St. Peter’s Dome

In Rome a great basilica dominates the city even 17 centuries after the first Christian emperor built it over a poor man’s shallow grave. Driving into Rome on the A24 from the Apennine Hills, before you can distinguish any other single building, you can pick out St. Peter’s Dome punctuating the skyline of the Eternal City. Once inside, you can look straight up almost 500 feet into Michelangelo’s cupola, and then down into the crypt 30 feet beneath the papal altar. A plumb line dropped from the center of that dome would pass through the middle of the altar and straight through the tomb of St. Peter, whose bones are kept in 24 Plexiglas boxes below the altar. Peter was martyred near that spot in the year 64, and his body flung into a hastily-dug grave. Over that grave, the entire basilica, and really the whole Church, eventually developed its magnificent form. Finally, in six-foot tall lettering circling the inner barrel of St. Peter’s vast dome are these words in gold mosaic: “Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram edificabo ecclesiam meam,” which are the words of Christ from today’s gospel: “You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Church.” Simon Bar Jonah, Jesus declares, I rename you “Rocky,” and upon this rock I will establish my kingdom on earth. Quite an honor for a simple fisherman from Galilee….

Ordination Anniversaries

Every five years each of the world’s 5000 bishops must make an “ad limina” visit to Rome—to meet with the Pope, but more importantly, to pray at the tombs of the apostles (ad limina means “to the shores,” that is, to the shores of the port city of Rome, where Peter and Paul were martyred and eleven of the Apostles are buried). Today, June 29, is the feast Saints Peter and Paul, both executed by the Emperor the same year. June 29 is also a popular day for priests to be ordained, that they might model their priestly service after that of those priests who watered the infant Church with their blood. Pope Benedict, for example, was ordained on this day in 1951, and forty years after him, I was ordained in 1991 by Bishop Donald Montrose in Stockton, California. We priests aspire to serve Christ, to love Christ, like Saints Peter and Paul, and we beg their prayers for our vocation. Please pray for Pope Benedict, 63 years a priest today, and throw in one for me if you get a chance.

Loosening Chains

Peter figures in both the traditional Mass’s Epistle and Gospel, but we don’t hear anything about poor old St. Paul. This imbalance is addressed in the reformed liturgy, in which we are also given a reading from 2 Timothy: “I, Paul, am already being poured out like a libation…. I have finished the race; I have kept the faith…. The Lord gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. …To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.” Peter too exclaims in the Epistle that “Now I know for certain that the Lord sent his angel to rescue me from the hand of Herod.…” God rescued both Apostles from the “Lion’s mouth” several times, but only because both had already surrendered themselves to be “poured out like a libation.” Absolutely giving themselves to Christ (in the words of St. Paul, “to me life is Christ, and death is so much gain”), they were found adequate to the role of twin pillars for the nascent Church.

The Blood of Martyrs is Seed of the Church

And the essential purpose of these apostles? It was to “bind” and to “loose:” to bind up spiritual wounds with right doctrine, and to loose the chains of sin. Angels literally unlocked iron chains from Peter and Paul in their imprisonment, even as Christ had unlocked their spiritual chains by His blood. These men came to realize what God had done for them, and they threw themselves into the work of making known his name to all the world. By Christ’s authority, Peter binds us to right doctrine and right worship; by Christ’s authority he looses the shackles of sin from us. Like a good father, he holds us fast to the truth, and he shakes loose the toxins of error and sin from us. We are Roman Catholics, and we glory in the grace given these two Apostles for our salvation. In a culture dominated by relativism, we bind ourselves to the Truth of which they bore witness by their blood. This Truth is a Person, and this Person loves us. Let us love Him as did Peter and Paul, even to the shedding of our blood, should our testimony call for it.

This laptop was written on June 21, the day after I reached the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, but I delayed posting it in honor of Corpus Christi Sunday (June 22).

A last look at Mount Kilimanjaro. My eyes fill with tears, which is a little embarrassing here in the bus from Arusha to Nairobi. Thankfully, instead of the usual rap music, our driver has a Christian station on the radio, with choruses of devout disciples singing happy songs: Asante Mungu, Assante Jesu. A pious and expansive Kenynan, Sephora, sits to my left, and David Bangama with his lovely wife from Tanzania sit in front of me. I do not want them to see my tears. They are Kili tears and cannot be shared just yet.

Through the vast African plain we roll, passing villages of Massai in their scarlet robes and sticks in hand as they govern small flocks of goats and cows. I have finally won a place in the real Africa. Umbrella-shaped Acacia trees populate her dusty grasslands. Three ostriches eye our passing bus, their large grey feathers flapping in the dusty wind. Every so often a ponderous anthill punctuates the plain, its lumpy towers looking like so many fumaroles communicating from a world below. Mt. Kilimanjaro is a volcano too, and I can still see it rising through various strata of clouds as our bus bumps along the potted road toward Nairobi.

Yesterday morning I watched the sun rise from Kilimanjaro’s highest point, Uhuru Peak. On my way down I saw a woman struggling to reach the signposts at Stella Point (600 feet below the summit); she grasped the sign, collapsing in sobs. Her lips were blue and she moved over to some rocks and vomited. Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest point on earth one can climb without technical equipment or life support. 50,000 a year attempt to reach her 19,300 foot summit, but less than half make it. My partner and I made it through careful planning and a dedicated guide named Davis from Tanzania.

At 11pm on Thursday night, my porter Mangusha tugged at the tent. “It’s time, Babba Joseph.” I unzipped my bag and felt how icy the air had become since I had turned in after dinner. After a bit of steaming porridge in the mess tent, we suited up for the climb. The vast group from the South Africa mining company was already filing out one by one, headlamps blazing in the inky darkness. Our group of four soon passed them under ten billion stars. Within an hour, though, the moon cleared Awanzi peak and we began switching off our lights to see the moon’s glow on freshly-fallen snow. The ascent was just over 4000 feet up, and we had spent five days progressively acclimatizing. So far, this trek had been a cakewalk for me. I ate up the miles between camps and hardly felt the altitude. Davis, our guide, took blood oxygen levels morning and night, and mine had maintained itself at over 90%.

Shortly after we started this final push, though, Davis began correcting me. “Father Joseph, you must follow me. Do not choose your own path.” I reluctantly agreed. At a rest stop he told me to zip all my pockets up and I became irritated. He kept pulling my water bottle out for me to drink (hydration hose long since frozen). At another rest stop I was having trouble getting my handkerchief out with heavily-gloved hands, and Davis moved to put it back for me. “Davis,” I said, facing him squarely. “I’m a big boy. We will get along much better if you treat me as an adult.” He responded meekly and we trudged upward. “Jeepers,” I ruminated, “I have probably hiked a lot more than he has. What does this African know about mountaineering that a Californian doesn’t?” I struggled with resentment toward a younger man.

We continued in silence for another hour. Then Davis began to sing. And my partner and I began to fail. We were not breathing that hard, but his head began to pound and I started seeing stars not only in the sky above but on the ground below. We stopped for the regulation “ibuprofen break”—even the guides pop 400mg at this point. We started again, and my stomach began to cramp up and my strength to fail. I looked up at the towering ridges framed in starlight above us: they were leaning, turning, falling on me. Davis gripped my shoulders: “You can do this, Father Joseph,” he insisted. “You climb this mountain with your mind. Do not think you are bigger than Kilimanjaro. But do not think you are smaller than God made you. You are small, and the mountain is big, but God is with you. You can do this, but you need to follow me.” I was panting: “Yes, Davis. Yes, I will follow you. Let us go.” We got up and now the slope rose almost 45 degrees above us. I glued my eyes on Davis’ heals and moved with him, one step, one step, one step.

And with that conversion of attitude, joy and strength returned. I had only to follow. It does not take that much to climb this mountain—only humility. Only the surrender of adult control and the willingness to follow Daddy up the hill. I began to sing with Davis and I began to weep. No one could see me in the dark, but I panted out great silent sobs with each gasping breath. God is with us; He is carrying us up this mountain. I had become a little child. All I must do is follow Daddy, one small step at a time. I need not worry about how long or how far or how difficult. I need not worry about myself.

And so we did it. We reached Stella Point under a sky filled with stars, but with the early dawn breaking in the east. We stopped for water and some biscuits, then another 50 minutes and we struggled up to Uhuru Point ten minutes before the sun cleared the eastern rim of Kilimanjaro’s far crater. I was drunk with oxygen deprivation, trying to utter rational lightheartedness but walking as if disembodied, as if I was watching the climb from far away. We took the pictures, gamboled a bit in the snow, and watched the mountain cast her shadow a thousand miles across Tanzania as the sun rose behind her.

We began our way down to base camp. Davis was very happy. “You made it guys! I knew you could!” He slyly leaned closer. “Just in case, I had this in my pack.” He pulled out a large steel canister of oxygen. “But you didn’t need it,” he said. “You just needed to follow your guide.”

Yesterday I returned from Tanzania and a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, and later this week will post a description of this adventure. Today the Church gives us Corpus Christi Sunday, and so I post the homily I gave to the Missionaries of Charity here in Nairobi. Many of the disabled men from the sisters’ home came to Mass, and their genuine smiles and authentic devotion shone through otherwise crippling physical and mental disabilities. Of such children is the Kingdom of God.

A Public Holiday

The Church celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi as a “public” holy day. Obviously not everyone celebrates it, but Corpus Christi is “public” because Jesus gives his flesh not only for Catholics but “for the life of the world.” Manna, the Old Testament symbol of the Eucharist, was given only to the Jewish people. Christ gives His body, however, to the whole world, and we receive it on behalf of the entire human race. If only “the public” would eat this bread, we would have peace on earth and endless life in heaven! Mother Teresa often said that Jesus is the bread to be broken, and we become that bread when we receive him. As His broken body heals the brokenness of humanity, so our brokenness, in Christ, heals “the public.” That is your essential vocation as Missionaries of Charity: not just to give bread to the poor, but to be bread for the poor.

Justin the Atheist

St. John Paul wrote that, by bearing the Eucharist in procession through city streets, “the Church proclaims that the sacrifice of Christ is for the whole world.” When John Paul offered public Mass for a million people in Warsaw in 1979, and when he offered the Body of Christ to five million in Manila’s city square in 1995, and when he gave the Body of Christ to 12 million in Mexico City in 2002, he did so not just for those Catholics present, but for the entire world. And the entire world received blessing from that Mass in Warsaw, which ultimately led to the overthrow of communist regimes in all of Eastern Europe.

Last week I hiked for a week with a young man from Colorado named Justin. Educated in American public schools, which exclude any mention of God, he said he didn’t believe in God or in anything he couldn’t see. Three times the Holy Spirit gave me the right moment to speak to him about God’s love without awkwardness, and each time Justin expressed polite non-responsiveness. He could see how many Tanzanian porters attended morning Mass on the trail, but he could also see that no European or Americans paid the least attention to the things of God on our journey. Justin and other wealthy unbelievers are that public for whom this feast of Corpus Christi is also offered. Justin is dying from hunger but doesn’t know it; who will receive the bread of life for him?

Sacrifices made all for thee

Mother begged you sisters to offer your afflictions for the love of Jesus and the poor. “Our chalices,” she wrote, “will be filled with sacrifices made all for thee.” In the First reading, Moses explains that God allowed the Israelites to suffer hunger, and then fed them with manna in order to convince them that man does not live by bread alone. It was the Lord who guided them through that “vast and terrible desert” with its serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground, bringing forth water from the rock and manna from the sky. Thus Moses explains why God allows suffering? Only through the humility of deprivation do we learn to trust Him, and learn to love Him. The public is dying of hunger for love, for meaning, for God, but it is so drugged on cheap substitutes that it doesn’t know it. My friend Justin, for example, desperately seeks to convince himself that he is happy, or as happy as one can be in a sad and meaningless world. God will allow Justin to suffer in the hope that he will learn to love and trust Him. Let us trust the divine physician’s treatment for our spiritual sickness when we suffer or see pain in others.

Corpus Christi priests

In 1981, Fr. Joseph Langford and some other priests wanted to work more closely with Mother for the poorest of the poor. They wanted a share in the secret fire that radiated from this little Albanian nun. At first this little group called itself the “Priestly coworkers of Mother Teresa.” But Mother soon changed the name to the “Corpus Christi Movement of Priests.” Why did Mother choose the name of Corpus Christi? I think it was because she wanted to remind priests of their essential purpose: to bring the Eucharist from heaven to earth “for the life of the world.” Mother also knew the essential purpose of your Society is to touch the Body of Christ, first in the Holy Mass and then in the poorest of the poor. “It is the same Jesus.”

Let us learn how to touch the fragile Body of Christ from that Mother who first received Him on earth. Our Lady knows how to receive him perfectly, as she did at the Annunciation, and will teach us how to receive the Body of Christ, both in the Eucharist and in poverty-stricken humanity. We can receive Him with the purity of her Immaculate Heart, if we stay devoted to her.

A Happy Father’s Day to all our fathers on this Trinity Sunday, from whose godhead all Fatherhood takes its name. I pray especially for my own father today. I will remember your fathers at the altar today, and ask you to please pray for mine (John Illo).

I write this on Saturday night in Moshi, Tanzania, where I just had a lovely talk with two fathers: Fr. Leopardo from the parish across the street, and Fr. Severin from the parish 10 miles up the Arusha Road. We got to talking about Mt. Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow I will begin a seven-day trek to the summit of that magnificent peak, which I beheld tonight during my rosary walk. I was on a quiet country road with cornfields on either side, and there in the northern sky was a cloud that didn’t look like the other clouds. The white was a little whiter, and there seemed to be no hard edges to it. The first time you see a really tall mountain on the horizon you are confounded. Nothing solid could be that high in the sky. Surely it must be a cloud bank. But it is not a cloud bank. Indeed, for some time after the gloom had already deepened here in the valley, I could see the setting sun blaze off Kibo’s glacier 16,000 feet above us. The Masai tribe worships that mountain, the source of water for their flocks, and one can readily understand their awe.

Back at the Lodge, my two new priest friends were talking about their Trinity Sunday homilies. “Kilimanjaro has three peaks—Kibo, Shira, and Mawenzi. The Holy Trinity is everywhere in nature!” Fr. Severin exclaimed. “We must tell that to the people.” I will concelebrate the early Mass at the local parish and not understand many words but I will see the joy on the face of the Tanzanian priest as he speaks of the Trinity. He will tell his people, who will receive this word with joy, that the deepest truth of the universe is that God is a community of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He has imprinted a desire for community—to love and be loved by others—in every fiber of the created world. Even the one mountain Kilimanjaro has three distinct peaks, which “communicate” with each other, which stay together.

On this Father’s Day, I bless my own father for staying with my mother for 60 years, and my mother with staying with my father. May God grant us all to imitate His own communion of love by never giving up on each other. Even should we have to be separated, may we be faithful to our very natures by continuing to love those God has put in our lives.

On Saturday a local priest pointed to a large green area on the other side of the highway. “Lots of monkeys in that park,” he said. “They come across the road looking for food in our house.” Yesterday I rode to that park, Nairobi’s City Park, in search of monkeys. There were lots of them, hanging from branches, crashing through bushes, perched thoughtfully on fenceposts, and hauling cute monkey babies upside down under their bellies. I stopped to inspect one at close range, and of course a man with a camera appeared to ask if I wanted my photo taken with the little beast. “Maybe,” I demurred. “But what is the name of these monkeys?” “They are monkeys,” he drawled. “They don’t have names.” “No, I mean the name of their species,” I persisted. He seemed unenlightened. “They’re just monkeys.”

It made me think: thousands of monkeys in the middle of Nairobi, and no one knows their names. But certainly God knows them. “Not a sparrow falls without your Father knowing it.” In this park, in addition to the monkeys, were hundreds of Kenyans and at least one American. Each of us has a mother, and each one’s mother knows us.

I gave a talk to the sisters last night on Our Lady and the Eucharist (the retreat is on Our Lady, roughly following the 20 mysteries of the rosary). I have to make the sisters laugh a bit, so I told them about the monkeys. If God loves the monkeys, He loves us too, and that’s why He gave us His Holy Mother, to feed us the Bread of Life. Here is a bit of what the sisters heard last night.

Our Lady was not at the Last Supper. One reason was that Christ held this Supper for his Apostles, to ordain them for the Eucharist. She was not called to be a priest; her role, like that of Mother Teresa, was not to bring the Eucharist to the people, but to bring the people to the Eucharist. Mother Teresa brought the love of Jesus into the dark holes of the poor, where the priests could not go. When the poor had received the love of Jesus in their hearts, then she would bring the priest to give them the love of Jesus in their bodies. Then she would call the priest, who would hear their confessions and give them the Eucharist.

Another reason Mary was not at the Last Supper was that she had already received her First Holy Communion, which the Apostles were to receive that night. She had already received Jesus when she had said her “Fiat” (or in Hebrew “Amen”) to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. Also, while Jesus gave Himself to the apostles veiled under sacramental signs, Our Lady had received Him in the fullness of his physical reality. Hers was the world’s first First Holy Communion, and the only reception of the Eucharist “unveiled,” not as bread but as a baby in her womb. She knew the Eucharist “face to face;” she nursed Him, and spoke with Him, and loved Him as her child.

But to receive that First Eucharist, Jesus’ Mother first had to say an unconditional “yes” to God’s will. We call it her Fiat, from the Latin “let it be done [according to your will],” but this simple village girl didn’t speak Latin. She probably said the Hebrew word Amen. That means something like “so be it” or “yes, of course!” or “be it done!” That was Our Lady’s vow of consecration to God; she said it once, and she renewed her total surrender every day. You too, dear sisters, say “Amen” every day, before receiving Jesus Christ, and when you say it, you are renewing your vows. Mary made one vow, but you have made six baptismal vows and four religious vows. All our vows, however, come down to one word: “Amen.” We say it before receiving Holy Communion, and we say it with Our Lady. Every time you say Amen to the Eucharist you renew your vows, and you strengthen the joy of living those vows. Your vows are enclosed within the one vow of our Lady: “be it done to me as you have said.” So do not be afraid of keeping those vows, and knowing the love of Jesus in your hearts. God receives your Amen as He received our Lady’s Fiat. He knows you as he knows her, and he stays in your heart, as long as you keep saying Amen to the Holy Eucharist. 

The Missionaries of Charity send their love and prayers from Nairobi, where it has been raining buckets for three days. We have 30 sisters on retreat from the 11 mission houses of the region (Kenya, Tanzania, and South Sudan). About half are Indians and half Africans, with a few Europeans for good measure (there are no sisters from north of the Panama Canal). The regional superior is our dear Sr. Bernadette, a petite Parisienne; her lieutenant, Sr. Eugenie from the South of France, is providing meals for me. When I asked for a bottle of olive oil, Sr. Eugenie became even more excited than normal and said, “Moi aussi, the oil of the olive is my friend, because I am from Southern France!”

It’s been raining, and there are no paved roads where we are, so everyone is treading delicately around gaping mudholes. Everyone in Africa is friendly, and everyone is your brother, and in difficult conditions, they pull together. This, it seems to me, is Africa’s great contribution to world culture. If, as the paleoanthropologists say, human life began in Africa, then it is only fitting that she portrays for us the universal brotherhood of man.

And yet brother kills brother, beginning with Cain and Abel. Kenya is generally peaceful, but Nairobi has seen some bombings in the last few months. Radical Muslims are punishing Kenya for supporting her neighbor Somalia’s efforts against Jihadists. I haven’t seen any evidence of violence in my few days here, but poverty is always evidence of violence and fear. Much of the poverty results from Western corporations stealing the nation’s wealth, but much comes from her own people.

Sr. Joseph Catherine talked to me this morning. She is a Tanzanian by birth, and been assigned to the mission house in South Sudan for the last three years. She is worn out, dispirited, her heart an open sore. Her mission house, she told me, is among the farms of the Nikobi tribe. Every night there are shooting and screams, as the tribe to the north makes raids on these farms, stealing cows, raping women, shooting men and boys. The sisters are chronically sleep-deprived and traumatized. “In all of Sudan’s terrible violence these last ten years, the last six months have been the worst,” she said. With the independence of South Sudan, the raids from the Muslim north have decreased, but an open tribal war has developed within the South. Sister Joseph Catherine told me that her parish priest has seen 15 of his family killed since January. The MC’s used to run the only hospital in the area, but since the war has burned down nearby hospitals and schools, the flood of victims and refugees forced them to give it over to an NGO. Still, the sisters go there every day to comfort the injured and dying, to pray with them and give them hope.

But St. Joseph Catherine is struggling to preserve her own hope. There is no solution in sight, just an endless stretch of stupid violence and misery. What could I say to her? She just wanted to tell someone, I think, and perhaps tell a Westerner what Sudan is suffering. “You can’t end the violence or take away everyone’s suffering,” I told her. “You can only suffer with them. Jesus said ‘the poor you will always have with you,’ meaning there will always be original sin, and so there will always be violence and poverty.”

The mission of these sisters, besides what little material aid they can furnish, is to point people to Jesus, and to heaven. The violence will end someday, even if that day is the day of their death. But it will end, and heaven is forever. These sisters have the irreplaceable mission of giving real hope to a hopeless people. It is the hope that one day everyone who believes in God will come to an endless day of peace and joy in God’s Heavenly Kingdom. The NGO has its part to play, to offer what little food and medicine can get through to the people in a war zone. The Missionaries have their part to play as well: that of giving Jesus to the people, the only real hope in a fallen world.

Sr. Joseph Catherine earnestly asked for my prayers. “I know only God can help us in South Sudan,” she said with a wan smile. We both went to the chapel after our talk, and she knelt down wearily before the tabernacle, but with a bit of light around her. I offered heartfelt prayers for her and her people. Please, I ask your prayers as well for the good people of South Sudan who have nothing to hope for but heaven. May God keep their hearts steadily fixed on it.

On my last day in Brazil I’m thinking about sugar. It’s so sweet here! At my little table in the priest room there is a sugar bowl. I use it for my tea. Sometimes when I open the bowl a gangly red ant jumps out and tears off like a dog caught eating off the dinner table. I’ve caught this red fellow about four times (seems to be always the same guy); he must have quite a sweet tooth, but he wastes no time scrambling off, all six legs flying in different directions, when the lid blows off his sugarbowl. So I get a little spoonful of sugar for the tea (carefully avoiding little black specks), and I’m amazed how just a thimbleful of local sugar wonderfully sweetens a whole cup of tea. This must be real sugar, local sugar, sugar from the live canes. I’m used to the “new and improved” American sugar, which must be made from corn or plastic or some other cheap substance. The marvelous thing about Third World countries is their real food. The oranges, for example, are oddly-shaped, discolored, and as sweet as the sugar. They were, I’ll wager, picked from a local tree within the last 48 hours, and not sprayed with ethylene gas to make them look ripe. A simpler economy means simply better food. Once in a while the sister will plop a bag of Cheetos on the table, and how wan it looks, how embarrassingly helpless, next to real fruits and breads.

Real food means real bugs, since the sisters don’t spray the premises with poison gas. We have to share our sugar bowls with gangly ants, our bedrooms with mosquitoes (mosquito nets keep dengue fever at bay), and our dresser drawers with small lizards. But really, these tiny fellow pilgrims are not so frightening after all. You just have to get to know them. In fact, I think we would all enjoy life with more “real” in it, and it is only advertising that has made us intolerant to ants and off-white sugar and lopsided oranges. What is intolerable, if we would think about it, is the tasteless, colorless, textureless world of “products” our manufactured economy sells us (at every lower prices!).

I’m going to miss my friend, the gangly red ant, when I get back to the States. Man, can he run!

The other day was Ascension Thursday, although the Bishops of Brazil, lamentably, have not yet restored the feast to its proper, biblical day. Moving Ascension Thursday to Sunday, among other things, deprives Catholics of the Church’s first and greatest Novena, that to the Holy Spirit. Jesus commanded his disciples to “stay in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high,” and we would like to join them in a full nine-day prayer from Ascension Thursday to Pentecost.

A Good Climb

Anyway, in keeping with tradition (since my boyhood, Mom would take us out of school on Ascension Thursday for a picnic in the mountains), I climbed a mountain on Thursday. One of the sisters lent me a bike and I rode to the foothills surrounding this part of Rio. I turned a corner on the trail and there was … a little monkey eating a banana. He dropped it and scrambled up a tree, and there he perched, regarding me with disapproval. “Oh, you little rascal,” I said, “you’re eating all the bananas!” He glanced slyly towards the other trees, and I followed his gaze. The surrounding branches were full of monkeys, all eyeing me with disapproving disdain. “OK, keep your blasted bananas,” I grumbled, and continued on my path. No use arguing with a jungleful of monkeys.

A Holy Hermit

Towards the top of the mountain, I passed through a crude wooden gate and came upon a little hut, with a smoldering fire, and a spring of water channeled through a bamboo stalk. An old man came out. “boa tarde,” he said with a slight smile. We didn’t communicate that well but he didn’t shoot me (the sisters had said that they “shoot people in those mountains” [who stumble upon their drug caches]). I guess this kindly old man was not making drugs, for he asked if I had made it to the top, and if I had friends with me. “Si,” I said in Spanish, “hasta la cima, y no, soy  solo. Como si sale?” He smiled more broadly and pointed the way back down the hill with his stick. I wished I could’ve spoken Portuguese so as to learn wisdom from this holy hermit.

The “Obligation” to Feast

No matter where in the world I’ve been on Ascension Thursday, thank God I’ve managed to find a mountain to ascend. On the tops of those mountains one often meets God, or at least God’s servants (holy hermits and little monkeys). It is in our nature to seek that which is above, to spend more time with God, not less…. which is why the bishops, God bless them, should not waste any more time. Please, Your Excellencies: restore the Solemnity of the Ascension to Thursday. You moved it to Sunday perhaps thinking that you were doing us a favor in removing another Mass obligation. But Holy Days of “Obligation”—so few in the year anyway—feed our starving souls with the great mysteries. They are no more onerous than the “obligation” to eat Thanksgiving dinner. I hope the US Government never thinks of moving Thanksgiving from Thursday to Sunday so as to relieve Americans of “yet another holiday.” Even though most of us will not celebrate Ascension until today, let us keep the Great Novena for the Holy Spirit, lifting our hearts and minds to the heights, where God dwells and where he prepares a place for us to join him.