No prophet is honored....

Before I entered religious life, I practiced law. I was a property lawyer, and spent my time writing wills and trusts and other instruments for clients who were able to pay me upfront. It was a very pleasant way to practice law, generally speaking. Of course, when you start out, you look for all kinds of clients, and with luck, even a few family members might trust themselves to you. My Dad was a doctor, and needed an estate plan. I very happily volunteered my services, and was able to organize his affairs to the point where we actually had to sign the documents that would create his subchapter S. Corporation, a 401(k) account, a will, his inter-vivos trust etc. Anyway, I prepared all these documents for him, and then ran into a roadblock. I could not get my Dad to sign anything. He would "yes" me to death about it; he would make appointments with me and then cancel them, he "needed to think about some things", but he never would in fact sign the papers. They were still unsigned when, after two and a half years of law practice, I finally entered the Dominican Order. When I entered the Order, I handed all my cases over to another lawyer, named Tom, who was coming out of the US Trust Corporation about the time I was entering the Order. I gave him all my cases, my good ones and my dogs, including my father's files. At Christmas, we novices in the Order were permitted to go home to visit, and I got to talk to my father about his new lawyer. "That Tom is great," said my father, "he's got me into ia Subchapter S. corporation, a 401(k) plan, a will, and so forth." Tom had found the file, in other words, and got my father to sign the papers that he wouldn't sign for me. Talk about frustrating! I asked my mother about this - actually, complained to my mother about this. She said to me. "Stephen, your dad saw you in diapers. At some level, you're are always going to be his little boy; that makes it hard for him to have you as a lawyer."

This coming Sunday's reading from Mark's Gospel has Jesus returning to his hometown where he grew up, where he meets with skepticism, opposition, and even rejection by the people who know him, and have known him from his youth. This is a radically different reception than he has gotten from other people in his Galilean ministry up to now. He is amazed by their unbelief, and, says the Word of God. "He was unable to do many miracles there", except for the healing of a few sick persons. (to be coninued)

A Breather

Today is a day, as Scripture says, "to swallow my spittle.." (Sorry, the Bible really says that kind of thing.) I have a short respite from things, though not much of one. I do have a paper due, but it's not going to get done today. I have a major meeting with the leadership group for the Bishop's three-year fundraiser which is coming up tonight. That said, it's a quieter day than most I've had recently. So I'm blogging. Finally, and after months.

Father Murray for three weeks has had a difficulty, a progressive weakness for some unknown reason, which has resulted in him being unable to walk for three weeks. At this point I have him up in Nazareth Home in Louisville for a course of physical therapy. The doctors can't really find anything wrong with him beyond his decompensated muscles except he is 87. Meanwhile I'm here by myself with the full schedule of Masses and so forth. It's been a rather dramatic year to say the least.

I've compiled a list of things I need to do in the very near future, and ended up with more than a dozen without difficulty. So it goes. Blogging is not one of them, but I think a regular approach to writing will help my writing in general. There is an asceticism about writing which I think will help in general with my need to focus more intently on an orderly life in the midst of the disorder which life throws at me.

The French Chancellor of Louis XV, Henri Francois d'Aguesseau, once observed that his wife always delayed ten or twelve minutes before she came down to dinner. Using that ten minutes effectively - sixty hours each year, he set out to compose a work entirely in this time, in order not to lose an instant; the result was, at the end of fifteen years, a book in three large volumes quarto, which went through several editions.

Heaven knows I have bits and pieces of time which would be better employed. And to that end I need 1. Sufficient sleep, so that I don't keep dozing at my desk; 2. Sufficient exercise to keep my energy level up; and 3. Regular prayer to keep myself attuned to Him who is my life.

Enough for now. Nos verremos.

Lifted up by Christ

This Sunday's Gospel includes the story of Christ's mention to Nicodemus of Moses' brazen serpent - the cure God prescribed for those who were bitten by venemous saraph (i.e. "burning") serpents in their sins against him; the people afflicted were to gaze upon the bronze serpent and find healing. "As Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." If we are to find healing at all for what afflicts us in this life, it will be in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sake became the image of the punishment of sin and sinners (though he himself was without sin) and was lifted up on the Cross .

I knew a young man who was injured in a motorcycle accident. He had been your typical working-class youth, loving girls, beer, and fast machines. When he was clipped by a car trying to pass him, he broke his neck and was made a quadriplegic. This event changed him completely. It could not do otherwise. He could move his neck a little, but nothing else. He could speak, but he was stuck in his stretcher bed as if he were nailed to it.

When I knew him, he had been going for a number of years to Lourdes with the Dominican annual pilgrimage to that center of healing. His family made sure he got there every year, hoping, of course, for a miraculous cure. However, by the time I met him, he himself was no longer looking for a cure, but rather a deeper embrace of the Lord Jesus Christ. This young man,- who might well like Job have cursed his luck and the day of his birth, and even perhaps unlike Job could have gone on to curse the God who let him suffer their injury he had, - had no bitterness or anger left in him. By the time I had met him, he told me, he had come past that. Now, nailed by his injury to his bed, he found himself daily in union with the heart of the Savior who was nailed to a cross for his sake. This young man was able to rouse and cheer up the other sick by his relentless good humor, his kindness, and his evident love of Jesus. He was able to give a few witness talks to the other pilgrims, speaking from a clip on microphone attached to his shirt.

On that pilgrimage I witnessed a few truly miraculous cures: one pilgrim's retinas, detached by his diabetes, were healed; another woman, silenced by Lou Gehrig's disease, began to speak again. My young friend in the stretcher was glad for them, though he did not himself receive a healing. A few years later, his body, enervated by inaction and the continued degeneration of his nervous system, finally gave up, and he died. But to the end, his peace and good humor perdured. And in this way he finished his being lifted up into the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ which was to be his final healing.

I remember this young man, and then I look at my own weaknesses. There's always something in a person's life that needs purification, that needs to be caught up in the mystery of the Cross. The Cross sorts us out; it makes us make choices we would prefer not to; it discloses the depths of our hearts and the good and evil that is in them. The two thieves crucified with Christ come to the cross alike as two peas in a pod; but one finishes by joining the mob of Jesus' enemies screaming for his death, rejecting everything Jesus is, while the other humbly begs to be remembered as the Lord enters his kingdom. Sheep and goats are separated at the foot of the Cross, anticipating the final judgment, and the human heart gives up its deepest secrets in the presence of the Crucified.

To look on the Cross is to open your heart to judgment; do that, and the Lord himself will sit down with you to refine it as a refiner purifies silver. Whatever dross is in our hearts, whatever secret sins lurk there, whatever demons riding us prevent our own mastery of our passions and desires, our angers and fears,- he will cast it all out as we hold up our hearts to the Savior who was lifted up on the Cross for us. We need to keep looking at this Cross and the holy divine and human fruit it bears. We need to keep opening ourselves up to Jesus for this healing, painful as it is, for he will heal us eventually even from death, and in the present age will knead into our being that goodness, beauty and virtue we see in his own person.

The Victory of the Cross is seen in us, at last, in the conquest of our secret sin, of our favorite and hardenened attachments to desire and avarice, to fear and anger and pride. It is through the embrace of that particular form Cross we are afraid we cannot carry, of the Cross that we will not bear, precisely by this gracious and painful and particular embrace of our share of the Cross of Jesus, that will make us, raised up by Christ, a saint and a friend of God.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!

Half- Past Lent

It's the vigil of the fourth Sunday of Lent, and I haven't blogged since January. There's more to tell than I really want to go over: two weeks without phones because of the ice storm, the toxic waste cleanup saga, the final installation of the underground electrical system; my chest cold/infection; and going up for St. Patrick's Day to Columbus. I'm finally beginning to feel healthy again, in part because it's easier to exercise outside. I need to set up a little archery range against the back edge of the property, so that I can increase my health, wind, and strength before turkey season hits us.

A young man approached me about seeking a vocation to the Dominicans the other day; the first time in my five years here. There is hope.

I'm going to blog more often, but probably more briefly. I think that's the key to keeping my hand in writing, and to return frequently to the task and the asceticism of it.

It's Snowing ...

It's snowing this afternoon. Snow doesn't happen very often in Kentucky, at least the part that I live in, but it was snowing this afternoon. Thick white flakes came down I was typing my last post; it has settled down now to a small, steady snow which in Boston would definitely be staying. It's so warm down here that snow doesn't last, and indeed there has been precisely no accumulation of it this afternoon. The problem is when we get snow or rain and then a cold blast of Canada air that turns the melting snow into glare ice. Very dangerous.

I will have to get away from this machine to get some exercise, but today I think it's going to be on the Total Gym. It's in the depth of winter down here that I wish we had a seacoast to look at. Call me crazy, but I think the wild look of a winter sea is a splendid thing. Oh well, I can do rowing exercises, and dream of the ocean around Hispaniola, with the warm turquoise sea blending imperceptibly into the sky at the horizon. Yes, that's how I will spend the afternoon, in a cosmic bowl of blue memories, with the promise of rum and lime juice at the end of the day, when the land-bound sailor comes home from his imaginary sea.

It's All Very Simple....

In the Gospel for today, John the Baptist points out Jesus as the "Lamb of God" to his disciples Andrew and John. Following Jesus at the command of the prophet, the Lord can find some asked them what they want. They want to know where he is" staying", and he invites them to "Come and see". After spending the afternoon with Jesus, Andrew sets out to bring his blood brother Simon to meet the Lord, who Andrew is convinced is the Messiah of God. Jesus looks at him, and gives him a new name- "Peter" - "the Rock."

Each of us has received a call from God pointed out by one who knows the mind of God for us, whether that is Eli teaching Samuel what God's call means, John the Baptist pointing out the Lamb of God to his disciples, lower our power parents in the present day presenting us for baptism: they direct and lead us us to the person of the Son of God made flesh. This is a road is not traveled in a moment; it is the work of a lifetime. But the daily task before us is the same as the destination: to "stay with Christ" - moment by moment - in this life today and for ever in the next. "Staying" with him does not mean merely an intellectual assent to the truth he teaches. We need rather to persist in his presence, to "stay with Him", in mind, in word, in the sacraments, and in deed. To think Christ's thoughts, to chew on Christ's teaching, to do Christ's deeds,-this is the life of the Christian exemplified by all the Saints, our Lady in the first place. This choice to become a saint is not optional for Christians. There is only heaven for the Saints and hell for the damned in the world to come. We need to choose Christ with our whole heart, and to stay with him, stay with his Heart. Simon, whose name means "twice" in Hebrew, has to turn to Jesus at least twice as he follows him, weakly and falteringly - but Jesus gives him a new name - "Rock" -and upon this Rock made strong by faith Jesus will build his Church.

So that means that everybody who has been baptized is called; indeed that is the root meaning of the word for church in Greek, "Ekklesia": "the assembly of those who are called." All are called to "stay with Christ", - to cling to him like a shipwreck victim clings to a life preserver -for that is what Jesus is for each of us. And to do that that in spite of the world's substitution of a different "wisdom" which is in fact a deadly poison. The danger for us is to forget exactly how wicked that world is, and what kind of danger our souls are in, the more we think the world's thoughts, talk its talk, and "stay" with it in our deeds.

Roe versus Wade has another anniversary this coming week; then I'm happy to say some of my parishioners are going down to the March for Life in Washington. I would've gone myself except for the little matter of the apparently leaking fuel tank that that has to be replaced at the school - the EPA is involved, and I dare not be absent from my post. We are having a Mass for pro-life intentions and an end to legalized abortion this country on Monday night.

Hitler killed 7 million Jews; Stalin murdered 20 million Russian citizens. We have so far, in less than a generation, killed 48 million children in this country by abortion. 48 million children. We are making the monsters of the 20th century look like pikers in comparison to the evil of our own society. And yet most of us are insensitive to it. People sometimes ask what German citizens under Hitler were thinking while the death camps were burning those viewed as a threat to that society's comfort and flourishing. I'll tell you; those Germans were were no doubt thinking the same thing we are, as American children daily die under the knife of the abortionist - they were doing their level best not to think about what was happening. Like Sodom before its destruction, we "modern" people love our luxury, our comfort, the way of life we have, which includes an easy sexuality and promiscuity - and to that end the Supreme Court, in U.S. versus Casey, has said that abortion is necessary. We insist that nothing disturb our comfortable way of life and our absolute control of it, not even the innocent life of a child. And so many people are complicit in the evil: not only the women who had abortions, but the men who impregnated them, the grandmas and mothers who brought their daughters to the abortion clinics, the killers - medicine is about healing, not killing- who use their science to destroy innocent life; the politicians who fund abortion, for voters who support the politicians, the clergy and laity who keep silent for fear of what people might say or think about them - all complicit in the wickedness.

We deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth for this evil alone. It may happen yet.

The rescue is in Jesus, in staying with him, in thought, word, and deed. The sacraments are there to give us light, and strength: we're making a spiritual journey between the two streams that flow from the pierced side of Christ on the cross -the water of our baptism, by which we enter into the person and death of Jesus Christ and receive its saving grace, and the progress into the ministry of the saving blood of Christ made manifest and tangible for us in the Holy Eucharist. It's here that we find the house of Christ, the disciples of Christ, a symbol around the Master himself, as he summons us out of darkness into light, out of vice into virtue, out of death into life, out of this world - call it Egypt, Babylon, Sodom, Jericho, Rome, or America - into the New Jerusalem which is built on the eternal heights, from whence has come our Help, - he who gathers us during this life into the truth and goodness and beauty of the life to come.

Health report

As long as were making New Year's resolutions, I should note carefully developments on my personal health and fitness.

I have not been as faithful as I should be to keeping tabs on my Weight Watchers program. At my last report in September, I was down to 295 pounds. I'm thinking some of that may have been dehydration as well as fitness. At this point, after the festivities of the holidays, I find myself back up to about 315 pounds. This is still a far improvement over 329, which is where I really started my plan to be serious about my eating and exercising. I have been spending far too long in this chair, and that does not make for a happy body. If I live like a clam, I'm going to have the blood chemistry and cholesterol of a clam.

Good old Matthew Fury, the baldheaded fitness guru who I confess has been actually very helpful to me, recommends three workouts today. As I interpret him, for a person like me, that's three sessions of 20 minutes each day doing something. Breathing exercises for one period perhaps, a walking session, and then body weight and resistance exercises.

Last week I started with a 20 minute session of aerobic and resistance work on the Total Gym; I was sore for four days afterwards, so I know I'm quite out of shape. I am actually in better shape than I was prior to Christmas because of all the walking have been doing while hunting. I know I have more muscle mass and a lighter step than I used to have. Nevertheless, I obviously need to take Matt seriously. This is going in one of my 10 goals for the index cards. Basta cosí. Stop writing; now act!

A New Year

Well we are half past January, and I haven't blogged in a long while. Things have been extremely busy. I have been working on a major electrical problem at St. Rose, and last week, apparently, we discovered a leak in our oil tank at the school, and now I have to repair this, plus handle EPA. And the water board.

Ah well. All things shall pass.

I need to get back on track with living a holy life, which means taking my prayer more seriously. There's always the tendency to let work take over. That's true whether you're running a business, or working for the Lord.

I have a little exercise I do at the beginning of the year, putting down my goals for the year, long-term and short-term, on 10 index cards, which I place upon my bulletin board. I put a copy in my personal organizer too. That way I have them constantly before my eyes, and eventually, they get done. Big projects are furthermore chopped into smaller ones; in that way they become more manageable. So I will work on these 10 things, and put them on the cards, in the organizer, and perhaps on this blog.

My brother Gerard is going off to Iraq. We'll see if the new technologies I have installed help me be a better correspondent.

We finally got DSL lines down here in Springfield, Kentucky. As a result, I now have a DSL line plugged into a wireless router, and all the computers in the house and parish feed through the one line. Life has gotten very simple on the computer all of a sudden. I no longer watch the drip drip drip of data through a telephone dial-up line into my computer. No more waiting for pages to assemble; things appear almost magically and quickly.

For somebody who loves games, this can be a very bad temptation!

I also installed the Bluetooth system. Working in my office, I find that the standard lengths of your phone cords do not fit my needs to answer my phone on the other desk. If I don't get things just right, I end up yanking the cord from the computer, with deleterious effects on the headphones. And maybe the computer.

I just shot my last set of headphones in this way. I'm dictating this using a Bluetooth earphone, which is now hooked up to my desk computer. This will, I expect, will be the normal way that I function in my office. I have one ear for the computer, and one for the regular telephone. In addition, the same earpiece functions with my cell phone so I'm completely functional. The only thing which I'm supposed to be able to do, and can not yet figured the function for, is the hooking up of the earphone and my laptop computer to my cell phone modem, so that I can use a dial up function even if I do not have a landline or WiFi connection.

For somebody whose great joy is primitive camping, I'm turning into an awful techie.