Homily: Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings: Is 49:1-6; Ps 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5ab-6ab, 15 and 17; Jn 13:21-33, 36-38

A few years ago, I read a remarkable novel by Gene Wolfe about a soldier, a mercenary who fought for the Persians during the Greek-Persian Wars in the fifth century before Christ. 

What made it so interesting is that our hero suffered a head wound that left him with almost no short-term memory. By the end of each day, he’d forgotten everything that happened the day before. And so he kept a diary on a scroll, keeping track of people, events, conversations. Each day he read the scroll, or at least parts of it.

But it really didn’t help him very much, because so much of life is defined by relationships with others. For him, all others were strangers, even those who’d normally be considered close friends. Eventually he saw his affliction as a kind of blessing, and memory as a kind of curse. Lacking memory all became new and interesting. Like a child, he appreciated the world as it unfolded before his eyes.

Anyway, I couldn’t help but think of this book as I reread John’s Gospel the other day. We’ve heard or read the Gospel story so often that the wonder of it all can be lost. Thanks to our memories, we know what will happen next, and this can cause us to ignore that which is most meaningful. This time, as I read John, I tried to read it as if for the first time, as if I were one of the disciples, living these events without the benefit of hindsight.

What struck me was how reasonable the disciples seemed in their on-again, off-again belief. Before I’d always been exasperated with them and found myself saying, “Oh, c’mon guys, how stupid can you be? Haven’t you figured out who Jesus is?” But now, I could even empathize with the Pharisees.

I found myself viewing the Gospel from a human point of view, a perspective that also caused me to see both Peter and Judas differently. Both men were put to the test, weren’t they? And both failed miserably.

Judas Departs

And yet, when we look at them, we can’t help but notice the difference. Judas deliberately betrayed his Master. We can’t fully grasp his motives, but from all indications it was a cold and calculated act. 

But Peter…Peter acted impulsively, out of human weakness and cowardice. He neither intended, nor expected to do what he did. And in a moment of weakness, Peter’s bravado crumbled. He denied His Lord with an oath and a curse.

Peter's Betrayal

Peter seems to be one of those guileless people whose words mirrored his thoughts, who always spoke with his heart, even though he would ultimately betray those words because of a weak will. Peter vows to die for Jesus. It’s a vow he will break that very night, but one he will ultimately keep, years later.

But Judas…he makes no vow that night, but in his treachery, he brings about Jesus' death, a death that redeems us. John tells us Satan entered into Judas when he rejected Jesus and departed to complete his deadly errand.

That’s what Satan can do, brothers and sisters, but only if we let him. He can twist love and turn it into hate. He can turn holiness into pride, discipline into cruelty, affection into complacency, trust into despair.

Peter, though, even in his sinfulness, rejected Satan and continued to trust in Jesus. He continued to trust in our loving, forgiving God. While Judas, in his sinfulness, fell into despair, a despair that denies forgiveness, a despair that denies love, a despair that rips any vestige of hope from the heart.

Brothers and sisters, we know we’re all sinners. We all betrayers of sorts. But I like to think you and I are more like Peter, sinners who still love the Lord, and who never forget how much He loves us, and how willing He is to forgive us, again and again.

In Memory...Always

Memory is one of God's great gifts because it keeps alive the people and events of the past so we can, in a certain sense, relive and reappreciate them. We can also learn from these memories, since in hindsight they often provide lessons that teach us how to live better lives. Equally important, though, our memories can be shared with others, with future generations, so they too can benefit from the experiences that have formed us into who we are. We shouldn't, then, hide these memories, but should pass them on, telling the stories of those who have gone before us.

My everyday thoughts, and I expect yours too, are often interrupted by memories, some sought and many unbidden, memories that call me back to other times and places. But Memorial Day is different. On this day we make a conscious decision to remember some very special individuals: those who have sacrificed their lives for our country, for their fellow citizens, and for the timeless values enshrined in our Constitution. 

For many Americans these memories are very personal, reminding us of family members, other relatives, friends, and those with whom we served. For me, today calls to mind a long list that includes many friends, shipmates, and Naval Academy classmates who made the ultimate sacrifice, most during the Vietnam, conflict. I've probably mentioned some of these men in previous Memorial Day posts, but that's okay; we really can't mention them enough. Indeed, hardly a day passes when I don't think of some of them and pray for them and their families. Here are just a few.

2nd Lt Henry Wright, USMC, was a Naval Academy classmate (1967) and a friend. Henry, only 21, was our first classmate to lose his life in combat. Henry led a platoon to the relief of a company under attack south of Da Nang during the communist Tet offensive. He led an attack against heavily entrenched enemy positions and was mortally wounded while directing covering fire for the evacuation of wounded Marines. During the action he carried his wounded radioman to safety and tended to him until the arrival of a corpsman. Henry died on February 6, 1968...forever young.

Captain Ron Zinn, US Army, was my brother Jeff's West Point classmate (1962) and roommate. Because we lived only 50 miles from West Point, Ron often spent weekends at our home and treated me like a kid brother. (The photo is of Jeff and Ron on their graduation day.) Ron was an amazing young man, a world-class race walker who represented the USA in two Olympic games (1960 and 1964). But he was an Army officer first and during his tour in Vietnam, he died as a result of small arms fire during a firefight in Gia Dinh province. Ron was only 26 when he died on July 7, 1965. My brother, Jeff, also a Vietnam vet, died on January 19, 2010 

There are many others, most of them classmates who died in Vietnam or while training for combat: Hal Castle, Bart Creed, Jim Hicks, Guido Carloni, Tom Lange, and so many more. And I have to add another classmate, Mike Smith, astronaut and pilot of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle...all good men. How did Our Lord Jesus put it?

"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" [Jn 15:16].

We thank them all today and every day for their sacrifice; and we thank God for their letting us share in their lives.

Have a prayerful Memorial Day.

Verses Recalled

I just discovered something shocking...well, I suppose shocking is a bit hyperbolic, but it's not a good thing. Apparently school children are no longer required to memorize poems as they study English literature in middle and high school. According to my reliable source — a current high school teacher of English — many schools ignore centuries of great English and American literature, preferring instead to focus on modern novels by writers like Stephen King. And poetry? Apparently, at best, it's back-burnered or completely ignored. I hope this is not true, or at least not universal.

If you're my age or even a few years younger, I'm pretty sure you were exposed to at least some of the English language's great poetry, and probably had to memorize many of those poems. I can still recite some of them, so burned into my memory were those lines. A poem like Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty" will always be with me:

Glory be to God for dappled things -- 

    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;

    Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;

        And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                        Praise him.

(Although I can still recall all the words, I had to look up the punctuation.)

The first time I read this poem, in my eighth-grade classroom, I was intrigued by its sounds, by the flow of the verse, but I hadn't a clue what all those strange words meant. I then made the mistake of mentioning this to Sister Francis Jane, O.P. In doing so I had talked myself into another homework assignment: "Find out," she ordered, "and tomorrow you can tell the class what you discovered." 

The next day, I introduced the class to another new word -- new, at least, for me -- "paradox"  -- and went on to explain, very poorly and nervously, how God fills the world with wondrous things that show off the variety and surprise of His creation. It's a creation, too, of opposites that display His glory. And, perhaps not surprisingly, man, in his own use of nature's gifts, imitates God. 

My brief commentary resulted in lots of blank looks and no applause, but one cute girl with long, auburn tresses seemed mildly impressed, so it was worth it. Of course, I ended up angering the entire class because "Franny Jane" (as we affectionately called Sister behind her back) decided that everyone should memorize the poem...lots of groans and dirty looks directed at yours truly.

And how many of you had to memorize Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"? Once again the words have remained with me. I found Frost's poetry refleshing because I could understand what he was saying without turning to the Oxford English Dictionary. It just took me a while to comprehend his deeper meanings related to the choices life places before us. And with that, Franny Jane introduced us to symbols and metaphors and similes. 

There's so much more verse tucked away in my aging memory banks -- poetry by Shakespeare, Tennyson, Pope, Dickinson, Francis Thompson, and many others -- and like the songs we loved in our youth, I can recall these poems and savor them when life's challenges demand a touch of calm or a reminder of reality. How sad that the memories of many of today's children will be empty of such wonderful poetry, for poetry introduces us to the fullness and intensity of language. Indeed, poetry, for me, is another proof of the very existence of God, in whose image and likeness you and I were created. The Creative Word presents us with a perfect divine song, a gift from a loving God who fills His creation with the objects of our poetry.

An Anniversary and Memories

I tend to view my life as a long succession of specific events, and I suppose that's normal. I suspect most of us measure the passage of our lives by the unique, special days that occasionally occur. For example, I can actually recall much that happened on the day I graduated from Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, NY back in June 1962. But I have absolutely no recollection of anything that took place on the days immediately preceding or following it. Certain events in life just don't seem to achieve the level of importance demanded by our faulty memories. 

There are, of course, exceptions. Some years ago, during my days as a Navy pilot, I had a friend, now deceased, who spent many years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. The communists treated him abominably, tortured him frequently, and forced him to spend most of that time in solitary confinement. He told me that he had never thought of his memory as anything but average. In fact, he said in college he had struggled with foreign languages and organic chemistry because both demanded so much of his memory. But then he was thrown into solitary confinement in Hanoi. He was not yet 30 years old, and in an attempt to maintain his sanity, he began to review his life, working backward in time, trying to remember everything he could. He was surprised by how much he was able to retrieve, and came to believe that every detail of his life was stored away in brain cells. He just had to learn how to access it all. He got to the point where he could remember the names and faces of every child in his first grade class. (I can remember only one: Bonnie Trompeter, a beautiful little girl who I later learned went on to become a supermodel. That tells you more about me than about Bonnie or my memory.)

As for my life, the key events begin with a day I cannot remember: my Baptism in 1944, at the age of 11 days. I do, however, remember my first communion and confirmation -- first communion because it was in Bridgeport, Connecticut where we lived while our Larchmont, NY house was leased to another family (We had just returned from Germany); and confirmation at age 10 because I was enamored of a cute, little red-haired girl named Sherry. (There seems to be a pattern here.) 

Yes, I was a fairly normal kid, if a bit skinny, with many extraordinary talents, as depicted in the following photos;

Little League Athlete 

Concert Pianist

Future Aviator - Model Airplane

Of course I have many other memories -- the years our family spent in Panama City Beach, Florida and Heidelberg, Germany back in the early 1950s. High school is a bit of a blur, but in the midst (or mist) of it all I can actually recall dozens of events, many good, some not so good. I won't bore you with details of my year at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service or my four years at the U.S. Naval Academy. In general those were five good years during which I made many lifelong friends and even learned a few useful things.

On September 16, 1967 I met Dear Diane on a blind date, an event that changed my life for the good. This was followed by two other events that occurred only two weeks apart. Diane and I were married in Pensacola, Florida on November 2, 1968 and I received my Navy pilot's Wings of Gold on November 15. The former was far more important, but the latter wasn't too shabby.

Just Married - 2 November 1968

This leads me to the anniversary I celebrate today. 50 years ago, on April 17, 1970, I was the co-pilot of the recovery helicopter that picked up the Apollo 13 astronauts when they returned from their ill-fated mission to the moon. Chuck Smiley, our squadron's commanding officer was the pilot, and as his co-pilot I got to tag along. When I wasn't taking pictures with my old Leica iiiF, he actually let me take the controls for a while. Chuck, who died just a few years ago, was one of those remarkable people who shape the lives of others. He certainly shaped mine. Chuck was my hero, a very special man who taught me more than even I will ever know.

Recovery Helicopter Crew - Apollo 13

Over the years I've been asked many times to speak about the Apollo 13 recovery. Eventually I put together a slide show, and then a PowerPoint presentation, to tell the key parts of the story. Here's a link to the presentation, should you want to relive that now-ancient history.

Apollo 13 Recovery Presentation

I suppose I'll continue to remember that day in 1970, perhaps even little shreds of it when I'm locked away in one of Florida's many memory care facilities. My hope, of course, is that my body does not outlive my memory.

The Inescapable Power of the Cross

Clipper, in Nichols, looking for chickens in the snow

Growing up as a youngster I lived first in rural Connecticut and then in suburban New York. I was only four years old when we made the move and suppose I was too young to notice much of a change between these two very different environments. Although I have many memories of those earliest years in Nichols, Connecticut, almost all center around our home and family. I can recall quite vividly every room of our house, and in my mind's eye can even picture the view from the window-seat in the living room. I remember well our dog, Clipper, a large German Shepherd who, despite his friendly, engaging nature, had developed one bad habit: a taste for a neighbor's chickens. For my brother and me, the highlight of our day was Dad's return from work. We would wait for him at the foot of our long driveway where he would stop so we could stand on the running board of his Packard sedan. He would then move up the driveway, at about two miles per hour, with the two of us joyously hanging on. I remember, too, our immediate neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Scalzi, who with their children and their collie, Laddie, lived in a lovely Tudor-style home. And the smells...how can one forget the smells? It's the scents of the past that seem to linger longest in the memory. Even today, whenever I smell a wet dog, my thoughts rush back to a day when I helped my mom catch Clipper who stubbornly refused to come inside during a heavy rainstorm. I can still smell the ripening apples on the trees in our backyard as my brother and I watched Dad standing on his stepladder picking them. And when the wind was right, who could forget the ripe, tangy, homegrown odor of Parker's Dairy Farm next door? We lived in a wonderful place and I've often wondered how my life might have differed had we remained there.

But these and the many other memories of those early years in Connecticut never take me beyond our home and its immediate surroundings. I have no recollection of any other place at that time of my life. I know, for example, that I spent some months at a local nursery school, run I believe by a Mrs. Curtis, but can recall nothing of it. I'm also certain Mom took us on occasion to Beardsley Park in Bridgeport; I have photographs, but no memories. Indeed, my earliest memories of places outside the home are of school and church, later memories from our life in New York. I find this very odd, but I suppose memories, especially those of early childhood, are fickle, capricious things. Who knows? Perhaps, as I enter this last phase of my life, memories of those earliest days will come flooding back and overpower the recall of more recent events, like what I had for breakfast.

In the midst of all these, my earliest recollections, one other memory is remarkably clear. It's the memory of a cross, a crucifix really, over the altar of a church. It's a very early memory, a pre-New York memory, and so this crucifix might well have been in the church we attended in Connecticut. I'm not certain about this since I don't even know the name of that church. It could have been in another church somewhere else. I simply can't be sure. But the image, this visual memory of that cross, is very intense. I can picture it as if it were right here on the wall of this room. Strangely, I can see clearly every aspect of the image. I can see the expression on the face of our Lord, one of victory colored with extreme sadness. I can see the nails, the wounds, the crown of thorns, the rough wood of the cross. And I can actually recall my child-like thoughts as I gazed on this symbol of our faith, wondering why someone would do such a thing to Jesus, the one Mom had told me was my friend.

I think it interesting that the very first symbolic object I can recall is a crucifix, the Cross of Calvary. This is particularly pleasing to me. I'm happy that I was blessed with this early memory, a memory that has never faded. For some, as St. Paul reminds us, the Cross remains a stumbling block, and for others a folly [See 1 Cor 1:18-24]. But for the faithful, it is the overpowering sign of our faith and calls to mind St. Paul's wonderful words to the Christians of Corinth:

"For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified" [1 Cor 2:2].

Sometimes that's exactly the way I feel. When something triggers the early memory of that crucifix I can think of little else. The image fills my thoughts. The Cross exerts power not just over you and me, but over all of creation. St. Paul, of course, recognized full well the tremendous power of the Cross of Christ:

"But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" [Gal 6:14].

And I find myself  pitying those who reject the Cross, those who actually despise it; for St. Paul also address them in his unambiguous way:

"For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the Cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their 'shame.' Their minds are occupied with earthly things" [Phil 3:18-19].

More on the Cross of Christ in my next post; but in the meantime, pray for those who "conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ."

Pax et bonum...

A Good Memory is Overrated

My father had a friend, Bill Hersey, a self-taught memory expert who made a good living teaching others his memory aids and techniques. I still use a few of  them myself, although with my ever-present iPhone -- "There's an app for that!" -- I find myself relying more on the cellphone in my pocket than the cells in my brain. This increased reliance on man-made technology over God-given brainpower will no doubt have its effects over the long haul...well, assuming at my age I have a long haul.

I used to be envious of people who displayed extraordinarily good memories. And when an expert like Bill Hersey would say, "Anyone can have an outstanding memory," I'd usually mutter under my breath, "Yeah, easy for you to say. What else have you got to do? Memory's your business. I don't have the time to devote all my waking hours to learning these silly techniques." Of course, if I had actually studied and practiced those techniques of his, I would have spent far less time relearning things I already knew. At this point in my life, though, I really don't have the need. If I've forgotten something, I just Google it.

But back before Google, and iPhones, and PDAs, before the arrival of the digital computer, people had two choices: they either wrote things down or remembered them. And if they were illiterate, well, that left only one choice. Most experts who study these things believe that the people of the past had much better memories than you and me, a hypothesis that has apparently been successfully tested on primitive tribes that have no written language. Indeed, some of these experts believe that poetry and song, with its rhyme and rhythm, were originally developed as memory aids, as a means to record and pass down the history of families and tribes.

You can test this yourself by asking a stray teenager a series of questions to test his or her memory on the kind of things they would learn in school; questions like these: In what year did Columbus discover the new world? What nation attacked the United States on December 7, 1941? What two countries were involved in the Louisiana Purchase? And then check the music charts and ask them to recite the lyrics of the top three songs. I suspect they'll do a lot better on the latter than the former. Rhyme and rhythm make a difference. Of course, the fact that they may not have been taught any American history in school could have an effect on their answers.

I know that whenever I need to know the last day of the month, I find myself reciting, "Thirty days hath September, April, June and November..." It's just a lot easier than trying to remember a collection of unrelated facts like the number of days in individual months.

Just the other day I witnessed a rather poignant example of the impact of song and rhyme on the memory. The wife of one of our volunteer delivery drivers at the soup kitchen suffers from Alzheimer's. He is her sole caregiver and takes her along every Thursday when he delivers meals to shut-ins. The disease, though, has progressed to the point where she rarely speaks to us, and I'm sure she has no idea who we are. But the other day, some of the women kitchen volunteers began to sing old hymns as they filled the take-out containers with the day's meal. And wouldn't you know it? Donna joined right in and sang along with them. The melody, the words, the rhyme and rhythm were still there.

I noticed something similar some years ago when I would take the Eucharist to the residents of a local nursing home. Each week I would visit the Catholic residents, including those in the Alzheimer's ward. Even if they weren't able to receive Holy Communion, I would still pray with them, and always finished by reciting the Our Father. It was remarkable how many of these patients, who uttered not a word and often had the most blank expressions on their faces, would suddenly light up once they heard those familiar words. And even more surprisingly, most would then join me praying aloud.

These odd thoughts all began some minutes ago when I couldn't remember an acquaintance's last name. It finally came to me, but not before I had recalled two of my favorite quotes, both relating to memory. (I find it especially interesting that I have no trouble remembering these relatively obscure comments by two people I never knew personally, but had to struggle to recall the last name of someone I  was with two days ago. Go figure!)

Anyway, the first comment was made by Maurice Baring, an early 20th-century British writer whose book, A Puppet Show of Memory, is a classic memoir of the age. Regarding memory, Baring's words have provided me with much consolation as my memory power weakens:

"Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary."

Flannery O'Connor, self-portrait

This just reinforces my belief that the things I've forgotten weren't all that important anyway.

The second comment is by one of my heroines, Flannery O'Connor, who wrote:

"Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me."

...and provided me with another reason to rejoice over my poor memory.

By the way, whether or not you're a Flannery O'Connor fan, I recommend reading a collection of her letters, published posthumously under the title, The Habit of Being. It is by far the most enjoyable collection of letters I have ever read...at least I think so, if I remember correctly...