Scattered Thoughts

The other evening I was sitting out on the front porch of the rectory and Lich, our seminarian from Vietnam joined me. Out of the blue, he asked me, “Do you look at the moon?” I wasn’t exactly certain what he was asking and thought maybe something got lost in the translation. He went on to say how when he was little, the village where he grew up had no television, no internet, no smartphones etc. So, after they’d go to the village church for evening prayers, he and the other children would just sit on the church steps and look at the moon. He was laughing and saying, “There was nothing else to do!” He said as he got a bit older, one home got a black and white television set so instead of looking at the moon, after prayers, they’d go to the front of their home and watch their television through the window. It reminded me of something my mother has long recounted. When she was a little girl, living in a triple-decker in Boston, her aunt and uncle bought a small television set. At one point they brought her Nana (who was born in rural Italy in 1884) up to see it. They turned it on and Nana said, “Questa è la fine del mundo.” “This is the end of the world.” In a sense, Nana was a bit of a prophet! Technology itself is a tribute to the human person’s ingenuity and provides extraordinary benefits to us. I am glad I am typing this letter to you on my computer rather than handwriting it. (You should be glad too as my penmanship teacher, Sr. Conan, would attest.) The extraordinary advances in medical, transportation, and communication technologies–to name a few–-make our lives so much better. Technologies, however, develop so rapidly that it is difficult for us to learn how to use them. By that, I mean, that it is difficult for us to learn how to use them in a way that is healthy for us. So absorbed are we in the latest technologies that we can forget that right over our head is . . . the moon. We can forget that right in the same room as us is another person; a husband, a wife, a child, a father, a mother, a friend. All of us should exercise a certain dominion over the technologies in our life. We used to sit on the porch, look at the moon, and converse because there was nothing else to do. Was life worse then? During the past couple of weeks it has been great fun watching the World Cup. Because of technology, we are able to see peoples from all over the planet, play, spectate, and meet one another. It’s been great fun in the rectory where the priests and seminarians have watched a lot of matches together. This shows that technology also has the capacity–when we choose to–to bring people together. This weekend we commemorate the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding. On the day when we recall the beginning of a revolution that changed the world, altered history, and gave birth to an extraordinary country, most will have celebrated by doing something rather boring. They will have put some hamburgers and hot dogs on a grill, put out potato salad, played some games, perhaps watched a World Cup match, and looked up at the sky to see fireworks. And they will love it! Chances are, anybody who does spend the day like that will be thinking, “We should do this more often.” Don’t forget that we can do it more often. We can actively opt for that simpler way of life that we occasionally catch glimpses of and that stir within our souls a memory of what can easily slip away from us. On Sunday mornings, for example, when I see parents bringing their children to Mass, I catch a glimpse of that simpler way of life. When I see these families arriving for Mass, something in my heart leaps because I know I am witnessing something that is true, good, and beautiful. Is Mass always an exhilarating, action-packed adventure that is fun for kids from ages one to ninety-nine? No, it’s not. Is sitting down at a family dinner necessarily more thrilling and exciting than a video game? No. Does spending time in prayer each day provide that immediate “thrill” and the immediate gratification that can come from online gambling, pornography, and video games? No. And yet, within each of us is the inexhaustible desire to look up, to look up together. Within us is a desire to look up together and to discover, not the moon, but rather the Face of the One who looks down upon us with Love. This path does not string us along with a never-ending series of dopamine blips that leaves us emptier than before. This path is one that carries us along together. It helps us to live a more human existence, an existence that corresponds to that desire of our heart to live life as the adventure it truly is. It is an adventure marked by child-like wonder. Jesus himself teaches us, “Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Mt:18:3). We used to look up because, “There was nothing else to do.” Now, we have to choose to do it. “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth” Col 3:1-2). None of us will ever say at the end of our life, “I wish I spent more time in my life staring at my phone.” Look up. In Christ, Fr. David Barnes

The following is excerpted from a letter that Pope Leo wrote to young people attending a conference. I thought it was something worth sharing. Your Brother in Christ, Fr. Barnes Dear Friends, If you had met Saint Francis on the streets of Assisi in the thirteenth century, he might have looked at you with a serene and loving smile, and said: “Pace e bene,” that is “Peace and all good.” This was the way that Saint Francis often greeted people, and it expresses one of the desires in his heart. We too can ask ourselves: Do I desire true peace for those who come into contact with me? Do I treat others in such a way that brings them peace? Now, you may say that this is not always easy. Sometimes our behavior, even toward those whom we most dearly love, can bring frustration and conflict rather than peace. We must bear in mind that Saint Francis was able to sow peace not because of his own efforts, but because he possessed within himself the source of true peace. I have often repeated that peace is a gift from God, a gift we receive when we invite the Lord into our heart. We are then called to become instruments of his peace, spreading it to our families, our communities, our countries and the whole world. Saint Francis was also known to be a particularly joyful person. He delighted in the beauty of creation, in God’s infinite goodness and mercy, and in the conversion of sinners. And yet, you may be surprised by how he once explained what perfect joy is. One winter evening, as he was walking back to Assisi with Brother Leo, one of the first members of the Franciscan order, Saint Francis began to give a long list of apparently “good” things that do not lead to perfect joy. At a certain point, Brother Leo finally exclaimed, “Father Francis, I pray that you will teach me about perfect joy!” In his response, the saint described a tragic situation that implied suffering cold, hunger and rejection — the opposite of what you would expect — and added that if such difficulties are embraced with patience, without complaining and with love for God, “This is perfect joy.” Is it really possible to have joy in such difficult circumstances, we might ask? It is only possible if our life is founded upon our relationship with God as a loving Father. Indeed, the joy of Saint Francis — the joy Saint Francis was speaking of — cannot be found through electronic devices, spending hours in front of a screen or endlessly scrolling on social media every day. These activities often waste precious time that could be used for moments of silent prayer, of cultivating authentic friendships, spending quality time with family, learning more about our faith, studying or playing sports. Joy should never be sought through drug use, alcohol abuse, promiscuity, superficial relationships, obsession about our image, or any kind of damaging behavior. Surprisingly, neither can it be found in goods such as wealth, beauty, fame or even health, for one day we will leave all of this behind. Only the love of God can provide us with true and perfect joy. If we have the profound conviction that God cares for us as his beloved children, we will not be flustered or discouraged, even in difficult situations. Many of you have heard since you were little that God loves you. But do you really believe it? You are precious in God’s eyes! (cf. Is 43:4) You are unconditionally loved by him! Are you certain of this? If you cultivate a trusting relationship with him, through regular prayer, through reception of the sacraments, if you abandon yourself into his hands, then anxiety, or sadness, and loneliness will fade away as his grace fills you and as his love inflames your heart. This is the secret to being able to face challenging circumstances with a smile. Open your hearts to discover this reality. So Saint Francis’ message, and mine, is simple: true peace and perfect joy are gifts from God that come when we open ourselves to him and trust in his power to transform us. What can we give him in return for such great love, for such generous gifts? Nothing but ourselves! Today, the Lord needs missionaries to spread the word to those who do not know him, holy men and women to begin loving Catholic families, priests to be spiritual fathers and ministers of the sacraments as well as religious men and women to be witnesses of the true joy of his kingdom. If you have a sense that the Lord may be calling you to one of these vocations, do not close yourself off or turn away in fear, but take a step forward and say to the Lord, “Here I am, send me!” (Is 6:8). At the same time, do not be afraid to talk to someone about it, a trusted friend, priest or religious sister. I wish all of you a fruitful conference, praying that in these days you will be filled with Christ’s love and come to know other young people who desire to give their lives completely to him, and in so doing, find true happiness. Entrusting all of you to the maternal intercession of Our Lady, Cause of Our Joy, I gladly invoke upon each of you the divine blessings of peace and strength. Leo XIV

The other day I went to the barber and sat down in the chair. There were two young barbers working and a young guy in the other chair. The barber asked, “Any big plans for the weekend?” Dressed in shorts and a golf shirt, I answered, “I work weekends.” I wondered if that would be the end of it, but he quickly followed up with, "What do you do for work?” From that point on, both barbers and the guy in the other chair peppered me with questions about Catholic life. They occasionally apologized for asking so many questions, but for me, it was an edifying encounter. I found it extraordinary that three young men were all quite comfortable and interested in engaging in questions about the Faith. It was, for me, further evidence of an interesting phenomena taking place in the culture today. Whereas in the past, people in those situations would assiduously avoid expressing even the slightest interest in religious questions, today there is not only an openness to questions of Faith, but there is a clear hunger for something more. Many young people (and especially in this particular moment, young men) recognize that those who raised them in an environment of no Faith or in a lukewarm practice of Faith, did them no favors. There is a desire in them to reclaim what was either lost by them or withheld from them. In the past, perhaps if I were in a situation like that, if there were any questions at all about Faith, it might be merely a thousand questions about this moral teaching or of that moral teaching. It was more about controversies. But nowadays, what I seem to encounter is more fundamental. It strikes me more as people who are basically asking, “What must I do to be happy? What must I do to be good? What exactly is Catholicism?” I think for many people in their late teens, twenties, and thirties, they feel like they are in a rut. They feel like something is missing in their life, but they don’t know how to “get” what they are lacking. For many, they feel like they wasted valuable time and now, they’ll never get it back. They might feel like they are irrevocably defined by the bad decisions and bad actions of the past. They feel–even at a young age–that the course of their life is chained to one (or more than one) bad decision of the past. Either that, or they live in such a way that life is just a series of disassociated events. It is a way of living that has no consistency or ultimate meaning. One of the surprising things I discovered while working with college students is that there was a deeper humility and honesty present in them than there was among previous generations. I found college students in recent years to be forthright, honest, and humble about their life. They weren’t concerned with appearing good. They actually wanted to be good, even if they didn’t know how. They didn’t begin every confession with disclaimers about, “I am basically a very good person.” They just said their sins matter of factly. The fact that there is openness, honesty, and hunger among young people makes for fertile ground for the Gospel. The “more” for which they are searching is available to them in Christ. Their desire to be good, their desire for a coherent life, their desire for meaning, for forgiveness, for hope . . . all of this is discovered in Christ. What I find particularly amazing in this moment is that we are not trying to give people answers to questions that they are not asking. They are asking questions and searching for answers. They are hoping that their life has meaning, that they are not imprisoned by their past, that there is hope for their future. For many of them, life has been built on foundations that lack certitude. They desire to have a life built on a rock foundation. Those people do not necessarily need a theologian, a philosopher, or a Catholic Dictionary. What they need is to encounter a person whose life becomes a proposal to them. They need a friend, a mentor. They need someone who is caught up into the life of being a disciple of the Lord. They do not need someone who has stifled the desires of their own heart and settled for a humdrum, mediocre, boring religion. At the same time, they don’t need someone who is just attempting to manufacture emotional religious highs. Instead, I think, they need someone who possesses even more desire than they do. They need to encounter someone who has discovered a Presence who–instead of crushing the desires of the heart–awakens them and testifies to them, “What you are seeking, is possible.” Your Brother in Christ, Fr. David Barnes

The other morning I was reading an essay by a very erudite and masterful spiritual writer named bishop Erik Varden from Norway. Something he wrote really struck me. He was speaking about how the present culture desperately desires hope and that, because of this desire for hope, the culture often tries to provide imitations of hope. The line that struck me was this: “Yet hope cannot be decreed as strategy. It must be born.” There is a temptation in all of us to manufacture hope with a command. “Everything will be fine. It will all work out.” That is not hope. That is just wishful thinking. Instead of instilling hope, manufactured imitations merely mask the hopelessness. We all know from experience that everything does not always work out the way we wish. Does that mean that in those situations there is no hope? This is why hope “must be born,” not decreed or manufactured. True hope is something that enters into the world (into our heart) and takes root and grows almost imperceptibly. It is something that awakens in the heart and is able to grow in the midst of hardship, frailty, and darkness. True hope does not deny or gloss over the pain that is present in one’s heart. In every human heart there is present, in some form or another, the regrets of the past, the pains of the present, and the fear of the future. Simply decreeing that “everything will be fine,” is not a sufficient substitute for hope. Also, true hope is not the result of something that we construct and implement. Just as artificial intelligence is not “life,” so artificial attempts to replicate hope fall short. Hope is rather something that springs up in the midst of the harshness of the surroundings. If the meteorologist came on the television and decreed, “Winter is now over,” it would do little to satisfy us. We would look out our window on March 22nd and it would still be cold, dark, and snowy perhaps. But, when we see those first greens beginning to push up from the earth, even though all around us there is still present the harsh realities of winter, our hearts are already beginning to live as though summer were here. In each one of us there are still the effects of the winter. To deny or to ignore this, or to decree it to be otherwise, is not in conformity with what we know to be true. The Church, instead, seeks to be a sign of hope in the midst of these realities. When we live the friendship of the Church together, something begins to awaken in our hearts and begins to grow, even in the midst of our afflictions. This is what hope is. When the dawn begins to break, it does so while the darkness still surrounds us. In those moments, we live differently. We live in the full expectation that what has only just begun will indeed come to fulfillment. Hope helps us here and now, relying upon God’s strength, to seek an arduous but possible good. Hope exists in, what one hymn refers to as, the valley of tears. Manufactured hope tries to compel us to believe what we know deep down to be untrue. True hope always seems to surprise us. It is born of a certain simplicity. For example, I see a parishioner in her nineties showing up for Mass on Sunday. Unexpectedly, I am surprised by hope. Her witness awakens something in me and I think, “Christ is true.” Or, I see a young person who somehow–in the midst of today’s culture–has encountered Christ and is striving toward living as Christ’s disciple. This awakens a deeper hope in me. It is not something I give myself. Instead, Christ’s Presence at work in these persons awakens within me a deeper certitude. What we live together does not offer a quick fix to every broken heart. Instead, what I see in our life together is that–even in the midst of this world’s real travails–we are already beginning to live in that New Creation that Christ came to establish. When I look at all of you and see you striving to grow in holiness, living together in friendship in Christ, and loving one another, I see the signs of that New Creation, the New Day. When we allow Christ into our lives and we live together as his friends, something surprisingly new, alive, and indomitable begins to grow in our midst. That is hope. Your Brother in Christ, Fr. David Barnes

One of the things I really enjoyed about my seven years at the Boston University Catholic Center is that the Catholic Center was physically located in the center of campus life. It was a place where students hung out, ate, studied, socialized, prayed, served, and grew in friendship and faith together. In times past, the parish church was something like that. It stood in the midst of the neighborhood where people lived, worked, socialized, and raised their families. The parish was the hub of people’s lives. Today, unless one is very intentional, the hub of people’s lives can be located in an online world that often only gives the appearance of community. It was not unusual to hear graduating seniors express fear that when they left the Catholic Center, it would be difficult to find a parish experience that replicated the intense community life they had been sharing with one another. They were going to miss having a place where they could just “hang out” in the middle of their day with other young Catholics who were on fire for their Faith. They also worried that they would not be able to find a parish where there were other young adults. The answer we would often give to those graduating students was this: Go and build it. Truth to be told, many of these young people were experts in building community. They cared for one another and worked to draw others into their friendship; a friendship that always was rooted in Christ. In fact, I’m so happy that some of those former students are parishioners here and they are still building community. Why do I mention all of this? Sometimes, as I’ve said many times before, Catholics can have a “consumerist” kind of mentality. You hear things like, “Know what this parish should have?” What that usually means is, “Know what someone else in this parish ought to do for me?” There can be an attitude that because I drop a few bucks in the collection, I expect to be served, entertained, and placated. One of the things I most appreciate about the parish community at St. Patrick’s is that people here are dedicated to building the parish that they want. Last week’s parish cookout was a great example of that. A few men from the parish did not say, “Know what we should have? We should have a parish cookout.” Instead, they said, “We would like to organize, advertise, shop, set up, host, cook, and clean up.” And that is exactly what they did. Even though it rained in the middle of it, I don’t think anybody minded. It was just a wonderful, fun-filled, day of friendship. Even the scramble to get all the chairs inside when the rain poured down became a visible sign of community. It was a sight behold; an army of folks getting hundreds of chairs from the lot to the inside in under a couple of minutes! I thank all of those who put so much into providing such an extraordinary day for us. Building community does not always require such a massive undertaking. It does not even require something to take place here at the parish building. It happens when people meet each other at Mass and have a meal together. It happens when two or three parishioners meet up for coffee. It happens when an elderly or infirm parishioner receives a visit from another parishioner. Building up a strong Catholic community is not rocket science. It does, however, take intentionality, boldness, and a certain ingenuity. It means one family noticing a new family at Mass and saying, “Oh, who are you guys? Nice to meet you. After Mass, we bring our kids out to play at the playground if you’d like to join us.” And just like that, our community has been strengthened. There are certainly differences between a Catholic Center on a campus and a parish church. There, kids stopped by in between classes to visit the Chapel, grab a cup of coffee, take a nap, or to play with my dog (Finbar, my German Short-haired Pointer who was the best dog ever!). Once a student found the Catholic Center and courageously crossed its threshold, I’d say there was a 95% chance they’d wind up making that community their home for their college years. The love and faith they experienced there would win them over. I’d say for us, our big day is Sunday. It is the primary day when all of us are here together. It is the moment for us to engage one another. But, what happens here on Sundays should then overflow into other moments to build up our community. Some of those moments may happen on the parish grounds, but they shouldn’t be limited to that. Friendship is a real key to evangelization and to building community. I am grateful that so many of you are not sitting around waiting for others to provide something. Instead, by the grace of Christ, you are intentionally and charitably building a place for others to encounter the friendship of Christ. Your Brother in Christ, Fr. David Barnes