The Ultimate Selfie: Sermon for Laetare Sunday (Father Cipolla)

From the Gospel:  “Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.”

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle recorded by all four of the Gospels.  This sign, this miracle, is considered as central within the kerygma, for it has always been understood as prefiguring the Holy Eucharist: the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish as pointing to the miraculous reality of the true bread of heaven who is Jesus Christ given to the Church as his Real Presence among us until the end of time.  And in this way this gospel has always been associated with the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday, with its introit:  “Rejoice O Jerusalem”, pointing to the Easter Sacrament by which the people are fed with the true Bread of Life.

But we must also remember that this miracle begins the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, the great discourse on the Eucharist, whose climax is Jesus’ words: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh”.  It is those words that cause a number of Jesus’ followers to leave him. It is those words that anger the scribes and the Pharisees.  It is those words that help set off those events that lead to the Cross.  It is those words that lie at the heart of the Church’s understanding of and faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 

When the people who were fed by the miracle of the loaves and fishes were looking for Jesus later, he had no illusions about what they were looking for.  He said to them:  “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  I love the clarity of this.  The people were seeking him to see what he could give them next.  The miracle as a sign is a two edged sword; it proves nothing in the end.  Taken at face value it may be part of a mysterious magic show instead of the sign that points to a deeper reality  And we can imagine the people reacting like the townspeople in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Carousel singing:  

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent: "What did you go out to see?"

Father Richard Cipolla

“Are you he who is to come, or do we wait for another?”  (Matthew 11:3)

This Gospel is full of questions.  The primary question by Saint John the Baptist, and then the questions asked by Jesus to the crowd.  This Gospel is one of the reasons why I love the season of Advent.  There is never enough time in Advent.  There seems to always be enough time in Lent, but Advent is something that seems to pass through our fingers. And yet…and yet, it is in the encounter with the Gospels read during the Sundays of Advent that we are forced to stop and look and hear and ask questions of ourselves.

The first question is asked by John the Baptist.  We must remember who he is: He whose mother felt him leap in her womb in the presence of Jesus in Mary’s womb: He who lived in the desert so that he might be closer to God.  He who, when he asked the question in today’s Gospel in prison, is in  prison not for some crime against the State or against humanity.  John is in prison because he dared to tell King Herod that he sinned in marrying his brother’s wife.  That is a topic for another sermon, but suffice it to say that John is in prison because he offended the power of the world that wants to do whatever it wants to do and also wants the blessing of religion on its dark deeds.  Remember that this was before Catholic theologians looked to the world to define what is right and what is wrong.  And from prison John asks his followers to ask this astounding question of Jesus: “Are you he who is to come, do we wait for another?”

Sermon for the Last Sunday After Pentecost: Learning the Four Last Things with Dante

Father Richard Cipolla

From today’s Gospel: For as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man… And he will send forth his angels with a trumpet and a great sound, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matthew 24:27 ff.)

Literary critics are a prickly and opinionated group, but they have always agreed that one of the greatest works of Western Literature is Dante’s Divine Comedy, both as poetry and as human epic. A few years ago a human rights organization called Gherush 92, which acts as a consultant to the United Nations body on racism and discrimination called for the banning of Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically the first part called the Inferno, from the classroom.  Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president.  She went on to say: “We do not advocate censorship or the burning of books, but we would like it acknowledged , clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there  is racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic content. Art cannot be above criticism”. She goes on to say that school children who studied the work lack the “filters” to appreciate its historical context and were being fed a poisonous diet of anti-Semitism and racism.

Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost: Lack of Virility source of Clergy's & Society's problems

Pietro & Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (detail), 1619
Galleria Borghese

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

Therefore, putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:24)

Book IV of the Aeneid is probably the most read and the most remembered of the twelve books of this seminal work in Western civilization  For it tells of the affair, the love-infatuation, between Aeneas, the man destined to found Rome,  and Dido, the founder and queen of Carthage.  How many thousands upon thousands of Latin students through centuries have translated these lines of great passion and betrayal and heroism?  And what most of these students have learned from Book IV is about the terrible choice in life for a man: the choice between the comfort and genuine love within a relationship with a woman whose greatness is strongly delineated by Virgil, and the calling to be the hero that founds the Roman empire and Roman civilization.  Aeneas dawdles in Carthage, becoming Dido’s consort.  And this dalliance has a debilitating effect on both Dido and Aeneas. She forgets her calling to build Carthage as one of the great cities of that time and place.  He forgets his calling to found Roman civilization from the ashes of Troy.  And in a harrowing scene, Mercury is sent by Jupiter to remind Aeneas, in the most strong terms, of his destiny. And Aeneas, frightened to his core, sets sail from Carthage to do what he has to do. Aeneas regains his virilitas as a man, a virilitas that will enable him to achieve his destiny given to him by the gods. 

Virilitas in Latin does not mean merely masculinity or manliness.  It means the quality of the vir, of the man-hero.  Both Vergil and his ultimate antagonist Turnus, are viri, are men-heroes, who are willing to sacrifice their lives for what they believe they are called to do and for what will give ultimate meaning to their lives through personal sacrifice.  Lest anyone think that virilitas is a virtue that only men can show forth, I offer the great women saints like St. Monica, St. Birgitta and St. Catherine of Siena, whose virilitas was a mark of their sanctity. The greatest of all the saints, Mary, is the model of virilitas at the foot of the Cross. Virilitas has nothing to do with machismo, nothing to do with old boy networks, still less with disrespecting women.  Virilitas encompasses courage and honor and a willingness to submit oneself to a calling to greatness based on truth, which involves a denial of self and a willingness to give oneself over to this calling. The ultimate and consummate vir is Jesus Christ. 

I have written and spoken about many times about the lack of virilitas in the Catholic clergy, especially in priests and bishops.  It is precisely this lack of virilitas that has made possible the moral turpitude of the clergy that has scandalized the whole world, specifically with respect to pedophilia but also with respect to the homosexual network within the Church that has allowed the cover-up of these crimes and the financial improprieties within the Vatican itself.  But the current drama that is enfolding in the United States concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is also about the lack of virilitas in our society. 

Sermon for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Eve and Our Lady

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

“And Mary said:  My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoiceth in God my savior.”  (Luke 1:46)

Two women:  so different, yet women, these two women whose role in the destiny of the human race have been pivotal. Their importance transcends that of any mere man who has paraded across the pages of history.  Compared to these two women, pharaohs, emperors, kings, Wall Street whizzes, tech giants:  whatever the power on the stage of history, nothing compares with these two women.  Secular feminism is blind to all of this, for whatever ever is purely secular is blind to the reality of the spiritual, is blind to that Spirit that blows through mankind from the beginning, that Spirit that brooded over the waters, that Spirit that gave the amorphous lump of clay life and called him Adam.

Musings on the Church and a Sermon, by a retired Pastor

by Father Richard G. Cipolla

I retired as pastor of St. Mary's parish in Norwalk, CT, and my last Solemn Mass was on June 24 and my last Missa Cantata as pastor was on June 29, the great Roman feast of SS. Peter and Paul.  The Sunday Mass was glorious in all ways:  the music,  the participatio actuosa of the congregation and the 32 altar servers and the ministers of the Mass, the reception that afternoon was an outpouring of joy and affection that I will always remember. 

I believe that the Traditional Movement in the Catholic Church, which appellation leaves something to be desired, is so very important to the future of the Church.  I nevertheless believe that there is too much heady talk and almost no heart.  What is lacking is contained in Newman's motto: Cor ad for loquitur: heart speaks to heart. This blog serves a very important purpose in the current struggle against the forces of a Catholic secularism that threaten the very foundation of the Catholic faith.  

Sermon for 4th Sunday after Pentecost - "Past 50 years in the Church have been of the lobotomization of clergy and people."

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

Duc in altum.  Set out into the deep water.  (Luke 5:4)

Those words of Jesus to Peter and his companions are his exhortation to these to embark on a life that they little dreamed of, far from their fishing boats an the land and family they knew.  Set out into the deep water, the deep water far away from the safety of the land, the deep water of the sea where storms arise suddenly, but also the deep water in which an abundance of fish live, ready to be caught. The fishermen had tried to catch fish all night long, but to no avail.  Nothing.  Nothing because this life of theirs was over. So Jesus tells them to go into the deep water, and it is here that they catch so many fish that the boats are nearly sinking with the catch.  It is at this point that Simon Peter realizes, however inchoately, however unclearly, that this is a sign that points to him and his future and his role as a disciple of Jesus, and in that wonderful and touching and dramatic scene, he kneels at Jesus’ feet:  Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man. What a wonderful and real reaction to Peter’s understanding of the miracle of the catch of fish: to declare himself unworthy for any task that Jesus had in mind for him.  A future as a follower of Jesus in the deepest sense was, in Peter’s mind, impossible. For he was a sinful man.  But the response is quite clear:  Fear not.  From henceforth you will be catching men.

Sermon for Corpus Christi, "The Feast With the Latin Name" - Fr. Richard Cipolla

“For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is real drink.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he abides in me and I in him. He who eats this bread will live forever.”  John 6:55-57

What is today about? –this feast we celebrate with a Latin name, Corpus Christi.  What is it about?  That is a relevant question in an age in which Christian worship has become a problem.  Some time ago the New York Times had a story on the historic Black churches in Harlem. Some of these churches have opened up their doors on a Sunday morning to tourists who are bussed up to Harlem to get some of the flavor of that part of Manhattan.  And part of the tour is for these people to attend a church service on Sunday morning to hear the cadences of African American evangelical preaching and to hear the soul rollicking sound of the gospel choirs.  The minister interviewed for this article said that the balcony pews were filled with theses tourists on Sundays but the main church pews were half empty.  The worshipping community is dying.  There was a photograph of the tourists looking down from the balcony, dressed casually in contrast to the beautifully dressed parishioners in the pews.  Some of the tourists wore shorts and they sat, looking down, as if they were in a theater.  They came to see what worship is like, but because of in so many places the reduction of American Christian worship to banal entertainment and fatuous preaching, they came not to worship but to be entertained.

Sermon for the Epiphany: A King of Orient tells us what the journey to Bethlehem was like

by Fr. Richard Cipolla

From the Gospel: “And they fell down and worshipped Him.”

It was one of the worst trips I had ever taken.  The snow, the cold, and then rain as soon as we got out of the mountains.  They robbed us at one of the inns; in some towns the food was not even edible. But we went on, somehow we did not give this all up, for it was still there, that star that we had seen that night many week ago now.  We searched our charts, we consulted others, and that star—there was nothing like it we had ever seen.  And so we set out, we set out in some sort of faith, looking for something, for surely that star was meant to announce something great.  We were not even sure what we were looking for.  Some said a king was to be born in the land of the Jews.  That is what one of my companions had heard, and it was this king that we set out to find.  Or was it? 

Sermon for Christ the King: Catholic Paralysis following Vatican II Threatens Very Foundation of the Church

by Fr. Richard Cipolla

St. Mary's

Norwalk, Connecticut

Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”
(John 18:37-38)

The Feast of Christ the King was added to the Roman Calendar in Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical Quas Primas  on December 11, 1925.   This was the time of a most troubling interlude between the two World  Wars that devastated two generations.  It was also a troubled time for the Catholic Church.  This time was the beginning of the rise of the understanding of an ideal government as purely secular.  This was also the time when the so called Roman question had not been resolved, the question being the dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento. It ended with the Lateran Pacts between King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pope Pius XI in 1929.

The Pope was quite explicit in why he thought it necessary and salutary to institute this feast for the whole Church. The date, the last Sunday in October, was chosen because it was the Sunday before All Saints Day, when the manifestation of the kingdom of Christ is seen in the glorious holiness of the saints in heaven; also because it was near the end of the liturgical year, and finally,  because that Sunday had been traditionally observed as Reformation Sunday by Protestants.

Sermon for the 8th Sunday After Pentecost: Protestantism in the Church has failed -- Let's try Catholic Tradition

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

St Mary's Norwalk, Connecticut

July 30, 2017

How the hammer of the whole earth has been cut off and broken! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations! "I set a snare for you and you were also caught, O Babylon, While you yourself were not aware; You have been found and also seized Because you have engaged in conflict with the LORD." Jeremiah 50:23-24

Brokenness. That is the only word, a neologism I am sure, that describes our current situation, our plight.  Last evening before dinner I read the New York Times, skimming as I always do. I had no hope of objectivity in the reporting of the news. Objective reporting went several years ago.  But I was deeply saddened to see in an article on yet again another personal debacle within the Trump administration of revolving doors and twitter invective the reporting of the ipsissima verba of an off hand conversation of someone who is working at a high level in the administration and who worked to get someone high up fired and succeeded.  The Times reported his language in the very words he used, which included four letter words that are now common in the artistic media and in everyday talk among so many of our young people but still never until this time have been printed in a newspaper that is read by many people indeed, including young people.  For me this was a powerful sign of where this society is.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Times did this on purpose to make clear the grossness of these people who are close to the president.  But printing those words is crossing a line that needed not to be crossed, because we all know the low level to which discourse has descended among the majority of people.  When the terrible earthquake destroyed the town of Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict and destroyed the monastery of Benedictine monks there, I said that this was the sign of the end of Western civilization as we knew it, that is, a civilization founded on the Christian faith, not perfect, but yet with a grounding in faith in the person of Jesus Christ and all that that means.  What is going on not only in this country but also in the whole Western world provides incontrovertible evidence that we are living not only in a post-Christian time but also in a real way in an anti-Christian time.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: The Western Civilization is daughter of the Catholic Church | Looking forward to TLM as Ordinary Form

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
St. Mary's, Norwalk, Connecticut

Together we look forward to the time when the Traditional Roman Mass 
will once again be the Ordinary Form of the Mass

And who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?  But even if you suffer anything for justice’s sake, blessed are you  So have no fear of their fear and do not be troubled; but hallow the Lord Christ in your hearts.   (I Peter 3: 14-15)

We have a president of this country who acts sometimes like a bull in a china shop.  One cannot help but wonder what he will say at the G-20 summit in Hamburg.  But he did give a speech in Poland a few days ago that caused quite a stir.  The Poles were quite stirred by the speech and liked it. The liberal press was stirred to attack what he said, especially in one part of the speech.  He asked whether the West had the courage and grit to defend Western civilization against those whose values are inimical to that civilization.  And he mentioned faith as a part of that civilization, and without being more specific he meant the Christian faith. 

I happened to be listening to NPR on my drive home through the back roads so I could avoid the eternal traffic on 95.  Late every afternoon they have a series on topical questions and choose one person from the left and another from the quasi-right, quasi because NPR seems to associate conservatives with red-neck Neanderthals who would be invited.  There was a woman from the Boston Globe as one of the participants-I need not say which side she represented.  The other was David Brooks from the New York Times, who, for that paper of record is a centrist, and does not always tow the Times line.  The woman chided Trump for his speech as being nationalistic and narrow and exclusionary, this based on his mention of Western civilization and as something worth fighting for.  David Brooks, to my pleasant surprise, said that he thought it a good speech and saw nothing wrong in Trump’s positive assessment of Western civilization that is worth fighting for.  He the civilization of Plato and Aristotle, of Rome, of the moral, teaching that was the basis for cultural and civic traditions that came from the ancients and were developed through two millennia:  this is something very real, and although far from perfect, was something Brooks is happy to be a part of.

What Brooks did not say, and probably dared not say, is that without the Christian appropriation of ancient Western culture, which deepened that culture in so many ways, the culture of which we are an integral part would not exist.  And to be more specific:  without the Catholic Church the past two thousand years would be incomprehensible and void of much meaning.  The Church’s strong influence in every facet of culture—from government to inventing the hospital, from the art and music that was inspired and supported by the Church to the development of rational thought that made possible modern science, but above all for the truly civilizing influence of the Church that turned barbarians into the English and the French.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday 2017

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
St. Mary's, Norwalk, Conn.

From St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “And this hope will not leave us disappointed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

***

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when or how or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no god: and this has never happened before.
That men both deny gods and worship gods, profession first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

It is this passage from T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses from the Rock” that describes the current situation of man in this present age.  And Eliot is correct:  this has never happened before.  Human history is characterized by the awareness of the sacred, however that awareness has taken form.  It has always been a given.  But something has happened in this time: men have left God not for other gods but for no god. But, the answer swiftly comes:  “All the polls show that the great majority of Americans say that they are religious”.  The liberal press is fond of trumpeting the rise of professed atheism, but most people would describe themselves as religious in some way.  But because people say that they in some sense believe in God, does not mean that for all practical purposes this belief is not in fact a form of atheism, for if you go on to questions them about this god and their relationship to this god, you discover, and this is true about many religious people who even attend church, that this god is a mental, subjective construct who plays no role in their lives.  For this is a god who has to fit into the post- modern way of looking at things.  And what is this way of looking at things?

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter - Love and Friendship

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

You are my friends if you do what I have commanded you to do.  Love one another.
(John 15:14)

For me those chapters of the gospel of St John that we call the Farewell Discourse, parts of which are read before Pentecost, are remarkable in their teaching about love with respect to Christ, and for me, defines what friendship really means.  We live in an age in which the word friend has become debased.  In the world of Facebook the word friend has become a verb: to friend someone, to establish a cyberworld relationship that has nothing to do with friendship as classically conceived and deepened in Christian thought, ultimately grounded in the love between two persons that is a gift from God and that finds its completion in the person of Jesus Christ.

When I taught the advanced Latin class in my former life as a Latin teacher, a vocation graced in so many ways, I always chose Cicero’s treatise on friendship as one of the works we read.  Cicero’s difficult and elevated style and syntax is a challenge for even the brightest students, but invariably De Amicitia, (On Friendship), and Augustine’s Confessions were the two works that the students seemed most interested in.  This is how Cicero defines friendship:  “Friendship is agreement in things human and divine, with good will and charity”.  Based on that definition of friendship he claims that friendship is the greatest gift of the gods to man.  And it is that definition of friendship, quite good in itself, that became the basis of the Christian understanding on friendship, from St. Augustine to the medieval mystics to St. Francis DeSales and St Jeanne de Chantal to St. John of the Cross to Pope Benedict XVI.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter: "Beauty must not be divorced from truth"

Chiesa del Gesù (Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus - ceiling), Rome

Father Richard G. Cipolla

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple. (Psalm 27:4)

From the Confessions of St. Augustine:  “Lately have I loved you, beauty so ancient and ever new; late have I loved you. And see you were within, and I was in the external world and sought for you there.” And from Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot:  “Is it true, prince, that once you declared that ‘beauty would save the world’”

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Family - The Family under the shadow of Amoris Laetitia

Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

This is the first year that the feast of the Holy Family is being celebrated in the context and shadow of Pope Francis’  Apostolic Exhortation,  Amoris Laetitia, the Joy of Love.  The Feast of the Holy Family was added to the Church’s calendar in the first decade of the twentieth century.  To contemplate the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is indeed a good thing to do within the celebration of the Christmas season.  The bond of love that existed within this totally unique family is an example for every family to emulate.  But, as I have preached about many times, to hold up the Holy Family as a model for the what we can call normal family, is not an easy thing to do.  And when we try to apply our own situation to that of the Holy Family without acknowledging that uniqueness, we are always disappointed.

Sermon for the Feast of Christ the King 2016: We are being purified

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’”

Sermon for the Feast of San Gennaro (St. Januarius): Preserve Catholic Culture!

by Fr. Richard Gennaro Cipolla

September 25, 2016

Church of the Most Precious Blood

and National Shrine of San Gennaro

New York City

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was sitting at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.  Luke 7:37

What a wonderful thing to come to this church of the Most Precious Blood and the shrine of San Gennaro to celebrate this Solemn Votive Mass of San Gennaro!  This church is redolent with a century’s worth of religious and cultural memories centered around the feast of San Gennaro.  We know little about the saint’s life, but the most important information comes from St. Paulinus of Nola, who said:  he was bishop as well as martyr, an illustrious member of the Neapolitan church.”.  San Gennaro was martyred in the Diocletian persecutions, together with Festus, his deacon, and others from the Naples area.  But what everyone knows about him is that his blood, put into 2 vials by a pious woman after his beheading, liquefies on his feast day and two other times in the year.  So we can imagine what went on in Naples this past Monday, as the crowds gathered at the Cathedral to witness the liquefaction of San Gennaro’s blood.  The Church blesses this celebration but has no official statement on this phenomenon.

Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost: What is True Humility?

by Father Richard G. Cipolla

Parish of St. Mary

Norwalk, Connecticut

Humilitas

From the Gospel:  “For he who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

Is it not a non sequitur? The first part of the gospel is about Jesus’ eating with the Pharisees, the pious Jews who knew the Law.  Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees react:  is it lawful to heal a man on the Sabbath, since one cannot work on the Sabbath? So Jesus heals the man.  And then he tells a parable about humility.  Is this a nonsequitur?  The first part of the gospel is about the relationship between the Law and the demands of love.  The healing of the paralytic is an act of love on Jesus’ part.  We remember how the Pharisees asked Jesus which is the greatest commandment. And Jesus’ answer is swift:  You shall love the Lord your God with all you mind, heart, body and your neighbor as yourself. Then there comes the parable about humility in the form of the man invited to dinner.  You say:  this is Jesus’ commentary on what he saw at the Pharisees dinner, elbowing themselves to get the best seat.  Perhaps.  But I suggest that our Lord told this parable about humility for a deeper reason.

Another Latin term like virtus. This time it is humilitas.  The root of this word is the Latin word for ground, earth, humus.  This is humus with one m, no chick peas involved here. No.  Humilitas is the quality of living close to the ground. Now there are those who fake humility, those who pretend that the live close to the ground and have no aspirations to rise higher, no aspirations to get the best seats at the banquet. Literature is full of these phony people, from Dickens’ Uriah Heep to Moliere’s Tartuffe.  Frauds, But Jesus says:  blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth, one of Newman’s favorite saying of our Lord.  The man who is truly humble knows himself so deeply that he assumes naturally that he has no business sitting at the head of the table anywhere and anytime.  And this has nothing to do with accepting the natural pecking order of things.  The man who is humble genuinely rejoices that someone else is chosen to sit in the place of honor, that others are held in great esteem, that others have worldly success, makes him happy. The humble man is a happy man. 

Help the Norcia Monks - an appeal

We have all read about and seen pictures of the devastation caused by the recent earthquake in central Italy.  Although the damage was not as severe as in Amatrice and other hamlets, the town of Norcia suffered in a real way from the earthquake.  What most saddened me was the damage suffered by the Basilica of S. Benedetto and the adjoining monastery.  Readers of this blog know of my great love for the Benedictine monks in Norcia.  What they have done there in the past decade is quite remarkable. They brought back a living monastery to the birthplace of Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica.  And they have been among the leaders in the monastic world of the return to and the promulgation of the Traditional Latin Mass.  To see the Mass celebrated there each day with such simple beauty is to look into the future.