Tag: Christianity

Monasticism is blessedness a man can ever afford on earth,
you can’t have anything more blessed than this…
Ultimate bliss is in heaven,
but its lower stage is on earth.

St. Barsonophius of Optina

A well-known ascetic Schema-Abbess Sophia (born Sophia Evgenievna Grineva) was the founder of the convent dedicated to the “Joy and Consolation” Icon of the Mother of God in the Kaluga diocese (1896–1913), abbess of the Kiev Protection Convent (from 1913 to 1923), and a monastic confessor of the faith. The holy nun Sophia had a difficult journey of life, which coincided with the turmoil Russia suffered at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Nun-Confessor Sophia (Grineva) The ancestors of the ancient Grinev family were awarded for their military exploits with land, and became landowners in central Russia. Sophia Evgenievna Grineva was born in 1873 in the family of nobleman Evgeny Ivanovich Grinev, who at the time of Sophia’s birth was a third-year student of the Law Faculty at Moscow University. Her mother, Lydia Dmitrievna Glazunova, was married at age sixteen. After graduating from the university, her father was assigned to serve as a judge in the Tula district court. Soon the family moved to the town of Belev, Tula Province, where her father was appointed an attorney. During one of his trips around the county, he caught a cold and literally burned away from rapid consumption in a matter of several days. He hadn’t even turned thirty. The young widow of twenty-six years was left alone with small children—seven-year-old Sophia, five-year-old Maria and one-year-old Boris. The orphaned children were placed in the Belev Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, where the abbess at that time was Nun Magdalina (Chelishcheva), a former governess at the Grinev family.

Sonya Grineva, who often attended monastery services, enjoyed playing the part of an abbess—she would dress up in a long cape and stand in a prominent place, while her younger sister and brother censed around her using spools tied to strings for censors. Then, the little “abbess” would bless them and they would bow reverently before her.

At the beginning of the 1880s, suffering severe hardships, the family moved to live with relatives in Tarusa county of Kaluga Province, and the children were left to reside there. Beginning from the age of sixteen, Sonya stayed with her aunt and grandmother on her mother’s side in their estate in the Kaluga Province, not far from Optina. Visiting Optina Monastery since her youth, Sonya grew fond of this monastery. Maria Evgenievna Popova, St. Sophia’s sister, reminisced about an event that took place in 1885, when Sophia was twelve.

“When the service was over, the elder came out carrying a cross. “Let the abbess approach first,” he said, looking at our side of the church. We were puzzled until we realized he was calling out my sister Sonya. He gave her a cross to venerate, patted her head, and said: “What a abbess she’ll become!”¹

During the same visit, the Grinevs chanced upon a Schemamonk who was living in seclusion in the woods not far from Optina Monastery. As he was passing by Sophia, he bowed to the ground before her.

There was also another prophecy about Sophia’s further fate. One day, when their mother took her daughters to the field at threshing season, one peasant woman, a cripple, walked up to her and shared about her prophetic dream: “You’d better not marry off your daughter. I saw a dream today. Your daughter was in place of the Mother of God in the iconostasis.” It is known that an abbess is considered a sort of vicar of the Mother of God.

Later on, the family of the Grinevs moved to Voronezh, where they owned a small estate their mother had inherited unexpectedly. This is where their brother was enrolled in the Cadet Corps, while Sonya was taken by her mother to Moscow’s Alexandro-Mariinsky Insititute for Noble Young Ladies. However, she received her secondary education not in Moscow, but in Kiev, in the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium for girls—the first one of this kind founded in the Russian Empire. After completing secondary education, Sophia entered the Kiev Conservatory, in the vocal classes. Her professors predicted an opera career for her. At the time, Sophia led a genteel lifestyle: balls followed by theatrical performances, musical evenings and the watching of the “dissolving views” or magic lantern shows—the precursors to silent cinema).

Once Sonya, who was visiting her aunt at the estate in Tarusa county of Kaluga Province, went to visit her friend who lived a couple of kilometers away. The winter was severe that year and the surrounding wooded area was teeming with hungry wolves. As Sonya was walking across the field, a huge wolf ran up and stood before her. Imminent death awaited the young girl—she knew that just recently the starving wolves had torn an officer and his horse to pieces; all that was left of them was the rider’s boots and spurs. Sonya broadly made the sign of the cross over the wolf and began praying aloud. The wolf stood as if listening, then slowly retreated and disappeared into the ravine. At that moment, Sonya vowed to God that if she lives, she would definitely take the path of monasticism.²

The reason for the twenty-two-year-old girl’s irreversible break with the world was a sudden serious throat disease, which happened just before she graduated from the conservatory. For nine months she was unable to speak and had to write notes to communicate with others. It came to the point that her doctors diagnosed tuberculosis of the throat and her relatives awaited her imminent death. But by Divine power she received healing after a Confession (the sick girl could not speak but only cried on the shoulder of the elder) and the Communion of the Holy Mysteries in the Holy Trinity monastery at Tarusa county, Kaluga province. Stunned by the miracle she had just experienced, Sophia received the tonsure as ryassophore nun in that same monastery. Her mother and sister Maria disowned her for many years to come, resenting her decision of becoming a nun.

For the place of her monastic labors the young nun Sophia chose a picturesque place in Kaluga Province located forty-five kilometers away from Kaluga at the confluence of the Dugna and the Oka Rivers. An iron foundry Nikita Demidov had founded in the eighteenth century by the order of Peter the Great was located nearby. Convicts who completed their prison term were exiled there from Kaluga and neighboring provinces. Not far from the factory stood an abandoned church dedicated to St. John the Merciful. The church was in a state of utter desolation—its windows were broken and the roof had sunken in. Inside it was the icon of the Mother of God, “Joy and Consolation.” This icon became the patroness of a future convent of the same name.

This is where Nun Sophia, along with another sister, Nun Catherine, founded a monastic community for women. Soon the sisters who desired to serve God flocked to their community. It lived in extreme poverty and the sisters often went hungry. The rude factory workers tried in every possible way to drive the sisters out of Dugna, but the young abbess firmly believed that God would not abandon them and would send them His help, and she succeeded at conveying her belief to other sisters. And help did come: the church was fully repaired, while the monastery buildings and the orphanage building were renovated. Soon afterwards, about one hundred and fifty nuns were living in the monastery. Abbess Sophia often held talks on spiritual issues, which the sisters liked very much. The monastery became a spiritual center, a hospital for suffering souls, and a model of Christian life. The locals came to love the monastery and its abbess and would visit her in search of advice and support.

The locals came to love the monastery and its abbess and flocked to her for advice and support

But she needed wise advice and guidance herself, and so she went to receive it from the elders of Optina Monastery. Sts. Anatoly and Nektary of Optina became her spiritual fathers. As her contemporaries recalled, Nun Sophia was the embodiment of simplicity, intelligence and kindness, yet she also possessed a strong-willed character. People who knew her noted her beauty and her lovely blue eyes. She was also very talented—her poems signed “I.S.” were published in spiritual periodicals.

The abbess petitioned the Holy Synod to hand over to the community the church of St. John the Merciful, along with its assigned land. It took awhile for the final decision, which cost the abbess many tears; the community was growing, yet she didn’t have enough food to feed the sisters and the orphaned girls.

S. A. Nilus, a spiritual writer who lived near Optina at the time, called the “Joy and Consolation” Convent “an abode of love, faith and… poverty.”³

Finally, on the eve of the Christmas holidays, the Holy Synod issued a decree: to hand over the church and its assigned land to the convent—upon condition that the abbess contributes five thousand rubles to the Kaluga diocesan office. On the commeration day of St. Seraphim, whom Nun Sophia especially revered, she placed the paper with the above decree near his icon and said in the presence of all the sisters: “Batiushka, you know what I am doing! We have no money, but I have already answered bishop that I will pay before the deadline. And you know, Batiushka, that we destitute sisters have nowhere to get them.” She also urged the sisters: “Sisters let us tearfully appeal day and night to our venerable father with confidence that he will come to our aid.” Two days later, the required five thousand were received from a stranger!”

Nun Sophia remained seventeen years in the “Joy and Consolation” Convent, until the age of thirty-nine.

At the end of 1912, the righteous nun went to Petersburg to make arrangements for her convent. At the same time, Metropolitan Flavian (Gorodetsky) of Kiev and Galicia was coincidentally seeking an abbess for the Holy Protection Convent in Kiev. Having met Nun Sophia in Petersburg, Metropolitan Flavian immediately understood that he had chanced upon an, intelligent, enterprising young nun who was experienced in conducting the practical activities and economic operations of the monastic community she had founded. He offered to the Holy Synod to assign her as abbess of the Protection Convent. At the Novodevichy Convent in St. Petersburg, she was tonsured to as a stavrophore nun with her previous name, and elevated to the rank of abbess. That is how Nun Sophia came to reside in the Protection Convent in Kiev. The sisters of “Joy and Consolation” community closest to her were also transferred to the Protection Convent. It was hard for Abbess Sophia to part with her beloved community, the sisters, the orphaned children and the elders of Optina Monastery. She cried all night long upon learning she was confirmed as abbess of the Kiev monastery.

To be continued…

I’ve developed a soft spot for those people we hear of from time to time who see Christ in a tortilla, Mary’s face in the trunk of a sycamore, the baby Jesus in the condensation of a hospital window.

In Protestant New England, where I come from, we had little regard for such phenomena. “Malarkey,” the grownups might have snickered, then doggedly continued chopping wood, hauling lobster traps, or canning peaches.

For many years after I converted, I harbored the same general view. So you had a vision — so what? Did it make you kinder, more forgiving, more patient? Have you become more Christ-like?

But over the years, I’ve had occasion to write about various visionaries, mystics, and stigmatists. And over the years, my view has softened.

Sister Mary Alfred Moes (1828-1899), for example, a Catholic nun of the Sisters of Saint Francis, saw a vision of a hospital rising out of a Rochester, Minnesota cornfield, and helped build St. Mary’s — the starter facility for what is today the world-renowned Mayo Clinic.

Snicker all you want, but who can deny that her vision bore rich fruit?

Servant of God Rhoda Wise (1888-1948), a Catholic laywoman, was a wife, mother, and convert from Canton, Ohio. Born to working-class, Protestant parents, Rhoda was the sixth of eight children. Anti-Catholic bias permeated the household.

At 16, Wise suffered a burst appendix. A nurse at the hospital gave her a St. Benedict medal which she kept ever after.

In 1917 she remarried widower George Wise. The couple adopted two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. George’s alcoholism was a source of ongoing poverty, shame, and embarrassment.

In 1932, Wise underwent surgery to remove a life-threatening, 39-pound ovarian cyst. In 1936, she tripped into a sewer drain and sustained serious injury to her leg.

During her convalescence, a Sister of Charity introduced Wise to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and taught her how to pray the rosary.

Wise was received into the Church in 1939, and continued to experience chronic pain and discomfort.

In the middle of the night on May 28, 1939, she woke to find the room filled with light and Jesus, garbed in a gold robe, sitting on a chair. A month later, she received a visit from St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Her abdominal wound, ruptured bowel, and leg were miraculously healed.

In the ensuing years, Our Lord and St. Thérèse appeared to Wise 20 more times.

From 1942 to 1945, Wise suffered the stigmata every first Friday from noon to 3 p.m. In her later years, she prayed for and helped heal a young woman who later became Mother Angelica and founded EWTN.

Today, visitors to the Rhoda Wise House and Grotto are promised: “Cures more wonderful than your own will take place on this spot.”

Many healings have been attributed to her. But maybe her biggest cure was this: Before she died, Wise’s alcoholic husband was relieved of the obsession to drink.

Servant Of God Irving “Francis” C. Houle (1925-2009), a Michigan husband, father, and “guy next door,” is said to have received the stigmata, and suffered the Passion every night between midnight and 3 a.m. until the day he died.

By all accounts a loving husband and father — he and his wife, Gail, would be married 60 years — Houle was a faithful communicant and prayed the Stations of the Cross every day after work.

Over the decades, Houle had jobs in retail and manufacturing. He became plant manager at Engineered Machine Products, where he was employed for the last 15 years of his working life. He was a bit of a prankster, a plain-spoken, solid family man with a penchant for jokes and teasing.

A 4th degree Knight in the Knights of Columbus, Houle received the stigmata on Good Friday 1993, at the age of 67. He was initially affected in the palms of his hands. “I’m taking away your hands and giving you mine — touch My children,” Christ allegedly told him.

Afterward, the physical suffering spread throughout his body. He was said to have suffered the Passion every night thereafter between midnight and 3 a.m.: those hours being “times of great sins of the flesh.”

Gail, luckily a sound sleeper, never witnessed these nocturnal sufferings, though others, including his brother Reynold, did. So did Father Robert J. Fox who, in 2005, published a book about Houle entitled “A Man Called Francis.” The pseudonym “Francis” was used in order to protect Houle’s identity, but the name stuck.

Houle avoided the limelight and neither sought nor accepted any financial donations for the myriad healings that were said to have flowed from his suffering and prayer. “Jesus is the one who heals,” he insisted.

He died at Marquette General Hospital, not far from the place where he was born: unassuming, unheralded, a sign of God’s strange and unexpected mercy.

The psalmist asked, “When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and see the face of God?” And who am I to question that Christ comes to each of us how and in the ways he wishes?

Mtskheta, Georgia, February 14, 2025

Photo: agenda.ge     

One of the crown jewels of the Georgian Orthodox Church was vandalized this week.

The incident occurred at the 6th-century Jvari Monastery, located near the ancient capital of Mtskheta. Its Church of the Holy Cross is a rare case of an early medieval Georgian church that has survived nearly unchanged till today. The monastery is listed as UNESCO World Heritage site together with other historic structures in Mtskheta.

The vandal published footage of the crime himself on his own social media accounts. It’s believed he is a foreign citizen who is still in Georgia. He is known to be active in the ongoing protests against the current Georgian government. A newscast from TV Imedi shows the vandal’s footage:

​

The Georgian Patriarchate issued a statement about the crime, expressing its sorrow but also calling on the faithful not to retaliate:

We express our deep sorrow regarding the sacrilege that was recently committed against our distinguished holy site, a UNESCO World Heritage Monument—the Jvari Monastery of Mtskheta. This is an offensive act by foreign citizen(s) not only against the Church but against the entire country.

Information is being circulated that this person (or persons) are still in Georgia, and there have been calls for personal retaliation against them, which is unacceptable.

We note that we have submitted a written appeal to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to establish the authenticity of the facts and for appropriate response.

The Sakdrisi Committee for Cultural Heritage has also condemned the attack, calling on the relevant authorities to respond quickly. It also calls on the local municipality “to monitor the uncontrolled movement of tourists in the vicinity of the monument.”

OrthoChristian reported on a similar incident at the same monastery Georgia: Graffiti in Arabic and Turkish appeared on walls of ancient monastery in MtskhetaA criminal investigation was opened under Article 2582, Section 3 of the Georgian criminal code (destruction of national memorials, and damage to or destruction of monuments included in the world heritage list), which is punishable by four to eight years of imprisonment.

“>in 2016.

Read more about the holy habitation in the article, “Jvari Monastery and the Spring of St. NinoWithin the nation of Georgia, there are numerous holy sites that are located within an hour of the nation’s capital of Tbilisi and are connected with the conversion of the Georgian nation itself to the Christian faith in the fourth century AD.

“>Jvari Monastery and the Spring of St. Nino.”

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As the deadly Eaton Fire roared toward the Altadena home that Ray and Mary Jo Spano had lovingly restored from near ruin, Ray grabbed their most precious possession: nearly 300 love letters from their courtship in the early 1960s.

Mary Jo carried photos of their nine children and 24 grandchildren. Before they left, she affixed the image of Divine Mercy to their front and back doors and the separate entrance to Ray’s architectural studio.

“Even though we lost the house and his office, you still feel that God was very present and there’s a reason,” said Mary Jo, 84. “I guess in time we’ll understand what that was.”

Raised in far distant parts of the country, they were introduced by Ray’s college roommate in architectural school at the University of Arizona. He happened to be Mary Jo’s cousin.

“For some reason, he thought Mary Jo and I would be a good match,” said Ray, now 87.

One reason was surely the deep, shared faith that is guiding them through this catastrophe.

Ray grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, attending the Cathedral Latin School before his family moved to California his senior year. He graduated from Chaminade High School (now Chaminade College Preparatory School) in West Hills.

Meanwhile, in Lafayette, Ind., Mary Jo studied at Saint Francis High School. It was about to close, and classes her final two years were in the chancery of the Diocese of Lafayette. There, she so impressed Bishop John Bennett that he hired her as his secretary. She continued with then-Bishop John Carberry, becoming close to him before his appointment as the cardinal archbishop of St. Louis.

After her cousin finagled a matchmaking visit to California, Ray and Mary Jo began a two-year courtship across 2,000 miles. “In those days, phone calls were expensive,” Ray said.

Thus, 300 love letters.

Also in those days, bishops rarely celebrated weddings. But Carberry, with whom they remained friends until his death, married them on Dec. 26, 1964.

His wedding gift was a porcelain image of the Blessed Mother, in a frame with a crimson velvet background. They attached her to the bedroom wall where they could see her when they awoke, and carefully transported her as Ray finished college, they relocated to Southern California and moved house several times. In 1978 they bought a fixer-upper in Altadena.

Built in 1909-1910 as the first house on Rubio Street, the 3,400 square-foot craftsman accommodated nine children — now ages 43-59 — but was in sad shape. Wisteria and ivy hid the exterior. Inside, wood paneling had been painted over and the original sconces ripped out for modern lighting. Decorative tiling was destroyed.

For 30 years, as Ray worked, their children attended Catholic school and they sang in the choir at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church, Ray and Mary Jo stripped paint, restored wood, installed period fixtures, and landscaped the large yard. A statue of the Blessed Mother that had belonged to Mary Jo’s mother stood against a low brick garden wall.

Ray also remodeled the detached garage, enlarging it to create an architectural studio whose skillful design testified to his skills. After 20 years of working there, he was planning to retire as he finished one last project for an old client. He and Mary Jo wanted to travel and spend more time with their children.

Last May, Rubio Street was the site of an annual Altadena home tour that raised more than $100,000 for Huntington Hospital. A café was set up in their backyard and Ray’s studio was a tour site. Video taken that day of their yard and studio has survived. Virtually everything shown on those videos is ash and cinder.

On Jan. 7 they fled the flames. Their home probably burned the next morning.

They went first to their eldest child, Christina, in Pasadena. Her house was threatened and they evacuated again. Christina’s home survived, but they remain for now in Long Beach with their youngest, Julia.

Their son Tony, his wife, and three children had been living with Ray and Mary Jo in Altadena but visited his wife’s family in Korea over Christmas and New Year’s. Tony returned before them for work, landing at LAX the night of the fire. His family is still in Korea “because we don’t have a home for them to return to,” Ray said.

After the smoke died, Ray and Mary Jo donned hazmat suits to inspect what remained.

They found the chimney, the foundation, the low brick wall and the concrete garden statue of the Blessed Mother. Sitting upright amid rubble and twisted cables from the collapsed second floor were several cherubic angel figurines.

Their treasured porcelain Madonna from Cardinal Carberry is gone.

“I didn’t think we would lose our house. I thought we would take the most precious things and then come back. Had I thought for a minute that the house would be gone, that was one of the objects that I would have taken,” Ray said.

“Those are the things that nothing you can do can replace them. You just have to keep them in your heart.”

He is thankful that they are alive and “we have the faith to move forward, whichever direction that will be.”

Their intention is to rebuild, and to help their neighbors do likewise.

They began emailing their Rubio Street neighbors with practical information, and the list has grown to about 90 as others asked to join. Their son Nick, who runs a café, hosted a gathering for the Rubio Street neighbors to have lunch and consult with a law firm.

Ray’s faith tells him not to ask why God allowed the fire, which he attributes to forces of nature. Instead, he asks God how to respond.

He scrapped his retirement plans.

“I’d like to assist my neighbors in getting their homes redesigned,” he said, speculating about how to ease their way through a yearslong process.

He had always wanted to design a home for their own family but never had the opportunity. Amid the terrible circumstances, he sees a chance to fulfill a dream.

Their insurance includes transitional housing, but finding a place large enough for them and Tony’s family has been difficult. It is also difficult to live so far from St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church, where they long to gather with friends.

At St. Elizabeth of Hungary School, when fire inspectors asked principal Phyllis Cremer for blueprints of the gas lines, she was astonished to discover that they had been signed long ago by Spano. Friends for 27 years, she described the couple as quietly generous to the church, whether through financial giving or hosting the choir for Christmas caroling parties.

“If you ever have a bad day, you just need to be with the Spanos,” she said.

Now the entire parish is hurting, its buildings damaged and many families homeless. She believes they will draw inspiration from Ray and Mary Jo because their marriage shows what the sacrament is all about.

“Their faith is so strong. You get a sense of how Christ-centered their relationship is. We all have our challenges within our relationships, and we need to allow God to be a part of those challenges to be a witness to others. Ray and Mary Jo do that,” she said.

“When you’re with Ray and Mary Jo it doesn’t feel like they’ve been married for 60 years. They’re as fresh and loving and tender as people who have just fallen in love.”

Ray and Mary Jo are grateful when friends tell them they are praying for them or ask them how they can help. Their greater concern is for victims who feel alone.

“We’re blessed because of our family and the number of friends that we have. I can’t imagine somebody going through this without that,” Ray said.

“Everything can be taken from us, but we also need to be cognizant that this is only a speck of what we are going to experience in eternity. I tell people that our house went up to heaven before we did.”

A GoFundMe started by Ray and Mary Jo’s son Nick to help them can be found here.

Not many have experienced the uneasiness the LA fires caused as uniquely as Phyllis Cremer, the principal at St. Elizabeth School in Altadena. Not only did students and parents turn to her as the Eaton Fire ravaged their homes, but she herself was evacuated, and is now displaced, because of fire damage to her home.

“It’s like a death,” she said. “Here’s this life that I had that is no longer and that literally went away. Now, being an administrator for a school that is dispersed is probably the hardest thing that I have ever experienced.”

But if anyone can help navigate and make sense of what happened, where the school community goes from here, and how not to lose faith in the process, it’s Cremer.

“It sounds corny, but I was made for this,” said Cremer, whose husband, Doug, is a deacon at St. Elizabeth Church. “I want to take care of people … I am fighting for my family and fighting for all families, and fighting for my faith.”

For Catholic school families in areas hit hardest by the fires — particularly at St. Elizabeth School and Corpus Christi School in Pacific Palisades — that hope is needed as they work out where, why, and how to send their children to school.

The Department of Catholic Schools has said that 915 students in 76 of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ schools were displaced by the fires, as well as several teachers, staff, and administrators, too.

While many students have since returned to their normal schools, others have been temporarily taken in by other campuses, such as American Martyrs School in Manhattan Beach, St. Martin of Tours School in Brentwood, and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Pasadena.

Some have moved out of the area. Others went out of state. Another left the country altogether.

While grateful for being able to still send their children to Catholic school, some families said the uncertainty caused by the fires has taken a toll on them.

Courtney Graff, whose children Sydney and Robert attended Corpus Christi School, said it’s been hard not to be able to provide them with “concrete answers” about the future.

“We said the house is gone, the church is gone. Part of the school appears to be there, but the school is not open right now. We don’t know when it will be,” she said. 

***

Like many families when they first heard about the distant Palisades Fire, Elizabeth Beall and her husband both never thought it would reach their home on the south side of the community.

“In order for the fire to reach us, it would have to burn the whole Palisades,” Beall recalled thinking. “Earlier that day, that seemed impossible. We were like, there’s no way it’s going to burn the whole village.”

Beall’s children Teresa and Charlie were at Corpus Christi School the morning the Palisades Fire started. By noon, the school had emailed parents asking them to pick up their students.

The Bealls decided to evacuate for at least the night, still expecting to return. They even left a car in the driveway.

On the news that night, they watched their neighbor’s house become engulfed in flames. It started to sink in that they weren’t going to have a house to return to.

Graff and her family were equally shocked to learn that their house — which they shared with her parents, including her blind father and mother, both in their 80s  — was no longer there.

“Then you find out the church is gone, the school is gone, the entire town is gone,” Graff said. “And this is a school that I went to. This is a church that I went to, a church that my sisters and I got married in.”

“The school felt like home to me because I’ve been going there for so long, and the teachers and the principal, I’ve known them forever,” said Graff’s daughter, Sydney, a fifth-grader at Corpus Christi.

***

It didn’t take long for Anna-Marie Silva, the Department of Catholic Schools’ superintendent for the San Gabriel Pastoral Region, to realize the fires were going to be “something that we hadn’t encountered before.”

Having handled previous emergencies before, the DCS team kicked into gear and began working with schools, asking: Is everyone safe? Are any structures threatened? What’s the air quality like? Which schools need to close?

When the magnitude hit of how many families were being affected, the focus shifted to finding out where students were, how to help them get necessities, and how to keep them connected as a community of faith.

“Our role is always accompaniment,” Silva said. “That’s how we define what we do. We accompany wherever we’re at.”

It soon became clear — especially in Corpus Christi and St. Elizabeth’s case — that students would need to be steered to other schools.

DCS began calling principals in the surrounding areas, asking them to take in displaced students. Figuring out the logistics of tuition, uniforms, and laptops would come later.

“The principals were great,” Silva said. “They’re welcoming the families. They’re including the kids and things, but also being very sensitive that they’re still mourning.”

Beall said Corpus Christi families began breaking off into groups, with a large contingent getting rental homes in the South Bay and taking their students to American Martyrs. But Beall and her husband wanted their children to be with as many of their close classmates as possible, so eventually decided to follow another group to St. Martin of Tours in Brentwood.

“We felt like for our kids, the most important thing was going to be to keep them with their friends and to keep that continuity,” Beall said.

Both the Bealls and the Graff families said they and their children are handling the situation as best they can. While there are some minor inconveniences, such as meeting new teachers, learning a new math program, a longer commute — the Bealls used to walk to school — they’re also taking any success they can. Charlie Beall has bonded with the St. Martin basketball team. Sydney Graff is enjoying the STEAM lab.

“Even though it’s hard sometimes, and to think about that my whole home is gone now, it’s just that was how God wanted it to be,” Teresa Beall said.

***

Both Corpus Christi and St. Elizabeth principals acknowledge that their job is “a lot harder” now than before.

“Transferring mail over there, going to pick up the mail, making sure that the families are OK,” said Corpus Christi principal Paola Sessarego. “And emailing constantly, to keep them updated. It’s a lot of little pieces here and there.”

Both principals shared a moment recently where they silently acknowledged the pain — for themselves, for their schools, for their families.

“We didn’t say anything, but we hugged each other and cried,” Cremer said. “To have someone, without saying words, to understand where you’re at. Just to know that I have someone on this earth hurting just as much as I am.”

Looking ahead, the extensive cleaning and rebuilding of Corpus Christi and St. Elizabeth make it difficult to project when each will reopen.

But both the Graffs and the Bealls are ready for when that happens.

“No, we will, we’ll be back,” Elizabeth Beall said.

The Wildfire Catholic School Tuition Relief Fund has been created to pay for students who have been displaced by the wildfires to continue attending Catholic school. To donate, visit cefwildfiretuitionrelief.funraise.org.

Editor-in-Chief Pablo Kay also contributed to this story.

In 1970, at the height of their fame, The Band was on the cover of Time magazine when that meant something. One by one, right up to last month, each member of the extraordinary quintet passed away, felled by alcohol, drugs, cancer, and suicide.

With the Jan. 21 death of multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson — age 87, the organist and grown-up of the group, the only one granted a peaceful death — all are gone from this sphere if not the radio.

Now and then you’ll hear the “Up on Cripple Creek” on an oldies station. Other times, independent radio will air all five-and-a-half minutes of “The Weight,” known via the chorus “…take a load off Fannie.”

Born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1937, Hudson grew up and was classically trained in nearby London, all long before there was such a thing as classic rock. His star turn is the Lowrey Festival organ introduction to “Chest Fever,” a song that runs five minutes and 18 seconds on vinyl.

Onstage, the intro alone could go as long as eight minutes. Grounded in Anglican liturgical music and Baptist hymns he played as a kid at his uncle’s funeral parlor, it’s an operatic swirl of Bach, church music, and whatever happened to be firing behind the virtuoso’s wide, curved brow any given evening.

“Garth’s organ playing is the secret sauce of The Band,” said Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram in the Hudson Valley where Hudson lived in Woodstock for the past 50 years. “The colorful little sprinklings and hues and countermelodies he weaves throughout the songs makes The Band sound different from the other groups of their day.”

To quote Nathaniel Hawthorne, Garth’s work “…breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart.” He did so before tens of thousands when The Band accompanied Bob Dylan on his 1974 “Before the Flood” tour and, as the decades and spotlight faded, a few hundred fans at small venues like Cheek-to-Cheek Lounge — now a drug store — in Winter Park, Florida.

It was there in March of 1986 that pianist and plaintive vocalist Richard Manuel played his last show, thanking Garth after “for 25 years of incredible music.”

Manuel, 42, hung himself with his belt in the predawn hours the following day, abetted by despair and bottles of Grand Marnier, in the bathroom of a nearby Quality Inn, an alcoholic unable to reconcile past greatness with the present.

Bassist Rick Danko died in 1999 at age 55 from heart failure exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. Drummer, vocalist, and mandolin player Levon Helm — born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, in 1940 — died in 2012 from throat cancer. Guitarist and primary songwriter Robbie Robertson, 80, died of prostate cancer in 2023.

Aside from autobiographies by Robertson and Helm, the primary resource for what these men achieved and how they did it is “Across the Great Divide: The Band and America” (Hal Leonard, $30), a 1993 book by the journalist Barney Hoskyns.

In a 2002 interview, Hudson gave one of the best descriptions of the way music is transformed — The Band a prime example of all strands of Americana — when filtered through the people playing it.

“Different musical styles are like different languages,” he said, fluent as well on accordion and any saxophone he cared to pick up. “It’s all country music; it just depends on what country we’re talking about.”

The country that Hudson explored in 1980 was Los Angeles by way of the empyrean. It was the city’s bicentennial year and he provided the soundtrack to a massive installation by designer and native Angeleno Tony Duquette.

Duquette (1914-1999) called work inside the Museum of Science and Industry at Exposition Park “The City of Our Lady Queen of the Angels on the river Porciúncula.” It included eight 28-foot-tall archangels, a quartet of altars to the elements, and bejeweled tapestries.

Hudson released the music independently on cassette and gave it the same name as the installation. You’d have to be a very ardent follower of his work to know it was him or even  know it exists. Upon careful listening — ethereal organ spiced with the chirping of birds, Garth on trumpet and vocals by his late wife Maud — it becomes clear.

Like myself, many fans of The Band and of Hudson had never heard of it until he passed. In the comments section of a video of the album one posted: “May Garth rest in the peace of Christ with Our Lady and the angels…”              

A tinker of sound, Garth Hudson was known by insiders as “Honey Boy” for the sweet touches he added to The Band’s music in the studio, on stage, and in post-production. He was the guy who recorded, compiled, and edited songs from 1967 of Dylan and The Band known as “The Basement Tapes” released in 1975.

He was born Eric Garth Hudson on Aug. 2, 1937, in a family that identified with a nonconformist Christian movement known as the Plymouth Brethren, an early 19th-century Irish offshoot of Anglicanism. (Volunteers from the group’s Rapid Relief Team recently assembled in LA during the wildfires and fed firefighters and rescue teams thousands of meals.)

His mother, Olive Pentland Hudson — whose accordion Garth began playing at 12 — was said to be a strict adherent to the Brethren, who hold that the Bible is the only authority on worship and doctrine. His father, Fred, a farm inspector and drummer who also played flute, saxophone, and piano, helped his only child rebuild two pump organs. Both parents sang and the family spent hours together listening to the radio.

To pacify his parents, when Hudson joined a band that played in nightclubs, honky tonks, and roadhouses, he said he was giving the boys music lessons. In many ways, they learned from him to the end.

Loquacious only on an instrument, more is known about Hudson’s thoughts on music than his religious beliefs — though the two merged seamlessly anytime he sat down at a church organ.

I happened to be riding a cargo ship in the North Atlantic when Garth Hudson died on the feast day of St. Agnes. It was organ music I heard — as expansive as a basilica — while saying a rosary for his soul at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp a week later, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.

As I sat for an hour or so before returning to the ship, Mass began. While I don’t understand Flemish, my Catholic muscle memory led me through the celebration by way of cadence.

Taking my place in line, I received the Eucharist for the soul of Hudson, a man I’d never met, somehow knowing he wouldn’t mind. His last performance was sitting in a wheelchair at a piano in the nursing home playing and singing The Old Rugged Cross.

“I will cling to the old rugged Cross

And exchange it some day for a crown …”

After the last note, he says, “Yeah, that’s a good ole tune…”

Hudson was mourned during a service at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York, on Jan.  27. He is buried nearby at the Woodstock Artists Cemetery.

Archpriest Peter GuryanovGuryanov, Peter, Archpriest

“>Archpriest Peter Guryanov is the rector of the Church of the Queen of All Icon of the Mother of God in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Province, Russia. He also serves as head of the Information and Publishing Department of the Melekess Diocese, Chairman of the Diocesan Commission on Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, and member of the Dimitrovgrad city Cultural Council.

Archpriest Peter Guryanov. Photo: radiovera.ru     

I’ve been working with women’s health clinics in Dimitrovgrad for ten years now. My ministry is to talk with women who’ve come to have an abortion and to try to do everything to get them to change their minds. They can call me at any time and ask me to come urgently. And there’s no one to fill in for me.

One day I left to take entrance exams for postgraduate studies at the Moscow Theological Academy. Suddenly they called me from the clinic, but I was already hundreds of miles from Dimitrovgrad. I started calling priests I know, but in vain: Some were busy, some didn’t answer. I decided to talk to the girl on the phone. I found out that her husband was insisting on terminating the pregnancy. I tried my best to talk her out of it: “Listen, every child comes at its own time … exactly when its needed and exactly the kind that you need. You can’t build happiness on the blood of killed children. Abortion is a man’s sin too…” All to no avail. What could I do?

I started praying to St. Sergius of RadonezhUndoubtedly, the most outstanding establisher of the truly selfless “life equal to the angels” in fourteenth century Russia is St. Sergius of Radonezh, the founder of the famous Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, which embodies in its historical legacy his blessed precepts, and gradually became a kind of spiritual heart for all of Orthodox Russia.

“>St. Sergius of Radonezh. My head was a total mess: I had to study, exams were coming, and here was this girl, an abortion! I asked the priests and laity who were there with me for help, and they prayed for her the whole eight days that I was at the Academy. And I kept calling her, texting her, but she was adamant…

Then came the day of my last exam and the day she was scheduled for an abortion. I decided to call one last time. She was already in the operating room and said she hadn’t changed her mind. That was it. The end.

I took my exam, and as I was sitting waiting for the results, I got a text from her: “I couldn’t do it.” I can’t even describe how all those of us who had been praying felt at that moment!

Then I met this young mother, baptized her baby, and I found out that when her husband found out that she had refused to have an abortion, he left her. But it was a blessing in disguise: She met a decent man and before the Nativity Fast, and I celebrated their Wedding. We still keep in touch.

Valentine’s Day will soon have come and gone — and that can mean date anxiety for singles. Before, during and after the holiday.

Will I have a date? How will I find a date? Will it work out? Will my relatives ever stop asking when I’m going to get married?

All common romantic fears — but for Catholics, there’s an extra layer of angst: Will I find someone who’s both a good match and a faithful Catholic?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023, 46.4% of American adults — 117.6 million — were single. That figure included those who were divorced, widowed or never married.

Among Catholics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found in 2014 that 27.7% of Catholics have never married. Numbers are unlikely to have improved since. Between 1969 and 2019, Catholic marriages declined 69% — even as the Catholic population increased by nearly 20 million — according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

If all that sounds discouraging, well Sara Perla, communications manager for The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America in Washington, wishes she had some good news for you.

“I was talking to a friend and she said, ‘I think she’s gonna want you to have something hopeful to say,’” referring to OSV News’ interview request concerning the state of Catholic dating.

“And I was like, ‘I don’t have anything.’ I really tried to think about it,” admitted Perla. “But I’m not seeing a lot of effort so far in addressing this issue … and I don’t know if there’s a will to do that — but I hope so.”

The Catholic Project made its own attempt, hosting a panel exploring Catholic dating at the National Eucharistic Congress in July 2024.

Religion News Service reported, “The attendees in Indianapolis had logged their responses via a QR code on their phone to the question, ‘What adjective would you use to describe how you feel about dating as a Catholic today?’ ‘Hopeless,’ loomed large in the resulting word cloud.”

An after-event poll indicated a yearning for more discussion.

“The overwhelming response was that they really wished that there was more of this kind of thing, and they wished it was longer,” Perla said. “They just want chances where they can meet people.”

Diocesan young adult groups are great, Perla added, but people age out of them — sometimes still single.

And while participants complain the atmosphere isn’t always holy enough at Catholic dating events, Perla has also seen some awkward attempts to wed matchmaking and theology.

“I saw an ad somewhere — it was theology of the body swing dance classes. And you’re like, ‘No, no, no.’ You don’t need to be weird about this,” she advised. “If you’re going to throw a speed dating event, for example — which I think is a great idea — don’t give, ‘Oh, who’s your favorite saint?’ (as an opening question). That’s a fine thing to talk about,” confirmed Perla. “But it doesn’t have to be the first thing.”

Campus ministries and Catholic colleges, Perla feels, should also be actively helping their students.

“In terms of compatibility in the intellectual life and spiritual life,” she observed, “you’re never going to be in a place like college again.”

Molly Sheahan, associate director for Healthy Families at the California Catholic Conference, agrees with Perla that the Catholic dating landscape is rugged.

“I think it’s challenging,” Sheahan told OSV News. “Ask anyone in the dating pool and they’ll tell you it’s challenging. Ask anyone who’s married and they’ll say, ‘Oh, thank goodness I’m married,’” Sheahan said, admitting she has not been immune to date disaster.

Last year, the bishops of California launched the “Radiate Love” initiative to celebrate marriage and family, and provide resources such as monthly reflections, prayers, videos, and other materials.

Sheahan has noted a resurgence of speed dating events, agreeing with Perla that they’re “a great way to meet someone and have a connection, in person.” She’s also seen more dances and young adult events, as well as question and answer panel discussions with married couples.

While a marriage catechumenate now exists, there isn’t yet a dating catechumenate.

“Discerning marriage doesn’t start when you get engaged,” Sheahan noted. “It doesn’t even start when you start dating. It starts before then, to have the concept of what marriage is — why it’s a gift from God.”

For those hoping for marriage but uncomfortable with dating apps — perhaps even Catholic ones, such as CatholicMatch, and Ave Maria Singles — Darenys Radich and Maria Creitz launched the Little Dates Club in April 2024.

As suburban Washington moms with children — Radich has six, Creitz has seven — they both have a vested interest in healthy dating for their kids. Neither, however, was fully aware of how problematic the dating scene can be. That reality literally hit home when Radich’s fourth son — who had discerned out of seminary and was just about to graduate college — hoped to find a girlfriend.

“We thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be so easy. He’ll get out of seminary. He’s well formed; great Catholic guy; super fun; smart — you know, what could go wrong?” Radich told OSV News. “I’m sure he’ll get snatched right up. He’ll just ask a few girls out and get to know them, and the rest is history.”

But that’s not what happened.

“This has been very, very, very difficult,” reported Radich. “And because of that, I started talking to my friend, Maria. I’m like, ‘What is going on in the dating world? People just aren’t going on dates anymore.’”

Creitz had tales from her daughter’s college of Catholic girls — “wonderful girls, smart, pretty, very Catholic” — who had never been asked out on a date.

“Then we came up with this club,” Radich shared, “and we were thinking, ‘Well, this is at least going to get people in front of each other, and give them a real chance to meet and find out what’s special about the other person, and make a connection.’”

It’s a curated approach, requiring an in-person orientation meeting with Radich and Creitz. Initial contacts were made through young adult groups in the Washington metro area. So far, there is one engagement and a planned proposal.

Little Dates Club is perhaps the “anti-app” — small, personal, organic. “I think in general, people do not enjoy using the apps,” suggested Radich.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2023, three in 10 U.S. adults say they have used a secular dating app. Of married or otherwise partnered couples, one in 10 met their current significant other through a dating site or app. Of those surveyed, 53% found the experience somewhat positive, while 46% found it negative.

Chris O’Neill, director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, told OSV News the archdiocese “wanted to try to understand what was happening in the culture more generally.”

“It became increasingly clear,” he said, “through conversations, listening to young adults, and a lot of reading, that the crisis wasn’t simply that people weren’t choosing marriage, but weren’t dating, or even forming genuine ‘face to face’ friendships.”

With a grant, the archdiocese began the NOLACatholic Healthy Dating initiative.

“Right now, we are just experimenting and learning as much as we can,” said O’Neill. “So far we’ve hosted a ‘Theology on Tap’ series focused on dating. We didn’t just want to talk about it, but provide an opportunity for ourselves to get closer to those who are facing the crisis, and to try to understand from their perspective what they are going through.”

Future efforts are also being planned, said O’Neill.

“We want to continue to experiment with speed dating events, a retreat for young people, social media/podcast efforts, and the like,” he added. “But it’s very different from what we’ve done in the past, so we’re on a learning curve.”

And the ultimate aim, apart from more marriages?

“I think the most important thing we can hope to achieve,” O’Neill reflected, “is encouraging a change in ministry culture, that becomes more attentive to these issues.”

In the end, said O’Neill, it’s all about relationships: person-to-person, one-to-one.

“Your ability to make friends with people will help you know how to build a good relationship with whomever ‘the one’ will be. The situation is difficult for sure,” he admitted, “but our human nature hasn’t changed, and there is a path where all of this works. You don’t have to ‘game’ the system with some technique or method. Lean on the human dimension — and just start to build real friendships.”

Photo: Georgy Lanchevsky   

The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger is a classic of American and world literature of the twentieth century. You read it or listen to it in one breath. It is an extremely solid and powerful work.

The main character, the sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield from a wealthy family, an “elite boy”, captivates readers with his sincerity, ingenuousness and deadly sarcasm, which, unfortunately, eats away at him above all. He disagrees with everything, denies everything, doubts everything, gets annoyed with everything to the point of hatred, but he conceals it in himself without letting it out.

Perhaps for the first time in world literature the author managed to masterfully describe the type of a neurotic person for whom everything is bad and wrong, the type of loner who is annoyed and irritated by everyone, the type of pessimist who sees only negativity everywhere and in everything; a neurotic person for whom it is extremely hard to communicate with others, although he hides it carefully. This type of person originated and spread extensively in the stone jungle of urbanized consumer society obsessed with the “American dream”. Those who feel his pretense and falsity and his inner emptiness keenly, doom themselves to misanthropic loneliness.

For others such a person wears the mask of an innocent crank, through which what he really thinks and feels breaks very rarely. For this to happen something extraordinary must take place—something that would make him lose his temper and drive him out of his wits: His deepest feelings must be hurt, or trouble must befall those dearest to him.

This discrepancy is the protagonist’s tragedy. This is what the novel’s open ending suggests— the “confession” of a teenager who is at a tuberculosis hospital.

The discrepancies between his desires and reality, his inner truth and outer reality, his ideal dreams and the prose of life, between the voice of his conscience and the need to agree with others… He bears these discrepancies, this split within himself, and cannot come to terms with it in any way. He does not agree to back down and change his inner world for the sake of the outside, does not want to pretend, be a hypocrite, wear masks, play roles and be like everyone else in order to eventually forget and lose himself, and come to believe that it is “necessary”, “normal”, “right” and the “real adult life”.

Growing up is the renunciation of the original, real and childish self through the adoption of a different, alien and fake way of thinking and living. This is exactly what the adults in Holden’s life—his parents and teachers—call him to do. And that’s exactly what he doesn’t want to confirm with.

Those who don’t become adults end up breaking down; their souls can’t stand the empty and stiff formalism of adulthood, when people say things they don’t think, do things they don’t really want to, want things they don’t believe in, act to please others and not to be themselves, live without living, but playing, like in a theater or a movie where they pretend all the time.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” William Shakespeare once remarked. Holden just can’t accept it because he hates all kinds of lies.

That’s why the protagonist so abhors Hollywood—this dream factory with its advertising and commercial falsehoods, but loves children with their ingenuous sincerity and frankness.

The author perfectly depicts the inner world of a sixteen-year-old teenager with his maximalism, mood swings, hormonal changes, lack of understanding of himself, rebellion against authorities, condemnation of adults and the simultaneous desire to become one, the incapability of calm self-reflection and critical sobriety, inferiority complex, desire for self-affirmation, irrepressible self-love and vanity, reverie and exuberant fantasy detached from reality.

The main character is a teenage rebel who locks all his rebellion inside himself, and it tears him apart from the inside. He does not want to remain the way he is, nor to become like adults—he is disgusted and hates living in their assumed, artificial and conventional world.

He only feels good with children. If he could, he would communicate with them alone. All he wants is to catch them over the abyss in the rye, preventing them from falling into that abyss. This is his cherished dream and at the same time it is a parable that is key to the novel.

The rye is our crazy world with its trials and temptations and it is also all people we come into contact and communicate with—that is, all our neighbors, speaking in the Gospel terms. All people are the rye and at the same time those who make their way through this rye. Everyone is both the rye for others and someone who walks through the rye of others at the same time. Each one of us, whether he wants it or not, has to go through the rye of the people around them, while trying not to lose their way and not to lose themselves, which is extremely hard.

The abyss is this loss of oneself, the loss of one’s original inner and outer integrity, Honesty as an Instrument of SalvationThe Gospel is a very honest Book; it demands honesty from us in our relationships with God, others, and ourselves.

“>honesty and sincerity. For Salinger this is more dreadful than Perspectives on DeathSo, I was thinking: why don’t we all write a summary of the life we lived at some point? I bet without a doubt it’ll scare us; some will break out into a cold sweat, and from this, good life changes will be born. Mortal memory, after all, is so… creative.”>death itself. The rye leads to the abyss, it always leads to the abyss, people lead each other to the abyss—most often without understanding or realizing it. According to the Gospel, They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch (Mt. 15:14).

In 1943—that is, when the novel was being written,¹ Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, No Exit, came out. Its final words are: “Hell is other people.” The French existentialist philosopher felt the same as Salinger did and thought about the same things.

Holden and teenagers like him are on the very brink of this abyss of hell. All they want is to keep themselves and as many children as possible from falling into it.

Both the protagonist and the author wish reality could be like this, but, unfortunately, it is impossible. It is impossible to save children from losing themselves by your own efforts. Holden can’t even save himself—his illusory dreams are not destined to come true. All children and the protagonist himself are doomed to become adults, fall and die in this artificial game world—a world in which, according to the Apostle John the Theologian, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 Jn. 2:16) reign.

In Salinger’s view, no one can avoid this. Everyone becomes an adult, leaving their childishness in the past. Everyone goes through the rye and falls into the abyss, and no one can save them from it.

Children don’t realize it yet—that’s why they’re still happy. But Holden has already realized this painfully and acutely, as well as the fact that he can’t do anything about it and can’t change it in any way.

He does not know the Gospel possibility of being like children (cf. Mt. 18:3), regardless of age. Unfortunately, for him Christianity is an integral part of the adult world, the world of lies, which he protests, rejects and overthrows, thereby dooming himself to a breakdown, emptiness and despondency. He doesn’t trust anyone or anything, not even himself. The only thing he is guided by in his life is emotional impulses, emotional arbitrariness, and that’s all.

In order not to humble yourself before the evil world you must humble yourself before Christ. Otherwise, your pride will tear your heart into pieces.

About HumilityThus, we should learn humility not from angels, not from men, not from the great books of the Gospel, but from Christ Himself, for He calls us to this.

“>Humility is the path to mental and physical normality and health. That’s what you understand on reading the novel. I don’t know if the author meant it—he probably didn’t. You come to this conclusion provided that you look at this book with Christian eyes.

In fact, as we grow up, we make a choice between two humilities—before the earthly world or before God. Those who do not choose either are left alone with their pride, which simply eats them up from the inside, making them pariahs, eccentrics, madmen, unsound to others and to themselves alike.

As a result, the existence of such people becomes unbearable, and they decide to commit suicide. The novel does not have this outcome, but does appear in Salinger’s short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” published three years before The Catcher in the Rye. Its protagonist, Seymour Glass, resembles the grown-up Holden Caulfield who could not resign himself to the world around him.

Humility (no matter before what) makes a person able to believe in something that is above him and thus allows him to find a point of support and of reference, meaning, purpose and the coordinates of life.

Those who humble themselves before “this world” acquire faith in it, its consciousness, ideas and values. Those who humble themselves before the Lord acquire faith in Him, in His power and authority, in His Providence, and receive His mind, desires, and feelings (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16).

You believe in what you humble yourself before. You serve what you believe in. If you do not humble yourself before anything, you are left alone—in the vacuum of your self-love, in the weightlessness of your pride, in the emptiness of your introspection and self-pity. Such a person makes himself an enemy and a stranger to everyone, and ultimately to himself.

The society the protagonist has to live in is the “atomized society” described by Hegel. In it everyone is selfish and individualistic, loving only themselves, living only for their dear selves—that is, for the satisfaction of their infinite egos.

Proud people live to be proud—it is a vicious circle. Pride is a snake that bites its own tail and nourishes itself this way. It is meaningless, futile, and destructive.

The only thing that unites egoistic people and glues them together is the external rules and institutions of coexistence that they have developed and agreed to observe so that society can survive and develop; something that is called a “social contract”, culture or civilization. In order to somehow coexist, people have to play by the rules, put on masks of decency, culture and civility. If these didn’t exist, there would be a war of all against all.

But the protagonist does not want to understand and accept this. For him all the external forms of human society are sheer pharisaism, based on selfishness and deceit. For a maximalist youth, wherever there are lies, everything is odious and should not exist. However, the truth is inaccessible to him either. Therefore, all that has to counter the untruth of the world around him is his own pride, his rebellious protest, which is doomed either to surrender or to madness.

In the spiritual sphere, when we fight the enemy with his own weapons, we ourselves become like our adversary—we become no better than him.

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel of warning, a novel showing the hopelessness of the world of adults and the world of children in which there is no Christ—no Way, no Truth and no Life (cf. Jn. 14:6).

If there is no Christ, then there is no Heaven and no vertical of ascent to Him. If there is no Christ, then there is only a horizontal line ending in a chasm. Rather, in two terrible chasms: those of hypocrisy and of selfish introspection.

“The abyss you’re rolling into is a terrible and dangerous one. Anyone who falls into it will never feel the bottom. He’s falling, falling endlessly,” one of Holden’s teachers warned him.

Blaise Pascal had the idea that man is a being placed between two abysses: the infinitely large and infinitely small—that is, between the macro and microcosms. Both of these realms make up the infinity of material nature.

Besides, there is also a spiritual infinity. It consists of two infinities too: that of evil and that of good. You can endlessly descend into the abyss of hell with your sins, or, on the contrary, endlessly ascend the ladder of virtues to the infinite God.

Salinger, who apparently did not recognize sin, nevertheless wrote about two endless sinful bottomless abysses, their horror and fatality for human existence: the abyss of false humility before this world, on the one hand, and the abyss of arrogant rebellion, on the other.

It is deplorable that, in fact, the author’s main novel is very often perceived as a manifesto of teenage independence and nonconformism and is used as an argument to justify disobedience and protest.

The protest of the novel’s protagonist is neither valor nor heroism. It is an indicator of his acute pain, an external symptom of his tormenting inner illness, an expression of his deepest personal crisis. This novel is not so much and not only about protest, as it is about hopeless grief; not so much about rebellion, as it is about self-search; not so much about freedom, as it is about confusion and inability to understand oneself—it is about bondage to passions, to put it in Christian terms. This is a book about human misery, which cannot be avoided, no matter how much we want to. There is a lot of pain and very little hope here. Or rather, there is almost no hope here.

If we compare The Catcher in the Rye with another classic American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, we will see that they differ radically as regards hope. Despite the title, there is hope in the latter book, which ultimately covers and resolves everything. You mustn’t kill a mockingbird—it’s a sin; rather, we must fight evil and do good deeds. This is the life-affirming message of Harper Lee’s book.

It appeared nine years after the publication of Salinger’s novel. Both books show the consciousness of children and the problems of their growing up—in Harper Lee’s novel, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in Salinger’s, the optimistic post–war late 1940s—more precisely, in the pre-Christmas days of December 1949.

The characters of Harper Lee’s novel have many external and internal problems, but they overcome them because they have ideas of sin and righteousness, dishonor and dignity. The protagonist of Salinger’s novel has only inner problems, but he cannot overcome them, because he exists outside the framework of good and evil—he simply has nothing and no one to rely on. He doesn’t believe in anything or anyone, not even himself, and sees a dirty trick, a deception and a trap everywhere. Holden lives in a society in which, in Nietzsche’s words, “God is dead”—in which people themselves have killed God in themselves, in their souls and in their relations with each other.²

True, like other Christian feasts, Christmas is still celebrated in this society, but as a tribute to tradition, a family ritual and children’s family festivities. They no longer illuminate the life of an individual, family, or society with the meaning. There is a lot of bright tinsel here, but very little life and truth. And Holden feels it perfectly well. So, Christmas only exacerbates his suffering, his rejection of the outside world, which only pretends to believe in something. There’s even more hypocrisy here than on ordinary days.

Today we know how the celebration of Christmas in the West is being transformed, often losing its link with the Gospel narrative and with Christ in the mass consciousness, losing its original salvific meaning.

It is a pity that many people want to imitate the protagonist and are delighted with the things that terrified the author. There is not much to imitate Holden Caulfield in—except for his love for children, though with reservations. They (children) suffer themselves and torment others. You can only sympathize with people like him. We should try to understand them without judging them, and help them come to Christ. For this to happen we must love them truly and sincerely, warming up their hearts, frozen with distrust of everybody and everything.

The author himself experienced the existential crisis described in the book. Faced with misunderstanding of his work, with a total distortion and substitution in the mass consciousness of what he wanted to say, he withdrew from the world and began to live as a recluse, carried away by Zen Buddhism and other Eastern religious practices. In fact, realized his protagonist’s dream of getting away from everybody and living an inconspicuous life according to his own will, and not someone else’s. Apparently, this is how Salinger wanted to overcome the spiritual illness that he had diagnosed in the book.

I don’t think he succeeded, because he looked in the wrong place. True healing and salvation can only be given by Christ, Who said:

Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light (Mt. 11:28-30).

Calling Vice President JD Vance’s “bottom line” comments a “tremendous mischaracterization,” Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has said that “[Vance] clearly doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know my heart,” while also offering a sit-down conversation.

“I would love to sit down sometime with Vice President Vance and talk to him about these issues in regard to our resettlement work and things like that, because he clearly has been misinformed, and that’s so unfortunate, and when it comes from a person who has a loud megaphone right now it can be very, very harmful to this work of the Church to very vulnerable people,” said Seitz, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration. “So it is really concerning.”

Vance, a Catholic convert, made the comments on a recent edition of CBS’s Sunday news program Face the Nation, citing the millions the U.S. bishops receive from the federal government to resettle refugees and questioning, “are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

The comment was met with a swift response from the USCCB, defending its work. As Vance suggested, the conference received in excess of $100 million from the federal government as a resettlement contractor in both 2022 and 2023, according to the conference’s published financials. However, records indicate that in each year the conference actually spent more than it received from the federal government on its refugee resettlement efforts, making Vance’s comment a bit of a misnomer.

Speaking at a Georgetown University Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life dialogue on Feb. 12, Seitz also spoke on the prejudice that has been enabled in the “current situation,” referring to the rhetoric of the Trump administration and other political leaders.

“The rhetoric from leaders opens the door because it doesn’t distinguish,” he said. “It calls all immigrants criminals, rather than criminals, criminals … and that allows many to hear that at least and say, ‘if the person is brown, you know, they’re bad.’”

As the Trump administration has targeted migrants who have committed crimes in the first phase of its mass deportation efforts – of which they’ve already detained and deported thousands –, Seitz also questioned the responsibility the country has to rehabilitate those individuals instead of deporting them.

“Is it really OK to say these people are so bad we’re going to ship them to Guantanamo Bay and forget about them without a trial, without even a due process, much less an effort to rehabilitate them?,” he asked. “And frankly, if you want to look from the standpoint of self interest, you’re not fulfilling self interest either when you’re putting people in a situation where they’re constantly made worse than they were before because of the way they were incarcerated.”

Pope Francis’s recent letter to the U.S. bishops on immigration, where he criticizes the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans only came up briefly during the dialogue, with Seitz simply saying the pontiff “has once again come forward and spoken in a certain way on our behalf, with an eloquence that few of us can.”

Throughout the dialogue, Seitz, and other participants, highlighted the fear the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric on immigration have created. Seitz spoke of the traumatization many migrants experience in their home countries that force them to flee, and that they experience on their journey, noting that many of them now feel forced to go back to those situations.

He told the story of a man named Jesus, who is in his mid-20s, and how after a Mass last week he spoke before the entire congregation, thanking them for the warmth they have showed him, and letting them know that because he has lost his parole “he wasn’t going to stay in the midst of the fear that they now have in the immigrant community.”

“That kind of story is being repeated throughout the immigrant community,” Seitz said. “Not everyone is choosing to leave, but many of them are saying, ‘as bad as it was at home, as much as I was in fear of my life at home, I just can’t live like this.’”