Lord Jesus, Come!

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. While I can’t start eating my ‘Advent’ calendar yet, I still think that this is a pretty auspicious time.

In his homily, the priest spoke about Advent as being a time of hopefulness and preparation, especially in our parish given recent events. No one really knows what’s going to happen, though the bishop has said they have no intention of shutting the parish down. There is waiting, in hope, for a new parish priest. The board of Wardens has expressed to the bishop their desire to have a resident, full-time priest. They were then informed that our church was actually the only one in the entire diocese to have still had a resident, full-time priest. Nevertheless, the hope is still to have one. A time of waiting, of expectation and uncertainty: the parish family is in Advent.

Purple, of course, is the liturgical color of Advent in most western church Rites, although some churches have replaced the purple with blue. I asked someone about the blue, and I’m still not really sure what it’s actually supposed to mean. ‘Making more money for vestment makers,’ is not really the deep liturgico-theological revelation that I was hoping for, even though that was joke. The idea that it’s the color of the sky just before dawn is a nice one, I find: the time just before the sun comes out. That actually captures aspects of Advent very nicely. Ultimately, the reason blue is used is because the older Sarum Rite used blue, and this is a sort of liturgical return. A return to the time before the Roman Catholic Church suppressed all local customs at variance with those of the Latin Rite.

Blue vestments are actually still used in some Catholic churches in the Philippines and Spain during the observance of Marian feasts (of which there are, if you keep them all, many many). The current laws of the Roman Catholic Church do not recognize blue as a valid (or licit) liturgical color at all. Although blue was worn widely within the so-called ‘Gallican-Rite’ churches – Spain, etc. – in the Gregorian Liturgical Calendar and elsewhere blue is omitted. Presently, limited indults have been granted to specific churches to use blue vestments while celebrating Marian Inmaculada feasts, though I might say the practice is still generally discouraged. It is licit to use blue trim and such-like things on white vestments for Marian feasts, but those vestments are white. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in the Latin Rite, blue is NOT a legitimate liturgical color.

I don’t personally think that blue is an invalid color for Advent. I just don’t like it, not that I’ve ever seen it; I don’t like the idea of it, of what it would mean for my impression of purple during other liturgical moments. While Canon Law does not list Advent as one of the Church’s penitential seasons (§ 1250), I think erasing the penitential aspect is a mistake. The General norms for the Liturgical Year has this to say: “Advent has a twofold character: as a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming to us is remembered; as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time. Advent is thus a period for devout and joyful expectation” (§ 39). Yes, there is an emphasis on joy and well there should be: the end of days – and Christmas – are joyous occasions when the world and God are fully met together, and the kingdom of God is fully realized. But this preparation to welcome God does not involve only rejoicing: to make ourselves ready we have to be penitent. Because the coming of God is for us, not for God, and that implies a need of it, a need which we must recognize in order to be able to welcome the kingdom. Not that I think the gates to heaven are one big Confessional in the Sky, but that there is an inevitable sorrow at our human failings accompanying Christ’s coming. After all, Christ’s coming is an event that happened, is happening, and will happen. The coming of the kingdom and our freedom in joy is integrally linked to his victory on the Cross, his triumph over our sin and death, and we should not in our anticipation forget that.

I like the purple because it structures the liturgical year so that Advent and Lent are twinned seasons. They are tied together by the same color – Advent also has pink on Gaudete Sunday – and by the fact that they are both, fundamentally, seasons of expectation and preparation. Sure the emphasis on joy and repentance is different in one and the other, but both are always present. I think the pairing of purple helps us to remember that. So when we wear purple in sorrow, it is also infused with joyous waiting, and when we wear it in joyous waiting, it is always suffused with the Sacrifice. Both remind us that we must keep ready, be waiting, be watchful, because the Lord comes unexpectedly – as a child whose birth was unnoticed by most of the world, as a man crucified (and then risen), as a glorious king whose kingdom comes like a thief in the night. It is that kingdom, always that kingdom, for which we are waiting. Christians are a people in Advent.

The person I asked about the use of blue told me that some parishes use different shades of purple for the two seasons, light for Advent and dark for Lent, to help emphasize the difference. I think that’s a GREAT idea. Unfortunately, my home parish can’t do it because there is only one set of altar dressings and one set of purple vestments. I did notice something interesting today, though. The altar is dressed in dark purple, but the side altars – one of which holds the tabernacle and the other a copy of that Jesus-face thing – are dressed in light purple, which also covers the tabernacle. The deacon’s stole matches the dark altar, and the priest’s chasuble matches the light altars. Interesting.

In a feat of stunning making-something-accidental-have-a-deeper-meaning, I think that this is brilliant and makes an interesting point. So the altar where the Sacrifice is offered is the dark purple of sorrow and repentance – appropriate. The altars holding the Blessed Sacrament, the ultimate embodiment of the Sacrifice among us, and the picture of Veronica’s veil, from within Jesus’ suffering but also an astonishing gift that endures, are dressed in light purple, the color of hope and expectant joy – also appropriate. The remaining presence of Jesus among us associated with the happier and the Sacrifice with the sadder, and yet both living within the same family of purple, which is not fragmented but…differently shaded. The deacon, who serves the priest, is more strongly associated with the repentance, and the priest who stands in persona Christi with the joy. The Sacrifice sees both shades at the altar and is surrounded by both.

Perhaps this suggests that the kingdom of God is served in penitence and accomplished in joy.

It's A Crazy, Crazy Faith

Our emergency priest last Sunday (the 15th) pointed out in his homily that, sometimes, our Christian faith is crazy. We always talk about heaven and the resurrection and saints in glory, about how that is our goal and the fulfillment of our lives. Except when someone actually dies: then we don’t want to talk about those things at all. Which is healthy – it would be a bit worrisome if one didn’t grieve.

However, at some point we must transcend our grief and share in the joy of our loved ones, who are in the Kingdom of God. I don’t know how it is anywhere else, but in the Catholic Church that transcendence is meant to occur during the Mass of Christian Burial. This may strike one as ironic, but really it isn’t. The whole process of Catholic dying leads up to it.

If a person receives last rites, the celebrant will be wearing a purple stole. The rite includes Absolution (or presumed Absolution, depending on the circumstances), Unction and Viaticum. The purpose of final Absolution is pretty obvious: it is a cleansing of sin before a person goes to meet God. Unction is an anointment of the body that embraces a kind of holiness of the flesh, presumably; I tend to understand it more as a sacramental recognition of the fact that the body already possesses an inherent holiness. It blesses the body before you die, imbues sanctity, but it is not intended to heal – which is of course why it’s permissible to anoint a dead body. Viaticum is simply Eucharist received for the last time as part of, or constituting, the last rites. Originally, it was so named because it was intended to give strength for the journey. Now, Viaticum is a plenary indulgence, making it the only indulgence in the Catholic Church that itself carries and creates the conditions necessary for receiving it.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it emphasizes the fact that you’re going away. The purple is a color of sorrow and mourning; but notice that it is the celebrant who wears purple, and not the person who’s dying – they don’t, like, drape a purple cloth over you or something. We are sorry about the going away, because it is our lives that you as we knew you will be missing from.

Purple, of course, has a second meaning, that of awaiting or anticipating the arrival of Christ and his Kingdom (hence the use of purple during Advent). Already, even in the sorrow, there is the anticipation that lies deep within all of us, always.

So here, here in the beginning of the journey, there is mourning for loss, as well as resolute anticipation of the things to come. There is anointing of the person who is dying in a way that expects the effects of that anointing to travel with him.

Next comes the actual handling of the body after death. The body is (thank God) embalmed, which has more to do with the people at the viewing than the actual body, so we’ll leave that aside. The body is laid out in clothing, usually something in some way representative of the person. In this case, Father is wearing his Christ the King chasuble. The vestment was new and unworn, probably because he was saving it for the feast, and he is now wearing it for the first time. I find this to be appropriate. For one thing, it’s white. For another, it emphasizes the kingship of Christ, a Kingdom which Father is now experiencing, the Kingdom to which our deaths look forward and which already abides among us: now is the Kingdom, now is the day. The feast brings a clarity to this reality and to our faith, as do these vestments. As we are in communion with all the Saints, the Kingdom is already our reality, though in this present darkness we cannot see it clearly. But we believe, and so we celebrate both Christ’s kingship and our Christian deaths. The vestment also points to the fact that, even though there is no Eucharist in heaven, the sacrament of Holy Orders leaves an indelible mark. Father is, like all other clergy, a priest forever, as we all remain ourselves in one way or another. After all, it is we ourselves who are saved, we who are loved, in all our sin and human frailty; our lives shaped and sanctified by the sacraments and realized in our deaths.

[A brief aside. I was saying to my brother, ‘Father is wearing his Christ the King vestments,’ to which he responded with something along the lines of, ‘no he’s not. He’s dead: his corpse is wearing them. He’s gone, he no longer exists.’ Of course, this is unacceptable. The person and the body we understand to be connected in some mysterious way that passes beyond death and into eternity. We speak about the body as the person because we recognize that, in some way or another, the person is coming back to get their body in the resurrection – or, perhaps more precisely, that the final resurrection will be an embodied one. Catholicism is not a faith that believes we shed the body as a snake sheds its skin, leaving it behind as a useless and meaningless thing. We take such care to prepare and present the body because we believe that even in death and eternal life a person is still themselves, still who they are, though they have also become so much more in the transformation that awaits us all. This conversation drives home an interesting point: in the reality of death our faith is both most deeply challenged and most strongly affirmed. Death exists. Death is real. This is no mirage. But eternal life is also real, also exists, is also not a mirage. Powerful stuff, this collision of two realities. Powerful. One might perhaps call it the center and definition of our faith.]

Then there is the funeral Mass. The celebrant(s) wears white vestments: the color of resurrection, eternal life and glory, sanctity. All sadness has been left behind, at least liturgically. At Father’s Mass, three bishops celebrated, along with a bunch of priests, at least one deacon, and a seminarian. The priests sang a song around the coffin: Ave Maria. In our Mother Mary, whom Father loved very deeply, the saint closest to the throne of God, we find an expression of brotherhood. That, too, is everlasting. We sang his favorite song (Lord of the Dance) and all simultaneously thought that if he were singing the Ave Maria with his brothers he’d be ruining it. Father loves singing, but can’t sing at all. Incense and holy water anointed the casket: again, we pray and sanctify the body until the moment when we commit it to the earth. We celebrate the Mass, the gift of God to us, the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, given for us for the remission of our sins. In the Mass we are all united in the mystical Church (itself a sacrament – the only one remaining after the final coming of the Kingdom, the one only fully realized within it). In the Mass we realize that God has shared in our death, in all of its horror, and so we are never alone in it; the feeling of aloneness is real – even Jesus felt it – but in reality it is an illusion. It is something we, in our humanity, must feel, but it is also a time when the Lord does not leave our side. I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.

The priest who gave the homily said something I believe is brilliant. He said that, throughout his life, Father experienced a dark night of the soul – only once did he feel the Lord’s presence and joy, when he was in the choir loft at seminary (perhaps why he loves singing). The fact that I seem to already have known this is a story for another time, or perhaps never. The priest said that it takes real courage to keep going, day after day, as a priest, without ever feeling anything, and he is right. Saint John of the Cross said that wood needs to be thoroughly dried out in order for it to burn. Father was consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit when he died – a moment he had been waiting for all his life now come in completeness. Maybe that's why he looked so at peace, in a way I've never seen in a body before. Sudden, but not something for which he was not ready or unprepared. The Lord comes like a thief in the night, and we must be ready, because where one is taken there is another who will be left behind.

Thus we see, in dying and death, the promise and reality of our faith, in which we all participate through the rites and sacraments surrounding it.

Holy F*@# !

This is unexpected. I was going to write about the Remembrance Day service at the University, and what it means to me in my life.

And now for something completely different.

I went to the same church my whole life: I was baptized there, received first Eucharist there, was confirmed there, and, illogically, I want to have my funeral there. (The feasibility of this plan remains sketchy. I also have music picked out, though the list is constantly evolving.)

My relationship with this congregation has been one of the most rewarding relationships in my life thus far. I love the people there. They watched me grow up, as I watched others grow up. I love people there very deeply, and it’s those people who make me miss the congregation most.

This church brought me to God. I felt God there, I loved God there, I hated God there, and I clung to God there. The Church was my life, which is why of course I will never fully let it go. Not really. This is still my church, my home, the place to go when there’s nowhere else. Even in all the sorrow and grief – especially in the sorrow and grief – it is the place to which I return. There are some things that never change. In many ways, the Roman Church is still the center of my world, and will be forever.

Sure, there was strife. For example, the priest and I sometimes disagreed. Vehemently. But, then again, I loved and cared about him very deeply all the same. So stubborn, but so sure of his vocation; so traditional, but so in love with the Church; such a terrible homilist and uneven in pastoral care, but the most love and the biggest heart that there could be. He loved this church, and I don't think he really wanted to leave it. The church was prepared to send him off into retirement, but they also would miss him desperately. He defined the church, and it defined him.

Now he’s dead. That was unexpected. It seems as though he died in his sleep, which would be good, since he wouldn’t have felt any pain. But he always said he’d rather have a priest by his deathbed than a saint, because he wanted to receive unction and Viaticum. Instead, he died alone. It’s so haunting, to not have the one thing you’ve always wanted, having performed the rite so many times yourself. He was sixty-five years old, and was a priest for thirty-eight.

I loved that man. Oh sure, sometimes I wanted to strangle him, but that doesn’t mean I loved him any the less. I believe that God put me in his life on purpose. Over the years, interacting with him forced me to think about what I thought Church was. What the priesthood was. What it was that God wanted for me in my life, in the sense of discerning what is important to me about my faith and what isn’t. Ultimately, this meant that I left the Roman Catholic Church because I realized that what matters most to me is Jesus: loving and following Jesus, not any church. A church is a community in which I can do it but, ultimately, the path is only mine to take. I do, of course, need the Church. The sacraments are very important to me, and I have a…profound reverence and awe for them, as well as a fairly full and robust understanding of them. He gave that to me, and for that alone I will always be grateful.

He also taught me the importance of Canon Law, being a canon lawyer himself. I was always a ‘canon-law-observant’ Catholic, which meant that I could not receive Eucharist in other particular churches outside communion with Rome, and that I cannot now receive Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church. He taught me the language of the Church, and to be respectful of its traditions. At the same time, the language he taught me opened up a world in which I was able to explore and question things like doctrine, tradition, and Church. His ecclesiastical ministry has shaped the entirety of my life in the Christian faith. He married my parents, baptized me, gave me Eucharist, and was there at my Confirmation. He prayed over me (although I don’t think he was the one who’d actually decided I was possessed). I owe him a lot, including, ironically, my stubborn refusal to just accept things as they are without prying into them, always questioning, always trying to better understand.

I have always observed Canon Law. I do it because it was important to him, and so it was important to me, and it forms a very real part of what I understand the Roman Catholic Church to be.

However, I’m going to Holy Family tomorrow and I plan to receive Eucharist (should no one stop me). Fuck the law: life is short. See, he taught me something else, too. About what matters in the living of one’s life. Because ultimately Eucharist isn’t about him, it’s about Jesus and my relationship with God. And I want it. And I need it. Therefore, probably only this once, I will break the law. Which I’m sure he would have found infuriating.

May the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit; May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.

Something Or Other

I haven’t been posting much lately (duh) and I really don’t have much to say now. This is the consequence of the life I’ve been living – or, rather, not living. While I finally made it back to evening prayer, I haven’t been going to church Sundays, or any other days of the week.

I haven’t received Eucharist since October 2nd. I’ve had opportunities – like when I went to the Anglocatholic church for All Souls – and I’ve let them pass by me. The thing is that, when I think about it, I don’t really care. I care very much about my reasons for not going, which are manifold and complex, difficult to explain clearly. If I just had hand puppets I’m sure I could do it: everything is clearer once you’ve seen it in the hand puppets version.

Anyway, the point is I’ve not been going. The dude I’m supposed to be writing my thesis on condemns religious indifference as the cause of France’s social disintegration. Indifference is bad, because it undermines the possibility of doing everything else, or at least doing it well. To extrapolate, my blatant refusal of the Blessed Sacrament is corroding the rest of my life as a Christian. I can accept that: it feels true.

I just keep wondering to myself, Where is God when you need Him? I mean, really need Him, a question of life and death, a question of desperate need without which you’re afraid you’ll die.

Instead of going to church and looking for God, I’ve been attempting to psychoanalyze myself. With the emphasis on “attempting.” I assure you, I’m equally long-winded and pointless in everything I write, though I am sometimes capable of clarity and insight.

‘Look inside yourself and find God,’ St. Augustine said. Maybe this really is just another path to God. But that still doesn’t justify my non-attendance at Mass.

I’m going to attempt to go on Friday morning. Wish me luck!