A Good Morning

Yesterday morning I attended Mass at 5:45 at a beautiful church about a mile from my hotel. I walked there, as it is not that far and the weather is quite decently cool in the twilight before the sun comes up. The church was not only beautiful, but quite huge as well. The congregation seemed little disposed to sitting close to each other, but instead were scattered fairly evenly throughout the whole church, with only a slightly higher concentration near the pulpit. There might have been a hundred and fifty people or so, but in the vast hall that seemed like a tiny number, barely a handful. There is always room for more in the Kingdom.

That same church has to hold six Masses every Sunday to accommodate all the worshippers. I have seen the 5:00 PM English Mass filled to overflowing, every stone bench and plastic chair in the courtyard likewise filled, and only room to stand, with a crowd waiting outside the gate for the Tagalog Mass to start.

This particular morning there was a young fellow in a white cassock behind me. It was the same cassock as the priest wore, but he looked too young to be a priest. Then again, you never can tell with Filipinos, and he was praying the Divine Office from a very shiny and new looking breviary. So I asked him, “Are you a priest?”

His face lit up in such a smile. He replied, “No, not yet. I am just a brother,” but he was tickled pink to be asked. There was something childlike about his excitement. It was obvious, shining from his face, that he wanted with all his heart to be a priest and that he will, God willing, continue on attending Mass and praying his Office and studying and working until he receives that great gift.

Leaving from the church I started to walk home. The sun was already excruciatingly bright (I had not brought sunglasses) and the temperature was in the upper 80’s, on its way up. I stopped at a bakery shop where a little beggar girl with a baby appealed to me for some coins. I bought two bibingkas from the shop, thereby providing free entertainment for the two girls watching the register. They thought I was quite funny for some reason. I ate one of the bibingka, and gave the other one with a few pesos worth of coins to the beggar. She looked like she could use it. I usually avoid giving coins to the children, because most of them are handled by professional beggars who take all of the profits and the kids get the scraps, but in this case I saw a woman across the street that had been talking to the girl, and I took her to be the girl’s mother. Not because women cannot be pimps or exploiters, but because she was not dressed any better than the little girl. At any rate she got the coins and the bibingka, and a few prayers.

I did not give any coins to the three little boys who hailed me at the next stop because they were obviously hale and hearty and well fed, and were just curious to see a big bald white guy on their street and thought they might get some free pocket change.

I hailed one of the little motorbike side-car taxis and caught a ride back to the hotel, because it was getting hotter and sunnier out. The taxi driver asked where I was from and practiced his English, which, while not good, was way better than my Tagalog. When I got there I asked him how much I owed him, and I could see him hesitate. The real rate is 8 pesos for anywhere in the city, but I was white, and he knew I could afford more. He didn’t know whether or not I knew what the rate should be. Perhaps he wanted to make up a higher number and couldn’t think of one, or perhaps he was just too honest. At any rate I just asked, with my most “innocents abroad” white guy look, if 20 pesos would be okay. His eyes lit up and he thanked me profusely and wished me a happy New Year.

The guys like to laugh at me for doing stuff like that. They pride themselves on knowing the going rates and not letting the locals get over on them. I, on the other hand, get fleeced pretty regularly. I hate bargaining and I am not good at it. It just seems like a waste of time to me.

20 pesos is less than 50 cents. I don’t even carry loose change in America. I toss that kind of money into a jar for years and never miss it, and then eventually I give the jar away rather than go through the bother of counting and banking it. Here I can give some driver 50 cents and a friendly smile and conversation and totally make his day. That seems worth it to me.

God Must Love Weird People... He Makes So Many of them!

I walked up to Mass one day during Simbang Gabi. It was dark, of course, being 4:20 AM, or thereabouts. The church and plastic lawn chairs all being full as per usual, I sat down on the stonework of the flowerbed and began saying Lauds.

A Filipino man sat down next to me. He was an older gentleman, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties. It is hard to tell with Asians. He had a long, scrawny neck, big ears and nose, and that not-entirely-aware, slightly dissipated look that I associate with chronic alcoholics. He wore a pair of jeans with holes in the knees, and a ratty t-shirt, and flip-flops, and no one else in the congregation paid him any attention whatsoever.

He sat down next to me and looked me over for a few minutes, and then smiled and began speaking to me in Tagalog. I looked up at him and smiled politely, and listened with no comprehension whatsoever. He went on and on, with gestures and significant looks and conspiratorial nods. Finally he said the word, “Tacloban,” with an interrogative upward inflection.

“Tacloban?” I asked, “Yes, I was at Tacloban.”

He nodded knowingly, and went off on another conversational paragraph of Tagalog. Eventually he finished it up with an English sentence, “What is your country of origin, Sir?”

“America,” I said.

“Ah!” He smiled. More Tagalog, more gestures and nods of comradarie. “Are you single?”

“No. I am engaged.”

He exclaimed, “Ah!” and slapped his thigh. More Tagalog, and a couple of winks. “So you are filing for divorce?”

I think maybe at this point my face showed something other than polite attentiveness. “No.” I answered quite emphatically. I didn’t know but that he might be trying to hook me up with a grand-daughter or niece or adult themed dance-club, and I wanted to make sure that my status was quite unequivocal.

He nodded with perfect comprehension. “One woman is enough for you?”

“Yes,” I said. “One woman is more than enough for me.”

He soliloquized in Tagalog for another few sentences, but with enough English scattered throughout that I managed to gather that one was not enough for him. He had had to have two. There was also something about his first wife, and a hope that she was like her. Who “she” and “her” were I have no more idea than you do.

Then he looked at me with the shrewd look of someone who has rapidly seen through an opponent's clever but misguided attempts to pull the wool over his eyes. “Do you understand the dialect of the Pilipino people?”

“No.” I answered. No good trying to trick this guy! May as well just out with it.

The Mass started at this point. He sat next to me for the sitting portions, but for the rest of it he was somewhat unpredictable. He would sidestep throughout the crowd of parishioners, periodically dropping to one knee on the cement pad for a few seconds, and then rising back to his feet. No one else even gave him so much as a glance, except for some of the teenagers who laughed at him a bit.

The Mass was mostly in English, but the homily was in Taglish, an approximately 90/10 mix of Tagalog and English. He came back over and sat down next to me and asked, “Do you understand what he is saying?”

I shook my head and said, “No, I do not.”

So he undertook to translate the homily for me. His method was somewhat unorthodox, but surprisingly effective. He would sit with his head bowed and his arms folded, a studious expression on his face, listening for the space of a sentence or two. Then he would say an English word or two, combined with a knowing wink and a hand gesture. Sometimes he would say a Tagalog word and then give me the English translation, and do this several times, as often as that word was repeated. Sometimes he would sigh and just gesture expressively with his hands. I would say I understood about 20% of the gist of that homily, and enjoyed the whole thing immensely.

He did not speak to me much more for the rest of the Mass, except to share a few choice lines from some of the hymns, but he wished me a very heartfelt “Merry Christmas!” at the end of it. He nodded and smiled and waved as he walked off, for all the world as if he possessed some incredibly enjoyable secret which he had just let me in on.

I have seen him there at Sunday Mass since, but have not spoken with him. He always arrives, sits, and leaves alone. I don't know his story, and although I am sure it has had its darker moments, yet there is some kind of faith there, I am certain of it. May God Bless Him and bring Him safely to his heavenly home!

Best Christmas Vigil Ever!

Last night (Filipino time) I attended the Christmas Vigil at the Carmelite Monastery in Davao City, Philippines. I had been attending the Simbang Gabi Masses for the previous nine days, minus a few, both there and in other locations around the country, but I was happy to be at this church for the Christmas Eve and Christmas morning Masses. Without a doubt, it was one of the coolest Christmas Vigils I have ever attended.

I arrived about 5 minutes after 8:00, (the Mass started at 8:30). The body of the church was pretty well full, but there were still stacks of chairs that had not been set out yet, so I grabbed one and set myself up at the back, in the portico on the right hand side, where I wouldn't be too much in the way for everyone coming in, but I could still see the altar by leaning a little to my right around the doorway.

Of course that only lasted until all the other seats were taken, all the rest of the space in the portico was filled, and there was a lady standing beside me without a seat. Of course I could not just sit there all comfy and let her stand. I feel certain my Mama would have sensed the disturbance in the force and contrived to find a way to give me The Look! from ten-thousand miles away. I have no idea how she would have done so, and I didn't wait to find out.

So of course I stood up and offered her my seat, and I stepped a few steps back behind the rows of plastic chairs. Unfortunately this also meant that I stepped out from under the arch of the portico ceiling. Wouldn't you know it, it was raining out there! I was able to take some refuge under the umbrella of the gentlemen whose view I blocked when I stood up (I can't help that I am roughly twice the average Filipino's size.) He was kind enough to hold his umbrella over my head the entire rest of the Mass. However, since there were two of us under there, my chest and shoulders somewhat encroached beyond the protective circle, and accordingly got rained on for the entire Mass. There also seemed to be a hole in the umbrella, somewhere in the vicinity of directly over the back of my head. 

The choir, however, was awesome, and the crowds of Filipinos standing in the rain to worship the newborn King was such an incredible experience, I not only did not care, I felt like spontaneously enacting a remix of Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain" routine, combined Piano Guys' style with "Angels We Have Heard on High."

Sometimes when I am sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, working at school, or a blog, or some other VERY IMPORTANT PROJECT!!!!! my fiancee' will come up behind me and kiss the top of my head, and I know that she wants me to pause what I am doing and look up into her face and see her for a second. Good things happen then.

The rain on my head is something like that. God wants me to pause and look up and see Him for a second, so that good things can happen.

Perhaps that is why He is taking all the hair off the top of my head, so that I can feel His touch more readily.

Blessed Be He!
Merry Christmas All!

Cuteness in the Morning

One thing you have to love about the Philippines: it is approximately 85% Catholic. 500 yards from the hotel I stayed in last night is a Catholic Parish, with Mass offered daily at 6:00 AM and 5:30 PM. That really is the standard, in my opinion. At least in every town there should be the option of a couple of early morning Masses, and a couple of evening Masses, so that everyone gets the chance to go to Mass, regardless of work schedule. To have both at the same parish is above and beyond, and probably only possible because it is run by the Redemptorists and so there are at least half a dozen priests on campus at any given time.

So this morning, after waking up and chatting with my fiancee for a few minutes, I did my workout (just yoga, since I am still recovering from my last injury), and I headed over for daily Mass. The place was full! Twenty minutes before Mass even started the place was pretty well filled, mostly with older folks, retirees and such, all sitting or kneeling in absolute silence. (So far I have had mixed experiences with kneeling in Philippino churches. The pews and kneelers are: 1) not affixed to the floor by any means whatsoever, and 2) designed for people half my size. This means that unless I kneel upright and absolutely still, they tend to slide, and that is just rude, re-arranging the furniture in Church, like a big gringo bull in a china shop.)

Philippinos love to sing. A Hawaiian friend of mine once remarked, "Why do all Philippinos think they can sing?" in reference to Manny Pacquiao's music debut, an album in which he sings five different remixes of "Sometimes when we Touch"... and nothing else. But I digress.

At any rate, in Philippino parishes, unlike most American parishes, everyone sings. They sing loud and they sing like they mean it. The hymns are, for the most part, no better than the ones I hear in the states, but they actually get into them which makes all the difference.

It is amazing! What love Jesus has for us! He makes Himself available to us every day, every single day, if we only make just the tiniest effort to open ourselves to Him. And there at Mass, surrounded by old, frail, wrinkly, eccentric saints, I felt humbled. Unworthy. It is good to feel unworthy because it allows me to appreciate more deeply the truth of the mercy I have been given.

After Mass I went back to the hotel for free breakfast. There was an old man outside the church as I left it, in dirty clothes. He made eye contact with me, and said, "Hey!" and made a move like he was going to come closer, but then stopped and changed his mind. I looked him in the eye, smiled and waved (smiling at people is pretty much standard around here) and half hesitated. Was he going to beg? Try to sell something? I didn't pause long enough to find out, and I think he didn't approach me because I didn't pause. Ironic. Less than ten minutes after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, I walked right by Him without giving Him the time to see what He wanted. If that old man is there tomorrow I will stop and say Hi and talk to Him. After all, Jesus is giving me free breakfast. Why can't I pay it forward if that's what the old man wants?

In the hotel lobby the tables were all set immaculately, as if they had been set out by ruler. There was a buffet set up with such breakfast staples as fish, beef stroganoff, garlic rice (and when the sign says "garlic rice" well, you better expect some Garlic! in that rice.) There is a chef on duty who cooks omelets and pancakes to order, and a smaller buffet of more typical American breakfast foods. I grabbed a little of this and a little of that, and some assorted sliced fruit and a mango "banna cata" which was like a yogurt pudding with mango jelly on top. Let me tell you, that was delicious!

The lobby was full of guests getting ready to go about their days. One group in particular caught my eye as I was getting my food. It was an American or European businessman with a beard, older, probably in his late fifties. Sitting next to him was a Philippina woman, probably in her late thirties or early forties, (it is hard to tell with Asians) and they were holding hands and laughing and whispering to each other like middle school sweethearts. Something about their body language said that they don't see each other often, or hadn't seen each other in a long time, or weren't going to see each other for a long time. It is a body language I have become very familiar with.

What I didn't see until I sat down was that they were not alone. They had a little girl sitting across the table from them, but I hadn't been able to see her before because her head wasn't tall enough to poke up over the back of the chair. There she was, a teeny-tiny little girl with big dark eyes, taking in everything around her, surrounded by opulence, immaculate place settings, fancy white china and silverware, just sitting there in her pajamas, her feet dangling miles from the floor. In her lap there was a fancy white china bowl filled with dry cheerios. She would eat them one at a time, picking them up delicately with a tiny thumb and forefinger, while gazing around her and watching everything.

I do not know their story. It might be a very good story or a very bad story. But looking at the little girl I felt like I was glimpsing something, a beginning of something. Right now, as I watch, she is being shaped into the adult that she will become someday. Whether that is a good shape or a bad shape, I cannot tell. I only know that I loved them, all three of them, and I wished them the best blessings God could grant them. May He guide and protect them and draw them to Him. May they know how much He loves them. I can think of no greater gift to offer than that prayer.

God: The Ultimate One-Upper

A while back my younger brother, in a fit of introspection, asked me, "Do you think I am a one-upper?"

I had to admit, he is a bit of a one-upper. All of us brothers are one-uppers, to some extent. That is, we inherit our Dad's love for anecdotes, some more and some less. Any story you can tell us triggers a story in reply. We don't set out to one up, but sometimes the stories are just one-uppish type stories.  When you have been in the Navy for six years and cruised all around Europe and the Mediterranean the subject matter you have to draw from is pretty rich.

However, I really believe that as much as we Kraeger males like to one-up people around us, we ain't got nothin' on God. He is the ultimate one-upper. He even says so: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38. No matter what you give to Him or to anyone else, He is going to one up you.

This truth was brought home to me today by my experience in going to Mass. I wrote recently about the church I found near Kathmandu, and what the experience of attending Mass there meant to me. Well it has been a couple of weeks since I had a Sunday off but this weekend I had three days off. The problem was that I am not completely independent here. I am a member of a team, and I cannot just go where I want or do what I want. Half the group wanted to go do things elsewhere, so that took up half of the guys and one of the vehicles and drivers. Even on days off we still have to have guys on duty and that takes up people there. The rest of the guys needed to get out and do some shopping, which I did not need because I had been working in the city for some days. So when we planned out our weekend I was left on duty. Ordinarily I don't mind that, but it was a Sunday off and I hadn't been to Mass in weeks. I was aching for the sacraments. 

So I had to ask. I had to ask one of the other guys if he would switch days with me so that I could go to Mass, even though I had been in the city for several days earlier. I had to ask the guys who were going down to leave very early in the morning on a day off so I could make it in time. 

I don't like asking people for things. I especially don't like asking for help from the other guys. They do not believe, therefore they do not understand why this is important to me. I don't want to be seen to be using my religion for my own personal gain. I don't want to give them reason to think that faith and being a good soldier are incompatible. 

But then I have to ask myself, what is really important? What is most important? If I believe what the Church teaches, that confession really does forgive sins, and that the Eucharist is truly the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, and if I really do have an opportunity to receive these gifts, how can I justify not exhausting every resource to be able to receive them?

One of the things that made me more able to accept the embarrassment was the certain knowledge of God's one-upsmanship. Sometimes He arranges things so that following Him is possible, but inconvenient, simply so that I will have to brave the inconvenience. It makes me value the following more. (This is a pattern in our relationship. You get used to it after awhile.) However, my experience has been that when He requires an unusual effort on my part, He comes back with an unusual result. Or maybe another way of looking at it is that when He has some unusual gift in store the devil goes to unusual length to discourage me. Maybe a little of both. Who knows? Certainly not me. I just know that I have not yet put on ounce of effort into my faith that has not been rewarded a hundred times over. 

So I swallowed that lump of pride and asked. It made some waves, sure enough, but the guys are more or less used to me going to unusual lengths to go to Mass. Their plans were more flexible and could be done another day easily enough, and the switch was made. 


So we left bright and early this morning, careening at a breakneck pace along the narrow winding road to Kathmandu, but the hiccups were not over yet. The driver did not know exactly where the church was, even though I had the address written down on a sheet of paper, and we were cutting it close on time. One of the other guys in the car had plans that also had a time hack, and he didn't want to waste time searching around for a church, so I had them drop me off at the bridge to Lolitpur, intending to let them go on their way while I found a cab. I would just show the cabby the piece of paper with the address... Oh Crap. I forgot the slip of paper. 

To late to go back for it now. I remembered two words of the address, and armed with those I hailed the nearest cab and jumped in, saying a prayer that he would know what I was talking about. He got the city and section of town (those were the two words I remembered) but didn't know which street (that was the word I forgot). He knew of several churches, and with time rapidly ticking away the two of us roamed around Lolitpur, asking other taxi drivers and random strangers if they knew of any churches in the area. As we were directed to them we drove there and I gave them a yeah or nay. I'm sure he was wondering what could possibly be so different between one western church and another, but he was a good sport about it. Finally, with a minute to spare (literally) I recognized a street and shouted "There!" pointing down the alley. He slammed on the brakes, and then backed up and did a fifteen point turn in the middle of the street. I am sure that earned us some bad thoughts from the other drivers.

But I made it, and walked in in the middle of the opening hymn. 

The church was full, and the altar was a sea of red vestments. Of course, it is Pentecost sunday. I knew that from reading Morning prayer for the last ten days. I have been counting down to Pentecost for weeks. 

What I didn't know was the Our Lady of the Assumption chose Pentecost Sunday to confirm seven of their young people and the Mass was being celebrated by he Apostolic Nuncio to Nepal and India, His Excellency Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, and concelebrated by His Excellency the Bishop of Nepal, Msgr A Sharma SJ. There were at least a dozen other priests on the altar, some of the most reverent altar servers I have seen since I was last at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Verona, NY, incense, full choir, the whole smells and bells experience. To top it off, Archbishop Pennacchio bestowed upon us the Apostolic Blessing of Pope Francis, and Archbishop Sharma had received a similar privelege from Blessed Pope John Paul II, and even had a relic of Blessed JPII for us to venerate. And just as the last little bit of showmanship, I went to confession after Mass and the priest was a charismatic priest with an epic Indian/British accent who prayed fire and brimstone over me for about five minutes. They practically blessed the hell out of me today!

When I told my girlfriend about it later over the phone her comment was, "Whoah! I wonder what crazy thing He is prepping you for." Which I agree, I do have a tendency to get suspicious when extraordinary graces are bestowed, because I have to wonder what is coming next. 

But what the heck! Why worry? God's love is not a come and go thing. This is not an example of Him loving me any more than He ever does, and if some trial comes up soon it will not be an example of Him loving me less. This was an example of showmanship, if it is not irreverent to use that word. A showing. A manifestation. Just like a birthday or Christmas or "just because" present is an example of showmanship, a special expression of a love that transcends that gift, so this was just a special gift.

And I think He likes showing off for His kids. What Father doesn't?

There I Am Home

 

Home has never been a place for me. I have been so many places in my life. I have a special nostalgia for the farming country of Upstate NY, especially in the Summer, and the Fall. And the Spring. And the Winter. That's because I grew up there, and I guess in a certain sense that makes it "home." But I use the word "home" about a lot of other places as well. Home has been apartments, houses, other people's houses. The barracks have never been home. America is home sometimes. Sometimes Washington State is home, sometimes New York State is home. Sometimes the whole east coast is home. Depending on the context, home can be a very ambiguous word in my lexicon.

 The reason for this disparity is, as I said above, I have never associated the  concept of "Home" with a place. Home is more of a concept, and even in some sense a feeling. As much as my inner wordsmith dislikes using such a word for something so nebulous as a feeling there really is nothing else for it. When I am home I feel relaxed. I feel like I belong. I feel whole and at rest. Perhaps it is a good thing that I can feel at home in so many places, but it is never the place that is the home.

Or perhaps Home is not a feeling, so much as the things that I have those feelings about. Home is always ever two things, in my life. When I speak of Home (with a deliberately capital 'H') I am speaking of either people that I love, or a Catholic Church. Having traveled quite a bit and lived in many different places, I have made many friends on both ends of the country. Sometimes it feels to me like I can never truly go home, because there is no place that unites all of those people. My Tacoma/Puyallup family would be missing if I were on the East coast, and on the west coast my related and pretty much related family would be missing. When I have leave and I go to the east coast I don't have time to visit my NY family, and my VA family, and my SC family. Home for me would be some scenario where all of those people could be gathered together for Mass, and then a huge pizza party afterwards. When I travel overseas it is not America that I miss (cheeseburgers, the mall, fast internet and all that) but the people. My friends. And when I am in a non-Catholic country I miss the Mass.

 

In a similar way that I have home all over the place in the people I love, I have also been to many different Catholic churches and seen many different liturgies. Some hold a special place in my heart (shoutout to Our Lady of Good Counsel in Verona, NY; St. Mary's in Greenville SC; and St. Francis Cabrini in Lakewood WA) but at all of them there is Jesus in His Sacramental Presence. There I am at home. 

It is amazing where you can find a Catholic Church these days. Just google "Catholic Church in Kathmandu and a link for the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption will appear. Since I happened to find myself in Kathmandu, with a google machine handy, I did such a search, and for the price of an outrageously expensive and more than usually dangerous taxi ride, I was able to get to the Church thirty minutes before the 9:00 A.M. Sunday morning Mass. (In Nepal, Saturday is the day off, it being a Hindu country, so Sunday is the first day of the work and school week.)

The Church in her role as educator.

I fell in love with this Church right away. Kind of like the Church I attended in Thailand, there was a strong blending of western and Nepali art and architecture. (The Navajo church I attended in Arizona was a different story. That was straight up Navajo. The only western influence was the English language, and I felt like even that was merely a concession to the priest, who spoke no Navajo.) The Church can assimilate seamlessly into any culture and give it rebirth from within if it is not hampered by overzealous ministers. I think that even the most vehemently anti-Catholic regime or hostile government or culture will not hinder the spread of the faith one half so much as her own ministers will when they insist on too narrow a view of what the Church is.

But I digress. I spent some time wandering around the outside of the Church and School buildings. Kathmandu is a large, loud, dirty city. The church was located, not in Kathmandu proper but in another city called Lotpuri, which is separated from Kathmandu by a river filled with trash. The streets around the church complex are narrow enough that two taxis cannot pass in them. The church grounds are surrounded by a brick wall with concertina wire on top of it part of the way around, and a security guard at the gate. He made me leave my backpack at the guard house. I had a laptop, Samsung galaxy note, passport, and about 80,000 Rupees ($920.00 US [Long Story]) in it. I was therefore a bit hesitant, but he promise to watch it. I figured, you know what? God's got this. So I left it under St. Isadore's protection, taking only my passport. St. Isadore is a favorite of mine. Remind me to tell you about that sometime.

No Shoes inside. You will notice that my shoes are covered by a touristy white hat which I bought to keep the sun off my touristy (and balding) white head.

I took a surreptitious picture during the Gospel. Does that make me a bad Catholic?

There are no pews in this church. There are some plastic lawn chairs along the side aisles, for the old people, but where the pews would be in the body of the church there are only rows of much compressed red cushions. Parishioners are expected to sit or kneel on these cushions. I am actually quite good at sitting cross-legged, but that was a bit rough on the knees. Totally worth it though. I enjoy praying cross-legged. I can see why Zen practitioners often meditate thus and at the risk of being branded New Age or (horrors!) a Liberal! I have often thought that it might profitably be used by Catholics as well.

One consequence of not having pews is that when it came time for Communion, people simply made a beeline straight for the Eucharist! Back of the church, front of the church, whenever and however they liked, they came. It may not have seemed orderly, but it made sense to them and I am sure it made sense to Jesus as well.

And it was the Mass! Apart from any novelty, irrelevant to any strange customs or eye-attracting art or architecture, above and beyond and infinitely deeper than all of these things (yet at the same time in and with and through all of these things) it was the Mass. The God of the Universe saw fit to arrange my schedule and travel plans to make it possible for me to visit Him in the Mass. It bears out what I have said on this blog many times, brings it home, (pun very much intended) that God wants to give Himself to me far more than I could ever want to receive Him.

The old lady on the right in white sat cross-legged for the entire Mass except the standing and kneeling bits. It took her literally fifteen seconds to get back to her feet after Mass. And we Americans feel imposed upon when we have to kneel during the Consecration!? I also loved the fact that as she very, very slowly made her way up the aisle after Mass, all the children came running to her for her blessing. I probably should have done the same, and just didn't know it.

Praise the Lord all you nations!

Ask Thugfang: Ex-Catholic in the Bag?

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

Dear Master Thugfang, I read with great appreciation your recent column on the use of family to corrupt infants before they reach the age of reason, and I thought I would write in to provide my own testimony. My patient is an ex-Catholic in her late twenties. Due to the abusive, repressive atmosphere I was able to establish in her home she rejected the Catholic Church entirely when she left home. Now she tries to tell all her Catholic friends how wrong and perverse the Catholic Church is, she never receives the Sacraments. She did try to go to Mass once, but she had an anxiety attack and left right away. That was five years ago. She is so completely insulated against the Faith that nowadays I barely even have to work at all. Yours Truly, Success Story.

My Dear, Darling, Wonderful Success Story,

Please allow me to join you in telling you how amazing you are. As you know (because you tell yourself this constantly) you are undoubtedly the greatest tempter the world has ever seen. Why don’t I promote you to undersecretary of a department, and let you write this column and teach all my lectures? Oh, I remember…

It’s because you are an arrogant little sprite who still thinks anxiety attacks are great fun. The mark of an immature palate is the over attention paid to cheap, passing torments. What can you know of the nuanced, subtle complexity of an entire human life drowned in misery, despair and sorrow? Nothing. You’re too busy with pranks. And you are lazy to boot. By your own admission you are not pressing your advantage on this patient. Not only did you admit it, you boasted!

Do you not understand we are at war here? Or did you think that the Enemy will abandon that patient the way you apparently have? I promise you, in your absence while you were fondly imagining that your work was done for you, the Enemy has not been absent for a moment. His agents never sleep. No matter how far she has run, I guarantee this patient has not closed herself off to them completely. Hardly any of them ever do before death.

Do you congratulate yourself on the work so far? Yes, there have been some successes, but not so deep or so permanent as you blissfully imagine. The patient has rejected “the Church” has she? Fool! She never knew the Church! Not the Church as we know it, that damnably tough bastion of human happiness, freedom and virtue. We see the spiritual reality spread out through the millennia, an agonizingly bright cavalcade of martyrs, poets, philosophers, saints, and millions upon millions of souls forever and ever, eternally, achingly lost to us. Do you for an instant believe that Church is what she rejected? Ha! She hears “Church” and sees her mother yelling at her about her neckline. That is what she rejects. Her “faith” was hardly worth the effort of destroying. Essentially you spent the first seventeen or eighteen years of her life telling her lies about what the Church was. First chance she got she rejected that shadow church outright. Does that put things in perspective for you, you insufferable little know-it-all?

Now, she still believes those lies, to some extent. She really thinks the Church is oppressive and self-contradictory. You had better hope she never learns the truth, because if she does it will cut through all your claptrap like a lighthouse through fog. This brings me to the biggest fault I find with you, given the very limited information in your letter. She tries to convince her Catholic friends to leave the Church. May I ask what the Heaven you are playing at? If you don’t want to lose that soul, you had better put a stop to that quick. Is it not obvious to you that the very fact she tries to argue people away from the Church is because she still really cares? Deep down inside she cannot quite get away from the haunting need to belong to whatever little bit of the real Church that touched her. Even hatred of the Church is not so useful as you might think, and I don’t think she really hates it. It might even be that she really cares about her friends and wants to rescue them from her nightmares. That really is the height of incompetence, to allow anything done from love to continue. Any love, even misguided love, is the Enemy’s territory.

Besides, hasn’t it occurred to you that talking about the Church at all with her Catholic friends is the best way I can think of to endanger all your lies? Don’t you see that it’s only a matter of time before she runs into a Catholic who actually does know a thing or two about the real Church? What do you think will happen then? You’ll be facing a long, long time in a very dark place, that’s what. It is only our unrelenting work within the Catholic Church that has saved your neck thus far. The general mediocrity among Catholic humans in her society is entirely the work of wiser and more motivated demons than yourself. That is what you have to thank for her continued ignorance, not your own skill.

Argument in general is not something I would rely on. Oh sure, it can be an opening for our own particular brand of argument. A flurry of half-baked ideas and barely hidden resentments clothed in cheap rhetoric, that is the closest you ever want to get to real argument. Real argument teaches her to ask whether this thing is true or not. Truth is something we don’t believe in here in Hell. You had better curb the idea in your patient as well, or she will never get here, and then… well… let’s just say we won’t be going hungry.

Not to mention that if she does find her way back in it is likely to be a more serious thing than you are ready for. What I mean is, the new faith she finds through hard searching is likely to be a real faith, chosen in her will, based on her intellect. It is not going to be something forced upon her by anyone. She will have had to face up to her fears and overcome them. She will have had to look your lies in the face and see through them. Hence she will value her new faith. She will also be poignantly aware of the difference between “The Faith” and the distortions and abuses that can creep in, so she will be on her guard against them.

Forget the argument. Put a stop to her even talking about the Church. We aren’t trying to reason her away from it. What you really want right now is a really solid vice or two to saddle her with, something that will distract her and absorb her. Maybe it doesn’t even have to be a vice. Save the Whales will do, as long as it takes up her time and attention away from her need for conversion and repentance. But I think while a cause or a hobby is all right as a distractor if you have to use it (the more vacuous the better) I think you’ll get more mileage out of a vice in the long run. You want something that will call up all that old, half-forgotten shame and guilt she associates with the very mention of the Church, which will cause her to resent the mention of it, and will cause her to insulate herself from those who will mention it. That’s how to get the patient to do your work for you. The sicker she gets, the more she will run away from the only medicine which might cure her. But don’t for a second dare to think you can stop chasing her. Temptation duty is not a vacation.

I have your file in front of me as I write. Perhaps, on second thought, we should meet.

I promise, if you don’t stop slacking off and bring us some results, you will be called back. You don’t want that. I don’t even want that. Really, all I want is to help you do your job better.

Cheers,

Thugfang

Hugged Upon: A Social Commentary

Yesterday I went to Mass before going to work. It was only a weekday Mass, even if it was the feast of the Presentation, so the church was mostly empty. One of the things about this parish that I don’t particularly care for is that at the sign of peace, everyone leaves their pew and walks all over the church to shake hands with everyone. It’s not wrong, as far as I can tell, but it rather distracts from the real focus of the Mass. After all, at this point in the liturgy, the Host is consecrated and Jesus is sacramentally present on the altar. That is the focal point of the entire universe! It’s not really the time for a social event.

However, as I said, I don’t think it is wrong, and I certainly don’t think those who do it mean any disrespect by it so I did what I usually do. I shook hands with and asked God’s peace upon those in my immediate vicinity, and any others who wandered over from other parts of the church, and then turned back to the altar to get back to the Mass. Upon turning back, however, I saw someone moving towards me from the front of the church. She was a largish lady, in her fifties I would guess, with a look of intense focus on her round face. She had me in her sights, so I prepared to shake hands with her as well, but as she bore down on me (she had to cover enough ground that I had time to size her up) her arms stretched out wide. My thoughts were not coherent, but they could be translated, “That looks like… but no it couldn’t be… but it really… no…”

Then she said loud enough to be heard through the building, continuing to advance at a high rate of speed, “Can I get a hug?”

She was close enough to be breaking the comfort zone, you know that little personal bubble area in front of you where someone is just too close for conversational purposes? As she broke it I retreated half a step back into my pew, and held out my hand, mumbling something stunned and lame under my breath. I didn’t register her reaction, except that she shook and walked back to the front of the church. In retrospect, I suppose it might have embarrassed her a bit to be so obviously rejected. She’s fortunate I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts or I would have just said “No” in the driest, most end-of-story tone I could muster. No doubt many would consider my reaction rude enough as it was. I wish I knew how she viewed it, since at the moment she represented a mindset almost entirely alien to me and I would like to understand it better.

Since I couldn’t figure out her reaction, I spent part of my drive into post this morning trying to analyze mine. I was surprised, not only by her action, but by the fierceness and strength of my reaction. It took a while for me to bring my thoughts back into the realm of charity. You see, I hate being hugged upon by strangers. I don’t even like having my space invaded (with some exceptions), and my initial reaction is always defensive, but when someone I don’t know tries to hug me (it happens very rarely) my first instinct is to shove them back, create some space, and just say “Whoah, hold on. Back off, I don’t know you.”

She obviously had no such reservations, and I had to question my reaction. After all, she just wanted a hug, right? Aren’t we supposed to love one another? Well, that wasn’t a very loving thing to do, now was it? Isn’t that what the sign of peace is all about, showing the love of Jesus? Doesn’t Saint Paul tell us to greet each other with a holy kiss?

I suppose she must have decided I just didn’t like hugs or something, and it was this supposition that gave me an insight into why my reaction is always so strong. You see the fact is I actually don’t hate hugs. I love them in fact. I hug the heck (literally) out of people I know well, family and really close friends. In going through the list I realized that there are people that I love well enough to take a bullet for, but I would never hug. Most of my patients have been like that. Even that lady in the church, I certainly wouldn’t say I didn’t want to have some charity for her. But a hug is still unthinkable, even repulsive. It isn’t the person that repulses me, but the act of hugging someone I don’t know.

And right there is the crux of the matter. There are some people who say that a hug or a kiss is a statement of love, and therefore to be expected between Christians united in the Love of Jesus. After all, you don’t have to know the person to know that Jesus loves them. Very true, and yet that doesn’t call forth the hugging instinct in me. To me, hugging is not so much the language of love, as a language of intimacy, to one degree or another. Love may be possible without knowing the person. Intimacy is not. Charity is guaranteed, or should be, simply on the basis of the shared love of God. One of the results of charity is that it should encourage us to seek to know the people that God loves so much, but it does not change the fact that we are human. We don’t know people right away. It takes time and patience to get to know a person, and this “knowledge” is not simply awareness of facts about that person. It is a matter of trust, a mutual exchange of part of the soul of each. It is a mystery how one person can “know” another at all, but one thing I do know: intimacy exists only in relationship. There must be giving and receiving, gift and regift over and over again. The longer this has been going on the deeper that intimacy becomes. If it hasn’t happened at all, there is no intimacy. You don’t know that person.

This is what “knowing someone” means to me. So I realized that it isn’t because I hate hugs that I recoiled so profoundly from that lady’s well-meaning gesture. It is because I love the act of hugging rather jealously. I want it to have some meaning, not just be a flippant thing we throw around to whomever happens to be within arm’s reach. It seems dishonest. It is lying with your body, pretending that something is there which isn’t there at all. Like a man who vows undying love on the first date, it means nothing.

I guess this is just one symptom of my overall critique of our culture’s approach to social interaction. We tend to be so very friendly and open and “frank” and we tell people just exactly what is going on in our minds. Our heartbreaks are emblazoned on the shifting sands of our facebook walls, there to be pawed over by the crowds for the few hours or minutes or seconds it takes to work its way to the bottom of the feed. Our every thought, emotion, action, and relationship must be dragged out into the cyber streets and vivisected. And what of those thoughts so casually thrown around on twitter? Did that thought even have time to grow up before I stuck it out there? What happens when you put the hops in the still, and then pour out the juice before it has time to ferment, let alone age? Can we even think for more than 140 characters at one time anymore?

I applaud the willingness we have to lay our cards out. The ability to be vulnerable is a prerequisite for relationship, but I wonder. Do we really gain anything by it? Have we increased the breadth of our attachments, but sacrificed the depths? If you try to be intimate with everyone, you end up losing the ability to be truly intimate with anyone. That seems to me something too precious to give up.

 
One Real Hug is worth about five and a half bazillion fake ones.

Why I Love the Tridentine Mass

When I lived in Fort Bragg I would sometimes drive to a Church forty minutes away so that I could attend a Tridentine rite Latin Mass. It was so worth the drive, although the drive itself was a forty minute time for prayer, and therefore quite worthwhile in its own right. I was mildly amused by the irony of the numerous billboards along I-95 outside Bragg, advertising "Adult Entertainment". Amused because I saw that on the way to Mass, but saddened on a deeper level. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

But something a lot of people don't understand is why the Latin Mass is worth forty minutes of driving one way. Why would you drive that far to attend a service in a language you don't understand when there were five Catholic churches with ten minutes of my apartment that are all in English?

Well, that is a good question, because it gets right to the heart of what liturgy is, but I'm going to save that for last. Actually, there are a number of lesser reasons why I go to the Tridentine mass. For one thing, I like being surrounded by families. I grew up in a large family, most of my friends growing up came from large families. My cousins that I visit on weekends come from large families. Right now I'm mostly on my own, but I still like being able to see families. For instance, another soldier I knew slightly from Afghanistan usually brought his wife and seven kids to the Latin Mass. I just like being surrounded by kids. It makes me happy, even when I'm ignoring them to concentrate on the liturgy. Their presence makes the Mass seem complete. Fr. Matt, the Chaplain on Fort Bragg, said once in a sermon that he never minded crying children at Mass because He didn't feel like explaining to Jesus why he wouldn't let the little children come to Him.

I like the music better. I don't know why it is, but Catholic church music in most Catholic churches is frankly horrible. I was literally embarrassed for the music director at the saturday evening Mass on Bragg. She sings boring, lame hymns with tame lyrics at a painfully slow pace, and you can tell from her face she's uncomfortable. The congregation is mumbling along as if they are embarrassed to be associated with the whole thing. I don't know why this should be. Our Catholic heritage contains the greatest Church music ever written, music that is performed in concert for its exquisite beauty and majesty even today, long after the religious meaning is forgotten and bypassed. We have hundreds of years of beauty to avail ourselves of, from Gregorian to Palestrina to Lutkin to Bach. There is more contemporary music also that is also very beautiful. You can find CD's of it anywhere. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has a huge repertoire of magnificent praise music in English. Why are we singing praise and worship songs that were tired when they were written? Why are we singing music that no one would ever want to sing or listen to if it were not "church" music? Why is all the music we use to celebrate the most profound Sacrifice of God to God on the Cross, unutterably dreary?

I like the Latin, because I actually understand Latin somewhat, and I find the sound of the words to be melodious and pleasing. People sometimes accuse the Catholic Church of having kept things in Latin so that they would remain a secret known only to the few. That's simply ignorant. The Church adopted Latin because it was the universal language. Everyone who knew how to read or write for most of church history, knew how to read and write in Latin. It wasn't until after the fracturing of the Church with the Protestant revolution, that Latin began to decline, and even until less than a century ago, Catholics learned Latin as a part of schooling. Latin was used to unify the world in worship.

I also like being able to worship in a Catholic Chapel building, where the architecture is designed to be an aid to worship, to lift the mind and heart to the mysteries being enacted, rather than simply to fit as many people as possible.

All of these are peripheral, they don't really matter. They don't really matter because they have everything to do with me, and nothing to do with the worship. You see the question of the Latin mass, or of any mass, really comes down to the sacrament being enacted. The sacrament is the action of God, making present under forms of bread and wine, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Against this reality all the details of other people, music, atmosphere and language fade into insignificance. To hold these things important in the face of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist is to say that our works are the important thing, not the action of God. This is the heart of Catholic worship, the insistence that in the end worship is not something we do. Whether we get a good vibe from it or not is largely unimportant. What is important is God's action, our business is to surrender to that action on faith. It is for this reason that I sometimes think that evangelicals have things rather backwards. By all means, read the scripture together (although I think you'll find there is more scripture in a Catholic weekday mass than in even the longest Evangelical service), listen to sermons and pray together. These are good things, but really, they kind of are our things. They are works. I am not denigrating them by saying that. I believe in works. But to have that as the sum total of your worship, just stuff that we do, that's a bit sad. If that is all worship is, us doing stuff, then it is a clumsy and ineffectual business. And incidentally, it is not even Biblical. In the Early Church the Breaking of the Bread was the center of worship.

But if the Catholic Church has the correct, sacramental interpretation of worship, then things begin to make sense. Worship is something that God does, God makes the sacramental reality present, God calls us, God is the source and summit. We respond. We accept. We surrender.

It is against this reality of God's action in worship that all these peripherals make any sense at all. Of course the sacrifice of the Mass on a plywood table in a tent in Afghanistan is just as much the center of the universe as the Easter Vigil Mass in the Sistine Chapel. The peripherals of the liturgy are not to benefit God, and certainly not to impress Him. He can't be impressed. They exist entirely as our response to His action. Some are better and more suitable because they are better responses. We respond more fully when we respond with all our senses, with music that is beautiful, with architecture that is fitting, with demeanor that is reverent, with dress that is honoring. But our liturgy is only a response; it is not the soul of the worship. God is that.

It is for this reason, above all others, that I love the Latin mass. Because I don't perfectly understand all the words, because most of the talking is done by the Priest, because there are so few responses compared to the Novus Ordo, precisely because of all of these things I am freed from the illusion that worship has anything to do with my action. I am not here to make my prayers, I am here to join into other prayers, the prayers of those in the building with me, the prayers of the priest as our pastor, the prayers of the Church around the world, and the prayers of all the Saints throughout all of history, past, present and future. All of these are gathered up together in the communion of Saints, which is the Church, and united with the prayer and Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, through our Celebration of the Eucharist. Without this celebration, I grant you, what we do is a bunch of meaningless mumbo jumbo. But because we all have one Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus, our worship that we surrender to and enact becomes a holy offering, pleasing and acceptable to God.

"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread." 1 Corinthians 10:16-17.

Like I Mean It

I know a non-Catholic who has been exposed to the Catholic faith pretty heavily for years, but who still has no interest in becoming a Catholic. When asked why he answers, “Because Catholic worship is so boring. It looks like there is no feeling, they are just going through the motions.”


The typical response to this would be an explanation of the liturgy, and how worship is an action of faith and will, feelings are secondary and accidental. This would be a true response, but let’s take a look at it from another angle for a second. Truth be told, most of the times when I go to Sunday Mass, if I pay attention to the people around me it doesn’t often look as if they are especially interested in what they are doing. Hardly anyone sings, the responses are mumbled, someone is picking his fingernails over there, someone else is playing peek-a-boo with the toddler in the seat in front of her. Before and after Mass the church often sounds like a meeting hall, to the irritation of those who have the desire to pray, but lack the focus to ignore the noise. Then, when I look at myself (because, after all, what am I doing watching everyone else) I find I am doing all of those things (except playing peek-a-boo.)

Granted that I am not a charismatic, and don’t very much value emotional thrills, yet still I can’t help but think that if we stopped and thought, really thought what we were doing, it ought to make a difference in how we act at Mass. I should be worshipping like I mean it. That difference ought to be noticeable. I think of the worship of cloistered nuns or even the discipline of Buddhist monks. I doubt anyone watching Zen monks meditating (which is not even worship) would be inclined to doubt the sincerity, whatever their thoughts about the theology of it.

But then, this is really only a part of the question. If you are a person that God Himself invites to His table, if you are the person who has received Jesus in the Eucharist, that really ought to mean something for the rest of your life. And yet so many of us act as if we were just killing time at Mass, and only really come alive outside the church. Instead it should be the other way around. The protestant who comes to Mass might not recognize the depth and passion of a beautiful liturgy, and almost certainly will not recognize the Sacramental reality that takes place regardless of how beautiful or how sloppy the liturgy is. It is quite fair for them to complain about a “Lack of feeling” at Mass, but the witness of the rest of our lives should be an answer to them. Worship does not end when we leave church. The hidden interior joy we receive at Mass (sometimes whether we know it or not) should slowly bubble its way to the surface over the course of the day and the week, until it overflows in a good life, lived with excellence and fun and style. We should live every day as if Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

Because as it turns out, He did.