Father Robert T. Cooper

March 29, 2020

          There are many saints fittingly associated with Good Friday: The Blessed Mother, the apostle John, Mary Magdalene, Simon of Cyrene, and Veronica, all of them, in one way or another, supported Jesus as He took our place on death row. The most remarkable saint of all, however, was the one who was with Jesus on death row. The Good Thief certainly was the least likely saint of Good Friday—and maybe of all time. But he is, in some ways, the most fitting Good Friday saint, because he is the greatest model of what Good Friday is all about.

          As He was being nailed to the Cross, Jesus did not cry out in pain. He did not shriek, as men would be expected to do in such circumstances, either insisting on His innocence, or condemning those who sentenced them, or imploring forgiveness for their misdeeds. Jesus, instead, cried out to His Father and begged Him to forgive the sins of others: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” His first thought for those who were brutally killing Him was not retaliation but exculpation. He had come to call and save sinners and, even in agony, never wavered from that mission.

          We see Him fulfill that mission in His interaction with the bandit on His right. After Jesus, hanging on the Cross, had been mocked by the Jewish leaders, by the soldiers, and even by those passing by, He received what may have been the most piercing mockery of all from the thief on His left. St. Luke tells us that the brigand “kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’” While the jeers from soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and the passing mob were probably anticipated, the sneers from the burglar on His side were likely totally unexpected. Jesus had long been known as the “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” He had stuck up for them and risked His reputation for their sake. To be attacked by one of those malefactors with whom Jesus identified with special predilection probably stung as much as the blistering kiss of Judas.

          But God seeks to bring good out of every evil, and from the ridicule from the sinister swindler came the conversion of the dextral. We do not know what it was that got this man, so accustomed to prey on the innocent, to stick up for one. Maybe it was watching Jesus suffer the same pain of crucifixion in a totally different way from him and his fellow thief. Maybe it was hearing His strange plea to the one He called “Father” for the forgiveness of those who were executing Him. Maybe he had concluded at the end of his life that evil simply does not pay and, having wasted his life until then, he did not want to squander the few precious moments he had left.

          Whatever the reason, honesty and the fear of God returned to him. He twisted toward his fellow thief and tried to revivify these traits in him before the time when there would be no time left. Even though it would have been excruciatingly painful for him to talk, he rebuked his fellow rustler and said, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

In doing so, the thief on the right earned for all eternity the paradoxical adjective “good.” He had humbly told the truth. He had thought of someone other than himself. He had stuck up for someone who was innocent. This humble, other-centered honesty is a necessary condition for effective prayer, and it occasioned what might have been the first—and maybe the only—real prayer of his life. Whereas before he might have been tempted to steal what he did not deserve, he now realized, with his pick-pocketing hands nailed to wood, that there was another way: he could ask. He saw now that there was the possibility that someone else, out of sheer goodness and generosity, might give what he could never have merited. So, he turned to the putative malefactor in the middle and asked, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”   

          This prayer showed tremendously deep faith in Jesus. It is quite natural for those who are about to die to desire that people will remember them after they are gone. But in this case, he was asking a dying man—one who would in fact expire before him—to keep him in mind. In doing so, moreover, he saw something that perhaps no one present on Calvary except the Blessed Mother recognized: that this despised, naked, lacerated, blood-soaked, crucified man next to him was a sovereign whose reign was not about to end but to begin. He knew that Jesus would be able to remember.

          Jesus turned His aching head toward His companion in suffering. From His throne on Golgotha, with the largesse benefiting a king, Jesus vastly exceeded what was sought. Not only would the dying thief have a place in His thoughts, he would have a place in His kingdom. “Amen, I say to you,” Jesus declared, “this day you shall be with me in paradise.”

          In the span of an instant, the good thief passed from a sinner to a saint, from a criminal to someone canonized even before his death. And as Jesus once promised, heaven rejoiced more for that repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent. In his great Eucharistic hymn, Adoro Te Devote, St. Thomas Aquinas sings to his Eucharistic Lord, peto quod petivit latro poenitens, “I ask for what the repentant thief asked for!” There is no greater prayer. Jesus died on Good Friday wishing to be able to respond personally to that request from each of us.

March 22, 2020

           At the beginning of the recitation of the Passion according to St. John, we hear of the treachery of the most famous traitor of all time, Judas Iscariot. This was a man who had watched Jesus raise at least three people from the dead, miraculously multiply food to feed multitudes, walk on water, cast out countless demons, and cure scores of people of leprosy, paralysis, withered hands, blindness, hypochondria, and other maladies. He had listened to Him preach and teach vast crowds, leaving them astonished. Along with the other eleven, he had been instructed by the Lord for three years in an intimate mobile seminary. He had even been given the Lord’s own incredible power to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. Yet, after all of this, he valued Jesus less than thirty pieces of silver. He led a band of soldiers to capture his innocent teacher and friend in the Garden of Gethsemane, betraying Him by faking a gesture of love. What happened next, to Jesus and to Judas, we all know.
 
            Some years ago, National Geographic Magazine and many either gullible or complicit media outlets sought to call into question the whole nature of Judas’ betrayal. National Geographic had a dramatic roll-out of the rediscovery of “The Gospel of Judas,” a fourth or fifth-century copy of a second-century document that makes the outrageous claim that Judas was asked by Jesus to betray Him. It paints a story that Judas was considered the strongest and most courageous of the apostles. It describes that Judas would be called apart by Jesus to receive special instruction on the mysteries of the kingdom and was once told by Jesus that he would come to rule over all the others. All of these actions and assertions are found in the midst of flamboyantly outlandish cosmological claims placed either in the mouth of Jesus or in lengthy visions received by Judas himself.
 
              It is silly and surprising that National Geographic and many in the mainstream are taking this document seriously. It was written well over a hundred years after Judas died by a crazy religious group widely known to invent documents and put them into the mouth of famous historical personages. These Gnostics were responsible for the eccentric pseudo-gospels of “the Consummation,” “Eve,” “The Egyptians,” “Peter,” “Matthias,” “Philip,” “Thomas,” and the equally off-the-wall “Acts” of “Peter,” “Andrew,” and “John.” Despite this track record, some are treating the pseudo-gospel of Judas as a primary historical source on par with the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It would be as if the Unabomber, pretending to be John Wilkes Booth, wrote a document that, within the context of bizarre musings like those found in his infamous Manifesto, claimed that Abraham Lincoln actually asked Booth to kill him in Ford Theater—and National Geographic and media outlets treated it as equivalent to eye witness accounts and hyped that it would “shake Lincolnian historiography to its foundations.”
 
             Early Christians were not so naive. St. Ireneus of Lyons, to whom Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI referred to as the first true Christian theologian, refuted and ridiculed the Gospel of Judas in a treatise against heresies written about the year 180. He described that it was written by a gnostic sect called the Cainites, famous for attempting to turn the most infamous Scriptural villains into saints. They tried, for example, to rehabilitate Cain, whom they said was just following God’s instructions in murdering his brother Abel, as well as Korah, the insurrectionist against Moses, and the people of Sodom. Ireneus said that the Cainites produced “a fictitious history of this [“black is white”] kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”

          Christians today likewise cannot be naïve. We are living in an age—like that of the time of St. Ireneus—when so many, including those who by their education should know better, are willing uncritically to accept even the most outrageous claims against the faith. Millions have treated the fanciful concoctions of Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code, such as the assertions that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers and that their progeny became the French kings, as exciting revelations rather than what they really are: blasphemous fabrications. The only way for Christians to sift through truth and falsity—and to help others to do so—is to know the faith better and, like Ireneus, to do what is necessary to defend and promote it.
 
           On  that first Good Friday, Christ gave His life in “witness to the truth” (Jn 18:37). St. Ireneus spent his life doing the same. Now it is our turn. Love for God and for others demands it.

March 15, 2020

          Each year of his pontificate, Pope St. John Paul II wrote a Lenten message to guide and inspire Catholics throughout the world to better understand and live the meaning of this season. This traditional has been continued by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. I believe that one of Pope St. John Paul II’s most moving Lenten messages was written in 2005 as it provides the prism by which Catholics could better understand the significance of the rest of his pontificate.

          His 2005 Lenten message was dedicated above all to the vocation of the elderly—especially of suffering seniors—within society and the Church. “If growing old, with its inevitable conditions, is accepted serenely in the light of faith,” the pope writes, “it can become an invaluable opportunity for better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence.”

          The terminally sick, who in some respects have entered a long existential Lent in longing preparation for an eternal Easter, provide all of us with a deeper wisdom of what’s most important. “Knowledge of the nearness of the final goal,” he continues, “leads the elderly person to focus on that which is essential, giving importance to those things that the passing of years do not destroy.” Capable of a much deeper penetration into the mystery of death, the suffering elderly are given a “more profound knowledge of Christ dead and risen, who is the ultimate reason for our existence.”

            While the statement was written to guide all of us to recognize that “reaching old age” is a “special divine gift,” one of its beneficial side effects would be for the Church to recognize that Pope St. John Paul II’s old age and even his infirmity were also special heavenly gifts to the whole Church. We live in a culture that sees little value in old age and none in suffering. In many places of the world—from the Netherlands to Oregon, legally, and with increasing frequency illegally in other places—those with the Pope’s health difficulties are voluntarily or involuntarily put to death. Even when their lives are not immediately threatened, many see the elderly as a burden requiring too many sacrifices to care for. And to a modern mentality in which the logic of business efficiency has become a new morality, and telegenic gifts are increasingly valued, a person who struggles to get around, who drools, who has a tracheotomy and who now has difficulty even talking is someone whose leadership qualities have definitely expired.

          For all of these reasons, Pope St. John Paul II’s highly visible witness about bearing suffering and senescence with dignity was so precious. But it has an even greater meaning within the Church. Too many in the Church today—at every level, including high-ranking members of the hierarchy—view the Church too much as a business or even as a government. While the Church obviously has necessary institutional aspects to it, Christ did not come from heaven to earth to establish a new multi-national corporation, but a FAMILY. In a family, a father may get old, a father may get ill, but he does not forfeit his paternity.

            Old age is an opportunity, the pope says, for “better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence.” John Paul II found great meaning in his entering more deeply into the Mystery of the Cross. One lesson that he drew is that just as Christ did not come down from His Cross, neither will he come down from the Cross God has given him. He trusted that the Lord who called him to be St. Peter’s successor would call him home when the time is right.

            The best way for us to reflect on the Pope’s illness is to follow his example of trust in God. Perhaps God thought that the greatest service any pope could give the Church and the world today, when so many are pushing to kill the youngest human beings to harvest stem cells to try to cure people with Parkinson’s disease and other maladies, is to have the most noticeable sufferer of Parkinson’s in the world stand and say “no!” Perhaps Christ recognizes that the greatest witness to the value of old age and the true meaning of “death with dignity” is to have a Pope not just write about it, but to show us with his body language.

          Lent is the season, the Pope tells us in his 2005 message, to intensify prayer and penance, “opening hearts to the docile welcoming of the divine will.” That’s precisely what Pope St. John Paul II did by his life and witness. May God help all of us do the same!

March 8, 20202

         Scripture scholars often describe the four Gospels as “passion accounts with very long introductions.” This is because the preaching of the apostles—and the earliest Christian writings—focused above all on the details of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.

         St. Peter, immediately after bursting through the doors of the upper room on Pentecost, proclaimed in an idiom understandable to all: “Jesus of Nazareth—you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up” (Acts 2:22-24). St. Paul tells us that the catechesis he received upon his conversion focused precisely on this: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3-4). So much did St. Paul specialize in the proclamation of Jesus’ paschal mystery that he says he resolved to know and to preach nothing other than “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).

         In 2004, we saw what happened when that Gospel of Christ crucified was proclaimed on the big screen. Just as when St. Paul preached it, Mel Gibson’s visual portrayal in The Passion of the Christ became a “scandal to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League attacked the film, saying that it would fuel anti-Semitism. It didn’t. In fact, it had the opposite effect: it led some at-large criminals to turn themselves in to the authorities. Gentiles in Hollywood and the secular media ridiculed the film, saying that it was nothing more than an orgy of “religious sadism.” Folly indeed!

        But just as with St. Paul’s original proclamation, the visual presentation of Christ crucified became “for those who are called … the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23). People came back to the sacraments after long years away. Catholics and Protestants prayed together—in public cinemas. Many Protestants were intrigued by the presentation of Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer, and her fortitude as she followed in the bloody footsteps of her Son. Many Protestants also saw for the first time, in Gibson’s artful flashbacks, the connections between the Eucharist and the Cross that to Catholics are second nature. Most of all, it helped all Christians realize just how much Jesus suffered—voluntarily, out of love—for each of us.

          One group that was particularly moved by The Passion of Christ was Catholic men. For the first time in a long time, there was a depiction of an unmistakably masculine Christ. Jim Caviezel’s portrayal was of a Savior whom today’s men would leave “fishing boats” and “tax tables,” “houses, family members and fields” (Mt 19:29) to follow.

          In much of recent Christian art, Jesus hasn’t even appeared human, not to mention masculine. Many modern crucifixes make him look like an emaciated extra-terrestrial. On Missalette covers, Jesus’ sacred humanity is reduced to a stick figure. In the last major Hollywood movie about the Gospel—Zeffirelli’s 1977 film Jesus of Nazareth—actor Robert Powell’s portrayal made men wonder if Jesus ever could have been a carpenter, since he looked barely capable of lifting a hammer. It seemed that Powell had taken Jesus’ statement that He was “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) and absolutized it. There was no room for the same Jesus who once identified Himself as the “stronger man” who would overpower the devil and divide his spoils (Lk 11:22).

            This is one reason why Jim Caviezel’s performance in Gibson’s superbly directed movie was so refreshing. He combined both Jesus’ strength and His tenderness. His portrayal of Christ helped men to see with their own eyes more clearly who they are called to be and how they are called to love. Men at last witnessed an image of their Lord that was faithful to the call of manhood. They finally saw a Jesus consistent with their images of a hero.

            It is no surprise, therefore, that Jim Caviezel has become so popular among Catholic men. The fact that he is a devout, practicing Catholic increases that admiration. He turns down blockbuster roles if they require immoral scenes. Every penny he earns from his speaking engagements goes to the pregnancy help center his wife Kerri helps to run. He often speaks on how portraying the crucified Christ changed his life and encourages men to have their lives altered by imitating the love of the same Christ crucified.

March 1, 2020

           Lent is a forty-day uphill pilgrimage with Jesus. Jesus starts by taking us, on the first Sunday, to a desert mountain where He teaches us by example how to say no to the devil’s temptations. Next, we climb Mt. Tabor with Him, where His Father gives us the secret to life: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” On the third Sunday, we travel with Jesus to the top of Mt. Gerazim, where He reveals Himself as the “living water” and inspires us to thirst for Him. We next ascend with Him to Jerusalem where He cures the man born blind and speaks about His desire to cure our spiritual blindness. On the fifth Sunday, He takes us over the Mount of Olives to Bethany, where He prophesies our resurrection by raising Lazarus from the dead. And on Palm Sunday, we climb the hill of Calvary with Him and stand with horror and amazement at the foot of His salvific Cross.

          At the start of Lent, Jesus says to us, as he said to Peter, James and John in Gethsemane, “Get up, let’s go!” Just as he points to Matthew at his customs post and says “Come, follow me!,” so He puts each of us in His divine cross-hairs and beckons us to leave our customary posts and habits and journey with Him along the path He knows we need to trod.

          That path is the way of the Cross. It is the way of the grain of wheat. It is the way of true discipleship. “Whoever wishes to be my disciple,” Jesus declared, “must deny his very self, take up his cross each day and follow in my footsteps” (Lk 9:24).

          Each Lent, the Church gives us practical means by which to work on these fundamentals of discipleship.

           We see this, first, in the practices of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. Fasting is one of the most effective means of self-denial; in controlling our desire for food, rather than being controlled by it, we grow in self-mastery, which helps us to deny ourselves in other areas. Almsgiving is a particularly efficacious way of making our daily cross, like Jesus’, an altar on which we sacrifice our lives and goods out of love for others. Prayer is the best way we keep our eyes on Christ so that we may both see the path He wants us to follow and receive His strength to complete that journey.

          The Church, secondly, proposes the Stations of the Cross, which our parish prays communally on each of the Fridays of Lent. This devotion makes visible and concrete where Jesus is leading us and reminds us of the reality that His Cross is really our cross and ours His.

           I also want to suggest a third means by which to work on these fundamentals: the ancient practice of Lenten Station Churches. Since the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604), Catholics in Rome have had the custom of making a pilgrimage to specific ancient churches on particular days in Lent. There they pray through the intercession of the Church’s saintly patron for the grace to make a good Lent. They also petition for strength on the pilgrimage of life, so that they might follow Christ all the way through the Cross to the eternal Easter.

           It is similar to the local practice of “Walking the Nine Churches” on Good Friday. However, it serves as a reminder that visiting local Churches throughout the Lenten Season is an additional way for us to live an intensely Eucharistic Lent, focused on a deeper communion with Christ and with the other members of His Mystical Body. The practice of visiting various Churches, moreover, makes Lent an actual pilgrimage, which reinforces the spiritual pilgrimage of the season. Sometimes we can become so comfortable and stable at our own parish that we can stop moving spiritually. This is a great danger, for as Archbishop Sheen used to say, “There are no plateaus in the spiritual life: if we’re not moving uphill, we’re sliding downhill!”

          Visiting various Churches during the Lenten season, helps us to keep moving upward, which is the true purpose of every parish. The word parish comes from the Biblical word for pilgrimage (paroikia). Our parish church of Divine Mercy is meant to be like a hostel on the pilgrimage toward heaven, a way station—“a station church”—that gives us nourishment precisely so that we can continue on the journey. Our Archdiocese has many beautiful such way stations, which provide Christ as nourishment for the pilgrimage of Lent and of life. During these forty days, may you discover many of them and rediscover in them Christ, who continues to say, “Get up, let’s go” and is the guide and goal of our journey home.

February 23, 2020

          “The most holy Church of the Lateran, the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world!” Those words, in Latin, greet every pilgrim entering through the front door of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and clearly proclaim the Lateran’s significance in Christianity.

          The Lateran is the mother of every church edifice because it was the first Christian basilica in history; it is the head, because Rome, the see of St. Peter, is the principal local Church in the world, and the Lateran is the principal Church of the Diocese of Rome. The Lateran, not St. Peter’s Basilica, is the Pope’s Cathedral, where his cathedra, the chair symbolic of his teaching authority, rests. The Lateran, not the Vatican, is where the Popes resided for the first millennium of legalized Christianity. St. John Lateran is, we can loosely say, the Cathedral of the world.

         The history of the Lateran is, in many ways, the history of the Church as a whole. Over the course of the centuries, the Lateran has been pillaged by vandals, decimated by fire three times, toppled by an earthquake, and neglected by the Popes and people sometimes for decades. After every fall on its Way of the Cross through time, however, the Lateran rose again, continuing to proclaim to the city and the world the Church’s faith, through the words of the popes and five ecumenical councils held there, and through the language of its art and architecture.

        The symbolism of the latter is a potent summary of the faith.

• At the top of the center of the façade stands the Risen Christ, demonstrating that to enter the Church, we must enter into Christ’s body.
• Directly underneath this statue is the Papal loggia, from which the Popes address the faithful. The placement is not coincidental: the Popes are meant literally to stand-under Christ as His vicar on earth—“he who hears you, hears me”—so that we might better understand what the Lord is asking of us.
• Directly above the pillars and the pilasters on the façade are 12 bishops of the early Church famed for their teaching of the faith (called “doctors”), to symbolize that the visible face of the Church is found in the hierarchy of bishops throughout the East and West who teach authoritatively in the name of Christ.
• Each of the huge foundational pillars of the basilica’s interior contains an enormous statue of one of the apostles, to symbolize that the Church is built literally on the foundation of the Apostles.
• In the baldachino above the altar, there are busts of SS. Peter and Paul, the founders of the Church of Rome, to indicate that the Pope who celebrates Mass on that altar is the living Rock on whom Christ has built his Church and the living Doctor (teacher) of the Gentiles.
• Finally, above the papal cathedra at the apse in the back of the Church, there is an ancient mosaic with face of Christ the Savior hovering over His Cross, depicted full of precious Jewels. The Papal Cathedra, the symbol of the teaching authority of the Pope, rests therefore directly underneath Christ and His throne—the Cross—on which the King of Kings was exalted.

           That last mosaic points to the original and true name of the Basilica, which Pope St. Sylvester dedicated to “Christ the Savior” soon after the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313AD and built it—the first Christian basilica—to be the principal Church of the bishop and faithful of Rome. When Pope Sergius III rebuilt it after a 9^th century earthquake, he rededicated it to the Savior through the intercession of St. John the Baptist; Pope Lucius II (1144-1145) added the intercession of St. John the Evangelist to the dedication. This is how it obtained its present common name, the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran.

           Reflecting on this great Cathedral gives us an opportunity, in her daughter Churches throughout the world, to rededicate ourselves to Christ, the Savior, to whom this Church—and the Church universal which it symbolizes—is dedicated!

February 16, 2020

            Archbishop Fulton Sheen, easily the most famous and perhaps the most influential American Catholic priest of the 20^th century, was scheduled to be beatified on December 21, 2019, at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria until the ceremony was abruptly postponed by the Vatican. This is the same cathedral where Fulton Sheen was ordained a priest 100 years ago on September 20, 1919.

         Almost every Catholic senior can recount stories of huddling with family members around the radio to listen to Sheen on NBC Radio’s “Catholic Hour.” Many others can recall his top-rated television program, “Life is Worth Living,” viewed by thirty million people each week of all faiths. Still today his voice resonates to Catholics, young and old, through the treasure of audio and video recordings.

          He did so much—and so much good—in his 84 years. In addition to his priestly duties and to being America’s first radio and television evangelist, he was a philosophy and theology professor, a newspaper columnist and magazine editor, a patient instructor of countless converts, an intrepid foe of communism, a popular retreat and mission preacher, the author of 67 books, for 16 years the National Director of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, and finally bishop of Rochester, NY.

            It is hard to fathom that one man could have done so much, so well, for so long. The reason why he was able to bear so much fruit was not principally because of the talents God had given him. Cemeteries are full of enormously talented priests whose deeds remain known only to God. It was also not because he was merely “in the right place at the right time,” ready to tap the potential of the inventions of the radio and television to proclaim the Gospel. The reason for his fruitfulness, as he often pointed out, was much simpler: he began each morning with a Eucharistic Holy Hour and Mass.

            Jesus told us that if we abided in Him the Vine, we would bear much fruit (Jn 15:5), and Sheen did both. Each morning he abided in Christ’s real presence and welcomed Him within. That was the fuel for the supersonic engine that powered his whole priestly life. On the day of his priestly ordination, Sheen made a commitment to make a Holy Hour every day in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Sixty years later, he thanked God for giving him the grace to keep that promise, and confessed that “the hour that made my day” was the source of his fidelity and his fruitfulness.

          “It is impossible for me to explain how helpful the Holy Hour has been in preserving my vocation,” Sheen wrote in his autobiography. “Scripture gives considerable evidence to prove that a priest begins to fail his priesthood when he fails in his love of the Eucharist. The beginning of the fall of Judas and the end of Judas both revolved around the Eucharist. The first mention that Our Lord knew who it was who would betray Him is at the end of the sixth chapter of John, which is the announcement of the Eucharist. The fall of Judas came the night Our Lord gave the Eucharist, the night of the Last Supper.”

           “The Holy Hour, quite apart from all its positive spiritual benefits, kept my feet from wandering too far. Being tethered to a tabernacle, one’s rope for finding other pastures is not so long.” He added that the Holy Hour “became like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world. Even when it seemed so unprofitable and lacking in spiritual intimacy, I still had the sensation of being at least like a dog at the master’s door, ready in case he called me.”

            It was in this daily holy hour that Sheen’s booming voice was silent as he listened to gentle whisper of His Master. It was here that he discussed with Jesus his homilies, difficulties, hopes, projects, and potential converts. It was here that his heart was set on fire. “Looking at the Eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way as the face of Moses was transformed after his companionship with God on the mountain.” So convinced was he of the connection between the Eucharist and fruitful fidelity that he judged the success or failure of every retreat he preached on how many retreatants he could convince to make a Eucharistic holy hour every day for the rest of their life.

            If Sheen were alive today, he would mount the pulpit enthusiastically to echo Pope St. John Paul II’s call for us to grow in “Eucharistic amazement” and make the Eucharistic Lord the “magnetic pole” of our whole existence. And he would fall to his knees again in Eucharistic adoration. Fulton Sheen lived over sixty Eucharistic years. That was the open secret of his enormous success. May it be ours too! God love you!

February 9, 2020

           Because of the Incarnation, every part of Jesus’ body is sacred. We have never celebrated the feast of the Lord’s sacred brain, however, even though through it the Word-made-flesh taught us the way to salvation. We have likewise never feted the Lord’s sacred hands, full of callouses from the carpenter shop in Nazareth and yet so gentle in reaching out to touch and heal sinners, cure the sick, and even raise the dead. Nor have we given public adoration to Jesus’ sacred throat, sacred lips, sacred feet, sacred eyes, or any other part of his sacred body, even though each and every part of Jesus’ body is worthy of adoration. The only part of Jesus’ holy corpus that the Church has adored over time has been Jesus’ sacred heart.

            Why Jesus’ heart–and only His heart? The answer is both simple and profound. In the Bible, the “heart” refers to the “center” of the person, where reason, will, temperament, and tenderness converge. To refer to a person’s moral character, the sacred writers routinely describe that person’s heart, because there the person finds his unity and interior orientation. The heart is the symbol and synthesis of the person. Therefore, to adore Jesus’ sacred heart is to worship Him in His totality. But the heart is also the most striking symbol of love. To focus on Jesus’ sacred heart is to focus on Jesus as love incarnate. Jesus said as much when He appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1675, “Behold the heart which has so much loved men that it has spared nothing, even exhausting and consuming itself in testimony of its love.”

            But the heart which St. Margaret Mary beheld was surrounded by a crown of thorns. It was wounded. Thus, the image of the sacred heart is not only a symbol of the love that made those sufferings bearable, but also of the sins that cause that heart to be pierced by a lance on Good Friday. Those sins continue. Jesus told St. Margaret Mary that the reason He asked her to spread throughout the world devotion to His heart was because so many ignore that love or treat it with scorn. He made a particular reference to the way people treat Him in the sacrament of the Eucharist. “Instead of gratitude,” He told her, “I receive from most only indifference, by irreverence and sacrilege and the coldness and scorn that men have for me in the sacrament of love.”

            Jesus asked St. Margaret Mary to begin the reparation, inviting her to take St. John’s place during the celebration of the Mass, to rest her head on His heart and, not only sense His love, but share in it. She felt the Lord take her heart, put it within His own, and return it burning with divine love into her breast. Jesus wants, in essence, through the Mass to give us the same type of transplant. He wants us to rest our heart on His as He celebrates in the Upper Room and to receive from Him His own heart so that we might love God and others as He loves us. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God had prophesied, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:24). He said He would do this first by “sprinkling clean water” upon us to “cleanse [us] from all [our] uncleanness” (v. 25), which is what happens in the sacrament of baptism. But that was just “pre-operative” preparation for what the Lord wishes to do in the Eucharist.

              When Pope Paul VI in 1970 authorized doctors to examine, with state-of-the-art techniques, the almost 1,300-year-old Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, Italy, we were able to get a glimpse of the connection between the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart. The doctors determined that the consecrated priest’s host that had turned into flesh right after the words of consecration was actually human heart wall (myocardium), cut in a cross section that would be impossible to make even with present day tools. In working such a miracle, the Lord obviously could have taken on the composition of any human body part, but chose the texture of the human heart, not simply because He was giving us the fullness of His love in this sacrament, but He was also giving us His heart so that we might be able to love like Him.

              Because of the connection, it is also easy to see, in retrospect, why the Lord, through St. Margaret Mary, asked that the feast of His Sacred Heart be celebrated on Friday right after Corpus Christi and to venerate His heart by receiving Holy Communion on first Fridays. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us a heart transplant, so that we might not just worship His sacred heart but receive from Him a sacred heart in return. The Mass is how Jesus fulfills the prayer Catholics have lifted up for centuries: “O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto thine!”

February 2, 2020

           “What would become of the world if there were no religious?” That’s the question St. Teresa of Avila asked aloud in her 16^th century autobiography. It is also the question that all of us should reflect upon as we celebrate this Sunday the World Day for Consecrated Life. Pope St. John Paul II instituted the annual World Day for Consecrated Life in 1997 with three objectives: to praise and thank the Lord more solemnly for the great gift of consecrated life; to promote a knowledge of and esteem for the consecrated life by the entire people of God; and to help consecrated persons, within and across their communities, to acquire a more vivid consciousness of the beauty of their life and their irreplaceable mission in the Church and in the world.

          Implicit in all of these objectives is the fact that, in the recent past, the Church and the world—and, frankly, even some religious—have taken the gift of consecrated life for granted. To be consecrated means to be set aside for a special purpose, to be dedicated to something out-of-the-ordinary, in short, to be different. It was above all a failure to appreciate this DIFFERENCE—in vesture, in commitment, in the way of worldly interaction—that led to depreciation for religious life in general. In recent decades, as the numbers of religious have plummeted, St. Teresa’s question has taken on a particular resonance. Many Catholics now live in a world where they no longer come into contact with religious. The whole Church suffers as a result.

           Catholic schools are simply not the same as when they were staffed, almost entirely, by communities of religious women or men. Catholic hospitals are different than when their spirit, and much of their medical and pastoral care, were dominated by sisters or brothers. Our Catholic parishes often struggle to provide the maternal complement to the clergy that mother superior and the sisters did so gracefully. And the whole Church can only begin to assess the impact of fewer contemplative monasteries and cloistered communities.

          Sometimes I have heard Catholics say that the decrease in priestly and religious vocations is not altogether bad, for without it, the Church would have never achieved a deeper understanding of the apostolate and call to holiness of Catholic lay people. While that is debatable, no one can contest that lay people have stepped into the vacuum caused by the shortage of priests and religious and have given ample witness that one does not have to be a priest or religious to become a saint, or a good Catholic school teacher, or effectively run a Catholic hospital or charitable institution. But the development of the laity does not require the decline of religious life. The two are not in competition, just as the limbs and the heart are not in competition! One of the challenges of our era is to demonstrate how they strengthen each other, so that all the states of life in the Church may flourish simultaneously.

            Pope St. John Paul II established the World Day for Consecrated Life on the Feast of the Presentation (the day on which it is celebrated in the Vatican each year) precisely to stress the interconnection between the lay and religious states. Jesus’ presentation evokes our baptism, the time at the beginning of our lives when we, like Jesus, were presented in God’s temple and consecrated to His service. Through this baptismal consecration, each of us has begun a consecrated life, participating in Jesus’ consecrated life offered to the Father in the Holy Spirit. This general consecration is the foundation of the consecrated life of religious in particular.

            At the same time, however, religious life shows those consecrated by baptism the full scope of their life in Christ. The profession of the evangelical counsels is a public identification with Christ, who Himself was poor, chaste, and obedient to His Father in everything. From Christ’s poverty, reflected in the poverty of religious, we learn the antidote to the materialism of our age and how to trust in God as our sole treasure. From His chastity, reflected in religious chastity, we discern the proper response to contemporary hedonism and how to master ourselves in order to give ourselves in love to God and others. From the Lord’s obedience to the Father until death, reflected in religious obedience, we discover the remedy for today’s exaggerated autonomy and how God’s truth alone sets us free.

           Religious men and women, through living the evangelical counsels, become icons of Christ and signposts to the joy of His kingdom. They show us that God is our greatest gift and is worth everything we are in return. May we never take them for granted, and may we all follow their beautiful and timely witness!

January 26, 2020

          The celebration of Catholic Schools Week causes us to reflect on the blessing of a Catholic education and why it is worth the many sacrifices—from parents, teachers, parish communities, and so many others—that make it possible. A few years ago, I discovered, or rediscovered, what makes Catholic education so special. I went on pilgrimage with more than 500 students from our diocesan high schools and parish youth ministry programs to Washington, DC, for the annual March for Life. As part of our itinerary prior to the March, we visited the Holocaust Museum, in order to sensitize the students to what human beings can do to each other once they begin to dehumanize each other. (Most were able, on their own, to see a similar dehumanization at work, with similar ghastly consequences, in regard to abortion.)

          At the end of the visit, one of the teachers approached me in the bookstore visibly moved. He opened a book and pointed me to a passage, the words of which moved me as much as they had moved him. It was a letter from a Holocaust survivor, Chaim Ginott, directed specifically to teachers. But his message is important for all of us. “Dear Teacher,” he wrote, “I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane.”

          Instruction, in other words, is like fire: it can be used for good or for evil. The difference between a pediatrician and an abortionist, a trustworthy airline pilot and a Mohammed Atta, a high school bookworm and a Columbine serial killer is not one of I.Q. It is that one is HUMANE and the other is not.

           As Ginott illustrated, the most important part of a young person’s education is not the three R’s. It is to form a person’s freedom properly, because it is only in the right use of one’s freedom that one becomes humane. Said in another way, the most important part of education is MORAL education.

           This is why Catholic schools are more important now than ever, because it is getting increasingly harder and rarer for young people to receive a solid moral education in our public schools. Good public-school teachers are gun-shy to pass along moral wisdom, because they know that almost anything they say that a particular parent or colleague does not like can be the subject of a politically-correct lawsuit or disciplinary investigation. And as more lawsuits try to eliminate all references to God in public education, the situation is bound to worsen, as young people, deprived of any reference to a Creator, risk losing their identity as creatures. But even if public schools were still able to provide a solid secular moral formation of their students, the value and uniqueness of a Catholic education would stand out all the more, because the most distinctive aspect of Catholic moral formation is that it can be done with explicit reference to Jesus Christ. Catholic schools can introduce the student not merely to “moral values” but to their Source.

            Christ, as the fathers of Vatican II reminded us, “fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme vocation clear.” He teaches us our great dignity and discloses to us our “supreme vocation,” the path to true human goodness and fulfillment: to use our freedom to love others as Jesus has loved us. It is by imitating Jesus in His human nature—laying down our lives out of love for others—that we will become most humane.

            The greatest gift of a Catholic education, therefore, is that students can be introduced not only to the truths of math, science, history, and language, but to Truth incarnate (cf. Jn 8:32). The students can be presented with the well-rounded geography of the REAL world, and not the flat-earth equivalent of a God-less one. In a Catholic school, students find not just smaller classrooms, but a divine Master who tutors everyone individually. They are educated not just in a safer environment, but where a Shepherd protects them from the wolf and guides them safely with his familiar voice and the simple instruction “follow me.” They are prepared not just for the ACT, SAT, and for entrance into college, but for the final exam of life and for admittance, God-willing, into the college of saints. Catholic schools do make students fully humane—and they do more. They make students disciples of the Master who teaches with the words of everlasting life.

January 19, 2020

          Many years ago, I went to jail for the first time, to interview a pro-life hero for a research paper. Bill Cotter had been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for the “crime” of sitting in the doorway of a Brookline abortion clinic to try to shut down business for a day. Pro-abortion propaganda and mainstream media often portray pro-lifers—especially those who would do what Bill did—as foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics who at any moment might hijack an airplane. Quite to the contrary, Bill was a soft-spoken, humble, compassionate, straight shooter who was as logical in his response to abortion as he was while designing computer software for a living.

          He described what he did as a “reasonable or even, in a way, feeble response to mass murder. It’s a direct protection of lives that are in imminent danger of violence and death. The reasonable response to killing in our midst is to stop the killing. It’s not simply to object to it, or to write to politicians to address the underlying conditions, although those things need to be done, too. If a child is in the road, we go and yank him out of the road instead of turning our backs, going home and writing to change traffic patterns.”

          I used Bill’s analogy about saving children in danger during a conversation with a woman last January. On the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wad, I had preached on the moral responsibilities of Catholics and the election of pro-abortion politicians. Soon after Mass, she called to complain about my “politicizing the pulpit.”

          I asked the woman politely if she shared the Church’s teaching on abortion. She replied that she was personally opposed to abortion, but considered herself pro-choice, because she did not think it was right to tell other women they could not choose to have one. When I tried gently to address that issue, she interrupted me and said, “With all the sexual abuse by priests and the coverup by bishops, I can’t believe that you would even talk about abortion in the pulpit!” Priests, in general, are getting used to people using the clergy sex-abuse crisis as an argument against any Church teaching they do not like. But I thought that, since she brought the topic up, it might be an effective way to illustrate the flaw in her position on abortion.

          I told her it was PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THE SEX ABUSE SCANDALS that the Church could not be silent on abortion. That got her attention. Then I respectfully asked her a few questions: “Do you agree that the evil in the sex-abuse crisis was two-fold: first, the sin and crime of the abuse itself; and, second, the sin of omission by all those who knew it was going on and didn’t do all they could to stop it?” “That’s exactly right, Father.” “Do you think the abuse would still have been wrong if the victim’s parents knew about it and allowed it?” “Of course!” “And do you think that it still would have been wrong if the perpetrators, rather than abusing the kids, would have killed them instead?” “Obviously—of course it would.” “Then, honestly, ma’am, I cannot see how you can think the Church should be silent about abortion or how you can, in good conscience, say that you are pro-choice but personally opposed to abortion.” She did not say anything, so I finished the point. “If abortion is the killing of an innocent human being, then to do nothing to try to stop that killing would be just as bad as thinking that sex abuse is wrong and failing to protect kids from the abusers.”

          “Are you saying that pregnant mothers are analogous to abusers?” she asked. “No,” I replied. The abortion doctors are analogous to abusers. But just as sex abuse would still be wrong even if parents allowed it, so the killing of a child is wrong even if the parents allow it or choose it. And no law legalizing sex abuse or abortion could ever make either right.” I finished by using Bill Cotter’s analogy about children in the road. She was silent for what seemed like minutes. Then she told me she would get back to me. I still hope she does.

          I repeat that conversation here not to relativize the horror of the sexual abuse of minors, but to put the horror of abortion—and the inaction of so many in response to it—in its proper perspective. Just as we should have zero tolerance with response to sexual abuse, so we should have zero tolerance with respect to the ultimate child abuse. Christ expects no less of us with regard to both. Wednesday marks the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which put “unwanted” children in the road. May it also mark a heroic new beginning for all of us in striving to protect and save them!

January 12, 2020

           Right before Christmas of 2004, as he met with his chief collaborators in the Roman Curia, Pope St. John Paul II made a statement that caught many in the media—and in the Church—off-guard. He very succinctly stated what the Church’s principal goal is for the world. While there are many complementary ways in which the Church’s main purpose—the fulfillment of Christ’s mission for the salvation of the world—could be phrased, the fact that St. John Paul II chose the language he did really gives us a window into what motivated all that he did and what he hoped will motivate all of us: “Communion with God and unity among all people, beginning with believers, is our priority commitment.”

          Many thought such a commitment was a novelty, but there is a long prehistory to this primacy of focus. It is as old and as new as the Eucharist. In His prayer during the Last Supper, Jesus poured out His heart to His heavenly Father, and asked for something positively incredible for us, His followers: “May they be all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me … May they become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:20-23).

          Jesus, whose petitions were always heard by the Father (cf. Jn 11:42), prayed that we might have a communion with God and with each other analogous to the PERFECT COMMUNION of the persons of the Blessed Trinity. In heaven, of course, we will experience that communion with Father, Son and Holy Spirit and, through our communion with God, with the communion of saints. But Jesus was praying for that union in THIS world. He specified two reasons why: to convince the world that Jesus was sent by the Father and that the Father loves us as He loves Christ. Jesus saw the loving communion of His disciples, therefore, as the greatest witness of His divine mission and authority and as the greatest testimony of our being beloved children of God. This truth has a crucial corollary: when this communion is absent, Jesus’ identity and our identity are both obscured. Without this communion, Christ is misunderstood and man is lost. This is precisely why communion with God and unity among all people, beginning with believers, MUST BE our priority commitment.

          It was clearly Pope St. John Paul II’s priority commitment. Despite his obvious frailties, he continued to labor, with patient urgency, to reunite the separated children of God. His ecumenical endeavors are too many to name, but two were especially significant and hopeful. They also showed his particular style of “spiritual ecumenism.”

          The first was the return of the image of Our Lady of Kazan to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow. This image was taken out of Russia a century ago and kept outside to protect it from the communists. Eventually, through the help of American benefactors, it was obtained and given to Pope St. John Paul II. The Pope then began to plan to return this most venerated image of the Mother of God in Orthodox Christianity, one day, to Russia. For the Holy Father, this action was more than one of goodwill: it was an attempt explicitly to involve the powerful intercession of the Mother of the Church in bringing her separated children back together.

          The second endeavor happened when the Pope returned the relics of SS. Gregory Nazianzen (d. 390) and John Chrysostom (d. 407) to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Nazianzen and Chrysostom were both patriarchs of Constantinople prior to the Orthodox schism. Their relics had been brought to Rome in order to protect them from destruction by 8^thcentury iconoclasts (Nazianzen) and 13^th century Muslims (Chrysostom). They were placed under altars in St. Peter’s basilica as a tangible sign of the unity between East and West. The pope, in giving them back to their successor, was in essence commissioning them to go to their former See to work for the unity of the Church, a unity they knew during their lifetimes. In both cases, the Pope was involving the communion of saints in the Church triumphant to bring about the communion of the Church on earth.

          The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which begins on January 18^th, is an occasion for all of us in that Church on earth to recommit ourselves, with fervor and patient urgency, to this priority of communion with God and with each other. Such unity was Christ’s dying wish. It is His living wish. May it be ours, so that the world may know Jesus Christ and the depth of the Father’s love.

January 5, 2020

          In their document “Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper”: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily In The Eucharist, the U.S. bishops have called our attention to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist: the Jesus we adore and receive in the Eucharist is the same one the shepherds adored in the manger and who will come on the clouds of heaven to separate eternally the sheep from the goats. Only the appearances are different. In Bethlehem, the Son of God took on the humble appearance of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. In the Eucharist, He assumes the even humbler appearances of bread and wine.

          In order that we not respond to his arrival in mystery as the ancient innkeepers did in history or those whom Christ says will be caught off-guard when He comes in majesty, the bishops say we need to prepare well. In the second half of their document, they give very practical advice about how to do so. They begin with the traditional distinction between “remote” and “proximate” preparation.” The first, they say, has to do with “how we live our Christian lives every day,” and the second with “how we come to and participate in the Eucharistic liturgy itself.”

          Our remote preparation, analogous to the preparation of the Jews for centuries awaiting the coming of the Messiah, involves three things: regular prayer and Scripture reading; faithful and loving fulfillment of the duties and responsibilities of our state in life; and daily repentance of sin and regular participation in the Sacrament of Penance. All of these keep us in communion with Christ and foment our hunger to receive Him. Our proximate preparation, the bishops write, includes several elements. The first is prayerful recollection. They encourage us to arrive early at Mass so that we might enter into a “reverent silence” that will help us to eliminate distractions and focus more easily on the great mystery about to be celebrated. Such silent prayer allows us to remember that we are meeting God and with Him entering the Upper Room, climbing onto the Cross, and rising within the empty tomb.

           The bishops then describe the Eucharistic fast as an essential element of our proximate preparation. This requirement of refraining from food and drink (except for water and medicines) for at least one hour prior to receiving Holy Communion “demonstrates reverence and respect for the Body and Blood of Christ” and “teaches us to hunger for Jesus in Holy Communion.” A fast longer than an hour, like the midnight fast of earlier days, by the same principle may help us to hunger for Jesus even more. The bishops next mention that we prepare or fail to prepare for this encounter with Christ by how we dress. “We should come to the sacred liturgy appropriately dressed, wearing clothes that reflect our reverence for God and that manifest our respect for the dignity of the liturgy and for one another.” We dress well for persons and events we consider important, like weddings or meeting a dignitary. The Mass is the wedding feast of the lamb in which we meet the King of Kings (or more appropriately, are married to Him as His bride) and how we dress is a sign of the extent to which we recognize these truths.

            Finally, the bishops describe what would be called “immediate preparation,” how to pray better the various parts of the Mass and unite them to the loving embrace of Christ in Holy Communion. The penitential rite, the liturgy of the word, the Eucharistic Prayer, the Our Father, the Sign of Peace, the approach of the altar and the reverential bow of the head, and the period of silent thanksgiving after Communion are all united to help us to receive the gift of the Lord with love. The liturgy of the word reminds us of the Emmaus journey and makes our hearts “burn at the hearing of the word of Truth so as to receive Jesus more fervently in Holy Communion.” They call us to unite ourselves to the priest in the Eucharistic Prayer, by which we are “joined to Christ in offering sacrifice to God the Father.” The prayer of the Our Father reminds us that we are God’s beloved children and brothers and sisters of each other, with whom we make amends and reunite in the sign of peace. We make a reverent bow of the head before receiving Holy Communion, “which expresses both our individual and communal adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist as well as our belief in the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion.” Lastly, the bishops encourage us to observe a period of silent thanksgiving to God for the gift of Jesus after having receiving Him, much as Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the magi would have done in Bethlehem.

           The bishops state simply that “because the celebration of the Eucharist is the source and summit of the entire Christian life, nothing is more important than participating in the Mass with our whole hearts and minds and bodies.”

December 29, 2019

         Catholics in the U.S. have a clear and accessible catechesis about the necessary dispositions one must have to receive Holy Communion. Several years ago, the U.S. Bishops approved a document entitled, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper”: On Preparing To Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist. Structed in a question-and-answer format, it is tailor-made for parish-wide and private study. After reviewing that Catholics believe that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, the bishops describe that sharing in Communion means participating in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord. “He gives himself completely and entirely to us, and we are called to give ourselves completely and entirely to him.” Our “Amen!” is meant to signify that we believe in and accept the reality of Christ’s real presence, seek total loving communion with Him, and recognize that “union with Christ also means union with all those to whom He gives Himself.”

          While the bishops encourage all of the faithful to receive Holy Communion “regularly, gratefully and worthily,” they note that “we may find ourselves in situations where we should refrain from partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ.” They describe a straightforward principle: “In order to receive Holy Communion, we must be in communion with God and with the Church.” What being in communion with God and the Church means is the heart of the first half of the document.

          The bishops cite St. Justin Martyr, who in the middle of the second century, presented the ancient principle that “no one is allowed to partake [in the Eucharist] except one who believes that the things we teach are true, who has received the washing for the forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us.” St. Justin described a three-fold Communion: doctrinal, sacramental and moral.

          Doctrinal communion means that “one believes that the things we teach are true.” The bishops say that “As Catholics we believe what the Church authoritatively teaches on matters of faith and morals. If a Catholic in his or her personal or professional life were knowingly and obstinately to reject the defined doctrines of the Church, or knowingly or obstinately to repudiate her definitive teaching on moral issues, he or she would seriously diminish his or her communion with the Church. Reception of Holy Communion in such a situation would not accord with the nature of the Eucharistic celebration, so that he or she should refrain.”

          Sacramental communion means that we are one body through the sacramental economy initiated in baptism, that is, “the washing for the forgiveness of sins and for rebirth.” For this reason, the bishops declare, “Christians who are not Catholic are welcome to join us in prayer during the Eucharist liturgy, but normally are not permitted to receive Holy Communion, since they are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. Members of non-Christian religions are also welcome to attend prayerfully the Eucharistic liturgy. They are not permitted, however, to receive Holy Communion, since they possess no bond of common faith in Jesus Christ, the one whom we receive in the Eucharist.”

          Finally, moral communion means that we “live as Christ handed down to us.” When we commit a mortal sin and deliberately fail to live as Christ taught us in a serious matter, the bishops write, there is a “rejection of communion with God and we are seriously obliged to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we are reconciled with God and the Church” through the Sacrament of Penance. The bishops specify several of these mortal sins. Some are obvious, like worshipping another God or committing murder. Some are not so obvious, but much more popular, like: “Failing to worship God by missing Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation without a serious reason, such as sickness or the absence of a priest;” “Engaging in sexual activity outside the bonds of a valid marriage;” “Speaking maliciously or slandering people in a way that seriously undermines their good name;” and “producing, marketing or indulging in pornography.” The bishops state that Catholics who have cut off their communion with Christ in any of these ways must first go to receive Christ’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance before they come to receive Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

            To present oneself worthily for Holy Communion, one needs to be in communion with Christ and the Church He founded in each of these three ways. Holy Communion is not a piece of birthday cake at a party which everyone expects to be offered as a sign of hospitality. Rather it is an efficacious sign of a radical union with Christ and His Body the Church that can be worthily received only by those who are already in such union doctrinally, sacramentally and morally.  Next week, we will discuss the advice the bishops give to those who are in this communion with the Lord, about how they can prepare to receive Him more fruitfully and worthily.

December 22, 2019

           It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth, the night when “he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Those words from “O Holy Night,” like the lyrics from most treasured Christmas hymns, are enough to fill our souls with awe and our minds with memories of the exhilarating graces of past Christmases. But the reality of the words is even more awesome than the thrilling associations they evoke: Christmas shows our true worth. So great is our value to God that He took on our humanity so that we might take on His divinity.

              The love of the Lord is shown in how low He was willing to go to save us. The King of Kings was born not in a palace, but in a stable. He was clothed not in fine royal purple, but in poor swaddling clothes. He was placed not in a regal bedroom but in an animal trough. He was surrounded not by princely courtiers but by animals. And that was just the beginning. He would be hunted down by assassins while He still nursed, a foreigner in Egypt before He could walk, a seemingly and unexceptional Nazarene carpenter until 30, and then an itinerant preacher who did not even have a stable to lay his head (Mt 8:20).

           When His hour finally came, He would take a towel and wash feet, be betrayed by one of His closest friends, framed by the leaders of His people, rejected by the crowds in favor of a murderer, and publicly executed between two thieves by soldiers He had formed in their mothers’ wombs. He was, as Bishop Sheen summarized, “born in a stranger’s cave and buried in a stranger’s grave.” From the beginning to the end, His incessant humility manifested both His love and our dignity.

             But He did not even stop there. The final step of His abasement and our exaltation was indelibly brought home to me during my first pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I along with a fellow priest visited Bethlehem, with several pilgrims, on a pilgrimage to thank God for His many gifts and blessings. At each of the sacred sites throughout the Holy Land, the Mass proper for the site is celebrated: in Nazareth, the Annunciation; in the Upper Room, Holy Thursday; at the empty tomb, Easter Sunday. In the city of David, we had the privilege to celebrate Christmas Mass. Before Mass, we prayed in the grotto where Christ was born. After descending to the nethermost parts of the Basilica of the Nativity, we, like all pilgrims, dropped to our knees and crawled underneath the altar in the grotto, where there is a silver star, fixed to the floor, that exposes the stable’s original ground. On the star there is a Latin inscription that brought home to us the historical and geographical reality of Christ’s birth: Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est. “Here from the Virgin Mary Jesus Christ was born.”

              A short time later, we celebrated Mass in a nearby chapel. It was such a great joy to celebrate the Christmas mysteries where they actually occurred! But the most unforgettable moment came right after the two of us pronounced the words of consecration. My priest friend illicitly but devoutly uttered words that are not found in the ritual: HIC Iesus Christus natus est. “HERE Jesus Christ is born.”

              The truth he could not contain was that the same Jesus whom Mary wrapped in diapers we had just placed on the altar. Bethlehem, literally the “house of bread,” was again the house of the “Living Bread come down from heaven” (Jn 6:51). For the rest of the Mass, we experienced, I think, a little of the amazement Mary and Joseph must have felt in the same spot 2000 years before.

          In his beautiful 2002 encyclical on the Eucharist, Pope St. John Paul II urged us to model our “Eucharistic amazement” on Mary’s Christmas awe: “Is not the enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion?”

           The greatest manifestation of God’s humility and love—and our worth—is the Eucharist, when He whom the angels, shepherds, and magi adored becomes our very food. Emmanuel, God-with-us, is still with us. The tabernacle is the modern manger. This is “good news of great joy for all the people.” Come, let us adore Him!

December 15, 2019

           The original St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, erected in the 300s over the tomb of the Galilean fisherman by Constantine, was by the late 1400s, like the Church as a whole, collapsing because of decay. The low point was the pontificate of Alexander VI (1492-1503), the most degenerate pope of all time. Upon his election, won in large part through bribery, he already had eight illegitimate children by several different women, and he would add to both numbers as pontiff. That such a man was capable of being elected the successor to St. Peter testifies to the deplorable state to which the Church had fallen. His pontificate would only lower the bar further, leading to calls for a thorough reform of the Church in head and in members. 

          When Pope Julius II was elected in 1503, he dismissed talk about repairing the Constantinian basilica. Instead he decided to tear it down and begin again. On April 18, 1506, he laid the cornerstone for the new basilica and commenced the 120 year rebuilding effort that spanned some twenty popes, incorporated many of the greatest artists and architects in history, and became the Church’s visible response not just to the theological errors of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, but to the moral scandals and decay within the Church that spawned it. As a result, the present basilica is not merely an architectural and artistic marvel, but a great catechesis in stone, which proclaims the splendor of the faith and the path of the rebirth of the Church after the moral ruin of notorious clerical scandals.

          There are so many lessons the present basilica, built to symbolize the Church as a whole, preaches to us today. The first is the foundation of the Church. The main altar is built right on top of the tomb and bones of St. Peter, epitomizing that the universal Church is built according to Christ’s architectural plans: right on top of Peter (cf. Mt 16:18). Next is the role of the saints. Within the pillars of the interior basilica, capping the pilasters of the façade, and above the columns in the square, are the statues of the thousands of saints, male and female. They typify that the Church is built not out of marble, wood, brick and glass, but of men, women, boys, and girls who become “living stones” “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (1 Pet 2:5; Eph 2:19-22). The interior of the basilica features saints of the counter-reformation, those whom Christ raised up to bring the Church back to its true nature after the age of the scandals.

          Perhaps the most interesting detail, however, is placed right above the main entrance to the Church. There is a huge sculpture of Christ’s handing the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter (Mt 16:19), located there to remind those entering, including critics, of the divine foundation of the papacy. But this image was placed in counterpoint to a mosaic located on the inner side of this same entrance, which those exiting the basilica are supposed to see and remember: Christ’s saving Peter from drowning after the fisherman had taken his eyes off of Christ while walking to Him on the water (Mt 14:28-33). Even though the foundation of the papacy is divine, the basilica stresses, the popes are very human, and when they take their eyes off of Christ, they can and will sink to great depths. Many popes, like Alexander VI, have done just that. This mosaic was a visual indication to pilgrims of their need to pray for the popes, so that they might keep their eyes on Christ and help all of Christ’s people to do the same.

          Even though St. Peter’s Basilica is over 4,000 miles from New Orleans, its message is one of hope and light to all those scandalized by the more recent clerical sexual abuse infamies and cover-up and the continued ecclesial decay. It points analogically to the divine foundation of the priesthood and episcopacy, but also to the falls that can occur when clergy take account of the winds and take their eyes off of the Master; thus, it indicates the ever urgent need to pray for the clergy. It shows the path to a stronger church through holier men and women, clergy, religious, and lay, whom the Lord is calling to become the pillars of an even more beautiful spiritual edifice. And it is a living witness that rebuilding after scandals can take a very long time, perhaps even several generations. The history of the rebuilding of St. Peter’s is, therefore, a lesson of hope, and the present basilica an unmistakably resplendent symbol that patient rebuilding is worth the time and the effort.

December 8, 2019

          On December 8, 1854, Blessed Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed as a dogma of the faith what many in the Church had long believed: that Mary, from the first moment of her conception, was free from all stain of original sin. At least as noteworthy as what Pope Pius said was how he said it. For the first time in papal history, he made use of what theologians now call the “extraordinary magisterium” to teach that dogma infallibly. From the beginning of the Church, the successors of St. Peter had always taught with special authority. They had often pronounced on infallible teachings, such as the articles of the Creed, the inspiration of Sacred Scripture, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and various moral teachings. But they had never proposed a teaching as infallible in so formal and explicit a way as Pius did: “By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine [of Mary’s Immaculate Conception] is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”

          Christ wished to endow His Church as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught—with the Lord’s own infallibility so that we might have certainty with regard to what we have to believe and do to please God and fully enter into communion with Him. Christ’s vicar exercises this charism whenever he, as supreme shepherd and teacher of the faithful, proclaims in an absolute way a doctrine pertaining to faith and morals.

           From the beginning, the Church had taught uniformly Mary had never committed a personal sin, but saintly theologians could not discover a means by which Mary would have been conceived without original sin; without original sin, she would have had no need of redemption. Blessed Duns Scotus (d. 1308) eventually posited that she was pre-redeemed from the first moment of her existence by virtue of the eternal but temporally subsequent merits of Christ her Son. This solution eventually gained widespread acceptance and the ancient celebration of Mary’s conception developed into the liturgical memorial of her Immaculate Conception.

           It is important to know, however, why there was a need to proclaim this reality infallibly in the mid-1800s. Catholics in various nations were requesting that the Holy Father solemnly define this teaching because they saw it as an antidote to some dangerous trends of thought—from sole reliance on the Bible on the one hand, to a sole reliance on human scientific reason on the other—that, on those bases, were calling it into question. The bishops of the United States—who had already in 1847 chosen Mary Immaculate as Patroness of our nation—thought that the definition of this truth would be pastorally beneficial for another reason. Americans have always prided themselves on self-reliance. From the pilgrims, to the pioneers, to people in every class today, we have gloried in our independence, in our capacity to “pick ourselves up by our bootstraps,” in our ability to get things done on our own and in our own way. When Frank Sinatra crooned his triumphant auto-eulogy, “I did it my way,” he was bellowing the theme song for so many of his countrymen. The bishops of our country saw in Mary’s Immaculate Conception a powerful contrast to excessive self-sufficiency. The late Francis Cardinal George of Chicago, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, gave the rationale: “The meaning of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is that Mary was always totally dependent on God, that her mission in life was given to her, and that she never did anything on her own but always did things God’s way. Never touched by sin, nothing in her resisted God’s will for her and for the salvation of the world through her Son. Of the few words attributed to her in the Gospels, the most basic is, ‘Let it be done to me according to your word.’ From this free decision on her part flows her instruction to the servants at the wedding feast of Cana, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”

          Rather than “my way,” Mary Immaculate tell us to do it God’s way. God’s way involves both her Immaculate Conception and the gift of papal infallibility. God’s way involves our following the popes’ teaching and Mary’s example. That is why the message of this feast is as relevant today as it was in 1854.

December 1, 2019

          The season of Advent that begins this Sunday focuses on the great encounter each of us is called to have with the Lord. The Lord is coming—that is what Advent literally means—and we are called to go out to meet Him. We are also called to help others to meet Him. More than any other Biblical figure, St. Andrew the Apostle, whom the universal Church celebrated on Saturday, demonstrates for us how this is done.

          We first encounter Andrew at the Jordan River astride St. John the Baptist, the great Advent prophet. Through his riverside preaching, John was helping his fellow Jews make straight the paths to receive the Lord. The path to Andrew’s heart and head were straight enough that when John, one day, looked up and said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” Andrew immediately left John and went to see where Jesus lived. He spent the day with Jesus, recognized Him to be the Messiah, and believed in Him. His next move not only reveals his character, but also shows what should be the reaction of anyone who meets Jesus. He ran to his brother, told him that he had found the Messiah, and hurried back to introduce him to Jesus. As soon as Jesus met his brother, he said, “You are Simon, Son of Jonah. You are to be called Peter” (Jn 1:42). Little did Andrew know, of course, what Jesus’ plans would be for his brother. His sibling, a simple fisherman like him, was to be made the rock on whom the Lord would build His Church (Mt 16:18).

          Likewise, we never know what the Lord might do with those we introduce or bring closer to Him. God may need us to be the instrument, or the fishing hook, to bring future popes, nuns, priests, or canonized saints to Him. He may take them from among the members of our family, friends, co-workers, or fellow students. Our task is to make the introduction, by letting others know we have found the Messiah, and inviting them to come to meet Him.  

          Andrew’s matchmaking would continue. He was the one who introduced the young boy with five barley loaves and two fish to Jesus. There was no way for Andrew to know what Jesus would do with those meager offerings, but from them Jesus would work one of his greatest miracles. He just brought the boy to Jesus and let Jesus do the rest. There is another great lesson here: whenever we put at the Lord’s disposal our talents, or encourage someone we know to do the same, the Lord is capable of working great wonders. We may not have much, but in Jesus’ hands, everything can be miraculously multiplied.  

          Andrew is at it again right before Jesus’ passion. Some Greeks came to Philip and Andrew and said, “We wish to see Jesus,” and the two of them brought them to Jesus. The Lord’s response was not just to greet them, but to exclaim, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (Jn 20:23). Their introduction was the trigger for which Jesus was mysteriously waiting, to inaugurate the culmination of His earthly life. Likewise, with us, our bringing someone to the Lord, even some strangers, might constitute the beginning of an enormous new development in the history of the kingdom of God.

          This Advent is a time for us to redouble our efforts to bring not just ourselves but others into a closer relationship with the Lord. The new beginning that Advent signifies starts with these encounters. One final point. Andrew brought people to the Lord not just by his actions, but by his words as well. We do not have any extant letters from him or homilies, but we do have an ancient account of his martyrdom, in which we can see the way he died and extrapolate from there to how he would have lived.

          His passion states that he was crucified on a decussate or x-shaped cross in northern Greece. The way people normally perish in crucifixion is not because of the literally excruciating pain, but by asphyxiation. When one is crucified on a t-shaped cross like Jesus, in order to breathe the victim must push up on his legs to open up his lungs to inhale. When one is crucified on an x-shaped cross, however, one’s quadriceps are immobilized, and the process of breathing is even more arduous. Since we speak during exhalation, saying anything while dying on a Cross is an act of tremendous heroism. St. Andrew’s passion tells us, nevertheless, for the last 38 hours of his life, when he could barely get enough oxygen to stay alive, Andrew preached the Good News of Jesus Christ from the cross to the throngs that had assembled to see him die. Until his last breath, he was seeking to introduce them to the Lord.

November 24, 2019

          When the pilgrims lowered the anchor in Plymouth harbor in December 1620, they were filled with hope. They had survived a perilous three-month journey on an inhospitable Atlantic with only one casualty. Their incessant prayers for a safe arrival had been heard. They had finally landed in the new world and were ready to begin a new life. Little did they know the year that would await them.

           Of the 103 that disembarked, more than half would die before winter was over. Governor John Carver, their leader, succumbed quickly to fever. Ten of the seventeen husbands and fathers died. Fourteen of their seventeen wives also perished. The young wife of soon-to-be Governor William Bradford drowned in Plymouth harbor before even reaching the shore. Those who avoided the grave remained in grave danger because of fevers, famine, and freezing temperatures. Yet they did not give up hope.

          With the Spring came the arrival of Squanto, who taught them various survival tactics, like how to distinguish between poisonous and good plants, to tap maple trees for sap, to fertilize soil with dead fish, and to plant corn. When that soil produced a modest harvest a few months later, they organized a feast not just to thank Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit, and their large families, but principally to thank God for all His blessings since their arrival. The fifty-one survivors easily could have looked at the previous eleven months as the worst year of their lives. They had buried almost as many bodies in the soil, after all, as bushels of food they had taken from the soil. The reason they were able to thank God so heartily, however, in spite of the suffering they had endured, was because they believed those hardships and blessings were both part of God’s providential care.

          Providence comes from the word in Latin to “foresee,” to “look out for,” and therefore, to “provide.” And they were confident that God, who foresees everything, who always looks out for His sons and daughters even when it might seem like He is not, would indeed provide, as He did. No amount of personal suffering could shake that faith. No amount of personal hardship could rock their trust in a God whom they knew loved them and was looking over them. They convened full of gratitude because they realized they were on a pilgrimage not only to Plymouth but to Paradise. Everything—adverse or propitious, life and even death—was part of God’s plans for them on their journey not merely to the new world but to a New World. That final destination, and their faith in the God who awaited them, were what gave meaning to all their sufferings and joys along the way.

          They had come to our land in search of religious freedom. As they neared the first anniversary of their arrival, they used that freedom to express heartily their gratitude toward God and to others. We still enjoy that freedom. As we come together with our families during this extended Thanksgiving week, it is proper for us to put it to its supreme use in expressing similar gratitude. No matter what type of year we have had, everything has come from God’s providential hands. And almost everything good has come through a modern Squanto or Samoset. On behalf of the clergy and staff of Divine Mercy Parish, I wish you a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!

November 17, 2019

           Jesus told us in St. Matthew’s Gospel that when He comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, He will separate us into two groups. On his right, He will place those who are saved. On his left He will place those who are condemned. To those on His right, He will say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” He told us that the stunned crowd of eternal victors will then ask when did any of us do these good deeds personally for Him, and He promised He would respond “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me” (Mt 25:34-40).

          The work of our St. Anthony Ministry to the Needy is an opportunity to take care of Christ in disguise in all these ways and more. Donations to this important ministry funds our food pantry and aid to those who need monetary assistance with basic household expenses.  As Catholics, we all have the duty to care for Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters, and the Lord tells us that we will be judged on whether we have loved Him or stiffed Him in the person of our neighbor. There are many ways to carry out that duty to be modern Good Samaritans. While we can always give generously and directly to a particular charity, there is something important about giving to our parish’s St. Anthony Ministry to the Needy.

          Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote, “Love of neighbor, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and to the Church universal in its entirety. As a community, the Church must practice love.” The “particular Church” of Divine Mercy Parish, as a community, needs to practice love. This is one of the most important signs of our ecclesial character, when we work together as disciples to give of ourselves for those for whom others so often fail to sacrifice or care. In the early Church, Christians were so distinguished by their love for those in need that even pagan leaders, while they were threatening to put Christians to death for the faith, were deeply fascinated by Christians’ love for those who did not or could not love them in return.

           Tangible deeds of self-sacrificial love are one of the most important components of the Church’s re-evangelization efforts. In an age when many are questioning the goodness of the Church after the clergy scandals, there is an even greater need to show the real self-giving face of the Church as a whole. This true image of the Church is of a mystical body working together to love Christ in others: when the multitudes of Catholic faithful through their sacrifices and prayers cooperate with those on the front lines of pastoral care to be the Good Samaritan to so many who are in need. This is the way all of us at Divine Mercy Parish can proclaim by our body language the Gospel Christ entrusted to us. It is also the way by which, God-willing, our whole parish family may reconvene in the Church triumphant at Christ’s glorious right side.