Sunday, June 18, 2017

Corpus Christi

I was struck at Mass today by these two stanzas of the Sequence for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi:

Hear what Holy Church maintaineth,
That the bread its substance changeth
Into flesh, the wine to Blood.
Does it pass thy comprehending?
Faith, the law of sight transcending,
Leaps to things not understood.




Here, beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things, are all we see-
Flesh from bread, and blood from wine,
Yet is Christ in either sign
All entire confessed to be.


Another note from last week: Christ is the sacrament of God. The Church is the sacrament of Christ. Individually we are to be sacraments of the Church, that is, visible and tangible signs of Christ's presence in and for the world.

Expectation, desire, hope

A long note I took in class this week apropos of nothing:

I have to distinguish my desire from my expectations.
Even when realized, my expectations don't completely satisfy my desire- desire remains
Desire is that in me which corresponds to God's grace.
Desire is what responds to God's initiative towards me.
One way to understand this is to see very self as desire; a longing for fulfillment.



Quite often my expectations are not met.
This leads to disappointment, but a different kind than when my expectations are met.
Dissatisfaction and disappointment are the fertile soil in which hope can grow.
Just as death is necessary for resurrection, travail and suffering are necessary for hope.

This an update. On reflecting further on this, it occurred to me that years ago there was a song I turned to whenever I felt like this. I was glad to rediscover it today. It seems fitting at the end of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

Friday, June 9, 2017

"Somewhere out there waiting is a place where I'll know peace"

Thanks to the charity of friends and one stranger, enough money has been raised to inter John Ellichman and not leave his mausoleum crypt unmarked. I will conduct his committal service later this morning at Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery here in Salt Lake City. Burying the dead is an work of mercy.

Because we believe in the resurrection of the body, Christians treat the bodies of our dead with great reverence and respect. Treating the bodies of the departed, of course, is not a unique feature of Christianity. In fact, this is something we inherited from our elder brothers and sisters- the Jewish people. Respect for a person's human dignity, which includes reverencing each person's bodily integrity, does not end at death. Given the vulnerability and defenselessness of someone's dead body, we have an obligation to safeguard the body of the person who has died.

Mt Calvary Cemetery, Salt Lake City

I am feeling pretty good that I am putting up a traditio on succeeding Fridays. Our traditio this week is a song I heard for the first time last night on 103.1 The Wave's Newer New Wave program, which airs on Thursdays at 7:00 PM. Since the advent of the program several months ago, I have been busy on Thursday evenings and unable to tune in. The show features both new releases by New Wave bands who have been around since the '80s and newer bands whose sound has the New Wave warp and woof. Without further delay, our traditio is VNV Nation's "If I Was."



If I was a better man
Or a poor man or a king
Would I have the strength to start again
Walk the path that called to me
Somewhere out there waiting
Is a place where I'll know peace
Calling out and beckoning
Be I a poor man or a king


"VNV" stands for "Victory Not Vengeance." It's a nation to which I can pledge allegiance.

Even with our observance of two major solemnities the next two Sundays (Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, respectively), we are back in Ordinary Time. So, it's time to get back to observing Fridays as days of penance in an intentional way. Momento mori - remembering death - is not morbid in the least.

Considering the brief span of one's mortal life ought to infuse one with meaning and purpose, causing us to spend time wisely. Scripture is incessant on this point. Sadly, what matters are not the things we tend to spend most of our time doing. May God have mercy on us all.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Tobit and the importance of burying the dead

Because my parish celebrated Mass in the evening instead of in the morning today, I was able to assist my pastor at the altar on this Memorial of St. Boniface, who was a fearless evangelist. Like my patron saint, Stephen, Boniface's fearless evangelizing led to his martyrdom. I did not have a chance to do more than glance at today's readings prior to Mass. When I heard it proclaimed, I was delighted by the first reading from the Book of Tobit, which is one of the deuterocanonical books, which are usually called "Apocryphal" by Protestant Christians.

Tobit is set in Nineveh, the capital of ancient Assyria, during the time when thousands of Israelites were exiled from Samaria to Assyria in the eighth century BC. Tobit was most likely written centuries later, in the late third or early second century BC. The Assyrian exile was the population exchange that led to the Samaritans having their unique, syncretistic from of Judaism, the center of which was Mount Gerazim, not Jerusalem.

It is from the first chapter of Tobit that we receive a lesson in the Corporal Works of Mercy
I would give my bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked. If I saw one of my people who had died and been thrown behind the wall of Nineveh, I used to bury him (Tobit 1:17)
According to the Book of Tobit, when Sennacherib succeeded his father, Shalmaneser, as king of Assyria, he took to killing Israelites. After Sennacherib killed them, Tobit would bury his fellow Israelites. Eventually, this caused Tobit to flee Nineveh for his life, leaving his wife Anna and his son Tobiah behind. After he fled into exile, all of his property was seized by the state, leaving his wife and son with nothing. Forty days after he fled, Sennacherib was assassinated. His son, Esarhaddon, succeeded him.

King Esarhaddon put Tobit's relative Ahiqar, "in charge of all the credit accounts of his kingdom, and he took control over the entire administration" (Tobit 1:22). Ahiqar interceded with the king on Tobit's behalf. As a result, Esarhaddon allowed Tobit to return to Nineveh. During the Festival of Weeks, called by Greek-speaking Jews "Pentecost," Tobit, being a man of mercy, told his son Tobiah to
go out and bring in whatever poor person you find among our kindred exiled here in Nineveh who may be a sincere worshiper of God to share this meal with me. Indeed, son, I shall wait for you (Tobit 2:2)
Tobit Burying the Dead


As he went to find a poor person to invite to share their feast, Tobiah came across an Israelite who had been murdered and whose body was thrown into the marketplace. On hearing this, Tobit went and retrieved the body of his fellow Israelite, brought it to his house, put the body in a room so he could bury it after sundown, when no one would see him. Tobit's neighbors were aghast, saying,
Does he have no fear? Once before he was hunted, to be executed for this sort of deed, and he ran away; yet here he is again burying the dead! (Tobit 2:8)
Burying the dead in accord with their human dignity is important. It is one of the Corporal Works of Mercy.

I was struck by this reading because last week a man I have known for the past 10 years or so, John Ellichman, passed away. Prior to his conversion, John lived a dissolute life, which had brought him a lot of pain and sorrow. As a result, he was pretty much alone in the world. He would speak to his daughter in St. Louis once in awhile, but he had never really been part of her life. For several reasons, she is not traveling to Salt Lake for his burial. After his conversion, John was as faithful as anyone I know. He loved Jesus and, more importantly, knew he was loved by Jesus. John was without doubt one of the most humble, unassuming, unimposing people I have ever known.

John was nearly indigent. He was able to maintain a small apartment. He managed to pay his utilities as well as keep himself fed and clothed. Here is an example of John's faithfulness: after it was mentioned in a homily by a former rector of The Cathedral of the Madeleine that it was expensive to bury people and that the parish had, in recent months, paid for the burial of a number of people, John paid what he could for his own funeral and burial expenses.

John had heart problems the whole time I knew him. His doctors were amazed he was still alive. They were even more amazed that John walked everywhere. In all the years I knew him, John never owned a car and he didn't take the bus or the train. He walked everywhere, including to the 11:00 AM Mass at the Cathedral every Sunday, no matter the weather. He always wore a red bandana around his neck and a brown leather vest.

The only thing that is not paid for to decently bury John is his metal memorial plaque, which will serve as his headstone. Otherwise, his grave will be unmarked. The plaque will have John's name along with the dates of birth and death. The plaque costs $425.00. To ensure John a dignified burial I have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money for his memorial plaque. Apart from the fee charged by GoFundMe to use their service, there is ZERO overhead. If any money is raised over and above $425.00, I will donate it all to Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Salt Lake City to use for others who, like John, need money to be decently buried.

This is an opportunity to do a Corporal Work of Mercy. No donation is too small. Twenty-five people giving $17 each would cover it. To donate click here.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

"One simple thing is all we really need"

With a few exceptions, it has been very difficult to post a Friday traditio the past several months. Yesterday it happened again that I was busy from dawn to sunset. This is okay because life trumps blogging. For some reason, like the fact that I've heard this song on the radio several times this past week, Stabilizers singing "One Simple Thing" is our late traditio for the first week of June.

I am used to time seeming to speed up as I grow older, but at the pace 2017 seems to be going, I will 80 the day-after-tomorrow. It's easy to see that Einstein was correct without doing any math.

"One Simple Thing" is one of those wonderful 80s songs the meaning of which remains slightly ambiguous. It seems to be about love between two people who want to just be together, excluding everything else, by building a wall "no one else can see." There is a lot of talk these days about "safe spaces." Desiring a "safe space," despite the harsh words of some, is a very understandable reaction to reality. In the past, we used to call this place home. But with the advent and widespread availability of the internet and various kinds of social media, I don't think home feels as safe as it once did for most people. For many, home is not a place where you can keep the world at bay.

Love both is and is not a safe space, so to speak. It is not a safe space because loving another always requires you to take a risk. But once love, if it merits the name, is experienced, it becomes something with a reliable degree of certainty, making it it highly desirable in an uncertain world.

Erecting and then living behind an invisible wall with one's beloved is, it seems to me, if in perhaps an overly philosophized way, expressive of the desire to inhabit eternity within time. Love between two finite beings can't be anything other finite, despite the longing for eternity love brings forth from within us, exposing the need that constitutes us as human beings made in the divine image. Hence, eternity often remains elusive. The passage of time, as noted above, stops for nothing and nobody. As the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus noted: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." These assertions are, of course, as subsequent philosophical discourse amply demonstrates, disputable. But the intuition that only love is eternal strikes me as beautiful and, hence, true.



If the "one simple thing" is love, even if restricted to the love of two people for one another, it bears noting that few things are more complex than the love between two people. On the other hand, nothing is more simple than what God has revealed about God, namely "God is love" (1 John 4:8.16). Moreover, "In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Being what it is (i.e., the very basis of reality), love does not build walls, or put up and maintain barriers, but removes them. The best evidence of this is creation and the Incarnation of the Son of God. Concisely, then, love is profuse, which means, according to the dictionary, "exuberantly plentiful; abundant." It is God, who is love, who enables us to inhabit eternity within time.

We would be wise to "give back all the things we had but one." In fact, in the end, that is what we'll be asked to do. Whether or not we can bring ourselves to do it will perhaps be the determining factor in how we live, or whether we, in fact, go on living. You see, to live is to love.



Sundown this evening marks the beginning of the Pentecost. After Easter, Pentecost is the most important observance of the liturgical year. Yes, it even trumps Christmas. Today I am privileged to accompany 6 adults from my parish, who I have been preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation over the past few months, to The Cathedral of Madeleine to be confirmed by our bishop, Oscar Solis. I am excited. At least as I learned them, the spiritual fruit of the Third Mystery of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary - the Descent of the Holy Spirit - is God's love for us. The Holy Spirit is Christ's resurrection presence in us, among us, and through us until he returns in glory.

One simple thing: ἀγάπη, agápē, love.

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9.15-1719-30.33-62; Psalm 23:1-6; John 8:1-11 Whenever I hear Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, m...