Tony Lusvardi, S.J.

The Nativity scene at 800

Santuario Francescano del Presepe, Greccio

A few weeks before Christmas in the year 1223, St. Francis told one of his brothers that he wished to celebrate the holiday in Greccio, a hamlet about halfway between Assisi and Rome. He added something more: that he wanted to see with his own eyes the baby born in Bethlehem and the crude stable where he lay.

The brother went on ahead and arranged everything as the saint had asked in a little grotto just outside the town, a scene now familiar to us–figures of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the ox and the ass. The sight drew men and women from around Greccio and delighted Francis, who served as a deacon at Mass that Christmas night. The tradition of the Christmas manger scene was born.

It’s a tradition that thrives all over the world, but especially in Italy. It’s also an example of what is known to theologians as “inculturation,” the way the Gospel enters into different cultures and finds ever-new expression in their traditions. The traditional Nativity scenes of Italy, especially Naples, often include dozens, even hundreds, of figures going about the tasks of daily life–shopkeepers, bakers, fruit vendors, beggars, musicians, servants, housewives, children, farmers, you name it. Dress and architecture in the scenes reflect the daily life of those who create them.

Memento mori

As I noted at the beginning of the month, November is a month dedicated to praying for the dead. It is also a time in which the readings begin to take on a somewhat apocalyptic flare. The theme of the end of things echoes with the changing seasons; at least in the northern hemisphere, this is the time when fall turns into winter.

Sedlec Ossuary, Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

It might seem macabre to dedicate a particular season to considering death, but it doesn’t have to be. In any case, not thinking about death will not prevent it from happening to each one of us. One reason to pray for the dead, as I wrote a few weeks ago, is to help them on their journey through purgatory. Another is to give us the proper attitude toward life. The things in this world are temporary; our relationship with God is eternal. We should plan accordingly.

Our Great American Holiday

As an American abroad, I’ll readily confess to a bit of nostalgia come Thanksgiving time. As a national rite, the holiday is sublime in its simplicity: turkey, family, eating–and an implicit spirituality as unobtrusive and essential as bedrock. I do celebrate here in Rome with other expats, but the Italian interpretation of cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, while sometimes whimsical and frequently tasty, is never quite the same. Thanksgiving is quintessentially American, expressing what is best about our country–and perhaps also something of what we seem to be losing.

No surprises on judgment day: homily for the thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Many years ago, before I became a Jesuit, my parents celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary with a trip to Italy. I had just finished two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan, and I decided to meet them in Italy—but I wanted it to be a surprise. So I made up an elaborate story about where I was going—a complete fake itinerary—and I pulled it off. I have never seen my mom’s mouth open so wide as when I showed up and said, “Happy anniversary!”

If you’ve ever pulled off a surprise party—and it’s not easy—you know that both the anticipation and the surprise itself are fun. There’s something about knowing what is going to happen when others don’t, the cleverness it requires, and then the shock, which in the end turns out to be joyful.

Let me be clear about today’s reading. Jesus is NOT trying to surprise us. The arrival of the bridegroom surprises all of the virgins—they all doze off and are awakened by shouting in the night—but for the wise virgins it is a joyful surprise, which brings a wedding feast, and for the foolish virgins, it means darkness. It means remaining outside in the darkness of the night because they did not care for the light that was their responsibility. In the Gospel parable, the foolish virgins are surprised, but Jesus is telling us the parable precisely so that we will not be surprised.

St. Josaphat Kuntsevych

Sunday November 12 will mark the 400th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Ukrainian Catholic bishop St. Josaphat Kuntsevych. During his lifetime St. Josaphat worked for the reunion of eastern rite Christians with the Catholic Church. He was murdered by an Orthodox mob in 1623.

St. Josaphat lived and worked, first as a Basilian monk and then as an archbishop in the part of the world that today includes Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. The anniversary is an opportunity to seek St. Josaphat’s intercession for the suffering people of Ukraine as they continue to fight for their nation’s freedom.

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of St. Josaphat’s martyrdom, the Gregorian University is sponsoring a conference on his life and legacy as well as an art show. I have to admit, I knew rather little about St. Josaphat before strolling through the display–though he is the patron of Milwaukee’s most beautiful church–and I have never seen so many paintings of the saint before. Here’s a sampling, showing all aspects of his life, from his calling to his monastic vocation, his ministry as bishop and his eventual martyrdom.

All Souls Day

November 2 is All Souls Day on which we remember and pray for the dead. For Catholics, November is traditionally a month dedicated to praying for the dead, a practice that goes back to the earliest days of the Church and, indeed, even to pre-Christian times. This pair of days, All Saints and All Souls, is a reminder of the profound solidarity that exists between all Christ’s faithful, on whichever side of the grave we currently find ourselves. Our lives and our journeys continue to intertwine with those who have come and gone before us.

Santa Maria del Purgatorio, Monopoli, Italy

The first reason we pray for the dead, of course, is to help those in the final process of purification we call purgatory. Since heaven means existing in a state of perfection and most of us still aren’t perfect when we die, purgatory is the time we need to reach that perfect way of being we long for.

This doesn’t mean that purgatory is a second chance, as if this earthly life were a video game in which you get five or six lives to move up levels. No, the choices we make in this life are decisive. Our free will really matters. Purgatory is the completion of what we start on earth.

Baptism and Christian identity

Sant’Agnese in Agone, the church in the center of Piazza Navona, is more beautiful than usual these days because it is hosting a special exhibit of three El Greco paintings. The largest and most impressive of these is the “Baptism of Christ,” a favorite theme of mine and something I think the Church would do well to reflect on more deeply–especially in these days of deep division and various lobbies jockeying for influence.

Sant’Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona, Rome

At his baptism, the identity of Jesus is revealed by the Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” As John the Baptist well knew, Jesus had no need of baptism; the event was for our benefit. The Lord’s baptism reveals what happens in our baptism: we become the children of God by adoption; we come to share in the Sonship of Jesus. The Father’s words come to apply to us. We become the beloved sons and daughters of God.

The reason I think this event is so important is because, for Christians, our status as God’s sons and daughters must become and remain our most fundamental identity. When some other form of identity becomes primary–our national identity, our identification with a particular political party or ideology, even our natural family–we go badly astray. This, it seems to me, is the most serious problem with contemporary LGBT ideology. The problem is certainly not with the people themselves, nor even so much with any particular sexual desires per se–living our sexuality with integrity has always been challenging, in different ways, for all Christians. The problem is when those sexual desires become ideology and ideology becomes identity, when one particular aspect of one’s personal make-up–one’s sexuality–becomes the dominant characteristic in one’s self-definition, the one ring to rule them all.

Gargoyles, east and west

One of the highlights of my recent travels through Asia was visiting a number of quite impressive Buddhist temples and shrines. This was particularly the case in Thailand, though Chinese temples in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were also filled with rich carvings, colorful statues, and piles of offerings including fruit, flowers, and burning incense. The warm red–the color of prosperity–of the Chinese temples reminded me of the red color with which the ancient Romans frescoed the inside of their homes. The desire for a warm hearth is written deeply in the human psyche.

A place of worship that makes an absorbing appeal to the senses is of course nothing new to me. I live in Rome, city of the baroque, where tales of religious ecstasy are told and retold in marble, mosaic, and fresco. The impulse of Christianity to express itself in art goes back to the Incarnation itself, to God revealing himself by entering into the world of the flesh, expressing his divinity in the matter of creation. We Catholics believe that he continues to communicate his grace to us through the sacraments. Artistic expressions using color, smell, and sound to amplify this divine work come naturally enough to a sacramental faith.

But what about Buddhism? Such expressions would seem to me, an outsider, to fit less naturally within Buddhist philosophy, with its distrust of all desire and negation of the world of pleasure and pain. Incarnation and Nirvana are two radically different beliefs. Yet how else to describe the gilded wats of Thailand, the cascades of angels and demons in glittering ceramic, than Buddhist baroque?

Of course, Thailand’s wats are not the architectural expression of pure Buddhist philosophy but a kind of non-culinary Asian fusion–Buddhism grafted into a still older mix of traditional folk beliefs, legends, and superstitions. How cogent such a mix is, I can’t evaluate. But there’s something human about that folk mix that I find more compelling than Buddhism in its purity, which I’ve always thought a little chilly.

Jonah, the most bumbling prophet

Jonah sarcophagus (ca. AD 300), Vatican Museums

Those at daily Mass this week get to enjoy the special treat of hearing the book of Jonah. The book is such a good tale–who doesn’t love a giant sea monster? or a cantankerous prophet?–that I imagine the story originally told dramatically aloud. I think we’re meant to laugh at Jonah, the Mr. Bean of prophets.

Of course, there is a serious message to the book that goes beyond whale innards and the prophet’s pouty attachment to his gourd plant. Jonah reveals the sweeping reach of God’s mercy, extending even to the most wicked of cities–Nineveh, grrr—when those within it seek conversion. Students in my classes are probably sick of hearing it, but one way to get under my skin is to claim that the grumpy “God of the Old Testament” has been replaced by the groovy “God of the New Testament.” There’s only one God. He’s infinitely merciful and revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. And the book of Jonah proves it.

Confessing other people’s sins

Old St. Anges Church, Parmelee, South Dakota

In case you missed it, an essay of mine appeared recently in issue 19 of The Lamp, a relatively new Catholic magazine full of interesting and thoughtful writing (if I do say so myself).

“Public apologies for historical wrongs have multiplied in recent years… Yet we do not seem to have become a more reconciled and understanding society.”

This particular essay, “Confessing Other People’s Sins,” is among the most important things I’ve written. The essay draws on a lot — my experiences in South Dakota, as a confessor, and studying theology.