Archives for December 2021

Dear Friends:
A missing child: every parent’s (second) worst nightmare. We remember the scene from Tom Sawyer when a grief-stricken Aunt Polly cries herself to sleep, calling out for “my Tom.” When he finally appears—at his own funeral—she doesn’t quite know how to react: jump for joy? Praise God? Kiss Tom? Spank him? Collapse in relief? The answer is: why choose? When life is at risk, it unleashes within the soul a “desperate” desire to protect and recover the beloved child, whatever the cost, whatever the peril. Such is family life and love.
Immediately after Christmas the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family. We Roman Catholics call the family the ecclesiola, the “cell” of the Church. Every choice we make, from the books we read, the professions we enter, or the culture we tend, is meant to nourish and sustain this most fundamental social unit. No wonder Catholic social teaching rejects any system (e.g. Leo XIII’s critique of Communism) that corrodes the bonds between parents and children. Still, the family has a spiritual purpose; while a human institution, it bears within it the seeds of eternity; we are swept up into the Kingdom of God our Father with Jesus our Brother. The Holy Family illustrates the dynamic between Nature and Grace.

Today’s artwork for the feast of the Holy Family takes as its theme the joyful mystery: the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. The painting is “Christ Among the Doctors,” by Luca Giordano, who was born about a generation after the death of last week’s featured artist, Michelangelo Caravaggio. Art critic Silvia Tomasi lists a number of nicknames for the artist: fapresto, famolto, and proteo; he worked speedily, produced a large body of masterpieces, and, like the god Proteus, could adopt, combine, and transform various styles of other artists. She also notes that, unlike the tragic figure of Caravaggio, Giordano was a success not only in his artistic life but in his personal life as well. He was a loving father, ardent Catholic, and successful entrepreneur. His career took him through most of 17-century Europe, creating images from Biblical and mythological themes, a “grand” style of ceiling painting called the apotheosis, to immortalize famous families (e.g. the Medici), and scenes from the lives of the saints. He was a forerunner of the “Rococo” style: lush landscapes, lively colors, and heroic action. In today’s work, we see a youthful Jesus, seated among the scribes in the temple, as Mary and Joseph look on from a distance. The Holy Family, at least to my eyes, seems to have been imported to a baroque academy of scholars, who furiously check their books against the words that flow from the young man positioned serenely above them. The reactions of the rabbis vary: some are entertained by Jesus’ youth; others seem confounded; one appears lost in thought, as though his deepest convictions were being shattered; others simply take notes; one who appears to be wearing a beret, looks on in awe.

As for Mary and Joseph, are they relieved to have found their son? Annoyed at the trouble he has caused? Astonished to witness his divinity unveiling itself before their eyes? Tomasi ends her article with what I consider a very Catholic notion of beauty: that for Giordano, “art is not the union of two immeasurable worlds, the divine and the human, but itself a world in outline: an endless work in progress.” Where does divinity pick up and humanity leave off? Perhaps only God knows the answer, but for the family that has Christ at its center, the best way to approach the question is through love.

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine

Dear Friends:

Recently I had dinner with my former Army commander and her family. Her daughter, a young girl at our last meeting, is now a journalist working for a major American newspaper. We came to the subject of language and, particularly, of grammar. My former boss and I lamented the lack of care with which people presently speak and write. She is a fan of the correctly used semicolon, and I, sentences free of split infinitives. (I could never achieve the style of William F. Buckley or the vocabulary of George Will, but I am drawn to their carefully crafted sentences.) The young journalist responded that this style of language is passé. She, on the other hand, is more tolerant of expressions (“Me and her went to the store” or “Who did you vote for?”) as acceptable “colloquialisms.” I don’t fully agree with her position, but her desire to speak the language of real people using current idiom is admirable. Indeed, it has inspired many famous religious works. Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible (1534), rendered the word of God in a manner that was accessible to ordinary German speakers. While my knowledge of the language is next-to-nothing, those who know can detect the distinct personalities of Jesus, St. Paul, and other New Testament as they speak to a new generation. According to one historian (Pelikan), Luther’s Bible was responsible for the emergence of modern German.

The same sensibility is obvious in Catholic art and letters as well. Our artwork for Christmas 2021 is the amazingly beautiful Nativity by Michelangelo Caravaggio, painted in the 1660s for the Oratory of St. Lawrence in Palermo by a lay Franciscan community. Certain aspects of the painting leap off the canvas to the viewer. Unlike, say, a medieval painting, the setting is much more realistic than “supernatural.” The bodies are fleshy and strong, and even the angel appears more like a flying man with wings than a disembodied spirit. Instead of creating a scene from ancient Bethlehem, the artist transports the Holy Family to 17th-century Palermo, complete with the appropriate hairstyles and clothes. A youthful, blond Joseph with muscular legs turns to welcome St. Francis of Assisi and an old shepherd, while the deacon St. Lawrence looks on from the other side. A clearly exhausted Mary looks intently at her newborn, who returns her gaze as if there were no one else in the world. The painting speaks to Caravaggio’s time, when ordinary Catholics were becoming weary of the religious and political divisions brought on by the Reformation and its aftermath. It also speaks to our time because, sad to say, the painting was stolen from the Oratory in 1969, never to be recovered.

At Christmas Mass during the day, Catholics hear the famous prologue of St. John’s Gospel. It gives no details of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, but it articulates a central dogma of Christianity, the Incarnation. The inaccessible God, infinitely beyond our reach, has made himself knowable—and known—to us. Which is to say: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” St. Mary’s parish is living witness that the Word has taken flesh for our generation: in the sacraments, Scripture and Tradition, the care and teaching of God’s children, and in you. Merry Christmas, dear people of St. Mary’s!

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine