Pompeii: Out of Time

 

One of the many side-benefits of the popularity of Christoper Nolan's blockbuster movie The Odyssey has been a widespread increase in interest in classics generally. For me personally, it led directly to my discovery of Mary Beard's fascinating and entertaining podcast Instant Classics. And it was on Instant Classics that I learned about Pompeii: Out of Time, a three-part documentary-drama television series recently produced for National Geographic and hosted and executive-produced by British actor (and Cambridge-trained classicist) Tom Hiddleston.

Hiddleston's series sets out to identify residents who might have escaped the disaster. Working with the "Pompeii Survivors Project," Hiddleston cross-references names inscribed on objects and buildings found in Pompeii with names that also appear elsewhere in the Roman world after the eruption (traditionally dated August 24, AD 79). He thus follows the fates of three individuals, who might have had potential to survive: Avianius, a headstrong teenager from a downwardly mobile family currently apprenticed to a bronze smith; Julia Felix, a wealthy businesswoman who owned a bathhouse on her estate; and an otherwise unidentified soldier, possibly a Praetorian Guardsman, whose belongings were recovered at the elite beach resort of Herculaneum several miles from Pompeii and even closer to Vesuvius.

In the first episode, "Tremors," Hiddleston follows some of the early signs from Vesuvius  as earthquakes disrupt the city. He follows Avianius and Julia Felix while he counts down to the beginning of the eruption. A key concept here is Hiddleston's desire to challenge the popular idea that Pompeii was destroyed without any warning, What in fact he examines is the different physical, social, and psychological pressures which contributed to each individual's eventual real-time decision to flee immediately or to delay during the appoximately 30 hours over which the tragedy transpired..

In the second episode, Hiddleston depicts the first four phases of the eruption. We watch as daylight disappears into darkness. (The fifth phase will be the final pyroclastic flows which ultiately buried the two cities intact for centuries.)  Hiddleston highlights the attempted flight from Herculaneum (dramatized as led by the Praetorian Guardsman.) As pyroclastic surges begin, hundreds will die not in Hurculaneum itself but on the beach from which they were trying to flee. He also highlights how Julia Felix tries to maneuver her household and customers away from the disaster.

In the third episode, Hiddleston uncovers possible evidence about the tragic fates of Avianius and Julia Felix, and considers what survival would have meant in practice for Pompeii's residents.

I guess it is a clever technique to bring us along following particular persons, expecting (or at least given initial reasons to hope) that they will survive. However, hoping our characters will survive only leads to disappointment when in the end most don't make it. Of course, it highlights the dramatic pathos of the event, but we already know it was a titanic catastrophe! By tracing the specific stories of particular people, Hiddleston seems to be trying to make that catastrophe come alive and its tragic character so much more personal for us as observers.

One of the three apparently did survive, however. Avianius apparently made it, although his mother did not, facts attested by a subsequent gravestone. For Avianius, survival meant moving on alone in the world. Survival too - for the few who, totally traumatized and now alone, did survive - was also tragic in its own very deep way.

My grandmother grew up in the shadow of Italy's other active volcano, Mount Etna near Catania, Sicily (which is making herself heard again as this is written!). As a child, I remember worrying that a volcano might erupt in the Bronx! There was never any danger of that, of course. But volcanoes continue to endanger our fragile human world - as Vesuvius itself may yet someday do once again! The twin traumas of massive deaths and traumatized survivors may yet continue to haunt our tragedy-burdened world.

The Cure of Ars

 

The year that Saint John Vianney (1786-1859), the famous "Cure of Ars" and patron of parish priests, died, 1859, Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities, his famous novel about the French Revolution, which begins with the familiar sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Into that turbulent "worst of times," John Vianney was born just three years before the Revolution - a movement which showed a hatred for the Church, the likes of which Europe had not seen since the worst of the Roman Emperors. Churches were desecrated; bishops, priests, and religious were massacred. Young John Vianney received his First Communion in secret, since public celebration of Mass by priests loyal to the Church was illegal.

After Napoleon had restored some semblance of peace between Church and State, 20-year-old John Vianney went to school to study for the priesthood. He failed the seminary admission test, but somehow managed on his second try. Even then, he was such a poor student that his continuance was in question. The Vicar General of the diocese finally asked the seminary rector, "Is Monsieur Vianney good?" The rector replied, "He is a model of goodness." To that, the Vicar General replied: "Let him be ordained. The grace of God will do the rest." Commenting on John Vianney's difficulties as a student, Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Paulist Fathers, saw "the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit at work" in John Vianney's difficulties. Hecker likened himself to John Vianney in how hard he had found his studies for the priesthood. Both John Vianney and Isaac Hecker went on to become exemplary priests - in spite of not quite measuring up to standard seminary standards.

The damage done by the revolutionary "worst of times" was eminently evident in the little village of Ars (population 230), to which John. Vianney was sent as pastor in 1817. His bishop warned him, "There is little love of God in that parish."

As Ars' parish priest, Saint John Vianney (photo) devoted the rest of his life to trying to remedy that devastating description. And, so, in Ars, "the worst of times" eventually became "the best of times." Always aware of his own inadequacies, but obedient to the Church that had called him to be a pastor and devoted to the people committed to his care, he sought to harmonize his own life with the holiness he was called to embody as a priest, instructing his parishioners by the personal witness of his life. "There are no two ways of serving God," he explained. "There is only one: serve him as he desires to be served. Celebrating Mass, he was said to have "gazed upon the Host with immense love." He believed the fervor of a priest depended on the Mass. "My God," he famously said, "how we ought to pity a priest who celebrates as if he were engaged in something routine." By his example, he helped his parishioners to pray. "One need not say much to pray well," he told them. "We know that Jesus is there in the tabernacle: let us open our hearts to him, let us rejoice in his sacred presence, that is the best prayer."

John Vianney is perhaps most famous for his ministry in the confessional. One legacy of "the worst of times" upheaval produced by the Revolution, was widespread indifference to the sacrament of forgiveness. Eventually, however, penitents would be coming to him from all over France, finally making it one of "the best of times" also for the great sacrament of God's mercy. 

Homily for the feast of Saint John Vianney, Saint Paull the Apostle Church, NY, August 4, 2026.

 

Bread of Joy

 

Every Sunday this summer, the second reading at Mass has been taken from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. Today’s text [Romans 8:35, 37-39] is a rhetorical flourish, which concludes the first half of Saint Paul’s letter.

What will separate us, Saint Paul dramatically asks, from God’s love for us as revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord? His answer: nothing! Not that there isn’t plenty out there to get in the way of our experience of God’s love! Paul knows only too well what obstacles there are and how powerful they seem to be. He even enumerates a bunch of them: anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. We could, of course, add to that list - war, public and private corruption, political polarization and division, downward mobility, the death of the “American Dream,” chronic illness, aging, and any number of other social, political, and personal problems. Even the gospel account we just heard of the feeding of the 5000, [Matthew 14:13-21] a happy, feel-good story if ever there was one, begins with the potential danger posed by the murder of John the Baptist!

Paul’s point is not that these things are not real or that they don’t threaten us, but that God’s power is so much greater than the forces that oppose it – and so can overcome all obstacles that threaten to separate us from God and the salvation his love intends for us. Instead, in desperation (in Paul’s time as again in our own) people tend to turn to all sorts of falsehoods – spiritual falsehoods like cosmic forces and social falsehoods like political power - in order to cope with threats from present things and future things.

Paul’s conviction, based on the love of God revealed in Christ, is that God’s power is way greater than those threats. If, however, we really believe in God’s omnipotence and in his love for us as revealed in Christ, then we will react differently to the many stresses and challenges we might otherwise be beaten down by. In this threatening and dangerous world, an all-powerful God who didn’t also love us would only add to the danger. That was precisely what made Paul’s preaching seem so liberating to so many pagans then – and continues to attract people to the Christian message today.

If God had not revealed himself – and his love for us – as he has done in his Son Jesus, we too would be equally desperate, clutching at anything that promised to placate otherwise uncontrollable cosmic forces or perhaps more mundanely to marshal aggressive political power to protect us against real or imagined scapegoats.

God, however, has revealed his love for us – not as an abstraction, but as a person, Christ Jesus our Lord, whose heart is moved with pity for us and satisfies us with food we could never buy on our own.

There will always be an insurmountable gap between our meager human resources – our 5 little loaves and 2 fish – and what God can accomplish on our behalf. Once we are willing to put ourselves at his disposal, however, God’s great love for us, present and active among us in Christ Jesus our Lord, will transform us by his blessing and enable us to accomplish, on his behalf, what we could never ever have imagined doing on our own – to conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.

And, so, the same Christ who feeds us whenever we assemble in his presence also commands us – as his disciples, as his Church –to reject pessimistic false alternatives and to join him wholeheartedly in feeding the world with the bread of joy and trust that comes from recognizing and perpetuating his presence in our world.

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, august 2, 2026.

Ignatius

 

Twenty-plus years ago, on a parish pilgrimage in Spain, I celebrated Mass at the shrine of Saint Ignatius at Loyola Castle, the famous site of Ignatius’ religious transformation while recovering from his battle injury. As I unvested after Mass, the Jesuit sacristan seemed to be yelling at me. Thankfully I knew enough Spanish to understand that he was complaining that we had not venerated the relic. “What relic?” I asked. “the Saint’s head,” he replied. “Where is it?” I asked. The sacristan looked around and realized his mistake. He rushed to a filing cabinet and pulled out the small reliquary with a piece of bone from Saint Ignatius’ head, while, I, for my part, ran outside and summoned everyone back into the chapel to venerate the Saint’s head!

I have no recollection of what I had said in praise of Saint Ignatius in my homily on that occasion. I could hardly have said it better than our first Pastor and Paulist founder, Isaac Hecker, did in a famous sermon in 1863: “The leader of this company was Ignatius Loyola, the Spanish soldier, who abandoned the sword for the more powerful weapon of the Cross. For enlarged conception, energy of execution, and boldness of design, he has not been surpassed, if ever equaled, in Church history.”  [“The Saint of Our Day, “March 19, 1863]

At a time when the Church was faced with the twin challenges of the Protestant Reformation and world-wide exploration and (what we now call) globalization, Ignatius, together with six others (among then Saint Francis Xavier), founded his Society of Jesus, to reinvigorate the Church’s spiritual life and serve at the Pope’s disposal, wherever and however needed in the global mission. His Spiritual Exercises have served as a guide for vocational discernment and personal spiritual renewal for generations ever since, while the Jesuit community has spread all over the world as missionaries, scholars, and teachers, from the era portrayed in the movie The Mission until the present day. The first U.S. Bishop was a Jesuit, as was the first U.S. Catholic college. Ignatius’ legacy continues to guide and direct individuals and communities within the Church in the perennial process of discerning the most apt responses to the complicated crises and challenges the Church faces today.

Homily for the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, July 31, 2026.

Image: Emblem of the Society of Jesus.

Friends

 

One of the more distressing observations about life in our contemporary society is how many people seem to have very few friends, some say none at all. Aristotle long ago famously said that friendship is something that no one would choose to live without even if one possessed all other goods. In the New Testament, even Jesus had his special friends and strongly valued his personal friendships. Today, the Church commemorates three of those special friends, the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany and their brother Lazarus. The Collect we just prayed mentions something specific to each of them. O God, Whose Son called Lazarus back from the grave and was pleased to be a guest in the home of Martha, grant us, we pray, that, faithfully serving him in our brothers and sisters, we, with Mary, may be found worthy to be nourished by the contemplation of his word.

Each is mentioned for the thing that he or she is most famous for - being brought back to life from the dead, serving as Jesus' super-conscientious hostess, listening attentively to Jesus' words. But we commemorate them together - together as a family, of course, but more than just a family - together too as Jesus' disciples, and, more than disciples, also as Jesus' faithful, much loved friends. It was Lazarus' loving friendship with Jesus that his sisters' emphasized when they sent Jesus the message that Lazarus was seriously sick. Presumably, it was Martha's also authentically close friendship with Jesus, which enabled her to confront Jesus so dramatically when he showed up late for Lazarus' funeral. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." We get the same feeling from Martha's other famous confrontation with Jesus in Luke's Gospel. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” That is less a disicple talkign to her teacher than one good friend talking to another.

Both these scenes took place in Bethany.at Martha, Mary, and Lazarus' home, where Jesus was apparently a frequent visitor. Not all visitors are friends, of course. Hospitality to strangers was a very high value in the ancient world, as the The Odyssey movie has recently reminded us. But Jesus seems to have been a regular visitor at Martha, Mary, and Lazarus' home near Jerusalem, occasions for more than conventional hospitality but rather for deeply human experiences of mutual friendship.

In becoming human in Jesus, God has fully experienced our human life, sanctifying the sorrows and challenges of our ordinary lives but also blessing life's joys, among the benefits we receive from friendship.

Homily for the feast of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, July 29, 2026.

Photo: Traditional Site of Tomb of Lazarus near Jerusalem.