Tag: religion

Spirituality, Writing

Habemus Papam!

Christine Eberle

Where were you when Pope Leo XIV was elected? How did you react? Busted Halo solicited a group of writers to answer that question in 300 words or less. Loving a tight word limit, here’s what I wrote:

“I assumed you were dead,” my brother said. What other explanation could there be for my silence following his 12:12 text (White Smoke!) and 1:16 follow-up (American Augustinian! Villanova grad!)?

Blame it on the weather. After five drizzly days in Maine — where my husband and I had come to ready our summer cottage for the season — the sun appeared and we plunged into garden cleanup, sans phones. I remember glancing at the Catholic church across the harbor, thinking, “If we get a new pope, I wonder if they’ll ring the bells?” (Apparently not.)

At 1:50, I wandered inside and discovered my blown-up phone. Calling my brother — a graduate of (then) Augustinian-run Msgr. Bonner High School outside Philadelphia — I got an earful about Pope Leo XIII and Catholic Social Teaching. Too much too soon! Where was the time machine that would whisk me back 98 minutes to watch the announcement in real time?

Oh, there it was, sitting on the kitchen table. I opened my laptop, pulled up YouTube, and watched David Muir and Fr. James Martin receive and react to the astounding news.

Since then, I’ve been riveted by a litany of personal connections to the new pontiff. My mother taught theology at Bonner for 25 years; there’s a photo of Fr. Prevost visiting during her tenure, which means Mom (now gone to God) probably met the pope. In college, he worked as a groundskeeper at the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. A friend at Merrimack met him several times. And don’t get me started on people from Chicago!

In Cherished Belonging, Fr. Greg Boyle writes about God as Meister Eckhart’s “Wild One.” Rather than simply trying to get butts in pews, Boyle insists, “this wild, astonishing God may have more spacious plans for us.” 

I’m fastening my seatbelt.

You can read the rest of the essays here:
Part I: Allison Bobzien, Fr. Evan Cummings, Laura Yeager, and Jennifer Sawyer
Part II: Allison Beyer, Eric Clayton, Nora Kavanagh, Catherine Anne Sullivan, and John Dougherty

Liturgy, Spirituality

The Work of Christmas: Choir Edition

Christine Eberle

When you sing in a church choir and Christmas falls mid-week, you know you’re going to be spending a lot of time in church: Christmas Eve and/or Day (possibly multiple services); then Saturday and/or Sunday; and then—if you’re Catholic—the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. That’s right: on New Year’s Eve/Day, we have a holy day of obligation honoring the woman who convinced her son to make more wine for a party. (And people say the Church doesn’t have a sense of humor.) This pitches us into another weekend, after which even people who’ve had the whole two weeks off are firmly back at work and you’ve been to church like 72 times.

Not that I’m complaining. Really! These liturgies celebrate things that are profound and powerful and—if you’ll pardon the bumper sticker wisdom—the reason for the season.  But that’s not the only thing we’re doing in church these days. Christmas, as it turns out, is also a season for funerals.

Sometimes that’s because people go “home for Christmas” (in the words of a Steven Curtis Chapman song that should come with a pack of tissues) or hold on for one last holiday before letting go. Other times, a loved one has died weeks or even months earlier, and family is spread across the country, and this is the best time to bring everyone together.

We had two funerals at St. Vincent’s this week.  The first was for the matriarch of a large family, whose husband we buried earlier this year. With a full church and two pews’ worth of grandchildren looking on, her three handsome sons stood at the ambo and wept their way through the eulogy. It was beautiful. 

The second was for a woman who had been living in a nursing home for many years, who died two weeks shy of her 100th birthday. She had one mourner: a niece in her eighties. And yet we cut no corners. The five-person bereavement ministry team and other parish staff were there; two of them sat with the niece and found each song in the hymnal for her. We did all the music. Our pastor gave a full-blown homily. It was beautiful.

It’s like eternity in a snow globe.

There is something deeply poignant about a Christmas funeral. It’s like eternity in a snow globe. The light of the paschal candle glows in the twinkle of hundreds of tree lights in the sanctuary. The casket or urn rests just a few steps from the babe in the hay. And above it all looms the crucifix—which at St. Vincent’s is a mural that includes the Blessed Mother reaching for her son, as she does in the manger tableaux below. Birth and death and the promise of new life, all together in that one holy space.

There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Picture of a Goat
Book Tour, Retreats, Spirituality, Travel, Writing

Sneak Peek: So Many Goats!

Christine Eberle

As I’ve been playing “what-were-we-doing-two-years-ago” all month, so many profound and silly memories have surfaced. Here’s one of the latter, told as part of Chapter Forty, “La Cova.” It takes place on the evening of October 30—the day after what we thought had been our final hike, from Montserrat to Manresa. Enjoy!

At three-thirty that afternoon, Fr. José told us, we were to meet in the garden to walk to Mass at Our Lady of Good Health. We should be sure to wear our boots, he added, and bring our hiking poles. Oh, good grief, I thought. How are we not done with those? And why are we hiking to Mass when there are more chapels than I can count right here in our residence?

The hour’s walk took us through the old town and surrounding commercial district, then onto a rocky path through the fields beyond. I will confess, I was grumpy.

My mood lightened when I discovered that we’d be sharing the road with goats. In the field beside us strode an actual goatherd—wearing sandals, carrying a crook, and accompanied by a frisky dog. (A twenty-first-century goatherd, he was also wearing jeans and a camo baseball cap, but still, it was pretty cool.) Close on his heels were at least fifty goats of varying colors and sizes, each sporting a noisy bell. As we hustled forward, the goats followed, kicking up a cloud of dust behind us until our ways diverged.

The surreal goat encounter banished what was left of my petulance. And, of course, the walk was worth it. Santa Maria de la Salut is a tenth-century hermitage. Preserved in the entryway is a rectangular slab identified (in Catalan, English, and French) as “the stone where Saint Ignatius knelt down on his visits to this sanctuary.”

How is it that a hunk of rock touched by Ignatius’ knees has been preserved for five hundred years? Fr. José explained that the ordinary people of Manresa kept Ignatius’s memory alive, realizing that they had been in the presence of a holy man. According to Tellechea Idígoras’s biography, when the saint’s canonization process was opened in 1594—seventy-two years after his sojourn in Manresa—many testified to the lasting impression Ignatius had made on them or on their parents and grandparents. Perhaps that’s why he continues to feel so present in this place.

As daylight was no longer being saved, the sun had dipped below the horizon already by the time we finished Mass. We started back at a good pace, hoping to reach the paved roads before dark; nevertheless, we had to navigate the treacherous end of the rocky path by flashlight. At last, we reached the bright Burger King and KFC signs on the outskirts of the city—a sharp contrast to the millennium-old hermitage and timeless goatherd. Like many of the towns we visited, Manresa is a place where the past and present coexist.

After dinner, we gathered for our final reflection . . .

Coming January 14, 2025 from Paraclete Press