The "God Is In Control Church"

I used to live in a strange town called Waldorf.  The first time I ever went to Waldorf was to eat lunch with new colleagues from the parish where I was about to start working.  Carol directed me to the restaurant by telling me to drive south into Waldorf, then turn left on “Mattawoman-Beantown Road."  Cheryl mentioned a helpful landmark:  “You’ll see a giant paint can on the left side of the road right before your left turn.  The giant paint can is how we mark things in Waldorf – everything is either before or after the paint can.”

I found the whole thing very strange.  Waldorf was always like that for me, though I did become quite accustomed to saying “Mattawoman-Beantown” and giving directions by orienting everything around a very large paint can that was perched on top of a strip mall. 

After slugging through seven or eight years of purgatorial Waldorfian living, my sister-in-law’s Swiss boyfriend informed me that Waldorf means “wooded village” in German.  It sounded so lovely!  If only!

But I shouldn’t complain.  Waldorf had its charms.  And one of them was a little non-denominational church situated on Waldorf’s main thoroughfare, nestled into one of Waldorf’s most nondescript strip malls.  It was called the “God Is In Control Church.”

Now that is a great name for a church.  Sure, we Catholics have very fine church names:  Holy Infant, Our Lady Help of Christians, Prince of Peace, The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  Wonderful saints, devotions and mysteries.  But I think Waldorf may have one-upped us this time.  Every time I drove past that little storefront church, I felt great about life.  I might have been living in a strange town, surrounded by suburbia, yearning for a wooded village.  But God was in control.  God was in control.  And that was enough.

Yes, the members of that little church had done something right.  Just by choosing a name and hanging up a sign, they were evangelizing me.  The “God Is In Control Church” made me happy.  It made me feel safe.  It made me want to nod my head and shout “Amen!” 

Plus, it was almost as much fun to say as “Mattawoman-Beantown.” 

I can't believe I found a picture of the actual paint can in Waldorf, MD!  You can click on the image to go to a website where you will see pictures of many, many giant paint cans found throughout the U.S.  Who knew?  P.S.  My husband enjoyed Waldorf very much.

Deacon's Prayer

I wrote this prayer for the deacons of the Diocese of Bridgeport and their wives (who share in their formation and often share in their ministry).  I wanted to pass it on so you can either share it with the deacons in your life (Hi, Dad!) or use it in your own ministry.  I did write it with deacons in mind but it can be prayed by anyone, of course.  Feel free to adapt this prayer for your own use!

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Lord Jesus Christ, Servant of all,

Send your Spirit upon me as I serve your Church.

Give me eyes to see the needs of your people.

Give me a discerning mind to know your truth.

Give me a generous spirit when I am tired but needed.

Give me a humble heart when my work goes unnoticed.

Give me peace of mind in obedience and service.

Give me health of body so I may serve with strength.

Make me fertile ground for your inspiration and love.

Comfort me when I question myself and my ministry.

Grant me grace as I age so I may share your wisdom.

Make my heart like yours so I may love your people. 

Amen.

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A special note:  Has hell frozen over?  It’s possible.  I’m on Facebook!  

Some of you have said it would be easier to share and respond to blog posts if they were on Facebook.  They will still appear on my blog of course, and for those of you who subscribe, they will still be delivered to your inbox, but now you can also find blog posts on my Facebook feed.

Visit me at: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009520730463.

The Coffee Cup

See the updated version of this post: The Coffee Cup 2.0 published in July 2016.

There’s an old story about Dorothy Day and a coffee cup.  It’s a story that’s gone around a bunch of times, told by many people, all representing Dorothy in their own way.  Like the game of “telephone,” in which the message spoken by the first player at the beginning of the game is completely warped by the last player at the end of the game, the coffee cup story has actually morphed into two distinct versions of what most certainly was one actual event.

In both versions of the story, a Mass was celebrated at Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker House in New York City.  Apparently, instead of a chalice, the priest chose to use a styrofoam coffee cup.  The two versions of the story developed around Dorothy’s reaction.  One account says that Dorothy was perturbed, even horrified, by the idea of using a coffee cup in the celebration of the Mass.  It wasn’t fitting; it dishonored the Lord.  This version of events says that after Mass, Dorothy found the coffee cup and carefully buried it in the earth behind the house, bringing some closure to what Dorothy felt was an error in judgment and a bit of scandal in her House.

The other version of the story says that Dorothy was profoundly touched by the use of the coffee cup.  A small, white, styrofoam coffee cup is the cup of the people, the cup of the poor.  It was perfectly fitting to use it in the sacrifice of the Mass; it honored the Lord.  Whether or not Dorothy buried the cup in this version of events is unclear.  But what is clear is the idea that this Eucharistic cup embraced the plight of the poor.  The coffee cup brought together the suffering of Christ and the very real situation of human poverty.

One interesting thing about this story is that from what I know of Dorothy Day, either version could be true.  She was what you might call authentically Catholic.  She embraced the liturgy in all of its meaning and symbolism.  She understood it; she lived it.  But she also embraced the poor – their marginalization, their pain, her own responsibility toward them.  She understood and lived that as well.  Dorothy Day was not predictable or classifiable.   She was just Catholic.  She was just faithful. 

In our contemporary American Church, where would Dorothy Day fit in?  Would her reaction to the coffee cup place her in a certain “camp”?  I doubt that either side of our polarized Church would be 100% comfortable with Dorothy.  And I doubt Dorothy would spend one minute worrying about it.

After writing this, I did some digging (not literally) and it seems that the most likely “true story” is somewhere in the middle (as usual).  Jim Forest, a close associate and biographer of Dorothy Day, writes that after the “coffee cup Mass”, Dorothy said nothing but simply buried the coffee cup (and the sandwich plate that was used as a paten!) in the back yard.  She was always happy to have a Mass and did not criticize the way the priest chose to celebrate it.  But as in all things, she wanted things to be right.  I also found this striking commentary about Dorothy, also by Jim Forest:

“We live in a post-Christian world.  Christian activity and Christian belief are not normal, even among Christians.  Most of us are constantly trying to conform ourselves to the people at the front of the crowd, so that our religious activities aren’t too ridiculous and too embarrassing and too isolating.  Dorothy Day was able to work through that and to find the place where she would be free to be a believer.  And when you are with one of those people, it hits you pretty hard.”

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For an updated version of this blog post, with memories by Jim Forest, click here.

Love One Another...Even at Church

It is an uncomfortable truth that those closest to us are sometimes hardest to love.  Mother Teresa hit the nail painfully on the head when she said it is easier to feed a hungry person a bowl of rice than to love the hurting person in your own home.  This truth applies to our life in the Church, especially within the parish.  Sometimes we look wistfully beyond her doors because those inside seem hardest to love.  Inside the doors of our own parishes, we find thousands of petty ways to judge and harm; we sift one another like wheat!  Whether there are great divisions in our communities, or just incessant pecking at one another, we do great harm to the Body of Christ; we fail the One we claim to love most. 

St. Augustine had a graphic way of putting it – when we claim to love Christ without loving his people, we decapitate his Head from his Body:  “What has the Church done to thee, that thou shouldst wish to decapitate her? Thou wouldst take away her Head, and believe in the Head alone, despising the body. Vain is thy service, and false thy devotion to the Head. For to sever it from the body is an injury to both Head and body.”

If we refuse to love those Christ died for, we empty the Cross of its power.  We work against Christ.  We become the enemy, the sickness in the Body.  Love in the Church is what keeps the arteries open and allows the blood to flow freely through the Body, keeping each member healthy and able to function.  When love fails, the blood of the Church slows and thickens; like body parts deprived of oxygen, members become lifeless and a slow decay sets in.

It is easy to find fault, to excuse ourselves from loving certain individuals who don’t measure up to our own standards – who don’t believe the right things, or say the right things, or make the right decisions.  But when this happens and we find ourselves without love, let us very intentionally stop, look on that person with the loving glance of Christ (Lk. 22:61) and cast on them the mantle of love, for “love hides a multitude of sins” (1 Pt. 4:8).  That is not a platitude from Scripture; it is a demanding truth.  We have the power to cover sin, to neutralize its damaging effects, simply by offering a calm, peaceful, forgiving love, and by leaving behind our judgment and irritation, which only exacerbate the faults of others and rob us of our peace.

When we find it hard to love someone – especially when it is one of our brothers or sisters in Christ, one of the fellow members of his Body – we must turn to Christ and beg for his help – because it is very important to him and to the survival of his Body.  We must go so far as to make him a promise:  “I will not decapitate you, Lord.  I will not work against the power of your Cross, which does not divide but reconciles.”  When we keep this promise, when we love those hardest to love, we become like him, and we discover not only the power but the joy of the Cross.  We release ourselves from our own demands and satisfy only the single command of the Master:  to love.  Following this command, we maintain the health of the Body and bolster the power of the Cross.  And slowly we discover that we have joined in a miraculous plan.  Our love heals and transforms:  those we deemed the “less honorable” parts of the Body (1 Cor. 12:23) become the beating heart of the Church.

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Encouraging Words about Our Church

Catherine Doherty (see Feb. 18 post) was a woman of prayer who could rightfully be called a mystic.  She was a mystic who was equally comfortable spending days in silence with God, or sitting in a diner having coffee with an old friend.  Her mysticism came out of something very primitive:  a core belief that human beings belong in the presence of God. 

I recently read a passage from one of Catherine’s classics, Molchanie:  Experiencing the Silence of God.  In it she describes a spiritual journey into the silence of God.  She tells of the temptations she faces, the things she sees, the ways she experiences God.  The passage that had my attention was her description of the Church, which she encounters while on this pilgrimage of prayer.  She sees the Church torn apart.  She fears for the Church. 

I could identify with what Catherine saw and what she feared.  We all can.  We worry about our Church, like we worry about our families.  We wonder what to do to breathe life into her, to serve the folks falling through the cracks, to restore the image of the Church as something beautiful but humble.

I found Catherine’s words very comforting, because she reminded me what Christ does for his Church, that he loves her more than I ever could, and that I too can rest “among the pines” in the knowledge that the light of the Church is continually renewed by Christ himself:

“From a vantage point in gentle mountains I saw the Church….  There she stood, above the tree line, shining in the rays of the noonday sun.  She was beautiful and simple, with her doors wide open, and into her streamed rich and poor alike.  As I beheld the Church, awe took hold of me.  These words from the Old Testament came to me:  ‘Take off your shoes; the place is holy”….

When I looked again, the scene had changed.  A disruption, a dismemberment or tearing apart seemed to be taking place.  The doors through which so many people had passed were being barred.  I shook my head and tried to clear my eyes, for they were filling up with tears.  I couldn’t believe the people of God were causing all this turmoil!  But they were.  Each had his own idea of the Church….

As my father had taught me to do, I lifted the ‘two arms’ – of prayer and fasting – for the Church.  At the same time I realized that the Church was the beautiful, shining Bride of Christ.  He had said that the gates of hell would not prevail against her.  I knew that she was his beloved, and that he, God, was all tenderness, all love, towards her.  She passed in front of my eyes, the beloved of God....

Yes, I saw the Church torn apart.  I was going to weep, but then I saw Christ putting her back together again, she who had come from his side.  There was music in the air, and she became whole again.  So I was at peace for a little while, because I knew that the Church is forever being restored and renewed in her Lord.  We celebrate his resurrection from death once a year, but he restores his Church every moment of the day and night.  

I relaxed among the pines.  It was night.  Brighter than all the stars and the moon was the Church, shining in the darkness.”

Excerpt from Molchanie:  Experiencing the Silence of God, Madonna House Publications.

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