Public Displays of Piety

[don-o]

Public Displays of Piety

Corpus Christi among the Bohemians

by Jordan Zajac

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/06/public-displays-of-piety

On a Greenwich Village street corner, amid a throng of man buns and designer sun hats, the priest held up the monstrance, aureate and glistening. The public square was filled with a sticky, sweet smell—not the usual resinous notes of cannabis, but the rich scent of myrrh. Two thuribles were swung by youngish, steady-eyed acolytes. Performers in the square paused to gawk at the procession, allowing us to hear each other as we chanted the Adoro te devote.

In a metropolis known for parades so huge they halt traffic, this small Corpus Christi procession interrupted the evening commute only briefly (following the Roman custom, it was held last Thursday). Perhaps that is why no one mocked or derided us. Or maybe the Village’s bourgeois bohemians were simply dumbstruck, bemused by this incongruous display of medieval-looking piety on streets begrimed by postmodern irony. What was the point of such a public pium exercitium, anyway?

American Catholicism is distinguished by its inevitable visibility. Cardinal Robert Sarah stressed this point in his recent address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. In his opening remarks, Sarah appealed to American Catholics not merely as believers, but as citizens and public witnesses:

As you well know, what happens in the United States has repercussions everywhere. The entire globe looks to you, waiting and praying, to see what America resolves on the pressing challenges the world faces today. Such is your influence and responsibility.

It is often easy—too easy—to resign ourselves to cultural collapse. The Republic seems to be dying. What can we believers really do, save pick out a dirge?

Sarah urged that the world has more faith in us than that. That even if the majority of the global population will follow happily in the U.S.’s slouch toward wherever it is we are heading, there are others who refuse to buy what secular progressivism is peddling. They continue looking—beyond all the headlines—for signs of sane resistance and refutation. Because they believe that such signs can be found. Because, much as it may surprise us, we actually do have that influence, and that responsibility.

The incense wafting through Greenwich Village on Thursday evening let off more than a sweet aroma. It also emitted “the nexpungeable odor of the long past,” to appropriate a phrase from E.B. White. In that ephemeral smoke was something paradoxically solid, substantial. Something lasting and resistant to our “liquid modernity” (sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s concept, helpfully elucidated by Rod Dreher), in which individuals operate without solid institutional and social bonds. The scent may have been entirely foreign to many onlookers, but they experienced it. The display was concrete.

exc

[don-o]

For me, the major point of interest is not the procession itself. Rather it is the Bishop's plea to Americans to lead the way for the restoration of traditional values; values that are fundamental to survival of society.

[Mrs Don-o]

For me, the major point of interest is not the procession itself. Rather it is the Bishop's plea to Americans to lead the way for the restoration of traditional values; values that are fundamental to survival of society.

It's a good reminder that we have an obligation to be a "spectacle unto the world".  Say the wise word, the sane word.  Do the decent deed, the beautiful deed. Brush your hand clean of filth and compromise.  Bow to the sacred. 

People the world around are watching to see what we will do.   They, and the angels.

[sinkspur]

don-o, do you have a link to the source?

[sitetest]

It's a good reminder that we have an obligation to be a "spectacle unto the world".  Say the wise word, the sane word.  Do the decent deed, the beautiful deed. Brush your hand clean of filth and compromise.  Bow to the sacred. 

People the world around are watching to see what we will do.   They, and the angels.

Whether people watch or not, say it, do it, be it.

[don-o]

don-o, do you have a link to the source?

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/06/public-displays-of-piety

Thanks for heads up @sinkspur

[don-o]

It's a good reminder that we have an obligation to be a "spectacle unto the world".  Say the wise word, the sane word.  Do the decent deed, the beautiful deed. Brush your hand clean of filth and compromise.  Bow to the sacred. 

People the world around are watching to see what we will do.   They, and the angels.

Of course that "we" is a  peculiar people.

1 Peter 2:9
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;

And sometimes it is not easy to deal with people who suspect and even resent peculiarity.

@Mrs Don-o @LonestarDream @roamer_1

[roamer_1]

It's a good reminder that we have an obligation to be a "spectacle unto the world".  Say the wise word, the sane word.  Do the decent deed, the beautiful deed. Brush your hand clean of filth and compromise.  Bow to the sacred. 

People the world around are watching to see what we will do.   They, and the angels.

Just the simple act of praying over a meal in public - Something my family does, just as a matter of course, any time we sit down to eat - The responses to that act are wide-ranging, though often positive. Folks are watching more than one would realize.

[Mrs Don-o]

Just the simple act of praying over a meal in public - Something my family does, just as a matter of course, any time we sit down to eat - The responses to that act are wide-ranging, though often positive. Folks are watching more than one would realize.

My experience as well.  When I lived in DC, I was entirely dependent on walking plus the Metro for my transportation, so it was a good opportunity to walk or sit or stand around with my rosary in my hand.  (Rosary people will know what I mean. These are times when your mind is free and you have time to pass.) 

Never was particularly ostentatious,  Never got a bad reaction from anyone.  And several times, a wayward citizen would come up and sit next to me on the Metro train or catch up to me walking, and start a conversation that would go something like this:

'Scuse me,Ma'am.  Uh, you a nun?

(No.)

But that, that's a rosary, right?  A religious thing right?

(Yes, it is.)

Could I ask you to pray for my brother?  He's an addict.

(I'll pray for him.)

His name is Wyatt Lee.  He's addicted real bad.  He really needs prayers. Thank you Ma'am.  Are you gonna pray for him today?

(Yes, I'll do it today.)

Today and tomorrow, OK?  Because he's in court tomorrow.

Sometimes they'd want to confess some generalized sin. 

"I..." (Long pause) I messed up my first marriage.  Man,  (long pause) I was messed up.  I was married to a beautiful woman but I (long pause) messed up."

I just had to say one or two sentences, maybe, like "Ask God to forgive you and give you a new start.  If you're thinking about another woman, respect her. God bless you both."  And then the person would quietly move off.  I felt like I was a small movable shrine.  If I helped some poor fellow stragglers find peace, well, what a wonder. Amen, Lord.

[roamer_1]

If I helped some poor fellow stragglers find peace, well, what a wonder. Amen, Lord.

Yep. He seems to put me in the way of folks... Folks that are tailor-made precisely for my witness. I can't tell you how many times I have said, "I was exactly where you are now, on this same dark road, just a few years ago..."

It took me a long time to figure out he was turning my most awful sins into victories - All I had to do is witness truthfully and confess.

Sometimes I am just a bee in their bonnet, and I don't know how it turns out - and sometimes confession and tears, and hitting our knees right then and there.

I dunno if I could be accused of the piety transmitted in the OP, but I do know that declaring faith... wearing it openly... is what provides those opportunities, or seems to.

[Mrs Don-o]

I do know that declaring faith... wearing it openly... is what provides those opportunities, or seems to.

I agree.  That's why I think nuns, priests and other people authorized to wear ""clergy clothing" ought to really consider wearing it all the time, just walking around downtown, waiting at a bus stop, sitting on a park bench,  see who shows up and what happens.

Some of the reaction would undoubtedly be hostile, reactions to "the sex abuse scandal" and so forth.  You'd have to resolve to silently, patiently absorb some insults, some tirades. But I'm betting a lot of it would be people just wanting to ask a few questions, to unburden themselves of a few problems, to confess a few sins.

When I was deathly sick in the ICU 19 months ago, as soon as I was able to speak again, I politely asked everybody whether they prayed: doctors, respiratory techies, nurses, CNA's, Food Service and Housekeeping, everybody.  Nobody was offended; a solid majority said they did.  One said, "Lady, I pray for people all day long."  I asked each one of them to make a deal: they pray for me and mine, and I will pray for them and theirs.

I realized I had a purpose even in the ICU, to remind people that God is with us.  And I think I came out way ahead on that deal.