80’s Baltimore, the King, and the Babies

For a Holy-Name-of-Jesus homily (and some other enjoyables), click HERE.

For an early-bird experience of this Sunday’s homily, read on below…

For a thoroughly captivating mid-1980’s glimpse of Lady Grantham when she was still a young waitress in Fells Point, back when Mt. Vernon Square was still on the way to an Orioles game, and shimmered with cigarette ash, and driving around Baltimore could make any movie worth watching, and some scripts still coursed with drama of Hitchcockian richness, with characters that taught you things about yourself, if you are over 18, consider downloading/renting/honestly obtaining “The Bedroom Window.”

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“Where is the king?” (Matthew 2:2)

The question fell a little awkwardly on the ears of the courtiers in Jerusalem. Because these eminent foreigners, thoroughly powerful and renowned, had asked the king where the king is. Awkward.

Herod

Where do we find the king? Might be a little awkward if we showed up in Washington and asked around, with the same question. Hey, Mr. President. Hey, Senators, Congressmen, Where’s the King?

Might be more than awkward. We might find ourselves locked-up. Citizens! This is a democracy. No king here. Spend some time in this padded room thinking about it…

The wise men sought the king. They knew Herod was not he. We, too, know perfectly well that the king we seek does not do cable-news interviews on any network.

But the human soul seeks her king, and always will seek Him, until she finds Him. That fact is no less true now than it was 2013 years ago. Doesn’t matter if we human beings live under a hereditary monarchy, or a republican democracy, or as islamist theocracy, or a communist-party oligarchy, or a dictatorship of relativism. We have no real peace until we find the king and do Him homage. Until we find Him, our own souls gurgle and froth with ungoverned chaos, like a destabilized nation ripe for a coup d’état.

The wise men, as you know, did not simply ask, Where is the king? They asked, “Where is the king of the Jews?”

Whither Capernaum and Camden Yards?

Synagogue in Capernaum

And as for you, Capernaum, ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ (Luke 10:15)

“The world as we see it is passing away.” Thus wrote the Apostle Paul to the Christians who lived in one of the bigger, bustling port cities of the Roman Empire, Corinth, in Greece.

The Capernaum we read so much about in the gospels has been excavated by archaeologists. A visit to the site offers an impressive evocation of the ancient town. But the impression the dig gives that Capernaum was very small: this is misleading. It was no sleepy fishing village. Capernaum was a bustling little hub of commerce.

It will all pass away. The skyscrapers of Charlotte, of Atlanta, of Manhattan—they will pass away. They will burn or fall or something, someday.

I am as big a Baltimore Orioles fan as anyone. But I will never forget the Saturday morning a couple years ago when I took a run down 33rd Street for the first time in about a decade. I had to stop dead in my tracks and gape in stunned silence. I found myself staring at a huge grassy field that badly needed mowing.

Memorial Stadium had ceased to exist. The huge coliseum where I had cheered for Eddie Murray and Brooks Robinson when I was in the fourth grade, and the seemingly endless parking lot where my aunt parked the Dodge Dart in a sea of cars: Bees were buzzing, flies flying. Not a sound. The center of everything, where the guys from Barry Levinson’s Diner would have gone to see Johnny Unitas play (if they had been real people): reduced to nothingness.

“Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?”

Will Camden Yards be preserved for all eternity in heaven? I think it’s pretty likely that someday Camden Yards, and M&T Stadium, and every boutique ballpark in North America—they will all be in ruins, underwater, forgotten.

And in heaven all the saints who prayed, who repented of their sins, who loved and feared God: they will be watching something infinitely more interesting than even the playoffs.

Little Wonders

Did you know: Before Helen was taken from Sparta to Troy–even before she was married to king Menelaus–while she was still a girl, she was abducted by Theseus?

Theseus gave her to his mother to take care of her, until she would be old enough for him to marry.

But Helen’s brothers Castor and Pollux rescued her from Theseus’ mother Aethra. (You can learn a lot of ancient mythology from beautiful old plates.)

Helen married the king of Sparta. But then she was taken away to Troy by Paris. (Paris was the cousin of Aeneas, the ancient father of the Roman race.)

It was a trial being the most beautiful woman in the world…

…Puer natus est nobis!

The “Missal” is the book the priest uses to say the prayers of the Holy Mass. The Cornaro Missal has a beautiful illumination on the page next to the Christmas Mass prayers.

Be My Speed

Basilica of St. Denis

First thing this morning, I put my red on. But it wasn’t in honor of the faltering Caps.

I vested in a blood-red chasuble in honor of the martyr Saint Denis, who was beheaded 1751 years ago today. He was the first to preach the Gospel in Paris.

In Act V, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Henry V, the king invokes the aid of St. Denis.

Henry is trying to woo the Princess of France. But she is stone-faced, because she thinks Henry is an “enemy of France.”

Katharine. I cannot tell vat is dat.

Henry V
No, Kate? I will tell thee in French; which I am
sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married
wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook
off. Je quand sur le possession de France, et quand
vous avez le possession de moi,—let me see, what
then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc votre est
France et vous etes mienne. It is as easy for me,
Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much
more French: I shall never move thee in French,
unless it be to laugh at me.

When Kenneth Branagh delivered this line in his movie version, he skipped the invocation of St. Denis. Not a good idea!

…A brother-priest and I will undertake the Baltimore Half-Marathon tomorrow morning.

Please say a prayer for us that some heavenly power will be our speed! (Both of us are slow in more ways than one.)

Dateline: Charm City

Lourdes

One hundred fifty-one years ago today, our Lady appeared for the first time to St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. The Lady made a spring of water flow. She asked for a church. St. Bernadette faithfully did everything the Lady asked.

Preacher and Big Daddy is on the road. We kept the Memorial of our Lady of Lourdes at the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, Maryland.

Beltway Battle #2: Not so much

If it were me, I would have said, “It is simply too cold to be outside.” But the Redskins are professional football players, so they don’t have that excuse.

My brother had to explain to me the GU on the back of all the helmets in the NFL. May Gene Upshaw rest in peace. I thought the entire league had decided to get behind the Hoyas. (As well they should.)

Another member of the NBA Moses Movement, Drew Gooden

While we are on other subjects, it is time to retire the Italian bests below.

They were fun for two weeks, but now it is time to move on to other things. I figure that by now everyone has had a chance to try the canolis at La Vittoria and to speak Spanish to an Italian hotel clerk or two.

We’ve got to move on now to new things. We can’t dwell on the past, like when it seemed as if the Redskins were actually good.

There are some new Bests above, to take our minds off other things…

Special “Bests of Italy” Edition

Best Canoli: Il Ristorante La Vittoria, Via delle fornaci, near St. Peter’s

Il Ristorante Vittoria

Best Way to Fall Asleep Standing Up during an Afternoon Tour of One of the Patriarchal Basilicas: Eat a Plate of Gnocchi for Lunch

Best Way to Try the Patience of an Italian Hotel Clerk: Act Like You are doing him a Favor by Speaking Broken Spanish to Him

Best Papal Tomb: Leo XIII, over the door to the sacristy in St. John Lateran

Best Occasion for Drinking Grappa: None.

Best Way to Cross a Roman Street: In a State of Grace

Best Cure for Jet-Lag: Redskins Victory!!!

Zephyrs, Beltway Battles, and Old St. Nick

Gimmicks with the uniform are never a good idea

Things had gotten so bad (3-13 record) that the Wizards decided to come in disguise to play the Lakers at the Verizon Center last night.

Then, amazingly, they almost beat my man Kobe and Co.!

Almost. The Wizards/Zephyrs are now 3-14. Kobe saved the game for the Lakers after a “valiant effort” in the fourth-quarter by the Wiz, as Phil Chenier put it.