Fr. Chuck's Column, August 23, 2020

I hope this finds you healthy and sane in this time of economic dislocation, political contention, extraordinary heat, and dangerous pandemic. This has proved to be a difficult year, with more to come.

Hard times push us to pray. Many recite the simple prayer “The Hail Mary” either by itself or as part of praying the rosary. Recently, I have taken to changing and adapting “The Hail Mary” in my prayer. I recite the first part pretty much as it is, since it comes straight from Scripture. The opening, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” is an old translation of the Angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary reported in Luke 1:28. The second part, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus” is Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary found in Luke 1:42. Since this is straight from the Gospel, I don’t mess with that.

To the second part, “Holy Mary, Mother of God” I add the words, “and Mother of the Church.” Mary is Mother of God, declared at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century. There was a debate over the relationship of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Was Jesus part God and part human, or God in a human form, or human and very nearly but not quite God? The orthodox response, our Catholic faith today, is that Jesus is fully God, fully human, and fully one. And since Jesus is fully one, what is true of his human nature is true of his divine nature. You can accurately say, “Mary is the mother not just of the human Jesus, but also Mother of God.”

While that is great for Mary, and is crucial for our individual salvation, it doesn’t have much direct appeal to us. However, at least since Vatican Council II, there has been more emphasis on Mary as a member of the church, and given her special role in salvation history, even as “Mother of the Church.” Pope Francis has emphasized this title of Mary. Therefore, to connect Mary’s role more directly to my own situation, since I am part of the Church, I add the title, “Mother of the Church” to more clearly emphasize Mary’s connection to me. Then, since in English the words “pray for us sinners” sounds like a command, I insert the word “please.” So it reads, “Holy Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, please pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, AMEN.”

We need all the help we can get. Reminding ourselves that Mary is also spiritually our Mother, and politely asking for her intercession, just seems more appropriate to me. And if it does to you, you are free to pray that way as well.

God bless!

 

Fr. Chuck's Column, August 16, 2020

 

Fr. Walter Dalton, C.S.P., was Pastor here at St. Austin Parish (Sept. 1962-1968) and Director at the University Catholic Center (1968 -1972). He died on Aug. 6, 1994. The following remembrance is by parishioner and former School Principal, Mary Berwick.

Remembering Father Walter J. Dalton, C.S.P.

I met Fr. Walter Dalton, C.S.P. soon after I began attending St. Austin in Sept. 1970. Fr. Ed Pietrucha, the pastor then, may have introduced us. Fr. Dalton had been born into a Catholic family in Philadelphia in 1916. Ordained as a Paulist priest at the age of twenty-nine in New York City, he served in New York, Portland, Oregon, and, for four years, in South Africa, returning in the mid-1950’s to a new parish in Richardson, TX. He served as Newman Chaplain at Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, and other area colleges.

At our first encounter in 1970, while he was director of the University Catholic Center, he told me some of his history. What sticks in my mind, though, is something he did not mention: that he had been the St. Austin pastor from 1962 to 1968. That period included the years of the historic meeting of the world’s Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council (Rome 1962-65). I only learned later that he was formerly the pastor, and think the omission revealed his characteristic humility.

Father Dalton spoke to me about ecumenism and Christian unity. He told of an organization he belonged to in Austin, the Austin Area Conference of Churches (AACC). He attended meetings and represented Bishop Vincent Harris on the organization’s steering committee. With Fr. Dalton’s encouragement, I began attending AACC monthly discussions, lectures, and concerts, held in different Austin churches. I made lasting friends among what in Ireland we would call “the Protestant community.” I also became a member of the Jewish-Christian Forum of the Texas Conference of Churches. Father Dalton served on panels at annual TCC conventions.

People close to him in that time admired him for having founded Volunteers for Educational and Social Services (VESS) in 1972. His collaborator was Archie Gress, a Catholic lay man who, with his wife, had worked with the poor in rural Honduras. VESS focused on giving young, full-time volunteer professionals the opportunity to be of service to others, live simply, and develop themselves professionally and spiritually. Father Dalton’s typical volunteer recruits were recent graduates of Catholic colleges. VESS paid their expenses and gave them small stipends. Father Dalton established a VESS office at St. Edward’s University. His former volunteers say he not only enjoyed “mentoring the rookies,” he also was expert at fund-raising, knew how to build relationships, and always emphasized the young volunteers’ mission rather than selling himself.

In the early 1970’s Fr. Dalton began holding Mass in Horseshoe Bay, northwest of Austin. A substantial Catholic congregation grew up. In 1982, a church building, including a worship space called the Holy Spirit Chapel, was completed on a donated site on Thanksgiving Mountain, overlooking Lake L.B.J. At the formal dedication, an Interfaith Service of Thanksgiving and Sharing, Fr. Dalton gave the call to worship. Now known as St. Paul the Apostle Parish (a Mission of the Paulist Fathers), the church has an ecumenical library and a family life center. Among its goals is “strengthening ecumenical and interreligious relationships.”

Fr Dalton is buried in a mausoleum in Horseshoe Bay, TX.

 

HOMILY Nineteenth Sunday in HOrdinary Time Cycle A Aug 9, 2020 Austin, TX

          Our first reading today takes place at Mt. Horeb, which is just another name for Mt. Sinai, where God gave Moses the Law.  It is like “Lady Bird Lake” and “Town Lake” are two names for the same body of water, or Mopac and Loop 1 are two names for the same road, so Horeb and Sinai are two names for the exact same mountain. 

          We find the Prophet Elijah there.  Mt Sinai is quite a ways from Israel.  What is Elijah doing there?   He is hiding.  Elijah is on the run from the evil Queen Jezebel.   She is out to kill him, and Elijah is scarred.  It is worth while reading the whole story in the First Book of Kings.  Anyway, Elijah is scarred, defeated, disgusted, and cowering in a cave on Mt. Horeb.

          For Elijah to stop hiding and continue serving as God’s prophet he needs a boost, a total reboot, something to get him out of hiding in the ground and to go do his prophetic duty.  So God is going to encounter Elijah, and thus energize him to continue his mission.  That is the setting of our first reading.

          Elijah goes out to meet God.  First there is “a strong and heavy wind”, so strong it rending the mountains and crushing rocks.  You could not ignore this wind.  It was strong and powerful and unavoidable.  A hurricane!  It was very definite.  But,     God was not in the wind.

          Then there was an earthquake.  It is pretty hard to ignore an earthquake, especially a big one.  You KNOW when a earthquake happens.  It is pretty much in-your-face.  But,       God was not in the earthquake.

          Then there was fire!  Again fire is attention getting, clear and pronounced.  You don’t walk through a fire and not notice it.  You don’t ignore fire.  It is pretty obvious.  But,      God was not there either.

           Finally there was a “tiny whispering sound.”  It is faint.  Easily missed.   Easily overlooked.   Not sure if you really heard that or not.   But there is where God was, and Elijah hid his face in his cloak, because it was overwhelming, too much to bear. 

 

          How much easier it would be if God only came to us with clear, dramatic effects that really got our attention.  If God would only appear to us with Imax 3-D and Dobly surround-sound and huge, explosive, attention-grabbing wonders!!!         Then belief would be easy.

          One of the early Roman critics of Christianity asked, “¿if Jesus is truly raised and is a god, why doesn’t he just appear in glory before the Roman Senate, clearly and unambiguously, and then we would all believe in him?”  That is a good question.  Why not make it clear and obvious, removing all doubt?

          But faith doesn’t work that way.  Why is faith so thin, so tenuous, so easy to miss, so iffy?   //

          St Paul in our second reading wrestles with the fact that his compatriots, the Jews, whom St Paul loves, did not respond in faith to Jesus as Messiah.  It is a problem that vexes St Paul.  He says: “theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants,  the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;  theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ.”         They have all this and still, they didn’t see it, they didn’t hear it, they didn’t get faith in Christ.

          Today we know people who went to Catholic grade school, and even Catholic high school, who grew up in faith-filled homes, maybe even have uncles who are bishops and aunts who are nuns, and yet, faith never took root in them.  Like St. Paul we wonder why, and we wish we knew what we could do to help them come to faith in Jesus as the Christ.

          But Faith is difficult to achieve.  It is not obvious.  //  It would not be faith if Jesus asks us to come to Him across the paved parking lot.  It would be easy, but it wouldn’t be faith.    But to walk across the waves?  That is faith.                         

    Faith is risky, because it is NOT a sure thing.  A genuine adult faith is a risk.  It means getting out into the deep waters of life, where the wind and the waves are strong, where life-long commitments are made, where forgiveness and generosity and compassion make more sense than greed and self-centeredness, where everything is less sure and more iffy, and then doing the foolish thing of getting out of the boat and walking towards Jesus. 

          Faith means walking with gratitude and compassion when fear is all around us, ready to drown us. 

          Faith means moving forward in acceptance and tolerance and peace, when the waves of pandemic and economic hardship whip up hatred, racism, homophobia, nativism and anti-immigrant intolerance all around us.

          Faith means believing when the Church does stupid things, when the music is insipid, the preaching dull, and our fellow Christians are unattractive.

          Faith means not looking for big, concrete, clear observable proofs, but rather listening for that faint, difficult to discern, “tiny whispering sound”, in our heart. 

          It ain’t easy.  But with faith you can walk on water.  Today Jesus says to us: “Come.” 

Fr. Chuck's Column, August 2, 2020

Whew!!! The whirlwind weekend with the celebration of the ordination to the priesthood of Fr. Paulo Puccini is over. We not only survived intact, but we pulled off a complicated choreography of sacrament and celebration that was TOTALLY AWESOME! There was a wonderful dinner prepared by Paulist in-house chef extraordinaire, Fr. Larry Rice, CSP, on Friday evening, hosting Paolo’s family and visiting classmate, Fr. Evan Commings, CSP. On Saturday we had a wonderful celebration of ordination presided over by Bishop Joe Vasquez, with added video congratulations from Paulist President Fr. Eric Andrews, CSP. And Sunday saw Fr. Paulo’s First Mass of Thanksgiving right here at 8:45, with Fr. Larry Rice doing a great job on the homily. Finally, to wrap it all up there was an exuberant and fun congratulatory “drive by” by many parishioners on our blacktop playground. Organized by the Knights of Columbus it went smoothly and was totally fun. Even the weather cooperated with the rain holding off for the reception in the courtyard and the drive-by. Truly the Holy Spirit was present in this event.

CONGRATULATIONS to Fr. Paolo Puccini, CSP. We are so happy that he is assigned here as a third priest on our parish staff. If all goes as planned, he will be here for four years, much as Fr. Steven Bell was here his first four years of priesthood, and Fr. Rene Constanza was here his first four years of priesthood. I am especially happy that Fr. Rich Andre will continue to be with us for at least another year. Beyond that, who can say???

Many thanks to all who helped to make this whole weekend such a beautiful, moving, holy and fun experience. It was truly memorable. It is a real feather in the St. Austin cap! With the live-streaming of the ordination and the First Mass I think we impressed Paulists around the country as well as ourselves. So, a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who helped in any way to make this past weekend so memorable and successful. You are way too many to name. This event was truly a community event that required a community effort, and you all came through in spades! THANK YOU!!!

Thanks to the diligent work of our parish archivist, Ms. Mary Lou Gibson, I have subsequently learned that Fr. Paolo is NOT the first Paulist to be ordained at St. Austin Parish. That honor goes to Fr. William Blakeslee, CSP. Mary Lou sent me the following:

Here is an excerpt Fr.om "The History of St. Austin's Parish, 1908 - 1947"

"In 1925 Fr. William Cartwright came as Pastor. It was during Father Cartwright's pastorate that St. Austin's experienced a great joy in the ordination of her first priest, one of her first altar boys, the first native son to be elevated to the Holy Priesthood. William Blakeslee, son of Judge and Mrs. William Blakeslee, having completed his studies at the Paulist Seminary, was ordained in St. Austin's Chapel, through special dispensation, by the Rt. Rev. Christopher E. Bryne."

So, Fr. Puccini is NOT the first Paulist to be ordained in this parish, though he is the first to be ordained in this church building. Obviously, we have a tradition going! Please continue to pray for more vocations to Paulist priesthood, and that we may in the future soon celebrate another priestly ordination here at St. Austin Parish.

God bless!

Fr. Chuck's Column, July 19, 2020

I hope you like the new statues of Sts. Mary of Magdala, and Phoebe. When we first saw the artist’s renderings, I asked of the proposed St. Mary of Magdala, “Can you make her look more Semitic?” As someone trained and interested in history, it has long bothered me that our depictions of Jesus and Mary and many of the saints are (historically speaking) wildly inaccurate. Jesus and the Holy Family did not look anything like how they are usually depicted. It is difficult to find a representation of Mary which does not make her look like a Renaissance Italian princess. She did not dress in yards of blue and red silk and satin. She was, in historical fact, a first century Galilean peasant woman, no different in appearance than hundreds of other poor peasants of her time.

St. Joseph also was not neatly dressed in flowing colorful robes. The Bible says he was a “tekton,” more accurately translated as a builder than as a carpenter. He probably worked with stone and brick more than wood, which was scarce. He would have been muscular, but usually dusty and dirty. The idyllic images of the boy Jesus (white skinned and blue eyed!) working with Joseph in his workshop are, to put it mildly, historically inaccurate. Think of the Hispanic immigrants working on repairs of the streets and construction sites of Austin, doing grunt labor in the blazing sun. Palestine is similar weather-wise to Austin in summer. That is what Joseph would look like.

Nor did Jesus wear long flowing robes of the brightest colors. His clothing was simple peasant clothing, and probably a flaxen or brown color. Jesus probably would have had short hair as keeping long hair clean and lice-free would have been exceedingly difficult. Also, St. Paul, who lived during Jesus’ life time, tells us that “Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him…?” 1 Cor 11:14. If St. Paul reflects contemporary Jewish understanding, then it would have been very unlikely that Jesus wore His hair long.

Some years ago the magazine, “Popular Mechanics” had forensic reconstruction experts attempt to recreate Jesus’ probable appearance. The result was nothing like how you usually see Jesus depicted. They subtitled the results, “you probably wouldn’t want to sit next to him on a plane.” You can see the article here.

There is some spiritual and pastoral benefit to depicting Jesus and Mary like us, so that we can more easily identify with them. All around the world Jesus is depicted in native costume and with local ethnic characteristics. Jesus is “like us in all things but sin.” (Hebrews 4:15). In Alaska, the fundraising letter of the Diocese of Fairbanks uses the image of Our Lady of the Arctic Snows, in which Mary is clothed in traditional Inuit dress, and Jesus is bundled up as an Inuit baby.

At my previous parish, Old Saint Mary’s in San Francisco, which is near Chinatown, a side altar has statues of St. Joseph dressed as a Chinese mandarin, and Mary and Jesus as ethnically Chinese. I remember one European tourist incensed over this depiction. Historically they were not Chinese, but neither were they white. While we want the Holy Family to be relatable, we also need to recognize that they are real people of a specific time and culture.

As in so much of our religion, this issue requires a “both/and.” The Holy Family can be represented truly in every world race and culture in a real spiritual way . But they are also people of a specific culture and ethnicity which should not be overlooked.

So I hope that Mary of Magdala looks a little Semitic to you, and reminds you that all those pictures that show Jesus as white need seriously to be put in context. In reality, Jesus is every race and all races.

God bless,

Fr. Chuck's Column, July 12, 2020

They say, “How time flies when you are having fun!” Well, I must have been having lots of fun as the last decade has flown by. Do you realize that I have been here at St. Austin Parish as the pastor for ten full years already? Yes, it was the first days of July 2010 when I arrived from San Francisco to become your pastor.

A great deal has happened during that decade. When I arrived, the parish was still hurting from the unfortunate and unexpected death of Fr. Jim Wiesner, CSP. We have had building projects, weddings, funerals, hundreds of Masses, old parishioners move on, new parishioners come, programs flourish, die, get reinvented, and more than a few laughs and glasses of wine.

When I first arrived, I wrote a bulletin column about myself as a self-introduction. At that time I said in part:

“Howdy! While I usually make it a point to NOT write extensively about myself, since that is a rather boring topic, none-the-less by way of introduction allow me to indulge in bending your figurative ear for a bit.

First of all, I am very happy and excited to be with you here at St. Austin’s. I am looking forward to meeting you all, getting to know you, working with you on the mission of our parish and best of all worshiping and praying with you all. …

Secondly, it will be a big adjustment for me to the climate of Austin….

Next, I hope to learn all of your names. However, the part of my brain that retains names does not work very well. It never has. So I ask your indulgence and please tell me your name at least a dozen times. Eventually it will stick. I also have trouble with spelling. Both names of people and objects, and the correct spellings of words, strike me as arbitrary, and for some reason that makes it difficult for me to retain. So I thank you for your patience and understanding.

Also, I do not have the kind of personality that usually comes on strongly at the beginning. My experience over and over, with moves from Alaska to Chicago to South Carolina to New York to San Francisco is that people like me, but it takes a while. So I respectfully request that you do not rush to any judgments about my character or abilities, but give it a while and see what happens.

Finally I am not a very patient person. I come by impatience honestly, as my dear Mother was not at all patient. This aspect of my personality surfaces commonly when I am driving. Through practice and aging I have gotten better, but at times I can still appear abrupt. This is not a calculated affront, but an unfortunate habit of character. I am hoping that the more relaxed Texan approach to life will assist me in improving on this trait.

Well, that is enough about me. I am sure you will soon be able to form your own opinions. I hope you will like what you find. …”

Well, that is what I wrote ten year ago. Was I right? In any case, it has been a great pleasure, and often an adventure, to walk with you the last ten years on the journey to the Kingdom. Now on to the next ten years!!! Oh my!