We Bought The Farm

Feasting and Fasting

Today is my 38th birthday. It's also Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, a season of fasting, abstinence and almsgiving.

Taking that into account, and considering that this is a season of celebration for our family, my wife and I decided to treat ourselves to a night out at the River Cafe last night. Superb.

Knowing we had to get the kids to bed, we took the last seating at 9PM (they close at 11PM due to licensing restrictions). It was busy but not overflowing. I had a starter of dressed buffalo mozzarella with mushroom shoots and leaf and a main of grilled veal with steamed spinach - the biggest piece of veal I've ever seen (or eaten). Lesley had a fish double-header. We got through two bottles of wine and shared a cheese platter for dessert.

It wasn't cheap - definitely a luxury in these straitened times. As we were there on the late side and curious about the place, they offered us a tour of the kitchen. One of the waitresses assumed I was a food journalist, an impression I did nothing to dispel. Would it be too much of a stretch to suppose that I am a web-based amateur food critic?

It was a late evening and I woke this morning a bit the worse for wear, not physically, but mentally ready for the Lenten season ahead.

Mass this evening was lovely. I went early for the hour of the exposition of the blessed sacrament. The first time in a long time I've just taken an hour off to contemplate and pray. The mass was concelebrated by our pastor and one of the other parish priests. Choir and organ blazing. Plainsong chants. No kids. A change from the usual, and absolutely fitted to the sober celebration of the season ahead. The service ended with a chanted Psalm 50 (in Latin). The priests remained at the altar in silence for the entire recessional hymn, then walked out. You could have heard a pin drop in the full church.

I'm not planning to fast as hard as I did last year, nor to aim for daily mass attendance. I've got some serious business travel ahead that's not very conducive to choosing the hour, place and type of meals on offer. During Lent I'm going to be working on detachment, trying to empty my mind of mundane preoccupation and leave myself in God's hands more.

Toward Confirmation

Deep breath. After a visit from one of our parish priests this evening, I am finally starting the annulment process. This is an essential step in my being confirmed a Catholic, but I don't pretend it's going to be quick, easy or even that it's guaranteed to happen. I pledge to approach it humbly and openly and pray for the wisdom to learn from the experience and for the forgiveness of God and of those who I have wronged along the way.

Something to look forward to

For many years I lived next door to Sacred Heart Church in Southwest London. The church was a good neighbour. Imposing, but silent. Not being religious, I never once crossed the threshold.

And now I find that, on our return to London, it will be my parish church, even though we now live some distance from it. And so I had a little surf around the website. It has a wonderful history, much of which was related to the house I used to live in (built by the family that donated the church). And it has music! Serious music. Here was the line-up for Pentecost Sunday:

11.15: Solemn English

Entry hymn: Come down O love divine (303)

Sequence: Veni Sancte Spiritus (300)

Litany to the Holy Spirit - Peter Hurford

Sanctus from ‘German Mass’ - Schubert

O Lord, give thy holy Spirit - Tallis

Final hymn: Breathe on me, breath of God (302)

Toccata sur le Veni Creator - Gaston Litaize

And even better...here in Rio, I go to a very small chapel for mass in English. It's a good mass, but our musical output is pretty weak, and limited to a handful of well-worn syrupy modern hymns. Look what's to come...

The Sacred Heart is one of the few parishes to retain the Latin mass, and each Sunday the choir sings settings of the mass in Latin, along with the plainsong propers for the day (introit, gradual, alleluia and communion). The creed and Pater Noster are sung to the familiar plainsong settings and the appropriate Marian antiphon is also sung each week. A motet is usually sung at the offertory and communion. In addition, the Domine Salvam Fac is sung at the end of mass each week.

...

The choir is a voluntary mixed choir of over twenty, but we are always keen to welcome new members, particularly tenors and basses. Please contact Robert Rathbone, the director of music if you would like to audition.

Pilgrimage

How's your French? I found a wonderful site yesterday for the pilgrim routes to Santiago, particularly the portions passing through France. They have a feature (you have to dig a bit) where you can request maps and practical information about the trails by either post or e-mail.

64 days from Vézelay (I visited the pilgrimage church there in 2001) to Santiago. And there's an extension up to Brussels.

The search for sacred silence

"In a society that lives ever more frenetically, often deafened by noise and distracted by the ephemeral, it is vital to rediscover the value of silence."

                                           - Pope John Paul II

Source: Zenit

Confession

I went to mass yesterday morning, and after sitting quietly through the service, I spoke with the pastor and asked to begin the journey to convert to Roman Catholicism.

This, then, is the path I have chosen. It has been some time coming, and I felt it took a bit of resolution to finally take that first big step.

I feel I will blog a bit about this, but not overmuch - I do not intend that this become a religious blog except to the extent that I become a religious person and that colours my worldview. There is much more to it than I can possibly explain.

For God's Sake

I have a hard time wanting to go public with this, but I am considering "converting" to Roman Catholicism. I guess I have not exactly been silent on the issue in recent months.

I have sniffed around in the blogosphere. I have found some really insightful blogs attached to "St Blog's Parish". And also a lot (a LOT) of noise. I have received by private correspondence some good advice, and also, in contrast to the noise, a lot of silence. It is a confusing thing, but I do not think it is meant to be so.

For me, I think the decisions, and the motivations, are fairly personal and private. But at the same time, I feel I have a lot to say, and nothing to be ashamed of.

I do not know how far back to go in considering the roots of my desire. I have considered myself for many years to be an atheist. I had a total lack of any belief in any kind of religious framework. As I started to see the sense...the pure beauty of Christ...I started looking for a way to reconcile my own disbelief (not doubt, but total disbelief) with what I was feeling. I know it is not about me, but about Him.

But where to draw the line? Exemplars in writing (Hoinacki)? My Catholic grandparents? Ardent but personal lived religion amongst close friends? I think the war in Iraq had a lot to do with this. The question of justice. My own sensitivity to the injustices of the Middle East have led me to ask difficult questions about how a Christian people, and how a Jewish people who have been persecuted unto the end, have been able to stomach; to justify; the crimes against men - brothers - committed every day in the Middle East. I watched my own country consent to the killing of innocents yet again. I started to feel a real sense of the persecution. I started to see the truth of the message of peace of Christ. I started totally to doubt the sincerity of anyone who thinks that waging war is a just or Christian act.

I consider, actually, the teachings of the Mennonites - the peace church, anabaptism - to be very close to what I believe. But also I feel I owe it to myself to seek Christ mystically, in the footsteps of John of the Cross, of the Carmelites, for example. To find a deeper connection with God that I do not see in the Protestant tradition. I do believe that the Roman Catholic faith can be such a vehicle. I think that it would be hard to get bogged down in the weaknesses of the church. All Christians of any stripe should be considered just that - Christians. It bewilders me that anyone could feel the differences of sect so strongly as to act violently against a brother Christian. The form of your worship is pretty personal. If you can accept a Christian, a Nicene or even a more gnostic framework, well then, you are a Christian. You should honour the example set by your God and Saviour.

So, at that level, I feel I would make a good Christian. I feel that I may not agree with the human direction of any Church, but that the point is not to think about yourself, but to think about God. Frailties can be prayed over. Sin can be forgiven. The first act is to cross the line into belief. I am ready to go there.

I find myself a stranger to prayer. I find that, while I used to be able to enter a church without sentiment, I can no longer do so. I feel meek, tentative. I know that others have come into this place to seek. I do not, myself, know how to do this. And knowing that I want to do it, I need to.

I feel a presence. I feel a call to resort to prayer. I have tried. It feels weird, but I still keep trying. I read Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain and it gave me some guidance. I considered trying to pray - not, mind you, down on my knees, imploring. Silent, contemplative. asking for some sign. "Shall I go forward?" I do not understand Marian devotion. But I considered asking Mary for a sign. And the night I did so, I heard a woman's voice in my sleep, whispering my name, twice, so clear I woke like a shot, knowing that I had gone to sleep asking.

Since then, I have considered that I have a (very personal) calling to carry on with my seeking. Every morning I look up at Christ with his arms open atop Corcovado. It brings tears to my eyes. This beautiful man-God, opening his arms to the cidade maravilhosa below, offering an answer to so many who suffer in such misery below. It is only for us to ask...he is there, waiting for us to come home.

Reading Notes

I finished reading Victor Klemperer's diaries from 1933-1941 on Saturday. If at times they are a bit slow, a bit introspective, a bit focused on the real and alleged maladies of Klemperer and his wife, they are kept compelling by the creeping progress of the Nazi policy against the German Jews that is an unavoidable and constant theme throughout these years.

You get a real sense of Germany's slide into war at the same time - of the logic used by the Nazis to pick fights with their neighbours, then play off as innocents aggrieved by the aggression of their neighbours. And of the marshaling of resources into the war effort - taking from those like the Jews, rationing away those of the Germans, until the majority of the country was hungry and hurting and whipped into a propagandistic rage against its enemies.

And yet in all this you have Klemperer's quiet resistance. To do any more, he would no doubt have been eliminated. But he got on as best he could, refusing the 'Heil Hitler' and other declarations of loyalty except when left with no alternative. Scrapping together enough to live on while his pension is repeatedly assaulted by the newest taxes and tributes. Enjoying the goodness of people who respect his station in life (as a university professor cast out of his job by a combination of anti-semitism and the Hitlerite purge of academics).

A worthwhile read; I've ordered the next volume covering 1942-45. Next up: Richard Ellmann's highly-regarded biography of James Joyce. My copy is of the 1982 revision released for Joyce's centenary.

Brazilian Mass

Having just finished reading Merton, I was interested in the opportunity to attend mass and to see again the celebration(although not a Catholic, I have been to many masses), but this time in a different light - a light of deeper understanding of the mysteries. And I have to claim disappointment, try as I have to take away some positives.

Now, it may be that because this was a special celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the arrival of an order of nuns, the Daughters of the Cross, that liberties were taken with the ceremony. I was a bit disturbed to see nine priests more or less enthusiastically encouraging this form of worship. It struck me as beneath their dignity.

What's bothering me is this. The bible is brought to the front of the church. Five girls form the procession, four short ones holding coloured ribbons tied to the taller fifth girl's headpiece, forming a little sacred space (I guess) (maypole?). The four bear candles, the fifth the bible, opened to its text. And then the music starts. And then the girls start to dance, while carrying the bible down to the altar. And the one in the middle is turning, and waving the bible to the assembled faithful, while dancing in time to the music and smiling broadly. And when the bible reaches the altar, an enthusiastic round of applause, prompted by a strong signal from the choir.

Raised to respect the mass, if not to partake, I found this rather alarming. I am sure that admitting such variations to the mass is an acceptance of the vernacular and traditions of the local into the body of the Church, but I still found it distasteful. Maybe I'm just being fuddy-duddish, but that would not be the church for me.

My wife and I talked about it afterward. She has a term I really enjoy to classify what I would call feel-good, all-singing, all-dancing enthusiastic worship. Happy-clappy. That's what this was, without question.

The service itself was a real mix. Most of the priests officiating were not native Portuguese speakers. I was able to follow nearly all of their clear, textbook Portuguese. I am sure the locals were as well. I suppose that the study of Latin makes it easier to get Portuguese, although my own recall of four years of Latin does not help me when I look at written Latin - I have forgotten too much of the "small stuff" - the prepositions, the word order. I probably never will forget the declensions and conjugations, and I am sure Latin explains my own understanding of English grammar.

Much of the mass was sung, but again, in an evangelical bent. My guess is that the Church here feels the need to compete with evangelicals. Brazil is a Catholic country, but the evangelicals have certainly made in-roads. A church that cannot respond to the needs of its people will lose those people. But I guess I raise the question of how far the church should lean to keep such needs within the big tent. I know this is far from an original question.

Two archbishops reflect

"War is always a deeply disturbing prospect; one that can never be contemplated without a sense of failure and regret that other means have not prevailed, and deep disquiet about all that may come in its train."