Denver Newsroom, Jan 16, 2021 / 02:00 am (CNA).- Like many in 2020, Catholic author Leah Libresco Sargeant found much solace in the past year in spiritual reading— as well as in copious amounts of baking.
“The big thing this year, especially with the new baby, is making large batches of cookies and then freezing a bunch of the dough so that there could always be fresh cookies, even if it’s a very busy day and it’s not plausible to make any. It’s great,” she laughed.
Leah is a convert from atheism, and writes and thinks a lot about ways to build up strong Christian communities. In fact, she wrote a book about it a couple of years ago, called “Building the Benedict Option,” in which she encourages Catholics to create opportunities in their lives to interact more with their faith community.
These additional, intentional interactions can include taking the initiative to host people more often for dinner or events at your home, especially on feast days. Her book offers tips on how to make these interactions more successful in building tight-knit Christian communities.
Although many of the suggestions in Leah’s book are predicated on face-to-face interactions, she said she has found ways to adapt her community-building practices during coronavirus times.
“I think one of the hard things is just having a routine shattered; some of the connections you have with other people vanishing. And it takes a bit of work, then, to build up from scratch what you otherwise could rely on from other people,” she noted.
For example, she’s taken the initiative to maintain several penpals, keeping friendships alive by conversing via snail mail. A habit Leah practiced even before the pandemic was sending things to people that she found spiritually enriching— such as book passages, or information about interesting saints— in the hopes that they would find it spiritually enriching too.
Most dioceses in the United States, save for a few in the West, have reopened almost all their churches for Mass with continued precautions such as social distancing and mask wearing. Catholic churches in Princeton, New Jersey where the Sargeants live have generally been accessible since the summer of 2020, but Leah says there have been times when the Sergeants have had to miss in-person Mass and instead participate from home via livestream.
“We try and make that an opportunity to pray for people who are in more remote places, who have a traveling priest who doesn’t come every week, even in normal times— or people who are living under persecution,” Leah told CNA.
“To try and take this unexpected and unwanted fast from the Mass as an opportunity to pray for people for whom [access to the sacraments] is an ongoing struggle, pandemic or no.”
Part of the key to making it through “unexpected fasts” from the sacraments is to reach out to others and offer to walk through it with them, she said.
“If you can’t go to Mass, or can’t go to Mass as often as you used to, part of the question might be: do you have a friend who is also in this position?” she said, adding that you could call that person on the phone and offer to pray with them.
“Is there a way that this can become something you share with others, rather than just a time of isolation?
Adding that she does not want to “sugarcoat” the difficulties in keeping a sense of community alive during the pandemic, Sergeant said restrictions on public gatherings, including Mass, have made spontaneous, organic interactions with her neighbors more difficult.
“I think in some ways what the pandemic has done is strengthened some of my ties with people who I’ve fallen out of touch with a little, and who don’t live nearby, and weakened them a bit with my actual neighbors,” she said.
On the other hand, Sergeant said she has found that the extra time spent at home during the pandemic has helped her and her family to pray more in their home.
Leah and her husband Alexi welcomed their first child in January 2020, so a lot of their domestic church traditions in the past year have been shaped by that joyful fact. For example, the Sargeants decided against putting out a physical Advent wreath in 2020.
“A lot of our traditions have to be things that are less tangible, because literally everything in the house goes into [the baby’s] mouth,” she laughed.
One “intangible” habit that Leah and her husband have gotten into is doing spiritual reading every Sunday, out loud, to each other. They’ve made their way through works such as the biblical poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus and “The Day is Now Far Spent” by Robert Cardinal Sarah.
Leah has also continued her habit of blogging, attracting several hundred followers to an email newsletter in which she writes on topics such as motherhood, the benefits she has found from working from home, and a variety of others from a Catholic feminist perspective.
One of the keys to a healthy spiritual life is silence, and cultivating periods of silence every day for prayer and peacefulness. Leah says she’s been working on this for a while, and added that the birth of her first child has, perhaps paradoxically, helped her to find quieter moments than she had before.
“For me, a baby is sometimes an excuse not to find those periods of silence. But…a baby forces you to be fully present in the moment, to put aside some of your own goals or own plans for the day,” she explained.
“And if she falls asleep on top of you after what’s been a rough afternoon, suddenly it is enforced silence…and if you weren’t planning to have any silent prayer too bad, now is the time!”
The human toll of the pandemic has a lot of people thinking about death— not only the deaths of others, but their inevitable own. Leah says for Catholics, who believe in resurrection, thinking about death is not necessarily a bad thing.
“The Church has always told us to meditate on our own death, and to make that part of our spiritual practice,” she pointed out.
“[God] defeated death and freed us from fear of it, but that doesn’t make it easy. That’s why we talk about this as a spiritual practice, something we have to do deliberately again and again, to build up that trust in God and that knowledge of who He is. And so I think the pandemic is really forcing that good spiritual practice on us in a much more stressful and frightening way than if we’d chosen it ourselves.”
This meditation on what it means to die, and for things to end, applies not just to individuals, but to the Church as a whole. Even in non-pandemic times, there are always going to be people at Mass who are journeying through grief and suffering, and pastors shouldn’t shy away from addressing that, Sergeant said, seeking to assure people that experiencing spiritual aridity and grief does not make them “bad Christians.”
“There’s always someone in your neighborhood, in your parish, who’s going through a time that’s just as hard as it is now [in the pandemic], but it isn’t shared,” she said.
“So part of the question is: Whatever’s going on now that’s helping us take care of each other, how do we continue that when there isn’t the shock of a pandemic to remind us that people around us are suffering?”
The pandemic hasn’t only brought challenges, however. There have also been some fun opportunities for enhancing the Sargeant’s family life— several of which involve baking. Leah recommends seeking out a sourdough starter, as it makes for a fun baking activity as well as a potential gift to pass on to others.
“If you’re only feeding one thing in your house, it should be the baby, not the sourdough starter,” she laughed.
This interview originally aired on Catholic News Agency’s podcast, CNA Newsroom. It has been adapted for print. Listen to the interview below, beginning at 9:40.
CNA Newsroom · Ep. 89: Taking Back the Year
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It’ll be named a cardinal by F1 in 3,2,1…while the bishop will still be a bishop, but a good one… There are just a few around…
I agree that the St. Michael Prayer should not be forced on people at the end of Mass in a public manner. When I’ve seen this done, it precedes the recessional song and precedes the exit of the clergy, so the prayer is in fact Mass-adjacent and forced upon people in the pews. I also disagree with public praying of the rosary in the nave immediately before or after Mass. Don’t foist your preferred spiritual expressions on others in the nave.
Let the Mass be the Mass. Let people pray in silence before and after Mass.
The practice smacks of superstition, as if we need to add something more to the Mass because Mass isn’t enough.
Why would you say that praying to St. Michael smacks of superstition? What is superstitious about praying to St. Michael?Exorcists are warning that evil is ramping up and that the demonic is increasing all across our country. We need St. Michael now more than ever. And then your comment about praying the Rosary, it sounds like you don’t appreciate the power of the Rosary or how often Our Lady in her apparitions has asked that the Rosary be prayed. As Teresa of Avila once said, “Lord, deliver us from sour-faced saints.”
It’s not an extension of the mass, it’s imploring a saint for help. It’s a short prayer so couldn’t anyone literally hold their breath and then exhale to do their meditation afterwards?
EWTN does it and also begs for laborers; I don’t think it diminishes the mass effect and worship in the least.
So don’t pray them. What could be easier.
Your thought that praying the Rosary and/or the prayer to St. Michael demonstrates a superstitious attempt to add something to the Mass seems to me a kind of spiritual blindness.
Superstition? You need to evaluate your Catholic teaching and knowledge.
When we pray the Rosary before Mass we are meditating on Our Lords life, it prepares us for the celebration of Mass
God bless the good bishop for speaking up in defense of St. Michael’s
prayer. I attend a church where once the Mass is ended and dismissal offered,
the priest and people, myself included, fervently say the prayer. Given the
horrors of contemporary wars, the dishonesty of so many of our institutions,
the tragic loss of innocent lives, the prayer is most appropriate. As Fr.
deSouza wrote in the original column, “evil abounds.” The prayer, which I
well remember as a child, should never have been removed from the liturgy.
The article is unfortunately 1) vague and 2) incorrect in that it states 1) the prayer was used liturgically “until the Vatican II era” and 2) was a “feature of the mass.” As many on here already well know, the so-called Leonine (Leo XIII) prayers were imposed only for low masses (which didn’t even include any procession or singing to be interrupted – to respond to Scott Walker’s comment – and were done by the priest and people, with the priest kneeling on the altar steps, already having ended mass and typically while carrying the sacred vessels in hand. It was a public devotion outside the mass, and included several other prayers, such as the Hail Holy Queen, three Hail Marys, a prayer for the Church, the St. Michael prayer, and ending with three invocations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (therefore ending on a God-centered note). Low masses already ended with the “last gospel” – the first chapter of John, so the issue of “being sent forth” being interrupted makes little sense (yes, I realize the last gospel was suppressed in the revised mass, but still). St. Paul VI suppressed the public Leonine prayers as a required practice in 1964, yes, but it was hardly “banned.” Given the onslaught of evil that is glaringly obviously spreading throughout the world, a quick St. Michael prayer done by the people spontaneously (which is how I usually encounter it) is most welcome. Who could have a problem with that? Snobs? Purists? People who are emotionally allergic to traditional prayers or piety? If the latter, that might be something to take up with a spiritual director.
Yes, everyone is agreed that evil abounds and has been growing all around us for some time. This despite the growth of such devotions as the Rosary and the prayer to St Michael. And there is a Mass said every second of every day somewhere in the world.
How come evil does abound then ?
The evil in the world does not have to become man’s resting place. We are free to develop the alternative, to pray and to act with grace, out of the pit of sin. The Resurrection teaches that. Our first parents, choosing sin instead of paradise, led to us being where we are. The life, death and Resurrection of the Incarnate Word, together with His Church, however, offer us the faith, hope, and love as the alternative to the sinful world.
How do we know that devotional prayer has ‘grown’ over time? The efficacy of prayer relies on the grace of God and the holiness of the prayer.
Imagine the state of evil in the world if there were no Mass and no prayer. I would guess that we hain’t seen nothing yet of the power of evil if we were to stop entreaties to the Power of grace to compensate and to overcome.
Yeah, the St. Michael’s prayer at the end of Mass is the most egregious liturgical abuse today. Give me a break. Clearly the priest has an agenda.
For the priest objecting to the St. Michael prayer, where is his objection to clapping for the cookie ladies and the choir and everyone else at Mass? There are real abuses to be concerned about rather than praying for St. Michael’s guardianship. Get a grip.
the cookie ladies? who said Catholics don’t have a sense of humor; thank you for the chuckle
It reminds me of the lunch ladies 1-8 grades at the Catholic school I attended; good food and they worked for little money but mostly gratitude. We were not allowed to waste food – now food waste is almost a mortal sin in many schools
Fr. Bednar is clearly from the generation of priests who believe Vatican II is the be all and end all of Catholicism. His generation and their fanatical adoption of the “spirit of Vatican II” have literally emptied the pews. The damage done to souls is astronomical. Pray for them; they will have one heck of an accounting to make at their judgment.
The St Michael prayer was written by a holy Pope who warned of Freemasonry seeking to destroy the Church.
The St Michael prayer was cancel-cultured once the Freemasonic destruction of the church was underway 1962-2024.
I read the article in the Wall Street Journal. I did not think it deserved a response.
Now we see these debates over the liturgy.
I was an usher in a Catholic Church in the 1960’s. We agreed if we encountered a serious threat, we would defer to our usher was a police officer.
Fast forward to 2024.
We now live, or die, with gun violence.
St. Micheal is the Patron Saint of Police Officers. The “TOP COP”.
We can use St. Michael and local Police Officers to protect us from gun violence at religious events.
When I was growing up in the 70’s I don’t remember our church being locked, maybe it was at night.
Mr Schmiedeler:
I hope you meant criminal violence in your comment above. A gun is a tool, with no mind or will of its own. It’s a tool that is often unfortunately used for evil and violent acts against mankind, but it’s a tool nonetheless. There is literally is no such thing as gun violence. That terminology is a fabricated lie created by liberals and the mainstream media to distract from the real problem of criminal violence which is stemming from drugs, human trafficking/exploitation,
gangs, (coming across our wide-open southern border) and our increasingly Godless society. If there were such a thing, we’d have to build prisons and for pistols, rifles and shotguns.
I believe that ushers and sacristans should be trained and armed in the event of a violent act by some crazy criminal during Mass, especially if a bishop is present.
Fr.Bednar is a bit suspect.Why should he object to a prayer that has been in the church for so many years.What is his agenda??!! His background should be looked into….
Fr. Bednar comes with a lot of backstory baggage. Currently a retired priest in residence at a parish in Cleveland, he once penned a book lauding Jesuit theologian William Lynch. If I understand correctly, Lynch believed, controverting scholastic and Church teaching on faith and on imagination, that imagination somehow analogically is akin to faith. America has republished a 1943 Lynch article at http://www.americamagazine.org/voices/william-lynch. Commonweal also has an article lauding Lynch. A synopsis of Bednar’s book can be read at http://www.ebay.com/itm/Faith-as-Imagination-The-Contribut-Bednar-Gerald.
Long and short, Fr. Bednar is likely near his life’s end, after a probable lifetime of having seen modernist dreams of his church wafting away as his own lifeblood waned. Then someone offered him the WSJ venue as a means of renewing an aged and infirm man so blood running cold could flow more freely on imagined faith.
Bednar, Lynch, and the ilk of the faith of such fellows speaks against Church practices which arose long before them and VCII. The praying of this prayer will survive long after our day.
Neither Lynch, Bednar nor any progressive modernist can cite evidence against its efficacy on anything other than imaginary grounds.
See the ancient history, beauty, and validity of the St. Michael Prayer at catholiceducation.org/en/culture/the-prayer-to-st-michael.html
The prayer is ***NOT PART OF THE MASS***. ANY PERSON SUBJECTED TO IT against his will AFTER MASS HAS ENDED IN A CATHOLIC CHURCH IS FREE TO VISIT THE REST ROOM, PLUG IN EARPHONES, OR EXIT THE CHURCH, AND GOOD RIDDANCE.
Good and victorious St. Michael the Archangel, as guardian of nations, we thank you for your protection. We praise and thank God for you.