Rev. Damien Cook

Airing this Tuesday April 30th, 2013 on EWTN at 6:30 ET/5:30 CT is the story of a parish on the brink of being a statistic and how the pastor and his people have been able to turn it around. It is a story, ably told by the StoryTel Foundation and titled “Where Heaven Meets Earth: Restoring the Sacred at St. Peter Church,” that points beyond the young, vibrant pastor. It is more than merely a tale about the right ministries and good preaching. The parish stands as a testament to the power of tradition, of reverence, of a community whose sole purpose is to make sure everybody encounters Jesus.

St. Peter’s Catholic Church is located on 27^th and Leavenworth in what is viewed by many in the Omaha Metro area as a rough part of town. Personally, I’ve been there many times in the evenings and have never felt unsafe, but then I only live ten blocks West and a short jog North of the parish.

When Father Damien Cook took charge of the parish as his first assignment, the parish roles did not look healthy. The school, which still stands there, was closed many years before. The highway that shoots right beside St. Peter’s all but destroyed the old neighborhood that kept that Catholic community alive. But after his first few years, Fr. Cook has managed to bring back people from all over the Omaha area and Iowa with his passion for one person and one thing.

The person is Jesus Christ. Father Cook lives to tell his congregants that Jesus is alive and wants to be in relationship with His people. The thing is Catholic tradition, that tradition which helps us connect to a sense of the sacred, that breeds a theological imagination.

I’m a parishioner at St. Peter’s Church. My family and I have been for about four years now. What drew us there was certainly the large number of large families, families who know and live out the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life. But the “smells and bells” also drew us there, because I wanted my children – well I wanted to be able to engage my senses and my imagination while I worshiped a God who loves us so much He is willing to humble Himself in the Eucharist.

Those things drew us there, but what has kept us there is the community. This love for the sacred, this care for our children’s souls and the souls of our brothers has meant that we have a community of Catholics who care for one another and are involved in each others’ lives. I will never forget attending the donuts and coffee session after Mass and having someone, a mom, just come up to us and introduce herself. She talked to us and made my wife and me feel comfortable and welcome.

She wasn’t part of a hospitality committee or a welcoming ministry – not that there’s anything wrong with those. But she did it because she loves Christ, and why wouldn’t you? Jesus propells us to love our neighbor and at least say, “hello” to the stranger.

This documentary on April 30^th, 2013 is a must see because it show us what can happen when you combine the sacred with the personal touch of a pastor who loves. Lives change. Communities change. Whole neighborhoods can change.

While I’ve been at St. Peter’s I’ve had the pleasure of seeing several young Evangelicals enter into the Church. They’re drawn by what they see and what they don’t see. They don’t see the “frozen chosen” as it were (their phrase not mine). The people participate in the Mass by singing. They don’t see a mob of totally disinterested Christians who seem not to give a fig about what Father is saying.

They do see an intentional community of Catholics who want so much to know our Lord and to have their children know our Lord that they travel from all parts of the city to attend Mass. They see a pastor teach and preach with the conviction of the best Evangelical preacher, sans any showboating. They see Catholics live up to what they imagine the Catholic faith should be if what the Fathers of the Church they’ve read have any truth to them. At St. Peter’s these Evangelicals see a Catholic Church alive and serious.

I should note that this story about St. Peter’s is not a slam about any other parish. Neither is it to say that Fr. Cook loves Jesus more than any other pastor. It is only to say that this parish, my parish, has a pretty special story that is worth watching in a world of bad news and downtrodden spirits. This story is a hopeful one that can benefit every Catholic, regardless of their particular parish situation.

Do watch this story about St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Omaha, Nebraska. Say a prayer of thanks to the folks at StoryTel Foundation for having been moved so much by the work of St. Peter’s that they’ve entirely donated the cost of making the film. Better yet, come visit St. Peter’s and allow yourself to get lost in the beauty of the sacred. From beautiful music, to Latin responses, to good vestments, to powerful homilies, to altar boys who act in concert with each other, to the incense, to the Corpus Christi procession every year and all the rest, you are surrounded by the tools of Catholic imagination that have fed Catholics for centuries. It only makes sense that these things should still win converts and move souls to greater love for God.

See the trailer below.

http://www.catholicvote.org/a-simple-prayer-method-from-a-simple-pontiff/

It’s a reflection on a sermon that Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, delivered in May of 2012. It’s great stuff. Have a read:

http://www.catholicvote.org/pope-francis-the-liberator/

http://www.catholicvote.org/social-teaching-and-b16/

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=29699

Mother Teresa wrote:

[St. Joseph] was a just man; that means a holy man. He gave to God what belonged to Him and to the creatures what belonged to them. Being ‘just’ means to give every person their due. We must show them love because they all belong to God. God loves us and the others also. We believe that we are tabernacles of the living God; the other sisters also; the people also. …Saint Joseph [had] two talents – faithfulness and love – to serve Jesus. He was a common carpenter and became the foster Father of Jesus and spouse of the Mother of God. In all sincerity everybody must say I have used what I have got. I must be ‘just’ to others. …People who want to become holy must pray to St. Joseph.”

Yup, that sounds just about right to me. It’s an important truth about this day. Though it is caught up in all the business of May Day and the mud-splashed history that makes up that remembrance, we should keep before us the fact that it was in the labor of St. Joseph that he worked out his salvation. He used what he got, and we now recognize him worldwide as a model for the just man. This ought to be a comforting thought for parents.

We would like to give our lives over to our children with the kind of sage advice of the boy Jesus in the Temple who had all the scribes hanging on his every word. We would like to be the prudent caregiver who can squeeze a dime out of a half-penny. We would like to always be the calm and self-composed adult in the room who never loses their cool. But we’re not. Like St. Joseph, we are burdened by the same happy yokes of every day life.

So it ought to be comforting that this day celebrates the tempering of our interior steel through good old-fashioned labor. Instead of fretting over grand plans for a catechetical tool that will instantly make a child understand the Trinity, we can revel in knowing that changing the diaper – even the half-asleep diaper change in the middle of the night with a screaming baby and an irked spouse just glaring at you through the darkness sure they can do it better and faster and quieter – this change of the diaper is what God wants of you right now so it is part of His plan so it is part of your salvation.

And what if you fashion some wildly speculative catechetical lesson from the diaper’s three points (the flap and the two tabs)? That’s a bonus. All you know is that you’ve done the Lord’s work, and that is enough. The principle carries forward to the work in the factory, the work in the office, the work of being a role model to your child’s playmates, the work of being a patient spouse, the work of wonderful participation in God’s creative hand.

So must St. Joseph have thought about his work and the chance to teach his son about the craft of carpentry. All he knew, as Mother Teresa puts it, was that he was given a task, a job, a role, a vocation and he was to live and work and toil without counting the cost and without heeding the wounds. He gave what was due to Christ Jesus, which of course was everything. He was a just man, because he knew how much and to whom to give of himself.

This also means, of course, that we cannot be lost in our work to the detriment of the family. My little reflection here is not meant to mount the argument that “my prayer is my work,” “my worship is a job well done.” No no. We can be relieved and joyful at the opportunity to love Jesus in the little things done well, done with love. But we cannot believe that the little things can replace time with Jesus or time with our families.

There is a wonderful line in Familiaris consortio which talks about the educative role of the parent. Bl. Pope John Paul II teaches that no one, that is not one other person can ever fully replace you, and you can never fully delegate your role as a parent to another. Our children, then, no matter how poor a father or mother we might think we are, our children are due us. They have a right to us. So to be just we must provide them with the gift of being with and loving us.

I like to believe that on particularly warm nights, and as is the wont of the people in the Middle East, Jesus and St. Joseph went onto the roof of their home to escape the heat inside the house. I like to believe that the young boy Jesus would rest his head on the arm of St. Joseph who had tucked his wood-hardended palms underneath his head. I picture them both laying down to stare up at the sky and together, silently, wonder at the creation before them. At the end of  a long day’s labor, such repose would have been very refreshing for St. Joseph the Workman, especially as Mary’s quiet song drifted up to them and filled their much needed night of rest with dreams of many more such evenings.

Happy Feast of St. Joseph. Happy day of labor to you no matter what it might be. May we all work out our salvation in the just labor given to us by God.

Lodi Italy

James fell in love with Catherine in their home town and they found each other equally in love with the amusements that made up so much of their lives. Neither of them was known to pass up a good time, to give up on fine clothes, to sacrifice their rare jewelry or eschew their lavish living quarters. All was directed towards the finer goods of this world.

A nasty plague broke out in Lodi, however, and the two young lovers found themselves bereft of the same sorts of amusements to which they were accustomed. So they left their city dwelling for Catherine’s father’s place in the country. These city mice would never been the same.

You see, in that pastoral countryside of northern Italy there was a small church which was hosting a traveling replica of various significant sites in Christ’s life. The day that James Oldo entered, he and his male friend saw a replica of the Holy Sepulcher, the place where Our Lord’s lifeless and bloodless body would have been laid after having been taken down from the cross.

Now, while for you and me this would have brought a sense of awe and quiet wonder, for James, it was a moment for amusement. So he leaned over to this companion and with a nudge of his elbow said, “Let us see which is taller – Christ or I.” Thus it was that James walked into the replica and laid down on the slab of faux rock.

We don’t know what James saw or experienced, what he heard or felt but when he got up he was a changed man. From then on he avoided the luscious pleasures of this life. At that point he realized what a fool he had been in chasing down all these passing things. He still painted, but now it was only religious art designed to point the soul to Christ Jesus. He spent the rest of this time in prayer, study, in serving an elderly priest who taught him Latin, in doing all he could to make up for lost time.

His wife Catherine was taken by this new zeal in her husband, but she did not join him in this unadulterated pursuit of Christ until after she had suffered the death of their two daughters to the plague. Only then did she take up a zeal for the faith. Yes, instead of lashing out at a God who should take her daughters, she embraced Him.

She and her husband James took vows of continence. They converted their home into a church and a hospice. They tore up all their fine clothing making vestments. They dismantled their jewelry in order to decorate the sacred vessels. He worked diligently until his dying days for the ill, the lonely, the imprisoned. Indeed, he contracted the illness that killed him because he was so careless in embracing those with the plague.

Frater Momento Mori

This life of Bl. James Oldo of Lodi makes me focus on what it was that occurred to him while he lay down there on the “rock” of the Seplucher, starting up at a plaster ceiling within that Italian Church darkened and smudged by the smoke of hundreds of years worth of votive candles. Did it, for instance, grab him suddenly that Christ Jesus actually lived and died for him? Was he granted a vision of what would happen to him if he didn’t change his ways? Could he, let’s say, feel the hands of Hades’ devils pawing at him while he lay there? It is sobering business.

Yet, my day passes by with a million luxuries and many of them beyond the wildest imagination of Bl. James. How can I hope to emulate him? Well, for me there are two things that must be clear. The first is the return to that famous Latin saying “Frater Momento Mori” “Brother, Remember They Death.” It is only too easy for us to forget just how mortal we are. On the drive home from work yesterday as I pondered Bl. James, I envisioned that Mac truck not stopping as it did and just going right through the intersection and right into my lap. It could happen, so I should have my life in order.

This second thing, then, is that whatever “getting my life in order” means it probably involves loving the poor, the lame, the dying, the sick with a greater zeal than what I have now. Indeed, the degree to which I love will be the measure of my conversion. Isn’t that the mark of Christ Himself after all.

So consider they death dear reader and wonder at the various luxuries we could all give up in Christ’s name, for if we don’t die with Him we shall never rise with Him either. Long may he live.

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=28944

A young Dorothy Day

In a conversation the other day about her, acquaintances at a table attributed her conversion to the Catholic Faith as just an effort to be closer to the poor. While true that she could not help but notice that those coming out of the Catholic Churches in the 19-teens and 20’s were predominantly the working poor of this country. It was also spectacularly true that what drove Day to the Church was not just a calculation directed at proximity with the impoverished. No, she was drawn by more and still more.

An intelligent woman, she thought through at every level what becoming Catholic meant. She felt drawn to the rubrics and the rules, the doctrines and the dogma. But still, she knew in the end that to become Catholic was to enter into a relationship with the Creator for whom she had cultivated a quiet but deep reverence.

After her conversion and after having started the Catholic Worker House with Peter Maurin, she began to go deeper into the writings and spirituality of the French theologians of the time. These included such contemporary giants as de Lubac and Congar. Her spiritual life became rooted in regular retreats with priests who preached on the classics by de Montfort and Caussade, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Dorothy Day was not one to tread gingerly into something. She plunged head first into the Catholic life.

Thus, these words from her book The Long Lonliness interested me:

In Pittsburgh there had been a slight difference in opinion as to what true Franciscanism was. A few of the young people broke off from the main house of hospitality, which was then housed in a former orphanage on Tannehill Street and seemed to them to be too organized, to start a little house of their own in another section. I disagreed with the small group who felt themselves to be the spirituals of the movement, the perfectionists. At St. Francis house they were more truly poor than those at St. Joseph’s, they felt. They didn’t want to make the retreat [with these French priests] because they lived a retreat – they were superior.”

It is a terrible habit of some in the social justice crowd to eschew the hard work for the spiritual life for “living the retreat” by being with the poor. Who needs the saints, the theologians, the trappings of deep spirituality, they might argue, when I can know what it truly is to be without food or proper clothing? In other words, for some, my ministry is my spirituality, my work is my prayer life, my chosen poverty is my retreat. But this is dangerous, oh so dangerous.

Day goes on to write,

But they ended up by coming at midnight, after imbibing at a few taverns along the way, but the important thing is that they came. There is a Bohemianism of the religious life among young people as well as Bohemianism in the labor movement, and it too smacks of sentimentality. The gesture of being dirty because the outcast is dirty, of drinking because he drinks, of staying up all night and talking, because that is what one’s guest from the streets want to do, in participating in his sin from a prideful humility, this is self-deception indeed!”

I’ve seen this myself. I mean I’ve seen it in myself, and I’ve seen it in others. Today the Bohemianism is not just being dirty – though of course our Bohemian youth today consider being dirty the choice to settle for the cheap body spray – today the Bohemian youth must be dirty, licentious and must question all authority because isn’t that what the poor do? It’s not just dread locks and piercings like some mangy pirate – curse that Jack Sparrow. No, we have to love Jesus and hate religion. The young of today have to rail against something, anything because to be docile in spirit is only what the oppressive bourgeois want us to be.

Solidarity with the poor in today’s world means drinking like the poor, smoking like the poor, sinning like the poor. The higher things are of no import. The spiritual life is just your being hung up on the stale doctrines of a petrified faith. Attending Mass with regularity is the badge of the idiot. The popularity of reality TV shows where the depravities of dysfunction are displayed demonstrate this fact. This is the way the “little people” live, so why shouldn’t we?

Above all things, Dorothy Day loved our Lord deeply. She understood that at the center of a life of love for the poor had to be Christ Jesus encountered in prayer, in devotions, at the sacrifice of the Mass. This was part of the lesson that Dorothy left us. It is a shame it is not better learned. For without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, all she and Peter Maurin did would have died a sickly death and the Catholic Worker House would have been a whitened sepulcher.

Earlier in her autobiography she quotes the French novelist François Mauriac who wrote

There is a kind of hypocrisy which is worse than that of the Pharisees; it is to hide behind Christ’s example in order to follow one’s own lustful desires and to seek the company of the dissolute.”

You’ve heard it before I’m sure. “Well Jesus hung out with the prostitutes and the sinners, so I’m okay to do x, y and some of z too.” This is worse than Pharisaical, friends. It is a deep hypocrisy, and so we must avoid it vigorously. It pops up in our lives when we succumb to the temptation to justify our sins in the name of being “with the people,” or being “accessible” to our culture, or being an “effective” evangelist, or – shiver – being “relevant.”

So, you want to help the poor, convert your neighbor, be wildly attractive to those who come to know you? Go to Mass, pray the rosary, recite the hours, read on the saints, be like Dorothy Day and pursue sanctity. That, friends, is the antidote to hypocrisy and is the path to helping the poor and the ignorant.

This is – frankly – a document long overdue. The theology from which it draws has been there in the Church’s social doctrine for decades. It quotes heavily from Gaudium et spes and Laborem exercens. At the same time, it is a document that is supremely contemporary and addresses the reality and the challenges of trying to do business ethically in our day and age.

I’ve not the time to provide a thorough explanation of it, but I thought I would quote some highlights and provide a bit of commentary. I’ll start with paragraph 3 which draws on the Church teaching around the role of the employer.

Some time ago I had a post on the duties of the employer based on how these are laid out by Pope Leo XIII. It is clear that in the vision for the social teaching, the employer has a major role in the building and maintenance of the common good in society. This document about the vocation of the business leader expands on this. So we read:

When managed well, businesses actively enhance the dignity of employees and the development of virtues, such as solidarity, practical wisdom, justice, discipline, and many others. While the family is the first school of society, businesses, like many other social institutions, continue to educate people in virtue, especially those young men and women who are emerging from their families and their educational institutions and seeking their own places in society.”

I love that the well-run business is spoken of like a family. In terms of the potential influence on those involved with the business, it can very well be like a family. Indeed, this is why the family business is such a ubiquitous institution. And I love the fact that it says business educates “people in virtue.” This says at once that the business does not only exist for profit, that the business has a transcendent meaning, and it also says that at the heart of a just society and a just business is virtue.

Here’s another good little bit from the document. The Pontifical Council for Justice & Peace argues that a business is only as good as its owner, its leader. Thus a poorly-run business must have some problems at the top because the owner or entrepreneur is not fulfilling his vocation to the full.

A man who knows that business is like family.

How does this happen?

Chief among these obstacles at a personal level is a divided life, or what Vatican II described as ‘the split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives.’ The Second Vatican Council saw this split as ‘one of the more serious errors of our age.’”

When I go give talks to high school groups about the social teaching of the Church I start with this point. Kids hate hypocrites. They’ve no time for the guy who says one thing but lives his life another way. So at the heart of the social teaching of the Church is the notion that we, as self-proclaimed Christians, want to live consistent Catholic lives. We want to live our faith on Sunday, yes, but also on every other day of the week and in every other day. Thus, I should be able to see my small business as an extension of my Catholicism. And if I don’t or won’t or can’t, then there is a division within me that will ultimately undermine me, my capacity for authenticity and thus my capacity to lead others in a business venture.

I could go on, but I’ll save it for later. This is wonderful news, and this is exactly what the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace should be doing. Now, if only we can get Catholic business schools to teach this stuff.