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Resurrecting Chicago

Trusting in Him with each step.

Hold My Laurels, Just Give Me a Hardy laugh!

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I’ve had a goofy Saturday morning. I had anticipated a nice, uncomplicated day. Other than morning Mass, I had nothing planned. Then, things happened.

I presided at the 8 AM Mass with the regulars present. Near the end of the homily concerning life eternal, I found myself reciting the words to an old Johnny Cash song where he sang of the family reunion he hoped for in heaven. I remember him singing of the family circle that will be rejoined and “unbroken” in heaven and, before I could catch myself, I belted out what I remembered of the tune and sang something like this: “One of these days–and it won’t be long– I’ll be singing a brand-new song –with my family circle at the throne!”

Why, I said to myself, did you do that? I answered myself that I couldn’t just recite the lyric without sustaining it with melody. But, my conscience answered that priests do not sing their homilies, especially at 7 AM. It’s self-serving –and, embarrassing.

Goofy morning thing #1.

Back at my house, I thought I would wait casually on the front porch for the Jewel food delivery which arrives on Saturday mornings at or around 9:30 AM. I waited. An hour later, it still hadn’t arrived. I am sitting there with my morning drifting away, trying to sustain the kindness of Jesus while I wait on the delivery guy, all the while still regretting my earlier solo performance at morning Mass. I sat wasting time and becoming more irritated until a red-faced pudgy guy brought in the bags. “Sorry man!” he said. Miffed.

Goofy morning thing #2.

Next, I’m in the kitchen putting the groceries away when my doorbell rings. I opened the door to a large-sized, uniformed police officer. The man in blue said that he gave out more tickets than anyone else in the department. He’d noticed my car was parked in a handicapped space without displaying the official handicapped placard. Though it’s a private lot, he could ticket me. He wanted me to display my handicapped placard when I park in the handicapped space next to my house otherwise, he promised to cite me.

“But, you came up my ramp and know that I’m handicapped,” I said.

“Gotta have the plaque displayed. If not, that’d be a hundred dollars,” he replied.

“Sometimes I just forget to hang the darn thing,” I said. Frustrated.

Goofy morning thing #3.

Then I thought I could clear my mind by talking to a friend who walks around with angina pectoris like it’s pain from a stubbed toe. After talking with him for a half hour, and not eliciting from him a promise to go to the E.R, I cut the call short. Why am I telling him what to do like some know-it-all? Frustration.

Goofy morning thing #4.

I spent the next hour watching “Laurel and Hardy” episodes and eating peanuts.

The Holy Dismissal.

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(A friend of mine, Father Ray who serves the Church in Nova Scotia, told this story of how a well-meaning French-speaking priest had difficulty with the English Mass.)

Canada has two official languages, English and French. French is the everyday language of many Canadians, especially in Quebec and areas of Eastern Canada including Nova Scotia. Here’s a story I heard from Father Ray who ministers in an English-speaking Church in Nova Scotia. I might not get all the details correctly but this is the story as I remember it.

Early in his priesthood, Father Ray was planning to go on vacation but was having difficulty finding someone to take his place to celebrate Holy Mass on Sunday. He finally located a priest who was free at the time and was willing to help.

The priest arrived a few days ahead of time so that he could familiarize himself with the parish. It turns out that the priest was from a French-speaking community and had limited use of formal English. Father Ray brought out the book that sits on the altar (the “missal”} which contains the proper wording for the ritual of the Mass. For example, when the celebrant begins the Mass, the priest greets the congregation with these words: “The Lord be with you! The people’s response is: “And with your spirit!” It’s right there in the text.

Since the priest was only accustomed to celebrate the Mass in French, Father Ray went over the English Mass with him. Although the priest had a heavy accent, he seemed to catch on to the English wording of the Mass.

When Father Ray returned from his vacation, he was told by a parishioner how his substitute ended his Mass in English on the previous Sunday.

Although his English was thickly accented, the parishioners were able to follow along until the very end of the Mass. After Holy Communion the visiting French-speaking priest returned to the altar for the final blessing and dismissal, but he couldn’t find the right page in the missal. After much flipping of ribbons and pages, he was still lost.

However, he remembered to greet the people in the same way as he did at the start of the Mass:

“The Lord be with you!

The people responded: “And with your spirit!” So far, so good….

He then struggled with the words of the final blessing:

May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! All responded: “Amen.”

But, he still couldn’t find the proper English words of dismissal to conclude the Mass. Then he remembered something! He recalled some English words he’d heard someone use to tell another person to leave. He lifted his eyes to the community and recalled the only English words of dismissal he could remember:

He folded his hands on his chest, looked at the congregation… smiled…and said: “Get out!”

The Shadow of Your Angel’s Wings.

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My angel, resting.

Today is the feast of St. Michael the archangel, that powerful spirit who fought Satan and cast him out of the celestial heights. Angels are everywhere

Lately, with some urgency because of my advanced age, I have felt moved to call on my guardian angel to hover over me and hide me from the evil one. The evil one is a renegade angel and my guardian angel knows how that rascal can connive to deflect me from angelic ways. I pray that he keeps me from being deceived by that fallen angel who may murmur hurtful things to me.

I call him by name, my angel. Since he only has me to worry about, it won’t matter to him if I give him a familiar name.  But you don’t have to know it. Let’s just say that his name is a shortened form of the word used to identify a meat-cutter.

I like to think of the being assigned to me at my birth as a kind of attentive protector large enough to shade me (I’m a big guy) from evil.  “Hide me under the shadow of your wings!”

In religious art, angel feathers are everywhere. And, artists have used all the colors of the palette to anoint angel’s wings: white wings, red wings, even green and blue feathers adorn angels flying through the sky with divine messages. Bold artists have come up with angels bearing rainbow wings in the wonderful colors of the spectrum. You can think of your angel as winged in whatever colors you want, just remember that you have one, your personal angel. He hasn’t left as you’ve aged.

Besides protecting us, angels carry important, revelations. Among these news-bearers is Gabriel who spoke to Mary of the divine choice of her as the mother of the Messiah, the same Gabriel who will, according to the Book of Revelation, blow his horn to announce the Last Day.

Think, too, of Gabriel announcing God’s will for Joseph and how he revealed Mary’s pregnancy to him. It’s clear that Joseph heard the message of his role in salvation while he was sleeping! He is given detailed plans to flee his homeland and find security for his family in Egypt.

“Your young men shall see visions and your old men dream dreams.” (Joel 2:29). I believe God has his angels whispering news, even plans, in the hearts of those who are listening. Young people may awake to a sharp vision that God has given them. Older people nodding in their recliners may dream of heaven more than earth, but the revelation is just as clear.

Don’t forget to honor and pray with your guardian angel. Consider praying each day the following classic prayer:

“Angel of God, my guardian near, to whom God’s love commits me here.  Ever this day be at my side to light, to guard to rule and guide.  Amen.”

And, if you are young and are graced with an angelic vision, don’t ignore its message, whenever it comes.   If you are old, there is still time to follow your dream as angels whisper God’s message to you each morning at dawn.

Things of Beauty Created by Tom Turner.

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(Tom Turner, an internationally celebrated potter who creates marvelous ceramics has recently established a permanent exhibition in our local gallery in Morris, IL The following is a tribute to his genius.)

In the beginning, the book of Genesis says, the earth was a dry, empty land without water. “But, there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.  Then, the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils and man became a living being.” (Gn 2:6-7 KJV)

And, in Jeremiah 18: 6-7, we read: “Can I not deal with you, O Israel, as the potter with his clay? You are clay in my hands….”

Tom Turner drives around and sees a stretch of likely clay at an excavation site. He stops, scoops up the clay, brings it home, treats it, throws it on his whirling wheel, forms it and bakes it.  The clay becomes something that he incises and then bathes to a glaze: a plate, a cup, or maybe a vase, each with wholeness, proportion, and clarity. He makes a thing of beauty.

The poet understands the wonder of this process well: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It will never pass into nothingness.” (John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”).

Thomas Aquinas wrote that where integritas, claritas, and consonantia exist, there is beauty. By integritas, he means wholeness; it expresses an essence.  Consonantia is when all elements of a thing create harmony and proportion. Claritas lights up the thing and colors seem to move and saturate the piece.  Aquinas simply defines beauty as that which pleases.

Tom, you have given us your clay creations, among them ceramics of great beauty and now have displayed these beauties for us and those who come after us.  The proportions are always right. The colors blend as you planned.  Each piece has integrity, wholeness. And, like every good artist, you say to us: “Look! Right here! Do you see ?”

You make us take note of something new, each time that you form clay into a work of art. That is the gift of the artist to the rest of us –and, that notice is beautiful. It pleases us.

Thank you, Tom Turner.

(Tom Turner, video)

The Creation of Adam. Michelangelo’s Womb.

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While visiting Rome years ago, I walked with a crowd of tourists into the Sistine Chapel.  I was stunned. From floor to walls to ceiling, the entire space was covered with glorious Christian art. My gaze was drawn upward towards the ceiling. I lifted my head and strained my neck to view the wonderful fresco of the creation of Adam by Michelangelo.

The Creation of Adam. (Wikipedia, public domain)

God the Father extends his right arm to the figure of Adam who is lifting himself from the earth and raising his left arm. The index finger of God nearly touches the extended hand of the man  –but not quite.  Something awesome happens in that space.

Recently, a local artist challenged me to look again at the figure of the Father in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. He wanted me to focus on the swirling cape from which God creates.  The cape in which the Creator-Father emanates represents something physical, he said.  “I’m not going to tell you what it is but you’ll discover it.”

I purposely did not look up any expert discussion of the patterns and symbolism of the Creation of Adam, but it occurred to me that Michelangelo had trained on cadavers and understood the anatomy of humans from the inside. Just look at his sculpture of David or Moses.  Michelangelo knew human anatomy well.  But, is the robe of God somehow anatomical?

Following upon my artist friend’s challenge–through the miracle of on-line viewing– I took another look at the fresco. I was trying to make sense out of the whirling robe of God.  The Creator tosses life to Adam from within a shadowy context and with intense effort bids Adam to live.

I thought at first that the Father was moving out of a dark dust storm. Dust…. The bible says that we are dust (Genesis 3:19). The bible also says that God knelt down in mud and with the artistry of a master potter created the figure of a man and then blew into it the breath of life (Genesis 2:7).

Although there is a powerful wind from which the Father emanates and Adam is definitely reclining on the ground, the Father is not kneeling, nor is he blowing into the nostrils of the man and there’s no mud. So, God’s flowing garment is not a whirlwind of dust.

Yesterday, while I was praying morning prayer, I found myself saying the words of Psalm 110:3. “Before the dawn, I begot you from the womb.” Could that cloudy thing from which the Creator emanates be the primordial womb?

At this point I needed to read what the experts have come up with.

Many expositions of this fresco take the position that Michelangelo intended that the robe be in the anatomical form of the two main lobes of the human brain.  It certainly looks like the outline of a human brain.

To me, however, the physical form of the human brain is not very impressive and it’s encased in the cranium. In Michelangelo’s day, little was known about how the brain functions and the science of neurology did not exist.

The uterus, however, is easily seen simply by cutting open the abdomen. There it lies, a chamber from which with great urgency a human life is sprung through the labia to a waiting world.  A great deal of mystery still surrounds the creation of life within the womb.

I side with those who see in God’s garment the form of a womb. It looks like it could be a human uterus. And, isn’t that green ribbon the umbilical cord trailing?

I must agree that a good argument can be made that God is creating from the background of a human brain. But I’m sticking with Psalm 110.  It’s a womb. I’m not sure that my artist friend will agree with me.

Incidentally, if there’s not a womb somehow involved, why else would Adam have a navel?  Yes, Adam does have a belly button, a detail that’s hard to miss in Michelangelo’s representation of the first man.

 

Listening for the Voice of the Lord.

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A  woman once asked me: “What does the voice of the Lord sound like?” We’d been discussing prayer and how prayer has two aspects:  I speak, He listens; He speaks, I listen…. Ahem…. It’s maybe not, always in that precise order.

Listening for God seems, often, a forgotten element of personal prayer. Some of us talk an awful lot when we pray. This woman, however, was asking me to describe God’s voice so that when she heard it, she’d know it was Him.

How do we recognize His voice?  Would I even recognize a voice as His if I heard it?

Each human voice is unique. When my father called out to me from upstairs,  I had no doubt it was he who was calling me. My response to his voice was immediate:  “O.K., Dad!” I can still hear the uniqueness of his voice and I could tell by the tone of his voice if I was in trouble, or not. But, how do I know when God speaks?

Sacred scripture in Psalm 29 says that His voice is powerful, thunderous, “splitting the oak trees” and resounding over the great waters. He shakes the ground and the living things leap up and take notice.

Is that the voice that I should be expecting to hear?  Would I be stunned into deafness by the loudness and power of his glorious voice?

Scripture describes another kind of experience of God’s voice which is much more subtle but startling just the same. Elijah has been praying within the solid walls of a cave in Carmel in the hills of Israel.  He asks God to permit him to experience His Presence. God responds not with thunder but with a “small, murmuring sound.” (I Kings 19:11-13).

God’s voice, then, may be indescribable but urgent when it comes.  His voice may be loud and awesome or conversational or just a revealing silence. We won’t hear Him unless we are listening for Him no matter the tone or intensity of that voice.

The sound of my father’s voice is indescribable and unique.  I could never misidentify it. An individual’s voice is part of the character of a person.

I think we have to learn how to recognize the voice of the Lord by listening for it.  Just like loving, I may not know how to define it but I’ll know it when I feel it. With God, if I can just learn to listen I will know it when I hear it.

 

 

 

Do You Think He Notices Me?

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A quiet church.  Off hours. The huge expanse is empty. I’m unlocking doors. On Sunday these pews are filled and there is a lot of activity. But now, no one. No sounds. I don’t notice anything different. The same shades of darkness fill this place.  Then,  a shadow moves at the rear of the church.

Until he rose up, I simply hadn’t noticed him hunched over in the darkest part of the church . He had been lying on a bench lengthwise.  Somehow, I hadn’t seen him in that pew when the church was locked up after Friday’s evening devotions. When he heard me open the sacristy door the next morning and enter the sanctuary, he awoke and sat up. It scared the h-ll out of me.

He acted as if he had done it all before, and he probably had. He was homeless and neither of us thought it necessary to belabor the point.  We exchanged “good morning” and that was it. I never saw him again. And, I don’t think I’d recognize him if I did.

These days I notice people more than I used to. It could be because my life is simpler in retirement.  Different people deliver my groceries once a week but each one impresses me. Neighbors walk before supper and pass by my porch. I’m beginning to recognize the regulars.

At the state park not far from my home, I sit at a picnic table and just watch people.  The same Asian couples come about twice a week to fish along the solid banks of the Illinois River as it flows through Morris. The women wear straw wide-brimmed sun hats and the men baseball caps.

Moms walk down to the slow moving water in shorts and loose tops hand-in-hand with their toddlers.  They watch them throw sticks and pebbles into the gentle river. The kids smile when they hear their stones go “plunk!” One boy looks up at his mom with a huge grin on his face as if to say : “Look what I did!”

An elderly man with a narrow, metal loop around his head sporting a microphone which clings to his right cheek comes regularly to lounge at a nearby picnic table and smoke a few cigarettes.

There are dog walkers of all kinds, some with two or three house dogs lunging forward straining their leashes; other walkers  are ambling as slow as their old sniffing companions. Plus, there is a whole set of people wandering around the park quietly who I haven’t focused in on yet.

In one of her short stories Flannery O’Connor described a scene where a young man is asked about God. The boy affirms that he believes in God and says, “but I don’t think he notices me yet.”

I’m thinking: God notices the homeless man in church, sees every individual in this park and His regard is weighty.  I want to see what He sees.

 

 

 

The Face of Jesus, Everyday.

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One day I was sitting in the car while a brother Resurrectionist went into a Starbucks for coffee and a donut. As I was waiting, I noticed a man sitting on a curb just a stone’s throw from me in front of a podiatrist office. He was a middle-aged man with scraggly grey hair wearing dirty jeans and a grey long sleeve shirt which looked nearly as bad as the pants. His once brown shoes were scruffed and ripped in places.  I didn’t notice any socks. He was sitting on the curb slumped over and occasionally made a gesture with his right hand as if he was in conversation with someone. I didn’t see anyone else.

I had hoped that he didn’t see me sitting there in the passenger’s seat in the dark blue Mazda. He’d have probably asked me for money. I was feeling moody and tired for some reason that day. I felt as bad as he looked.  Anyway, I just didn’t want to deal with this guy.

My brother C.R. came out of Starbucks with two coffees. I had told him that I didn’t want any. He walked right by the car and crouched down to the eye level of the homeless man.  I couldn’t hear what either said. The man reached out, took the coffee. They exchange a few words. My brother Resurrectionist then hopped back into the car and continued a conversation we’d begun earlier.  Not a word about what he had just done.

This happened years ago, but I’ve never forgotten his kindness to a person who had not asked him for anything. I also remember that I never even thought of getting involved with that guy.

“I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” Ouch!

You and I have no idea of what Jesus looked like or His mother Mary, either.  I have to admit that Our Lord Himself could pass me on the sidewalk today and I’d probably miss him because I simply do not expect Him.

If we could see the face of Jesus in the people we meet every day we’d be closer to putting the gospel into practice. We might see the face of Jesus transfigured before us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resurrectionists Get-together in Darien, IL.

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This week the members of my province of the Congregation of the Resurrection will begin a four-day meeting in Darien, Illinois at the Carmelite Conference Center.  This get-together is an opportunity for our American province members to strengthen our brotherhood in Our Lord Jesus Christ and to bring into focus our mission to serve in our ministries with a renewed spirit. We are committed to bringing the light of Our Lord Jesus Christ into the darkest places in our culture.

When we were formed in 1842, we called ourselves “Brothers of the Resurrection.” Today, we are known simply as Resurrectionists. We minister in parishes, universities, and other ministries by carrying the light of the Resurrection into the reality of the 21st-century American Church. We cherish the spirit which brings us together to serve the Church.  We need one another more than ever in a time when the Catholic Church is being called to what Pope St. John Paul called the New Evangelization. We are meeting this week to strengthen our commitment to Our Lord and one another.

It’s also a time when we remember brothers who are no longer with us but whose spirit still energizes us. Father Leonard Krzywda was one of the brightest and kindest of men who lived the life of the Resurrection with great humility. Whatever ministry the Congregation of the Resurrection asked of him he accepted. Len was a parish priest, a high school Biology teacher and an army chaplain during the Vietnam conflict. He learned Portuguese and settled in Brazil in order to manage the Brazilian region’s seminary and formation program.  He’s gone now but his example of holiness remains. 

We ask you who are reading this to please pray for us.  We expect to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and hear his call to courage in this moment of transition in our Church.  We would be grateful if each day this week you would lift us up in prayer asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten us and strengthen us in our commitment to the Church and each other.

We will not forget to pray for you and for the Church we both love.

 

Jane Fonda, “The Dollmaker.”

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Jane Fonda as Gertie in “The Dollmaker.”

I’ve never liked Jane Fonda.  Her showboating about the Vietnam War fifty years ago turned me off then and the feeling lingers. Even recent interviews display a cranky old lady. However, after seeing her in a made-for-TV drama she starred in years ago, I’m reviewing the situation.

In “The Dollmaker,” Fonda portrays, Gertie, an Appalachian mother of five young children who follows her husband, Clovis,  to Detroit, after he left the family farm to try to better their lives by taking a tradesmen’s job there.  It’s the beginning of the Second World War and men, mostly, go off to serve their country, some never coming back and those who do often find their families scattered and their own souls scarred by what they’ve endured.

Clovis and Gertie and their kids find themselves living in a clapboard house in a long row of similar shacks provided by Clovis’ employer, an un-named  manufacturing company. Gertie has to buy food for the family, a thing that was unfamiliar to her because back home they lived off the land and bartered for whatever else they needed.

School was alright but Gertie’s kids found it hard to relate to city kids. The northerners had trouble understanding her Appalachian children and their country ways. Their southern accent marked the kids as dumb hicks.

In her rare moments of relaxation, Gertie enjoyed carving dolls out of scrap wood.  Squirrels and birds appeared, too, even a crucifix. But, what was most interesting to her was working a large cherry tree trunk into a brooding hunched figure of Jesus. She wasn’t quite ready to work on the face of her subject but she was thinking about it and wondering how the finished sculpture — for that’s what it was– would turn out.

Gertie never thinks of herself.  She cares for each of her children with strength and dedication. She is an  up-rooted Appalachian housewife who fixes three meals a day, washes clothes and tries to keep the family together.

When Gertie’s youngest daughter wanders off to the train yard behind their house, Gertie frantically searches for her. Then, she sees her resting on some train tracks as a freight engine roars towards her. Screaming and running to save her child, she is too late. She witnesses the train crush her little girl who dies later at the hospital. Her funeral uses up the stash of money that Gertie had been saving to buy some farmland back home.

Jane Fonda is wonderful in this movie: strong and loving. She brings Gertie to life.  She portrays a woman who somehow manages to hold the rest of the family together  when her teenage son runs away and returns to the hills. Now, her little girl was taken from her and Fonda makes you feel the loss.  Her Gertie finds a way to rescue the rest of her family and return to the county where they all had been raised.  That was home. Not Detroit.

Fonda is convincing as a woman from the hills and captures well the dialect and endurance of a rural “old lady” as her husband affectionately calls her in the movie. In a stunning performance, Jane Fonda evokes something of the character portrayed by her father in “The Grapes of Wrath.”  He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.  Jane won an outstanding actress Emmy for hers.

(“The Dollhouse” is available on Prime Video and Tubi.)

 

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