Tonight we will have the traditional pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, with one exception--mine will be chocolate/raspberry pancakes! I don't really like pancakes (too many memories of Girl Scout camping and totally soggy over-the-fire pancakes, ick) but I found this mix, and my husband made me some a while ago and they are scrumptious.

Did I mention that I have decided to give up chocolate for Lent? This is a very hard one for me. Hence the pancakes tonight.

For my Lenten devotions, I will be reading Pope Benedict's Journey to Easter and starting--at a slow, deliberate pace--Blessed Columba Marmion's Union with God: Letters of Spiritual Direction as suggested at Spiritual Mothers of Priests. With my son I'll be reading the daily lectionary Gospel reading.

I am also going to try to finish the angel stitchery (Lavender and Lace's Angel of the Morning) my husband asked me to do for him last year, in thanksgiving for his upcoming first anniversary of being cancer-free (St. Patrick's Day).

So often, for me, Lent passes in a blur of getting music ready for all the liturgies between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day. I want this year to be different. The past several months have had too many days in the Slough of Despond, so I am coming to this Lent feeling like I need to be more in the Church Militant. Pray for me and I will pray for you that this year, Easter crowns the year with all blessings. Miserere nobis, Domine.

In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...

ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST, et habitabit in nobis
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us...

...et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis
And we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

I remember hearing the Prologue of St. John's Gospel as the Christmas Day Mass Gospel as a child, kneeling at the Incarnation verse "And the Word became flesh", and bursting into tears, overwhelmed by the Truth proclaimed therein and the sense that this was the eternal Christmas story, from the point of view of the Eternal, Loving Father who sent His only Son...for the world...for me. I have never "gotten over" the reaction of my heart whenever I hear or read this passage; when I hear it at the end of every Extraordinary Form Mass, I still am moved to tears.

The medieval Christmas carol 'Balulalow'--a lullaby of praise for the Baby Jesus--says it perfectly (here the words are modernised):

Last week, before the sinuses and Eustachian tubes fell victim, I did record two of my favorite Advent chants. The first is the Advent Prose, Rorate coeli:


http://www.christeluxmundi.org/Rorate%20coeli%20(chant)%20PRW.mp3


The second is Alma redemptoris mater, the Vespers Antiphon for the Magnificat sung between the Vigil Mass of the First Sunday of Advent and The Feast of the Presentation (Candlemas, 2 Feburary) inclusive, except for the days upon which the O Antiphons are sung:



http://www.christeluxmundi.org/Alma%20redemptoris%20(chant)%20PRW.mp3

The Magnificat Antiphons, including the O Antiphons, are very dear to me because the Magnificat is very deeply embedded in my heart. The Blessed Virgin Mary's spontaneous song, when greeted by her elderly cousin Elizabeth, has always stirred in me an immediate response. At different times in my life, different parts of the Magnificat would 'jump out' at me:

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour....

He, remembering His mercy, hath holpen His servant Israel, as He promised to our forefathers....

He hath showed strength with His arm...

He hath filled the hungry with good things...

When I was in high school, our pastor once asked in a sermon, "What is your personal motto?" My response was immediate--the response of Our Lady to the Angel Gabriel, which is the last thing recorded before the Magnificat:

I had promised that I was going to record each of the O Antiphons with the Magnificat this year, but today finds me battling a sinus and ear infection. Perhaps I will post it later. In the meantime, my dear friend Argent on the Tiber, one of whose gifts is illuminating the Faith through Beauty, has on her blog a meditation on O Sapientia and a YouTube link which leads to a lovely rendition: http://sognodargento.blogspot.com/2009/12/o-sapientia.html

May Our Lord's wisdom illumine your mind and heart this Advent.

A quote I came across today while searching for something else:

Q. What is the Use of Singing and of Organs in the divine Service?
A. To help to raise the Heart to Heaven, and to celebrate with greater Solemnity the divine Praises.
--Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, 1758-81

I was struck by the parallel to the Catechism's definition of why Our Lord created mankind:
"So that we may Know, Love, and Serve Him in this Life and to Enjoy Him in the next."

The purpose of music at the Mass and in the Office is not to entertain, not to pacify, but 'to raise the heart to heaven', to awaken in us the desire and the capacity to know, to love, to serve. And 'solemnity', in the Church, always means a deep joy infused with worship. C. S. Lewis understood this when he wrote:

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the first day of the Christian liturgical year, so Happy New Year! Today is also the first anniversary of my son's and my confirmations into the Church in 2008, so it is the beginning of our second New Year as a united Catholic family. This first year has been quite a journey.

At Drawn to Catholicism, a commenter to the Happy New Year cartoon said that his/her New Year's resolution is: Hope, pray, and don't worry. I think I am going to adopt a version of that:

Pray without ceasing, over everything, in everything.
Trust--hope--in Our Lord's goodness and love, without ceasing.
Don't worry--don't let the darkness of depression or fear overtake the light.
Strengthen everyone in your circle of influence.
Abide in God.

Thank you to all our veterans who have served our country with honor and self-sacrifice, even when derided by the very persons whom you have defended.

In November, Catholics remember and pray for the faithful departed every day, so it is very meaningful to me that both Veterans Day and Thanksgiving fall in November. Today I am remembering my father and his two younger brothers who all served in WW II. For various reasons, I am the only person left to remember my father's service, to recall what it meant to him and what it cost him, and to give thanks for the effect his service had on his life and the lives that he touched.

My father and his brothers were the "Sons" in the family small contractor firm "Wm. Brad and Sons", and each was a master in one trade and very good at the others. They enlisted in 1944, after finally either persuading their wives that they needed to do so or declaring that they were going to do so. This was after the famous "Private Ryan" incident, so they were split up into different services based on their individual talents and abilities. One ability that set them apart was speaking multiple languages. At home they spoke Hungarian (their dad) and German (their mom) as well as English. In addition, my father was a natural polyglot who spoke and wrote six languages when he enlisted (he was the extended-family scribe to all the relatives in The Old Country.) Uncle Joe, the eternal-optimist youngest, was a master plumber who could fix anything; he ended up in the Navy, serving in the Pacific. Uncle Bill, the middle brother, was a fabulous raconteur, a master electrician, and a small and wiry man; he was chosen to enter the Army Air Corps and to work in Intelligence, parachuting into Hungary to work with the Resistance there. (He joked that he looked emaciated enough to pass as a native.) My father, Frank, was a quiet, introspective man, a master carpenter who also had the gift of being able to study a building or carving or molding and be able to sketch it and know its dimensions, then to be able to carve it to absolute perfection. He could also imitate any singer (his Dame Joan Sutherland singing the Queen of the Night aria was incredibly realistic and would get me into hot water later in life....that's a story for another time.) But the ability the services were most interested in was his skill with a rifle. It turned out that, from hunting with his father and extended family, he was a marksman of great skill, and the 'look-measure' ability played into that. He was sent to Okinawa in the Army. (He picked up Japanese in a month or so and never lost it; another 'another time' story.)

Dad had two assignments. One was as quartermaster for his post deep in the jungle; the other was as a marksman. He only talked about his days as a quartermaster, and even then rarely.

You know how families have a family language and a family code, embodied in phrases that one's parents and grandparents use constantly? My Dad's phrases all revolved around God, honor, and family:
"Do your best to serve The Man Upstairs or get out of the way." (He always addressed Our Lord directly as 'Sir'.)
"Your word is your honor--always keep it, always." ("If you get tricked into giving your word to something rotten, get out of it right away and make it right.")
"I don't care if you're black, brown, pink with purple polka-dots: do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, own up to your mistakes and fix them, always leave a place cleaner than you found it."
"Take care of your family and the people attached to you who have no one else to take care of them."

Dad hated the grinding poverty and starvation of the Okinawans left behind by the war--women and girls of every age, men over 70 and boys under 12--and he did whatever he could to alleviate their suffering when he could. He had a very deep compassion for the boys, who had no one to teach them how to be true (honorable) men and were having to act like men long before they should have to do so.

He was thrice 'busted back' in rank for allowing the villagers to scrounge in the post's dump after the soldiers had been issued new blankets or boots or jackets or whatever--he could not understand why perfectly good items should be burnt instead of being given to the needy, and so 'failed to secure' the dump's gate, even after being ordered to make sure that "the enemy" got not one scrap from the dump. Dad didn't see an "enemy"--he saw people trying to take care of themselves and their families with no means of support. The standoff between the CO and Dad ended only with Dad's enlistment ending.

The use of his marksmanship was never talked about, and only after his death in 1992 did my mother tell me what she knew. Dad was often sent to inter-service marksmanship competitions which he apparently won more often than not. He would come back to the jungle post with small items that he knew people needed; he would repair or build things for the villagers. But what hurt him the most was having to be a sniper. Toward the end of the war and during the occupation of Japan, there were Japanese soldiers who holed up in the jungle and would kill anyone--man, woman, child, Japaness or not--who walked/rode along the tortuous roads. My father would be sent out to 'deal with' these 'crazies'. Mum told me that when Dad found his 'target' he would pray, "Sir, just one shot, please." His book had 167 targets, all with the notation "one shot" and, in much tinier letters, "thank You." Mum said he knew that he had discharged his duty honorably, but that he grieved every day that his duty had involved taking life, even to protect others, both 'us' and 'them'. He had a Purple Heart and tons of medals for competitions and for his 'excellence' in his job; we never saw them until after his death. While my uncles would tell stories about their experiences, in which they always found cameraderie, friendship, and grace and heroism under pressure, Dad never talked about his.

After Dad returned from overseas, he suffered some family losses, not because of what he'd done but because of other people's actions. I believe that those losses, coupled with his experiences, are why he very quietly became a mentor and surrogate father/grandfather to two generations of boys. He took a break from this while raising the two children he and Mom adopted in the 60's (me and a younger boy), but after we left home, the pastor would point out to him boys in need, and he would bring them into his manly orbit: fishing, fixing up the church and elderly people's homes, building all sorts of things for the community, pruning trees and shrubs and digging and planting vegetable gardens, all the sort of men's work that was second nature to him but less and less commonly pursued as the neighboring community became less and less rural and increasingly white-collar. He was the one that the Vietnam vets (including some of my cousins) would come and sit with at the old dining room table, and go away comforted and strengthened. He was a member of his local VFW post, where he and Mum were a fixture at the Tuesday night live-music-and-dancing-after-dinner night, and never missed cleaning up veterans' graves and putting out flags on Memorial Day and Labor Day. A quiet, undemonstrative, faithful man, doing what he could in his sphere of influence.

At the wake following his funeral in 1992, I was approached by a stream of men between 15 and 55, a few in uniform, each of whom said, "Pat, I know you don't know me/maybe you don't remember me, but your dad saved my life/turned me around/saved my marriage/brought me back to God." The familiar faces were a surprise; I stopped counting the unfamiliar faces after I reached 30.

Thank you for reading this far, and helping me remember my father. May all our veterans and our servicemen and -women find their way to being the men and women they were created to be by our Heavenly Father. May we learn from them, and remember those who have gone before, give thanks for them, and pray for them.