Angelus News | May 22-29, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 16
A Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles smiles while welcoming volunteers at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra May 12. As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic drags on, Catholics are finding special “opportunities to love.” On Page 10, families come together to help local Carmelite nuns, who had to make a surprising choice to protect the most vulnerable in their care. On Page 14, R.W. Dellinger gets an up-close look at the “daily bread” being provided at dozens of LA Catholic schools for families in need. And on Page 18, Sophia Martinson reports on how the “domestic Church” is becoming a reality in family homes during the pandemic.
A Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles smiles while welcoming volunteers at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra May 12. As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic drags on, Catholics are finding special “opportunities to love.” On Page 10, families come together to help local Carmelite nuns, who had to make a surprising choice to protect the most vulnerable in their care. On Page 14, R.W. Dellinger gets an up-close look at the “daily bread” being provided at dozens of LA Catholic schools for families in need. And on Page 18, Sophia Martinson reports on how the “domestic Church” is becoming a reality in family homes during the pandemic.
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ANGELUS<br />
OPPORTUNITIES<br />
TO LOVE<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> <strong>Vol</strong>. 5 <strong>No</strong>. <strong>16</strong>
Contents<br />
Pope Watch 2<br />
Archbishop Gomez 3<br />
World, Nation, and Local <strong>News</strong> 4-6<br />
Scott Hahn on Scripture 8<br />
Father Rolheiser 9<br />
John Allen: Are Vatican’s pandemic woes bringing about a ‘poor Church?’ <strong>22</strong><br />
Gary Jansen: Don’t forget the Stations of the Cross after Lent 24<br />
Grazie Christie: The kind of men we need in times of trouble 26<br />
Catholic blues legend takes a ‘train bound for heaven’ in new album 28<br />
Art imitates stay-at-home life in films of solitude and isolation 30<br />
Heather King: A pope’s timely guide to living well 32
ON THE COVER<br />
A Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles smiles while welcoming<br />
volunteers at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra <strong>May</strong> 12. As the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19) pandemic drags on, Catholics are finding special “opportunities to love.” On<br />
Page 10, families come together to help local Carmelite nuns, who had to make a surprising<br />
choice to protect the most vulnerable in their care. On Page 14, R.W. Dellinger<br />
gets an up-close look at the “daily bread” being provided at dozens of LA Catholic<br />
schools for families in need. And on Page 18, Sophia Martinson reports on how the<br />
“domestic Church” is becoming a reality in family homes during the pandemic.<br />
IMAGE:<br />
Ambassadors, priests, religious, and the faithful<br />
gather <strong>May</strong> 18 for Mass at the tomb of St. Pope<br />
John Paul II in St. Peter’s Basilica on the 100th<br />
anniversary of the late pope’s birth. The liturgy was<br />
the last daily Mass with Pope Francis livestreamed<br />
on the internet during the time of pandemic, as the<br />
restrictions on the celebration of public Masses in<br />
Italy were lifted the same day.<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
VATICAN MEDIA<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 1
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<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong><br />
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POPE WATCH<br />
Forged by the Lord<br />
In the foreword to a new book ahead<br />
of the 100-year anniversary of St. Pope<br />
John Paul II’s birth, Pope Francis said<br />
that he has looked up to the Polish<br />
pope throughout his priesthood.<br />
“St. John Paul II was a great witness<br />
of faith. … Many times, in the course<br />
of my life as a priest and bishop I have<br />
looked to him, asking in my prayers<br />
for the gift of being faithful to the<br />
Gospel as he witnessed to us,” Pope<br />
Francis wrote in the forward of “St.<br />
John Paul II: 100 Years. Words and<br />
images.”<br />
The book is being issued in Italian to<br />
mark the centenary of Karol Wojtyła’s<br />
birth on <strong>May</strong> 18, 1920. In his five-page<br />
foreword, Pope Francis wrote that<br />
St. John Paul was “a great man of<br />
prayer who lived completely immersed<br />
in his time and constantly in<br />
contact with God, a sure guide for the<br />
Church in times of great change.”<br />
When Cardinal Wojtyła became<br />
Pope John Paul II in 1978, a 41-yearold<br />
Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio was<br />
serving as the provincial superior of<br />
the Jesuits in Argentina.<br />
St. John Paul appointed Father<br />
Bergoglio an auxiliary bishop in 1992,<br />
elevating him to become archbishop<br />
of Buenos Aires in 1998, and making<br />
him a cardinal in 2001. Pope Francis<br />
canonized St. John Paul in 2014.<br />
Pope Francis pointed out that there<br />
are young people today who have not<br />
known or only have a vague memory<br />
of St. John Paul.<br />
“For this reason, on the centenary<br />
of his birth, it was right to remember<br />
this great, holy witness of the faith that<br />
God has given to his Church and to<br />
humanity,” he said.<br />
Pope Francis wrote that many may<br />
not realize how much St. John Paul<br />
suffered in his life. He experienced<br />
the death of his mother, brother, and<br />
father by the age of 21, and then lived<br />
through World War II.<br />
“The suffering that he experienced<br />
relying totally on the Lord forged him,<br />
and made even stronger the Christian<br />
faith in which he had been educated,”<br />
Pope Francis said.<br />
“He suffered a terrible attack in<br />
1981, offered his life, shed his blood<br />
for the Church. He testified that even<br />
in the difficult trial of disease, shared<br />
daily with God made man and crucified<br />
for our salvation, we can remain<br />
happy. We can remain ourselves.”<br />
In a tribute published <strong>May</strong> 15, Pope<br />
Emeritus Benedict XVI hailed St.<br />
John Paul as a “liberating restorer of<br />
the Church” in the turbulent years<br />
after the Second Vatican Council.<br />
He suggested that those who present<br />
the Polish pope as a stern moralist<br />
overlook his message that “in the<br />
end God’s mercy is stronger than our<br />
weakness.”<br />
“The inner unity of the message of<br />
John Paul II and the basic intentions<br />
of Pope Francis can also be found:<br />
John Paul II is not the moral rigorist<br />
as some have partially portrayed him,”<br />
he wrote in a 2,000 word message to<br />
Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, St. John<br />
Paul’s personal secretary.<br />
“With the centrality of divine mercy,<br />
he gives us the opportunity to accept<br />
moral requirements for man, even if<br />
we can never fully meet them. Besides,<br />
our moral endeavors are made<br />
in the light of divine mercy, which<br />
proves to be a force that heals for our<br />
weakness.” <br />
Courtney Mares is a Rome correspondent<br />
for Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency.<br />
Papal Prayer Intention for <strong>May</strong>: We pray that deacons, faithful in their service<br />
to the word and the poor, may be an invigorating symbol for the entire Church.<br />
2 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
NEW WORLD<br />
OF FAITH<br />
BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ<br />
Love alone casts out fear<br />
As I write these words, it is the 100th<br />
birthday of the great pope, St. John<br />
Paul II.<br />
I feel a close connection to him<br />
and have been thinking about him,<br />
praying for his intercession, reflecting<br />
on how his life has inspired me in my<br />
ministry.<br />
I was ordained a priest two months<br />
before he was elected pope in 1978,<br />
and he appointed me a bishop in<br />
2001. In December 2004, he named<br />
me an archbishop, just a few months<br />
before he died.<br />
St. John Paul reminded all of us that<br />
the reason for our lives is to know<br />
Jesus, to love him, and to share his life<br />
with others.<br />
In this Easter season, we always<br />
return to the Acts of the Apostles and<br />
the stories of the Church’s beginnings.<br />
Those first disciples gave their whole<br />
lives to follow Jesus and continue his<br />
mission. Their love for him was so<br />
strong it cast aside all fear.<br />
Jesus had told his disciples on that<br />
first Easter night, “Do not be afraid.”<br />
St. John Paul repeated these words in<br />
his first homily as pope.<br />
“Do not be afraid. Open wide the<br />
doors to Christ,” the pope told us.<br />
These words speak more clearly to us<br />
in this time of plague.<br />
Following Jesus means sharing in his<br />
life. It means carrying our cross with<br />
him. And it means accepting that we<br />
will suffer, as he suffered for us.<br />
I am praying for all of you who are<br />
worried about your businesses, your<br />
jobs, about what the future will look<br />
like for your children and loved ones,<br />
for our economy, and our way of life.<br />
I am praying for all of you who are<br />
grieving and feeling abandoned and<br />
lonely.<br />
We are in this together, we are suffering<br />
together. In his Providence, God is<br />
allowing this pandemic to happen to<br />
all of us.<br />
And God is asking us to bear these<br />
burdens without the consolation of<br />
the sacraments, without being able to<br />
come to church for many weeks now.<br />
This is a profound sadness for me, as I<br />
know it is for you.<br />
We closed our churches out of love<br />
for our vulnerable brothers and sisters<br />
and concern not to spread the disease.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w, we are working on it, trying hard<br />
to open our churches back up. I am<br />
confident that we are getting there,<br />
that it will be a matter of weeks now,<br />
not months.<br />
The Church has always suffered,<br />
from the beginning. Being Christian<br />
does not mean we escape suffering.<br />
Being Christian means we know that<br />
our suffering will be redeemed, that<br />
divine mercy overcomes every evil,<br />
that divine love is stronger than death.<br />
God is alive and he goes with us. He<br />
has a plan for human history and a<br />
plan for every human life. Jesus Christ<br />
is still the light that shines in the darkness.<br />
We need to look for that light<br />
with the eyes of faith. We need to walk<br />
by that light with the courage and love<br />
that he gives us.<br />
This is what Jesus meant when he<br />
said, “Do not be afraid.” This is what<br />
St. John Paul meant.<br />
In this pandemic, God is asking each<br />
of us what we value, what is important<br />
to us. He is showing us that in the end,<br />
it is only love that matters. The love<br />
that Jesus Christ has for us. The love<br />
that we have for him. The love that we<br />
have for one another.<br />
We are coming out of the darkness of<br />
this coronavirus pandemic, and as we<br />
open the doors to get back to work and<br />
some kind of “normal,” we are going<br />
to see the damage this virus has left in<br />
its wake: economic, spiritual, emotional,<br />
and psychological. Lives broken<br />
and emptied of hope, people hurting<br />
in ways we cannot yet imagine.<br />
Our society needs the Church, perhaps<br />
now more than ever. Love is the<br />
only answer, the only credible way to<br />
proclaim Christ. And love alone can<br />
cast out fear.<br />
In his book, “Crossing the Threshold<br />
of Hope,” St. John Paul wrote, “Love<br />
that became man, Love crucified<br />
and risen, Love unceasingly present<br />
among men. It is Eucharistic Love. …<br />
He alone can give the ultimate assurance<br />
when he says ‘Be not afraid!’ ”<br />
Jesus is calling us in this hour to<br />
love without holding anything back.<br />
We need to help our neighbors get<br />
back on their feet. We need to help<br />
them mourn their dead and heal their<br />
wounds, to begin their lives again.<br />
We need to make sure the poor are<br />
not forgotten. We are in this together.<br />
And we are stronger together, better<br />
together.<br />
Pray for me this week and I will pray<br />
for you.<br />
Let us ask our Blessed Mother Mary<br />
to intercede for us as we prepare for<br />
the reopening of our society and our<br />
churches.<br />
And let us entrust our lives to her Immaculate<br />
Heart, just as St. John Paul<br />
did. Let us say as he said, “Totus tuus.”<br />
All for Mary. <br />
To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com.<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 3
WORLD<br />
Vatican Museums to<br />
reopen amid money woes<br />
After months of being closed due<br />
to the coronavirus (COVID-19),<br />
one of the Vatican’s biggest sources<br />
of revenue has announced plans to<br />
reopen, but with many changes and<br />
challenges.<br />
The Vatican Museums will resume<br />
tours under several safety restrictions,<br />
including requiring all visitors to wear<br />
masks, taking visitors’ temperatures,<br />
and limiting group sizes.<br />
The extended closure, which began<br />
March 9, has taken a heavy financial<br />
burden on Vatican City.<br />
According to Reuters, the Vatican<br />
Museums generate about $100<br />
million annually, and in 2015 the<br />
Economist reported that about half<br />
of those annual funds serve as surplus<br />
revenue for the city.<br />
Father Juan Antonio Guerrero, head<br />
of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the<br />
Economy, anticipates that because of<br />
the coronavirus, the Holy See’s overall<br />
income will drop between 25% and<br />
45%.<br />
“We definitely have difficult years<br />
ahead of us,” he told Vatican <strong>News</strong>.<br />
Phase two of Italy’s reopening process<br />
allows museums to reopen <strong>May</strong><br />
18, but the Vatican Museums have yet<br />
to set a date. <br />
PANDEMIC PILGRIMAGE — A nun wearing a face mask attends a ceremony marking the<br />
103rd anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima at the Fátima shrine in central<br />
Portugal on <strong>May</strong> 13. Without the crowd of pilgrims it welcomes every year due to the<br />
coronavirus (COVID-19) safety measures, the shrine of Fátima celebrated the anniversary<br />
during a ceremony reduced to the bare minimum.<br />
Benedict cites threat of ‘humanist ideologies’<br />
The Catholic Church is under siege,<br />
said Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, but<br />
not necessarily by plague or persecution.<br />
In a newly published biography, German<br />
journalist Peter Seewald quotes<br />
the 93-year-old once known as Cardinal<br />
Joseph Ratzinger as saying that a<br />
“worldwide dictatorship of seemingly<br />
humanist ideologies” is threatening<br />
the Church.<br />
These ideologies, the pope continued,<br />
include same-sex marriage,<br />
abortion, and in vitro fertilization.<br />
“Modern society is in the process of<br />
formulating an anti-Christian creed,<br />
and resisting this creed is punished<br />
by social excommunication,” Pope<br />
Benedict said in the interview with<br />
Seewald. “Events have shown by now<br />
that the crisis of faith has above all led<br />
to a crisis of Christian existence.”<br />
In the same interview, the pope also<br />
referred to a spiritual testament he<br />
had written, which will not be published<br />
until after his death. <br />
Catholic charity group calls for post-pandemic aid<br />
PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES<br />
PAUL HARING/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE<br />
Visitors tour the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican<br />
Museums Feb. 21, two weeks before their<br />
closure.<br />
The end of the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19) will not mean the end of<br />
challenges, according to the world’s<br />
biggest network Catholic aid agencies.<br />
“Caritas Internationalis is highly<br />
concerned by the major humanitarian<br />
crisis to which the post-pandemic<br />
is heading,” read a <strong>May</strong> 6 statement<br />
from the network, which is dedicated<br />
to bringing emergency aid to the poor<br />
and vulnerable.<br />
Citing Catholic teaching, Caritas<br />
noted the importance of addressing<br />
a range of mounting human afflic-<br />
tions, including famine and migrants’<br />
increased vulnerability.<br />
To alleviate these situations, the<br />
network believes the international<br />
community should suspend economic<br />
sanctions on certain countries,<br />
support faith-based organizations<br />
responding to post-pandemic needs,<br />
and allocate funds to support the<br />
needy.<br />
“We can stop another major humanitarian<br />
crisis,” read the statement,<br />
“if courageous and bold actions are<br />
taken to anticipate and support the<br />
most vulnerable communities.” <br />
4 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
NATION<br />
Catholic doctors offer church reopening ‘road map’<br />
A panel of Catholic doctors on the front lines of the<br />
fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) have produced<br />
a “road map” with suggestions on how to reopen<br />
Catholic churches safely during the prolonged pandemic.<br />
Sent out to the country’s bishops <strong>May</strong> 14, the document<br />
recommends social distancing, masks, no singing, and<br />
reception of Communion on the hand during celebration<br />
of Mass.<br />
The sacrament of confession, the doctors recommended,<br />
“should follow safe social distancing practices and be<br />
carried out in a well-ventilated area, outdoors, or in the<br />
main church,” with the priest and penitent separated by<br />
a barrier and both wearing masks.<br />
One of the doctors on the panel interviewed by <strong>Angelus</strong><br />
said he believes churches actually have a number of<br />
advantages in protecting people that businesses don’t.<br />
“It’s a no-brainer, if you should have best practices for a<br />
grocery store and for a Home Depot, why can’t you have<br />
best practices for church services?” said Yale University<br />
immunobiologist Dr. Andrew Wang.<br />
A man applies an electrostatic disinfectant at Christ the King Church<br />
in Nashville, Tennessee, <strong>May</strong> 15.<br />
The document and interviews with the doctors can be<br />
found on <strong>Angelus</strong><strong>News</strong>.com. <br />
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/RICK MUSACCHIO, TENNESSEE REGISTERN<br />
A special coach-in-waiting<br />
The not-so-great mask debate<br />
St. Michael High School<br />
in Fairhope, Alabama,<br />
knows it will be getting<br />
an NFL legend as its new<br />
football coach, it just<br />
doesn’t know when.<br />
Longtime San Diego<br />
and LA Chargers quarterback<br />
Phillip Rivers was on<br />
<strong>May</strong> 8 named “coach-inwaiting”<br />
of the Fairhope,<br />
Alabama, school’s football<br />
team, which means the<br />
job is his once he retires Philip Rivers on <strong>May</strong> 8.<br />
from the NFL, which<br />
could be after a few more seasons.<br />
“I [had] two childhood dreams,” Rivers told Catholic<br />
<strong>News</strong> Service. “One was playing in the NFL … the other<br />
was to be a high school football coach as my dad was.”<br />
Rivers recently announced he is leaving Los Angeles to<br />
play for the Indianapolis Colts on a one-year deal. He has<br />
not announced his plans beyond that.<br />
“[Phillip] and Tiffany are devout Catholics,” Faustin Weber,<br />
St. Michael’s principal, told Catholic <strong>News</strong> Service.<br />
“I believe he’s going to be a tremendous influence on the<br />
lives of our young men here and their faith life.” <br />
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/ROB HERBST, THE CATHOLIC WEEK<br />
The editor of the Christian journal First Things set off<br />
a heated social media debate this month when he denounced<br />
the “mask culture” brought on by the coronavirus<br />
(COVID-19).<br />
“Masks=enforced cowardice,” R.R. Reno wrote in one of<br />
the tweets. The tweets were later deleted.<br />
Public health experts, and many of Reno’s fellow Catholics,<br />
were quick to object.<br />
“The simple reason [to wear a mask] is primarily to protect<br />
others, the secondary reason is to protect oneself,” Dr.<br />
Barbara Golder, a physician, lawyer, and bioethicist with<br />
a background in pathology, told Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency<br />
when asked about the controversy. “It isn’t fear to exercise<br />
prudent care for ourselves and others.”<br />
Acknowledging that there are legitimate concerns regarding<br />
such limitations, Golder said that it is “absolutely true<br />
that there has been some overreach of government officials<br />
in imposing restrictions in various places.”<br />
But at a time when a large portion of the population is<br />
at risk due to age or medical conditions, charity should be<br />
our first concern, Golder said. “Wearing a mask is a way of<br />
exercising our care for the other, who could be harmed if<br />
we do not.”<br />
Reno issued an apology for his “foolish and ill-considered<br />
remarks” on <strong>May</strong> 18. “It was wrong of me to impugn the<br />
intentions and motives of others.” <br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 5
LOCAL<br />
Essential workers get Hollywood treatment<br />
At a livestreamed Mass on <strong>May</strong><br />
17, Blessed Sacrament Church in<br />
Hollywood honored those working<br />
on the front lines of the coronavirus<br />
(COVID-19) pandemic.<br />
In the empty church, the names<br />
of more than 400 medical professionals,<br />
LAPD and LAFD<br />
members, pharmacists, and other<br />
essential workers with ties to the<br />
parish community, were posted on<br />
the backs of the pews. “It’s not a<br />
jet flyover,” said Father John (J.T.)<br />
Tanner, SJ, in his opening prayer,<br />
“but we come together and we<br />
recognize these specific people.”<br />
The Mass was inspired by a team<br />
of teenagers who have served at<br />
the parish food pantry since the<br />
beginning of the pandemic. The<br />
teens identified contacts for local<br />
hospitals and nursing homes, made<br />
and displayed the name posters, and<br />
participated in the celebration of the<br />
appreciation Mass. <br />
The names of first responders and essential<br />
workers are displayed on empty pews at<br />
Blessed Sacrament Church <strong>May</strong> 17.<br />
COURTESY BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH<br />
COURTESY ST. ELISABETH SCHOOL<br />
Van Nuys school offers drive-thru Mother’s Day<br />
In the chaos of the coronavirus<br />
(COVID-19) pandemic, parents are<br />
feeling the pressure: working from<br />
home, supervising distance learning,<br />
and keeping family faith alive.<br />
“Homes have become the school and<br />
the church,” said Sister Angelie Marie<br />
Inoferio, principal of St. Elisabeth<br />
School in Van Nuys.<br />
On Mother’s Day weekend, teachers<br />
and staff decided to give busy moms<br />
a break with a socially distanced<br />
celebration. The Daughters of Divine<br />
Zeal Sisters decorated an altar for<br />
the Blessed Mother in the school’s<br />
parking lot, and mothers and students<br />
were invited to participate in a drivethru<br />
party.<br />
The teachers made signs wishing<br />
moms a “Happy Mother’s Day!”<br />
and telling students how much they<br />
missed them, and passed out roses and<br />
treats.<br />
And, as one final gift, the school<br />
canceled all distance learning classes<br />
that day. <br />
A teacher and a Daughter of the Divine Zeal sister hand out treats to mothers and students in a<br />
<strong>May</strong> 8 Mother’s Day celebration.<br />
A glimmer of hope?<br />
After more than two months of<br />
churches being closed to the public in<br />
California, Gov. Gavin <strong>News</strong>om said<br />
<strong>May</strong> 18 he expects people to be able<br />
to gather for worship again in a matter<br />
of weeks, not months.<br />
<strong>News</strong>om made the comment as he<br />
announced revised reopening standards<br />
for individual counties in the<br />
state, many of which have pushed<br />
back against some aspects of statewide<br />
shutdown orders aimed at stemming<br />
the spread of the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19).<br />
“We recognize the conditions across<br />
the state are unique and distinctive<br />
depending where you are,” <strong>News</strong>om<br />
said in the news conference.<br />
Under the new rules, churches<br />
in some parts of the state would be<br />
allowed to offer “counseling services”<br />
such as confession soon. He suggested<br />
that the congregants would be able<br />
to meet for worship again in a matter<br />
of weeks, “if everything holds,” but<br />
offered no specifics. <br />
6 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
The global COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve rapidly and impact all aspects of our lives. During times<br />
of uncertainty and crisis, people come together to support one another. We are one family of faith. When<br />
one part of our family suffers, we join together to help alleviate the pain of another.<br />
At the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, our clergy and lay staffs’ primary concern is the health and safety of our<br />
community. We continue to pray for those who are sick, and for a fast-moving resolution of the current crisis.<br />
We look forward to the time when we can celebrate all the sacraments and Mass as a community.<br />
During this unprecedented time, the COVID-19 Relief Fund ensures that the more than 10,000 people who<br />
work in support of faith needs can keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Our faith and lay<br />
ministers continue to serve those in need – those in our community most affected by the pandemic.<br />
Please join us, and together let us rise up and support our local community. As we keep one another in<br />
prayer, let us embrace this crisis as Jesus embraced his Passion – by loving one another and trusting that God<br />
is with us – we are not alone!<br />
Visit LACatholics.org/Emergency to donate<br />
COVID-19 Relief Fund<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, 8-15, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 7
SUNDAY<br />
READINGS<br />
BY SCOTT HAHN<br />
Acts 1:12–14 / Ps. 27:1, 4, 7–8 / 1 Pt. 4:13–<strong>16</strong> / Jn. 17:1–11<br />
Jesus has been<br />
taken up into<br />
heaven as we<br />
begin today’s<br />
First Reading.<br />
His disciples,<br />
including the<br />
apostles and<br />
Mary, return<br />
to the upper<br />
room where he<br />
celebrated the<br />
Last Supper<br />
(see Luke<br />
<strong>22</strong>:12).<br />
There, they<br />
devote themselves<br />
with<br />
one accord<br />
to prayer, awaiting the Spirit that he<br />
promised would come upon them (see<br />
Acts 1:8).<br />
The unity of the early Church at<br />
Jerusalem is a sign of the oneness that<br />
Christ prays for in today’s Gospel. The<br />
Church is to be a communion on<br />
earth that mirrors the glorious union of<br />
Father, Son, and Spirit in the Trinity.<br />
Jesus has proclaimed God’s name to<br />
his brethren (see Hebrews 2:12; Psalm<br />
<strong>22</strong>:23). The prophets had foretold this<br />
revelation: a new covenant by which<br />
all flesh would have knowledge of the<br />
Lord (see Jeremiah 31:33-34; Habakkuk<br />
2:14).<br />
By the new covenant made in his<br />
blood and remembered in every<br />
Eucharist, we know God as our Father.<br />
This is the eternal life Jesus promises.<br />
And this is the light and salvation we<br />
sing of in today’s Psalm.<br />
“The Ascension of Christ,” by Pieter Jozef Verhaghen, 1728–1811, Flemish.<br />
As God made light to shine out of<br />
darkness when the world began, he has<br />
enlightened us in baptism, making us<br />
new creations (see 2 Corinthians 5:17),<br />
giving us knowledge of the glory of<br />
God in the face of Christ (see Hebrews<br />
10:32; 2 Corinthians 4:6).<br />
Our new life is a gift of “the Spirit of<br />
glory,” we hear in today’s Epistle (see<br />
John 7:38–39). Made one in his name,<br />
we are given a new name — “Christians”<br />
— a name used only here and in<br />
two other places in the Bible (see Acts<br />
11:<strong>16</strong>; 26:28). We are to glorify God,<br />
though we will be insulted and suffer<br />
because of this name.<br />
But as we share in his sufferings, we<br />
know we will overcome (see Revelation<br />
3:12) and rejoice when his glory is<br />
once more revealed. And we will dwell<br />
in the house of the Lord all the days of<br />
our lives. <br />
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.<br />
Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com.<br />
8 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> August <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>16</strong>-23-30, <strong>2020</strong> 2019
IN EXILE<br />
BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI<br />
Leaving peace behind as our farewell gift<br />
There is such a thing as a good<br />
death, a clean one, a death that,<br />
however sad, leaves behind a sense of<br />
peace. I have been witness to it many<br />
times. Sometimes this is recognized<br />
explicitly when someone dies, sometimes<br />
unconsciously. It is known by<br />
its fruit.<br />
I remember sitting with a man dying<br />
of cancer in his mid-50s, leaving behind<br />
a young family, who said to me,<br />
“I don’t believe I have an enemy in<br />
the world, at least I don’t know if I do.<br />
I’ve no unfinished business.”<br />
I heard something similar from a<br />
young woman also dying of cancer<br />
and also leaving behind a young family.<br />
Her words: “I thought that I’d cried<br />
all the tears I had, but then yesterday<br />
when I saw my youngest daughter I<br />
found out that I had a lot more tears<br />
still to cry. But I’m at peace. It’s hard,<br />
but I’ve nothing left that I haven’t<br />
given.”<br />
And I’ve been at deathbeds other<br />
times when none of this was articulated<br />
in words, but all of it was clearly<br />
spoken in that loving awkwardness<br />
and silence you often witness around<br />
deathbeds. There is a way of dying<br />
that leaves peace behind.<br />
In the Gospel of John, Jesus gives a<br />
long farewell speech at the Last Supper<br />
on the night before he dies. His<br />
disciples, understandably, are shaken,<br />
afraid, and not prepared to accept the<br />
brute reality of his impending death.<br />
He tries to calm them, reassure<br />
them, give them things to cling to,<br />
and he ends with these words: “I am<br />
going away, but I will leave you a final<br />
gift, the gift of my peace.”<br />
I suspect that almost everyone read-<br />
ing this will have had an experience<br />
of grieving the death of a loved one,<br />
a parent, spouse, child, or friend, and<br />
finding, at least after a time, beneath<br />
the grief a warm sense of peace whenever<br />
the memory of the loved one<br />
surfaces or is evoked.<br />
I lost both of my parents when I was<br />
in my early 20s and, sad as were their<br />
farewells, every memory of them now<br />
evokes a warmth. Their farewell gift<br />
was the gift of peace.<br />
In trying to understanding this, it is<br />
important to distinguish between being<br />
wanted and being needed. When<br />
I lost my parents at a young age, I<br />
still desperately wanted them (and<br />
believed that I still needed them), but<br />
I came to realize in the peace that<br />
eventually settled upon our family<br />
after their deaths that our pain was<br />
in still wanting them and not in any<br />
longer needing them.<br />
In their living and their dying they<br />
had already given us what we needed.<br />
There was nothing else we needed<br />
from them. <strong>No</strong>w we just missed them<br />
and, irrespective of the sadness of<br />
their departure, our relationship was<br />
complete. We were at peace.<br />
The challenge for all of us now, of<br />
course, is on the other side of this<br />
equation, namely, the challenge to<br />
live in such a way that peace will be<br />
our final farewell gift to our families,<br />
our loved ones, our faith community,<br />
and our world. How do we do that?<br />
How do we leave the gift of peace to<br />
those we leave behind?<br />
Peace, as we know, is a whole lot<br />
more than the simple absence of war<br />
and strife. Peace is constituted by two<br />
things: harmony and completeness.<br />
To be at peace something has to have<br />
an inner consistency so that all of its<br />
movements are in harmony with one<br />
another and it must also have a completeness<br />
so that it is not still aching<br />
for something it is missing.<br />
Peace is the opposite of internal<br />
discord or of longing for something<br />
we lack. When we are not at peace it<br />
is because we are experiencing chaos<br />
or sensing some unfinished business<br />
inside us.<br />
Positively then, what constitutes<br />
peace? When Jesus promises peace<br />
as his farewell gift, he identifies it<br />
with the Holy Spirit; and, as we know,<br />
that is the spirit of charity, joy, peace,<br />
patience, goodness, longsuffering,<br />
fidelity, mildness, and chastity.<br />
How do we leave these behind when<br />
we leave? Well, death is no different<br />
than life. When some people leave anything,<br />
a job, a marriage, a family, or a<br />
community, they leave chaos behind,<br />
a legacy of disharmony, unfinished<br />
business, anger, bitterness, jealousy,<br />
and division.<br />
Their memory is felt always as a cold<br />
pain. They are not missed, even as<br />
their memory haunts. Some people on<br />
the other hand leave behind a legacy<br />
of harmony and completeness, a spirit<br />
of understanding, compassion, affirmation,<br />
and unity. These people are<br />
missed, but the ache is a warm one, a<br />
nurturing one, one of happy memory.<br />
Going away in death has exactly the<br />
same dynamic. By the way we live and<br />
die we will leave behind either a spirit<br />
that perennially haunts the peace<br />
of our loved ones, or we will leave<br />
behind a spirit that brings a warmth<br />
every time our memory is evoked. <br />
Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology<br />
in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 9
Sacrificing for<br />
<br />
The sisters at Sacred Heart House in Alhambra received care packages and honored the Order of Malta with a rendition of "Rejoice in the Lord."<br />
10 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
‘Operation Gratitude’ is delivering care<br />
for caregivers at a critical time during the<br />
COVID-19 pandemic<br />
BY HAYLEY SMITH / ANGELUS<br />
In the early weeks of the coronavirus<br />
(COVID-19) pandemic, the Carmelite<br />
Sisters of the Most Sacred<br />
Heart of Los Angeles learned that senior<br />
citizens were at a heightened risk<br />
of contracting the deadly virus. The<br />
sisters thought instantly of the residents<br />
at their Santa Teresita nursing home<br />
and assisted living facility in Duarte,<br />
and realized what they were being<br />
called to do: move in with them.<br />
“It was the ultimate sacrifice,” said<br />
Mike Psomas, president of the Los<br />
Angeles chapter of the Order of Malta,<br />
a 900-year-old lay religious order of the<br />
Catholic Church.<br />
recipients of the program?” Psomas<br />
asked. “It probably took us a month to<br />
figure it out.”<br />
As part of the Order of Malta’s mission<br />
of caring for the sick and the poor,<br />
the organization was already running<br />
a hygiene kit delivery program for<br />
homeless shelters in LA. Each month,<br />
a truck delivered a pallet of supplies to<br />
the members of the order, who broke<br />
them down and reassembled them into<br />
personal packages for delivery. They realized<br />
they could use the same system<br />
for the Carmelite sisters.<br />
“We were already doing this hygiene<br />
kit program, so the idea arose that we<br />
Rich Grimes, a knight of the Order of Malta, assembled care packages for the Carmelite sisters<br />
with his family over Mother's Day weekend.<br />
COURTESY ORDER OF MALTA/ADLA<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
When Psomas and other members<br />
of the Order of Malta heard about the<br />
sisters’ commitment, they knew they<br />
wanted to help. But with strict citywide<br />
stay-at-home orders and social distancing<br />
measures in place, they had to get<br />
creative.<br />
“How do you structure a program<br />
to protect the people providing the<br />
program and the people that are the<br />
could model it like that,” Psomas said.<br />
“It’s already approved by our medical<br />
director, and we can make kits, we can<br />
give people something to do.”<br />
Over Mother’s Day weekend, that’s<br />
precisely what happened. Thirteen<br />
families received supplies like gummy<br />
bears, granola bars, and hand creams<br />
and worked in an assembly-line fashion<br />
to put together care packages for the<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 11
After learning that senior citizens were at a heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19), several sisters decided to quarantine with their patients in their nursing and assisted living<br />
facilities in Duarte.<br />
COURTESY ORDER OF MALTA/ADLA<br />
care package contained a hand-written<br />
note and a copy of “Prayer for the<br />
Health Workers in the Time of the<br />
Coronavirus Pandemic,” written by<br />
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Edward<br />
Clark.<br />
“Bless the hands of those who care for<br />
the victims of this disease,” the prayer<br />
reads. “Reward the generosity of their<br />
commitment to those who suffer.”<br />
Because the senior population at<br />
Santa Teresita is at such a high risk<br />
of contracting the coronavirus, it was<br />
decided that the gift kits would themselves<br />
be quarantined for a minimum<br />
of five days. The sisters at Sacred Heart<br />
House in Alhambra — the “motherhouse”<br />
of the Carmelites — agreed to<br />
accept the gifts and keep them until<br />
they are cleared for human contact, at<br />
which point they will distribute them<br />
to the sisters who moved in with their<br />
patients.<br />
But these additional steps aren’t just a<br />
necessary precaution in the time of the<br />
pandemic; they’re something the sisters<br />
view as yet another act of love for the<br />
people they care for. The delivery on<br />
<strong>May</strong> 12 was a joyful occasion for everyone<br />
involved.<br />
“I can feel my heart enlivening,”<br />
said Sister Mary Scholastica as the<br />
Malta Mobile Unit pulled into the<br />
leafy driveway. Before accepting the<br />
packages, she and several other sisters<br />
honored the order with a rendition<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
sisters, more than 300 in total.<br />
“The Carmelites are so wonderful,”<br />
said Rich Grimes, a knight of the Order<br />
of Malta whose family assembled<br />
several of the kits. “Our hope is to put<br />
a smile on their faces and a recognition<br />
in their minds that they’re not alone,<br />
and that we’re beaming our prayers<br />
and support for what they do and how<br />
they put themselves at risk for others.”<br />
The idea, which the order named<br />
“Operation Gratitude,” could not have<br />
come at a more critical time. As the<br />
city inches toward reopening, many experts<br />
are expressing increasing concern<br />
about the responders on the front lines<br />
of the virus. Doctors, nurses, chaplains,<br />
and nuns are witnessing illness and<br />
death at unprecedented levels, and for<br />
many of these caregivers, even small<br />
acts of kindness and encouragement<br />
can make a big difference.<br />
“This situation is almost reminding<br />
people that life is passing, and there’s<br />
another life we’re heading for.”<br />
“We just went through Nurses Week,<br />
which is normally a time to celebrate<br />
nurses in a lot of different ways,” said<br />
Arthur “Tri” Fritz, a knight of the<br />
order who also assembled kits with his<br />
family. “To be able to recognize nurses,<br />
caregivers, and first responders of all<br />
sorts is really crucial, because they’re<br />
under the most pressure right now.”<br />
In addition to snacks and lotions, each<br />
of “Rejoice in the Lord,” their smiles<br />
peeking out from beneath their masks<br />
as they stood in formation across the<br />
lawn.<br />
“The great evil in this virus is that it<br />
isolates us from each other,” said Sister<br />
Isabel, one of the nuns who lives at Sacred<br />
Heart House, “but if we keep love<br />
in our hearts, then evil can never win.”<br />
While the gifts await distribution, the<br />
12 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
In order to protect the recipients of their gifts, the Order of Malta used a creative, multistep system to assemble and distribute care packages while<br />
maintaining strict social distancing protocols.<br />
Carmelite sisters are focused on yet another<br />
method of offering hope: They’ve<br />
used their time in quarantine to set up<br />
a livestream of their prayer services.<br />
The response has been overwhelmingly<br />
positive, and people from all over the<br />
world have reached out to express their<br />
gratitude and appreciation.<br />
“It speaks a lot to the hunger people<br />
have,” said Sister Scholastica. “This<br />
situation is almost reminding people<br />
that life is passing, and there’s another<br />
life we’re heading for.”<br />
That the pandemic has left many<br />
people frightened, confused, and in<br />
search of meaning is a challenge the<br />
Carmelite sisters feel uniquely prepared<br />
to handle.<br />
As spiritual (and often medical) caregivers,<br />
they see it as their job to help<br />
not only those suffering from the virus,<br />
but also their families as they move<br />
through with what Sister Scholastica<br />
called “the walk from this life to the<br />
next.”<br />
“It’s hard, but not all hard things are<br />
bad,” she said.<br />
The decision of some sisters to<br />
quarantine with their patients is both<br />
an illustration of their exceptional<br />
commitment and an embodiment of<br />
their faith. In addition to small sacrifices,<br />
like the opportunity to go for walks<br />
around the neighborhood, the sisters<br />
who chose to move into Santa Teresita<br />
have taken on even more duties: they<br />
sent the regular staff home in order to<br />
In addition to snacks and lotions, each care<br />
package contained a prayer and a hand-written<br />
note.<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
avoid the risk of any contamination<br />
from people coming and going.<br />
The opportunity to provide these<br />
sisters with care packages, and involve<br />
dozens of families in the process, is<br />
something Psomas and the other members<br />
of the Order of Malta feel acutely<br />
grateful for.<br />
“I just hope they know that people<br />
do care for them, and that the outside<br />
world cares for them and recognizes<br />
them,” Fritz said. “They’re not alone.<br />
People love them, God loves them.”<br />
As the pandemic enters its fourth<br />
month, all parties involved with Operation<br />
Gratitude are looking ahead to<br />
other ways they can be of service. And<br />
while assisting the sick and the poor<br />
has never been so challenging, or required<br />
so much creativity, it makes the<br />
work that much more meaningful.<br />
“It’s happening all over the world,”<br />
said Sister Isabel. “You see different<br />
people reaching out in different ways,<br />
and then you know: there’s God. You<br />
can see how his love can never be<br />
beaten by sickness or by death.” <br />
Hayley Smith is a Los Angeles-based<br />
reporter with a master’s degree in journalism<br />
from USC Annenberg.<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 13
Bagged free lunches are<br />
distributed to needy families<br />
at the entrance of Our Lady of<br />
Guadalupe School in East LA.<br />
Carryout cafeteria<br />
Local Catholic schools like Our Lady of Guadalupe in East LA are<br />
serving hundreds of free to-go meals a day to families in need<br />
BY R.W. DELLINGER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR ALEMÁN / ANGELUS<br />
Principal Na<br />
of Los Ange<br />
14 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
By 9 a.m. on a recent Friday, the<br />
line of mostly young mothers already<br />
stretched for a block down<br />
the sidewalk along the chain-link fence<br />
that separates Our Lady of Guadalupe<br />
School from Hazard Avenue. Nancy<br />
Figueroa, principal of the parish school<br />
in East LA, was talking to them in<br />
Spanish.<br />
Today, not even the blue mask on her<br />
face could contain the administrator’s<br />
enthusiasm as she made sure to catch<br />
up on how their families were doing.<br />
Slowly but surely, the women made<br />
their way to the partly open front metal<br />
gate to the table blocking the entrance<br />
to the schoolyard. A woman in a floppy<br />
brim hat and green T-shirt with the<br />
elementary school’s logo greeted them,<br />
asking how many meals they needed<br />
for their children.<br />
Most answered “dos” or “tres.” Three<br />
women inside the gate, stationed at<br />
two longer tables stacked with cardboard<br />
boxes of plastic grocery bags with<br />
breakfast and lunch cartons, passed<br />
along orders to the server in front.<br />
She handed the bags to the waiting<br />
mothers, who responded with “gracias”<br />
before hauling away the bags with both<br />
arms.<br />
The day’s lunch was popcorn chicken,<br />
mixed vegetables, applesauce, and<br />
milk.<br />
Principal Nancy Figueroa (left) and Lilia Chavez, di rector of Externally Funded Programs for the Archdiocese<br />
of Los Angeles.<br />
Handing out some 750 breakfasts and<br />
lunches each Monday through Friday<br />
during the coronavirus (COVID-19)<br />
pandemic, Our Lady of Guadalupe<br />
is the busiest of 38 Catholic schools<br />
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles<br />
involved in the national “Seamless<br />
Summer Option.”<br />
The food distribution program from<br />
the U.S. Department of Agriculture<br />
is a pandemic-time adaptation of the<br />
National School Breakfast and Lunch<br />
program that 73 local Catholic schools<br />
participated in. Before the pandemic,<br />
the federal program offered free and<br />
reduced-priced meals to low-income<br />
students at public and private schools<br />
across the country.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w there is no reduced price —<br />
only free.<br />
sometimes think<br />
that it’s only public schools<br />
“People<br />
providing breakfasts and<br />
lunches, because that’s all you hear<br />
about on the news,” Lilia Chavez, director<br />
of Externally Funded Programs<br />
for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,<br />
told <strong>Angelus</strong>.<br />
Those 38 school sites around the<br />
archdiocese provide the federally<br />
funded meals through “Better 4 You<br />
Meals,” a vendor based in Commerce.<br />
The numbers tell the story: Many of<br />
the schools serve hundreds of meals<br />
each day; then there are ones like St.<br />
Lawrence of Brindisi School in Watts<br />
(1,460 meals a day) and St. Patrick’s<br />
School in <strong>No</strong>rth Hollywood (1,200),<br />
for a total of 15,000 meals a day<br />
throughout the archdiocese.<br />
The meals are intended for students<br />
under 18, but they don’t have to be<br />
enrolled in a Catholic school. <strong>No</strong> one<br />
is turned away.<br />
What makes these food programs especially<br />
vital to struggling low-income<br />
urban families, according to Chavez,<br />
is the fact that paying the rent and<br />
utilities are usually a family’s top two<br />
priorities. So putting food on the table<br />
can come in a distant third.<br />
“We have run out of food at some<br />
sites, but then we adjust,” Chavez<br />
explained. “Then we just increase the<br />
order. And that’s what we did with Our<br />
Lady of Guadalupe, which started<br />
giving out just 60 meals, until it’s up to<br />
1,500 today.”<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 15
Food insecurity, or going hungry, isn’t<br />
new, even in the U.S., the wealthiest<br />
nation in the world. Before the coronavirus<br />
first appeared in the U.S. in January,<br />
more than 40 million Americans<br />
were categorized as “food insecure.”<br />
And now, with more than 30 million<br />
workers filing for unemployment benefits<br />
in the last two months, that number<br />
has been rising rapidly.<br />
The principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe<br />
has seen that firsthand. Decreasing<br />
attention spans and cognitive skills<br />
are often the first observable symptoms<br />
with students who don’t have enough<br />
to eat at home.<br />
Still, Figueroa, who graduated from<br />
the East LA school herself in 1989 and<br />
still lives nearby, thought people in<br />
the community might be too proud to<br />
show up in a food line. And she was<br />
really afraid of wasting any food.<br />
“Lilia said, ‘It’s OK. We’ll try it out<br />
small. We can fluctuate. If we have to<br />
go down in the number of meals, we’ll<br />
go down,’ ” the principal recalled. “But<br />
instead of going down, we’ve only gone<br />
up.”<br />
Figueroa said new patrons come from<br />
both near and far, waiting as long as<br />
they need to but sometimes fearful.<br />
“I was talking to a family who<br />
wouldn’t get out of their car. And<br />
they asked me if they could have four<br />
meals. And I said, ‘Of course. I’m the<br />
principal.’ They’re just so grateful. So<br />
there shouldn’t be any stigma in asking<br />
for food right now during this crisis.”<br />
“If we didn’t have this summer food<br />
program, it would be hard for these<br />
people.”<br />
Before transitioning to the out-ofschool<br />
food program, when all<br />
265 elementary and high schools<br />
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles<br />
closed in response to the pandemic,<br />
the principal and her staff had an even<br />
bigger transition to make. In a matter<br />
So with tens of thousands out-of-work<br />
families now skimping on food, experts<br />
say that developing school-age children<br />
— one of the groups most affected by<br />
chronic hunger — are in grave danger<br />
of not maintaining their physical and<br />
mental health.<br />
The principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe<br />
has seen that firsthand. Decreasing<br />
attention spans and cognitive skills<br />
are often the first observable symptoms<br />
with students who don’t have enough<br />
of days, the parochial school had to<br />
navigate the transition from in-class<br />
instruction to distance learning.<br />
“We transitioned so quick,” said<br />
Figueroa with a chuckle. “It was announced<br />
on March 13, a Wednesday,<br />
that we were closing. So we sent home<br />
letters to our parents. We had a faculty<br />
meeting on Friday and a plan for<br />
distance learning on Monday. Tuesday<br />
and Wednesday we rolled it out.”<br />
iPads and Chromebooks were handed<br />
out to parents, and by Thursday,<br />
March 19, the school’s 131 students<br />
had embarked on a homeschool adventure<br />
none of them had prepared for.<br />
The principal said the transition had<br />
worked well. Teachers are planning<br />
“around the clock,” coming up with<br />
new weekly lesson plans, posting<br />
instructional videos in math, reading,<br />
religion, English, social studies, and<br />
science. They hold live online sessions<br />
with students four to five days a week,<br />
and answer feedback from parents.<br />
“There’s no limit now on using<br />
Zoom video conferencing with kids,<br />
parents, and teachers,” the principal<br />
pointed out. “For second-graders, it is<br />
45 minutes, Monday through Friday.<br />
Third, fourth and fifth grades have an<br />
hour every day. And for middle school,<br />
sixth, seventh and eighth, it’s six hours<br />
a week total.<br />
The trade-off? “It’s actually a lot more<br />
work for teachers.”<br />
Back at the line on Hazard Avenue,<br />
a woman toward the front<br />
was asked what she thought of<br />
the summer food program that began<br />
in March.<br />
“I’ve been coming from the first week<br />
it started when I heard about it,” she<br />
said, but didn’t want to give her name.<br />
“This really helps my family. My kids,<br />
who come here, all get to eat. My<br />
daughter is going to graduate this year<br />
and my son is in sixth grade. And one<br />
graduated last year and goes to Sacred<br />
Heart High School.<br />
“But it’s good for the whole community,<br />
because food is so expensive<br />
these days. With this extra food, I can<br />
also give some of our own food to my<br />
grandmother, who can’t go outside<br />
now. So the program is good for my<br />
whole family.” <br />
R.W. Dellinger is the features editor of<br />
<strong>Angelus</strong>.<br />
Th<br />
the<br />
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tha<br />
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FR<br />
“Ma<br />
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<strong>16</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
“<strong>No</strong> one does more to keep Mary<br />
in our minds than Fr. Rocky.”<br />
– Dr. Scott Hahn, Ph.D.<br />
Throughout time, powerful intercessions of<br />
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world. <strong>No</strong>w is the time to honor her and<br />
ask for her protection and intercession<br />
that churches reopen.<br />
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Family-driven faith<br />
For Catholic families during the coronavirus pandemic,<br />
the ‘domestic church’ has gone from idea to reality<br />
BY SOPHIA MARTINSON / ANGELUS<br />
Fuad Shunnara and his wife, Sohad, kneel and read the Bible and pray with their sons in their<br />
living room in 2013.<br />
DEBBIE HILL/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE<br />
Deborah DiPaulo sat down on<br />
her living room couch one<br />
Friday and turned on her laptop.<br />
She had cleared out her schedule<br />
for the whole evening and the next<br />
morning so that she could tune into<br />
the virtual event about to take place.<br />
That event was the Catholic Family<br />
Conference, hosted completely online<br />
<strong>May</strong> 1-2. Through a series of lectures<br />
and panels, the conference brought<br />
together a host of prominent Catholic<br />
Deborah DiPaulo<br />
COURTESY DEBORAH DIPAULO<br />
18 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
DEBBIE HILL/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE<br />
speakers and thousands of families<br />
from across the globe to reflect on the<br />
topics of faith, family, and finding hope<br />
in hardship.<br />
“They touched me more than they<br />
realized,” said DiPaulo, 49, about the<br />
conference speakers, which included<br />
<strong>Angelus</strong> contributors Kathryn Jean<br />
Lopez and Scott Hahn, Ph.D. As a<br />
Catholic wife and mother of five living<br />
in Flowery Branch, Georgia, she found<br />
the virtual conference to be nourishment<br />
for her faith and family life.<br />
“This, to be honest, brought me more<br />
into my Catholic faith,” she told <strong>Angelus</strong><br />
in a phone interview. “I needed<br />
it to be a Catholic forum … so that I<br />
could direct [my family] the right way.”<br />
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic<br />
continues to confine thousands<br />
of people to their homes, the question<br />
of how to strengthen family faith while<br />
separated from the sacraments and<br />
parish life has become increasingly<br />
prevalent. And as parish leaders have<br />
stretched to minister to their congregations<br />
from afar, a recurring theme has<br />
been the meaning of the family unit<br />
within the Church.<br />
“The Church is the family of God<br />
— we are a family of families,” said<br />
Archbishop José H. Gomez at a <strong>May</strong><br />
6 virtual town hall organized by the<br />
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, echoing<br />
Pope Francis’ “Amoris Laetitia” (“The<br />
Joy of Love”).<br />
While not a new teaching, the challenges<br />
brought on by the coronavirus<br />
pandemic have compelled the Church<br />
to proclaim and support the centrality<br />
of the family, or the “domestic<br />
church,” more than ever before.<br />
ANCIENT YET OVERLOOKED<br />
What exactly is the domestic church?<br />
The term first appeared in the Second<br />
Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution,<br />
“Lumen Gentium” (“The Light<br />
of the Nations”). “The family is, so<br />
to speak, the domestic church,” the<br />
document states. “In it parents should,<br />
by their word and example, be the first<br />
preachers of the faith to their children;<br />
they should encourage them in the vocation<br />
which is proper to each of them,<br />
fostering with special care vocation to a<br />
sacred state.”<br />
The council’s subsequent document<br />
on the laity, “Apostolicam Actuosi-<br />
Gregory K. Popcak, Ph.D.<br />
tatem” (“Apostolic Activity”), later<br />
revisited the topic, and St. Pope John<br />
Paul II expounded upon it in his 1981<br />
encyclical “Familiaris Consortio”<br />
(“The Fellowship of the Family”).<br />
According to Gregory K. Popcak,<br />
Ph.D., the concept stems from Vatican<br />
II’s promulgation of the “universal call<br />
to holiness,” or the fact that God calls<br />
all people, regardless of life circumstances,<br />
to be saints.<br />
“It is the notion that every home is<br />
meant to be a sacred space and an<br />
outpost of grace in the world,” he told<br />
<strong>Angelus</strong> via email.<br />
Popcak, founder and executive director<br />
of the Pastoral Solutions Institute,<br />
an organization of Catholic counselors,<br />
has researched and written about the<br />
domestic church for years. He noted<br />
that while Vatican II brought it to new<br />
light, the idea is as old as the Church<br />
itself.<br />
As the Acts of the Apostles reveals,<br />
the first Christians fostered their faith<br />
within their homes and neighborhoods<br />
long before the establishment of monasteries,<br />
convents, and parishes.<br />
Despite these ancient foundations,<br />
Popcak has often found the domestic<br />
church to be an overlooked teaching.<br />
“Unfortunately, very little has been<br />
done to help families live out this<br />
vision in our homes,” he explained.<br />
“Until fairly recently, the phrase ‘domestic<br />
church’ has been employed as,<br />
at best, an aspirational term with little<br />
practical relevance.”<br />
Part of the problem, Popcak continued,<br />
stems from a misunderstanding of<br />
the role of the Catholic parish.<br />
COURTESY GREGORY POPCAK<br />
“Catholics have a tendency to think<br />
that the parish is meant to be the<br />
center of our faith life. But that’s not<br />
what the Catholic theology of the<br />
Church actually teaches,” he said.<br />
“In reality, the parish church exists to<br />
support the Christian life and ministerial<br />
efforts of the domestic church: the<br />
family.”<br />
<strong>No</strong>w that parishes across the world<br />
have closed their doors, families have<br />
had to reevaluate exactly what that<br />
means.<br />
NEW LIGHT ON OLD TEACHING<br />
Even with the ability to livestream<br />
services, the cancellation of public<br />
Masses and other gatherings has been a<br />
blow to pastors and parishioners alike.<br />
“Seeing the church totally empty is<br />
very sad,” said Archbishop Gomez at<br />
the archdiocese’s town hall.<br />
Recently, Pope Francis also emphasized<br />
that while Catholics can<br />
stay united from afar through prayer,<br />
coming together in person is a crucial<br />
part of the Faith. “This is the Church<br />
in a difficult situation that the Lord is<br />
allowing, but the ideal of the Church<br />
is always with the people and with the<br />
sacraments — always,” the Holy Father<br />
said in an April 17 homily.<br />
At the same time, being cut off from<br />
the sacraments has inspired many<br />
Catholic families to appreciate them<br />
more than ever before. Hahn, a biblical<br />
theology professor at the University<br />
of Steubenville and renowned author,<br />
reflected upon this sensation in his<br />
address at the Catholic Family Conference.<br />
“I was talking to [my daughter] Hannah<br />
just a couple of weeks ago,” said<br />
Hahn, “and she was describing to me<br />
how it was throughout this period that<br />
she came to realize how much she’s<br />
been taking the Holy Sacrifice of the<br />
Mass for granted, and how much more<br />
she has a kind of holy hunger, a longing<br />
for holy Communion like she has<br />
never known. … I realized that she was<br />
giving voice to what thousands — tens<br />
of thousands of us are feeling.”<br />
For Popcak, the repercussions of the<br />
pandemic have brought his research<br />
on the domestic church to the fore.<br />
When asked about this shift in focus<br />
within Catholic discussions and events,<br />
he commented, “As truly painful as it<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 19
A virtual town hall organized by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles <strong>May</strong> 6 featured Archbishop José<br />
H. Gomez, Helen Alvaré, Aaron Kheriaty, and Christina Lamas.<br />
is to be separated from the sacraments,<br />
the pandemic is forcing us to rethink<br />
how we ‘do church.’ ”<br />
He added, “God is giving us an opportunity<br />
to rediscover an idea that has<br />
been hidden in plain sight since the<br />
early Church. “Namely, it’s the Catholic<br />
home — not the parish, the parish<br />
school, or diocesan chancery — that is<br />
meant to be the crucible of intentional<br />
discipleship and primary outpost of<br />
evangelization.”<br />
FROM IDEA TO ACTION<br />
Within the context of the coronavirus,<br />
these discussions on the domestic<br />
church have also addressed how families<br />
can live it while observing shelterin-place<br />
orders.<br />
In his lecture, Hahn offered several<br />
practical recommendations. First and<br />
foremost was family prayer. “We all<br />
know that prayer is to the soul what<br />
breath is to the body,” he observed.<br />
“When you stop praying, you start<br />
suffocating.”<br />
Hahn continued by emphasizing<br />
the importance of the “nucleus” of<br />
the family: marriage. “That, too, is a<br />
blessed sacrament,” he said. “So pray<br />
together as spouses.”<br />
The LA town hall also included practical<br />
tips for families. In his remarks,<br />
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist at the<br />
University of California at Irvine and a<br />
father of five boys, first acknowledged<br />
the very real and acute difficulties individuals<br />
and families face while being<br />
confined: “What we’re going through<br />
is not normal for human beings,” he<br />
stated. “This has caused disruptions in<br />
our life, on a biological level … [and]<br />
on a social level.”<br />
In response to these challenges,<br />
Kheriaty offered recommendations for<br />
quarantined families to sustain their<br />
physical, psychological, and spiritual<br />
health. “This can be a golden opportunity<br />
for family mealtimes,” he said,<br />
noting the benefits of maintaining<br />
a regular meal schedule, including<br />
stronger family bonds.<br />
Kheriaty also said that many important<br />
activities, such as physical exercise<br />
and acts of service, can build family<br />
relationships and virtue when done<br />
together. “I think there are all kinds<br />
of little, simple, everyday ways that we<br />
can be in service to others, starting<br />
with the people close to us,” he said.<br />
When it comes to putting the notion<br />
of the domestic church into action,<br />
Popcak refers to various components<br />
of family life that make up a kind of<br />
“liturgy.”<br />
Just as the ministerial priesthood of<br />
the clergy cannot exist without the<br />
liturgy of the Eucharist, he explained,<br />
the common priesthood of the laity<br />
cannot exist without the “liturgy of<br />
domestic church life.”<br />
This kind of liturgy, he said, “presents<br />
an authentic, domestic-church-based<br />
spirituality that allows families to ‘bring<br />
Jesus home’ and make the faith the<br />
source of the warmth in their homes.”<br />
SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE<br />
To live this liturgy, Popcak continued,<br />
families must focus on three things:<br />
relationships, traditions, and service.<br />
Specifically, fostering an environment<br />
of affection; making time for prayer,<br />
conversation, and fun together; and<br />
serving others inside and outside of the<br />
home are key.<br />
By doing so, families can make faith<br />
the source and center of their life and<br />
therefore fulfill their mission as the<br />
domestic church.<br />
MAKING IT STICK<br />
If the coronavirus pandemic has<br />
stimulated an increased appreciation<br />
for the domestic church, sustaining<br />
that appreciation after the pandemic<br />
passes will be just as vital a task. After<br />
all, in his April 17 homily, the pope<br />
urged Catholics to see this time as<br />
providential but temporary, and the<br />
Church must at some point resume<br />
the full activity of the sacraments and<br />
evangelization outside the home.<br />
Nevertheless, hope is not lost that<br />
the good habits built during quarantine<br />
will disappear when busy, outand-about<br />
schedules resume. Going<br />
forward, Hahn sees the opportunity for<br />
families to build on the lessons from<br />
this period and grow in their mission.<br />
“When you get together and you listen<br />
to the truth of the Gospel with new<br />
ears, you get changed,” he told <strong>Angelus</strong><br />
in a phone interview. “And when this<br />
quarantine is lifted, individual faithful<br />
members of the Church, but also faithful<br />
families are going to get going … to<br />
be fruitful apostles.”<br />
For DiPaulo, the Catholic Family<br />
Conference is still impacting her life.<br />
She connected with several speakers<br />
on Facebook, where she continues to<br />
draw insights from them.<br />
“I really knew God was going to bring<br />
fruit out of it,” she told <strong>Angelus</strong>. “He’s<br />
still working … and [he’s] not done<br />
yet!”<br />
<strong>No</strong>w that his area of expertise has gotten<br />
increased attention, Popcak aspires<br />
to make the message of the domestic<br />
family more prominent than ever.<br />
“I would like to challenge families to<br />
realize that their homes are meant to<br />
be spiritual.” <br />
Sophia Martinson is a writer living in<br />
New York City.<br />
20 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
Memorial Day<br />
MONDAY, MAY 25, <strong>2020</strong> – 10 AM<br />
Online Event Only<br />
Holy Cross Cemetery<br />
& Mausoleum<br />
Culver City<br />
ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ GOMEZ<br />
PRINCIPAL CELEBRANT<br />
Join us Online at:<br />
CatholicCM.org or<br />
Facebook.com/lacatholics<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 21
A complicated<br />
crunch<br />
The Vatican’s financial mess<br />
illustrates ambivalence over<br />
being the ‘poor Church’<br />
Pope Francis dreams of<br />
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. / ANGELUS<br />
Pope Francis gave his blessing from the apostolic palace above an empty St. Peter's Square after the Sunday Regina Coeli April 26.<br />
VATICAN MEDIA/CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY<br />
ROME — Before “Who am<br />
I to judge?” and before the<br />
“throwaway culture,” as well as<br />
before his celebrated catalog of the<br />
15 “spiritual diseases” of the Roman<br />
Curia, Pope Francis just three days after<br />
his election gave us the soundbite<br />
which, in many ways, would define<br />
his papacy.<br />
“How I would like,” the new pope<br />
said, “a poor Church for the poor.”<br />
Under the heading of “be careful<br />
what you wish for,” Pope Francis may<br />
now be perilously close to getting<br />
what he wanted, at least as far as the<br />
Vatican is concerned, not as a result of<br />
internal reform, but rather long-standing<br />
financial weaknesses combined<br />
with the coronavirus (COVID-19)<br />
pandemic and its economic repercussions.<br />
A recent internal analysis prepared<br />
for Pope Francis and the heads of Vatican<br />
departments suggests the Vatican’s<br />
deficit could balloon by as much as<br />
175 percent in <strong>2020</strong>, reaching $158<br />
million, which is basically as much<br />
as the Vatican is projected to bring in<br />
this year, meaning it will be spending<br />
about twice as much as it collects.<br />
Annual income for the Vatican<br />
(technically, the “Holy See”) derives<br />
from three principal sources: investment<br />
returns, the real estate market,<br />
and contributions from dioceses, all of<br />
which have been negatively affected<br />
by the coronavirus shutdowns.<br />
Likewise, the Vatican City State,<br />
which fiscally is a separate operation,<br />
has been hard hit by closure of the<br />
Vatican Museums and the consequent<br />
loss of revenue from ticket sales (the<br />
Holy See has announced plans to reopen<br />
the museums in the near future).<br />
Longer term, the Vatican faces a ticking<br />
financial time bomb in the form<br />
of unfunded pension obligations that’s<br />
not been ameliorated by the coronavirus,<br />
because even idled workers are<br />
still on the books.<br />
Right now, the Vatican will have to<br />
scramble just to cover payroll; how it<br />
will make ends meet when more and<br />
more of its present workforce begins<br />
to retire and collect pension checks is,<br />
frankly, unknown.<br />
The internal report recommended<br />
that Pope Francis impose a freeze on<br />
hiring and promotions, plus a ban on<br />
travel, even when it becomes possible<br />
again, as well as a moratorium on<br />
conferences and events.<br />
Beyond that, it also counsels the creation<br />
of a unified investment fund for<br />
all Vatican entities to maximize return<br />
on investment, and at least hints at<br />
trimming payroll by recommending<br />
building a human resources capacity<br />
so a smaller staff can work more productively<br />
and nimbly.<br />
In past eras of crisis, popes have been<br />
able to count on the generosity of<br />
Catholics around the world to provide<br />
the resources necessary to weather<br />
whatever storm broke.<br />
Yet this time around things may be<br />
different, given that an important<br />
vehicle the Vatican uses to tap that<br />
generosity, the annual Peter’s Pence<br />
collection, has been tainted by association<br />
with a $<strong>22</strong>5 million scandal<br />
involving the Vatican’s role in purchasing<br />
a former Harrod’s warehouse<br />
in London’s tony Chelsea neighborhood<br />
slated for conversion into luxury<br />
apartments.<br />
Most Catholics believed Peter’s<br />
<strong>22</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
Pence was designed to support<br />
papal charities, and they may be less<br />
inclined to give if they think their<br />
money will instead end up in speculative<br />
land deals. The Vatican analysis<br />
presumes just a modest drop-off in<br />
income from the collection to support<br />
papal activities, and only time will tell<br />
if that’s right.<br />
The crunch may well induce a new<br />
spirit of financial modesty, and to that<br />
extent, Pope Francis may be inclined<br />
to see it as a blessing in disguise. To<br />
date, his efforts at a financial cleanup<br />
have met with mixed results, but in<br />
the wake of the pandemic, it seems<br />
obvious some sort of reform is now<br />
inevitable.<br />
On the other hand, there’s also the<br />
wisdom embedded in the famous<br />
comment attributed to the late American<br />
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus,<br />
onetime president of the so-called<br />
“Vatican Bank,” which goes like this:<br />
“You can’t run the Church on Hail<br />
Marys alone.”<br />
For the record, Archbishop Marcinkus<br />
always claimed he was misquoted.<br />
What he actually said, he insisted, was<br />
that when Vatican employees came<br />
to his office wanting their paychecks,<br />
he couldn’t respond, “I’ll pay you 400<br />
Hail Marys instead.”<br />
In whichever version, the point is<br />
the same: However much it may strive<br />
to be poor in spirit, the Vatican still<br />
needs money to keep things running.<br />
It’s worth recalling, in that context,<br />
where Pope Francis was when he<br />
delivered the “poor Church for the<br />
poor” soundbite: the Vatican’s Paul<br />
VI Audience Hall, known to Italians<br />
as the “Aula Nervi” after the architect<br />
who designed it, Pier Luigi Nervi,<br />
whose other projects included the<br />
UNESCO building in Paris, Rome’s<br />
Fiumicino airport, and the Port Authority<br />
Bus Station in New York.<br />
The hall was built between 1966<br />
and 1971, providing seating for almost<br />
7,000 people (capacity rises to 14,000<br />
if people are standing) and features<br />
strong acoustics and lines of sight.<br />
The total price tag at the time was<br />
about $6 billion in the old Italian lire,<br />
which worked out to $3.8 million in<br />
1971. Adjusted for inflation over the<br />
intervening 50 years, in today’s money<br />
the same hall would cost about $25<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 23<br />
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus<br />
million. Given its size and capacity,<br />
that’s hardly extravagant, but it’s not<br />
chump change either.<br />
Yet if a pope is to be the Church’s<br />
chief evangelizer and a voice of<br />
conscience for the world, he needs a<br />
platform from which to speak. One of<br />
the reasons the “poor Church for the<br />
poor” line was so effective, in fact, was<br />
because Pope Francis delivered it in<br />
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
front of the entire world’s media, in a<br />
setting perfectly designed for it to get<br />
across, with great sound and broadcast<br />
facilities.<br />
Pope Francis knows all this; when<br />
the London scandal broke, he<br />
acknowledged something seemed<br />
“dirty” about the affair, but defended<br />
on principle the idea of investing the<br />
Vatican’s income in order to grow its<br />
resources.<br />
“Good administration isn’t about<br />
collecting the sum of the offerings and<br />
putting it in a desk drawer,” he said.<br />
“That’s bad administration. Instead,<br />
you have to try to make investments so<br />
that when you need money, it’s there.”<br />
Thus the dilemma: How to embrace<br />
a new climate of limited means, along<br />
with much of the rest of the world,<br />
seeing it as an invitation to be that<br />
“poor Church” of the pope’s dreams,<br />
while, at the same time, cultivating<br />
practices of “good administration”<br />
to ensure that when the pope really<br />
needs it, he’s got more than Hail<br />
Marys in the account. <br />
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.<br />
¿Qué Legado dejará Usted?<br />
Es fácil incluír a su Parroquia,<br />
Escuela o Ministerio en su Testamento.<br />
Para dejar un legado perdurable,<br />
llámenos hoy.<br />
La oficina de Planned Giving<br />
(213) 637-7364<br />
PlannedGiving@la-archdiocese.org<br />
www.ADLALegacy.org<br />
1403<strong>2020</strong>_ADLA_<strong>Angelus</strong>__1-3pgH_4-10.indd 1<br />
3/<strong>29</strong>/20 11:38 AM
Carrying<br />
our<br />
CROSSES<br />
Suffering is always around us, especially during this pandemic.<br />
Let the Stations of the Cross be a spiritual balm<br />
BY GARY JANSEN / ANGELUS<br />
Life-size Stations of the Cross at St. Anthony’s Chapel on Troy Hill in Pittsburgh in 2011.<br />
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/NANCY WIECHEC<br />
Even though I consider myself pretty Catholic, I have<br />
avoided the Stations of the Cross for most of my life.<br />
I had what you might call a tumultuous childhood<br />
that left me with an odd form of self-diagnosed post-traumatic<br />
stress disorder. Even today, there are times when<br />
I’ll be walking down the street only to flinch or dodge an<br />
imaginary blow that just isn’t there; call it bad memories or<br />
phantom pain, but it’s real and unsettling.<br />
Though I knew there were people out there who suffered<br />
worse than I did, I still wanted nothing to do with meditations<br />
or prayers that had to do with suffering and misery.<br />
Give me the Joyful and Glorious mysteries of the rosary<br />
— those were more my speed. Keep the sorrowful stuff to<br />
yourself, Lord.<br />
As we learn of more and more people around the world<br />
losing loved ones to the coronavirus (COVID-19), I’m<br />
reminded of an experience that happened to me some years<br />
ago. I was alone with my grandmother in her hospital room.<br />
I was watching her die.<br />
Though I kept a strong face, I was sad, disoriented, frightened,<br />
and confused. For much of my life, my Nana (sometimes<br />
“Nana Banana,” a nickname I gave her when I was a<br />
small child) was a second mother for me, a lighthouse in the<br />
tempest.<br />
She was always there with a smile, some words of encouragement,<br />
or a small bag of my favorite pretzels (my snack of<br />
24 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/NANCY WIECHEC<br />
choice after school for many years).<br />
Though she lived simply, she struggled her whole life, always<br />
on the verge of poverty, always dealing with uncertainty.<br />
When her husband, Harry, my grandfather, a gravedigger<br />
for more than 30 years, died of a heart attack when I was <strong>22</strong>,<br />
it became my turn to take care of her.<br />
I was just starting in my career in publishing, busy with<br />
work, and making new friends at my new job. Still, I would<br />
see Nana every day, take her to the grocery store on Saturdays,<br />
primarily to get cat food (I swear her cats ate more<br />
food than she ever did) and to Calverton National Cemetery<br />
once a month to visit Harry.<br />
At the time, I was driving an old Jeep CJ-7, and in the summer<br />
we’d take off the hard-shell roof and cruise down the<br />
Long Island Expressway en route to the old flower shop she<br />
loved so much; there we would buy the perfect bouquet of<br />
cash-and-carry carnations to put on my grandfather’s grave.<br />
Nana. We were pals. We were, in many ways, best friends.<br />
The last five years of her life, though, had become even<br />
more of a struggle than the first 78. She suffered a series of<br />
strokes and became bedridden. Her daughter, my aunt, who<br />
had struggled her whole life with addiction, became her<br />
primary caregiver.<br />
During those final years, because of various complicated<br />
circumstances, I didn’t see my grandmother very much. We<br />
would talk on the phone from time to time, but visits were<br />
almost impossible.<br />
I missed those old days when we were BFFs, blasting<br />
Bruce Springsteen on the radio while she wore big bug-eyed<br />
sunglasses, giving people the peace sign as we cruised to the<br />
grocery store to buy kitty litter.<br />
But here she was now, so close to death. She couldn’t<br />
speak. Her hospital room was quiet except for the beep of<br />
the heart monitor and her own labored breathing. I knew<br />
I was going to lose her, and I knew I was going to lose her<br />
soon. I took her frail, soft hand into mine and just held it as I<br />
looked into her pale water-blue eyes.<br />
For a fleeting moment, I felt her whole life flash in front of<br />
me. Wait, I thought afterward, isn’t that supposed to happen<br />
when I die?<br />
But at the moment I felt as if all her stories — growing up<br />
in Brooklyn, her walks on the boardwalk at Coney Island,<br />
all the five-cent Pepsis she bought as a teenager, the death of<br />
her father when she was 21, the loss of her first love, working<br />
at Woolworth’s during World War II, the disappointments<br />
she suffered, the joys she experienced — had all been downloaded<br />
through the palm of my hand and into my heart.<br />
<strong>No</strong> words were spoken, but just being in her presence<br />
while she was suffering made me feel closer to her than I<br />
had ever felt before.<br />
Nana would die a few days later. I wasn’t in her hospital<br />
room when it happened, but to this day, I carry her life<br />
around inside me, and I am a better person for it. Having<br />
been there with her during those painful and precious moments<br />
created a bond and an understanding that continues<br />
to affect my life. I know that today in this time of pandemic,<br />
many people do not get that opportunity.<br />
Sometime later, after her funeral, I was drawn to the<br />
Stations of the Cross. I don’t know why. I just remember<br />
Pictures and names of people who died from the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19) hang on crosses in a remembrance garden near a church in<br />
Burton, England, April 24.<br />
being in church and looking at the stained-glass depictions<br />
of Jesus’ last moments. I thought of my grandmother and<br />
her struggles, and I looked at the colorful images as the sun<br />
streamed in, casting an aquarium of colors on the floor.<br />
I realized that just as I had felt close to my grandmother<br />
as she made her way to God, I felt closer to Jesus as I spent<br />
time with him as he inched his way to God. I’d never felt<br />
that before. It was late summer, and I remember asking<br />
myself why the Stations were relegated to Lent, when suffering<br />
is around us all the time. Soon after that, I made the<br />
Stations a regular spiritual exercise.<br />
I love the visual representations of Jesus’ life. As a movie<br />
geek and someone who attended film school for a couple<br />
of years, I sometimes look at the Stations of the Cross as if I<br />
were watching a movie while listening to the director’s commentary.<br />
Only this director isn’t Martin Scorsese or Steven<br />
Spielberg; it’s God talking to me through prayer.<br />
As Christians, we celebrate Jesus’ passion every year, so<br />
we may fall into the trap of thinking that we know the story,<br />
like, “Hey, I’ve seen this movie before; I know what happens.”<br />
But there’s so much more going on that we might not<br />
know. When we meditate on the Stations, no matter what<br />
time of year, no matter what we are going through, we allow<br />
God to speak to our suffering, to provide us with insight on<br />
what unfolded 2,000 years ago and what’s unfolding in our<br />
very lives today.<br />
The Stations of the Cross isn’t just a Lenten practice, it is a<br />
perennial exercise in spiritual awakening and a vital way of<br />
helping us carry our cross — and the crosses of those around<br />
us — in this time of uncertainty and upheaval. <br />
Gary Jansen is executive editor at Loyola Press, a Chicago-based<br />
publisher. He is the author of “Station to Station:<br />
An Ignatian Journey Through the Stations of the Cross” (Loyola<br />
Press, $9.96). For a limited time, the ebook of “Station to<br />
Station” is available for free to help people during this time of<br />
pandemic. Copies are available at Amazon.com, BN.com, or<br />
Apple.com.<br />
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CARL RECINE, REUTERS<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 25
WITH GRACE<br />
BY DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE<br />
Honors Latin American history teacher Juan Vazquez teaches his<br />
students about the Wall of Martyrs located inside the Belen Jesuit<br />
Preparatory School administration building.<br />
Be a man — and maybe a martyr<br />
IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK @BELENJESUITMIAMI<br />
My sons’ Catholic high school<br />
in Miami has all the usual<br />
things that high schools have,<br />
like a gymnasium, science labs, and<br />
a cafeteria that serves the mountains<br />
of food necessary to keep 1,200 male<br />
appetites satisfied every day.<br />
But it has something that may be<br />
unique among schools: a wall of<br />
martyrs.<br />
The right-hand wall of the school lobby<br />
is decorated with dozens of pictures<br />
and portraits, faces of handsome boys<br />
and men, all of them students or alumni<br />
of the school who died for truth, liberty,<br />
and the good of others. First-time<br />
visitors often stand there, gazing up at<br />
the wall, awestruck by the sight.<br />
Some of the faces are painted or<br />
drawn portraits and date back to the<br />
19th century. The school was founded<br />
in 1854 in Havana by Queen Isabel II<br />
of Spain and named after Our Lady of<br />
Belen (Bethlehem in Spanish).<br />
It keeps its name today, but it is now<br />
in Miami, and some of the elderly<br />
priests who give the boys spiritual<br />
direction and wait for them in the<br />
confessionals during the homeroom<br />
hour were young teachers when the<br />
whole school was expelled from Cuba<br />
by Fidel Castro, the school’s most<br />
(in)famous alumnus.<br />
From its founding to the present day,<br />
it has been a school infused by a heady,<br />
virile faith. The idea was and is to form<br />
young men who lean confidently on<br />
God, not simply to patiently endure<br />
the slings and arrows of life, but to<br />
wade enthusiastically and confidently<br />
into the fray.<br />
One of the school’s mottos, and my<br />
favorite, is “Esto Vir” (“Be a Man”).<br />
That is, live the classically masculine<br />
virtues of honor, daring, selflessness,<br />
and valor. Be, in short, a “man for<br />
others” — another school motto. The<br />
results, much of the time, are young<br />
men imbued with a Christianity that<br />
makes them capable of heroism; ergo<br />
the wall of martyrs.<br />
Some of the earliest portraits on the<br />
wall are of young men who gave their<br />
lives in the long and deadly struggle<br />
against one of their own century’s<br />
viral scourges: yellow fever. It was the<br />
school’s doctor, Carlos Finlay, who,<br />
seized by inspiration while saying his<br />
daily rosary, hypothesized that the<br />
disease that killed upward of half of<br />
those infected was being spread by<br />
mosquitoes.<br />
Fifty-seven young men from the<br />
school volunteered to be bitten by<br />
mosquitos that had recently fed on a<br />
yellow fever patient. Three of them<br />
died a hard yellow fever death and their<br />
portraits grace the wall. Dr. Finlay was<br />
correct, incidentally.<br />
Within a few decades, mosquito control<br />
measures had virtually eradicated<br />
a disease that had killed millions and<br />
26 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
Carlos Juan Finlay was a Cuban epidemiologist<br />
recognized as a pioneer in the research of<br />
yellow fever, determining that it was transmitted<br />
through mosquitoes.<br />
caused untold misery for centuries.<br />
For the last three decades of the 19th<br />
century, Cuba was gripped by war,<br />
which is a dark and cruel thing but<br />
one whose blackness never fails to be<br />
pierced by the light of human courage.<br />
For centuries Cuba had chafed as a<br />
colony under the grip of Spanish rule.<br />
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
They longed for freedom: to vote, to<br />
free the slaves, to speak frankly without<br />
fear of punishment.<br />
José Marti, the philosopher-poet-martyr<br />
of the revolution wrote about that<br />
longing: “It is terrible to speak of you,<br />
Liberty, for one who lives without you.”<br />
His own generosity of spirit and love of<br />
“patria” (“homeland”) stirred the souls<br />
of countless Belen students and alumni<br />
to abandon all self-interest to reshape<br />
their country around the claims of<br />
justice and human dignity.<br />
The portraits of those who died fill the<br />
wall, and hang side by side with many<br />
more who died on the beaches of Playa<br />
Giron in 1961 or were summarily<br />
executed along with hundreds of other<br />
men and boys in the infamous La<br />
Cabaña prison for recognizing in the<br />
face of Fidel Castro yet another brutal<br />
enemy of freedom.<br />
The lamentable way that most<br />
schools concentrate exclusively on the<br />
technical and academic education of<br />
their young men betrays a tragic blindness<br />
of spirit. We have long since left<br />
Eden, and in our exile from that glad<br />
place where Adam strolled with God in<br />
the cool of the evening, we can be sure<br />
that sin, injustice, and disease will have<br />
to be confronted by each generation.<br />
And each age will need heroes alight<br />
with enthusiasm to go and right what<br />
is wrong, courageous enough to risk<br />
— even disdain — their own safety<br />
and future when the common good<br />
demands it.<br />
Our current crisis is no different.<br />
We need heroes to lead the way out<br />
of quarantine and into life with the<br />
coronavirus, heroes to fight for the vulnerable<br />
as economic ruin envelops the<br />
world, and heroes of patient cheerfulness<br />
and hope in every home. Heroes<br />
so heroic, they may even earn a place<br />
on a wall of martyrs of their own. <br />
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie grew up in<br />
Guadalajara, Mexico, coming to the<br />
U.S. at the age of 11. She has written<br />
for USA TODAY, National Review, The<br />
Washington Post, and The New York<br />
Times, and has appeared on CNN,<br />
Telemundo, Fox <strong>News</strong>, and EWTN. She<br />
practices radiology in the Miami area,<br />
where she lives with her husband and<br />
five children.
Salvation out<br />
of the blues<br />
After passing through fame, addiction,<br />
and Protestantism, a Catholic rock ’n’<br />
roll legend’s new album may be his<br />
finest testament of faith yet<br />
© DION DIMUCCI<br />
BY ARSENIO ORTEZA / ANGELUS<br />
How long has Dion DiMucci been making music?<br />
Here’s how long: When he sang “I’d make love to<br />
you” in the song “Can’t We Be Sweethearts,” he<br />
wasn’t referring to anything R-rated any more than Laurence<br />
Olivier was when he told Joan Fontaine in the film<br />
“Rebecca” that he “should be making violent love to [her]<br />
behind a palm tree.”<br />
Dion, in other words, was simply promising his sweetheart<br />
lots of romance — with “lovin’ kisses too!”<br />
The year was 1963, the album “Donna the Prima Donna.”<br />
And Dion was all of 24 years old. Yet he was already<br />
a rock ’n’ roll veteran, with <strong>16</strong> top-40 singles to his name<br />
(or his and the name of his doo-wop backing group, the<br />
Belmonts) dating back to 1958.<br />
The biggest — “A Teenager in Love,” “Lovers Who Wander,”<br />
“The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue,” “Ruby Baby” —<br />
would eventually propel him into the Rock and Roll Hall<br />
of Fame (and, what’s arguably cooler, find him rubbing<br />
shoulders with Tony Curtis and Oscar Wilde on the cover<br />
of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”<br />
album).<br />
He’s in the news these days because of his new album,<br />
“Blues with Friends,” his 33rd solo recording (not counting<br />
live discs and compilations) and his first for Keeping the<br />
Blues Alive, a label launched by the blues guitarist Joe<br />
Bonamassa.<br />
You could call the album a comeback, except that Dion<br />
has never really gone away. Leaving aside the hiatuses<br />
between 1963’s “Ruby Baby,” 1968’s “Dion,” 1993’s “Rock<br />
n’ Roll Christmas,” and 2000’s “Déjà Nu,” he hasn’t gone<br />
more than three years without releasing new music.<br />
And, incredible as it may seem given his many accomplishments<br />
and the fact that he’ll turn 81 in July, “Blues<br />
Dion DiMucci<br />
with Friends” might be the best long player of his career.<br />
His switchblade-tenor voice evinces minimal wear and<br />
tear, and 12 of the 14 compositions are new. They haven’t<br />
come out of nowhere: His last three albums, “Bronx in<br />
Blue,” “Son of Skip James,” and “Tank Full of Blues,” were<br />
blues efforts, too. But the new songs are tougher, sharper,<br />
and sometimes even sweeter than their recent antecedents.<br />
And although the majority are blues through and<br />
© DION DIMUCCI<br />
28 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
through, they’re spelled by haunted roots exercises ranging<br />
from yearning folk to nightclub jazz that open windows<br />
through which refreshing cross breezes flow.<br />
Even without the tasty contributions of the guest guitarists<br />
(Bonamassa, Jeff Beck, Joe Louis Walker, John Hammond,<br />
Sonny Landreth, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Stray Cats’<br />
Brian Setzer) and singers (Paul Simon, Van Morrison,<br />
Rory Block, Patti Scialfa), “Blues with Friends” would have<br />
listeners wearing out the “repeat” buttons on their playback<br />
devices of choice.<br />
As for the two vintage copyrights, “Kickin’ Child” (which<br />
Dion originally recorded in 1965) and “Hymn to Him”<br />
(1986), they’ve never sounded better.<br />
“Songs are never finished,” Dion says of the latter in the<br />
album’s press kit. “I kept hearing this with Patti’s voice, so<br />
I asked her to help me remake the song.” Scialfa’s singing<br />
plus an impromptu guitar solo from her husband, Bruce<br />
Springsteen, made the<br />
song, in Dion’s words,<br />
“something sublime.”<br />
As its title suggests,<br />
“Hymn to Him” is a gospel<br />
song. “Come to Him<br />
through the darkness,”<br />
Dion sings, “come to Him<br />
through the rain, / walk<br />
with him from misfortune,<br />
/ walk with Him from the<br />
pain.”<br />
It’s the album’s last song<br />
and, as such, a culmination,<br />
the inevitable last<br />
stop on a journey foreshadowed<br />
by the “train bound<br />
for heaven” that Dion<br />
boards 11 songs earlier on<br />
the loping “Uptown Number<br />
7” and promises never<br />
to disembark.<br />
It’s a metaphor with particular<br />
meaning in Dion’s<br />
case. The main reason for his dry spell circa 1963-1968 is<br />
that the heroin habit that he’d begun nursing as a teenager<br />
in the Bronx had finally overtaken him, all but undoing his<br />
music, his marriage, and anything else of value that he’d<br />
worked to amass.<br />
Eventually, to make short a long and moving story that<br />
Dion himself has told many times, he got clean (with the<br />
help of his wife and a 12-step program) and did, in fact,<br />
board the Gospel Train.<br />
The best-known song of what’s sometimes called his<br />
“mature period” — his hit rendition of Dick Holler’s paean<br />
to assassinated emancipators (real or perceived), “Abraham,<br />
Martin and John” — followed shortly thereafter and reflected<br />
his newfound gravitas. But it was his two self-penned<br />
confessions-of-an-ex-junkie numbers “Daddy Rollin’ (In<br />
Your Arms)” and “Your Own Backyard” that laid bare his<br />
soul.<br />
By 1980, after a decade of earnest but commercially<br />
unsuccessful albums, he’d begun taking his Christian faith<br />
especially seriously, immersing himself in the evangelical<br />
subculture and reinventing himself as a born-again<br />
singer-songwriter. In 1984, the third of his five contemporary-Christian<br />
albums, “I Put Away My Idols,” earned him<br />
a Grammy nomination.<br />
Then, like so many other restless Protestants before and<br />
since, he began noticing the unintended consequences of<br />
the doctrine that, more than any other, animates the evangelical<br />
soul, “sola scriptura” (“by scripture alone”): namely,<br />
that in making every believer a one-man magisterium, it<br />
inevitably leads to an exponentially multiplying number<br />
of denominations and the absence of a unifying spiritual<br />
authority.<br />
By the time that Dion, a cradle Catholic, happened upon<br />
an episode of Marcus Grodi’s EWTN program “The Journey<br />
Home,” he was, so to speak, ripe for the picking.<br />
He returned to the<br />
Church in 1997, and<br />
he hasn’t looked back.<br />
Indeed, he has burrowed<br />
deeply into his Faith’s<br />
theological roots.<br />
One fruit of these investigations<br />
has been his<br />
ability to give articulate<br />
reasons for the hope that<br />
is within him. Google<br />
any video of him giving<br />
his testimony, and were<br />
it not for his trademark<br />
beret and Bronx-inflected<br />
speech, you’d almost think<br />
© DION DIMUCCI<br />
that you were listening<br />
to a seminary-trained<br />
apologist instead of one of<br />
the last living survivors of<br />
the ill-fated Winter Dance<br />
Party tour.<br />
Another fruit is “The<br />
Thunderer,” a “Son of<br />
Skip James” album cut that, as of this writing, is the only<br />
blues song to have been inspired by St. Jerome.<br />
“[M]y definition of the blues,” Dion once told NPR’s<br />
Linda Wertheimer, “is the naked cry of the human heart<br />
longing to be in union with God.” The blues, he went on<br />
to say, are “a bit of salvation” because they let out emotions<br />
that if pent up would “spiral inward” and eat us alive.<br />
Or, as Dion’s old friend Bob Dylan puts the matter in<br />
“Blues with Friend’s” liner notes, “You have to be careful<br />
with the blues. They’re strong with lust and you can overpay<br />
for them, but they quote the law.<br />
“It’s a shame,” Dylan concludes, “more people don’t<br />
follow that law.”<br />
As “Blues with Friends” makes unmistakably clear, Dion<br />
agrees with every word. <br />
Arsenio Orteza is a freelance music critic and regular contributor<br />
to WORLD magazine.<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>29</strong>
Uneasy discoveries<br />
Movies that navigated the<br />
nature of solitude, loneliness,<br />
and suffering before stay-athome<br />
orders and a pandemic<br />
made them all too real<br />
BY ALISON NASTASI / ANGELUS<br />
Thanks to a virus that has brought the world to a<br />
standstill, achieving focus and productivity feel like<br />
a Sisyphean task. Even as some sectors of the economy<br />
slowly reopen, there’s a palpable uneasiness caused by<br />
the sudden unpredictably of what’s going to happen next.<br />
It’s an uneasiness that pop culture has tried to capture<br />
for years, often using dystopian themes that resonate more<br />
deeply today than we could have ever imagined.<br />
Take “The Twilight Zone,” for example, which brought<br />
the post-World War II anxieties of the Atomic Age to the<br />
small screen. The episode “Time Enough at Last” is an<br />
eerily prescient story for a time when people are trying to<br />
navigate the blurry line between solitude and loneliness<br />
while holed up in their homes.<br />
Burgess Meredith stars as bespectacled bank teller Henry<br />
Bemis who has a penchant for books. Despite protests from<br />
his boss and wife, he values nothing more than time alone<br />
to read. After a nuclear explosion, Henry finds himself the<br />
last man in existence.<br />
It’s a troubled fate made better for the bookworm by the<br />
discovery of a library filled with undamaged books. In a<br />
typically bleak “Twilight Zone” plot twist, Henry’s glasses<br />
break, rendering him nearly blind and unable to read.<br />
“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all,” bemoans Henry.<br />
“There was time now. There was all the time I needed.”<br />
Before “Twilight Zone,” the great American director Alfred<br />
Hitchcock made us feel the loneliness of confinement<br />
Burgess Meredith in “The Twilight Zone.”<br />
with 1954’s “Rear Window.” The story about an injured,<br />
homebound photographer who believes he has witnessed a<br />
murder unfolds through the perspective of James Stewart’s<br />
character, Jeff.<br />
He gazes out his apartment window at the neighbors he<br />
only knows by made-up nicknames. Our view of the narrative<br />
is limited to his. The compositional frames of windows<br />
and doorways entrap us with each character, making us<br />
complicit in Jeff’s voyeuristic compulsions.<br />
James Stewart in “Rear Window.”<br />
IMDBNS IMDBNS<br />
30 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
.”<br />
Stanley Kubrick looked at the extremes of isolation in his<br />
adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining,” about the<br />
breakdown of a family that moves to a remote hotel in the<br />
Colorado Rockies to become off-season caretakers.<br />
Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”<br />
Kubrick confronts us with our own murky subconscious<br />
and the strange, dark places it sometimes leads us. Like the<br />
book, the film veers into supernatural territory, and “The<br />
Shining’s” labyrinthine centerpiece, the imposing Overlook<br />
Hotel, becomes the stage for a battle between ultimate<br />
good and evil.<br />
The mystery of human motivation and suffering is also at<br />
the heart of a 2019 film by director Robert Eggers, “The<br />
Lighthouse,” recently available to stream on Amazon<br />
Prime. On a remote New England island chiseled by<br />
the fury of the sea, a grizzled lighthouse keeper (Willem<br />
Dafoe) and his tight-lipped apprentice (Robert Pattinson)<br />
descend into madness as violent storms keep them stranded<br />
in isolation atop the rocks.<br />
By night, the sailors become entranced by the lighthouse’s<br />
hypnotic beam. Eggers’ claustrophobic tale of seafaring<br />
horror revels in its graphic, intrusive masculinity and scatalogical<br />
humor, but it’s one of several intentional choices<br />
that become agents for exploring identity.<br />
The black-and-white format and boxy 1.19:1 aspect ratio<br />
limits what the viewer can see, confining us to the characters’<br />
miserable existence fraught with memories and<br />
fantasies they can’t escape, perhaps the greatest torment<br />
of isolation. Both men are named Thomas, which comes<br />
from Aramaic origin, meaning “twin.”<br />
“How long have we been on this rock? ... Where are<br />
we? Help me to recollect. Who are you again, Tommy?”<br />
asks Dafoe’s character. They are at once trapped by their<br />
grotesque humanity and closer than ever to touching the<br />
gods through the lighthouse, their Mount Olympus, the<br />
“heavenly threshold” of Homer’s “Iliad.”<br />
IMDBNS<br />
While Julio Quintana’s 20<strong>16</strong> Terrence Malick-produced<br />
film “The Vessel” doesn’t portray phantoms in a traditional<br />
sense, grief still haunts the hearts and minds of its protagonists.<br />
Set years after a deadly tsunami took the lives of a<br />
Puerto Rican village’s schoolchildren, the townspeople<br />
have yet to be consoled despite the efforts of a tenacious<br />
priest, Father Douglas (Martin Sheen).<br />
One young man, Leo, struggles with loss, tending to his<br />
distraught mother, who seems to favor his deceased brother,<br />
and a love interest who clings to the memory of her late<br />
husband. The villagers are transformed when Leo has an<br />
accident but appears to return from the dead, like Lazarus.<br />
He decides to build a boat from scraps of the old schoolhouse,<br />
reigniting hope and faith within the community.<br />
Unlike many movies that explore similar themes, “The<br />
Vessel” proposes although there are seasons of life that<br />
bring us pain, suffering, and loss, these are burdens we<br />
don’t carry alone.<br />
In his 1984 apostolic letter “Salvifici Doloris” (“Redemptive<br />
Suffering”), St. Pope John Paul II asserted that suffering<br />
is “a universal theme that accompanies man at every<br />
point on earth: in a certain sense it co-exists with him in<br />
the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered.”<br />
Suffering is not fully reconciled by the end of “The Vessel.”<br />
Leo still questions if he will ever fully reach a place of<br />
interconnectedness through his pain, but his healing has<br />
begun. Suffering, in this way, is a sacred mystery.<br />
Perhaps he could have used the words of the late saint<br />
in “Salvifici Doloris”: “This is the meaning of suffering,<br />
which is truly supernatural and at the same time human.<br />
It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery<br />
of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply<br />
human, because in it the person discovers himself, his own<br />
humanity, his own dignity, his own mission.” <br />
Alison Nastasi is an arts and culture journalist, author, and<br />
artist living in Los Angeles.<br />
“<br />
Ghost stories appeal to our craving for immortality,”<br />
Kubrick once said. “If you can be afraid of<br />
a ghost, then you have to believe that a ghost<br />
may exist. And if a ghost exists, then oblivion might not be<br />
the end.”<br />
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in “The Lighthouse.”<br />
IMDBNS<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 31
THE CRUX<br />
BY HEATHER KING<br />
Ten ways<br />
to live for<br />
today<br />
John XXIII served as pope from<br />
1958 to 1963 and was canonized<br />
April 27, 2014.<br />
He is most noted for convoking the<br />
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,<br />
which was inaugurated on Oct. 11,<br />
1962, at St Peter’s Basilica.<br />
But I best remember him for his<br />
promulgation of the Daily Decalogue.<br />
1. Only for today, I will seek to live<br />
the livelong day positively without<br />
wishing to solve the problems of<br />
my life all at once.<br />
2. Only for today, I will take the greatest<br />
care of my appearance: I will<br />
dress modestly; I will not raise my<br />
voice; I will be courteous in my behavior;<br />
I will not criticize anyone;<br />
I will not claim to improve or to<br />
discipline anyone except myself.<br />
3. Only for today, I will be happy in<br />
the certainty that I was created to<br />
be happy, not only in the other<br />
world but also in this one.<br />
4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances,<br />
without requiring all<br />
circumstances to be adapted to my<br />
own wishes.<br />
5. Only for today, I will devote 10<br />
minutes of my time to some good<br />
reading, remembering that just as<br />
food is necessary to the life of the<br />
body, so good reading is necessary<br />
to the life of the soul.<br />
6. Only for today, I will do one good<br />
deed and not tell anyone about it.<br />
Pope John XXIII in the Vatican Gardens with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background in<br />
this undated photo.<br />
7. Only for today, I will do at least one<br />
thing I do not like doing; and if my<br />
feelings are hurt, I will make sure<br />
that no one notices.<br />
8. Only for today, I will make a plan<br />
for myself: I may not follow it to<br />
the letter, but I will make it. And I<br />
will be on guard against two evils:<br />
hastiness and indecision.<br />
9. Only for today, I will firmly believe,<br />
despite appearances, that the good<br />
Providence of God cares for me as<br />
no one else who exists in this world.<br />
10. Only for today, I will have no fears.<br />
In particular, I will not be afraid<br />
to enjoy what is beautiful and to<br />
believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12<br />
hours I can certainly do what might<br />
cause me consternation were I to<br />
believe I had to do it all my life.<br />
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CATHOLIC PRESS<br />
32 • ANGELUS • <strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong>
The Daily Decalogue serves well at<br />
any time and never more so, it turns<br />
out, than during a pandemic.<br />
“Only for today, if my feelings are<br />
hurt, I will make sure that no one<br />
notices.”<br />
<strong>No</strong>w that’s a tough one. Are you really<br />
going to praise her writing — to my<br />
face! — and not mine? Do you not<br />
realize I asked about a hundred questions<br />
about you during our conversation<br />
and you asked none about me?<br />
“Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes<br />
of my time to some good reading.”<br />
Thus, I’ve dusted off “Seven Short<br />
<strong>No</strong>vels by Chekhov,” returned to the<br />
“Letters of Caryll Houselander,” and<br />
just ordered three books on spiritual<br />
direction so I can be better prepared<br />
to help those who turn up on my<br />
doorstep.<br />
That 10-minute rule works well for<br />
any number of things: balancing a<br />
checkbook, cleaning the bathroom,<br />
updating a website.<br />
“Only for today, I will not criticize anyone;<br />
I will not claim to improve or to<br />
discipline anyone except myself.” <strong>No</strong>t<br />
even mentally. Just try it! Impossible!<br />
To that end Father Augustine Wetta, a<br />
monk at St. Louis Abbey, recently posted<br />
a YouTube video on “obedience.”<br />
Turns out that the one infraction St.<br />
Benedict could not abide — “ante<br />
omnia” (“above all others”) — was<br />
grumbling.<br />
The word in Latin is “murmuratio,”<br />
which Father Wetta describes as “that<br />
cowardly, backstabbing, passive-aggressive,<br />
underhanded whining” — the<br />
kind of whining the Israelites did on<br />
their way out of Egypt when, after all<br />
the miracles God had performed on<br />
their behalf, they still carped about the<br />
food.<br />
“Murmuratio” can also be defined<br />
as criticizing something you have no<br />
power to change, like oh, just say,<br />
the course of the coronavirus (COV-<br />
ID-19).<br />
Grumbling poisons community life,<br />
undermines confidence, and is thus<br />
“incompatible with the monastic<br />
ideals.”<br />
Father Wetta went on to describe<br />
what psychologists call “the fundamental<br />
attribution error”: I attribute<br />
my own actions to circumstance. I<br />
attribute other people’s actions to flaws<br />
in their character.<br />
When I dash around the grocery store<br />
like a bull in a china shop, it’s because<br />
I don’t want to be late for Mass. When<br />
someone else does it, he or she is a<br />
selfish jerk. When I go on and on<br />
about myself, it’s because I’ve decided<br />
to allow myself to become vulnerable;<br />
to share. When someone else does it,<br />
he or she is a mindless narcissist.<br />
For 12 hours I can do what would<br />
plunge me into despair if I thought<br />
I had to do it my whole life: Homeschool<br />
my kids. Wear a mask. Watch<br />
and hear 24/7 predictions of catastrophe.<br />
But wait. When someone else offers<br />
catastrophic predictions, they’re being<br />
a conspiracy theorist doomsdayer.<br />
When I share my reflections, I’m just<br />
trying to help. <br />
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<strong>May</strong> <strong>22</strong>-<strong>29</strong>, <strong>2020</strong> • ANGELUS • 33
What Will You Do?<br />
A ministry of the Church serving the faithful.<br />
If you’ve ever wondered what will happen when a loved one<br />
dies or how to plan for your own passing, then don’t miss this<br />
informative, FREE online seminar:<br />
My Father’s House<br />
What to expect When a Loved One Dies,<br />
How to Prepare for Your Own Final Needs . . .<br />
From a Catholic Perspective<br />
We’ll walk you through the steps you’ll take when a family<br />
member passes and explain why preplanning for yourself is<br />
so important.<br />
Wednesday, <strong>May</strong> 27, <strong>2020</strong> * 7:00 – 7:45 PM * Q & A to follow<br />
Or Saturday, <strong>May</strong> 30, <strong>2020</strong> * 11:00 – 11:45 AM * Q & A to follow<br />
Pre-registration required at: catholiccm.org/webinars<br />
Questions?<br />
Please contact Outreach@CatholicCM.org<br />
or call 213-637-7810.<br />
¿Y Tu Que Harías?<br />
¿Haz pensado alguna ves que pasaría si alguno de tus seres<br />
queridos muere y ademas cómo planearias tu propío funeral?,<br />
si es así, no te pierdas este próximo taller informativo, llamado:<br />
La Casa de mi Padre,<br />
Qué esperar cuando un ser querido fallece y como preparamos<br />
nuestras necesidades del funeral desde una perspectiva Católica.<br />
Te mostraremos paso a paso que hacer cuando tu familia<br />
se enfrenta una situación asi. También explicaremos<br />
la importancia de Planear con anticipación.<br />
¿Cúando? Miércoles 27 de <strong>May</strong>o <strong>2020</strong> * Hora: 7:00 – 7:45 PM<br />
O Sabado 30 de <strong>May</strong>o <strong>2020</strong> * Hora: 11:00 – 11:45 AM<br />
Continuaremos con una sesión de preguntas y respuestas.<br />
El curso es gratuito pero require regístrarse a:<br />
catholiccm.org/webinars<br />
¿Preguntas? Email Outreach@CatholicCM.org o<br />
llamado al 213-637-7810.