St. Mary's Church, Roslyn: Pastor's Page

Dear Friends:

This week American Catholics prayerfully entrust to God three annual commemorations: the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the annual March for Life. As a young seminarian I found myself deeply attracted to the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, whose efforts for the rehabilitation of people with addiction is heroic. (I am personally indebted to them in ways I cannot adequately say.) The order grew under the leadership of Fr. Paul of Graymoor, an Episcopalian convert to Catholicism, and Mother Lurana White, SA. Indeed, they inspired a worldwide movement, and a desire to attain what Christ prayed for at the Last Supper: Ut unum sint. (“That they may be one.”)

On January 20th, we commemorate the legacy of Dr. King, who based his principles of peace and social justice upon the foundation of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Applying their ideas to institutions that degrade or dehumanize whole sectors of the human family, he writes: “A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God…An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

Finally, on Friday, January 24th, people of goodwill give voice to the voiceless in defense of all human life, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Wasn’t it John Donne who wrote: “Each man’s death diminishes me”? More tragic is the deliberate choice to end a human life, the imago dei (“the image of God”). Just as Dr. King tells us that “an unjust law is no law at all,” we pray that human law may come to acknowledge the dignity and value of every human being: that it is God alone who makes life worth living.

These events brought to mind the painting for this week’s cover art, the “Sistine Madonna” (c. 1513), by the Renaissance Master, Raphael Sanzio. It may be as famous for the two chubby cherubs at the bottom of the painting as for the Blessed Mother and the Christ Child they contemplate. Mother and Son are surrounded by Pope St. Sixtus II (thus Sistine) and St. Barbara, early Christian martyrs who sacrificed their lives in fidelity to Christ. Sixtus points outward; is he directing Our Lady’s attention to us, the faithful who gaze upon the holy scene, or to the cross that awaits Our Lord? My mother had an image of this painting in our house, and its effect, as I recall, was both comforting and saddening. Mary’s expression is somewhat apprehensive as she protectively holds the child in her arms. As for the defenseless, vulnerable Jesus, we behold a beautiful, albeit anxious face. St. Barbara, by contrast, looks downward in serenity, as if to reassure us that God makes all things work to the good. Even the angels look playfully to the heavenly realities that lie above them. This painting is known to have moved kings and potentates to tears.

Friends, the events of this week remind us that often we can only recognize great good as it contrasts with great evil. In light of threats to human life, dignity, and unity, let us pray—and work—as agents of God’s love in a world so desperately in need of his healing.

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine

Dear Friends:

After the Christmas Masses one of our parishioners, Mrs. Marie Papiro, made a wonderful observation (See? Sometimes I listen) as we enter into a new decade: “Maybe we should pray for ‘2020’ vision!” (Get it?) I couldn’t agree more; I only wish I could take credit for the line. Her point is well taken: Catholics are not cockeyed optimists. We look at the world with neither naïveté nor bitter cynicism. The saints were, if anything, fierce realists, but with one great qualification: they beheld the world as if with the vision of our loving Creator. They acknowledge the fallen nature of the world, but only “with an eye” to our re-creation in Christ. My spiritual director once advised: “The Gospel will never make sense to us until we know what it means to have fallen in love.”

Over a decade ago, in his brilliant encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict explains the meaning of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:15) wherein he reminds Christians to “profess the truth in love and grow into the full maturity of Christ the head.” Returning to Ordinary Time after the beautiful Advent/Christmas season often means plunging back into the routine of human existence. And precisely because it occupies the majority of the year, Ordinary Time offers us the greater opportunity to recognize and point out the loving presence of Jesus in the world he came to save. The use of the word “plunge” is deliberate, because it underlies today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

At the risk of appearing obsessed with his work, I would direct your attention to our bulletin cover, and yet another image of Leonardo da Vinci, the famous Baptism of the Lord, c. 1475. This was a further example of collaboration between artists, but in this case, the student (Leonardo) so far surpasses his master Verrocchio that the latter (according to Walter Isaacson) “resolve(s) never again to touch a brush.” As Isaacson points out, we behold an almost perfect marriage of scientific precision with artistic imagination. It is a truly Catholic work, as it springs from a mind familiar with the world of grace. There is the hair of the (far left) angel, whose loving gaze makes that of his companion seem rather clueless; the more “true to life” body of Jesus (vs. John the Baptist), whose glowing flesh shows no hard edges; the sfumato (“smokiness”) that connects the background (heaven?) with the foreground (creation); and the limpid pool of water bathing the feet of Jesus, descending as it does from the river behind it (the continuity between nature and grace).

Indeed, Catholics are neither fantasists nor cynics. Of course, we tell the truth about sin, which disfigures the image of Christ in humanity, but “truth” must be tempered by love, so as not to cause further damage. Indeed, we allow the grace of God to act through us, to heal and strengthen the human condition, and ready it for its divine destiny. Let’s get back into the world of Ordinary Time, and there make concrete the words of the hymn: “My Song is Love Unknown/My Savior’s Love for Me/Love to the Loveless Shown that They May Lovely Be.”

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine