Christmastide in Rome!

This Advent & Christmas season at St. Paul's and the JNRC has been at once busy, joyous, exciting fulfilling and more than a little bit exhausting! Instead of writing a long treatise about all the events (as seems to be my custom lately), I’ll mostly let the photos and videos speak for themselves. Enjoy!!

On December 12th, St. Paul's and the JNRC joyously hosted its third annual Christmas Bazaar to raise money for the Refugee Center. With the indomitable leadership of volunteer coordinator Daniela Morales and junior warden Yvette Manigold, about twelve fantastic booths raised a record sum to support our work with refugees by selling sweets, children's books, Christmas decorations, mulled wine and much more. Santa Claus (or "Babba Natale" as he's called in Italy) even made an appearance!

The Holiday Market - Photo Credit: Merritt Cluff

The very next day, we were blessed to celebrate the ordination of the Rev. Digna Mercedes Tutasig Tenorio to the Sacred Order of Priests! The new "La Reverenda Mercedes" as she is sometimes known has been a member of the St. Paul's community since she moved to Rome from Ecuador in the mid-1990's. After a very lengthy ordination process, we are thrilled that she will continue to serve the Communidad Latinoamericana at our church in a new capacity. On December 20th she celebrated her very first Eucharist and even received a standing ovation afterward! (You can read more about Rev. Mercedes' journey in my article in the church magazine)

Photo Credit: Luis & Maria Emilia Rodriguez

The Saturday before Christmas, about thirty members of St. Paul's traveled about 90 minutes north to the town of Orvieto, an beautiful shopping village in the mountains, to sing Christmas carols in the public square. In the shadow of their majestic cathedral and throughout the cobblestone streets, we joyously shared some American, Italian, German and even Danish classics that brought us perfectly into the holiday spirit. Check out the links here and here (If you're viewing this on a mobile device, the videos may not play properly.)

(Video credit: Rev. Francisco Alberca)

Heading into the final few days before the blessed Feast of the Nativity, St. Paul's & the JNRC hosted a marvelous lunch for nearly 300 refugee guests. Our master chef Nasim cooked a fantistic Afghan meal with rice and lamb, combined with the colorful and delicious oranges, veggies and sweet rolls! The whole Center was buzzing with Christmas spirit as each guest received a regalo ("gift") with toiletries, warm clothes, pens notebooks and all sorts of other goodies :). A great many of the refugees - the majority of whom are Muslim - even wished us a Buon Natale ("Merry Christmas"), and one even said Eid Muabarak (a traditional Islamic holiday greeting)!

The JNRC Christmas Lunch! Photo Credits: Austin Rios & Paola Sanchez

Finally, I had the extraordinary joy of hosting my Mom and our dear family friend Terri for about a week. They were able to attend a handful of the events above and I was absolutely thrilled to show them around this beautiful city. What an honor to take them both around on their first trip to Italy, and to introduce them to my housemates and friends here too! While I wasn't able to spend Christmas with most of my family in the States, just having my Mom in Rome with me meant the world. We had a minor hiccup in that my Christmas gifts didn't arrive from the USA until a few days after Christmas, but knowing the difficulties that our refugees face put everything into perspective. We also had beautiful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day masses at St. Paul's, although sadly I haven't yet found any pictures of them.

I hope and pray that your Christmas has been as absolutely wonderful as mine, and I wish you all a Buon Natale  and Buon Anno (Happy New Year!!)

And the Word Became Flesh

On the First Sunday after Christmas (December 27, 2015) I had the great pleasure to preach at St. Paul's Within the Walls for the first time. Below are the text and audio from my sermon, which can also be found on the parish website here.

The First Sunday after Christmas
Charles Graves IV
St. Paul’s Within the Walls
December 27, 2015

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

Every year, on the Sunday after Christmas, we in the Church set about to read this very same message – the first words from the Gospel of John.

It’s strange message to be sure, but it’s a message so important in fact that it sits front and center in our church all day long. Though you may never have noticed, the gold band sitting between Christ the King and the Apostles below bear some important words in Hebrew and Greek. On your left side are the first words of the New Testament in Genesis – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth”. And on your right are these first words from John’s Gospel: 

"Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος."

En archē ēn ho Lógos, kai ho Lógos ēn pros ton Theón, kai Theós ēn ho Lógos.)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

It’s no mistake that John the Evangelist (not to be confused of course with John the Baptist) reflects the imagery of Creation in these very first words of his Gospel.

I have to say, unusually I really love how John thinks here. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke in their own ways begin the story of Jesus completely differently. Matthew spends his first 18 verses in a grueling recitation of Jesus’ genealogy, going through Mary all the way back to King David and back to the great Patriarch, Abraham. (and so-and-so begat so-and-so, and they begat so-and-so). Mark – preferring to give the cliff’s note version of the story doesn’t even tell the birth story at all, nor does he give any of the backstory. Within the first 8 verses of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is already an adult being baptized in the River Jordan. The third Gospel, Luke, goes back to the parents of John the Baptist, telling the story of his own unusual birth before getting to the now-familiar tale of the Angel Gabriel’s prophecy to Mary and Joseph.

But John the Evangelist – the fourth Gospel – goes an entirely different way. Instead of sticking to the facts of the story (Mary did this, Joseph did that, so on & so forth), the Gospel of John the Evangelist starts out downright mystical. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God”.

What does that even mean?

Try to diagram a sentence like that and it throws you through so many loops that the Church has tried for two millennia to try to untangle it. And if you go looking for clarification in the next two verses, you’re not going to get it. “He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

Perhaps the first great mystic in the early church, John the Evangelist jumps into playing with so many illusive and ethereal terms that he just sort of leaves you floating in some kind of odd spiritual sky-bubble. It’s not about the facts anymore with John. The other Gospels have done that for us already. But I’ll tell you what…

It’s about planting the age-old story of Jesus into our hearts, souls and spirits.

Those of you who know me well, know that I’m a “just the facts” sort of guy. I like lists, and objects, and rules, and facts and physical realities that I can see or touch or hold in my hands. By and large, nothing gives me a headache and makes my eyes cross faster than a boatload of unreachable concepts that are constantly being reexamined, reworked, and redefined. It’s like trying to grab onto a bubble that a child blows into the air. Spend extraordinary energy trying to grab it, and you will still find yourself holding nothing but a fistful of disappointment and bewilderment.

The God we serve is infinitely more illusive, despite (or perhaps because) that same God is present everywhere and at all times. God is not constrained by the languages, or words, or facts, or numbers, or buildings, or theories that we humans try ceaselessly to construct. Try as we might – as we have since the days of Adam and Eve – the God we serve just can’t be tied down.

Sometimes, or often for that matter, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to try and try and try again, failing every time to wrap our arms around exactly who and what this God is. It’s like Sisyphus pushing that infamous rock up the hill only to have it roll down on top of us time after time after time. But we keep on working at it, don’t we?

We think that if we meditate hard enough, or busy ourselves enough with this good deed or that one, or if we educate ourselves enough, or if we advocate hard enough or fight the battles of social justice hard enough than maybe, just maybe, we can apprehend God and tie God down to the model of our own expectations.

But Guess what – I don’t know about you, but I’m awfully glad that the God of Heaven isn’t constricted to the facts, rules, and expectations that we try to create. At least for me, every time I catch a little glimpse of the Divine in this world – whether it’s in the everyday course of life or in the extraordinary moments of amazement that catch us by surprise, this God is so much bigger, so much more beautiful, so much mightier, so much sweeter, so much more merciful, so much more loving than I ever could have thought to imagine.

And that very revelation is why we’re reading John’s prologue on this first Sunday of Christmas. Having just celebrated the birth of the almighty, all-powerful, all-consuming King of Heaven being born into this world as a feeble little vulnerable baby in a dirty little stable in Bethlehem – how can we not revel in God shattering our expectations. How can we not look up from this world of calendars and schedules, facts, and figures, rules and regulations to focus on what’s REALLY important in this world.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “And the Word became flesh and lived among us”

My dear friends, take some time this week to look up from the hustle and bustle of this busy world and take some time alone, in the company of the Living God. Say that phrase to yourself, repeating it, praying it, breathing it into your body and your soul and your spirit.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us”
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us”
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us”

Taste the sweetness of those words in your mouth this week. Do not try to grasp them. Do not try to fully understand them. But let them carry you away toward the transcendent beauty of the God who passes all understanding.

"Martyres", Part 2

“The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!” *

The location of the Fosse Ardeatine Massacre

On March 24^th, 1944, Three hundred thirty-five people were captured, driven to an obscure location, and led to a small abandoned cave. In sixty-seven groups of five, they were made to kneel on the hard rocky ground.

Wanting to save on ammunition, a group of Nazi soldiers murdered each person with exactly one bullet. The soldiers then threw their lifeless bodies into piles roughly one meter tall, making space for the next line of terrified victims. For three-hundred thirty of them, their last sights on this earth were the blood-covered corpses of their compatriots. When it was done, the bodies were left to rot for more than three months, with no notification to the families or loved ones of the victims. **

Standing in the spot where the Fosse Ardeatine Massacre took place, the presence of evil in this world was so painfully and horrifically present. A fellow visitor expressed the feeling that “the Devil is running the world”. To me, it was like the day I stood at Cape Coast Castle, (the largest slave trading fort in West Africa) which was the killing field of my own captured ancestors.

These people were not just victims. Ranging from elderly grandparents to young teenagers, they were fathers, mothers, siblings, Christians, Jews, lawyers, doctors, clergy, shopkeepers, friends, lovers, spouses, children and people of varied ethnic groups and languages. Most of all, they were Martyres - the Latin name for "witnesses" (which gave birth to the modern English word "martyr"). They witnessed one another's horrific deaths, and in dying, their blood cries out to all of us, witnessing to the greatest evils of this world.

The entrance to the cave

This week, that witnessing sensation seems ever more present to me and to so many in my home country and across the world. We can no longer escape the brutality which we inflict upon one another through every form of violence. Especially with the carnivorous guns and bombs that litter God’s creation, we are killing ourselves and our families every single day. All of us are culpable. Though many of us have never held a gun or a bomb in our hands, we failed to protect those whose lives have been cut short by violence. And we have failed to protect those whose lives will be cut short by violence too.

Today, roughly ninety people in the United States and hundreds of people around the world woke up this morning. They expect to go to bed tonight, but instead, they will be murdered – or have already been murdered by gun violence today.

Gravestones mark each victim by name, age, religion and photograph

Tomorrow, the same thing will happen to the same number of people. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And every day after that – over time more and more and more. It may be your co-worker or friend, or loved one, or spouse. It could be your son or your daughter. It may be you. It may be me.

This is not about Muslims and Christians. This is not about “those” terrorists. Every day we allow this to happen, we become  pawns of the gun-bearing brutality that devours ninety lives every single day.

It will never end until we make it end. One thing is for sure. It will never end with our “thoughts and prayers”, as expressed not even half-heartedly by those who seek to wish away the greatest tragedies of our age.

Pray with your hands. Pray with your feet. Pray with your bodies. Pray with your pocketbooks. Pray with your families. DO SOMETHING.

“The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!” *

*(Gen. 4:10, NIV)

** Toward the end of World War II, Mussolini’s fascist regime had just been voted out, and replaced by a general who promptly drew up terms of unconditional surrender to the allied powers. The Nazi German forces responded by marching into Rome to occupy the city. When a group of anti-German Italians ambushed and killed a group of thirty-three Nazi soldiers, Hitler personally ordered that ten Italian civilians must be killed for every one German casualty. (Five more were added because of a mathematical error). Near the northern edge of Rome, along the old Via Apia (perhaps the most famous road of the ancient Roman Empire) lies the Fosse Ardeatine Memorial. There, in an unassuming niche on the edge of a park in a lovely residential neighborhood, unspeakable violence occurred just a few decades ago.

**N.B., Because I chose not to take photos for much of our time at the memorial in order to absorb its significance, the first three pictures were borrowed with permission from here, here, and here. The fourth picture was taken by the Rev. Rosa Lee Harden. For more information, visit the monument's website.

"Martyres", Part 1

Today, with the Refugee Center closed for the weekend, I ventured with eight St. Paul’s parishioners (guided by Fr. Austin & our superb senior warden, Larry) to the Catacombs of St. Domatilla. As I would soon learn, the Catacombs were (and are) a burial ground for early Christians in the first two centuries A.D., before the religion was legalized in the Roman Empire. In short, the space was built to be a dormitorium – a place for Christians bodies to “sleep” for a short time after death until the expectedly imminent second coming of Christ. Once holding some 17,000 bodies deep underground throughout 11 miles of tunnels, all but a few corporeal remains were exhumed in the 7^th century.

Entering the cave, as our tour guide shared with us the story of the ancient martyres (Latin for “witnesses”) who were buried there, I was surprisingly struck by the palpable morbidity of the place. I should’ve seen it coming perhaps, since I was in the catacombs of all places, but I couldn’t shake the sense that the spirits of those long-deceased children of God were there walking with us and among us along the way. The average age of death, in those days, was just thirty-five years old. Among them were people of all walks of Roman society – mothers, fathers, doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, teachers, paupers, children, babies, and people of varied ethnicities, home countries, and languages.

Buried here together, unadorned, unmarked, unheralded and unknown to us as individuals, they are nonetheless our family. I wrote here recently about the “great cloud of witnesses” we celebrate annually at the Feast of All Saints, and its twin celebration the Feast of All Souls on the preceding day. (All Souls honors the totality of our deceased predecessors in Christ, whereas All Saints specifically marks those people whom the church remembers as being extraordinary models of Christian piety).

 Today, honoring these saints and souls together from nearly two millennia ago, it was the incredible greatness of their number that left me awe-inspired. Think about it – the 17,000 Christians once buried in these very catacombs of Domatalla from the first three centuries in Rome, plus the thousands of Christian souls from the same era buried elsewhere in Rome, and the hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, not to mention the hundreds of millions of departed Christian witnesses from all over the globe assembled in the last twenty centuries! What an enormous multitude of angels, saints, and blessed souls we have the honor and responsibility to honor.

As if this were not enough on its own, it was their extraordinarily ordinary lives that humbled me so deeply, far beyond my expectation. These were not people who commanded great fame or attention, not people who led empires or found their names written in the great histories of the world. They were people of every age, across magnificent diversity who loved their families, worked hard at what they did, and lived as best they could in this troubled and difficult world. They faced so many of the same challenges that we might recognize today, even walking on the same ground and the same streets which I traversed this morning to arrive in this place.

Preparing to celebrate the Eucharist at the catacombs

Yet their world was also so different from ours. Even in a city like Rome where we even walk through the same buildings that our ancient ancestors knew, this modern world has so often forgotten its ancient present. Amidst the ubiquitous cars and hotels, pizzerias and gelato shops, the souls of those whom we call “long lost” lie not only deep underground or high in the heavens as we imagine. Try as we might to domesticate and constrain death - to avoid our mortality until an “appropriate time” - it is not going anywhere. The dead walk with us still.

These siblings in Christ of the past and present age believed this earthly world would come to an end imminently – any minute now, any day now. They must have never imagined that two thousand years hence, Christians would continue each day to walk by their burial sites - to pray for and with them in such a radically transformed and yet remarkably unchanged world. Some day soon perhaps, our great-great-grandchildren (a hundred generations on, give or take) will walk by our gravestones too.  And in this season of Advent we continue to wait with them, no less confident that all Christ’s servants of past, present and future continue to prepare, and live, and love our ageless God together.




**N.B., Because picture taking was not allowed for most of the tour, the first three pictures were borrowed with permission from here, here, and here. The fourth picture was taken by the Rev. Rosa Lee Harden.