The We of Catholic Conscience

You are witnesses to these things.

By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit.

I appointed you to go and fear fruit that will remain.

Between now and Ascension Day, we hear the Lord Jesus say all these things to us. You are my chosen witnesses.

We are. We. The sons and daughters of the Church. We. You and I, dear brothers and sisters, are a we. A family.

We are united not by natural birth, but by divine choice. Not by flukish circumstances, or by personal preferences, or by common interests in sports, playing cards, politics, or music. No, we are united by the free gift of God’s grace.

We did not choose Christ. Christ chose us, and made us us, made us a family of faith.

He made a universal communion that spans every human frontier. To be Catholic is to be a brother or sister to other people of every race. We have the right, we have the duty, we have the solemn and holy privilege to call the black, the yellow, the white, the red—to call everyone brother and sister.

God made us a universal human family with the living—and with the dead. Who are my best friends? My best friends are the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Therese, St. Ignatius, and St. John Vianney. I don’t need a bleeding special cellphone plan to holler at my peeps all day, every day. All I have to do is pray.

Seven Years, Season of John

No French cuffs. But an unforgettable moment nonetheless. Ad multos annos, Holiness.

…Everyone knows that we read from the Bible according to a three-year cycle at Sunday Mass? Year A, Year B, Year C. And, for the most part, the gospel readings come from either Matthew, or Mark, or Luke—depending on which year of the cycle we are in.

Great system. We thoroughly read all three gospels. All three—Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Wait. What? Of course. The gospel of the eagle.

St. John’s gospel gets its props every year during Lent and Easter.

This is the week of John 3. We were here back on the fourth Sunday of Lent also. During Lent we had weeks for John 5 and John 8. Next week is John 6. Then we roll into John 14, 15, 16, 17—which recount all the amazing things the Lord Jesus said at the Last Supper.

…One way or another, everyone who has ever walked the face of the earth has known God. Everyone has had a relationship with God—a relationship of some kind. God gives existence to all existing things. So: to exist is to have a relationship with Him, and to know about existing is to know God.

So we all know God. Except we don’t. God gives existence. But the way that God Himself exists? His infinite being? Totally beyond us.

Totally beyond all of us. Except one. One man knows God from the inside, knows Him like a fish knows water. Jesus.

All the gospels present this fact to us—the fact that the mind of Jesus truly knows God, that Jesus’ knowledge of God is utterly unique among all those ever born of a woman. All the gospels teach us this fact.

But we have St. John to thank for recording all the intimate and sublime ways in which the Lord Himself explained it. And we have the Easter season to luxuriate in reading it all.

Forty Days

Lent was forty days of penance. But now…

After He rose from the dead, the Lord Jesus remained on earth for forty days. He interacted with numerous people, revealed many mysteries, taught His Apostles many things.

Those forty days were probably the most precious period of time in the history of the world. They are the greatest gift God has ever given–when He walked the earth as an immortal man, revealing our final destiny to us.

These forty days were a new beginning for the human race.

The Lord “walked” in the Garden of Eden, looking for Adam and Eve, but they were hiding themselves in shame. After He rose from the dead, Christ walked the earth as the new Adam, with the shame of human sin taken away.

Through the Sacred Liturgy of the Church, we can share in the original forty days of the Resurrection. All you have to do is go to daily Mass from now to Ascension Day!

…T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month.” (In my opinion, “The Waste Land” is his best poem, even though he wrote it before his conversion.)

Anyway, April would seem to be the cruelest month for me. Four years ago on April 2, Pope John Paul II died. Three years ago on April 27, my father died.

And now I have just buried my first pastor. (By the way–I was not an easy parochial vicar to deal with, but I did not give him his heart attack.) His date of death: April 9. Three fathers, three guides, mentors, intimate role-models–all dead in April.

The good thing is, I love death. I love caskets, funerals, cemeteries.

It is natural for priests to love death. We wear black because we are consecrated to the reality of life beyond this world. Death is how we get there.

Fr. Lee Fangmeyer said in Fr. Finch’s funeral homily: “It is easier to talk to people when they are dead than when they were alive.” I rely on my dad and the Holy Father (J.P. II) now more than ever, and I know Bill will help me, too.

May Father Bill Finch and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in the peace of Christ.

Life is Short. Pray Hard.

My mom wore her brand-new Clinton Portis jersey to my brother’s favorite Mahnattan sports-bar on Sunday afternoon. But, as we know, it was to no avail.

Redskins 2008: 8-8.

Let’s define “substantial fan encouragement” as: the Redskins putting together two winning seasons in a row.

Our decade-and-a-half-long drought with no substantial fan encouragement continues.

Portis, on Monday:  “I have no intention of having anything to do with exercise until February or March.”

On New Year’s Eve we consider how fleeting is our life on earth. Here’s a resolution: In 2009, my top priority will be getting to heaven. (Hopefully this will be a renewal from 2008.)

 Happy New Year!  Here’s a poem for your meditation.

“Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard” by Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.