Joy, wonder, science, and Pope Francis

I always underestimate how much of an emotional rollercoaster the Triduum will be for me. Most years Easter Monday finds me back in the classroom, exhausted but having to climb on the next rollercoaster ride — the end of semester — after a week of working full time and long liturgies. Once, thirty eight years ago I climbed the steps of my parish church behind my young husband's coffin on a blindingly sunny Easter Monday.

So this year, on sabbatical leave, I thought I could take it easy on Monday. I'd catch up on the household chores that went undone on the weekend. Wash a load of towels, make an appointment to get my hair cut, pick up a prescription. Take a walk. Read a book. Perhaps even write a bit about water and Easter and burbling fonts. 

Instead I woke up to texts telling me Pope Francis had died. And I shortly joined the thousands of journalists and pundits scrambling to write against very tight deadlines, writing an op-ed on Pope Francis from the perspective of a scientist who has a Vatican appointment. Two hours and 800-ish words later, I dispatched it, along with photos from my own stash. Another couple of hours and it was live at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I never did get to the towels.

You can read what I wrote here, but the writing of it reminded me how wide the view Francis had of things, including science, from the very start. A few bits follow:

From his very first encyclical, written less than 4 months after his election in 2013:

“Nor is the light of faith, joined to the truth of love, extraneous to the material world, for love is always lived out in body and spirit; the light of faith is an incarnate light radiating from the luminous life of Jesus. It also illumines the material world, trusts its inherent order, and knows that it calls us to an ever widening path of harmony and understanding. The gaze of science thus benefits from faith: faith encourages the scientist to remain constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness. Faith awakens the critical sense by preventing research from being satisfied with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always greater. By stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation, faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation”. Lumen Fidei  [34]

From the words he offered at the private audience where I got a chance to meet him:

"Dear brothers and sisters, scientific research demands great commitment, yet can sometimes prove lengthy and tiresome. At the same time, it can, and should be, a source of deep joy. I pray that you will be able to cultivate that interior joy and allow it to inspire your work. Share it with your friends, your families and your nations, as well as with the international community of scientists with whom you work. May you always find joy in your research and share the fruit of your studies with humility and fraternity."  Address to VOSS in Summer 2016

It's this tiny blessing from a message sent to the 2023 Vatican Observatory Summer School when he was recovering from surgery that sits over my desk at home that I treasure as much as the rosary I have that he blessed.

"May you never lose this sense of wonder, in your research and in your lives. May you be inspired always by the love for truth and awestruck by all that each fragment of the universe sets before you."

I hope to never be less than awestruck at each and every fragment of the universe, and pray that I always have the courage to speak the truth. 

 

Holy Thursday: Fully Immersed

 

I am "preaching" Holy Thursday (Carthusian style — a long ago abbot of that most silent of orders told his confreres that they preach with their hands, by writing, not with their voices). Or maybe I should just say I am preaching today. Period.

Today begins the Triduum, a single liturgy unfolding over some 5o hours. We will come and go, but there will be only one collect — tonight — and one closing prayer — at the end of the Vigil. Holy Thursday is sometimes celebrated as the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, sometimes as the institution of the Eucharist. But either of thsoe two characterizations seems to do justice to the depths of the mysteries at play in this liturgy. It's not an anniversary, it is a prophetic call to the baptized.

Last summer, when Give Us This Day's editor invited me to write the reflection for today, I will admit to being slightly intimidated. I have written many pieces for them over the years (50? I haven't really kept count), including for Christmas and other major feasts, but this day, these days, felt far more freighted. 

I sat down to write this with the powerful readings that direct our attention both inward — take this and drink — and outward — wash the feet of others, but my mind kept drifting to the unspoken, to what lies above and beside and below. Wade in with me to all that surrounds us, and that invites us to become what we receive, that calls us to be the Word made flesh. In the world today, where cruelty seems to be the watchword and mercy and justice are given short shrift, it seems all the more important to gather our strength and go forth as Christ commanded.

"After the starkness of Lent, with its stripped altars and veiled statues, it’s always a shock when I walk into the church on Holy Thursday. The altar is draped in crimson satin, the chapel where the Eucharist will repose is overflowing with flowers and candles. Tendrils of incense wind toward the ceiling, a gathering cloud of prayer above the nave...

Listen! Hear the Word that commands me to wash my neighbors’ feet, that whispers to me, “take up your cross,” that speaks my name and sends me out to make manifest the Good News. Verbum caro, panem verum, Verbo carnem éfficit. Become flesh in me."

The full reflection can be found here, along with a beautiful icon by Olga Bakhtina.

Hard realities to remember

The birth of my second son was fast and tumultuous. Literally heart-stopping. When it was all over, his heart once again beating strongly and all the necessary medical tasks for us both tended to, the obstetrician who had delivered him filled a basin with warm water and brought me a fresh towel to wash. It was unexpected, and like Peter when Jesus knelt at his feet, I was taken aback. I’m fine. I don’t need this done, I thought. Except I did.

I’m always tempted on Holy Thursday to let my attention be seized by St. Paul’s mandate to the Corinthians to break the bread and drink the cup that is Christ’s Body and Blood in remembrance of his death and resurrection. To focus on the incredible gift of the Eucharist that we enact daily on altars around the world. This once-a-year washing of the feet, towels piled on the altar and the choir singing meditatively, can feel like something extra, an embellishment for the Triduum. It’s nice, but not needed. Except it is.

For here is the one moment in the liturgical year when the two dimensions of the Eucharist come crashing together in the same space. The Eucharist is not just the summit of our lives as Christians; it is the font as well. Here, with literal water poured out on the steps of the altar where we will shortly literally encounter Christ, we show each other what we are about, what it means to be Christ. The aching feet I have been standing on to teach, then to rehearse, and now to celebrate will be soothed in the warm water. What I will eat and drink will in truth feed a body that has missed lunch and dinner as much as it will feed my soul. These are not metaphors we are playing out here, but hard realities, the water as much as the bread and the wine. We wash each other, feed each other. We do these things, and so we remember. We remember, and so we do.

How often do I respond to an offer of assistance with a quick, “Thanks, but I am fine.” Too often. I don’t want to think that I need any help, or maybe I think that it would be nice, but really, I could manage. Yet these days I cannot always manage. Yet if we are Christ for each other, why would I reject God’s tender care and help? God knows.

______

A version of this reflection appeared in Not By Bread Alone in 2020.

All the ring tones

Photograph of Alexandra Stepanoff
playing the theremin on NBC Radio

On Friday I spent 7 hours in a tiny waiting room on the 7th floor of a hospital in Philly with what felt like 70 other people . Math Man was having surgery. There were understandably lots of anxious people, and so phones were dinging and ringing in every corner as families got and provided updates. (That’s how I learned Math Man was in recovery, and when I could see him.)

There were at least 3 other Star Trek fans in there, including one who had a theremin ring tone. Theremins sound like anxiety to me, presaging the arrival of an alien with designs on all the salt in your body.

April is the cruelest month

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain...
— TS Eliot “The Waste Land”

This could be one of those posts titled “how it started/how it’s going”.  How it started? A 77oF day, with a glorious blue sky. The cherry tree behind my garage blossomed, and when I looked up from my desk through the open skylight I could see the branches framed, stark against the sky.  Like a James Turrell skyscape. Such tender, ephemeral beauty.

How is it going? A front came through, bringing a deluge of rain. Beating the blossomed trees. Thunder rolled. Lightning made it look like broad daylight. An epic spring storm. Also, I left the skylight open. 

In principle this should not have been a problem. The roof windows are solar powered and have a sensor which detects rain and swiftly closes them. Except when it doesn’t. Which it didn’t. 

I came home from the first night of the parish mission — at which point it had been pouring for more than half an hour — to find water trickling down the wall. And  the bowl I keep on the altar in my prayer space with its (mostly irreplaceable) collection of prayer cards and notes and other spiritual ephemera was also collecting water. 

I hit the close button, took a breath, grabbed a towel from the closet and mopped. Then I picked up the bowl.

I started emptying it, laying the cards and notes out to dry. The beautiful Japanese book of pilgrim stamps that I have collected was dry, but… the cards from friends’ funerals and ordinations. The notes from the kids. Markers had bled. Papers were so soaked there was no way to separate them. I could only wait to see what could be salvaged.

The next afternoon I sat on the floor and sorted. I let go what could not be saved, I spent some time reflecting on the bits of my friends and family’s lives that lived in this liminal holy space. Life and death. Memories stirred by spring rain. I grieved the loss of friends, rejoiced again with others joys - births and marriages and ordinations and professions of their vows. I laughed. I wept.

I washed the bowl and blessed it. And filled it once again, placing it on the altar where it might breed lilacs from the dead and the past.

So how is April going? Well, I am writing this in a 7th floor surgical waiting room in Philadelphia. Math Man is having emergency surgery to repair a detached retina. This is not the first April day I have spent waiting in a hospital for news of a husband in surgery while the world explodes with life. April is a cruel month.