I received an email from Father Augustine Foley recently. Father Augustine is a Benedictine monk who teaches philosophy to the seminarians at St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, Louisiana. Everyone who attends St. Ben’s (nicknamed that thanks to the Benedictines who run the place) know that Father Augustine is the monk who takes photos: photos of birds, deer, monastic liturgies, football games between the seminarians, etc.

If something is happening on campus, Father Augustine is taking a photo of it. So, the email I received from Father Augustine was, of course, a photo. It was a picture of Grayson Foley (no relation to the photographer!), one of our newest seminarians, fishing the pond adjacent to the beautiful Abbey Church.

I was struck by the photo not just because it was a particularly beautiful shot of the Abbey grounds, but also because just eight years ago in August of 2012, I was Grayson. I was brand new at the seminary and struck by the beauty of the place. I loved the acreage that I could explore and the time I could spend speaking to the Lord by one of the ponds or running the trails through the woods. Grayson, and our five other seminarians, are all at different stages of their priestly formation, but all of them are getting the help that they need to make a diligent discernment, to confidently declare “yea or nay” on the question of diocesan priesthood.

It has been such a joy to see two new men have the courage to ask that question this year. I pray that their time in seminary is as joy-filled as mine was. If you look at the photo, you see a picture of peace. Peace comes to our heart when we finally stop trying to do everything on our own and we begin to allow the Lord to help us decide what we will do with our lives. Peace comes when we bring our sufferings and our joys and our fears and our triumphs to God and we see our life through the lens of the Lord. In short, peace comes when we put God first.

As I have stated in this space many times, there are men and women who are being called to discern religious life in our diocese right now, I hazard to say many more than those who are currently in discernment are being called. If you want to find peace, give your life over to the Lord, give Him the time and space to work with you, mold you, form you and love you. As challenging as priesthood has been over the past two plus years, I would not change a thing. I am doing what I was called to do, and there is a measure of peace and stillness in my heart despite any disturbances that arise at the surface.
I ask the reader to seek to answer this question: have I placed God at the forefront of my life, have I even asked the question in prayer, Lord, what do you want me to do with my life? If that question remains unanswered, come speak with me. That’s what I’m here to do, to help faithful Catholics find that peace that comes from listening to God’s call and following his will in your life.

Vocations Events

Friday, October 9, 2020 – First annual Homegrown Harvest Gala and Fundraiser (virtual)

For more information and sponsorship opportunities visit: https://one.bidpal.net/homegrownharvest2020/welcome

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Imagine this. You are the dutiful daughter or son and your mother is widowed and living in an assisted living facility. You happen to be living close by while your sister is living across the country, thousands of miles away. So the weight falls on you to be the one to help take care of your mother. You dutifully visit her each day. Every afternoon, on route home from work, you stop and spend an hour with her as she has her early dinner. And you do this faithfully, five times a week, year after year.
As you spend this hour each day with your mother, year after year, how many times during the course of a year will you have a truly stimulating and deep conversation with your mother? Once? Twice? Never? What are you talking about each day? Trivial things: the weather, your favorite sports team, what your kids are doing, the latest show on television, her aches and pains, and the mundane details of your own life. Occasionally you might even doze off for a while as she eats her early dinner. In a good year, perhaps once or twice, the conversation will take on some depth and the two of you will share more deeply about something of importance; but, save for that rare occasion, you will simply be filling in the time each day with superficial conversation.

But, and this is the question, are those daily visits with your mother in fact superficial, merely functionary because your conversations aren’t deep? Are you simply going through the motions of intimate relationship because of duty? Is anything deep happening?
Well, compare this with your sister who is (conveniently) living across the country and comes home once a year to visit your mother. When she visits, both she and your mother are wonderfully animated, they embrace enthusiastically, shed some tears upon seeing each other, and seemingly talk about things beyond the weather, their favorite sports teams, and their own tiredness. And you could kill them both! It seems that in this once-a-year meeting they have something that you, who visit daily, do not have. But is this true? Is what is happening between your sister and your mother in fact deeper than what is occurring each day when you visit your mother?
Absolutely not. What they have is, no doubt, more emotional and more affective, but it is, at the end of day, not particularly deep. When your mother dies, you will know your mother better than anyone else knows her and you will be much closer to her than your sister. Why? Because through all those days when you visited her and seemed to talk about nothing beyond the weather, some deeper things were happening under the surface. When your sister visited your mother things were happening on the surface (though emotionally and affectively the surface can look wonderfully more intriguing than what lies beneath it.) That is why honeymoons look better than marriage.
What your sister had with your mother is what novices experience in prayer and what couples experience on a honeymoon. What you had with your mother is what people experience in prayer and relationships when they are faithful over a long period of time. At a certain level of intimacy in all our relationships, including our relationship with God in prayer, the emotions and the affectivity (wonderful as they are) will become less and less important and simple presence, just being together, will become paramount. Previous to that, the important things were happening on the surface and emotions and affectivity were important; now deep bonding is happening beneath the surface and emotions and affectivity recede in importance. At a certain depth of relationship just being present to each other is what is important.
Too often, both popular psychology and popular spirituality do not really grasp this and consequently confuse the novice for the proficient, the honeymoon for the wedding, and the surface for the depth. In all of our relationships, we cannot make promises as to how we will always feel, but we can make promises to always be faithful, to show up, to be there, even if we are only talking about the weather, our favorite sports team, the latest television program, or our own tiredness. And it is okay occasionally to fall asleep while there because as Therese of Lisieux once said: a little child is equally pleasing to its parents, awake or asleep, probably more asleep! That also holds true for prayer. God does not mind us occasionally napping while at prayer because we are there and that is enough.
The great Spanish doctor of the soul John of the Cross tells us that as we travel deeper into any relationship, be it with God in prayer, with each other in intimacy, or with the community at large in service, eventually the surface will be less emotive and less affective and the deeper things will begin to happen under the surface.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Spirit and truth
By Father Aaron Williams
Our study of the liturgies of Holy Week picks up in this edition with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night. For the sake of these columns, I will save discussion of the Chrism Mass for a later issue since this Mass is historically new and deserves a fuller treatment. In older times, the ‘Chrism Mass’ was simply the Mass of Holy Thursday celebrated in the Cathedral church.
From an aesthetic and ceremonial perspective, the Holy Thursday Mass is the simplest of the Triduum lituriges. In many ways it resembles a ‘normal’ Mass, which seems fitting on the night which honors the institution of the Mass itself. From the beginning of the Mass, the overarching theme of the Triduum is put forward. The entrance antiphon begins, “Let us glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This same text is used as the entrance antiphon only on one other occasion in the year: Sept. 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
We tend to try to place ‘themes’ upon the Triduum liturgies, but the Church desires us understand these rites as a continual zooming in on the one Paschal Mystery. Holy Thursday should be understood as a Mass of the Passion, and retain the same somber tone that we would approach Good Friday. It is for this reason that the rubrics of the Holy Thursday Mass tell us that following the chanting of the Gloria, no instruments or bells are used until the Gloria at the Easter Vigil. The remainder of the Mass is sung a cappella. All through Lent, the church gradually strips away the ceremonial surroundings of the liturgy, and this comes to a climax on Holy Thursday night.
The Gospel read, both in the modern from and in the traditional Missal, does not actually tell the story of the institution of the Eucharist. Rather, the Gospel of the foot washing from St. John is used. This is to underscore the theme of the Passion in the Holy Thursday Mass. The reading of the foot washing on Holy Thursday isn’t a disconnected moment from the Triduum. Those who return for Good Friday will find that the Passion reading at that service will pick up where the previous night finished — again to underscore the one continual mystery celebrated through the Triduum.
In the Holy Week rites before 1955, there was no foot washing rite at this point. The Mandatum, as it is known, formerly was a rite reserved for Cathedrals and Monasteries when new members would be added to the clergy or monastic community. The head of the community would wash the new member’s feet while the community chanted, “Mandatum novum do vobis … I give you a new commandment, love one another as I have loved you.”

Pope Pius XII gave permission for this rite to be celebrated after the Holy Thursday Mass. In the later reform of Holy Week in 1955, the Mandatum is inserted into the Missal as an optional rite after the gospel — which made this rite unique considering there is very little that is optional in the traditional liturgical books. The modern liturgical books maintains the Mandatum as an optional rite, but moves its location to after the homily, rather than after the gospel. The traditional chant is still provided as an optional text to be chanted during the rite.
When this rite is celebrated, it must be the priest to perform the washing (and multiple priests should not be used). The priest takes the place of Christ, strips off his chasuble, and puts on a linen apron (or an amici tied about his waist). He should go one-by-one to each person and wash and dry at least their right foot. Remember that the theme of the entire Triduum is the Passion, so the emphasis here is that the priest, representing Christ, is also representing how Christ’s sacrifice was made not simply for all of us, but for each of us personally, which is why only the priest must celebrate this rite. Christ personally offers himself up for each of us in his Passion.
The Mass continues from this point as normal. The First Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon) must be used in this Mass, and it takes a special form where, prior to the institution narrative, reference is made to the fact that the Eucharist was instituted on Holy Thursday night.
Following communion, a ciborium (not a monstrance) remains on the altar. After the post-communion prayer, all kneel and the priest incenses the ciborium. Putting on a humeral veil, the priest carries the ciborium veiled around the church in a solemn procession with incense and lamps. It is appropriate that some members of the faithful follow this procession as at least a representation of the parish. The procession leads to a special altar which is richly decorated and prepared as the place of reservation for the next two nights.
This altar is traditionally called the ‘Sepulchre’ or tomb. Some modern theologians compare this altar to the Garden of Gethsemane, but traditionally it is understood as a representation of the tomb of Christ, since the Holy Thursday Mass is a celebration of the Passion and not simply of Holy Thursday night. In medieval rites, this altar had a significant role in the Easter liturgy, which we will visit at another time.
After the procession, the ciborium is placed inside the temporary tabernacle and the door is shut. Candles are left burning and adoration (without a monstrance) is kept solemnly until midnight. After that point, adoration may continue more simply, but the altar is to be left decorated through the Triduum — which is why it is best this altar be in another place than the church itself.

(Father Aaron Williams is the administrator at St. Joseph Parish in Greenville)

Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle
You can ask anyone who knows me, I love to cook. I love making wholesome and healthy meals and I absolutely love having people over for dinner. I love every minute of meal planning, shopping, meal prep, table setting, wine chilling, dessert making, and I love most the gathering of friends and family around my big country table. The pandemic has authoritatively terminated dinner parties and holiday gatherings since mid-March and will likely continue to scrub such activities for some time into the future. Not only have our gatherings been deferred but the glorious trip to Mother Kroger has been completely and utterly transformed.
Prior to the pandemic I never and I mean never thought I would utilize the “clicklist” shopping option at my local Kroger. Since the pandemic I use this option almost weekly and order my Mom’s groceries the same way. So, you are asking yourself, what do dinner parties and grocery shopping have to do with spirituality?
Here is the thing, as a society we have grown so accustom to having what we want, when we want. For most of us, we are a might bit demanding and our expectations for variety and quality are high. In a world of excess, it is easy to grow accustom to having what we want regardless of the season. But our present reality has made a mockery of our need for instant gratification and the best of the best. We have lost control of the things we have taken for granted like fully stocked shelves at the grocery store. The reality of having someone else shop for you means that you no longer control which bunch of bananas ends up in your cart. And we all know where we stand on the banana matrix of ripeness. If you are like me, slightly speckled bananas are considered over-ripe. If substitutions are made, you are not the one making that decision. On more than one occasion, I have found myself singing the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want” whilst unloading my “clicklist” groceries.
Therein lies the deeper lesson of this pandemic. This is a season of life marked by the destructive nature of an uncontrollable virus, but also marked by the opportunity to let go of our sense of control and seek God’s will. Ecclesiastes 3:1-5 reminds us, “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.” This ebb and flow of life’s events recognizes a proper time for everything under the sun.
What has this time of pandemic been for you? In March, I thought we would shelter in place for a few weeks, beat down this beast called coronavirus and be back in business by mid-April. I saw an opportunity for a hard reset that would take us out of the unhealthy and all-consuming busyness of our lives. Five months into this gig and the unhealthy busyness is creeping back in. I do not want to backslide. So, I am making an effort to reprioritize how I give myself to God, my family and my work.
We will look back on this time in the years to come and think about the many ways our lives have been forever changed by the pandemic. Some of them are as small as giving up control of what tomatoes end up in our shopping cart. Some of them will be seismic shifts in how we live. Sorting out what gifts we take with us from this pandemic and what we leave behind might be difficult. Just like the parable of the wheat and the weeds we may need to wait until harvest time to separate what is life giving from the things that just are not that important anymore. For now, I am leaning in. I know there are important lessons to be learned in all of this. The pandemic and the Kroger “clicklist” continue to remind me that I will not always get what I want, what I get may be less than what I expect, and there is a season for everything.

(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson)