#thatmomentwhen

The celebration of Crash's birthday had Math Man and I comparing notes all day on what we'd been doing at that time 20 years previously. Walking, laboring, eating a chili dog (Math Man, not me).  When did we decide on a name for the Crash Kid? When did I get to hold Crash?  I could relate to the conversation Keith Maczkiewicz SJ recounts in his piece at the Jesuit Post about deciding upon the time of resurrection.

And this Easter - the 56th anniversary of my baptism, the 27th anniversary of Tom's funeral - when did I first catch the scent of resurrection, push aside  the veil to peer out of the Lenten tomb?   I intoned the incipit to the Gloria, acapella in the dark church, my voice clinging to the last threads of the Vigil's darkness, holding the last note until it was caught into a shimmering cascade of light and music as piano, organ, flute, trumpet, strings, choir and assembly took up the major doxology.  Was that this Easter's "moment when"?

Or was it when I walked past the 2nd grader at Mass this weekend, his face buried in his hands after receiving the Eucharist for the first time? And for some reason, it all made me think of John Updike's poem

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

Perhaps each year we must painfully let the bones of this Body of Christ reknit, the amino acids fall back into their places, the cellular machinery creak and groan its way back to life.

The Case for Camels

Me: Good night, my little 19 year old! Love you tons, Mom and Dad... 
Sorry...wrong window open.
The Boy: #old #texting
Me: #young #carinsurance
The Boy: #myBad #useCamelTextPlease
Me: #NewVocab #BlogPost
The Boy: #dontCapatalizeTheFirstWord #itsComputerScience
Me: #spelling #inMyDay computers only understood one case UPPER

On the night before my birthday, for as long as I can remember, my mother would wish me "Goodnight my little n year old!" and greet me the next morning with, "Good morning, my big n+1 year old."  Long after my age no longer correlated linearly with my height, my mother would make the traditional wish.  She called one year from London (in the days when making that phone call was neither inexpensive nor trivial) to do it.

Tonight I texted Crash the traditional pre-birthday wish.  Except that I didn't.  I accidentally sent the  text to The Boy.  There was no calling it back, and I steeled myself for the snark was sure to follow.

There was snark on both sides, but I also learned about CamelCase, which I use when I code, but didn't have a name for.

Column: Breathe Easter, and exult!

I love the gentleness of the Whitacre piece, and even his initial reluctance to write it.

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly.com on 21 April 2014.

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…then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

It began with ashes and dust, a charcoal rendering of the mystery of redemption on my forehead. “Remember that you are dust….” With a deep breath taken at the meeting point of darkness and light it ends, “Exult, let them exult….”

“Breathe Easter now … you vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,” says Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., in his poem, “Easter Communion,” to those who have been pursued by the cold breezes of Lent. After this winter, after this Lent, I want nothing more than to breathe Easter. To let God’s breath fill my soul, to let resurrection billow in my heart.

St. John of the Cross, in his commentary on his “Spiritual Canticle,” suggests that this is how we are made and remade in this life — by God breathing in our souls, by our souls breathing in God. An act of creation I find no less miraculous than that wrought when God’s breath first moved over the waters.

Gregory of Nazianzus says our souls are a mingling of heaven and earth, the breath of God with the dust of the earth. They are lights “entombed in a cave … unquenchable.” Light that will not dim in the sharing, we who kept vigil through Lent’s dimness are promised.

In the end it is Augustine who takes my breath away. God’s breath is what first bound body to soul, he says. Our bodies may have been formed from the dust of the earth, but our souls were held within God, waiting. But even as our souls were breathed forth, bringing us into being, they are never separated from God, for God is not bound by place. We were created not to be separated from God, but joined to his very breath. In God we live, and move, and have our being.

We were once but dust and ashes, what we are now lives by God’s breath, by the Word that died and rose again. Breathe Easter, and exult.

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To read from Scripture: Let everything that has breath give praise to the Lord. Psalm 150.

To pray:
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I may love only what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, that I may defend all that is holy.
Guard me, O Holy Spirit, that I myself may always be holy.

— St. Augustine of Hippo

To listen:

Eric Whitacre’s Alleluia. This is a very gentle setting of the Alleluia, a choral piece that feels to me like a single breath, of God in us, of us in God.

A Church of Mercy

In a celebration with a congregation a short homily may follow the reading to explain its meaning, as circumstances suggest. [General Instructions for the Liturgy of the Hours, 47]

We celebrate Morning Prayer six days a week with the Augustinian community that staffs our parish, but as Morning Prayer follows daily Mass, the circumstances do not conduce to a homily.  On Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, there are, of course, no morning Masses so we more often than not have a short homily. This year I was privileged to "take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners" and break open the Word at Morning Prayer on Good Friday and Holy Thursday.

On Good Friday I reflected on the connections between the stories of the Trappist monks of Tibhirine in Algeria and of Frans van der Lugt, the Jesuit priest who was killed in Syria recently and Psalm 51, the Miserere.

I closed by inviting us to shift our focus in the Passion later that day, to look upon Christ’s walk to Calvary and his death on the cross, not as some divine transaction that bought us out of our sins, but as a psalm of mercy, a way of proceeding from death to life.  To see Christ singing mercy, literally and figuratively, all that way, even unto the cross, forgiving the unforgivable.  To take a page from Augustine (and from the previous night's homily), May we see who we are, may we become what we see. 

__________
For more on mercy as a way of being:

• my post at DotMagis on Pope Francis' notion of mercy-ing
• Jim McDermott, SJ's post on Good Friday and God's faithfulness
• Pope Francis' book, A Church of Mercy (out this week from Loyola Press and which I have a pre-publication copy of -- as yet incompletely read)

Easter communion

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

from Easter Communion by Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ


I woke up this morning miserably ill (some awful throat virus has been plaguing the choir all week, felling cantors, choir member and directors alike), but still over brimming with joy with the gathering in communion of parish and family. The boys are making dinner, I'm alternately napping and reading on the sofa with a view of the backyard in nearly full flower.

The photo is of the dome at Immaculata University taken at noon, between my two talks last weekend.  I loved the way it goes up and up until the colors dissolve into the white light that gathers all their wavelengths together.

Christ is risen, alleluia!