Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Doubt
I remember Father Thomas Cassady, the rector of my seminary, Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, once saying that all of us doubt, if even for a moment. I was reminded of his quote when I saw this quote from French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist René Descartes (1596 - 1650): If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Prayer for Memorial Day
We
recognized Memorial Day at our masses over the weekend at St James, honoring
those who had given their lives in their service to their country in the
military. We prayed this prayer of
blessing at the masses from the Catholic book of Household Prayers and
Blessings:
God of
power and mercy,
you destroy
war and you put down earthly pride.
Banish
violence from our midst and wipe away our tears,
that we
may all deserve to be called your sons and daughters.
Keep in
your mercy those men and women who have died in the cause of freedom and bring
them safely into your kingdom of justice and peace.
We ask
this through Jesus Christ our Lord forever and ever. AMEN.
6/3/2016 – Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Luke 15:3-7
The
Church has seen a lot of changes throughout its history, that is for sure. To
set up the climate in which today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus came
to birth, the Protestant Reformation and the establishment of the Church of
England in the 16th century divided Christianity in the West. During that same period, the development of Calvinism and Jansenism preached a
view Christianity in which some were destined for eternal life, while others
predestined for damnation. The
Catholic Church opposed this view of the predestination of souls, instead
teaching of the infinite love of Jesus who died on the cross for our sins. The
image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus contributed to the Catholic Church’s teachings
on Jesus’ love for all of humanity. In
the year 1675, Sister Mary Margaret Alacoque, a French nun in the Order of the
Visitation, received messages and appearances from Jesus on his Sacred Heart in
1765. He told her: "I promise you in the excessive mercy of
my Heart that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy
Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final
perseverance; they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving their
sacraments. My divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.”
The actual feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
began in 1765 in Poland and in certain congregations. In 1856, Pope Pius IX
made it a feast for the universal church. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated
the whole world to the Sacred Heart. Although we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus with this solemnity each year
of the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost, there is a devotion to
the Sacred Heart on the first Friday each month, a devotion that we practice
here at St James. In
the visions received by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Jesus promised that those
who made the First Friday devotion for nine consecutive months would be given
the grace of repentance at the moment of death.
We
think of how in our faith, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a powerful image of the
love of God. Even
when we go back to the Hebrew Scriptures, the heart of God was a key image of
how God kept a covenant with his people. For
the ancient Jewish people, the heart was at the very center of a person. Through the history of ancient Israel, God begged his people to return to him after they had hardened their hearts. Throughout the Gospels, when the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes challenge
Jesus to summarize the law of God, he
tells them to love God with all their heart and to love their neighbors as
themselves. In
today’s Gospel, as the Pharisees and scribes challenge Jesus once again, he
tells them about how he as the Good Shepherd would search high and low to bring
that one lost sheep back into the fold, how his love for us has no boundaries
or limits. The
Sacred Heart of Jesus, then, is meant to symbolize the love of God and to evoke
love for God from us. May
this rich devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus call out to us today to emulate
this love God has for us in our lives.
Monday, May 30, 2016
6/1/2016 – St Justin Martyr – Thursday of the 9th week in Ordinary time – 2 Timothy 1:1-3, 6-12
Paul had been imprisoned in Rome for the
second time, this time by the Emperor Nero. He
writes to Timothy, who is probably in Ephesus at the time, wanting him to come
to Rome to spend time with him. We hear the beginning of this letter in our first reading today. Even
though he is prison, Paul is still able to express his gratitude and is able to
be encouraging and bold in his advice to Timothy. Paul was one of the great evangelizers and
Patriarchs of the Early Church. St
Justin Martyr, the saint whom we celebrate today, must have been recognized in
a special way for his dying for the faith, since the term “martyr” is officially attached to the way he is remembered in the Church as a saint. Justin was born into a pagan family in the year 100. Even though he was initially attracted to
Plato and the Greek philosophers, these philosophies led him to Christ and into
conversion to Christianity. Justin is primarily remembered for his Christian apologetics, for the way he
defended the faith against other religions and philosophies. In a
letter Justin Martyr wrote in 155, we have the first description of a liturgy
in the Early Church. Justin description
is very similar to the flow and elements that we have in mass today. In particular, what strikes me about his
description of mass is his description of the Eucharist: “This
food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one
who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing
for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to
us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as
Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for
our salvation.” Justin Martyr was beheaded in Rome in 165 as a martyr for the faith. Today, we give thanks for Paul, Justin Martyr, and all those Early Church
Fathers and Mothers who boldly lived out their faith and passed down their
faith to us.
5/31/2016 – The visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth – Luke 1:39-56
The
past few weeks, we have had a lot of special feast days in our liturgical
calendar, even though we have returned to Ordinary Time. These past two Sundays, we have celebrated
the solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Most Holy Body and Blood of
Our Lord, Jesus Christ. This upcoming
Friday, we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. And today, on the last day of May, we
celebrate the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Last
Saturday, we had the funeral of Mike Reinhert here at St James. The one request that his family had for music
was that they wanted to have Ave Maria as a part of the funeral liturgy. It is
interesting that when I get questions from non-Catholics about the role Mary
has in our life of faith, questioning why Mary has such an important role, it
is indeed Mary whom we turn to our lives when we need consolation or
encouragement. We
honor both Mary and Elizabeth in the event that is recorded in Scripture, of
Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth after she learns from the angel about
her cousin being with child. The
“Hail Mary” that so many Catholics pray each day combines the greeting of the
Angel to Mary, “Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you!” with the greeting of her cousin Elizabeth: ““Most
blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”. While
these two women minister to each other in their need, while Mary and Elizabeth
are both able to understand their situations, we might wonder if Mary would
have been able to pray and to proclaim the words of the Magnificat in the way
that she does if Elizabeth had not recognized the way that she was blessed and
if had not proclaimed that blessedness to her. There
are times on our journey when we particularly feel that we are at the end of
our rope and that we cannot it on our own.
We might need to receive some spiritual hospitality and spiritual
encouragement like Mary and Elizabeth provided to each other. That might be what we exactly need. However, we, in turn, need to practice that
same kind of spiritual hospitality and warmth toward others. Sometimes we can so be caught up in our own
world, we might not realize how we can be of spiritual service to those around
us. Even when we are struggling or
overwhelmed or self-absorbed, we can ask for the gifts of humility or contrition
or fortitude from the Holy Spirit. Thank
Blessed Mother and St Elizabeth for the examples of faith you are for us.
Walker Percy - May 28, 1916 - May 10, 1990
From 2000 to 2004, I taught Spanish at Greenville Weston High School in Greenville, Mississippi as a member of the Mississippi Teacher Corps out of Ole Miss. It was a very challenging time during my life, but a very enlightening time as well. Greenville has been known as the Queen City of the Delta, a city known as a center for barges and tugboat and cotton. Greenville High School is considered a critical needs school where many students struggle academically and where there are a lot of discipline problems. Greenville is also a city of high unemployment and extreme poverty. The high school, at one time, was one the most prestigious in the state. Shelby Foote, one of the most respected Civil War historians to have ever lived, grew up in Greenville and attended Greenville High School. One of his classmates was the novelist Walker Percy. Percy, a convert to Catholicism, became an acclaimed novelist and Catholic philosopher. He is buried at the cemetery at the Benedictine abbey in Covington, Louisiana, where he was an oblate of the Benedictines. If you have not read the Movie Goer, Percy’s acclaimed existentialist novel set in New Orleans and winner of the National Book Award, you really owe it to yourself to read it. It is one of my favorite books, one that I read again and again. Walker Percy is a national treasure, that is for sure, and one of the community of saint whom I respect dearly, even thought he has not been officially canonized (yet, I add with hope!) Saturday, May 28, would have been Walker Percy’s 100th birthday, something my good friend Anne Belcher pointed out to me, since it was mentioned in the daily devotional that we both read - Give Us This Day.
May 30, 2016 - Feast day of St Joan of Arc
St Joan of Arc sparked so much interest during her lifetime - this teenager who led the French troops into battle who is burned at the stake. The place of her death became a place of pilgrimage almost immediately, and even though it took almost 5 centuries for her to become an officially canonized saint, having died in 1431 and canonized in 1920, she was a saint and a martyr in the eyes of the people for all that time. I remember going to the St Joan of Arc chapel on the campus of Marquette University in Milwaukee so many times when I was a seminarian in Milwaukee from 2004 to 2008, praying in a chapel where Joan of Arc herself prayed in France. One of my favorite novels, Black Robe, a fictionalized account of the Jesuit missionaries in French Canada, based on the life of St Jean de Brebeuf and his companions, depicts this young Jesuit priest and his mother going to the place where Joan of Arc was burn at the stake and praying before this young priest goes off to Canada. He and his mom realize this may be the last time they way see each other and that he himself may die a martyr’s death like Joan did, fears that unfortunately come to be realized. Yet, his sense of mission and his sense of conforming to God’s will, and his sense of being united with the community of the saints in proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth, helps him overcome any fears and trepidations he has. St Joan of Arc, please pray for us.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
29 de mayo de 2016 – Solemnidad del Cuerpo y la Sangre de Cristo – Lucas 8,11b-17
Hoy celebramos el cuerpo y la sangre de Cristo. Celebramos el cuerpo y la sangre de Cristo – la
presencia de Cristo – que recibimos en la santísima Eucaristía cada vez que
vamos a la misa. Celebramos el cuerpo de Cristo que formamos en la
Santa Iglesia.
Hay una estadística muy triste en nuestra
iglesia. Muchos católicos no creen en la presencia
verdadera de Cristo en el cuerpo y la sangre de Cristo en la eucaristía. Muchos católicos no conocen que la Iglesia
enseñan que la Eucaristía es la presencia verdadera de Cristo. Hay muchos católicos que no vienen a la misa cada
domingo para recibir la eucaristía. Hay muchos católicos que no participan
activamente en la vida de la Iglesia – el cuerpo de Cristo – en la vida de su
parroquia.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
5/29/2016 – Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ – Luke 8:11b-17
Dominic Tang, a Jesuit priest in China and a native of Hong Kong, was named as
a bishop in China by the Vatican in 1951. He knew
that this was a dangerous assignment for him, since the Church was being oppressed by
the Communist regime that had taken control in that country. He
was arrested in 1958 for refusing to recant his loyalty to the Holy Catholic
Church and to our Lord Jesus Christ, for refusing to pledge his full support to
the Chinese communist state. Although he was never brought to trial and never convicted of any crime, he
served 22 years in prison. Cardinal Timothy Dolan recounts in his book, The Priests for the Third
Millennium, how after 5 straight years of confinement in a small windowless
prison cell, Bishop Tang was given a couple of hours to do anything he wanted
to do. He was offered to take shower,
something that been denied him all that time.
He could make a phone call to his family. He could have gone for a long walk outside in
nature. But, when the jailer asked him
for his choice, he responded: “I would like to celebrate mass.” I
remember the rector of my seminary tell all of us seminarians time and time
again: As a priest, if you do not develop a love of the mass and a love for the
Jesus you encounter in the mass, there is no way you are going to make it
through the difficult times you will encounter in your priesthood. Bishop Tang’s encounter with Jesus in the mass helped him survive his 2 years
in prison. When
he was released, he never showed any bitterness or resentment, even though he
never received any type of apology from the Chinese government. Bishop Tang stated: In prison, I always asked God to help me to progress in
virtue, in humility and obedience. I
tried to be kind and gentle to others, without resisting ill-treatment from
others. When controlled and walked upon, I did not complain. There are many opportunities for practicing
virtue in prison.
The miraculous presence of Christ in the Eucharist is there to help our to live out the Christian virtues and the values of the Gospel, even when we cannot do so through our own means.
The miraculous presence of Christ in the Eucharist is there to help our to live out the Christian virtues and the values of the Gospel, even when we cannot do so through our own means.
Monday, May 23, 2016
5/27/2016 – Friday of the 8th week in Ordinary Time – 1 Peter 4:7-13
As we
continue to hear from the first letter of Peter today, we hear about what it
means to live out our Christian faith in a hostile world and we hear advice to
those who face persecution. When we hear of the martyrs in the early
Church or other those Catholics who were persecuted by the Nazis in WWII or of
those in Africa or the Middle East who are being persecuted for their faith, it
seemed so far away. But,
I can tell you, I have face hostility as a Catholic priest here in the Bible
Belt of Mississippi. And I think when
some of us see the direction the government and society is going, with an
emphasis on the secular and a diminishing of the religious, we can be
frightened as to where all of this might go. There
is a famous quote from the late Cardinal Francis George regarding persecution
in a secular society that has made the rounds of the blogs on the internet for
some time. Cardinal George made this
comment while speaking to a group of priests.
It was recorded on someone’s smart phone, and the rest is history. Cardinal George said this: "I expect to die in bed, my successor
will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.
His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help
rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history." And, yet, there is always a message of hope
in our faith. Mary is one of figures in
our faith that always gives me courage and hope. I think of the Sorrowful Mother who stood by
her son on the cross, accompanying him and praying for him. I think of Mary as Our Lady of the Pillar,
who appear to St James in an apparition to give him hope and encouragement when
his missionary work in Spain seemed to be a failure. Here
is a prayer to Mary, the Light of Hope, taken from St Pope John Paul II’s consecrating
of the entire world to Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 1982.
Immaculate
Heart of Mary,
help us
to conquer the menace of evil,
which so
easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today,
and show
immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world….
Accept,
O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us
with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin:
individual
sin and the “sin of the world,”
sin in
all its manifestations.
Let
there be revealed once more in the history of the world
the infinite
saving power of the Redemption:
the power
of merciful love.
AMEN.
5/26/2016 – Thursday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time – 1 Peter 2:2-5, 9-12
The
author of the first letter of Peter declares to us today: Once you were no people – now you are God’s
people. Once you lived with no mercy –
now you live in the light of God’s mercy. He
states that as aliens and sojourners in this world, we are to separate
ourselves from earthly desires. Do we
feel like aliens in this world – that is a strong word to use, isn’t it? Or
are see super-attached to the things of this world, so much so that they
separate us from God and our journey of faith?
One
of the saints we celebrate today is a woman named Mariana de Jesus, a woman who
lived in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, in the first half of the 17th
century. As a
youth, she felt the call to become a nun, but entry in the convent was turned
down for her. Instead, she became a virtual hermit and recluse in the home of his sister and
brother-in-law. She led a very austere,
contemplative, mystical life, devoting herself to pray and
self-deprivations. She had a gift of
curing the sick and reading the hearts of those who came to her. She
became a third-order Franciscan, living that lifestyle. In
1645, the city of Ecuador suffering a terrible earthquake in which over 1,400
of its inhabitants were killed, as well the eruption of the nearby volcano and
an epidemic of terrible disease. Mariana felt that she needed to offer up her life in reparation for the sins of
her beloved city. She
asked the Lord to accept her offering in defense of her country and her compatriots,
that she “might be chastised for everything in the city which deserved
chastisement.” She
was struck with a mortal illness that day, dying within 2 months. At
her death, the earthquakes and the volcano quieted down and the plagues died
out. Pope
Pius XII canonized Mariana de Jesus in 1950. I
remember during the first month that I was in Ecuador as a missionary, back in
May 1996, I went to a mass on her feast day, in which there were a large number
of nuns from various religious orders all in their traditional habits. She is the patron saint of Ecuador, very
beloved as the first person from that country to be canonized as a saint.
5/24/2016 – Wednesday of the 8th week in Ordinary Time - Feast day of the Venerable Bede – 1 Peter 1:18-25
Today’s reading from the first letter of Peter discusses the redemption that we
have in our Lord, Jesus Christ and how the Word of God is an imperishable seed
that has been planted in our hearts to bring us new birth in Christ. Yes, it is indeed the action of the Holy
Spirit in our lives that brings about conversion and renewal in us, but the Word
of God that lives and abides in us is also an essential presence, presenting us
the message of Christ’s Good New, the message of repentance and salvation. As we
talk about the Word of God and the redemption we have in Christ today, we
celebrate a very honored saint from the Middle Ages: the Venerable Bede. Bede was
born in England in the latter part of the 7th century; he is the
only native born person from Great Britain who has been named Doctor of the
Church. Although Bede spent his entire adult life in a monastery in England, he is
ascribed the title Venerable and earned great respect and honor due to his
reputation for knowledge and wisdom. I
remember reading his most acclaimed work, The Ecclesiastical History of the
English People, in my Western Civilization course in college. For
his well-known scholarship in the field of history, Bede is known as the Father
of English History. I
really like this quote from Bede, which echoes how are new birth in Christ is
to affect our lives, as we heard in the first reading: “I was no longer the center of my life and
therefore I could see God in everything.” As
Bede says, let us see God in all things.
Let us make him the center of our lives, the alpha and omega of our
being. The
example of Bede’s life shows that no matter where we are planted, we can bloom
or serve. Bede only left the monastery
once in his time as a monk, which was to teach in a Catholic school in York for
a couple of months. Yet, Bede’s
influence and example of faith encouraged many believers in his own day and
even now, more than 12 centuries after his death in 735. It is
recorded that Bede died while reciting these words of his favorite prayer: “Glory
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As in the beginning,
so now, and forever. Amen.”
Sunday, May 22, 2016
5/23/2016 – Tuesday of the 8th week in Ordinary Time – 1 Peter 1:10-18
Usually, our first readings come from the Old Testament. Last week, however, we heard from a book in
the New Testament in the first readings: the Letter of James. Today, we hear the beginning of the first
letter of Peter, another New Testament book. In
the Early Church, this letter was ascribed to the Apostle Peter, but most
modern scholars do not think that this is the case. This letter, written originally in Greek,
probably dates from the end of the first century or the beginning of the second
century, many years after the Apostle Peter died. It was written to a group of Christian
communities in Asia Minor in present-day Turkey. Perhaps it was written by one of Peter’s
associates after his death in the tradition of Peter, or perhaps it was written
by a learned Christian leader in the early Christian community who was outside
of the circle of Peter and his associates. No
matter what it’s origin, the first letter of Peter contains a lot of sound
moral teachings and catechetical instruction, in addition to a plea for the
followers of the way of Jesus to remain faithful in spite of persecutions and
sufferings. Our
passage of scripture today ends with the exhortation – “Be holy yourselves in
every aspect of your conduct, for it is written: “Be holy because I am holy.” What
does it mean to be holy? I saw this
quote from Protestant Minister Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in
California: “God does not want you to
become a God; he wants you to become godly – taking on his values, attitudes,
and character.” When
I was on the Camino in Spain, I spent the night in the parish where the Founder
of Opus Dei, St. Jose Maria Escriva, went to mass as a youth, the Church of
Santiago the Apostle in the city of Logroño, in the small province of La Rioja
in northeastern Spain. Father Escriva
says that “great holiness consists of carrying out the ‘little duties’ of each
moment.” Mother Teresa and Therese of Lisieux carry that message in their spirituality
as well, that holiness does not consist of aspiring to greatness, but rather in
how we live in the ordinary moments of life, how we reflect God and the values
of our faith in those moments. That
is easier said than done, right? Our
impatience, our pride, our whims, our temptations, the material values of our
world, and our anger can all get the best of us and can get us off the path to
holiness. We need to find the method that works for us
to get us back on the road to holiness, which can vary from person to person
and can vary depending upon where we are on at the moment in our journey of
faith. Lord, please lead us to be more holy and
incorporate the values of our faith in our lives.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
5/22/2016 – the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – John 16:12-15
Think
about some experience you had that was rather complex and multi-faceted. It may
be you a trip or adventure you took, or the years you spent in high school or
college, or a long time at a job. I
think about one of my missionary experiences, either in Ecuador or in Canada or
in South Texas working with the children of migrant farm workers. Those
experiences were both full of joys and heartache, full of challenges and
struggles, full of growth and setbacks.
It is really difficult for me to describe one those experiences in all
its complexities and nuances. I about
think this on the weekend that we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity. A lot
of Catholic priests start out a homily on the Trinity by stating that the
Trinity is a mystery of our faith and that it is impossible to completely
comprehend the Trinity in all its complexity. How do we even begin to talk about the
Trinity? In
fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church very boldly states: “The
mystery of the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life”
(number 234).
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