The First Sunday of Advent

Advent-and the new Liturgical Year with it-has arrived, and this year a new translation of the Roman Missal comes with a new cycle of the seasons, and that means some changes in how we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even before the so-called "change" came into being, the complaints in certain quarters began. Some of these were simple and were born of obvious concern. One veteran parishioner at my parish asked bluntly "why would you change the Mass." I reminded them as best I could that the Church has been through major changes in the Mass before-changes that this person lived through-and we did alright. Indeed, compared to the last major liturgical reform, this one really is a cakewalk.

Many other complaints come from some folks who seem to have a problem not with the changes per se, but what the new Roman Missal is actually designed to do. The Mass as we will begin to pray it today has been translated in such a way so as to be as literal a rendering as possible of the Latin text of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. In addition, there have been some changes in the Latin text itself since Pope John Paul II promulgated a new Missale Romanum, and the Anglosphere would not be in harmony with the rest of the universal Church if we did not change our text of the Mass accordingly. The new English translation is designed both to be more biblically accurate and in language that is a bit more formal for the sake of the Church's highest and most important form of prayer, the Sacrifice of the Mass.

None of this is to say that this will be an easy process for everyone. At Mass this weekend, I found myself saying "and also with you" at least twice when I should have said "and with your spirit," though I did remember the correct salutation at the beginning and the end of the Liturgy. At the end of the Eucharistic prayer, I began to default to the old "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you...," until Nicole prodded me with the correct "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Even though I have read through the new text of the Mass multiple times for months in advance in an attempt to teach myself, I still tried to default to the old form at least four times that I could count during the Mass-and I came into these changes giddy with excitement about them (and still am)! If it is hard for me, who has been a vocal proponent of the "reform of the reform" since John Paul II first announced that the Roman Missal would be changing, I can just imagine the difficulty faced by some of our parishioners around the Diocese of Knoxville and the country this weekend. And if it is any consolation, my personal copy of the Daily Roman Missal, bought with $60 of a college student's wages (money I didn't really have back then) in the days shortly after I was baptized and entered the Catholic Church because I wanted to be able to learn everything I could about the liturgy-and pray even when I couldn't personally be at daily Mass-well, that book is now largely obsolete, only some of the scripture readings are still correct. (Copies of the new Daily Roman Missal make great Christmas or Birthday gifts, and that will be my shameless plug of the day.)

This isn't a painless process for anyone, but I really think that if we all embrace this "new" translation of the Mass in a spirit of obedience and genuine prayer, we are going to get far more out of it if we allow it to slowly sink into us. We live in a part of the country where we constantly hear the false accusation that "Catholics don't read the Bible" or "Catholics don't know the Bible." It is vital for us, then, that not only should we read and learn our Bibles in parish Bible studies and on personal time, but our prayer lives should be filled with scripture, and the highest prayer of the Church-the Mass itself-should be a font of quotation and allusion to the Word of God-not merely from the scripture readings in the Mass, but within the prayers of the Mass. This new translation accomplishes this even better than our previous English translation did.

A few notes: At St. Pat's this weekend, I noted that at the Mass that I attended, we did the Kyrie but not the full Confeteor. It is my personal opinion that we are all going to have to learn to say the new Confeteor correctly "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault..." ("mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa"), so we might as well just drag it out and get everyone used to it.

We used Eucharistic Prayer III today-the beauty of the new Eucharistic prayers and the way that they present vivid imagery of the mystery of salvation just blows me away. If you are having trouble "getting" the new translation of the Mass, take the time to stop and listen to the prayers of the priest during the consecration-meditate on what is being said here. It may help you better understand just why it was felt that this change had to be made-and have a blessed Advent.

Giving thanks

Tomorrow marks the annual American feast of Thanksgiving-some parishes (including my own) will have a special Mass time to give parishioners the opportunity to give thanks at the Eucharistic table. I have always been of the mind that this is completely appropriate, and that in fact more such opportunities ought to exist in our parishes on Thanksgiving Day-it is the closest thing that we have in our culture to a national celebration of thanks to God in the form of a feast, we have transformed it almost wholly into a secular day-schoolchildren are told that tomorrow is "Turkey Day," lest they be told that tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which would give rise to the clear and obvious questions: "What is Thanksgiving? What are we saying thank you for, and Who do we thank?"

For my part, I am thankful to God. Nicole and I have never had much in the way of material wealth, and what we do have doesn't amount to much, but we have never yet been without the things that matter. In fact, I can't ever recall a time in my own life when the Lord has not blessed me with food on my table, clothes on my back, shoes for my feet, and a roof over my head. Thus far, He has blessed Nicole and I with all that we have needed-and sometimes the ability to bless others as well. We have much for which we can be thankful.

I am thankful for my wife, who has been faithful to me, and who has walked with me on the journey in which the Lord now has placed me-on the path of the deaconate. I am thankful for the friends and the family that He has graced me with who have supported me and prayed for me over the years, and especially for those who have given me the gift of faith in God.

I am thankful for the people of the community where I live, who have blessed me with their trust and friendship, and the firefighters and first responders that I have the privilege to work and associate with.

I am grateful that I am now joined on the journey of faith by holy men of the Lord's choosing whose very presence is a blessing to me. I am thankful for these men, and for their families, and for our Bishop Richard and our Director of Deacons, Deacon Elliott. The Bishop and the Deacon Director have seen not only that I myself may have a call to serve the Church in the deaconate, but that the men who I am privileged to be in formation with also are being asked by the Holy Spirit to step out in faith and offer ourselves in a life of service to the Church and to the people of God. I am eternally grateful for my pastor, Father Joseph Hammond, FHS, and Associate Pastor, Father Alex Waraksa, and I pray for them and their ministry as part of my daily prayers, as I do all of our priests. I am thankful for the example of Deacons Jim Fage and Robert Smearing, and for the lives of service which they lead as an example to me and to many others, and I pray that God may grant me the grace to be that example of Christ to others.

I am grateful for the deaconate formation process, and thankful that thus far, the Lord has made it possible to do and to have all that is required of me in order to fully participate in the formation process, and for that formation to deepen my spiritual walk in return.

So when I eat that wonderful meal tomorrow, I will be thankful not only or the delicious food, but also for the things aforementioned, and so very much more.

Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

The feast of Christ the King has always been among my favorite feasts of the Church's year. Perhaps this is because it is a reminder of the reality that Christ reigns unchanged over the Church forever, and that there will be no end to His Kingdom. The Lord reigns now, and as we are reminded, he will one day return (a reality that we remember at every Mass when we say "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." It may be that I am so fond of this feast because it is a reminder that, even though time changes (the Liturgical Year will end on Saturday afternoon-we have entered the final week of Ordinary Time), God does not change, and will never change. In a world of constant change, the one great thing which remains unchanged is the eternal God.

In today's Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46), Christ reminds us that all nations and all people will one day stand in judgment before Him, and he will render a royal judgment on the eternal fate of all people. He does not tell us that he will ask us if we have "been saved," he will not ask if we come to know him or not-He knows the end of from the beginning, and He says that He will know by our works whether we know him or not. Indeed, whether we accept him or not is the first step on our journey of faith-acceptance does not guarantee our salvation, but obedience does-our willingness to live according to the ways of Christ and to follow his example:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,  and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’  Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ 

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

There is little question that what the Lord is asking of us in this passage is a very tall order indeed. It seems simple enough-feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for those in prison, welcome the stranger, care for and heal the sick (and by extension, bury the dead). We may read this passage and say "oh, Jesus is telling us that we must be benevolent." Benevolence is good, and through personal, corporate, and ecclesiastical benevolence, we can accomplish wonderful things on behalf of those who otherwise cannot do for themselves-and that is important. However, Jesus is taking us to another place aside from benevolence in His description of the Last Judgment. Jesus is asking us to act in ways that are directly contrary to human nature.

We are prone to place blame upon the criminal for their crime, even the poor for their poverty or the sick for their illness, especially in our relatively wealthy and well-provided society. It is even fair to say, if we are completely honest with ourselves, that in our minds much of that blame is justified. After all, there are many poor who wish not to work or earn their keep. Despite the discussion about innocent people in prison or on death row, most people are incarcerated or waiting for the needle or the chair are in that position because they have committed crimes-often horrible-to put them in that position. Even the sick or ill are sometimes blamed-probably with some truth-because it may be said that they would not be ill if they did not take better care of themselves.

Jesus is asking something very radical of us, because He is asking us not to be concerned with whether the poor, or the sick, or the prisoner is to blame for their lot or not-in fact, He mentions nothing about how the people He mentions got to the state they were in. Jesus merely tells us that when we look at the poor, the hungry, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, we are looking at Him, and that when we minister to the needs of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the naked, the prisoner, et cetera, we are ministering to Christ. Jesus Christ is telling us that we must see Him in the poor, and that failure to do that could mean dire eternal consequences for us.

Many people remember the poor at this time of year, as we approach Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas. That is a good thing, especially for the children who truly have no control over their life situation. However, Christ does not ask us to remember the poor during one season of the year, but to consistently look to the poor and the unloved in order to see the face of Christ in our world. Further, He tells us that our willingness to see Him in the "least of these" will be the criteria upon which we are judged when we stand before Him in all His majestic splendor.

All of us-myself included-would do well to reflect on how well we would do at the great Divine Test

Bible word of the day: Ignoramus

Other than my work with the Knights of Columbus, the ministry of my parish St. Patrick in Morristown that I am blessed most involved in is to be a part of the RCIA team. (For those of you reading who aren't Catholic, that's the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults-the program for people who aren't Catholic but are showing an interest in the Catholic faith and they come to the Church inquiring about the teachings of our faith-those who feel called by the Holy Spirit to do so may be baptized, or of they are already baptized properly-in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-may be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, usually at Easter). RCIA is a special ministry to me because I went through the process myself, and so did Nicole, so we love to help others who are on that journey themselves.

At St. Pat's, we begin RCIA very informally, giving several weeks for inquirers to ask almost any question you could possibly imagine about the Catholic faith. People are coming to the Church from all kinds of backgrounds and every conceivable walk of life, so we get all kinds of questions-and they aren't always what you might expect. However, we have begun to move out of the phase of general inquiry, and into a phase of more grounded teaching and explanation of the dogmas and doctrines of the Faith. This week's discussion was about Catholic teaching in regards to faith and works.

Deacon Jim Fage, who is also the Youth Director for the Five Rivers' Deanery, is the leader of our RCIA team. There are several of us on the team from the parish, and a few who've been ministering through RCIA a lot longer than Nicole or myself. At some point, members of the team often get a chance to lead the teaching on a particular topic on a given night (I wasn't able to give my class on the Eucharist last year because-wouldn't you know it-I took terribly ill with a stomach virus the night I was supposed to teach-bummer!). However, yesterday was Deacon Jim's time at the helm, teaching on a topic that is among those which are central to the doctrinal differences between Catholics and most Protestant churches-and in this part of the country most inquirers come from some kind of Protestant background, sometimes a fundamentalist one. As a result, faith and works is a critical topic that is addressed early on when discussing core teachings of the Catholic Church. While I enjoyed Deacon Jim's teaching last night, what stuck with me the most was the scripture he read at the outset-specifically one word of the scripture reading.

I should preface this scripture citation by pointing out that there is a reason that I hadn't heard this before last night. The New American Bible has become the preferred text in many Catholic dioceses, and it is the text the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recommends for catechesis and uses on the website for the bishops' conference. In our home, however, we have seven Bible translations, of which the New American is but one. My preference for personal study has been the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) for many years. (In fact, my Brother Aspirants should know that those shiny new Ignatius RSV Bibles we recently received...mine doesn't look quite as new anymore...some of the pages are already frayed from my fingers and thumbs turning them and devouring the excellent footnotes Ignatius Press is known for-this is the first time I've ever owned an RSV from Ignatius). As a result of my personal taste for the RSV, deaconate formation has also forced me to become reacquanted with with the New American Bible since we use it for readings during class.

For our opening scripture reading for yesterday's class, Deacon Jim read from the NAB, and the reading was James 2:14-24:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.” See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

I had to ask Deacon Jim if that came from the New American Bible-which he confirmed that it did. I compared it to other translations, none of which used nearly that strong a word. It left me wondering if previous translators had "dumbed down" this passage in order to avoid calling people an ignoramus (or something of the like) in the pages of the Bible.

Then Nicole and I got a huge laugh out of the picture of St. James dictating to some scribe a sentence which essentially called people who believe that faith is independent of works rather stupid. In fact, the more we thought about it, the bigger a laugh we got. The whole idea became a running joke the rest of the evening-in the best possible sense.

Ignoramus-it is a perfectly good Bible word!

Well, we know what James thought about Sola fide, don't we? Obviously, he wasn't terribly big on that theological idea. I doubt St. James and Martin Luther would have gotten on terribly well.

The paper questions

As it has been said so effectively by others, being a permanent deacon in the Church is a vocation, a calling sent to a man by the Holy Spirit. It is up to each of us who are discerning our call to answer the Lord when He calls us, but once we do that, we assume the responsibilities associated with formation, and one of the principle responsibilities is the academic side of things-we have to write a lot of papers. I can't speak for what my Brother Aspirants were all told beforehand, but I didn't go into this part of the process blind-I was told that a certain academic rigor would be required of Aspirants before I ever began the discernment process, and that a lot of it would involve some serious paper-writing.

Nonetheless, it had been nearly a decade since I wrote an academic paper when I began formation. Since, if my calculations and memory serve me correctly, I am the youngest Aspirant who is currently in the deaconate formation class in the Diocese, I am also certain that there are a few men in the class for whom it has been even longer since they put pen to paper for an academic essay. A lot of people might think it easier for me, since I have quite a lot of writing experience. It is one thing to write when you have a great deal of control over your content, but it is quite another to do so when you must write academically about material you've read or been lectured on. Our papers have not been lengthy (which is a good thing, as we must engage in our studies while carrying on our daily lives as well), but the relative brevity which has been the hallmark of some of our early papers has left me asking the questions that I know some of my confreres are also asking...

"Did I write enough information?"

"Darn, I left <this> or <that> out, I wonder if I should have put <that> in the paper?"

"Did I write too much? Father said he only wanted a summary...I hope I put in what was right and left out what he would have expected me to leave out."

"I wonder if Father understood what I meant? I hope I phrased it right..."

These are just a few of the things that can go through one's head...each of our instructors are different and their standards are different, as is the subject matter. We do have an idea of what is expected of us, but I have found that sometimes, wisdom is best gleaned in the school of prayer-and that is how I have tried to approach having to write papers again.

The Last Things and the Last Days

1 Thessalonians 5:1-6:

But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people say, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape. But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

As the Church approaches the end of the Liturgical Year, we begin to see Sunday readings that remind us of...well...the End. We see it not only in today's Epistle, St. Paul's warning to the Thessalonians that "the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night," but also in today's Gospel. We can take all kinds of good lessons about the Christian life from the parable of the talents, but it is also an apocalyptic parable-a warning from the Lord of what might happen if "the Master of the House" returns to find that his servants haven't made use of the talents they are given. We see an even more stark vision of the same theme in next Sunday's Gospel, when Jesus gives us a vision of the Last Judgment, when we will be asked what we have done for the Least of These...the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, those in prison...We are warned that those who have ignored these brothers and sisters will be called workers of iniquity, and will be told to depart from the presence of the Lord for all eternity. We would all do well to remember that warning.

The Church in her wisdom calls our attention to the End of Days as she prepares to mark the time with the end of one Year of Grace and the beginning-on the First Sunday of Advent-of another. It is a reminder to us that both our individual time and the time of the whole human race in this universe of God's Creation is finite-both our life and the life of this present world as we know it will eventually come to an end.

A lot of Catholics may not realize that the Church does have a few things to say about the Last Days, and one of these things may surprise some-and it comes right out of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and is rooted in a longstanding belief which goes back to apostolic times:

675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.⁵⁷⁴ The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth⁵⁷⁵ will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.⁵⁷⁶
 
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,⁵⁷⁷ especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.⁵⁷⁸

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.⁵⁷⁹ The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.⁵⁸⁰ God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.⁵⁸¹

I'm not including all of the relevant footnotes here only because of space and time (this entry has already taken me quite some time to compose), but we see that the Church teaches that there is such a thing as the Antichrist, that will become apparent as part of the Church's final trial in this world before the end of the world as we know it. We as Catholics may find that strange because we don't talk about this much, but more so because more false doctrine and deception swirls around this idea of Antichrist and the End of Days than around anything else in Scripture. The earliest believers expected the appearance of the Antichrist, and were warned in 1 John 4:2-3:

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,  and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.

The early Christians were told that while they were busy expecting the Antichrist to show up as some sign of the end (which they expected at any minute) that the spirit of antichrist-the denial that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is the Son of God-is already with them. This seems to be an apostolic shot across the bow against running around declaring the end to be near and that the Antichrist is about to show up-just go about your life but watch and be ready, the things the apostles shared with you could happen at any time.

It is noteworthy that the Church has chosen not to go into great detail about the Antichrist and the last things in the Catechism other than what I cited above. We also aren't told specifically whether the Antichrist will be a person or a system of things that puts itself in place of God, but it does seem to be far more systemic than personal based on what the Church tells us above. One thing we do know is that throughout history, believers in Christ have never been removed from the possibility of persecution. Hence, the idea that Christians are going to undergo a "Rapture" (or as I call it, the Rupture) and be removed from the final trials of this present world is directly contrary to Scripture and the constant teaching of the Church. Persecution-and even death-has long been seen as the ultimate test of the Faith (Matthew 24:9). Indeed, the very idea of "the Rapture" as today's fundamentalists understand it is an invented doctrine with no roots in apostolic times which can trace it's roots to 19th Century American fundamentalist Protestant theologians, not the Apostles.

There is also the negativity and fear that seems to surround discussion of end times thought among those with a more fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture or eschatology-its a kind of "repent and believe in our way or Jesus is going to get you when He comes back" sort of preaching. Note that you don't hear that quasi-panic coming from Catholic circles at all. This is because Holy Mother Church is 2,000 years old, and in virtually every age of the Church's history, people have tended to take the apocalyptic parts of Scripture and apply an interpretation-often quite reasonable for its time-to their own day.

In the first two centuries after the Apostles the Church underwent varying persecutions and believers took the Lord's warnings to mean that they would live to see the End of Days. During the time of Julian the Apostate, many Christians thought that the Lord's return was imminent. At the turn of the Second Millennium, a great many people believed that the world would not long endure and that Christ would soon appear. Belief in the imminent return of the Lord was quite prominent at various times during the Crusades, as well as when much of Christendom was ravaged by the Black Death. The terrible and bloody calamity of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)-the real first "world war"-when the Western world was so bitterly divided between Catholic and Protestant (and from which some historians believe Christianity in Europe never fully recovered) had good people on both sides believing that the Lord was very near, and with good reason. Americans believed that our own War Between the States had apocalyptic significance, and doubtless for many Americans it did. Christians saw the First World War and the Second World War both as having significance in a prophetic way in determining that we were living in the Last Days. Good people thought the same thing with regard to the rise of Communism, the nuclear arms race, and the beginning of the Third Millennium.

Yet, we are still here and now well into three millenia Anno Domini. Does that mean that all of those centuries of Christians were wrong for believing that the events that they were witness to-unique in history and to their age-were signs of the Last Days? Perhaps none of them were wrong at all...

What is often missing when many of our fundamentalist or evangelical brethren discuss the end times is a sense of Divine Perspective. We may have been living in the "Last Days" for the last 2,000 years. As we are told in 2 Peter 3:8:

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

 In other words, God doesn't measure time in the way that we do. We should be joyful that one day the Lord will return and the sorrows of this world will pass away...but we shouldn't obsess over how close we are to the very end...that is ultimately up to God to decide, and God alone.

The kindness of strangers-or of new friends

When members of our deaconate formation class have our once-monthly weekend of intense prayer, study, and teaching, we meet at an East Tennessee hotel in a small conference room. Our presence there isn't anything like a business meeting, and the atmosphere doesn't even remotely lend itself anything like a professional conference. The Diocese of Knoxville does not have the luxury of a nearby seminary in which to train its Aspirants for the deaconate, such as a Diocese or Archdiocese like Baltimore, Cincinnati, or Evansville (which largely uses St. Meinrad from what I understand) might have. The Diocese can't afford to send us away for instruction, so the instructors come to us.

Our presence at the facility where we stay is pretty low key. The name tags we wear are as much so that we remember one another at this early point in our formation as they are so that others who are not there for that purpose know who we are. We do not broadcast our presence to the guests at the hotel. They are there for a good night's sleep, we are there to gain the knowledge and the discernment we need to better serve the Church in the years to come. The hotel provides us a convenient place in which to do that, and if it happens that others are as blessed by our presence there as we feel blessed to be there and blessed by each other, I'm thankful for that-and I am sure the other Aspirants are, too. However, there is one group at the hotel that knows we are there and can't ignore our presence, and they know we are coming-and that is the hotel staff.

The staff of the hotel know that we are coming, and most of them know when we are going to be there. I'm not sure if all of the staff know why we are there, but I do know that some of them have an idea by now, and the ones who haven't grasped that at least know we are not there for ordinary business, that's for sure. We aren't in our rooms much except at night. I've been known to sneak up to my room after finishing lunch or supper early in order to stretch, shave, use the restroom privately, or call Nicole (we do not keep our cell phones in the classroom, at Mass, or at prayers). However, if class is not out completely for the day, I have a limited amount of time in which to do these things, and I have to watch the clock. Miss a few minutes of class, and you can miss quite a lot.

I cannot say enough about the kindness and the consideration of so many of the hotel staff. Those of you reading this who know me know that I needed an adapted room with a walk-in shower when I travel. I've stayed in rooms that do not have this, and it makes staying clean and comfortable very difficult for me. Not only has the hotel provided for this, but the housekeepers seem to have gone the extra mile, making sure I have extra towels-and necessary things always seem to be where I can reach them. I feel like someone is watching me-in the positive sense-as though the staff is quietly observing me to figure out what I might have need of without asking. My room is about five paces away from where hot coffee and water for tea is always available for guests at any time of the day or night. Others have to seek the place where the coffee is, but I just have to step outside my door. The elevator that goes downstairs to our classroom is just ten paces away

We eat breakfast, along with other hotel guests, on the other side of the same room from where the aforementioned coffee and tea is located. The fella that sees to our hot breakfast came quickly to know me, and as soon as I appear promptly at 6:00am (prayers begin at 7:45, followed by class. I'm a little slower than others, so I eat early, or I don't eat), he's asking if I need anything, and he jumps to get it whether I really need it or not. The same fella has gone out of his way to make sure our little classroom has a supply of coffee and cookies that will last us for as long as we need to be there. We don't need the cookies, we just like them, but it must be admitted that quite a lot of us need the coffee. He doesn't have to bring us coffee, since it wouldn't be much for us to go upstairs at break time and get coffee-but he is kind to bring coffee to us anyway-and was especially kind in something that he did for me and for Nicole, even though Nicole has never been to formation with me yet.

Last month on Sunday morning, our friend was carrying a tray of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies that was also laden with some small muffins from breakfast for us for our Sunday sessions. I caught him on the elevator downstairs, and he said that he was bringing some muffins because he had heard that some of the guys had grown tired of cookies. I commented in jest and in passing "that's bunk, you can never have too many cookies." (Fresh cookies were my favorite childhood dessert, and they remain my favorite as an adult).

My breakfast buddy remembered that remark, because after I was through eating breakfast Saturday morning this month, he brought me a wrapped plate filled to the brim with cookies, and said "well, you were the one who said that you can't have too many cookies." I was shocked and surprised and tickled to death...I laughed about it several times throughout the day. While other Aspirants had to get up for their cookies during class, I had a personal plate. I did offer to share with my neighbors, but only one took me up on it. I had leftovers at the end of the weekend, so I just added those to the massive bag of cookies that I was given on Sunday  was told to take home to my wife. Yes, I did take them to Nicole, and yes, she has managed over several days to eat and enjoy them. We both send our thanks to the kindness of the hotel staff-we can't thank them enough, really. I was very humbled.

That experience, among many others, has lent itself to something that our Deacon Director told us awhile back-that lots of people are on this journey with us, even the hotel staff. I now remember our new friends the staff in my prayers each morning and night. I'm thankful for them, and I pray that the Lord continues to bless them in their work of blessing others with hospitality.

Bede the Venerable

Father Bede Aboh

I've returned from this month's Formation class and am still alive and kicking, both physically and spiritually. As for my fears about how I'd be able to handle Aquinas and the rest of our material, I think those fears were partly justified and partly overblown on my part. I learned that the difficulties that I have been having with Aquinas were largely shared by my fellow Aspirants, and our stories of initial frustration and how we dealt with this were very (and almost eerily) similar. However, as I told several confreres this afternoon, if my mind were an egg, Father Bede Aboh, Pastor of St. Mary's in Oak Ridge and our instructor for this weekend's series of classes on philosophy, has managed to crack the shell.

Father Bede managed to have me understanding enough Aquinas to be able to write a short paper comparing the epistemology of Aquinas with that of Plato-I feel confident enough to write it (praying that it is up to Father Bede's standards, of course) believing that I can produce something that at least appears as though I know what I am writing about. I could not have done that before this past weekend began, so that tells you something not only of Father Bede's knowledge of philosophy, but of his ability to convey that knowledge to others. Of course, not all of this material was foreign or unintelligible to me. Yesterday afternoon, late in Father Bede's lecture, he drifted on to what for me is familiar ground when he discussed John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. A lot of my confreres know that my minor in college was history, but my major was Political Science, and both Locke and Hobbes are required reading for any student of political theory. Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Hobbes' Leviathan were two examples of competing ideas of human nature and political theory, with Locke positing that human nature is basically founded on reason and tolerance, while Hobbes believed that human nature was savage because of human greed (both Locke and Hobbes agreed on a seemingly inherent ability for humanity to be greedy) and that life without control would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes, being a Royalist who had returned to the boiling chaotic cauldron of Cromwellian England, thought that people should trust the power that protects them-the opposite of Locke's social contract, rooted in the choice of the individual.

The discussion of these giants of the political world is what finally cracked the egg of my mind, because in all of the years I spent studying comparative politics, it never really dawned on me that these men were philosophers in the same sense as Aquinas, and Aristotle and Plato before them (let alone someone like Bertrand Russell), they simply belonged to our own age, and in my mind I began to compare the ideas of Locke with Aquinas as I was coming to understand them. Talk about hitting me over the head. It took until Sunday afternoon, but Father Bede inadvertently managed to do that. Political people really are in our own little mini-world, and it is easy to forget that politics can be, and often is, composed of deeper philosophical questions...so it finally began to make some sense...some sense...finally.

Perhaps the most important thing that stuck in my mind from this weekend, however, was the discussion we shared after Vespers Saturday evening. The scripture reading for the First Vespers of Sunday this week was 2 Peter 1:19-21:

We possess the prophetic message as something altogether reliable. Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your hearts. First you must understand this: there is no prophecy contained in Scripture which is a personal interpretation. Prophecy has never been put forward by man’s willing it. It is rather that men impelled by the Holy Spirit have spoken under God’s influence.

After Evensong was complete, Father Bede asked for the scripture lesson to be read again, and then asked what we believed that the Apostle meant when he said "there is no prophesy contained in Scripture which is a personal interpretation. Prophesy has never been put forward by man's willing it." I responded that I believed this meant that we as individuals had no authority to interpret Scripture, but that we must defer to the Church as a collective body. Another Brother Aspirant said, correctly, that we should defer to the magesterium. "What is magesterium," asked Father Bede. "The teaching authority of the Church." Father Bede then said specifically to me that I should be careful with the use of the words "collective body." He said that he had a seminary professor that was utterly obsessed with the term "collective body" and she used it to try and undermine and undercut the authority of the bishops and the Pope. I responded, of course, that I would never do such a thing. In my heart, I was thinking "may the Lord strike me if such vile schismatic thought were to proceed from my tongue when teaching in His Church's name." While I understand what I meant by the term "collective body," and I think Father Bede understood what I meant-and for that matter, so did the class-Father's recounting of his heterodox seminary professor made me think twice about ever using that term in the same context again, that's for sure.

Father Bede then told us to "remember that when you are ordained, the words you speak carry weight. When you speak of the Church's teaching authority, some people will look to you for that authority." This was why, Father said, we must be well-formed before being allowed by the Church to enter into ordained ministry.

Father Bede came to our country from Nigeria, and he began seminary at 11 years old-11!  He went through minor seminary and then major seminary, and he said that there were a couple of times when he contemplated quitting, but that he asked the Lord to lead him out of there if he wasn't supposed to be a priest-the Lord didn't. He said that he loves being a priest, and that "this is the only life I have ever known."

One of the many things that Father shared with us is the difference in attitude toward the priesthood that Catholics have in Nigeria, as opposed to the attitude that Catholics have in the United States and other Western countries. "In this country," said Father Bede, "we have to beg men to become priests, but in Nigeria men are begging to become priests." Seminaries have had to turn otherwise-acceptable men away there, because there are simply not enough spaces for those who want to get in. The so-called Third World seems to have become the First World of clerical and priestly life. How selfish has our culture become, when men in a place like Nigeria beg for a life of general obscurity in the name of spiritual riches, but many Catholics in our own country scoff at the idea of their children becoming priests or religious because "I want grandchildren?" We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. The Lord will take our spiritual blessings away from us and give them to people who will make use of them if we are not careful.

I hope Father Bede comes back and visits our class again-I would really like to hear much more from him.

Off to Formation

I am preparing to leave for this month's Deaconate Formation weekend, the one I wrote about last week as being somewhat anxious about because several of us have been laboring our way through St. Thomas Aquinas' Treatise On Human Nature. Not only do we hope that Father Bede Aboh-who will be our instructor in the Philosphy section which comprises this month's classes-will give us heavy guidance through these choppy intellectual seas, but I'm quite sure that many of us are hoping that as he does this, he will allow the same latitude that our initial instructor in Sacred Scripture, Father Ragan Shriver, also allowed-for his lectures to be recorded.

My Brother Aspirant Scott Maentz has thus far done all of his brothers a great service in allowing his notes to be shared, commented on, and thus used as a tool of study within Google Documents. He also recorded Father Ragan's lectures on introductory Scriptural material over two months worth of sessions and made them available to the rest of us for use in our studies. Scott has a passion for using modern technology for the advancement of the Church and the Kingdom of God, and his contribution to our collective study in the form of legible notes that we can add to through comments and recorded lectures has helped many of us get the most out of our studies so far. If Father Bede is so kind as to allow his lectures to be recorded, we can continue to use the material to help master, by God's Grace, what has been put before us.

Before putting my bags outside in preparation to leave for formation, I have to print out my paper that is due this month for Father Ragan's second Introduction to Scripture weekend from last month-an exegesis of five verses of our choosing from the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). I chose vs. 51-55 for my written study of this important passage of Scripture, which is recited daily at Vespers throughout the Catholic world.

If you live in the Diocese of Knoxville, there is a collection this weekend to support those of us who are in formation for the permanent diaconate. Normally, I wouldn't dream of speaking for all of the other Aspirants, but only for myself. However, I am sure all of the men in formation would join with me in thanking our brothers and sisters throughout the Diocese for generously assisting all of us in the formation process.

Above all, pray for us-we all need your prayers.

Hallow Mass

On this Solemnity of All Saints, the Universal Church remembers all those Saints and Martyrs of the Lord who rest from their labors at the feet of the Lord. For me, it gets me thinking about the many people along the road of my life who have had a deep spiritual impact upon it, and now that I am in a state of Aspirancy to the Diaconate, I especially think about those people-and there are several who I will talk of on this blog from time to time. Today, on All Saints Day, I want to remember one in particular.

  Father Chris

Father Christian Rohmiller had many parish and school assignments over the years in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and he even flirted with religious life over the years-discerning whether he had a vocation as a Jesuit, then whether he had a vocation as a Benedictine, before deciding that life as a diocesan priest was really the life for him. It's a good thing for my sake that Father Chris made that determination with the help of the Holy Spirit. Among his former parishes were St. Albert the Great (where his parents would later attend, and where I met them), and St. Mary's, both in Dayton. Father Chris seemed to know everyone-literally. I once witnessed an encounter between Father Chris and a student from India one day after Mass, wherein the student introduced himself, and in the course of conversation it was discovered that Father Chris had a personal connection with members of that young man's family-and the student did not initially know Father Chris. Stories like that where Father Chris is concerned are not uncommon.

In the fall of 1997-it was early October-a 21 year-old kid in a wheelchair came to Mass on a Sunday while Father Chris was Campus Minister at Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio. Father Chris made a habit of distributing Holy Communion to anyone at Mass in a wheelchair first, and so that young man got communion along with everyone else-except that he wasn't baptized and shouldn't have received it, and he didn't have an opportunity to tell the priest no...

After Mass, I approached Father Chris and told him that he should not have given me Communion because I had not been baptized. Father did not ask me if I would be interested in RCIA, nor did he ask (yet) if I would be interested in the process. He looked me straight in the eye with a real sense of spiritual understanding and simply said "well then...we need to get you baptized." He then promptly told me to come back to the little A-frame building the next day at 5:00pm, and as for receiving communion he said "I know this much, it is certainly not going to hurt you, but you won't be receiving it again unless you are baptized."

I began RCIA the next day under Father Chris' formation...

I did, in fact, have an interest in the Church-thanks in part to my developing friendship with University of Dayton Political Science professor Father John Putka, SM-and Father Chris probably sensed that, which is why he didn't ask many questions that day or give much further direction. Father Chris seemed to see something in me that I did not yet see in myself at that age and during that time in my life. He took me under his wing and began, while I was still a catechumen, to introduce me to things that would inform my entire spiritual life as a Catholic. He saw a zeal for the pro-life cause in me, so he encouraged myself and another student, Joe Morris, to start a pro-life group on campus, which we did. I attended the March for Life-the March for Life-in Washington D.C. because Father Chris thought I should have that experience. I was baptized, received my First Communion, and was Confirmed on Pentecost Sunday, 1998.

Father Chris also introduced me to Benedictine spirituality, and to the Liturgy of the Hours. I became a novice, and eventually a full Oblate of St. Meinrad Archabbey after Father Chris invited me to come to Mass and to the annual Oblate picnic on the Feast of St. Benedict in the summer of 1998. Father Chris introduced me to the Liturgy of the Hours and encouraged me to develop a deeper interior life. He also introduced me to the Knights of Columbus-when I first joined the Knights in 2000, Father Chris was my sponsor. It was Father Chris who first introduced me to the monks of St. Meinrad, and Father Chris who took me to the Archabbey for the first time.

One of Father Chris' last personal ministries was to prepare Nicole and I for our marriage in 2003. Over the years, Father Chris and I and another friend, Mark Regeic, had developed the habit of going to Giovanni's Restaurant for pasta after Mass on Sunday evenings. Shortly after I had asked Nicole to marry me, Father, Mark and I were preparing for our weekly Sunday night trip into Italian culinary bliss when Nicole called me. I can't even remember what the fight was over, but Nicole and I had just seen one another that day and were having quite a disagreement all within earshot of Father Chris. Hearing it all, Father Chris jumped over and said "give me the phone." He then laid it on thick and heavy: "It's not too late Nicole! Run while you still can, I told you he was crazy to begin with...see, I was right!" He had us both rolling over with laughter.

When I received word that Father Chris had died suddenly of a heart attack in 2006, I literally dropped everything-both Nicole and I did-to drive all the way to Ohio to his funeral. I told Nicole that we needed to go because Father Chris would have done the same for me.

If by God's grace I am ordained to the Deaconate, perhaps the only tinge of sadness I might feel that day is that Father Chris will not be there-but then again, I'm sure he will be there all the same.