Father Richard G. Cipolla
Parish of Saint Mary
Norwalk, Connecticut
From the gospel of John: “Jesus responded to Pilate: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’”
I hadn’t heard about it.
A friend sent me an email last week and asked if I knew anything about
the latest earthquake in Italy in the same region as the earthquake a few weeks
ago that destroyed towns and killed people. I said , No, I did not know. And so I went to a news website and I found
out that there indeed was a strong earthquake in the same region between Assisi
and the Adriatic, but there was little detail.
Not big news this time. Last time
at least the media could talk about the destruction of the little town of
Amatrice, and they talked about it not because of the destruction but because a
pasta sauce called Amatriciana that originated in that town. My thoughts immediately turned to the
monastery in Norcia that had undergone significant damage in the last
earthquake. Not much on the internet. So
I sent an email to Fr. Benedict, one of my spiritual sons whom I brought to
Norcia years ago and watched him being tonsured and went to his ordination
where the whole town came out and ate and drank in celebration. “Is there damage? What is going on?” His reply: ”Yes, damage much worse. But we are ok. Much to tell you
but just pray. I am well and God continues to purify us and bring very good
things.”
The
basilica that was the monastery church, the church built over the home where St
Benedict was born, damaged in the first earthquake, now has been leveled. Only the façade remains. The whole monastery
in town in now uninhabitable and the monks are all on the mountain above the
town in heated pods. And the latest
photo shows Cardinal Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, with
the monks after the quake. He came up from Rome, a visit planned before the
first earthquake, and this is what he said.
askin
Thank you for this welcome, for the prayer this morning, and for me to bless this house, which reminds me of Bethlehem, where it all began. Salvation began in Bethlehem, in absolute poverty, and I think that we should follow Christ in this, in His poverty, which is also the humility of God. God is humble, God is poor, but He is rich in love. To live here means that your heart is full of the love of God, for you cannot live with God without loving him. Love is at the center of all of our work. This is why the revelation that Jesus gives us says that the Lord, our Father, is love, and that everything we do comes from love, above all. I ask that this be a place of love for the Lord. I am certain that the future of the Church is in the monasteries, because where prayer is, there is the future. Where there is no prayer, there is disaster, division, war. Perhaps I am not an optimist, but I see that a church that doesn’t pray is a disastrous church. Since you are a church that prays, the whole of the Church is here.
He said this before
the second earthquake, before the taking away from the monks the little they
had to hold onto practically. But the
response, the response is so important for us to hear on the feast of Christ
the King: God continues to purify
us. Remember that St. Benedict fled the
corrupt and dying Roman civilization that surrounded him, a great civilization
that was collapsing morally, spiritually and practically. And he lived in a cave for two years and then
founded that order of monks that is one of foundations not only of Catholic
culture but also of Western culture. And in those monasteries Chrstian
civilization was built, and what was good, true and beautiful in Graeco- Roman
civilization was preserved to be passed on.
For traditionally minded Catholics the monastery in Norcia was an ideal
place: American monks who revivified the
monastery built over St. Benedict’s birthplace, the last monks cast out in the
tumults of the 18th century. These monks restored buildings, the
monastery, the refectory, the church, they decided with a vote to celebrate the
Mass and Office in the Extraordinary Form, the place where many of the
seminarians from the North American College came on retreat, they understood
the role of beauty in liturgy and life, they began a successful beer enterprise
and recently met with Mario Batali and company in New York who agreed to sell
their beer in his posh restaurants. I
have taken many people to Norcia and they have profoundly moved. And then this. Two earthquakes, awful damage, town empty and
despondent, and yet the message: God
continues to purify us and bring us very good things.
From the viewpoint of
the traditional Catholic these monks were ideal, did all the right things, the
right Mass, restoring the monastery in a beautiful and tasteful way, understanding
the role of St Benedict in the Church, making good beer to support what they
were doing. All that taken away by what
some would call lawyers call “an act of God”.
An act of God. What does this
have to do with the feast of Christ the King?
This feast was instituted by Pius XI to remind the Catholic faithful of
the reality and centrality of Jesus Christ in their faith against the
secularism and nationalism growing at that time between the two World
Wars. It was Pope Paul VI who changed
the name and date of the feast. He moved
it in the Novus Ordo calendar to the last Sunday of the Year before Advent, to
emphasize the relationship with the end of time when all will be all in Christ,
and he renamed it Christ the King of the Universe. Both Popes understood this feast as a
counterthrust to the strong forces of secularism that threatened to destroy
that civilization which we call Western civilization and which was shot through
and through with the Christian faith. It was a Christian culture, not perfect
by any means, but nevertheless a Christian culture.
The gesture of both
Popes, while noble, did not recognize the reality of the situation. The reality of the situation, and this is
much more clear today than in 1925 or in 1972:
Christian civilization in the West is in fact dead. There are cultural
and religious vestiges of this civilization still extant: but the center is dead. Much could be said about the wonderful aspects
and content of that past civilization and the darkness of that same civilization. But that is all commentary on the past
because that civilization does not exist any longer. The failure of the traditional movement in
the Catholic Church for the past half century has been precisely to refuse to
acknowledge this death and instead to work to restore certain elements in that
culture: faith, morality, liturgy, family and so forth. That is energy badly spent. Those Catholics who love the Tradition of the
Church, the truth of the Gospel, must finally abandon the past, must finally
reject circling the wagons, and look forward to and participate in the rebirth
of Catholic tradition and culture. Someone
said to me after a Solemn Traditional Mass I celebrated in New York two evenings
ago: “It’s time to circle the wagons”. I said quite quickly and sharply: “Absolutely not. Be open, be joyful in your faith and let the
dead bury the dead!”
Part of this looking
back and holding on to the past is that strand of Puritanism that infects those
who profess to love the Catholic tradition. This Puritanism is deadly to the re-flourishing
of Catholic culture. The Church Father
Tertullian, although not without his problems, said that the Christian should
walk on the streets looking like everyone else, modest of course, but not distinctive,
for the distinctiveness is in the heart, not in the dress. The beauty of the body and of human sexuality
are gifts from God. They must never be
suppressed by a pseudo traditionalism that denies both gifts.
Traditionally minded
Catholics must face the fact that Christianity has nothing to do with the
present political situation in this country.
In fact, it has had nothing to do with Christianity for a long time, if
ever. When one is faced with a
presidential election where both
candidates are radically post-Christian, to say the least, then one must face
the reality of the situation. But
Father, but Father, you say, what about the Supreme Court? Can you imagine any of the saints putting
their trust in appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, especially
when it was a practicing Catholic who wrote the majority opinion that made
abortion legal in this country? The
Christian culture in this country is dead, and what we have to do is to figure
out not only how to survive in this situation, how to pass on our faith to our
children, how to make them as wise as serpents and gentle as doves in the lives
that they will lead—but ultimately how to make sense of the feast of Christ the
King of the Universe in which the universe itself has been evacuated of ultimate
meaning by the all demanding self-centeredness of a culture that makes Jerry
Seinfeld look altruistic and thoughtful?
And how can we make
sense of Christ the King in a Church whose strength has been sucked out by her
own hierarchy and priests who are all too happy to live in a post-Christian
world that is unhampered by both truth and personal sacrifice? We here make
sense of Christ the King in this celebration of the Mass in the rite whose
roots are in the Catholic Tradition, roots in Christ. What we do here together,
priest and people is one of the antidotes and answers to the crisis in the
Church and the world. And the re-formation of Catholic culture will happen
quietly wherever the family says the Rosary not as an act of penance and
discipline but as an act of love, wherever Lauds and Vespers are sung in this
church not because of a schedule but because of an act of love, whenever men
meet before dawn to adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, whenever people
gather for prayer quietly and hopefully, wherever acts of kindness are truly
spontaneous, when Classical education is not a slogan but rather a joyful
attempt to restore all things in Christ, wherever the great monuments of art,
music and literature of Christian culture are preserved, not as in a museum,
but for the love of God-- and this parish, Deo volente, will be one of those
places. And all of this with no Traddie
angst or fear or hardness of heart. At
this point you think that I am going to tell you, amidst all of this, how to
make sense of the feast of Christ the King today? No. I
just once again quote Fr. Benedict’s email.
There is more damage, but we are safe.
We are being purified.
