November 19: “Give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant”

“…whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet…”   
                           (Ishmael in Moby Dick)

Entering this week of high anniversaries of President Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg (Nov 19, 1863) and of John Kennedy’s death in Dallas – as well as the liturgical year drawing to a close, with the Church bowing before the authority and power of Christ our King – the opening scene of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago came to mind:

They walked and walked and sang “Memory Eternal,” and whenever they stopped, the singing seemed to be carried on by their feet, the horses, the gusts of wind. Passersby made way for the cortege, counted the wreaths, crossed themselves. The curious joined the procession, asked: “Who’s being buried?” “Zhivago,” came the answer. “So that’s it. Now I see.” “Not him. Her.” “It’s all the same. God rest her soul. A rich funeral.” The last minutes flashed by, numbered, irrevocable. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and those who dwell therein.” The priest, tracing a cross, threw a handful of earth onto Marya Nikolaevna. They sang “With the souls of the righteous.” A terrible bustle began. The coffin was closed, nailed shut, lowered in. A rain of clods drummed down as four shovels hastily filled the grave. Over it a small mound rose. A ten-year-old boy climbed onto it. Only in the state of torpor and insensibility that usually comes at the end of a big funeral could it have seemed that the boy wanted to speak over his mother’s grave. He raised his head and looked around from that height at the autumn wastes and the domes of the monastery with an absent gaze. His snub-nosed face became distorted. His neck stretched out. If a wolf cub had raised his head with such a movement, it would have been clear that he was about to howl. Covering his face with his hands, the boy burst into sobs. A cloud flying towards him began to lash his hands and face with the wet whips of a cold downpour. A man in black, with narrow, tight-fitting, gathered sleeves, approached the grave. This was the deceased woman’s brother and the weeping boy’s uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin, a priest defrocked at his own request. He went up to the boy and led him out of the cemetery.

   
                                                 

“Alleluia. Weeping at the grave creates the song.”

The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul

[first published November 18, 2015]

by David Pence

The Catholic Church on this day each year celebrates the dedication of the churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome.  St. Peter and St. Paul drank of the Lord's Chalice and were both martyred in Rome.  “Those two famous shoots of the Divine Seed burst forth in a great progeny.” Their sacral brotherhood of blood served as the foundation stones of the apostolic Church.

Their tombs were pilgrimage destinations from the beginning. The basilicas were built over their sacred remains by Constantine in the 4th century, and then refurbished and rededicated in later centuries. Christianity’s priesthood  is centered in Rome where the graves of the martyred blood brothers signal the early development of Christ's Body as surely as Bethlehem and Nazareth. The reclamation project of winning back territory from the Prince of this world is celebrated especially when a sacred space is carved out of the land and stone to consecrate a church.  

Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls

                                       

Interior of St Paul's

Basilica of St Peter

The Chair of Peter upheld by
Saints Ambrose, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Augustine

Nov. 9th -- Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome: Sacred Space and the Cleansing of the Temple

(first published November 9, 2014)


by David Pence


It may seem odd that a feast day celebrates the consecration of a church. Think of it as a time to reflect on all the ways God and his Church have set aside sacred space to bring Creator and man in closer union. Out of nothingness, he set a platform of matter where man could stand and know and love. In the hostile expanding universe, He set the solar system and earth in just the right place for life. Then, from inanimate matter he enclosed a cell: a set-aside enclosed space which is the structure of all physical life. He set aside a garden amidst the earth for the best of his handiwork.

After man was cast out from the holy place because he defiled it, Noah and his sons were instructed to set aside an ark where they could survive the Deluge. God made all the men under Abraham a set-aside sacred brotherhood when he ordered them circumcised. When He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He also instructed him in building a new sacred space: the Ark of the Covenant. There God would dwell amidst his elected people. That holy chest of the desert wanderers eventually became the Temples of the Promised Land. And from that Jewish culture came the Virgin-Mother, the new sacred Ark. She was set aide in her beginning by her Immaculate Conception and at her earthly end by her Assumption into Heaven. She was the ultimate sacred space. And He dwelt among us.

There is a setting aside of sacred spaces, and days and persons, because the whole of matter and living beings is not destined to be drawn into the Body of Christ. There is a separation which makes this ground here, holy; and that ground over there, profane. There is a separation that will send the devil to Hell, while drawing the poor in spirit into the Body of Christ. Maintaining this separation is so crucial to the divine plan that spaces and persons which have been consecrated must be destroyed or purified if they become contaminated. The root of the word "holy" actually means "set aside or separated."

The celebration of Hanukkah by the Jews is an 8-day commemoration of the Purification of the Temple after it had been defiled by a desecrating Greek king. When the Maccabees cleansed the temple altar from the Greek abominations, they destroyed the old altar and then rebuilt a new one. The Maccabees could end the desecrations only by warfare. They were led by a father and his sons. Once again we hear the biblical lesson that without a fighting patriarchal fraternity there is no defense of the sacred center. (Hanukkah really isn't "the Jewish Christmas.")

The liturgy of this day reminds us that human beings are temples of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of God dwells within us. Ezekiel has his vision of the sanctifying sacramental graces flowing like a river from the new temple of the Church. This day's Gospel recalls the Maccabees. Christ swings a purging whip to cleanse his Father’s house. In that same week on the night before he dies, he will do his other great pre-Crucifixion purifying act when he cleanses his sacred Apostles of the Judas-priest and orders them to do the same through the ages. Today, let us reflect on sacred spaces and our duty to keep them pure.

                                       

by El Greco (d. 1614)

                                                               



UPDATE: The Lateran in Rome  was dedicated in November 324. It was the first  Church built in Rome after Constantine's Edict in 313 allowed Christianity a recognized public identity.  Emperor Constantine convoked the first Ecumenical Council - at Nicaea -- the following May.

"The beauty and harmony of the churches, destined to give praise to God, also draws us human beings, limited and sinful, to convert to form a “cosmos,” a well-ordered structure, in intimate communion with Jesus, who is the true Saint of saints. This happens in a culminating way in the Eucharistic liturgy, in which the “ecclesia,” that is, the community of the baptized, come together in a unified way to listen to the Word of God and nourish themselves with the Body and Blood of Christ. From these two tables the Church of living stones is built up in truth and charity and is internally formed by the Holy Spirit transforming herself into what she receives, conforming herself more and more to the Lord Jesus Christ. She herself, if she lives in sincere and fraternal unity, in this way becomes the spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God.

Dear friends, today’s feast celebrates a mystery that is always relevant: God’s desire to build a spiritual temple in the world, a community that worships him in spirit and truth (cf. John 4:23-24). But this observance also reminds us of the importance of the material buildings in which the community gathers to celebrate the praises of God. Every community therefore has the duty to take special care of its own sacred buildings, which are a precious religious and historical patrimony. For this we call upon the intercession of Mary Most Holy, that she help us to become, like her, the “house of God,” living temple of his love. "

— Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, November 9, 2008

NOVEMBER 2: The assassination of President Diem

[first published November 22, 2012]

The tumultuous November of 1963 began with the assassination of a Catholic president: Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. Three weeks later, another fell.

For years the U.S. strongly supported Diem, but the turning point was JFK’s appointment of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (Nixon’s running mate in 1960) as our ambassador – replacing Frederick Nolting.

Lodge – with allies such as Averell Harriman and newspaper reporter David Halberstam – completely undermined the Vietnamese leader.

Diem’s younger brother and top advisor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, was killed along with him. The widow of the latter, Madame Nhu, had acted as first lady since 1955 when the unmarried Diem had become the country’s first president.

(The always colorful Madame Nhu lived long in exile; she died last year in Rome on Easter Sunday.  After the Saigon assassinations on the second day of November, All Souls Day 1963, she said: "Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies.")

Dr. Pence says that JFK’s greatest failure as a public leader was his betrayal of our ally, President Diem. Kennedy was never proud of having allowed his underlings to give the green light to the coup; and in a mysterious way, it marked the loss of the American leader’s ‘Mandate of Heaven’…

[Diem’s older brother, Thuc (d. 1984), was the archbishop of Hue. One of the nephews of Diem was Cardinal Thuan (d. 2002), who after being imprisoned for years in the North, served as head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace].

Check out this interview with Ambassador Nolting, in which he calls our involvement in Diem's overthrow "disastrous."


 Here is a review of Philip Catton's book, Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam.

2017 UPDATE: Interview with Geoffrey Shaw, the author of  The Lost Mandate from Heaven: The Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam. This is the definitive account of the greatest blunder of the Vietnam war-the American inspired assassination of President Diem in Nov, 1963.  The man with the heart of darkness was Averell Harriman of the State Department. The young atheist news reporter David Halberstam could never understand the Catholic Confucian president who was much more an authentic nationalist than Ho Chi Minh. Replacing Ambassador Nolting with the Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge left no one to counter Halberstam's prejudicial reporting and Harriman's sinister machinations. The champions of secular liberal democracy orchestrated the murder of the one leader who could have negotiated a settlement in Vietnam. This  primal political lesson of the Vietnam War was hinted at but inexcusably misrepresented by the Ken Burns PBS series. It is easier to paint an Asian Catholic as a tyrant than accuse a liberal Democrat and secular journalist of leading roles in a generation's greatest tragedy. The wrenching Last Man Out account of the fall of Saigon.

Here are State Department documents and analysis-Did JFK order Diem assassination? by John Prados.

All Souls Day: Remember, Venerate, Pray

[first published November 2, 2014]

by David Pence


We live in a reality both visible and invisible. We trust our senses so much that we can become tricked into thinking realities which are not accessible through the senses are somehow not real. Some people call that epistemological error "the Scientific Revolution." They even boast of that great sundering of Truth as progress!
                                               

                             

The Church begins the last month of the liturgical year by remembering the dead. Yesterday -- the saints. Today -- all the souls departed. Almost every human culture knew the dead were not really dead. It took modern intellectuals to deny the reality. We keep pictures of those who have passed in our homes. Other cultures keep a flame and incense. Let us learn from the veneration of ancestors that marks Chinese and other Asian cultures. (See our review of Simon Chan's Grassroots Asian Theology).

                                             

Let us embrace the Mexican tradition of gifts for the little ones on one day, and good drink for the adults on the next. Let us remember the ever-present skull in the paintings of a wiser age 500 years ago. So often the Church reminds us of the truth. On Ash Wednesday we are dressed in the ashes to remind us from whence we came and where we are headed. For Catholics the Mass is where we always, and everywhere, make trek with the dead. Let us, as Catholics, especially keep sacred the liturgy of the Mass so there is the distance and formality that allows us to live amidst the angels and the saints and truly recall the dead in our prayers. Nothing so distracts us from the invisible as too heavy an emphasis on those around us as the fundamental unit of community. There is a Capuchin church in Rome with crypts of bones on the walls. A placard in five languages reminds us of the lesson of this day: "What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be..."