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The photographs are 167 of the 180 Amsterdam area men who died during World War II.
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TSWNN May 25, 2012 | The Show With No Name:Gavin Murdoch, school-board member-elect, weighs in on the post-election (and pre-inauguration) spending spree by the GASD. Jim Nicosia reports on the dysfunctional City of Amsterdam Budget Review Board. Bob Going discusses whether the problems are structural or personal (res ipsa loquitur or non do fecem?). Then, just as the show starts getting bogged down in malcontentery, City Historian Robert von Hasseln arrives with the new South Side history program and news of the upcoming events of June 2. From there, of course, begins a discussion of the history of the world that is, as usual, both entertaining and informative.
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FROM THE PASTOR
May 20, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler
The great feasts of Christmas and Easter have their Advent and Lent for preparation, but there is little of the sort for Pentecost, which is celebrated next week, although the liturgies of the week before are filled with anticipation. The Resurrection of Christ and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the Church fifty days later are inseparable, and there was what we might call a Pre-Pentecost on Easter itself when Christ breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20: 22-23). On the actual Pentecost, the whole Church would be inspired with fire from Heaven.
The hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” invoking the Holy Spirit is sung at the Church’s important events, and most fervently at the conferral of Holy Orders. I remember Archbishop Dominic Tang Yee-min of Canton preaching to American seminarians and saying three times: “No pope, no Catholic Church!” He had been confined to a Communist prison for twenty-two years for loyalty to the papacy. We can also say, “No priest, no Catholic Church!” Every Christian is imbued with the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and the priest has a special measure of that gift so that he might serve the people. For many years in our country there has been a deafness to the Holy Spirit’s call to priestly service, for we hear Him with our hearts, and hardness of heart is the spiritual equivalent of hardness of hearing. Happily, invocations of the Holy Spirit seem to have stirred up solid vocations recently, and the present number of 3,723 seminarians in our country is the highest in nearly twenty-five years.
Among the young men from our own parish studying for the priesthood, three hope to be ordained to the diaconate later this year. This past week I had the privilege of giving the annual retreat at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers for those preparing for ordination in our archdiocese. I’d have to say that all of them seem more certain of what is the solid meat of doctrine than was the tone when I was in seminary, and they are very much in the mold of the present Pontiff as shepherds of souls. God willing, they will be priests in one of the most challenging times in Christian history, and our culture will not afford them the perquisites and comforts that an earlier and more Christian culture provided, but that circumstance will also make for stronger hearts and voices for the conversion and care of souls.
Everyone has a vocation to some state of life and some particular service, and the Holy Spirit guides each in discerning what that is. In this season, then, it is especially fitting to pray, “Come Holy Spirit. Enlighten the hearts of the faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your love.”
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FROM THE PASTOR
May 13, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler
The earliest recording of a voice was thought to have been that of Thomas Edison in 1877 reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his own invention. But recently an 1860 recording was discovered on a device consisting of carbon paper etched with a stylus, called a “phonautograph” by its inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. A woman is heard singing “Au Clair de la Lune.” There are remarkable recordings of William McKinley, Walt Whitman, William Gladstone and Alfred Lord Tennyson reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” There are even a few seconds of what is thought to be the sound of Queen Victoria’s voice.
Microphones have changed classical rhetorical style to small-time conversation. Listen to Gladstone, and it almost sounds like grand opera. In 1843 Daniel O’Connell spoke to hundreds of thousands at Tara. Elizabeth I rallied thousands of troops against the Armada, declaiming from horseback. Sometimes “repeaters” were used: men who would echo the speaker’s lines rank to rank, but voices were trained to be heard, and Benjamin Franklin attested that the Methodist bishop George Whitfield could be heard by thirty thousand from the steps of the Philadelphia courthouse.
We do not have a recording of Christ’s human voice, but it was strong enough to be heard by possibly fifteen or twenty thousand, if we add families to the four and five thousand men at the feeding miracles, and could be heard even in the worst agony seven times. It frightened hypocrites but whispered like a charm to children. While His voice cannot be heard on a machine, we know what it said. St. John’s transcript has Him saying seven times: “I AM — the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Gate, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection, the Way and the Truth and the Life, and the True Vine.” When Pilate asked Jesus if He was a king, he thought the reply “I AM” meant only “yes.” The crowd knew that He meant something more, something Moses had heard from the Burning Bush.
In a larger sense, we have heard the sound of His voice and live in it. The whole Creation is a recording of the divine voice saying “Let there be light.” And everyone engrafted to the True Vine by baptism is a recording of that voice, for Jesus said to the 72 disciples, “He who hears you hears me” (Luke 10:16). As He ascended, He commanded us spread His voice to all nations. There are people today who would try to drown out that voice with their microphones and teleprompters. To them, the Second Vatican Council spoke: “. . . the Bishops, from divine institution, have taken the place of the Apostles, as the pastors of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ; he who spurns them, spurns Christ and Him who sent Christ” (Lumen Gentium, 20).
If you enjoy reading these newsletters, please express your support with a Donation, of any amount, to the Church of Our Saviour.
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TSWNN May 11, 2012 | The Show With No Name:Getting down to the wire with Gavin’s campaign for the schoolboard; a review of the election results around the country for the last week, including giving a second look to the imprisoned felon who took 41% of the vote against the sitting president in the West Virginia Primary. Would he able to pardon himself on taking office? Say, should we move the train station? (The boys are not siding with the local choo-choos on this one). Jim defends the city controller, Bob re-proposes a fair and balanced ward redistricting, and Calvin Coolidge comes back from the grave to explain to us what should be obvious. No show next week, so savor this one.
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St. Agnes
HOMILY
MONTH’S MIND MASS FOR MONSIGNOR EUGENE V. CLARK, P.A.
Rev. George W. Rutler
Church of Saint Agnes
May 11, 2012
On the first month’s remove from the death of a man, the custom of reticence loosens, and the proscription of eulogies ends, for when a body is buried and the days move on, it is allowed and even ordered to recall how the life that died was lived, and in what way that life helped others live better.
Monsignor Eugene Vincent Clark was ordained a priest by Cardinal Spellman whom he later served in many offices, as he also served in the household of Cardinal Cooke. He respected his place, never breaking a confidence, and would not mention how much of what those archbishops said and did were in some measure his words and work. His services were as a priest who followed other priests and would be followed by more.
Everyone here today who knew him can tell how by that very knowing they were helped by him. Rare was the charity or philanthropy in the archdiocese and in many instances beyond, even to the Holy See, that was not encouraged by him, and sometimes started by him. Those who were brought to the Faith by his guidance, or restored to the Faith by his prodding, make a large and powerful regiment. His hospitality was not confined to the hospitable, for our Lord asked what reward is there for that, Many who were derelict or discouraged or, worse, made cynical by the bruises a city may inflict, found in him a host of munificence and even of magnificence. Such habitual benevolence in a harsh culture attracts some who would importune, bur far more were those who would make it their own good habit. Of such a priestly soul should it be said what an old hymn said of Christ himself: “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.”
Each of us has his own story, and mine is part of a large catalogue whose moments are beyond barter. When I wanted to be received into the Church, a friend suggested that I speak with Monsignor Clark. Later I realized that my friend was one of a chorus that said to countless inquirers, “Go speak with Monsignor Clark.” So I did, and he introduced me to Cardinal Cooke and things moved on from there. They moved on farther that I expected, and soon I found myself in Rome speaking no Italian, and a perplexity to those who did not know what I needed to learn. Years later I became curate to Monsignor Clark who was inventive in finding ways to prevent me from at least outwardly seeming useless. He never gave orders as such, but his invitations to do things were peremptory commands in quiet camouflage, and so he suggested that I preach on Good Friday, and he kept suggesting that for fifteen years. When I once remarked that he was the organ grinder and I the monkey, he did not deny it. After the old St. Agnes church went down in flames, he shamelessly auctioned off some of my amateur paintings, and many connoisseurs surrendered their judgment to his charm, and bought them. He arranged for Cardinal Cooke to welcome my parents as the last he received into the Church before dying. Today would have been my mother’s ninety-first birthday, and I pray that she and my father now rejoice with the priest who made them so happy.
If we said nothing about our priestly friend, these walls would speak, for he built them. They hold the echoes of many conversations around the rectory dining table. Ranks of guests came to hear what to me was better than any university education, usually moderated by Monsignor Florence Cohalan to whom Eugene Clark was as a devoted son. It is tempting to think of those around that table now as ghosts, but they are ghosts no more than is Our Risen Lord, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones. These were true men and true priests who served here. They may hear us now as we heard them then, and in reflection we wish we had listened to them better. We pray with the conviction that now they are more solid in eternity than we are in this broken world.
This joyful prospect of Heaven is the good news that priests are ordained to announce. That is their first duty and, by that preaching, the priest prepares the way to offer in immortal sacrifice the true Christ. It is Christ’s holiness and not our cleverness, his wisdom and not our sophistication, that perfects the sacrifice of the Mass. Christ chooses men who by the actual economy of their humanity with his divinity, become the engine uniting earth and heaven. The human character of the priest is his boast and burden which represents all of humanity before the hidden glory of God. The writer to the Hebrews said: “Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin. He is able to deal paiently with the ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people. (Hebrews 5: 1-3)”
Eugene Clark was an historian, taught especially by Florence Cohalan and later by the Englishman Philip Hughes. They formed him to revere John Henry Newman. In one meditation, Newman wrote, “…when a man, in whom dwells His grace, is lying on the bed of suffering, or when he has been stripped of his friends and is solitary, he has, in a peculiar way, tasted of the powers of the world to come, and exhorts and consoles with authority. He who has long been under the rod of God, becomes God’s possession. He bears in his body marks, and is sprinkled with drops, which nature could not provide for him.”
The securities of a comfortable Christian culture which nurtured the young Eugene Clark are gone, and before us now is the prospect of a moral atmosphere more like the first centuries with their threats. His intuition formed by a vivid acquaintance with the ups and downs of history sensed this, and he was frustrated often by the failure of others to sense the same. Sure, though, was his trust that if gossamer Springtimes quickly fade into hard Winters, those Winters will melt and the Beloved Christ will peer into our souls to announce the lengthening of light and the bright sounds of a new season. So Newman hoped to see once again in that some bright dawn ,angel faces “which I have loved long since and lost awhile.” Some have debated who those angel faces were, but no one who has loved with a Christian heart wonders who they were. They gave us birth, and they taught us, and they laughed with us, and they dined and drank with us, and they mourned with us, and then they left us one by one to go to the Lord who made them. Soon enough it will be our turn to join their long line. While we are still here, in those years left which are mere minutes in eternity’s timeless clock, we can give thanks for those angel faces that smile even when we do not. Among them we think of the one we remember today at Holy Mass, and pray, May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace, and light perpetual shine upon them.
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FROM THE PASTOR
May 6, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler
A father recently bemoaned the fact that the iPod had deprived him of his teenage son. That is the son's fault, but it is also the father's fault. As Christ is shepherd of our souls, using rod and staff to guide us — the rod to knock us on the head when we are in danger of straying and the staff to gently encourage us — so is a parent a shepherd of the young, and sometimes the rod must smash the iPod, but never without the staff gently urging the youth along the right path. This is easier for me to say since I have never been the father of a teenager, and there are those who curiously list this among the sacrifices a priest must make. A pastor, though, is definitively entrusted with the care of a flock, as the Pope himself has a very large flock, and when the rod must sometimes be used, those who need to be tapped into moral consciousness will object at first, but on the last day they will be thankful that they were saved from going off a cliff. The rod without the staff would certainly be a battle-axe, and the staff without the rod would be a weak crutch.
The Good Shepherd says that “the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his sheep by name” (John 10:3). Like the father excommunicated from his son by the iPod, God Himself can be blocked out of our consciousness if we hear only our own voice, living in a “virtual reality” sustained by the imaginings of the ego. Jesus told Peter “Tend my lambs. . . Feed my sheep . . . Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17). The sheep are those who hear God but need encouragement. The lambs are those who seem to have blocked out God, Who continues to call to them. Once they have been brought to consciousness, sometimes by the shock of crises in life, which can strike like a rod, then God leads them with His shepherd's staff into green pastures and “restores my soul” (Psalm 23:3).
Prayer is conversation with God, and it is often difficult for us because, by misuses of our free will, we can “put Him on hold.” When we do not answer, God leaves us a recorded message through the Scriptures, the saints and the Liturgy. The Latin word for deaf is surdus, and man does become an absurdity to his very self when he willfully listens only to himself. When the dying St. Stephen said he could see the Son seated at the right hand of the Father, the mob covered their ears, but one of them listened. When St. Paul was converted, he said: “you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13).
If you enjoy reading these newsletters, please express your support with a Donation, of any amount, to the Church of Our Saviour.
The Church of Our Saviour uses ParishPay to process online donations.
Our website is www.OurSaviourNYC.org.
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and don't forget 