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Tuesday, March 23, 2010


"Who are these, robed in white,
and where have they come from?"
Oscar Romero
Archbishop of San Salvador, 1980,

and a Martyr of El Salvador

Peter Menkin, Obl Cam OSB
Church of Our Saviour (Episcopal)
Mill Valley, CA USA
March 24, 2010
Wednesday morning Eucharist
Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2009
On the web: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/LesserFF/Mar/Romero.html

Revelation 7:13-17
Psalm 31:15-24
John 12:23-32


In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyr, entered the popular mind of the world when he was assassinated in El Salvador. The film “Romero,” circa 1989 and reviewed by Roger Ebert, made him ever more part of the popular culture. Film reviewer Ebert writes in 1989 of the 1980 assassination:



The film has a good heart, and the Julia performance is an interesting one,
restrained and considered. This Romero is not a firebrand but a reasonable man
who cannot deny the evidence of his eyes and his conscience. The film's weakness
is a certain implacable predictability: We can feel at every moment what must
happen next, and the over-all trajectory of the film seems ordained even in the
first few shots. As a result, the film doesn't stir many passions, and it seems
more sorrowing than angry. Romero was a good man, he did what his heart told him to do and he died for his virtues. It is a story told every day in Latin
America.

My own sensibility of this Holy Man who we celebrate on this March day is not so glib. He sought God in Christ in his quiet, introspective way and found himself transformed by the plight of the poor. This enormous change of heart and his integrity of action for this conservative cleric of the Roman Catholic Church demonstrated his love of God and his willingness to die for God and his Church:



"As a Christian," he remarked, "I do not believe in death without
resurrection. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people."


The martyr as reflected as statement in our Gospel reading today is one who has followed
Christ. The cross is his, Oscar Romero’s, reward. It was the Priest Oscar Romero who lived the cross long before he became a martyred Christian. He wrote as a young man some prophetic words about his way of life when he was a seminarian in Rome, and that he published there in the students' magazine of the Latin American College. He did this in March of 1940, when he was twenty-two years old. He writes of the priesthood as a sharing in the cross and resurrection of Christ:



This is your heritage, O, priest: the cross. And this is your mission: to
portion out the cross. Bearer of pardon and peace, the priest runs to the bed of
the dying, and a cross in his hand is the key that opens the heavens and closes
the abyss.
The priesthood, Romero said, means "to be, with Christ, a
crucified one who redeems, and to be, with Christ, a risen one who apportions
resurrection and life.

Regarding another Gospel selection for this special day, [John 12:23-32], Christ was crucified on the cross and though he prayed to prevail in the earthly life, to avoid death and the cross, it was His to bear. So it was this way for Oscar Romero, the quiet Archbishop who in his lifetime gave sermons over the radio. The selected Gospel says:


"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell
you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a
single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life
lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal
life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be
also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.


It is that God raises up men to do justice and do right, to transform the world as Oscar Romero did in El Salvador and inspire the world, displaying the plight of the poor in his land. As one writer explains it, Does Romero's life have lessons for us? Perhaps the most important is that God still works wonders with weak and imperfect human beings like us. He brings about his salvation with weak human instruments: David the shepherd boy, Moses the stutterer, Mary the handmaid of Nazareth, Peter the head- strong fisherman, Paul the headstrong Pharisee, and Oscar Romero, the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, the scrupulous but docile man who only wanted to do what God asked of him.

Here is an example of Oscar Romero’s preaching and the martyr’s concern. We get an historical look at the man’s true conviction regarding the poor. This example shows how he was explicit, as he had been in his reports to the Pope of the way the poor and downtrodden were treated in El Salvador. In this famous pastoral letter released in November 1976, he reflects on the plight of the thousands of coffee plantation workers in his diocese:


“The Church must cry out by command of God: ‘God has meant the earth
and all it contains for the use of the whole human race. Created wealth
should reach all in just form, under the aegis of justice and accompanied
by charity…’ It saddens and concerns us to see the selfishness with which
means and dispositions are found to nullify the just wage of the
harvesters. How we would wish that the joy of this rain of rubies and all
the harvests of the earth would not be darkened by the tragic sentence
of the Bible: ‘Behold, the day wage of laborers that cut your fields
defrauded by you is crying out, and the cries of the reapers have reached
the ears of the Lord’ [James 5:4]”

Shall we honor this man with a Psalm from our reading today? Yes, let us do that as end to this homily.

Before we end this homily, remember, the Archbishop was gunned down while performing a funeral mass in the Chapel of Divine Providence Hospital. He had said recently, before his assassination:



“Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of

Christ will live like the grain of wheat that dies…The harvest comes because
of the grain that dies…We know that every effort to improve society,
above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that
God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.”


Here is an excerpt from Psalm 31, and it explains by considering Oscar Romero’s life and death how God finds a way to save our life though we may give and lose our lives. This is the way of the Cross:

Make your face to shine upon your servant, *
and in your loving-kindness save me."

LORD, let me not be ashamed for having called upon you; *

rather, let the wicked be put to shame;
let them be silent in the grave.

Let the lying lips be silenced which speak against the righteous, *

haughtily, disdainfully, and with contempt.

How great is your goodness, O LORD!

which you have laid up for those who fear you; *
which you have done in the sight of all
for those who put their trust in you.

Amen.



Audio recording of the Homily as given in Church:

Monday, March 15, 2010



















Comment on NYT articles on Contemplatives--personal statement replying to Ross Douthat

by Peter Menkin

This article from “The New York Times” (NYT) was noted on a list read by this writer. Here is an editorial comment of a more personal kind to The Times piece, found here under the title Mass Market Epiphany on a NYT blog.

The article by ROSS DOUTHAT published March, 2010, starts:
Mysticism is dying, and taking true religion with it. Monasteries have dwindled. Contemplative orders have declined. Our religious leaders no longer preach the renunciation of the world; our culture scoffs at the idea. The closest most Americans come to real asceticism is giving up chocolate, cappuccinos, or (in my own not-quite-Francis-of-Assisi case) meat for lunch for Lent.

This, at least, is the stern message of Luke Timothy Johnson, writing in the latest issue of the Catholic journal Commonweal. As society has become steadily more materialistic, Johnson declares, our churches have followed suit, giving up on the ascetic and ecstatic aspects of religion and emphasizing only the more worldly expressions of faith. Conservative believers fixate on the culture wars, religious liberals preach social justice, and neither leaves room for what should be a central focus of religion ­ the quest for the numinous, the pursuit of the unnamable, the tremor of bliss and the dark night of the soul.
This writer’s notations and comment for Ross Douthat posted originally as an email:
Are we contemplatives coming into fashion, for here is an article that is backward compliment for contemplatives?
I suppose the literary world's preoccupation with confessional and personal experience also jars with the quiet, even private though community practice of the contemplative life, and continues at odds with contemplation. Religion is not in fashion, but contemplation, so the article implies—saying really both should be. Narcissi are not a real or valued element of the contemplative way for union with God. Ours is a self involved American way, and maybe we should say, Tch, Tch.
The contemplative way is a life of surrender, and individualism is not a road to surrender. Not as I understand it.
I am happy to see the conversation by article in The New York Times and will look at the paper itself to see the comments.
The contemplative life is not just about union with God, alone, as in everything mystical. It is a form of being, and though the mystical may be sought or practiced by many, to a great degree it is a whole way of life, of seeing the world. The life with God is not solo, per se.
There is a photograph I've got on my computer by amateur photographer Henry Worthy, Oblate, who lives in London, of a woman standing gazing away from the camera on what is a spring day. She is looking at a field of flowers. She is seeing the world, and it is being done in God's presence with a sense of his presence. I call this the sense of creation. God is creator.
Again, the work of Arthur Poulin, a Camaldolese Priest and Monk makes in his painting work contemplative statement, even call it reality. I call this vision. Father Arthur lives and works in Berkeley, California at Incarnation Monastery. His work is found at the I. Wold gallery in St. Helena, Napa, County. They are also found at Immaculate Heart Hermitage, Big Sur, California.
So as I dare to make these remarks as comment to the article, and I am glad for Ross Douthat’s posting, I guess the writer knows little about the Camaldolese Oblate witness. For the number of these Benedictine Oblates was small when I began about 16 or so years ago; now there are so many more: Maybe 500 or so.
My point is that this is a lot of contemplatives, and they are in the world, being a light to the world and a presence for good. If I am right in recollecting, there have not at any time in history that great a number of contemplatives, but the writer's point is broader. He suggests there be a more serious exercise in religion, an inspired one. As for me, Christ is inspiration as Christ is truth. The heart is moved.
To go on, we are in America so distracted a society, a society that is individualistic and seeks diversion and distraction, that it is likely that the writer Ross Douthat's thesis is even more genuine. Note cell phones and their ubiquity.
I think it would be enough if more people said, felt, and sought God in a sense that they began to recognize that God loves them. For God does love them. For me, this is an important recognition, not Epiphany, for that this is a friendly universe is a helpful starting point for a larger faith. I think Mr. Douthat is asking that we all seek a larger faith. Is that not to a degree what Lent is about, a return and seeking larger faith. We look towards Easter.
Addendum:
From The Times…
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review. A native of New Haven, Conn., he now lives in Washington, D.C.
Image (1) Photo of monks at Communion by Henry Worthy. (2) Photo of woman at contemplation by Henry Worthy. (3) Painting "Radiant Light" by Father Arthur Poulin, OSB Camaldolese. (4) Ross Douthat by Susan Etheridge for The New York Times.

Friday, March 05, 2010



Prodigal return, confession of mortality...(2002)
by Peter Menkin



Flesh, that yields
to time. Soul entreats
my failures not noticed
in return to God
with open heart.

Stricken with failures
of being away from You.

Exercise:
What's known, you are merciful.
What's known, Christ prayed.
What's known, the cup.

Allow my unbelief
become belief; strengthen us.
We are prodigal; I am.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010


Coffee, you flavor my life...(2001)
by Peter Menkin


With the cup of coffee
I am friends; usually, we
meet the partaker
of this tasty liquid dark.

I think of you, coffee,
once beans, picked
in South America,
arriving
here to be ground right. You

fill the cup and saucer,
and stirring you is pleasure,
since I always intend first
sipping. This in rememberance
of my father, who said
I love coffee. He believed in hope. My wife, she

may by now have changed her tastes,
but when we were married in our
twenties she drank coffee

in the morning. Women like you
coffee, for I've known some
others who entertain your aromas

enjoying the heat like me
that you are when sipped, drunk
and go down the throat
giving taste buds a lasting
envelopment. Engage my mouth.

I remember her words: "Tug boat
coming 'round the bend!"
She went to a place
called St. John's Episcopal
where she learned to want peace.

There was one woman
I wanted to marry very
much, and she drank you
when we went all over the place:
coffee in a swank hotel, cool
hangout restaurants, petite
MaMa's exclusive lunch spot
on Maiden Lane San Francisco,
and regular coffee shop, too--tasty word
is what my family thought
of my desires to drink you

with her. Too bad she ran
away to another when South
of Houston in New York City.
She learned in Temple
about Hebrew and God is good.

Sparks drank it, you coffee
good in the morning at the wood
round table in her San Francisco
apartment, kitchen table simple.

Marry me, but not so.
My friend went away, she
a lover of jazz, God,
the morning, and Quaker life
.
What funny combinations have come
my way, with you coffee. She
is gone. Sadly I miss her
announcements, punctuated with:
"Oh, my God!"
She learned about loving
and sharing, with laughter.

Tonight I will remember,
there is life before coffee.
Hear my prayer.