At the Register Today

Hello everyone. I have a piece over at the Register on Relics, on what we leave behind, and how sarcasm is hereditary.

Bringing the Stable to the Mother

"Why do we have to go to mass tonight?" one kid complained. "Yeah, why didn't the Church move the feast to Sunday?" The teen sensed a mutiny and fanned the flames. I would have a full scale kid riot for a Holy Day of Obligation if I didn't act.

"We're going to the vigil mass because tomorrow is too full of things for us to make it. The 6:30 will be fine." I soothed. They'd already eaten. They were still dressed.

"I haven't done my homework." one said.
"Me neither." another volunteered.
"You have fourty-five minutes right now." I said and set the timer.

To minimize stress, I lay the coats in a pile, put my purse on top of it with my keys and lined up their shoes. I knew why the eleven year old didn't want to go. She'd had a fight with her two best friends, and the wounds were still fresh. I handed her my phone. "Call them. Say you're sorry. Don't demand anything. Just say what you are sorry for, and that you're also sorry there was a fight at all." She ran off to phone.

I wondered if we'd be spiritually wrecked before we even got to mass, as a shouting match broke out between two over the computer, and the girl with the phone came back, that problem cured, but a new one in tow. She'd been singing a Christmas carol and her brother didn't like it. When her brother didn't like something, he made sure everyone knew it.

I knew why the teen was mad. He wanted to eat. Mind you, he'd had two dinners already, but third dinner promised to be a better one, and so waiting seemed a major injustice. When he's mad, his favorite tactic is to set off as many other people with their own personal mads so that the whole world burns with madness.

I'd hit my limit. I admit, when I start a lecture, it gets a cadence all it's own and it keeps going. "We are going to celebrate and honor the Blessed Mother, and her state of perpetual sinlessness." I put on the first daughter's shoes. "We are going to celebrate a mass as a community and as a family." and handed her a coat. "We're going to sacrifice one hour of our lives to the woman who surrendered her son and didn't scream at the people who killed him." I knocked on the teen's door. "We're going as a family because this is what our faith teaches, it is important, and we're not going to become closer or kinder or better by arguing something none of us have the power to change, only to ignore or accept." I opened the door and they lined up. "Since I accept it and I'm the adult, knock it off and get in the car!"

We drove the three blocks down the road to the church. No one was in the parking lot. The announcement at the end of mass said 6:30, but the mass schedule on the door said 7:30. We went back home. "At least I know, all homework will be done." I said, "And we'll be back, hopefully in a more grateful and celebratory state in an hour."

P.S. They finished their homework and we made it.  The teen took his youngest brother to the back when he needed help quieting down, and when a daughter remarked during one of the songs, "Mary had it easy."  I said, "Nope, she had greater grace, but greater things were asked of her than of you and remember, she had to choose, all her life, to be obedient, even when she didn't feel like it."  Just to prove the point of how difficult obedience is, my son had a slight accident on my jeans.  I sat with him on my lap the rest of mass, draping my coat over the spot.  Mary understood.

I considered Mary's lfe and grace once again.  Mary had and has it hard; she had all of us to deal with, and we're all these messy squirly quarlesome children with different agendas. The mass ended and there was an opportunity to go and venerate a relic from the Blessed Mother.  A piece of her mantle was presented.   After I kissed the relic, I felt a deep sense of knowing, the obedience of grace, is the obedience born of love, that bears all things, hopes all things, and doesn't fail in patience or kindness, even when it seems like it would be so much easier to say, "Knock it off." because I said so.   Walking up, children in tow, smelly, still struggling with the trials of the day and the very real issue of my own wardrobe problem, I felt very much like the stable coming to her, in all its dirty dingey undignified way, coming to be somehow made better by love.  And it did.  Mary's kiss made everything better, even if nothing physically changed, how we treated each other, how we saw each other, did.  

Through the Looking Glass to See No Evil

I have been told I am wrong to be upset with Fr. Pavone by no less than the internet; that there is no difference whatsoever between we display on a crucifix, and Fr. Pavone's altar.

Arguing that Sacred art depicts realities, even ugly ones that God made redemptive like the martyring of Stephen, the Pieta and every image of the crucified Christ whereas displaying the naked crushed body of an infant to prove Abortion is ugly is to shock, I was told, this was a minor difference.

The difference between stone and flesh is easy to see unless one wills one's self to have a stony heart. However, I don't believe that anyone really thinks there isn't a difference between sacred art and an actual dead body.  

We would be horrified and rightly so, if someone took dead bodies to depict a scene from scripture and called it art.  We would be horrified and rightly so, if someone profaned sacred art.

Using the body of a child to make a political point, ignores the moral reality of what we are called to do as Catholics for the dead, and what he was called to do as a priest when entrusted with this child in particular's, body.  He gave a 45 minute lecture on abortion with a baby's remains exposed on what looks to be an altar. It is meant to look like an altar, even if it is not an altar.  Oddly enough, it is a warped version of what horrified everyone when Dr. Gosnell was arrested.  Displaying rather than properly caring for the remains, is inappropriate.

Someone said, "Well, what about open caskets and wakes?" Those incidents are grieving processes for those who mourn the loss of a loved one.  They aren't done as a stage for a political/moral platform.  They aren't done for a youtube video to stump for a candidate or a political position the day before an election and I won't defend it even if I agree, and I do, abortion takes a life, it is always wrong.

But again, I don't for a moment think people don't recognize a difference, I think people want to defend a priest they love, and a position they hold dear.

This child was discarded by his or her mother as thing, destroyed by an abortionist as a thing, and then (however temporarily), used by the priest, as an illustration of abortion.  People are NEVER things, and we can NEVER use them as such, without committing great harm to our own souls and those who find themselves agreeing, the end justifies the means.

What about relics? I've seen Saint Anthony's tongue.  I asked and did research, "Relics and incorruptible bodies are testaments to the saints." He was buried, and when they cannonized him, they dug him up (30 years after death), they found his tongue incorruptible.  This sign of santification, of holiness, led to the veneration of his tongue.  We need the relics of the saints, because we are physical beings.  We need to know the saints were flesh and blood, real, not esoteric philosophical constructs created by imaginative manipulative scribes or poets.  Pieces of the true cross, the Shroud of Turin, the Tilma, hairs of Saint Maximiliam Kolbe, these things bring us into touching distance with Our God, with the Blessed Mother, with saints.

I've already seen the next layer of the argument, "Some of these were not saints before they were made into relics."

I do not feel I must fend every argument to still state, this was not a good act.

This baby was to be buried.  The baby should have been treated as one would any other baby brought for Catholic burial.  In not treating this infant like any other infant one would bury, this was forgetting the moral underpinning of the Pro-life position, which is to treat every child, all children, regardless of age, developmental status or capacity, with absolute dignity.  Exposing any other child naked and deceased to the internet, would be unthinkable.   This child deserved the same dignity afforded any other child one would mourn.  Love this baby first, and let that be your testimony.

When we hate something, we sometimes get so zealous, we can become a parody of the very thing we hate.  In reference to Fr Pavone's wrong decision to place a child on the altar so as to highlight the evil of abortion, you cannot justify a bad action (which this was) to bring about a good (end of abortion).  This was an inappropriate witness as a priest and as a person who professes to be pro-life because it did not put the actual child's dignity first.

Far more compelling a witness to the dignity of life would be to give that child a name, to dress him or her, drape in a blanket, and give a mass for the child.  Open casket if he likes, and invite all to pray for the souls of this child's family.   There is a temptation, when we seek a political solution for a moral issue, to put the movement before individuals. It is an understandable temptation, when people feel frustrated or powerless, but that is a secondary failing of despair because things are not happening according to a fast enough schedule.

So please, pray for Fr. Pavone and for his Bishop who must counsel him and for all who might want to not see how this act is wrong and fails to properly witness to the world, all humans are made in God's image, and all should be treated at all stages of development, with dignity.

Third Class Relics

It's Good Friday and I wanted to do...something.   I wanted my kids to experience something of Good Friday, for something of the bones of our faith to resonate in their bones.

I'd hit upon the insane notion, I wanted us to walk through a door of mercy.  This is the Jubilee year of Mercy and all across the world, there are Holy Doors.  If you walk through them, and get to confession and communion, (plus a few prayers), you obtain a plenary indulgence.  What a way to get to Easter!   I've tried to do indulgences in the past, to have all our sins remitted, not just forgiven, but also removed from what we would owe for our transgressions.   Somehow, I never quite make it.

I googled Holy Doors.  One of my kids wanted to go to confession.   The Basilica offered confession from 10 to 6.  We could go through the Holy Door.  We could go to confession.  We could pray for the Pope's intentions and on Easter, receive communion.  We would get everyone in the family an indulgence.   As a bonus, we could see the relics of the passion of our Lord.

The Basilica website indicated there would be 1st class Relics to venerate.  We would see a piece of the one True Cross, found by Saint Helen.  We would see a piece of the spikes that pierced our Lord.  We would see a thorn from the crown, relics from Saint Peter and Saint Paul and a fragment from the veil of the Blessed Mother.  

In the crypt church of the Basilica, the line for confession and for the relics stretched out the length of the church, and wound around.   We waited.  The kids squirmed, struggled, and my having not eaten didn't help with the issue of patience.   We waited.  We waited.  We waited.  We did bathroom breaks and afterwards, scrounged for things we could touch to the relics.   I touched my wedding ring to the spot separated by the glass, where on the other side was a fragment of the one True Cross and foolishly put it back on my finger instead of the chain where I normally wore it.  It fit my finger.

Five minutes later, my finger was pink.  We scrambled to the cafeteria where I bought m&m's for those not fasting.   My daughter had quit the line for confession, as she was told, it would be two more hours.  I felt defeated, and I couldn't get my ring off my finger.   We left to go to the car, with me feeling ever more certain, if I didn't need a plenary indulgence before, I needed it now.   In the car, I gobbed my daughter's hand lotion on my finger and pulled and twisted.  My finger looked red now.

My son asked what would happen if we didn't get it off.   My overly helpful older daughter explained in more detail than I could stomach, what would happen.  I needed help.  I'd seen the sign for the entrance to the Little Sisters of the Poor.  I drove back to it and knocked on the door.  They looked at my finger, heard my story, and called a nurse.  

Daisy, (God bless her), talked me through her gentle pulling of the ring.  The irony of it being March 25th, the day Tolkien chose for the destruction of the one ring, was not lost on me.  I hoped it wouldn't be the day my wedding ring became a relic and then had to be destroyed.

My daughter who didn't make it to confession, sensing my stress level, decided to lead us in the rosary.  It made the trip bearable, because I felt so defeated by all of it.

It took the whole drive home for my finger to return to normal.   The ring is once again on the chain on my neck.  It touched a relic, ergo it is a relic itself.   Looking at my finger, the ring left a mark. I can't help but think about the thorn and the particle of the spike and the cross.  Relics aren't neat little holy trinkets, they're raw pieces of real life, real experiences of suffering rendered meaningful by how the person who endured it, faced it.

All I felt I'd proven, was how much I needed more time in this life, in this Lent, to get ready for Easter.

Over at the National Catholic Register Today!

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Saint Maximilian Kolbe's Relics Tour the North East