Good Pope John and me

My mom recently pulled out an old baby picture of me and told me I looked like the Pope, with a beatific expression and a hand raised in blessing. "It was a sign!" says she.

Blessed John XXIII seems the likeliest candidate... you be the judge. :)

I'm two months old in that picture, and boy was I fat. Topped ten pounds at birth and thirty pounds at one year. Look at that double chin! Mom says as a child I often reminded her of the chubby puppy in "101 Dalmations"-- the one who's forever saying, "I'm hungry, Mama, I'm hungry!"

Saint picture quiz 3

The answer to Quiz #2 is St. Dominic; Athanasius got it first. Here's another picture of him with all his stuff: dog with a lighted torch about to set the world on fire (which was the dream his mother had while pregnant with him), lilies for purity, a book in his arm, and the Dominican habit with Rosary-- he's missing the forehead star but he has his Dominican staff.

St. Dominic founded the Order of Preachers around 1200. If I recall correctly, the Church was a bit moribund at that time, but the Dominican friars brought about a great revival by traveling on foot from parish to parish, preaching and teaching and combating the Albigensian heresy. I imagine St. Dominic normally looked a bit dustier than portrayed here... and I doubt he ever gathered his attributes around him and struck a pose on a pedestal framed by columns... but I like the painting anyway. :)

When I was at the monastery two weeks ago, the prioress gave me a little medal commemorating the anniversary of the founding of the first convent of Dominican nuns in 1206. Other than the Catholic Church itself, how many institutions can you think of that have lasted at least 800 years?

Okay, moving on to quiz #3. This one's a bit harder.

Rublev's icon of the Trinity

Andrei Rublev painted this famous icon of the Holy Trinity around 1415. (Click for a bigger version.) Pretty much every detail is symbolic; here's a good article explaining it all.

There's a great class at my church that teaches different methods of prayer, and a few weeks ago we did visual prayer. It's something like what the article describes, but more involved. For homework we were supposed to practice visual prayer twenty minutes a day for a week.

I didn't expect to get anything from the exercise. I'd never done anything like it before, and praying by staring at a picture sounded unnatural and awkward to me. Maybe if I'd been raised Catholic... But I gave it a try with various images and found it very effective!

Then that very week I happened to run across the story linked above, so I tried the same exercise with Rublev's icon. At first it just looks like three angels sitting there, but focusing on the faces I saw the amazing love of the Father, and the listening obedience of the Son, and the loving submission of the Holy Spirit (qui ex Patre Filioque procedit, whatever the Russian Orthodox Rublev might have thought-- ha ha, I'm such a nerd). Then I started to envision my own relation to the three divine Persons-- I don't see how you could not be on your knees at that point.

The house behind the Father is supposed to evoke Jesus' words: "In my Father's house are many rooms.... I go there to prepare a place for you." To my own surprise, as I gazed at that worn and faded outline of a very simple house, it seemed to represent unimaginable peace. I had a great longing to go and dwell there forever.

Here's what the prayer class had us doing (sounds a bit awkward because it's been hastily translated from Spanish):

One takes an expressive picture, for example an image of Jesus, or Mary, or any other subject, a picture that makes a strong impression, such as peace, gentleness, strength. What is important is that it speaks to you deeply.

Take the picture in your hands and after calming down and invoking the Holy Spirit, stay quiet, simply looking at the picture, first as a whole, then in detail.

Secondly, capture intuitively, attentively, and with serenity the impressions this picture evokes in you. What does this image tell you?

Thirdly, with calmness transfer yourself to the picture, as if you were this image, or as if you were in it. Respectfully and calmly, make 'yours' the impressions this picture arouses in you. Thus, identify yourself mentally with this image. Remain so for a good while, and saturate your soul with the sentiments of Jesus which the picture illustrates. This is how the soul puts on the image of Jesus and shares in his interior disposition.

Finally, with this inner disposition, transfer yourself mentally to your daily life. Imagine difficult situations, and overcome them with Jesus' attitudes. This is the way to embody the image of Jesus in the world.

This exercise is particularly fruitful for those who are naturally imaginative.

I would just add that I am not naturally imaginative-- I'm very deficient in that area-- and I found the exercise "particularly fruitful" for precisely that reason. I've often tried contemplating scenes from the Bible, but while others report all sorts of images and insights after such exercises, for me it was usually an hour of frustration and boredom. Having an actual picture to look at made all the difference to me.

Saint picture quiz 2

The last quiz was St. Christopher ("Christ-bearer") carrying the child Jesus across a river, and Desmond got it. Here's another one; I think it's one of the easiest...

A pro-life board meeting and a private Mass

My friend Christie has evidently decided I have too much free time, for today she took me to her Vounteers for Life board meeting. VFL appears to consist of three nuns and however many volunteers they currently have, all living in an apartment building, sharing meals and morning and evening prayer in community and spending their days working for various pro-life causes, like crisis pregnancy centers. They're looking for another board member, someone young and web-saavy who can figure out how best to promote the organization to other web-saavy Catholic women who might be thinking of dedicating a year to full-time volunteer service (the volunteers get room, board, and health insurance, but very little money). Theoretically the new board member could be me; I don't know about that but anyway it was most interesting to be there. The board does wonderful work and they were great to meet (the fun part of volunteering is working with other volunteers.) Sister Paula was in charge and stuffed us with breakfast foods while we talked about finances and potential volunteers and the fact that the huge Archdiocese of LA has no official program to teach NFP in the parishes and maybe we could get one started up if we could find $15,000 a year for a full time volunteer....

But my favorite part was before the board meeting, when a former Navy chaplain said Mass for the four of us who arrived early. We had it in the living room of one of the apartments, which was set up as a chapel (the kitchen was the sacristy). One of the year-long volunteers lives in that apartment; imagine having a chapel in your living room with a tabernacle and all! I really liked our itty-bitty Mass. It was both thrilling and consoling to think that it had the same essential character as a Mass in a big cathedral-- the greatest prayer of all, in union with the whole Church, Christ's sacrifice made present to God, and his Body given to us. Amazing.

(Actually, "thrilling and consoling" also describes my feelings about the entire Catholic Church pretty well. Home sweet home and a great adventure at the same time.)

One detail I didn't think much of: the vestments provided for the priest, which were of plain unbleached cotton with a red cross crocheted on the front. I mean... homespun cotton! Crochet! Enter that thing into the Ugliest Vestment Contest (winners here)! The four members of the congregation were more formally attired than the poor unsuspecting priest was. But I'll stop complaining, for it was still a great experience.

Sister Paula's been in the pro-life movement since the 60's, so I asked her if things are getting any better. Yes, she said-- in the early days abortion was seen as a great and obvious good for women, and apparently there wasn't much thought given to the harm it would do. Now people are more aware of how it can hurt women, and thanks to ultrasound they're much more aware of how it dismembers very human-looking little babies. She said some leaders of the pro-choice side even published an editorial recently saying "We've lost the moral high ground in the public's view. We've got to get it back!"