Coming up for a bit of air after some business travel directly on the heels of a A Very Busy Triduum. I was saddened, but not surprised, when the announcements about Pope Francis hit on Monday. When I saw the pictures of him after he left the hospital, it seemed very much like he intended to die at home rather than in a hospital bed. And other than being found face-down in a breviary (which is how I want to check out), is there a better way to go than on Easter Monday? The next few weeks will be interesting. I pray for the repose of the soul of our Holy Father, and for the cardinals preparing for the conclave. I pray also for our own bishop and the pastor of our parish.
I took a couple days off so that I could jump with both feet into the Easter liturgies and was able to serve on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil. It was exhausting, and I wasn’t even on the hook to come back for Masses throughout Easter Sunday. This will certainly not be the case next year, so I’ll probably plan on taking Monday off as well. It was exhausting, but profoundly moving, to be in the middle of every single bit of it. Probably never too soon to start practicing the Exultet, with apologies in advance to the rest of my family.
This weekend is the last class of our last academic year. If the instructor follows her usual pattern, the exam will post on Monday and I’ll probably do it on Tuesday, at which point I will have completed all necessary requirements. Once this is in the rear-view mirror, we have some travel planned - Mexico, for some work-related stuff which will also be fun, and the UK later this summer which is purely fun.
Reading: Azuela has stalled out a little bit. I took St. Gregory’s Book of Pastoral Rule with me for the trip, but spent the return flight watching Severance instead. Finally getting around to this and so far, so good. For upcoming travel, I have Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (in English) on deck. After that, I have Como agua para chocolate in queue.
One of our catechumens comes to me before class last week and says “here, I got this for you,” and hands me a beautiful scapular.
My Lady, I can take a hint.
I carried it around for a few days waiting for a good moment with a priest, and was enrolled on Sunday after Mass in the vestry. I should probably go back and revisit some of the books on the Carmelites soon but for now, I just want to linger with her a bit longer in these final days of Lent.
Currently reading: Los de abajo by Mariano Azuela 📚 🇲🇽
This past weekend was our penultimate class. I’m just waiting for the instructor to post the exam so I can get started on it. Our final course completes our moral theology sequence, covering sexual and biomedical ethics. An assembly of the diocesan deacons and wives was also planned for the same weekend, and we all came together for mass, a brief meeting covering some new things coming our way, and (naturally) dinner with cocktails. A day of recollection was provided for the wives of men in formation, so I wasn’t up there alone the whole time.
Friday morning, our bishop came to our parish to celebrate the school mass. I tagged in to serve and managed to wind up having breakfast with him, our clergy, and some representatives of the student council (one of whom is our daughter). The school masses are always a lot of fun, and I’m glad for the chance to be there for them once in a while. The night of the assembly mass, I was asked about 4 hours prior to serve as cantor, which seemed to go fine. It turns out I have a decent voice for singing, or at least chant. I know this because others have told me, and I frequently seem to get pencilled in whenever our families are attending formation masses or other guests are present. I’m leaning in, as they say. Saturday was the first time I ever had to use a microphone and it seemed to go fine. No one got up and left, and I got several compliments, so there we go. Never too early to look over the Exultet I suppose.
School reading is going to push the leisure stuff to one side for a bit; the biomedical ethics book is pretty hefty. I’m helping our final Lenten Stations of the Cross and will be leading the Spanish portion.
Too rainy for wildflower pics today. We were dodging polygons last night as a front of severe weather blasted through the area around midnight, which set the weather radio alerts on and off for about an hour. All is well, though wet. April showers and all that.
Springbeauty grows in large areas which are beautiful, but also in these little clumps off by themselves. We’re getting close to needing to mow, but honestly I can wait a little longer.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
Met with my deacon mentor today, probably for the last time before ordination unless something comes up and I need advice. We’ll see each other this weekend (big deacon meeting coinciding with our formation weekend) and will probably cross paths before December. He’s got a great perspective, having been in the role for awhile and at a parish that’s at some distance from all the goings-on downtown.
One of the things I’ve been working on a little is Marian piety - discovering ways to approach the Blessed Virgin in ways that don’t feel forced to me. I love the idea of the Rosary a lot, but it’s never been a go-to for me during times of mental prayer. This has felt like something that needed a closer look, so I made it part of Lenten devotions and as luck (?) would have it, our director of vocations invited many of us to join him in a novena to Our Lady Undoer of Knots. Why? It turns out that the incoming group of seminarians is so large that there’s some concern about where they’re going to be housed. This is a good knot - maybe the very best knot - but a knot nonetheless. So I joined in and managed to make all nine days without missing one, leaning on the Rosary tab of the Universalis app which has the option of including scriptural reflections for every single bead. This forces me to slow down a little for each prayer, rather than letting autopilot take over - hammering out a decade as my mind begins to drift.
I’ve also found it helpful to just ask her to sit with me before the Blessed Sacrament, letting her point me towards Him. Soon I was asking her intercessions before falling asleep. It’s happening slowly but surely. The novena was timed to end at the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which is today. When we draw closer to Mother of God, we also come closer to the humanity of Christ. We also approach Joseph, husband of Mary, protector of the Church, and model of deacons. The Holy Family has much to teach us, even - maybe especially - if all we do is rest quietly in Nazareth for awhile.
Bluets, another backyard native. These are tiny and a little tricky for me to photograph with a phone. They range in color from this pale color to dark blue/purple.
I started re-assembling my radio stack this past week, a project that started when I noticed that my main antenna (and everything attached) was suddenly deaf as a post. The problem was simple enough to fix - the lightning arrestor plug had worn down after the recent wave of severe weather, so I ordered a few more and got it up and running again. Something was still not quite right, and I next discovered that the SDR switch (an MFJ-1708-R) had blown a relay, so that component needed to be replaced as well. MFJ is now out of business, so I’m looking at some alternatives (these look good), but in the meanwhile, I got the HF rig back on the air, ironed out some wrinkles with the CAT controls, restored my lost QSL log, and made a few contacts via FT8.
Anyway, this is all to say that as we approach the formal end of studies, a bit more mind space can be returned to hobbies and whatnot, and as long as we’re still at (or near) solar max, this feels like a good time to get back into radio.
Halfway through Demons, it’s starting to pick up some speed. I’m on Paz’s final essay and will probably start Mariano Azuela’s Los de abajo afterward. I’m close to finishing Introduction to the Devout Life and would like to stay with DeSales for a little longer, probably with Treatise on the Love of God.
Watching: White Lotus, The Righteous Gemstones. FOMO has gotten the best of me, and now I need to watch all of Severance so that I can speak with the rest of my family.
Statement of the Bishops of the Province of Louisville on the Feast of the Holy Family, emphasis mine:
The Church recognizes the right of individuals to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their family members. The Church also recognizes the responsibility of nations to control their borders and create migration policies. However, the Church teaches that this right is not unlimited and must be exercised with respect for the human dignity of each person and the common good.
The Church in the United States has long advocated for comprehensive immigration reform that includes pathways to citizenship, family reunification, and protections for those fleeing persecution. It emphasizes the need for just and humane treatment of all migrants, including access to legal protections, and due process. The Church recognizes that basic human rights are based on the dignity of being created in the image and likeness of God.
Mariam Mahmoud calls for a return to The Lost Art of Research as Leisure (h/t HN):
In this fragmented landscape, we need not just diagnoses but prescriptions. How might we rebuild the foundations of culture when our very modes of attention have been compromised? The answer may lie in recovering an ancient understanding of leisure—not as idleness, but as a form of directed contemplation.
Josef Piper, writing at the same time as Eliot, but in a defeated and fragmented Germany, declares leisure the basis of culture. By “leisure,” Pieper does not mean idleness, but the more ancient type of leisure — leisure as the Greek σχολή (scholē), or school.
Pieper’s leisure is a contemplative one—it is, in essence, a style of unconstrained research. Such leisure is not merely, or singularly, the pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake,” nor is it simply “reading for pleasure.” The leisure that forms the basis of culture is a directed and intentional curiosity — it is the practice of formulating questions and seeking answers with a disposition towards wonder, not rigid certainty. Where free time is not used for research — for developing questions, and investigating the answers with an explorer’s spirit — cultural coherence crumbles. For Pieper, without leisure as letters, or “research as leisure,” there is no pattern from which higher civilisation is found.