September 29th is the Feast of Saint Michael, the Archangel – Michaelmas. Today begins the novena of prayer to our most powerful defender against the snares of the devil:

Glorious Saint Michael,
guardian and defender
of the Church of Jesus Christ,
come to the assistance of His followers,
against whom the powers of hell are unchained.
Guard with special care our Holy Father,
the Pope, and our bishops, priests,
all our religious and lay people,
and especially the children.

Saint Michael,
watch over us during life,
defend us against the assaults of the demon,
and assist us especially at the hour of death.
Help us achieve the happiness
of beholding God face to face
for all eternity. Amen.

Saint Michael,
intercede for me with God
in all my necessities,
especially (intention).
Obtain for me a favorable outcome
in the matter I recommend to you.
Mighty prince of the heavenly host,
and victor over rebellious spirits,
remember me for I am weak and sinful
and so prone to pride and ambition.

Be for me, I pray,
my powerful aid in temptation and difficulty,
and above all do not forsake me
in my last struggle with the powers of evil.
Amen.

* to be followed each day by the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father), Angelic Salutation (Hail Mary), and Gloria (Glory Be).

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It’s been quite a while since I posted anything here but I’ve been wanting to get back in the swing.  Some of you might know about the little pilgrimage that I made with Cecilia (2 1/2 years), my youngest.  From October to March, we made a visit each week to every one of the Catholic Churches located within the city limits of Austin. 

Sometimes we attended Mass, sometimes we just said a quick prayer or gave Mary a kiss, and a few times we were locked out.  We regularly posted the pictures of our trips on my blog.

A lot of people have told me they wish that they had thought of it – but that’s no reason not to do it anyway.  For those of you who live in larger towns, I’ve got to really reccomend that you give it a try.  You wouldn’t believe how excited Cecilia would get when the day would come each week to find a new one.  We learned quite a bit not only about churches  in Austin, but about the Faith itself.  It was a big letdown when we were done. 

Now we’re starting it up again, visiting all the surrounding towns.  This Part II may take a bit longer…

Here’s a video compilation of the pilgrimage here.

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There are a few stories that, no matter how often I read them, always bring tears to my eyes. I included my version of one of them on my blog before, of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago. This is another one – the Four Chaplains and the sinking of the USAT Dorchester. Both stories are tragic, but both contain elements and acts of pure selflessness worthy of John 15:13, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

It was the evening of Feb. 2, 1943, and the U.S.A.T. Dorchester was crowded to capacity, carrying 902 service men, merchant seamen and civilian workers.

“It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said John Ladd, another survivor who saw the chaplains’ selfless act…

Continue here…

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By Dom Eugene Moylan, O.C.S.O.

This was recommended to me by a priest shortly after my “reversion” back to Catholicism. I had asked him what the best Catholic book was that could approach what C. S. Lewis did in Mere Christianity. He’s passed away now, and I don’t think I ever thanked him for pointing this out to me. Just in case you don’t know it already Father C – thank you.

On Membership in Christ and on Christian Charity:

“… No matter what we do, unless we do it in the love of God, it profits us nothing. God wants our love, He will be satisfied with nothing else. That is what He principally looks for in our works. The things we do or achieve are not of primary value to God, for he can create them by a mere thought; or with just as much ease He can raise up other free agents to do what we do. But the love of our hearts is something unique, something no one else can give Him. True, He could create other hearts to love Him, but once He has created us and given us free will, the love of our particular heart is something unique and in a way irreplaceable. In any case, it is not for His own sake that He wants our love, but because He desires to make us happy with Him forever, and He can only do that if we are in love with Him ……

There is only one source of true happiness in this life or in the next, and that is to love and to be loved. Knowledge that does not lead to love is worse than vain and sterile. It is of course quite true that love expresses itself in many ways, and it is true that its reality can be questioned if it does not seek expression in some way; but for all that, it is love, and love alone, that matters. St. Paul and all the saints knew that; our Lady knew that; our Lord knows that, and God Himself knows it and tells it to us in the Scripture. I have loved thee with an everlasting love (Jer xxxi, 3). My son, give me thy heart (Prov xxiii, 26). Love is the culmination of the law (Rom xiii, 10).”

“Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not the love of God. It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics – even many Catholic religious – make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Christian life, all a man’s work must be done with God, for God, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

For the whole spiritual life is a love affair with God, and if that expression has associations that are out of place here, it is because of the abuse of it, not because of its proper use …”

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I wrote this last summer but I thought “Catholic Dads” would be a good place to post it again. It’s about family and having a dad and being a dad; hope it’s not too long…

I’ve been thinking a lot about my family lately. I’ve been blessed with a large one. My wife and I only have two daughters but I have four much older brothers and sisters, which by today’s standards would be considered a lot. “Breeders” my parents might be called now, but it wasn’t so long ago that 5 children was fairly normal, especially if you were Catholic. My parents had 23 brothers and sisters between them. And including their spouses and the children they produced, the population stretches into the hundreds just counting from my grandparents.

Such a large group naturally produces a wide array of differing personalities, careers, and interests. There have been engineers, artists, firemen, coal miners, bus drivers, airmen, soldiers, and merchant mariners. Nurses, bankers, writers, world-record holders, a nun. Drinkers, smokers, and gamblers. Intellectuals, world-travelers. Heroes and rascals. Poets. Singers, musicians, great cooks, and bad drivers. Republicans, Democrats, socialists and conservatives. Roman Catholics. I had an uncle who was Joe DiMaggio’s accountant and sat on the groom’s side for his wedding to Marilyn Monroe. One survived the Battle of the Bulge. Another (may God forgive him) helped develop the precursor to the bar-code. The accomplishments are never-ending.Family.

And whenever two or three or 20 of them got together, life became much, much more interesting. Fireworks usually, but often too enlightenment. It was truly a privilege to have grown up around these larger than life peoples. My adulthood has been brushed and polished by their stories, experiences, mistakes, and successes. By their love – for life and for each other.

This populous bounty sprung from the Freeland and Shenandoah areas of Pennsylvania – coal country. A part of the nation that was truly developed by immigrants, mostly eastern European. In my case, Polish and Slovakian. Two cultures that worked and fought to become Americans – good ones – without much help from anyone but themselves. They relied on each other. They helped each other. They ate together, worked together, cried and laughed together. And they made it, most of them. And in the case of my family, most never left for long. They stayed close to where their roots were.

The reason I’ve been thinking about family so much lately is because of a faded blue box that’s sitting in my bedroom closet. Not really a box, but more of a suitcase with a piece of twine latched through its top. I just moved it there from the pantry in my kitchen where it’s been sitting for three years. You see, my father died from a head injury in November of 2004. He spent a few days in tormented critical care before a final attempt was made to save him under surgery. He never came out of the induced coma. He was 75. The man who spent his life giving and doing for others without accepting anything in return was finally forced to be on the receiving end of our charity. We took care of him the best we could, especially so my brother who had followed him into the Air Force. He died a week later with my scapular around his neck.

The blue case that’s now sitting in my closet is my father’s accordion. Everyone knew my father by his generosity but also by his accordion. It sat by his casket at the wake. It was one of only a few things I asked to have of his when he passed. A spent shell from the honor guard at his funeral, his rosary ring, his 1955 Missal, a book that was beside his recliner, and his accordion. This accordion wasn’t brought out often. Usually at holidays but always when there were family and friends. And he wasn’t the best player but that’s what made it all the more special. When he played, he was telling us about himself. Where he came from. What he loved. He was playing for us. It was his gift and it unites us all even though many of us are now thousands of miles away. It’s part of the family.

My mother died in February. A very slow and drawn-out fibrosis of her lungs and heart that began shortly after my father went. Little by little, the daily routines of her life were taken away and replaced with new ones. Ones that didn’t bring joy or satisfaction, but instead ones that were necessary just to make it to another day. All those little chores that we take for granted or do with a sigh had become impossible. Getting dressed. Doing laundry. Standing up. These gave way to rotating her oxygen tank, draining her lungs of fluid, and in the end, it was enough for her to just chew and swallow a bite of toast.

We all had time with her during her gradual decline. Mom wasn’t easy. One of my brothers would stay for weeks at a time taking care of her. One of my sisters broke her knee and tended to her from a wheelchair. A “saint-maker” is what they would have called Mom in her day. We watched her endure a personal hell. She said that when she was a child, she prayed to Jesus to allow her to atone for all the sins in her life before she died. She wanted to go straight to heaven. She died at home in front of my brother and sister, looking up at something above her, with her arms stretched out like a child waiting to be picked up.

One by one by one they disappear. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, my mother and father. A cousin died last month of heart failure at the age of fifty eight. Next will come brothers and sisters. They age, they go, and you can’t stop it. They can never be replaced. You pray that God’s grace is shining on them and you’ll get to see them again one day.

A lot of people like to think that life is a circle. It’s not. While it may be true that history repeats itself, and what comes around goes around, nothing is ever the same. Life is a straight line. You’re born at a point on that line and you die at a point on that line a little further down. There’s no going back. At first thought, it seems so simple and cold. But it’s not. It’s not, because there are other points on that line. Points where others are first beginning their journey, or ending it. Points that mark profound events in the life of a person, or even small personal ones. These overlapping segments are what make our short journey on this line so miraculously worthwhile. We get to share it.

We don’t often get to choose with whom or under what circumstance we share our life. Sometimes we’ll never even know how we’ve affected others. My father never knew that I would one day tell my daughter the story about how his wrist came to be so misshapen. How, as a little boy, he had broken his arm playing football when he was supposed to be out picking huckleberries for the pies his mother would sell. How, instead of going home to face the wrath of his father, he wrapped his arm tightly in his t-shirt and went and did his chore without ever telling anyone about his injury. How, forty five years after that, I would break my arm playing football when I was supposed to be home eating dinner. How he made me wait on the couch until he finished his mashed potatoes and peas before he took me to the hospital. And how these stories made my daughter understand that the little crick she had in her neck after sleeping awkwardly was not something that merited dramatics.

I look at that old blue case and it reminds me of my grandmother and her stuffed cabbages, French toast, and apple pie. It reminds me of tiny little compact cars that my father squeezed his 300 pound frame into. Of cigars, chess pieces, and poker chips, and American flags. Christmas morning. It reminds me of the loudest voice in church. It reminds me of my wife, who woke me up in the middle of the night a week after my father died and said “He’s here.”

When I received the accordion, it was my intention to learn to play it. To honor my father. To keep a tradition alive. I called around and found some wonderful people involved in the accordion community. Who knew there was an accordion community? A young Ukrainian immigrant came to my house to get me started. I had to relearn how to read music. And he pointed me to another older man that lived quite near me who was an accordion enthusiast. When I went to meet him, he had an entire room devoted to his collection – antiques, some of them, but mostly just a large collection of beautiful, colorful accordions. He grew up in Pennsylvania too, same age as my father, just a few more miles away. His wife works in the Bishop’s office. It was like meeting another uncle. I showed him the accordion and he pointed out a hole in the keyboard, some broken buttons, and a big tear along the bellows. It was going to need a lot of repair. But the shock came when I learned that my giant of a father had been playing a child’s instrument. It was made for kids, a starter instrument. I looked again at the skinny keys and tiny buttons and wondered how in the world did he ever get his fingers over them. He got this accordion as a child, learned to play it without a lesson, and for 60 years he never let it go. So far, I’ve left it as it is. If this old blue case can elicit so many memories for me, I can’t imagine what stirred in my father’s head each time he looked at it.

This old blue case is like a magic mirror for what it means to me to be part of a family. My family. It was my father’s accordion but it belongs to us all. I look at that old blue case and I don’t just think of my father. It points to everything and everyone on that ever-flowing line on which he lived. Because before he was my father, he was a son, and then a brother. He was my uncle’s friend. He was my mother’s husband. My daughter’s grandfather. All those fantastic people he shared his life with and all those who shared theirs with him come pouring out of that accordion box. Like music. And if it was my father’s choice, it would of course be polka music.

Finally, I look at that old blue case and I think what I will leave behind. What kind of memories am I leaving for my children? What have I done that my children will tell to their children? Will my children someday have an old blue case of their own to ponder over and make them feel part of something special? I hope so. I’ll probably never know, but it’s nice to think about.

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I heard a radio interview a few weeks ago with Mike Kryzewski, the head coach of Duke University basketball. In it, he talked about the great athletes of our times and how they got that way. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali (although he of course also became famous for other things), these were men who were specialized in doing one thing – playing a game. They became great at what they did and reached the pinnacle of success. But these men transcended the niche market to which they were initially confined. From New York to Beijing to the tiniest atoll in the South Pacific, it’s a task to find someone who hasn’t at least heard their names.

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