Father Robert T. Cooper

April 21, 2019

           “This is the day the Lord has made,” Christians sing all over the world today. “Let us rejoice and be glad” is our reaction. While God gives us every day of our life and for which we should never cease to thank Him, today is the most special day in which the Lord who created the world, in the beginning, remakes it. “O God, who wonderfully created human nature and still more wonderfully redeemed it,” we prayed after hearing the Creation account in the Easter Vigil. The recreated world is even more beautiful than the created one. The Lord has made us for this day, to experience the recreation, the new life Easter brings. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus said, “Behold I make all things new!” Today, Jesus not only renews all of creation through His overcoming of sin and the death and disordered introduced into the world by sin, but He wants to make us new, too.

          St. Paul describes how we enter into that dramatic transformation: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The new and improved human life Jesus wishes to give us involves new goals, new aspirations. It involves a death to the old Adam in us and a resurrection to the New. It involves lifting up our hearts and our lives to the Lord. If we live this day as God wants to help us to live it, if we permit the Lord to remake us this day in His image and likeness, then we will experience the joy and gladness of this most sacred day.

          Joy is meant to be our fundamental disposition on Easter morning! Catholic Churches throughout the world exploded with joy in the Easter Proclamation describing the joy of Jesus’ resurrection. “Rejoice, let Mother Church rejoice, arrayed with the lighting of [Jesus’ risen] glory, let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.” In the hymns we sing, we burst with that building-shaking gladness. In The Strife is Over, we sing, “O Let us swell the joyful strain.” In Christ the Lord is Risen Today, we tell each other, “Raise your joys and triumphs high.” In the great Marian antiphon sung each of the 50 days of the Easter season, the Regina Caeli, we chant, “Be Joyful, Mary, Heavenly Queen!” The entire season is an Ode to Joy given to God at the gift He gives us today. The Eucharistic Preface of the Easter Mass most effectively summarizes this Easter attitude: “Overcome with paschal joy, every land, every people exults in your praise” as with all the angels and heavenly powers we praise and thank God “yet more gloriously” on this day “above all.” Jesus came into the world, as He said to us on Holy Thursday, so that “my joy may be in you and your joy be complete!” Today is the day in which He wants to give us that fullness.

          If we are going to celebrate Easter Sunday well, if we are truly going to live the Christian life, we must be joyful and glad. This has been one of the principal messages of Pope Francis since his election. At the beginning of his pontificate, he wrote an apostolic exhortation to every Catholic of the world entitled The Joy of the Gospel. He would hope that you have had a chance to read it, or if you have not, to do so as a response of faith to God this Easter season. The fundamental reform of the Church Christ is calling him to lead is one in which Catholics experience the true joy of the Gospel, the joy of believing and living our faith, and contagiously bring that joy to others. He said, “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter,” who live as if they always have “just come back from a funeral.” That is not the Christian way!

          Pope Francis’ thoughts in that exhortation are a powerful way for us to learn how to live Easter right. He begins his exhortation saying, “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew.” The Holy Father admits that the Christian life isn’t devoid of crosses, but states that Christians find joy even in the Crosses because of our knowledge of how Good Friday leads to Easter when we unite those Crosses to the Lord. “The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross, constantly invites us to rejoice,” he declares. “Our Christian joy drinks of [Jesus’] brimming heart. He promises his disciples [before his Passion]: ‘You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy’ (Jn 16:20). He then goes on to say: ‘But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you’” (Jn 16:22). After his resurrection he fulfilled that promise, the Pope says, as St. John describes happened on Easter Sunday evening, “The disciples ‘rejoiced’ (Jn 20:20) at the sight of the risen Christ. “

           Pope Francis says that Christians need to be overcome with Paschal joy because the “heart of the Christian message will always be the same,” in humanly good times and in bad, in poverty and prosperity, in sickness and in health. That message is about “the God who revealed his immense love in the crucified and risen Christ.” The fundamental Christian proclamation, the Gospel, is: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” “When everything is said and done,” Pope Francis observes, “we are infinitely loved.” The Holy Father recognizes “the grief of people who have to endure great suffering,” but he says “slowly but surely we all have to let the joy of faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust, even amid the greatest distress.” The Resurrection gives us hope. “If we think that things are not going to change, we need to recall that Jesus Christ has triumphed over sin and death and is now almighty. Jesus Christ truly lives. … Christ, risen and glorified, is the wellspring of our hope, and he will not deprive us of the help we need.”

          But the Holy Father says that if we are going to experience this fountain of hope and joy, we need to live with Jesus in the present, we need to enter into communion with His joy and hope. We need to receive His strength even in our weakness. “Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past,” Pope Francis emphasizes. “It contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us, we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference, and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew; it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection. … Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain.”

           This vital power of Jesus’ resurrection is at work not just out there in the world but also inside of each of us and this is at the root of our Christian joy, the joy of the Gospel. But it is not enough for us to experience it individually. In his exhortation, Pope Francis calls us to share that joy. The joy flowing from Jesus’ brimming heart into ours is supposed to flow from ours into others. We all lit tapers from the Paschal Candle showing how Jesus, symbolized by the Paschal Candle, lights each of us, symbolized by the tapers on fire; and just like we all spread that flame to our neighbors by lighting their tapers in turn; so Jesus wants to illumine us with His joy, the joy of the Resurrection, the joy of the Gospel and have us spread that joy to others. The way to increase our joy is precisely to do this. We all know that if we were to take a lit taper outside on a windy day, it would almost certainly be extinguished. We cannot surround it with our hands and body sufficiently to protect it from the wind. The only way to keep the flame alive is to make it grow, to join it to many lit tapers so that it becomes a huge bonfire that not even strong winds can really extinguish. It is the same way with Christian joy. It grows by sharing because then our own joy is increased by seeing the joy of Jesus change the life of another.

          Our joy from Jesus compels us to share that joy with those we care about, those we love and even strangers for whom Jesus out of love died. Pope Francis says, “We are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. It is not the same thing to try to build the world with his Gospel as to try to do so by our own lights. We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize!” We share the faith so that others may be happy.

           Today on this Easter Sunday, on this day the Lord has made, we rejoice and are glad, and we seek together with Jesus to share that happiness with others. And the greatest way we do that is in the way Jesus taught us to do it, not just on Easter Sunday but on what the early saints called the “little Easter” of each Lord’s day. It is here at the sacred altar that we come to celebrate the special day each week the Lord gives us to rejoice in and be glad, the day on which He remakes us in His image. Today, “overcome with Paschal joy” that flows into the enthusiasm of all our hymns, our sung and recited responses, in the peace we give to each other, let us get ready to receive Jesus’ risen body and blood so that He may make us new, so that He may help us to seek the things that are above, so that He may help us “see and believe,” and inspire us to go to bring to others this Joy of the Gospel…that Jesus lives, that He loves us, and that He is at our side every day—so that they with us may experience the joy Jesus came to give us all to the full!

April 14, 2019

          It is always a joy when I meet parishioners after Mass and they say, “See you next Sunday!” But there is one exception: on Palm Sunday. When they say it leaving Church with their blessed palms, part of me wants to politely stop them and say to them with a smile: “Do you really have no plans to RSVP for the Last Supper that Jesus ‘eagerly desires to eat with you’ (Luke 22:15) on Holy Thursday? Will you be there on Friday when they crucify your Lord? Are you excited about Easter, such that you cannot wait to celebrate it at the earliest possible moment, which just happens to be during the most beautiful and liturgically significant Mass of the year, the Easter Vigil?”

          The Church professes that in the Sacred Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil—the Church marks the most sacred time of all time. We enter temporally into the eternal moments when Jesus gave us His Body and Blood in the Upper Room, sacrificed that Body and shed that Blood on Golgotha, and ultimately rose triumphant from the dead. And yet, in my pastoral experience, there are a shocking number of Catholics who faithfully come to Church every Sunday who do not attend any of the moments of the Sacred Triduum. Many others come just to one of the three, normally the Good Friday Passion Service. It is very rare to find parishioners who attend all of them.

          This is, I think, one of the effects of the increasing secularizing of Catholic sensibilities. Secularism means living as if God does not exist. It is a type of practical atheism. Rather than living as 24/7 Catholics, we have our “times” for prayer, for Mass, for other religious duties, but the rest of the time, we basically live indistinguishably from those around us. The Church must recover a sense of full-time Catholic identity. One of the most important ways to do that is by recovering a Catholic sense of time through living well the liturgical cycle. And one of the biggest litmus tests as to whether we have a spiritually-calibrated watch is how we live what we proclaim to be the holiest week of the year.

          The phrase “Holy Week” refers, after all, only to one week each year. It is supposed to be special. It is meant to make us holy. But with the exception of the Good Friday abstinence and fasting, too many Catholics live it like any other week of the year. Sometimes people ask me whether priests should simply be satisfied that people come to Mass at all on Sundays. Happy? Certainly! Satisfied? No, because we care too much about the people we serve not to challenge them to an upgrade in the way they live their faith. Holy Week is an opportunity for us to grow greatly in love of God and in appreciation of what He has done for us, and we hope and pray that those He died for will open themselves up in faith to receive all the gifts He seeks to give.

           As a young boy growing up in a practicing Catholic family—not very long ago!—we always spent the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil attending the Church’s most solemn liturgies. It was, frankly, unimaginable that we would not be in attendance. I never believed I was doing anything special. I thought that this was what basically every practicing Catholic did. For disciples of Jesus to miss any of these principal celebrations of our faith would have been as incomprehensible for me as a diehard New Orleans Saints fan skipping the football games in the Superdome.

          When, however, I left seminary for parish life, anticipating that the Holy Week liturgies would be mob scenes, I discovered that they were, in contrast, rather sparse affairs, in some cases even less well-attended than Holy Days of Obligation. I did not know whether it was a case of insufficient catechesis on the part of priests, parents, and religious education instructors, or general lukewarmness on the part of parishioners, or the failure of the faithful just to reflect adequately on the incredible invitations Jesus makes to us during those days.

            But I soon began to discover that Holy Thursday—pastorally—can be a little depressing. The day on which Jesus established the Holy Eucharist and founded the priesthood to make the Eucharist possible is one on which the vast majority of parishioners are doing something else than coming to celebrate these gifts and mysteries. Most Catholic faithful love the Lord but do not come to celebrate the establishment of His extraordinary Eucharistic self-giving. Most faithful likewise love their priests but do not come to celebrate the “day of the priesthood” with them.

          Good Friday is a little better, when more people seem to try to come to something, whether the Passion Service, or Walking the Nine Churches, or the Stations of the Cross. But I have always wondered how it is possible for anyone to live the Catholic faith and not to seek to overcome every obstacle to come to say to the Crucified Lord “thank you for dying for me” and “have mercy on me and the whole world.”

           The Easter Vigil is more like Holy Thursday when many priests must put on a massive recruitment effort to get people to come. Yes, it is a Saturday night; it is the longest Mass of the year by far, with many more readings and prayers than a typical Sunday, not to mention litanies and triple alleluias, fire and a lengthy solo of the Exultet. But how seriously and eagerly do we approach Easter? Many just seem to choose to fulfill their Sunday “obligation” the following morning. They have no idea of how much they are missing.

              Occasionally someone asks, “If Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil are so important, why aren’t they Holy Days of Obligation?” I think for the same reason why we do not need laws or rules mandating the celebration of a loved one’s birthday: because it would be unfathomable that such a mandate should be needed. Obliging attendance at the principal events of Jesus’ life by which we enter into His Passover from death to life would be totally to miss the point of the interior motivation that should be bringing us there. Not to downplay at all the importance of any of the Holy Days, but is there any doubt that what the Church celebrates on Holy Thursday—Jesus’ self-giving in the Eucharist—is more important than what we mark on the Solemnities of All Saints Day, Mary Mother of God, and the Immaculate Conception? Is there any question that the celebration of the Lord’s death is more important than the Solemnity marking the Assumption? Is there any dispute that the Easter Vigil trumps everything, including the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity and His Ascension?

            Lent is a season of conversion and the way we live Holy Week should be the crown of that conversion process. May each of us respond to God’s help to dare to make it not only the holiest week of our year but even, until now, the holiest week of our life!

April 7, 2019

         On December 3, 2018, The Strength of a Vocation, a book-length interview with Pope Francis by Father Fernando Prado, a Spanish Claretian Missionary, was published in ten languages. Fr. Prado, a theology professor at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, asked 60 questions on a wide range of topics with regard to priestly, religious, and consecrated vocations, but the only subject that made headlines was what Pope Francis said with regard to priests, religious, seminarians, and candidates with same-sex attractions.

          The context was a conversation Pope Francis said he had had with a bishop who did not think it was a problem that several priests in his diocese were openly gay because it was just an “expression of affection.” The Pope corrected him, saying, “This is a mistake. It is not just an expression of affection.” Neither the bishop nor the Bishop of Rome defined what was meant by “openly gay,” whether it meant participation in unchaste gay practices or publicly identifying oneself as gay and aligning oneself with the gay movement. Whatever the definition, however, the Pope declared, “In the consecrated life and in the priestly life, there is no place for that kind of affection,” meaning, it seems, no place for same-sex sexual activity, same-sex public displays of affection, or affection for the gay lifestyle.

          With regard to priests and religious engaging in same-sex sexual activity, Pope Francis called them to stop living as hypocrites and make a choice whether to live a Christian or gay lifestyle. “I say to the priests, gay religious men and women,” the Holy Father forthrightly stated, “we must urge you to live fully celibate and, above all, to be exquisitely responsible, trying not to scandalize your communities or the holy faithful people of God by living a double life. It is better that you leave the ministry or consecrated life rather than live a double life.” Concerning candidates for the priesthood or religious life, Pope Francis said, “Homosexuality is a very serious issue that must be adequately discerned from the beginning with the candidates,” adding, “The Church recommends that people with this ingrained tendency not be accepted into the ministry or the consecrated life. The ministry or the consecrated life is not his place.”

          “It’s something that worries me,” he continued. “We have to discern with seriousness and listen to the voice of the experience that the Church has. … It may be that at the moment they are accepted they don’t exhibit that tendency, but later they come out.” For that reason, he said, we must “very much take care of human and sentimental maturity” when training future priests and religious, and “be demanding,” because “in our societies it even seems that homosexuality is fashionable and that mentality, in some way, also influences the life of the Church.” None of what he said was essentially new.

           With regard to priests not living chastely, Pope Francis has regularly called priests living unchastely either to repent and thoroughly convert or have the integrity to leave. Prior to the papacy, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio said in book-length interview with Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti that a priest “cannot scandalize a community and abuse the souls of the faithful,” which is why “the great hypocrisy of the double life” cannot be tolerated. In another book with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, he said that if a priest violates his commitment to chaste celibacy, he tries to “help him to get on track again” through penance and chastity, but that one who proves incapable of observing celibacy must leave.

            None of this is a contradiction of Pope Francis’ well-publicized 2013 statement, “Who am I to judge?” There he was referring to a priest who had been previously caught in homosexual activity whom the Pope implied “committed a sin [and] repented, sought forgiveness and received it.” Mercy was offered and received. Pope Francis, however, certainly is one who judges, and judges negatively, as the Church always has, hypocrisy, infidelity to one’s priestly promises, and same-sex sexual activity by priests. The Church has never considered kicking faithful priests out of the priesthood or faithful religious out of religious life simply for same-sex attractions. Nevertheless, if priests or religious want to identify with the gay lifestyle or live a double-life, the Holy Father is underlining that it is incompatible with what they promise.

           Concerning candidates for the priesthood and religious life, there is a stricter standard because we are not dealing with those who are ordained or in final vows who have made public commitments in the Church. What Pope Francis said is consistent with the Congregation for Clergy’s 2016 instruction for seminary formation that he approved and ordered to be published. That document, The Gift of the Priestly Vocation, reiterated the Church’s positions from 1962 and 2005, emphasizing: “The Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’” The reason is that “such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women” and “one must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

             The instruction considers a few different situations. The first is with regard to those who are engaging in unchaste and sinful homosexual activity or those who are living or promoting the gay lifestyle in opposition to Church teaching. It would be insane for the Church to ordain those who do not practice what they are called to preach. Likewise, those who support a “gay culture”—and look at a same-sex lifestyle as something that should be celebrated, either by living it themselves or encouraging those who do—simply are not thinking with the mind of the Church they have sworn a solemn oath to represent. The second is for those whose same sex attractions are “ingrained,” “deep-seated,” or profoundly rooted, in contrast to “transitory.” The Church recognizes that there is a huge difference between one who experiences some fleeting same-sex attractions—which, because of their ephemeral character, can and “must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate”—and another whose attractions are strong and seemingly a permanent part of one’s self-identity. The Church has established the bar not at whether a man can practice continence (the abstention from sexual activity), but at whether he is free of what the Catechism calls “intrinsically disordered” same-sex affections.

                Does this mean that the Church thinks that someone with same-sex attractions cannot be a good, holy, and chaste priest or religious? No. Some are. The question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is prudent and likely, for there have also been priests with same-sex tendencies who have not served with the same distinction. For one with deep-seated homosexual tendencies to become a holy priest, for example, he needs much greater humility, and has to overcome many more obstacles, than a typical heterosexual candidate does. For him to believe and teach the Catholic faith, he must be able to say with integrity, “I have a disorder in my emotions and attractions that is not my fault, but which I have to work to overcome.” Otherwise, he will be tempted to conclude that the Church is wrong about her constant teaching on homosexuality and therefore can be wrong on other matters of faith and morals about which she definitively teaches. Likewise, he must also overcome greater challenges in seminary formation and priestly living. While it is, of course, possible with God’s grace for a man with profoundly rooted same-sex tendencies to remain chaste, seminary and rectory living would provide temptations to him that a typical heterosexual seminarian or priest living in those same circumstances would not face. Failure here, too, would be grievous for both the man and the Church.

              The scandals of recent months, beginning with former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and exacerbated by the report of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury, have revealed the problem in the Church of “lavender mafias” in various seminaries, religious houses, and dioceses, which has brought this issue of the inadvisability of ordaining those with deep-seated same-sex attractions to the forefront. The Church has not yet dealt adequately with the reality that four of five cases of the sexual abuse of minors are same-sex in nature and four of five of those are not of children but of post-pubescent boys. Many in the Church are in denial that there is any connection between same-sex attractions and activity with adults and the abuse of teenage boys, a connection that the notorious case of McCarrick has plainly illustrated. Whether the denial is ideological or simply a legitimate desire not to scapegoat all priests with same-sex attractions unjustly for the abuse crisis, it has prevented the Church from confronting at its roots the culture of sexual infidelity that allowed the abuse of minors to happen.

             Some have tried to accuse Pope Francis and the Church of an unchristian animus toward those with same-sex attractions, creating one set of standards for straights and another for gays, speaking about chastity for one and not the other. The Church indeed calls all priests, religious, seminarians, postulants, and novices to chaste celibacy—something that, frankly, everyone knows. The issue is not that the Church treats heterosexual and homosexual unchaste behavior differently—the Church considers both sinful—but that the Church objectively treats heterosexual and homosexual attractions and “identity” differently, something that is offensive to gay ideology, which maintains that same-sex attractions are merely “differently ordered” than opposite-sex attractions.

           The Church, however, holds that they are rather “intrinsically disordered” at the level of their “affective and sexual complementarity,” and that when someone identifies deeply with them, it is germane to the question of fittingness for the priesthood or religious life. As the Pope candidly affirmed, these matters are indeed highly relevant to the “strength of a vocation.”

March 31, 2019

         Why do Catholics fast? Our reasons find firm grounding in the Bible.

          When we fast, we follow holy example. Moses and Elijah fasted forty days before going into God's presence (Ex 34:28, 1 Kgs 19:8). Anna the Prophetess fasted to prepare herself for the coming of the Messiah (Lk 2:37). They all wanted to see God, and they considered fasting a basic prerequisite. We, too, wish to enter God's presence, so we fast.

            Jesus fasted (Mt 4:2). Morover, since He needed no purification, He surely did this only to set an example for us. In fact, He assumed that all Christians would follow His example. "When you fast," he said, "do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting" (Mt 6:16). Note that He did not say, "IF you fast," but "when."

           And WHEN is now. In Lent, the Church extends the idea of fasting, beyond the minimal skipping of meals, to a more far-reaching program of self-denial. Jesus said: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself...daily" (Lk 9:23). Therefore, we "give up" something that we would ordinarily enjoy: sweets, soda pop, a favorite TV show, or the snooze alarm.

           Fasting has its health benefits, but it is not the same as dieting. Fasting is something spiritual and far more positive. Fasting is a spiritual feast. It does for the soul what food does for the body.

           The Bible spells out specific spiritual benefits of fasting. It produces humility (Ps 69:10). It shows our sorrow for our sins (1 Sam 7:6). It clears a path to God (Dan 9:3). It is a means of discerning God's will (Ezr 8:21) and a powerful method of prayer (8:23). It is a mark of true conversion (Joel 2:12).

            Fasting helps us to be detached from the things of this world. We fast, not because earthly things are evil, but precisely because they are good. They are God's gifts to us. But they are so good that we sometimes prefer the gifts to the Giver. We practice self-indulgence rather than self-denial. We tend to eat and drink to the point where we forget God. Such indulgence is really a form of idolatry. It is what St. Paul meant when he said, "their god is the belly...with minds set on earthly things" (Phi 3:19).

            How can we enjoy God's gifts without forgetting the Giver? Fasting is a good way to start. The body wants more than it needs, so we should give it less than it wants. St. John of the Cross said that we cannot rise up to God if we are bound to the things of this world. So we give up good things, and gradually we grow less dependent on them, less needy.

            All of this is part of our preparation for heaven, for we are destined to lose our earthly goods anyway. Time, age, illness and "doctor's orders" can take away our taste for chocolate, our ability to enjoy a cold beer, and even the intimate embrace of a loved one. If we have no discipline over our desires, then these losses will leave us bitter and estranged from God. However, if we follow Jesus in self-denial, we will find a more habitual consolation in the ultimate good—God Himself.

               How is it that some people are able to remain serene and cheerful amid extreme suffering and even when facing imminent death? It is not just a matter of temperament. They have prepared themselves for the moment by giving up the things of this world, one small thing at a time. They have grown so accustomed to small sacrifice that the big one is not such a stretch.

                No one says that fasting is easy. In fact, says Benedictine Father Thomas Acklin, author of The Passion of the Lamb: God's Love Poured Out in Jesus, "Fasting can seem very hard, and it can seem that if I do not eat I will become weak and will not be able to work, or pray, or do anything.

              "Yet there is that marvelous moment," he adds, "when, after some hours have passed, my stomach has stopped growling and I've even forgotten what I've given up, when there is a lightness, a freedom, a clarity of the senses and a brightness of attitude and feeling, an incomparable closeness to the Lord."

              Many will say, “Lent is over, so I am finished with my fasting till next year!” However, God wants the forty days of Lent to have a lasting effect on our lives. So, in a sense, fasting is for always. Father Rene Schatteman, an Opus Dei chaplain in Pittsburgh, says that he received this lesson directly from a canonized saint. "I learned from St. Josemaria Escriva, whom I had the privilege of knowing personally, that a person should make some small sacrifice at each meal, always, and not just during Lent."

              Fr. Schatteman emphasizes the importance of little things, and the big effect they can have: "We should all feel the need to help Christ redeem the world by practicing self-denial in everyday, ordinary eating, and drinking...to take a bit less, or a bit less of what we like most, to avoid eating between meals, to skip a snack or dessert, etc., without making a big deal of it."

              A Metairie businessman (who asked for anonymity) told me of his longtime practice of fasting on Fridays, "a 12-15 hour fast from food, water-only." He said, however, that this can be difficult to carry out, not because of the hunger, but because it can disrupt family life. "It's very hard to sit at the family table and not eat. It's not so much a question of resisting the temptation of the food. I always felt like I was breaking fellowship. My fasting actually felt selfish, like I was taking something away from our time together as a family." He has since modified his fast, "to be broken at the family dinner in the evening."

              Why do Catholics fast? Our anonymous businessman put it well: "It is medicine for my biggest problem—selfishness and lack of self-control. To force myself to curb my appetites, to not satisfy my desires—even for a short period of time—this is a good thing. To offer up the little sacrifice to God, for my family, for people who are hungry through no choice of their own, this I think is also good."

March 24, 2019

         Few times in the Christian year call us to reflect on transformational change like Lent leading toward Easter. Springtime is lush with rebirth, new beginnings, and new growth. Too often, however, we want to race to the Easter Resurrection without fully embracing the Lenten process that leads there. Lent reflects the forty days that Jesus wandered in the wilderness—tempted by Satan—in readiness for a ministry destined to end in tragedy. Few of us can relate to the level of sacrifice and commitment that Jesus displayed in these forty days, yet Lent provides us with an opportunity to deepen our spirituality by engaging in regular discipline from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday. The wilderness—the desert days of Lent—is the true path toward spiritual transformation.

         There is a compelling metaphor that helps us embrace the wilderness and prevents us from racing to Easter. It is the metaphor of the seed. Jesus began His teaching ministry with the parable of the sower (cf. Matthew 13) and referred to seeds and trees, fruit and branches, throughout His ministry. To see the metaphor of Christian growth and spiritual development contained in a seed is to learn valuable lessons about change and transformation. Receive these six lessons from the seed as six devotionals for this Lenten season. Incorporate them into your daily meditations so that they might grow to full bloom in your heart.

Lesson One: Seeds Need a Rich Environment

        A seed that lacks appropriate soil may sprout, but will quickly wither and die. Even in the best soil, without water and nutrients, growth will be limited. Without sun and cultivation, plants will decay and spoil. Seeds require a rich, healthy environment in which to grow. This applies to the environment in which we grow as Christian disciples. There must be an ongoing flow of comfort and security, challenge and inspiration, learning and service. Without such an environment, discipleship growth is stunted, stagnant, or worse, dead. We create an environment for our spiritual formation through prayer, study, worship, fellowship, and service.

Lesson Two: Seeds Can't Be Rushed

         When seeds do not sprout, take root, and grow, try yelling at them. Of course, that is a preposterous idea. No one would ever think that they could somehow rush the normal growing process. Seeds require the amount of time that they require. In God's plan, the time things take is the right time. People, however, being only human, get impatient. Our culture puts pressure on us to rush through everything. We live in an age of instant gratification. Seeds teach us that we need to learn to wait, to develop patience. Christian formation is a process of seed-like growth. Patience is the key ingredient to transformational growth.

Lesson Three: All Seeds Grow at Different Rates

          Plant a package of seeds, and immediately you see diversity in the rate of growth. Some sprout almost immediately and begin a steady rate of growth. Late sprouters often become early bloomers. And some normal beginners end up stunted and sickly. Growth is rarely even, and it is often chaotic. Nothing we do will change this diversity. Where seeds are concerned, we are comfortable with different rates of development. This is not always true with our attitudes about Christian believers. We often adopt a "cookie-cutter" approach to disciple making that makes some seem advanced, while others lag behind. The seed teaches us that to mature in different ways at different times is the only true normal.

Lesson Four: Change Happens in Stages

            Examine any plant as it grows from seed to maturity, and you will find that it is hard to believe you are looking at the same plant. While the growth follows a smooth process, it proceeds through distinct stages. These stages are marked by unique characteristics and are a measure for the relative health and well-being of the plant at any given time. Our spiritual development progresses through stages as well. Belief and inquiry deepen to devotion and discipleship. Learning and following evolve into teaching and leading. Growth within the community of faith matures to a life of service in the world. We move through ages and stages of faith development as we grow from seed to sapling to fruit-bearing tree.

Lesson Five: Seeds Contain the Past and the Future

            Each seed is the product of previous generations and contains within it all the genetic code for the future. Seeds are filled with information that yields transformation. Each generation builds upon the last and lays the foundation for the next generation. The Word of God is the information we contain—passed down throughout the ages and preserved in us for the future—that holds the power to transform us. When we give ourselves time to grow, we unleash the God-given power to become mature Christian disciples.

Lesson Six: Seeds Have a Purpose Larger Than Themselves

            Growth is not the purpose of a seed, but a means to an end. Unless seeds give rise to new seeds, they fail to fulfill their purpose. Transformation never happens for its own sake. Change happens to lead us to a new place. Growth occurs that we might not only know more, but that we might do more. Seeds are judged, ultimately, on the fruit that they bear. Christians may never content themselves with growing in their knowledge and love of God. Growth that fails to lead to a change in behavior is cancerous, not healthy. We grow for a reason, and that reason is something much larger than any individual's needs.

              The lessons of the seed help us see Lent, not only as a time of sacrifice and denial, but also as a time of preparation and anticipation—preparation for the work to which God calls us and anticipation of the fullness of life that God promises.

March 17, 2019

          Lent is a special time of prayer, penance, sacrifice, and good works in preparation for the celebration of Easter. In the desire to renew the liturgical practices of the Church, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council stated, "The two elements which are especially characteristic of Lent—the recalling of baptism or the preparation for it, and penance—should be given greater emphasis in the liturgy and in liturgical catechesis. It is by means of them that the Church prepares the faithful for the celebration of Easter, while they hear God's word more frequently and devote more time to prayer" (no. 109). The word Lent itself is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words lencten, meaning "Spring," and lenctentid, which literally means not only "Springtide" but also was the word for "March," the month in which the majority of Lent falls.

         Since the earliest times of the Church, there is evidence of some kind of Lenten preparation for Easter. For instance, St. Irenaeus (d. 203) wrote to Pope St. Victor I, commenting on the celebration of Easter and the differences between practices in the East and the West: "The dispute is not only about the day, but also about the actual character of the fast. Some think that they ought to fast for one day, some for two, others for still more; some make their 'day' last 40 hours on end. Such variation in the observance did not originate in our own day, but very much earlier, in the time of our forefathers" (Eusebius, History of the Church, V, 24). When Rufinus translated this passage from Greek into Latin, the punctuation made between "40" and "hours" made the meaning to appear to be "40 days, twenty-four hours a day." The importance of the passage, nevertheless, remains that since the time of "our forefathers"—always an expression for the apostles—a 40-day period of Lenten preparation existed. However, the actual practices and duration of Lent were still not homogenous throughout the Church.

         Lent becomes more regularized after the legalization of Christianity in A.D. 313. The Council of Nicea (325), in its disciplinary canons, noted that two provincial synods should be held each year, "one before the 40 days of Lent." St. Athanasius (d. 373) in this "Festal Letters" implored his congregation to make a 40-day fast prior to the more intense fasting of Holy Week. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) in his Catechetical Lectures, which are the paradigm for our current RCIA programs, had 18 pre-baptismal instructions given to the catechumens during Lent. St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) in his series of "Festal Letters" also noted the practices and duration of Lent, emphasizing the 40-day period of fasting. Finally, Pope St. Leo (d. 461) preached that the faithful must "fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the 40 days," again noting the apostolic origins of Lent. One can safely conclude that by the end of the fourth century, the 40-day period of Easter preparation known as Lent existed, and that prayer and fasting constituted its primary spiritual exercises.

         Of course, the number "40" has always had special spiritual significance regarding preparation. On Mount Sinai, preparing to receive the Ten Commandments, "Moses stayed there with the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights, without eating any food or drinking any water" (Ex 34:28). Elijah walked "40 days and 40 nights" to the mountain of the Lord, Mount Horeb (another name for Sinai) (I Kings 19:8). Most importantly, Jesus fasted and prayed for "40 days and 40 nights" in the desert before He began His public ministry (cf. Mt 4:2).

          Once the 40 days of Lent were established, the next development concerned how much fasting was to be done. In Jerusalem, for instance, people fasted for 40 days, Monday through Friday, but not on Saturday or Sunday, thereby making Lent last for eight weeks. In Rome and in the West, people fasted for six weeks, Monday through Saturday, thereby making Lent last for six weeks. Eventually, the practice prevailed of fasting for six days a week over the course of six weeks, and Ash Wednesday was instituted to bring the number of fast days before Easter to 40. The rules of fasting varied. First, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: "We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese and eggs." Second, the general rule was for a person to have one meal a day, in the evening or at 3 p.m.

          These Lenten fasting rules also evolved. Eventually, a smaller repast was allowed during the day to keep up one's strength from manual labor. Eating fish was allowed, and later eating meat was also allowed through the week except on Ash Wednesday and Friday. Dispensations were given for eating dairy products if a pious work was performed, and eventually this rule was relaxed totally. (However, the abstinence from even dairy products led to the practice of blessing Easter eggs and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.)

          Over the years, modifications have been made to the Lenten observances, making our practices not only simple but also easy. Ash Wednesday still marks the beginning of Lent, which lasts for 40 days, not including Sundays. The present fasting and abstinence laws are very simple: On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the faithful fast (having only one full meal a day and smaller snacks to keep up one's strength) and abstain from meat; on the other Fridays of Lent, the faithful abstain from meat. People are still encouraged "to give up something" for Lent as a sacrifice. (An interesting note is that technically on Sundays and solemnities like St. Joseph's Day (March 19) and the Annunciation (March 25), one is exempt and can partake of whatever has been offered up for Lent.

         Nevertheless, I was always taught, "If you gave something up for the Lord, tough it out. Don't act like a Pharisee looking for a loophole." Moreover, an emphasis must be placed on performing spiritual works, like attending the Stations of the Cross, attending Mass, making a weekly holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament, taking time for personal prayer and spiritual reading and most especially making a good confession and receiving sacramental absolution. Although the practices may have evolved over the centuries, the focus remains the same: to repent of sin, to renew our faith, and to prepare to celebrate joyfully the mysteries of our salvation.

March 10, 2019

My Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:

         On Ash Wednesday, we began together our Lenten journey. Through prayer, fasting, and works of charity, we will experience God’s power at Easter, which “dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, and brings mourners joy.” As St. Paul said to the Ephesians, “You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” (Ephesians 4:23-24).

          This Lent, my dear friends, I invite you to join me on a journey to Jesus. The question that I pose as we begin this journey is this: What is the difference between a window and a door? Well, you and I can look out of a window and catch a glimpse of what is outside – or if we are outside we can look in through the window. In either case, though, we stay where we are. A door, on the other hand, lets us become part of the scene, as we move from where we were and then enjoy taking part in what we could only catch a glimpse of through the window. Doors lead somewhere. When we walk through a door we cross a boundary. Doors can open up new horizons. Doors can also shut us out.

            At the time of the Great Jubilee in 2000, our Holy Father of happy memory, Pope St. John Paul II, opening the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, said, “Throw open the doors to Christ”, repeating what he had said when he was elected Pope in 1978. Pope Emeritus Benedict renewed this call with the challenge, “If we let Christ into our lives, we lose...absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great...Only in this friendship [with Christ] are the doors of life opened wide...Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ and you will find true life.” Doorways on our journey of faith invite us to enter; to “come and see” what God offers us. Equally, when we open our door, we invite God and others into our hearts. When we do this, we recognise that our life is a gift, not to possess for ourselves but to share generously as a good steward.

             There is a story that is told of a person who had never stayed in a hotel. He rang the front desk and complained that there was no door by which he could leave his room. The duty manager was astounded. “There must be an exit! Have you checked all the doors?” The man replied that there was a door to his bathroom, a door to his closet – and one other door, which he did not try, because it had the sign labelled “do not disturb” hanging from the handle. Lent challenges us to become disturbed. Don’t we all, at certain times, post “do not disturb” signs on our relationships with others; “do not disturb” on our current life style choices; “do not disturb” on our willingness to hear the call to repentance and conversion; or “do not disturb” on our attitudes to the Christian virtues. Lent is thus a time in which the message of the Gospel should challenge us, disturb us, and unsettle our present judgments.

          For, if we are not willing to be disturbed, then we have effectively closed the door to our heart. Lent is a wonderful opportunity to think about the closed doors in our life. Are we feeling trapped in our current decisions? Have we shut God out? Have we shut other people out? Have we closed our mouth so as not to have to preach the message of the Gospel? Have we closed our eyes to our own need for repentance? Have we closed our ears to shield us from the cry of the poor, the weak, the lonely, the elderly or the little ones?

            Whatever may be holding us back from opening the door of our heart to Christ, let this Lent be a time for us to “Throw open the doors to Christ.” Let us ask God for the courage to reach beyond our fears and stereotypes. Let us fast, not only from food and drink, but from judgemental and envious attitudes that deepen divisions. Let us be generous in our almsgiving: in sharing our time, talent and treasure responsibly and generously with both friend and stranger. Throwing open the doors to Christ is also fundamental in our prayer life. We direct our prayer to the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord in union with the Holy Spirit. Prayer is the lynch pin of the Christian life, especially during Lent. Without constant and consistent prayer and meditation it is hardly possible to live the Christian life with a love that burns brightly for God and neighbor. If we have become sluggish in prayer, and most of us do at times, Lent is the time to refresh and renew ourselves in it.

             On the other hand, what if we ourselves are feeling shut out or alienated from Jesus Christ or others because of what we may have done? Remember, the tender compassion and mercy of God, as well as God’s readiness and desire to forgive, far outweigh any sin of which we are capable. Let us take strength and confidence from that and make a fervent confession of our sins. Christ’s invitation, “Knock and the door will be opened,” is a constant encouragement. We must also pray for the courage to apologise, so as to be reconciled to anyone we may have hurt.

           As we enter this Lenten journey, each of us should think about and pray about the great good we can achieve by leading exemplary Christian lives. As followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can try to imitate His goodness, His compassion, His love, His self-denial for the benefit of others. We can keep the commandments and practice the beatitudes. In so doing, we draw closer to God personally, we inspire faith and hope in others, and we positively influence our world.

            May our Blessed Mother, Mary Most Holy, who welcomed God so fully that God became incarnate in her, teach us to open wide our minds and our hearts so that we may undertake our Lenten journey with a renewed focus on our need to be renewed and transformed in the burning fire of God’s love. As St. Leo the Great expressed it: “None of us, dear friends, is so perfect and holy, as to make reflection and improvement unnecessary. All of us, regardless of rank or dignity, should be concerned to embark on the race that is set before us with fresh determination this Lent, making an effort over and above the norm.” May the 40 days of Lent, plus the 50 days of Easter joy – Ash Wednesday to Pentecost, the Christian Passover – give us all a welcome ‘tune-up’ so we can understand better how to live the new life Jesus won for us.

As a fellow pilgrim on the journey, I remain,

Prayerfully,

Fr. Cooper

March 3, 2019

          Bishops today, to be truly effective in the aftermath of the new wave of sexual abuse scandals, have no choice but to be true and thorough reformers. They cannot merely be good priests with a sacramental upgrade. They cannot be just competent managers and institutional maintenance men. They cannot be amiable and personally pious clerics who are intimidated before the wolves. They cannot be great evangelists who have no time for, or interest in, good governance and problem solving.

         The new conditions of the episcopacy today after the scandals require that bishops be saintly reformers. Reformers are not passive men. They are not naïve, excuse makers. They are bold and prudent problem attackers, strong fathers intent on defending their family against danger. They live with a patient urgency. Like Jesus, they have a zeal for their Father’s house with the courage to confront moneychangers or anyone else turning God’s Church into a place of manipulation and sin. They cannot wait for the fire that Jesus came to light on the earth to burn away whatever is unfit for the kingdom and renew the face of the Church and earth.

        For those looking for models, there are many from which to choose: Ignatius of Antioch, Ireneus, Hilary, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo, Gregory, Peter Damian, Bellarmine, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus and the intrepidly heroic prelates of the faith of the 20^thcentury under persecution. However, I think the greatest reforming bishop and model of all is St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), who reformed the Archdiocese of Milan and the Church universal after the terrible sins, scandal, and disarray that precipitated the Protestant Reformation.

         Here is what he faced. The sprawling Archdiocese of Milan had not had a resident bishop for eight decades. Many priests lived with concubines stolen from the married men of their parish, thought they were exempt from confession, and did not even know the formula of absolution to confess others. “If you want to go to hell,” one popular saying intoned, “become a priest.” One convent of religious women was so debauched that the nuns were simply called prostitutes. Several orders of men were depraved to the point that one tried to assassinate him while he was praying. Corruption of morals among civil leaders and average Joes was ubiquitous. Needless to say, he had a challenging assignment!

         As Msgr. John Cihak points out in the first sentence of a great and much needed new book, Charles Borromeo: Selected Orations, Homilies and Writings, “Charles Borromeo should have been part of the problem.” He was appointed nepotistically as a Cardinal at the age of 22 by his uncle Pope Pius IV, given a slew of benefices, and made the de facto Secretary of State, all while not even being ordained. Instead, however, God used him to be the point man to finish the Council of Trent, implement its decrees, publish its Catechism, reform the liturgy and liturgical music and so much more. After his uncle died, moved by pastoral zeal, he was able to persuade St. Pius V to allow him to go to Milan to serve the Archdiocese.

         When he arrived, he wasted no time. He did not need to wait a year to go on a listening tour to form a plan. He knew what the Church’s perennial pastoral plan of holiness was and he got right down to work. He reformed the bishops of the Province with various Provincial Councils to implement the decrees of the Council, because he recognized that if one Diocese were faithful and another unfaithful, the people would rightly be confused. He reformed the clergy, arranging for retreats and appealing to wayward clerics to repent and “be who you were promised to be.” If they refused his entreaties, he removed and replaced them, because their sinful and scandalous behavior was an obvious impediment to reform.

          He reformed lax religious orders, sometimes with the help of the Pope, sometimes with the help of civil governments. He reformed priestly formation. Previously it was done by means of apprenticeship. He formed seminaries to ensure that some of the best priests he could find would properly and adequately form future priests. He reformed parishes, traveling throughout his extensive diocese to get to know his priests and people and correcting abuses wherever he found them. He reformed the laity, especially corrupt civil officials, whom he first met with privately, but if they refused to convert, he went public and denounced their behavior for the scandal it was. He taught Catechism himself and formed the first Catholic “Sunday School” system, requiring priests to teach, so that all the faithful would learn the faith. He excelled in charity, liquidating his personal fortune and so many possessions of the Archdiocese to care for the poor, especially during the famine of 1571 and the plague of 1576, when he fed 70,000 a day.

            But most of all, he reformed himself. He fasted, used traditional instruments of mortification, and limited his sleep to four hours a night. If he was going to lead a reform of the Church from within, he knew that he himself needed to be constantly conformed to Christ. He was therefore able to hold others accountable by his example and not just his words. None of the reforms he implemented is particularly surprising. One did not have to be a genius to identify what the problems were in the archdiocese. What distinguished him was that with total resolve he dedicated himself to addressing rather than ducking the problems. He did so at the same time that he stressed not merely what Christian faith and morals oppose, but the good news they affirm, so that people would learn the great “yes” of faith. Morever, he did all of this before he died at the age of 46.

            During the Second Vatican Council, St. Paul VI decreed that his twelve orations to brother bishops and various sermons to priests be published and given to all the bishops of the world. They contained, Paul believed, the principles and paradigms of ecclesial reform in every age. Msgr. Cihak’s book translates many of them into English for the first time. They deserve to be read by all bishops today, and by everyone who loves the Church and is praying, fasting, and working to see her reformed anew.

February 24, 2019

           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 super abounding. 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.

February 17, 2019

           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 — and 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.

February 10, 2019

           Today, we celebrate World Marriage Day. One of the duties of parish priests is to prepare couples for the Sacrament of Matrimony. Many priests love this work. Others admit they find parts of it taxing. Nevertheless, almost all parish priests do it, dedicate quite a lot of time to doing it, and, like other aspects of priestly work, try to do it well. That is why it came as quite a shock when the Prefect for the Vatican’s Dicastery of Laity, Family and Life, which is in charge of the Church’s universal care for the family, declared that priests are basically incompetent to do this work.

          In an interview printed in the July/August 2018 edition of Intercom Magazine, published by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Kevin Farrell made headlines when he said, “Priests are not the best people to train others for marriage. They have no credibility. They have never lived the experience. They may know moral theology, dogmatic theology in theory, but to go from there to putting it into practice everyday life … they don’t have the experience.” This was not the first time he has alleged universal priestly ineptitude with regard to marriage preparation. In September 2017, at a conference in Belfast, he emphasized that priests have “no credibility in this area” because they have “no credibility when it comes to living the reality of marriage.” What is needed, he said, is accompaniment by other married couples “who have walked in [married couples’] shoes.” He implied that his comprehensive assertions might be partly autobiographical extrapolations because; he said, he did not “have a clue” when his own nieces and nephews asked him some questions about marital difficulties. “I have no experience of that and the majority of priests don’t have that experience,” he said. However, in the Intercom interview, he also contended that priests’ lack of competence and credibility is matched by a lack of commitment. Basing himself on his previous experience as Bishop of Dallas, he said, priests, with all of their duties, “are not going to be interested in organizing marriage meetings.”

          Priests who are in fact interested in organizing meetings with couples to help them get ready for the Sacrament of Marriage found his comments disheartening and disturbing. Many married couples likewise found them bewildering. It is one thing to make the obvious point that effective marriage preparation involves not just parish priests but well-trained married couples, something that happens in most parish, diocesan, and online marriage preparation courses in the United States. Cardinal Farrell’s regrettable emphasis, however, was not to encourage greater lay participation but to undermine priests’ involvement and credibility—as if, because they have never been married, priests have nothing to contribute. This led Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin humorously to tweet, “It seems fair to ask, then, if a celibate cleric has sufficient ‘credibility’ to lead a dicastery devoted to laity, family, and life.”

          Cardinal Farrell’s comments made me wonder how familiar he is with St. John Paul II’s works on marriage, which consider his objections and persuasively refute them. In the opening words of the introduction to his book Love and Responsibility, for example, the future Pope took up the Cardinal’s objection: “There exists a view that only married people may speak about marriage, and that only persons who experience love between a man and a woman may speak about such love. This view demands personal and direct experience as the basis for speaking in a given field. Thus, priests, religious and celibate persons cannot have anything to say on matters of love and marriage.” Then John Paul II responded: “A lack of their own personal experience does not hinder them since they possess a very rich indirect experience proceeding from pastoral work … [where] they encounter precisely these problems so often and in such a variety of ways and situations that another experience is created, experience that is undoubtedly more indirect and ‘foreign,’ but at the same time much more extensive.”

          Even though priests do not have first-hand experience of marital life, the saintly pope underlined, they have a far more extensive second-hand experience than almost anyone because of their pastoral work hearing confessions, counseling couples, and sharing the joys and struggles of their married spiritual sons and daughters. They also have their first-hand exposure to the reality of family life from growing up in a family. His Eminence, however, not only seems to have forgotten John Paul II’s insights, but also to be unaware of what Pope Francis has recently said about priests and marriage preparation.

          Speaking to parish priests in the Vatican on February 25, 2017, Pope Francis commented, “In most cases, you are the first people to be approached by young people desiring to form a new family and marry in the Sacrament of Matrimony. And it is again you to whom married couples turn in crisis as a result of serious relationship problems, with a need to rekindle their faith and rediscover the grace of the Sacrament. No one better than you knows and is in touch with the reality of the social fabric of the territory, and experiences the various complexities: unions celebrated in Christ, de facto unions, civil unions, failed unions, happy and unhappy families and young people.”

          “With each person and in each situation,” the Pope continued, “you are called to be travelling companions who can offer witness and support. May your primary concern be to bear witness to the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony and the primordial good of the family, vital cell of the Church and of Society, by announcing that marriage between a man and a woman is a symbol of the spousal union between Christ and the Church. Such witness is put into practice concretely when you prepare engaged couples for marriage, making them aware of the profound meaning of the step which they are about to take, and when you journey with young couples with attentiveness, helping them experience the divine strength and the beauty of their marriage through light and shadow, through joyful and difficult times.”

          He went on to say that, he wanted marriage preparation be a “true catechumenate” that could accompany engaged couples similar to the way the Church for months accompanies adults preparing for the Sacrament of Baptism. And he stressed, “This catechumenate is principally entrusted to you, parish priests….I encourage you to implement it despite any difficulties you may encounter.” Those are not the words of someone with a low estimation of the credibility, competence, and commitment of priests with regard to the Sacrament of Matrimony.

          I have had the chance to prepare over one hundred couples for marriage. I normally meet with couples cumulatively for about eight hours because I am convinced that in a culture that does not support marriage as the lifelong, faithful, and fruitful union of one man and one woman, this time is indispensable to help them build their marriage on the rock of faith. Over the course of our conversations, we discuss their family backgrounds, how they met, how they determined the other was the “right one,” how the proposal happened, what marriage means, why Christian marriage is a Sacrament, what role God plays in their relationship, what is distinctive about marital love, what they love about the other and how the other has shown love to them, what their desires are for children, how to grow in prayer and faith as a couple, how to forgive, and what marriage experts say are best practices on communication, finances, and relations with in-laws. We go over in depth the necessary intentions for a valid marriage. We cover the what and why of the Church’s teachings about natural family planning, adoption, infertility, cohabitation, contraception, in vitro fertilization, and pornography. We even tackle what to do if they happen to fall in love with someone else.

           In all of this, rather than being an insurmountable handicap, my priesthood is actually an asset. My chaste celibacy allows me to be more objective in talking about human sexuality in God’s plan than someone whose ideas are marked too much by personal experience. My seminary training is likewise a plus. So many generous Catholic couples who volunteer to lead marriage preparation courses certainly can talk effectively and eloquently about various practical realities of living a Catholic marriage, but in general, they cannot speak to the theology and sacramentality of marriage the way priests can and couples deserve. These priestly contributions are an indispensable service to couples, who are often beguiled by our secular age to look at marriage in a desacralized way.

            Most helpful of all, however, I think, is simply a priest’s presence and prioritized concern for the couple. Many young people, including Catholics, do not know priests personally, because they see them only in chasubles. Many come to marriage preparation not practicing the faith, in one way or many, and have lots of unanswered questions and misconceptions that will impact their marriage and spiritual life overall if left unaddressed. Over the course of the hours we have together, those questions can come up. Trust can build. The practice of the faith can return. Doubts about “credibility” can be overcome. Real evangelization or re-evangelization can take place.

           When a priest shows how much he cares in making the time to get to know and form them, and then brings the fruit of that burgeoning friendship to their rehearsal, wedding homily, reception, future baptisms, and more, it can have a favorable long-term influence on their relationship with all priests and with the Church. I hope that the intense reaction that Cardinal Farrell’s unintentionally offensive remarks have provoked among priests and faithful might lead him to reassess his conclusions. I also hope that it will help him, and the Dicastery he directs, better to encourage and support priests in the trenches in their important labor—together with married lay people—in preparing couples not just for marriage but for the Sacrament of Matrimony in its fullness. The future of the Church depends on that crucial and ongoing work.

February 3, 2019

          The image above is called the "Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over Averroes." It was painted by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) in 1471 and is on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Most scholars consider St. Thomas Aquinas to be the Catholic Church’s greatest philosopher and theologian. He was born in southern Italy near Aquino in 1225 to a wealthy and aristocratic family. His father was a count. His mother was a countess.

         When he was five years old, his parents sent him to be trained by the Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino. As a young student, St. Thomas was known for his prayer and hard work. He had a philosophical bent early on and would ask questions like: “What is God?” His teachers realized his superior intellect and recognized that he needed better instruction than they could provide. So at the age of fourteen, he was sent to the University of Naples. In only a matter of months, he surpassed his professors at the university in knowledge and understanding. It was at Naples that he first began to sense that God was calling him to join the Dominicans.

        When he was seventeen, he revealed his plans to join the Dominican order to his family. His family was strongly opposed to this idea. St. Thomas’s uncle had been the Abbot at the prestigious Monte Cassino Abbey. They hoped Thomas would follow in his footsteps. The Dominicans were a new order known for their itinerant preaching and begging. His family found this unacceptable. So as Thomas was on his way to join the Dominicans in Rome, his brothers kidnapped him and imprisoned him at Roccasecca Castle. At one point, his family even sent in a prostitute to his cell to try to tempt him, but he drove her out with a burning torch. His family kept him imprisoned for fifteen months until the Pope finally intervened for him. He was released and joined the Dominicans in Naples.

         During his captivity, Thomas’s sister brought him a copy of the Bible, Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Peter Lombard’s Sentences to study. The Dominicans were delighted to see his intellectual progress during this time. The Dominicans sent Thomas to study with St. Albert the Great in Cologne, Germany and then the University of Paris. St. Albert the Great was a man of great learning who was interested in practically everything including science, mathematics, geometry, medicine, botany, astronomy and, of course, theology and philosophy.

         St. Thomas was physically a big man, but also gentle and humble. Because he was so quiet his fellow students nicknamed him the “Dumb Ox.” However, when he was called upon in class to give a defense of a very difficult thesis, St. Albert the Great predicted: “We call this man a ‘Dumb Ox,’ but his bellowing in doctrine will resound through the whole world.” St. Albert’s prediction has been fulfilled. The writings of St. Thomas Aquinas continue to be influential in the Church and the world today, over 700 years after his death.

         St. Thomas was ordained as a priest at the age of twenty-five. He preached to large crowds all over Italy, France and Germany. People would travel for many miles to hear his brilliant explanations of Holy Scripture. As he became better known, there were more demands on his time. He remained faithful to prayer, preaching, teaching, and an arduous travel schedule. All the while, he was writing his greatest work–the Summa Theologica–a systematic presentation of philosophical and theological truths. He was offered the Archbishopric of Naples, but he turned it down to continue preaching and teaching.

          When arguing against an opponent, he always presented the best version of his opponent’s argument. Then he would proceed to show how the argument fails. Many people, in order to win arguments, will misstate an opponent’s argument in order to argue against a weaker position. This is called setting up a “straw man” or “straw horse,” but St. Thomas never did this. He treated his opponents and their arguments seriously and with intellectual honesty.

          St. Thomas was best known for incorporating insights from Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, to explain the truths of Christianity. In his work On Being and Essence, he explains that God is pure being, fully actualized. Everything else borrows existence from God and is in a state of becoming. In teaching how Jesus is present in His body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist, he used the word transubstantiation to explain how the underlying substance of the bread and wine were changed while the appearances and other properties remain the same.

          St. Thomas is also famous for his five proofs for the existence of God. The arguments involve God as the Uncaused Cause or the Unmoved Mover. He is the only necessary being, whereas everything else has existence by analogy. He is the most perfect Being one could contemplate. As we see a design in nature, so there must be a designer. This designer is God.

         St. Thomas argued that the truths that we can come to know through a rigorous application of human reason and the truths that can only be known by a special revelation from God flow from the same source, and therefore, when properly understood, complement rather than contradict one another. He taught that human beings were not simply souls using bodies, but rather are embodied souls. Our bodies are not just something we use, they are us. It is not just our souls that will live forever, but like Christ, our bodies will be raised on the last day.

          At the age of 48, St. Thomas was experiencing regular ecstasies and visions. Once after offering Mass at a Church in Naples, three of his Dominican brothers heard a powerful voice praise St. Thomas saying “You have written well of me, Thomas…What reward will you have?” St. Thomas replied: “Nothing other than yourself, Lord.” After this vision, St. Thomas could write no more. He said all he had written seemed to him as straw. It’s not that what he had said before was not true, but nothing he said or wrote compared with the beauty he had seen directly. It was like the difference between talking about love and being in love.

          St. Thomas died while he was on his way to the Council of Lyons called for by Pope Gregory X. He was taken in along the route by Cistercian monks and died on March 7, 1274, at the age of 49. He was canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323, and proclaimed a doctor of the Church by Pope Pius V in 1567. St. Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of all Catholic universities and students. We celebrate his feast on January 28, the anniversary of when his body was transferred to a shrine in Toulouse.

         We can learn so much from the life of St. Thomas Aquinas. We can learn from his courage and perseverance in pursuing his true calling in life. He was always patient when arguing against an opponent. He won many of them over to his position through his personality and great learning. He could have enjoyed a life of great wealth and privilege, but his tastes were simple and he lived his vow of poverty. He had a great memory which he nurtured through study. Sometimes he would forget his surroundings when he was absorbed in thought. Nevertheless, when he did speak, he expressed his thoughts calmly and systematically in a clear and simple manner. He valued his education as a way to learn about the God who he loved and the world He created. He taught others to love God too by passing on his learning to others.

         St. Thomas was a genius, but more importantly, he was wise. Wisdom comes from God. Not everyone who is smart is necessarily good or wise. Some people believe that living a life of virtue makes you weak, but it’s the exact opposite. St. Thomas taught that virtue is a power to do good. Sin is the abuse of a power God has given us to do good that instead we use for evil. It is sin that weakens and virtue that makes a person strong.

          St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us of the importance and value of a good Catholic education. The knowledge and love of God should come first and then everything else flows from that. All of us are called to love God and serve Him in different ways according to the unique gifts and talents He has given to each of us. A Catholic education should help us to be a well-rounded, knowledgeable, cultured person who loves God and loves their neighbor as himself. A Catholic education is more than just job training. It seeks to develop the whole person, recognizing the human person as created in the image and likeness of God and destined to share everlasting happiness with Him in heaven.

          Theology is the “Queen of all Sciences,” but a Catholic education should include not just the study of religion, but also of philosophy, science, mathematics, history, literature, music, art, poetry, theater, languages and participation in sports. A Catholic education should help form a person who loves God and their neighbor; a person who is always seeking to grow in knowledge, holiness, and fidelity to the truth. It should instill a love for learning in the student and help them to understand that education is a lifelong process. We ask St. Thomas Aquinas to help us to follow his example, to grow in wisdom and lead us to Jesus who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (cf. John 14:6)

January 27, 2019

           As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week, a review of documents from the Holy See and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops provides clarity on the Church’s mission in Catholic education. Catholic education is an expression of the Church’s mission of salvation and an instrument of evangelization. Through its schools, members encounter God, who in Jesus Christ reveals His transforming love and truth. As a faith community, students, parents, and educators, in unity with the Church, give witness to Christ’s loving communion in the Holy Trinity. With this Christian vision, Catholic education fulfills its purpose of transmitting culture in the light of faith, integrally forming the human person by developing each student’s physical, moral, spiritual, and intellectual gifts, teaching responsibility and right use of freedom, preparing students to fulfill God’s calling in this world, and attaining the eternal kingdom for which they were created.

          In the fullness of time, in His mysterious plan of love, God the Father sent His only Son to begin the Kingdom of God on earth and bring about the spiritual rebirth of mankind. To continue His work of salvation, Jesus Christ founded the Church as a visible organism, living by the power of the Spirit. Moved by the same Spirit, the Church is constantly deepening her awareness of herself and meditating on the mystery of her being and mission. Thus she is ever rediscovering her living relationship with Christ “in order to discover greater light, energy, and joy in fulfilling her mission and determining the best way to ensure that her relationship with humanity is closer and more efficacious”—that humanity of which she is a part and yet so undeniably distinct. Her destiny is to serve humanity until it reaches its fullness in Christ. Evangelization is, therefore, the mission of the Church; that is she must proclaim the good news of salvation to all, generate new creatures in Christ through Baptism, and train them to live knowingly as children of God.

          To carry out her saving mission, the Church uses, above all, the means which Jesus Christ has given her. She also uses other means which at different times and in different cultures have proved effective in achieving and, promoting the development of the human person. The Church adapts these means to the changing conditions and emerging needs of mankind. In her encounter with differing cultures and with man’s progressive achievements, the Church proclaims the faith and reveals “to all ages the transcendent goal which alone gives life its full meaning.”

          The Church establishes her own schools because she considers them as a privileged means of promoting the formation of the whole man since the school is a center in which a specific concept of the world, of man, and of history is developed and conveyed. It is precisely in the Gospel of Christ, taking root in the minds and lives of the faithful, that the Catholic school finds its definition as it comes to terms with the cultural conditions of the times. It must never be forgotten that the purpose of instruction at school is education, that is, the development of man from within, freeing him from that conditioning which would prevent him from becoming a fully integrated human being. The school must begin from the principle that its educational program is intentionally directed to the growth of the whole person.

          Catholic education is an expression of the mission entrusted by Jesus to the Church He founded. Through education, the Church seeks to prepare its members to proclaim the Good News and to translate this proclamation into action. Since the Christian vocation is a call to transform oneself and society with God’s help, the educational efforts of the Church must encompass the twin purposes of personal sanctification and the social reform in light of Christian values. 

          Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. First and foremost, every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals His transforming love and truth. Christ is the foundation of the whole educational enterprise in a Catholic school. His revelation gives new meaning to life and helps man to direct his thought, action and will according to the Gospel, making the beatitudes his norm of life. The fact that in their own individual ways all members of the school community share this Christian vision makes the school “Catholic”; principles of the Gospel in this manner become the educational norms since the school then has them as its internal motivation and final goal. 

          From the first moment that a student sets foot in a Catholic school, he or she ought to have the impression of entering a new environment, one illumined by the light of faith, and having its own unique characteristics. The Gospel spirit should be evident in a Christian way of thought and life which permeates all facets of the educational climate. The implementation of a real educational community, built on the foundation of shared projected values, represents a serious task that must be carried out by the Catholic school. The preparation of a shared project acts as a stimulus that should force the Catholic school to be a place of ecclesial experience. Its binding force and potential for relationships derive from a set of values and a communion of life that is rooted in our common belonging to Christ. Derived from the recognition of evangelical values are educational norms, motivational drives, and the final goals of the school. Certainly, the degree of participation can differ in relation to one’s personal history, but this requires that educators be willing to offer a permanent commitment to formation and self-formation regarding a choice of cultural and life values to be made present in the educational community. 

          When Christians say communion, they refer to the eternal mystery, revealed in Christ, of the communion of love that is the very life of God. At the same time, we also say that Christians share in this communion in the Body of Christ which is the Church (cf.  Phil 1:7; Rev 1:9). Communion is, therefore, the “essence” of the Church, the foundation and source of its mission of being in the world “the home and the school of communion,” to lead all men and women to enter ever more profoundly into the mystery of Trinitarian communion and, at the same time, to extend and strengthen internal relations within the human community. Since true education must strive for complete formation of the human person that looks to his or her final end as well as to the common good of societies, children and youth are to be nurtured in such a way that they are able to develop their physical, moral, and intellectual talents harmoniously, acquire a more perfect sense of responsibility and right use of freedom, and are formed to participate actively in social life. 

          To fulfill the mandate she has received from her divine founder of proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men and of restoring all things in Christ, Holy Mother Church must be concerned with the whole of man’s life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a bearing on his heavenly calling. Therefore, she has a role in the progress and development of education. Education today is a complex task, which is made more difficult by rapid social, economic, and cultural changes. Its specific mission remains the integral formation of the human person. Children and young people must be guaranteed the possibility of developing harmoniously their own physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual gifts; and they must also be helped to develop their sense of responsibility, learn the correct use of freedom, and participate actively in social life. A form of education that ignores or marginalizes the moral and religious dimension of the person is a hindrance to full education, because “children and young people have a right to be motivated to appraise moral values with a right conscience, to embrace them with a personal adherence, together with a deeper knowledge and love of God.” That is why the Second Vatican Council asked and recommended that “all those who hold a position of public authority or who are in charge of education to see to it that youth is never deprived of this sacred right.”

          It is important for Catholic schools to be aware of the risks that arise should they lose sight of the reasons why they exist. Catholic schools are called to give dutiful witness, by their pedagogy that is clearly inspired by the Gospel. They have the responsibility for offering Catholic students, over and above a sound knowledge of religion, the possibility to grow in personal closeness to Christ in the Church. 

            The young people we are educating today will become the leaders of the 2050s. What will religion’s contribution be to educating younger generations to peace, development, fraternity in the universal human community? How are we going to educate them to faith and in faith? How will we establish the preliminary conditions to accept this gift, to educate them to gratitude, to a sense of awe, to asking themselves questions, to develop a sense of justice and consistency? How will we educate them to prayer? As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week, let us take this opportunity to ponder these questions and to thank God for the great gift of Catholic education! 

January 20, 2019

         In most political and cultural circles, for decades, there has been much talk, passionate action, and legal success in the fight against unjust discrimination. Persons are created equal in dignity and most people naturally rebel when someone suffers prejudice or injustice on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, age, religion, handicap, or other reasons. However, one area that generally gets a pass from the typical opprobrium that attends brazen discrimination is the practice of abortion. Discrimination in favor of abortion is somehow ignored and permitted by so many who in no other circumstances would tolerate it. Among some social circles, such discrimination is sometimes almost treated as genteel.

         Many know that Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger with explicitly eugenic intentions. In a 1932 speech about compulsory sterilization, Sanger spoke about ensuring that “morons, mental defectives, epileptics… illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends” are sterilized so that they do not have children. In her autobiography she proudly recounted her speech to a Ku Klux Klan meeting in 1926 and in a 1939 letter, she wrote, “We don’t want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Jesus once said, “A rotten tree produces bad fruit” (Mt 7:17), and we should not be surprised to discover discrimination in the fruits of a tree that began with such blatant eugenics.

           The practice of abortion is clearly racist. In the United States, for example, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an African-American woman is five times more likely, and a Latina twice as likely, to have an abortion than a white woman. Even though African-American women comprise just 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 36 percent of abortions. Twenty-eight percent of African-American pregnancies end in abortion, compared to 11 percent of white women. Studies show, however, that African American women do not support abortion more than whites or Hispanics and, yet, when the statistics are controlled for economics, are still three times more likely than white women to have abortions. Could it have anything to do with the fact that a disproportionate number of Planned Parenthood and abortion facilities are built in minority communities?

          Internationally, there is an obvious racial and abortive pattern to development assistance. In the last 20 years, for example, there has been a shift in foreign aid budgets to African countries. According to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s recent analysis of Foreign Aid to Africa (2014), more money is now being given for population control programs than for health, water supply, sanitation, and education—and nearly for all of them combined. For other continents and regions of similar socioeconomic status, however, population control budgets comprise just a small percentage of development assistance. There is clearly an unmistakable priority among some in developed nations to have fewer babies from Africa.

          The practice of abortion is also sexist. While over the course of several decades there has been much progress ending discrimination against women in the workplace, education, healthcare, culture, access to ownership, and control over land and other property, financial services, inheritance law, and other legal structures, there has been relatively little work against ending the practice of the systematic discrimination against the youngest girls in the womb. As scholar Mara Hvistendahl documented in her monumental work “Unnatural Selection,” there is now an international deficit of 160 million girls who have gone “missing,” because they have been preferentially chosen to have their lives ended through the combination of pre-genetic screening followed by sex-selection abortion. Many groups and agencies that say they are advancing the cause of women and girls are notably silent when the most vulnerable of those they claim to be defending are being systematically targeted. Such tacit cooperation in this lethal form of discrimination against girls is, at the very least, inconsistent.

           The practice of abortion similarly discriminates against the handicapped—and does so badly. We see this in a particularly repellant way in the case of those diagnosed in the womb with Down Syndrome. Last August, CBS News reported that Iceland was on the verge of eliminating Down Syndrome, but what it really meant was that Iceland was eliminating those with Down Syndrome, because 100 percent of parents of babies who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome have been choosing to end the life of their son or daughter. In Croatia, it’s similarly 100 percent; in Denmark, 98; in France, Germany, and Spain, 96; in many other countries, over 90.

          Rather than stop it, many abet it. In November 2017, one of the members of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, based in Geneva, stated during an official meeting, “If you tell a woman, ‘Your child has…Down Syndrome … or that he may have a handicap forever, for the rest of his life,’ … It should be possible for her to resort to abortion to avoid the handicap as a preventive measure.” Defending those with disabilities, he said, “does not mean that we have to accept to let a disabled fetus live.” How can such a position be consistent with the human rights of those with disabilities? In a March 14column in the Washington Post, George Will made the case that what we are confronting with respect to Down Syndrome, in Iceland and beyond, is a “genocide,” the deliberate attempt to eliminate a category of people.

            Speaking in June 2016 at a Jubilee Mass for the Sick and Those with Disabilities, Pope Francis spoke to the logic behind those who permit the practice of aborting those with disabilities. “It is thought that sick or disabled persons cannot be happy,” he said, “since they cannot live the lifestyle held up by the culture of pleasure and entertainment. In some cases, we are even told that it is better to eliminate them as soon as possible. They fail to understand the real meaning of life, which also has to do with accepting suffering and limitations. The world does not become better because only apparently ‘perfect’ people live there…but [becomes better] when human solidarity, mutual acceptance and respect increase.” In October 2017, at a Vatican Conference on People with Disabilities, Pope Francis said that “at the cultural level, through a prevailing false understanding of life…an often narcissistic and utilitarian vision unfortunately leads not a few to consider persons with disabilities…as if [their condition] prevents one from achieving happiness and self-fulfillment. It is demonstrated by the eugenic trend of ending the lives of the unborn who show some form of imperfection.”

          The statistics show that those with Down Syndrome and their families not only can be happy but are among the happiest groups of people alive. A 2011 Study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics by Harvard University Researchers associated with Boston Children’s hospital showed that 99 percent of those with Down Syndrome say they are happy with their lives, 97 percent like who they are, 96 percent like how they look, 99 percent of them love their families, 97 percent like their siblings and 86 percent said they make friends easily. Ninety-nine percent of their parents say that they love their child with Down Syndrome, 79 percent testify that their outlook on life is more positive because of their child, and only 4 percent regret having their child. Among siblings 12 and older, 94 percent declare they are proud to have a brother or sister with Down Syndrome, 88 percent say they are better people because of him or her, and only 4 and 7 percent respectively say that they would “trade their sibling in” for another or are embarrassed by their brother or sister.

          Can you think of any other situation that would show such high numbers among children with a particular condition or no condition at all, and among their parents, and siblings? Yet, tragically, the vast majority of those diagnosed in the womb with Down Syndrome are being aborted while so many others permit this lethal form of discrimination; as if it is somehow self-evidently for everyone’s good.

          What can we learn from the abortion exception to the practice of discrimination? I think we can see how corrosive permitting abortion is to moral reasoning in general. Most people opposed to racism, sexism, and discrimination against those with disabilities are at the very least uneasy with the use of abortion preferentially to eliminate African-Americans, girls, or the physically or mentally disabled. They recognize, however, that if they were to say or insist that abortion should not be used against certain categories of people, then logically they would have to answer the question why should it be permitted against anyone. If it is against the human dignity of some, is it not against the human dignity of everyone?

January 13, 2019

         We all celebrate our birthday with great joy. We have just celebrated the birthday of Jesus, certainly the greatest birthday of all. Now we are celebrating the feast of His baptism. But I wonder how many of us celebrate the anniversary of our baptisms? How many of us even know when we were baptized? This Sunday, the liturgical season of Christmas comes to a conclusion with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. This is a time when we might ask ourselves why Jesus would allow Himself to be baptized by John the Baptist and what practical applications might we make in our own lives.

        There is a difference between the baptism of John the Baptist and the baptism that Jesus gives to us.  The word baptism means to submerge in water. Baptism was not unknown to the Jewish people. Within the Jewish tradition there was a rite of immersion for legal purification for those who had become defiled under the Mosaic Law. Baptism was also used for Gentile converts to Judaism. Moreover, the Jewish Qumran, a community in existence during the time of Jesus, had been practicing baptism as a rite of initiation and purification over a period of years.

         From the beginning, John's baptism focused on conversion. His exhortations and appeals for personal repentance prepared the people to receive those graces which Christian baptism gives to us. While John's baptism, a ritualistic expression of conversion, penance, and repentance, did not confer sanctifying grace, Jesus' baptism, a sacrament necessary for salvation, does bestow upon the baptized sanctifying grace.

         Jesus had no need of conversion and repentance.  He is the sinless one. So, why did Jesus allow Himself to be baptized? There are a number of reasons that we can consider. First of all, Jesus needs to make Himself known to the Jewish people. A number of years ago, I had an opportunity to work in a mission territory in a very poor part of South America. Telephones, text messages and email were not always available. Without these means of communication, which we take for granted, it was common to interact with people in a more personal manner. Jesus walked the earth at a time when modern communication and the news media simply did not exist. A spiritual movement within the Jewish people was being stirred up by John the Baptist. It was very appropriate for Jesus to begin His public ministry by making His first public appearance precisely where John was baptizing. It is John the Baptist who announces to the crowds: "Behold, the Lamb of God!" (John 1: 36). Two of John's disciples are so moved by Jesus' appearance that they decide to become His disciples. Thus, Jesus uses the act of baptism as a means to make Himself known to the people.

         Secondly, the Lord's baptism is a moment of decision and identification. For thirty years He has faithfully carried out His Father's will in the ordinary circumstances of His hidden life. Now the Father is calling Him to begin His public ministry. By being baptized, Jesus, although He is sinless, identifies Himself with the very people that He has come to save. At Calvary, Jesus takes the sin of the world upon Himself.  In a similar way, as He immerses Himself in the waters of the Jordan, the sinless one takes upon Himself the sins of humanity. Through His baptism, Jesus announces to the world that His public ministry has begun.  In His humanity, He freely chooses to complete this mission and makes a free decision: He will carry out the Father's will to its' ultimate consequence. Through His baptism, Jesus identifies Himself with all of us (sinful humanity) so that we can come to Him filled with total confidence and peace.

         It would be a mistake to consider, as some spiritual writers do, that Jesus was confused about His identity and did not know that He was the Messiah until his baptism in the Jordan. On this matter, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear. "The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man. During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that falsified it" (CCC 464).

"This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, 'increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man', and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking 'the form of a slave'.

But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God's Son expressed the divine life of his person. The human nature of God's Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God.  Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father.  The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.

By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal. What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal" (CCC 472-474).

         As we contemplate the mystery of Christ's baptism, there are a number of practical applications that we can consider. 

          In today's culture, many people, even those who are baptized Christians, have great difficulty with their own identity. Many people wonder what their purpose is in this life. People find little or no meaning as they carry out their daily activities. A cloud of laziness hangs over many people as they also strive to find direction for their lives. This Sunday's liturgy shows us that Jesus gives us meaning, purpose, and direction. It is through the sacrament of baptism that we become His disciples. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and it is precisely in Jesus that our human existence finds fulfillment.

          Moreover, the consideration of Jesus' baptism, gives us an opportunity to remember our own baptism. If you do not know the date of your own baptism, it is a good idea to go through your personal files and find out when it occurred. Many people celebrate the anniversary of their baptism with a special celebration like a birthday. After all, baptism is the day that we are reborn. We become children of God, active members of the Church, and temples of the Holy Spirit. Original sin is washed away; we receive sanctifying grace and the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. The reality of baptism certainly gives us great cause to celebrate.

         Finally, as we contemplate the baptism of the Lord, we are reminded of our apostolic mission as disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus commissions the Church to go forth and baptize all nations. It is erroneous to deny that baptism is essential for salvation. The large numbers of people who have not been baptized should inspire us to always seek the salvation of souls. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove at Jesus' baptism underscores the apostolic dimension of baptism, precisely because it is the Holy Spirit who appears as tongues of fire at the moment when the Church begins its mission to baptize all nations.

January 6, 2018

           Before I entered the seminary, there were three significant days in my week: Monday was the much dreaded day school or work began; Wednesday was the hopeful hump day when most of the week was over; and Friday was the glorious final day of the week that ushered us into the weekend. Since then, I have gained a new appreciation for the sacredness of time. The liturgical cycle gives shape and meaning to the year, and each season brings new significance. But the liturgical year is just the beginning. Did you know Mother Church has also assigned meaning to each day and month of the year? Let’s briefly examine the significance of each day and month.

Holy Days

     Sunday: The Holy Trinity – Sunday is dedicated to the Holy Trinity. This is entirely fitting as Sunday is the first day of the week and the day when we offer God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) our praise, adoration, and thanksgiving.

     Monday: The Angels – Monday is the day in which we remember the angels. Angels are powerful guardians, and each of us is protected by one. Many of the saints had a great devotion to the angels in general and to their guardian angel in particular.

     Tuesday: The Apostles – The Catholic Church is apostolic. That is, it is founded on the authority and teaching of the apostles, most especially that of St. Peter to whom Jesus gave the keys of his kingdom. Each bishop is a direct successor of the apostles.

     Wednesday: Saint Joseph – Saint Joseph is known as the prince and chief patron of the Church. As the earthly father of Jesus, he had a special role in protecting, providing for, and instructing Jesus during His earthly life. Now that Christ is ascended into heaven, St. Joseph continues his fatherly guardianship of Christ’s body, the Church.

     Thursday: The Holy Eucharist – Our Lord instituted the most Holy Eucharist on a Thursday, so it is fitting that we remember this greatest of sacraments on this day. The Eucharist is the greatest gift of God to mankind, as it is nothing less than Jesus Himself. What gift could be greater?

     Friday: The Passion – Jesus was scourged, mocked, and crucified on a Friday. Because of this, the Church has always set aside Fridays as days of penance and sacrifice. While the U.S. sadly does not require abstinence from meat on Fridays, penance is still required in one form or another. This day should always be a day of repentance and a day in which we recall Christ’s complete self-sacrifice to save us from our sins.

     Saturday: Our Lady – There are a number of theological reasons Saturdays are dedicated to Our Lady, perhaps the most significant is that on Holy Saturday, when everyone else had abandoned Christ in the tomb, she was faithful to Him, confidently waiting for His resurrection on the first day of the week.

Holy Months

      January: The Holy Name of Jesus – There is no name more powerful than the name of Jesus. The Catechism sums up the power of this name beautifully: “The name ‘Jesus’ contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray ‘Jesus’ is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him” (CCC #2666).

       February: The Holy Family – The Holy Family is an earthly reflection of the Holy Trinity. By meditating on the Holy Family, we can learn the meaning of love, obedience, and true fatherhood and motherhood. We are also reminded that the family is the foundational unit of both society and the Church.

     March: St. Joseph – St. Joseph is the icon of God the Father–silent but active and perfectly providing for the needs of all. The Church constantly invokes the protection of St. Joseph, admonishing us to ite ad Joseph, go to Joseph.

     April: The Blessed Sacrament – Holy Church is the guardian of the Holy Eucharist. For two thousand years she has guarded this treasure, administering it to the faithful and proclaiming that it is nothing less than Jesus Himself. We can never be too devoted to the Blessed Sacrament or show it too much honor.

     May: The Blessed Virgin Mary – Our Lady has long been associated with the beauty of flowers and the coming of spring. This is fitting because she is both beautiful and the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the life of the world. In May, the Church remembers our glorious lady with crownings and processions in her honor.

       June: The Sacred Heart of Jesus – The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the revelation of God’s immense love for us. It is often depicted as a fiery furnace, pierced and broken, but beating with love. The Sacred Heart is also a profound reminder of the humanity of our Lord, for His heart is not a mere symbol, but a true physical reality.

     July: The Precious Blood – The blood of Christ saves us from sin. It is the blood of Christ that gives us the hope of heaven. St. Paul tells us that Jesus reconciled “to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). Without the blood of Christ shed for us, all would be lost.

     August: The Immaculate Heart of Mary – The heart of Mary is a motherly heart, a heart full of love and mercy for her children. The heart of Mary is also the channel through which all the graces of God flow down to us. She is “our life, our sweetness, and our hope.”

     September: The Seven Sorrows of Mary – Aside from Jesus, no human being has suffered more than our Blessed Mother. In perfect obedience to the will of God, she consented to her son’s torture, humiliation, and brutal executed for our salvation. As any parent knows, watching one’s child suffer is the greatest suffering of all. Mary still bears the sufferings of her divine Son in her heart.

     October: The Holy Rosary – The rosary is one of the most powerful weapons the Church possesses. We are constantly exhorted by saints, popes, and Our Lord and Our Lady themselves to pray this simple yet profound prayer. Accordingly, Mother Church has set aside a whole month to the promotion of this prayer.

     November: The Souls in Purgatory – The souls in purgatory are suffering a great deal, and they cannot pray for themselves. They are our brothers and sisters, and as members of the body of Christ, we must pray and offer sacrifices for those who have gone before us, asking that they may rest in the light of God’s presence.

     December: The Immaculate Conception – The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a profound mystery. In the Immaculate Conception, Mary was without sin from the first moment of her conception. She is perfectly united forever to her spouse, the Holy Spirit. Their fruitful union produced a wedding of heaven and earth in the God-Man, Jesus Christ. We will meditate on these truths for all eternity.

          The Church takes seriously the call to sanctify all things, even time. The Catholic significance of days and months is a profound reminder that our lives are finite, and that time should not be squandered. As the Psalmist said, “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). But more than anything, it reminds us that time is a gift from God, and with Him and through Him, all things are holy, and nothing is without meaning.

December 30, 2018

            In April of this year, Pope Francis published an apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness in today’s world. Entitled Gaudete et Exsultate, “Rejoice and Be Glad,” taken from Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, the papal appeal passionately urges us “not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence,” but to commit ourselves, body and soul, to responding to God’s “call to holiness in today’s world.” The relatively short and often eloquent exhortation is unique in magisterial style. Normally Popes only use the second person singular (“tu” in Romance languages) in letters to young people or to individuals. The Pope strikingly uses it throughout this letter, seeking to draw each of us— including you and me—into dialogue.

          “I would like to insist,” he writes, “primarily on the call to holiness that the Lord addresses to each of us, the call that he also addresses, personally, to you: ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’” Addressing any possible anxiety we might have before such a vocation to sanctity, he counsels, “Do not be afraid of holiness. It will take away none of your energy, vitality, or joy. On the contrary, you will become what the Father had in mind when he created you, and you will be faithful to your deepest self.” The exhortation was fittingly released on April 9, the Solemnity of the Annunciation this year (March 25 was Palm Sunday), because Christ took on our humanity so that we might participate in His divinity. Holiness is our sharing in divine life.

          “At its core, holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life,” he states. “It consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his self-sacrificing love.”

          However, Pope Francis did not want to write a “treatise on holiness,” but rather to “repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges, and opportunities.” Holiness is not an idea, like the Gnostics believe, thinking that holiness depends fundamentally on what we know. Holiness, rather, depends on how we put into practice what we have learned from Christ. Christianity, after all, “is a practical religion: it is not there to be thought about, but to be practiced, to be done.”

          Moreover, Pope Francis has written the most extensive, practical treatise on the call to holiness in the history of the papacy. I would urge everyone to read this letter in its entirety (vatican.va). But as a primer, I would like to share ten practical nuggets Pope Francis shares.

          First, holiness is the deepest meaning of our life. “A Christian cannot think of his or her mission on earth,” the Pope notes, “without seeing it as a path of holiness, for [as St. Paul wrote], ‘This is the will of God, your sanctification.’ Each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel.” He says that it’s “to the extent that each Christian grows in holiness [that] he or she will bear greater fruit for our world.”

            Second, holiness is found in ordinary daily life. It does not involve “swooning in mystic rapture,” or having the stigmata, or being listed on the rolls of canonized saints and martyrs. We are not called to be Saint Someone Else and therefore “should not grow discouraged before examples of holiness that appear unattainable.” There’s a “middle class of holiness,” he says humorously, often found “in our next-door neighbors,” among our “own mothers, grandmothers and loved ones,” who “living in our midst reflect God’s presence.” We are all called to this holiness “through small gestures,” mindful that “every minute of our lives can be a step along the path to growth in holiness.”

            Third, holiness begins with desire. St. Thomas Aquinas stressed that to become a saint we have to “will it.” Pope Francis says he wrote the exhortation to help the “whole Church devote herself anew to promoting the desire for holiness” and praying that God will “pour out upon us a fervent longing to be saints for God’s greater glory.” This desire for holiness, however, does not mean it is principally our work. Pope Francis cautions us against the Pelagian heresy that pretends that holiness depends exclusively on our personal strength and abilities. Rather, it depends on God and His grace. “Only on the basis of God’s gift, freely accepted and humbly received can we cooperate by our own efforts in our progressive transformation.”

                Fourth, God carries out the work of our sanctification, among other ways, through the traditional means of sanctification already known to us: the various methods of prayer, the inestimable sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, the offering of personal sacrifices, different forms of devotion, spiritual direction, and many others as well.” We should take all of these seriously.

            Fifth, holiness can be understood more simply as living the Beatitudes. “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when he gave us the Beatitudes,” Pope Francis writes. “In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives:…being poor of heart,…reacting with meekness and humility,…knowing how to mourn with others, … hungering and thirsting for righteousness, … seeing and acting with mercy …keeping a heart free of all that tarnishes love,…sowing peace all around us,…accepting daily the path of the Gospel, even though it may cause us problems, that is holiness.”

          Sixth, holiness flows from a life of prayer. “Holiness consists in a habitual openness to the transcendent, expressed in prayer and adoration. The saints are distinguished by a spirit of prayer and a need for communion with God,” the Holy Father indicates. “I do not believe in holiness without prayer.” Part of that prayer is discernment, since the path of holiness is “given to us by the Spirit,” helping us to hear His voice and attune our lives to Him. Discernment is “an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God, who helps us to carry out the mission to which he has called us.”

          Seventh, our prayer must overflow into charity. “We cannot forget that the best way to discern if our prayer is authentic is to judge to what extent our life is being transformed in the light of mercy,” Pope Francis says. Holiness “is nothing other than charity lived to the full.” He says that we have to “acknowledge and accept…the uncompromising demands of Jesus” to care for Him in the poor, sick, stranger, naked, ill, imprisoned, and needy (Mt 25:31-46) because “our Lord made it very clear that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands.” The ultimate criterion on which our lives will be judged, he says “is what we have done for others.”

          Eighth, our holy, self-giving love must be cheerful. “Far from being timid, morose, acerbic or melancholy,…the saints are joyful and full of good humor.” The exhortation is entitled “Rejoice and Be Glad” because the Christian life is marked by “joy in the Holy Spirit,” which is what helps make holiness “the most attractive face of the Church.” Each of us is called to have that joyous face.

          Ninth, growth in holiness is a battle that requires perseverance, patience, courage, and meekness. “Holiness is…boldness,” Pope Francis says. “You cannot grow in holiness without committing yourself, body and soul, to giving your best to this endeavor,” because “The Christian life is a constant battle. The battle is not just against the ways of the world or against our human weaknesses and inclinations; it is also a “constant struggle against the devil” who incessantly seeks to divert us from the path of sanctity—and from God—in this world and in the next. For that reason, “Those who really wish to give glory to God by their lives, who truly long to grow in holiness, are called to be single-minded and tenacious.”

          Finally, holiness is not principally a solitary battle, but one waged in communion with God and his faithful in heaven and on earth. “Growth in holiness is a journey in community, side by side with others,” something we see in the Holy Family in Nazareth, in the early Church, in so many homes and religious communities today. We are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1) urging us on to victory, so that we may truly become one as God is one, a communion of saints within the Triune communion. Among all the saints, Pope Francis proudly stresses, stands Mary, who “teaches us the way of holiness and walks ever at our side.”

          The path that Pope Francis is describing is not easy. This battle entails, he writes, “a readiness to make sacrifices, even to sacrificing everything.” But he adds, “God asks everything of us, yet he also gives everything to us. He does not want to enter our lives to cripple or diminish them, but to bring them to fulfillment.” That fulfillment is the eternal life to which God summons each of us through the universal call to holiness—which Pope Francis has now engagingly made more practical.

December 23, 2018

           One of the most rewarding aspects of the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations in New York is the ability to organize conferences at UN headquarters to shine a spotlight on realities that deserve greater attention and to give a voice to those whose cries for help are not adequately heard. In November of last year, the Church sponsored two conferences on what Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities have endured at the merciless hands of ISIS. Since ISIS has been militarily defeated in Iraq and is on the verge of defeat in Syria, there is a serious risk that the attention of the world will move to other crises. But we cannot forget what happened or those who suffered. While we tragically could not prevent the barbarities Christians, Yezidis and others endured, we must act to bring them justice, help them rebuild, and prevent ISIS from achieving one of its main objectives, which is the liquidation of ethnic diversity and religious pluralism from the region.

            We heard first-hand from survivors of ISIS atrocities and focused on what was needed to hold accountable the barbarians who carried out their sadistic rampage of murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, suicide bombings, enslavement, forced marriage, human trafficking, rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence—in short, what the United States, Iraq, Hungary, Lithuania, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the European Union and others have termed a genocide.

            We heard from a courageous Yezidi girl, Ekhlas Khudur Bajoo, who on August 3, 2014, was kidnapped by ISIS as they invaded her city of Sinjar. Her father was brutally executed, as part of a mass murder of males in the village. She, at 14, was sold into sexual slavery with hundreds of other girls and raped and humiliated each day for six months. Her sufferings were so severe she tried, but failed, to take her life. Three times she attempted to escape but was caught by ISIS troops, beaten and tortured. Finally on her fourth attempt, she succeeded. She came to the UN conference to speak on behalf of all those women who have suffered or are still suffering. She begged everyone present to “wipe our tears, heal our wounds, bring back the smiles on our faces, and rescue the girls who remain in captivity.” She finished by appealing, “I ask you not to remain silent. Stand with me and with all the survivors. Bring back our smiles.”

          We heard by video from a Syrian Christian, Gaby, who was kidnapped by ISIS and tortured for three weeks before his family arranged a costly ransom. We also heard from Dr. Nezar Taib, a psychiatrist and regional health director in Dohuk, who catalogued for us the various physical and psychological traumas among the thousands fleeing from ISIS terror and captivity whom he and his team have treated. Everyone present, from Ambassadors, to NGO delegates, to experts on the Middle East were repeatedly moved to tears. One of the UN technicians told a reporter that he has worked for 30 years at the UN—helping to run several conferences a day, five days a week (an estimated 40,000 conferences)—and said that this event was the most compelling he had ever attended.

              The second conference focused on the rebuilding necessary to help those who had been driven from the Nineveh Plain by ISIS to return home. We heard from Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Erbil, where most of the Christian refugees were welcomed, and Fr. Salar Kajo, pastor of three affected parishes in the north of Iraq, where Christians are now returning. We also heard from ambassadors from countries and leaders of three organizations—the Knights of Columbus, Aid to the Church in Need USA, and the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee—that are heavily committed to the rebuilding effort.

              ISIS left many of the cities and towns of the region in rubble, destroying homes, Churches, schools, public utilities and infrastructure. What is needed is the equivalent of a “Marshall Plan” that was used to reconstruct bomb damaged Europe after World War II. It begins by clearing rubble, rebuilding or refurbishing houses, reestablishing water and electricity, and reconstructing medical, educational and community infrastructure; next, creating jobs through microfinancing so that a local economy can be established and people can transition from dependency to self-sufficiency; then providing physical and psychological care to those in need, educating the young and training them to help rebuild their societies. This is not just to return to them what ISIS sought to pillage from them. It is also to ensure the true defeat of ISIS.

              Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, echoed the fear of the great Lebanese Statesmen, Charles Malik, one of the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II. “You may win every battle, but if you lose the war of ideas, you will have lost the war. … My deepest fear—and your greatest problem—is that you may not be winning the war of ideas.” Anderson commented, “While ISIS is now gone as a military force, so too are the victims they forcibly evicted. The philosophy behind their genocide–the idea of cleansing Iraq of religious minority groups like Yezidis and Christians–is on the cusp of success. Quite simply, if the religious minorities displaced by ISIS do not return to their ancestral homes in sizeable numbers, ISIS will have won the battle of ideas. In that case, not just Nineveh, and not just Iraq, but the entire world will be poorer for that outcome–and threatened by it.”

              The only way to make sure ISIS cannot claim any victory is to restore Christians, and with them pluralism and diversity, to where ISIS ravaged. The Nineveh Plains had been home to more than 40 percent of the Christian population of Iraq, but in most of the region, only 12 percent of the Christians have been able to return. Archbishop Warda stated, “One positive outcome that has followed the genocide by ISIS has been the denouncing of their tactics by the entire world community–Christians, Muslims and others. Now it is time for action as well as words. Not only the West, but Islamic countries as well, who have been affected by terror of ISIS’ ideology, must commit resources to save pluralism in Iraq as a manifestation of their opposition to this ideology of hatred and genocide.”

              Father Kajo spoke on behalf of his parishioners, who “want only to live in peace … in our historic lands where we have harmed no one.” They are deeply afraid of more violence, he said, and for that reason “sleep with suitcases already packed” and “only buy small amounts of food.” He said that even though “there are many tragedies in this world today, and our story is only a small one now. Please do not forget the persecuted minorities of the Nineveh Plain.”

              Pope Francis hasn’t forgotten them and is trying to stir the world to remember them. Last year, when he was given a special edition Lamborghini Huracan, he announced that it would be auctioned off so that the proceeds could be given to the “Return to the Roots” project being coordinated by the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee (a unified effort of the three major Christian churches in the Nineveh Plain) with the help of Aid to the Church in Need and the Knights of Columbus. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, his Secretary of State, called the work of the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee “praiseworthy and greatly needed” and expressed the “deep appreciation and encouragement” of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church “for this noble and difficult effort.”

              If you would like to help out in this noble, difficult rebuilding effort, I would urge you to go to www.christiansatrisk.org, the site set up by the Knights of Columbus to channel support directly to the Church’s efforts in the region. The average cost to repair or rebuild a home for a family in the region is $2,000, and so your contributions will go a long way.

          As we prepare for Christmas, meditate upon the generosity of the Magi who came from the East, and ponder with horror the slaughter of the Holy Innocents soon after Christ’s birth; we have the opportunity to do something to help those who are striving to keep the memory of the Prince of Peace alive in the region where the Church is not just a branch of Christianity but a root, where the disciples were not converted by St. Paul, but baptized him.

December 16, 2018

         On July 25, the Church marked the fiftieth anniversary of the most reviled and rejected magisterial document of all time. Many papal encyclicals remain unread, others are perused and ignored, but Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae was pervasively condemned and opposed. This antipathy came not only from predictable sources, like radical secularists, sexual revolutionaries and anti-Catholic Christians, but also from remarkably atypical ones, such as various Catholic bishops, priests, religious, theologians, and otherwise observant married couples.

          Since its publication, surveys have shown that over ninety percent of Catholic spouses at some point in their marriage have contravened its moral summons and that most consider its teaching on the immorality of the use of contraception in marriage erroneous. Opposition to it ushered in an age of dissent, both open and private, since if the Church can be wrong in teaching about marital morality, then how can her teaching be trusted in other areas? And the hostile reaction to it has led, among other things, to a severe enfeeblement of the teaching office of the Church, as many clergy, theologians and catechists, called to preach the Gospel in and out of season, have remained mute, refusing out of embarrassment, fear of opposition, or pusillanimity masquerading as prudence, to acknowledge its existence, not to mention faithfully transmit its teaching.

          So why does the Church celebrate its Golden Jubilee? Because the teaching of Humanae Vitae is nevertheless unmistakably true. Its message, at the dawn of the Sexual Revolution, was both heroic and prophetic. Its predictions of what widespread contraceptive use would lead to have become sadly and conspicuously validated—marital infidelity, general lowering of moral standards, the objectification and instrumentalization of women, the coercive use of it by public authorities. Other negative consequences that were not mentioned but flow from a contraceptive mentality and lifestyle metastasized—promiscuity, divorce, out of wedlock conception, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, in vitro fertilization, cloning, embryonic experimentation and destruction, widespread under-population, the acceptance of same-sex sexual activity and ultimately the redefinition of marriage according to a non-procreative ideal has resulted. Honest observers are increasingly admitting that Paul VI was right about both effects and cause.

          Truth in general is often unpopular and rejected. Most of the Old Testament prophets experienced severe rejection, many were persecuted and some were executed. It was only later, once the people had experienced the consequences of persevering in sinful behavior, that their words were acknowledged as coming from God, accepted, and put into practice. Jesus Himself experienced rejection in Nazareth and in Jerusalem, including from religious leaders who conspired with the Romans to kill Him. Even among His disciples in every age, most dissent in practice from His more challenging teachings, like loving one’s enemies, picking up their Cross daily, forgiving seventy times seven, living the Beatitudes, and treating everyone in need as if we were caring for Him personally. And we see the popular rejection of the truth throughout Church history. Saint Jerome wrote during the fourth century, “The whole world awoke with a groan to find itself Arian,” because so many Christian faithful and clergy had accepted the heresy that Christ was really a creature, not God.

          Truth, however, is not determined by polls of popularity. Pope Paul VI anticipated opposition to Humanae Vitae. “Perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching,” he wrote, but added that the Church cannot “evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical.” He said that the Church, “no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a ‘sign of contradiction.’” And in the last century, there is no way that the Church has been a greater sign of contradiction than with regard to Paul VI’s and the Church’s efforts to keep conjugal love open to the love and will of God.

          However, to regard the Church’s teaching on contraception as a fundamental “sign of contradiction” is to do it an injustice, because it is not principally a negative retort to Playboy, pills, and prophylatics, but a positive articulation of the goodness of human love in the divine plan. The fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae is a chance for the Church to ponder that Gospel anew and commit herself to understand it better, live it, and proclaim it. At the same time, the Golden Jubilee is an occasion for an honest examination of how we have received the gift of the truth contained in Humanae Vitae, confess where we have failed, and make a firm amendment ecclesially and individually to live and announce its sanctifying message better. We can consider several areas of needed improvement.

          First, we must do a better job on proposing moral alternatives to contraception. Paul VI noted that there are serious physical, economic, psychological and social reasons why a couple might determine that conceiving a child at the present time would be imprudent. Many think, however, that contraception and complete abstinence are the only options. That is why teaching fertility awareness methods in accordance with the extraordinary growth in scientific knowledge since the “rhythm method” of the 1960s is so important. Not only do fertility awareness methods promote respect for women, increase spousal communication and dramatically decrease divorce rates, but the knowledge they provide are among a couple’s greatest aids when they hope to conceive. Every engaged couple should receive this training. It should also be a standard offering in a parish’s accompaniment of families as well as part of the remote sacramental marriage preparation in every religious education program. Failure to do so is a spiritual malpractice that only abets the contraceptive culture.

            Second, we must assist couples to involve God in their approach to sex and children. Making love is meant to express in body language what a couple says verbally before the altar–that they give themselves wholly and receive the other just as God made them–without rejecting their built-in capacities to become a mom or dad in the very act God made for those capacities to be expressed. Many couples unfortunately put up in their bedrooms a virtual “No entry” sign to God, eliminating the procreative significance from their love-making and thereby effectively evicting the Creator. Many couples, moreover, make “planning” decisions about family size without prayerfully consulting God. This Jubilee is an opportunity to assist them to unite all aspects of their married life to God.

          Third, we must honor and thank those couples who have faithfully sought to live by the teaching of the Church without much support and encouragement from fellow couples, their parishes and the wider Church. Whether by generously raising up a large family of disciples or having recourse to moral means when their circumstances do not permit it, many are true heroes of faith whose example should be put on a lampstand.

          Fourth, we must overcome our shame in preaching the challenging parts of the faith. Many clergy and married couples treat the teaching of Humanae Vitae as “bad news” rather than Good News and clam up out of embarrassment. St. Paul experienced similar shame early in his apostolate with regard to the Cross, but eventually the reality of Jesus’ crucifixion and the need to be “crucified with Christ” became his boast. He would urge us, like he urged the first Christians, not to be ashamed of the Gospel. The teaching of Humanae Vitae is not a peripheral or optional part of the Catholic faith, because essential to our faith is loving God and loving neighbor, and neither God nor one’s spouse is sincerely loved through the sins involved in contraception. The Church needs to proclaim that love with apostolic boldness all the more at a time when many treat lust as a god and when the sexual revolution catalyzed by contraception has left so many hurt and our culture ailing.

          Fifth, we must strengthen the teaching of Humanae Vitae by communicating its substance in ever fresh and adequate ways. This is what St. Pope John Paul II sought to do. While absolutely agreeing with its conclusions, John Paul thought that Paul VI’s natural law analysis of the “conjugal act” was not the most effective means to communicate the “why” behind the “what” of the Church’s teaching. For a subjectivist, emotivist age, he did not think an objectivistic analysis of spousal actions, however coherent, would be widely convincing. Philosophically, he sketched out a personalistic, anthropological analysis of what the use of contraception does to men, women and their attitudes toward children–the truth of which readers could verify on the basis of personal experience. Theologically, especially through his famous Catecheses on the “Theology of the Body,” he sought to ground the teaching on contraception in the light of Sacred Scripture, which he was convinced would be more persuasive to people of faith than objectivistic natural law argumentation. Communicating the faith always involves seeking the best methods to convey unchangeable teaching in changing times. The fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae is an opportunity for evangelically faithful creativity.

          The history of the Church has shown that the reforms of popes, ecumenical councils, and new religious orders often take decades to take root and be appreciated. Sometimes the words of prophets, moreover, are valued only after people have suffered because of a failure to heed them. Humanae Vitae’s fiftieth anniversary is a time to read it with renewed eyes, and to pray that its prophetic teaching on the blessing of marital love in God’s plan—and the affliction that cannot be avoided when that gift is treated as a curse—will be listened to anew and responded to with humble and courageous faith.

April 28, 2019

           History was made in 2014 as Pope Francis celebrated a joint canonization of two predecessors, both from his lifetime, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. Of the 266 Popes who have served the Church, 80 are canonized saints, but none had ever been canonized with another successor of St. Peter–three holy Bishops of Rome, the two raised to the altars and the one presiding at the altar. Making the day even more significant was the fact that they were canonized on the Feast of Divine Mercy, which was a central theme, perhaps the central, prominent theme, in the life of all three Popes.

            John XXIII’s most notable papal achievement was the calling of the Second Vatican Council, but in his famous October 11, 1962, speech to open the Council, he framed the entire Council in a merciful key. The point of the Council, he said, was to guard and teach more efficaciously the “sacred deposit of Christian doctrine.” In the past, he said, the Church “condemned with the utmost severity” the errors of various ages, but he said that today the Church must prefer “the balm of mercy to the arm of severity…by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations.” It is no wonder why he once called himself “a teacher of mercy and truth,” for he recognized that both are needed.

              In 1962, he published the encyclical Paenitentiam Agere on the gift of God’s mercy and the importance for us to recognize our need for it, come to receive it in the Sacrament of Penance, and do interior and exterior penance. This was, he declared, the best way to prepare for the Council, so that the “good seed that the Council will scatter far and wide over the Church in those days [will] not be allowed to go to waste,” but rather find “hearts that are ready and prepared, loyal and true.” The fruits of the Council would happen in abundance, he believed, only if the soil of receptivity had been fertilized with God’s mercy. One might argue that among the reasons for the chaos, confusion, and dissent that occurred in the Church after Vatican II was that John’s summons to conversion, penance, and mercy was not adequately followed.

              One of John Paul II’s principal tasks was accurately and effectively to implement the Second Vatican Council that John XXIII convened and in which the future Polish Pope participated as a young bishop. It is no surprise, therefore, that he sought to bring what Papa Roncalli called the “balm of mercy” to the modern world. John Paul II was spurred on in a particular way by the private revelations Jesus had given to a young Krakovian Sister named Faustina Kowalska.

                 Curiously, during John XXIII’s pontificate, Sr. Faustina’s diary was placed on a list of condemned books because a faulty Italian translation made it seem as if Jesus had revealed to her that forgiveness of sins could happen through devotional practices alone outside the Sacrament of His Mercy. However, when the future John Paul II became Archbishop of Krakow, he had his former teacher and doctoral dissertation adviser, Fr. Ignacy Rozycki, examine her writings dogmatically in order to show their consistency with Church teaching and eventually lead to her total rehabilitation.

              When he was elected the successor of St. Peter, John Paul II framed his entire Pontificate within the scope of God’s mercy. In 1981, he said, “Right from the beginning of my ministry in St. Peter’s See in Rome, I consider this message [of Divine Mercy] my special task.” In 1997, he added, “The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me. This was also my personal experience, which I took with me to the See of Peter and which in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate.” In August 1992, he solemnly entrusted the world to Divine Mercy “with the burning desire that the message of God’s merciful love…be made known to all peoples of the earth.”

                He would declare in 1997, “There is nothing that man needs more than Divine mercy,” and in his second encyclical, “God is Rich in Mercy,” he would write, “The Church must bear witness to the mercy of God revealed in Christ…seeking to introduce it and to make it incarnate in the lives both of her faithful and as far as possible in the lives of all people of good will…[and] to call upon the mercy of God, imploring it in the face of all the manifestations of physical and moral evil.”

          In 1993, he beatified Sister Faustina and seven years later, he canonized her, solemnly declaring the Second Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday. Because of his devotion to proclaiming the Gospel of God’s Merciful Love, it was fitting that God called him home on the Vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy in 2005, that he was beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2011 and was canonized on that same feast.

          Lastly, mercy has been the fundamental theme in the papacy of Pope Francis. When he was asked if he would accept the papacy, he showed his own personal trust in God’s mercy, responding, “I am a sinner, but I trust in the mercy and infinite patience of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Mercy is the fundamental story of his vocation, receiving his priestly calling totally as a surprise while he was confessing as a 16-year-old. His papal motto, “Miserando atque Eligendo,” emphasizes that in his life and in every life, God calls us in the very same act with which he embraces us in His mercy.

             He has praised John Paul II for grasping, with the help of St. Faustina, that our time is a “kairos” or propitious occasion of mercy. He said that the “whole Gospel, all of Christianity,” is contained in the joy God has in forgiving us, and that “mercy is the true force that can save man and the world.” As Francis canonized John and John Paul, the real story was not the personality and achievements of these three holy popes who will seem to be the central figures but the mercy of God that they received, rejoiced in, and never ceased to offer and proclaim to the Church and the world.