The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

"When the Lights go on again...all over the world"

November 21, 2005

Dame Vera Lynn with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

I have an eclectic taste in all things and music is one of them. In addition to my interest in Gregorian chant I am an avid opera fan. For the three hour drive to Jacksonville yesterday afternoon I listened, for a second time, to an audio book published last year by the English author John Guy on the life of Mary Queen of Scots which I purchased a week ago in a second hand bookstore in Jacksonville. After listening for an hour and a half, I opened the CD drawer in the minivan and for a change of pace decided to listen to some music sung by Dame Vera Lynn the famous "Forces' Sweetheart" during the Second World War. (I told you I have a very eclectic taste.)

Two of her most famous songs, nay legendary songs, are "There'll be Bluebirds over, the White Cliffs of Dover" and "When the lights go on again". When I listen to those two songs I frequently get quite choked up since the words of those songs go back to an era, when heroism was the stuff of daily life, and the British people struggled to keep life in Britain afloat with the German menace just the other side of the ever so small (as it then seemed) English Channel.

In Britain around Veterans' Day (November 11) English men and women proudly wear paper and plastic poppies whose sale the proceeds support those injured and maimed in previous foreign wars. We call the Sunday closest to that day Remembrance Sunday and Her Majesty, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family lay wreaths at the Cenotaph, a monument in Whitehall, the heart of the British Government in London. The poppies are a reference to a famous poem by the Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a medical doctor in the Canadian Army during the First World War.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Ever since childhood I have always been moved by the great sacrifice of so many brave men to keep the British Isles from foreign domination. My own paternal grandfather fought bravely as a paratroop sergeant at the Battle of Arnhem in the closing stages of the Second World War being wounded with shrapnel.

However, there is a double significance of the two songs by Vera Lynn for me: I apply them to the current struggles in the Church. I am not alone in my spiritualizing of classic love songs, according to a biography I read some years ago of Saint José-María Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei - he also liked to listen to Spanish love songs and spiritualized them to be the love of God for the individual soul. Lynn's two songs speak of the world and the vision of hope for when the whole struggle is over and done with for example:

When the lights go on again all over the world
And the ships will sail again all over the world
Then we'll have time for things like wedding rings and free hearts will sing
When the lights go on again all over the world

and:

There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see
There'll be love and laughter and peace ever after
Tomorrow when the world is free

Two days ago I posted a fairly optimistic view of the current papacy but there was an obvious caveat that occurred to me in writing that column which I did not bother to set down at that time. I decided to "ruminate" on the point a little more. It has to do with the political philosophy of the current President of the United States. He came to Washington to set a "new tone" as he called it and now 5 years into his presidency he recently averred that he was glad of the opportunity to "get out of Washington". The current Pope is attempting to set a new tone but it like Bush's presidency could go up in smoke I thought. Not so ! Further reflection has taught me that whereas the United States is a secular governmental power of man's creation, the Church in contrast is of Divine Institution and for that reason, and as per the promise of Our Divine Lord, the "gates of hell will not prevail".

After the two Sunday Masses in Spring Hill yesterday, before departing for Jacksonville some words from a recent interview with Bishop Fellay caught my attention:

Q. You usually give the impression that you are an optimist. Is this natural or arrived at?

A. Faith! Faith gives me certainty. God will not abandon the Church, having promised her his assistance. God having promised his assistance to the church, will not abandon it. I see the church in pain, I see the church suffer, and I know, by faith, that this state will not last, that this crisis that wounds the souls, will be overcome. Though there will be other suffering, because I know also the Church militant, being that she is in the middle of a world that can hardly stand her, that there will be other suffering that will also need to be overcome. My optimism is really placed in the Lord. This is the essence of our religion as we learn to sing that our joy is in the Name of the Lord, our force, our assistance is in the Name of the Lord. The reason for my optimism can be found there.

Yesterday's Gospel for the last Sunday of the Church year contains the famous and ominous references to the last times and the loss of Faith etc. Much fodder for sedevacantist diatribes against the Pope and the Novus Ordo I'm sure. Did anybody bother to contrast the Gospel with yesterday's Epistle ? The words of St Paul leapt out at me in Jacksonville last evening:

EPISTLE. Col. i. 9-14. Brethren: We cease not to pray for you, and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of the will of God, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to the power of His glory, in all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His Blood, the remission of sins.

"No reason for doom and gloom here !" I thought. The contrast between the Epistle and the Gospel could not be more apparent. St Paul encourages us to "good work", "with joy" and "in the light". Like Bishop Fellay I have every reason to expect that the Church will right herself since as the current Pope reminded us at the Mass to inaugurate his pontificate he said:

(The Church) "holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future. The Church is alive and we are seeing it: we are experiencing the joy that the Risen Lord promised his followers. The Church is alive – she is alive because Christ is alive, because he is truly risen."

During the long years of the Second World War, lyrics such as those quoted above must have seemed like wishful-thinking to some, and yet with the benefit of the passing of time we know them to now be true. Life did move on. If it can in the affairs of men, then why not in the Church ?

Last evening as I was reciting the Domine non sum dignus at Mass before my own Communion, the thought occurred to me that I have the power to call down God into a piece of bread made by human hands and that he submits Himself to my vile hands that I might be sanctified by Him - the mystery of God's grace. If he can do this for me why cannot a God Who has the power to replace the substance of bread and wine with Himself, fix the mess in today's Church ? As The Archangel told the Blessed Mother: "With God nothing shall be impossible". He said this in response to a question from Our Blessed Lady herself: "How shall this be since I know not man ?" We all have questions as to how God will fix the mess - we think the thoughts of men not God. Wisely the Blessed Virgin did not doubt the word of an angel in response to her question - shall you or I ?

+TF