Fr. Z's Blog

The Pentecost Friday – it’s an Ember Day – Roman Station is Dodici Apostoli, Twelve Apostles, because that’s where Friday Ember Day Stations are. Believe me.  It was pulled to Dodici Apostoli from its original place Ss. Giovanni e Paolo on the Coelian Hill.

The texts of the Mass today are calming, as befits summery pursuits. Crops are planted. Early harvest of first fruits and grains are in. Other plantings and fruits are maturing. The days are long, warm, languid. There is always something to be done, but there is long daylight for leisure.

Leisure and praise of God.  As the Introit says and the other joyful antiphons echo today:

“Let my mouth be filled with Your praise, alleluia: that I may sing, alleluia. My lips shall shout for joy as I sing Your praises, alleluia, alleluia.”

The reading from Joel is about the harvest, and grain and wine and the gifts of God.   Here it is, but including v. 25 which had been excluded.

²⁴ “The threshing floors shall be full of grain,
    the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
²⁵ I will restore to you the years
    which the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
    my great army, which I sent among you.

Alleluia!  As the Holy Spirit moved on the waters and brought forth good things from the earth at the beginning of Creation, so too does He move and work now and in us.

If it is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that our Alleluias are inspired, formed, charged and launched on high, it is also under the influence of the Spirit that our good works – fruits – are performed.

The Gospel today is about the man whose friends lower him through the roof to get him to Jesus, who heals him. It’s a great moment, one of my favorites, in the Gospels.  Imagine the sheer chutzpah of the man’s friends, ready to go up on top of the house where Jesus was and tear a hole in the roof to let their friend down on ropes on his stretcher.

Out of the chaos that must have ensued… do you think perhaps there maybe some shouting and protests and maybe even tussles? … order emerged, physical and spiritual.  The result was praise.

Set the image of the friends in the Gospel against the image in the Collect, which returns to the them of “the enemy”.

Grant to Your Church, we beseech You, almighty God, that, united by the Holy Spirit, she may in no way be harmed by any assault of the enemy.

In the midst of the joyful antiphons there is this stark reminder that, because I am in Brooklyn as I write, “It ain’t over, ’till it’s over.”  Okay, okay, Yogi was a Yankee rather than a Dodger (aka Traitorous Dogs).  And, yes, this was a check to see if you were still reading.

The Postcommunion seems to echo what happened in the Gospel, thus tying our minds in the moment of Communion to the healing, strengthening effects of the Eucharist:

“We who have received the gift of Your Blessed Sacrament, O Lord, humbly pray that what You have taught us to do in commemoration of You, may profit and help us in our weakness.”

As I write, I think of all your priests being the friends who tear a hole in the roof to get you to the Lord. The friends lowered the man. The priests bring the Lord to you. The fabric of the roof, Heaven, is torn open. The division of heaven from earth is ripped asunder and Christ is called down, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity for your healing and joy.

We must turn this sock inside out. you lay people pull that roof apart and get us priests to the Lord. You do the heavy… lowering. We would be lost without you, frozen, unable to move.

You are our stretcher bearers.

This brings up the situation of many priests today, who have been canceled in serious ways, or mistreated and subjected to enduring moral injury.

St. Ambrose of Milan (+397) has this in his Commentary on Luke:

What is this bed/pallet which [the paralytic] is commanded to take up, as he is told to rise?  It is the same bed which was washed [with tears] by David every night, the bed of pain on which our soul lay sick with cruel torment of conscience.  But if anyone has acted according to Christ’s teaching, it is already not a bed of pain but of repose.  Indeed, though the compassion of the Lord, who turns for us the sleep of death into the grace of delight, that which was death begins to be repose.  Not only is he ordered to take up his bed, but also to go home to his house, that is, to return to Paradise. That is our true home which first fostered man, lost not lawfully, but by deceit.  Therefore, rightfully is the home restored, since he who would abolish the obligation of deceit and reform the law has come.  (Exp Luca 5.14)

The healing of the paralytic results in the paralytic being able to “go home”.

In a similar way, Christ in His Holy Church causes us to rise when we are paralyzed in our sins.

Not just in our sins, but also the memory of those sins.

Not just the memory of sins, but the memory of injury by others.

I want consciously here to connect for you the healing of the paralytic, with the help of his friends and the creative breaking of barriers, to the process and the results of purification of memory.

A first step is, of course, thorough examination of conscience.  Also,…

GO TO CONFESSION!

One of the effects of the Sacrament of Penance is strengthening again sin.

For most of us, most of the time, the confessional is palette from which the Lord causes us to arise, freed from sorrow, bondage, and new life.

Pentecost Thursday.

The Roman Station is really St. Lawrence outside the walls, which is where it would have been in the Easter Octave on Wednesday.

However, given that yesterday was an Ember Day, and Ember Wednesdays are at S. Maria Major… there it is. Things give way. On early lists, the Stations of Pentecost week seem to have followed those of Easter. But Ember Days were reestablished, as mentioned yesterday, by Gregory VII, Hildebrand.

So, today we have a trace of the more ancient connection with the Easter Thursday Station of the Church of the Twelve Apostles.

In the Gospel from Luke 9, Jesus sends the Apostles out with authority to heal and cast out demons. In the Epistle from Acts 8, Deacon Philip is in Samaria doing the same. Perhaps there was some confusion about the Deacon and the Apostle, since the Apostle Philip’s tomb is at Twelve Apostles. Oh well.

For the rest, the remaining Mass propers are like those of Pentecost Sunday.

I note in the Epistle, “And the crowds with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip… So there was great joy in that city.”

I note in the Gospel, “And whatever house you enter, stay there, and do not depart from thence. And whosoever will not receive you – go forth from that town, and shake off even the dust from your feet for a witness against them.”

A common thread here is docility and acceptance of the Good News.

Where there is acceptance there is healing.

Where there is not, there is no joy in “dustville”.

The Lord Himself established the attitude that the Apostles (bishops and priests today?) should have.

In Latin, “étiam púlverem pedum vestrórum excútite in testimónium supra illos“. The Greek says, “kai koniortos“. In Greek, kai is a conjunction, a copulative like “and”.   It is also a form of karate associated with a particular kind of snake practiced in the Receda area of L.A. where the vampires pass by on Ventura Boulevard. Sometimes I just want to see if anyone really reads this stuff.  However, kai, the Greek particle, not the karate, can also lend greater force to what follows, which is how we get that Latin etiam that comes into English as ” don’t just leave that town but even shake the dust off your feet”. Leave it and forget it and the dust – whence all of them were made and to which they will return – will remain there as a reminder of what they lost: life, joy.

When dust is in the picture, something is up. Or rather, down.

This points to consequences for all of us when we reject something from God.

What pops into my mind is the rejection of a vocation.

For example, say someone has a vocation to marry, but… won’t. That person will be restless. Say someone doesn’t have the vocation to marry, but… does… and then abandons the marriage. Sorry, can’t do that.

Say the same about religious life or about priesthood.

Yes yes, there are ways to deal with “being in the wrong place”.

In canon law there is acknowledgement that marriages at times don’t work. The innocent one of the couple could in, for example, cases of infidelity, adultery, seek a separation from the other (not divorce, mind you).  Canon Law even states that the bishop can be involved in this decision.  This can be misunderstood by the poorly informed as asking a bishop to grant something so there can be a civil divorce, which clearly is a misunderstanding of the law: bishops aren’t going to be involved in divorces. Or they shouldn’t be. Similarly, there are paths for clerics to be relieved of the obligations of the clerical state.

However, both of these are exceptions and exceptions are … well… exceptions. They, by definition, are not the norm.

In most cases the better path forward is to bear the crosses that flow from the obligations one has chosen, that come from choosing that fork in the road rather than the other, and apply oneself with humble perseverance for the sake of saving one’s soul.

Life is short and eternity is long.

This pretty much flies in the face of the squishy messaging in certain documents with infamous footnotes that present the hard aspects of vocations as nearly impossible “ideals” that no one can be expected to be able to reach. Hence, there ought to be even greater and multiple paths “out” of whatever hard situation one finds oneself in.  It’s a manifestation, I think, of a Christian-lite, one without the Cross, and maybe a dose of … wokey confusion about reality.

It is an aspect of fallen human nature to tend toward the easy path and to avoid the crosses life brings. We should be wary of this tendency. I do NOT mean that must always choose the way of greater suffering. But I think it is good to double-check oneself, even to consult, to determine what God wants.

Going back to Luke 9, when the Lord sent the Apostles out with His authority, He also told them not to take those things along by which they could possibly make a living or easily obtain creature comfort: they were to rely only on “the sending” … which was from Jesus alone. That probably entailed hunger and thirst during their mission. Not to mention anxiety and danger.

It was a harder path. But it was one which brought them their joy later.

It also provided an opportunity for people to be generous to them when the Apostles instruction, healing and freedom.