Lenten Stuff

It's Annunciation Eve (so I'm getting in a bit of anticipatory blogging), and I wish I knew more about the solemnities that fall in Lent (that is, from the point of view of how "Lenten" a celebration ought to be: feasting and fasting are both important, but hardly combine well).

Between evening meetings and losing my voice for a fortnight, reading out the Imitation in modern Dutch has been a slow business. We've only just got to book I, chapter 13, and a passage that could have been written for me:

Some are kept safe from great temptations, but are overtaken in those which are little and common, that the humiliation may teach them not to trust to themselves in great things, being weak in small things.

Thursday last week the cardinal came and gave a lecture at the parish I help out in, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. He speaks very well, and says very sensible things. His pastoral letters, his lectures, his essays and his sermons always contain, and convey, so much wisdom. How have things come so badly unstuck on his watch? You wonder why someone so sensible seems so reluctant to do anything about it.

On a lighter note, looking for material to illustrate a lecture on (among other things) the BSE crisis, I came across this rendition of Roast Beef of Old England:



Hardly Lenten fare. But Fielding: what a genius!
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2nd Sunday of Lent

Catechesis yesterday afternoon was about the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. And led on into a consideration of the Eucharist. The programme we use had a three step procedure: the story itself (with Jesus explaining Scripture and then breaking bread); thinking about what it means to break bread in memory of Jesus, or to recognise Jesus in the the breaking of bread; and a consideration of Sunday Mass. The middle step was supposed to let them grope towards the conclusion, brainstorming about the question "How might we go about 'remembering Jesus' or 'recognising Jesus' in the 'breaking of bread'?" before getting all explicit about the Mass, and Jesus's presence in the Eucharist.

But the youngsters were a step ahead of me, two or three of them immediately identifying the story as Eucharistic (it probably helps that they also have RE in school). Their brainstormed list of 'what we would need to remember Jesus' turned out to be: a church, an altar, bread, wine, the Scriptures, a priest, a diocese, the Pope, Faith, Hope, Charity, "being present", "quiet", and "being together". Oh, and one of them suggested "Easter eggs" - I'm starting to worry about him. They even identified the parish priest (by name) as taking on the role of Christ in explaining the Scriptures and breaking bread.

At every stage I queried their answers, "Do we need that? Can we manage without it?" They conceded that a church and an altar were not strictly necessary (private houses and tents will both do at a pinch, or a table or any other flat surface - one of them remembering Mass at camp); all the rest they considered non-negotiable. When I queried whether the Pope was strictly necessary to Eucharistic celebration one of them got quite indignant (a boy with an Italian surname; how relevant might that be?). Even Luke's account of the disciples returning from Emmaus mentions Simon! I wasn't expecting a bunch of brainstorming 11-year-olds to come up with "No Mass without Rome", and I'm sure the course designers would be pretty surprised too.

More soberingly, two of them (four years after First Communion) claimed never to have heard that Christ is present in the Eucharist. I wish I could assume it was just because they hadn't been paying attention.

Come Wednesday it's Bible study in the parish again: the Cleansing of the Temple. The literal meaning aside, Bede sees it as the cleansing of worldly concerns from the Temple of the Holy Spirit (probably not just Bede, but Bede is certainly among those who so consider it). Perfect for Lent.
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Why This Waste?

Long Catholic blog rant. If you really want to read it, click on the link at the bottom of the post.

Before Mass this morning I attended a talk about John's Gospel. The talk itself was very interesting, but not what prompts this post. In the course of it the priest (a Jesuit provincial) referred to John's account of the pound of ointment poured out over Our Lord's feet, and Judas's objection to it "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?"

He said (I translate freely while quoting from memory), "Judas had got behind what we might call the Jesus project - a world of justice and peace - but had not developed a loving relationship with Jesus himself" - and contrasted this with what we know of Peter and John.

This jogged something in my mind. One of the blogs I read so regularly that it's listed in the sidebar is written by a parishioner of the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen, on the outer fringes of London's estuary sprawl into Kent. Anybody who regularly reads British Catholic blogs, or the Tablet, will be aware that a couple of weeks ago the Tablet took it upon itself to have a go at her parish priest for saying one Sunday Mass not only in Latin but according to the old missal (which the Pope said a year or two ago could now be done without seeking special permission from the bishop every time). This is alongside a Saturday evening Mass, a Sunday morning family Mass, and a Sunday evening hymnless Mass all in English, so really it looks as though every taste is catered for, but some folk seem to be offended that anything "preconciliar" should happen in an ordinary parish at all, and this is music to the Tablet's ears (I used to read my mother's copies of the Tablet fairly regularly, because they were in the house, and am grateful that, indirectly and without their knowledge, they made it possible for me to spend half a year teaching English at a junior seminary in Malawi; these days I just give it the occasional glance while waiting for old books to be brought out of the strongroom in the Theology faculty library, if L'Osservatore Romano is already taken).

What another blogger I regularly read, in an alternative view from across the estuary, has dubbed "the tradosphere" (a portmanteau of "traditionalists" and "blogosphere") was briefly in an uproar about the Tablet's "hatchet job" (the wikipedia page was even "semiprotected" to stop a rash of hostile editing). My own experience of the "old Mass" (it's the same Mass, of course, always new and aways ancient, but you know what I mean) has never been encouraging - having an avid celebrant promise that “the Mass our martyrs died for” won’t take over fifteen minutes and you don’t actually have to listen to any of it, does nothing to endear the form; nor does being told that floods, famines and earthquakes could have been averted by people receiving communion without touching it with their hands - but I certainly got a great deal out of the way the Oratorians said Mass in Oxford, following the missal of Pope Paul VI in Latin and with a gentle, careful, painstaking devotion that I (perhaps mistakenly) mentally associate with Newman; and I can well believe that there are those who derive the same sort of benefit from the "preconciliar" missal when it's not gabbled through in an undertone.

I hadn't blogged about this because it's really none of my business (or the Tablet's either, for that matter), but one thing about the article did bother me, in a niggling, sub-conscious sort of way, and this morning's talk brought what it was into focus. It was the mention of "complaints about their priest’s refusal to support Cafod, [and] his expenditure on traditional vestments". Never mind the fact that collections do go to other charities, or that the vestments are often salvaged or hand-me-downs, really it only changes three letters of one word: "Why was not this vestment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?"
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"We Three Kings of Orient Are"

No, not really. But the beauty of a very parochial society is that local customs vary somewhat, so after singing out the old year in one village, the children can amass a whole other pile of loot by "King Singing" in another village at Epiphany. I suggested the four of them could be three kings and a star - but number one son insisted they were three kings and a camel.

Like English carols, Three Kings songs can be used to raise money for good causes, as well as to accumulate sweet stuff. The kids preparing for the formal renewal of their baptismal vows, as a preliminary to the Confirmation course, braved the cold to raise money for the projects of local hero "Bishop Bert", whose vocational training for AIDS orphans has inspired our number one daughter to various money-raising exploits of her own.


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Liturgical oases

On the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a young Salesian (the first priest I've met in a long time who's actually younger than I am!) said Mass in the next parish along - with (almost) nothing left out, nothing put in, and with great devotion. Just a few hours earlier he'd been disc jockey at a New Year's party.

More than ever, I'm starting to think we need a "Society of Pope Paul VI", dedicated to preserving and promoting the Ordinary Rite of the Latin Church in the face of mind-numbing (and occasionally heart-breaking) attempts to make it more "relevant". So much New Age blather attracts people looking for transcendence, while the most transcendent fact imaginable is being disguised as a combination of sing-along and pep talk.

I hope this doesn't come across as grumpy, or whining, or controversial, because really I feel happier and more hopeful than I have in a long time.
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Taizé in Brussels: day two

The weather is cold (-4 centigrade); cars, houses and trees are iced with frost; but the skies are clear and there's no hail, drizzle, sleet, snow or freezing mist to contend with. Yesterday was the second day of the Taizé pilgrimage in Brussels. The hobbit-like habits of the Belgians are much in evidence: nobody is willing to let the pilgrims walk anywhere in the cold, and many will happily drive miles out of their way to see that they don't; before morning prayer the pilgrims get breakfast with their host families, then after morning prayer they get second breakfast in the local primary school that's functioning as reception centre and meeting place for the discussion groups. Although they're supposed to get noon and evening meals at the Heizel, some of them are given yoghurts and other odds and ends to take with them. After they get back, they're virtually force-fed supper (soup, tea, cake, weak coffee) before being dispatched to their various host families.

A couple we know in the next parish along have Serbian guests who manage to get lost when they go to the Heizel, and end up sight-seeing. I don't know whether our guests have that problem - I'm not particularly worried what they get up to, as long as they don't roll in drunk at three in the morning.

I'd planned to go to sit in on one of the "workshops" yesterday afternoon, but a rush job came in around lunchtime and by the time I'd turned it around and got to the Heizel all the afternoon workshops were over, and everybody was at a loose end for the hour before they began serving the evening meal. So I went to the "silent" area, which had a tremendously restful atmosphere, despite being busy with hundreds of people engaged in silent reflection or in muttering with the dozen or so priests and spiritual counsellors who, with decent distances between, were lining the walls of the hangar-like space. There were banners hanging from the roof, carpet on the floor, and images of Christmas-themed Brueghel paintings being projected on a massive screen at one end of the room. I poured out my woes to a South-East Asian priest whose main European language was French, and received a blessing and some sound advice that had nothing whatsoever to do with what I'd been talking about. Still, no reason to neglect it on that account. Then I poured out my woes to a Dutch sister, and got advice that was relevant. Two sets of sound advice at the price of a single set of woes - a bargain by any reckoning.

Today is actually day three, but I won't know how it's gone until this evening (when we have a peace vigil, followed by a New Year's party until 2 tomorrow morning). After morning prayer I took the children to sing out the old year in the little village that my mother-in-law is from (and where my sister now lives), so that old ladies who went to school with their grandmother can give them sweets, crisps, pieces of fruit and loose change.
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Taizé in Brussels: day one

Our parish's Taizé-inspired visitors arrived yesterday morning, around half a dozen at a time, every half hour that the bus from Brussels stopped. We (that is, my family) have been assigned 2 Poles, 2 Italians, and there are 2 young pilgrims from Sweden staying here too (but that's a private arrangement: it's actually my youngest brother and his girlfriend). In our parish everybody was processed by 2 p.m. Then I went to help in the next parish along, to be greeted by scenes of chaos (they had twice as many visitors to process, and nothing nice and simple to deal with like groups of half a dozen, at half-hour intervals). I ended up hanging around until it was time to put the children to bed, with 7 of the assigned pilgrims still not having turned up in the parish. I hear they all made it in the end, so I don't feel too guilty about coming home into the bosom of my family.

It's a nice interaction of individual spirituality and the institutional church. I did read somewhere that the two have nothing to do with one another, but without the parish structures there would be no way to greet all these pilgrims, unless we were happy to run the risk of some of them freezing in the streets (crushed by the juggernaut of enthusiasm). And of course, the spirituality is a nice reminder of what the structures are actually there for.

Again, there was more, and more sympathetic, coverage on national news than I would expect in England:


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Taizé Brussels 2008

Taizé receives large numbers of young people during the spring, summer and autumn, but in wintertime they encourage them to meet up in a city, and trust to the locals to find them room for sleeping mats (in houses, school gyms, church halls). "Pilgrimage of trust" is a phrase I've heard for it; perhaps even the official name. They've done one city after another for 30 years, and this year they're coming to Brussels, from 29 December to 2 January.
I've been asked to help organize the sleeping places in our parish and it's proving a slow business to find people willing to open their doors to foreign youngsters during the Festive Season. That it is the Festive Season is one of the most common reasons given for not doing - which makes me wonder what they can be celebrating in the dead of winter if it doesn't include hospitality. Belgians are also reluctant to provide floor space: those who are willing to take in strangers are those with spare beds. Saying that the pilgrims are only expecting floorspace scandalizes them. As I recently said to a Hungarian friend: the Belgians are the most hobbit-like people on the planet.
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The Faith of a Ten-Year-Old

Last week’s “Faith evening” (see here for the one before) was about the Good Shepherd. The initial talk by a diocesan director of catechetics (as I think she is - could be wrong on the exact job description) was very good indeed, quite making up for the lack of Redemptorists in the (post)modern parish mission. Still, I wouldn’t expect any less: she used to be a religion teacher at my wife’s school, where her absence is sorely missed. Then there was a hymn, a coffee break, and it was time to “share our faith experiences” with the rest of our table. The first session was about our images of God, this second session was about our personal faith journey (the emphasis is still very much on “us”). The assumption seemed to be that we were Catholics by accident of birth and socialization -- something that might have been true in Belgium thirty years ago, but surely not at any time since? (And of course, not in England since 1535!)

So here’s stage one of my "personal faith journey".

The religious education of children is based almost entirely on stories that are hard to distinguish from children’s stories: the Fall, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, the testing of Abraham, Jacob and Esau’s birthright, Joseph’s captivity, Moses in the bullrushes, the Walls of Jericho, David and Goliath, the Infancy narratives, Christ’s parables. When I was about nine or ten I was given a book of “Norse Myths and Legends”, and something of a crisis of faith ensued. The stories of the ancient Norsemen were much more exciting than the stories to be found in most children’s bibles. If religion was going to be a set of archetypal stories to people my imagination with, I’d much rather have the Norse myths (I’d guess this view is pretty widespread among my contemporaries). I don’t recall ever talking to anybody about this at the time, and I was conscious of not wanting to shock my parents, and also of not wanting to be open to persuasion by others until I’d thought it through for myself.

This last Saturday I was teaching my second confirmation class, and asked the children who they would go to if they had questions about their Faith. Several said their parents, one said a teacher (a particular teacher, and one I’d reckon is a good choice: the day before the Feast of St Francis she showed her class of 8 year-olds Brother Sun, Sister Moon), one said “I’d think about it quietly and see what answer came to me” (a ten-year-old illuminist?), and two said “I’d look it up in a book” (quick! get those boys catechisms!).

My own attitude at that age was a combination of the illuminist and the bookish. During Mass I prayed for faith (because I still loved Jesus, even if ancient pagans had better stories), and I read the Bible: an (Anglican) uncle had given me a Good News Bible as a First Communion present. In so far as I can consciously tell, what more than anything kept me believing in the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, was biblical texts like Leviticus 14:33-53, or Deuteronomy 20:2-9. This is plainly a God not so much into stories and more into people’s actual lives (something that can’t really be said about the gods of the Norse pantheon). Perhaps I was turning into a historian even then, but I’ve never understood why Leviticus and Deuteronomy have the reputation of being dry reading.
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Simultaneity

Or should that be some other word? Whatever you call it, there appears to be Transatlantic consensus that young people today don't know the Our Father.

Perhaps religious education in Belgium is not as bad as I think. All the kids in my confirmation class learnt the Our Father at school!
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Taizé is coming to Brussels!

With Taizé coming to Brussels, I suppose it saves me the trouble of actually going to Taizé. They're looking for beds. Or rather, floor space for sleeping mats. We can do 4, at a pinch. Now I need to find another 20 people in the parish to take some in.
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Faith evening 1

I posted a fortnight or so ago that there were to be weekly "faith evenings" in the parish (not actually our parish - the next one over, where the children go to school). The first full session was two nights ago, and now they'll be every Wednesday for five more weeks. I had been in two minds about blogging about it at all, but a query from a fellow blogger prompts me to say something more about them.


I do so still with some reservations. One reason for reticence is the confidentiality. It's not exactly the seal of the confessional, but these things are a little like how I imagine AA meetings to be (although as my acquaintance with these goes no further than American police serials and an Elmore Leonard novella, I could be way off on that one). Another thing is that I'm not sure I can hit the tone to do justice to the thing, partly because everything is in Dutch, and I feel a little out of place for other reasons too. At the beginning of the introductory evening, two weeks ago, I heard the voice of one of the organizers behind me saying "Oh, at least fifty." She was doing a rough headcount (the final figure must be closer to seventy), but for a moment I thought she was talking about the average age of the room, and falling about a decade short. And then only about a quarter of the participants are the same sex as me, and none of them are in the subgroup I landed in by dint of being a couple of minutes late and taking the only seat left. It's odd, as a thirty-something father of four, to be told how refreshing it is to see a "youngster" at such a gathering, and realize they mean you.

As I mentioned before, we're using a handbook, the German original of which was written by a Swiss-German duo called Leo Tanner and Klemens Armbruster. The Dutch adaptation, pictured, has the imprimatur (in the form of a foreword, rather than anything old-fashioned like a nihil obstat) of the bishops of Roermond and Hasselt. There's a description of the programme (in Dutch) here.

The first exercise was to think (or rather, free-associate) about our "image of God", in order to identify and neutralize unhelpful or impeding mental images that we might not even be aware of (such as a sympathetic but ineffectual grandpa, or an emotionally distant father, or a demanding mother, or a vindictive judge). God as an abstraction of pure logic or as an impersonal cosmic force didn't get a look-in, but I'd have thought they were easily as widespread, and as nefarious. They just don't fit the psychologizing paradigm of the programme, as I guess. Which isn't necessarily a bad paradigm (I'd think in light of what I've read of Karl Stern) but this is definitely about feelings rather than ideas.

In "group work" we were supposed to be sharing our own experiences. I couldn't help wondering if this "mutual sharing" format was the most fruitful way of spending the time allotted (rather than, say, getting a Redemptorist in). Still, it beats vegetating in front of the laptop.

The handbook for the course has daily exercises, and the first, a meditation on Psalm 138 (139 in the Hebrew numbering) had me in tears. Anything that gets you reading Psalm 138 with due attention has to be good. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meditation on John 1:35-39 to attend to:

The next day again John stood and two of his disciples. And beholding Jesus walking, he saith: Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speak: and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turning and seeing them following him, saith to them: What seek you? Who said to him: Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou? He saith to them: Come and see. They came and saw where he abode: and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour.

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Faith seminar

And this evening was the first in a series of "faith evenings" in the parish hall. Not a Redemptorist in sight: this is DIY revivalism, with a handbook. Tonight was only the introductory evening, but it followed the plan that the rest of the course will take: a half-hour talk, a hymn, a break, an exchange of personal insights, and a final prayer. Once a week for six weeks.
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Confirmation classes

Confirmation classes kicked off this afternoon, so I spent two hours getting to know half a dozen eleven year olds, and then talking about Jesus with them. The first step was to gauge the state of their knowledge, and it turns out once they get going they can recount a fair number of events and stories from the Gospels: the Nativity, the Magi, the massacre of the innocents, the miraculous catch of fish, walking on water, the woman taken in adultery, the Last Supper, Judas's betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. Two of them did bring up Moses and Samuel as people Jesus had spoken to, which might not be entirely wrong (I'm not sure how the trinitarian theology plays out there), but wasn't what we were looking for.

The course we're using is based on Luke's Gospel. Asking whether they knew the names of the other evangelists brought some close misses -- guesses but not wild guesses: John! Philip! Simon! Matthew! Nobody managed to get Mark.

We read Luke's account of Jesus' baptism, and discussed it briefly: we were running behind by then, and wanted them to be able to burn off a bit of energy before Mass. They'd been told to bring photographs of their own baptism, and their baptism candles, if they could. Most did. There wasn't even any sword-fighting with the candles.
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