Coronavirus and the Spirit of Community at St. Mary's Seminary

The suddenness with which the coronavirus crisis affected our community of seminarians here in Baltimore felt like a violent rupture, tearing apart deep and personal relationships. We had been through a five-year ordeal together and suddenly, almost without warning, it was over.
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The coronavirus crisis occurred during my final year in seminary, after my classmates and I had just completed a rigorous series of final activities and exercises required for ordination to the priesthood. In late January, we underwent 72 hours of written and oral comprehensive exams, testing everything we had studied over the past five years about theology, liturgy, the sacraments, spirituality, ecclesiology, the history of the church, and pastoral care.
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Things happened in rapid succession after that. We wrote letters to our bishops, petitioning for ordination and we underwent our final “scrutinies,” in individual sessions with the rector. The purpose of these scrutinies was to affirm that we knew what would be required of us as priests and that we were entering this new stage of our lives voluntarily.
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In the midst of all of this, we continued our ongoing responsibilities and relationships with members of the parishes we had been assigned to in Baltimore. We baptized babies, led novenas, delivered homilies, served during mass, interviewed candidates for confirmation, and comforted and counseled parishioners who were experiencing significant transitions in their own lives.
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Reports of the spreading coronavirus hovered in the background of all this. First, there were newspaper reports about how the virus was spreading in China. These reports began last December. We read about how the virus had spread to Iran and Italy, and about the precautionary measures that governments had taken in South Korea and Japan. There were ominous warnings that it would only be a matter of time before the virus spread to the U.S.
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Still, our lives and our relationships continued and grew even deeper. I spent time with friends, both seminarians and people I met in Baltimore. We went to restaurants and movies and visited different parishes on Sundays when we were not required to serve in our assigned parishes. We hung out in coffee shops, shared memories and shared our hopes for the future. There were hugs, handshakes, and pats on the back, the kind of physical contact that everyone needs, the contact that makes us human and connects us to one another.
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A conversation that I had about philosophy with a seminarian from Columbia reminded me of how much I used to enjoy reading the works of Albert Camus, many years ago. As a result, I bought a copy of Camus’ “The Plague,” and began to re-read it for the second time in about forty years.

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I went for long walks, sometimes alone, sometimes with other seminarians, through the woods and the green fields on the campus. A seminarian from Vietnam and I talked about English idioms that make the English language difficult to learn. We talked about what it was like to grow up in the United States and in Vietnam. We cooked meals, shared jokes, laughed and sang together. We also watched movies and accompanied each other in prayer.
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Among the movies we watched were “Les Miserables,” Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights,” and “The Kid,” and “Tsotsi,” a film from South Africa that was shot in a shantytown in Johannesburg. Disturbingly, however, when we went to the supermarkets to shop for food many of the shelves were bare. As we walked through the aisles of several pharmacies, there were no longer any cleaning supplies, antiseptic alcohol, or thermometers. The empty shelves starkly mirrored the efforts of customers to keep a distance from one another. Suddenly touch, any form of physical contact was forbidden.
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The warnings about the spread of the coronavirus continued. By now, the rector at St. Mary’s began giving almost hourly updates on the progression of the virus in the United States and the precautions that the Center for Disease Control, (CDC) was recommending. He explained that although it was his desire to keep the seminary open for as long as he could while protecting our safety, all options were now on the table, including the possibility of closing the seminary itself and sending us home. He instructed us to have minimal contact with the outside world beyond the walls of the seminary.
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I had gotten to know the employees and some of the customers at several of the coffee shops in the area. In many ways, each coffee shop is a community in itself. I decided to make final visits to the shops, both to stock up on whole beans so that I could brew fresh coffee in my room, and to say good-bye to people I began to suspect I would not see again for a long time.
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One of the baristas, who was in her senior year in high school, confided during her break that she was upset that she would not be able to celebrate her graduation as she had dreamt of doing for many years. She said that it bothered her that she would lose the 400 dollars she paid toward several graduation events that had now been canceled. Her school told her that the money that she paid through her savings while working at the coffee shop over the past year, was non-refundable. Above all, she said she would miss not having the opportunity to bring together her family and her friends for this important milestone in her life. I commiserated with her in her disappointment, but as I left the coffee shop it crossed my mind that this might affect the graduation events at St. Mary’s, and perhaps the celebrations I was planning for my ordination.
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As the virus continued to spread, precautions increased and institutions all around us began to shutter their doors. Public amenities, such as a portable coffee cart in the Seminary’s hallway, suddenly disappeared. The theological library was now closed to the general public. The Ecumenical students, who normally take classes at the seminary in the evening, started to dwindle. Eventually, the Ecumenical Institute switched to on-line courses. The CDC was now issuing warnings that gatherings should be no larger than 50 people. Many seminarians had resolved to tough it out until Palm Sunday, when we would have to return to our home dioceses anyway, for two weeks, before returning to St. Mary’s to finish the semester. These hopes were soon dashed when the CDC issued projections for the virus to reach its peak in early May. Despite our voluntary semi-quarantine within the seminary, there seemed to be little hope that we would return after Easter break. The Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore instructed parishes to discontinue all public Masses because the crisis was worsening.
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Still, for us, there was work to be done. There were obligations to fulfill, and relationships to maintain. It was the midterm season and we were now immersed in preparation for yet another round of exams. We faced long periods of intensive study. We also had to deliver class presentations. No one wanted to be seen as being unprepared for whatever questions they might get during these presentations. My tutoring shifts at the Writing Center in the library, where I helped other students revise their papers, had a steady stream of visitors to the point where my eyes became red and my vision was blurred by the end of the night. Nonetheless, there was comfort in community-living and there was the fullness of life in our activities. In my exhaustion, I paused each night as I passed the chapel and offered a brief prayer in silence before going to bed.
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On Monday, after a vigorous class discussion, I headed to my room to get the latest updates on the coronavirus before going to Mass when one of the seminarians stopped me in the hallway and said, “You know you’re the deacon for Mass today, right?” In my scramble to complete the work on my midterms and to prepare for class presentations, I had forgotten to check the schedule for my clerical assignments for the week. I rushed into the sacristy and vested for Mass. The priest who was the celebrant of the Mass and I lined up with the servers to begin the procession into the chapel but the rector, who had been giving regular updates on precautions our community should be taking to prevent the spread of the coronavirus signaled for us to stop because he had yet another update to deliver.
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The CDC was now advising to avoid public gatherings of more than 10 people. The celebrant and I couldn’t hear the rector very well because the acoustics were poor where we were standing, so we inched onto the sanctuary itself and stood close to the wall. The rector continued, “After meeting with the faculty and student advisory committees on the coronavirus, and after talking with Archbishop Lori, I am announcing that all classes will be suspended immediately after Mass and that the semester will be over and should return home.”
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There was an audible gasp in the chapel as students and faculty realized that this would be our final Mass together as a community. The tone of the Mass was somber. Students who were in their final year in the seminary, and who had been ordained as deacons during the previous summer were stunned. It was suddenly over, but there would be no ritual or ceremony to mark the occasion. There would be no time for closure at the end of a long journey. Some of the deacons had spent seven years in the seminary; they openly wept when they realized they were receiving communion in the chapel as a seminarian for the final time.
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As the liturgy drew to a close I gave the dismissal at the end of Mass, “Go forth, the Mass is ended,” to which the community somberly replied, “Thanks be to God.” The Mass had indeed ended and with it the semester, and, for the deacons, with the semester, the many years they had spent as seminarians.
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I processed from the chapel with the priests singing a full-throated rendition of “Salve Regina” (Hail Holy Queen), a Marian hymn which is sung at the conclusion of most gatherings of priests or seminarians. The voices of the seminarians filled the chapel with the hymn. The priests continued to sing the hymn as they processed into the sacristy. The seminarians continued singing in the chapel.
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At some point, on the way to the sacristy, the priests managed to get several lines ahead of the seminarians so that the echoing back and forth between the two groups of voices had a “call-and-response” effect. By the time the priests had reached the sacristy and stood in a semi-circle around a wooden crucifix above a cabinet inscribed with the words, “Sancta Sancte” (Holy, Holy), we heard the voices of the seminarians thundering through the stone walls of the chapel, singing the final lines of the Salve Regina.

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I stared at the words, “Sancta Sancte,” inscribed with gold letters. The seminarians’ voices, as they concluded the hymn, several lines later than the priests, seemed forceful, almost to the point of being defiant. It seemed as though, at that moment, in spite of everything, the spirit of St. Mary’s was unbroken.
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As the celebrant of the Mass bowed before the crucifix, we all bowed with him and he gently said, “Prosit,” (may it be for your benefit). We replied, “Pro omnibus et singulis,” (for all and for each).
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The voices of the singing seminarians were breaking through the walls from the chapel. They echoed through the sacristy. The words “Sancta Sancte” blazed beneath the crucifix. I could not help but to think about what was going on in the world beyond the stone walls of the seminary. It was a world of scarcity, fear, and uncertainty. It was a world in which we were being called to minister. It would not be a neat world of comfortable predictability. We would have to adapt and adjust.
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Our semester, and for many of us, years of formation had abruptly come to an end. It all felt incomplete. Yet, in this world of abrupt endings and uncertainty we would have to reach out, often putting ourselves at risk, and minister to a suffering world.
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I often think of myself as being an introvert, but in the following 48 hours I began to realize how much I thrive within multiple communities. This was true, whether those communities were within the walls of the seminary or they were in the larger social and cultural environment that had become a part of my life in Baltimore.
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People, relationships, I discovered, were important to me, yet under the present circumstances of the coronavirus I would suddenly have to practice “social distancing.” It all seemed unnatural. Like the virus itself, the situation ruthlessly tore apart relationships, contact, touch, and everything that makes a person human.
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As Monday wore on the staff and lay faculty rushed around the building, collecting books and papers in boxes and sought last-minute assistance to help them set up their computers so that they could do their work from their homes. I helped some of the seminarians and staff members hastily gather their things for their departure and I was reminded, at that moment, of the scenes of “the fall of Saigon” from old news footage.
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The next day, the faculty and staff from Ecumenical Institute were gone, as were most of the School of Theology staff for the seminary. All that remained was a dwindling population of seminarians, and they were loading up their cars so that they could leave as soon as possible, but many lingered. I helped a seminary brother from Vietnam move into his new location in a nearby rectory. We had been close friends ever since he arrived in August of last year, and we had grown even closer over the past three months. We had a final meal together before saying good-bye.
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I spent the afternoon in the library of the seminary, forcing myself to push through a wall of emotional pain that threatened to immobilize me. I was beginning to feel the full brunt of the loss of so many members of my community. I hunched over a bookcase to organize my notes from the past seven months, preparing to scan them into digital files for my computer. I planned to transcribe them once I got back to my home diocese in Pittsburgh. It took over six hours to finish the project; the result was 65 digital documents averaging 15 pages each (approximately 975 pages of notes). My emotional pain was now coupled with physical exhaustion.
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While I was in the middle of this photocopying binge, one of the students from the Ecumenical Institute, who had been auditing a class on literature that I was taking, came up to me with a bewildered expression, “Aren’t we having class today? I heard they are sending you all home.”
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I nodded “yes,” they were sending us home and felt as though I had been gutted by a hunter’s knife. He said, “How do you feel about that?” I leaned on the top of the bookcase, searching for a way to describe what all of this was like. I told him, “Yesterday felt like the fall of Saigon, with everybody rushing out of here as the whole world seemed to be coming apart, but today -- do you know what today feels like?”
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He said, “No.”
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I looked at him, “Did you ever see the movie, ‘The Wings of Desire’ that was shot in Berlin back in 1987?” He said, “yes,” rather doubtfully, as though he was trying to follow my train of thought. “Well, you know the scene where the performers in the carnival are suddenly told to fold up their tents and go home because the carnival has run out of money and they have to close it down? In the scene, the next day the performers are slowly packing up their belongings and wandering around aimlessly, trying to salvage one final memory from the wreckage. That is what today feels like.” I continued, “We built something here, over the past five years. For better or for worse, we were a community. We went through a lot together. We knew that one day it would have to come to an end, but we didn’t expect it to happen so suddenly. It feels as though the wires are being ripped out of our hearts. We thought we would have more time to say good-bye. Now we are clutching at memories.”
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He silently nodded and gave me a hug, and then he said good-bye.
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After spending most of the following day organizing my belongings and making preparations to return to New Castle I took a break to get one last cup of coffee and to say good-bye to the baristas. The coffee shop was operating on a skeleton crew; it had all of the chairs stacked up on tables and there were never more than three customers in the store at a single time. There was, appropriately enough, carry-out service only.
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I fell into a conversation with one of the newer baristas.  I asked her, “How has the coronavirus affected you?” She said, “It’s depressing. It’s a strain because it means that I can’t get in as many hours of work as I would like to have, so I’m not sure how I will pay the bills.” She paused thoughtfully and added, “But it is changing the way we greet each other, isn’t it? I mean we used to say, ‘how are you doing?’ without really wanting to know how the other person is doing, but now people ask that question and actually mean it.”
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She opened a bag of coffee beans for a customer and poured it into the grinding machine, “It forced me to think about what is most important in life,” she added, “Should my life be about endless work or should I spend more time on my relationships and appreciating the people around me?”
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She turned on the machine and the blades started grinding the coffee beans, “At first I was thinking that I wasn’t concerned about the virus because I’m young and healthy, it doesn’t seem to be fatal for people like me. Then I started thinking about all the people I love, and many of them have compromised immune systems. I started thinking that it isn’t really about me, it’s about them, and now I want to fight anyone or anything to protect them from the virus.”
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She resealed the bag of freshly ground coffee beans and handed them to the customer and began wiping the counter, “You know, in a strange way I think this is an opportunity to slow down and put things in perspective. I notice more people are taking walks, which might bring them closer to nature. I hope something good will come out of it and we will no longer go through life without really paying attention.”
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I thanked her for her wisdom and left the store.

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Back at the seminary, later that night, I lit some candles and spent a holy hour in what we have come to call the “JPII pew,” because Saint John Paul II prayed in that spot, in 1995. I gazed at the tabernacle and in stillness and silence I reflected on all my years in seminary formation, and on what will come next, God-willing, in the priesthood. I finally found the peace I was looking for. I finally reached some degree of closure. Now, I am ready to return to Pittsburgh and begin a new chapter in my life.

Seven Years of Meeting God at 5 AM

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For seven years I was a nocturnal adorer at the Newman Center near the University of Pittsburgh. I covered the Friday morning slot from 5:00 to 6:00 AM. I originally signed up for the slot because I thought it would do me good to force myself to slow down, be still and be silent in the presence of the Eucharist for at least one hour a week.

It was easy enough to do this at first, when I was new to the practice and full of enthusiasm, but as one week followed another and the seasons changed from spring to summer, and from fall to winter I began to suspect that something greater was at work in what I was experiencing.

The practice of getting up at 3:30 every Friday morning was becoming a habit. My colleagues at work thought it was crazy to do this if one didn’t have to. There were plenty of times when I thought that it would be easier simply to sleep in and to let someone else cover my shift.

Sometimes I would come to adoration feeling on top of the world because everything seemed to be going fine; other times I would bring anxiety over unpaid bills or worries about what the diagnosis might be from the test results from a medical exam. Some nights were warm and bright in the full moonlight; I wanted to be outside. Others were dark, cold, rainy, or snowy and I had to force myself out of the house to make my Holy Hour for the week.

Gradually, I began to feel the presence of God through all the variations of emotional highs and emotional lows, through wet and dry weather, through the warmth and the cold. The “voice” of God was consistent, drawing me closer and drawing me deeper. I began to notice the presence of Christ outside of the adoration chapel, not just when I was inside of it.

The presence I felt was consistency within the variation, and a deeper fascination with the word of God. Above all, it became a desire and a willingness to open up to receive more.

Poem: The Body and Blood of Christ

Image credit: C. Matthew Hawkins

Introduction to the Poem “The Body and Blood of Christ”

By C. Matthew Hawkins
February 10, 2019

For me, one of the benefits of participating in a poetry workshop before this conclave of poets is that I got a chance to find out how other people hear my work. Explaining a poem to someone is like explaining the punchline to a joke; to explain it ruins the experience. I want to take a moment to highlight three key phrases from the poem: (1) where the taunt that “God can’t hear you” comes from and what it refers to; (2) what it means, within African American discourse, to be “felt” and not merely to be heard; and (3) the meaning of the practice, within African American culture, of the practice of “pouring libations.”

Many of the images and emotions in this poem are from my childhood in the East End of Pittsburgh. Children will often notice beauty in the details that adults pass over with indifference. Beneath an often frightening surface, there was much that was beautiful in the neighborhood of my childhood.

On the frightening side, however, the phrase, “You pray to God, but he can’t hear you” was used to ridicule someone who was about to be badly beaten or maybe even killed. It showed contempt for the person who prayed and affirmed the nihilistic idea that we live in a Godless universe where raw power is a law unto itself.

That phrase, “God can’t hear you,” turned Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” on its head. Instead, the message was this: “Don’t place your hope in an absent God. Fear me; I’m as real as the boot that is about to smash your head in.”

Tupac Shakur adapted that phrase in the lyrics for one of his songs. He took the phrase and fleshed it out to chilling effect: “Scream to God, he can’t hear you. I can feel your heart beating fast cause it’s time to die,” (from “Starin’ Through My Rear View”).

Image credit: C. Matthew Hawkins

A second phrase that deserves attention is this: “I feel you.” In African American discourse this is used instead of “I hear you.” This is not a linguistic error. It is consistent with the sense, in our culture, that people are better understood through the heart than through verbal abstractions. Even the power of the spoken word moves toward that end.

African American culture is highly relational and emphasizes the importance of empathy. In many ways, the phrase “I feel you” is not very different in meaning from what Cardinal John Henry Newman intended by the phrase “heart speaks to heart”.

Third, there is the pouring of libations. While pouring libations may conjure the image of Greek classical literature or Ancient Roman funeral rites, in African American communities the practice comes from traditional African religions and culture. One pours libations in memory of the dead. This takes on a sacramental dimension within the context of Christianity and in relation to the Eucharist.

Other images in the poem should be fairly self-evident. In the end, it is best for the reader and the listener to attach their own meaning to the poetic images that follow.

The Body and Blood of Christ 

Image credit: C. Matthew Hawkins

A crack in the windowpane
stringing light across the surface
A trace of accidental beauty
Slitting the fingertip, drawing blood

Our heads are like bricks in the street.
Our lives, the jagged edges of broken bottles.

We cry out, “Where is God in all of this?”
A face deformed with power
Sneers mockingly, “He can’t hear you.”

“He can’t hear you,” echoes through the darkness,
And fills the dead of night
We sob as our lives bleed into streets
And you, God, are nowhere to be found.

Image credit: C. Matthew Hawkins

You are fixed high above the altar
Suspended between heaven and earth
Twisting in pain and in agony
No solutions to be found on the cheap.

“He can’t hear you --”
But maybe he can feel you.

The priest holds bread and wine in his hands,
Transformed into the sacramental offering
We, the assembled, gathered in prayer,
We too are transformed and become sacraments.

“He can’t hear you,”
the terror of darkness and being alone.

Bread is cracked open and ripped apart
Our hearts, too, are torn open
Broken and poured out like blood on the sidewalk
In the pouring out of ourselves, we become whole.

“Maybe he can feel you,”
No longer alone.

Image credit: C. Matthew Hawkins

Disheveled men on the corner
Pour libations into the street
Remembering souls that were snatched in an instant
Leaving behind a mural on the wall for a memory

In silence, we encounter your mystery
In silence, we confront and embrace our pain
In silence, you clear the muddy waters of our minds
In silence, you whisper your truth.

We are heard and we are felt,
especially when we are alone.

C. Matthew Hawkins: Brief Bio

I was born and raised in the city of Pittsburgh. I grew up in a working-class African American neighborhood. My father was the pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church. Both my father and mother were professors at the University of Pittsburgh and they gave me a broad interfaith and ecumenical foundation. I attended a Catholic elementary school, a Quaker high school, and a Jewish summer camp. I was drawn to become a Catholic and entered full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in 1978.

I earned a master’s degree in social work community practice skills from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985, and an additional master’s degree in applied history from Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. For twenty years I worked in the field of community economic development while teaching community practice skills at the University of Pittsburgh and American history at Carlow, which is a Catholic University in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. During this time I was an active member of St. Benedict the Moor Parish in the historic Hill District of Pittsburgh.

Following seven years as a nocturnal adorer in the Ryan Catholic Newman Center while working as a consultant on in-depth parishioner interviews and participatory narrative inquiry for pastoral planning in parishes in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and serving on the parish pastoral council of St. Paul Cathedral, I entered the seminary in 2014 to discern a calling to the priesthood.

I am now in my final year of theological studies in St. Mary’s Seminary and University. St. Mary’s was founded by the Sulpician order and was the first Catholic seminary established in the United States. Located in Baltimore, it is noted for its emphasis on pastoral and spiritual formation.

What Catholics Learn from David Brooks' Talk on Suffering and Transformation

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David Brooks packs a lot of wisdom into this brief, 30-minute talk about why individuals and societies suffer and what steps we must go through to rise above our suffering and transform the experiences of "darkness" into something that is fruitful and positive. Brooks was speaking at an engagement for the Knight Foundation to promote his new book: The Second Mountain: the Quest for a Moral Life.
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Freedom from a Commitment to Other People is Not Freedom at All
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Brooks notes that freedom (if one means by it individual and social "freedom" in which one is not tied down to other people but is, rather, an individual who is adrift in the world), is not something you want to aim for. Such freedom, he says, is "not an ocean you want to live in; it is the river you want to get through so that you can commit yourself to something on the other side."
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The uncommitted person, he says, is the unremembered person because a person who cannot make a commitment is not permanently attached to anyone or anything.
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Breaking Open in the Season of Sorrow
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Brooks goes on to discuss what he calls "the season of sorrow", which is the low point in each of our lives, and in the life of a society, where everything seems to be coming apart and it seems as though we cannot go on.
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Brooks says that when you hit a hard patch in your life you can either be broken or you can be broken open. I take this phrase, "broken open" in the Eucharistic sense, in which one is made whole by allowing oneself to be vulnerable and to confront the pain and suffering.
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Brooks says that people who are simply broken (not broken open) get smaller and more afraid; they lash out in anger and grievance toward the world and they are filled with resentment. They experience pain, and pain, Brooks notes, that is not transformed is soon transmitted onto others.
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On the other hand, a person may be (Eucharistically) broken open. The toughest moments of our lives begin to define us when we are broken open; they are moments when we stop living superficially and we begin to discover the depths of our souls.
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Wisdom from Suffering

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Quoting Paul Tillich, Brooks says that suffering interrupts our lives and reminds us that we are not who we once thought we were.
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Suffering, Brooks says, carves through what we thought was the basement of our soul and reveals a cavity below that "basement", and it carves through the floor of the cavity and reveals a cavity below that. It is through suffering, he says, that we come to know ourselves more deeply.
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Brooks quotes Tillich in noting that in our suffering we discover our hearts and our deepest desire. We all have a sense of desire, Brooks says. Sometimes life tries to cover over that desire, but our desire shoots through. What the heart desires most is the sense of completion and fusion with another. One might add that in the tradition of the Abrahamic religions, our deepest desire is to become one community and to see the face of God.
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Love and the Yearning of the Soul
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Love, Brooks points out, is more than infatuation. It is more than a passing feeling and a mere emotion. Quoting British novelist Louis de Bernières, Brooks notes that love is what is left over when "being in love" is burned away. Love endures the temporal, the fleeting, and the transitory.
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It is during what Brooks calls "the season of our suffering" that we discover that we have a yearning soul.
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Brooks does not attempt to play the role of a theologian, but he offers his audience this working definition of a soul: it is a piece of us that has no size, weight, color or shape. He says of the soul that it is of infinite value and dignity and that rich and successful people do not have more of it than do poorer or less financially successful people.
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The abuse of human persons, he continues, is wrong not just because of the damage it does to the physical body, but because of the damage it does to the human soul. Harm to the body is worsened, in its effect, because of the harm it does at the deeper level of the soul.
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The soul, Brooks says, gives us moral responsibility, and it also gives us the desire to lead good lives. He adds that as the heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for fusion with an ideal. It is this yearning for the transcendent and the ineffable that attracts us and pulls us upward.
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In the dark moments of our lives, Brooks says, we become aware of our desire for values that are higher than the shallow desires that once defined us.
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A Problem with Two Faces: Tribalism and Radical Individualism
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The third lesson, says Brooks, is that the problem we are facing will not be resolved on the same level at which we created it in the first place. We have to approach the transitory problem that we see at a much deeper level. In society, we have to approach problems that were created on a national or global scale locally and within our communities. Perhaps the first challenge, then, is to allow ourselves to be formed into a community.
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Brooks sees the United States today as being in a moment that he would characterize as being a season of suffering. This moment, he says, has been in the making for more than 40 years.
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The United States is damaged, he says, by the loss of a sense of connection between people, by our hyper-individualism, and by a distorted and obsessive concern for meritocracy to the point that we place greater value on some people's lives over others based on how much wealth they have and how much money they make. We define our worth as human beings by how much social status we have and how much we can consume.
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The problems our society faces, according to Brooks, are personal as well as social. Our individual stories map onto the larger story of our society as a whole. Our hyper-individualism weakens the connection between us; we also find it harder and harder to trust one another and we find it harder to trust our institutions (religious, media, academic, and political). We also suffer, he says, from a crisis of the spirit so that many people no longer believe that there is anything for which to live.
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Brooks points out that the growth of "tribalism" in our society today is a symptom of the problem. He sees tribalism as being a negative form of social identity and social relationship. People seek comfort in the feeling of tribalism when they are afraid of everyone and everything that is outside of the tribe. Tribalism thrives in an environment of fear and hate.
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Fear and Recovery

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Fear, Brooks argues, is a driving force in our society today, and it generates a form of energy that is tearing us apart. Recovery, according to Brooks, will require a four-step process:
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First, our culture will have to be willing to be broken open. Although Brooks does not put it quite in this way I would look at it from a Christian standpoint and see the model for being broken open reflected in the celebration of the Eucharist.
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Brooks, who is Jewish, gives an example of this from rabbinic teaching based on a parable in the Hebrew Scriptures related to Moses in which a lamb flees deep into the wilderness. The rabbinic teaching points out that sometimes, like that lamb, we must flee deep into the territory of the unfamiliar so that we can see the world around us in a different light.
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Brooks argues that when we get down to the bottom of who we are, as human beings, regardless of differences in culture, politics, and ideology, we will find an inexplicable capacity to care for one another. We are often surprised to find this inexplicable capacity to care even among those whom we think of as being our "enemies".
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Quoting Anne Dillard, Brooks points out that once you get below our identity politics, our social posturing and the various masks we wear to define ourselves, most of us simply want to know that we are loved. This, of course, is what is at the core of the Gospels and the Hebrew Scriptures as well as other sacred writing in the Abrahamic tradition; it is the journey of a people who know that they are beloved by God and are able to pay that love forward.
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Salvation in Community
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Secondly, says Brooks, you have to be willing to be led. He notes that we are not able to get ourselves out of seasons of suffering on our own power. This reminds me of something Pope Benedict XVI used to say: "You cannot pull yourself out of the quicksand by your own hair."
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We need other people to lift us out of our season of suffering. In the Abrahamic tradition, and especially from the standpoint of Christian theology, God works through other people to lift us up from the mire from which we cannot free ourselves under our own power. This is why the notion of "kenosis" (the self-emptying of Jesus) is so important in Christian theology and is something all Christians are called to imitate in their own lives; it is a self-emptying that frees one to become an instrument to others of God's healing.
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Brooks points out the importance of relationships and communities. Often, when we search for solutions to personal and societal problems we think in terms of what "program" might be helpful. Brooks quotes a person, Bill Milliken, who had been doing youth work for 50 years who said, "I have never seen a program turn around a life; I've only seen relationships turn lives around."
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This requires the willingness to allow oneself to be led. Only when we open up can we allow ourselves to be led out of our spiritually-oppressive self-absorption and isolation.
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The Bright Sadness
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Brooks describes the quality in people he has met which he calls a "bright sadness". These are people who have taken sadness, anger and adverse circumstances and transformed them into determination to do something positive in the world with the energy generated by their adversity.
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Brooks notes, of these people that "they see reality, they see the shadows because they are right in the middle of life, but they have a brightness about it." At the core of their perspective on life is a sense of "radical hospitality" and "radical mutuality" born of the understanding that we are "all equal" because we are "all broken". From this awareness, they extract the capacity to transcend themselves and live for others.

Image credit: crosswalk.com

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Brooks concludes that by being loved we develop the capacity to give and express love and that we are not meant to live as hyper-individualists: "we are formed by relationships; we live by relationships; we measure our lives by the quality of our relationships, and society shifts when the culture shifts."
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Brooks makes one other observation, which I believe is particularly important to keep in mind in terms of the life of our parishes: "communities are people who share a sense of story." How often we overlook this. This is why it is so important for parish pastoral councils to be involved in conducting in-depth interviews with a significant number of parishioners. This must be done not only to develop a pastoral plan but, in the process of developing the plan, to excavate the story of the parish which, in turn, will strengthen a sense of belonging to a community among parishioners. Every parish has a story. Every parish IS a story which maps onto the larger story of the universal Church.
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Brooks notes that "if you don't have a story that you are a part of, you don't know how to behave." Paraphrasing Brooks, which I have done a lot of in this post tonight, some parishes are all-too-aware of their story, but the story they embrace is from decades ago. Their story has stagnated and become outdated, as has their parish identity. In those cases, it is necessary for the parish to refresh and renew their story by updating it, reflecting the lives of the people in the parish territory today while honoring the stories of previous generations. Who are we today? What are our lives like, and what is the social environment of our parish today, as opposed to what it was one or two generations ago?
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"Happiness" and Joy
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Significantly, Brooks distinguishes between "happiness" and "joy". Happiness, he says, "is when you win a victory and your 'self' expands", but "joy" is "what you feel when you transcend 'self'", and you lose the alienating distinction between where you end and somebody else begins. Joy, he says, becomes more than just a fleeting feeling, it develops into an outlook that you live from day-to-day.
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Brooks closes with these memorable words: "If we orient ourselves toward joy, not just individual happiness, then we will be pointed in the right direction."

"Roma": Catholic Cultural Subtext and Powerful Cinematography

Image Credit: Theatrical Poster

On Saturday night I had the good fortune to see "Roma", the indie movie produced by Netflix that has created quite a buzz over the past two months. This movie is likely to win several academy awards due to its cinematography and directing. Had it been up to major movie producers and distributors it would never have seen the light of day because the industry, perhaps accurately, did not see an artsy non-English language film, which was shot in black and white, as being a smash hit at the box office in the United States. What the film may have lacked in its commercial appeal to mass audiences it has more than made up in its craftsmanship and artistry.

This film is more of a cinematic meditation of images than it is a conventional story, but its details and the sudden twists that become life and death circumstances are powerful enough to move even the most jaded and desensitized viewers.

The film is rich in symbolism about families and their disintegration and renewal, and about faith that has been infused within the general culture, even when the life of faith is not practiced in an ostentatious way. The film is very Catholic in the sense that one encounters a deeper meaning through everyday life and circumstances than what appears on the surface. The film is also about the tensions and transcendence of race, class, violence and the plight of women. This includes the plight of both affluent women and domestic workers.

The film is loosely based on the life of its director, Alfonso Cuaron, who also directed "Gravity" and "Children of Men".  Cuaron grew up in an affluent section of Mexico City, called Roma, during the early 1970s. It is from this section of town that the movie takes its name. It is filmed in three languages. It was mostly filmed in Spanish but there is also a language that is spoken by the indigenous population, and snippets of English in some of the scenes.

Seminarians will be particularly interested in how the movie handles topics such as unexpected pregnancies, families that are falling apart, social justice for domestic workers, and the curious ways in which a masculine identity is acted out at the expense of the dignity of women.

Cuaron, the director of the film, is a master of cinematic detail; what Cuaron was able to do with images in the film is itself worth the price of admission.

The character who represents Cuaron in the film is a young boy who captures viewer's hearts with his precociousness and his practice of referring to a time "When I was older...", by which he means a time before he was born. The boy's vivid imagination allows him to "remember" a previous life in which he was an adult. But the movie is not centered on the boy. The focal point of the movie turns out to be Cleo, a domestic worker, who is responsible for taking care of the child and his siblings. In a comical, but also symbolically significant way, the film also focuses on a dog that leaves impressive piles of feces all over the place.

Without giving the story away, viewers should note contrasts and recurring images: the enclosed space within the garage and airplanes flying overhead; viewers should note the recurrence of the impressively defecating dog and other dogs in general; viewers should note the imaginary guns, toy guns, and the real guns that appear in the film. They should note the recurrence of the marching band and the symbolic significance of the car that enters the garage, carefully at first, and later recklessly.

There are also the destructive forces of fire and water when the family goes on vacation, and there is the transition in how Cleo is treated -- at least up to a point -- from merely being an employee to having a role that more closely resembles the status of being a member of the family.

Another significant contrast in the film occurs in the scenes where Cleo and adults members of the family she works for, prepare for the birth of a new life under difficult circumstances, and the persistently threatening shadow of violence and death that hovers in the background.

The men in the film are only supportive of Cleo up to a point; they never seem to muster up the courage to stand with her when it is time to deliver the baby. It is the women (the lady of the household, the religious grandmother, Cleo's coworker in domestic service, and the female pediatrician) who are there for her through thick and thin.

In terms of the film's handling of the politics of social class, I can imagine some viewers criticizing it for a kind of "Uncle Tom" narrative in which the domestic servant overcomes social divisions by sacrificing everything -- her own personal life, the village of her upbringing and her own family -- for the privileged family she serves, but there is also something that is very "Christian" about the film in its depiction of vulnerability and mutual dependence that transcends racial status and socio-economic class. An underlying message is that one's humanity transcends one's social status and identity.

After two hours of enjoying the superb direction and cinematography, you will develop something akin to having a photographer's eye that allows you to appreciate details in the world around you and the director teaches you how to "see" in new and surprising ways.

Into the Spider-Verse and the Dimensions Inside of Us

From the theatrical release poster

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse was released in theaters last month and its popularity is well-deserved. There is not a wasted scene in the story. We are right with the character as he struggles to develop and gain mastery over his newly-acquired powers. The artwork, particularly the nighttime scenes of New York, set and maintain the mood. This movie is a classic example of how to tell a good story employing perennial themes of innocence versus maturity, attempting to control outcomes versus taking the leap of faith, and the longing to be reunited with one's family, restore relationships and to find one's way home.

The central theme in the movie is that of resurrection. Miles Morales, the boy who is bitten by a radioactive spider and must, therefore, against his will,  become something he never really wanted to be, will never be able to live up the billing of Spiderman until he learns to get back up each time he is knocked down; metaphorically, he must come back from the dead.

Each of the major characters faces an emotional challenge on the road to maturity and is thrown into an ironic relationship that helps that character grow. The middle-aged Peter Parker, who has ruined his life due to his unwillingness to be open to having kids, ironically finds himself in a partnership with two teenagers who teach him what it means to be human once again.

Spiderwoman, who is no longer willing to “do friendships” after she was unable to prevent the killing of her closest friend -- Peter Parker in another universe -- finds herself partnered with Miles and confronted with the frightening prospect of learning to trust and to care again.

Miles can’t express his love for his father, and his father doesn’t quite know how to talk to the boy, saying all the wrong things at the wrong times, making it impossible for Miles to confide in him.

Early in the movie Miles enters a new environment and doesn’t know whether or not he will be accepted. All of his jokes fall flat and he finds it difficult to make new friends. Most of us can relate to that awkward feeling of standing out in our new environment when we’re just trying to keep our heads down and not to stand out at all.

We can also relate to the feeling of trying to impress a mentor who has already expressed that he or she sees something in us that others don’t see, and that we fail to see in ourselves.  We all know what it feels like to try to live up to what others expect from us, yet we repeatedly make a mess of things and let them down.

Throughout the movie, Miles struggles to gain control over his newly-acquired and extraordinary abilities. One of the main themes in the film is that ordinary people can do extraordinary things once they are able to give and receive love and take a leap of faith despite the fact that everything is not under their control. Through all of the trials and ordeals in the movie Miles learns that his uniqueness is his strength and that, in spite of everything, he is not alone.