Bad Greek Puns and my Meeting with the Goddess

I am taking Greek 101 this semester on top of my Latin.  I figured that if I were ever to learn the language, I might as well do it while I have Catholic University’s outstanding classics department at my disposal.

On thing that any linguist will tell you is that you need to look for little tricks to help you remember things.  For instance, to remember the English translation(s) for the Latin word, cupiditas, cupiditatis, I noticed that the English words form the word ‘clap’:  cupidity, longing, avarice, and passion (oh yeah, and desire; I guess my acroynm should be ‘clap’d’ or something.) 

So here I am, studying my Greek, the first declension nouns in particular.  For whatever reason, the forms would not stick in my head.  But then, Hermes came to me in a new pair of Nike’s and took me to a goddess (the very same goddess Parmenides spoke to!)  She had been on the decline since she met with Parmenides.  At first everyone seemed to appreciate the wisdom she gave to Parmenides.  She was invited to all of the best parties.

Unfortunately, many people became unsatisfied with her arguments.  Those who did agree with her about motion being an illusion just stood around all day, so she fell out of favor and on to hard times.  She tried writing philosophy books, and she became a very successful philosophy writer.  Unfortunately, she soon learned that being a successful philosopher means that you earn just enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes every week.  She then thought she’d try to work as a goddess in the pantheon of New Age deities, but her application was turned down because New Agers much preferred to just make up their own gods and goddesses rather than worshipping anything real.

I felt sorry for her, and I gave her a few food coupons.  I then asked her if she had any advice for me, a lowly Greek student trying to learn the first declension endings.  Just as with Parmenides, she gave me a cryptic answer, but one with much wisdom:  ”I own ice, [jerk]!”  After a few minutes of pondering, I realized the wisdom of her words.  Incidently, the plural endings of the first declension are -ai, -wn, -ais, and -as.  w’s are pronounced like long o’s, and everything else is pronounced as it would be pronounced in English.  So when you say the endings quickly, you say, ”I own ice, [jerk]! 

The goddess then offered me a Coke.  At first I thought I would accept, but then I realized that I was having so much fun with nouns that I chose to decline!   

An Article on Mother Teresa

I just finished reading a very interesting article on Mother Teresa.  I was aware that Mother Teresa lived through a very dark night in her spiritual life, but recently revealled  correspondence between her and her spiritual directors showed just how great the night was.  To the article’s credit, it does mention John of the Cross’ spiritual doctrine, if only in passing.  Just as much–or more–time is devoted towards sources which mock modern day theists because some of their greatest saints had unbelievable doubts, often about whether or not God existed.

I find such opinions to be interesting, for they show an ignorance of Christianity and its history.  The early Church worshipped its monks and ascetics who gave up worldly goods and sought purification through mortification.  The Church of the middle ages claimed saints that voluntarily begged for their food and owned nothing.  John of the Cross speaks about the purifying role that suffering plays in a person’s spiritual growth.  In all centuries, we honor our martyrs, who gave their lives–often joyfully–for the sake of the Church.  And today, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries give up wordly possessions to help the poorest of the poor.  Other saints–St. Francis and St. Therese of Lisieux, for instance–suffering periods of doubt, feeling as if God wasn’t nearby. 

Maybe it’s just me, but I have come to expect that behind the great saints exists a suffering soul:  the greater the saint, the greater the suffering.  We suffer so as to emulate our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered and died out of love for us.  The saints follow Christ, purifying themselves of a love for all earthly things in order to prepare their hearts for the only Good that can satisfy.

So why is the modern mind so shocked by Mother Teresa’s intense doubts and sufferings?  Why do the atheists quoted in the article foam at the mouth, saying that Mother Teresa demonstrates that if the greatest saints cannot believe, then no one can believe (of course, maybe its a rhetorical question to ask why a Hitchens would foam at the mouth, since such things come standard with the militant atheists.)  Let me just guarantee my readers:  the path to holiness has not changed.  The only thing that has changed is the modern human mind which rejects Christ and His Church.  Our saints have suffered, do suffer, and will evermore suffer until the end of days.  In fact, lesser Christians such as myself wish that God would grant them the grace to accept greater sufferings while simultaneously realizing that they are too weak to handle such trials. 

Mother Teresa’s suffering comes as a surprise only to those people who think Christians choose faith to make life easier, or to get a quick emotional high, to those who know not the basic claim of Christianity that salvation comes through the narrow way, the way of the Cross.  Mother Teresa is a saint not only for her exceptional work among the poor, but because she persisted in faith even through her trials.  She is exceptional because she had faith and walked confidently through her darkness, hoped through her own dispair, and loved though she felt not loved. 

Bah.

I am finishing the process of moving my stuff back into my seminary dorm room, and I remembered that I had some beautiful postcards of churches in Germany that I hung up in my room last year.  I couldn’t find them after a cursory search.  About an hour ago, I decided to do a more meticulous search of my things (I don’t have much!) to find these postcards. 

After much fruitless searching, I remembered that I sometimes stuff postcards and holy cards in my books as bookmarks, so I started searching through my books.  But wouldn’t you know it:  I searched through every single one of my books and didn’t find it.  So I was about to give up when I noticed that I had forgotten to search one solitary book.  Lo and behold, there they were!  I’m glad I found them, but why does my luck have to be so poor that they turn up in the very last spot in which they could be?

Goodbye, St. Louis

I flew back into DC today.  Already, I know that I’m going to miss quite a few things, listed in no particular order.

1.  Inexpensive food and beer. 

2.  Schlafly’s beer.

3.  Being able to run at night without fearing for my life.

4.  Daily Cardinals’ games.

5.  Going to my home parish for Mass.

6.  Family, friends, and the other St. Louis seminarians.

7.  Clean air.

8.  Watching Star Trek: Voyager on a daily basis.

9. Imo’s and Cecilwhittakers’ pizza.

10.  Having a bit of free time which is not taken away by homework and papers.

A Debate on Summorum Pontificum

Recently, I was doing a translation of the new Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum to brush up on my Latin in prepartion for a major Latin exam I must take this semester en route to my masters degree.  I got stuck because I missed a verb, and so I looked for the unofficial English translation online.  In the process, I found a discussion about the implemenation of the norms laid out in the document on this blog, run by a Fr. Zuhlsdorf.  I normally would never bother discussing such things, but I found the material important enough to throw my dog into the fight.  Follow this link to see the discussion.

EDIT:  I will keep my Rule:  I will not respond anymore in that thread because it exceeds my three post limit.  However, I think a joke is in order to sum up the comments of my illustrious interlocutor:  What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist?

You can negotiate with a terrorist.

Running away from Retreat

I try not to talk badly about seminary living or seminarians.  I try to avoid gossip as much as possible.  But seeing as my life pretty much revolves around the place and people where I live, and the goings on at the seminary shape what I think about at a given time (both good and bad), it’s sometimes hard to tiptoe around criticising in the process.  I’ll try my best.

This past week has been a time of reflection and examining my own conscience.  I was on a retreat with the other St. Louis seminarians, which had some redeeming features (such as hearing my archbishop speak), but nevertheless left me feeling empty, drained.  I have been known to criticize liturgical conservativism, and I saw some of its ugly heads this weekend.  At one point I was listening to an absolutely awful conversation going on behind me that so angered me that I had to wait a full ten minutes to calm down before I turned back and talked to them about it.  I said very little, but having my breviary on hand I had them read my favorite reading.  I actually said next to nothing, letting the great St. John Chysostom do the talking for me. 

However, I do not want to talk about other people’s faults in this post.  If you haven’t read the reading I link to, I highly suggest doing so.  Even though I agree with everything that St. John says in that excerpt, I find it incredibly challenging.  St. John argues that by ignoring Christ in the flesh while adorning him with golden chalices and magnificant buildings we are in essence reinacting the passion of Jesus where He is crowned with thorns.  If we truly want to honor Christ, we should honor him in the way He explicitly and repeated tells us to do so, by looking after the physical and spiritual needs of those who are physically and spiritually deprived.  Many Catholics are wary of the term “social justice” because it has come to imply a service to others looking merely after human needs without such works coming from a life of prayer and love of Christ.  Still others are content to give money to the Church, a genuinely good and necessary act, and believe that their obligation to others has been fulfilled. 

However, a brother seminarian in DC made an excellent point:  we do not merely help the poor to better the lives of the poor.  We help the poor because the poor are people who are often readily aware of their own brokeness as people.  Of course, this statement assumes no extra virtue on the part of the poor, or even that they are all highly aware of their own sinfulness.  Nevertheless, in seeing their brokeness we come to a better knowledge of our own brokeness, our own inordinate attachment to what we have, to our comforts and luxuries, to our sins and disordered desires.  We allow ourselves to see the extent of the Fall, which we Americans often do not acknowledge due to our “need” for young, healthy, beautiful, and wealthy people.  When we perform works of mercy for the poor, through God’s grace we delve deeper into Christ, following the program for salvation which Jesus Himself so explicitly and often laid out.  We do not shy away from our suffering but accept suffering as Christ did, paradoxically following a road of suffering to divine beatitude/happiness.

St. John expertly addresses an audience in love with beauty with the Gospel message.  He reminds us that if we wish to honor Christ, we must honor Him first in the way He asks us to honor Him, and only then offer gifts of gold to God.  But St. Thomas argues that if even a small part of an act is evil, the entire act becomes evil.  In order for our gifts of gold or our desire for “good liturgy” to avoid motives of ostentation or other poor motives, we must give with a pure heart.  To give with a pure heart, we must first pursue the saint-making plan laid out by Christ Himself, helping the poor and submitting humbly to the service of others. 

Unfortunately, I the preacher am grossly negligent of what I am exhorting others to do.  But the Truth is the Truth, even when proclaimed by a sinful man.  Every time I read St. John’s words, I am pushed out of the complacency that I often fall into and remember to take seriously my prayers and actions.  I am not yet the helper of the less fortunate that Christ wants me to be, but I am planning to take serious steps in that direction next summer.  Hopefully, I will work for room and board with a group of sisters that devote their lives entirely to the work Jesus describes.

I need to continue to grow in holiness over the course of the next two years.  I hope to come back home after my time in DC and become a better witness to the Gospel for my hometown bretheren.  I do not doubt that most realize the value and importance of what I have written here.  But as a group, when we talk about the Church we spend well over 90% of that time talking about silly things, like whether the Pope’s permitting a wider use of the “extraordinary use of the liturgy” overrides past bans on the wearing of black shoes with golden buckles on the shoes of bishops at said Masses, and other pressing issues in the life of the Church.  Be forewarned:  when I get back to St. Louis, I will make sure that such things are discussed less.