A Sense of SenseThe Stations of the Cross Henri Matisse painted for the Rosary Chapel in Vence leave me pretty cold. The ensemble is schematic, crowded, unbeautiful. I am just not able to see it as a high form of essentialism. One might be Read More
Like Floating ThoughtsA friend who is a poet recently wrote after a visit to the Aquarium in Baltimore of how she had ‘watched the other worldly fantastical creatures flutter a fin or a tail and fluently glide through the blue water. There Read More
A Sense of SenseThe Stations of the Cross Henri Matisse painted for the Rosary Chapel in Vence leave me pretty cold. The ensemble is schematic, crowded, unbeautiful. I am just not able to see it as a high form of essentialism. One might be forgiven for thinking it was work the painter did one afternoon he had indigestion or was suffering from the heat. It is remarkable to realise how painstakingly, and over what a period of time, the ensemble was prepared. An exhibition currently on display in the Baltimore Museum of Art shows eighty or so sketches chronicling the process. Through them one senses that Matisse had a real sense of what he was portraying. This Deposition, for example, not only displays formal and architectural perfection, but is deeply affecting. Why is this depth so insufficiently, at least to my eyes, rendered in the finished work? So many other aspects of the chapel are exquisite. I am mystified, though a degree of light is shed by this documentary about the Vence project, Matisse’s last great work.
Commencement AddressAddress given at St Mary’s graduation ceremony on 7 May 2026. Your Grace, President, honoured Faculty, ladies and gentlemen, dear graduates! Thank you for inviting me to share this day of joy with you. Thank you for the encouragement you give me in honouring my work with a degree. I am thrilled to be with you and to get to know in person this venerable house, from which many ardent apostles have gone forth nurtured by sound devotion and solid learning. While looking forward to my visit, I found my anticipation illumined from an unexpected angle. A few weeks ago, a kind acquaintance — who could not have known of my appointment here — sent me a copy of Willa Cather’s novel published in 1927, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I had long wanted to read it, but the title, I suppose, makes any prelate a bit wary of taking it into his hands: one just never knows. Anywhere, there it suddenly was, dropped into my mail box. The novel, as you know, sets out from Baltimore. In the prologue we find three curial cardinals and a missionary bishop gathered in the Sabine Hills outside Rome in 1848 to discuss a request from Baltimore’s Provincial Council for an Apostolic Vicariate in New Mexico. Amid descriptions of a delicious supper, obligatory in narratives evoking Italy, the qualities needed in a Vicar are discussed. The Irish-French Bishop Ferrand, who knows America, stresses that the appointee will direct ‘momentous things.’ New Mexico, he explains, was evangelised in the sixteenth century, but allowed to drift. It might call itself Catholic but is marked by superstition and malpractice. Its few priests, of scarce instruction, live tawdry lives. The Vicar-to-be ‘will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili’. The country ‘will drink up his youth and strength as it does the rain. He will be called upon for every sacrifice, quite possibly for martyrdom.’ He must be, then, ‘of strong constitution, full of zeal, and above all, intelligent’. One of the cardinals, taking all this in, puts it to Ferrand that such conditions surely call for a German? Ferrand says: ‘No!’ The Vicar has to be French. ‘Oh’, he says, ‘the Germans classify, but the French arrange!’ The scene is set for the novel’s hero, Monsignor Jean Marie Latour, to ride onto it — for a bishop without a horse is of no use at all in this story. Latour is appointed Vicar in 1851. As the novel unfolds, he visits Baltimore repeatedly. It is hard to think that he wouldn’t have stopped at old St Mary’s down in Paca Street. After all, Cather constructed her fictional Monsignor on the basis of the factual Jean-Baptiste Lamy, born in Auvergne and trained by the Sulpicians of Montferrand. Both the bishop of the novel and his historical double would have found at St Mary’s sweet scents and sounds of home, and, who knows?, perhaps even a beneficial draught of Bordeaux. At first sight it might seem odd that a Sulpician formation should be thought to equip a man for the trials that await the Vicar Apostolic as Cather tells them: dirt, deserts, and beans; folklore, idolatry, and violent feuds; a life in the saddle. As a student at Montferrand Lamy will have been formed according to the Examinations of Conscience of Louis Tronson, third superior of Saint Sulpice. Tronson collated the Society’s patrimony. He edited its constitutions. His Examinations distil its spirituality. They are a guide to conscious Christian living and self-discipline. Reading them now, one is struck by the fact that they seem to leave no aspect of existence to chance. They tell a good Sulpician with what disposition of soul he should get out of bed in the morning, how he should eat his lunch, at what speed he might appropriately walk – strictly on devout errands, of course – about town. They instruct him to make sure that his surplice is spotless and that he is ever able, at a nod from his superior, faultlessly to intone a complex Gregorian antiphon. The charism of Saint Sulpice is urban. It is ordered. The society educated Christian gentlemen. Its customs appear to presuppose the backdrop of a quiet French provincial town with cobbled streets, neat gardens, and the Angelus sounding melodiously at dusk. Such a setting contrasts with the one the Vicar Apostolic in Cather’s novel meets one night as, making his way to Mora, he seeks shelter in a wretched homestead. The farmer, an American, is described as ‘gaunt and ill-formed, with a snake-like neck, terminating in a small, bony head’. He is quite as odious of character as he is of appearance. He snarls and menaces. The poor Mexican girl he keeps as a house-slave lets the visitors understand that he is dangerous. She signals to the bishop and his priest-companion to ride away as quickly as they can. Now, how on earth would the formal regimentation of Saint Sulpice prepare a man to face a situation like this, straight out of an old-fashioned Western movie? Very well, it turns out. The bishop responds with great presence of mind. He is courteous yet firm. When the serpent-headed fellow starts swearing he draws from his pocket, not a rosary, but a pistol, saying: ‘No profanity, Señor!’ Then he rides off. Sulpician discipline is clearly not incompatible with resourcefulness. This incident in Death Comes for the Archbishop is reflected in countless examples from real life. It seems appropriate to pinpoint this paradox as I address those of you who, today, graduate from St Mary’s University. During your years of study you will have read lots of books, written many essays, sat many exams. You will have acquired knowledge and practical skills. Some of you will have produced original research. All this is capital, precious capital, for whatever work, whatever duties lie ahead. Even more essential, though, are the discipline of mind and formation of character you surely will have benefited from in this Sulpician house. Nowadays there is a tendency to think of universities as degree-factories. People sign up for courses they are not really terribly interested in. They follow lectures online while doing their ironing, produce a few written assignments with the discreet collaboration of ChatGPT, then emerge with a hood and an acronym after their name, hoping to further their career and salary prospects. There is nothing wrong about this in the sense that it is morally culpable. But this approach is hardly likely to generate intellectual joy, intellectual freedom. And that is what education is about. Saint John Henry Newman, whom we now rejoice to honour as a Doctor of the Church, put it even more audaciously in The Idea of a University published in 1852, just as Bishop Lamy was getting himself sorted out down in Santa Fe, the HQ of his newly established New Mexican vicariate. The result of genuine education, Newman insists, is the ‘perfection of the Intellect’. He understood that phrase to point towards the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural clarity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres. Dear graduates, your time at St Mary’s will have given you a taste for such ‘perfection’. Make sure you keep your appetite for it alive. Be determined to awaken it in others. That will be a most noble and effective expression of Christian charity. Our world is in dire straits. I think most people would consider this an uncontroversial affirmation at the moment. Few are those with patience to pursue an overview of ‘all things’ to see particulars in perspective. Hardly anyone, now, knows any history; it is risky to formulate even rudimentary notions of human nature, for we might upset those with divergent views; littleness and prejudice seem to be enjoying a heyday; people are highly startlable. Much societal discourse depends on keeping others’ fears alive. Your education equips you to step into this reality as benevolently ordering presences, awakened as you are to a contemplative vision of things. When the bishop in Willa Cather’s novel wonders how he might bring order into his diocese, a wilderness spread out before him, a friend tells him: ‘Don’t begin worrying about the diocese. […] Establish order at home.’ Order, the ‘beauty of order’, spreads like rings in a calm forest lake when you have plopped a pebble into it. Order develops marginally from the energy of an orderedly impacted centre. To order the world around us, we must be ordered. For that, we need to know how we fit into the universal order of things. In Monsieur Tronson’s Examinations, that great Sulpician manifesto, each apparently mundane observance presented for consideration is preceded by an act of adoration. The study of theology helps us — ought to help us — to regard all things in the light of God’s majesty, that is, to see them as created in love, destined for greatness, their wounds reparable by grace. To hear the music of the spheres is to note the cantus firmus voiced in all creation: in the helix of a DNA molecule as well as in the galaxies above. The music is that of God’s Creator Word singing itself as praise to the Father through the Spirit. It resonates, too, in the heart and mind of Christians washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. Dear graduates, you go forth from Baltimore, much like the Auvergnat Vicar of New Mexico in 1851, with a grand task ahead. The specifics of the task will be unique to each of you; its essence, though, is the same. You are to carry clarity into catastrophe; to bring ordered, bright intelligence to bear on a world in sombre chaos; to give Christ’s love coherent expression in your words and deeds. That is what you have been educated for. It is what the world hopes for from you, what the Church expects. It is an arduous task, but a glorious one. I pray it will fill you with gladness. Listen out for the music of the spheres. Let it resonate in you. Become its instruments. Then you cannot go far wrong. You will proceed quietly, not having to dread sudden needs, menacing occurrences, or even outright threats. You will be ready for the sacrifices that are part and parcel of your task. Your heart-searched lives will be blessed. And you will be for a blessing. Set out, then, in humble confidence, with gratitude, in Christ’s name. Thank you for your attention.
Innocence RestoredHomily given as part of a day of recollection to priests at St Mary’s. Wednesday: Remain in me (John 15.1-8) Although I know it by heart and look out for it in advance, the collect set for today, Wednesday in the fifth week of Eastertide, never fails to jolt me. It begins startlingly with the affirmation that God not only loves, but restores innocence. The loveability of innocence is clear to everyone. We’re aware of it not least when faced with innocence lost and the sadness that results. The thought that innocence might be restored, however, seems just extravagant. We human beings might do our best to repair effects of lost innocence, but however hard we try, we can’t restore it. The restoration of innocence amounts to a re-creation. That is God’s prerogative, and his alone. Today’s collect is linked to that for Thursday in the second week of Lent. Both begin with the same formula: ‘God, restorer and lover of innocence, direct the hearts of your servants towards yourself’. At that point, though, their ways part. The Lenten prayer continues aspirationally. It asks that, ‘caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works’. This corresponds to the atmosphere in which we get ready to celebrate Christ’s Pasch. Today, illumined by Easter, our intention is more essential. We pray, after the introduction, that those ‘set free from the darkness of unbelief may never stray from the light of [God’s] truth’. Those words recall the prayer we pray secretly before Communion: ‘Free me by your most Holy Body and Blood from all my sins and from every evil; keep me always faithful to your commandments, and never let me be parted from you.’ We are children of light. We cannot turn back into darkness. And why would we want to? Christ exhorts us: ‘Make your home in me!’ He reminds us that he is the vine, we are the branches. Then he states the obvious: ‘A branch cannot bear fruit all by itself’. Any Christian is, by baptism, grafted on to Christ, the true vine. Still, we who rejoice in the wonderful gift of being Christ’s priests are bound to him in a singular way. We have been ordained to act in his stead, ‘in eius persona’ (CCC 1558). That has been, from the day of our consecration, the whole point of our existence. Such is our sacramental union with Christ that we may speak the words of Absolution in his name, not because of some magic aura we’ve acquired, but because Christ chooses to exercise his grace through us. It is an astounding thing to be, in this way, instruments of his restoration of innocence, able to say to a penitent forgiven: ‘Nothing binds you anymore! You have been set free, made new!’ The more we realise the vast grace of priestly ordination, the reach of the promises entrusted to us, the more we shall be determined to live up to it, firmly rejecting anything that might make us stray even slightly from Christ’s side. This means we must surrender ourselves to him unstintingly, unconditionally. The image of the branch joined to the vine is inseparable from the image of the grain of wheat sown to give life through dying. Exactly a week ago I found myself praying before the relics of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis at Marijampolė in Lithuania. Let me conclude with something that model priest and confessor of the faith wrote in 1913 to a young man mustering up the courage to be ordained: You must not be afraid to take a chance for the glory of God. Christ clearly says: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone” (Jn 12.24). Only when it has fallen to the ground, died and decayed does the grain bring forth new life and fruit from itself. Do not wish to protect yourself so very much. Do not be afraid to immerse yourself in God and die to yourself for God’s sake — then, when you become a priest, you will give forth much fruit. May we be priests of such mettle, generous, gentle and strong, faithful to the innocence won for us so that we may, on Christ’s behalf, joyfully restore it in others. Amen. Archbishop Jurgis Matulaitis-Matulevicius (1871-1927) *** Deus, innocentiæ restitutor et amator, dirige ad te tuorum corda servorum, ut, Spiritus tui fervore concepto, et in fide inveniantur stabiles, et in opere efficaces. Deus, innocentiæ restitutor et amator, dirige ad te tuorum corda famulorum, ut, quos de incredulitatis tenebris liberasti, numquam a tuæ veritatis luce discedant.
Searing GraceHomily given as part of a day of reconciliation to bishops at St Mary’s. Acts 14.19-28: They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him dead In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul itemises incidents of violence suffered after his conversion to Christ: ‘Five times I have received the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned’ (11.24f.). Today’s reading from Acts gives us details of the stoning. The event occurs in about 47 AD, at the end of Paul’s first missionary journey. It had been rich in contrasting experience. At Cyprus he had had a run-in with Elymas, a pagan magician, whom Paul’s prayers blinded in the hope that Elymas would, as he himself had on the road to Damascus, come to his inward senses by being deprived for a while of sense-perception. At Iconium Paul had had to escape an ambush mounted by Jewish opponents. Then, at Lystra, he’d had to fight to keep people from worshipping him as a god. The excitement had barely died down when a band of Jewish zealots turned up and won the crowds over: ‘They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city [of Lystra]’. A year or so later, Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians: ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ (2.20). In this statement there is more than just devotional hyperbole. At Lystra Paul had literally tasted something of what Christ went through in Jerusalem during his Passion. The crowd that one moment shouted ‘Hosanna!’ soon united in crying: ‘Crucify!’ Likewise Paul was hailed as a messenger of the gods by an ecstatic crowd only in order, hours later, to be pelted with stones by those same people, and left for dead. They had loved Paul as long as he had seemed a hero on terms they had set; they hated him when he turned out to be working on entirely different terms. Well, such is the life, such are the conditions of apostolic ministry. Paul’s example teaches us not to get too carried away by others’ praise. On the contrary, when the world speaks well of us and starts bringing out the incense, it’s time to be wary, prepared. There is another aspect of the stoning at Lystra worth considering. Paul first turns up in the Biblical narrative in the context of a stoning. When Stephen was stoned in Jerusalem for proclaiming Jesus as God, those who took active part, needing freedom of movement to chuck stones with all the needed force, laid their cloaks down at the feet of Paul who, still called Saul, was wardrobe-keeper for the occasion, fully approving of what was going on (Acts 7.54-8.1). With what grief, what shame Paul must later have recalled this incident! How powerfully it must have been present to him when he found himself cast defenceless on the ground, to be stoned. Paul would later write to the Colossians that he was making up, in his flesh, what is ‘lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, the Church’ (1.24). Christ’s oblation, wrought on the Cross, was divinely sufficient. Nothing is ‘lacking’ in it in the sense that it is incomplete. The ‘making up’ concerns the instantiation of its effects, the application, through the Church, of the Cross’s grace to specific wounds and failings. First among these are our own intimate betrayals, needing to be reconciled. At Lystra Paul sustained, in his flesh, a concrete atonement. It released him from the particular wages of a deeply personal sin. This freed him to proclaim to others — and with what force! — the real possibility of such gracious liberation. May we likewise be open to receive God’s searing, purifying grace as it comes to us to set us free from our bonds; and may we thus acquire the authority and courage we need to witness credibly to the presence in our midst of God’s kingdom. Amen. The Stoning of St Paul at Lystra by Philippe de Champaigne. Wikimedia.
Like Floating ThoughtsA friend who is a poet recently wrote after a visit to the Aquarium in Baltimore of how she had ‘watched the other worldly fantastical creatures flutter a fin or a tail and fluently glide through the blue water. There were fish with funny lips, and with unicorn horns, and rays with leopard print, and huge silvery flat fish with tiny fins, not to mention gills, nettles that look like thoughts floating through the sky, and moon jellies with the finest fibers. We were utterly transfixed’. Today, having occasion to visit the Aquarium myself, I could so well understand what she meant, though I would not have been able to put it so beautifully. The gratuitous elegance and beauty of normally invisible creatures speaks powerfully of the existence of God.
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Feast of Our Lady of Fatima Today is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. It was on this day in 1917 when Our Lady appeared to three children in Fatima and asked them to pray for sinners and an Read More 1 Comments
Today we celebrate the first anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate. Holy Father, we thank God for your pastoral leadership and tireless work for peace & on behalf of those who suffer in the world. We remember your intentions in prayer. Trocaire Read More 1 Likes
Today we celebrate St. Athanasius, Bishop and doctor of the Church. St. Athanasius was born at Alexandria around 295. He fought ceaselessly against the Arian heresy, defending the true and equal divinity of Christ. As a result, he had Read More 1 Comments
