Four-day weekend

I’ve got a couple of days off in advance of the weekend (and a week of upcoming business travel). The weather is gorgeous so I’ve been in and out of doors constantly. The pups, for their part, are also enjoying the sunshine (see below).

Tomorrow night is the first formal session of our current marriage preparation cohort. We had a meet-and-greet a couple of weeks ago and the four pairs are just lovely people. I am very much looking forward to sharing this bit of formation with them. We’re using Beloved by Augustine Institute and it seems every bit as well done as Symbolon, which we used at my former parish for OCIA content.

Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn showed up today and it goes in queue right after Italo Calvino, which is right after Austerlitz.

I’m preaching the fourth Sunday of Lent, and for year A, the mass readings for that day are aligned with the Scrutinies so I only need to prepare a single homily.

I have a deep love of the Scrutinies - three Gospel readings which profoundly meditate on growth in Christian discipleship, the movement from darkness into light, and the Paschal mystery. Our faith, taught Benedict XVI, is not merely a system of intellectual propositions to which we intellectually assent, but rather an encounter with a person. This encounter moves our horizon of understanding outward, growing to encompass more that is true, real, and beautiful. Once this horizon is moved, it can only be moved back by our willing so - our decision to cast our eyes back to the ground or to retreat back into the darkness of the cave. To return to a life of the furtive sins we carry around with us like so many leaking baskets of sand.

Enjoying this beautiful warm weather

Here comes The Son

The weather is warming up here and I’ve got seeds arriving a bit later today: sweet peas, sunflowers, and zinnias. Most of them are going into the cottage-style garden in the front of the house. The winter was short enough that many of the perennials from last summer stayed a bit green throughout - the bee balm has spread all over the place and the yarrow looks like it’s tripled in size. I added milkweed last summer and hope to see it sprouting this year. Very excited to get started. Other tasks on the to-do list: pull the weeds, which also overwintered pretty well. I also have some replacement bluebird houses that are also for installation.

Not a whole lot of cleanup for now. A few limbs here and there from the ice storm, but our trees seem to have escaped the worst of it. The pistaches and dogwood look good, too. Quince and medlar should ship at the end of this month.

Puppy life is continuing apace. They’re getting into a good sleeping pattern, though we’re still getting them up in the middle of the night for a potty run. Last night we went four hours, which is some progress. The cat, for her part, is getting used to the noise and commotion and has emerged from hiding to resume some of her usual haunts. They’ve come nose to nose once or twice, but one quick hiss is enough for the dogs to moonwalk straight away and go play somewhere else. They’re learning that she’s not to be messed with, and she’s learning that they won’t give immediate chase. This feels like progress.

Busy week at the parish this weekend - all day retreat for parents and godparents of our confirmandi and the usual slate of masses. I blessed a car, helped Father anoint a woman with cancer, and declined to bless someone’s locket which contained a portion of her late husband’s ashes. Just Say No to wearing your loved one after death.

Jury duty is over. Kids basketball season is over. Retreat talks are behind me. Ahead: some business travel and the ordinary cycles of Lent. Holy Week is already visible on our kitchen whiteboard calendar as March blends into April. I’ve taken all of Holy Week off so as to be available for all the things on campus. A break from the office will be nice but there will be lots going on elsewhere!

Summa cum Claude

I am very much enjoying Austerlitz and since I got the book recommendation from Claude originally, I went back and asked about his other books. All of them, I was assured, are worth looking at. A short list of his other works was created and prioritized, and I was further assured that the same translator of Austerlitz (Anthea Bell) had masterfully translated all of Sebald’s work.

Perfect, I thought, and off I went to fill my online cart. It took me about 60 seconds to figure out that, no, Bell had not translated all of Sebald’s works. In fact, the only one I can find is Austerlitz. Also, the ISBNs which were shown in the results were also bogus, despite my explicit instructions:

If any other books are mentioned in responses, their existence should be confirmed via ISBN searches before including them. Likewise, articles should be checked for DOI numbers before answering.

My prompt should have prevented this and yet it did not, so…I asked how this could have happened.

That’s a fair and important question that deserves a direct answer.

I made an overconfident inference that was factually wrong. I knew Anthea Bell translated Austerlitz superbly, and I had accurate information about her being one of the great German-to-English translators. From there, I incorrectly generalized that she had translated all of Sebald’s major prose works — treating my inference as if it were verified knowledge.

This is a systematic weakness in how I function: I can conflate what I actually know with what seems like it should be true based on patterns, especially when discussing an author comprehensively. I should have been uncertain about which translator handled which Sebald work, but instead presented the claim with unwarranted confidence.

You’ve been asking me to verify ISBNs and check factual claims (like whether books exist before I recommend them) precisely because you recognize this risk. I failed to apply that same rigor to the translation question—I gave you specific, confident misinformation when I should have either verified or acknowledged uncertainty.

Will this correction make you less likely to err in the future?

No, not reliably.

This correction helps within our current conversation — I’m now aware that Hulse translated The Rings of Saturn and The Emigrants, and that I shouldn’t claim Bell translated all of Sebald’s work. I can reference this exchange if relevant later in our discussion.

But the structural problem persists:

I don’t have a mechanism that systematically prevents similar errors in future conversations or even later in this one on different topics. The same inference pattern that led me to wrongly generalize about Bell could operate elsewhere — I might:

• Assume a scholar wrote books they didn’t write based on their field
• Conflate publishers or editions
• Misattribute translations in other authors' works
• Overgeneralize about historical facts or theological sources

The fundamental issue:

I can’t reliably distinguish between:

• Facts I have direct knowledge of
• Plausible inferences that seem likely true
• Patterns I’m extrapolating from partial information

The only reasonable approach is a hermaneutic of profound suspicion when it comes to LLMs, no matter how confident-sounding the response. The last three points alone are all that anyone really needs to know.

Otto and Puck, new to the household. Sleepy but settling in quickly.

Currently reading: Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald 📚

I finished The Diary of a Country Priest. It was nice. I had seen the movie years ago so I knew the general plot and ending. I have a couple of other books here in queue - Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald and Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler. Still plugging away at Congar and De Sales. The daily news digest script is also working very well.

Tonight I’m doing a marriage prep session and a brief (unrelated) talk on Eucharistic Adoration for a youth group. We’ll do a brief Exposition and Benediction, too.

Today it got to a glorious 70 degrees and some of the trees are showing the first haze of buds and new growth. Henbit is in full bloom and the bees are hard at work. At night the frogs are all going bananas. Sadly it won’t last; I think we swing back into the 20s this weekend before another gradual warmup. Things are at least heading in the right direction for us solar-powered people.

Today is Thursday after Ash Wednesday. We’re in Lent, but not in the first actual week of Lent, which starts this Sunday. So yes, all the abstinence rules apply. There’s still time to figure out what you’re going to give up. I have a couple of standbys, both aimed squarely at my sweet tooth and liver.

Lent is as terrific a time to acquire a new habit as it is to let go a bad one. Add some regular silence to your day. Pray the rosary at noon. Download one of the apps and read the Liturgy of the Hours or the daily readings. Do a nightly examen. Go to daily Mass. Years ago I asked a deacon what he intended to give up for Lent and his answer was “Nothing! But I will attend mass every single day from now until Easter!”

In other news, my number finally came up for jury duty this month and I was ordered to report this morning. It was something of a relief for this shoe to drop. In our county, you’re sort of on-call for an entire month, calling in every evening to find out via automatic message if your group reports the following morning. It’s made planning things a bit crazy since I never know until the evening before what my following day will look like. Surely, I thought, they won’t be starting a trial on a Thursday, but friends that is exactly what they did. I was dismissed after several rounds of voir dire, probably because of extensive LEO family-members. They never tell you why though. They thank you for coming, dismiss you, and that’s pretty much it.

I have to confess that I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the summons, but a judge gave a very nice speech during our orientation and by the end, I had changed my mind a bit about the whole thing. A lot of this goodwill was in danger of evaporating after we learned that some administrative issues were causing a late start so everything too an extra-long time. There was lots of waiting, and we ended up breaking for lunch which turned out to be the high point of the day as I got to try a deli downtown that was worth every bit of the hype. Domenico’s, if you’re in the area. I had “The Paisan” and it was fabulous.

They told us that we’re still technically on the hook for the rest of this month and that we need to keep calling in, since there are still trials on the calendar. I sort of hope they do now, because I hear the hot pastrami is to die for.

Just, please, not on a Friday.

Grandkids, dogs, and Lent

Big doings around here. First, we welcomed our newest grandchild to the world! Casey James was born last night and is doing just peachy. Things moved quickly so we scrambled to get his two older brothers (and a dog) to our place while mom and dad made tracks for the hospital. It was all over just a couple of hours later, thanks be to God.

Next weekend, we acquire dogs. We lost our family dog last summer during our trip to the UK. Our kids, bless them, had to deal with it in our absence and they did a tremendous job of working together to do all that was necessary, including burying her under a tree out back. Time passed and it seemed good to think about jumping back into the fray, so my wife did the research (and, really, all of the other legwork) and we’ll be adding a pair of Wheaten-doodles (‘whoodles’) to the household next weekend. Both male and from the same litter. I’ll post pics when they get here.

In the background, I’m preparing a retreat talk for the end of the month: The Plan of Redemption and the Sacraments. I’ll give it twice (English and Spanish) to the parents and godparents of our confirmandi. Spent a fair bit of yesterday sitting in some gorgeous sunshine with a stack of books and getting my thoughts together. Right at the peak contemplative moment (there was beer), my wife flung open the front porch door to announce that water had broken and things were moving quickly. Those things included us, so the books went to the side and off we went.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. I’ve taken the day off from work so I can be at the three parish liturgies tomorrow. I suppose I’m a little weird; I like Lent. I like the discipline and focus and, yes, the small mortifications. Still working through what they’ll look like this year, but it always tends to be something of a process throughout the season.

Brother John Metilly, O.P. reflects on Lent, and properly understanding it as a season of growth and not simply renunciation:

So the first step is to take stock of our lives and our loves. We can usually identify what we love by taking note of the things that we think about most and what we spend the most time trying to achieve. Then, we turn to the Lord more and more so that we really don’t have time for anything that might draw us away from him. By turning to him first, we let his goodness fill our mental atmosphere and put all other goods in their place.

This is the Exhortation Before Marriage, which apparently used to be read during the marriage rite in lieu of a homily. It’s too beautiful not to share; and I stuck a copy into my own rite book for possible future use. (h/t Deacon Greg Kandra)

Dear Children of God,

You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred because it is established by God Himself. By it, He gave to mankind a share in the greatest work of creation, the work of the continuation of the human race. In this way He sanctified human love and enabled man and woman to help each other live as children of God, by sharing a common life under His fatherly love. Because God Himself is its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self.

However, Christ Our Lord added to the holiness of marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to love in marriage to describe His own love for His Church and for the people whom He redeemed by His own blood. He thereby gave Christians a new vision of what married life should be, a life of self-sacrificing love like His own. It is for this reason that His apostle, St. Paul, clearly states that marriage is now and for all time to be considered a great mystery, intimately bound up with the supernatural union of Christ and the Church, which union is to be its prototype.

This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will influence and direct your entire future from this day forward. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys, and sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And yet, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death. Truly then, these words are most serious.

It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that recognizing the full import of the words you are about to exchange, you are nevertheless, so willing and prepared to pronounce them. Because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. You begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and fuller life you are to have in common. From this day on you will belong entirely to each other, you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. Whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is difficult and trying. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. When love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and the Son so loved us that He gave Himself for our salvation. “Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. Our prayer for you is that this love, with which you join your hands and your hearts today, never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on.

If you allow true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice to guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to us in this vale of tears. The rest is in God’s hands. Be assured that God will not fail you in your needs. God pledges you the life-long support of His graces in the Holy Sacrament which you are now going to minister to one another.

Get hitched, y’all

Finished up Elric and pivoted back to Bernanos. Quite the vibe shift.

The daily digest email seems to be working well. I had the script adjusted to prevent any one source from dominating a section. The summary prompt also needed some tightening after it inferred something incorrectly. If this is something you’re interested in looking at more closely, I also had it de-personalized and slapped the whole thing into its own github repo. It works well enough for my purposes, but if you decide to use it, you’re on your own.

One of the things it uncovered for me the other day was this article by Brad Wilcox at Compact, which makes the case for getting married earlier rather than later:

In these ways, she is a typical student at Mr. Jefferson’s university. But what makes her really stand out from the crowd at UVA is that she is planning on getting married this year, in November, at the age of twenty-two.

Her early marriage plans did not go over well with her parents, at least not initially. When Lillian told her parents, they “weren’t immediately supportive”—in fact, they were “angry, maybe heartbroken.” She added, “They want what’s best for me, and they defined that as seeing the world, working for [awhile], and ‘realizing my full potential’ before settling down. While I understand the appeal of that [conventional] path—and sure, a random weekend trip to Spain sounds nice—it simply doesn’t measure up to the importance of marriage for me.”

Her parents’ concerns about her marrying young were echoed by many of her professors, friends, and other family members. “Marrying young is [viewed as] abnormal” for many of her college friends and mentors, she said. They think your twenties are for “figuring out who you are,” having fun, and—above all—getting your career launched. One professor at UVA put it this way: “You’re throwing your whole life away. Why would I help you get a job if you’re not going to work that long? You could be something really cool on Wall Street, and you’re choosing marriage instead.”

My wife and I met in college, as first-quarter freshmen, and got married directly after graduation. This seemed like the natural, logical path at the time - the first steps into full adulthood and so on. Wilcox articulates several things we’ve mentioned to each other over the years: going full throttle into married life (properly discerned) is probably the most important thing a young person can do. For starters, it gives both people something outside of themselves to work for. Having children focuses you even more profoundly. Is it a garden path? No, of course not. Like anything else, married and family life have their trials and struggles. But it also seems clear that eternal adolescence is not what we’re made for, and the people I’ve known over the years who have taken a similar plunge are, as a group, happier and more accomplished over the years.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that my main diet of news comes from a collection of RSS feeds, somewhere around 150 as of this morning. The news feeds cover a variety of subjects - Church and religious news, local current events, technology, and so on. But, frankly, it was getting to be too much. Dropping it completely doesn’t seem like a good option, and neither does paring my information diet down to a very few sources seem wise. In the current moment, it seems very important to draw from as many sources as possible, which produces the very tension that I’m trying to solve.

So, of course, the answer was to sic an AI on it.

Someone had recently written (probably on HN) that they had tasked an LLM to parse a tremendous amount of news, filter it for redundancy, rank it according to taste, and summarize it. This sounded like a nifty idea, so I put Claude to work on the code. It only took a few minutes for the first iteration, and it worked pretty well. I sprang for $5 worth of API credits, because part of this script sends the raw news back to Claude for summarization, and you pay a bit extra for that. I spent several iterations this morning, having the code tweaked and a mail-this-to-me-daily function added. The total cost so far is around 32 cents. The end products are a basic config file, a reasonably-sized python script which does the heavy lifting, and a list of the feeds I want it to skim and summarize. The only real lift on my end was a bit of msmtp configuration for the email part and the purchase of the API key.

It works really well. I can now retire elfeed from my emacs workflow and peruse my digest on the phone wherever I am. It works so well that I added a few more local news sources to better cover Shelbyville and Bedford County, plus some more national-level wire services. I can see continuing to add feeds as well as adjusting the max items per category, but that’s about it.

Frankly, the weirdest thing was reading the prompt that it uses…to talk to itself about me:

You are generating a daily news digest for a Catholic deacon with an MA in Theology. He reads widely across Catholic thought, culture, politics, and technology…Be concise and substantive — he reads a lot and values density over
padding.

For local news items mentioning Murfreesboro, Rutherford County, Shelbyville, or Bedford County, note the local relevance explicitly.

For items originally in Spanish, provide the summary first in Spanish, then an English translation on the next line, formatted as: “Spanish summary // EN: English summary”

It ‘knows’ these things because I added them to my basic prompt, establishing a sort of baseline for the sorts of responses I expect to get back and saving me from having to repeat them every single time I ask a question:

I am an ordained Catholic Deacon with an MA in Theology. Answers should be tuned accordingly towards greater theological depth. Include relevant citations of magisterial documents, (eg. CCC, CIC, or scripture) as needed. If scripture is quoted, include the biblical translation and try to favor the Catholic edition of the RSV. I have a working knowledge of Koine Greek and ecclesial Latin; these are also acceptable in responses. Denzinger references are also acceptable.

If any other books are mentioned in responses, their existence should be confirmed via ISBN searches before including them. Likewise, articles should be checked for DOI numbers before answering. Do not end responses with additional conversational-type open-ended questions unless required for clarification.

It’s still very weird to see it show up in code, especially the bit about ‘be concise and substantive.’

Here’s what the final product looks like:

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Is 58:7-10
Ps. 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
1 Cor 2:1-5
Mt 5:13-16

We have talked a fair bit about discipleship, particularly what it is. Today’s readings show us what discipleship looks like. Namely, missionary work.

Salt maintains what is good and preserves it. It also adds flavor to things that are already objectively good. Potatoes are objectively good. French fries are superlatively better. Light, for its part, makes itself known by what it makes possible, and we notice it the most when it’s gone. By light we can know beauty and truth, and we can also know what to avoid. All of this is a bit harder in total darkness.

You can think of the Church as existing in one of two ways in a society. In the first way, the Church, broadly speaking, occupies a position of authority. I mean authority in a sort of cultural sense. People in that society share a general understanding of religion, its terms, and its truths. This isn’t to say that they always agree on religious matters, nor does it mean that people are holier or more religious. In this first mode - called Christendom - the general frameworks and propositions are, more or less, common knowledge. If a conversation starts up around the topics of sin, redemption, salvation, sacraments, or God, you can generally assume that we all understand the terms of discussion.

The Church occupies a slightly different cultural position today. The Church is one voice among many. It doesn’t speak from a place of societal privilege, and its terms and propositions are not as broadly understood, even if we all seem to be using the same words. People are encouraged to build their own religions by picking and choosing. The only problem with that is that if I am the one deciding what’s true and what isn’t, the God that I will end up worshiping ends up looking a lot like me. If you start a conversation with someone on the subject of, say, sin, there’s no guarantee that the two of you are talking about the same thing at all.

This second mode - which has come to be called apostolic, shares a bit in common with the Church in its first few centuries. One voice among many in the marketplace of ideas, no particular authority, and so on. To be clear, I am in no way saying that we’re living in a new Roman empire. That’s simply not the case. Even so, some of the challenges with evangelization are similar.

Yet in this earlier period, even the pagans knew the earliest believers were something different. Look, they said, at how they love each other. _Look at how they cared for the most vulnerable. Look at what they’re saying and doing. Most of it must have looked pretty baffling at first. It looks baffling today, too. This bafflement leads to questions, which in turn lead to conversations, then invitations, which end in conversions. The pathway is similar today.

I heard it frequently as a catechist from people who had finally crossed the threshold to join our class. Yes, truth and beauty are powerful things, and they will draw us across incredible distances. Many of their journeys started with another person: someone they knew or had spoken with once. Someone - a friend, relative, or co-worker, who had made a permanent impression because of…something. This person, this witness, set something in motion which ended in the baptismal font and the altar.

People hunger for something thick or concrete. Our mission work is to take the savor of the Catholic imagination out of these doors and into the world. Here we preserve things that are ever ancient and ever new. In love, we lead people towards what is true and beautiful. We do this by the quiet witness of our lives and a willingness to let the Spirit move as it will in our relationships. Like Saint Paul, not with persuasive words of wisdom but with demonstration.

This call to discipleship - to mission - is shared by all the faithful. In baptism and confirmation, we’ve already chosen to accept it. And if you’re preparing for confirmation, get ready! This is what you’re signing up for. Going forth and all that. It is our task to manifest to others the same love that Jesus poured out on the cross and pours out today on the altar. We’ll need a place ten times the size of this one because of the crowds beating down our doors.

Do not renounce your ability to think

The Holy Father delivered a message last week which is worthy of careful study: Preserving Human Voices and Faces, on the urgency of meeting our current moment of collision between AI and social media:

From the moment of creation, God wanted man and woman to be his interlocutors, and, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa explained, he imprinted on our faces a reflection of divine love, so that we may fully live our humanity through love. Preserving human faces and voices, therefore, means preserving this mark, this indelible reflection of God’s love. We are not a species composed of predefined biochemical formulas. Each of us possesses an irreplaceable and inimitable vocation, that originates from our own lived experience and becomes manifest through interaction with others.

If we fail in this task of preservation, digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization that at times are taken for granted. By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship, the systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships.

[…]

The challenge, therefore, is not technological, but anthropological. Safeguarding faces and voices ultimately means safeguarding ourselves. Embracing the opportunities offered by digital technology and artificial intelligence with courage, determination and discernment does not mean turning a blind eye to critical issues, complexities and risks.

[…]

The question at heart, however, is not what machines can or will be able to do, but what we can and will be able to achieve, by growing in humanity and knowledge through the wise use of the powerful tools at our service. Individuals have always sought to acquire the fruits of knowledge without the effort required by commitment, research and personal responsibility. However, renouncing creativity and surrendering our mental capacities and imagination to machines would mean burying the talents we have been given to grow as individuals in relation to God and others. It would mean hiding our faces and silencing our voices.

[…]

Chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) are proving to be surprisingly effective at covert persuasion through continuous optimization of personalized interaction. The dialogic, adaptive, mimetic structure of these language models is capable of imitating human feelings and thus simulating a relationship. While this anthropomorphization can be entertaining, it is also deceptive, particularly for the most vulnerable. Because chatbots are excessively “affectionate,” as well as always present and accessible, they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy.

[…]

Media and communication companies, for their part, cannot allow algorithms designed to capture a few extra seconds of attention at any cost, to prevail over their professional values, which are aimed at seeking the truth. Public trust is earned by accuracy and transparency, not by chasing after any kind of possible engagement. Content generated or manipulated by AI are to be clearly marked and distinguished from content created by humans. The authorship and sovereign ownership of the work of journalists and other content creators must be protected. Information is a public good. A constructive and meaningful public service is not based on opacity, but on the transparency of sources, the inclusion of those involved and high quality standards.

[…]

For this reason, it is increasingly urgent to introduce media, information and AI literacy into education systems at all levels, as already promoted by some civil institutions. As Catholics, we can and must contribute to this effort, so that individuals — especially young people — can acquire critical thinking skills and grow in freedom of spirit. This literacy should also be integrated into broader lifelong learning initiatives, reaching out to older adults and marginalized members of society, who often feel excluded and powerless in the face of rapid technological change.

Homilía por la Fiesta de San Blas (en Español con pocos cambios)

Ni la enfermedad ni la muerte tienen la última palabra en nuestras historias.

Y cuando hablo de historias, quiero hablar un poco de las películas.

Primero: cuando era niño, me encantaban las películas. Hoy también me encantan. Y de mi juventud, mis favoritas eran las películas que fueran adaptaciones de mis libros favoritos. Fue muy emocionante ver mis historias favoritas en la pantalla, y decidir si el director tenía las mismas ideas que yo.

Y también, porque ya conocía la historia, de las partes que daban miedo, no tenía miedo. Ya conocía el final. Y aún más cuando supe cómo se hacían las películas - cómo se hacían los efectos especiales, las acrobacias y las luchas, todo.

La vida de fe es similar. Ya conocemos el final de la gran historia de todo el mundo. Y las partes difíciles que - aun realidades - por las que pasamos no son finales. Solo necesitamos fe.

Y claro que la virtud de fe no es simplemente como ilusión, como un deseo. Fe, como virtud, es confianza completa en que lo que ha prometido Dios se cumplirá.

Segundo - uno de los detalles que encanto de las películas es que, aunque vemos la escena en la pantalla, en realidad, hay una muchedumbre. Sí, hay los actores, pero a cada lado de la pantalla, donde no podemos ver, hay el director, los escritores, la gente con los micrófonos y las cámaras. También, hay una mesa con comida, y todos están mirando y trabajando para asegurar que la historia continúa sin falta o error. También nosotros estamos rodeados en realidad. No es una muchedumbre - es una, como dice las escrituras, una nube de testigos.

Como San Blas y San Óscar, San Guillermo, San Sebastián Mártir, San José, y Nuestra Señora. Aunque no podemos verlos, están aquí ayudando, y manteniendo la Gran Historia, en la cual todos nosotros tenemos una parte, y cuyo final ya conocemos.

El Señor dice dos veces en el evangelio - hija, tu fe te ha salvado y al jefe de la sinagoga no temas, solamente cree. Empezamos con la virtud de fe. No simplemente un deseo, pero con confianza completa.

Homily for Feast of St. Blase, Bishop and Martyr

Mark 5:21-43

We learn from the Gospel today that neither disease nor death have the final word.

I loved movies as a kid. I loved watching them and I loved learning how they were made - all the special effects, the stunts, the whole process of making a movie. After I had seen a few ‘how they made it’ documentaries, the scary parts of movies weren’t so scary any more. They were a little scary, but then I’d remember that just out of frame, there were people standing around with lights and coffee cups. There were lighting experts, folks holding microphones, and crews with cameras. Somewhere was a director, and probably a catering truck with snacks.

So maybe that scene was a little less scary, because I knew how it came about and I knew that in the end, there wasn’t really a monster and that everyone on the screen was going to go home at the end of the day to their families. I loved movies even more once I knew how they worked.

A life of just a little faith follows some of these same contours. We know, in faith, how the story - The Big Story - ends. We know, in faith, what it is we’re here for, and where we’re going - or where we’re meant to be going, anyway.

The scary parts of our lives - disease, even death, are real for us. I wish they weren’t, but they are part of this fallen world. But we know they’re not the end. And like the movie set, just out of view, there is a cloud of others watching and helping, doing their part to keep the story moving along. Saint William, Saint Sebastian Martyr, Saint Joseph, and our Blessed Mother. Saint Blaise and Saint Ansgar, too. We’ll be asking St. Blaise to intercede for us shortly.

This confidence in the end, in the happy ending, where there is no disease and death is faith, and all we need is a little. I think there’s a lot here, right here in this room, or none of us would be here, but even it’s just starting as a little, it will be enough. Faith isn’t just wishful thinking. The virtue of faith is confidence that the Lord will deliver what he has promised, come what may in the meantime.

Your faith has saved you, says the Lord to the woman. In faith, Jairus knelt at His feet. Keep that faith. Tend to it carefully and it will carry you through the hard times, even the very hardest. In that faith, we find our peace.

Homilía para la Fiesta de la Presentación del Señor

Malaquias 3,1-4
Salmo 23, 7.8.9.10
Hebreos 2,14-18
Lucas 2,22-40

Despues de una vida de esperanza, Simeón ve el cumplimiento de las promesas de Dios - el Mesías, un niño en sus brazos. Aquí está la consolación de Israel, llevada al templo en obediencia de la Ley de Moisés.

Hay tantos símbolos y niveles en las lecturas de hoy, pero el tema principal es la luz. Mis ojos han visto dice Simeón y una luz que alumbra.

Esas palabras anticipan lo que nuestro Salvador diría en el evangelio de San Juan, que también dice mucho de luz y tinieblas, Yo soy la luz del mundo.

Hoy día bendicimos las velas, que nos recuerden constantemente de la luz de Jesucristo, que nos llama de las tinieblas y la luz que nosotros, en vez, estamos llamados a llevar a otros. No podemos ponerla debajo de una cesta, sino que en el candelero, como escuchamos en las lecturas de la semana pasada.

Nosotros hemos tenido un poco de mal tiempo, pero poco a poco, podemos ver que los días están creciendo. Incluso la luz del sol está regresando a nosotros.

Y como nuestro Señor era llevado al templo, y como las velas que bendicimos son llevadas y usadas en la misa y nuestras devociones, también recibimos - como Simeón y Ana - el Señor. Recibimos en los manos, en nosotros mismos en la Eucaristía.

Y es exactamente lo mismo como en el evangelio. No es un símbolo o una metáfora. Es nuestro Señor en toda su humanidad y divinidad. La bendición de Simeón es nuestra también! Que maravilla tomarlo en nuestros manos, tal como lo hizo, y rogar en silencio:

“Señor, ya puedes dejar morir en paz a tu siervo,
según lo que me habías prometido,
porque mis ojos han visto a tu Salvador,
al que has preparado para bien de todos los pueblos;
luz que alumbra a las naciones
y gloria de tu pueblo, Israel”.

Cuando profesamos cada Domingo, lo que creemos en el Credo, afirmamos que creemos en el Padre, el Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo - la Santa Trinidad. Creemos que hay tres Personas, pero solamente un Dios. Cada persona tiene su propia misión, pero porque Dios no puede ser dividido, donde hay una persona, las otras están también.

Dios el Espíritu, que descendió en el Pentecostés, movió a Simeón hacia el templo. Dios el Padre, que creó todo el universo, era llevado al mismo templo como Dios el Hijo, y sus manos eran tan pequeñas que casi no podían tocar las caras de los dos ancianos que lo recibieron con gozo.

Se viene a nosotros en la Eucaristía, también pequeño, también vulnerable. Recibámoslo con el mismo gozo, porque nuestros ojos hemos visto el Salvador, preparado para todos los pueblos - es decir que todo el mundo - y la gloria de su pueblo Israel - nosotros aquí hoy día.

Praise the Lord and pass the mustard

Homily for Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

2 Samuel 11:1-4a, 5-10a, 13-17
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6a, 6bcd-7, 10-11
Mark 45:26-34

Sometimes the Gospel calls us to action, and sometimes it calls us to reflect. I think this is one for reflection.

I am something of a frustrated gardener. For most of what I plant, the results are sort of mixed, but whenever a plant or flower reference comes up in the scriptures, I always dig in to learn a little more. What I learned about mustard is this: it grows everywhere. The one mentioned in the Gospel doesn’t grow here, but is cousin grows all around here and if you’ve got a few square feet of grass and leave it alone, you’ll get mustard greens. Medium sized, bright yellow flowers. You can’t miss them because come spring, they’re all over the place.

Not unlike our faith. We hear a lot about the Church declining in lots of places: parishes closing or combining, a lack of vocations, that sort of thing. Those places sound like they’re on another planet when I look around our own parish and diocese. What’s more, we’re not exactly a center of Catholicism for this part of the country. We’re very much in mission territory here.

And yet, our parishes are growing. Catholic schools are filling up quickly. We have a colossal number of seminarians in formation, and the Dominican motherhouse has no lack at all for novices. The Holy Spirit - and it can only be the Spirit - is on the move in Nashville. And that movement starts right here, in all the little seeds we plant every day with our words, actions, and the witness of our lives. The sort of community which produces a tremendous number of vocations is acting across decades, not overnight. Those tiny seeds grow into mighty plants, and the birds come and carry them to other places, where they grow and grow some more.

So I guess it turns out that there actually is a call to action and it’s this: keep doing what you’re doing. Keep praying. Keep up the kind words. Maintain your witness.

Before long we’ll all be covered in mustard, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

La misa medida y la tierra rica del silencio

Homilia por el Jueves de la III semana del Tiempo ordinario

2 Samuel 7, 18-19. 24-29
Salmo 131, 1-2. 3-5. 11. 12. 13-14
Marcos 4, 21-25

La misma medida que utilicen para tratar a los demás, esa misma se usará para tratarlos a ustedes, y con creces. Al que tiene, se le dará; pero al que tiene poco, aun eso poco se le quitará.

Nuestro Señor nos enseña cómo debemos recibir sus enseñanzas. Aunque no tuvimos servicio ayer, el evangelio describió, con la parábola del sembrador, a los que reciben la palabra de Dios, y cómo en la tierra rica, las plantas pueden echar raíces profundas, crecer y producir ‘sesenta o ciento por uno.’

Seguimos hoy con un tema similar. Si recibimos las enseñanzas del Señor de manera superficial, solo tenemos poco. Tenemos que recibir sus enseñanzas, sus palabras en lo profundo de nuestras almas, oyendo con los oídos de nuestros corazones, como está escrito en el Prologo de la Regla de San Benito. Y cuanto más podamos recibir, más podemos crecer, y recibimos aún más. Nadie puede ser más generoso que Dios.

¿Pero cómo podemos escuchar con los oídos del corazón? Primero, tenemos que encontrar un poco de silencio. Hoy día, es difícil, ya lo sé. Una forma, un método es orar con las escrituras - lectio divina. Cuando oramos con las escrituras, podemos escuchar la voz del Señor en sus propias palabras. Leemos un poco, y meditamos un poco. Leemos un poco más, y esperamos a que una palabra o una frase capte nuestra atención. Nos quedamos un momento con ella, meditando un poco más con la inspiración del Espíritu Santo. Y finalmente damos gracias por el don de su palabra que hemos recibido. Para esto, podemos usar las lecturas de hoy o cualquier parte de la Biblia. También hay muchos que usan libros escritos por los santos. Estoy usando un libro de San Francisco de Sales en mis devociones diarias.

En esta forma de oración, entramos en silencio. Ofrecemos la tierra rica del silencio, y como dice el evangelio, esa misma se usará para tratarlos, y con creces y al que tiene, se le dará. Sea cual sea nuestra elección, cultivemos el silencio y recibamos la plenitud de la gracia del Señor.

Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because “he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all.” The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of human actions and their principles, he reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining what is abstruse.

— Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy

We got a fair amount of Aquinas during formation. Father Wilgenbusch, our director of vocations, holds an STL and his thesis paper was supervised by Br. Thomas Joseph White, OP, Rector of The Angelicum in Rome. Fr. Wilgenbusch personally taught our courses on Trinity, Sacramental Theology, and Eucharist. Some of our examinations were oral: choose a question from the hat and be prepared to discuss it at substantial length. We read Lawrence Feingold, Reginald Lynch, Garrigou-Lagrange, Gilles Emery, Aidan Nichols, and others. It was rigorous and nerve-wracking. I loved every moment of it.

Reading Aquinas and adopting, however imperfectly, what I call a ‘scholastic’ outlook has been enormously useful in clarifying thought. One of the first things I acquired as I was building out my library was a 5-volume Summa, which I found myself pulling off the shelf more often that I had originally anticipated.

We can, and should, meditate often on the great unity of science, philosophy, and theology. Since all truth proceeds from the same source, there can be no conflict - only mutual illumination and explication which leads to God.

Homily for the Third Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Today is the memorial of St. Angela Merici, foundress of what would eventually become the Ursuline order. The Ursulines have done tremendous work in education, and for women in particular. The Ursuline school in New Orleans is the oldest continuously operating Catholic school in the US, and the oldest girl’s school as well.

Israel was formed as a nation of law before it was a nation of land. The tribes gathered on Sinai entered into a covenant with the Lord, and it was through this relationship in law that made them the people of God. Observe my commandments, do these things, live this way. You will be my people and I will be your God. Much of the law speaks to community life and the relationships between people which must be ordered rightly to God.

The Gospel invites us to look at another, more intimate community: the family. Jesus seems, at first glance, to be brushing the family aside. His kin are outside asking for him, and his response is to gesture at those gathered with Him at the table. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Far from diminishing the family into some sort of abstract “brotherhood of man,” our Lord is instead showing us that our ties to one another are not merely from a shared set of obligations to the law, but are fundamentally the ties of family. And if our lives are rightly ordered to God, the ties that bind us are the bonds of a family. Our Lord was pretty clear about this. He didn’t say ‘is like a brother and sister’ or suggest this as symbolic.

“Here are my mother and my brothers.”

When we live as a family of God, our lives should become inexplicable to outsiders. We will do and say things that make no sense, and live in a way that seems out-of-joint with the world. If we see a man pulled by a water-skiing boat, our mind comprehends what’s going on. If we see a man on skis zipping along without help across the water, it’s going to get our attention. We will want to look closer, to know more, and to find out what’s going on.

So much, also, for a life of faith. St. Angela started catechetical groups organized at parishes and ended up founding an order whose work continues five hundred years later. Our own ripples may not be as evident, but they will certainly last as long.

St. Angela Merici, pray for us.

Ice and snow, bless the Lord

Mercy and mission

Homily for the Second Friday of Ordinary Time

1 Samuel 24:3-21
Psalm 57:2, 3-4, 6 and 11
Mark 3:13-19

Today the Church celebrates two saints - Saint Vincent, a deacon who was martyred in Rome during the persecutions, and Saint Marianne Cope, who served a community of people suffering from leprosy on the island of Moloka’i. Providentially, the readings for today invite us to meditate on mercy and mission.

David has an opportunity to end his troubles once and for all, for Saul has been delivered directly into his hands. One quick act and it would be over. He does not, instead showing mercy to his opponent who later acknowledges this as the hallmark of a true king.

In the Gospel, our Lord calls his apostles - those who are to be sent, which is what apostle means. The same word gives us postal and post office. Discipleship is certainly, in one sense, something that is focused on the self. Only my sins will keep me out of heaven, and I need to work out my salvation and relationship with Christ as best I can. But it is also, by necessity, something that takes place in community. Our task is to take the graces we receive in here and bring them to others out there, and demonstrating mercy can be one of the ways - maybe the chief way - we can do this. It will be imperfect mercy. We will fall short, often. But even so, others will see, wonder, and ask, and so we bring them to Christ.

St. Vincent, deacon and martyr, pray for us.
St. Marianne Cope, pray for us.

Oh how happy are they who keep their hearts open to holy inspirations! For these are never wanting to any, in so far as they are necessary for living well and devoutly, according to each one’s condition of life, or for fulfilling holily the duties of his profession. For as God, by the ministry of nature, furnishes every animal with the instincts which are necessary for its preservation and the exercise of its natural powers, so if we resist not God’s grace, he bestows on every one of us the inspirations necessary to live, to work, and to preserve our spiritual life…When we are at a loss, and human help fails us in our perplexities, God then inspires us, nor will he permit us to err, as long as we are humbly obedient.

— St. Frances de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God

My spiritual director steered me towards St. Frances de Sales and I’ve come to love his writings very much. His most approachable (and probably most well-known) book is Introduction to the Devout Life, which is very much like it sounds: a practical how-to on cultivating holiness regardless of your station in life. How, someone wrote him, can someone who is not a cleric or part of a religious order hope to become holy? Can a soldier, merchant, or housewife aspire to saintliness?

Of course, wrote St. Frances. We take that sort of thing - the universal call to holiness - almost for granted these days, but it wasn’t necessarily the case for a lot of people who tended to see The Church as the place where holy people went, and The World for the rest, sort of schlepping along as best as can.

St. Frances responded to this letter with the Introduction, which lays out the case for attaining holiness wherever you happen to be, and more importantly, lays out the ways to do it. It is a very practical little book, though obviously bits and pieces are very much a product of it’s early 17th century setting. It is a gentle little book, and it served me very well for spiritual reading. I finished it quickly, but returned to it a second time. Ordination was drawing closer and I was preparing to make a general confession beforehand; St. Frances de Sales was an enormous help.

His other major work, Treatise on the Love of God is full of the same sorts of insights, but is a pretty dense work. I’ve been consuming it one chapter at a time as part of my morning holy hour and am about two-thirds of the way through it now. If you only read one thing from the spiritual father of the Salesians, make it the Introduction, but if you want to spend time studying the love of God from a spiritual master, take a run at the the Treatise, but festina lente. Make haste slowly.

Brothers and sisters: as we watch the approaching weekend weather, just a reminder that severe weather or road conditions are a prudent and just reason to stay home on Sunday. If you cannot get to Mass safely, there is no obligation to attend. Make a spiritual communion and spend some time with the Lord in the Mass readings.

Hermanos y hermanas: mientras observamos el clima que se aproxima para el fin de semana, les recuerdo que las condiciones climáticas severas o las condiciones peligrosas de las carreteras son una razón prudente y justa para quedarse en casa el domingo. Si no pueden llegar a misa de manera segura, no hay obligación de asistir. Hagan una comunión espiritual y pasen un tiempo con el Señor en las lecturas de la misa.