The Caspar Star-Tribune in Sheridan, Wyoming ran a front-page story on Sunday dealing with forgiveness. Writer Kristy Gray tells the story of Fr. Rob Spaulding, a priest of their diocese, who when in seminary, wrecked a car after a night of drinking. Two people ended up dying in that crash, including my friend Matty Molnar.

It is a moving story. Kudos go to the Caspar Star-Tribune for taking the time to get the details right, getting all sides of the story, and for running the powerful piece on the front page of the Sunday edition.

AS A PRIEST, ROB SPAULDING PREACHES FORGIVENESS. WHAT HE EXPERIENCED TRANSCENDS EVEN THAT.

Reconciled

No street lights illuminate this winding, narrow road, but Rob Spaulding can see enough.

The car is facing the wrong direction, folded and bent at ugly angles where it hit the trees. Matty is lying on the side of the road.

Rob can’t see what Mark is doing, but he’s outside of the car, walking around.

Rob doesn’t remember how he got out.

We need an ambulance, Rob says into his cell phone.

One needs life support now.

Jared is still inside, slumped over the back of the driver’s seat. Rob reaches out to him and finds a pulse. He’s breathing, alive.

He kneels beside Matty and begins CPR.

Minutes earlier, Rob had been driving his friends around the lake, windows down, enjoying the midnight air. They had been promising young men, studying to become priests, passionate about their faith and the people they felt called to serve.

One reckless mistake destroyed nearly all of it.

But those of faith know that out of unthinkable sorrow, unimaginable love can grow.

Broken hearts can forgive.

Journey to seminary

Every year, Gillette’s hometown newspaper picks 10 people who, with acts small or large, made a difference in the community. It chose Rob Spaulding in 1995.

The summer before his senior year at Campbell County High School, Rob decided that a Fourth of July parade without a marching band wasn’t much of a parade. In a matter of weeks, he organized 52 mostly young musicians and formed a marching band, the parade’s first in at least 10 years.

In school, he built a resume typical of an overachiever:

Valedictorian, class of 1996; a national champion in DECA, a business and marketing competition; marching band drum major; and a one-time national qualifier in debate.

“It wasn’t just intelligence,” said Terry Quinn, Rob’s advanced math teacher and debate coach.

“He was a 35-year-old mind in an 18-year-old body.”

Though Rob attended Sunday evening Masses at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, it wasn’t a dominant part of his life.

Music was his passion.

He played the oboe, saxophone and guitar. He played piano in the St. Matthew‘s music group.

In college, he was the music director at St. Paul’s Newman Center, a church serving the Catholic community at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

The Rev. Roger Schmit was skeptical when he applied. Who is this 18-year-old kid? Music directors are older, more experienced.

“I was very slow in responding to him. But he was persistent,” said Schmit, who now works at Conception Abbey in Missouri.

“There is something about the way he communicates that is so genuine, something wholesome about the way he visits with people.”

Rob earned three degrees in six years, including a bachelor’s in music and a master’s in business. In 2001, he won the Tobin Memorial Award given annually to one outstanding male graduate.

People expected him to go into business, marry his longtime girlfriend and spend summers camping and fishing with his children in Wyoming’s mountains.

But in Laramie, Rob saw the full power of a faithful community. In 1998, UW student Matthew Shepard was pistol whipped, tied to a fence and left to bleed on the prairie. As a member of the Newman Center’s pastoral staff, Rob felt the church reach out and pull students together, to heal through one another.

In 2002, he enrolled in seminary at St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill., near Chicago — 1,000 miles from Wyoming. Instead of cowboy bars, Mundelein has neo-Georgian architecture. Instead of dusty pastures and huge skies, it has lakes and canopies of trees.

Rob decided to try it for one year.

He wasn’t sure if he could commit his life to the priesthood after his first year — or after his second. During his third, in the spring of 2005, he completed a pastoral internship at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Cheyenne, a chance to minister directly to people. In August, he chaperoned 180 Wyoming kids at World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany. The faith, fellowship and community Rob experienced there convinced him.

He returned that September to Mundelein Seminary for his fourth year.

All right, he told himself. I’m ready.

The crash

It was a Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005: the day before Mundelein’s big golf tournament, a yearly fundraiser that seminarians help put on. Semester classes would start soon. Rob, then 27, needed a breather and went for a walk around the forested road circling the campus’ lake.

He ran into fellow seminarian Mark Rowlands. Mark convinced Rob to go out for a drink, to catch up after the summer.

Mark drove them to Emil’s, a sports bar and pizzeria, where they met four other seminarians, including Jared Cheek, 23, and Matty Molnar, 28.

Jared had just moved across the hall from Rob in the dorms. He had a baby face and bright green eyes. Rob knew little about him, except that he liked to tell jokes and was the star of the seminary basketball team.
Rob knew Matty from music. Matty sang in the choir that performed at Tuesday Masses; Rob was the director. Matty played piano and guitar. He was always smiling, joking, the life of the party.

Rob ordered one Long Island Iced Tea. Later, he ordered one more.

Jared and Matty stayed behind to hang with Rob and Mark. After about 3 ½ hours, about 12:30 a.m., the four called it a night. Walking toward the door, Mark pulled Rob aside.

You’ve had the least to drink, Mark told him. You have to drive.

Mark held out his keys.

There were good reasons to say no: They were just a mile from campus, an easy walk. But Rob’s ego wanted to say yes, to pull through for his buddies. Besides, he’d only had two drinks.

After leaving Emil’s, Rob drove the four to a fast food restaurant, but it was closed. A cop pulled behind the car, following it for several blocks. Rob’s driving never drew attention.

It’s the kind of confidence that is so misleading and so dangerous, he says. Not all intoxicated drivers are sloppy drunks. Not all stumble to their vehicles and fumble with the turn signals. Rob didn’t feel drunk.

He drove the car back to the seminary. Mark sat in the front passenger seat, Jared and Matty in the back.
Someone suggested a drive around the lake. At the other side, Rob drove the car across the bridge. Someone egged him on: Go faster. Go faster.

The speed limit was 25 mph. He was going about 55 when he felt the tire slip.

The bottom

Rob’s scapula is broken, and his kidney is torn. Nurses have removed the glass from his face and cleaned the blood from the cuts.

A man walks into his hospital room, and Rob can see he’s been crying.

I need to know, Rob says. Is Matty dead or alive?

The president of Mundelein Seminary doesn’t answer.

If he’s dead, don’t say anything.

Rob waits through the long seconds of silence that follow.

Mark walked away from the crash with a broken arm. But what about Jared? Where is he?

Rob thinks of his friends’ families, of his own parents. Of all the pain he’s caused.

I’ll never be able to go home again, he thinks. I’ll never go to a place where they don’t know.

What was lost

At 5:30 a.m., a ringing phone stops a mother’s heart.

Joan Magette jolts awake. Then she stops breathing. All four of her children are away from her home in St. Marys, Kan.

Her husband, Brandon, answers.

Who is it? She asks. Erin? Emily?

It can’t be Jared. He’s at seminary. Safe.

The call lasts forever. Finally, Brandon hangs up.

Who is it? What’s the matter?

It’s Jared, he answers. A car accident.

And Matty died.

Joan walks into the fog — questions, decisions, things to do, everything bumps around inside her head. Was Jared driving? Were they on that dangerous Illinois interstate? And Matty? Was her son’s friend really gone?

Joan and Brandon pack a week’s worth of clothing. Whatever happens, Joan will not leave Jared’s side, and she wants to be prepared. Brain injuries can take a long time to heal.

The last thing she grabs is the silver rosary of carved rosebuds Jared bought her at World Youth Day in Germany a month before.

By the time she gets to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital near Chicago, Jared is in a coma, hooked to a ventilator.

It’s Jared, she thinks. Just not all of him.

Growing up in St. Marys, a small town in northeastern Kansas, Jared always had to be on the move. He played every sport he could and loved basketball, cross country and golf. During his senior year, he played in the state finals on the football team.

Though his parents divorced when he was 9, his mom and his dad, Rick Cheek, raised him in the Catholic Church. Younger parishioners looked up to him.

“The words people around here used were, ‘He was on fire with his faith,’” Joan said.

He would have made a superb priest. She hoped to see him give a homily.

I’m going to be one of those priests, he told her once. I’m going to be on the podium and I won’t need any notes. I’m not going to have to write down what I want to say.

The hospital waiting room fills with friends, seminarians and Mundelein staff. Then, they crowd into the intensive care unit, breaking the two-at-a-time rule. No one from the hospital objects.

Joan waits late into the night. Her sister asks her archbishop to lead them in the rosary. Simultaneously, all of the people in the room reach into their pockets and pull out their beads.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son …”
At 9:30 the next morning, a doctor tries to tell Joan, but he can‘t find the words.

Joan asks the question directly: Is there any brain activity?

No.

Joan turns to the director of Mundelein Seminary: Does that mean Jared’s already beginning his journey to heaven?

“He has to be so proud of the death that he had,” Joan said. “I don’t know if that’s possible, but nobody gets to have the honor that he had that day.”

Another heartbreak

At the same time the phone wakes Joan Magette, Richard Molnar answers the phone ringing in his mother’s house, 75 miles away. Then he walks into her room.

Mom, you need to get up.

What? Richard, it’s 5 in the morning.

Mom, put something on. Get dressed. A priest is coming over.

Pam Molnar pulls on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and goes downstairs. Coffee first. On her way to the kitchen, she glances out the living room window and sees a priest walking up the driveway. What could he want?

Even after he comes in, asks to sit and breaks the news, Pam doesn’t believe it. She just talked to Matty last night.

He’d been hustling across campus, just finished preparing for the Mundelein golf tournament, on his way to choir practice. He‘d been so excited to sing under the new director.

Afterward, he and Jared were going out for pizza and beer, taking out a couple of new Mundelein students.

I’m where I need to be, he told her. I’ll let you go and I’ll talk to you later. I love you, Mom.

Growing up in Prairie Village, just on the Kansas side of Kansas City, he was called Matthew by his mom — her perfect middle child. He was shy and reserved in Catholic grade school.

In 1993, as a high school freshman, he went to World Youth Day in Denver thanks to someone else’s last-minute cancellation.

“That was the beginning of all this,” Pam said. “That’s when he decided. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but it was going to be something with the church.”

When he returned from Denver, he became Matty. Pam’s not sure where it came from, but the nickname fit his new outgoing personality. He put it on his license plate.

If you search for it, you can still find Matty’s blog — jpthe2nd, an abbreviation for Pope John Paul II — floating around the Internet.

There, profiles live indefinitely. He likes prayer, Catholic Church, coffee, all types of dancing, gin and cuff links. He’s going to become a priest in 2008, his profile says. “I want to serve the Lord and love and live life to the fullest.”

On Sept. 10, 2005, Matty thanked everyone for a wonderful birthday the day before. At about 10 a.m. Sept. 14, he wrote his last entry — his first “Ecclesiological rant of the year.” He asked his readers to consider not “What would Jesus do?” but what Jesus already did.

Twenty-five hours later, his blog became his memorial: “Hi Matty. I heard some horrific news this morning and am praying every second that it is not true … please call me as soon as you get this so that I may stop worrying.”

Mothers forgive

The Bible teaches that forgiveness is essential to the Christian life, that God commands it, just as He has forgiven the faithful. Forgiveness is offered without request or condition.

But how does a mother forgive the man who killed her son?

For Pam, and separately for Joan, forgiveness came without fanfare. It wasn’t a decision in the concrete sense, like choosing a restaurant or a new pair of jeans.

More than 1,000 people attended Matty’s funeral. He was known for his ability to attract friends and form lasting bonds. Some of those friends were angry.

But Pam wasn’t angry at Rob Spaulding, a man she had never heard of but who had been with Matty on his last night. She can’t explain why. “I guess I was thinking Matty could have been driving.”

Really, she just felt numb.

Nor was forgiveness deliberate for Joan.

She says anger or hate never occurred to her family. She, her husband, Brandon, and Jared’s father were all on the same page. They missed Jared with every ounce. That was all.

She remembers sitting in her kitchen, talking about Rob’s case with her sister. You know, he could go to prison, her sister said.

How sad, Joan thought.

Many bad decisions were made that night, including Jared’s to get in the car. Joan didn’t want any more bad to come.

Suzanne Willett, chief of the Lake County state’s attorney traffic office in Illinois, called Joan to brief her on the case. Rob pleaded guilty in February 2006, and Joan and Pam would have the chance to speak at his sentencing.

What would happen to this young man, the one Joan saw standing next to her son in a rectory photograph taken shortly before the crash? On television, she’d seen him walking out of court, trying to push through reporters as he crossed the street with his mother. Her heart ached for him.

Joan, you’re the victims here, the prosecutor explained over the phone. He was drunk, and Illinois does not tolerate drunken driving. It was her job to go after Rob to the full extent of the law.

No, you’re not listening, Joan told her

I don’t want him to go to jail.

The sentencing

The sun is shining on the Lake County, Ill., courthouse.

Inside wait family and friends, priests and students from Mundelein Seminary. Joan and Pam sit together, just behind the prosecutor’s table. They had never met before their sons’ deaths, but know they will be forever bonded after.

It’s May 2, 2006: sentencing day for Rob Spaulding.

He’s pleaded guilty to three felonies — two counts of reckless homicide and one count of aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol. He faces 10 years in prison.

The prosecutor had been prepared to send Rob away, but switched gears when the mothers asked her for leniency. She will argue for probation.

Will the judge agree?

When it is Joan’s turn to address the court, the tears come almost immediately. She holds her papers with trembling hands.

Jared was her oldest child, she says, loved as a son, a big brother, a nephew, grandson and friend. Everyone was anxious to see where his passions would lead, what he would accomplish. She was counting on him to help strengthen her own faith.

But sending Rob Spaulding to prison will only add to her pain, she says.

It’s Pam’s turn next. “People ask me how I feel about losing my son and how I must hate the guy that was driving. I do not hate ‘the guy’ — he has a name — who was driving,” she reads from her victim’s impact statement.

She pauses, collects herself, begins again.

“Hate is a terrible word. Hate is like a cancer that eats away at your heart and soul and makes you a bitter person …”

Matty would forgive, she tells the court. If Rob Spaulding still wants to be a priest, she hopes he will be allowed to do it.

She sits next to Joan, turning Rob’s fate into the court‘s hands.

Precedent is clear. Drunken drivers go to jail, and Rob’s blood-alcohol content was 0.135 percent, almost twice the legal level. He was driving twice as fast as the speed limit.

Pam and Joan hold hands as the judge begins to speak.

In sentencing, Judge Victoria Rossetti says, she must balance rehabilitation, information about the defendant and punishment. She asks three questions she answers herself:

Is Rob Spaulding likely to commit another crime? No. He has no prior criminal record.

Will Rob likely comply with probation? Yes, just as he’s complied with all bond requirements.

Is a sentence necessary to deter others from committing the same kind of crime? “Absolutely,” she says, then speaks to Rob directly. ”You have lived an exemplary life until that night … All it takes is one decision, and now you are an example, not exemplary.”

Rob drops his head. Pam and Joan wait and listen.

Nevertheless, the judge continues, Rob is in counseling, has taken full responsibility and spared the families from a trial. He has shown true remorse and been the recipient of genuine forgiveness.

She finds “that prison is not appropriate and that probation is the appropriate sentence.”

What? What did she say? Joan turns to Pam.

Probation?

A sigh whispers through the courtroom. Pam thinks she clapped.

Rob is sentenced to 30 months of intensive probation, 18 months of house arrest and 250 hours of community service. He must pay $5,000 to the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.

Before Rob is led out of the courtroom for processing, Joan finds him and hugs him. Is this OK? She asks.

That night, staying in a room at Mundelein Seminary, Joan watches a news report on the sentencing. She sees herself and Pam walking out of the courthouse, into the sunlight.

“We walked away happy. Can you believe that?” she says.

“Our sons died, and we had smiles on our faces.”

Reconciliation

People sometimes tell Rob that God must have had a reason. God must have needed Matty and Jared in heaven.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Rob said. “God did not cause this to happen. I did.

“But God has been part of rebuilding it since the time of the crash.”

In April 2006, Rob and his parents drove to Kansas. He met with Rick Cheek, Jared’s father, Joan and then Pam. I am so, so sorry, he said to each one.

He didn’t expect forgiveness then, didn’t ask for it.

But they all gave it.

What they did transcends forgiveness, Rob said. It crosses over into redemption and reconciliation — standing eyelash to eyelash with the man who killed their sons and then inviting him to become part of their lives.

After sentencing, Rob wore a court-ordered monitoring device for nine months. He could leave the rectory at St. Mary Parish in Buffalo Grove, Ill., only for work, school, church and community service. He talked to 20 high schools in Chicago about the crash and sat on victim impact panels. One of the hardest for Rob was a young woman’s panel. Two weeks after Rob had spoken at her school, after he had told about Matty and Jared and all that had been lost, she had driven drunk.

Would it ever make a difference? Rob wondered then.

He had to believe that it would.

After everything, he still wanted to be a priest. But Mundelein Seminary asked him to wait at least two years before applying again. It needed time to heal.

In August 2006, Rob asked the Wyoming Diocese to continue his studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Seminarians must be sponsored by dioceses, and Wyoming’s support had never faltered. While he was still in the hospital, Wyoming’s Catholic community showered him with love.

We know what you’ve been through, people said in e-mails, cards and phone calls.

Welcome home.

Rob graduated from the seminary on May 13, 2009, was ordained a transitional deacon on May 22, and went to Holy Name Catholic Community in Sheridan at the end of June. He was ordained a priest on Aug. 10, 2009, in Laramie, in front of 620 people. Pam and Joan drove from Kansas to be there, but didn’t introduce themselves to many people. They didn’t want to interfere with Rob’s day.

Bishop Paul Etienne of the Wyoming Diocese says some people will use Rob’s history as an excuse to take shots at the church and the priesthood: Here’s another guy who got a pass and didn’t have to pay for his actions.

Though Etienne didn’t come to Wyoming until November — after Rob had been ordained — he says the diocese’s decision to stand with Rob was the right one.

“For all of us, as Catholics and Christians, the cross is at the heart of our lives,” Etienne said. “The trials are different, but if we deal with them appropriately, they are all a source of insight, not just into ourselves, but to the human experience.

“This is one of those encounters of the cross. It involves real death and resurrection.”

Unmasked

Holy Name is a congregation of about 1,200 people, nestled in a quiet Sheridan neighborhood.

Standing in the church foyer, Father Rob greets the arriving parishioners. He grabs their hands and welcomes them with a joke or smile.

Inside, he is almost as nervous as he has ever been.

He plans to give the homily he’s prayed over almost since coming here nearly a year ago. Rob wanted time to get to know the parishioners, to build a community, before he formally told them his story.

He’s not afraid to answer questions. People will form their own opinions. But he worries about whether his congregation will accept him. Will it hurt his ability to share God’s message?

This weekend, the Celebration of Pentecost, Rob’s vestment is red, a color symbolizing the fire of the Holy Spirit. This is often considered the church’s birthday, a celebration of its origins after Jesus rose from the dead.

Rob begins the homily with a reading from the Gospel of John, when Jesus forgives his disciples for abandoning him in his crucifixion and for huddling frightened in a room instead of spreading the news about his resurrection. Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” reconciling the relationship so they can move forward, so his followers can become disciples on fire once again.

Rob steps away from the pulpit.

He knows the promise of the spirit is true, he says, because he’s experienced reconciliation in his own life.
So Rob tells. About running into Matty and Jared at the pizzeria. About saying yes when he should have said no. About driving to Kansas with his parents, about hearing three words with the power to reach through the deepest despair: I forgive you.

“For me, when I think of love in action and reconciliation, the families of Matty and Jared are examples of living the Christian message, of living the life of Christ that each one of us is called to do.”

Father Rob pauses, unmasked and utterly exposed.

His voice cracks for the first time.

“But I have to be honest with you, I’m pretty afraid at this moment.”

Amy Rojo has already heard this story, but she cries anyway.

Last year, she struggled in church. Her son had gotten into trouble. She felt judged and isolated.

Then, Father Rob came. He was young, just 31 years old, and so vibrant. When her mother got sick, he was so gentle.

“I went every Sunday just to listen to him preach, to hear that homily,” Rojo said. He challenged the parish to invite new people into their homes, to get to know one another as a community. Then he posted a dinner menu.

I want to practice what I preach, he had said, and invited parishioners to come and eat with him.

Amy was so excited, she called her son.

Mom, you know him, he told her.

No, I don’t.

Remember when we posted the names of the people we were praying for on our refrigerator? We prayed for him. He was the one in the accident.

Amy didn’t know Rob then, and she didn’t know the circumstances. She just knew he needed love. She had prayed for him as a mother of three boys.

After the phone call, Amy reached out to Rob. She shared her family’s story and then listened as Rob shared his.

She remembers what she said to him: “Father Rob, you are now in a position to reach out to serve others. You can bring faith and hope and love to those that are in despair.”

And maybe that’s the good that rises from the broken glass and twisted metal, the life that comes from those cut short. For those who hurt, regret, are living every day with the consequences of their mistakes, Father Rob can listen. He can walk beside them and say that healing and reconciliation are possible. He knows, because both happened to him.

He knows that forgiveness is real.

Matty was a friend of mine; we went to high school together. I’ve prayed with him, laughed with him, sang with him and hugged his mother at his funeral. What a great guy. Heaven is a better place for having him in the choir.

And compliments to Fr. Rob Spaulding and to the families of Matty and Jared who have shown true Christian grace and strength in the years since the accident. You are all worthy models.

I really didn’t want to write this post, but the worldwide clergy sex abuse scandal doesn’t show any signs of going away. In the Sunday bulletin at my local parish, there was a blurb about charges made against a priest who was an associate at the parish less than a decade ago, asking anyone who had any information about this former priest to contact the Archdiocese. *sigh*

The much-famed Fr. Longenecker has gotten a lot of attention with a blog post titled The Myth of Pedophile Priests, but I find his arguments somewhat uncompelling. Every Catholic is going to come up with his or her own response. This is mine.

*****

The funniest Easter joke I know is about Jesus coming out of the grave, seeing his shadow and giving us 6 more weeks of winter. It was told to me by a priest– a family friend, when I was about 8. He’d come to functions of parish families; I remember seeing him at big Christmas and Easter parties growing up. He was a young, energetic, likable priest; so affable that the Archbishop named him the first chaplain of a new high school in 1992. He’s got a brick with his name carved in it in their Student Commons, named as one of the early donors to the school. He’s also no longer a priest. I was too young to understand all the details, but I remember being told that he had a sickness where he liked boys and girls too much, so he had to move away where he could try to get better.

In grade school and in high school, I wasn’t a very good student—particularly in classes that didn’t come easily. I had a lot of zeroes in my eighth-grade math class from homework that I never did, and a number of bad test grades because I never studied (or practiced… i.e. homework). The math teacher took pity on me—rather than fail me in math class, she said that I could interview a priest about the priesthood and what it meant to pursue a vocation. Yeah, when I was younger, a lot of people thought I’d be a priest. My dad set up an appointment with the Archdiocese vocations director and my mom helped me craft a list of questions I could ask him. I wrote a 5-page paper and passed math with a “C”. The Archdiocese vocations director in the 90’s was a young and cool priest. He wore Air Jordans (the Jordan 6 with the red “jumpman” logo on the sole and tongue) under his vestments, so when he genuflected before ascending the sanctuary steps, you could see the big red logo on his feet. He’d later be my high school’s chaplain, my parish’s assistant pastor, and when I went to college, he was in residence at the St. Lawrence Center, where he’d sometimes say the Sunday 9:00 PM Mass that all the cool Catholic students attended. He was the first priest I knew to have an email address—an AOL address that I still remember, though it’s long out of service. At a high school retreat when I was a junior or senior, I remember him telling us boys in a breakout session about how he dealt with sexual temptations as a priest by, ahem, using his hand. Eew! The same hand that he held up in blessings and the same hand by which he gave us communion. He’s no longer a priest either. In details that I garnered from news reports, I pieced together that he was in a gay relationship with a fellow priest who dumped him, so he rebounded with a high school boy. I may have some of those details wrong. I lost interest in the details after a while. This was in 1998 or 1999, back before the sex abuse scandal got the widespread coverage it would get just a few years later. These days, he sells fertilizer to farmers down in one of the desolate stretches of Kansas and checks in with the Sex Offender registry.

The media would get a hold of this sex abuse story in 2002—led by the Boston Globe, whose investigations and tough, evenhanded writing would win it a Pulitzer for their journalism. The Globe still maintains the story on their website that discusses the problem and Boston’s recovery. I had kind of forgotten that the Globe was the leader in the reporting until I read a column by Peggy Noonan that ran in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Noonan praised the press for bringing the story to light, and then praised the Church for stepping up to handle the scandal once they understood the scope of the problem. She makes the point that John Paul II bungled the affair because he couldn’t fathom how priests could fail en masse like that; the priests that he grew up with were the Polish heroes of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s—truly heroic men whose dedication to serving the Lord and the Church meant that they risked life and limb to bring souls to Christ. That so many priests could be scoundrels was beyond his wildest imagination. It wasn’t until Pope Benedict XVI would take the papacy that the Church could begin to turn around the battleship.

In fairness though, the Vatican administration of His Holiness John Paul II did take some action. Bernard Law, the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston is now the rector of St. Mary Major in Rome. John Allen Jr. wrote an excellent piece about Card. Law for a story of how one of America’s most powerful clerics makes his time as a parish priest in a foreign land these days; when I read it in 2008, it left me with a very humble understanding of how this chief conspirator performs his penance with grace. Yet, shipping His Eminence to Rome isn’t exactly the punishment that some were wanting for Law, who appears to be the poster-bishop for shuffling predator priests around Boston rather than taking any serious measures to correct the abuse.

Strictly speaking, I think that it’s wrong to say that the Church hides the facts about sexual abuse. A sex abuse problem appears to be bigger than anyone understood at any time; Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, certainly seems correct when he says “Nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it”. Yes, it’s hard to deny that the bishops bungled their handling of the situation. But it doesn’t appear to be by any malevolence on the part of the shepherds—just mishandling.

Statistics show that the abuse problem peaked in the 70’s and 80’s, while bishops were using 1950’s tactics to handle it— giving priests a “fresh start” in a new parish might have been a good tactic when problems were isolated and the psychology of pedophilia and pederasty were poorly understood, but when you have a large number of offenders, “fresh starts” look like nothing more than rearranging chairs. That said, if someone is committing crimes, it is unarguable that the offenders should have been turned over to the police. It’s really a wonder that there aren’t more priests in jail over this.

I wonder if the dwindling numbers of priests in the years after Vatican II put the bishops up against the wall: if a bishop knew of widespread abuse problems in his diocese, what’s he going to do? Fire every priest? The moral-high-ground answer is “yes”, but how realistic is that? Back when I was managing restaurants, I had a bad cook. He’d come in late, was sometimes high at work, he messed up orders—when it finally became obvious that I had to fire him, I had to do so at the end of his shift, because we were already a little short-staffed for that night. I’m sure the bishops had the same problem, expect more widespread and more serious.

I also think that it speaks to a misunderstanding people have about the Church. If you have a bad priest—or even worse, a bad bishop—you can’t really fire them. You can take them out of ministry, you can make it against Church law for them to offer Mass or the sacraments, you can send them to a hermitage, but you can’t really fire a priest. In ordination, their hands are bound and their souls indelibly marked—they are a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek. Even those two priests I talked about in the beginning of this post—are sacramentally priests, though they are suspended a divinis. The theology can’t be undone. I could confess to them in a case of emergency, and could give me my last rites if I was dying and no other priest was available. Likewise for bishops—while His Eminence Cardinal Law is no longer the Archbishop of Boston, he’s still a bishop—and retains the “power” to confirm and ordain, though his station in life is just like a parish pastor. (Yes, I’m understating his role as “parish pastor”. He’s a Prince of the Church and the rector of a major basilica—St. Mary Major is one of the most important churches on earth. But in the day-to-day duties of his work, it’s comparable to what Fr. Tom Dolezal does at Holy Trinity in Lenexa). The Church can’t un-priest its priests; sacraments can be soiled and tarnished, but they can’t be undone.

My high school buddies used to tell a lewd joke about priests. Its punchline was about what kind of penance Father gives—a candy bar and a Coke. Oh, we thought we were so funny! A little bit of knowledge makes a lot of sophomoric jokes. That same joke would disgust me today.

Now I understand things a little differently than I understand them as a teenager. For one thing, I understand more clearly that Satan is REAL, and that he prowls the world seeking the ruin of souls. And I understand that when a person tries to live a holy life, the devil attacks them all the harder—hell has no greater trophies than the souls of people who tried to live holy lives. I can’t think of any other explanation. The priest who used to be the vocations director said as much in court during his sentencing: “The devil works overtime. I was weak. I am weak today”, he said. Of course, it’s only half the issue to blame Satan. Satan only tempts. Priests make their own decisions.

We all make our own decisions.

The Church has had a long trouble with sexual temptations. Go do a little research on the Renaissance popes, with their sexual romps in St. Peter’s Basilica, and how Pope Urban VIII is the great-great-great grandson of Pope Alexander VI. I read a brief story how today’s priestly clerical dress morphed out of rules mandated in the 16th Century as a way to keep priests out of bars and brothels.

*****

There is an old prayer to St. Michael that Catholics used to pray after every Mass. The story goes that Pope Leo XIII had a vision after one particular Mass in 1886 where he saw a vision of a great battle between the devil and the Catholic Church. The vision terrified him so much that he locked himself in his office for a time; when he came out, he had penned a prayer invoking St. Michael the Archangel’s protection. His Holiness directed that copies be made of the prayer and sent to every bishop on earth, to be prayed by every Catholic after every Mass. The prayer read:

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

We Catholics were faithful in saying this prayer for about 80 years; right up until the Church turmoil of the 1960’s when the practice was discontinued (or more accurately, made optional. And thus: effectively discontinued).

Is there any question that the devil is attacking the Catholic Church? He has corrupted our priests so much that even the good and innocent clergy feel the need to apologize for the trespasses of their guilty brother priests. The whole Church is backpedaling under the weight of the sin it created for itself. People my age are afraid to have their children baptized Catholic, for fear that they’re just marking their kids as targets. Others leave the Church for rival denominations. Others abandon their faith altogether.

But.

The way to beat Satan is the same formula that the Church has used since Christ Himself: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Penance. And maybe jailtime. Even the Jews of Jesus’ era needed Caesar to try certain crimes (see: Pontius Pilate), so it’s appropriate to turn over pedophiles and pederasts to the cops. But we cannot discount prayer! And it’s not just the tempted or guilty priests who have to pray, fast and give alms—innocent priests and laypeople can do it too—it wasn’t all that long ago that Catholics prayed the St. Michael Prayer to protect the Church from the devil after every Mass. What is stopping you from praying it still for the benefit of the Church? What is stopping you from praying it still for the benefit of your family? What is stopping you from praying it still for your own protection?

I know, I know. You don’t want to be one of those people after Mass who stop to kneel and pray for a few minutes after Mass, only to miss out on gladhanding with Father by the parish gift shop. And the time after Mass isn’t usually conducive to praying anyway, what with all the people clapping along with the drum solo in the recessional song and the general chatter of the congregation that seems to follow every Mass. When I stay after Mass to pray, I usually run the risk of missing out on the best after-Church donuts and getting stuck choosing between the half-smooshed jelly donut and slumming it with a bagel (also known as the consolation-donut). So I usually pray the St. Michael Prayer after receiving Holy Communion, along with the Anima Christi and the Angelus. It helps me focus on connecting with Our Lord and His mission for us, rather than spending the minutes people-watching.

I’m not the kind of person who looks for coincidences to prove his point. Too often, such reasoning leads to a logical fallacy called “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc”, or “After this, thus because of this”. It means that because a certain situation happened after some particular event, the event must have caused the situation (example: I clapped my hands before it rained, thus my hand clapping caused the rain). But I have to admit that I’m inclined to draw this conclusion: about the time Catholics quit pleading for St. Michael’s protection in the battle against the wickedness and snares of the devil, the Church fell victim to Satan’s corruption.

The problem with sex abusing priests is a serious one facing the Church. I take some comfort that the program that the US Bishops have created to prevent abuse, report abuse and correct abuse is considered one of the best programs of any bishops’ conference in the worldwide Church– and is now serving as a model for dioceses in every corner of the globe. But that is only small comfort.

St. Michael, defend us in battle.

Not long ago, I gave some friends of mine a little bottle of holy water as a present on the anniversary of their son’s (my Godson’s) baptism. They said they appreciated the gift, but looked at me blankly as to what to do with the water. I stammered out that people use it to bless themselves and their children and that some people cook with it. I should have anticipated the question. But the truth is that I didn’t really have any good tips as to what to do with the water. And as a sacramental object, I’m sure the parents weren’t even sure how to get rid of the water. Sorry, friends!

Holy water is a confusing item. People don’t know much about it or what to do with it. The cinematic evidence shows that vampires shy away from it, but most people don’t really worry about vampires these days. Not to mention that garlic is usually available, even in non-Catholic homes. So what else do people do with it?

Catholic churches have the little bowls just inside the doors to the nave—sometimes on the wall (like in the photo to the left), or sometimes on a pedestal, or sometimes (and IMHO, regrettably) in a pool the size of a Jacuzzi tub.

Catholics dip their fingers into the water and use the wet fingers to make the sign of the cross. Growing up, I was told that it was to “remind us of our baptism”. A phrase like that doesn’t make much sense to the modern Cradle-Catholic, since we were baptized as infants before we can actually remember the event. But I think that the phrase “remind us of our baptism” should be understood in the old Hebrew sense of the words, where remembering isn’t an intellectual activity as much as it’s an emotional one—I think we’re to remember with our hearts rather than our heads.

In baptism, our sins (even our original sin) is washed from our soul. Catholics (like most mainstream Protestant denominations) profess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, which means that we only receive that sacrament one time. After that, it’s up to us to keep our souls as clean as possible. Remember your baptism– that may be as holy as you’ll ever be again!

Some people also splash a little water on the ground for the poor souls in Purgatory. I started doing this a couple years ago, hoping that it would bring souls closer to Christ in Heaven. But it’s also been a weekly reminder that I will also face my end one day, and when I do, I should be ready for it.

Most churches have a supply tank of holy water somewhere in the building where people can take a little home with them. The indispensable website Fisheaters has a suggestion for how to turn a liquor bottle into a to-go container for holy water, but I think their suggestion is a little hokey. I’ve read about people who reuse pickle jars, people who recycle 5-gallon buckets (!), and people who buy little plastic bottles in Catholic bookstores for the purpose. I use a repurposed white-wine-vinegar bottle because it’s got a shaker top that makes sprinkling easier.

At home, people use it for a variety of things. My mother has these little ceramic basins in a few rooms of my folks’ house that are supposed to be filled with holy water. In all the years that I’ve seen them hanging there, I’ve never actually seen them filled with a drop of water, but it is not uncommon for Catholic families to have a little font by their front door so the family can bless themselves as they go out into the world, or in each bedroom so people can bless themselves as part of their nightly prayers.

It’s not uncommon to put a few splashes of holy water into the saucepot when you’re cooking the family meal, though I admit that I’ve never done this myself. I use a little holy water here and there around the house when I’m cleaning. I sprinkle a little in the bedroom, that each night I remember the blessings of the day; I sprinkle a little at my desk in our home-office, that my work is a blessing to the Lord and to his people; I sprinkle a little in the kitchen, that God will bless our food for the nourishment of our bodies and the sustenance of our souls.

I sprinkle a little holy water in our vegetable garden from time to time, praying that we never go hungry. I sprinkle a little in the flowerbed by the front door, that God’s blessings always give us a happy return home. Every now and then, I sprinkle a little bit on the dog—a blessing he doesn’t seem to appreciate for some reason.

Parents often sprinkle a little holy water on their children’s heads at night, that God would bless them with happy and holy lives. Parents might sprinkle a little holy water on their children to see if it cuts their skin—as a test of whether or not the kids are little demons after all.

I bet that parents of 2-year-olds go through a LOT of holy water.

There’s nothing magical about the stuff though. Holy water is a “sacramental” of the Catholic Church, which means that it’s a religious tool; it is a sacred sign that signifies effects obtained through the Church’s intercession. Like all sacramentals, they are worthless without the prayers of the church and user, and totally worthless if they do not ultimately point to Jesus Christ. They are tangible ways of asking the Lord to bless us. Sacramentals are devices to bring us closer to the Lord, to repel the devil and his ilk, and to prepare our souls for God’s grace—but they are not magical talismans. They (like us) are nothing without God.

My parish has a stainless steel holy water tank like the one pictured to the right tucked back in the side door of the sacristy. I think that for a lot of people, finding an industrial-looking can (that bears a strange resemblance to a restaurant stock-pot) kind of spoils some illusion of where holy water comes from. I think people assume that there’s some gold-plated natural spring under the sanctuary altar. Alas, there is not. Holy water is usually just tap water with salt added to it, then fortified with the prayers of a priest.

The salt it, ostensibly, to keep the water from going sour from sitting around. But glancing into the dishes by the church door, you can see that there’s often a little funk in the water. I choose not to let that funk bother me, but it’s kind of icky. At home, you can dispose of sour holy water the same way you’d dispose of any sacramental: by returning it to the earth. I don’t wear a scapular, but people who do tell me that they wear out after regular wear—so people dig a little hole and bury the scapular. Holy water probably doesn’t need a hole dug unless your lawn is paved, just pour it into the earth to dispose of it.

In any way, that’s the gig with holy water. I recommend that people keep a little bottle in their house and bless themselves with it from time to time.

Other resources:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church: Sacramentals
Angelus magazine, July 1986, reprinted on catholictradition.org: Holy Water a Means of Spiritual Wealth
Catholic Encyclopedia: Sacramentals
Catholic Encyclopedia: Holy Water
Fisheaters: Introduction to Sacramentals
Fisheaters: Holy Water

A few weeks ago, Mrs. WRC and I sat down to watch the epic documentary Into Great Silence. It is a 3 hour glimpse into the life and prayer of the silent Carthusian monks. The movie is a discussion all to itself and maybe we’ll have it some day. But because we had seen that documentary, Mrs. WRC and I found this little video that’s going around the web to be delightful!

How do you sing to the Lord if you’ve taken a vow of silence?

Hat tip to Creative Minority Report and to Father Z.

Back in early 2008, the Leaven, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, ran a beautiful article about praying the rosary. I’ve kept a copy of it and re-read it from time to time. I am not the greatest pray-er in the world and probably suffer from a lack of practice. Maybe that’s why I get a little teary-eyed when I read the story, reprinted below.

*****

‘Sometimes, it’s all you can do’
by Jill Ragar Esfeld

Every morning growing up, I woke to the sound of my father reciting the rosary in unison with a voice on a local radio station.

In college, when my faith was challenged by the “born again” Christian movement, I confronted him about prayer by rote. Why do Catholics do it — Our Fathers and Hail Marys over and over again? What’s the point?

His answer was simple but weighted with the wisdom of a man who had lived through the Depression, served in a war, and survived a Chinese prison camp.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s all you can do.”

He called it “keeping despair at the door” and warned me that “if you let despair in, hope goes out, and faith is soon to follow.”

In the years to come, I would learn that lesson well and be grateful for my rosary prayers and the 10 fingers God gave me to keep track of them.

Not only did they become an important method of meditation and centering as my prayer practice matured, but the rosary became an invaluable life tool — a way to get through those moments when, as my father said, it’s the only thing you can do.

A gift for our children

The immeasurable value of this prayer practice made me want to be sure, above all things, that my children learned the rosary. I saw it as the most important life tool my husband Jerry and I could give them.

But I wondered what would be the best method for teaching it. After all, the rosary can be a very long and tedious exercise in the hands of a five-year old. How could we present it as a gift and not a burden?

We decided to teach it in a manner most appealing to children, in bits and pieces, and with great appeal to their imaginations.

So each night, at prayer time, after our thank-you’s and petitions, my daughter Lizz and her little brother John would take turns choosing a rosary prayer to recite. And surprisingly, they chose the Apostles’ Creed as often as they chose the Glory Be. Length was never an issue; all prayers got equal practice.

I taught them to imagine Mary whispering their little concerns in Jesus’ ear and to think of her as their other mother — a mother who loves them as much as I do, but has far more power to make their dreams come true.

“When you call her name,” I said, “all the saints and angels turn and listen.”

In May and October, we would say a “car rosary” on the way to school, reciting a decade each morning, discussing the fruit of its mystery, and talking about how we could live that fruit during the day.

I showed them by example how important the rosary was to me. I said a rosary each day, asking them for prayer requests. Often they joined me for a decade or two. Every Wednesday, when they got out of Holy Trinity School in Lenexa, they knew they would find me in the adoration chapel saying a rosary.

A refuge and guide

The truth of my father’s wisdom was most clearly brought home to me, however, when John, in first grade, suffered from Kawasaki syndrome, a rare and life- threatening vasculitis.

At moments when I couldn’t think straight — when I sat helpless and watched a nurse struggle to get an IV in his small hand, when I waited for the results of yet another echocardiogram — the rosary helped me stay focused on Mary, who knew what it was like to watch a child suffer. Through her, I kept my eyes on God, never allowing despair to get its hold on me.

When John recovered from his illness, he worried that he might get sick again and had a hard time being away from me, especially at night. He would creep into my room and beg me to sit with him until he fell asleep.

I couldn’t refuse him. So I would sit on the edge of his bed, praying my rosary and begging Mary to show me the way to tough love.

Then one night an idea came to me, and the next day I bought a luminous rosary — one that glows in the dark. I gave it to John at bedtime and told him to say it all the way through before he came into my room.

“Try to stay awake,” I said. “But don’t worry if you fall asleep, because the angels will finish it for you.”

He never came into my room again, though many nights, before going to bed, we tore his covers apart looking for that rosary.

Our children’s keeper

Over the last 10 years, the angels have finished many rosaries for John, who is now in his last year of high school. His sister is a sophomore in college.

I’m happy to say my method of teaching them the rosary seems to have worked.

Lizz calls us now with weighty news about organic chemistry, biology internships and curriculum committee issues. When the going gets tough, she tells us, she says her rosary.

“I say the joyful mysteries,” she confides, “because those are the ones I know the best.”

I think that’s fine. I like to imagine her on her beautiful campus, in union with a youthful Mary, recalling the joys of Jesus’ life beginning.

As for me, I tend to gravitate toward the sorrowful mysteries these days. I draw strength from their fruits — courage, patience, perseverance. After all, we’re raising a teenage boy.

The child who, at seven, couldn’t leave my side, barely finds time to speak to me now as he races in the house just long enough to grab his golf clubs, a skateboard or a pair of basketball shoes. I can’t keep up with his girlfriends, much less his life.

And I worry every time he gets in the car and backs out of our driveway — a worry that borders on panic when he’s late, past his curfew.

But then I go up to his room to deliver a load of laundry or a school book that’s been left on the kitchen table, and I see his rosary — the same luminous one I gave him when he was seven.

Sometimes it’s in the middle of his unmade bed, or draped across the alarm clock on his night stand. I imagine him waking up and finding it wrapped around his hand just as it was when he fell asleep the night before, and a wave of comfort comes over me.

I know he’s talking to his other mother — the one who can make his dreams come true. And I know he’ll be OK, because she’s with him always, watching over him, keeping despair at the door.

*****

The rosary is a kind of meditative prayer, where the pray-er focuses on various scenes in Christ’s life. Those scenes, called “mysteries”, are contemplated while praying the prayers of the rosary. The website Angelqueen.org has a nice description of the mechanics of the rosary: which prayers to say, their order and the text of each prayer. It is harder to describe how to pray the rosary, by which I mean how to contemplate the scenes of the Gospel while praying. That part comes with practice. Practice which I am still learning to do.

Still, I practice. When God feels far away or when I feel like I’ve gotten into life far over my head, I am tempted to shed Him and deal with the God-stuff later. This is the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I should pursue Christ when I need Christ rather than retreat from Christ when I need Christ. Heh. Easier said than done. But we should learn to pray. Sometimes it’s all we can do.

Today (Sunday) begins the season of Advent. Despite what those creepy mannequins in the Old Navy ads tell you, it’s not actually Christmas season. That season doesn’t actually begin until Christmas. But I don’t think it’ll do much good to reason with America’s Christmas-Industrial complex.

Nonetheless, today begins Advent. And today is also the beginning of the Church year. Happy New Year, fellow Catholic!

Advent is a time of preparation; it’s a time to get ready to greet Jesus, the newborn king of kings. How are you getting ready? If you’re like most people, you’re getting ready by dec’ing your halls, making your lists and checking them twice, roasting chestnuts and pondering if you’ve ever seen a sugar-plum in your life (much less envisioned a dancing one). Include me in that list of “most people”. Except the roasted chestnuts thing. Chestnuts are gross. But I digress.

Yes, Advent is about getting ready for Christmas. More properly, Advent is about getting ready for Christ.

So what are you doing to get ready for him?

*****

I joined the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus a couple months ago. In it’s simplest form, the Knights are a life-insurance program founded to provide for widows if the husband dies. This proposition is laughable in the WRC household, as Mrs. WRC earns more money than I do… even when I’m employed! She wins the bread around here, I just cook the bacon she brings home.

The Knights have grown beyond their historic function as an insurance provider to a charitable or philanthropic organization for the Church and her related work. Maybe the most famous example is when they sell Tootsie Rolls to benefit the Special Olympics. My council (and maybe others, I don’t know) are also selling these car magnets exhorting you to “Keep Christ in Christmas”. This isn’t really my kind of thing. The magnets aren’t particularly attractive, they’re about the size of a dinner plate, and I think they’re less likely to convince someone to act all Christiany than they are to convince someone to tailgate me trying to read the strangely scrunched-up type for a magnet the size of a dinner plate.

But even more than the fact that I don’t really like the magnet, I don’t think that it offers any practical advice for how, exactly, we should go around keeping Christ in Christmas. A person who is casual with their religion might think that the phrase is as simple as “Don’t spell Christmas like Xmas”. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, thinking that “Xmas” is some kind of way to erase the religious context from the holiday. This is not factual. Dennis Bratcher of the Christian Research Institute wrote a great article on the subject in 2007. Excerpt:

Abbreviations used as Christian symbols have a long history in the church. The letters of the word “Christ” in Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written, or various titles for Jesus early became symbols of Christ and Christianity. For example, the first two letters of the word Christ (cristoV, or as it would be written in older manuscripts, CRISTOS) are the Greek letters chi (c or C) and rho (r or R). These letters were used in the early church to create the chi-rho monogram (see Chrismons), a symbol that by the fourth century became part of the official battle standard of the emperor Constantine.

Another example is the symbol of the fish, one of the earliest symbols of Christians that has been found scratched on the walls of the catacombs of Rome. It likely originated from using the first letter of several titles of Jesus (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior). When combined these initial letters together spelled the Greek word for fish (icquV, ichthus).

The exact origin of the single letter X for Christ cannot be pinpointed with certainty. Some claim that it began in the first century AD along with the other symbols, but evidence is lacking. Others think that it came into widespread use by the thirteenth century along with many other abbreviations and symbols for Christianity and various Christian ideas that were popular in the Middle Ages. However, again, the evidence is sparse.

In any case, by the fifteenth century Xmas emerged as a widely used symbol for Christmas. In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. In the early days of printing typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive. As a result, abbreviations were common. In religious publications, the church began to use the abbreviation C for the word “Christ” to cut down on the cost of the books and pamphlets. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and “Xmas” became an accepted way of printing “Christmas” (along with the abbreviations Xian and Xianity). Even Webster’s dictionary acknowledges that the abbreviation Xmas was in common use by the middle of the sixteenth century.

Keep Christ in Christmas. Indeed, I agree. He is the reason for the season! How, exactly, do you plan on doing that? Speaking only for myself, it won’t involve sticking any magnets to the rear of the WRCMobile.

*****

For these four weeks of Advent, the Church has a particular attitude during Mass. It is a time of stripping down and slowing down; the church seems as though it’s been made bare. For the last few months, we’ve been in “Ordinary Time” (or, for the traditional Catholics among us, the equally uninspiring term “time after Pentecost”). This is when the Church just does what she does during the normal year. Except for certain days for notable saints or martyrs or whatnot, Father’s been wearing his green chasuble. He’s been wearing green because that’s been the time of life and vitality in the Church. But today he switched to the penitential color of purple. Purple is also the color of royalty– a fitting display for preparing yourself to greet the king. But it is also a color of repentance, of penance, of setting things straight.

You might notice that the music is getting somber during Advent, too. Sunday Mass omits the “Glory to God in the Highest” at the beginning of Mass. In my neighborhood parish, all of the people’s responses are to the slow and aching tune of “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. This song, perhaps the greatest and most known Advent song ever, is a clumsy fit for the Lamb of God prayer and the Great Amen. It sounds hokey and contrived, but this parish has been doing it for many years now and I’m probably the only one that doesn’t like it. Meh. That’s life as a crotchety fuddy-duddy.

This is backwards to how the world sees the time before Christmas. To the world, the Christmas season starts somewhere around mid-October and builds piece by piece until Santa’s big scene. First it starts with the Christmas decorations (and candy!) in the aisles of Walmart. Then a few days later, at least 2 radio stations have switched to the all-Christmas-songs format. By the week before Thanksgiving, there’s several houses in the neighborhood with animatronic reindeer in their yards. When Christmas actually arrives, the only people still looking forward to the day are under 8 years of age. Everyone else just wants Christmas to be over already.

The Church does the opposite. She takes away little bits from Mass and from the celebration. It leaves you longing and hungry for more. The absence makes your heart grow fonder. When Christmas finally arrives and the choir proclaims out the joyful strains of GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!, you want to stand on your pew and scream out every note along with them! Proclaim your joy to the world!

The world is sick of Christmas by then, they’re probably the last ones who want to hear about all your joy. “Joy” is not having too much stuff to take back to Walmart on Boxing Day.

*****

How exactly do you keep Christ in Christmas? Got any plans yet? I’m over 1300 words in this post. Has that been enough time for you to make any plans?

May I make some suggestions? While you’re filling out your Christmas lists, make sure you figure in some cash for charity. Or if you’re one of those people with something even more precious than money: time. Why not spend a little bit of it doing the Lord’s work? Or spending it in prayer. Or doing some prayerful reading. Or when you’re downloading tunes to your iPod, find something spiritually edifying to prepare your mind for Christ. The internets are full of good sermons, lectures, prayers and song. Sure, working out to an Archbishop Sheen recording isn’t the same thing as listening to the Karate Kid soundtrack, but it’s got to be at least twice as good for your soul.

Me, I’m trying something new this year. Something that is kind of brave for a guy like me.

I’m going to practice a fast from Monday through Saturday during Advent.

*****

Fasting is a very old practice. Christians have practiced it for centuries and Jews have practiced fasting for centuries before that. It is a process of doing without, of denying yourself. It is a penitential practice, an act of reparation, a chance to set yourself straight for the Lord.

The mechanics of keeping a fast are very simple: you are allowed one full meal a day, with two smaller meals that, together, do not add up to be a meal. There is no snacking between those periods. Fasting is not the same thing as starving, but it does require some discipline and some self restraint. If you’ve ever met me, you might guess that I am not the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about discipline and restraint around the refrigerator. This is going to be a challenge.

I should note that fasting is not a diet plan. I guess that for my one meal of the day, I could eat bacon-wrapped cheese sticks covered in a porterhouse steak. Not that bacon-wrapped cheese sticks covered with a porterhouse is a typical meal (oh, would that it were!) or anything. I’m just illustrating the point that fasting is designed to be hard. It is supposed to be a time of self-denial. It is a supposed to be a time of doing something for someone other than yourself– in this case, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Why no fasting on Sunday? Because every Sunday is like a miniature Easter, a celebration of Jesus’ triumph over the grave. It’s confusing to offer penance during a celebration. So on Sundays, I’m eating for Jesus. Now THAT is joy.

*****

In the old days, Catholics had certain periods of the year called “Ember Days”. The indispensable website Fisheaters writes of Ember Days:

Four times a year, the Church sets aside three days to focus on God through His marvelous creation. These quarterly periods take place around the beginnings of the four natural seasons 1 that “like some virgins dancing in a circle, succeed one another with the happiest harmony,” as St. John Chrysostom wrote.

These four times are each kept on a successive Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday and are known as “Ember Days,” or Quatuor Tempora, in Latin.

The Ember Days were eliminated from the calendar once the Church glazed down the calendar after the Second Vatican Council. Those ember days were times of fasting and abstinence (i.e. no meat), and I’ll refer you again to Fisheaters for the details. Advent’s Ember Days came just before Christmas and were the final bit of preparation for Christmas.

Fasting beyond those three days was a matter of private devotion and not required by the Church. These days, the same is true. Fasting beyond the (seemingly) 2 or 3 days of whole year is a private practice that people can do if they are so inclined. And I am so inclined.

*****

I don’t really know what I expect to gain out of forgoing my shredded wheat in the morning and some midday leftover meatloaf. Other than periodic abstinence from meat, I’ve never really tried to link my stomach to my soul. But I’ve been looking for a spiritual “slump-buster” lately and need to try something new. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Remember: the fastest way to a man’s heart and whatnot.

And that’s what I’m really looking for: how am I going to make straight the pathway in my heart? How I am really going to search for Christ in Christmas? I think this year, I’m going to do something that I can’t really quantify on a wish list or a car bumper. I’m going to do something solely for the sake of Jesus Christ.

O Come O Come Empanada Emmanuel.

Prepare to meet him away in that manger.

Psalm 99
A psalm of praise.
Sing joyfully to God, all the earth: serve ye the Lord with gladness.
    Come in before his presence with exceeding great joy.
Know ye that the Lord he is God:
    he made us, and not we ourselves.
    We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Go ye into his gates with praise,
    into his courts with hymns:
    and give glory to him. Praise ye his name:
For the Lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever,
    and his truth to generation and generation.

A good number of atheist Americans are going to go to their mother’s house today to eat turkey and watch the Detroit Lions lose another football game. And they are going to, ostensibly, give thanks.

But to whom, exactly, are they giving thanks? Heh heh.

I’ll tell you this: I am thankful for a good number of things, people and experiences in my life. And I give thanks to the Lord for all of it.

Enjoy your turkey today. And make sure that when you’re thanking your mom for dinner, you thank God for bringing it to your table.

Now will you please pass me the cornbread dressing? Now that’s good stuff.

“Glory” is a hard term to pin down, exactly. Oh, its definition is straightforward enough: worshipful praise, honor, and thanksgiving, but “glory” is one of those words whose definition doesn’t really match its meaning. Even the old Catholic Encyclopedia, whose discussion of all-things-Catholic is encyclopedic kind of dodges the phrase, saying: “This word has many shades of meaning which lexicographers are somewhat puzzled to differentiate sharply. As our interest in it here centres around its ethical and religious significance, we shall treat it only with reference to the ideas attached to it in Holy Scripture and theology.” Still, things are called “glorious” (or, regrettably, inglourious), some people seek to glorify, and St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31 that everything we do, we are to “do all to the glory of God.”

And we confidently use the term, admitting that any one of us may have a substandard understanding of how, exactly, we’re to give glory to God. Yet so it is.

*****

A few years ago, Major League Baseball pitcher D.J. Carrasco was a member of the Kansas City Royals. He pitched for my hometown team from like 2003 to 2005 with mediocre success. But for a while in early 2005, Carrasco looked like a surprisingly good pitcher on a team that had precious few players who could be called “surprisingly good” at anything. One game in that season really stands out in my memory, a Tuesday night game in June of that year when the ‘Boys in Blue trumped the San Francisco Giants 8-1 in an interleague game, snapping a skid of losing 8 or 9 road games in a row. After the game, I remember his on-field interview with the TV crew where they ask the player how it felt to win and whatnot– and Carrasco said something that really stuck out. I’m paraphrasing here, but Carrasco commented that he went into every game just pitching for the “glory of Christ, Jesus” and that he did “all things for Him.”

With that, he smiled ear to ear, and walked off camera.

Back in 2005, I was more interested in following this rotten baseball team than I was interested in following Jesus, so I rolled my eyes and turned off the television. That team was rotten. In 2005, the Kansas City Royals won 56 games and lost 106. They had 3 different managers that year, including one who decided to shower in the locker room with his clothes on because he thought it would pump up his losing club and hiring another who would go on to lose more games than any other manager in baseball history. But I digress.

One of my good friends hates it when atheletes give God credit for their victory. “God is undefeated” he likes to say. He’s right, of course. You never hear the game losers say they lost the game because God loves the other team more than them. But I think that I’ll give D.J. Carrasco the benefit of his statement, because he didn’t say that Jesus won the game for them. But rather that he pitches for Jesus.

Are you laughing yet? Go ahead and snicker; it sounds lame. After all, Jesus probably has more important things to worry about than mediocre pitchers tossing 87 MPH fastballs for His glory. But if I can stand back from my own snark for a moment, I have to quietly admit that now a few years later, I finally understand what Carrasco meant when he said he pitches for Jesus. Carrasco was recalling St. Paul’s words to “do all to the glory of God.”

I haven’t spent very much of my life do things that glorify the Lord. In fact, most of my adulthood has been rather inglorious. But the nice thing about living another day is the opportunity to do the next one a little different than the last.

*****

Starting about three years ago, I began thinking that I needed a career change. I’d just left one decent little job in banking to a new decent little job in local government. But none of the pieces were really fitting correctly. And so with a little prayerful reflection and some wise counsel from friends and family, I decided to do something dramatically different– and I entered night school to get my teacher’s license. It took a little time to get going (and some academic backtracking from some… inglorious academic decisions), but now I’m on the verge of finishing my license to teach high school social studies. I quit my job about 2 months ago so I could do my student teaching (the last part of my license) and to do the reporting that follows it. We’ve gone without my income for a while now. No, I don’t have a job lined up yet. Yes, I am fortunate enough to have a temporary gig that should start sooner or later. No, the job market isn’t very good for teachers right now– especially in my subject area. Yes, I think that will improve. No, I can’t coach football. And no, I’m not worried about that.

*****

Do you have a favorite chapter in the bible? I didn’t until about 2 years ago when one just really jumped out to me. Yes, I have a favorite chapter of the Bible. I like Matthew 6 quite a lot– and for a variety of reasons.. It really speaks to me. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ just finished the main part of the Sermon on the Mount and directs the next part to the disciples. There are basically 4 parts to the chapter:

First, Jesus gives specific directions about how to conduct yourself when you are in prayer. It’s that part about going into a closed room and not making a big deal out of it. It’s a reminder that when we pray, it’s a moment between us and God, not us and other people who watch us and God. I think about this line a lot during Lent. For the last couple of years, I’ve given up meat altogether during Lent– and I wanted EVERYONE to know how hard it was. But that’s a no-no; if I’m doing it for the Lord, then I can leave everyone else out of it.

Next in Mt 6, Jesus gives us His prayer– the Our Father. This may come as a surprise, but yes, the Our Father isn’t something that someone just made up. The words come from Christ Himself. Catholics pray these words of Christ every day in every Catholic Mass. The prayer isn’t long, just a couple of sentences. But it has so much to teach.

Third in the Chapter, Jesus gives his disciples– and everyone else listening– a stern rebuke about their priorities in life. “For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” He says that so many people say that they want to live good and holy lives, but when you look at the things they spend their time and money on, it’s hardly focused on living a good and holy life. “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Eek. Funny how in our modern age, over 2000 years removed from Christ’s earthly life, we’re still going into the office on Sundays, skimping at the collection plate, but ordering dessert after dinner, and remembering the parish food drive when you notice that other people have dropped off their food for that month. And just so this doesn’t sound accusatory, I’m writing these words about me. *sigh*

But the last part of Mt 6 has calmed a lot of my fears lately. Especially that part about me quitting my job and not having a permanent gig ready. Christ says this:

Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

Mrs. WRC and I have a little money saved up (not a lot, but we’re treading water) that has allowed me to quit a safe and stable government job with a state guaranteed pension so that I could be a full time student for a short while. It’s a little scary, I must admit. We’ve got a mortgage on the WRC estate. But this decision to go into teaching is a little more than a decision to make a career change. It was a decision to change my life so I could do something that can truly glorify the Lord!

So I’m doing it. I’m teaching for Jesus, from here on out. I never did any other job for any other person than myself before, but this time is something new. Christ and I have a deal, actually. Through some particularly hard parts of going back to school, I’ve asked him to hold my hand in some rough patches. And some nights when I’m doing homework until the wee hours so I can get it finished on time, or when I’ve had to drive all over town to arrange a video camera, or get a form signed by a teacher who is on campus 2 days a week, or when I’ve got to get a background check and a medical checkup submitted to the state by 4:00 on a Tuesday, but the campus medical center is closed that day because the main nurse and the substitute nurse are both sick at the same time and I’m zipping through traffic on my lunch break to get it all done before I miss the deadline… well heck. He’s walked me through every minor trial and tribulation along the way.

You may be unimpressed. After all, lots of people deal with lots of deadlines or late night homework, and most people that really want to get their license handle these little obstacles without difficulty. Fine, I don’t care. I’m giving Him the credit (and some worthy patrons that I’ve taken along the way: St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila and St. James… if you’ve been praying and asking any of those four for intercession, sorry. They’ve been pretty much working for me full time lately). I’ve had too many little minor miracles in the last 3 years to believe that this is all my doing.

But I’m not worried about finishing my license (report is due next week, I take one last test in a couple upcoming weeks). It’ll happen. I’m not worried about finding a job, either– that’ll happen sooner or later too. Consider the lillies of the field! Maybe I am being silly or naive. Maybe. But if so, then I’ll be silly and naive to glorify the Lord. I’m not doing this just for myself or my patient and forgiving wife. I’m doing it for Jesus.

*****

The Jesuits have a little phrase that runs through my head from time to time. Jesuits are an order of priests– like monks, except not really monks. But they have this phrase that sticks in my craw. “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”. It means “For the Greater Glory of God”. There’s a lot of ways to apply the phrase, often abbreviated AMDG, from building rich and elaborate churches that are dedicated to God (which incidently, puts Christ’s words in Mt 6 into practice about where your treasure and heart is), or reaching out to the needy and doing it for Christ’s sake, or for making every piece of your life serve to glorify the Lord. Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated all his work “AMDG”, and Edward Elgar followed this practice on his masterpiece “The Dream of Gerontius”. And so likewise do I dedicate my new life’s work Ad Majoriam Dei Gloriam. I like the little phrase. I like it so much that I’ve added it at the bottom of http://www.WhollyRoaminCatholic.com. It’s a good reminder.

I will probably struggle with this as a teacher. Some days will certainly be inglorious and the job may send me to the confessional from time to time. So be it. Jesus didn’t say the job would be an easy one. If I have to offer it up, then I will. And if I have to do my turn in the confessional, then I’ll do that for the greater glory of God, too.

I don’t know much about glory, really. I can’t give you a good definition, and I think the dictionaries don’t really do the concept justice either. But I know what I need to do so I can make my life point to Christ’s.

Here’s to hoping I have that courage. But that’s another post altogether.