Miseri Cordis (A Poem)

There is a man who I must be
And yet I do not know his name.

Not yet his body rightly see

Though his cross for mine I claim

Oh the quest through dark night weary

Now my soul must surely claim

For it finds nothing certain clearly

Save uncertainty of name.

And now my wretched heart I know

Holds yet a pain I cannot name

And O this melancholy sow'd

What in reaping will God claim? 

That starkly nameless go I now

Flying fast from flaming claim

Of my soul as is, but how

To crack at the ice and name

The Godhead I so endow

As with life of me, my name

And so freely give up, now,

The free will that I had claimed.

O God, this wretched heart of mine
Is now a mercy that I claim
For though mercy's fogged in time
Heaven's splendor lights my name.

Prophesy (A Short Story)

In the spirit of fellow BadCatholic Marc Barnes' latest post on Almsgiving, I now present this short story I wrote a few years ago.

The man was psychic. That's what the sign said, the sign he was holding, cardboard soaked by rain and flimsy in his hands: Psychic and homeless, please help!
Sometimes he would get food, arms extended to the passing car, grabbing at the faceless arm's package. Sometimes it was a cheeseburger or a fish sandwich. Nobody ever knew if he was actually psychic or not, because he would take whatever he got and bite into it hungrily without even checking to see what it was.
Sometimes all he would get was venomous glances, I mean, what was this old man doing, anyway, this cancer of society, this man who "simply refused to get a job like any decent human being. I mean Christ! What's the world gonna do with all these bums all over the streets..?"
Most of the time the eyes of the people in the cars seemed just to slide over the old man, as if he were not there at all. In any case, the cars never slowed down.

Day and night the man stood on the corner, highways on both sides. He would stand there, a lone figure, isolated by his many layers of filthy clothes as well as concrete. Isolated by the pavement that surrounded his grassy divider. Isolated by the glass of car windows, the metal of car doors.

One night, I heard, he got beat up by a bunch of drunk kids. They stopped, got out of the noisy pickup, and surrounded the poor old man. They hit him when his back was turned. "You're psychic, eh? Tell us who hit you?" They struck him again and again, and all he could do was turn and turn and turn around. "Who hit you? Tell us, old man! Ha! Who hit you?"

Today I saw him still standing there on his median, still bearing the bruises and the blood. They didn't kill him. Not yet, that is. His eyes do not hold fear, though. No, when he saw me drive past, when our eyes locked, they held...hurt.
He stands, holding his sign for all to see. Now, it does not mention that he is psychic, nor that he is homeless. It simply bears the words: God Bless. And every time I drive past, it strikes me like a knife to the heart.

The Medal of St. Benedict (A Prayer)

Crux s. patris Benedicti 

The Cross of our holy father Benedict

Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur! 

May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death!

Crux sancta sit mihi lux

Let the Holy Cross be my light

Non draco sit mihi dux

Let not the dragon be my guide

Vade retro satana

Step back Satan

Numquam suade mihi vana

Never tempt me with vain things

Sunt mala quae libas

What you offer me is evil

Ipse venena bibas

You drink the poison yourself.

Being a Bad Catholic

To a person not deeply immersed in the Catholic-nerd culture, the tagline of my blog must seem very odd.

Dear non Catholic-nerd, Allow me to explain why I, and the rest of the Church Militant, are bad Catholics.

Besides being a less-than subtle nod to Marc Barnes' excellent blog on Patheos called (you guessed it) BadCatholic, this small two-word label is also a reference to another excellent bad Catholic, and a Theological and Philosophical expression at the heart of the Catholic religion and Catholic Theology.

In the famous interview of Walker Percy by himself (Ok, ok...maybe not so famous), Mr. Percy asked himself what kind of Catholic he considered himself to be. He answered himself, "Bad."
Now, I have not read much Walker Percy, but after reading that, I don't feel like I need much more persuading. It's on my to-do list, folks.

What Mr. Percy was hinting at was not simply a quirky remark. His acknowledgement that he is a "bad" Catholic recognizes what I have seen as a central theme in Catholicism, one that I think not many people really get.

Catholicism, in my experience, is at its heart a gradient of perfection. Where man may be imperfect in many ways, he is measured by the perfection of God. St. Thomas in his famous Summa Theologica (ok, ok, probably not so famous to anyone but a philosophy nerd. Cut me a little slack) says this:

"All created perfections are in God. Hence He is spoken of as universally perfect, because He lacks not" ~Summa Question 1, Article 2

 That phrase: "Universally Perfect" used to describe God--and in doing so, describing also the perfect man, which is Christ--, is also what the word "Catholic" really means:

catholic (adj.) 

... from Church Latin catholicus "universal, general," from Greek katholikos, from phrase kath' holou "on the whole, in general," from kata "about" + genitive of holos "whole" (courtesy of www.etymonline.com / my emphasis)

 Where we normally use the term to describe a whole Church, a church of all nations, to describe a person as Catholic is to describe them as "whole" or "universal", which is to actually describe a person as perfect, for perfection is to be whole.
Using that end, that description, there is only one person in this world that can be described as such: Christ. In being perfect, Christ was whole, Christ was Universally human, perfectly human. And in being so, He can be described as Catholic. And of course, this Catholic Church is assembled around Him. The root word for Church comes from Greek as well:

ecclesiastic (adj. 

...from ekkalein "to call out," from ek "out" (see ex-) + kalein "to call" (Also courtesy of www.etymonline.com)

 So, drawing conclusions, the Catholic Church is a universal calling or gathering of people centered upon somebody that is, in themselves, universally perfect.

Now, this perfection that belongs to Christ is, at its heart, infinite. Think back to Pre-Calc in High School. In a graph, an asymtote that is located at 1 will come as close to 1 as the human mind can comprehend, but yet will never reach 1. It will come to 0.9999999999, but it can never be said to be 1.

This gradient that the line creates is kind of like how holiness is. We, as Catholics, strive to become like Christ, to be truly "universally perfect". Now, as humans, we will never be perfect on our own. We mess up, we fall. But just like that asymtote, we will try to reach that number 1.
So Walker Percy said it right when he said we are Bad Catholics. Anything that is imperfect cannot legitimately be called perfect, just as 0.9999999 cannot be called 1. But as we are in the process of being perfected in this Catholic Church, as we are "called out", we enter into the Catholicism of Christ. Just as the asymtote of the line cannot be called 1, it comes so close that we call it 1 anyway.
Well...that metaphor may be a heresy, I'm not sure.

Anyways, we're not perfect like Christ, so we enter into the Church in order to share in his Perfection, to grow nearer and nearer that 1 in order to eventually become it. Thus are we Bad Catholics: not perfect yet!

Pax! Please comment and correct me where I need it!

Making A Mess/ Pilgrimage

            What World Youth Day impressed on me the most is this: that Saints are messy creatures. The Holy Father, in his address to Argentinian youth at the Cathedral of St. Sebastian famously said this: 

“What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess.”

            Obligingly, we made a mess of Copacabana beach, we made a mess of Rio de Janeiro, and ultimately, we made a mess of ourselves. Pilgrimage does that. (I have been carrying a fierce Brazilian cold for the past three weeks that doesn’t seem to want to leave). Pilgrimages are full of sand, sore feet, and sickness. They are not fun. Now, it is time that I brought the mess home with me.

            That is the nature of a pilgrimage: not only to make a mess, but to do so to reach a destination. We made messes of ourselves getting there and back again. We made messes because the destination was worth it. And World Youth Day, we found, was all the more amazing for the mess.

            But returning home, I find that the nature of a pilgrimage may be to reach a destination, but the object of a pilgrimage is to make us realize that life is simply a bigger, broader pilgrimage, one that is directed towards heaven. And what the Pope has been saying this whole time is that we need to strap on our spiritual hiking boots and get mobile. This has meant many things over the past month or so, whether it be actually giving to the poor, or leading the Rosary when no one would, or making an effort to pray the Liturgy of the Hours once in awhile. It means that I will make an effort to dress nice for Mass, make an effort to go to Confession more often, make an effort; to make a mess of myself for the sake of Him who has made a mess of himself for me. 

            It means that we can do something for Jesus that we never thought to do before, to go places we never thought to go, to become someone we never thought we could. Not, indeed, to travel the world, but to travel the field of Faith, to set out, to do something courageous for once... for Him who has done everything for us. Saints are messy creatures because they have hiked very far to reach their destination. They may be caked with spiritual mud and dust, but they have gotten so far, and they have reached Heaven.

            A few weeks ago, I was talking to our local Deacon after mass, and I was saying how disappointed I was that I did not have the privilege of traveling with anyone from our diocese. He turned and looked me in the eye. He said to me “It was your turn”.

            My friends, my turn is over, now it is yours.

St. Patrick's Rune (A Prayer)

At Tara, in this fateful hour,
I call on Heaven with all its power,
And the Sun with its brightness,
And the Snow with its whiteness,
And the Fire with all the strength it hath,
And the Lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the Winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the Sea with its deepness,
And the Rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness.
All these, I place
By God's Almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of Darkness.

O Hope (A Poem)

The flowers are dead in the meadow

All that hearkens to God is ignored

All that is Man stands in shadow

And the battle-cry put to the sword

O Hope
For the End

Can renewed be a blade that was broken?

Dust and blood wiped from the eye?

Can ear of man be made to hearken?

And mouth of man, made to cry?

For in every fell deed day is darkened

As the Son of God dims, He will die

O Hope
For the Power

Yes cry the angels in heaven

Yes cry the soldiers below

The helmet indeed has been cloven

Greater indeed is our foe

O Hope
You won't Bend

Still we hope for a dawn yet unbroken

Still we fight for a light that is veiled

Our ears we have made to hearken

The God-man in heaven, we hail

And though we die in this day that is darkened

Our beating heart has not yet failed.

O Hope!
This is our Hour!

Photo by: http://wallpaperus.org

In the works: Two modern heresies and a definition of religion! Pax!

For When the Beads Fall (A Poem)

There is a Rosary
Of days stretching out
Before us
As if prayed late at night
With fumbling lips
And whispering hands

And you knowing you

Are miles from
The last
Amen

How can we
Endure it
?

And yet you
Say your Hail Marys
As if your heart were a
Candle in the dark
Instead of a crack in the basket
As if
Our Celtic crosses were meant
To intertwine so

     Lovingly.

Onward, then 

I say to you
Saints and Sinners
Into the Dark
Our Rosaries biting in our hands
And slicing in our throats
Like daggers naked
For the devil to behold.

The guardian angels will light the way
When the beads fall from our hands

A sigh dropped from weak humanity
A tear mournfully masquerading as
A Rose 

As the (k)night falls

Photo by: asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com 

An Example

I was sitting here thinking about how leadership doesn't matter to me. I was sitting here thinking about the imagery of the young man carrying the torch, and about how I don’t care. This supposed journey, this giving-of-commands, this head-over-shoulders ability…it finds only bitter contempt in my heart. I was thinking that I’d write a cop-out about my ‘leadership abilities’, and perjure myself on the stand of life, because I don’t value them. It was then that I realized I do…I must.

In this world, we have a dire need for real leaders. In this world of sinful silence, of hellish hedonism, of casual cynicism, of weakness, we need someone good to imitate. For a leader, I realized, was not made to give commands, he is not better than anyone else, he does not place himself in a position of power. Rather he is placed there by circumstances dire, made better by strife and weakness, and commands only the ceasing of all praise. A leader is the one who cries, if only to himself, “Once more into the breach!”

The question faces me, then. It prompts me, seeking out my weaknesses and revealing them before my eyes. I find that sorrow for my failures wells up in my heart as I am asked “Are you a good leader?” To this, I am forced to answer no. But I try.

Between leading small skiers up a hill, leading humbled youth out of the courtroom, leading the procession down the aisle, leading prayer in a small near-deserted classroom, I find that all I can do is set an example. Leading those children, my skiing technique comes into peak performance, striving, as my body does, to show them how to make it up this hill. I remember youth court, where my speeches given as a youth judge sought to embrace the shaking teen sitting at the defense table, to forgive them, let them go, and encourage them never to do it again. And, while leading prayer is one of the least favorite things that I do as a leader of Christ-Centered Youth, I know I can do it well if I can show them a little bit about how to pray, even if it is just a fragment. I know that I can lead the procession down the aisle at Mass if I can focus on the Crucifix above the Altar.

It might not be a good one, and it might not lead in the exactly right direction, but I can—I must—set an example.

I must promise you that I will use everything I can, all the knowledge in the world, my education, my career, all the strength that I have to set an example for you. If I can do better in the future, if I can encourage you up that hill through the dark, and if I can watch you go happily down the other side, I will know that I have done Okay.

Onward, Christian Soldiers.

Business as Usual (A Poem)

Saints are different from
Sinners because they
Carry On. 

Saints, however
Carry On because they are a
Sinner. 

Sinners, then, are simply
Saints, that do not
Carry On. 

Sinners, rather, are to
Carry On if they wish to be a
Saint. 

Carry On, then, O you
Saint and
Sinner! 

Carry On, then, O you
Sinner and
Saint!

Readers, I've just finished High School! I don't really know how to feel, how to act, or what to do. Pray for me, then, as I feebly carry on, 

darkness and light, sadness and joy.

The advent of a new age. The end of a celebration.

The Lorica of St. Patrick

Photo by: D. L. Piscoya

I arise today:

in vast might,

invocation of the Trinity,

belief in a threeness,

confession of oneness,

meeting in the Creator. 

I arise today:

in the might

of Christ’s birth and his baptism,

in the might

of his crucifixion and burial,

in the might

of his resurrection and ascension,

in the might

of his descent to the judgment of doom. 

I arise today:

in the might of cherubim,

in obedience of angels,

in ministrations of archangels,

in hope of resurrection,

in prayers of patriarchs,

in predictions of prophets,

in preachings of apostles,

in faith of confessors,

in innocence of holy virgins. 

I arise today:

in the might of heaven,

splendor of the sun,

whiteness of snow,

irresistibleness of fire,

swiftness of lightning,

speed of wind,

absoluteness of the deep,

rock’s durability. 

I arise today:

in the might of God for my piloting,

power of God for my stability,

wisdom of God for my guidance,

eye of God for my foresight,

ear of God for my hearing,

word of God for my word,

hand of God for my guard,

path of God for my prevention,

shield of God for my protection,

host of God for my salvation,

against any demon’s snare,

against all vice’s lure,

against concupiscence,

against ill-wishes far and near. 

I invoke all these forces:

between me and every savage force

that may come upon me, body or soul.

against incantations of false prophets,

against black lairs of paganism,

against false laws of heresy,

against idolatry, spells of women, and druids;

against all knowledge that should not be known. 

Christ for my guard today:

against poison, against burning,

against drowning, against wounding,

that there may come to me merit.

Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ in me,

Christ under me, Christ over me,

Christ to the right, Christ to the left,

Christ in lying down, in sitting, in rising up;

Christ in all who may think of me!

Christ in the mouth of all who may speak to me!

Christ in the eye that may look on me!

Christ in the ear that may hear me! 

I arise today:

in vast might,

invoking the Trinity

believing in a threeness,

confessing a oneness,

meeting in the Creator.

From the Lord is salvation; in the Lord is safety.

Be thy right way, Lord, ever with us!

Philomena (A Poem)

Eyes
With a piercing
Gaze, staring straight
Into mine. Arms, folded into
A prayerful embrace, as if holding my…
Soul

Her expression is blank, but I
See in it, more love and devotion than I expect.
I am left breathless by her
Beauty. My heart longs, simply to…
Hear her speak.

It is as if She
Were alive, though she died
Long ago, as a…
A Martyr.

Her face, so full of Peace
Does not betray that she was be
-headed, nor say how much pain she dealt with.
Still, I find myself crying. Peace be with thee,
Philomena.

Photo by: http://www.adorare.ch