The Great Multitude

I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).  

 

First it was one voice.  “O salutaris, Hostia.”  Then more voices joined.  “Quae caeli pandis ostium.”  And then, the multitude cried out, “Bella premunt hostilia da robur fer auxilium.”  The final note of the Amen faded, and a hush, heavy like wet snow filled the arena.  And the multitude knelt in rapt adoration of Jesus present there on the altar.  Shining like the sun under the glare of the spotlight in the darkness, he tugged at the hearts of the youth around me.  They were being inexorably drawn, like iron to a magnet, into him, into his love, into his mercy, into his healing.  

 

This was the third day of a week-long trip.  Sixty people (mostly teens with a handful of chaperones), and hundreds of miles guaranteed a bus rank with the smell of traveling adolescents roused too early from slumber.  The days had been long and the nights short.  We walked five miles and more daily.  Lines for bathrooms, vendors, food, and impact sessions were long, and the wait regularly consumed the lion’s share of what free time was available.  The breakout sessions were excellent, but the cool, darkened lecture halls lulled most of our group to restless sleep.  That night, at the stadium, the talks focused on forgiveness and healing.  As the final presenter concluded, we briefly considered leaving.  Could the kids take another hour?  We had to stay.  After all, we had come to see Jesus, not the speakers.  And so it was, that I found myself surrounded by young people aching for the infinite.

 

Into the silence, a deep bass note sounded, as though from the drone of a bagpipe.  Then a second, and a third, and a fourth.  “Let all mortal flesh keep silence’” they intoned.  “And with fear and trembling stand.”  Suddenly, the bass droning was no longer coming from the direction of the altar.  It was rising to Heaven all around me.  The boys were singing!  Not murmurs or whispers, but full-throated, they begged the Almighty, “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, Lord Most High!”  Then, silence again, broken only by the quiet sounds of gentle tears.

 

“What happened last night?” I asked them later.  “I don’t know.  I was just that I suddenly knew I wasn’t alone,” one boy told me.  Another said, “I felt like Jesus picked me up and carried me.”  A girl told me, “I don’t know what happened.  It just felt different.”  Another said, “I heard him say my name.”  Over and over they told me they had discovered that Jesus knew them, loved them, was with them, cared about them, and would help them.  

 

The National Eucharistic Congress was a resounding success.  I have so often begged Jesus in my own prayer, “Please, do something.”  He did something, alright.  Something big, something real, something amazing.  These kids confessed their sins honestly and completely.  They spoke openly and vulnerably to Jesus.  They allowed themselves to feel the aching they all experience for the “Something more” that life this side of eternity cannot give them.  By the time we arrived at the closing Mass, the message they were hearing was, “Go!”  And I think they will.  Back to Martin, and to Wall, and to Lemmon, and to Rapid City, and Spearfish, and Bison.  And they will know that everywhere that a red sanctuary light is burning, there Jesus is waiting for them in the tabernacle.  They are different now.  They have tasted heaven.  They are marked by his love, and now they know it.  They have fulfilled what St. John the Evangelist foresaw so long ago:

 

They cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb. . . and they fell down before the throne upon their faces, and adored God, Saying: Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power, and strength to our God for ever and ever. . . . They shall no more hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun fall on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them (Revelation 7:10-17).

 

Stay Tuned

It was fourteen years ago that I published the first post to this blog. It was, at that time, meant to help memorialize and process the many first experiences of priesthood and to include others in that process. It served that purpose well for five years, and then it became more difficult. I was assigned to a small town. Too many people would be familiar with the details I disclosed to write honestly. And I was busy, getting busier. Now, at the end of fifteen years of priesthood, without a parochial assignment, in possession of a sharp tongue and a dim wit, I find myself headed to our nations capital in August to commence the study of canon law. I am not so much intimidated by the thought of returning to school, but I am repulsed by the thought of life in a metropolis after my bucolic existence in Bennett County.

I fear that I will be arrested for hate speech, and I am likely to be cancelled for my inability to keep my antediluvian opinions to myself. I find people behaving badly in public both repugnant and enrapturing. I doubt I’ll be able to refrain from recording the crazies on the metro and the truly deranged blatherskites who blockage from the steps of the capitol. I am certain I will need and outlet, or perhaps more appropriately, an audience to let the madness out of my head.

And, I need something to help fill the hole left by my hiatus from parish life. I hope to write more now. And I hope people will read. It will help me stay grounded and connected. It will help me remember what it is to be a parish priest in Western South Dakota.

So, if you enjoy blistering rebukes of East Coast pretension, deliberate hick exhibitionism, delightful displays of Great Plains folksy commentary, and the pining of a priest who is homesick before leaving, check back often. I suspect, at least in the short term, I’ll have much to say.

Stay tuned…

Merry Christmas 2017

As Lent begins, Merry Christmas.

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January 2018

Greetings,

I have never been invited to attend a baby shower.  Apart from fact that such celebrations seem to generally be

reserved to the females of our species, as a professed celibate, there is little call for my presence.  As I write this missive, however, I cannot help but reflect on the amount of preparation one undertakes prior to the birth of a child.  Bottles, bassinettes, blankets, bibs, and babyproofing.  A child’s birth changes everything so

dramatically.  It must change so that the child can thrive.  Parents suddenly have to make room in their lives for a new person.  No amount of planning, I think, is probably sufficient to prepare for all the change.  Parents learn to make room for the baby in ways they never imagined doing before. 

If parents do these things, it seems fair to ask if these were not the same preparations undertaken by Mary and

Joseph?  Likewise, didn’t God the Father assumed similar preparations among generations of Hebrews in order to ready the world for the grand appearance of Jesus on the human scene?  And still, in spite of all the preparation, so much of the life and ministry of Jesus came to man as a surprise.  He continues to do new things and to surprise us today.

The many young couples whose marriages I witnessed over the last year, even after lengthy periods of preparation, are surely finding Christ popping up in their lives in new ways and they  are learning to make a space for him.  Those who grieve losses this year, I pray, are finding Christ arriving in new and unexpected ways as well.  They are also learning to make a new place for him.  He is also still doing new things for me.

Last May I began formal training to be a spiritual director.  Through that process, God is revealing himself to me in ways I have not experienced him before.  He is asking me to confront fears and insecurities in ways I have not done before.  He is making a place for himself in my life where I had not invited him previously.  It is beautiful and    joyful, and sometimes very difficult.  He persistently asks me if I am willing to abide in his love.  I find that I acquiesce only intermittently.

In one of my first years as a priest, on the occasion of their confirmation, I admonished several high school boys that I knew well, to become better men than I am.  They are now husbands, fathers, Air Force officers, dental students, and seminarians approaching ordination.  Somewhere in the last few years, without me quite noticing it, these boys became men.  They are good men.  Better than me, I think.  And when I speak to them now, I encounter Christ within them differently than I did before.  Once again, he presents opportunities to make a new place for him.

I experience him differently now too, as he asks me to make less of myself.  After long prayer and avoidance, I am working on a serious weight loss program.  I have lost a little more than thirty pounds to date.

Not all with the Lord is new, though.  I still find him while standing in the stream while trying to outwit trout with brains the size of peas.  I still find him in my people, and in my ministry, and in the sacraments.  I find him in confessions and baptisms and funerals.  I find him in may parents, siblings, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces.  I find him in my brother priests.  I find him in the beauty of this place where he has assigned me to

minister. 

It is a privileged life I lead as a priest that allows me to find Christ so freshly so often.  I am

tremendously grateful for it, and I am grateful for you.  You are one of the places where I find Christ and his love.  Know of my continued prayers for you and yours during the coming year.

In peace,

 Fr.  Tyler

Picking Dandelions

I wrote this for the local paper a couple of weeks ago.  In rereading it, I decided it should go here too.

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Two coinciding events have served as points of reflection for me over the last couple of weeks.  First, at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, we have nearly finished a project in which we have replaced our pews and flooring.  Both were necessary simply from the perspective of standard building maintenance.  Both were desirable inasmuch as these new pews and flooring are more beautiful than what we had previously.  Second, I presided over a wedding at the parish of St. John Cantius in Chicago.  I do not exaggerate to suggest that it is one of the most beautiful churches I have seen on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.  The building, completed in 1889, is the fruit of the sacrifice and dedication of Polish immigrants.  Upon arrival in Chicago, before building their own homes or schools, they built their church.  As typical in the baroque style, the Church is filled with arches, magnificent stained glass, and a gorgeous high altar.  The main aisle is wood inlaid with various Christian symbols.  Thick wooden doors separate the nave from the vestibule.  Everything is covered in gold.

Why?  Is such grandeur necessary?  Should it be done?  These are, in part, questions about which Catholics and various groups of Protestants have disagreed for centuries.  To my mind, however, beauty is an essential element in Christian worship.  The Polish immigrants who built St. John Cantius and the Catholics who helped refloor our Church here in Martin did not do so because a vain and avenging God demanded as much.  Rather, moved by the knowledge that God gave his life for the sake of man’s salvation, and inspired by his infinite love and mercy, these people desired to offer something in return.  They wanted to give something back to God as a demonstration of their own love and gratitude for him.  They knew, of course, that no human construction would ever be enough to repay the debt of gratitude owed to the Lord.  But they gave anyway, acknowledging that when we live lives in which all good things come to us as gift, we must give in return.

This sentiment should motivate our worship each day.  The way we dress, the way we speak, the way we sing, even our attentiveness to the Scriptures and to the sermon are ways in which we offer a little back to the Lord.  It is not as though we are doing any of these things to earn his love.  They are, instead, responses to his love.  At issue is not whether God will love or accept us.  Of course he will!  He will love us even if we don’t dress well, if we don’t sing, or if we don’t participate.  At stake is what we do in response to God’s love.  An analogy helps demonstrate my point:

A small child will bring a bouquet of freshly picked and slightly crushed dandelions to his mother as a spontaneous response to the love he receives from her.  His mother’s life is little improved by a gift of a fistful of weeds, but she recognizes the love that motivates the gesture.  The child fulfills a need of his own to reciprocate the love he receives from his mother.  The mother loves him no less if he doesn’t bring her flowers, but she does appreciate the gesture.  With God it is the same.  Psalm 116 asks, “How can I make a return to the Lord for all he done for me?”  In short, we can give nothing that is commensurate with what we have received.  But that should not stop us from trying. 

Merry Christmas 2016

January 2017

Greetings,

It is not without cause that those closest to me accused me of “scroogishness” this Christmas.  Convention dictates that a Christmas Letter be joyful and hopeful and glad.  It is, I suspect, because of this encumbrance that I have found writing this letter to be onerous this year.  As I complete my annual retrospective, the moments that stand out are mostly sad.  Our community has buried more than our share of people in the last twelve months.  A dear friend of mine, only a year older than me, died suddenlyleaving her toddler daughter without a mother.  Another friend’s father and a respected teacher from my high school days also died unexpectedly.  Regular notices of people diagnosed with serious illness have punctuated our community’s grief.  Short days, unnecessarily cold weeks, and frustratingly frequent snows have left me feeling little Christmas cheer.  Indeed, it was only as Christmas drew to its conclusion and the season of Ordinary Time commenced that the ageless proclamation that God Is Made Man began to peel away the spiritual cataracts that had perpetuated my dimness of soul. 

We hear each year, “The people who dwell in darkness have seen a great light.”  That light, Jesus Christ, tiny and innocent, lived and died and lives again.  Because he lives, death has no power here.  Sickness has no power.  The light always defeats the darkness.  Thus, even as I sit writing and twilight lingers, I realize that darkness arrives a half hour later than it did just a few weeks ago.  The year was not so bad.  I caught some nice trout, and almost caught an extraordinary one (He would probably have been the biggest I have ever caught.  He broke my line just as I brought him to net).  I talked myself into buying a dog, and then promptly talked myself out of it.  I spent a weekend in Georgia.  I witnessed the weddings of beautiful, happy couples.  I blessed the farms and ranches of extraordinarily good and kind people.  Rain came regularly and the grass was green well into the summer.  It was nearly Thanksgiving before it finally snowed.  I am sponsor to not just one, but to two exceptional young men preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. I have not hit a deer yet.  My people are kind.  My parishes are solvent.  Things could be much worse.

God does not require that we pretend all is well if all is not well.  He does, however, call us to seek him where he may be found.  2016, in a number of obvious ways, was bleak and hard.  To see God sometimes required that we squint.  But there were plenty of moments of light.  Therefore, I resolve, in 2017, to try to dwell in the light.  One source of that light is God’s love as I experience it through you.  Thank you for all you do for me.  Thank you for your kind and thoughtful sentiments this season.  I am deeply grateful.  Know of my continued prayers that 2017 will be a year filled with light, and that you will receive all of God’s richest blessings.

In Christ,

 Fr. Tyler

Do Not Go Gentle

Brown Trout - Rapid Creek - Summer 2016

When, I wonder, did I become mortal.

I recollect, even from my youth, an abiding jealousy for the integrity of my frame.  There was little to merit the risk of injury and pain.  These threats were sufficient inspiration to avoid work or sport.  I did, however, really ever think that  I might die.  As with nearly all those still in the flower of youth, death was not real.  Even when it lurked near, as it did when I rolled my grandfather's old Ford pickup, or when I rolled my own Oldsmobile a few years later, I cannot recall that I took the possibility of death seriously.  When a seventh grade peer died of cancer, it was sad, but it never occurred to me that such a fate might as easily have been my own.  Pain was possible; death was not.  

Even now, the word fear fails to capture my attitude toward my own ultimate dissolution.  I think of my death often; death will eventually come for me.  I may rage against it.  I might cleverly delay it.  But death will win.  It is in this sense of resignation, I think, that one first becomes truly mortal.

Mortality insists that I concede that I am also finite.  Rage though I may, time will ravage me, men will ignore me, loved ones will not love me, my own strength or will shall fail me, my body shall betray me, and mortality will steal what is precious to me.  The sun sets.  The sun also rises.  There is nothing new under the sun.  

It is surely the inevitability of this inescapable entropy that adjures me to resist while yet I might.  Is this the allure of fly fishing?  Perhaps I am like a fish upon a line handled by the Master Angler.  Perhaps I, like so many trout unlucky enough to be fooled by my own abecedarian  flailing of the line, might shake my head, flee across the current, leap into the air, and throw the hook.  Or perhaps the hook will remain.  The Master Angler will play me, giving slack here and increasing drag there until, in his providence, I lay gasping in his net.

Give me, O Master Angler, plenty of line.  Let me strain against it.  Let me leap among those you have given to me to love.  May their love for me be the cutbank toward which I flee when strange shadows threaten above.  Keep me out of the dangerous entangling willows.  Should I break the line, do not quit for the day.  Cast for me once again.  And, should you bring me to net, if it be your will, Master Angler, release me as often as you might.  But keep a fly in your box you know I will bite.

                

The Unexamined Life

The AIDS epidemic of the 1990s inspired the musical Rent from which the world came to learn that there are 525,600 minutes in a year, which are apparently measured in midnights, in sunsets, in daybreaks,  in cups of coffee, and other such jolly tripe.  My experience suggests that 525,600 minutes are measured in miles driven, tanks of gas purchased, diet cokes consumed, meetings planned, meetings cancelled due to poor attendance, television shows on Netflix, and disappointments.  A blog is interesting to read and interesting to write so long as there is something sufficient to merit the effort.  I'm not sure when things became uninteresting, or if they did, but I find it hard to write anything of depth these days.  My muse has either died of neglect, or, like a cat that one stops feeding, has gone to find sustenance at some other person's house.  How did I arrive here?

Chapter 1: In Which The Intrepid Author Waxes Dark and Philosophical 

"The unexamined life," Socrates insists, "is not worth living." Of course, for him, the examined life led to death anyway, so perhaps the examined life isn't so great either. In either case, it seems inescapable that life is dull when one walks through it never asking, "Why do I do what I do, believe what I believe, and choose what I choose? Why am I here?" Boredom is the fruit of an unexamined life, because one fails to discover what one truly wants and thus seeks meaning and pleasure in things that ultimately dissatisfy. Of course, for many, living the examined life leads to angst and nihilism, which is like boredom, except with more self-mutilation. But at least people living the examined life are interesting. They break up the humdrum, mundane, all too regular existence of those who live the unexamined life. Mine, I fear, has become an unexamined life.

Minor seminary, of course, required self-examination.  In all charity, I've never met a group of more self-absorbed naval-gazers than seminarians.  It is their job.  They are asked to question their motives for coming to the seminary, what God wants of them, and how they know he wants it.  This interior investigation takes tremendous psychic, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional effort.  Every little flaw, real or perceived, could become a formation issue - something that would ultimately prevent ordination.  It is the work of major seminary to draw a man to the point where such introspection becomes an external offering of self to Christ and his bride, the Church, through the priesthood.  For many men, at least those who never advance to ordination, it comes as a shock to discover that most other lifestyles neither encourage nor tolerate introspection to this degree.  I recollect bemusedly listening to a former seminarian relate that one of his friends (also a former seminarian), had needed to explain to him that after leaving the seminary, one no longer experiences "formation issues".

The first few years of priesthood likewise lent themselves to examination.  First, there was still an element of formation that occurred so long as I was under the watchful eye of the pastor.  His critiques required me to look carefully at myself.  Second, almost everything was new, shiny, and endowed with infinite significance.  Every act of ministry placed me one step closer to my final goal of having saved the world.  I was changing lives.  I did not yet believe that if people change, they do so only slowly, and sometimes not for the better.  Before becoming convinced of this idea, I wanted to record each moment as a monument to my success.

The process of saving the world leaves one feeling very much as though he is needed.  It feels good to be needed.  Codependency, it has been suggested to me, is dysfunctional.  I suspect that it is, but it is often rewarded in Church work.  The more one is needed, the more industrious he becomes, and thus all the more needed.  Industry takes time and energy.  It leaves little room for examining one's life.  One relies on assumptions, previous experience, platitudes, and a handful of really good homilies from the last time these readings came around.  It is astonishing how long one can get away with employing only these tools.  These tools, however, are rather expensive.  They come at the cost of disappointment and self-doubt.  The one who uses them feels cheap, a cheater, a fraud.  There is, however, a ready remedy for disillusionment; one just needs to become more needed. And to become more industrious. And to examine one's life even less.  And to become even more disappointed.  As surely as carbon becomes diamond under pressure, disappointment becomes blaming, blaming becomes resentment, resentment becomes anger, and anger becomes apathy.  Apathy is the opposite of love; apathy is a killer of muses.

Chapter 2: In Which The Intrepid Author Explores Other Causes For His Authorial Malaise

I like writing.  I like playing with words.  I like nitpicking over whether this or that sentence is just right.  I like deleting whole paragraphs and starting over.  I like beginning a piece with one idea in mind and discovering by the end that I have said something else.  Six hundred word articles in a small town paper, monthly columns for the parish bulletin, the occasional snarky email, and infrequent blog posts inspired by debilitated, pale muses, however, leave me longing for something more.  I am a fan of the short story.  So often they have grabbed me by the soul and shaken me.  I want to write a story.  I grow weary of essays, exhortations, and expositions.  I want, by means of brief narrative, to crystallize the human experience with wisdom, wit, sincerity and singularity.  I want to write a story like Hemingway, or O'Connor, or Bradbury.  But what I write seems insipid, cliche, and immature.  My style is wrong for the genre; the vocabulary is vapid, the arc of the story too brief, and the moral too obvious.  The written word is never so unruly as when I try to write a story.  So I haven't tried for a while.  The blog and my own self-examination suffer as a result.

Chapter 3: In Which The Intrepid Author Complains About His Stuff

I have too much stuff.  Too many books.  Too many devices.  Too many fishing magazines.  Too much mail.  Too many clothes.  Too much comfort.  Too much time during which no one demands anything of me. (It is a paradox, not hypocrisy, that I can complain in a single post of having both too much and too little time.  The experience merits a post of its own.)  Distractions of one's own choosing are hell on introspection.  Distractions - stuff - seem mostly to lend themselves to silent speculation and frustration about why they are ultimately so dissatisfying, and what other distraction might be more satisfying.  Stuff is not helpful to writing.

Chapter 4: In Which The Intrepid Author Bemoans The Absence of Other Philosophy Majors

Very few people talk about ideas.  They talk about people.  They talk about events.  They do not talk about beauty, truth, goodness, or happiness.  If they talk about themselves, it is only in the most superficial of terms.  Conversations dare no vulnerability, push no boundaries, never risk that one party or the other might be wrong, and resultantly incite no intimacy.  A conversation should reveal the self.  It seldom does.  Most conversations cannot even initiate the process of basic self-revelation because the person speaking has never asked who or what he is.  Talk of the weather, the kids, sports, politics, news, cows, crops, work, school, hook-ups, break-ups, vacations, medications, plans for Thanksgiving, plans for Christmas, plans for summer, who is pregnant, and who recently died can all pass the time.  They do little by way of eliciting truth, goodness, and beauty.  They do little to draw the mind and heart to God.  They do little to inspire self-examination.  Sometimes I ache for these conversations.

Chapter 5: In Which The Intrepid Author Recognizes Glimmers of Hope

And here I sit writing.  I have not written, nor really even thought, so honestly for a long time.  It all started as I refereed a dispute between two college boys, one a convicted Catholic, the other a resentful Catholic who calls himself an atheist.  Their their argument descended (ascended?) into a lengthy conversation about the nature of beauty and whether or not life is objectively meaningful.  At the end, I thought, "I need to read. And I need to write."  Writing leads to self-examination.  And, since I am trying to quit smoking (I've been tobacco free for seven days today), I need to do something to distract my fidgety hands, and craving-addled mind.  So, herein I offer an examination.  I doubt it has the enduring value of Plato's Apology.  It will not shatter the history of Western Thought as did Descartes and his Meditations.  But, it is something.  Something is better than nothing.  And even a shallowly examined life must be more worth living than a life altogether unexamined.