A Verse in Two Languages about a priest and a stranger at the Church door (Sometime in 2013)

Something I wrote in 2013, below is a play on words in two languages. If you find the quick switch from one language to the other disconcerting, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Understanding someone else is never easy, and we deceive ourselves if we think it is. It takes effort and love. This could be entitled «The Passion in the Translation,»

Algo que escribí en 2013, lo que sigue es un juego de palabras en dos idiomas. Si usted queda desconcertado con el cambio abrupto de idiomas, está bien. Entender a otra persona jamás ha sido fácil, y nos engañamos a nosotros mismos si pensamos que lo es. Requiere esfuerzo y amor. Se podría titular «La pasión en la traducción”.

The morning Mass was over,

And the last rosary lady done;

Father looked at his watch quickly,

And smiled, only 8:41.

The curate enjoyed the quiet,

Soft-shooing the carpeted floor,

Jingling keys and musing,

Aiming for the furthest back door.

I’m free for a coffee and donut,

Until the business manager at ten,

(Something about youth expenses gone over,

And the pastor’s concerned yet again);

Then maybe time for a run,

Or even a trip to the gym.

At the door in the shadows, a heaving,

As light slowly breathed its way in.

Maybe it’s a case for the Charities,

a man who claims two kids and a wife,

or maybe a thirty-something,

Suddenly worried at the meaning of life.

Cheerfully as the hour could muster:

Good morning, young man, how are you?

Paradito solo en la puerta

Encajado por el umbral,

Se presentó un joven enrojecido,

Camiseta agujerada, expuesto el costillar.

Rasgos de alambre dentado

Marcaban las manos y morral,

Apretando cachucha de juego,

De los Yánkis, (si puedes tú imaginar)

El joven escuchó sólo sonidos:

Good morning, young man, how are you?

Ave María Purísima,

Said the youth behind the last pew.

El cura encogió hombros macizos,

Gesto tal vez de no saber replicar;

After a moment of silence,

In the best Spanish he could command,

The curate spoke from a distance,

To the joven with a cap in his hand:

Hola muchacho, ¿Qúe tal?

El joven vio las llaves del cura,

Con ansias ya de cerrar,

Y recordando lo de Cristo y Pedro,

Decidió con más apuro hablar:

Bendiga me, Padre, le pido,

Al verle mi lengua quiere soltar.

He viajado aquí desde mi pueblo,

Donde muerte y vida son cuates

Que por Dios se suelen mezclar,

Bailamos la danza del duelo

Al son de dos tiros o más,

De tal modo marcamos el turno,

De las caras que ya no están;

País donde mártires sonríen,

A saber que no se pueden confesar,

Donde caudillos quizá se persignen

Antes de ordenar fusilar.

Fairly familiar the speaking,

The sounds that came to his ear;

Words much faster than in Texas,

When the teacher’s meaning was clear.

Prometí a la Virgen Morena,

Si guiara como estrella mi afán,

Que  le rezara tres Aves Marías,

Antes de buscarme un pan,

En el primer templo encontrado abierto,

Sea con riesgo que otros

Espiándome me verán.

The Father caught next to nothing,

Of the phrases that came through the fear.

He thought to call the Gardener,

By blood if not birth related,

To the fellow standing right here.

He muttered a quick disculpe thinking:

Lord, get me out of this bind.

Maybe a swift pointing toward the office,

And the day could go on as designed.

But the measure you measure,

Was the phrase that came to his mind.

¿Se impacienta  un poco, Padre?

Lo siento, de veras que sí,

Que sólo le llegan

Sonidos que caen al azar,

Como cuando el corriente del río se acerca a saludar

Con gotas más bien dirigidas

Al llamado que les hace el Mar.

Still, Social Services has an office,

Not taxing because really not far,…

The government would still let them feed him,

(Though the bishop said no travel by car.)

Then the stranger started to speak faster,

Never lifting his eyes from the floor;

This shower of words kept coming

Like a river that poured through the door.

Permítame Padre, le pido,

Hincarme aquí a rezar,

Pronto salgo para fuera,

No le quiero más molestar.

Pero, encontrar una iglesia sin llave,

Me parece una gracia real

Y el respiro de mi alma,

Algo que la Virgen esperando dar luz al Cristo

Hoy me desea regalar.

Maybe the mention of Christ and the Virgin,

And something about grace and today,

Announced a different hunger

–not food or referrals–

For this joven muchacho

Stopping a cleric on his way.

So the priest asked

¿Como te llamas, joven?

(Sputtering for something to say),

¿En qué te puedo ayudar?

Y el joven respirando de veras,

Hasta sus ojos alcanzó levantar,

Le dijo al cura, Me llamo José Ángel,

A sus órdenes me quiero prestar.  

The name José Angel

In a single breath came through,

With a look of longing, —

The young man just gazed at the pew.

Dirigió sus ojos a la banca,

Silenciosa palabra universal,

Y causó que el cura se fijara,

En los ojos a punto de llorar.

He only wanted a few minutes

To kneel in the pew and to pray,

Before the door was locked

And el Santísimo, hidden for the rest of the day,

So the priest breathed in and said pase,

And putting his keys clean away,

Announced gently: José Ángel, God bless you,

I’ll close up later in the day.

Sin llave dejó la puerta,

Y lentamente el cura parpadeó,

Ladeando la cabeza en seña,

Un pase quieto emitió:

Entendió José Ángel Dios te ayude,

Más tarde pasaré a cerrar.

Que en lenguaje de los Ángeles,

sin pecado concebida,

se podría interpretar.

Sort of a genuine wonder,

What happened really that day,

Que Ave María Purísima,

Se logró ese día pronunciar.

And that conceived without sin,

Got stammered back

In some way.

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22 March 2013

“Calico Joe”, Baseball, and Forgiveness

John Grisham wrote a book that I read some time back. The book is entitled “Calico Joe,” a well told baseball story. I like baseball stories. Some of the most enjoyable novels I have read have had a baseball backdrop. The sport lends itself to a rhythmic narrative that punctuates the pace of life. Like the game itself, novels set in the context of baseball games fall naturally into a pattern of action, followed by interludes of memory, observation, and commentary. 

“Calico Joe” is fitted into a fictionally reconfigured 1973 baseball season. It is about a man named Paul, whose father was a major league pitcher and whose hero, Calico Joe, was a rookie-phenomenon in 1973. It is also about the boy Paul who grows up to become the man, and who tells the story. Now, I was about the age of the boy Paul during the baseball season of 1973, and the story’s accents about that time, seen through the eyes of an 11 year old, turned my eye to a part of the memory I had not visited in a while. To me, that fact alone was worth the price of admission to the story. But there is more. 

Baseball is beautiful to watch, with its manicured fields, its clean, chalked lines stretching out, in principle, to infinity to define and embrace time and space, all providing a paradise-like field on which to play a free and fair game (tip of the hat to Bart Giamatti, may he rest in peace). But, as in all things human, there is pain and sorrow between the chalked lines, just as there is grace and beauty. “Calico Joe” has to do with a boy who must make peace as a man with the smashed hopes, the sorrow and the pain that enveloped his childhood. He must re-visit the troubling memory of his father’s self-absorption, and his child-like admiration of a player, Calico Joe, who in addition to being a figure of heroic proportions, was not his father. 

There are pitches in the game, and there are pitches in life. Some seem uniquely aimed to ruin things forever, and some can make it possible to get to a better place. You need a special kind of eye to see either kind of pitch coming. The theme is simple, perennial, human: in the end, which pitch prevails? 

I recommend the book because it is gently and elegantly told, spare in its use of literary ornament, yet capable of pulling you into a serious reflection about what it means to forgive someone. The story-teller does not provide you with a light-hearted path to this reflection on forgiveness, but he does show you what is humanly possible when the truth is brought to light. We can try to re-write the past, or try to bury it; neither of these opens life to a curative path. You can, though, have the courage to face things as they are, and —like a kid who still remembers how to hope for a good pitch—you can take a chance that anger and resentment can give way to something better.

And because baseball is a graceful game, whenever a good story explores what is humanly possible in the environs of a baseball park, it explores, often clandestinely, what is at the same time a gracefully possible next play in life.

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St Cyprian of Carthage, on the Will of God

Saint Cyprian of Carthage offers this brief and clear text on what constitutes the will of God the Father. When I was in college taking a course in Patristic Latin, Father Placid O.Cist., often extolled the reserved beauty of St Cyprian’s Latin prose. His style reflects the “reserve in speaking» he mentions in the passage below.. The excerpt is from the reading that occurs every year in the Liturgy of the Hours, Wednesday, XI week in Ordinary time. This text is like an old friend that appears just in time to keep us centered. I include English and Spanish translations of the Latin text below.

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Ex Tractátu sancti Cypriáni epíscopi et mártyris De domínica oratióne (N. 15):
Volúntas autem Dei est quam Christus et fecit et dócuit. Humílitas in conversatióne, stabílitas in fide, verecúndia in verbis, in factis iustítia, in opéribus misericórdia, in móribus disciplína, iniúriam fácere non posse et factam posse toleráre, cum frátribus pacem tenére, Dóminum toto corde dilígere, amáre in illo quod Pater est, timére quod Deus est, Christo nihil omníno præpónere, quia nec nobis quicquam ille præpósuit, caritáti eius inseparabíliter adhærére, cruci eius fórtiter ac fidénter assístere, quando de eius nómine et honóre certámen est, exhibére in sermóne constántiam qua confitémur, in quæstióne fidúciam qua congrédimur, in morte patiéntiam qua coronámur: hoc est coherédem Christi velle esse, hoc est præcéptum Dei fácere, hoc est voluntátem Patris implore.

From the Treatise of St Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr, on the Lord’s Prayer, no. 15:
«All Christ did, all he taught, was the will of God. Humility in our daily lives, an unwavering faith, a sense of modesty in conduct, reserve in speaking, justice in our acts, mercy in our deeds, discipline in our habits, refusal to harm others, a readiness to suffer harm, peaceableness with our brothers, a whole-hearted love of the Lord, loving him because he is Father, fearing him because he is God; preferring nothing to Christ who preferred nothing to us, clinging tenaciously to his love, standing by his cross with loyalty and courage whenever there is any conflict involving his honor and his name, manifesting in our speech the constancy of our profession and under torture confidence for the fight, and in dying the endurance for which we will be crowned — this is what it means to wish to be coheir with Christ, to keep God’s command; this is what it means to do the will of the Father.»+++

Del tratado de san Cipriano, obispo y mártir, sobre el Padre Nuestro
Cap 15:
La voluntad de Dios es la que Cristo cumplió y enseñó. La humildad en la conducta, la firmeza en la fe, reserva en el modo de hablar, la rectitud en las acciones, la misericordia en las obras, la moderación en las costumbres; el no hacer agravio a los demás y tolerar los que nos hacen a nosotros, el conservar la paz con nuestros hermanos; el amar al Señor de todo corazón, amarlo en cuanto Padre, temerlo en cuanto Dios; el no anteponer nada a Cristo, ya que él nada antepuso a nosotros; el mantenernos inseparablemente unidos a su amor, el estar junto a su cruz con fortaleza y confianza; y, cuando está en juego su nombre y su honor, el mostrar en nuestras palabras la constancia de la fe que profesamos; en los tormentos, la confianza con que luchamos y, en la muerte, la paciencia que nos obtiene la corona. Esto es querer ser coherederos de Cristo, esto es cumplir el precepto de Dios y la voluntad del Padre.

The Sign that is Christ, Evangelization, and the Poor (May 2025)

Address to the Graduates of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC

16 May 2025

The Sign that is Christ, Evangelization, and the Poor

At the outset this evening Í would like to evoke for your memory’s retrieval the scene in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 8) wherein Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch on his way home from Jerusalem. Í will not read it to you, Í just ask that you keep in mind what you remember about it.

Secondly, I want to suggest you recall the scene in the movie Amadeus where the Emperor, after hearing Mozart play a beautiful composition, praises the musical genius. But, he added, there are “too many notes,.. so just cut a few”. I mention this because I have found myself muttering the line recently to myself, only saying “too many words”.

Words are everywhere, in this social media, internet information, and Artificial Intelligence world of ours. We dwell in a most wordy world. I say this as someone who loves words, delights in and savors them. And it is for love of them that I urge myself and all of us to hear a call to deeper silence. The importance of silence speaks for itself.

1. The things Christ did and suffered

So, let us take a few sparse words from St Thomas to accompany our silences. In the prologue to the Tertia Pars. St Thomas says this:

Concerning the [Savior himself], a double consideration occurs: the first, about the mystery of the Incarnation itself, whereby God was made man for our salvation; the second, about such things as were done and suffered by our Saviour — i.e. God incarnate.

Listen to the concluding phrase about the consideration of the Savior himself: such things as were done and suffered [acta et pasa] by our Saviour — i.e. God incarnate. Thomas does not say “such things as were said, done and suffered by our Savior. This points us to two immediate observations.

First, many theological or apologetic discussions in our time are focused primarily on what Scripture texts say, as in “what does it mean when it says this etc.” Thomas, however, is not looking primarily at the words. He wants us to consider the things Jesus did and suffered.

As you can see from the content of this section of the Tertia Pars, the focus is on the mysteries. The Baptism, his miracles, the Transfiguration, his way of life etc, along with the treatise on the Passion that follows. The Lord had said to his pharisaical critics: if you do not believe me, believe the works I do (Jn 10,38). What works? They probably wondered. And what do they mean?

There is a parallel with the liturgical mysteries, obviously. And on the whole, this section of the Tertia Pars is epiphanic in structure. The Gospels, epistles and prophets are quoted extensively in this section, primarily to illuminate the theological sense of what is being manifested in the actions of Christ. The words the WORD spoke are the interpretive keys to the meaning of the acta et pasa of his life.

Someday I might ask AI to tell me how many times a form of the verb “manifestare” appears in the Tertia. Well, probably not. There is no urgency in knowing this, because it’s not primarily about how many times Thomas uses the word, it’s about how the word is used at key points in his explication of the revelation contained in Christ’s movement among us. The actions and suffering of Christ are saying something to us. Through them God the Word manifests himself to us. Christus manifestavit se.

2. The Word that is Christ’s Flesh

In St Thomas’ first lecture on the Letter to the Hebrews he makes a distinction between the expressiveness of material creation and human words.

An expression does not have the character of a word” Thomas says, “unless it is ordered toward a manifestation. Thus, it is clear [manifest] that the [material creation] expression cannot be called a word (locution), and thus it is never said that God speaks by creating creatures, but rather that he is known. Rom 1,20: through those things that are made the invisible things of God are understood.

So what is an expression ordered to manifestation? Well, primarily it is an intelligible sign that expresses what is interior to the speaker. Spiritual interiority expressing itself intelligibly to another is what makes an expression an actual word. Thus, for example, when God spoke to the prophets he gave them images and words that intended to communicate what was inside God. God speaks to us to intimate his interiority.

Now then, in his comments on Hebrews 1, Thomas goes on to the specific character of the Incarnation as in itself the complete intelligible Word of the Father made sensibly manifest to us. This, he says, “is through the assumption of the flesh, about which it is said in Jn 1,14. The WORD was made flesh, and we saw his glory, etc. And thus Augustine says that the WORD incarnate is to the uncreated WORD as the word spoken is to the word of the heart.”

Ah, always take note when Thomas cites Augustine. In this context, likening the spoken word to the incarnation signals two things: its exterior manifestation to the senses, and its character as a personal revealing of what is interiorly hidden “in the heart”.

In human communication, facial expressions, groans, nods and other gestures can point towards what a person holds interiorly, but these would remain enigmatic expressions until a sensibly intelligible word is produced. God the eternal WORD’s speaking himself into a human nature is the eternal WORD made sensibly intelligible, plainly manifested. He himself is the word he speaks. His humanity has all the characteristics of a word. An intelligible sign expressed sensibly, which renders accessible to us the inner life of the Speaker; God himself.

Thomas elaborates this ever so succinctly when he adds: “through the assumption of the flesh, the WORD is made man and he perfects us in the cognition of God: Jn 18,37: for this I was born, to present testimony to the truth. And he has thus expressly manifested himself to us. Baruch 3,38: Afterwards he was seen upon the earth, and shared his way of life with men [conversatus est cum hominibus].

From this perspective, the preaching and teaching of the Church, and our own words used to evangelize and catechize, are primarily aimed at unveiling the true meaning of the sign made visible to us, and that sign is Christ. This unveiling is the principal intent of the Treatise on the Life of Christ in the Tertia Pars.

3. Unveiling the Sign

A good example of this is Tertia Pars 46, 3, where Saint Thomas, explicitates why the Cross was necessary. Think of this passage as an example of his work as a teacher unveiling the meaning of the sign that is the Christ Crucified. For first point he makes, he says,

In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby provoked (stirred) to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says in Romans 5:8: «God commends His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us»

An incredibly rich passage, I will not attempt to explicate it all here, but I will highlight the beginning where he says that we know from the Cross how much God loves us and we are provoked (stirred) to love Him in return. [per hoc provocatur ad eum diligendum]

Salvation reaches us through an intelligible sensible perception of the Cross as the preeminent sign of love; salvation is perfected in us through an act of love returned. We are provoked to this response, he says. Among other things this passage illustrates the primacy of charity as the perfection of faith. And it makes clear that justification is the effect of this love given, perceived and returned.

Now let us remember again the account of Philip and the Ethiopian. In that episode there is a premium on spontaneity impulsed by another. “The Spirit said to Philip, Go and join up with that chariot.” So the Ethiopian “invited Philip to get in and sit with him.” The Ethiopian was pointedly reading from the prophet Isaiah:

This was the scripture passage he was reading: «Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In (his) humiliation justice was denied him. Who will tell of his posterity? For his life is taken from the earth.» Then the eunuch said to Philip in reply, «I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this? About himself, or about someone else?» Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him.

It is not clear if Philip answered the Ethiopian’s exegetical question. He did answer a wider, deeper one. There is a confluence of evangelical kerygma and catequesis in this passage. The explication of Isaiah precedes the moment when Philip “proclaimed Jesús to him”. The instruction centered around the meaning of the sign Isaiah spoke of, the suffering servant, and the light this sheds on the mystery of Christ’s Cross.

This in itself is worth pondering with the help of St Thomas: The sign of the Cross, first of all, must be interpreted, and it cannot be superseded. It remains the indispensable tangible word of the WORD. Philip offers the interpretation of the mystery of Christ’s suffering. As Philip for the Ethiopian, so we for our contemporaries, are explicators of the sign that is the Incarnation and self-emptying of the Word. No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.

Flannery O’Connor said in her famous preface to the second edition of Wise Blood, that sometimes, what a person cannot do is the most significant thing about them. It was her description of the tortured main character of the novel.

Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

I mention this because we cannot provoke a perception of the Cross as the primordial sign of the love of God. Nor can we provoke a response to that love manifested in Christ. Philip did not provoke the grace that moved the Ethiopian to request baptism.

There are some things the Church cannot do. We cannot provoke conversión programatically. Formation programs are not formulaic conversion programs. The grace of Christ can move us to mediate decisively the grace of his appearing (making himself manifest) in the lives others. Our mediations, however, operate at levels that are mostly enigmatically in our awareness. The grace of mediation moved Philip to chase the carriage. Yet Philip could not provoke the delicate perceptions of love intimated by his announcing Christ to the Ethiopian. Nor could he provoke a desire in the Ethiopian to move from faith’s perception to that charity which is offered back to God. All these things are Christ’s work, by the Holy Spirit.

“Freedom cannot be conceived simply”, Flannery said. Especially when it comes to our perceptions and responses to the Christ who is sovereign over how and when he appears to one who is beginning to perceive him. For the Church to admit humbly what she cannot do, is for the Church to confess her faith and love for, and docility to the Christ who is our Head.

4. Christ Jesus and the Social Magisterium of the Church: Explicating the Sign

Now, near the end of my too many words, let us recall the event narrated by St Luke (ch 4) where Jesus unrolls the scroll “and found the passage (from the prophet Isaiah) where it was written: «The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”.

because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.» Rolling up the scroll, Jesus handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, «Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.»

Jesus does not really explicate the passage . Rather he lets the passage be heard as an explication of himself. This is something, we really cannot do either, except in a participated sense. The messianic signs are proper in a literal sense to his person. What we can do is participate in his anointing and do the things that his identity and mission entail.

From this vantage point, the Church acts and suffers on behalf of the poor, the captive, the oppressed. And the Social magisterium of the Church is rightly understood as the explication of the sign that is Christ present in wounded flesh, and present in the one who attends the wounded.

We announce the poor Christ who gives us life through his vulnerability and his willingness to bear what the poorest among us bear. Christ bears his Cross in them. Ours is an evangelical narrative of human dignity rendered most intelligible by the Paschal Mystery: of the suffering, death, and rising of the WORD enfleshed, who seeks the lost. We are the lost, he found us; and his finding makes us seekers of the vulnerable, or we risk losing our gift of ever having been found. Whatever you do to the least of mine etc.

The Church pleads that all persons be respected for the dignity that is theirs. And we can never cease to defend the dignity of the powerless: the unborn, the disabled, the migrant, the elderly, all of whom can be counted among the poor precisely because they are largely defenseless before the arbitrary manipulations of the powerful. The world has its expendable populations.

There is an enormous manipulative capacity in this world deeply wounded by sin; and the Lord’s rising announces the victory of grace over it.

This manipulative tendency stifles the human agency of the poor, of their ability to speak and describe for themselves what moves and animates them. Their words, speaking of their deepest hungers for themselves and their families, are not often heard, and when heard, not much respected. Few, very few, political or economic leaders take the time, for example, to talk to an immigrant family, to get to know what their lives are about. For if they hear, they might have to rethink something, “lest they be converted and be saved”. We can hear the Lord Jesus say to us: It cannot be that way with you.

There is a tendency in our ecclesial cultures to see our service to and defense of the poor as of secondary importance, or even extraneous to the evangelizing mission of the Church. This is a severe misreading of the sign that is Christ. There are various aspects to the sign that is Christ, but the sign is one, because Christ Jesus is One.

We are enjoined to do the work implied in the messianic signs Christ said were fulfilled in his speaking them. In evangelization, this cannot be dispensed with. What we lack today is precisely a vigorous explication of how the things we do (our acta et pasa) on behalf of the Christ who suffers are signs of Christ Risen, active in the world.

Without the authentic signs of Christ in flesh, without the action of attending to him, through him, in others, our words are just more words in an already too wordy world. Words become hollow when their only sensible manifestation is a sound or scribble. When our words are expressed in flesh, we do the work of the Word. We must be about his work, and (as Thomas teaches) our explications must aim to unveil the intelligibility of the sign that is Christ Jesus, Crucified and Risen from the dead. The Lord himself will take care of the rest.

Thank you for your kind attention.

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