Waiting & Becoming

Advent is often described as a time of waiting. And as a child, I was taught that we were waiting for the birth of Jesus. Such waiting was fun – full of starry nights, carol singing, and hot chocolate. When the wait was finally “over” and we returned from Midnight Mass, my mother would uncover the small figurine of the baby Jesus who was then lying in the manger with Joseph and Mary attentively watching him. The whole scene never failed to impress me: the crisp night air that embraced us while walking home from Mass, the family and friends who gathered at our home to partake in cookies, dried figs, and small glasses of Port until about 2 AM, the baby in the manger with his attentive parents and a variety of animals – many of which I’d helped arrange in the days prior to his arrival. All of this, in my estimation at the time, had indeed been worth the wait.

I have to admit that as I’ve grown older waiting is not always as much fun as it used to be. There’s waiting in line at the grocery store while the person in front of me has decided to have the price of each individual item double-checked, there’s waiting for the 86 Bus which conveniently decides to arrive earlier than scheduled causing me to have to wait an additional fifteen minutes in the 20-degree-weather before the next one comes along, and there’s waiting for papers and final exams to finally be over so that I can enjoy a bit of vacation before the next semester begins. Of course, there are also profoundly frightening moments of waiting – waiting for the results of a medical test, waiting to know if a loved one is safe, waiting to see if that person who just collapsed on the sidewalk is in fact going to be okay. I think that’s what makes waiting so difficult: it reminds us that we are never in as much control as we would like to be. And this is humbling, perhaps as humbling as God becoming human, sleeping in a manger, breaking bread with so-called outcasts, and hanging on a cross. The lesson of Advent and its waiting, I think, is not that God demands our humility, but that God shows us how to live in the midst of all the chaos (sometimes happy and sometimes sad) that is human life. It is not a passive waiting, it is not simply a call to hum along with John Mayer and wait “on the world to change.” Rather, it is a call to remember that the world has changed and is ever-changing; it changed in God becoming one of us, and it changes as we continuously become one with God.

How Do You Remember Your Patron Saint?

"Be who you are and be that well!" This was the quotation from St. Francis de Sales, the founder of the Order of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, that both high school and college students at my Oblate run institutions seemed to love. I was among that camp, as well. In the high school world of uniforms and schedules, pressures to take Advanced Placement courses, and participate in extracurricular activities and sports, this was the quotation that everyone who went on their mandatory junior retreat would come back stating. I do not know if Fr. McCue, the chaplain at the high school, ever realized that it would be this quotation from the patron saint that would serve as the summation of Salesian spirituality in our minds, but it did.

Even in college, this sentiment reigned. I recently talked to a good friend from college, Tiger. He and I both served on the Student Government Association and ran in a variety of crowds. In 1997 at the Oblate founded college, DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, most of the students were from the Pennsylvania-New Jersey area. But what marked many of us was not our geographic region of origin, but the Catholic high school and the order who ran it. There were the Father Judge boys and the St. Hubert's girls, both schools located in Philadelphia and single-sex schools. Lineages from Northeast Catholic, Archbishop Ryan, and Monsignor Bonner. For everyone to be who they were meant an acceptance of diversity, at least in Catholic high school lineage. High school rivalries ceased as new identities were forged under the college banner.

Tiger and I came from the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales lineage, he from Father Judge, me from Bishop Ireton. As we chatted the other night, we found it to be no great irony that Alan, our other SGA friend-colleague for many years, went to St. Francis de Sales in Toledo, Ohio.

Tiger and I talked vividly about how "Be who you are and be it well" as a spirituality continues to live strongly in us, despite not having any formal connection to the Oblates at this time. Alan, in some ways, serves as our closest link; he joined the order and was ordained. A few years ago when I was living in Ohio, I ventured from Cleveland to Toledo to another ordination occasion. It was so strange to see him dressed in black and with a collar, and overhear women whisper, "Oh, Fr. What-a-Waste". It seems to me that a life is not wasted in becoming more fully a human person and grow to be more fully a unique individual. And just as Tiger and I both find ourselves not as closely linked to the Salesian tradition of spirituality as we once were, "Frankie D's" words still provide a homing for us to become the unique beings that we were born to be.

Kate Lassiter likes Catholic kitsch. She also likes chewy brownies and exercise balls. She can be reached at kate.lassiter@vanderbilt.edu.

In Memory of My Grandparents

When my grandparents were my age, the second Vatican Council hadn't even happened yet. The Catholic Church as I know it is extremely different from the Catholic Church that they knew and is even different from the Catholic Church that my parents have known in their lifetime.

Both of my parents were raised in Catholic households, my mother in a Polish Catholic family and my father in a German and Irish one. They went to Catholic schools, sang in church choirs, and attended every holy day of obligation. There were also the more cultural signs of their Catholicism - meatless Fridays, prayers to Saint Jude, palms on the wall.

My parents passed many of these elements of Catholicism onto me. We ate pasta and fish sticks on Fridays in Lent and kept our Palm Sunday palms year round; we lit the candles on the Advent wreath over Sunday night dinner; we said a prayer to Saint Christopher every time my dad backed the car out of the driveway on a road trip.

My maternal grandfather would have been 87 this month - my paternal grandmother 88. All of my grandparents have passed away and as I think about these birthdays, I think about the foundation my grandparents laid for me. My grandparents lived their Catholicism as it had been passed on to them, my parents live their Catholicism as it has been passed on to them, and I live my Catholicism as it has been passed on to me. As an individual I have kept some things and changed others, just as the Catholic Church has as an institution.

Sometimes it is hard to see that change does happen – within individuals and also within the Church. But when you look at it over the period of a lifetime, there are changes. I wonder what traditions will be the same and what will have changed fifty years from now, during the course of my lifetime.

Deb Heimel grew up in Pennsylvania and hasn’t had fish sticks in 13 years.

My SoDak Catholicism

I spent the last week in South Dakota with my family--mom, dad, two sisters, and new husband. I water-skied on Lake Kampeska more than I can ever remember and savored several sunny days, and even sun-burned my pale Alaska skin. And, of course, we went to Mass at my home parish. While the priest has changed several times since I graduated from high school, the parishioners have not shifted too dramatically. Maybe it's a bit sacrilege, but I love watching people I grew up with go through the communion line. It's like watching a real-live yearbook. I see who has had kids, who is married. Who else is home for a visit. And I get to watch the parents of my friends carry grandkids or hold each other's hands because an empty nest has rekindled a newlywed sensibility. It feels like I think communion is supposed to--reconnecting with my community and the people who shaped my Catholicism.

After Mass, we crowded awkwardly around a few pews, visiting. I saw my 5th grade Catholic school teacher, my friend who recently left the monastery, the parents of a friend who has three kids. We stay in touch like this--through our time at Mass, through this sacramental coming together.

Last year, I was married in this parish. When the priest was doing the paperwork, he was sort of amazed to see that I have received all my Sacraments in this parish--from Baptism and First Reconciliation right on through to Marriage. We buried my grandparents here and I grew up here. It really is how I am Catholic. And its funny; when I'm away, I sort of forget about this way of being Catholic that is just part of the water, the air...as natural to me as water-skiing on Lake Kampeska.

kate