Sacristan's Corner-- The Crotalus

Over at our little country parish, where I reign gloriously as sacristan, I've been making some small, incremental liturgical changes à la "reform of the reform." While I haven't encountered resistance, exactly, folks generally like things the way they're used to them, and so it's been suggested to me that  I write brief weekly bulletin blurbs to explain things. So here's my first little blurb--about the crotalus. Enjoy!

Clack, clack, clack. Maybe you noticed the strange sound that has replaced the bells. That's the crotalus, which shares its name with a genus of snakes who make a clacking, or rattling, with their tails when frightened. The scientific name of the rattlesnake is crotalus cerastes! 

The use of the crotalus at Lenten Masses dates back more than a thousand years. Some old churches in Spain and Latin America actually have a giant crotalus in the bell tower, since even the church bells can't be rung during the Triduum. 

So, why use the crotalus during Lent? Similarly, why deprive ourselves of good things, like desserts and meat, during Lent? Perhaps the answer is found in the song “Again We Keep This Solemn Fast” where one verse reads, “Our speech, our laughter, every sense,/ learn peace through holy penitence.” 

We yearn for the beauty of the bells just as we yearn for the things we've given up. The bells will ring again briefly on Holy Thursday during the Gloria, and then, after the sacred silence of the Triduum, they'll return to their place of honor at the Easter Vigil. 

Until then, their absence is a reminder, together the sanctuary bereft of flowers and the omnipresent, somber color of violet, that we're preparing for something far more beautiful than bells or any other worldly thing: the joy of the Lord's Resurrection.

Those who have wives should act as not having them and other Pauline paradoxes

A phrase from Mass today really struck me: St. Paul's counsel that those "using the world" do so as "not using it fully." Maybe it's having seriously considered clerical celibacy and the detached, itinerant lifestyle of a diocesan priest that has always given me a degree of discomfort with this balancing act. The question is: How much is too much? Obviously I've settled in comfortably despite my discomfort: I have 40 acres in God's country to call my own, a wife who loves me, and children who love me and depend on me for everything. So, for all my discomfiture, I'm a man of the world, with daily labor that I thoroughly enjoy. I have practical concerns that occupy my time and energy, and interests in agriculture and animal husbandry, in political ideals, in practical entertainment and all the little enjoyments of life.

In short, there is as little of the ethereal to my everyday life as there is to that of the next person. And so, St. Paul's words rightly make me uncomfortable whenever I hear them, and they have me asking yet again today: How much is too much?

There is a great deal of truth to the argument that things are inherently good, and that we come to know God through our proper, measured embrace of them. Food, drink, and a comfortable chair all, in the pleasure they give after a hard day's work, provide a foretaste of the enjoyments of heaven and an opportunity to give thanks to the God who is the source of all good things. More seriously, I've made a real investment of myself in terms of my daily labor and my commitment to the ideals of organic farming and the noble cause of small-scale, sustainable agriculture. So we also come closer to God through our commitment to justice, to truth, and to the common good. In each example, there is a balance: There is such a thing as too much food and drink detracting from one's health, too much labor detracting from one's family life, etc.

But let me also broach the most radical example St. Paul brings up: that "those having wives act as not having them." Is St. Paul saying that there is also such a thing as too much commitment to one's family, to one's wife and children? A cynic might say that this is just Paul being Paul, the life-long celibate who just a little earlier had advised that a man only resort to marriage if he can't control his passions (cf. 1 Cor 7:9). Easy for Paul-the-bachelor to say, but what of a married man such as myself? And what of St. Paul himself elsewhere, who inspires me with his challenging words that husbands ought to love their wives as Christ loves the Church (Eph 5:25)? After all, Christ turned the water into wine at Cana, blessing marriage and making it holy, a sacrament. Through the unshakable embrace of one's spouse, for better or for worse, in the indissoluble bond of holy matrimony, one is supposed to be drawn closer to Christ. One is united to God, in other words, by a determined, single-minded embrace of  the worldly, very human, very real bond of marriage. So, what of those who have wives acting as if they don't? How can these matters be squared? Can there really be too much?

I was led to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac. I imagine that there was little in the world that Abraham was more invested in or loved more dearly than his son. Actually, that's how God refers to Isaac when he commands Abraham to sacrifice him: "Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love..." (Gen 22:2). It was through caring for Isaac, providing for his basic needs, giving him an example to follow, and raising him into a God-fearing man that Abraham himself came to know God better. Fatherhood was his vocation, and yet, when God asked him to sacrifice his own son, Abraham willingly and unhesitatingly raised hand to perform the deed.

Obviously there are New Testament ramifications in this Genesis passage to God the Father, who so loved the world that he sent his beloved, only-begotten Son into the world to die on the cross. But I found myself asking what I would do if I were Abraham, if I had to choose between God and the gifts he has given me. Ultimately that's what this is all about: Are you so invested in the world that you would be unwilling to give it all up if circumstances demanded? I'm reminded of the single-mindedness St. Louis de Montfort's motto, Deiu seul, God alone. How much is too much? How much can one love the things of this world before giving it all up would cause us to hesitate or to experience pangs of regret?

It's not that radical a question if you look back at history. It's interesting, for example, to look at the history of England under Oliver Cromwell, where most Catholics were broken through the exorbitant taxes levied against them for non-attendance at the official Protestant parishes. What if I was threatened with the loss of my own farm unless I rejected my faith? My stolid answer, of course, is that I'd accept the loss of all my material possessions rather than reject my faith. Some days I think I'd even be strong enough to die a martyr, like the early Christians who were torn apart by lions in the arena rather than carry out sacrifice to the pagan gods. That said, I can identify with the annoying child-protagonist of Flannery O'Connor's short story, "The Temple of the Holy Ghost," who "thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."

But the real examples are cleverer than that. What if my wife or one of my children were to be shot and killed unless I trampled on Consecrated Hosts spilled from the tabernacle? What if all I had to do was spit on the Bible, or proclaim aloud just once that I don't believe in God, in order to save them? The problem is that we don't want to put the people we love in the same category as other worldly things. This, I think, is why St. Paul counsels against marriage. It's not that one can't love Christ through marriage and family; rather, it's that, despite the travails, suffering, and imperfections of our human relationships, there is nothing else in the world that more closely resembles the loving embrace of God. Therefore, there is also nothing that would be harder to give up.

So, I remain as discomfited by St. Paul and his very true, very relevant counsel as ever. There is something of a paradox here. Because God is transcendent, totally other, the imperfect love we experience in our human relationships is the only way we can come to understand and experience his love for us. So we need to embrace and love fully, not in part. We need to believe, and to love, and to sacrifice without reserve, for those who are ours in order to understand and come to know the unreserved, unconditional love of the God whose we are. Yet somehow we must also come to recognize that the things we love here on earth, even the ones we love most here are earth, are but fleeting shadows, foretastes of the love that is to come.

Of life and death; or, first lessons from a still young kidding season

Kidding season is now in full swing here on the farm. We bred the goats last summer for mid-winter babies. Although this leaves the birthing process to the coldest months of the year, in a few years when our herd is bigger this timing will yield young goats ready for commercial sales around the time of the Easter holiday, when goat meat is at its highest demand.



At present, though, everything is small and still an experiment. We have only five Boer and Kiko meat goat mothers-to-be, in addition to two bred mothers from our registered Nigerian dwarf goat herd. We had a few more promising does that we brought with us from North Carolina, but we struggled with parasite issues on the new pasture the first summer here in Wisconsin and lost a few very promising does--but that's a subject for another post.

For now, my post revolves around kidding season, which is now fully underway. It began with one of the dwarf goats last weekend. Little Milcah, a second freshener, went into labor Saturday evening as the temperature dipped a few degrees below zero fahrenheit. As much as we've read of successful kidding in sub-zero weather, honestly, Rosemary and I were--and are--quite apprehensive about births in the extreme cold. On the internet, one can read advice about making sure to dry the ears fully so that they don't get frostbitten, and of difficult cases in Canada, for example, where at twenty or thirty below there is even the possibility that wet hooves can freeze. In our own limited experience, I think that once in North Carolina we had a kidding in the upper thirties (above zero, that is!).

Suffice it to say, we were ready with a hair dryer and plenty of rags. We had warm molasses water for Milcah to drink during and after labor, and sure enough the first kidding went off without a hitch. Around 10 p.m., she gave birth to a beautiful, healthy buckling. His coloring is perfect, and the blue eyes he inherited from his father are a desirable trait that, together with other promising qualities, have us asking whether he might be a future herd sire. In fact, we may retain him ourselves since a few of our other dwarf goats are entirely unrelated to the high quality Sinai Thunder lines this little buckling possesses from both his sire and his dam.

Okay, enough inside baseball talk. But it was gratifying to watch vigorous new life make such a confident entrance into the world in such harsh conditions this weekend. Milcah birthed unassisted, with Rosemary interposing only to rub the little buckling off and run the hair dryer up and down his sides to eliminate any moisture and ensure that he didn't become chilled. My job was mainly flipping the breaker back on as a single electrical outlet struggled to support the load of multiple heated water buckets, a worklight, and, now, a hair dryer. Okay, I did take over a little later on, helping the buckling latch on to his mother and get some colostrum, ensuring that his belly would be full and warm on that first cold winter night outside the womb. But Rosemary really is amazing with the birthing process. She's had plenty of practice these last few years, even a few particularly difficult births back in North Carolina.

Speaking of difficult births, yesterday brought more mixed results. Since she was up to nurse Cornelius anyway, at around 4 a.m. Rosemary made a trip down to the barn to check on the goats. Sure enough, Mango, one of our first freshener Boer goats, was in early labor. This was concerning, as she had not yet developed an udder at all and was probably the goat we least expected to go next. Rosemary gave me a call, and I came down to the barn and took over, keeping watch until, finally, I had to leave for La Crosse, where I am teaching classes at Providence Academy part time this semester. Thank God for being closer to family--Rose's mother was able to come over right away to watch the boys.

Alas, I was off to the big city dressed in suit-and-tie, and it turns out that I left Rosemary to deal with a difficult situation here on the farm. Mango, it seems, must have been hit in the side by another goat sometime recently. Her single doeling had died in utero, and Rosemary had to pull it out. Although I won't go into extreme detail about how hard a task this is, you can probably guess that it's not a great deal of fun. For obvious reasons, it is also emotionally draining. Suffice it to say, yesterday was a long day in the Klein household. The doeling was beautifully formed, with traditional Boer markings. Even today, Mango is hearing the other babies and calling out for her own baby. She may also have a retained placenta, and we're working creatively with herbal remedies as we look to stave off infection without resorting to the use of antibiotics. Farming is not always so fun.

The lesson from all of this, I suppose, is the lesson of Job:

"We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?"

I've always struggled a little with Job's comment, though. It's not that evil comes directly from God, that he wishes ill for us, or for our livestock for that matter. But the adversities of life certainly do encourage us to cling more closely and gratefully to what we have. Part of what makes life so precious is the knowledge of how fleeting it is, and how tenuous is our grasp on it.

Just another lesson from life on the farm, where the mysterious intertwining of life and death isn't hidden behind the facade of euphemisms and antiseptic hospital rooms. What made yesterday worth it, even for Rosemary, who had to deal with the worst of it, was that another Boer first-freshener, Curry, went into labor shortly after Mango and easily delivered a beautiful, vigorous doeling. She's chocolate brown like her father, with a cute white star on her forehead. Curry and her daughter are doing well, and kidding season continues apace. Thank God for that, and thank God for the higher temps that the coming week's forecast promises.

"Thus the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his earlier ones. For he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. And he had seven sons and three daughters, of whom he called the first Jemima, the second Cassia, and the third Ceren-happuch. In all the land no other women were as beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brethren. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; and he saw his children, his grandchildren, and even his great-grandchildren. Then Job died, old and full of years."

'Raw water' and other all-natural absurdities

Apparently 'raw water' is the newest craze in California. Really, this is "hard" news, not a spoof from the Onion. Two-and-one-half gallon glass bottles of untreated spring water are now selling in Silicon Valley grocery stores for as much as $70. The claim from Live Water, the company selling 'raw water,' is that "blasting water with ozone changes its molecular structure."

Any knowledge of chemistry at all reveals that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom bonded together are water, and that if the molecular structure of water were to change, then whatever the new molecules were, they would no longer be water. So the question is, how can such a ludicrous claim go unchallenged in one of the smartest cities in the nation? How is it that smart people are taken in by these sorts of 'all-natural' absurdities?

The question is pressing to me because, to some degree, I look upon absurdities like 'raw' water from within the wider healthy foods movement. My wife and I are proponents of healthy, minimally processed foods. Commercially, we are a certified organic farmers, and in our personal life we are homesteaders who raise as much of our own food as possible. We've done plenty of research into the effects of pesticides and herbicides. We drink our own raw goat milk to take advantage of naturally occurring enzymes and vitamins that are eliminated by pasteurization. We ferment our own kiefer, kombucha, and sauerkraut to increase our intake of probiotics that benefit digestion and gut health.

To emphasize, these sorts of things have plenty of scientific basis and are not absurd in the least. The abandonment of traditional fermented foods and the ultra-processing of dairy, fruits, and vegetables has been accompanied by a rapidly growing public health crisis. There is consensus that the massive amount of added sugar and sodium in processed and prepared foods is directly linked to the rise in obesity, reproductive health issues, and certain types of cancers. Science doesn't say that everything one eats must be organic, or all-natural, or GMO-free, but science indisputably says that the human body is affected by herbicides and pesticides, that excessive sugar or sodium is harmful to our health, and that raw or minimally processed foods contain more vitamins and minerals than their cooked counterparts.

The problem, I think, has a few parts. First of all, for all the technology at our fingertips, we live in an age of ignorance. We buy our food from the grocery store knowing very little about it. We don't know where it came from or how it was grown. We think bacteria is bad, something to be eliminated at all costs. We adhere to expiration dates because they are printed on the package, with no knowledge of how actually to preserve or store foods. Then something goes wrong with the system-- there is an e coli outbreak tied to California-grown lettuce, there is a listeria outbreak tied to frozen peas originating from an Oregon processing plant, or, apropos to the 'raw' water craze, there is lead contamination in the tap water in Flint, Mich.

Then folks get scared. Although they don't know where their food comes from, they understandably want to do something to protect themselves. Absent any real knowledge about the food they consume, they put their trust in the labels-- all-natural, hormone-free, GMO-free- pasture-raised, organic. No, organic is not a 'sacred cow,' not even to me, an organic farmer. But at least it signifies a strict set of standards, unlike "all-natural," which is not regulated at all and means whatever the food processor decides it means. In any case, based on ignorance and half-baked theories, folks think they are protecting themselves by reaching for 'healthy' labels, and we are left with absurdities like gluten-free tomatoes, GMO-free salt, and, now, 'raw' water.

The kernel of truth, of course, is that 'raw' is good-- Raw foods indisputably contain vitamins and minerals that are leached out through cooking. But does that mean that 'raw,' by extension, is good just because it is 'raw'? Obviously not-- We cook our meat to kill bacteria, and, for the same manifest reasons, we filter or otherwise treat the water that is sold in stores or that makes its way to our homes by way of a city water sytsem. There are cases that can be made against fluoride, chlorine, and other treatments commonly used for city tap water, but come on, you folks out there on the West Coast, use your brains. 'Raw' water is manifestly absurd unless you are tapping your own, regularly tested, rural home well. But it's an even greater absurdity, I think, that this even needs to be said.

Farming in the frigid north; or, lessons in the fragility of life

Every morning, my routine here on the farm begins with outside chores. As dawn breaks, I don extra wool socks over my regular socks, then winter boots, a thick coat, leather work gloves, and a hat. I may have grown up in Wisconsin, but after four years in Texas, and another four in North Carolina, I readily admit that I've forgotten just how cold it gets here. With a cold front firmly settled over the Midwest right now, this past week has definitely been a period of reeducation for me.

Nevermind their warm winter coats, the bucks insist that they are not fans of the lower temperatures.

A few mornings ago, I was greeted by a temperature of 11 degrees below zero fahrenheit. For my friends in the south, I need to describe how there is an instinctive feeling of danger at that temperature. I step outside, and everything is perfectly silent. Then I hear--and see--myself breathing, and my breath starts to crystallize on my beard. When a branch breaks in the woods, the sound crescendos, carried through the still air with a peculiar dry snap. Then I feel the cold start to spread from my nose and ears, and inward from my fingers and toes. As I go about my morning routine, I stamp my feet and shake my hands, curling my fingers inside my gloves to warm them, with ever decreasing success, and with an ever increasing desire to get back inside as quickly as possible.

My Wisconsin friends are probably chuckling at this description. After all, 11 degrees below zero is only the beginning. I just saw that 17 below zero is in the forecast as the low for New Year's Eve. I still remember the feeling of bundling up and going for a run at 36 below zero during my years in college in Minnesota. And I know that, historically speaking, it can get even colder here in the Midwest. Then there is the wind that can accompany the cold up here on the ridge where our little Wisconsin farm is located. Eleven below zero on a still winter morning is one thing; eleven below zero with the wind blowing at your face at 30 miles per hour is an altogether different beast.

Whatever the low temperature, there is something to that instinctive feeling of danger that accompanies a downward trending mercury.  For humans, a healthy body temperature ranges between 97 and 99 degrees fahrenheit. For horses it's a little higher, at 99 to 101 degrees, and for goats it's even higher, at 102-103 degrees. It's remarkable how little ability we humans have to cope with extremely low temperatures. Right now we have the outdoor wood furnace going full blast, enabling us to keep even our drafty old farmhouse at a toasty 72 degrees. And that's certainly not a bad thing given that we have a three week old baby in the house.

It's equally remarkable, though, to observe the farm animals cope with the cold. Down in the barnyard, I find the pigs cuddled together every morning, having buried themselves in hay with only their snouts exposed. Seeing me, they shake the hay off slowly and reluctantly, only their stronger desire to eat able to overwhelm their desire for warmth. The goats, too, sleep in pairs or trios, sharing body heat and staying as still as possible through the long, cold nights. Even our two bucks who are pictured above, who usually spend their time fighting with each other, cuddle together out of the wind in their little shelter, sharing body heat, trying make it through one more night, trying to winter through to that renewed warmth that, instinctively, every creature knows will follow the cold as inevitably and as regularly as the earth circles the sun on its tilted axis.

For all these instinctive coping mechanisms, it's all remarkably fragile. Every morning the animals clamor for their doubled rations, and when they're not staying still in order to conserve warmth, they're busily eating hay in order to generate it. At 11 degrees below zero, I find myself breaking ice even on the electrified water buckets. The animals run over and drink thirstily, hydrating themselves before a sheet of ice forms yet again. The first very cold morning, I found myself with a frozen pipe in the milkhouse. Thankfully it hadn't yet burst, and a heater applied to it for a day followed by a better wrapping with insulation and a longer length of heat tape seems to have taken care of the problem. For all their instincts, the animals themselves also aren't always helpful. A few mornings ago, our bored horse decided to entertain himself by taking the heating element out of his water tank despite my having placed it under a large rock. Thankfully I rectified the situation before he had an entirely frozen tank of water, but I still have to find a better way to secure that heating element. Really, it's all so fragile, so tenuous. The water needs to be kept free from ice, the hay needs to be replenished, and the wind needs to be blocked. If any one of these things goes awry, or any one of countless other things, then warmth turns to cold, and life slowly ebbs away.

Later today, as the temperature creeps toward the zero degree mark, I need to head out to the barn once again. The goats are all bred for January kiddings, in order to provide goat meat for folks who want it for the Easter holiday. Although I've worked hard to get the barn finished, even adding a plastic strip door to block the wind, I still have to finish the individual kidding stalls to separate out the mothers and their new babies. So, pray for a mid-January warm-up and successful kiddings for us here at Kleinshire. The goats and all our other animals are amazing me with their remarkable adaptability, but the extreme cold of the last few days has also reminded me that it's all remarkably fragile.

Stay warm, everybody!

It's still Christmas, please don't take down that tree!

This is the day when discarded trees begin to litter the curb, awaiting trash pick-up. Admittedly, Christmas begins to wear thin after awhile. The presents have all been unwrapped, the warm cider drunk, and the cookies eaten. The guests have all gone home, and today most of us are probably back at work. As regards the tree itself, at least if it's the real thing, the needles are probably beginning to fall off. From a practical standpoint, it's totally understandable that we're ready to move on to New Year's with resolutions and fresh starts and all.

But for the love of God--seriously, for the love of God--please make a resolution right now not to follow the horde!

A Christmas tableau from the Christmas Vigil Mass at St. Peter's, Middle Ridge, Wis.

The problem, of course, is that our secular, consumerist-oriented society has started turning the wheels of Christmas too early, and we've been madly spinning like hamsters ever since in order to keep up the frenetic pace. There is a collective groan every year following Thanksgiving, when the Christmas sales begin. Actually, in recent years I've seen Christmas sales as early as Halloween. The lights have been up since the beginning of the month. I've learned the hard way that you can't show up at tree farm and expect to get a tree after mid-December. There simply aren't any trees left by that point.

There are economic forces at play here that don't need to be belabored. But most of us are at least vaguely aware of how the ever-earlier Christmas has robbed us of Advent, that period of expectation and anticipation. Have you ever tried to avoid hearing Christmas carols, even to the beginning of the octave prior to the Lord's Nativity? The distinction would be between Joy to the World, the Lord has come, which implies Christmas is here, and O come, O come, Emanuel, which signifies that we are still awaiting the Savior's birth. Don't turn on the radio or visit a Christmas market if you're trying to avoid the early celebration.

Of course, we're too late for these warnings. Yet somehow we need to live in the world even as we strive to live the distinctiveness of our faith. I'm actually serious: Continuing to celebrate Christmas is striving to live our faith, the very sort of counter-cultural example that we Christians are called to be. I can't think of a clearer instance in our culture where one consciously declares, "I am a Christian," than in continuing to celebrate with earnestness at least through Jan. 6, Epiphany, the traditional twelfth day of Christmas.

So how exactly does one continue to celebrate, especially if one is already experiencing Christmas "fatigue"? Here are a few practical examples from our own family efforts:

-- First of all, do keep the tree up. Add water to the base and vacuum up those needles. With LED lights, there really is little fire danger, even if the tree is dead. You simply need a visible symbol of Christmas in your house, and in our American culture that's principally the tree.

-- We also continue to illuminate our outside Christmas lights through Epiphany. After New Year's, we're practically the only ones with lights still on, but again, that's the counter-cultural example that I mentioned above.

-- Keep things fresh. We do little things, like gradually moving the Wise Men from one side of the room to the other as they make their way toward Bethlehem. Of course, you have to keep the Nativity set up, too. But that's the point. You can also keep things fresh from a culinary point of view. Christmas cookies keep very well in the freezer. We make a huge batch before Christmas and continue to enjoy them all through the season.

-- Commit to attending a few daily Masses. With our move to the country and with the overall busy-ness of farm life, we've attended fewer daily Masses than we used to. But even if you can't make it to church, you can still follow the liturgical cycle and the special feasts of the Christmas octave--the martyrdom of St. Stephen today, the Feast of St. John the Apostle tomorrow, the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents the day after that, and so on. The liturgy is a tour de force of the events surrounding the Nativity and the early Church, and participating in it can rekindle the Christmas spirit.

So, just a few practical examples. It's true that there can be too much even of a good thing. Nonetheless, we need to extricate ourselves from the hyped, consumerist version of Christmas and reclaim it for ourselves. Really, we haven't experienced the "good thing" yet. We're missing out if we quit now. Again, I'm not saying that we can't live in the world and enjoy Santa Claus and presents and all. But our faith calls us to so much more than this world offers, and continuing to celebrate Christmas is a practical, hands-on way to live our faith and be a light to the world

The Domesticity of the Sacraments

Many of you already know that I'm a liturgical curmudgeon, a traditionalist, a lover of solemn ritual, of the Latin language, and of older form of the Mass. I firmly believe that many--not all, but many--of the liturgical changes following Vatican II were emphatically not for the better, and that the plummeting church attendance of the past four decades is ample evidence that I am right.

So I've become a liturgical radical in my own small way, most recently as the sacristan at our small, rural Wisconsin parish. I made some first moves for Advent, introducing the "Benedictine" altar arrangement of six candles and a crucifix. I veiled the chalice, and I polished and returned to regular use a beautiful, shining ciborium that had been tucked away in a dusty cupboard in the sacristy. We're still a long way from ad orientem, or a Latin-language canon, or even the purchase of cassocks and surplices for the altar servers, but even these first small changes have lent a degree of solemn reverence to our liturgies, a hint at the full beauty of our Catholic liturgical tradition.

I was thinking about what is attractive in traditional Catholic liturgy this past Sunday after the baptism of my newborn son, Cornelius Michael Ambrose. I had convinced our temporary parish administrator, a good, faithful priest in his eighties, to conduct the solemn ritual using the older liturgical books. It was his first baptism using the Rituale Romanum since the early years of his priesthood, and there were many stops and starts as we made our way through the ceremony. There were pages lost and then found, mispronounced Latin words, rambunctious children peering over the rim of the baptismal font, chattering and running about, tugging on sleeves, and even on this patient priest's alb.

Yet somehow, through all the missteps, and the noise, and the children's chatter, Sunday's baptismal ceremony moved inexorably forward, with the full force of its majestic symbolism. Thankfully the salt hadn't yet been exorcised and blessed when a youngster tipped the bowl off the table and broke it. A quick trip to the sacristy for a replacement took care of that matter. And it didn't matter that there were children running ahead up the aisle as the priest protectively draped his violet stole stole over the newborn baby and led him, carried by his grandmother, into the church while everybody recited the Creed and the Our Father. Symbolically, this was Cornelius Michael Ambrose's entrance into the Church, an entrance to be ratified in the saving waters of baptism, and the symbolism of that literal entrance, step by step up the aisle, was beautifully clear.

There is something about traditional Catholic liturgy, with its regularity, its repetitiveness, and its symbolism, that preserves reverence in the midst of the distractions of everyday life. It actually begins with the structure of the church building itself, with its steeple and cross rising above the surrounding houses, a constant reminder of sacred, unchanging things in the midst of the secular world. It continues as one enters a church and sees the statues, the stations of the cross, and the ubiquitous flickering red of the tabernacle candle, a reminder of the real presence of Christ and his promise to remain with us always. It is seen in the division between the nave and the sanctuary, where the priest and the servers carry out sacred actions according to set formulae, no matter what is occurring in the pews, be it the dozing of elderly people or the cries and chatter of a discontented children. There is a predictability in the priest's "The Lord be with you" and our response "and with your spirit," a familiarity that the believer can focus on, something that is constant and unchanging, to which we bring our ever changing needs and petitions.

The beauty of Catholic liturgy is that, in it, the sacred reaches down and touches the world with the eternal, unchanging promises of something more than what the world can provide. The unchanging nature of heaven's promises is mirrored in unchanging language, ritual, and symbolism, all comforts to the mind that there is also something unchanging in God's promises to us, no matter how much change there might be in our fickle life circumstances. The sacred meets us where we are at and accepts us as we are, distractions and messiness of everyday life all, and then elevates us out of ourselves, at least for a moment providing a foretaste of where we are headed and what we are to become. Sometimes, sacramentally, the touch of the sacred has enduring effects, as a newborn is born yet again, indelibly marked as a child of Christ, or as bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, his real presence in our midst. The appearances remain, but the transcendent, unchanging reality veiled behind mere appearances gives joy to the believer's heart.

We had invited parishioners to stay after Mass for Cornelius' baptism and reception. Not many took us up on the offer, but among those who did was a young couple visiting from another parish. They remarked to me afterward that the ceremony had seemed so welcoming, so much "like family." That comment made me happy, for in the sacraments we become one family of faith, gathered together in the one house of God our Father, for sixty minutes, or for ninety for those who can bear it that long, to experience a foretaste of our eternal heavenly home before we head back outside into the world, back to our many, varied, temporary abodes.