How many people do you suppose filled out their NCAA basketball tournament brackets with a Final Four featuring Princeton and Hampton, Brigham Young and Nevada- Las Vegas? Throwing darts at the brackets would probably work out better, right? But the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy had a different point to make.

Jenna Ashley Robinson of the Pope Center posted a couple of surveys that she calls March Money Madness. Here's her bracket of the tournament field where the contest isn't a series of basketball games, but the comparative debt of graduating students. This analysis follows her Tournament of Starting Salaries last week.

For those scoring at home, the only school to make the Final Four in both contests -- high starting salaries and low student debt burdens -- was Princeton University.

A different scale of reckoning than the honor and laurels of Princeton's great Hobey Baker, certainly, but the brackets are a clever way to highlight some facts that are worth a look, and whose implications are worth some thought.

Elizabeth Scalia, the Anchoress, writes of today's Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord: This is a moment of such profound import that Catholics are called to remember it every day, in the prayer of the Angelus: “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived of the Holy Spirit.” 

All Christians are called to realize that holiness is not our only vocation: that we are meant also to be active participants in the work of salvation, active in bringing others to knowledge of God. And that can mean active in a particular way, congruent with the special gifts and charisms that we possess. Pope John Paul II described a particular way of understanding the Annunciation event, and the special dedication of our heart and purpose that observance of this great Feast proposes:

Mary shows us the path towards a mature freedom. In our days, many baptized Christians have not yet made the faith their own in an adult and conscious way. They call themselves Christians and yet they do not respond in a fully responsible way to the grace they have received; they still do not know what they want and why they want it.

This is the lesson to be learned today; an education to freedom is urgently needed ... With the Virgin Mary's example before us, we are invited to reflect: God has a project for each of us, he "calls" everyone. What is important is knowing how to recognize this call, how to accept it and how to be faithful to it. 


My older brother, Joe, a sculptor, gave me an impressionistic pencil sketch of the Annunciation for my birthday ten years ago. It hangs in the hallway between my bedroom and living room, and faces the entrance to the kitchen. A prominent hanging, then, so I see it several times each day. It's a welcome reminder to me of one of the central events in the history of our salvation, a pointer to all the poetic loveliness of the first chapter of Luke and, since the Annunciation is among the most frequent subjects of Western art, echoes in a particular way the richness and depth of our Christian tradition and inheritance.

And the sketch is a reminder, of course, of my brother and his family. Fittingly so. In a happy coincidence, the Feast of the Annunciation is also the birthday of Joe's wife, Diane.

With thanks to Michael Potemra, who writes: "From Books & Culture: A Christian Review, a fascinating assessment of how Lutheran, Catholic, Anglican, secular, aristocratic, and commercial influences combined to shape a man with a serious claim to the title of England’s greatest composer."

The assessment is part of a stimulating, insightful and suggestive review by David Martin, a Fellow of the British Academy, of The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia, and well worth your time.

Potemra gives a tip of the hat to Rev. Victor Lee Austin, theologian-in-residence at St. Thomas Church (Episcopal) in Manhattan, for the link..

We owe a good measure of respect and forbearance to the decisions of those in positions of properly constituted authority. Part of the reason for that is that they may have information unavailable to us. There are also, undeniably, serious responsibilities that flow from the fact  that our country has reserves of power and strength unexampled in human history. But we are as a country, yet again, committed to engagement in armed conflict on presidential authority alone. No declaration of aims, no statement of purpose, no fitting resolution has issued from the Congress of the United States. President Obama, in response to a question in Rio de Janeiro, spoke -- briefly and unsatisfyingly -- to the question of aims and purpose of this latest engagement but, to the extent that he's addressed the question of authorization and its proprieties at all, seems to believe that it's only the United Nations apparatus, and not the prerogatives of the co-equal branches of the American government, to whom he should show comity and respectful regard.

There was good and bad in that autumn of 2008 that seems already so far away. The Phillies won the World Series 4 games to 1 over the Tampa Bay Rays after a lot of great post-season baseball, but even the joy and celebration of that achievement was clouded for some of us by the nasty economic news of the preceding months and the resultant damage done to financial nest eggs and stock holdings.

It didn't register on the same scale of public moment and interest, certainly, but another event from that autumn has had a lingering effect on my life: a club that I'd frequented for several years closed. It wasn't a glamorous place or even scrupulously clean, but I was comfortable there, especially in the pool room. Not that I played much. But it was a good and companionable room to watch some shooting, and was the beginning ground of some much-valued friendships.

Those friendships continue, but in a necessarily different way, and usually individually rather than as a group, since we no longer have an established common gathering place. We manage to get together occasionally, although much texting and adjustment of schedules seems to occur first. We enjoy each other's game and company and laughter as before, but Philadelphia is, unfortunately, a very segregated city and it doesn't seem likely that we'll easily find a replacement spot so convenient and congenial as we had. It's been a loss of something good and happy. The passage of time and the development of new interests among us might well have brought us to the same point eventually, but that kind of thought doesn't really help much.

It was the final year of President Ronald Reagan's first term, the Dow Jones average passed 1100 for the first time, Michael Jackson's Thriller album was the pop music phenomenon, and I was writing a thesis on church endowments in medieval England for a History M.A. at the University of Virginia. It was the last time that my living quarters didn't include cable TV. In fact, there wasn't a TV in my Charlottesville apartment at all that year, a source of open-mouthed wonder to some of my acquaintance.

I haven't banished the television entirely from my Delaware County home, but I had the cable service removed earlier today. I'll have a few network channels remaining, and Jethro Gibbs and the NCIS team may show up for an occasional visit. And I'll get some Phillies games. But, as for Don Draper and the Mad Men, top chefs and classic movies. Well, they'll have to flourish without my eye on them.

It's a very unusual year when I don't mark the mid-March feasts with a culinary treat, but the week's ending without my indulging either soda bread with Patrick or zeppoli with Joseph. Not a penitential decision, just bad planning. And not a happy break with tradition, or one I want to repeat.

The first two paragraphs below are from the newsletter of 15 January 2011 from the Community of Taize.


Psalm 139 (138): Few passages in the Bible speak of God’s closeness to human beings with as much subtlety and force as Psalm 139. “Lord, you have searched me and known me”, say the very first lines. God, the psalm tells us, is not a distant observer but one who looks deeply into individuals, who knows them not partially or one-sidedly but rather in the entirety of their existence, indeed as no one else can.

As the psalm unfolds, the tone becomes more pressing. “Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” The psalmist pictures himself going high and low, and from east to west before hiding finally in darkness in order to elude God, but to no avail. God’s hand now is not only upon him, as earlier (v. 5), but holds him fast (v. 10). The realization seems all at once frightful and reassuring: there is no way to escape from God, but, at the same time, God never abandons individuals, no matter how far they stray from Him.

Let's amend that last line and bring the thought closer: God never abandons us, no matter how far we stray from Him. There's always richness and comfort and support in the notes and messages from Taize, and I've been blessed in receiving them. It's a continuing blessing to the world, too, that the horror of Brother Roger's assassination on that grim August day in 2005 hasn't blighted the influence of his life's work nor dimmed the witness of the community that he founded as a living parable of John17:21: ut unum sint.

That they may be one. Ut unum sint is also the title Pope John Paul II gave to his encyclical and exhortation on ecumenism in 1995,  reminding us that:  

At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church committed herself irrevocably to following the path of the ecumenical venture, thus heeding the Spirit of the Lord.

And heeding that call must be central to our journey. Even out of the terrible sufferings and persecutions that have scarred the human family in the modern world, the Holy Spirit asks for -- demands -- our renewed commitment to the cause of unity in Christ.

The courageous witness of so many martyrs of our century, including members of Churches and Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church, gives new vigour to the Council's call and reminds us of our duty to listen to and put into practice its exhortation.

Taize stands as a beacon to those who hear the words of John 17:21 in humility, and following the brothers in their practice of prayer -- short, repetitive song; a reading from Scripture; long, contemplative silence -- works almost as an introduction to lectio divina and deepens our immersion in the Word. Deepens, too, our sense of fellowship with all those who bear the cross of Christ on their forehead.

Gideon Strauss, with whom I had an online connection through our blogs and who's now president of the Center for Public Justice, left a comment here a few years ago. I'd written often of hymns from various Christian traditions and several times of my deep debt to James Montgomery Boice and of the power of his preaching. Gideon, of the same Calvinist tradition as Dr. Boice, took note of some of the things that I'd entered here and left a comment, writing that I "practice a bracing ecumenicism." I was grateful for his visit and support and hope that his words remain true. And I'm grateful, certainly, for the friendship and fellowship of brothers and sisters of other faiths. Much of the good in my fumbling I owe to them, and to the witness of Taize.
 

I like my tea brewed long, dark and strong. I make the iced tea that way, too. When I made a fresh couple of quarts earlier this afternoon, I remembered that I still had a pint container remaining in the refrigerator, and poured it in to the fresh batch.

Here's the unexpected danger of dark tea and unmarked containers: I also had a pint of au jus gravy in the refrigerator. I suppose I should really have realized my mistake before drinking several tall glasses of the brew. And I wouldn't feel so bad, certainly, were today not a Friday in Lent.