Solitude, Order, and His Crowded House

I crave order.   Organization is an essential part of my well-being, my worldview, and even my flirtation with sanity.  There is no aspect of my life that is not subject to the natural rules of hierarchy, gravity, and orbit.  There is nothing that hasn't a place that was determined by efficacy and reason.

Order is my "Precious", and it is that which binds me in this place and time, and that which allows me make sense of all that is around me, to sort through what is important and what is not, to locate what I need and to abandon all else, to place humanity, deeds, and inventions in each's accustomed spot in what I know to be God's creation.

Thus, my concept of time prompted me to rise very early on a Saturday morning in June during a recent visit to Rome.  I had acquired a ticket to the Papal Mass for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and I feared the crowds would prevent my getting a seat.  

It had been a very interesting two weeks for me.  I had journeyed to Rome alone, ostensibly to attend a conference on Music and Liturgy, but really because I wanted to see the city again with an unhurried eye.  My last visit had been as part of a pilgrimage tour, and while it was an enjoyable experience, it had left me tired and often confused, my memories blurred and the impressions of each day overlapping the next to the point that I could not distinguish one from the other.   The lack of leisure and the sheer volume of activities had distorted the beauty of the city, much like viewing a garden in a downpour.   I was determined to see less this time, but to see it well.

I sat by the Trevi Fountain before the crowds arrived with their coins and cameras, the hour or so spent with moleskine and fountain pen recording the events of the day before, which had found me spending long moments before the paintings of Our Lady in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, which led me to a chance encounter with a French couple who had retired to the hometown of Dali in Spain.  They spoke a little English, I spoke a little Spanish, we all mimed and chortled through our attempts to discuss the beautiful art before us, and finished with a discussion of music, particularly lai and Guillaume de Machaut.  I ventured through a horrible little wax museum and visited Our Lord in countless tiny chapels as well as in the grander churches for which Rome is famed.  I ate gelato.  I prayed.  I drank prosecco and cried.  I watched the sunset over the Pantheon from a hotel rooftop, and I enjoyed my solitude.  I found the eternal in my days.

It was rather sad, actually, to give that up when the conference began.  I saw old friends, made some new ones, and quite enjoyed the learning that comes with such things, but the unhurried peace that comes with lonely beauty quite vanished.  I found myself longing again for solitude, and so I rose early, and went alone to stand in a queue, intent upon finding the eternal again, in seeing My Lord in His Accustomed Place, and resuming my observation of a world that seemed better for its not observing me.

It was not meant to be, however.  Despite my reaching St. Peter's Basilica at seven, the line was already long.  My ticket, blue with a number well over seven thousand, convinced me that I would be lucky to see His Holiness during the celebration of the Eucharist (I am quite near sighted and rather short) and, with his soft-spoken words, probably ill-fated in hearing him speak, as well.  Crowds are not known for their silence, and the shifting of seats and thousands of bodies would disrupt the sense of the sacred, or so I thought.

Our Lord, though, is gracious and kind, and He knows best what we need, no matter what our longings are.  There were three ladies ahead of me in line, obviously American and of the Southern persuasion.  The queue was long, the morning young, and a conversation quite naturally developed.  They were from Louisiana.  I knew a priest there.  They knew him, too!  They were hoping to see him that very day!  (He was currently in Rome, studying.)  A common tongue and a common friend led to them offering me an "extra" green ticket, which allowed me to sit near the altar,  close enough to see the Sacrifice, to watch the Elevation of the Host, to glimpse the beauty of the chalice, and to participate as I had always done at Mass, with wonder and awe that Our Lord should come to us again in the form of bread and wine, that He would impart His Grace here, among the ruins and the art, among the relics and the living, among the noise and, yes, the peace.

"Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi..."

Then, suddenly, there was no order. The congregation became a crowd, pressing forward from all angles toward the priests who were distributing Communion. There were no lines, no ushers directing us, nothing organized about our movements, we were all just pushed forward, sometimes stepping over those who had returned to their seats, those who remained kneeling, those who stood waiting patiently for someone to tell them what to do. The priest nearest us simply turned from one waiting tongue to the next, protected by the rotational movement as much as by his vesture, the surging crowd shifting back and forth as more and more people pressed forward to receive.

I was irritated and annoyed. This was a Papal Mass. Surely, there should be a more dignified way to do this! This was a shambles, the priests distributing remaining calm, but being buffeted a bit and often turned by the pressure of the crowd around them. Where were the ushers? Why were there no lines?

Then, a thought occurred to me as I glanced about the Church. There was a continuity here, a bond that joined us to the earliest Christians. They, too, had crowded around the Lord, buffeting and bumping Him, striving to touch Him, hoping to reach just the hem of His garment, content with the mere sight of His Face as he passed among them. We were the same crowd, pressing forward to be near Our Lord, our eagerness was the same as theirs, we wanted to receive Him, in whatever way He permits.  We wanted to touch Him as Thomas did, even if only with our tongues. We wanted to know His Mercy, His Grace, His Peace, and we were creating a different order to do that, an order which found Him at our center, the only calm in a crowded place filled with beauty and disarray, a world that only grew calm again when we had all received Him.

This was my thought as I received my Lord and my God, kneeling once more, uttering my thanks for His forgiveness and the gift of salvation, grateful for my Faith, this place, and even this age. There is no peace in the confusion of the world, there is no order that is not centered upon Him, and there is nothing that I can do that will ever pay the debt I owe for the wounds He bore for me that Thomas touched and the other Apostles witnessed, and that He shows to the Father each time I plead forgiveness for my sins, an offering made again here, before a crowd that knew nothing more than it must press toward Him to be healed.

A Silent and Unwelcome Witness

"What is he doing?"

My husband asked the question as we were driving through a small college town in Pennsylvania.  We had taken a long weekend to visit a bookstore another friend had mentioned and were enjoying a beautiful late spring day, driving up and down the side streets in a lovely little community, when we saw a man on his knees on the sidewalk, back ramrod straight, concentrating on something clutched in his hands, his lips barely moving, completely oblivious to those passing by on foot or by car.  As we drew closer, I saw what he held.

"He's saying the Rosary."

There was nothing to mark the building, but the posture and the action of this man told us that this was an abortion clinic.  This was a place where a beautiful young college girl could come to receive a secular absolution for her momentary indiscretion, where she could wipe out that stain on her worldly intelligence, where she could show her professors and parents that she really could act responsibly.  She could bring a friend with her  to drive her home, someone who would munch an apple while waiting in the car.   She could make all the arrangements.  She could walk in that door and act as if this were nothing more than a routine visit to her regular doctor, and when it was over, she could console herself in all the ways she had been taught to do, but as with everything else in this life, there are some things that they don't tell you.  There are some things that you find out when it is too late to save what is really important.  That newfound knowledge was written on the faces of the girls coming out the door, some still clutching their abdomens, the hollowness reaching their eyes.

We stopped the car and parked (illegally, alas) and walked over to the sidewalk where the man knelt.  Some other women had pulled up in a van and were hauling out the usual gruesome signs that one sees in front of abortion clinics from time to time, but I was drawn to kneel with the man already there on the sidewalk.  My husband joined me and we knelt to pray for the poor girls who felt driven to this, for those who had done it before and now had the anger of the self-deluded to convince them that this one didn't matter any more than the last one did, and we prayed for those who brought them, those who sent them, and for those who weren't here by choice.  Then I couldn't pray anymore, I could only kneel and watch the quiet gentleman beside me telling his beads, joining my heart to his words, joining my pain with that of the girls within the clinic.

My husband rose to go move the car and I stayed behind to wait for him, still kneeling.  The other ladies had set up at the far end of the building, their signs and their offers of brochures meeting with little success, and quite a bit of hostility.  One man, jogging by with a large dog, began to curse them loudly as he passed, pausing by the two of us kneeling (our backs to him) long enough to set his dog to barking and growling at us.  "Get 'em, boy, get 'em!"   I prayed for him, too.   Such virile hatred for something as innocuous as prayer.

But it isn't innocuous, is it?  It is our most potent weapon here on this earth.  We beg our daily bread, we plead for forgiveness, we offer praise, all through prayer.  Those with vocations offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and call forth the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments for us.  Those cloistered bear the weight of the world,  tiny titans in wimples and hoods who lift it daily before God and remind Him that what He has created, He can destroy, but surely He will spare it  for the fifty good souls pleading for it?   Perhaps for the twenty, maybe the ten?  Or perhaps just the one kneeling before a thick white "no trespassing" line telling him he is not welcome, but who stays there anyway to pray for the children who might have been.  

He continued telling his beads even as I rose to leave, making the sign of the cross and thinking of Christ in the noonday sun, and His Holy Mother standing near His torn feet, clutching her abdomen too, feeling the loss and the hollowness that only a mother who has lost her child can feel.   She, that most silent Witness of them all, would hear the prayers uttered by those gathered before this new Golgatha and would bear them before Her Son, and plead as only a mother can do for the fate of Her children.

May God have mercy where we show none.  Amen.

Veering off the Via Media

It occurs to me that, as of this Easter, I have been a Catholic longer than I was an Anglican.

It seems incredulous to me, for these last thirteen years have flown as time does when one reaches a certain age, that point at which we lose not only the child's understanding, but that innocent connection with eternity in which a summer lasts forever and Christmas is always distant.

My faith in God was well established as a child.  There was never any question in my mind that He who created the universe had time to not only tend the lilies and sparrows, but help this little girl catch fish.  That faith never wavered.  It still hasn't, and it has brought me through much when nothing else would have helped.  It was what gave me the hope of salvation, I needed no proof of anything beyond it, it was sufficient enough for me to trust.

It is a bittersweet truth that we cannot remain as children, though.  Belief does not always require understanding, but without it, it will not survive into adulthood.  The world is full of pain, cruelty, hardship and evil that calls even the most devout to question God, sometimes even calling us to question His very existence.

Gratefully, my life is not such that I ever truly doubted, but I did ponder the whys and wherefores of the  religion into which I had married, and when my husband chose to convert, I reluctantly followed, finding, even with that reluctance, a fuller Truth, a complete Faith that never ceases to thrill me in Her day to day lessons, that explains so much and yet still holds a Mystery that compels me to attend Her repetitive rites, finding in them that which is Eternal, that which is the Same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

It is an humbling thing, this acceptance of a Sacramental God.  For the first time in my life as a Christian, it was no longer about simply believing.   There was a consummation in this Faith, much as there is in a marriage, that left me altered, much as Saul became Paul, the scales removed from his eyes by the sacramental touch of the Apostle.  In taking the Body and Blood of Christ on my tongue, I was compelled to change, to grow in this Faith that I had consciously chosen and publicly professed.

Here, before these altars, I found that there is no middle way.  There is no lingering in those things that bring me complacent comfort.  For the first time, religion became more than merely believing, more than an acknowledgement of the Eternal Truth, but the consumption of it, and in that act, that willful acceptance of Our Lord's Body, I recognized that the faith I once found sufficient was hardly enough to offer to the God who became man, who gave Himself as a Pure Victim, spotless and holy.  I needed to do more than to believe.  I needed to offer myself to God sacrificially, to immolate that which I knelt to worship and adore, that which I owed my all.  

I am glad to be a Catholic.  May I be an acceptable one to Our Lord, and may my prayer always be that He make me worthy of the perfection He has promised us in eternity, and until that moment, may He order my days, our days, in His peace.  Amen.

Love or What You Will: An Awkward Way of Persuasion

"There were four of you," I said. "Cara didn't know the first thing it was about, and may or may not have believed it; you knew a bit and didn't believe a word; Cordelia knew about as much and believed it madly; only poor Bridey knew and believed, and I thought he made a pretty poor show when it came to explaining. And people go round saying, 'At least Catholics know what they believe."

This time of year causes me to return to favorite places, be they real or imaginary, to refresh my memory regarding those things that have profoundly influenced me, and so I am reading Brideshead Revisited again, what is possibly the greatest Catholic novel of the Twentieth century. It is a novel of great faith and great failing, two things that are inseparable in the fallen world we inhabit. A story of friendship and lovers, of innocence and knowledge. It is a microcosm containing both the extraordinary and the mundane, the "Sacred and Profane".

For those not familiar with the novel, it is the story of the aristocratic Flyte family, the story told by Charles Ryder, a friend of the family's youngest son, Sebastian Flyte. They met at Oxford, when the very charming but inebriated Sebastian vomited through the window of Charles' room, leaning into it, not out of it. Hardly a pleasant way to start a friendship, but the apology was elegant, profuse, and the evidence of the faux pas deftly removed by a well-tipped servant. All was well, forgotten amid plover eggs and cointreau, and Charles began his metamorphosis, his eyes swaying toward Beauty, becoming drawn to different ideals than he had previously known.

Brideshead is not a happy book. It has moments of high humor, to be sure, and scenes of pathos that make one cry. It shows a Faith lived, not necessarily well, but even at its weakest it gives a pervasive substance to all: Charles, Lord and Lady Marchmaine, Bridey, Julia, Sebastian, Cordelia, even Anthony Blanche. There is no escaping knowledge acquired, it haunts you in the darker emotions, exciting guilt, encouraging anger, wearing one down to acceptance or to a destructive denial. The characters evolve toward these ends, finding the odd contentment, the occasional pure joy, both hating and loving that which draws them to higher things, that which draws them away from the shining baubles of this realm to the pure light of another, that which they can only dimly see, but that they know is there. They believe in that which is lovely, that which is Beauty, that which is Truth. They may not wish to believe, but they do, and it is that belief which defines them.

My husband, who introduced me to both Brideshead and ultimately to Catholicism, often tells me that I am a "Bridey" Catholic. By this he means that, like Bridey, the elder son and heir of the Flyte family, my religion pervades my daily life, often to the point of being an annoyance to those not religiously inclined. I can begin and end any discussion with a reference to the Church, I can draw any topic toward it, and I can turn off any number of people by doing so. Such is not my intention, but like Bridey, I can't seem to help it. In finding this, my Faith, I have become a zealot, and while I'm not the best evangelist or example on Her behalf, I love being a part of the Church, and in my own awkward way, I try to bring others to Her, to show them Her Beauty, Her Grace, the ways She already fits into their world, the ways they would fit so easily into Hers.

Yet, these things I see so clearly I cannot express. I hate preachiness, yet find myself falling into a pattern of it, I attempt to explain, and only muddle. It's like being in love. It is being in love.

I entered the chapel of Brideshead before I became a Catholic. I genuflected, as Charles did, to be polite. I eyed a Beauty that appeared too vivid to be described with the formality of Anglicanism or even the plain words of my childhood. I lingered in the doorway of Faith, adjusting to the gleam of the interior life that awaited me, not yet grasping just how affecting a single Host would be when I entered into Her Sacraments. Here was a richness I had never imagined, a loveliness that I had only dared believe because others had believed before me, and a Truth that I still may not fully understand, but that gives me the hope that I someday will. "To understand all is to forgive all", and here, at least, in this Holy place, is just that. Forgiveness from One Who inhabits an oddly decorated room, and in Whom I believe with all reason, and yes, because I find it lovely.

Dogmas, Devotions, and Praying with Mary

My very first penance was to say the Magnificat.  I think it was also my shortest penance, but the priests I've tormented since know me better.  Of course, at the time, I didn't have the Roman Catholic version of the canticle memorized, and I could only recall the Anglican one by singing it, so that's what I did.  I sang my first penance before a white marble image of Our Lady.

Between that, my first prayer connected to the Sacraments, and the Regina Caeli, I never stood a chance.  Mary became my spiritual "Audrey Hepburn", the epitome of what I wanted to be and that for which nothing in my childhood had prepared me.  Alas, I will never be doe-eyed, swan-necked, or elegant.  I will never be full of grace either, but one must try.

It is a terribly flawed perception that the Protestant world has of Mary.  I know, for I once saw her as they do.  To them, she is a graven image.  She is a goddess.  She is a falseness that keeps us from the Biblical Jesus.  She is antithetical to the WORD.

I learned differently from listening to a quiet group of women praying.  I was there for choir, and they always started with a corporate Rosary.  I knelt with them, but my intentions were to say only the Our Father and the "Jesus" prayer.  Yet, as I listened to the soft rise and fall of the melodic voices of my new choral friends, I realized that the words didn't mesh with my understanding.  Literally taken, something Protestants are so wont to do, they weren't praying TO Mary, they were asking Mary to pray FOR them.

Such a simple thing, that concept.  How often had I heard my Baptist relatives and friends say to a grieving child, spouse, or parent, "Our loved one is with Jesus now, looking after us."  I've even heard them mention the signs they've received from those who have passed on, letting them know that all is well.

Yet, this simplicity is never applied by them to Mary, she who was conceived without sin so that she could be worthy to bear the Word Incarnate, she who was given to us at the foot of the cross as our mother and we, with John as the symbol of our race, entrusted to her care in that same moment.  She who was assumed body and soul into heaven...why should we doubt that she can speak to her Son on our behalf?  

There is an old hymn that I sang as a child that says "We'll understand it, all by and by."   I had to step out on faith, that what I did not understand might be a failing in me, that  I, like Saul, might still have scales on my eyes, that I needed something more to remove them.  "Blessed are they who believe without seeing."

This first grasp of what Mary was to us, as God's children, allowed me to look beyond my petty questions and lend myself to belief without understanding.  That came later for me, in what I have termed my clicking epiphanies.

 It was music that granted me the beginning of that understanding.  It was the beauty of the liturgy that drew me into the Peace of God, that first tentative encounter with the Joy that has nothing to do with material happiness.   I heard the Regina Caeli without understanding a word of it, but I recognized the Beauty of it.  I saw the incense rise, and it was easy to imagine our prayers and supplications rising with it.  I heard the words of Christ repeated, I saw the age-old actions of the Consecration, I saw Christ lifted and lowered from the cross, and in the breaking of the Host and in the receiving of His Body, I knew Him in a way that made me long to know Him better.  

So I decided to meet His mother.  I came to her through hymns and a rosary.  I met her as I traveled the Stations of the Cross.  I heard her commanding the servants at the Wedding of Cana to "Do what He tells you."  I admired her faithfulness at the foot of the cross.   Always, she is fixed upon her Son.  Always, her intent is to bring our attention to Him.   She, who cradled the unborn Christ (as all pregnant mothers do) accepted the Sorrows that came with being a mother.  Then she adopted us, too, and here we stand as John did, looking upon Christ on the cross, and hearing him say, " Behold your mother", even as she looks upon us and says, "Behold my Son."

So I ask her to pray for me as my choir mates did so many years ago now.   I approach Our Lady with supplications both flippant and serious, for me and for others, and while I cannot hope to be as effectual as those who have led me to this spiritual place, I do hope (to quote an old friend) that when I stand before Jesus, that He will smile upon me and say, "Darlene...Darlene...oh, yes, my mother spoke of you..."

Holy Mary, Mother Of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Ecce Agnus Dei...and then, a Miracle Occurred

Many years ago, long before I was Catholic, I knew a woman whose son had died when he was only a boy.   His death was a tragic one, and I often wondered how she could bring herself to speak of him so often, for she never tired of talking of him, describing his childhood as if he were still the toddler in the next room, the child she had held in her arms at Mass, cradling his face and turning him toward the altar during the Consecration, whispering gently to him to "Watch!  This is when the miracle happens!".   It is a story she told often, and one of which I never tired, despite the fact that I never knew her son, that I had no concept of the scene she was watching with her precious child. 

It is one of the first things that I watched for when I became a Catholic.  I had longed to feel the emotion I heard in her voice when she described this moment.   I, too, wanted to see the miracle.  I wanted to know My Lord in the Bread and Wine.  I wanted to recognize Him at that very precise moment when He is again with us, sharing His Body and Blood with us, making us whole by His Passion.  I wanted to see these things with the eyes of both the child in awe and the mother in faith.  

There is a beauty in this moment that is like no other on earth.  Our Faith teaches Christ crucified, His Body broken, His Blood poured, His Wounds marking Him Victim and Sacrifice for the many.  Yet at this moment He is lifted higher than the cross, His elevation in the Host marking Him victorious over it, and then comes the sole moment of gentleness in the tableau.  His Body is lowered, ever so gently, to rest again on the Altar.   It is such a private thing to see, the look of awe on the face of the priest who lifts Him high and then restores Him unbroken to the paten, as if He is once again being laid in the arms of His Blessed Mother.  This is the miracle another grieving mother described to me long before I could understand it.  This is what she recalls when she mourns for her child, that what he once believed he now beholds.  It is what marks us apart from men, this understanding of how Mary felt as she took her Son again into her arms, the recognition of the child in the man, who through no fault of His own was made to suffer and die in agony, in thirst, in nakedness, in abandonment, in shame.  

The bells ring and the moment passes, the priest continues the rite as it was begun, and we partake of Our Lord's Body and Blood.  Some receive Him reverently, some absentmindedly, some worthily, some not.  I imagine it has always been so.  I wonder who it was that lifted him down from the cross?  Was it Longinus trying to be kind to the old Jew from Arimathea or at least get him out of the way?  Did John clamber up to help?  Was Jesus first lifted a little higher to ease Him from the nails or were they pulled away from the wounds?  I like to think that He was lifted from them, leaving the cruelty of cross intact as He was restored once more to the gentle care of His mother.  She who bathed Him as a child would bathe the wounds of the Man.  She who swaddled Him in a manger would wrap Him in His Death linens.  She who witnessed His Death would know Him in His Resurrection.  She, Our Lord's most gentle advocate, her own heart pierced with sorrow, taking His disciple as another son at His command and turning John's face toward the cross as she cradles the Body Broken for us.  "Watch!"  she says.  "This is when the miracle happens."  

The Constant Crisis of When to Play the Bagpipes

I once heard that the definition of a gentleman was "A man who knows how to play the bagpipes, but doesn't".

This "definition" is one of those phrases that has stayed with me, a metaphoric yardstick by which I measure my own actions around others.  Is this a good moment to let my companions know I can play the bagpipes?  Perhaps I shouldn't even let on that I own a set.  Is there ever a good moment to actually play them?  What if the silence left instead is awkward?  What justifies the sound of the bagpipes, that instrument jokingly labeled the missing link between noise and music?

What if someone else starts playing the bagpipes?  Do I try to discourage them discreetly?  Do I talk over the continuous, unbroken screech of Jacobite angst or do I wait politely for the sound to end before attempting a conversation that lures the enthusiastic one to lay aside his pipes and embrace a better loved instrument, such as harmonica or accordion?

Yet, there are times when bagpipes are necessary, times when nothing but the harshest sound will do.  There is a connection between the sound they make and the culture they inhabit, the customs they herald,  and the scenes they invoke.  Kilts, Auld Lang Syne, the Highlands, and Scotty sending Spock into the great void that will eventually lead to his rebirth.  Who can imagine a world without them, as unpleasant as they may sometimes be?

The sound of bagpipes grows on one.  Watching the Highland games, watching the ceremonial piping  of the haggis, hearing the old airs that convince one that there ne'er will be peace 'til Jamie comes hame, these things would be missing so much without the melancholy sound of the bagpipes.  The sound alone gives them authenticity, the world would lack something without that sound.

Sometimes, I think my purpose in life is to play the bagpipes.  Of course, I am not speaking literally, but I've often been told that while what I say may be true, it is often painful to hear.  Perhaps it's my delivery, perhaps it is that I am an Aries and haven't a clue how to be soft or subtle.  I only know that stating the Truth isn't often appreciated, and it can lead to all sorts of issues with others, be it a mere visible wince or losing one's "friend" status.

Hearing it isn't always pleasant, either. There have been more occasions than I can count that have left me feeling hurt, angry, and disgruntled, often due to the words of those dearest me, those friends, and yes, those priests, who play the bagpipes far too well and too often to be considered polite. They know the worth of the sound that is Truth, that which draws us closer to the society and culture of God, and the closer we get, the more appropriate is the sound of what we hear, until the day arrives that we actually yearn for it.

Here is our Culloden, what seems a lost cause but in which we must hope.  Here is the haggis that no one wants to eat, but without which our banquet would be incomplete.  Here is Truth, its perfect sound grating against the ears of a world that is used to only noise.

We can no longer afford to be gentlemen.