I think I finally have my head around most of CQRLOG, and especially its integration with LoTW. Parts of the UI had baffled me, but someone on /r/amateurradio set me straight and I think I’m good to go. I can definitely see how the hooks into fldigi will be useful once I get into digitial modes.

Had a chance to run the local ARES net last night, which is always a gas. Not nearly as nerve-wracking as the first time. Twenty-nine stations participated, which is pretty good. No major errors, except realizing afterward that I probably didn’t ID as frequently as I needed to. Will definitely have to keep one eye on the clock, or just follow along with the repeater when it IDs.

In other hobby news: the bees are getting out and about on our recent warm days. It looks like both colonies came through the winter well, which is a good sign. It looks like we’re headed for another cool spell, but I’ll be getting an order in for frames and foundation anyway. They’re working something - I saw white-gray and reddish pollen coming in. Dandelions are starting to show up, but not seeing much yellow stuff come in. The grey is probably early maples. The red is likely henbit, but none of the henbit on our property is blooming yet as far as I can tell. As usual with bees: who knows? Probably somewhere else.

During the Skywarn classes, the trainer mentioned that we our current El Nino pattern portended a mild winter followed by active spring weather. Active in terms of convective weather, which is what we were learning to identify and report. I am hoping this sets us up for a repeat of 2013-2014, which was an epic year in terms of honey production. I pulled nearly 8 gallons out of a single colony and got fooled into thinking it would like that every year. They showed me.

I significantly adjusted the 20m legs and re-tied them so that they’re not quite on the same plane as the 40m, hoping to reduce any interaction. Success! The radio is showing under 1.5 across the band, even before letting the ATU do it’s thing. I seem to be good for 40, 20, and 15m. I’ll probably add 10m for the sake of completeness and then lay off multiple trips to the attic while I’m ahead. Now it’s time to nerve up and actually key the mic a few times. O_o

…at least according to the meters. After some sanity checking from a couple of youtube videos and the Amateur radio subreddit, I shortened both legs by about 5" and now have a good, sub 1.5 SWR across 40m! Frustrating though it was at first, I learned the process of tuning/pruning, which should be useful for future antenna work. If I can pick up an inexpensive SWR meter at a hamfest, I probably will, but the meter in the radio is going to suffice for now.

Will work to re-add the 20m legs soon, but not right now. I’m done with the attic for a day or two.

The ham tickets are frequently described as a license to learn. The impatient guy in me just wants everything to work. On the other hand, trying, failing, and getting better is one of the actual points of the hobby and it’s good to be regularly reminded.

It turns out that my dipoles are wonkier than I thought. Possibly way wonkier. I finally figured out how to effectively use the SWR meter built into the FT-450D and both the 40m and 20m antennas are reading too short. At the low ends of the bands, the readings are pretty good. At the top end, they’re off the chart, which is not good at all.

How did I finally get an accurate reading? A commonly suggested setting for operators using external tuners is to map the C.S button onto the front to the SWR setting. Once this is done, pressing C.S will generate a 10 watt CW tone for as long you hold it down. The procedure is covered on page 16 of the fine manual, by the way. This kick-starts the external tuner and you’re off to the races. In my case, the constant signal on the internal SWR meter turned out to be enough for me to see that things were not optimal at all.

This is easily fixed, in principle, by splicing some more wire into them and then trimming back as appropriate. In practice, it’s not so simple, since it means returning to the attic and we all know how much fun that is. In any case, another possible culprit is an anti-static-electricity component built in to the Alpha Delta center insulator. I found some information on a forum thread that said it could make tuning screwy, and as the antenna is basically indoors, it’s probably not necessary. I can yank it easily enough to see if it makes a difference.

So I learned more about the radio, my antennas, and the rudiments of tuning them. I’ll call that a win.

Reviewing the FT450 docs and scrounging around online, I think the SWR readings for the 40/15 and 20 meter elements are good, and if not good, at least acceptable. I tried to make contact another station on 20m yesterday, but the band was fading fast and he lost me in the noise. Band conditions seem to be pretty good in the morning and mid-day hours, which are unfortunately when I also have to work. If I can pull it off without crashing through the ceiling again (since the most recent sheetrock repair is actually still drying as a type this), I’ll carefully add elements for 10m as well. That should about do it for the time being. Then it’s just a matter of, you know, actually making some contacts.

I had the radio connected to an old and pretty flaky Macbook for rig control. It worked, but was sort of meh. Probably a little more interesting when running stuff like fldigi, so a Signalink is probably in my future.

…in “Amateur Radio.” After a couple decades of putting it off, I got my Tech and General licenses this past summer.

Current gear:

• Yaesu FT-60R HT
• Yaesu FT-450D
• Kenwood TM-V71A
• Uniden BCD396XT scanner
• Mobilink TNC2
• Elk 2M/440
• Diamond NR770HN (for mobile work)
• Diamond SRH77CA
• Homebrew 40m dipole

The FT-60R goes with me when I fly. I also use it with the Elk for working satellites and the APRS digipeater on the ISS. When I’m not working satellites (which is not often, because it’s cold outside right now), the Elk sits up high in my office feeding the scanner. It works extremely well for both applications.

Satellites are a ball to work, by the way. I’m just a wimp when it comes to the cold. My first attempt to hit the UHF digipeater on the ISS made it into one of KG4AKV’s Space Comm videos.

The TM-V71A resides in my office most of the time, though my truck is wired up appropriately for a mobile installation as well (hence the mobile Diamond antenna). When it’s set up at home, the Kenwood feeds an Ed Fong Dual-band J-pole in the attic. I run an RF->IS iGate most of the time via Xastir on one band; the other VFO scans local repeaters. I took the NWS Skywarn classes, then joined the local club and ARES groups to help out during the bad weather (read: tornado) season.

I play around a (very) little bit with SDR in Linux, generally for decoding digital stuff on FM.

The HF rig is new. For the dipole, I picked up an Alpha Delta center insulator, some good coax, and a big roll of wire. Owing to the peculiarities of our property, it also has to live in the attic for the time being. My first contact was about 500-some-odd miles away, so it seems to be working pretty well. I want to get some more contacts under my belt and then start looking into some of the digital HF modes.

Until I put my foot through our bedroom ceiling fooling around with it. In any event, my attempts to add 20m elements haven’t yielded a whole lot of luck quite yet. I probably need to invest in an SWR meter to make sure things are tuned correctly. As it happens, the local club meets in a couple of days. I’ll ask around and see if anyone has one they’d like to sell. I tried to hand-build my first satellite antenna awhile back and could have used one then, too.

In reality, Advent is a preparation for the threefold coming of Christ; that is, it is commemorative of His historical coming in time, it prepares for His mystical coming into the hearts of men now, in the immediate present, and it looks forward to His final coming in the general judgement at the end of the world. \ — With Christ Through The Year, Bernard Strasser, O.S.B.

Complaints about the over-commercialization of Christmas go back at least as far as Lucy’s sotto voce revelation to Charlie Brown about the “big eastern syndicate” that was running the whole racket. Annual complaints about Yule-creep have become an annual tradition unto themselves. It wouldn’t be Fall without that creeping tension as everyone waits for the first note of Christmas music to show up, like the first swallow returning to San Juan Capistrano (though in point of fact, they’re actually hitting the road for Argentina in October).

All eyes are peeled for the first sighting of decorations for sale, reliably in the larger craft and hobby stores around Labor Day. Strings of orange lights are now par for the course in Halloween decorating, and forget about Thanksgiving. If you take part in any of the local Turkey Trot 5Ks on Thanksgiving morning, you’re as likely to see as many people dressed as elves and reindeer as you are pilgrims and Indians.

So it’s no wonder that by Christmas afternoon most everyone is done with a capital D. Box it up and get it out of here so we can at least sip our New Year’s cocktails in peace before grunting our way through the interminable grayness of JanuFebruMarch.

The antidote to the three month Blitzenkrieg is Advent. Dr. Russell Moore recently wrote about this recently in a piece on Christmas carols generally and hymnody in particular. The opening anecdote:

This guy started by lampooning one pop singer’s Christmas album, and I found myself smiling in agreement on how awful it is. But then he went on to say that he hated Christmas music across the board. That’s when I started to feel as though I might be in the presence of the Grinch. But then this man explained why he found the music so bad. It wasn’t just that it was cloying. It’s that it was boring.

“Christmas is boring because there’s no narrative tension,” he said. “It’s like reading a book with no conflict.”

Now he had my attention.

The narrative tension comment caught my eye. If ever a moment was pregnant (pun intended) with narrative tension, it’s the mystery of the Incarnation, that moment when the Author of the story shows up in its very pages to show the other characters a way out. It’s simultaneously the climax and opening the greatest story that ever was. To put it in Shakespearean terms: we’re reading Act III, the traditional high point of action in his plays, over and over without participating in either the rising tension of Acts I and II or the denouement of Acts IV and V. We’d get pretty sick of Hamlet if we only watched him stabbing Polonius over and over.

If Christmas lacks narrative tension, if it feels incomplete or somehow inauthentic, one response is to restore it to its proper context within the larger drama. Not only can we approach the day itself refreshed, the pent-up joy of preparation demands more than a single day from us. How much extra time? Would twelve days do it? The Church in her wisdom seems to think so.

The days are shorter and the weather (at least in this part of the world) tends to be less agreeable. We owe it to ourselves - our sanity if no other reason - to take time, slow down, and enjoy the meditative and, yes, penitential relief that Advent offers. We diminish the joy of Christmas not a single bit by taking time to prepare, slowly if possible, but at least mindfully if not. This is written, incidentally, not in a silent fortress of Christmas rectitude. We’re playing the music here, too, and goodness knows that the Christmas cookies from Trader Joe’s showed up about a week ago.

The point is that a little leavening goes a long way.

I finished Mary Eberstadt’s It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies last night. It probably seems pretty easy - maybe laughably easy - to dismiss Christians who see themselves under attack as just the latest round of election-year fearmongering. There they go again, with the culture war stuff, and so on. I believe Eberstadt lays out a pretty good argument in response, heavily footnoted with references and citations:

Professed belief can be professionally dangerous, depending on where you work. It can be existentially threatening, if you happen to live in parts of the middle east. If you’re an organization providing charitable services, you may be put of business soon. A parallel between some of today’s discourse and the witch-hunting, red-baiting, and daycare-abuse hysterias of the past is slowly becoming clear.

I have to confess at the outset that I am probably not the intended audience of the book. The court cases, cultural touchstones, and news recaps are featured heavily in most of my daily current-events reading.

I have just finished reading R.R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, and will probably be chewing on its thesis for some time to come. Something has gone deeply, fundamentally askew in American society, but it wasn’t until I read through his assessment of meritocracy replacing the democratic in fits and starts that things began to snap into place.

Those who look to place his book into quick service of either liberal or conservative viewpoints are likely to be disappointed. Progressive liberalism may take the lion’s share of space, but conservative libertarianism turns out to be not too far removed - both share the same telos: man as the measure of all things, utility, and radical plasticity.

Both claim large portions of the one-percenter crowd, and both fall disproportionately hard on the lower and middle classes.

A careful, humane argument is laid out for Christians remaining as active leavening in society, rather than withdrawing from the public square. Whether this is a meant as a rebuttal of the so-called Benedict Option remains to be seen, though I’d be willing to bet that the sort of intentionally orthodox Christian communities described in Rod Dreher’s writings could serve as exactly the sort of leaven, salt, and light that Reno describes (and Christ demands).

The haves: one-percenters who have the social capital, wealth, and opportunities to navigate and prosper in an increasingly rootless, global economy. The have-nots: everyone else, trying to live out the American dream of general prosperity and self-fulfillment. Compare the middle-class jobs of our parent’s generation to those of today - many have benefited from worldwide productivity and falling prices of goods and services. No one can seriously argue against the technical progress the world has seen. This progress, though, seems to have come at a substantial price, a bill that is being presented over the course of a couple of generations.

Cultural values that have generally worked to preserve the fundament of society have eroded away, even while they’re still practiced at the upper end of the spectrum. To take but one example: however much lip service is given to the fluidity of family structure in popular culture, in one-percent-world, very few children are born out of wedlock. As another case: educational level is the strongest predictor of professed religious belief. The highly-educated, credentialed professionals most likely to be successful in today’s meritocracy are also the most likely to be found in a pew on Sunday.

And for everyone else? Once the family as an atomic unit of society has eroded away, so too do the social networks - the social capital - that provided the sort of safety net that is largely taken for granted at the top end. In the absence of this network of networks, the void is quickly filled by state programs of one form or another, and so the cycle continues.

As he’s admitted in a recent First Things podcast, some of the arguments are complex, but I think they’re cogently laid out and while there might be a temptation to despair, Reno rightfully reminds us that as Christians we are called to try, not succeed. Our ultimate end is not to be found anywhere on this side of the veil of death. There may come a time when America is no more, but the Gospel is for all eternity. In no way does this require withdrawal. There is work to be done - the works of mercy would be a good place to start. Challenging every new thing with the question and how does this affect the poor? would be next, provided we can see through specious justifications for the status quo.

Reno’s book has me thinking about Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World, a different sort of polemic written for a different time. Guardini’s book deeply informed Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si - indeed, Guardini is cited frequently throughout the entire document. It’s a relatively short book, and one I will probably be revisiting shortly. T.S. Eliot’s The Idea of a Christian Society, which served as something of an inspiration will probably also get a look.

In any case, two thumbs up for R.R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, for whatever my thumbs are worth.

I started my reading project with the intent of re-sharpening some mental tools and perhaps acquiring a few new ones in my attempt to make sense of the insanity playing out on the national stage, which insanity seems to me something like a shadow-play cast by the rest of society at large. The temptation is to superficiality, but I think this does a deep disservice to larger questions. The trick is to forswear the immediate flash and noise - the glamour - and look a little deeper, a little closer.

Eight-plus months in, I can slowly begin feeling ideas - which is to say these questions - growing more concrete. This is to say nothing about answers, of course. I intended to start with a framework, and however dim it still seems in my mind, a structure is nevertheless forming. All men by nature desire to know, after all. I don’t pretend that this project will provide any answers. It will certainly not spell an end to the questions. First principles seemed like a good place to start.

I traveled for business today and landed early enough in the day to find a church where I could hear evening Mass. I walked for fifteen minutes, found the building, and then tried all of the wrong doors trying to get in. Someone noticed me, and I was welcomed, then ushered in. This is an urban church, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers and all of the attendant noise and activity of a large city. Inside: candles and the altar. The choir chanted the entrance antiphon and the liturgy began. It was strange being the obvious outsider for once. They stand, rather than kneel, during Communion. The music was different than what I’m used to. But none of this really mattered, because the Mass is the Mass is the Mass. It is always and everywhere the same.

The homily focused on Amoris Laetitia, and then segued to today’s Gospel, John 10:27-30. Father allowed that pastoral imagery was somewhat lost on him, but then he related an experience he had as a young man: traveling to Paris for study and taking a day-trip to see the cathedral in Chartres. The cathedral, he said, reminded him of a great mother hen, roosting among the town and gathering it to herself like a brood of chicks. Chicken analogies continued for awhile, but they worked, and it was a lovely homily.

We keep chickens at home (for eggs and amusement) and here I had traveled two thousand miles to hear a homily on chickens. If the priest had somehow managed to work in a bee reference, I think I might have fainted. I left feeling better, as I always do. I certainly felt closer to home, even if everyone around me was a complete stranger. Before the liturgy began, a parishioner called for visitors to raise their hands. I did, as did another man from Indiana,

We may never see you again, he said, so it’s important for you to know that you are welcome here, and that this is your community too.

Mission accomplished. God bless you all.

One may look upon death, as did antiquity, as a shadowy, inexplicable fate hovering over existence and infusing it with melancholy. Or as science sees it: the simple fact of organic disintegration. Thus conceived, death belongs so intrinsically to life, that one might define life as the movement towards death. One may greet death ecstatically as the Great, the Unspeakable, the Dionysian Mystery in which life culminates; or one may relegate it to the farthest corner of the mind, crowding it to the very brink of the consciousness and behaving as if it were non-existent. Death may also be regarded as the ultimate way out of the labyrinth of existence, a leap to be taken calmly or in despair. But as soon as we compare any one of these conceptions with Jesus' words on the subject, it becomes obvious how differently he speaks. \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

On the fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear about the raising of Lazarus. This is the last of the three Scrutinies undertaken by the Elect - those who will be received into full communion with the Church during the Easter Vigil. The scrutinies guide the Elect into a deeper understanding of repentance and belief.

First, Christ is the living water to the Samaritan woman at the well.

Second, Christ is the true light of the world, bringing sight to the man born blind.

Finally, today: Christ is the resurrection and the life.

In each of these encounters with the Lord, the individual is permanently changed. The Samaritan woman returns to her village and urges others to come and see this man who knew everything about her. The Lord remains with them, and many come to believe. The man born blind progresses from simple facts - I was once was blind, and now I see - to possibilities - He is a prophet and finally, to adoration: Lord, I believe.

Lazarus moves from life to death, and into life again. The Lord has raised others: the daughter of Jairus, the widow’s son. The former is in the intimate surroundings of her bedroom - she is only asleep, he says. The second is almost nonchalant - the young man is raised almost in passing, as the Lord and his followers encounter the procession of the bier at the city’s gates.

But Lazarus is raised before a great crowd in the Lord’s final miracle before entering Jerusalem. Moreover, Jesus deliberately waited before returning and did not mince words with his followers: Lazarus is dead, not “asleep,” like the young girl.

By the time he returns to Bethany, four days have passed since his friend was laid in the tomb. The sisters of Lazarus are mourning: Lord, if only you had been here. Jesus is deeply moved; he weeps. He orders the stone removed, prays to his Father, and calls to Lazarus “in a loud voice.”

…behind the visible event, deep in the last recesses of the spirit, rages a battle…It is against the enemy of salvation that Jesus warns. Christ conquers death by conquering him to reigns in death: Satan. And he does not vanquish by magic, nor by superior spiritual force, but simply by being what he is: invulnerable to the root and vital through and through. He is life itself, that life which is grounded in perfect love to the Father. This is Jesus' strength \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

Here there is no subtle progression, only a sudden reversal. Lazarus emerges from the tomb, still wrapped in his burial cloths.

The distractions of this world count for nothing in the face of this final, ultimate truth. Death, as Guardini writes, is not something that is simply tacked on to our life, but rather the direct outcome of the sort of live we live. In the act of our dying, a condition that is already present in our sinful nature asserts itself but which nevertheless should not exist. The totality of our disordered existence is made manifest in a single moment.

…Thou shalt lie down\ With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,\ The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,\ Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,\ All in one mighty sepulchre. \ — William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis (ll. 34-38)

To live a life of faith in Christ is to deny mortality the final word on the matter. The path to that blessed assurance leads first through Gethsemane and Golgotha.

Lazarus himself largely fades from view afterward but the word of his raising quickly spreads, one of the main reasons for Jesus causing such a commotion on entering Jerusalem a few days later. He is welcomed by jubilant crowds who will ultimately call for his execution.

Filled with the power of the Spirit, he hastens to be alone. There in the deep silence of the wilderness, in prayer and fasting, the storm within him swings itself still; and when temptation comes, it is not repulsed by struggle, but seems to ricochet effortlessly against the invulnerability of freedom sprung from divine necessity. Then Jesus begins his task. \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

From the Gospel reading on the first Sunday of Lent: following his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to fast and pray for forty days. Having entered the wilderness to fetch us back from exile, as St. Ambrose writes, the Lord contends with the master of the world. He is tempted three times.

The first and second temptations - squarely aimed at appetite and ego - are both met with responses from Deuteronomy: One does not live by bread alone and You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve. The Law given to the Israelites is repeated by the Word which has fulfilled it.

The final attempt comes with a sense of desperation: a direct challenge, and an appeal to scripture as well:If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from this high place, for it is written that the angels will guard you, lest you so much as dash your foot against a rock? Marvel at this: even the Devil can quote scripture when it suits him. “If you are the Son of God,” he says, daring Him to prove it.

Jesus again responds with the words of the Law: you shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.

First: our senses and ego. Later: self-doubt and second-guessing. Our senses and appetites are not bad, for by these we know the world and desire things that are good. Introspection and self-examination are also good, inasmuch as they provide a means for improvement. Even so, this is where the adversary will meet us. Small shortcuts here and there, complete with rationalization. Or later on, self-doubt which causes us to either shrink from the moment or rush headlong in, driven by vanity. We will be tempted. Many times, we will fail. But sometimes we will not fail. Sometimes we will take a tiny step towards our perfection.

In neither case are we alone in the desert, however empty it may seem.

The ascent of the Easter mount is the by far the most serious and difficult climb the Christian will find in the liturgical year. This is in keeping with the fact that Easter is the high point of the entire year, the pivot on which our holy faith depends; for the resurrection of Christ was the greatest of His miracles and most strongly substantiated His claim that He was the Son of God. As St. Paul said, “if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). More than anything else, the resurrection clearly and conclusively demonstrates that the dead Christ on the cross on Good Friday was God, and thus corroborated all His teachings as to the redemption of mankind and the institution of the one true Church. \ — Rev. Bernard Strasser, O.S.B., With Christ Through the Year

After tonight we part ways with the sensual, pagan world for awhile. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. We follow Christ into the desert for 40 days, fasting and praying with Him, spending Passiontide in preparation for the great feast of Easter. This is a time of thought and reflection, prayer and almsgiving, penitence and patience. At the far end of this journey lies the Upper Room, the Cross, and further still, the empty tomb.

In the special way particular to this season, we will enter most deeply into the Paschal mysteries, recapitulating the entire history of salvation. We will follow the Master on the road to Jerusalem, welcome him as the Messiah, and then join the crowd to call for his death. There is a place for us to stand at every step along the way.

The Gospel reading for today (Mark 5:1-20) is the story of the Gadarene swine.

A man is tormented by unclean spirits, wandering throughout “the tombs.” He threatens others and himself. Attempts to bind him are unsuccessful. These spirits recognize the approaching Lord, and drive the man forward to fall at the feet of Jesus. Spare us, they beg, for we know who you are. We are Legion, there are many of us. He commands the spirits to enter a nearby herd of swine, which are driven to madness, plunging off of a cliff and into the sea.

A crowd gathers at the commotion and meets the man, now well. He is calmly sitting, dressed and in his “right mind.” Witnesses relay what has happened to the onlookers. Greatly disturbed at the events, the crowd implores Jesus to depart. The restored man, for his part, pleads for the Lord to “remain with him.”

But Jesus would not permit him but told him instead,\ “Go home to your family and announce to them\ all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”\ Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis\ what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.

This curious ending catches my attention. Rather than the usual instruction to “tell no one,” the restored man is explicitly told to go and proclaim what has happened. Unclean spirits, torment, and disease are types (used in the scriptural sense) of sin. An encounter with the Lord restores this man and rids him of his disorder. Now calm and brought back to right reason, the man rightly wants to remain with the Lord, maybe indefinitely. How can he be blamed? Who hasn’t experienced moments of love and belonging so profound that we wished they could stretch to an eternity? God has other plans. This restoration is to drive us to move purposefully along our true road. He returns to community, leaving the dead behind for the living, proclaiming what the Lord has done for him.

We are to be active rather than static. The freedom given to us is freedom to choose to move in the directions God has knitted into our very being.

Jesus came with his disciples into the house.\ Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat.\ When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him,\ for they said, “He is out of his mind.”\ — Mk 3:20-21, Saturday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time

In brief, here are two reactions of the world to the Christian life fully lived. In the first, the crowd gathers, hungry to be near him. Perhaps they came as many did, for physical healing, or out of simple curiosity. Word has doubtlessly spread of this healer who spoke with a strange, new authority. Those from afar are drawn near. His relatives - those closest to him - respond differently. Something is clearly wrong. At best, he is unwell; at worst, possessed by a devil. There is a hint of scandal.

We easily notice interruptions in patterns. An intentionally Christian life is an interruption in the current of the world, an eddy which lives in the stream but gyres and wends its own way. Attention is caught, interest piqued.

How do we, react in the face of witness which challenges us? Do we examine the person, impute motives, tidily categorize, rationalize, dismiss? God speaks to us through others, in their words and actions, even if the other may not fully realize his own participation. We ought to have the ears to listen and the eyes to see.

There may be occasion for us to bear Christian witness in word or deed. If the attention turns to us, what then? How well do we bear the scrutiny? Do we invite or repel? Do we smooth things over, quick to resume our place in the pattern, or do we stand fast?

…human action is a part of time, and when its hour has passed, the act is also a thing of the past. With Jesus it was different. He was man and God in one, and what he did was the result not only of his human will and temporal decision, but also of his divine and eternal will. Thus his action was not merely part of transitory time, but existed simultaneously in eternity. — Romano Guardini, The Lord

Msgr. Guardini is writing about the mysterium fidei – the unfathomable mystery of the Eucharist. What could I possibly add to all that has been said? The words of institution stand on their own, and cannot suffer interpretation or mental gymnastics that allow us to do anything else but take them as they are: literally. Here is no mere symbol or tidy metaphor. This is my body, this is my blood. Did those around him understand? Possibly no better than we do, and probably less than we do, as the Advocate had not yet descended. Even so, the mind fails in attempts to truly understand, and thus: the Paschal mystery. At most, we can listen, approach, and trust. This will suffice.

So many prayers and hymns have been written about the Eucharist - the Anima Christi, Pange Lingua. It’s the Canticle of Simeon, the Nunc Dimitis, that comes to my mind in those moments after receiving. My eyes have indeed seen him under the appearance of bread and wine, exactly according to his word:

Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word in peace;\ Because my eyes have seen Thy salvation,\ Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:\ A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.

The Gospel reading (Mark 3:1-6) tells the last of a series of encounters between the Lord and the Pharisees in Caparnaum. He has healed a paralytic, dined with sinners, forgiven sins, and – in their eyes – profaned the Sabbath. Their reaction has changed from awe, to anger, and finally, to conspiracy with others in common cause. The final straw was the restoration of a man’s withered hand. The law allowed for the saving of a life on the Sabbath, but this man was not in imminent danger.

The Lord, knowing their thoughts puts the question to them: is it lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath? His response to their silence is to heal the man with a word. So intent were they on catching a violation of the rule, it escaped notice that the very source (and fulfillment) of the Law stood before them.

The tools of piety are not ends in themselves. They should point the way to the true end, or they threaten to imprison us by our own shortsightedness. Focusing too closely on minutiae risks trapping us in an endless feedback loop of examination and correction. Like the Pharisees, we will ultimately be unable to pin down the Son of Man, however purely are intentions began before descending into a madness of our own making. He will not find the way out - He is the way out, and we have but to conform ourselves to his will to follow.

It is better to remain silent and to be than to talk and not be. Teaching is good if the speaker also acts. Now there was one teacher who “spoke, and it was made,” and even what he did in silence was worthy of the Father. He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to his silence, in order to be perfect, that he may act through his speech and be known by his silence. Nothing is hidden from the Lord, but even our secrets are close to him. Let us then do everything in the knowledge that he is dwelling within us that we may be his temples, and he God within us. He is, and will reveal himself, in our sight, according to the love we bear him in holiness.\ — Saint Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

Seek silence within and without. Within, to still the voice that carries our attention away from Him. Without, to find ourselves, however briefly, in the deserted places where he used to go to pray. Then we too can echo Samuel: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

It is not easy today. Perhaps it has never been easy to find silence. Parents of children certainly know this. We crave silence to gather our thoughts, and rest for a while in the knowledge that the littlest ones are in bed asleep. For a moment, we can relax our guard. Sleep will be after us soon as well, but until then…night moves through its courses and all things are in silence.

Where we live, the nighttime stillness is broken only by the occasional passing car. When the wind is right, we can hear trains in the distance. Sometimes a dog from the farm next door. Owls. The occasional riot of coyotes passing through the fields and woods. I remember holding a baby in the small hours of the night and longing to get back into bed. Then I thought about the Trappists at the monastery in Conyers, who were preparing to start their day with Matins. Their silence was being broken by softly-chanted psalms.

As Creation imperfectly reflects the One who made it, its sounds can let us hear Him, and maybe loudest of all in moments of silence amidst praise.

Woe to me if I say “I am a Christian” – possibly with a side-glance at others who in my opinion are not, or at an age that is not or at a cultural tendency flowing in the opposite direction. Then my so-called Christianity threatens to become nothing but a religious form of self-affirmation. I “am” not a Christian; I am on the way to becoming one – if God will give me the strength. Christianity is nothing one can “have”; nor is it a platform from which to judge others. It is a movement. I can become a Christian only as long as I am conscious of the possibility of falling away…The real danger is that of becoming within myself unchristian, and it is greatest when my will is most sure of itself. I have absolutely no guarantee that I shall be privileged to remain a follower of Christ save in the manner of beginning, of being en route, of becoming, trusting, hoping and praying.\ — Roman Guardini, The Lord

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.\ — Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Polemic is the order of the day. Thoughtful discourse is abased by a microsecond culture. The immediacy of communication incites a concomitant urge to respond in kind, and bereft of meaningful, authentic human contact as a touchstone for empathy, we have created a subhuman storm of whispers. Any feeling or notion can find immediate confirmation, and where can this help but lead? We are like ships, navigating by lights we carry with us, rather than looking outside of ourselves to a fixed point of reference.

As Christians, we trust because we know God will not test us beyond our strengths. Likewise, we must beware, for the greatest obstacles to salvation are the walls that we pile up on our own, out of our misplaced passions or secret vanities. We can indeed find comfort in Truth, and fly there for refuge. What we cannot do is let comfort become complacency. Scripture is clear on what is to be expected of those to whom much is given.

Lord, keep us ever mindful of who we are, what we are about, and inspire in us humilitas et caritas. Rescue us from the cells we have built for ourselves and help us to remember with kindness our fellow prisoners.

The Gospel for today, Thursday of the first week of Ordinary Time, is Mark 1:40-45, the healing of the leper.

Moved with pity, the Lord wills the cleansing of this kneeling, begging man. He touches this untouchable person and sends him to quietly fulfill the requirements of the Mosaic laws prescribed for ritual cleansing. See that you tell no one, he says.

The man goes and publicizes the event, and the crowds are such that Jesus can no longer openly enter towns, remaining outside in deserted places and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

The man was healed entirely. Though his leprosy was gone, to rejoin community required obedience to the rules and concrete actions. There is something here about sin and reconciliation. Freed from the disease of sin in the sacrament of Reconciliation, we restore our relationship with God. We are then given the freedom to restore right relations with those our sins have affected. Forgiveness comes before penance.

Why did the Lord ask him to remain silent?

The Catena Aurea has this reflection from St. Bede the Venerable:

Now it may well be asked, why our Lord ordered His action to be concealed, and yet it could not be kept hid for an hour? But it is to be observed, that the reason why, in doing a miracle, He ordered it to be kept secret, and yet for all that it was noised abroad, was, that His elect, following the example of His teaching, should wish indeed that in the great things which they do, they should remain concealed, but should nevertheless unwillingly be brought to light for the good of others. Not then that He wished any thing to be done, which He was not able to bring about, but, by the authority of His teaching, He gave an example of what His members ought to wish for, and of what should happen to them even against their will.

Righteous action demands nothing except silence and stillness as place for work. Once given the grace to participate in God’s will on Earth, there is nothing we can add. Seeking earthly glory (or its quieter personal version, which is vanity) moves the focus away from God.

Perseverance in faith even on Calvary – this was Mary’s inimitable greatness. And literally, every step the Lord took towards fulfillment of his godly destiny Mary followed – in bare faith. Comprehension came only with Pentecost. Then she understood all that she had so long reverently stored in her heart. It is this heroic faith which places her irrevocably at Christ’s side in the work of redemption, not the miracles of Marianic legend. Legend may delight us with deep and gracious images, but we cannot build our lives on imagery, least of all when the very foundations of our faith begin to totter. What is demanded of us, as of her, is a constant wrestling in fide with the mystery of God and with the evil resistance of the world. Our obligation is not delightful poetry but granite faith – more than ever in this age of absolutes in which the mitigating spell is falling from all things and naked opposites clash everywhere. \ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

Granite faith, not poetic image. Here are words for someone who has struggled with Marian devotions in the past. So deeply venerated, she has become nearly superhuman, distant, untouchable, almost unknowable. I have held this sort of piety at arms length for a long time, unwilling to close a door but unable to find a way to her through the apparitions, visions, prophecies, and thousand-fold promises of This Devotion or That One.

Digging past all of this, the elemental faith which followed her fiat - uncomprehending, internal, unshaken. Something in this view resonates deeply and authentically with me. To learn that she held things in her heart, maybe silently, pondering them for many years and struggling with them until the end is to discover a path through the bewildering cloud of Marian devotions.

She trusted, though she did not understand. Time and time again, the sword pierces her - yet she follows in faith all the way to the foot of the cross. What must have passed through her mind afterward, on Holy Saturday? Was she trusting still, but numb? Joy beyond reckoning awaits on Easter Sunday, but up until that point? I imagine her, turning over the events of his life in her mind, recalling the Annunciation, drawing a breath and holding on to the faith - even in the midst of the silent darkness following the death of her son - that Something Wonderful was yet to happen. Exactly what, perhaps she was unsure.

This is granite, not roses and lilies which pass in a day.

Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptiser; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.\ — St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 39

Emerging from the long silence of childhood and family life, the Lord arrives at the Jordan to be baptized by John. He makes no announcement, asks for no particular privilege. He submits himself for baptism and begins his public life and ministry.

“I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?”\ Jesus said to him in reply, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”\

John’s hesitation is understandable. He has spent his life preparing himself and others for the Lord’s arrival. John’s words and actions, laid out in his father’s prophecy, were so powerful that some thought he might be the long-awaited Messiah. No, he demurs. There is one coming whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

John consents. The heavens open, the Spirit descends upon Jesus and the voice of the Father is heard from heaven: This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

For one moment before John - while Jesus is praying, according to Luke: God the Father, speaking to the Son, by (through? with?) the Spirit. Later, the Lord will command his disciples to baptize in the name of all three.

Jesus' every act is governed by the Father; hence the Spirit (through which the Lord was conceived and made man) is always with him, for it is the bond of love uniting Father and Son. Yet we read that the Holy Spirit “comes” over Jesus, just as one day, it will come over all whom Jesus calls his own. The intellect cannot cope with such paradoxes, though it somehow senses the reality beyond all reality, the truth beyond all truth. Precisely hear lies the danger. The mind must never allow itself to be misled into seeming ‘comprehension,’ into facile sensations or phrases with nothing solid beyond them. The whole problem is a mystery, the sacred mystery of the relationship of the triune God to his incarnate Son. We can never penetrate it, and knowledge of this incapacity must dominate our every thought and statement concerning Jesus' life.\ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

The baptism of Jesus sanctifies water, and so makes possible our own baptism. As his very human self entered the waters to sanctify them, so our following him into the waters joins us to him as adopted children and heirs. Prefigured in the passage of Israel through the Red Sea, the water of baptism delivers us from slavery to sin and into a new life, in a new land.

After this great manifestation - this realization of the divine promise (for that is what Epiphany means), Jesus will withdraw into the desert to fast and pray. As in baptism, we follow him, this time at a distance, ending the great feast of Christmas and entering briefly into Ordinary Time before withdrawing into Lent.

The Gospels record no encounters between John and Jesus prior to this one. The closest is a meeting of their mothers, when Mary visits Elizabeth, and the unborn John leaps for joy to hear her greeting from afar. This encounter begins to a close John’s life and mission as The Precursor, just as it stands at the threshold of the Lord’s public life.

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man who stands and listens to him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease. (Jn 3:29-30)

St. Paul says of the Lord: “For we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tried as we are in all things except sin” (Hebr 4:15). He entered fully into everything that humanity stands for - and the names in the ancient genealogies suggest what it means to enter into human history with its burden of fate and sin. Jesus of Nazareth spared himself nothing. In the long quiet years in Nazareth, he may well have pondered these names. Deeply he must have felt what history is, the greatness of it, the power, confusion, wretchedness, darkness, and evil underlying even his own existence and pressing him from all sides to receive it into his hear that he might answer for it at the feet of God.\ — Romano Guardini, The Lord

He that has no fools, knaves, or beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.\ — old English proverb

A genealogy fixes a person in time and places him in a larger context of generations past and future. The genealogies of Christ in the Gospels are no different. Narrow focus on their historicity or attempts to reconcile differences miss a larger theological point. He entered into the human family in full participation of the ongoing family story, with all of its highs and lows, virtues and vice.

The genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels were always something I briefly scanned for familiar names: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. David and Solomon of course. Beyond them, things started to get a little hazy. On a narrowly intellectual level, I understood them to establish of his royal lineage in fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. But other than providing for an occasional Sunday School activity (draw out the family tree!) or Advent Jesse Tree project, I was content to pass them over. Too content, and too hasty.

I’ve done some genealogy. Names, boxes, and lines on paper do very little justice to the fullness of the human lives they represent or the family webs they reveal. Focus on impersonal data like names and dates risks losing the forest for the trees. These were people, after all, no matter how many times removed. All children of God, each with an immortal soul. They had interior lives, grew up, loved, and in many cases, aged. They married, reared children, buried their dead, migrated, cooked meals, stubbed toes, dropped dishes, and made love. All these lives bleed, one into the next like a giant, glorious, impressionist mural stretching across time.

Think, too, of all the moments that had to align exactly to produce any one individual - all of us are products of a long panoply of successes, failures, in-laws and outlaws, and yes, the burden of sin comes along with our humanity.

Find any one name in the Gospel lists, then look around it. Four names in sequence might capture the generations that could conceivably be alive together. Two or three is probably safer. Look at your own family - your parents, your children. Think about that mural, and the beautiful Monet-like smearing together of all those colors.

Warts and all, this is the circus he stepped into in choosing to be born “according to the flesh.” As Msgr. Guardini writes, he spared himself nothing. He came not on a white horse at the head of big parade, or by some smoke-and-mirrors spectacle in the town square. He became flesh, like us. Was born, like us. Learned to walk and talk. All of it. His ancestors were flawed - some of them deeply so. None of it was sugar-coated. He entered into - and took on - all of it. Only by taking on flesh could he truly be Emmanuel - God-with-us. Only by remaining fully God could he reconcile all things in himself.

So the genealogies are somewhere to linger. Each name, a complete lifetime - all of the tens of thousands of moments that make them what they are. The generations coming and going with their knaves and fools.

Thank God for the ones who have gone before. May the ones that follow after kindly remember us.