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Sacrament and Service Go Hand in Hand

Steve · April 25, 2019 · 4 Comments

Fr. Tom Santen's chalice (made from a cannon shell). SJG photo.

My next “Faith Perspectives” column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch appeared online yesterday and should appear in the paper on Saturday morning. It’s a reflection on the recent Holy Thursday liturgy and the link between sacrament and service, between sharing in the Eucharist and washing the feet of those around us. You can read my column below or online here: http://bit.ly/sacramentservice

Just a few weeks ago at the evening Holy Thursday “Mass of the Last Supper” at my parish, I sat and kneeled and prayed, contemplating the creation of the sacrament of the Eucharist by Jesus in that upper room so long ago. This simple sacred meal, in which Catholics believe bread becomes Christ’s body and wine becomes his blood, is celebrated daily by Catholics around the world as the true presence of Christ in our midst. It is our center, our gathering place, our source and sustenance.

But the mass and the scripture readings for that evening did not end with the disciples huddled in the upper room, prayerfully professing their faith in this new-found communal meal. For before they had much time to even ponder the meaning this new sign of the divine in the world, Jesus gives them something else to consider.

A ‘New Road or a Secret Gate’

Steve · March 31, 2019 · 22 Comments

Still around the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the moon or to the sun.

from “Upon the Hearth the Fire is Red”
from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

End of Maintained Trail...keep walking. Sedona, AZ. SJG photo

The poem above is a piece of a larger lyric, sung by Hobbits as a “walking song”’ in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. It has been many years now since I first made my way through Middle Earth with Bilbo, Frodo and the gang, but I admit to thinking of them often when I am out for a hike, especially if the path is not clear or if I am walking it for the first time. For while they knew the general direction they were headed (southeast toward Mordor), the path and the turns were often uncertain. Some turns led to glorious adventure — usually fraught with battles to be fought with the likes of giant spiders or orcs — but adventures nonetheless.

I am very close to beginning a new walk, as retirement from my position at the university looms large (target date: June 14). The question I hear most frequently, you might imagine, is “what are you going to do?” It’s a fair question since, at age 59, I am not technically retirement age (especially when it comes to the intricacies of health insurance…) I get a plethora of advice from those who know me well and those who don’t. Thanks for all that. I hear you all.

Playing in the Wild Garden of Childhood

Steve · January 25, 2019 · 12 Comments

FOD BAll — At the "Field of Dreams," Dyersville, Iowa. SJG photo.

I recently came across this line of poetry from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.” And, of course, that’s right.

Take, for example, the pick-up games of some variation of baseball (fuzz ball, Indian ball, Wiffle® ball, cork ball, kickball, step ball) of my childhood in North St. Louis in the early ‘70s. These were “wild gardens” in the very best sense, meaning they required no adults, no official field dimensions, no uniforms and very few rules, other than the ever-evolving ones that existed only in our collective consciousness as 12-year-olds.

Choosing joy, despite the facts

Steve · October 29, 2018 · 2 Comments

My next “Faith Perspectives” column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a re-write of an earlier post from here back in February. Some of the details have changed but the theme hasn’t…My column went online this past Friday and was in the print edition Saturday morning. You can read my column below or online here: http://bit.ly/2PYGdQf

Pompano Beach — Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, sunrise walk today. SJG photo.

Kentucky novelist, poet, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry once entreated his readers to “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”

As Catholics, that can be a tough idea to get our heads around in the current state of uncertainty and doubt surrounding the abuse scandal and the subsequent divisiveness in some quarters of the institutional Church, for it requires openness of mind and heart on our part. Like in all aspects of our lives, choosing joy requires a willingness to accept what life hands us with gratitude for what we have already received. It is, for example, looking death in the face and being thankful for life.

Choosing joy is an inclination to see the beautiful despite the ugly, and it is an invitation to see the dignity of human life despite those who would have us denigrate people and ideas we don’t agree with or understand. It is a chance to find the very best in others when all the cultural mores and signs direct us to find their faults and take advantage of them.

Perhaps especially within the Catholic Church right now, joy is a choice we must be prepared to make, even though the facts can be a bit disheartening and hope for deep and real change seems distant. Despite the facts, joy can still be found because we can still allow ourselves to be formed by our faith in Jesus Christ and his teachings of love, peace, justice, service to others, forgiveness and salvation.

Choosing joy means deciding to embrace the beauty of the church, its liturgy and traditions, and the searing truth of the Gospel while we wait for the many, many good priests and honorable leaders of the Church to find a way forward through the dark of the current moment. There have been many such moments in the history of the Church and these dark moments will not be the last. We are an imperfect church filled with imperfect people and we will continue to falter. What we must not ever be is a church that looks the other way when injustice occurs. Our foundation in the love of Christ tells us we are and must be better than that.

For me, choosing joy over the facts means continuing to seek the peace and communal unity that flows from bringing myself before the altar each week, from kneeling before my still-creating and ever-creative God, from immersing myself in words of scripture, music of worship and fellowship of other Catholics.

For there is joy to be found in the midst of our ordinary days if we only look a little harder and more closely, if we only remind ourselves more frequently to be aware of the gifts that constantly flood our lives, if we remain diligent and committed to improving the lives of those around us who are not as fortunate, if we embrace justice for all instead of prosperity for a few as the guiding principle of our faith and life.

Choosing joy is not a call to blindness, to ignoring those things we would rather not see. Rather, it is a call to see our lives and world with new and joyful eyes of faith and then set out to help bring about real change, whether serving one person or helping to reform an institution in need of healing from the inside out.

Appreciating the Small and the Now

Steve · September 29, 2018 · 9 Comments

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

When I was a young man, I think I lived day to day waiting for the “big thing” to happen. I raced to the mailbox at the end of the day (imagine relying on such an antiquated source of information and news!) to see what it might hold for me that might change my life — a letter from an editor wanting to publish something I’d written or a breakthrough song, perhaps, one great hit to be recorded by the likes of Garth Brooks or Tricia Yearwood.