On the Buildings of Communities of Faith

It is probably apparent to most of us in our parishes that we have spiritual and material strengths, and some weaknesses. For example, Mass attendance, although not perfect, is generally quite good. Considering the size of St. Mark’s and our people’s demanding schedules, daily Mass attendance is excellent. It has been truly heartening to see how St. Mary’s, Raynesford, displays devotion for their small church and for that faith community; indeed, St. Mary’s is so vibrant that although it is a mission in church law, in reality it acts more as an independent parish. This year I plan to offer several special Masses at St. Mary’s, beginning on the Eve of All Saints (Halloween). St. Clement’s needs and will receive considerable effort to build a living community there once the beloved chapel has been removed to St. Thomas Camp. As noted, I will offer Masses there during summer months only. Holy Trinity, Centerville, a truly independent parish, has integrated parishioners from Great Falls with notable warmth and Christian charity. Also, I much appreciate the way parishioners who live in “the Gulch” maintain their facility, and assist the priest in every possible way. Holy Trinity is a wonderful faith community, and I invite all of our parishioners to attend there at least once in the next few months to appreciate them as part of our common community.

Because I live at St. Mark’s, Belt, and because this parish remains our largest in numbers, more services have been offered here.  Perhaps my largest disappointment with St. Mark’s has been the non-attendance of many of our children during summer months. We truly need to encourage better youth attendance. Although it seemed as though we could not offer CCD classes this fall at St. Mark’s, guidance from Lisa Jassen may help us find a good solution. Regarding our week-day Masses in Belt, so well attended, I invite each parishioner to attend on some occasion if at all possible, just to appreciate  the kind of close fellowship we experience in these more intimate liturgies.

What is most needed in our four faith communities, I believe, is ongoing spiritual development for our adults, who will then share their growth with their children and with other people living in this part of central Montana. In addition to our Eucharistic celebrations, I try to provide adult faith formation classes periodically throughout the year. A new series will begin sometime in mid or late fall; to date, I have not decided on our topic or text to study, so suggestions are welcomed. Furthermore, I have asked Fr. Owen to begin the NeoCatechumenate at St. Mark's, and that may happen in January. We will provide information in coming weeks of this program of intense faith-and-discipleship formation.

More is needed. We all need growth in genuine faith, which includes knowledge and practice of our Catholic faith within the context of the Diocese of Great Falls. We also need to develop bonds with Protestant brethren in this area, as we share our love of Christ Jesus.  In coming weeks, I encourage you to share with me thoughts you may have for helping us build up our common life together. Jesus tells us how to proceed:  “Ask, and you shall receive.” 

"Renounce All That You Have To Be My Disciple"

Recently we heard Jesus ask this question: “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, rather division....” Although no doubt puzzling to people used to illusions of “world peace,” and the like, a little reflection clarifies, to some extent, the meaning of Jesus’ words: Christ brings peace, but not an end to wars and human divisions; what he brings to a faithful disciple is “the peace of God that surpasses understanding,” and the peace of a cleaned conscience. But he also brings division, for anyone who seeks to follow Christ faithfully will encounter hostility from people who resist God. Furthermore, each of us discovers that as we obey Christ, there is often a division in our own hearts, for we must say “yes” to God and to genuine love of neighbor and “no” to our own selfish desires and strivings for power or prestige. So Christ brings peace to a human soul only to the extent that one is utterly faithful to the LORD.

The saying from St. Luke’s gospel on “renouncing all your possessions” is yet more challenging. It is an absolute demand, for Christ did not say, “renounce your excess possessions,” or “give up luxuries,” but that one must renounce everything that one has--not only luxuries, but all things, even human relationships, and “even his own life.” If a Christian wishes to take Christ seriously, than he or she would have to try to understand his meaning in these absolute demands, and respond accordingly. Christ gives a human being no place to hide from God or from his word. If we take the gospel seriously, we are exposed to the penetrating light of God who gives all and demands all.

 “This is a hard saying. Who can bear it?”  Many hear what Jesus Christ says, and choose to turn away. Others filter out the difficult sayings, and hear only words of “forgiveness,” “mercy,” “love.” To those who want Christ on their own terms, he says: “No one can be my disciple unless he hates father, mother, family, children, even his own life” (Luke 14:26). What does he mean? Does Christ actually want one to hate his own family, and his very life? He is speaking as a Jew to Jews, using a Hebrew form of speech. It is extreme in order to get the main point across without “wiggle room.” To be a disciple, one must choose and love Christ more than his family, himself, his “stuff.” To be a disciple means to place God and Christ first and foremost ahead of anyone, anything. What Christ keeps saying to us is that anything less than complete loyalty to God, perfect love, all-giving, all-costly love, is not genuine.

If anyone of us can hear Christ’s words and feel comfortable or satisfied with the quality of his discipleship, his love of God and of neighbor, he should at least realize that he is spiritually dull or even dead. More to the point, one satisfied with his love of Christ should wonder if he or she really loves Christ at all, but is just playing a religious game. On the other hand, to one who seeks to be an ever-better disciple, who strives to grow in God’s grace, that soul lives in the stream of God’s mercy, and despite failures, keeps on stretching forth into God. To one who “forgets what lies behind, but strains forward” into God, one knows well that in God’s time, everything will be stripped away, and the soul will be found stripped and alive in God alone.

On Following Diocesan Policies

For reasons which should be obvious to all by now, it is highly important that our faith communities follow diocesan policies. If these policies, based on laws of the Catholic church, are not being followed, you should wonder why, and question whether some serious wrongdoings are taking place. Perhaps appointing an Ombudsman to investigate fidelity to diocesan policies would be beneficial. Such an Ombudsman would consult the priest-pastor (Fr. Paul) on any negligences, and inform the Bishop or proper chancery official if serious deficiencies are not corrected at once. I have been informed that for years, St. Mark’s, Holy Trinity, and the two missions did not have a finance council to oversee all parish income and expenditures.  We must be sure that such negligence does not happen again. Parishioners need to be properly informed and protective of the goods of the parishes.

For example, an operating parish council is recommended in canon law, but not required; a functioning finance council is mandatory for a parish, not only by diocesan policy, but by the laws of the Catholic church. To comply with these important laws, I immediately formed a finance council at St. Mark’s, which includes members from our four faith communities. (Holy Trinity, as a separate parish, may request a separate finance council meeting with me, should their two representatives ever wish to do so.) A typical reason for having an Ombudsman who knows the policies and insists on their enforcement occurred in the case of Holy Trinity, which had not been informed years ago that a priest does not receive a salary from each community he serves. Rather, each priest, pastor, or parish administrator according to diocesan policy receives one pay check monthly, with the amount completely regulated by diocesan policy. A priest with multiple parishes or missions does not receive any extra payment for this duty, as a priest with a very large parish does not receive extra payment, either. Parishioners, or at least finance council/Ombudsman, such know these policies and assure that they are faithfully followed. Furthermore, the claim that the pastor is underpaid, and therefore in need of “supplemental income” from his parishes is simply false.  In addition to our annual salary, we receive housing, a food allowance, and payment of 90% of our auto expenses--if and only if we document all expenses with receipts. Without proof of expenditures, the priest must pay for food, gasoline, or repairs out of pocket.  

According to diocesan policy, accurate records must be kept. It is clearly a serious violation for a priest to destroy, or ask others to destroy, parish records. Our finance records prior to January 2011 have never been found.  As some of Holy Trinity’s Sacramental records seem to have been in the same closet with their financial records, these records, too, disappeared several years ago, during the transition between priests. We are obliged to maintain and to protect Sacramental and financial records. 

Prayer Book of the Church

 Prayer is the life-breath of a Christian’s spiritual life. Without a genuine effort to keep in close contact with God our life, we contract into ourselves.  A self-enclosed, self-contained life soon yields to disordered passions, anxiety, depression, restlessness, mindless TV stupor, endless pursuit of entertainment, and so on. Prayer grounds us in divine Presence, in the reality that says to those who listen, “I AM your salvation.”  Prayer opens us up to the truth of reality.

When I was a young man I asked a friend who had been a Carthusian monk, “What is the prayer book of the Church?” For I was seeking a good collection of Catholic-Christian prayers. His ready reply was: “The Psalms.”  I immediately felt disappointed, because I had often prayed the psalms of the Bible, but thought that Christians could have better prayers than this collection of Israelite and Jewish (Old Testament) songs, hymns, laments.  Over time I came to learn that the Psalms do indeed form the skeleton of prayer life in the Church, especially for Catholic religious and clergy, and as a Benedictine, I have prayed most of the psalms literally thousands of times, using different translations. On the other hand, there are also magnificent prayers composed by devout Christians over the centuries, and some collections may be available. A few of these Christian prayers are known by many, such as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Memorare. One project I have long desired to accomplish is to make readily available to our faithful in parishes a very good collection of Christian prayers. That work awaits me. 

Still, however, the Psalms are indeed the Prayer Book of the Church, used and approved by two thousand years of praying by the faithful. I encourage our faithful to pray the psalms often. One can usefully begin with Psalm 1, and read up to Psalm 150. I have found it beneficial to read the psalms in the order in which we find them in our bibles, an order developed centuries before Christ by Jewish priests and scholars. Over time, one should discover favorite psalms which you “read, mark, and inwardly digest,” using Luther’s apt phrase. In the past, I have listed psalms I especially recommend, and I hope that some parishioners have prayed them. Remember: Jesus prayed the Psalms, and so has the Church over centuries.

There are truly psalms for all sorts of spiritual needs, feelings, problems of life, occasions of thanksgiving. Some of these prayers express joy in God, some are cries from hurting hearts. Many are mixed, often moving from desperate need to thankfulness for the LORD’s tender mercies. The point is: Pray. “Pray as you can, do not try to pray as you can’t.” Spiritual laziness leads to emptiness of spirit and a troubled mind. Pray. If any of you asks me, “Can you recommend a psalm or two for me?” I should be glad to do so.  It would be one way to give you a little practical help in your spiritual life, your desire to grow closer to the God in whom “we live, and move, and have our being.”

(Click here for a collection of previously recommended psalms by Fr. Paul).

A Dose of Reality

Order in the soul, order in the life of human beings, remains the source of order and goodness in society at large. When human beings are mentally and spiritually disordered, society suffers waves of unrest, political disturbances, social upheavals. The breakdown of order in our society and civilization, evident for decades, becomes acute.  Order in soul and society can be restored in one of two ways: by responsible action in individuals, or by increased doses of force applied by civil (or not-so-civil) authorities. The kind of order that results from applied force is not a truly civil society, but to one degree or another, an uncivil and even nightmarish police state. If human beings will not govern themselves, they will be ruled by power and more or less arbitrary commands.

Order in the soul depends on acquiring and practicing virtues. The most foundational virtue is faith in the sense of trust in the presence of God, who orders a person by love and wisdom. This kind of faith is not mere religious beliefs or intellectual thoughts, but a trusting, loving opening of the soul to the presence of the unseen God. The soul unattuned to divine presence will live a life of disorder, rebellion, self-centeredness, addictions, deceit, lying, and so on. The human soul open to God’s presence, responsive to God, cooperating with the divine, is capable of true love, fidelity, prudent and responsible action, self-control, human friendship, generosity.

An essential part of ordering one’s life is openness to the truth of reality.  Acceptance of truth requires one to break from untruths, from fantasy worlds, from delusions and illusions. The human being unaware of divine presence in the soul and in the cosmic order (reality) becomes a prey to destructive forces, to manipulation by power elites and propaganda, to the wiles of advertisers, to “values” and empty-headed opinions, to unruly passions. To be attuned to the truth of reality, on the contrary, means an active awareness of one’s sharing in the mysterious Whole in which beings and things exist. We are partners in the Whole of reality, and this Whole remains largely beyond our wishes and control. Reality can break into lives with a suddenness and fury that leave one bewildered and humbled. How foolish we human beings are to think that we can remake or control the vast, mysterious Whole in which we exist for a short period. 

Reality can and will break in. Many of us experienced a powerful reminder of the uncontrollable ways of reality this past week when a sudden fury pounded us with wind, rain, hail. It came, it shock up our little worlds, and it departed. Destroyed crops, damaged trees, wounded gardens, broken windows: reminders of our vulnerability to natural powers beyond our control, and of our own littleness in the scheme of things, in the timeless cosmic Whole existing time and time after. 

“Make us know the shortness of life, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” 

Avoiding Pitfalls in Faith and in Religious Practices

Living faith in God is one of the simplest and most basic activities possible for a human being. Although faith is a response to “hearing the word of God,” as the Apostle Paul wrote and as prophets before him declared, it remains a starkly simple activity on our part. God initiates faith by moving us to turn toward Him; but the response is ours to make, or not. Faith does not require studying the Bible, or performing various religious practices, or being taught what to believe and what to do. It is a simple act, that one makes in the moment, and which a soul needs to choose to do repeatedly. The essence of faith in God is a loving, trusting turning of the gaze of the mind towards the living God, who is ever beyond our grasp or knowledge. Hence, it can be called the opening of the soul towards the unseen source of all that is. To believe in God, to trust in God, is essentially an act of loving surrender and wonder. It happens in the moment, now, when one says, “Yes,” to God’s gentle pull. 

Each of us has his or her own set of obstacles or hindrances to naked faith. Some are emotional: a fear of trusting; a fear of trusting what we do not know; a fear of losing control; a fear of change; a fear of dying; fear generated by stories suggesting that God is not truly good and just. Other obstacles arise less from fear than from an excessive love of ourselves, rather than of God: Self-centered life; love of power; love to dominate; over-evaluating our own abilities; love of money, love of “stuff.”  We also can see the excessive love of play, of self-gratification, a refusal to grow up and to live responsibly. All of these vices and bad habits surely are contrary to childlike trust in God. 

Among church-attending Catholics, two main substitutes for simple faith keep showing up, both of which are in effect mental or spiritual diseases:  Traditionalism and secular social activism. Traditionalism substitutes a clinging to “traditions” and various forms of worship rather than to the unseen God. Traditionalists are those who “cling to the side of the pool, rather than swim,” as I like to put it. Traditionalists, like the Pharisees who resisted Jesus, love their laws, rules, religious practices and beliefs more than they love God.  At the heart of traditionalism is a fear of change, and a foolish love of one’s own judgment and opinions. They nit-pick and complain, and feel moral outrage at what they do not like.

Secularists in the church predominate in some areas. My home town of Missoula was a hot-bed for these social manipulators. Rather than love God and develop a genuine spiritual life, they have their worldly substitutes:  change the Church; change society; end war; provide for the needs and wants of everyone; and so on. Secularists are worldly, or “in love with the world.”  Rather than face their own personal short-comings and mortality, secularists want to tamper with everything they can get their hands on.  Never at rest, they seek power, control, dominance, all in the name of “doing good,” or “social justice,” or some other slogan of the day. Although secular souls may do some good, such as helping to feed the hungry, they lack an awareness of their own sin, ignorance, mortality, and need to turn around and face the living God. They want to “change the world,” not live now in God.

"New Order of the Ages?" Some Fireworks on the 4th of July

 

On the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America are two quotations in Latin, which translated mean: “He has favored our undertaking” and “New order of the ages.”  That our country’s founding was undertaken by men and women with trust in the Almighty is well documented from original sources.  As we survey the history of our country from its early 17th-century colonial founding, we can indeed find many reasons to be grateful for this land, our people, our institutions, and the American way of life. That the United States of America can in truth be called “the new order of the ages,” or even “a new order of the ages,” suggests a kind of millennialism or Messianic consciousness which can scarcely be deemed reasonable, but rather displays overly enthusiastic expectations for this country during the period of the Revolution and our constitutional Founding.

From the perspective of the 21st century--if not long before--a human being moved more by reason than by excessive passions would have to marvel at what happened to our founding experiment, to the country that most citizens of our country still love. What we experience daily is far less a “new order of the ages” than another heavily disordered body politic whose fate is not at all assured. How long the United States of America will survive in the course of history, before it goes “the way of all flesh,” no one knows. But one experiences daily strong and disturbing symptoms of disorder, of decay, of what surely feels like the passing away of this country--or at least of its historical way of life, of “justice under law.”

There is, it seems to me, a great chasm in the political consciousness and heart of every American born several decades or more ago--say, born and raised before the Viet-Nam debacle. We love our country and feel considerable patriotic pride; and yet, especially in moments of sober honesty, we recognize and feel in our whole being that this country is spiritually, morally, and politically sick. The “New Order” is experienced on a daily basis as disorder. And the sickness, the disorder, is seen in many citizens, in our political and civil rulers, often in our own families, perhaps in ourselves. If we are willing to face reality, each of us can list a number of disturbing symptoms, signs of deep corruption at every level. And facing the truth of reality, we can echo the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson when he said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just....”

America is paying the price for her corrosive spiritual negligences. Unfortunately, those who bear the most burden are the young. With minds often corrupted and damaged--but surely not properly developed--by broken or wounded families and by a poor and often perverse educational system, our young are all-too-often rudderless, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, adrift in a seemingly meaningless life of destructive music, mindless mass media, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of good economic opportunities, a vast spiritual wasteland that is breeding anxiety, depression, narcissism, egomania, violent behavior, suicide.
 
America is losing its soul.  As a people in history, we have turned away from the one source of true order in human lives: God. Wanting what we want, when we want it, regardless of the consequences, we have shrunk ourselves down to such a level that even our “great ones” appear to be very small indeed to anyone with eyes to see.  Political, educational, cultural, business elites should inspire our people to strive for excellence, to cultivate virtuous lives, to sacrifice selfish ambitions for the common good. Instead, what we see is a virtual free-for-all for power and wealth among “elites” who are often about as uncontrolled and uncontrollable as many of our youth.  It is not the most noble and virtuous who rise to the top in America, but generally the more unscrupulous, the deceived and deceiving, the most power-driven.  

Forty years ago, the Russian writer and prophet Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned our country that we were spiritually sick and dying. Rather than listen to him, our educated elites chose to ignore him, or to vilify him, and to continue deceiving us. We must consider again Solzhenitsyn’s basic truth: That a people in history who have rejected God will break apart and perish, regardless of how we raise our wine glasses and flash fake smiles. My hope is that the undertaker is not yet at the door, and that a genuine spiritual and intellectual renewal is possible.  But before undergoing renewal, we must at least acknowledge the spiritual, intellectual, and moral wasteland that we have become. Unfortunately, recognizing this truth is least likely by those who hold the reins of power and mass manipulation in this country.