We’ve also got a pretty excellent raffle going, with a grand prize of a $200 gift certificate from the Butcher Block, and several other prizes of gift cards from local businesses.  Tickets will be available at the dinner for $1 each or 6 for $5.

See you there!

Also, we’re having a couple raffles.  One is a 50/50, and the other will give away a night’s stay for two at Stoney Creek Inn, plus some gift baskets.  So I’m going to do what I did last year: I will buy a raffle ticket for the first ten people who leave a comment on this post.  Just be sure to say which raffle you want me to enter for you.

Photo by Allan Ferguson

Whaddya know.  I’ve had his name for almost 40 years, and I didn’t even know Moses’s brother Aaron from the Old Testament was a saint.  It turns out today is his feast day.  I guess it’s a minor one, though; he doesn’t even rate a commemoration in my missal. (On the other hand, my middle name happens to belong to the guy who taught Jesus how to use a hammer, so it balances out.)

I don’t think I was named after any particular Aaron; I think my parents just liked the name.  (Incidentally, I’ve never understood why people have a hard time spelling it.  Didn’t everyone read those Bible stories at least once as a kid?  I mean, I’m not named Adam, but I know it’s not spelled Adum.)   I’ve never felt much attachment to Old Testament Aaron, since the main thing the Bible says about him is that he was a good public speaker. He also had to carry around a staff that would turn into a snake when Moses said so.  Sounds like a rough job.

There are other saints named Aaron I could claim as a patron, but they’re even more obscure.  One was a hermit on a French island in the sixth century.  Sounds like my kind of guy.  But so many people came to learn from him that he wound up as abbot of a monastery.  Another was the first archbishop of Krakow, Poland, in the 11th century.   He’s only “blessed,” though: a step away from being canonized as a saint.  Another was marytred under Emperor Diocletian (along with lots of other Christians) in 303 A.D., and may have been the first British martyr.

I think I’ll go with the guy who tried to be a hermit, Saint Aaron of Brettany.  His feast day is June 21, so I’ve got lots of time to prepare for the next one.

Here’s a fun article: Confessions of a Computer Hater. (I wonder, though, how he gets his articles from his typewriter to the web?)  I’ve known a few people like him, who were intelligent enough, but they just couldn’t manage to make computers or other machines work.  A classmate of mine was an incredible artist, but I think he made it through an entire year of computer class without learning how to load a file from disk.  He just wasn’t wired for logic.  I don’t know where he is now, but if he’s using a computer, I bet he’s cussing it.

I have to argue one point, though.  The reason we don’t have Dumb Computers like he wants isn’t because computer people don’t think that way.  It’s because it’s not nearly as easy and cheap as he thinks it would be.  The problem is that for a computer to be able to do the things the average user expects today—editing files, email, web browsing, getting images from a camera, etc.—it essentially needs to be smart enough to anticipate the user’s needs at all times.  Basically, it has to be smarter than the human who’s using it.  That’s not easy and cheap at all, but they’re working on it.

* * *

Here’s a good article about God-lovers and people-lovers, and how the differences between them have affected the Mass.  Just a few days ago I heard someone mention Jesus’s commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  But that was His second commandment.  The “greatest and first commandment” (maximum et primum mandatum in Latin), which doesn’t get mentioned nearly as often today, was, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind.”

As Fr. Longenecker says, we have to love God so that we can love His creation, both in ourselves and in our neighbors.  Without starting from the love of God, I think love of self too often turns into self-indulgence, and love of neighbor become a social function rather than an outpouring of Grace.  Love of God has to be the foundation.  Maybe that’s why Jesus called it the “greatest and first commandment,” instead of saying, “Here are two commandments in no particular order.”

It’s probably true that at times in history, that first commandment was overemphasized and the second one ignored.  But by the time I was growing up, the second one dominated almost completely.  The new Mass often seems to go along with this, bringing the focus down to the people, encouraging them to pay more attention to each other (especially in the new fan-shaped churches) and less to God.  But when Mass becomes about community and loving your neighbor, where do you go to focus on loving God with your whole heart, soul, and mind?  And if people get their “love thy neighbor” quota filled at church, what about all the other neighbors they meet throughout the week outside church?

We need to follow them both, but we’ve gotten them backwards.  As Fr. says, it makes a lot more sense to love God in Church so we can then go out and love our neighbors properly outside church—all our neighbors, not just the ones who go to church with us.

* * *

And lastly, here’s the conversion story of Fr. John Corapi.  He’s got a pretty inspirational story, from a life with some major highs and lows, and he’s a good speaker.  If he’s ever in the area, I’d sure go see him speak.

Here are a couple nice new video ads (one and two) by CatholicsComeHome.org, that I guess have been on TV somewhere. They’re emotionally powerful, but at the same time they make their case simply and clearly without being pushy. They say, “Here’s who we are and what we’re about, and we’d love to have you join us.” I think they’re very well done, and there are also some nice shots of traditional services in the first one. Check out their site if you want to see more.

Here’s a good article from the New York Times (believe it or not) about two women who went into business with a monastery. A quote:

“I was scared to death,” said Ms. Griffith, 50, a Web designer and divorced grandmother who is not Catholic. “I’ve been to Catholic weddings, but I don’t know anything about monks. Do they talk? What do I do when they pray? Do I sing this stuff? I don’t know Latin.”

Here’s an interesting (and long) article about the early history of the Church. I liked this bit:

Since The Da Vinci Code and other dubious best-sellers claim that early Christianity was anti-feminist, it’s worth recalling that large numbers of women during these centuries thought otherwise. The Church’s teachings about marriage and family, along with its strictures against divorce, abortion, and the exposure of newborn babies — all of which a pagan husband could force his wife to do, no questions asked — resonated with women who were treated like chattel under the old dispensation. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke goes out of his way to mention female converts like Lydia and Damaris. Even at this early date, women played a key role in the Church’s evangelical mission. No world religion has ever given women a more important place than Roman Catholicism.

I just discovered G.K. Chesterton, thanks to the folks at St. John Fisher Bookstore who came to St. Rose for the business expo. That’s a little embarassing to admit, considering that Chesterton is one of the most prolific and important writers of the twentieth century. But hey, I was busy reading sci-fi and fantasy during my school years.

Anyway, Chesteron provided a ton of great quotes, so I’m sure I’ll be writing more about him in the future. Here’s one about Catholicism, written after he converted. (H/T Fallibleblogma.com)

“It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair.”

We learned this week that our Bishop, George Lucas, has been promoted to Archbishop of the Omaha diocese. I don’t know a lot about him, except that he had a real mess to clean up when he came to Springfield, and that he was supportive of the Latin Mass as soon as the people here in Quincy approached him about it. I’ll always be thankful to him for that, and I wish him well in his new appointment.

One thing Catholics and other pro-lifers hear a lot is that we’re all negative, no positive; that we only care about stopping abortion but don’t offer any solutions about what to do with the babies.  Of course, that’s not true.  The Church and other pro-life organizations run all sorts of pregnancy crisis centers, adoption agencies, and so on; but those things don’t get the press that the political stuff does.  This video is a nice (non-political) reminder of the positive work that is always going on without fanfare—that always has gone on.

(Hat tip: Fallible Blogma.)

By the time the 1970s dawned, religion classes had been replaced by Arts and Crafts.

That was the line that hooked me, that had me nearly pumping my fist and saying, “Yes!”  (But I try not to talk and gesture too much when I’m out walking the dog and listening to podcasts.)  That sums it up right there.  There was lots of drawing, lots of making banners and gluing things on posters.  There were workbooks filled with smiling children.  (I don’t remember if they were always carefully ethnically distributed, but I’m sure they are now.)  There were sessions of sitting in a circle telling the other kids what you loved about them (although we were never taught what “love” meant).  Egad, I’d better stop there before I start having flashbacks.

There’s a generation of parents who have been betrayed by Catholic educators, and now there’s a generation of students, on top of their parents, who have likewise been betrayed by Catholic educators.  These parents are sending their children to Catholic schools and programs where they learn nothing about Jesus Christ.  They learn nothing about the faith.  They learn nothing about what Jesus Christ Our Blessed Lord came to earth to do.  They hear nothing.  In fact, they’re being taught things that it’s probably better they didn’t hear at all.  Stop sending them to schools that are polluting their minds and distorting them and making them lose their souls.  It’s disgusting and it’s disgraceful.

Wow.  That’s putting it bluntly, but it’s the truth.  Not that no one ever tried to teach us anything real about the faith.  I’m sure here and there someone tried to teach us something concrete, but they were swimming against the tide, to say the least.  I think we did learn the Ten Commandments, so there was that at least, but we didn’t get the grounding to learn anything more.  You can’t suddenly teach algebra to a bunch of kids whose previous teachers refused to teach them arithmetic.  I do remember a good dose of environmentalism (pollution was the big concern back then) and fretting about nuclear war, which was equally true in public school.

One thing that occurs to me now is that, in the process of trying to make the faith accessible to us and make it fit within our larger culture, they just made it antiseptic and boring.  The Catholic religion is actually very…sensuous, for lack of a better word.  There are the smells of candles burning and incense wafting.  Then the sounds: organs booming, choir and priests chanting and singing in a special language, bells ringing, rosary beads clinking as people pray together.  Most of all, there are the sights: beautiful statues and paintings and stained glass windows, people dressed in their “Church clothes” as we called them, the priest decked out in vestments proclaiming the season or feast, the altar and crucifix drawing our attention forward and upward.  There’s even the pain in your knees after kneeling a long time.  Until a few decades ago, there was so much more to the experience of being Catholic, but most of that was gone by the time my generation came along, and what was left we weren’t taught about.  Why incense?  Who’s that on the window?  We had no idea.

Which brings up the history of the Church, which gets really interesting: saints, martyrs, warrior priests and monks, mystics, angels, emperors, wars, crusades, missionaries, and more martyrs.  What young boy or girl wouldn’t rather learn about St. Joan of Arc leading armies across France than glue felt on a poster?

There are so many amazing stories just in the lives of the saints, but we got none of that.  (Well, maybe a bit about St. Francis and the animals now and then, with a bit of a nudge toward vegetarianism.)  Angels alone are a fascinating topic you could probably study for years, and the most we learned there was that we might sort of have a guardian angel, but it was presented as sort of an imaginary friend who might keep us from tripping over our shoelaces if we asked nicely, not a mighty creature who could protect us from anything.  The rest was murky stuff from the past that we got the feeling we shouldn’t look too closely at, as if it were mostly shameful.  So Church history was taught much like secular history: we all got enlightened in about 1965, and with a few exceptions, most of what happened before then was bad.

A couple Sundays ago, I saw a boy holding a copy of the Baltimore Catechism, which used to be what kids (and adult converts) were taught from, before we all went to smiley workbooks and the group-therapy method of education.  Now, maybe the Baltimore Catechism wasn’t perfect, maybe it’s awfully dry and blunt, but at least it provides a foundation for a teacher to start with.  If you don’t know why we pray before statues and relics, you can look it up.  If you don’t understand or disagree with the answer, you can go to other sources or argue with the teacher, but at least you’ve got a solid reference point to start from.

If we didn’t get the basics, we sure didn’t get the more peripheral stuff.  How many Catholics today know that the Church teaches that animals have souls?  How many know what a Mary Garden is, or that numerous flowers and plants were once named for Mary or other aspects of Christianity?  How many American Catholics know that missionaries were running around parts of North America long before the Pilgrims landed?  How many know that when an infant dies, the priest wears white at the funeral because the child is assumed already to be a saint in heaven, and we can even pray to that child?  (Is that cool or what?)

It makes me mad to think how much I missed out on, and how many kids are still missing out on it.  Sure, even if we taught the faith perfectly, some people would still fall away from it as they got older.  But at least they’d know what they were leaving and be making an informed choice, not drifting away from boring posters and sappy music because they didn’t know there was so much more.  And if they came back twenty years later, they wouldn’t have so much to relearn when the brain just isn’t as nimble as it used to be.

Whew, that’s a rant that’s been building up for over twenty years—parts of it anyway.  I’d better stop there, and see if anything else percolates to the surface now that that’s out of the way.

I’m writing about the Low Mass here, since it’s the one I attend at 8:00am every Sunday, and it’s also the form used on other days of the week.  The High Mass at 11:00am Sunday and some holy days is different because the choir sings the responses and some other things, and there’s more going on.  The Low Mass is easier to follow your first time, since it’s all spoken rather than sung.  Maybe I’ll do another walk-through on the High Mass sometime.

When you enter the church on Sunday, there should be a holder attached to the wall next to the doors, containing bulletins and the proper of the Mass.  Be sure to grab both, because the proper has the readings and prayers that are particular to that Sunday.  More on that below.   There are other things on the tables in the vestibule that you dont need for Mass but you might want to check out afterwards, like prayer cards and the FSSP newsletter.

When you enter the actual church, try to be as quiet as possible.  There will usually be people praying before and after Mass, and they’ll appreciate the silence.  You’ll probably want to sit in the back half so you can see when people do sit and kneel and so on.  Rosary starts about twenty minutes before Mass, and Father hears Confessions for about thirty minutes before Mass.  The confessionals are at the very back of church behind the pews to the left and right.

In the pew, you’ll find a Sunday missal with a red cover.  This has all the prayers that are the same at each Mass, plus instructions and some commentary about what different things mean.  Together with the proper, this gives you all the prayers and readings that will be used during the Mass.  The Low Mass starts on pages 10-11 of the missal, and each pair of pages has the prayers in Latin and English.  It also tells you when the priest moves to one side or the other and when the servers ring the bells, so there are a lot of cues in case you can’t follow the Latin.

Everyone rises when the servers and priest come out to the altar, then kneels when Mass begins with the Sign of the Cross (“In nomine Patris…“).  The priest and servers recite the Judica Me (Psalm 42), alternating like it says in the missal.  The servers say the words for the congregation, so the people aren’t expected to say the responses.  Some people like to, but don’t feel like you’re doing it wrong if you just listen and pray internally.

After the initial prayers at the foot of the altar, the priest goes up and kisses the altar and goes to the book on the right side of the altar (the epistle side) to read the Introit.  This is the first point where you’ll need the proper you got at the doorway.  The Introit is followed by the Kyrie and Gloria (in the missal), then back to the proper for the Collects.  The Collects are the collected prayers of the faithful, for which the Mass is being offered.  There is usually one Collect, but may be as many as three if certain feasts overlap.

After the Collects come the Epistle, which is a reading from somewhere in Scripture other than the Gospels, then the Gradual (somewhat analogous to the responsorial psalm in the Ordinary form).  These are both in the proper.  On weekdays, the priest may read the Epistle in English only, but on Sundays he reads it in Latin, then usually again in English before his homily.

After the Gradual, a server moves the book to the left side of the altar (the Gospel side), and everyone stands for the Gospel, which is in the proper.  After the Gospel, everyone sits for the homily, before which the priest may read the Epistle and Gospel in English.

After the homily, everyone stands for the Credo (Creed).  We’re back to the missal now.  About a third of the way through the Credo, everyone genuflects during the line that ends, “et homo factus est” (“and He was made man”).  After the Credo, the priest turns to face the people and says “Dominus vobiscum” (the Lord be with you), and the servers (and the people, if they want) respond with, “Et cum spiritu tuo” (and with your spirit).  Everyone sits, and the ushers come around to collect the offering while the priest (quietly) reads the Offertory prayer that’s in the proper.

From this point until Communion, many of the prayers of the priest are silent, which may be one of the strangest things for someone who’s used to the constant activity and dialogue in the modern format.  Once I got used to it, though, I found that the silence allowed me to get into a more reverent state.

After the priest mixes the water and wine and washes his hands (the Lavabo), he turns to the people and says the Orate Fratres (Pray, brethren…), and the servers say the reply.  Then the priest silently reads the Secret, which is in the proper if you’d like to read it to yourself at the same time.  There are a few short prayers and responses by the servers, then the Preface from the proper.  There are several different prefaces for different seasons and types of feast day.

At the end of the Preface, the priest goes straight into the Sanctus with “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” (Holy, holy, holy…), and the server rings the bells three times as everyone kneels.  After the Sanctus begins the Canon, much of which he says quietly.  It’s all in the missal, so you can follow along by watching his movements at the altar, or just pray and prepare yourself for Communion.  The server rings the bells once at “Hanc igitur,” the beginning of the Consecration.  Then the servers go up and kneel behind the priest.

After the actual words of Consecration of the Host, the server rings the bells three times: when the priest genuflects, when he elevates the Host, then when he kneels again.  This pattern is repeated after the words of Consecration of the Wine.  During each elevation, the servers lift the priest’s vestments, which I’ve always thought is nicely symbolic of us (since the servers represent us) assisting him in offering the Sacrifice.  Again, this is all done silently except for the bells.  Then the servers move back down the steps to where they were before and the Canon continues quietly.

If you’re listening closely, there are three words a bit later in the Canon that the priest says in a louder voice: “Nobis quoque peccatoribus” (To us sinners, also).   He finishes the Canon with “Per omnia saecula saeculorum” (World without end) and then goes into the Pater Noster (Our Father).  There are some more silent prayers while he breaks the Host and puts a Particle into the Wine, before saying out-loud the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

Then there are quiet prayers before Communion for Peace, Sanctification, and Grace, followed by the priest’s Communion.  Holding the Host, he strikes his breast three times, each time saying out loud, “Domine, non sum dignus” (Lord, I am not worthy) while the server rings the bells, then finishing the prayer quietly.

After the priest receives the Body and Blood, the servers repeat the Confiteor (I confess) that they and the priest each said back at the first part of Mass.  The priest turns to the people (for whom the servers are speaking) and says the prayer of absolution.  Most people make the Sign of the Cross when he does at this point.

The servers move up the steps again, and the priest turns to the people and again repeats three times the prayer beginning with “Domine, non sum dignus.”  Some people like to recite it with him this time.  He then gives Communion to the servers and then to everyone else.

Communion is taken on the tongue, kneeling at the Communion rail, for those who are able to do that.  People who have trouble kneeling should sit in the front pew, and Father will bring Communion down to them.  He usually does that first, so it’s a good idea for the rest of us to stay back until he’s finished with them, to not get in the way.  At the Communion rail, ormally 5-6 people go up and kneel down at one time, he distributes Communion to them all, and then they all leave and make room for the next 5-6.

When you kneel down, place your hands beneath the cloth that hangs over the rail.  The idea is that if a Host would drop and miss the paten the server is holding under your chin, it would land on the cloth and not on the floor.  Stick your tongue out just a bit so he can place the Host on it.  Don’t say “Amen” like we do in the new form; the priest says it for you.

After Communion, eveyone goes back to their pews and kneels again (if they can) while the priest cleans the vessels and puts any extra consecrated hosts away in the tabernacle.  The servers move the Book back to the right side of the altar, and the priest reads the Communion prayer, then the Postcommunion prayer, both of which are in the proper.  (You’re done with the proper after this.)

The priest then turns to the people and says the dismissal, “Ite, missa est” (Go, the Mass is ended).  After one more silent prayer toward the altar, he pronounces the Blessing, and everyone makes the Sign of the Cross as he does.

Now everyone stands as he goes to the far left of the altar for the Last Gospel.  This is the beginning of the Gospel of John, and is read at the end of most Masses.  Everyone genuflects during the words, “Et Verbum caro factum est,” (And the Word was made flesh).

After Low Mass, everyone kneels again for the prayers ordered by Pope Pius XI in 1929 for the salvation of Russia, which are said in English.  After these, everyone stands while the priest and servers genuflect one last time and leave the sanctuary.  Mass is over.  Some people stay and pray for a while or light a candle, so it’s good to leave quietly and go visit in the hall, where there will be coffee and juice and donuts (at least).

Whew, that got a lot longer than I expected!  I don’t suppose anyone could memorize all that before going, but maybe reading this first will help someone recognize what’s happening and not get lost.  The important thing is to make sure you get the proper when you come in, and understand that everything that’s not in the proper is in the missal, and the missal will guide you through the Mass.  And when Father isn’t speaking up there during the Canon, it doesn’t mean he’s stuck; he’s actually moving right along.  If you need help with anything before Mass, feel free to ask an usher.  If you aren’t sure who the ushers are, ask one of the guys sitting in the back pew.  (Tell them I said that’s what they get for sitting way back there.)

Hope to see you at St. Rose soon!

There was quite a crowd for the Good Friday Office—maybe more people than I’ve seen in St. Rose since the first High Mass when it reopened last year.  I don’t know why; maybe other churches weren’t having anything that day so people came there, or maybe the afternoon scheduling made it extra handy.  Whatever the reason, there were plenty of people there to hear the Passion sung in Latin.  Fr. Bauer (who happens to be my late grandfather”s first cousin) sang the narrative, which is probably 90% of it.  I felt for him; standing and singing for that long, but he did a great job.  Fr. Schlangen and a deacon from the FSSP seminary (whose name I never caught, unfortunately) sung the other two parts.  I found it inspirational, but I hope the people who didn’t have missals were able to catch the spirit of it even though they couldn’t follow along with the translation.  Next year, we’ll know to expect a couple hundred people instead of a couple dozen.

The Easter Vigil started at 10pm Saturday and finished with Mass around midnight.  The crowd there wasn’t as large, but that is pretty late for a lot of people.  Fr. Schlangen and the deacon were there again to assist Fr. Devillers, and we started outside with the blessing of the new fire and then proceeded inside with our candles.  After several scripture readings and the blessing of things like holy water and oils, we came to the big reveal.  The lights came up, the altar (which had been bare to this point) was decorated, and all the statues were uncovered.  After two hours in the near-dark leading up to it, that really defined the moment, emphasizing that Christ has risen, Easter has begun.

When the lights first came on, something looked different in the sanctuary, and I couldn’t put my finger on it at first.  Then I realized there were two new statues, one on either side.  (Hey, it was three hours after my bedtime.)  Fr. D. announced that they were the statues of St. Rose and St. Patrick, the primary and secondary patron saints of St. Rose Church.  Apparently the statues had been kept in safe-keeping by Msgr. Kuse since St. Rose was closed.  It’s great to see those back up there; it did seem odd that there wasn’t a statue of the saint the church is named after.

I had a pretty good Lent, at least for me, compared to the last twenty or so years.  I only forgot not to eat meat one time.  I’m usually on auto-pilot in the morning, thinking about work or whatever while I go through the motions of making breakfast, so one Friday I’d cooked and eaten sausage and eggs before I realized what day it was.  Oops!  I guess that’s a good reason to start the day with morning prayers; it’d be hard not to notice the day that way.

Spiritually, though, I feel like I just skimmed the surface of what I could have gotten out of the whole season of Lent.  I learned a lot about it, from reading my missal and other sources, and actually paying attention and wanting to know.  But it seems to be hard to pray and learn about new things at the same time.  They’re both important and useful, but not at all the same thing.  I hope that next Lent, when I’ll be more familiar with the forms, I’ll be able to spend less time thinking, “What’s that mean?  Why’s he doing that?” and reach a deeper level of prayer more often during the season.

I found a place that I hoped would be obscure, over on one side, in the back, and went to it without genuflecting, and knelt down.  As I knelt, the first thing I noticed was a young girl, very pretty too, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, kneeling straight up and praying quite seriously.  I was very much impressed to see that someone who was young and beautiful could with such simplicity make prayer the real and serious and principal reason for going to church.  She was clearly kneeling that way because she meant it, not in order to show off, and she was praying with an absorption which, though not the deep recollection of a saint, was serious enough to show that she was not thinking at all about the other people who were there.

What a revelation it was, to discover so many ordinary people in a place together, more conscious of God than of one another: not there to show off their hats or their clothes, but to pray, or at least to fulfill a religious obligation, not a human one.

photo from flickr.com

That’s Thomas Merton writing about the first time he went to Mass at about the age of 20.  It reminded me quite a bit of my first Latin Mass.  He wasn’t Catholic at that point, and I wasn’t a very good one, but I too remember sitting in the last pew and being impressed by the silence, the seriousness, and the reverence that people showed.

I’ve been wanting to do more spiritual reading and I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for this book, so I thought it might be a good one to start with.  It’s the autobiography of a man who seemed to have it all by conventional standards: enough family wealth that he could travel the world and live pretty much how he liked.  He’d spend a year in college, then live as a tourist in Rome for a while, then pop over to America to live with his grandparents and explore New York.  But as the years passed, he felt more and more that something was missing, and eventually realized that something was God.  This is his story of that journey from misspent youth to baptism and faith, and eventually to becoming a Trappist monk and priest.  (I don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler, since there’s a picture of him in his robes on the back of the book.)

One thing I like about his story is that it was a gradual process.  We hear a lot about big explosive conversion experiences, like Paul on the road to Damascus, where someone gets whapped upside the head by God and lives a saintly life thereafter.  That’s great, but I suspect it’s hard for most people to relate to.  It is for me anyway.  Merton, on the other hand, comes to the faith little by little.  First he’s simply awed by the churches and cathedrals of Europe, but as someone who was raised to think Catholics were somehow diabolical, he never paid much attention to what went on in them.

When he is baptized, it’s clearly a very meaningful event for him, but it doesn’t really change his lifestyle much.  He’s still mostly partying with his college drinking buddies and basically cruising through life.  But he starts to pray more, to attend Mass more often, to read spiritual works, and eventually he somehow finds himself thinking about becoming a priest.

photo from flickr.com

Even then it’s not an easy path, as he assumes his sinful past will disqualify him for the priesthood or religious life, and in fact it does cause the Fransiscans to reject him when he first applies to join them.  But over time his unhappiness at the thought of never being able to enter the religious life makes him realize it is his true calling, and he joins the Trappists at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.

It’s encouraging to read about his stops and starts, to see that someone could go to Mass on Sundays and be too much “in the world” on weekdays; but that by persevering and working on it, he could gradually build his faith to deeper and deeper levels.  If we don’t hear God’s call (or hear it and reject it, more likely), He doesn’t stop calling.  No matter how many times we say “I can’t” or “I won’t,” it’s never too late for us to shape up and listen.

On a historical note, one interesting thing about this book is that, if it didn’t have any dates, you’d probably think Merton was growing up in the 60s and 70s rather than the 1930s.  He spends a good part of his twenties hanging out at colleges like Cambridge and Columbia with a bunch of other intellectual types, hitchhiking around Europe to see the sights, letting his hair and beard grow long, becoming a Communist for a while, and just taking it easy.  He was like a 60s hippie prototype, 30 years before his time!  It goes to show those things weren’t invented in the 60s; they just became more popular then.

Anyway, it’s a very good book.  He’s pretty quiet about the actual details of his sordid past, but that’s probably appropriate.  There’s often a fine line between relating those things for educational purposes and bragging about them.  When he starts riffing on God’s grace and divine love, on the other hand, sometimes he’s downright poetic.  The book ends soon after he’s accepted into the monastery, so it doesn’t go into the Trappist life much.  I’ll have to see if he wrote any more books that cover that.