Catholic Sensibility

It’s a slow week, but I like it this way. The Iowa winter so far seems undecided between dumping significant snow, or raining and thawing, or plunging below zero at night. I still have a crest of crusty snow on the car, my badge of not having a garage on the property.

At the parish, the students are long gone. Many parishioners are off visiting for the holidays. About half the staff has taken the week off. I got an amazing amount of stuff done today in a very quiet office.

I was reading about the renewal of the encroachment on civil liberties masquerading as beefed-up airline security. No wonder the feds are spinning the news on Detroit’s flame-out like diocesan PR people. The system “worked,” or maybe it didn’t; but we’re going to insist on some silly rules to further alienate air passengers.

Or maybe they’re trying to force the air traffic industry into bankruptcy. I wonder how often a traveller, when requested to do something ridiculous, just tells the airport people to forget it and turns around and goes home.

Even if I had the extra money to fly somewhere, I have to ask myself: why would I bother? Do I need to travel back in time to the first grade and pay for the privilege of enduring juvenile rules? I don’t think so. We haven’t been able to afford a big family vacation in more than three years–the last time I saw most of my family in one place at one time.

On the plus side, I can and do call my mother or siblings just about any night of the week. I probably chat with my mom more often today than in the years when I was in grad school and lived in the same city. Don’t tell my mom, but who needs a vacation? Suppose we all stopped flying? I think my mom, my cell phone, and I could outlast the airline industry. If we turned that into several million cell phone users and their parents, I know we could. Personally, I think liberties are more valuable than bureaucracies and the businesses that prop them up.

In reality, it is a tough choice, I have to concede. Another excuse to put people out of work and not rehire them. The decade of the Big Zero sees one in five (about, probably) Americans un/underemployed. Maybe we should just concentrate our selective non-consumerism on businesses large and small that haven’t hired people, or worse, have let them go.

We did our best last year. When my wife was seriously ill last Fall, we brought in a housekeeper twice a month to keep things tidy at home. After about three months, it was just too much. I didn’t have the funds in the checking account to pay her the last week before payday.

So meanwhile, I’ve just stopped spending. Haven’t rented a movie in almost two years. The public library has more than enough to borrow. Reading books is good. If my wife didn’t have serious favorites on tv, I’d consider ditching cable altogether and hook up the internet to the tv for entertainment.

A liturgical suggestion:

257. For children of this age, at the rites during the process of initiation, it is generally preferable not to have the whole parish community present, but simply represented. Thus these rites should be celebrated with the active participation of a congregation that consists of a suitable number of the faithful, the parents, family, members of the catechetical group, and a few adult friends.

This might seem curious at first glance in some cultures in which children are accustomed to being in large community groups and adults are generally accepting of the presence of young people. Still, it can be good to have the flexibility for some cases in which personality of the child(ren) might suggest otherwise.

It seems as if the Church’s liturgical documents don’t avoid stresing the importance of “active participation.” Other comments?

Neil is correct to press me for an affirmative response to the question, “What are saints for?”

I cannot criticize in others the hermeneutic of subtraction without offering something positive from my own encounters with the saints. After some reflection these past few days, I’d like to begin with Neil’s quote from David McCarthy, and springboard the discussion from here:

Certainly, literary, historical and other critical tools ought to bear on how the Bible is understood, but, at its fundamental level, the truth of scripture is most fully grasped when lived out.

When I was on retreat at St John’s Abbey last month, I was introduced to the Saint John’s Bible. In this work, the text of the Scriptures is developed with illumination to augment the believer’s experience. That artistic augmentation far surpasses a picture book. For the medieval West, there may have been a practical reason for enhancing the text for illiterate believers. But given that these manuscripts were produced by religious communities, it might also be that they were more than illustrated Bibles for those who could not read Latin. Having experienced lectio divina with illuminated Scriptures, I can attest from my own experience that it’s more than watching pretty pictures.

I would agree with Professor McCarthy in that the lives of the saints serve to illuminate the Scriptures. As Neil suggests, what better example do we have for Luke 9:58 than Francis of Assisi?

In pondering this, I’ve been living the start of a joyful liturgical season with the usual musical backdrop. (I don’t mean the pop radio stations.) In addition to illuminations of gold, silver, and paint on parchment we also have the musical embellishment of the Scriptures–centuries of musical heritage. Christmas might be accessible enough, especially with another nod to Saint Francis. But we also have the irrepressible Gloria of that favorite French carol and the expansive range of O Divinum Mysterium. I can’t imagine celebrating the Nativity without either.

The saints provide a third way of illumination. One might say that their lives are a “performance art” intended to develop the Word of God. Their witness complements the two traditional arts of illustration and music. If this is God’s plan, it’s a good one. Music and visual art, grand as they can be, do not always appeal to everyone, everywhere. Saints enfold another layer into the Christian consciousness.

Saint as artist, saint as illuminator of Divine Revelation is more appealing to me personally than saint as hero. While not to disparage the notion of hero, I think our strongest and most authentic saints should stand above mere heroism.

The multivalance of Christian saints allows them to stand out fron admirable human figures of politics or sport or art or culture. Sainthood as art form allows us to discern exemplars of the Christian way, to see saints as women and men beyond personal virtue, however important that might be. They place the human witness of Divine Revelation more squarely in the grace of God.

Seeing saints as the work of art of an almighty and generous God? Why not. We focus on the artist as we admire the art. We aspire to be tools in the hands of God. We can be inspired to sacrifice ourselves for God’s plan of salvation.

Christmas greetings to you readers from our household, humans and pets, to yours. May you all find God’s blessings, wild and sweet, in all the celebrations of faith and family in the season ahead. Let the songs be sung, especially this one.

(This is Neil) I would like to wish a blessed Christmas to our readers. Let me post one more thing in 2009. I would like to direct your attention to three lectures just delivered by the Anglican priest Nicholas Sagovsky, a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, who is also Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey. They are on Dante, and can serve as a good brief theological introduction to the Divine Comedy. I’ll mention only a few of the points in them.

Canon Sagovsky begins his first lecture [PDF] by noting that Dante believes that our human life is a journey, or, better, a pilgrimage. There certainly is a “right way” and Dante has lost this right, or straight, way (“la diritta via era smarrita”). The psalmist had prayed, “Teach me thy way, O Lord; and lead me on a level path (“in semitam rectam” [LXX Ps 27:11]). Dante had gone astray, “pursuing the false images of good” in preference to a spiritual relationship with Beatrice. There are many false images that lure all of us: before a nearby hill, Dante’s path is blocked by no less than a leopard, representing worldly pleasure, the lion of violence, and a wolf that represents avarice.  We must all follow God’s will, because:

Free and upright (dritto) and sound is Thy will
And error were it not to do its bidding.

There is hope yet for us. Isaiah had prophesied that “the crooked shall be made straight” (40:3).

And Dante has a guide – Vergil, who he will call “maestro” and “duce.” It is Vergil, Sagovsky says, “who leads Dante through the darkness towards the light, though he is not himself permitted to experience the fullness of that light.” The first step is the “shock therapy” of hell – not to satiate Dante’s voyeurism about the world to come, but to help him see “this life re-imagined in the light of eternity.” What is Dante supposed to learn from his trip through hell, which Sagovsky likens to a trip to parts of Madame Tussauds or the London Dungeon? Dante is meant to see that it is a very terrible thing not to have hope. Christ had harrowed hell – Vergil speaks of a “Mighty One” who came “With sign of victory incoronate,” drawing forth Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Rachel, and “others many, and he made them blessed.” Those who are now left behind lack the human quality of hope.

In the second lecture [PDF], Sagovsky discusses the climbing of Mount Purgatory. Hell has shocked Dante but left him unchanged; this mountain is the place of his reformation. Dante has begun his ascent. This theme of “ascent” is venerable in Christianity. Moses ascended Mount Sinai. He had to first purify himself and the climb was difficult. Then, he encountered God directly, and, only then, he could bring revelation back to his wayward people. But first there had to be purification. Gregory of Nyssa wrote, in his Life of Moses:

The person who would approach the contemplation of Being must be pure in all things so as to be pure in soul and body, washed stainless of every spot … in order that he might appear pure to the One who sees what is hidden, and that visible respectability might correspond to the inward condition of the soul.

Initially, this person who wishes to ascend is weighed down by earthly things, but “Once it is released from its earthly attachment, [the soul] becomes light and swift for its movement upward, soaring from below up to the heights.” Or, as Vergil tells Dante, “And, aye, the more one climbs, the less it hurts.”

Dante also learned from Augustine that a “flame of love” draws us forward on our journey to purify ourselves before we can see God. We read, in an early canto, in the voice of those violently killed (“sinners even to the latest hour”):

Then did a light from heaven admonish us,
So that, both penitent and pardoning, forth
From life we issued reconciled to God,
Who with desire to see Him stirs our hearts.

Purgatory is a place of prayer and song, because it is the place where human beings, including Dante himself, are being purified for glory. Thus, when Dante encounters the proud, they are carrying huge burdens to humble themselves. They are not cursing under the weight, but reciting a version of the Lord’s Prayer. They pray not for themselves, but for others on earth:

“This last petition verily, dear Lord,
Nor for ourselves is made, who need it not,
But for their sake who have remained behind us.”

As Sagovsky reminds us, this is because the petitioners are already being delivered from evil. The weeping in purgatory is not the tearful despair of hell. There is sorrow for sin, but also wonder in its sure disappearance:

And lo! A sound of weeping and a song:
“Labia mea, Domine,” – in fashion
Such that delight and sorrow it brought forth.

In his third lecture [PDF], Canon Sagovsky notes that Dante’s heavens – there are heavens – come from Ptolemaic cosmology, in which there is a series of spheres above the earth. Thus, Dante must journey through these spheres to the motionless Empyrean, the dwelling place of God. But Dante also has read St Paul, who wrote about being “caught up into Paradise” where he “heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat” (2 Cor 12:4), and so he does not describe heaven in detail, only suggests what it might be.

Dante, Sagovsky says, once more recalls for us the the description of mystical ascent in Gregory of Nyssa – now, that we pass “from glory into glory.” In his Life of Moses, Gregory “describes how Moses was ‘lifted up’ to share in the glory of God, but this sharing only created the desire for greater transformation.” This is epektasis: Gregory tells us that Moses, in his ascent, “still thirsts for that with which he constantly filled himself to capacity, and he asks to attain as if he had never partaken …” As Rowan Williams has written:

If the Christian life is a journey into God, it is a journey into infinity – not an abstract ‘absoluteness’ but an infinity of what Gregory simply calls ‘goodness’, an infinite resource of mercy, help and delight. And because of its limitless nature, this journey is always marked by desire, by hope and longing, never coming to possess or control its object.

This well describes the heavenly part of Dante’s journey. Canon Sagovsky also reminds us of Augustine’s claim that we are attracted by God’s love for us, and the more we respond to this love, “the more we feel its attraction.” In our ascent, our love is redirected towards what endlessly satisfies. We are liberated from the bondage of sin – those “false images” – to love more and more, endlessly. Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee” become’s Dante’s “Our hearts are wayward till they find the way to thee.”  And so Dante goes on.

The end of the Paradiso has Dante speechless, but ultimately transformed into the love that has led him onwards, that has finally made his crooked path straight:

Here vigor failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

And, so, may it be for us …

No doubt a few Catholic commentators were wondering what’s holding up the show. The USCCB has passed on all the Roman Missal it was allowed to read. So why aren’t we using it already?

Apparently, it was because of the Aussies. Their bishops have finally got around to the inevitable, according to Sydney’s Catholic Weekly. The more myopic among us Americans think, of course, that the whole of liturgy, doctrine, and all revolve around our fat corner of the globe. There are several other English-speaking bishops’ conferences. They all have to approve the Missal too. Just like they all did for RM2.

“Early 2011″ is the expected “publication” date, according to the Weekly. If true, that gives publishers up to ten months to get into print for annual resources and an implementation of Advent 2011–less than two years away. Will we be ready?

There is also a comment thread at the Australian CathNews site.

Some important aspects of timing the reception of the sacraments. Section 256 in whole:

256. In regard to the time for the celebration of the steps of initiation, it is preferable that, if possible, the final period of preparation, begun by the second step, the penitential rites (or by the optional rite of election), coincide with Lent and that the final step, celebration of the sacraments of initiation, take place at the Easter Vigil (see RCIA 8). Nevertheless before the children are admitted to the sacraments at Easter, it should be established that they are ready for the sacraments. Celebration at this time must also be consistent with the program of catechetical instruction they are receiving, since the candidates should, if possible, some to the sacraments of initiation at the time that their baptized companions are to receive confirmation or eucharist.

Commentary:

It’s not as strongly urged as it is for adults, but the preference is for the child catechumens to observe a Lent and Easter Vigil as adults would. What isn’t clear is that if children are deemed ready at another time, should the parish engage “another” Lent to prepare with them? That would be the understanding for adult catechumens.

Note that the vocabulary has shifted for the young catechumens: the rites do not speak of “scrutinies,” but of a single “penitential rite.” (RCIA 295-303) The rite also links this observance to the sacrament of penance for baptized children. I would assume that the penance liturgy for First Communion and/or Confirmation candidates would be linked to this penitential rite, assuming the groups are meeting, praying, or otherwise engaged together as “companions.”

The rite stresses that while Lent and Easter are important liturgically, the children must be really ready.

One aspect I’ve missed in the past: the coordination, if possible, of the parish’s First Eucharist and Confirmation efforts–both catechesis and liturgy–with that of the young candidates for baptism. How many parishes manage to do this? Would or should a bishop accommodate his schedule for a parish that coordinated such ministry, or make allowances over and above the parish that didn’t?

Thanks for the comments on the “Hero Worship” thread. It wasn’t my main intention to get into a debate on the merits of Pius XII’s stance with or aid to Jewish refugees in the 1940′s. It’s certainly not a surprise that the man is a controversial figure. But some obvious questions and observations are afoot regarding saints.

1. Clearly, not all saints avoid the controversies of virtue, morality, and inaction. Let’s keep this in mind when discussing merits of potential saints in the future.

2. Being declared a saint is probably more about hero worship than most Catholics would want to admit. We cheer for countrywomen and men. We cheer for ideological mates. We cheer for people whose personal qualities or experiences (loneliness, persecution, etc.) mirror our own, or at least touch on our affective side.

3. It’s all relative. A little controversy in Rome is no problem, but in Latin America, forget it. We can appeal to the emotions (The santo subito! of JPII) or just as easily turn off that spigot when we want to talk about theology or doctrine. Likewise the privations and sufferings of the martyrs: feel bad for them. But maybe not so much when other Christians or even Catholics delivered the blow. You never know: they might have been heretics.

The question goes begging: what makes a saint? Can one be a saint without any followers at all? Does one need to have earthly support to achieve sanctity? Does the Roman process of declared saints always add to the sanctity of the pilgrim Church or does it sometimes detract from it?

An interesting pair of popes progress down the lane of declared sanctity. One commentator somewhere remarked it was something of a balanced ticket. I didn’t get that. John Paul II from the beginning was a charismatic figure, inspiring people in our more mobile age to be, in fact, mobile, and go on pilgrimage to see him, only not to Rome necessarily. Pius XII is an interesting companion, the last of the N popes. N being whatever adjective you want to place: traditional, pre-conciliar, valid, monarchical, whatever.

As a lay person, I mostly see the pair as birds of a feather: talented guys who were nurtured in a culture of priesthood, who had their own mentors who slotted them into fortunate positions, and whose abilities carried them to the top of the ecclesiastical heap.

When I speak of “hero worship” in the title above, the nuance is intended to be somewhat above our regard for athletes and media stars, but definitely below saints who possess a more heroic witness for the faith.

John Paul has his advocates, tens of millions of them. He saved the Church from modernism, put bishops and theologians back on track, developed a theology, trotted the globe, ended Communism, and whatnot. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. (Sprinkle, maybe.) But these were human accomplishments performed by a very gifted man. But were they saintly? Do they inspire imitation, or are they acts to which some respond with clapping and cheering?

Pope Pius is a more troubled choice. My stance is that he missed an opportunity to be truly heroic–to stand up against fascism before the juggernaut crushed millions. That he acted to save some is not reasonably questioned. He directed religious orders and others on the line at Castel Gandolfo and other places to take risks. Others in the chain of refugees were more endangered, exerted themselves physically, cleaned and prepared and hid and lied to the fascists. But as a pope, as one of the few universal religious leaders of the world, could he have done more? No matter how often the Catholic figure of saving 700,000 is touted, the question doesn’t go away: could he have done more?

In the supercharged church environment today, do we really need more saints who, while no doubt good people, are objects of cheerleading at the expense of church unity. I would certainly say the same about Pope John XXIII. A good guy with pastoral experience. Inspired to call a council. But a saint? He’s more of a hero, like John Paul II. He’s an object on which Catholic project their likes, beliefs, and philosophies.

Pius XII adds a certain novel twist. This pope is a sort of guilt-free card. He represents the best possible edge of mediocrity in the face of grave physical and moral danger. He shows we can skirt the cliff’s edge, but not be plunged into the rocks below. We can dissent in our hearts without risking life, limb, or property. That’s similar to a choice most of us might make: our conscience would prick at us to save some Jews. And maybe it would get to the point where we were genuinely fearful for our life as we helped a friend or two. But Pius XII was no Natalia Tulasiewicz. And in his position as pope, how could he be a teacher like her, a conscientious objector like Franz, or a simple priest like Maximilian Kolbe? If Pius XII is a saint, it was probably in spite of his being a pope, not because of it.

Granted, a figure like Mary McKillop inspires hero worship. Australians, dissidents, the sisters of her order all can cheer for a kindred Aussie, an excommunicant, and a founder. But the real sanctity of such a saint is to be found in the work she (or he) inspires. Saint Mary founded schools, orphanages, and homes for women. Many people have been in need of education, adoption, care in a time of grave need. We can be grateful to a person who was the cause of that. We can aspire to follow in that person’s footsteps.

A saint continues to do the work of God to the degree he or she can model and inspire saintly behavior in living believers. Saints should be oppotunities for conversation. We can read of them, ponder their life story, consider how we would have done in their shoes, and apply their spirit to concrete situations in our prayer or apostolate or our ordinary life.

The current age would seem to need saints more than ever to counterbalance the excesses of secular hero worship. Pius and John Paul are no doubt on an inevitable track to declared sainthood, but I can’t say–not at this time anyway–that their witness inspires me deeply. Give me Natalia or Franz or Maximilian.

The rite recommends putting child catechumens together whenever possible:

255. For the celebrations proper to this form of Christian initiation, it is advantageous, as circumstances allow, to form a group of several children who are in the same situation, in order that by example they may help one another in their progress as catechumens.

On paper, it looks nice. Certainly it makes sense to celebrate the rites of the catechumenate period with larger groups of children. The Lenten period rites should probably be celebrated with adults, if possible.

Almost all  American parishes I know of have just a trickle of youth catechumens at any one time. And there are at least three distinct age groups: elementary, tween, and adolescents–I can’t imagine effectively mixing these in catechesis.

I like working with kids. Always have. One of the most wonderful things to watch is to see them develop as musicians over the years. I’m also fascinated by their thought processes: what choices they make, how they judge options, their likes and dislikes.

My daughter, for example, has noticed Lady Gaga. They played one of her tunes, “Paparazzi,” I think it was on the radio on the way home from school the other day. Good stuff I thought. A pop singer who can use her head voice as well as her chest voice and she sounds good and smooth using both in the same song.

Tonight we had the final rehearsal for the “Family” Christmas Eve Mass. Donna, our choir director, traditionally allows instrumentalists to prepare and play a piece as part of the prelude before Mass. Some of the choices were pretty standard. A nice setting of the Huron Carol for flute: flautist and pianist mother discussing the merits of playing the flute in the voice range or an octave up. What do you think, Todd? they asked. Both, I replied. Play two verses.

The director’s son plays trumpet. He asked me if I had “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.” Amazingly, I had a three-part voice arrangement I reduced from an SATB a number of years ago. I no longer have the original octavo, so I’m going to have to work backwards from a sparse voice arrangement. And transpose the piece from G to F for me.

Another young pianist brought a really elegant arrangement of “What Child Is This.” Donna agreed when I suggested we slot it for preparation of the gifts.

The high school guy who plays bass clarinet was offered a slot. He mostly aw-shucks shrugged while the younger choristers were playing one or one-point-five minutes pieces from the standard Christmas repertoire. The director asked me to suggest something. So I gave him a choice between “Of The Father’s Love Begotten” or “Once In Royal David’s City.” Which do you think he picked? Hint: it wasn’t even close.

One Irish bishop out, but the others of the “Dublin Five” appear to be heading toward a showdown with a brother bishop, Diarmuid Martin. According to the news link, Archbishop Martin will petition Rome for the removal of these bishops if they don’t resign. However, I didn’t read any specifics on the “emergence,” only this paragraph worded in passive voice:

Yesterday it emerged that if the four bishops — who say they did no wrong — do not stand down voluntarily on the principle of collective responsibility, Archbishop Martin will petition the Congregation of Bishops in Rome to remove them early in 2010.

Anybody from the religion watch hear anything more of this? Rock has nothing public since reporting on Donal Murray’s accepted abdication from Limerick last Wednesday.

It’s a cliche that the Church works slowly, sometimes like a glacier. Yet ordinary human beings live in a world less icy, especially when feeling run hot for the injustice of certain crimes and the slow reactions which can just as easily be interpreted as a boy’s club loyalty. Archbishop Martin is positioning himself, at the very least, as something of the avenging angel for Irish sensibility on these bishops. If the bishops in question stick, and petition to  Rome is denied, I can imagine a certain chilliness in Irish bishops’ meeting in the years to come.

During 8:30 Mass yesterday we had almost an inch deposited on our parked cars. The buzz at church during our brief whiteout in Story County was the incoming weather system due to hit later this week.

I confess I’m glad I’m not the pastor making decisions on the state of liturgical grace. Particularly for those “two-timing” worshippers due to grace our doors later this week. But how bad does it have to get before you cancel Christmas?

As a church musician, suppose you have oodles of cool music ready to go when Father calls and says to stay home on Thursday/Friday. A lot of it is appropriate on Holy Family Sunday. Transfer some or all of your prelude?

Christmas Eve practice in our parish is later tonight at 6:30. That will be less of a challenge than Midnight Mass practice, now scheduled for Wednesday at 7. Daily highs will be close to the freezing point, which means some treacherous driving conditions, even within our city.

I leave it in the hands of you armchair liturgists out there. Suppose you have the pastor’s ear. What would you advise? And if Christmas is cancelled, what do you do with the fruits of your rehearsals for the Nativity feast?

weather.com provides the “White Christmas Probability Map” for interested weather geeks. Usually, the historical expectations are on this map, but I think now they have the actual prediction of having an inch or more of snow, new or old, on the ground Christmas morning.

254. The children’s progress in the formation they receive depends on the help and example of their companions and on the influence of their parents. Both these factors should be taken into account.

As a parent,  I have to comment on this interesting expectation. I would hope that my example is at least equally important as my influence would be. I suppose the Church assumes the “supportive setting” of peers is as important for youth as it would be for adults:

1. Since the children to be initiated often belong to a group of children of the same age who are already baptized and are preparing for confirmation and eucharist, their initiation progresses gradually and within the supportive setting of this group of companions.

What is 254.1 saying or implying? Are all children who have yet to receive confirmation and First Eucharist assumed to be in formation for these sacraments? Or are the groups in proximate preparation for confirmation and Eucharist the ideal peer groups? Surely the framers of this paragraph knew the variations in practice around the globe for confirmation and that First Eucharist is nearly always celebrated very early in a child’s life.

2. It is to be hoped that the children will also receive as much help and example as possible from the parents, whose permission is required for the children to be initiated and to live the Christian life. The period of initiation will also provide a good opportunity for the family to have contact with priests and catechists.

This is sound. The Church recognizes the special situation for unbaptized children, the opportunity for good pastoral ministry with parents, who, are either recently inactive Christians, or who have been bystanders as their children have taken some initiative of belief and brought it with them to family life.

An interesting reflection by the Holy Father on the lighting up of the thirty-meter Belgian fir tree at the Vatican. Taking the image of transfiguration a bit further, I often reflect on the plants cut and used for liturgy. Each of them sacrifice their lives in a garden or from a tree for the sake of a certain transfiguration for liturgy. The same for grain and vine, too.

Once I overheard a friend explain to one of her parishioners why she used real flowers. The questioner wondered about the waste when frugality would suggest buying the plastic forms that last.

It’s the notion of sacrifice, my friend said. We give our best for liturgy. We sacrifice from our gardens of beauty and from the life we cultivate.

It’s really true for us believers. Pope Benedict’s reflection goes further, of course. After we shine and bear the fruit of faith, we also share the fate of the tree. Our life is not our own. No longer rooted, we are at the point in which we are dependent on God for nourishment. Eventually, we dry out, we are stripped bare. In the case of this year’s Vatican tree, it will be trimmed of branches and fashioned into wooden sculptures. And back  in the forest, I assume that new seedlings will take the place of the old and grown and develop as the last generation did.