|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Father Joe's Interview with NY Talk Radio
On Wednesday, December 17, 2008 Father Joe was interviewed on New York Talk Radio (formerly Tribeca Radio) on the show "Spotlight on Business and Entertainment" with Colin Gregory and Bruce Biggins. NY Talk Radio.net is part of the BBS Network, and is available at www.nytalkradio.net. You can listen through itunes, real player, windows media player, or any other mp3 player. The link to Father Joe's interview is below. It is show no. 38.
Back by popular demand: WHAT IS AAADD?
Isn't it funny how much time we spend preparing for Christmas, and then, it seems that in a wink of an eye- it’s all over. Yes, even though the Christmas season runs until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Christmas celebration seems to end very abruptly. In no time, the Christmas tree looks wilted and dried, the poinsettias begin losing their leaves, the Christmas lights begin to blow out, and the arduous task of “un-decorating” begins.
This is all, I think, a microcosm of what our society is like. So many things which seem to be so important to us at the time, fade from our interest so fast. We often wander from one task to another, from one project to another, often feeling unfulfilled and empty.
Sometimes my life seems to be like that- going from one thing to another, doing a lot of things but accomplishing little. That’s when I realize that I am afflicted with “AAADD.”
What is AAADD? It is “Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.” I’ll give you an example of how it works in my life.
My day starts at 6:30 AM when I get up, shower, wake up Blue, and get down to my office. I immediately open up the friary doors in preparation for Mass, fetch the newspapers (no, Blue hasn’t learned to do this yet), take Blue outside to do his morning obligation, bring him back to my office and try to do some paperwork (or check emails) before the 8:00 Mass. After the 8:00 Mass, Blue and I go upstairs for some breakfast. Then it’s back to the office where my AAADD kicks in.
I begin trying to clean off my desk. I notice a marriage license that I have not completed, so I begin doing that. I open the top drawer of my desk for a pen, and see some keys laying there. I decide to label the keys, so I begin walking around the office, trying out keys. It is then I notice that someone has raised the thermostat in the office, making it unbearably warm. I head to the thermostat, and see that there’s some mail which needs to be stamped. Before I get the first piece of mail in the stamp machine, I see some messages in my mail box from the night before. I begin reading these messages when the phone rings. I rush back to my desk to answer the phone when I remember that the Christmas Mass schedule is still on the voice mail system. I click on my computer to look up the voice mail prompt, when I notice that I’ve gotten some emails. I click on the email icon when Theresa comes in my office with a giant pile of mail. I begin sorting the mail when I notice a Christmas card I sent has been returned because of a wrong address. I go on the computer again to my label writer program to check on the address. As I am doing this, I see that my labelwriter has run out of labels. I check my desk drawer for labels, when I see some bills that are long overdue. I pull out the checkbook to pay the bills, when I realize that I have not made a recent deposit to the bank. I announce to the staff that I am going to the bank to make a deposit when Blue indicates that he has to go out again. I take Blue out and notice that my car’s inspection is one month past due. I come back in the office to book an inspection, when I decide to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge. I open the fridge and see that the water has frozen, so I put the water out on my desk to defrost. I then notice that the marriage form is still laying there. By now it is time for the 12:10 Mass. I’ve wasted the whole morning. In the meantime: my desk is still a mess, the marriage form is not competed, the keys have not been labeled, the thermostat is still high, the mail has not been stamped, my messages are still unread, I never answered the phone, the Christmas Mass schedule is still on the voice mail system, my emails haven’t been answered, the mail has not been sorted, I am still out of labels, the bills have not been paid, the checks have not been deposited, my car hasn’t been inspected, and Blue is lost. Then I wonder aloud why I’ve been so busy, why I’m so tired, and nothing ever gets done.
Does your life seem like that, too? Well, I decided to take my time into my own hands. I decided to call a counselor for help. So I sat down at my desk, went to my computer, google searched a counselor for New York City. In the middle of my google search, I noticed a marriage license on my desk that needed to be completed. I looked in my desk for a pen….
|
PewSpective- Blogspot
This was written recently in a blog after the author visited our parish church. The blog can be read at www.pewspective.blogspot.com
WEDNESDAY,
JULY 22, 2009 I have to admit that, visiting St. Anthony of Padua parish in New York this weekend, I can see why some Protestants might get the mistaken idea that Catholics may have gone just a bit over the top in the matter of church decor--and how the mistaken idea that Catholics elevate saints over God might creep in too. The key word in that sentence is mistaken. I
usually take advantage of a trip to New York to indulge in mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Although the gawking crowds
of tourists can get in the way, I love the soaring architecture, the massive space, the chapels and the statues arranged along
the walls. It is so classically Catholic to me--something I recognized as a difference from the Protestant faith of my childhood
even from the beginning. Like the style or not, I find it impossible to enter a space like that and not understand that I
am in a place reserved for the uplifting of the human heart to its Creator. This time, however,
our digs in Soho and the desire to spend as much of Sunday morning as we could with our daughter made the trek uptown to St.
Patrick’s impractical, so we opted for a neighborhood church, built in the 1800s to welcome waves of Italian immigrants
to the City. I’d actually walked by the building on several occasions, drawn particularly by a statue of Our Lady of
Fatima, surrounded by kneeling children (one that proves, as a recent homilist said, tongue firmly in cheek, that not only
do Catholics bow down to statues, so do their statues!). Closer inspection revealed that Our Lady wasn’t the only statue
in the small garden outside. St Padre Pio was there, and St Anthony (no big surprise) and over in a corner, appropriately
placed next to a bag of Weed-Stop, was St. Francis. But that was just the beginning, and nothing
to compare to the statuary that filled the inside. There was not a nook or cranny long the walls that did not have some sort
of exuberant, highly representational--and very beautiful--art: statues of various saints and huge stained glass windows and
relief carvings of the stations of the cross. The sanctuary space was lined with green stone, set apart by soaring, white
columns. In the center, behind the altar,between two carved angels, was a much larger than life sculpture of the Blessed Mother
handing the infant Jesus to a kneeling St. Anthony. Below it was a gold crucifix, beautiful. Present, central--but somewhat
overwhelmed by the tableau above it. I could just hear my Presbyterian friends tut-tutting in
disapproval. Where, they would ask me, is Jesus in all that? Talk about exalting the creature over the Creator--this church
not only gives headlines to this Saint Anthony fellow, they give him center stage as well! Well,
no, not center stage, and not headlines, either. In the center of the tableau, in the exact center, above the crucifix,is
the child Jesus, being handed to Anthony by Mary. One of the things I learned very quickly as I entered the Catholic Church
is that all of the Trinity is regularly worshipped, and Jesus in all of his forms is known and adored. It was a new experience
for me, liberating, disorienting, intoxicating, enhancing all at the same time. It never occurred to me--because no one ever
pointed it out--that Jesus is and was and always will be Jesus at every stage of His earthly life, and thus, worthy of worship
(and teaching me something about my own life in the bargain.) It was a little disorienting to see the infant Jesus, rather
than a massive crucifix, at the center of this church, but once I adjusted to it, I realized that it conveyed to me in a very
powerful way that the Infant being tenderly passed from one set of loving arms to another was the same One who ended up on
the cross below. And knowing the story of St. Anthony, if for no other reason than that it was shining forth from the stained
glass of the windows, the message that he was entrusted to spread the knowledge and love of Jesus came through loud and clear. I
began to look at that church with the eyes of a new immigrant to New York in the closing years of the 19th Century. That’s
not as hard as it might seem for a second generation German-Irish All-American mutt like me--after all, I’m a new immigrant
to the Catholic faith. And here’s what I found. I found that I didn’t need to listen to the homily (though it was inspiring) to get the story of the faith, because it was all around me. I didn’t need to know how to read, or be trained in biblical exegesis. The simple story of faith and salvation was an intimate part of the very walls of the place in which I worshipped. This was a place where, simply by paying attention to the cues around me, and (at least in my imagination) hearing the stories passed down of the saints and their missions, I was drawn clearly and expressly to that Infant and that Man and thus to the Trinity itself.
After church, I paused for a few minutes to walk around and look at the statues lining the walls. I realized that I have learned to recognize them even at a distance, as clearly as I would recognize the distant form of my husband in a crowd. There was Mary, there was Jesus, there was St, John the Baptist, in animal skins, carrying a rod and a lamb. And St. Rocco. with his ever present dog, this one carrying the miraculous bread. St. Joseph, with his flowering staff. Saint Lucy with wreath on her head (I was too squeamish to look for her eyes). What amazed me, literate, book-learned woman that I am, is that is was osmotic knowledge--not something I had read and learned and thus acquired and made mine by effort of will but something I had seen and experienced that was mine simply because I was immersed in it and belonged to it and it was in one way or another always around me. It’s sometimes hard for modern people,
who depend so very much on reading things to remember that for most of the history of the church, most folks learned the faith
not through expensive, difficult-to-obtain books that a hefty percentage of the population couldn’t read anyway. They
learned faith through the people who lived it. They learned about Christ through Christians. And Christians learned the stories
of the faith by heart and through art because that was the way to spread the message to the most people in the most memorable
way. Faith wasn’t then--and shouldn’t be now--a merely intellectual exercise. I fall prey to that temptation all
to easily; it was nice to be shaken out of the habit. Learning about Christ from other Christians, alive in the present or
alive to us from the past, is still the best way to see how to live out the faith we have been given.
|
|
|
|
|
|