MY
"Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love… I ask of you that the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi be set apart for a special Feast to honor My Heart, by communicating on that day, and making reparation to It by a solemn act, in order to make amends for the indignities which It has received during the time It has been exposed on the altars. I promise you that My Heart shall expand Itself to shed in abundance the influence of Its Divine Love upon those who shall thus honor It, and cause It to be honored." (Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) The Sacred Heart has been on my mind lately. Sure, June is a month traditionally devoted to the Sacred Heart, but it's been more real to me this month than in Junes past. Maybe it's all the Sacred Heart themed images, prayers, and devotions floating around. Maybe it's the research I've done - I'm making a scapular, so I'm slowly teaching myself to embroider. Maybe it's just the ministry I'm doing that's influencing my reflection. I'm shadowing the Priest for communion calls to nursing homes, funerals, house blessings, and visits to the homebound. Maybe it's the Holy Spirit inspiring and directing my prayer. When God selected David to be king of Israel, he proclaimed through the prophet Samuel, "the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14). The longer I spend in seminary, and the more I strive to be a man after God's own heart (only by His grace), the more I see pain in the world. I don't know many of the folks that I'm ministering to this summer... not yet, at least. I don't know the people who died and whose funerals I serve, or their families who are visibly grieving. I don't know what the elderly and the infirmed were like when they were healthy - I've only seen them in pain and as shells of their former selves. All I know is "we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. " (Hebrews 4:15). I know we have a God who loves us and who is with us in the midst of our suffering. Although I've never met these people, I recognize Christ in them. The month of the Sacred Heart is a sad month, in many ways. It always hurts to see someone we love suffer. It's painful to witness the suffering of Christ in his faithful, and to witness the many ways that He is grieved by the sins of the world... and by my sins and failings. "Compassion," literally translated, means "suffering with." It is painful to look at the Heart of Christ with compassion and to share in His immeasurable suffering. But I love Him too much to not keep company with Him, and with His faithful.
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Nothing says, "Welcome to the Seminarian's office" quite like a cassock hanging on the door. It also functions as soundproofing when I play music while I work. More importantly, the cassock, surplice, and fascia are deeply symbolic of what it means to be a priest and of the lifestyle I live as a seminarian - aspiring towards the priesthood. Pictures of each vestment described in the slideshow above.
Before vesting, the priest, deacon, or seminarian washes his hands. This has nothing to do with COVID (it was around long before then), nor with some sort of ritualistic, man-made necessity. We are asked, not required, to enter into a sequence of prayers while vesting. There's a prayer associated with every vestment. When we wash our hands, we remember our baptisms and we ask God to purify our hearts and intentions. "Cleanse my hands, O Lord, from all stain, that, pure in mind and body, I may be worthy to serve thee." The cassock is the long black robe traditionally associated with the priesthood. Robes are usually a symbol of an office. Think about a judge's robe - it symbolizes the job. For a priest, it's more than a job. It means putting on Christ - assuming the way his identity was changed at his ordination. He is in persona Christi (in the person of Christ), and every part of the cassock symbolizes that. It's black, the color of death, because the priest dies to himself when he puts on Christ. It traditionally has 33 buttons going down the center - one for every year of Jesus' life. It'll often have five decorative buttons on each cuff - each one a reminder of Christ's wounds which the priest shares. Christ is the totality of the Priest's possessions. "O Lord, the portion of my inheritance and my chalice, You are He who will restore my inheritance." The fascia is the vestment I knew the least about going into seminary, and the one I appreciate most having been in seminary. It's a cincture, a belt of sorts (but typically worn just above the belly button), and it's symbolic of chastity and other promises. Religious wear three knots in their cinctures to represent their religious vows. The priest wears one to symbolize his promise of celibacy, a promise that I haven't taken yet but one that I'm living out daily. Cassocks also look much better with a fascia, but I digress. "Gird me, O Lord, with the girdle of purity and quench in me the fire of concupiscence, that the grace of temperance and chastity may abide in me." The surplice originally comes from the alb, which originally comes from the baptismal garment. Scripture talks about this kind of garment often. Angels are depicted wearing something like it. The redeemed in the book of Revelation have washed their garments white in the blood of the Lamb. It's a symbol of holiness, purity, and God's redeeming power in the life of the wearer. While the cassock and fascia are worn by the priest daily, the surplice is only worn for the liturgies: the only reason the priest, seminarian, or anyone, is fit to serve God is that God is the one renewing and sanctifying their life. "Invest me, O Lord, as a new man, who was created by God in justice and the holiness of truth." I don't want to talk about the contentions surrounding altar servers - whether young men and young women should be allowed to serve, or whether altar servers are fundamentally distracting - but it would be disingenuous of me to talk about the beauty and significance of these vestments and not talk about altar serving. These are priestly vestments. They symbolize the baptismal identity of the wearer - all the baptized called to be alter Christus (another Christ), all of us are called to die to self, and we are all called to wash our garments in Christ's mercy. They also point toward the priesthood and the priestly life. The practice of serving at the altar, of being so close to the Eucharistic sacrifice, and of vesting, were so formative for me as a young man. I don't think I'd be in seminary today if I didn't serve. It's so important for me that everyone who sees or wears these vestments knows their significance and is pointed back to Christ in and through them. Maybe that's a post for another time... Parish life is very different from seminary life. You might say, "Hold on, isn't seminary supposed to prepare you for life in a parish?" And you'd be right. I'm sure after more time in seminary, and when I'm closer to ordination, I'll be better prepared. But seminary is designed after a monastic schedule - it's designed to teach you to pray, work, and live in community. It's not designed after a parish schedule. I'm in Athens, Ohio, for the summer, staying with two priests who juggle several churches and Ohio University campus ministry. I'm used to praying the Mass. I'm not used to praying five Masses a weekend.
Dedicated, focused, liturgical prayer is physically and mentally draining. "My sacrifice - a contrite spirit. A heart, contrite and humbled, You will not spurn." The priest urges us to "lift up your hearts" and "we lift them up to the Lord." In the Mass we unite ourselves to the one sacrifice of Christ, and in the Mass we die with Him. I usually feel it midway through the Eucharistic prayer of my second mass on a Sunday. My attention is slipping. Reverent posture is getting pretty uncomfortable. The significance of the presence of God isn't the first thing on my mind anymore. By the end of the third mass, I can only hope that training and practice are preventing me from becoming a distraction, and that the symbolic nature of the liturgy points back to God in a way that my disposition can't. In parish life, one priest covering multiple Sunday masses is often an unavoidable necessity, even if it would be more prayerful for the priest (and his seminarian shadow) to celebrate only one. One time, during a live-in discernment retreat at the Josephinum, one of the guests we were hosting collapsed in one of the pub's armchairs and said, "How are you guys still awake? You wake up before dawn to pray, and then you have classes and meetings nonstop through the day, Holy Hour in the evening, and yet you're still cheerful and socializing in the pub late into the evening with us? How do you do this day after day if I'm tired after only a couple days?" None of us had a good answer for him. Frankly, I don't think I knew how I did it. It's a stressful schedule for sure, but it's also a schedule that's natural to the state of life God has called me to live. God is a good Father, and he doesn't ever give us a task without giving us the tools to complete it. To plagiarize St. Paul, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13) I was in a car with the pastor after a long First Communion Mass, a reception, and another Mass. I really wanted to ask him how he does it. How he stays prayerful after hours of liturgies. How he keeps the sacred special even though it's such a prevalent part of his life. How he remembers that every Host really is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ after distributing to the 500th person that day. Suddenly, I remembered my interaction with that live in guest, and I immediately knew what the pastor's response would be. "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13) |
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