America Magazine - The Good Word

Why Celebrate the Ascension?

Terrance W. Klein

One early summer evening, shortly after the end of the school term, my Dad rather solemnly — so it seemed to me — took the training wheels off my bike. Then, while he mowed the lawn, my Mom and I slowly walked my two-wheeled test to the school playground at the end of our block. I was going to ride a bike without training wheels!

Of course it was harder to peddle on a field than on asphalt, but Kansas grass isn’t high. And it did make for a softer landing. This was the procedure. Mom would hold the bike upright while I mounted it. Standing alongside me, with a hand on each of the handle bars, she would run alongside the bike as I peddled. “That’s it.

The Fifth Sunday of Easter: Jesus is the Tap Root

John P. Schlegel

For 30 years I have been on college campuses during exam week. I know there are students in this congregation who are preparing for exams—over preparing or under preparing. There are graduating seniors and folks who may not becoming back to Fordham; and I know the emotions that accompany that reality.

Over the years I have sought a theme for this last Mass that would be both relevant and timely for you in your personal circumstance, as well as timeless; it applies to all of you.

Tonight’s Gospel works well—the vine and the branches. We are all dependent on the vine rooted firmly in the earth of life, which is the source of life. That tap root, on which we

When the Devil Turns Round

Terrance W. Klein

Robert Bolt’s play about the martyrdom of Saint Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons, has seen a lot of them come and go since its premiere in 1960, perhaps because so much of its dialogue is worth the remembering.

Consider this scene. Richard Rich, the man who will betray him, has just left More’s home. More’s wife Alice and his daughter Margaret sense the treachery of which Rich is capable, but it’s More’s headstrong son-in-law, William Roper, who is the first to speak.

ROPER Arrest him.

ALICE &n

Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Good Shepherd

John P. Schlegel

In the last movement of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler’s 2nd symphany is found this solo: “O believe, you were not born in vain, you have not lived in vain/ you have not suffered in vain/ what has come into being, that must perish/what has perished must rise again./ cease from trembling/prepare to live!”

"Prepare to live." That is a wonderful description of the Christian life in the afterglow of Easter. "Prepare to live" is an apt summary of resurrection theology. "Prepare to live" is hope-filled and forward looking injunction for all of us.

These Sundays after Easter we are continuously confronted with the irreducible core of our faith, namely that Jesu

Why Jesus Is Not on Facebook

Terrance W. Klein

Strange, where generations divide. I’m an earlier version of humanity, one without the opposable thumbs needed for texting. When a younger colleague taught me to text, I asked why I would want to do it. “Wouldn’t it be easier to telephone?”

“Easier for the thumbs; harder for you.” The argument went something like this: When you text, you’re in control. You send a message — what you want the other person to know — and then you choose whether, when, and how to continue the exchange of data. In contrast, once you begin a conversation, you’re committed. You don’t know where it will take you.

I can’t help b

Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Holy Spirit

Terrance W. Klein

Do you remember this scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Harry discovers that the diary he’s found “writes back to him.”

Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.

The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, “My name is Harry Potter.”

The words shone momentarily on the page and

Easter: Like Dills Doing Time

Terrance W. Klein

Grandma and Grandpa Herrman had a storm cellar. The small, limestone-lined space was dug-out beneath their house, but one entered it through a door in the backyard, just as Dorothy tried unsuccessfully to do in The Wizard of Oz. My numerous cousins and I spent a lot of time in our grandparents’ backyard, because, if the weather was good — and when isn’t the weather in Kansas beautiful, the Dorothy scenario excepted — our parents would be talkin’ on the front porch. They would encourage the kids to count license plates, walk to the filling station for a “pop,” or harvest blackberries, which we called Schwarzeberries. We’d take a buck

Good Friday: And It Was Night

Terrance W. Klein

From Rachel Aviv’s January 2^nd, 2012 New Yorker article, “No Remorse”:

Shortly after midnight on March 6, 2010, Dakotah Eliason sat in a chair in his bedroom with a .38-calibre pistol in his hands, thinking about what the world would be like if he didn’t exist. One of his friends had recently killed himself, and his girlfriend had dumped him. Earlier that night, Dakotah, who was fourteen, had taken his grandfather’s loaded gun off the coatrack. The breakup felt like a sign that he would always be a failure, and

Holy Thursday: The Words He Chose

Terrance W. Klein

In grading college essays, there are certain phrases that I pen so frequently, in red ink, that I’ve considered having them put onto a rubber stamp, to save myself from writing them repeatedly. For example, “The relative pronoun for people is ‘who’ or ‘whom.’ ‘That’ is for inanimates.” Or “The adverbs ‘really,’ ‘actually,’ and ‘just’ almost never add anything to a sentence; consider removing them. Or, my favorite, “The adverbs ‘now’ and ‘well’ are used in conversation at the beginning of a sentence in order to gain time to think, but this activity should occur befo

Such a Scene

Terrance W. Klein

Because I was doing doctoral studies at the time, I able to be home when my father died, even able to stay a couple of weeks afterwards, with my Mother. So I was with her when those initial days of funeral preparation, and its frenzied aftermath of calls and visits, had passed.

Strange, how family members almost never set down, across from each other, and speak directly. Conversations are more likely to occur over the morning paper or the evening dishes. Many times in the weeks that followed my Father’s death, I saw something I hope never to see again. I would be in conversation with my mother, and, when my own attention was drawn to whatever it was that I was doing, I would

Vincent the Failed Preacher

Terrance W. Klein

His father had been a minister. His grandfather as well. So, when he failed as an art dealer and began to reexamine his life, it seemed clear to Vincent that God had a better plan for his life, preaching the Gospel. “It is my fervent prayer and desire,” he told his brother, “that the spirit of my father and grandfather may rest upon me.”

He didn’t lack for zeal. He spent Sundays going from church to church, Protestant or Catholic, listening to sermons, sometimes taking in three or four. Even before beginning formal instruction, Vincent “began studying his catechism immediately, furiously copying out page after page.” When his father arrang

In the Grave of the Water

Terrance W. Klein

There’s reason to believe that the primitive Church, at least some congregations, valued ministers who could make baptism into a near-death experience. They held the head of the person being baptized under water long enough to induce loss of consciousness, but not so long as to produce death itself. Certainly it would have made the sacrament an unforgettable experience.

One unfortunate effect of contemporary baptisms being largely baby affairs is that we focus our attention upon new birth, the natal life that is the gift of creation itself. Nothing wrong with that, except that the primitive Church saw baptism as a portal into resurrected life, which is so much more than a gi

The Art of Fielding

Terrance W. Klein

Critics can’t decide if Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is really a book about baseball. There’s a lot of “other stuff” going on in the novel. But certainly in the character of Henry Skrimshander, it offers a wonderful description of what it means to be consumed by America’s pastime.

When he came home from Little League games, his mother would ask how many errors he’d made. “Zero!” he’d crow, popping the pocket of his beloved glove w

Child Sacrifice

Terrance W. Klein

It’s difficult to imagine a biblical passage so well known and yet so utterly incomprehensible to modern readers as Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah. In this age of Tiger Moms, and of parents whose lives revolve around their children, what are we to make of a story in which the God of Israel — our God — demands the death of a child?

Begin the comprehension by rolling back the centuries. We need only go back beyond the Victorians to find a very different attitude towards children. Pre-modern peoples loved their children, but they certainly did not organize their lives around them. Scholars offer numerous reasons for this. Some suggest that,

If Emily Had a Pulpit

Terrance W. Klein

Lent begins with the sturdy words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” They’re a reminder that the world around us — and the world of care and concern we carry daily within us — is passing away. Like so much of the faith, that’s easily asserted yet difficult to imagine. Immersed in the world, it’s difficult for us to picture its passing. Admittedly, she wouldn’t want one, but if Emily Dickinson had a pulpit, she could remind us that, even if we can’t find time to think of death, it will nonetheless remember us.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;<