From the Pastor's Desk | February 1

Ice-Melting Salt
We received a notification from our snow removal contractor that, due to the unforeseen early and harsh winter, they are out of salt.  In fact, the Detroit salt mines have temporarily shut down, halting production and supply.  This seems to be a regional issue.  They are prioritizing hospitals, nursing homes, and municipalities.  Therefore, it could very well be that the only service we will have is snow removal.   That means the sidewalks and parking lot will not be salted when our supply runs out.  Please be aware of this and please be very careful, particularly if you have difficulty walking or standing.  I apologize for all of this, but this is out of our control.       

Ash Wednesday 
Lent is right around the corner!  Our Ash Wednesday (February 18) Mass times can be found in the bulletin and below as follows: 6:30am (no music), 8:20am (with the school), 12:00pm noon, 6:30pm.

A Reminder on Fasting and Abstinence as We Near Lent 
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are obligatory days of fasting and abstinence for Catholics. In addition, Fridays during Lent are obligatory days of abstinence.

For members of the Latin Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Latin Catholic Church from age 14 onwards.

Members of the Eastern Catholic Churches are to observe the particular law of their own sui iuris Church.

If possible, the fast on Good Friday is continued until the Easter Vigil (on Holy Saturday night) as the “paschal fast” to honor the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus and to prepare ourselves to share more fully and to celebrate more readily His Resurrection.
 
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
For the five weeks of Lent we will continue our tradition of not having a hymn during the recessional.  Rather, during the recessional the priest and ministers will process out in silence.  We will also continue singing (with musical accompaniment) the Agnus Dei in Latin as we have during the Lenten, Advent, and Christmas seasons.  
Additionally, and only for the five weeks of Lent, we will be chanting the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) in Latin.  I want to stress that this is only for the five weeks of Lent.  This is not indicative of additional changes coming down the pipeline.  We will continue singing in English the rest of the liturgical seasons.

The reasons behind this are: 
To maintain some liturgical unity across the global Church - Latin is our common liturgical language and it doesn’t hurt us to sing/chant it a little bit once in a while. 
This honors the historical roots of the Catholic Church. 
It helps foster a sense of sacred mystery in the context of our worship and liturgy.  

Lent is also meant to be a season of penance.  Another way to look at it is, Lent is a season of absence.  We fast and abstain from certain foods.  We refrain from singing or saying the word Alleluia until Easter.  In fact, there is a tradition that has kind of been forgotten of literally burying the Alleluia until it is resurrected at Easter.  Even the sanctuary itself is laid bare with the absence of decorations.  In fact, this year the six candlesticks will be removed from the sanctuary during Lent and replaced by two candles on the corners of the altar.  And, in a very real sense, the absence of singing or chanting some aspects of the liturgy in English will help us communally look forward to Easter all the more.   

So, my thought behind this is to double-down on the sense of absence and penance during the Lenten season as we worship together.  Then, come Easter, we will all be even more excited to worship together in our common vernacular language.  I realize this will be a stretch and likely uncomfortable for some.  But, please bear with me and let’s give this a chance by singing and chanting together.  The words and notation will be included in the weekly worship aids.   

Gospel Reflection
St. Ignatius of Loyola is one of my most favorite saints.  Consider this also an advertisement for the series I will be leading on the discernment of spirits and St. Ignatius’ fourteen rules of discernment.  The series begins after Ash Wednesdays with separate tracks offered on either Thursday evenings OR Saturday mornings.  If you show up Thursday evening and again Saturday morning, you will hear the same thing!  I wanted to offer a couple of options so as to engage more people.  Participants will need to purchase the book Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living by Fr. Timothy Gallagher.  You will find having the book and reading along with us will be most helpful.  It is best to purchase the book via Amazon because it is significantly less expensive.  And, I would recommend reading the introduction, chapter one, and chapter two prior to the first time we meet. 

St. Ignatius was a fascinating man.  He was born in 1491 in the Basque region of Spain in the western Pyrenees on the border of France.  He was of middle class and a courtier on the royal court.  He was of minor nobility and thus more or less middle class and dreamed of grandeur.  He dreamt of being a military general leading thousands into battle and glorying in victory.  He did, in fact, enlist in the Spanish Army in service of the King.  At the battle of Pamplona in 1521, where he was serving in the military, the Spanish forces were vastly outnumbered by the French and losing considerably.  Ignatius, being the brash young man that he was, convinced the commander to continue fighting - to give it one last stand.  In the midst of that, a cannonball ricocheted off a wall in the Spanish fortress severely injuring his leg.  

The French, impressed by his bravery, carried him back to his home where he convalesced.  During his time of recovery, he had a deeply spiritual experience (Cliff hanger…there is much more to this account that I am leaving out.  But, you have to come either Thursday February 19 or Saturday, February 21 to get the rest.  Ignatius’ time of convalescence is vitally important to his conversion and thus his fourteen rules of discernment).  After this spiritual conversion, Ignatius gave up on his dreams of grandeur and glory to pursue holiness and living like the saints.  In so doing, he would go on to become one of the spiritual giants in Christianity and ultimately founded the Society of Jesus (otherwise known as the Jesuits).  He was canonized a saint on March 12, 1622 by Pope Gregory XV.  

I think St. Ignatius is a great example of both humility and magnanimity - two virtues that seem opposed to one another.  That opposition, however, is a grave misunderstanding of what humility and magnanimity each mean.  

Our readings today take up the virtue of humility.  Zephaniah explicitly exhorts the people of 7th century B.C. Israel toward humility.  Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, gives us the eight Beatitudes - or blessings.  And, connected to each blessing is a particular disposition of soul (e.g. poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, etc.) all of which have as their foundation the virtue of humility.  Closely tied to humility, however, is magnanimity or greatness of soul.  How can one be both humble but, at the same time, strive for greatness?  

St. Thomas Aquinas helps us in his great theological and philosophical work, Summa Theologiae.  (As an aside, most philosophy departments in universities completely skip over medieval philosophy and therefore St. Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologiae is not studied.  This is a great disservice to students and to the academy in general.  And, it’s quite bad philosophy not to study Aquinas who himself used Aristotelian philosophy in his own thought).  
In Summa Theologiae II-II (second part of the second part), particularly Question 161, St. Thomas Aquinas takes up humility as a virtue.  In his reply to Objection 3 (the objection that states humility cannot be properly called a virtue because a virtue cannot be opposed to another virtue, in this case the virtue of magnanimity), he writes, “Humility restrains the appetite from aiming too high; magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason.”  

I want to point out a couple of things that St. Thomas Aquinas means: first, both humility and magnanimity as virtues are concerned with truth, particularly the truth about oneself in light of right reason.  Every person has unique gifts and talents but also weaknesses and shortcomings.  Humility, properly understood, means that we know ourselves and understand ourselves in light of both our gifts/talents and our weaknesses/shortcomings.  Humility then reins us in, so to speak, so that we act in accord with the gifts and talents that the Lord has given us and guards us against pridefully reaching too far.  Secondly and at the same time, the Lord wants us to be magnanimous - to strive for great things.  Magnanimity then, like humility, is concerned with the truth about oneself and the use of one’s gifts and talents to strive for greatness.  Not out of pride but rather for the glory of God and service of our neighbor.  

St. Ignatius in his younger years was not strong in the virtue of humility.  He was quite prideful and thought very fondly of himself.  It was his pride that ended up getting him injured and nearly killed.  It was his pride that likely got some of the men he fought alongside killed.  When he had the time to think, pray, and reason with himself while he convalesced he began to understand himself and his relationship to God all the better.  He grew in both the virtue of humility and magnanimity.  He humbled himself and left behind his foolish and vain pursuits.  He gave his life to God and went on to use his gifts and talents to found what is now the largest religious order in the Catholic Church.  Not only that, he left behind a treasure in the spiritual life of the Church in his Spiritual Exercises in which his fourteen rules of discernment are found.  

As we pray today, brothers and sisters, let us pray first to know thyself - to know thyself soberly and honestly taking into consideration our gifts, talents, weaknesses, and shortcomings.  Let us then pray for an increase in both humility and magnanimity.  Let us be humble in who we are and in what it is we intend to achieve and let us also strive for great things out of service for God and neighbor.  

Know of my prayers for you all! 

Fr. Ryan