Father Robert T. Cooper

January 17, 2021

          Father Michael McGivney was beatified on Saturday, October 31^st in Hartford, Connecticut, during the year in which we mark the 150^th anniversary of Pope Pius IX’s declaring St. Joseph the patron of the Universal Church.

            St. Joseph is a model for priests, particularly parish priests like Father McGivney (1852-1890). St. Joseph was a “just man” and every priest is similarly called to holiness. He had a fatherly love for Jesus and sacrificed to protect and provide for Him; every priest is meant to treat Jesus in the Eucharist with the love with which Joseph held Him in Bethlehem. He had a pure and reverent love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, a model for all priestly Marian devotion. He was a hard worker and model of diligence for every Christian not to mention alter Christus. He was “most chaste,” as the Divine Praises reminds us, an example of the incandescently pure love that is meant to burn in every priest’s heart. And he was a man of action. The Gospels do not record one word he says, but the Angel told him he was to name the Son of God “Jesus,” a fitting summary of his life, which bespoke that one word.

           Father McGivney reminds me of all these qualities of St. Joseph, but the one that strikes me the most is the last. We do not have a single word Fr. McGivney preached. We only have a few letters or articles. Almost every priest or bishop raised to the altars—as well as most religious and lay people—leaves a paper trail of prayers, theological insights, spiritual counsels, and more. For Father McGivney, the only resource we have to try to know him and imitate him, is, like St. Joseph, his deeds. And his deeds, like St. Joseph’s, point to Jesus.

           There were some extraordinary deeds of charity. For example, after one of his parishioners, Edward Downes, died of “brain fever,” his wife Catherine discovered that there was no money at all to support her four sons. That meant, according to the practices of the time, that the Probate Court could assign the children to public institutions lest they be neglected for want of money. Catherine Downes had to demonstrate that her fatherless children had someone to prevent them from becoming vagrants and support their education or apprenticeship. The oldest son was able to get a job and Catherine’s relatives were able to scrape together $2,500 for each of the two youngest sons. But no guardian was found to pay a $1,500 surety to become Alfred’s guardian. During the probate court hearing to determine his fate, the judge asked if anyone would be willing to assume the responsibility. Fr. McGivney stepped forward. Even though he did not have the money for the bond, the judge accepted an arrangement with a local grocer who trusted the priest enough to insure the guardianship and thereby save Alfred from going to a public institution.

              Another deed happened with 21-year-old James (Chip) Smith, a Catholic who was sentenced to death for shooting and killing a police officer. He was a bitter, very confused young man, and treated as a cop-killing pariah. Fr. McGivney visited him each day in the city jail, patiently talking to him, offering guidance and friendship, and praying. Eventually, Chip lost the “chip” on his shoulder and was reconciled. On the day of his execution, Fr. McGivney offered Mass for him in the jail, accompanied him to the scaffold, and blessed him. “Father,” Chip told him, “your saintly ministrations have enabled me to meet death without a tremor.”

             There were many other routine priestly deeds: youth outings, baseball leagues for the men and boys, parish dinners and fairs, preparing parishioners for the sacraments, receiving converts into the Church, and trying to make St. Mary’s Church in New Haven and, later, St. Thomas in Thomaston, real centers of Catholic family life.

            But the deed for which he is most known is founding the Knights of Columbus. The trauma of losing his father and having to leave seminary, as well as seeing what happened to the Downes family and many others, led him to want to found a fraternal benefit society that could provide security for families in the event of the death of their breadwinner. He also wanted to strengthen the faith of the men in his parish and do something to counteract the anti-Catholic secret societies that were luring Catholic men precisely because they provided insurance in the event of sudden death.

             After studying what other fraternal benefit societies did, Fr. McGivney and 24 lay parishioners founded the Knights of Columbus in the basement of St. Mary’s in 1882. He wanted it to be a self-governing organization, even though lay-led organizations in the Church were very rare, with him serving as a chaplain and advisor. From that humble beginning, the Knights have grown over the past 138 years into the largest society of Catholic men in the world, with 1.9 million members in 17 countries. They continue to provide spiritual support and affordable life insurance policies to its members, but they do much more. Annually Knights fundraise and donate $185 million to the Church’s worthy causes and dedicate 75 million volunteer hours. I am very proud to be one of that band of brothers Fr. McGivney founded. I have been a member of three different Councils.

               St. John Paul II wrote in 2001 that we should not think of holiness “as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes.’” Pope Francis in 2018 spoke positively about what he termed “middle-class holiness” seen in the “saints next door.” For me, Father McGivney is a model of the day-to-day, blue-collar holiness to which every parish priest is called. He was not St. Augustine in the pulpit, St. Thomas in the classroom, St. Charles Borromeo in administration, or St. Padre Pio in stigmatized prayer. He was Fr. Michael McGivney, but he sought to respond to his priestly vocation and the work given him with the same wholehearted devotion as the others. That is why he is a great model for every priest and why his beatification is such an important event for parish priests and parishes served by them.

               In the best biography of Fr. McGivney, aptly entitled Parish Priest, authors Douglas Brinkley and Julie Fenster said that they wanted to write a book about him because he was “the most unassuming of Catholic clerics” and “just a parish priest.” The heart of Catholicism, they emphasized, “lies with the parish priests, who become so much a part of their parishioners’ regular lives. They celebrate Mass, baptize infants, visit the sick and dying and preside at weddings and funerals.” It is to parish priests, they said, that Catholics turn in times of personal crisis. By writing about Father McGivney, they emphasized with italics, they were “embracing that very obscurity and so honoring all parish priests,” whose stories, “if they are told at all, are buried in parish newsletters and local newspapers.” They hoped that their work would “help to instigate fresh thinking on the priesthood and its manifest potential.”

                We see the manifest potential of the priesthood fulfilled in Fr. McGivney’s holy life. We pray that, as a result of his beatification, we will see it brought to perfection in many unassuming priests of action like him. And we ask God through his intercession that the Knights he founded will continue to form men to be committed “practical Catholics,” giving the witness of unity, charity, and fraternity that the Church and the world need more than ever.

January 10, 2021

To the Parishioners and Friends of Divine Mercy Parish:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

A recent Pew Study entitled “What Americans Know About Religion” reported that only 31 percent of Catholics believe that the bread and the wine consecrated during the Mass actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus, and that only half of Catholics know of the Church’s teaching concerning the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. In order to help the faithful in the Archdiocese of New Orleans gain a better understanding of the Eucharist, Archbishop Aymond has declared a Year of the Eucharist to begin this Sunday, January 10, 2021, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. It is my hope and prayer that through this spiritual initiative we can invite and encourage our brothers and sisters to find the consolation of the Lord through participation in the celebration of the Eucharist and in times of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

My parents and maternal grandparents held the evening meal as a priority for our family; attendance was not optional. It was an institution in our house to gather around the table and it was there that we bonded with one another. We shared our experiences of the day. We would laugh together, would even argue with each other. The evening family meal was essential to our formation and it was where we discovered our identity.

The same can be said of the celebration of the Eucharist. As Catholics, it is in the Eucharist that we learn our identity. At the table of the Lord, Jesus makes a gift of Himself to us because God loves us so much. Just as we discover our identity at the family table, it is in the Eucharist that we discover who we are, why we are here, and what is our mission as disciples of Christ.

Growing up I remember many wonderful devotions that kept the Eucharist at the center of our lives as Catholics: perpetual Adoration, Corpus Christi processions, and the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. From an early age, I knew the Eucharist is what distinguishes us from most other Christian churches, that the Body and Blood of Christ was actually, sacramentally present in our Church.

At the Last Supper, Christ gave us the priesthood so He could be present everywhere in the world, not just in Jerusalem, in every time and age. Through the Eucharist, we have direct contact with the Lord at the celebration of Mass and in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. When we visit our Church at times other than the celebration of Mass, we can see the red glow of the sanctuary lamp and know that Jesus is there for us. He is always waiting silently and lovingly, ready to receive us and console us. Praying in the presence of the Eucharist, in adoration of the Lord, is a very important part of my daily existence; it is essential to perseverance in the vocation I have embraced.

As a child, I learned many of the hymns I sing to the Eucharistic Lord. I love the Latin hymns I learned in the seminary, the “Pange Lingua,” and the English hymn, “Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All.” I memorized these hymns, and it is my hope that they can become a regular part of devotional practice here at Divine Mercy Parish, hymns that everyone learns by heart and sings together. As St. Augustine told us, singing is praying twice, because singing lifts our hearts to God and provides us with a glimpse of His beauty in the beauty of the music.

Recent times have been very difficult for our local Church and her people. In the Year of the Eucharist, we all have the opportunity to renew and strengthen our faith and our closeness to the Lord. If we center ourselves in the Real Presence of Jesus, in His friendship, then everything else will make sense. At the celebration of Mass, Jesus is there, waiting for us, inviting us to the table where He is making a gift of Himself to us so that we may have the strength to make a gift of ourselves to others. That is what human fulfillment is about. It is about love and giving of ourselves on behalf of others. That is the meaning of the Eucharist, it is love taken to the extreme. The more we understand that, the more we will want to be present to the Eucharist and the more the Eucharist will transform us.

Discipleship is not a solo flight. Jesus sent people out two by two, not one by one, and spoke of the importance of “two or three are gathered in my name.” The Eucharist is where we gather as Christ’s family, where we can witness our faith to one another and grow in our capacity to love. The Eucharist gives us the strength to carry out our mission to transform the world, to work for justice, to serve the poor, to bring healing and reconciliation. But we cannot do these things unless we have the strength that comes from the intimate contact with God’s love that is given to us in the Eucharist.

Discipleship also requires a plan. We need to ask ourselves what we can do, individually and with our families and friends, to embrace this Year of the Eucharist. We can find the answer to these questions in times of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in our Church or Adoration Chapel. We can read and reflect on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. We can invite family, friends, and colleagues to join us at Mass and times of Adoration. We can reflect on the importance of receiving the Lord in the Eucharist, the difference that makes in our lives, and share that insight with those who are close to us.

We do not exist by accident. Our lives are a gift of God’s gratuitous love, and the Eucharist is the most profound symbol of His love for us. Jesus comes to us in humility, in littleness, so that no one need be afraid or unsure of His acceptance. He makes Himself present to us so that we can have the strength we need to live our mission in the Church as disciples of Christ.

God created us, and He entered into creation in Jesus Christ so we could be close to Him, hear Him, know and love Him. The sacraments not only touch our lives, they mold our very being, and the Eucharist is the center of our sacramental life. That is why I am a Catholic. That is why I am a priest. Without the Eucharist, I would ask myself, “Is it worth it?” I know it is worth it because Christ really is present in the Eucharist. May God bless you all abundantly with this assurance that Jesus will be with us always, even to the end of time. That is Jesus’ promise, and He keeps that promise in the gift of the Eucharist.

Availing myself of this opportunity to express my sentiments of profound fatherly affection and with every best wish as we celebrate this Year of the Eucharist and Year of St. Joseph, I remain

Faithfully in the Heart of Christ,

Reverend Father Robert T. Cooper, Pastor

January 3, 2021

           On December 8^th, to mark the 150^th anniversary of Saint Joseph’s being declared the patron of the Universal Church, Pope Francis decreed a Year of Saint Joseph and published a beautiful apostolic letter entitled, Patris Corde, “With the Heart of a Father.” Ecclesiastical holy years are meant to influence everything the Church does. As we have seen over the course of the last 20 years—during the Jubilee of Mercy, the Great Jubilee of Redemption, and the Years of the Rosary, the Eucharist, St. Paul, Priests, Faith, and the Consecrated Life—the given theme provides special light to help us integrate and deepen our understanding and living of the faith as we relate each aspect of Catholic life to the theme of the year-long observance. The Year of St. Joseph is meant to have the same type of impact.

              Hence, it is fitting, as we celebrate the Christmas season during this holy year, that we do so by entering “St. Joseph’s School.” There we can learn seven lessons about how he lived the first Christmas that can help us, according to our circumstances, live well this Christmas season.

                The first lesson is about involvement. St. Joseph’s participation was long willed by God, as we see in the genealogies of Jesus in St. Matthew and St. Luke, both of which run through St. Joseph. Just as Mary was part of God’s advent through her Immaculate Conception, a singular grace given in view of her becoming the Mother of the Son of God, so was Joseph part of God’s remote preparation, so that Jesus would be a son of David through the law. While Joseph was a natural shoot from Jesse’s tree, we have been “grafted” into that family tree (Rom 11:11-24), and we should be filled with Josephite wonder at how Jesus’ nativity implicates each one of us.

          The second lesson is about trusting, obedience to God. After the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, he did not hesitate to take Mary his wife into his home. He could have easily, even in a pre-Freudian age, deconstructed the dream according to the standard of his conscious desires and concerns, and continued confused about the genesis of the child Mary had miraculously conceived without male participation. Instead, Joseph awoke and did as God through His angel commanded. He did the same in response to three other dreams.

              We might ask: Why did not the angel come to Joseph right after the Annunciation to clue him in, or inform him at least the night before Mary’s return from caring for Elizabeth and the newborn John the Baptist, so that he would not have had to endure the bewilderment, doubt, and scandal and would never have considered divorcing Mary? The likely reason is so that we could learn from him. Pope Benedict taught, “Throughout all of history, Joseph is the man who gives God the greatest display of trust, even in the face of such astonishing news.”

                For that reason, he is justly compared to Abraham. Just as Abraham left his native place, believed in God’s power to give a child against the normal laws of nature, was willing to see the child sacrificed knowing that God could raise him again, and it was all “credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6, Rom 4:22) so Joseph, a “righteous man” (Mt 1:19), did the same. He is, like Abraham, a true “father in faith.” If St. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, could say of Mary “Blessed are you who believed that what the Lord had spoken to you would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45), so we can all give the same praise to Joseph. His example of attentive, obedient faith invites us to trust completely in God and do promptly what He asks.

               The third lesson is about prayerful silence in response to the mind-blowing mystery of God-with-us. St. Joseph never says a word in Sacred Scripture, although St. Matthew beautifully implies that he spoke once—and said everything—when he gave the newborn Son of God the name “Jesus.” Everything in his life can be summed up by his speaking that one word, “God saves,” for his entire existence became directed, as a hard-working “doer of the word” (Js 1:22), toward helping Jesus fulfill that saving mission.

               His silence, however, speaks volumes. It shows that he was steeped in contemplation of the mystery of God, listening to the Word he was raising, adoring Him and God’s will enfleshed in Him. He quietly worshipped Jesus and observed the loving adoration of Mary, the shepherds, angels, wise men, animals, and angels. He continued to do so in Nazareth shrouded in the silence of the workshop and the home, as Jesus worked alongside him rebuilding the human race. In 2005, Pope Benedict prayed that in a cacophonous world that discourages recollection and attentive listening to God’s voice, all of us would be “infected” with Joseph’s prayerful silence.

               The fourth lesson is about protection. Joseph was entrusted by God the Father as the “guardian,” or we could say “bodyguard,” of the Redeemer. We see the confidence of God the Father in Joseph’s faith-filled capacity to give everything to protect Jesus in the fact that the Angel of God was sent to Joseph in a dream at the last second, summoning him immediately to arise, take the baby Jesus and Mary, and flee to Egypt, for Herod was seeking to assassinate the child. St. Peter Chrysologos commented that “though all Heaven was alarmed and fear had spread there before it reached earth,” God the Father did not give Joseph even a day’s notice about the impending danger. Upon hearing the message in a dream, Joseph did not snooze until the morning. He arose, awakened Mary and Jesus, and leaving everything behind, began the trek on foot through the desert.

              Consequently St. Joseph has been aptly referred to as the “Savior of the Savior.” Blessed Pius IX 150 years ago placed the Church under St. Joseph’s patronage so that he might similarly protect and defend the holy family Christ Himself founded. Just as Joseph did not disappoint God the Father’s trust, neither will he disappoint the Church’s trust. He teaches us all how to guard Jesus and His Mother and all those in their image.

                 The fifth lesson is about providing. Joseph was resourceful enough to find lodging for Mary to give birth. He entrepreneurially found work in Bethlehem, Egypt, and in Nazareth to support the Holy Family. St. Paul VI said that he “turned his human vocation to domestic love into a superhuman oblation of self,” living what St. John Paul II called the “epitome of the Gospel of Work” as he provided for Jesus and Mary. For this reason, the saints throughout the centuries have compared him to Joseph the Patriarch (Gen 37-50). They share the same name, the same receptivity to God’s word through dreams, a similar chastity, and the know how to provide for God’s family. Each was a “wise and faithful servant whom the Lord put in charge of his household (Lk 12:42). Pharaoh called Joseph the Patriarch the “Savior of the World” (Gen 41:45) for storing wheat for bread that sustained the world during seven years of famine. Joseph of Nazareth provided for the Living Bread who would be the world’s true salvation. With confidence the Christian faithful has therefore never ceased to follow Pharaoh’s advice to “go to Joseph.”

               The sixth lesson is about chastity. St. Joseph is invoked as Mary’s “most chaste spouse,” someone who reciprocates Mary’s pure, white hot, spousal love and demonstrates, at a time when the sexual revolution has upended the meaning of love, marriage, sexuality, and children, that true human love does not have to be carnally expressed. In Patris corde, Pope Francis writes that the chastity of St. Joseph is “the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste is it truly love. He never made himself the center of things. He did not think of himself, but focused instead on the lives of Mary and Jesus.” St. Joseph teaches us all how to love with similar unselfishness.

              The last lesson is about growth. The name “Joseph” means “increase.” His fatherhood was directly totally to helping Jesus grow according to His humanity, and Joseph wants to help Jesus grow in all of us. The sure path to making that happen is through growing in devotion to St. Joseph, since Joseph’s whole life points to Jesus.

              As we continue our celebration of the Christmas season, we ask St. Joseph’s intercession, to help us act on the angel’s directive to “get up, take the child and his mother” (Mt 2:13), as faithfully, lovingly, and wholeheartedly as he did.

December 27, 2020

            Earlier in 2020, as the initial panicked phase of the battle against COVID-19 was concluding, I wrote that the most important and urgent lesson Church leaders needed to learn coming out of the first phase was the disaster of acquiescing as various civil leaders attempted to treat the Church’s activity and worship as a “non-essential” service. It is not surprising, I said, that those who do not believe in God might think that the life of faith is non-essential. It is similarly unremarkable that Catholics who no longer practice the faith, who do not deem it essential to their life, might also reckon it unnecessary in the lives of others. But that the Church—clergy, religious and faithful alike—would not thunderously protest against such a gross mischaracterization, and in some places would behave as if she agreed with that description, was scandalous.

          That is the lesson that was unwittingly taught when the Church in some locales decided to lock churches and forbid all access to the Sacraments, except for priests, even when such decisions were not required by public mandate. It was reinforced when such decisions were made as if they were not particularly vexing. It was cemented when certain Church leaders insisted that even practical solutions fully in alignment with medical and government directives on safety be shut down, like drive-in Masses, confessions at safe distances in parking lots, anointing of those dying of non-communicable diseases, all adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as all baptisms, weddings, and funerals.

             Pastors have since seen the consequence that such decisions, treating the practice of the faith as de facto non-essential, have had: the percentage of those who had been regularly coming to Mass in February who have returned to Church after the spiritual lockdown is, in most places, a quarter to a third; those where it is fifty percent of pre-shutdown numbers, are doing relatively well. Some are watching the Mass live streamed because they are in at-risk populations, care for those who are, or simply prefer it. Many of those who are not coming seem to have deprioritized Mass altogether.

              It has also become clear that the compelling health justification that had been given by civil leaders can no longer be considered credible. Churches were closed as non-essential, but liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries remained open? Eleven masked parishioners could not come together in a Church fitting a thousand but eleven thousand unmasked and non-socially distanced BLM protestors could convene in a crowded courtyard? The inconsistent decisions of civil leaders made it plain that something else was at work rather than legitimate concern for public health.

              Certain shepherds began to fight back in defense of their people, their rights, and their spiritual good. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone took the lead. Legitimate health-related restrictions were one thing; discriminatory restrictions contrary to religious freedom—both a natural and a Constitutionally-protected right—were another. The prelates were now, moreover, armed with data to respond to the ludicrous, hyperbolic, and phobic assertion that religious gatherings were somehow super-spreading disasters waiting to happen. Since Churches reopened in May with proper safety protocols, there has not been one reported case of someone getting COVID-19 at a Catholic Church anywhere in the country.

               Supreme Court justices recognized what was happening and ultimately overturned such restrictions. In a decision fittingly announced the day before Thanksgiving in a case in which Bishop DiMarzio sued New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Justice Neil Gorsuch lacerated the Governor’s decisions in a concurring opinion. “The businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too,” he wrote in Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. “So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?”

              He continued that in New York “people may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports, in laundromats and banks, in hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of ‘essential’ businesses and perhaps more besides. The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as ‘essential’ as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel, and tools, are all ‘essential’ while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.”

              Justice Samuel Alito has been similarly outspoken. In a July dissent in Calvary Chapel v. Silolak, a case in which the governor of Nevada had permitted casinos to have fifty percent occupancy but limited Churches to 50 people, Alito wrote, “The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance. But the Governor of Nevada apparently has different priorities.”

              He elaborated on the unconstitutional hypocrisy of such decisions—and what they presage—in a November 12^th speech to the Federalist Society’s National Law Conference. “It pains me to say this,” he stated, “but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored, right. Over the summer, the Supreme Court received two applications to stay COVID restrictions that blatantly discriminated against houses of worship.… If you go to Nevada, you can gamble, drink, and attend all sorts of shows. But … if you want to worship and you’re the 51st person in line, sorry, you are out of luck. Houses of worship are limited to 50 attendees. The size of the building doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter if you wear a mask and keep more than six feet away from everybody else. And it doesn’t matter if the building is carefully sanitized before and after a service. The state’s message is, ‘Forget about worship and head for the slot machines or maybe a Cirque du Soleil show.’”

               These Justices demonstrate that what we are not dealing with is imperative decisions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the super-saturation of ICUs, and the ensuing suffering and death of thousands each day. We are dealing with baldly unconstitutional discrimination against religious believers and their houses of worship. And it seems, with the confirmation of Justice Amy Barrett, that such undisguised bias will no longer be countenanced.

               That leaves the Church in a position now to do what it should have been doing from the beginning: taking a leading spiritual and moral role in response to the crisis, helping to guide and augment people’s prayer, forming them in the courage and compassion needed to care perseveringly for those in need, educating and animating the young, bringing people into communion—if even socially-distanced or virtually—to overcome injurious isolation, and assisting everyone to find meaning in suffering and even death. When crises come, the Church is not supposed to cower on the sidelines, seemingly useless. Catholics are called, rather, individually, and organically, to unleash our God-given competencies and charisms, and to make the Eucharist we humbly receive consequential. Now is the occasion to make up for lost time!

December 20, 2020

           Christmas truly is one of the most wonderful times of the year. For many, there are warm parties, cozy homes, fond traditions to celebrate, and gifts to be shared. It is a joyous time of celebration. However, sometimes we get lost in the season and forget the reason we celebrate it. Among the hustle and bustle, our focus is lost, and priorities are misaligned.

              Most people can tell you the origins of Christmas—that it is a remembrance of the birth of Christ. But either that is the extent of their knowledge or they lose sight of this in the busyness of the holiday. Why do we truly celebrate Christmas? Not Santa Claus, or the Christmas tree, or any other of the various traditions wrapped up into Christmas. Why do we celebrate this occasion—what is its true meaning?

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, upon David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:5-6).

             For thousands of years mankind waited for the coming of Christ; they longed for their King to arrive and free them from oppression. The Old Testament is full of prophecies, including this one from Isaiah. The Bible is full of Scriptures pointing directly to the One who would save mankind from their sins. When Isaiah described His coming, he described His coming as an infant. But this child would grow and establish a Kingdom of righteousness forevermore. When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the moment in history when the prophecy was fulfilled. God came to be with us.

              Because when Jesus came, He also left us with the gift of salvation. His birth is significant because of His death. For thirty-three years Jesus lived a life free from sin so that He could be the perfect sacrificial lamb for the atonement of our sins. On Calvary, Christ paid the price and overcame death so that we could have victory over sin and condemnation. So, when that precious baby was born and placed in the manger, it was not just another birth. It was the beginning of God’s redemptive plan for humanity. An act He did not have to take part in, but He chose to out of love.

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11).

                  This very act of humility and His choice to die on the cross is cause for bowed knees and lifted hands. I know the busyness of the season can cause the time to fly and before we know it, the holiday has passed, and we have forgotten to celebrate why we are celebrating it in the first place. But do not get sidetracked—get perspective. Choose reverence and give honor where honor is due.

               Take time this Christmas season to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas by glorifying the One who gave it all. A child was born in humble circumstances and His sacrificial death reflected the same, however, both were significant for humanity. Without the death of Christ, salvation is not possible. So, without His birth, neither is it possible. Jesus coming to Earth that night changed everything, and it is a moment we should celebrate with all our hearts.

              Certainly, enjoy the parties and food and gifts, but do not forget to point your heart, family, and those around you to Christmas' true meaning: Christ came with a plan for our redemption!

December 13, 2020

           On Wednesday, we will mark the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ disembarking in Plymouth, MA. What they endured, and how they responded spiritually to it, are guides for us as we mark this holiday season and begin to formulate year-end reflections. When the pilgrims lowered the anchor in Plymouth Harbor on December 16, 1620, and disembarked two days later, they were filled with hope. They had survived a perilous three-month journey on an inhospitable Atlantic with only one casualty. Their incessant prayers for a safe arrival had been heard. They had finally landed in the new world and were ready to begin a new life. Little did they know the year that would await them.

              Of the 103 who disembarked, 52 would die before winter was over. Governor John Carver, their leader, succumbed quickly to fever. Ten of the seventeen husbands and fathers died. Fourteen of their seventeen wives also perished. The young wife of soon-to-be Governor William Bradford drowned in Plymouth harbor before even reaching shore. Those who avoided the grave remained in grave danger because of fevers, famine, and freezing temperatures. Yet they never gave up hope. In March came the arrival of English-speaking Squanto, who taught them various survival tactics, like how to distinguish between poisonous and good plants, to tap maple trees for sap, to fertilize the soil with dead fish, and to plant corn and beans. When that soil produced a modest harvest a few months later, they organized a feast not just to thank Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit, and their large families, but principally to thank God for all His blessings since their arrival.

              The fifty-one survivors easily could have looked at the previous eleven months as the worst year of their lives. They had buried almost as many bodies in the ground as the baskets of food they had harvested from it. Yet, they were able to thank God so heartily despite the suffering they had undergone because they believed those hardships and blessings were both a part of God’s direct or permissive will. Their personal and communal suffering could not shake their trust in the God they knew loved them and was looking over them. They convened full of gratitude because they realized they were on a pilgrimage not only to Plymouth but to Paradise. Everything—adverse or propitious, life and even death—was somehow, they knew, part of God’s plans for them on their journey not merely to the new world but a New World. That final destination, and their faith in God’s guiding and awaiting them, gave meaning to the sufferings and joys along the way.

              Likewise, little did any of us know the year that awaited us as the ball dropped in Times Square to inaugurate 2020. From experience, we recognize that each year will have ups and downs, but few anticipated that the present year would seem to recapitulate the Book of Job: a worldwide plague with its massive physical suffering, death, and mourning; the collateral damage from the pandemic’s attendant economic, educational, cultural, transportation, and even spiritual lockdowns; riots in our streets flowing from unhealed racial harmony and destructive rage; and widening political chasms that are destabilizing the country, turning fraternity into enmity, and putting our common future at risk since a nation divided against itself cannot stand.

               If gratitude during this time of widespread anxiety and foreboding would already have been challenging, government restrictions and public censure of private gatherings for Thanksgiving and the Advent/Christmas season as potentially super-spreader events decimated many of the traditions that annually help to counteract complaining, pessimism, and despair. Yet, even if it is going to require far greater effort to cultivate and live with an attitude of gratitude, it is even more important this year than in times of normal adversity and blessing. Thanksgiving comes easily when the blessings are abundant. When, as the Pilgrims learned, thanks are given during adversity, the spirit of gratitude has a chance to become more extensive and existential, as we begin to see divine caresses amid crosses and learn to appreciate far more things that on sunny days we are prone to take for granted.

               There is a very important dialogue that happens in the heart of every Mass. After the priest and people pray that God will be with each other and help them lift up their hearts to divine realities, the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God” and the people respond, “It is right and just.” Underlining that truth, the priest turns to God the Father and prays, “It is right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks.” To thank God always and everywhere is the right thing to do, whether on beautiful days or torrential downpours, when we feel like a million bucks or are in the ICU, when we receive promotions and bonuses at work or get pink slips, when we are in Church for a baptism or a funeral. To thank God in all places and times is not just what we owe to the God who gives us life, but it is also our salvation. We are saved through thanksgiving.

               We see this in the dramatic Gospel scene of Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers (Lk 17:1-11). He cured ten, but only one returned to express gratitude. Jesus’ question, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?,” shows the concern not of an insecure egomaniac obsessed with people’s appreciating His generosity and entering into His debt, but rather of a Redeemer who wanted to give a far greater gift than the healing of leprosy. Only the grateful leper would receive the gift of salvation since only he had a heart open to receive it, only he had the sense that the Giver was even greater than the healing he had bestowed. The other nine likely looked at their disease and even their cure with residual anger toward God, as if they had somehow been sadistically chosen for years of unjust punishment. They likely looked at their healing the way people might view getting released by a kidnapper: while grateful for their liberation, they would not send thank-you notes to the one who had held them in bondage.

               The grateful leper’s soul had not been destroyed by the leprosy of bitterness, complaining, cursing, or ingratitude. He probably thanked God for all the little things he received from His hands, like the generosity of people who would provide food or share a kind word. When he received the big grace of his cure, he did what he probably always did and sought to thank the Giver. And over time, he doubtless grew to thank God even for his years of leprosy, because if he had not been a leper, he may never have encountered Jesus the way he did and may never have received the gift of salvation by faith.

              In normal times, some of us would be candidates for honorary doctoral degrees in complaining. The glass is never full enough. The beach is too sunny. The water is too wet. When we are asked about how we are doing, we can grumble about a slight toothache rather than express our gratitude that our eyes, ears, nose, and every joint of our body is without pain. Some might even complain about the menu at the Last Supper. That is why it is essential for us to learn and live with hearts lifted up to God in gratitude since gratitude is a precondition to receiving what God desires to give. God has directly willed or permitted everything that has happened to us since even out of the humanly inauspicious God seeks to draw spiritual good. “Everything,” St. Paul reminds us, “works out for the good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28).

              So, a few practical lessons. The first is to make sure our prayer heavily features praise and thanksgiving to God, rather than just petition, intercession, and contrition. The second is to fight to overcome the temptation to obsess about what we do not have rather than to thank God for what we do. The third is to learn to thank God even for the things the world considers curses, because like with the grateful leper, they can become for us relative blessings through bringing us into life-changing communion with the Savior. “In all circumstances give thanks,” St. Paul tells us, “for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:18). Fulfilling that divine vocation is our duty and salvation as well as the way we can best serve and help others at the end of a difficult year.

December 6, 2020

           Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is undergoing from within that person’s frame of reference. I could not help imagining myself in the situation of Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit. On August 6^th, presumably after celebrating Mass on the Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration, Hood’s life was changed far more than the Lord’s appearance on Mt. Tabor. He read a news story that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had declared that the formula “We baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” rather than “I baptize you…,” is invalid.

              A few months earlier, at the beginning of the Covid-19 shutdown, his father had sent him a video of his and his twin brother’s 1990 baptism, in which he noted that the deacon who had baptized him at St. Athanasius Parish in Troy, MI, had used the word “we.” Hood was concerned enough to reach out to a seminary professor and some canon lawyers to ask whether they thought his baptism—and, therefore, all of his other subsequent sacraments, including his own priestly ordination—was valid. Since the Holy See had never declared such a formula invalid, they responded that the presumption would be that it was valid. The August 6^th Doctrinal Note from Rome made clear that it was not valid.

             In the blink of an eye, Hood recognized that not only was he not a priest but not even a Christian. His own baptism, first and subsequent communions, every confession he made, his Confirmation, his diaconal and priestly ordinations were all invalid. To make matters worse—and what troubled his pastoral heart more—was that all the Masses he had celebrated, the Confessions he had heard, the anointings he had done (including of his own grandmother on her deathbed), the confirmations of adults he had received into the Church, and most of the weddings he had celebrated since his June 3, 2017 putative priestly ordination, were invalid, too.

             This existence-shattering realization—which he called “very sad and very disorienting”—happened not because his parents had done anything wrong: they dutifully and faithfully brought their sons to the Church to be baptized soon after their birth. It happened not because he himself had done anything wrong—in fact, he had sought to follow the Lord with great abandon, saying a whole-hearted “yes” to what he discerned was a priestly vocation. It happened because a cleric changed a word in the formula of baptism.

              The substitution was not an accidental malapropism. Part of the basic instruction that the Church always gives to every young couple preparing for their child’s baptism, and to every child in religious education when the Sacrament of Baptism is covered, is how to baptize in an emergency: to pour or sprinkle water three times over someone’s head, saying, “I baptize you” followed by “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Three simple words, together with the expression we make with the sign of the Cross, that accomplish what they say. They are as much a part of an average Catholic’s vocabulary as the expression “This is my body.”

              Whether the choice to use the formula “we baptize you” was a personal invention on behalf of the deacon involved, or the consequence of abysmal sacramental formation in the diaconal training program and total lack of basic supervision in parish ministry, it was a cataclysmically consequential abuse. And it was not an isolated case. The Archdiocese of Detroit found out in 1999 that the deacon had been using the formula “we baptize you” since 1986 and instructed him to stop. At the time, the canonists and theologians the Archdiocese consulted said that, because of a lack of formal declaration from the Church—and perhaps out of reluctance unnecessarily to upend the lives of 14 years of baptized children and their families if a stricter interpretation of validity were wrong—the obviously illicit baptisms were nevertheless probably valid.

              We also know that the deacon by no means was the only cleric to use an invalid formula. In the early 1990s, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston had to have the Paulist Center next to the Massachusetts State House contact years’ worth of invalidly baptized babies, because the priests at the chapel, thinking that the words “Father” and “Son” were misogynist, took it upon themselves to baptize “in the name of Creator, and of the Sanctifier, and of the Redeemer.” The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2008 had to pronounce that such pseudo-sacramental formulae, as well as “in the name of the Creator, of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer,” were invalid. The Congregation published its August 6, 2020 Doctrinal Note because it became aware that clerics in some part of the world were using the formula, “In the name of the father and of the mother, of the godfather and of the godmother, of the grandparents, of the family members, of the friends, in the name of the community we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

               Such liturgical abuses constitute pastoral malpractice of the worst possible kind, as what has happened in the life of Father Hood, his twin brother, all of the others baptized over 14 years by the deacon, and all those who had gone to Father Hood for Mass, confession, marriage and anointing now make plain. But the consequences of such liturgical injustice could even be more serious. Imagine, for example, that Pope Francis had been invalidly baptized, making his diaconal, priestly, and episcopal ordinations, not to mention his papal election and so many of his papal acts, invalid. Imagine, even worse, that Cardinal Scipione Rebiba (d. 1577), from whom Popes Francis, Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and 91 percent of Catholic bishops today trace their apostolic lineage, had been invalidly baptized. It would render invalid almost every bishop today, and all of their priestly ordinations, and most of their own and their priests’ sacramental acts—all because someone decided on his own to change a word in a sacramental formula. And there is simply no way of knowing when a baby is baptized what that person will become or what the ripple effects will be of liturgical infidelity.

               What should be done to try to ensure that no one must go through what Father Hood, his brother, and his parishioners have had to experience? First, at the level of the ministers, there must be absolute fidelity to the Sacramental formulae. Not to do so is the most abhorrent form of pastoral cruelty with massive spiritual consequences. Liturgical abuses regarding sacramental form are unfortunately not uncommon. Several times a year, I am approached by various faithful with legitimate doubts about the validity of the Mass they attended or absolution they received. About a month ago, a young religious asked me about a priest who celebrated Mass for her community, who, instead of saying, “This is the Chalice of my Blood,” substituted, “This is the Cup of my Love.” A laywoman told me that when she went to Confession, the priest simply said, “Go. Your sins are forgiven.” She had to beg him to say the essential of the formula of absolution, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Seminary formators, vocations directors, and bishops can sometimes just presume that all those in seminary and diaconal programs have the desire to do things the way they should, and at a minimum, “say the black and do the red” (faithfully pronouncing the words in the ritual and carrying out the indicated actions). But this intention should be formally made explicit, because occasionally, someone can slip through thinking, oblivious to the consequences, that he has a better way.

              Second, there must be much greater supervision, and zero tolerance, on the part of bishops for liturgical misconduct. In some places in the Church, liturgical abuses, small and big, are tolerated and widespread. There needs to be the equivalent of former police commissioner William Bratton’s proven “broken windows” approach to criminality, that if you want to eliminate violent crimes, begin by fixing broken windows, eliminating graffiti, and vandalism, and other minor crimes. To eliminate sacrilegious offenses on the part of clergy rendering sacraments invalid, bishops should respond quickly, and never overlook, situations whenever they hear that clerics are not doing things by the book.

              In Father Hood’s case, the Archdiocese of Detroit, led by Archbishop Allen Vigneron, responded quickly and appropriately, giving him validly—the Sacraments of Initiation on August 9^th, Diaconal Ordination on August 15^th, and Priestly Ordination on August 17^th. They also created a website and have been working non-stop to identify those baptized by the deacon or who had received any invalid Sacraments by Father Hood to remedy those situations as quickly as possible. But this whole sacramental catastrophe could have been avoided had the one baptizing only done the exceedingly simple thing of faithfully using the valid words. The Church, out of sincere repentance, must resolve to do everything it can to prevent further such abuses—and innocent victims—in the future.

November 29, 2020

           On November 30^th, the Church marks the fiftieth-first anniversary of when the Novus Ordo, or “Mass of Paul VI,” debuted as the ordinary form of the Roman Rite of the sacred liturgy. St. Pope Paul VI had promulgated the new Roman Missal eight months earlier, but, by the time the first Sunday of Advent came around, the new liturgical books were not yet ready, and so the roll out was rather bungled and confusing, for priests and people alike.

             In many places, that disarray continued, as some thought that the “new Mass” not only allowed for but demanded creativity. This led to a period of sweeping liturgical instability and experimentation that dramatically impacted Church prayer, architecture, art, and music. It also led to a more generalized ecclesial chaos: If something like the Mass could be altered so significantly and often in seemingly arbitrary ways, why could the same spirit of “renewal” not be extended to Church sexual teachings, the nature of religious life, priestly celibacy, and more?

              Because of the centrality of the Mass in Catholic life, the way the changes were haphazardly enacted, the frequency of deviations and abuses surrounding its celebration, and the wider struggles of the Church in the years following its implementation, the Novus Ordo soon became the icon and symbol for all the changes in the Church after the Second Vatican Council—those intended by the Council, those never considered, and those absolutely unintended.

             To support the Novus Ordo therefore came to mean approving not only the substantive changes it contained but also what it did not contain: the “renovation” of sanctuaries; the moving of tabernacles to the side; hymns of inconsistent quality; vestments, banners, and liturgical appointments of variable beauty; a ministerialization of the laity; an exaggerated emphasis of banquet over sacrifice; a focus on priest and community over a theocentric sense of the sacred; priests celebrating in bathing suits on the beach; and more.

               Similarly, if one preferred some things the way they had been, like Gregorian Chant, Mass ad orientem or receiving communion at the altar rail, none of which was required to change, one was prone reflexively to take issue with the Mass of Paul VI as a whole. For example, many of those, especially young adults, who frequent the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, celebrated according to the 1962 ritual that stretches back to the Council of Trent, do so, in my opinion, not because they have major issues with the Novus Ordo per se, but because they prefer the general liturgical fidelity and reverence of priests who celebrate the extraordinary form, the conspicuous focus on God, the sacred music, the way Holy Communion is received, the promotion of priestly vocations through the training of altar boys, and several other things still possible, but far less common, in the celebration of the Novus Ordo.

               I think it is good, therefore, as we mark the anniversary of the Novus Ordo, to separate the “substance” of its reforms from the “accidents” of its historical context and implementation. This is a means by which we can appreciate it more and where necessary, commit ourselves, as priests and faithful, to praying it more devoutly and fruitfully. I love the Novus Ordo. I love the extraordinary form. I love the rites of the Mass in the Eastern Churches. How can one not love any valid means by which the Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of sacred ordination, comes from heaven to the altar under the appearances of bread and wine?

                The Novus Ordo brought, I believe, many improvements compared to the extraordinary form: a much greater use of Scripture; a homily based on the Word of God rather than a sermon on a spiritual theme; a much broader and richer set of Prefaces, Eucharistic Prayers, votive Masses and Masses for various needs and occasions; a more extensive and better organized Sanctoral calendar; the use of the vernacular for readings and the prayers, which facilitates prayerful reception; the priest’s saying most of the prayers audibly so that people can hear and unite themselves to them more fully; everyone’s praying the Our Father in its entirety; a greater sense of praying together as a community through praying Mass parts out loud together; the possibility to receive Communion under both species; and a more accessible experience overall for potential converts. When done well, it certainly can lead, in my opinion, to a more full, active, and conscious participation by a greater number in praying the Mass, and therefore, according to the ancient aphorism lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, can help more people to pray, believe, and live the Christian faith better.

                At the same time, I think, various helpful aspects were lost in the transition. The Pentecost Octave was sadly eliminated, as was linking the main part of the liturgical year to Pentecost. Several of the priest’s silent prayers, which help him better pray the whole Mass, were excised, like those going up to the altar or during the different incensations. There was a dramatic reduction of the number of genuflections and the reverence they provoke and convey. There was a loss of a sense of history and a clearer connection to praying the Mass as have so many generations of saints, martyrs, and loved ones who had gone before us. There was also a weaker “catholic” experience of the Mass, as inconsistent or poor translations led to widely divergent things being prayed in different cultures. Overall, however, when weighing the two forms, I think the gains outweigh the losses. The anniversary of the Novus Ordo’s debut is, therefore, a time to thank God for those gains.

                 At the same time, however, it is an occasion to look maturely at the bigger picture and grasp that, because of various liturgical changes made beyond the Novus Ordo as well as the failure in many places to confront and stop liturgical abuses, the promise of the liturgical reform has not been fulfilled. As so many surveys, including the Pew Forum report released last August, have distressingly shown, over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic decreases not only in Mass attendance but in faith in Jesus’ Real Presence.

                 A half-century ago, right before the celebration of the Novus Ordo began, Saint Paul VI gave two Wednesday general audiences about the changes that were about to take place and talked about the promise. It would not be a “new Mass,” he said, because “the Mass of the new rite is and remains the same Mass we have always had.” Rather, it would constitute a “new epoch” in the Church’s life, a “step forward for her authentic tradition,” in which “the relationship between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist [will be] brought out more clearly,” the faithful will be able to “participate in the liturgical mystery with more understanding, in a more practical, a more enjoyable and a more sanctifying way,” and, understanding better what they are praying, will therefore be able better to exercise their “royal priesthood” in “supernatural conversation with God.”

                     This would happen, he said presciently, “if the rite is carried out as it ought to be.” That has proven to be a big “if,” especially in the early decades of implementation. To celebrate the Novus Ordo “as it ought to be” means ensuring always and everywhere that the liturgy conveys a profound sense that one is in God’s presence, facilitates loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and opens us up so that God can transform us by this encounter to love our neighbor as He loves us. This not only can happen, but does, when the celebration of the Novus Ordo takes place with proper preparation, beauty, and reverence. That is what every Catholic has a right to. That is what St. Pope Paul VI intended. That is what the Church and the world need.

November 22, 2020

           A few years ago, I was asked to prepare a talk on the call of lay people to renew the Church as salt, light, and leaven. I began the talk with two remarkable stories of Catholic lay people in the preservation and transmission of the faith.

          The first was on how the Christian faith was introduced into Korea by lay people who, traveling in China, had found Bibles and catechetical texts from martyred missionaries. They took them back with them over the border, baptized each other, and tried to live the faith as best they could. When missionaries were finally smuggled in, they found that there were already 4,000 catechized Catholics hungering for the sacraments and living the faith with such resolve that most of them would remain faithful under torture and be martyred. This is a history that “tells us much about the importance, dignity, and beauty of the vocation of the laity,” Pope Francis said in a 2014 visit to Seoul.

          The second story was about “hidden Christians” of Japan, the lay people who, after all priests and catechists had been eliminated by the 1640s, kept the faith alive for 210 years before missionaries were permitted to enter Japan again. They baptized, prayed together, and cared for each other. When a priest began to build a Christian Church, these lay people emerged saying that they had been told that one day fathers would return to teach them better about the way of Jesus. To ensure that they were dealing with Catholic priests rather than Protestant missionaries, they then interrogated Fr. Bernard Petitjean with the simple questions that had been passed down for 200 years about the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope, and priestly celibacy. Many of these Christians, once they came out of the shadows, would die for the faith before Christianity was decriminalized in the 1880s.

            The renewal of the Church needs lay people with similar faith, hope, courage, virtue, and perseverance. The Church is constantly in need of renewal: ecclesia semper reformanda. Real reform happens when lay people, who are the vast majority of the Church, assimilate and live it, when the “living stones” of the Church are renewed in holiness. At this time in Church history, when the Church in many places is struggling, it is essential for lay people to take up Christ’s perpetual summons.

           I focused on the three images Jesus uses in the Gospel to describe the aspects of the renewal: salt of the earth, light of the world, and leaven. “These images taken from the gospel,” St. John Paul in his 1988 exhortation on the Christian Lay Faithful, “although indiscriminately applicable to all Jesus’ disciples, are specifically applied to the lay faithful.”

            Salt has three purposes. The first, in the absence of refrigeration, is as a preservative. The second is as a fire starter: when salt is mixed with dung (at Jesus’ time and still today in various developing countries), it is ignited and serves for both cooking and heat. Third, salt gives flavor. Lay people have this three-fold mission within the world: to prevent it from going to corruption; to light people on fire, redeeming even what is considered refuse; and to bring “taste” and joy. But for lay people to live up to this task, Jesus says, their salt must not lose its saltiness, something that happens when they separate themselves from Him.

            Light has two fundamental purposes. The first is to help people see. “The just man is a light in the darkness for the upright,” the Psalms tell us. Christians, illuminated by Christ, the Light of the World, reflect His light so that others may see things better, as they really are. Light also warms. When we approach Jesus and others approach us, we and they should feel like someone cold approaching a lit fireplace. But for this to happen, Jesus says, we cannot hide our light, too embarrassed or falsely humble to share it.

            Leaven raises dough. A pinch of yeast is enough to make much dough rise. One Christian on a street, in a workplace, family, or parish is meant to have a dramatic, transformative impact through the power of example and friendship. Jesus warns, however, that we need to ensure that we are in turn not affected by bad leaven. One bad apple can spoil the whole bushel.

             There is a need for salt, light, and leaven within the Church, preventing corruption, giving flavor, warming people, and helping them become ardent, illuminating them with the wisdom of the Gospel, seeking to give them hope, and help them become good. But the fundamental mission of the laity is to exercise these missions in the world. Pope Francis has spoken often of the problem of clericalism in the Church and how clergy can clericalize the laity, trying to get them to focus more on things internal to Church life than the Church’s mission outside. He adds that many lay people enjoy being clericalized because it is easier to proclaim the Gospel in Church than at work and simpler to serve Mass than to serve the poor. The reform of the laity, he says, involves forming them within the Church to go out as “missionary disciples in communion” in the midst of the world. The reform of the Church does not come with priests’ delegating priestly duties to lay faithful, but when all members of the Church fulfill their mission.

           St. John Paul II emphasized two parables in his exhortation on the Christian lay faithful. The first is the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1-16), which underlines that Jesus wants and needs all of us with sleeves rolled up working hard in His vineyard. The second is the parable of the Vine and the Branches (Jn 15:1-8), which reminds us that we can do nothing unless we are attached to Christ and to each other. Through Baptism all members of the Church have become united to Christ and share in His mission to proclaim the Word, to offer our lives and work together with Him to the Father, and to enter into and help others to enter His kingdom. Remaining attached to Christ the Vine in the Sacraments, lay faithful are called as branches to be the extension of His holiness and charity in the world.

           The renewal of the Church will always involve the renewal not just of the clergy and religious—which is deeply needed—but also and especially of the laity. There are many challenges involved, but Christ would not be calling the laity to be salt, light, and leaven unless He was prepared to give everything needed for them to live up to this mission.

November 15, 2020

           On October 17, 2019, the Pew Research Center released the results of a survey that showed that 65 percent of American adults now say that they are Christians, down 12 percentage points in just the last ten years. Those describing themselves as atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular” are now at 26 percent of the population, up from 17 percent in 2009. And while Catholics were 23 percent of Americans a decade ago, they constitute today—despite large-scale immigration from Catholic countries—just 20 percent of the adult population.

            These are staggering declines, and we have all seen the troubling consequences of these shifts. Many Catholic churches, schools, convents, and seminaries are now shuttered. Masses in those parishes that have survived often have plenty of empty pews on Sundays. Family members and friends whom we know and love are no longer practicing or believing. Most everyone recognizes that these are not anomalous blips, like an occasional down economic quarter for a major company; they are worrisome trends that give few signs of reversal.

            At an institutional level, these tendencies occupy the attention of bishops and chanceries, pastors and parish finance and pastoral councils, Catholic superintendents, principals, and teachers, and many concerned faithful. On a personal level, however, they occupy a great deal of the minds and hearts of parents, grandparents, godparents, spouses, siblings, sons, daughters, and friends as they pray for their loved ones whose choices have helped establish those trends. Many are discouraged. Many do not know what to do or to say. Many lament that their prayers and interventions do not seem to be bearing any fruit.

            Whereas priests are always asked to pray for individual’s family members and friends who might be in need of conversion, and to give encouragement and counsel to those who are concerned about the temporal and eternal stakes of choices their loved ones are making with regard to themselves or their children, such requests are coming more frequently now—and with a conspicuous sense of despair and desperation. Many are saying, essentially, “Father, my prayers have failed. The situation is just getting worse. I am about to give up. As a last resort, I am hoping somehow your prayers can work a miracle.”

             Prayers for loved ones do work miracles. We see it throughout the Gospel. At the pleading of moms and dads, Jesus exorcizes a girl (Mt 15), raises another from the dead (Lk 8), heals one boy of epilepsy (Mt 7), and another of life-threatening illness (Jn 4). At the entreaty of a Centurion, He heals a slave (Lk 7) and at the faith-filled ingenuity of friends, Jesus healed a paralytic of his sins and made him walk again (Mk 9). Jesus hears and responds to prayers of intercession for loved ones.

             We have seen in the lives of the saints how prayers for others have similarly worked many miracles of conversion. St. Stephen’s prayers for those who were stoning him were efficacious in the life of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 7). St. Monica’s 17 years of preserving prayer for the conversion of her husband and additional 15 years for her son Augustine not only led to their new life but also to her becoming, too, a great saint. St. Therese of Lisieux’s prayers for an impenitent condemned criminal Henri Pranzini led, it seems, immediately before his execution, to his asking for a crucifix and kissing Christ’s wounds.

               Such miracles still happen. I have witnessed the beautiful scene of the Good Thief recapitulate itself when people have asked me to come to the besides of family members who have been away from God for decades and who have said they do not want to see a priest. Their insistent prayers and love and God’s grace have triumphed time and again. I have similarly witnessed it in confessionals with those whom St. John Vianney used to call “big fish,” coming back after decades away. When to break the ice, I gently ask what kept them away for such a long time and what brought them back, several have told me that they knew their mother, or spouse, or best friend or even young kids had been praying for them.

               Jesus tells us to pray with insistence and confidence. He gives the Parables of the Friend at Night (Lk 11) and the Importune Woman (Lk 18) to stress how we should “pray always without losing heart,” guaranteeing that “everyone who asks, receives.” That does not mean we always get exactly what we ask when we ask. There is free will on the part of the person for whom we are praying, and God may have a better plan than for what we are begging. But He promises not to turn a deaf ear. He cares for us more than He does the lilies and the sparrows. He loves our loved ones more than the most loving parents of all time have loved their children.

                Let us get to some practical tips about praying for those who have chosen to stop, or drifted away from, the practice of the faith or others who need prayers to take it up for the first time. First, so that our prayer does not get reduced simply to prayer of petition, which can narrow our relationship with God, we should exercise all five different forms of prayer. We should praise and bless God for how lovable and merciful He is. We should thank Him for His saving will, patience, fatherly solicitude, and for sending His Son and the Holy Spirit to make conversion possible. We should ask His forgiveness for all those sins—ours and others’—that have led those we care about to turn away from the faith. We should make petition for ourselves, to grow in patience and hope as we pray perseveringly and seek to become an instrument of the Holy Spirit. Finally, we should make intercession for our lost sheep, that God will have mercy on them and perhaps send someone who can reach them at the depth God wants to and bring them home. Our intercession should be simple and straightforward: “Lord, the one that you love needs your help.”

                Second, we should recognize we are not praying alone. Christ has prayed for our loved ones from the Cross and intercedes for them at the Father’s right side. The Blessed Mother prays for her children more than St. Monica prayed for Augustine. Guardian angels are praying. Cloistered religious in convents across the globe and so many others—essentially the whole Church in heaven and on earth—are praying. We should take confidence.

              Third, if they are engaging in sinful behavior, they need to know the moral truth, but do not need to be reminded of it all the time. We cannot reduce people, in our prayer and interactions, to their sins. When they know we look at them as good, they are generally open to our kind encouragement to become better. When we praise them for what they do right, for their areas of virtue, then they can receive our gentle call to conversion as coming from a fan rather than a critic. In short, in our prayer and conduct, we should try to draw them toward the beauty of the faith, to the Good News, rather than to “scare the Hell out of them” by focusing excessively on sin and the death to which sin leads.

               Fourth, as we see with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus (Lk 24), the reasons why people leave the faith often contain the seed for their return. This should influence both our prayer and action. The two disciples could not understand how the supposed Messiah could have been slaughtered by the same Romans they anticipated He would extirpate. After Jesus appeared as an unknown wayfarer and helped them to grasp that the Messiah had to suffer, what seemed to be a great contradiction became a great confirmation. If people leave, for example, because of hypocrisy in the Church, we need to share their hatred of hypocrisy and help them discover those who live the faith with integrity.

              Fifth, our prayer and life should radiate hope. The conversion of the Good Thief reminds us that as long as they are alive, there is still time. Things can happen, like hitting rock bottom, or a diagnosis of a serious illness, that can lead to people opening up to God anew. Even after people have died, since God is eternal, our prayers in time can impact the past, and so we should persevere praying with hope in God’s mercy and saving will. The Pew Research Center study is ultimately a summons for the whole Church to pray more and with greater insistence. The Lord has given each of us plenty of people to pray for. And, as we intercede for others, like with St. Monica, the Lord will strengthen our faith as well.

November 8, 2020

               Among the harmful consequences of the multidimensional clergy sexual abuse crisis is the way that it disfigures the face of the Church and impedes the Church’s mission. In the best of times, many Catholics are timid in spreading the faith and inviting people to consider becoming Catholic. The shame and disgust that understandably follow the revelation of sexual abuse by hundreds of clergymen, the lack of horror and adequate action on the part of some leaders in the Church to stop it, the lack of transparency on the part of some to own up to their responsibility, and the open divisions that have formed over what to do about to it today, all make it much more challenging to perceive Christ and His holiness operating in the Church. They render our message about God, the Church, and faith and morals in general, less credible because of the failure of so many messengers to practice what the Church preaches. Yet, as St. Paul insists, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Rom 5:20). God always seeks to bring good out of evil. Paradoxically, at times like this, when the Church has suffered a gut punch that has knocked the wind out of the Mystical Body, when she limps into the public square with a self-inflicted black eye, God is still mysteriously at work opening people up to the life of grace.

               In 2013, Pope Francis gave a stunning commentary on the Gospel account of Emmaus to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean assembled with him for World Youth Day in Brazil. Focusing on why the two disciples were leaving Jerusalem and heading downhill into darkness crestfallen at the crucifixion of the one they hoped was the Messiah, only to have their hearts burn when the anonymous Wayfarer explained to them that Scripture taught that such sufferings were a confirmation rather than a contradiction of the Messianic Mission, Pope Francis made a general point: “The reasons why people leave also contain reasons why they can eventually return. But we need to know how to interpret, with courage, the larger picture” and warm the hearts of others with the fire of our own faith in spite of shattered expectations. Applied to the sexual abuse crisis, the reason why some leave the Church, and others would find it unattractive to join, is because people legitimately expect the Church and her ministers to be, if not holy, at least honorable; when they find filth, they are disgusted and repelled. That nausea, however, contains within it the seed of a burning heart, once they meet people who are sickened by the sludge as much as they are and not only still believe but fight to restore the Church to its true dignity, loving the Church as Christ does.

               We must always remember that the Church is and does not merely have a mission. This is a time for us to grasp that the reform of the Church will involve a “reshaping” to its true apostolic nature, given to it by Christ. The Church today is a lot like St. Peter after he and his companions had fished all night and caught nothing. After borrowing Peter’s boat to preach to the throngs, the Carpenter from Nazareth instructed the expert fisherman to put out into deep water and lower his nets for a catch. Peter had already cleaned his nets and was exhausted, discouraged and ready for bed. Fish, he knew, moreover, were caught in shallow water in darkness not in deep water in broad daylight. Yet, reluctantly, against his human wisdom, he did as Jesus said—and caught the largest catch of his life.

              This is an opportunity for all of us in the Church to put the Barque of Peter out again into the deep and troubled waters and lower our nets. Even if it seems the least propitious time to catch anything whatsoever, the reality is that grace is superabounding. People are searching for those who are not hypocrites, for those who still are faithful “despite it all,” and after perhaps enduring some rude jokes, true and false accusations, and many questions, we may just find them more open now than ever to the deepest Answer to their most existential questions.

              I recently watched an interview with Bishop George Pallipparambil, Bishop of Diocese of Miao, India. He had come from the Himalayas to New York as the guest of Aid to the Church in Need to speak about what has been happening in his region over the last 30 years and to ask for help so that that growth might continue. Thirty years ago, there were no Catholics throughout the region, which is inhabited by nearly 100 different tribes who have often been brutally at war with each other. Now there are 90,000 Catholics, with 32 parishes, 156 mission stations, 44 schools, 13 high schools, 1 college, 28 Diocesan priests, 68 religious order priests, 165 women religious, 158 lay catechists, a diocesan seminary with 31 seminarians, and the only hospital in the region of 17,000 square miles—the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined—where among other successes in the two years since it opened, infant mortality rates have declined by 80 percent. It is a situation that reminds us of the Acts of the Apostles and the spread of the early Church. One of Bishop George’s collaborators, a deacon from Ireland, calls him, only half-jokingly, “The St. Patrick of Miao.” We could call him a 21^stCentury St. Paul of Tarsus.

                Everything started in the late 1970s. A few young warriors from the tribes journeyed far from their villages and found some peers who were educated and had jobs because they had been able to go to a Catholic school not too far from the region. The warriors were able to persuade their families to allow them to go away to be educated at the Bosco Bible School. Several months later they and girls from the village returned not only with professional skills—they went to school from 5:30 am to 10:30 pm each day—but well-fed, having had the chance to have three meals a day instead of a few meals a week. They were also able to read and write and were talking about a new God and a new Book. Across the tribes, the leaders came together and sent a message to then Father George, saying, “Please come to us and tell us more about this God Jesus who has done so much for our children.” Nine-hundred were baptized in Borduria in 1979. Thirteen years later the first Church was built, with Father George as the founding pastor. He trained lay leaders, catechists, and youth ministers, and recruited the Missionaries of Charity to help him care for the needs of the poor. He traveled extensively throughout the region, preaching and strengthening the faith and setting up mission stations throughout, providing education for the kids and establishing youth groups, women’s groups and mothers’ associations, so that women would no longer be treated as the property of their families. In 2005, Pope Emeritus Benedict established the Diocese of Miao and appointed Father George its first bishop. The exponential growth has just continued.

                In the interview, Bishop George described a little bit the sufferings of Christians in various parts of India, including his own, and the risks he himself took to try to plant the seeds of the Gospel in a place where doing so was initially against the law and French martyrs once irrigated the soil with their blood. But he spent most of his time joyfully describing what God has done since he began to put out into the deep. He also described the appeal of Christianity and his particular missionary priorities. When people are baptized, he stresses, “You are becoming a member of the biggest family in the world!” Especially for people who are isolated, knowing that anywhere they might travel they would find the Gospel expands their horizons to the grandeur of God Himself. The people, he says, are also attracted to how Catholicism makes everyone equal. Members of tribes are even lower in the caste system than the untouchables. In the Church, however, the dignity of everyone is affirmed. The Christ he preaches is “Christ with them.” He seeks to help them to understand, in contrast to the dualist animisms that have pervaded that territory, that God came into our world, is totally and only good, remains at their side, and in fact, loves them. Part of that love is shown in the love that those believe in Him have for each other, which is the motivation behind their building so many wells, schools, hospitals, and dispensaries. They cannot miss that love. And he tries to form them to love Christ and others in return. He has started perpetual Eucharistic adoration at a shrine constantly visited around the clock by faithful in two-hour shifts, praying for the needs that are sent in from all over the Diocese. Extraordinary miracles, he said, happen as a result of prayers there. These bring many more to the faith. One boy had had his foot severely broken and turned from front to back because of a soccer injury. He was carried to the shrine by family members who had heard of its reputation. They prayed. And they saw his foot turn around before them as prayers were being said. The bishop said laconically, “Twenty families were baptized as a result!”

                There’s much more that could be written about what God is doing in bringing so many to the faith among the Mongolian indigenous peoples of northeastern India. But I think we can find in what Bishop George is doing perennial lessons that are just as important for the new evangelization as missionary work proper, lessons that can help us recover the Church’s true missionary form after the scandals. We are still members of the biggest family in the world, and the Church at its best behaves toward each other with familial love, featuring spiritual fatherhood and motherhood. Everyone has equal dignity. Christ is still with us, loving us, and seeking to help us truly love others, by defending, protecting and caring for them, rather than tolerating any exploitation of them. And Christ is still blessing us in the Eucharist, desiring to work miracles and to turn His Mystical Body around.

November 1, 2020

            The continuous wave of revelations of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church has been sickening and disheartening for so many as we confront the suffering of countless victims, the wickedness of predators, the lack of spiritual paternity and pastoral determination on the part of those with the responsibility to root it out, and the corruption and tepidity that not only tolerate such filth and infidelity but sometimes augment it. Those who know Church history are aware that throughout the centuries there have been periods of infidelity and iniquity in which spiritual cancer spread throughout the members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the clergy, religious orders, the laity, even the papacy. They also know that in response to such pervasive degeneracy, God was not indifferent and inert. Where sin abounded, His grace super-abounded, witnessed above all in the saints, movements, and devotions that He Himself inspired to bring the Church to her knees in prayerful conversion.

              Hope comes from the recognition that God never abandons His people but remains with us speaking to us in prayer, purifying us through penance, sanctifying us through His sacraments, and desiring to draw good even out of the evil we have committed and endured. The pace of reform always depends on the level of cooperation we give to God’s work of rebuilding. Over the past several months, there have been many voices that have tried to sketch out the ways the Church needs to be reformed, but if we were able ecclesially to receive Jesus’ clear input—not just our inferences based on what He has said to us already through the living word of Sacred Scripture, but the Divine Physician’s diagnosis of the problem and prescription for healing for the Church’s present wounds—what might He say?

              I think the answer to that question may be sketched out through credible private revelations given to an anonymous Benedictine priest from October 3, 2007, through June 2, 2016, found in the book recently published by Angelico Press entitled, In Sinu Jesu: When Heart Speaks to Heart — The Journal of a Priest at Prayer.  The words In Sinu Jesu come from the Latin Vulgate of how St. John reclined during the Last Supper “on Jesus’ breast” (Jn 13:23). This priest’s journal, in which he humbly and plausibly claims to have regularly heard Jesus and Mary speaking to him, reminds us that Jesus desires to have an intimate heart-to-heart relationship with all of His beloved disciples, but especially with His priests. Throughout its 308 pages, Jesus and Mary— nd also on rarer occasions God the Father and a few saints—cover many fundamental aspects of the Christian spiritual life in such a profound, direct and moving way that it is the most compelling text of spiritual reading besides Sacred Scripture that I have read in years.

               What I would like to focus on, however, is what Jesus communicates to His interlocutor about the roots of the priestly scandals and what God is asking the clergy and all the faithful to do in response. “All of heaven weeps over the sins of my priests,” Jesus states, which are a “grievous affront to my own priesthood,” adding, “Every time a priest sins, he sins directly against me and against the most Holy Eucharist toward which his whole being is ordered. When a priest approaches my altar laden with sins that have not been confessed or for which he has not repented, my angels look on with horror, my mother grieves, and I am again wounded in my hands and my feet and in my heart.” Would we expect any less?

               Jesus’ desire, however, is not to condemn but to convert: “I am about to renew the priesthood of my Church in holiness. I am very close to cleansing my priests of the impurities that defile them. Soon, very soon, I will pour out graces of spiritual healing upon all my priests. I will separate those who will accept the gift of my divine friendship from those who will harden their hearts against me.” He emphasizes about the latter what we now all know: “Those who do not live in my friendship betray me and impede my work. They detract from the beauty of holiness that I would see shine in my Church.” The root of priestly sins, Jesus says, is the “loneliness” that comes from a lack of friendship with Him. Jesus desires to be the friend each priest needs, “the Friend with whom they can share everything, the Friend to whom they can tell everything, the Friend who will weep over their sins without, for a moment, ceasing to love them.” He laments, “If priests lived in my friendship, how different my Church would be! … Many of the sufferings and hardships experienced with my Church at the hands of her ministers, my priests, would not exist.” The lack of “experiential knowledge of my friendship and love,” Jesus continues, “is the root of the evil that eats away at the priesthood from within.”

                This lack of friendship, he says, is seen in the “coldness and indifference” with which priests approach Jesus in the Eucharist. “There are priests who go into my church only when they have a function to perform.” They receive little from their daily communion “because they expect so little.” He adds sorrowfully, “Even after two thousand years of Eucharistic presence in my Church, I remain unknown, forgotten, forsaken, and treated like a thing to be kept here or there.” Priests, moreover, “keep themselves apart from me. Their lives are compartmentalized. They treat with me only when duty obliges them to do so.” And because of loneliness, they look for love “in other places and in creatures unworthy of the undivided love of their consecrated hearts,” as they try to “fill the emptiness within with vain pursuits, with lust, with possessions, with food and drink.”

              What is the remedy? “The sins of my priests call for reparation,” Jesus declares. The particular reparation He implores is Eucharistic adoration. “The renewal of my priesthood in the Church will proceed from a great return to the adoration of my real presence in this the Sacrament of my love. … This is the remedy for the evil that has so disfigured my holy priesthood in the Church.” He underlines, “I want priest adorers and reparators, … priests who will adore for priests who do not adore, priests who will make reparation for priests who do not make reparation for themselves or for others.” He says that priests “will be renewed in holiness and purity when they begin to seek me out in the Sacrament of my love,” meaning the Eucharist.

               Time with Christ in prayerful adoration will develop that friendship that is the source of true priestly life. “The secret of priestly holiness,” Jesus states, is “a life of friendship with me, a ‘yes’ renewed each day to the gift of divine friendship that I offer each priest.” This is where priests learn to identify “with all my interests, with all my sorrows, with all that offends me, and … with my burning zeal for the glory of my Father and for the holiness of all my people.” He adds, “All the rest is secondary.” To enter into friendship with Jesus means to enter, He notes, into a “privileged and sweet relationship with my Mother,” imitating the relationship both St. Joseph and St. John had with her. “The great renewal of the priesthood in my Church will begin when priests understand that I want them to live in the company of my Immaculate Mother.” He wants us to pray each day the Rosary and the Ave Maria Stella and to entrust our lives and needs to her, both big and small.

              The reform also involves, He says, embracing the purifying fire of love of the Holy Spirit in very practical ways: “I will pour out the Holy Spirit upon all priests in the form of a purifying fire. Those who welcome that fire will emerge from it like gold from the furnace, shining with holiness and with a wonderful purity for all to see. Those who refuse my fire will be consumed by it.” Living by the fire of the Holy Spirit means that priests strive for holiness. “There has never been in all of history a single priest whom I have not destined for a great holiness,” Jesus says. “A holy priest is quite simply one who allows me to live in him,” and for this reason, “I offer them my presence in the Eucharist. Yes, this is the great secret of priestly holiness.” So many of the problems in the clergy and in the Church have come from priests’ lowering the bar for themselves and for everyone else.

              To grow in holiness, Jesus says He wants priests to “go to confession weekly,” to meditate each Thursday on Chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of St. John, preferably together with adoration, and to grow in the exercise of spiritual fatherhood based on trust in God’s Fatherhood. “The fatherhood of the priest is a grace that I shall renew in the Church now,” because the Church “suffers in that so many priests do not know how to live the grace of their fatherhood,” abandoning souls to “live like spiritual orphans.” Jesus says to His Benedictine dialogue partner and through him to all priests, “Be a father.”

               Finally, Jesus encourages the prayer of what He calls the “Chaplet of Reparation” or the “Offering of the Precious Blood for Priests.” Like the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, it is prayed on ordinary Rosary beads. On the ‘Our Father’ beads, we say, “Eternal Father, I offer you the Precious Blood of your Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb without blemish or spot, in reparation for my sins and for the sins of all your priests;” on the ten ‘Hail Mary’ beads, “By your Precious Blood, O Jesus, purify and sanctify your priests;” and at the end of each decade, “O Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, have mercy on all your priests and wash them in the Blood of the Lamb.” What a beautiful prayer to say for the renewal of the clergy!

               What I have shared are just a few coins of the enormous treasure contained in In Sinu Jesu. I urge you to buy this book and prayerfully read it. I encourage you to purchase a copy for any and all of the priests that you may know. And I exhort you to pick up copies for your friends and family members who do not know how to respond to the scandals the Church is enduring. It will bring you and them into the heart-to-heart conversation with Jesus that is at the root of the renewal that the Church urgently needs.

October 25, 2020

            The December 7, 2019, beatification of an American, LaSallian Brother James Alfred Miller, a native of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, who was martyred for the faith in Guatemala in 1982, is a great blessing for the Church. Pope Francis, in his 2018 exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate, wrote about the “saints next door,” and in many ways Blessed James is an all-American holy neighbor. He was born in 1944 and grew up working hard on his family’s dairy and chicken farm in Custer, Wisconsin, praying at home, and wanting to be a priest. He was fascinated by other countries, reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover to get to know foreign countries and regions where he hoped to bring the faith.

             When he entered Pacelli High School and met the Brothers of the Christian Schools, he quickly discerned he had a vocation to share in their educational apostolate. He entered the juniorate of the community at 15 (much like boys at that time could enter high school seminaries at 14), became a postulant and novice at 18, professed first vows at 21, and final vows at 26. He was sent by the Christian Brothers to St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota, where, hoping to share in their missionary apostolates, he got both Bachelors’ and Master’s degrees in Spanish. He was described by those who knew him as likable, sociable, simple, humble, generous, honest, kind, intelligent, ordered, courageous, prayerful, zealous, and hardworking. His fellow Christian Brothers dubbed him a “common, good guy,” “very human,” “a man of union and communion,” who had the “gift of gab,” a perpetual smile, “deep faith and love for his religious vocation,” and a contagious, boisterous guffaw.

              He also, they noted, was perpetually “late to class and community prayers,” something that Cardinal José Luis Lacunza of Panama, presiding over his beatification, joked had prepared him very well for service in Latin America, “where punctuality is not numbered among our virtues!” His first assignment was to teach Spanish, English, and religion for a few years at Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. While there, he supervised the maintenance of the school, earning the nickname “Brother Fix-It.” He also coached football, a sport at which, at 6’2” and 220 pounds, he was prone to excel. In 1969, after a fellow Christian Brother got sick at the Brothers’ school in Bluefield, Nicaragua, “Hermano Santiago” was sent to replace him. For four-plus years, he taught sixth grade, then high school, while also repairing the residence, running a bookstore, and starting a soccer team.

              In 1974, Brother James was transferred to Puerto Cabezas where, as director of the school, he catalyzed an increase of enrollment from 300 to 800 students, helped build an industrial arts complex, offices, an auditorium and science center, taught, founded a volunteer fire department, and served as janitor, fixing the plumbing, cleaning the bathrooms and sweeping the floor. His practical know-how won the attention of the Somoza Government, who contracted him to build ten more schools in the rural region so that the children of the area would have a chance at an education.

                 When the Sandinistas took over the country, because of his having erected schools for the Somoza government and his general work of education and care for the human dignity of people long-neglected, he was put on a list of those to be “dealt with.” His superiors, therefore, decided to summon him back to Cretin High School in Minnesota. He feared that the people of Puerto Cabezas would see his departure as an act of cowardice and so he wrote them telling them he would return, but he never got his wish. After two years of trying to return to Latin America, his superiors sent him to their Mission in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, to teach at the Indigenous House School and work at the Indian Center, training indigenous Mayans in agricultural techniques, leadership skills, and basic educational subjects.

                 St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle had told his spiritual sons, “Your zeal must go so far that you are ready to give your life, so dear to you are the children entrusted to you,” and Hermano Santiago took his founder’s instruction to heart. His new assignment was as dangerous as the one in Nicaragua. The Guatemalan government regularly conscripted indigenous students, even though they were exempt by law, into service. The government resented the Christian Brothers’ constantly appearing to present documentation to liberate their students. Word quickly spread that members of the G-2 death squad were looking for the “sub-director,” Brother James’ office at the school.

                 He well knew the danger, but responded with humor, realism. and faith. When asked if he were afraid, he replied, “Are you kidding? I never thought I could pray with such fervor when I go to bed!” He wrote his sister a month before he died, “One of two frightening things could happen to me in Guatemala: I could be kidnapped, tortured and killed or I could simply be gunned down.” He added, however, “You don’t think about that, that’s not why you’re there. There’s too much to be done. You can’t waste your energy worrying about what might happen. If it happens, it happens.” He insisted, “I pray to God for the grace and strength to serve Him faithfully among the poor and oppressed in Guatemala. I place my life in His Providence. I place my trust in Him.”

                 On Saturday, February 13, 1982, after returning with students from a picnic, Brother Fix-It mounted a ladder to repair a broken lamp on the outer wall of the school. At 4:15 pm, four hooded men, whom the government would later call “subversive criminal elements,” sped past in a car with windows down and submachine guns loaded. They shot Hermano Santiago seven times in the neck and chest, as shocked children looked on from a window in the school. He fell from the ladder, dead. His funeral was held first in Huehuetenango and then in St. Paul, Minnesota, before he was buried in Ellis, Wisconsin, at a cemetery just outside the family farm.

                At his beatification on the Huehuetenango soccer field, Cardinal Lacunza called him a “martyr, an excellent educator and an evangelical defender of the poor and oppressed” who “made himself one of us and for us gave his life.” He suggested that Hermano Santiago died in witness of Christ’s great commission to teach all nations and was an icon of Christ the Teacher who died to give witness to the truth. “There is nothing that bothers totalitarianisms…more than education,” Lacunza said, since the greatest way to ensure that people remain docile to manipulation is by keeping them “ignorant, without criteria or values.” If education is subversive to tyrants, the Gospel is even more of a threat.

               One of the Christian brothers who had known Blessed James throughout his religious life said he loved to do things “very quietly, behind the scenes,” and “never asked for recognition.” Now, all he did is in the foreground, with his having received the most important acknowledgment a human being can. His beatification shows that the Lord continues to exalt the humble. It also shows that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven remain those who keep the faith and teach others to do the same.

October 18, 2020

              July 12^th was the Feast of Saints Louis and Marie-Azélie Martin, canonized together by Pope Francis in 2015. July 12^th was chosen as their feast because it was on this day in 1858 that they were married at Notre Dame Basilica in Alençon, France, and committed themselves together to living to the full the Sacrament of Matrimony and its two-fold call not just to human, but eternal, love and life. The sacraments are signs and means of intimate communion with God: they bring Him to abide in us and us in Him; and because God’s life is eternal, the sacraments are all aimed ultimately at heaven. The Sacrament of Matrimony is directed toward the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children to be saints as well.

               We see that very clearly in the life of the Martins. They were both already seeking holiness prior to their marriage: Louis had spent time in an Augustinian monastery but could not master Latin, and Zélie had sought to become a Sister of Charity, but, because of respiratory difficulties and migraines, was not accepted. God had another holy vocation for both of them in mind.

              Zélie prayed that God would give her many children who could become consecrated to God. God blessed them with nine, four of whom died soon after they were divinely consecrated in baptism, while the other five discerned vocations to live out a more intimate form of consecration as religious sisters. The most famous of their children is St. Therese of the Child Jesus, who spoke effusively about how she had been blessed with “incomparable parents” and how God had given her “a mother and a father more worthy of heaven than of earth.”

             When they were beatified in Lisieux in 2008, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints emphasized in his homily, “Louis and Zélie understood that they could sanctify themselves not despite marriage but through, in, and by marriage, and that their nuptials would be considered as the starting point for a mutual rise.” He proposed them as models for engaged couples in purity of heart; for married couples in mutual love and honor; for parents as ministers of love and life; for educators in guiding the vocational choices of the young; for widows and widowers in approaching loss with faith; for the dying in peaceful surrender to God, and for every Catholic in living with a missionary spirit. He said their being raised to the altars was an occasion for everyone to think of their own mom and dad and to thank God for them, not just for their cooperating with God in giving them life but also for their collaborating with God in leading them to Him and His Church.

            I have always enjoyed celebrating twenty-fifth, fiftieth, and other major wedding anniversaries liturgically in parishes and have always encouraged couples to give this witness to God’s fidelity and their own. It is one of the best ways to inspire young people not to be afraid to make the commitment of marriage at a desacralized time when far fewer young men and women are willing to make such lifetime commitments to God and each other.

              Last year, I celebrated the 65^th wedding anniversary for a couple which included Mass on June 29^th, which is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul; the readings and prayers of the Mass had to come from the solemnity. It was an opportunity to focus on the apostles’ words about the Sacrament of Marriage in the divine plan, about vocation in general, and the vocation to marriage in particular, and about perseverance.

         But what I wanted to dedicate most of the homily to was the role of a married couple in being “domestic Church builders.” Peter and Paul were, as we know, foremost instruments God used to build His family of faith. Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter or “rock” and build His Church on him—on his faith in and love for the Lord and on his capacity to let the Lord work through him, even through his death. St. Paul was Jesus’ chosen vessel to bring the Gospel to the nations and crisscrossed the ancient world to found and strengthen Churches in modern-day Syria, Turkey, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, and some ancient extra-Biblical traditions also say Spain.

             Married couples, like Louis and Zelie Martin, are also called by God to be church builders. The main image to understand marriage in the early centuries of Christianity was as a “domestic Church,” because so many of the first Christian places of worship were Christian homes, like Priscilla’s and Aquila’s (Rom 16:5). Saint John Chrysostom (d. 407), the patron saint of Christian preachers, wrote, “The Church is, as it were, a small household, and … indeed a house is a little Church.” Recent Popes and Church documents have frequently underlined how the family built on the Sacrament of Matrimony is meant to be a “little Church” where God is present, welcomed, adored, loved, spoken to and about.

                The Second Vatican Council taught, “The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. In it parents should, by their word and example, be the first preachers of the faith to their children; they should encourage them in the vocation that is proper to each of them, fostering with special care vocation to a sacred state” (LG 11). St. John Paul II wrote about how the family is a “church in miniature (ecclesia domestica), such that in its own way the family is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the church (Familiaris Consortio 49). Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI declared in a 2007 catechesis, “Every home is called to become a ‘domestic church’ in which family life is completely centered on the lordship of Christ and the love of husband and wife mirrors the mystery of Christ’s love for the Church, his bride.”  Pope Francis underlined in his exhortation on family life, “The Church is a family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all those domestic churches” (AL 87). And the Catechism emphasizes, “The family home is rightly called ‘the domestic church,’ a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity” (CCC 1666).

              This feast of the first married couple canonized together, it is a chance to celebrate God’s power working through the Sacrament of Marriage to sanctify marriages and families, make them true domestic Churches, and thereby build up the Church on earth and the communion of saints in heaven.

October 11, 2020

           On July 18^th, the Church marked the 150^th Anniversary of Vatican I’s Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, which, in addition to describing the meaning and power of papal primacy exercised by St. Peter and his successors, formally defined as divinely revealed the dogma of papal infallibility. It put into words what the Church had long believed, that when the Pope, by virtue of his authority as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, defines a doctrine about faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he does so infallibly by means the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to Peter, the apostles and the Church.

          The original context of this ecumenical council’s infallible declaration on the infallibility of the pope was a response, first, to the growing relativism of the nineteenth century, both in terms of general epistemology as well as to the truths of faith. It implicitly states that God is real; that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God and Truth that sets us free, taught infallibly; and that He has given His own capacity to teach the truth without error to the Church and to those He has chosen, called, and commissioned to lead the Church, who exercise it, not independent of Him, but in communion.

           Second, it was a response to some of the questions that had arisen after the clear exercise of solemn papal infallibility 16 years earlier in Bl. Pius IX’s dogmatic declaration of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, especially with regard to the limits of papal infallibility. Some ultra-Montanists—those who advocate supreme papal authority in matters of faith and discipline—had been arguing that papal infallibility extended to basically all statements of the Pope, even informal ones, a position that not only confused many Catholics, especially those who knew papal history like St. John Henry Newman, but emboldened and ignited Protestants and rationalists who misunderstood papal infallibility as well.

          Pastor Aeternus specified the conditions under which the Pope proclaims a truth of faith in a solemnly infallible way:  when he teaches “ex cathedra,” with the authority of the “chair of St. Peter,” as a teacher for the Church in all places and times, on a point drawn from the deposit of faith (Scripture and Tradition) that every member of the Church must believe and accept concerning Christian faith and life.

          It did not mean, to quote Rex Mottram in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, that if the Pope said it was raining cats and dogs, Catholics needed to believe spiritual pets were pouring down from heaven. The Popes can be, and occasionally are, fallible in their informal teachings, theological, and historical understandings, and pastoral applications. If they were to be given a test on the Bible or the Catechism, they would not be guaranteed to get every question right. When he teaches extra cathedram, he is fallible like the rest of us, and as Pope Benedict humbly emphasized in his introduction to his personal trilogy Jesus of Nazareth, theologians, Christians and others are free to correct him when he does.

              But Pastor Aeternus did specify that when the Pope teaches under the specified conditions, he will be prevented by the Holy Spirit from teaching error. Most theologians believe the Pope has exercised this “solemn Magisterium” only twice: in 1854, with the dogma clarifying that Mary from the moment of her conception was free of original sin; and in 1950, with Pius XII’s dogmatic proclamation that at the end of her earthly life Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Others will say that, by Pastor Aeternus’ criteria, Pope Leo exercised it in his Tome to Flavian in 449 that led to the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon; Pope Agatho did so in a letter in 680 about Christ’s two wills; Pope Benedict XII exercised it in 1336 on the beatific vision of the just before the general resurrection; and Innocent X in 1653 and Pius VI in 1794 did so, condemning various principles and teachings of the heresy of Jansenism. Regardless, the exercise of the “solemn Magisterium” has been rare.

             These instances, however, are not the only times that the Church or the Pope as head of the Church have taught infallibly. The early Ecumenical Councils taught infallibly about the consubstantial reality of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, His two natures and human and divine wills, the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and several other truths we proclaim in the Creed. Likewise, the Popes and subsequent Councils have infallibly taught that the Church was willed and founded by Jesus; that the Sacraments were instituted by Jesus and communicate efficaciously their respective graces; that Christ is really and substantially present in the Holy Eucharist; that Sacred Scripture is inerrant with regard to the truths of salvation; that the Pope exercises primacy in the Church by the will of Christ; that only a baptized male validly receives priestly ordination; that a person’s spiritual soul is immortal and is judged immediately upon death; and that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is gravely immoral.

             The theological ground for this broader exercise of the infallibility given to the Church was clarified by the Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium. It described that the infallibility Christ has given to His Church so that it may pass on the faith in all its purity can be, and has been, exercised not only by the pope in solemn ex cathedra decrees and not just by bishops united with the Pope in dogmatic decrees of Ecumenical Councils, but also in the “ordinary and universal Magisterium,” when the successors of Peter and the apostles together teach something to be part of the deposit of divine Revelation—founded on the Word of God and constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church—that must be adhered to with the obedience of faith. This is the normal way the Church’s infallibility is exercised.

               Lumen Gentium similarly specifies that “the entire body of the faithful, anointing as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief … when from the Bishops down to the last faithful they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals” (12), which is something seen with regard to many of the teachings in the above paragraph. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised that He and the Father would send to guide us into all the truth, works in the Church to prevent the Church from erring about what we must believe and do to please God and enter into His life.

              One of the concerns that were prudentially expressed about the dogma of infallibility 150 years ago was that if the Pope and the Church were to begin to define things as infallible, it might undermine the authority of every other teaching. If a doctrine were not infallibly defined and therefore irreformable, some worried, it would seem up for grabs and people would feel free to believe and to do the opposite. This concern that the “infallible Magisterium” might unintentionally spawn a fictitious “fallible magisterium” has come to light over the last 150 years, and even more so in the last fifty.

            Some on the progressive side downplay, doubt, disobey and occasionally outright dismiss Church teaching on contraception, the ordination of women as priests, and the condemnation of all extramarital sexual activity because it has not been proclaimed ex cathedra. Some on the conservative side do similarly with regard to Church teaching on the application of the death penalty, the environment, the universal destination of goods, and religious freedom. Both replace the concept of authority with that of infallibility as well as substitute the truth of a doctrine taught by the Church with the degree of formal certitude with which the Church teaches it. Both end up placing non-infallibly expressed teachings of the Church at the level of theological opinions that they deem they are free to disregard.

            It is for this reason that the Second Vatican Council clarified that even when the Pope and the bishops teaching in communion with him propose a teaching on faith and morals in the exercise of their normal teaching office—without pronouncing it in an infallible or definitive way—we are to adhere it with “religious assent.” Our response is different from the “assent of faith” we give to the truths in the deposit of faith—in which we place our trust in God teaching us through the Church—but it is an extension of it.

           As we mark the sesquicentennial of Pastor Aeternus, it is an occasion for us to be grateful for the gift of the teaching authority of the Church, especially that of the Pope, so that through it, we can know without a doubt the truth that leads to salvation, to believe it, to live it and to transmit it more effectively.

October 4, 2020

           Recently, bishops in several dioceses have begun to lift the general dispensations from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass that they had decreed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Numbers of new infections are low in their regions, schools, places of employment, restaurants, stores, and places of entertainment have reopened, and people have resumed most of the activities of normal life. Combined with Church protocols for safety, which have proven highly effective in preventing the transmission of COVID, there is no reason to continue a general dispensation. For those who are ill, caring for those who are ill, or those with health conditions that would make contracting the coronavirus especially perilous, the bishops have generally maintained particular dispensations.

          These decrees lifting the general dispensation and reminding the faithful of the grave duty to attend Sunday Mass make sense and it is always good when bishops are clear about the precepts of the Church. I am concerned, however, that a primarily canonical response is not the most prudent way to address the present situation where, in most places—according to both surveys and online priest discussion groups—only a minority of those who were regular Sunday Mass-goers in February has returned to regular worship.

          The headlines announcing the removal of general dispensations—which have included “Bishop orders faithful back to the pews” and “Catholics again obliged in conscience to attend Mass”—lay the emphasis on obedience and duty. Even though the language in the most of the decrees does not make explicit that voluntarily missing Sunday Mass without a legitimate reason is a mortal sin, and that unabsolved mortal sins can lead to earthly and definitive self-alienation from God, some Catholics, nevertheless, know that context and will not be able to resist receiving the decrees as an eschatological threat. In ordinary times, that is not the message we want to be emphasizing about Sunday Mass. In these extraordinary times, it strikes me as even less evangelically apposite.

          Many of the faithful have been scandalized by the way Church leaders have treated the sacraments during the early weeks of the pandemic. When civil leaders in many states began to define the worship of God as a non-essential service, less important than access to liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries, many Church leaders acquiesced. Ecclesiastical decisions in various places to suspend access to the Sacraments—even, in some places, quashing the creative and zealous solutions of priests to celebrate parking lot Masses, drive-by confessions, and the Anointing of the Sick in full protective gear—could not help but suggest that “even the Church” regarded the Sacraments as non-essential. It is a challenge for faithful to go from a habit of thinking Sunday Mass is optional for several months to Mass’ suddenly being obligatory again almost overnight.

          Many people have gotten comfortable in the new normal of the pandemic. In priest online discussion groups, several pastors have described that their parishioners have told them that they have not voluntarily returned to Mass in their parishes because they have come to prefer watching Mass making spiritual communions with a cup of coffee from their La-Z-Boy, or viewing livestreams from exquisite Cathedrals with great sacred music, or those featuring priests who are superb preachers. While it is good at least to watch Mass, in a culture of convenience, marked by consumerism both material and often spiritual, many Catholics over the last six months have formed new Sunday habits that they are not eager to give up. Others have simply gotten into the habit of living without Sunday Mass altogether, even virtual.

            That is why I think it is essential for the Church, in hoping to draw people back to Mass, to focus less on obligation and more on the mind-blowing reality of what Mass is. God loved us so much that He not only humbled Himself to take on human form and even further humbled Himself to allow us, His creatures, to crucify Him; He humbled Himself to the extent that He hides Himself under the appearances of bread and wine so that we can spend time in prayer with Him substantially present, and so that we can become one with Him in Holy Communion. God has made possible for us to enter with Him in time into His eternal acts during the Last Supper and on Calvary so that we might journey with Him through the new and eternal Passover from death to life.

            I catechize first communicants and others that far more than the Virgin Mary desired to receive the blessed Fruit of her womb again within at the Masses celebrated by the apostle St. John, far more than all the saints combined have collectively hungered for Jesus in Holy Communion, Jesus even more desires to give Himself to us. He came so that we might “have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10) and emphasized that unless we “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,” we will have no life in us (Jn 6:53). The Eucharist is the greatest loving means to achieve that saving and life-giving end.

              Now is the time to stress not so much our duties toward God but our love for Him and appreciation for what He has done. Watching Mass on our screens is good, but nothing in comparison with entering into Jesus’ presence. Spiritual communions are important but are nothing in comparison with the fulfillment of those desires in actual Holy Communion. Personal prayer at home is great, but pales to the opportunity we have Mass to enter into Jesus’ greatest prayer that redeemed us and brought salvation to the whole world.

              On September 12, the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, published a letter that he sent to the bishops across the world describing that it is “necessary and urgent to return to the normality of Christian life … and especially the Eucharist.” “As soon as is possible,” Cardinal Sarah wrote, “we must return to the Eucharist … with a renewed amazement, with an increased desire to meet the Lord, to be with him, to receive him and to bring him to our brothers and sisters with the witness of a life full of faith, love, and hope.”

            He reminded us that Jesus gave Himself to us not in a virtual way but in His Body and Blood. “This physical contact with the Lord is vital, indispensable, irreplaceable,” he underlined. “It is necessary that all resume their place in the assembly of brothers and sisters, rediscover the irreplaceable preciousness and beauty of the celebration of the liturgy, and invite and encourage again those brothers and sisters have been discouraged, frightened, absent or uninvolved for too long” to return. He urged us to ponder the witness of the martyrs of Abitene in fourth-century Tunisia, who after being sentenced to death for attending Sunday Mass and asked by their judges why they made such a choice, responded serenely, “Sine Dominico non possumus,” “Without that-which-is-the-Lord’s we cannot live.”

             By that-which-is-the-Lord’s, Cardinal Sarah said they meant several things: they cannot live without the living Word of the Lord; without participating in the sacrifice of the Cross by which we are saved; without the banquet of the Eucharist that sustains us on the pilgrimage of earthly life; without our brothers and sisters in the Christian community that is meant to resemble the communion of persons in the Blessed Trinity; without going to the house of the Lord our sacred, spiritual home; and without the Lord’s Day, which resets our soul and frees us from slavery to work and earthly things so that we might live for God and love. They were willing to die out of love for the Sunday Mass in all of these aspects and their witness eloquently speaks still.

           The whole theme of Cardinal Sarah’s letter is encapsulated by its title, “Let Us Return to God with Joy!” It puts the emphasis on what the Christian response should always be with regard to Sunday Mass: we attend not principally because we have to, but because we want to, out of gratitude to God and out of love. That is what the whole Church should be stressing at this time.

September 27, 2020

           In the early day of the pandemic, there was a viral expansion of advertisements and recommendations on my social media accounts about The Chosen, a 2019 drama series about the life of Jesus. Many contained hype about The Chosen’s being the highest crowd-funded TV series or film project of all time, about how it has been seen by over 20 million, in 50 languages, across 180 countries. My general aversion to fads and herd behavior, however, won the day.

          Two other things gave me pause. The word that the series was “based” on the Gospels but gave lots of extra-Biblical, imaginative “background,” made me wonder what the series would do for my blood pressure. I am always interested in visual depictions of the life of Jesus, but when Biblical accounts are mixed with fictional interpolations and extrapolations, I have found that most of these additions annoy rather than aid. Moreover, Catholic theological training in general forms us to wait prudently until something is over before giving general reviews since something that starts with much promise could end up being a hook for something harmful at the end. This is part of the wisdom in the way the Church handles claims of private revelations, for example. And so, I would normally hesitate to write an article after only one season of a projected eight.

          But once public worship resumed, the volume of Mass-goers asking me for my opinion on the series, multiplied by questions from various penitents, pushed me over the edge. I had to watch it, at least to flag any potential concerns. Some spare time in July gave me the opportunity. I was very pleased overall by the eight episodes of the series’ first season and found most of it to be a very helpful and beautiful visual meditation on the life of Jesus. The figure of Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, is manly, cheerful, and attractive, someone the strength of whose personality would be able to get very down-to-earth people to leave everything to follow Him.

          Playing Jesus may be the most difficult acting assignment there is, not only because most Christians already have strong impressions about Him they are vigorously prepared to defend, but also because no human being can possibly depict the divine dimension of the hypostatic union. Roumie approaches that challenge in the only adequate way, through prayer before and during filming. “I always ask that it’s not my voice or my personality that comes through but that of the Lord’s,” he said in an interview. He is also praying after the series, using his new status as an icon of Jesus to lead others in prayer, using YouTube to pray the Rosary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and a novena to St. Joseph with viewers as well as to speak about the Eucharist.

          Throughout the first season, Nicodemus is given a much larger role than the Gospels accord him, which is an interesting choice on the part of creator, director, and co-writer Dallas Jenkins, a fervent Evangelical. I found Jenkins’ inventions with regard to Nicodemus, however, credible. They allow viewers to see Jesus from the perspective of a member of the Sanhedrin, with the typical questions a scholar and lover of the law of Moses would pose toward the spiritual fulfillment Jesus was bringing. Nicodemus is also a “seeker,” someone making a sincere attempt to discover the truth, as many today are. He has been called throughout the centuries the “reluctant disciple,” someone who comes to Jesus “by night,” who out of cowardice and pusillanimity keeps his faith hidden, who gives oblique defenses of Jesus when colleagues in the Sanhedrin turned on Him, and who surfaced as a believer only after Jesus’ crucifixion. His character reveals that the essence of Christianity is not knowing Jesus or believing in Him but faithfully following and imitating Him. Many will relate to Nicodemus’ struggles to do so.

          The first eight episodes also develop the figures of Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Matthew. Peter is shown as a struggling fisherman, a stubborn and strong leader, impulsive and action-oriented, proud but capable of humbling himself. The Gospels imply that he was married—he had a mother-in-law—but say nothing about his wife or marriage, leading some to question whether he was a widower and others to speculate that Jesus may have broken his wife’s heart in summoning Peter to leave everything to follow Him. I very much like the way that Jenkins presents Mrs. Simon bar Jonah: someone whose faith in God, her expectation of the Messiah, and her love for her husband led her to rejoice when Jesus saw the good in her husband and called him to be at His side. Her fiat to Peter’s vocation and mission, setting him free to serve the Bridegroom, is heartwarming.

            There is a heavy focus on the vocation of Mary Magdalene. She is discretely shown at the beginning of the series as a prostitute and very plainly as a possessed woman whom typical exorcisms cannot liberate, until she meets Jesus, who frees her. “I was one way and now I’m completely different,” she says later. “And the thing that happened in between was Him.” Toward her Jesus shows a chaste confidence and she in turn seems to help the apostles relate to Jesus as a person rather than just a projection of their Messianic hopes. I do not care for how, prior to Jesus’ exorcising her, she is referred to as “Lilith,” which imports a lot of unnecessary baggage from Jewish demonology and modern radical feminism that unfortunately will not impede further neo-gnostic concoctions about her. If anyone deserves a more sober, Biblically-tighter portrayal, it is she.

          The greatest liberties, however, are taken with the story of Matthew the publican. Jenkins presumes that ancient tax collectors needed to be detailed-oriented, mathematical geniuses rather than a low-level corrupt Mafiosi, and therefore portrays Matthew anachronistically with Asperger’s. While the attempt toward inclusion is admirable, it does not fit other aspects of the Biblical account, especially Matthew’s being the king of the sinners capable of hosting a party full of his ilk, not to mention someone chosen not just to write a Gospel but to be sent out into the crowds among wolves to proclaim it. His conversion story, nevertheless, is moving and highlights not only how Jesus summoned the outcasts but how following Jesus meant giving up much to gain much more.

              As a whole, through these vocational portrayals and others, the series brings to the fore the personal aspect of the call of Jesus and the response human beings must make. Jenkins certainly delivers on his goal to portray Jesus “through the eyes of those who met him,” and through that perspective viewers can sense that they are meant, too, to be among “the chosen.”

          I have liked very much the visual meditations on Jesus’ miracles. The wedding feast of Cana is very well-developed and among the most moving things I have ever seen on screen. After viewing the healings of the paralyzed man and a leper, one may never read or hear those Biblical accounts the same way again. The miracle of the miraculous draught of fish has Peter catching fish strangely near the shore rather than after having “put out into the deep,” but nevertheless clearly reveals Jesus’ overwhelming generosity. The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law shows Jesus’ routine personal concern.

          I also appreciate the way The Chosen has handled Biblical flashbacks, whether to Jesus’ early days—like the finding in the temple—or to Old Testament prophecies regarding Jesus, from Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, all of which give a much richer context to the visual Gospel narrative, especially for those who have greater familiarity with the Bible.

            The second season of this series of Scriptural visual art is set to start filming in September. It will feature greater development of the apostles James, John, and Nathaniel and will continue examining how the disciples respond to Jesus’ miracles as well as how the Pharisees and scribes begin to organize in opposition to Jesus. For those who have not seen it, it is available for free on YouTube or The Chosen App. Production is funded fundamentally by viewers who, moved by what they have seen, desiring to see more and wanting others to see it, are contributing via crowd funding about $10 million per season. With many, I am looking forward to the second and subsequent seasons.

September 20, 2020

            For those who want to grow in their knowledge of the faith, there is never been a greater time to be alive. We have ready access not only to the Bible in every spoken language but also to so many great commentaries, websites, and podcasts, that help us to understand and live it. There are scores of good Catholic publishing houses printing inspiring works from authors old and new. There is free digital access in most modern languages to the works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and almost every spiritual classic. There are now several 24-hour Catholic television stations and hundreds of Catholic radio stations that are no longer restricted to particular geographical areas but can be streamed anywhere in the world. There are Catholic newspapers and magazines that through the web have increased their scope to form and inform from an authentically Catholic perspective.

              There are millions of authentically Catholic websites and blogs, showing the beauty of the faith, carrying out the crucial work of apologetics, presenting Catholic commentary on every topic under the sun, and providing a digital narthex for millions. There are the extraordinary apostolates of Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire, Matthew Kelly’s Dynamic Catholic, the Augustine Institute’s Formed, and Ascension Press’ array of scriptural and theological courses, which help people better understand the faith, live it, and teach it to others. These are all key parts of what the popes have called the new evangelization. While there is an undeniable crisis of faith today in the West leading in various parts to reductions in parishes and Catholic schools, sacramental practice, vocations, and public influence, these new forms of outreach are all the buds of a new springtime that inspire hope, strengthen faith, and build Catholic culture in the midst of the scorching rays of aggressive secularization.

             The Covid-19 pandemic, while bringing much death and suffering, has also out of necessity mothered various inventions. Some, like parking lot confessions and parking lot Masses, will not outlast the pandemic. Others, however, will. The streaming of online Masses, while obviously not the same as participation in person, is a great gift to those in places where faith is struggling, whether due to persecution or poor pastoral service or anything in between. My cousins told me in April that they loved attending the livestream Masses of Fr. Mike Schmitz from the Diocese of Duluth, one of the U.S.’s most capable priestly evangelists, especially to young people. Since then, I have been told by friends from various parts of the country as well as from Trinidad, India, Spain, and Nigeria that they have been watching Fr. Schmitz as well and are grateful that the pandemic has allowed his gifts to be shared beyond northern Minnesota. Some have told me that, even though they love their parish priests and fellow parishioners, they have longed for more inspiring preaching and more conspicuously devout celebrations of the Mass. The pandemic’s livestreams have made that possible. It is one illustration of the “catholicity” of our faith that many faithful are praying will continue.

              I think one of the innovations occasioned by the pandemic that will and ought to last is the phenomenon of virtual Catholic conferences. Covid-19 hit the U.S. right as we were preparing for Lent, when many Diocesan men’s and women’s conferences, educational, and Eucharistic conferences take place. When almost all of them needed to be canceled, some Catholic apostolic entrepreneurs tried to convert that disappointment into opportunity and host a conference online. Speakers and interest Catholics responded. And in the last few months, there have been massive virtual Men’s and Women’s Conferences, Theology of the Body Conferences, Marriage and Family Conferences, as well as conferences on chastity, Catholic Social Teaching, the Eucharist, apologetics, Catholic formation, and other themes. Two of them had over 60,000 attendees. Another had nearly 40,000.

            Over the course of my priesthood, I have had the chance to speak at many Catholic conferences and workshops. As a pastor, I always prioritized bringing as many of my parishioners to such events as I could. Their value goes beyond the powerful talks, sacraments, and opportunity for prayer that are the routine fare. It is being surrounded by so many others like them seeking to grow in faith and to rejoice in it. While Catholics can sometimes feel like outliers in their schools, workplaces, and even sometimes homes, when they attend such conferences they recognize that they are not isolated tapers in the midst of strong headwinds, but rather a united torch with a mission to ignite the world with the light of faith.

              I wondered how the online conferences would be able to substitute for that experience. It was easier than I thought. At a typical in-person conference, there is a finite program with four to five speakers over a given day. The virtual conferences were able to have several dozen speakers watched on demand, in the order the viewer wished, over three days (Friday through Sunday). The fact that so many speakers signed up to share their gifts on related themes already created a baseline of community. That tens of thousands of others were interested in attending the conference added to a sense that the Holy Spirit was working to unite despite the isolation caused by social distancing. And most of the conferences had breakout sessions over Zoom where participants could interact directly with the speakers, ask questions, and engage with Conference-goers from across the world. It is not the same as in-person contact, but nevertheless, the conferences produced a palpable sense of Catholic community.

             Because of the extended format and greater number of speakers, the online conferences were able to deliver content even better, I think, than in-person conferences. Not only is there a greater variety to meet the heterogenous needs of attendees, but the different approaches, experiences, and expertise of speakers make for a broader and deeper learning experience. Being able to rewind to hear an important point missed, or to watch a whole talk again, can clearly assist comprehension. There is also something powerful about the immediacy of a speaker looking right at you and, albeit through a screen, speaking directly to you, rather than addressing a multitude of hundreds or thousands from a stage.

               The financial model of the virtual conferences likewise is innovative and a win-win-win for attendees, speakers, and organizers. Attendees are generally able to watch the talks for free during the weekend, which makes the content accessible to all, regardless of their financial situation. Those who would like to have access to some special talks and live sessions during the conference, or to the videos on demand afterward, can sign up for “premium packages,” but those fees are normally far less than what one would pay to go to in-person conferences.

              Speakers are not given stipends but receive generally half of the proceeds of all those who sign up for the premium packages through their recommendation. If speakers have large social networks, their own apostolates can do very well. The other half of the fees go to the organizers to cover the computer and other costs incurred for a virtual conference as well as to strengthen their apostolates financially, which is particularly important during pandemic-related financial shortfalls.

              Since these virtual conferences have been so successful, many are now trying to organize similar events. There will only be so many weekend conferences that even zealous Catholics will have the stamina to attend. But even after the pandemic has abated and in-person conferences are able to be held again, I believe—and am hoping—that the virtual conference model will remain an option, since it is able inexpensively, measurably, and conveniently to expand the number of people able to attend such powerful opportunities to grow in faith.

September 13, 2020

           On August 6^th and 9^th, we marked the 75^th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Americans, we look with horror and rightly condemn the evil attacks against Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, where 2,403 and 2,977 people, respectively, died. What should our attitude be toward the dropping of the uranium gun-type bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and the plutonium implosion “Fat Man” bomb on Nagasaki, which between them killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, the equivalent of six to ten weeks of September 11s?

              In the United States, a sense of patriotism has kept many of us from confronting how World War II ended. To question the morality of the bombs dropped by the Enola Gay and Bockscar mainly on Japanese non-combatants seems to question the moral legitimacy of the Allied victory, turn the good guys into bad guys, and undermine the authentic heroism of the greatest generation.

              We are told that dropping the bombs was necessary to prevent an estimated 130,000-220,000 US casualties (25,000-46,000 dead) that would have come from a land invasion of Japan. We are reminded of the unlikelihood of Japanese surrender through conventional means and of Japanese sadism not only to Allied prisoners of war and the civilians of the Philippines, Korea, and China. We had already, after all, obliterated 67 Japanese cities with fire bombings, destroying 267,000 buildings and killing 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night; is there really that much moral difference, we are asked, between using conventional rather than atomic weapons to achieve the same end?

              Such consequentialist and proportionalistic moral reasoning, however, cannot make something evil good. A just end, like concluding the war or saving American lives, cannot justify any and all means. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen spoke forthrightly about the ethical deformation that came from ignoring moral absolutes and justifying the intrinsically evil decision to use atomic weapons with merciless indiscrimination to destroy whole cities in order to intimidate survivors to surrender.

              “The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima,” Sheen said, “blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, and the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half-dead. So, we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me. … The key moral question comes down to the principle that the end does not justify the means. A noble intention to end the war does not make immoral acts moral. The same is true in the moral life more generally.”

             That is why when the Popes have visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have spoken in terms of horror and shame over the slaughter of so many people, the wounding of 650,000 more, the birth of the age of atomic and the threat of global self-suicide, and the eclipse of moral reason. John Paul II in 1981 called it an “unforgettable tragedy,” a “frightful wound inflicted on … the whole of the human family,” and a terrifying realization that “man is capable of destruction beyond belief.” He said that what happened in those cities stands out even against the horror of “concentration and extermination camps where contempt for man and his inviolable rights reaches its most base and cruel expression.” To remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said, is to abhor nuclear war and to commit oneself to help humanity make a “moral about-face.”

              Pope Francis, during his visit last November, insisted, “We cannot allow present and future generations to lose the memory of what happened here.” He said that the two cities must become a “living memory that helps us to say in every generation: never again.” He poignantly asked: “How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?” Quoting Pope Paul VI, he said, “No one can love with offensive weapons in their hands.” And that is why he underlined, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.”

                 While the Church has since the start of the atomic age spoken out about the immorality of the use of nuclear weapons—Vatican II had unequivocally and unhesitatingly denounced any “act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population” as “a crime against God and man himself”—the condemnation of the possession of nuclear weapons is new to Pope Francis. But it is a clear logical development of Church’s thought.

               Nuclear weapons are not collectors’ items. They are maintained with the clear intention and threat to use them under certain circumstances if deemed necessary. The intention to do something intrinsically evil, however, is itself evil. The whole machinery of possessing nuclear weapons involves training people to use them, weeding out conscientious objectors who would hesitate to launch, keeping them on alert, choosing targets, constantly assessing and updating weapons readiness, and so on. Human or system error, after all, could be catastrophic—just remember Chernobyl and Fukushima.

                The possession of nuclear weapons has been justified in the past under the guise of a doctrine of deterrence and mutually assured destruction, that one State’s threat of nuclear retaliation will impede other States from attacking with their nuclear weapons. During the height of the Cold War, the Church tolerated it on an interim basis, with John Paul II saying in 1982, “In current conditions ‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable.”

                     Over time, however, the “current conditions” have changed: it is no longer “superpowers” who alone have them in somewhat balanced numbers, but also rogue States with unstable political situations and apocalyptic leaders, and non-State actors and terrorists have striven to obtain them from failed States or corrupt officials. The provisional nature of the tolerance as a gradual step toward gradual disarmament and abolition has proven illusory, as disarmament agreements and commitments have not been honored, allowed to expire, or withdrawn from. The present situation of deterrent possession is destabilizing and crumbling.

               There is also a deep moral flaw in the rationale of mutually assured destruction. Two people will never form a friendship if they have loaded guns pointed at each other. Similarly, mutually assured destruction, as Pope Francis stated in 2014, will never be the “basis for an ethic of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and States.” Now is the time, he said, to “counter the logic of fear with the ethnic of responsibility and so foster a climate of trust and sincere dialogue.”

                  As we mark the 75^th anniversary of bombings that should never recur, now is the time patiently and persistently to work for nuclear disarmament and eventual abolition. Nuclear weapons will not disappear by magic or by words. It is time to ratify, buttress, and implement the various international and bilateral treaties to this end. It is also a time to pursue what the Church has called “integral disarmament,” referring not only to the reduction of weapons of war in general but also to the defusing of bellicose hearts. Jesus told Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” If we do not wish to suffer the fate of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we must address not just the weapons involved but convert the minds and hearts of those who justify their possession and their potential fratricidal use.

January 24, 2021

             It was strangely fitting that the October 31^st beatification of Father Michael McGivney, a parish priest of the Diocese of Hartford and founder of the Knights of Columbus, was marked by COVID-19 restrictions because Blessed Michael died during the coronavirus pandemic in 1890, which took one million lives. He joined a list of eleven American saints and five American beati raised to the altars. He is interred within St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, where he spent the first 7 of his 13 years as a priest serving as a parochial vicar and where he founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882.

            I was at St. Mary’s shortly before I left as pastor of St. Benilde Church because I had been asked to preach at a young adult retreat on Michael McGivney and the Call to Holiness. I was moved—as a diocesan priest and a Knight of Columbus—to be in the sanctuary in which Blessed Michael brought Jesus Christ from heaven to earth, where he prayed for his people, led his people in adoration, celebrated so many baptisms and First Communions, heard countless confessions, prepared the young for the Pentecost of Confirmation, joined couples’ hands in marriage, and presided at funerals. It was particularly poignant to climb the pulpit where, with what his parishioners remember as a “soft, pleasant voice” and “perfect diction,” he shared Jesus’ words of eternal life and helped people, including many initially non-Catholics who would come to hear him preach, to embrace the truth that sets us free.

                 I had a chance to speak about his extraordinary deeds of charity for the sick, widows, orphans, and those on death row. He founded the Knights of Columbus as a means to institutionalize his pastoral solicitude for families that had lost a breadwinner as well as to form the men of his parish to keep and transmit the faith. Little could he have known that what he started four years after ordination with 24 laymen in the St. Mary’s basement would like a mustard seed grow into a tree encompassing 1.9 million men in 17 countries, donating 75 million volunteer hours and $185 million annually to charity.

               Just like the abiding patrimony of a dad or mom is in his or her kids and grandkids and the greatest legacy of the founder of a religious order is his or her spiritual sons or daughters, so Blessed Michael’s greatest fruits are in the quality of men found in the Knights. I would like to focus on two.

               The first is Daniel Schachle, whose son was healed in utero through the intercession of Blessed Michael in the miracle that led to the beatification. When Daniel and his wife Michelle—then parents of 12 children and five who had died in the womb—were informed after an ultrasound that their son had Down Syndrome, they received the news as a blessing. Later, however, their doctor discovered that he had fetal hydrops, which in most cases is fatal. The doctor suggested there was no hope and that if they terminated the life of their child, it would not “really” be abortion since the child was going to die anyway.

                 Daniel, who not only is a Knight but works for the Knights in Nashville, instead turned with faith and hope to Father McGivney, promising that if he prayed for their son, they would name him Michael, even though they had already settled on a family name. After asking their family members and friends to pray through Fr. McGivney’s intercession, they went on a pilgrimage they had won to Rome, Fatima, and Spain, perseveringly praying for a miracle. When they returned, they were told, to the amazement of doctors, that their child would live. Mikey was born on May 15^th, 133 years to the day on which Fr. McGivney chartered the first Council of the Knights of Columbus.

                     The night before the beatification, Daniel gave a testimony at St. Mary’s Church about the miracle. His words conveyed the type of ordinary heroic faith found and formed in so many Knights of Columbus. Mikey, he said, “was born to a Knights of Columbus family … that had a long-standing devotion to Fr. McGivney. We had even named our home school ‘Father McGivney Academy’ over a decade ago. We’ve worked together as a family on Tootsie Roll drives, Special Olympics, food drives, other KOC charity events, and caring for widows and orphans.” Turning to the miracle, he said, “We are so humbled by this extra grace from heaven. We didn’t deserve it. We just kept trying to do what we thought God would want.” Then he got to the heart of the loving, holy generosity with which he and Michelle have lived their marriage. “I have wondered since this happened,” he said, “what if we had decided to tell God that we thought we needed to stop at 2, 4, 8, or even 10 children? We certainly had friends and even clergy along the way who suggested as much. But we can’t imagine life without Mikey and now God is working through his story to bless the whole Church.”

                      The other example is Andrew Walther. Andrew, a 45-year man, who had been Vice President for Communications and Strategic Planning for the Knights before being appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of EWTN News in June.  Andrew had been diagnosed in July with an aggressive leukemia. Within two weeks, in circumstances that seemed miraculous, he had recovered. The week before the beatification, however, the leukemia returned, and his situation was grave. Many knelt at Blessed Michael’s tomb beseeching another miracle. The miracle for which they were asking did not come. God came for Andrew on All Saints Day.

                Andrew was a true Knight. He made those around him better, bolder, wiser, and humbler. He cared for those falling through the cracks, especially those Christians persecuted in far off lands. His work for and among these heroic Christians made him even more intrepid both with regard to the causes for which he was fighting as well as to the holy grit with which he waged the battle against leukemia. He was chivalrous to the last, refusing to let his life be taken from him, but like Christ, freely laying it down for God and others (Jn 10:18). He was a living example of St. Paul’s valedictory as he fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith, in a way that taught those who knew him to fight better, run with greater urgency, and keep the faith, like him, by trying to preserve and proclaim it.

                 Many have remarked that today we are experiencing a crisis of manliness and especially an undermining of spiritual fatherhood. In Daniel Schachle and Andrew Walther, we see how the Knights of Columbus are forming valiant men, true sons of Father McGivney, to respond to that need.