Abbey-Roads2

Icon: St. Xenia of Petersburg, Fool for Christ

St. Olaf in Downtown Minneapolis used to be my parish when Monsignor Flemming was pastor. I have some fond memories from back then. The Church has changed physically with the latest renovations, but the spirit of the parishoners has remained as vital as ever. It’s a good parish, always noted for its middle of the road stance, welcoming everyone, conservative and liberal alike. It’s mission in the heart of Downtown Minneapolis is essential, the Church is a haven amidst the hustle and bustle of city life, a real ’soul saver’ offering the sacraments to people who may not otherwise receive them.

I posted a picture of St. Xenia, because I think of many types like her that worshipped with me at St. Olaf. Lovely and holy people in their own right, or so I am convinced.

One woman, Mary Ellen, always edified me. She would call out, “I want to be a nun in Rochester!” Sometimes Monsignor would quiet her down at Mass by saying, “Now, now, Mary Ellen, keep quiet.” Once she turned and saw me coming in for confession during noon Mass wearing shorts and she yelled at me, “You can’t wear shorts in Church!” I mouthed “Shut up!” back at her and she just smiled at me and turned around. She always smiled at me. Once she was next to me and wasn’t approaching Communion, I patronizingly thought that she was too simple to have any sin that could keep her from Communion and I whispered something to that effect. She blasted me with, “How dare you! You don’t know my soul!” She so much put me in my place.

There was another woman, very anorexic who went to confession every day, sometimes three times in a row. She would dissapear for some time and when I saw her again she would have new clothes and would have gained weight, I figured out she had been hospitalized and her medication adjusted, since she seemed much more peaceful and less agitated. I see the same woman now at St. Agnes where I believe she has found some stability.

Once, before the chapel was built I was in the main Church for adoration. (It was around the time “Brother Son, Sister Moon” had come out, when Francis took off all of his clothes and laid them at his father’s feet.) This man walked up slowly towards the altar, I heard gasps and looked out of the corner of my eye to see what was going on. The guy was stark naked and suddenly prostrated himself on the floor before the Blessed Sacrament. The old ladies were gasping and so I knew they would fetch someone to take care of the matter, and I laughed out loud.

I have fond memories indeed of the old St. Olaf’s. It’s a lot more slick these days. I don’t care for the renovated sanctuary - it reminds me of the Mormom Tabernacle. Everyone else I know still likes it. It doesn’t matter, it’s a good parish.

July 29 and 30 St. Olaf is celebrating their patronal feast as well as their 65 year anniversary. What an appropriate time for their new pastor, Fr. Mark Pavlik to be installed by Archbishop Harry Flynn. See Ray’s post at Stella Borealis for all of the details.

Little Murders - a play and movie by Jules Feiffer, 1970. Still; Alan Arkin.

Plot summary:

“A girl brings home her latest boyfriend to meet her parents. This is done against the background of random shootings that had just begun in NYC at the time the play was written, 1969. How the family’s failings are magnified by the social confusion of the times is the crux of the plot.”

I think of Feiffer’s play everytime I hear about snipers and serial killers and killings in our Country’s cities - such as the freeway sniper now active in Indiana. Violence it seems is apparently escalating once again. His play was rather prophetic in many ways, albeit a black comedy. For people in Lebanon and Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan, and not a few other places in the world, it is everyday life once again.

I am also reminded of Mother Teresa’s prophetic words that made her listeners, the Clintons among them, rather uncomfortable:

“February 1997 - National Prayer Breakfast in Washington attended by President Clinton and the First Lady. ‘What is taking place in America,’ she said, ‘is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another.’”

In the late ’60’s the musical “Hair” opened on Broadway and I was in NYC to see it, in one of the songs they shout out sexual terms for various sexual acts as a sort of declaration of sexual freedom. One could substitute those words in the same mantra like fashion regarding what has brought all of this upon us;

“Contraception”
“Sexual Promiscuity”
“Abortion”
“Homosexuality”
“Consumerism”
“Materiali sm”
“Indifferentism”
“Euthanasia”

On and on. Pope Paul VI in his encyclical “Humanae Vitae” also prophetically foretold what might happen to us in the future. (The future is now.)