every place, but of every time. Vestments, as the papal MC, Monsignor Guido Marini, is supposed to have said some years ago, “aim to underline the continuity of today's liturgical celebration with that which characterized the life of the church in the past."

So retaining (in this case restoring) the use of traditional attire highlights the continuity of the Roman Rite and symbolizes the Church’s present connection with the Church of ages past.

The second reason why I think the restoration of the Fanon is a good move is that it highlights the distinctiveness of papal liturgy. Another oddity of the late-20^th-century liturgical reforms was the tendency to assimilate papal ceremonial to ordinary pontifical ceremonial. Of course, the Pope is first and foremost a Bishop. So papal ceremonial should rightly be recognizable as indeed a case of pontifical ceremonial – but still a special case. A Papal Mass is not just a Pontifical Mass in a larger than usual venue with a larger than usual crowd and extra security! Pilgrims who attend a Papal Mass attend precisely because it is special (which is why they are willing to put up with all the security and other inconveniences which nowadays accompany such ceremonies). 

In this age of increasinlgy casual attire, we may perhaps be in danger of forgetting that how one dresses for an occasion says something significant about the importance of the occasion and about one's own understanding of one's role. It seems especially significant that the Fanon reappeared at a canonization - one of the most solemn and authoritative   papal acts. Distinctive papal vestments are one small, but observable addition which highlights the specialness of the papal office.