Faith and Liturgy

Before I was married I used to lead a Bible study in my parish that brought together mainly young adults. As the resident guy with the Theology degree, I became the study leader, leading the discussion and doing the research into what we were reading at the time. I enjoyed it immensely, because it was a great social gathering (we always went for food and drink at Salem Beer Works afterward) as much as a wonderful intellectual and spiritual stimulation. I loved exercising those theology muscles again.

(The memory of the Bible study is also near and dear to my heart because it’s where I truly started the courtship of Melanie. After our near-disastrous beginning, she started coming to Bible study with her roommate and she saw I wasn’t just an impetuous cad.)

We haven’t had anything like the Bible study in a long time. After we and our friends started getting married and having kids, getting a free night to have people over the house became more and more difficult. Then we had to up and move to the South Shore of Boston, at least an hour away from our old place (at best). I’ve been attending the Men’s Group in our parish, but it’s not the same.

However, Melanie just started something new, which brings back the old theological joy, while also making me appreciate all over again what a smart, intellectual woman I married. Someone (I forget who, sorry) linked to 2006 academic article by Dr. Scott Hahn published in the journal “Letter & Spirit”. It was entitled “The Authority of Mystery: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI” (PDF). It looked intriguing so I downloaded it to my iPad, but I was having the hardest time reading it. Maybe it’s the lack of hard theological reading lately or just the many nights of sleep interrupted by wakeful children, but I couldn’t grasp it.

However, when I mentioned this, Melanie asked me to start reading it aloud to her. So I did as she cooked and cleaned in the kitchen, with punctuations from children seeking a drink or something. And what do you know? It worked. Suddenly I was grasping it. Not only that, but we start discussing it as we went, digging into the meaning, applying to our own situations or more broadly. As if by magic, we were back in our dating days, when we’d have long intellectual discussions while sitting in my car in front of Melanie’s house, as I was dropping her off from a date. Or standing by the door of my house after Bible study, her hand on the doorknob, for two hours.

A large part of our mutual attraction was indeed the intellectual curiosity and capacity of the other, but as we settled into the routine of family life, we seemed to have let that slide somewhat.

(While I’m shallow enough to admit that Melanie’s good looks were an equal part of my attraction to her, I’m also lucky that when Melanie considered me, looks were not as important as intellect.)

I’m reminded again what a blessing it is to have a wife with whom I share not just so many interests, but whose differences from me are also intriguing. I’m not a big poetry or “literature” fan (I like books just fine, but serious English Lit eludes me), but with Melanie I can begin to appreciate it. Likewise, Melanie has never been big on politics or science, but she likes to talk with me about them. And when it comes to faith and theology, that is a shared love we dig deep in together.

Some of the best husband-wife couples I know include two great intellects in them, which seems to spur both on to greater accomplishments. I’m thinking of Scot and Kimberly Hahn for one and Phil and Leila Lawler for another. Certainly, the life of the mind is a key element to a happy marriage, I think.

July 4 is the memorial of Pier Giorgio Frassati, the young man from Turin, Italy, who died in the early 1920s and who has become an unofficial patron for youth and young adults of our modern times.

I’ve maintained webpages devoted to Pier Giorgio online since about 1994 or 1995, when they lived at my members.aol.com site. Over the years, they’ve received tens of thousands of hits from all over the world from people seeking to learn more about this young man who has been an inspiration for me.

If you don’t know Pier Giorgio, I encourage you to learn more about him, perhaps from the several books written about him which I’ve linked from those pages. He’s certainly well worth knowing. And please pray to him for intercessions so that he can be canonized. I think it would be a boon for the Church.

As I’ve been writing on Twitter and Facebook this afternoon, my mom is very sick. She’s had replacement knees for several years and a problem with them getting infected. Twice now, she’s had to have one of the replacement knees removed for a six-week period while they dose with her antibiotics to knock the infection back.

The most recent surgery was a couple of weeks ago, which left her with a stent in her leg. There was concern ahead of the surgery that she might be too anemic or that there wouldn’t enough bone left to re-attach the surgical implant. They were worried they would end up amputating or—worst case—we’d lose her.

Since then she’s been in a rehab hospital and just came home this past week with a visiting nurse each day. Yesterday, she had a bad reaction while taking her IV meds and my sister took her to the ER. Last night, she asked the ER doc if he’d talked to my mom’s infectious disease doctor about whether my mom should be admitted or sent home. The ER doc said he had and that the infectious disease doc had been non-committal. So she went home.

This morning, my mom had a bad reaction again and when my sister called the infectious disease doctor, he said he hadn’t talked to the ER doc! She called 911 again and she’s back in the hospital.

My mom’s labs from yesterday came back and she is septic with a number of infections in her blood, including e. coli. They are moving her to ICU now.

We’re very worried. Please keep her in your prayers.

Do you belong to a Foursquare church? No, not this kind of Foursquare Church. Thiskind of Foursquare church. The kind you find on the social networking site Foursquare.

(In case you don’t know what Foursquare is, it’s a location-based social network that is used primarily with other social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. A user “checks in” to a venue, sometimes providing a pithy comment, a photo, or a tip at the same time. If you check-in to a location often enough, you can become its “mayor,” which usually only affords bragging rights, but in some cases can result in special “mayoral” benefits from an Internet-savvy retailer.)

Some have dismissed Foursquare as another example of the ability of social-networking addicts to share too much of the minutiae of their lives, which can be true. Just as no one needs to know every time you retire to the bathroom on Twitter, neither does everyone need to know every time you stop for gas at the service station or pick up a value meal at McDonald’s. for my part, I only use Foursquare when I actually have something pithy to say. (If you’d still like to check-in, say to maintain your mayorship, without having anything to say, you can check-in without sending the notice to your Twitter or Facebook stream.) In any case, it can be another fun way to get to know your social-media friends and to share a little bit of yourself with people who live far from you.

But Foursquare can also be an opportunity to live out your Christian witness. Using the tools that Foursquare gives you, you can let your check-ins speak to others. For example, I’m the “mayor” of my parish, St. Joseph in Holbrook, MA. If you look at the page for my parish on Foursquare, you will see that I’ve made sure that all of the parish’s contact information is correct, including the address. I’ve also used the tips feature to leave information about the parish’s men’s group. And when we have special occasions at the parish, like the recent May crowning, I include a photo in my check-in.

Similarly, I check in to my workplace daily at the Archdiocese of Boston’s Pastoral Center in Braintree. On that venue page, I’ve made sure the address and phone number are correct as well as putting our Twitter page there. My tip for the Pastoral Center lists the time for daily Mass in our Bethany Chapel, inviting the public to attend and stay for lunch afterward in our cafeteria. I could also leave a tip to check out the small religious goods shop run by the Sister Servants of the Divine Master off the lobby. Or to make an appointment to do genealogical research in the archdiocesan Archives. Or something similar.

The point is that just by checking in on Foursquare, you can provide an invitation for the casual user, someone who may just be in the area or who follows you on Twitter or Foursquare or Facebook. to experience the prompting of the Holy Spirt. It’s certainly not the entirety of Christian witness (we should all be doing a lot more than that in our daily lives to share the Gospel with others), but it’s just one small way to do your part to make Christ present in life. Even in the social networking world on Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter.

Now that Isabella is five years old (where id the time go?!), Melanie and I have been talking about her education, which we expect to begin formally in the fall as homeschooling. While Melanie is taking the lead here, I want to be involved, especially in the subjects in which I have competence including her faith formation.

I want to make sure that all of our kids are better off than many of the kids I used to see in religious education, many of whom couldn’t name the Ten Commandments or the 12 Apostles and didn’t recognize who Adam or Noah were. Now, as I’ve chronicled here and on my Facebook page, it’s obvious that our four children are doing pretty well in this area and by their prayers and how they talk to us we know that they are developing a personal relationship with Christ. Yet I was emphasizing to Melanie how important it is that Isabella learn some things by rote as well. I want her to be able to answer the question, “Why did God create me?” I want her to be able to name the 12 Apostles and the Ten Commandments and to know the Patriarchs of the Old Testament and all that stuff that I didn’t learn in my hippy-dippy “Jesus is my pal” religious education back in the ’70s.

But Melanie assured me that Bella and the others are doing okay. For a five year old, Isabella is very advanced. And I saw proof of it this morning. Before breakfast, she was sitting on the couch with me and she picked a children’s book of the Way of the Cross. Even though she can’t read, she was able to identify by the images all of the Stations of the Cross and give them their proper names. She picked out St. Veronica and declared her to be her new favorite saint. In the back of the book she recognized the Regina Caeli, even though she cannot yet read, and then began to sing it. In Latin. A few minutes later, she went to take care business in the bathroom and while in there she regaled the whole house with the Litany of the Saints.

So I guess I don’t have to worry too much about whether she’s learning her faith. I don’t want to relax too much, but I think I don’t have to be afraid as long as she keeps reading good books, still loves to go to Mass, we keep praying with her, and we keep modeling our own faith to her. In the end, we have to leave the rest of it up to the Holy Spirit.

This parenting stuff is hard.

Bob Rice’s “Between the Savior and the Sea” is a novelization of the public ministry of Jesus with a focus on St. Peter. It is not a theological treatise, although as Bob says, he based his story on solid theology. Neither is it private revelation, although it is faithful to the public revelation of the Four Gospels. Instead, what Bob has created is a narrative bridge that fills in the gaps of what the Gospels choose to tell us, creating a story that brings the truths about Christ and His apostles to us in new ways that are uniquely suited to a culture such as ours that consumes such stories for hours per day.

To be clear, Bob is not claiming that the way he depicts Jesus, Peter, Mary or any of the figures in the books is the way they actually were. “Between the Savior and the Sea” is undoubtedly not what really happened in the pubic ministry of Christ. But it could be what happened as nearly everything rings true to what Scripture and Tradition tell us.

“Between the Savior and the Sea” accomplishes what every work of Christian fiction should aspire to, namely that as I read it and when I was done I was brought closer to Christ, to His Church, and to His sacraments. At times, I was brought to the point of tears as I contemplated Christ’s love and His sacrifices. Particularly moving was the scene in which Mary receives the Body of Christ from the cross and contemplates Him as the newborn baby He once was.

The focus on St. Peter is especially satisfying. I’ve always loved Peter because it is so easy to identify with him. Having been chosen by the Lord, Peter so obviously fails again and again, and yet manages to also express profound truths about the Lord. In his denial of Jesus, he’s not quite like Judas in the depth of his betrayal, but even so he shows in his life the forgiveness that could have been Judas’ had he not given into despair. Bob’s depiction of Peter’s soaring love for Christ, his self-doubt, his final thrust of himself at the mercy of the Lord all resonate with my own relationship with Christ. How often do I fall in to sin? Yet, even St. Peter failed the Lord at times and look at he got back up time and again to go forward for the Lord.

Some will be bothered by the colloquial language used by the characters in the novel as being too 21st-century American. Others will not like how one or another character does not live up to their own mental images of these people who are in many ways as much a part of our lives as our own families. It can be hard to let encounter someone else’s interpretation of that person.

The research that Bob put into the book shows clearly. He went to the Holy Land and stood in the places he describes and in that way, we stand there too.

At the beginning of Holy Week, this is a perfect time to read this book. It will be good spiritual reading and nourishment for your contemplation of the Passion and Resurrection. If you have a Kindle or a device that can show Kindle books, then you can download the book and be reading it within minutes.

Personal Disclosure: Bob and I went to school together at Franciscan University of Steubenville, but my opinion of his book would be the same regardless.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I’d been anticipating the release of Apple’s iPad 2 for months, even before they’d officially announced it. I’d see the launch of the first iPad last year and I’d even got to use some that belonged to others briefly and I’d known immediately how such a device could contribute to both my work and personal lives. The iPad fills a gap between my iPhone and my MacBook Pro perfectly.

I’d been talking about the iPad with Melanie non-stop about the iPad since last year about what a great tool it is. I also started hinting that I thought we should get one. She agreed on the awesomeness of the iPad, but was concerned whether we could afford it. I’ve been working the numbers ever since and had been waiting to see what our tax refund looked like and as of late January I knew we could afford it. So we talked about it.

So, you have to understand something of the way Melanie and I converse. Melanie is the silent thinker. I speak, she listens and then says something back. I speak again and she doesn’t say much. I make a definitive statement, like “So, we should get it.” She doesn’t say anything. My mistake here is thinking that silence is assent. (And I will concede there may be some willful blindness on my part.)

Fast forward to March 11, the first Friday of Lent and the day Apple is launching the iPad 2. There is huge demand and lines for the product as people wait outside stores for the launch at 5pm. I couldn’t be there because I was working on our new radio program, The Good Catholic Life, but as soon as I was done, about 6pm, I went straight to the Apple Store across the street. Madness. A huge line and the Apple employee told me all they had left was a model I didn’t want. I headed straight for Best Buy, which was also selling them that day. Score! They had models in stock and only a few people were ahead of me.

As I was waiting in line, I got a text from Melanie: “Coming home soon?” I text back, “Soon. In line for iPad.” Her reply: “Seriously? I didn’t know we’d agreed on that.” I may not be the swiftest guy on the block, but I knew what that meant. I got out of line, got in my car and headed straight home.

After dinner and after the kids were in bed, we sat down and had a conversation. It was a calm and rationale discussion that ended with me agreeing that we should save the funds for something else. I was disappointed, sure, but I agreed. I’d been thinking for weeks by that point that I was getting an iPad and suddenly that wasn’t going to happen. But you suck it up and move on. In the end, it’s just a gadget and there a lot of people getting by with a lot less than that.

Although it was the third day of Lent by that Friday, I hadn’t yet decided what I was giving up for the season. I decided to offer up the iPad as a sacrifice for Lent, turning my disappointment into prayer for the needs of my family. It’s not curing world hunger, but it was something.

But then something wonderful happened on Saturday. Melanie pulled me aside and told me she’d been thinking and, if I was really sure that we had the funds available, I could get the iPad. The skies parted, angels sang, and the sun shone down.

Of course, I forgot my Lenten sacrifice.

I ran to the computer to see if I could order one online. Ack, backorders were listed at 3 to 4 weeks. On Monday, I went to the Apple Store. Sold out, no idea when more would come in. I went back a few times, even first thing in the morning and finally learned that people were lining up at 5am every day and getting the few iPads coming in each day. I resigned myself to ordering online finally, having lost a week in the process.

The other day as I was checking my order status for the umpteenth time, I suddenly remembered my Lenten promise to God to offer up my disappointment at not having an iPad. With a sneaking suspicion, I checked again the expected date of shipment that Apple gave me: April 21. Holy Thursday. Delivery date: April 26. Easter Tuesday.

I had to laugh. Even if I’d forgotten my Lenten promise, it seems God had not. I really was giving up my new iPad for Lent.

So now, I’m waiting every day for the end of Lent to come, awaiting in anticipation of Easter glory for more than one reason. And as I start to see friends get their iPads, I feel that pang of envy. I have not yet mastered my feelings, but this is good practice.

I’m so glad God has a sense of humor. And I’m glad I have a patient, understanding and wonderful wife who puts up with my nonsense. I couldn’t be more blessed.

Update: I just received an email notifying me that my iPad has shipped early from Shenzen, China! And when will it arrive? Yep, at the end of Lent.

I’ve been relying on St. Anthony a lot lately. First, there was my wallet, which dropped out of Melanie’s coat pocket into 18 inches of snow in the backyard. I’d lent it to her when she ran into the store for essentials after Mass on Sunday a couple of weeks ago. We got a blizzard the next day, I lost track of it, and when I asked for it as I was leaving for work the following day, it was gone. We searched and searched, but no go. We said a quick prayer to St. Anthony, then while I was at work (canceling all my credit cards, alas), Isabella took it on herself to go search the backyard (18 inches of snow!) and, lo and behold, she found it! And it’s not like Melanie didn’t both go tramping about the yard looking for it.

The second lost item was an important file on my sister’s computer. She’d used the Stickies program on her Mac to keep a lot of very important data (don’t do this, by the way; it is only intended for temporary data, not permanent) and now it was gone. One of her kids must have closed the note. Now, the program does prompt you to save the note as a text file first, so I tried searching her drive for a saved file, but nothing came up. And of course, her backup program hadn’t been actually backing up. (She misunderstood how it was supposed to work.) So, I told her to use Evernote from now on, instead of Stickies and wished her well reconstructing her data. Well, instead she turned to St. Anthony and—lo and behold!—he came through again. She found the text file we’d been searching for with all her data intact.

Fast forward to last week. We got another snowstorm last Wednesday and on Thursday, as I was getting ready to head out to work, I started my car to warm it up, cleared off ice and snow from the windows, then went back into the house where my eyeglasses promptly fogged up. So, I set them on top of my head—or rather, on top of my wool cap where they perched precariously. I gathered my computer bag, went about the house giving goodbye kisses, and then went outside to the car. As I settled into the car seat, I reached up to get my glasses and… they were gone. I search the car, front seat and back. I re-traced my footsteps around the car, and back into the house, to all the rooms I’d been in. Nothing. It was possible they’d got flung off their precarious perch into a snowbank, in which case I wouldn’t see them until the spring thaw. Grumbling at my own stupidity, I pulled out my backup glasses and went off to work.

This morning, as I got in my car again, I thought, “I haven’t prayed to St. Anthony about these glasses yet.” And that ever-present skeptic in me pooh-poohed the idea, telling me not to be superstitious, that St. Anthony is not the keeper of some heavenly private detective service, seeking out lost keys and glasses and wallets throughout the world. I told the inner skeptic to pipe down and said some kind of perfunctory prayer—“St. Anthony, can you help me out here?” or some such—then backed out of the driveway. As I was driving away from the house, my hand drifted down to the center console where it landed right on my glasses.

Had I simply overlooked the glasses in my frantic searching before? Maybe. Nevertheless, I believe that God also opens our hearts to see Him and the work of the saints and angels on our behalf in the world around us. It must be a terribly lonely thing to have a completely materialistic and ultimately nihilistic worldview. For me, it’s a great comfort and joy to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, including a few looking out for an absent-minded dad.

By the way, it’s probably also no coincidence that Melanie is due to give birth to a boy on February 24 and that we’d already decided to name him Anthony.

Photo by Flickr user La Paloma Alegre

Something one of our priests said in his homily a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about a way I could exercise my spiritual duties as father and husband. Father told an anecdote in his homily about a friend of his who set his cell phone to beep on the hour every day to remind him to pray for his wife and kids, wherever he happened to be.

I like that idea. I would like to be able to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day, marking each of the hours of the day with readings and prayers, like religious and priests do. Unfortunately, there just isn’t the time for it. I’m often in meetings or deep in a project and by the time the end of the day rolls around I can’t believe 8 hours has passed.

But this I could do.

So I set up a series of reminders using my favorite to-do web service at RememberTheMilk.com that are timed for each hour. Starting at 9am, RTM sends a notification through their iPhone app to my phone to pray for Melanie. I stop for a moment, say a quick prayer for her needs and intentions and that I would be the husband she needs me to be. Again, at 10, I pray for Isabella, her needs and intentions, and that Melanie and I would be the parents she needs us to be. Then at 11 for Sophia, 1pm for Ben (noon being too distracting with going to lunch), and 2pm for our unborn baby.

Occasionally, I’m talking to someone, or on the phone, or in a meeting when the top of the hour rolls around, but as soon as I can after the hour, I take a minute to pause and pray.

I can’t be with Melanie and the kids every day, all day like I would want, but it’s a way for me to be present with them and to be caring for them even as I go about my workday. It’s a kind of father’s Liturgy of the Hours.

Update: Something I forgot to mention: Last week, Melanie told me that during her weekly trip to the grocery store, she lost track of Sophia at the checkout. Our little 2-year-old had wandered out the doors of the market and a kind woman had come back in to find the mother of the crying little girl outside. I was shaken up hearing about it and Melanie was quite shaken up at the time too. But when she she told me about it later, she mentioned the time of day she got home and got the kids lunch and put them down for naps. I realized then that the incident at the checkout happened at just about 11am, right when I was praying for Sophia. The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways.

I picked up a new chaplet from a local New Hampshire Rosary maker online whose web site is entitled appropriately for Memorial Day, Battlebeads, as in “beads with which to do spiritual battle.”

While there are very many nice-looking rosaries, I already have perfectly good ones at the moment. But what caught my eye was the USA Chaplet, a set of beads that includes 5 groups of 4 beads along with a special prayer for blessings and a protective hand for the United States. This is an approved devotion, having received the Nihil Obstat from the Bishop of Manchester, NH. So I bought one for myself, which you can see in the attached photoH.

What’s especially nice is that the proprietress of Battlebeads.com prays for each person who buys a rosary or chaplet in particular; she touches each set of beads to a first-class relic, making it a third-class relic; and asks you to pray for her ministry and include her your intentions.

The joy that fills my soul as my hands create these prayerful gifts is astounding. Oftentimes, as I am working, I have an audio or video of the rosary or Chaplet of Divine Mercy on and I pray with each bead I add. Additionally, when I’m done with each rosary, I pray at least a chaplet on each one before they’re packaged. When I receive an email of a sale, I immediately say a prayer for the buyer, who later gets ‘perpetually enrolled’ in my 3PM daily prayers. I am now, offering monthly Masses in addition to the annual Novena of Masses for all my customers and their intentions from the Seraphic Mass Association.

The prices are also obviously set to cover the cost of materials and shipping, not her labor. This is a labor of love for her. If you’re interested in a new rosary or chaplet for yourself or as a gift, I would recommend you check out Battlebeads.