Monsignor Barry's Memorial

The week after the second anniverary of his death (March 18, 2007), Msgr. Bill Barry's grave memorial was installed at Holy Cross Cemetery, Pomona.  Please remember him in your prayers. I'm sure he continues to intercede for all of us.

Msgr. Barry's grave is on the north side of the "new" section of Holy Cross Cemetey in Pomona, at the foot of the statue of St. Joseph and the Boy Jesus, halfway between the main entrance driveway and the cemetery office building.

The grave marker was installed during the week of March 25, 2009.  The image is the Our Lady of the Assumption Parish logo, derived from Revelation 12:1ff: "A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."

Incidentally, of interest to parish "old timers," in age or in spirit, Monsignor Donald Strange, who became pastor in 1948, shortly after the parish was established, and who built the church, the auditorium, and the Bonita school building, is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Orange.  After leaving Our Lady of the Assumption in 1963, he became the pastor of Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, and the Vicar General of the new Diocese of Orange.  (The Vicar General is the first assistant to the bishop.)  He died on January 13, 1994.

Happy Birthday, Robert Frost

Today's the 125th birthday of poet Robert Frost, whose two poems I fondly remember in high school and college years as thematic of my own developing vocational choice: "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

In celebration you may want to glance at his bio in Wikipedia, and an interesting article from The Atlantic, about the publication of several of his poems 'way back when.

I like this quote:

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life--it goes on.

And the epitaph on his tombstone reads:

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

I also couldn't help but notice he died, at age 88, of complications from prostate surgery.  That was two years after he read his poetry at JFK's inauguration.

Happy birthday, Robert Frost.

Another view of the Annunciation

This wonderful painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner has inspired at least three equally wonderful poems/meditations:

Robert F. Morneau

M. Doretta Cornell (scroll to near the end)

J. Michael Sparough, S.J.

Annunciation

As we celebrate today the Solemnity of the Annunication of the Lord, it occurred to me that the Annunciation is depicted in some of the ealiest Christian art, that of the catacombs in Rome.  Here is the fresco in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla:

Notice that, as early as the third century, Mary was seated on a throne, and the angel appears in very human form -- no wings or halo.  Very little resemblance to the scenes of later, especially Renaissance, art, which you can find in abundance here.

Another wonderful early representation of the annunciation comes from the Coptic tradition in Egypt, perhaps around 710 A.D.:

According  to an article on Early Coptic Painting on the "Tour Egypt" website, "This remarkable work is not only inspiring because of its grand style, but also its rich iconography. It depicts the Holy Virgin, seated on a throne, listening to the archangel's message. She is surrounded by four prophets, consisting of Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, holding scrolls with Coptic inscriptions. In the background is the town of Nazareth. This theme is unique to Egypt."

Liturgically, our celebration of the Annunciation is not a feast of Mary but a deast of the Lord, we are celebrating the beginning of his earthly life as one of us.  Good news indeed.

Saints of Lima

Today is the feast of St. Turibius (or Toribio) of Mogrovejo.  Most people, I think, respond to that factoid with, at best, the question "Who?", or more likely, "So what?"

The significance of St. Toribio is that he was bishop of Lima at a time when four other people in Lima were living, all five of whom have been canonized as saints.  Throughout history, how many cities, much less a recently colonized city in the "New World," less than a century after Columbus' famous voyage of discovery, can claim five recognized saints living there at the same time?  (In the case of one of them, as you'll see further on, it's a bit of stretch, but he too

 deserves inclusion.)

Toribio (1538-1606) was born a Spaniard, lived the first two-thirds of his life as a lay jurist, and suddenly, in 1580 at age 42, he was quickly ordained a priest and bishop and sent to Lima as its second bishop.  As with so many missionaries, he had to struggle with the pastoral care of his people in the face of oppressive colonization.  Lima was the center of Spanish colonization of South America, and already as only the second bishop of the diocese he inherited chaos and corruption.  He learned the local language, made frequent visits to even the remotest regions of his 18,000-square-mile diocese, and his pastoral reforms echoed those of St. Charles Borromeo in Milan, his contemporary.  He had a special concern for the sick and the poor, as well as healthy religious communities.   His feast is today, March 23; in Ordinary time it has the rank of an obligatory memorial, but Lent bumps it down to an optional commemoration.  

The well-known and popular saints of Lima, Martin de Porres (1575-1639) and Rosa (1586-1617) were  contemporaries, as well as the lesser-known Francisco Solano (1549-1610) and Juan Macias (1585-1645).

Martin de Porres, the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed slave from Panama, is often pictured in the habit of a Dominican lay brother with a broom, indicating humble servant status.  In reality, he was a skilled, even though informally educated, physician and surgeon, who was as famous for his medical practice as for his spirituality.  His feast is celebrated on November 3.

Rosa of Lima, native born and also associated with the Domincans as a member of the lay Third Order, modeled her spirituality on St. Catherine of Siena, and engaged in excessive physical mortifications that would today be considered pathological.  Her spirituality, reputation, and influence derive more from her well-organized works of charity and care for the poor, rather than her penitential practices, and her work has been called "the beginning of social service in Peru."  Unlike the other four, all of whom lived into their sixties, she died relatively young, at age thirty-one.  Santa Rosa, California, is named after her.  The Roman Calendar celebrates her feast on August 23.

Juan Macias was a poor Spanish 

shepherd who, in midlife, made his way to Peru were he worked for two years before he decided to become a Dominican lay brother.  Like Rosa, who died five years before he left Spain, he too practiced extreme and health-threatening austerities.  But like his friend Martin, he dedicated his work totally to serving the poor.  (Although a younger contemporary of Toribio's, he did not come to Peru until about fourteen years after the bishop died.)  He was canonized as recently as 1975 by Pope John Paul II, and his feast is celebrated on September 16, but only locally; it is not on the universal calendar.

The lone Franciscan of the group, Francisco Solano, was sent as a missionary to Peru in 1589 at age forty, and then to Lima five years later.  While he related well to the native population in the rural missions, playing music and dancing with them, as well as defending them against the exploitation of the Spanish overlords, in the big city he became something of a rabid, puritanical reformer.  Although he was credited with prophecy and working miracles, he was distinctly unpopular because he frequently stormed into theaters and gambling houses loudly condemning the going-on there.  The mission in Sonoma, California, is named after him.  His feast is on July 14, but only on local calendars.

Five saints, among the first in the Western Hemisphere, in one place at the same time.  This deserves to be better known.

I've based my few words on the accounts in the recent edition of Butler's Lives of the Saints.  There's lots more of good stuff to know about them, and if these great, though sometimes eccentric, people capture your imagination as they have mine, you can explore quite extensively with Google.

The Passion and Death of Jesus in Paul and the Four Gospels

I've just uploaded my talk on the Passion of Jesus which I gave last Thursday night onto YouTube.  I've also created new "Legacy Series" Blog which I hope will give easy access to all my 2008-2009 presentations as I prepare them for sharing.  Here's the first segment of the talks:

You can find this, and all the segments at http://legacyseries.blogspot.com.  I had to break the talk up into pieces because YouTube has a maximum length of 10 minutes per video.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm not sure if this is a confession or a boast, but I haven't a drop Irish DNA in me, except what might perhaps have been clandestinely inserted in my lineage by a renegade Irish monk wandering around Teutonic lands in the Middle Ages.  (They did save civilization, after all.  See Thomas Cahill.)

That said, I acknowledge (as I did at Mass this morning, in conjunction with the Gospel on foregiveness), the debt we all owe to St. Patrick -- and his willingness not only to forgive his captors but his passion to share with them the greatest possible gift: Jesus Christ.  Without him, and that persistent act of forgiveness, what would any of us be doing today?  Certainly not what we're doing now; that's for sure.

In the spirit of St. Patrick, I'd lke to share this most wonderful rendition of the quintessential Irish poem/song.  (No, it's not "Danny Boy"!)

"Via media"

As I was waiting for the water to boil for my coffee this morning -- yes, I make my coffee by manually pouring just-under-boiling water over freshly ground Sumatra beans; doesn't everybody?  mmmmmmm -- I turned on my computer to see what goodies the cyberspace fairy had left in my inbox overnight.  Because one of my favorite "secular" magazines is The Atlantic, which still seems to turn a profit by posting all of its print content, and then some, online to its elegant and user-friendly website, I subscribe to both the print edition and regular emails notifying of new online content.  This morning there were two articles about Amazon's new 2nd-generation reading device, the Kindle 2, one con and the other pro.  (At this point, I don't have time to get into that fray, however, my opinions will be forthcoming in due time.  They are still mellowing in the cellar.  BTW, having resisted the first Kindle because I wanted them to get the bugs out, it should come as a surprise to no one who knows me that I was one of the first to order the Kindle 2, and it was delivered on Ash Wednesday.  More about that later too.)

Fast forward slightly to the next time I checked email, about a half-hour ago; two relevant and related things jumped out at me.  One was a new article by the NCR's highly respected Vatican observer, John Allen, on an important side of Benedict XVI that, among many of his important sides, gets routinely neglected or distorted by the media of both the so-called "right" and the so-called "left."  Now that I've whetted your appetite, you'll have to read the article to see what it is: click here.

Hand-in-hand with that, I find it significant that, under Benedict's leadership, the Vatican is very proactively forging a presence on both YouTube and Facebook.

The second item was a new post on one of the sites I keep in touch with daily, the Deacon's Bench blog ("where a Roman Catholic Deacon ponders the world").  He cites an article from the Arlington, Virginia, Catholic Herald about "Faith in the Age of Facebook."

We can sometimes lament the passing away of old media -- for better or worse, ink on paper is giving way to the many facets of cyberspace communication -- but the question has to be asked and answered, how can the "new media," even with its forms that develop and mutate almost daily, serve the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

The answer is not a simple one because the terms of the question itself are not simple.

Spend a little time with the articles I've cited.  (Personally, I find reading on the computer screen more conducive to both speed and retention than on paper.  I haven't figured out why, but it may be that scrolling actually accomplishes the speed-reading methods I learned in college but never disciplined myself to practice.  Also, I find that white or yellow letters on a black background are much easier on the eyes. )

The title I gave this post is, of course, a bit of wordplay.  Traditional philosophy and theology have always sought the "middle course" (via media) as the safe and sure navigation between extremes. Today, as in the past, the vessel by which that course could be navigated was the latest in media technology.  Don't forget that invention of paper (papyrus) that could be bound in folios rather than rolled up in scrolls, the art of stained glass, and the movable type printing press were all at one time innovative technologies that revolutionized communication and put an end to a previous era.  

What do you think?

St. Paul on YouTube

I can't believe it's been a whole week since my last post.  The ashes on the forehead have worn off, but I hope they remain on my heart.

I've been pretty busy, not only with re-entry stuff and beginning-of-Lent activities, but also with a talk I gave at OLA Thursday evening, as part of my "Fr. Tom's Legacy Series," on "what do we do on Sundays, and why?"  And then a more ambitious presentation on Friday, February 27, to more than 400 people at the L.A. Religious Education Congress in Anaheim.

The presentation is entitled, "Crossing Paths with Paul: a Journey into His Homeland and His heart."  Today I finally finished transferring the PowerPoint slides to video and adding the sound, and posted it on YouTube.  Because YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minutes per video, it had to be divided into seven segments.  Because it would be unwieldy to embed all seven videos here, I've set up a special "Crossing Paths with Paul" blog site where you can conveniently watch all the videos one after the others.  Click anywhere in this paragraph to go there.  I also plan to have more resources on St. Paul up on that site within a few days.