Father Robert T. Cooper

July 23, 2017

          One of my favorite stories from the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima a century ago this year is how Our Lady was compelled gently to correct the three shepherd children for “cheating” on how they were praying the Rosary.

          The eldest, at the time ten-year-old Lucy, described in her eventual Memoires what they were doing and why. “We had been told [by our parents] to say the Rosary after lunch, but as the whole day seemed too short for playing, we worked out a great way to get through it quickly. We simply passed the beads through our fingers, saying nothing but ‘Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary….’ At the end of each mystery, we paused a second, then simply said, ‘Our Father,’ and so, in the twinkling of an eye, as they say, we had our Rosary finished! … So great was our eagerness to get to play! Our prayer finished, we started to play ‘pebbles’”!

          When our Lady appeared, she taught them how to slow down and to pray the whole Our Father, the whole Hail Mary, and the whole Glory Be in each decade. Seven-year-old Jacinta was a quick convert. Later that day, when the pastorinhos brought their sheep to a place of pasture and Lucy and eight-year-old Francisco called her to come to play, she demurred, saying, “That Lady told us to say the Rosary and to make sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. So from now on, when we say the Rosary, we must say the whole Hail Mary and the whole Our Father!”

          Our Lady would later teach the docile Jacinta how to go beyond merely just saying the complete prayers. She pointed her to the 15 tableaus in their Parish Church of Fatima (Aljustrel), which depicted the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, and helped her to learn how to meditate on each of them as the most important part of praying the Rosary. Learning how to pray this Christocentric Marian prayer not just correctly but well was central to the revelations of Fatima. In each of Mary’s six appearances in 1917, she insisted on the children’s praying the Rosary each day.

          In May, Mary appeared to them the first time holding Rosary beads in her hand and asked the three kids to “recite the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.” One month later, as they were praying the Rosary, Mary appeared and asked them to “say the Rosary every day.” In July, she stated, “Pray the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain peace in the world” and, “When you recite the Rosary, say at the end of each decade: ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.’” The following month she expressed her wish that they “continue to say the Rosary every day.” In September, she reiterated, “I want you … to continue to recite the Rosary to obtain the end of the war.” Finally, in October, she revealed her identity as “the Lady of the Rosary” and said, “I desire … that people continue to recite the Rosary every day.” Could she have been more emphatic about the importance of praying the Rosary daily? Or about relating to her precisely through the Rosary?

          I have always found it noteworthy that Mary did not insist that the shepherd children go to Mass each day, even though Mass is the source and the summit of the Christian life. She did not demand that people read Sacred Scripture. She did not require that they do a Eucharistic holy hour or a certain fixed time of meditation. After all, it is not possible for everyone to get to daily Mass, to read, or without training easily to do mental prayer. Mary, rather, recommended something basically everyone could do, from young children to popes. And she asked that it be done daily and well. And she said that the peace of the world depended on it.

           Why? St. John Paul II attempted to answer that question in 2002, in his apostolic exhortation The Rosary of the Virgin Mary.

            “The Rosary,” he wrote, “is by its nature a prayer for peace, since it consists in the contemplation of Christ, the Prince of Peace, the one who is ‘our peace’ (Eph 2:14). Anyone who assimilates the mystery of Christ – and this is clearly the goal of the Rosary – learns the secret of peace and makes it his life’s project. Moreover, by virtue of its meditative character, with the tranquil succession of Hail Marys, the Rosary has a peaceful effect on those who pray it, disposing them to receive and experience in their innermost depths, and to spread around them, that true peace which is the special gift of the Risen Lord” (cf. Jn 14:27; 20.21).

            “The Rosary is also a prayer for peace,” he continued, “because of the fruits of charity that it produces. When prayed well in a truly meditative way, the Rosary leads to an encounter with Christ in his mysteries and so cannot fail to draw attention to the face of Christ in others, especially in the most afflicted. How could one possibly contemplate the mystery of the Child of Bethlehem, in the joyful mysteries, without experiencing the desire to welcome, defend and promote life, and to shoulder the burdens of suffering children all over the world? How could one possibly follow in the footsteps of Christ the Revealer, in the mysteries of light, without resolving to bear witness to his ‘Beatitudes’ in daily life? How could one contemplate Christ carrying the Cross and Christ Crucified, without feeling the need to act as a ‘Simon of Cyrene’ for our brothers and sisters weighed down by grief or crushed by despair? Finally, how could one possibly gaze upon the glory of the Risen Christ or of Mary Queen of Heaven, without yearning to make this world more beautiful, more just, more closely conformed to God’s plan?”

             “In a word,” he concluded, “by focusing our eyes on Christ, the Rosary also makes us peacemakers in the world. By its nature as an insistent choral petition in harmony with Christ’s invitation to ‘pray ceaselessly’ (Lk 18:1), the Rosary allows us to hope that, even today, the difficult ‘battle’ for peace can be won.”

            In this Centenary, the woman who wants us to relate to her as the “Lady of the Rosary,” is reiterating her call for us to take up the Rosary each day almost as a “weapon of peace,” praying it correctly, slowly, and meditatively, so that we might become more like the blessed Fruit of her womb, the Prince of Peace, and allow Him to forgive us, save us, and lead us and others to heaven. The beads await our fingers!

July 16, 2017

          As we continue to examine the enduring relevance of the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima, we can note the particular resonance of Mary’s appeal to the world through the three shepherd children. When St. John Paul II visited Fatima in 1982, he remarked that Our Lady’s words in the Cova da Iria can be summarized by the two-fold imperative with which Christ began His public ministry: Repent and believe in the Gospel. “These are the first words,” the Pope said, “that the Messiah addressed to humanity. The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel. … The call to repentance is a motherly one, and at the same time it is strong and decisive.”

          We need to listen to that ardent maternal call to penance and conversion with a fitting trepidation, he emphasized, because we can easily see “how many people and societies—how many Christians—have gone in the opposite direction to the one indicated in the message of Fatima. Sin has thus made itself firmly at home in the world, and denial of God has become widespread in the ideologies, ideas and plans of human beings. But for this very reason the Gospel call to repentance and conversion, uttered in the Mother’s message, remains ever relevant. It is still more relevant than it was [in 1917]. It is still more urgent.”

         Our Lady’s message has particular relevance and urgency for our times.

          In her first apparition, on May 13, she asked Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, “Do you wish to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the suffering that He may please to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and to ask for the conversion of sinners?”

          At the beginning of each day, Mary could well ask each of us the same question.

          On July 13, she repeated the appeal, telling the pastorinhos, “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say often this prayer, especially during any sacrifice: ‘O my Jesus, I offer this for love of you, for the conversion of poor sinners, and in reparation for all the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.’”

          Then she showed them a vision of Hell, a clear reminder of the stakes involved in whether sinners, whether we, convert and begin to choose God. It was, as Lucia recalled, a “great sea of fire” in which “were demons and souls in human form,” emitting “shrieks and groans of pain and despair,” which Lucia said “horrified us and made us tremble with fear.” It was so frightening that had Our Lady not promised to take them to heaven they “would have died of fear and terror.”

            “You have seen Hell,” our Lady commented, “where the souls of poor sinners go. To save future souls, God wishes to establish in the world the devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I tell you, many souls will be saved.”

            Devotion to Mary’s heart is to a heart that is pure, a heart that says “let it be done to me according to your word,” a heart that treasures God’s word within. It is the opposite of the heart we are warned about in Psalm 95, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” To consecrate ourselves to Mary’s heart is not just to entrust ourselves to Mary’s intercession but to enter into the essence of Christian discipleship. Mary indicates that doing so is a matter of life and death, of heaven and hell.

            Mary also showed the shepherd kids in the July apparition another vision — the famous “third secret of Fatima” — in which Our Lady pointed toward an Angel with a flaming sword who cried out in a loud voice, “Penance! Penance! Penance!” a summons that beyond the symbolism needs little interpretation.

            She also taught them a prayer known to many of us that we should say with particular fervor this centennial year. “When you recite the Rosary,” she said to them, “say at the end of each decade: ‘Oh My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Your Mercy.’”

            That prayer would make a fitting spiritual aspiration, especially this year. Mary taught us this prayer through the shepherd children not for our edification but because she’s concerned as a knowing mother about our and others’ eternal destiny. In August, Mary repeated the summons with a holy candor that’s impossible to sugar coat: “Pray, pray a lot and offer sacrifices for the sinners. You know that many souls go the hell because there is none who pray for them.” In her last appearance in October, she repeated her appeal for people to recite the Rosary “every day” and emphasized, “It is necessary that they ask pardon for their sins” and “don’t offend our God and Lord.”

            Just like St. John Paul interpreted the Fatima message in key of repentance, so did his successor. Writing in 2000, the future Pope Benedict underlined, “Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the start of the twentieth century, remains timely and urgent today.” Her “insistent invitation” to penance, he said, “is nothing but the manifestation of her maternal concern for the fate of the human family, in need of conversion and forgiveness.” The key words of what Mary revealed, he added, was prayer and sacrifice “to save souls” and the “threefold cry ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’” This, he said, is a repetition of the call to repentance and faith that began Jesus’ public ministry. To understand Fatima and our own day, he said, “means to accept the urgency of penance, of conversion, of faith.”

          In future articles, we will have a chance to look at the Fatima message from other angles, but we should not miss the way which Mary revealed a century ago is calling us to live life with greater seriousness and urgency. In response to Mary’s appeal, Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta prayed with fervor, fasted heroically, and offered themselves and their sufferings as alms for the conversion of others. What will we do?

July 9, 2017

           A big danger to growth in faith is letting it become routine. That’s one of the reasons why I have always been a big supporter of ecclesiastical holy years, which provide a prism through which to look with fresh eyes and renewed hearts at all the interconnected aspects of the life of faith. In the last 20 years, Catholics have been blessed to have had more such holy years than at any time in history: we have had years dedicated to God the Son (1997), God the Holy Spirit (1998), God the Father (1999), the Incarnation (2000), the Rosary (2002-3), the Eucharist (2004-5), St. Paul (2008-9), the Priesthood (2009-10), Faith (2012-3), Consecrated Life (2014-6) and Mercy (2015-6).

           As a disciple and as a priest, I have grown so much from the graces of these years and have sought to help others profit from them that, I confess, I am almost on a little spiritual and pastoral “withdrawal” from not having one to focus the Church’s attention since last November’s close of the Jubilee of Mercy. The absence of an officially declared holy year, however, provides the opportunity for popular devotion to fill the vacuum. I would suggest that 2017 would best be lived as a “Year of Fatima,” a time to celebrate the centenary of the appearances of Our Lady to the three shepherd children in the Cova d’Iria in Portugal, to ponder the messages entrusted by Mary to them, and to imitate the response of Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta. Over the course of the next several bulletin articles, that is what I will try to do.

          But before we get there, I would like first to address the subject of “private revelations” so that all of you will know where apparitions like Fatima fit into the practice of the Catholic faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church writes, “Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private’ revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church” (67).

          When the Church recognizes a private revelation — a reputed vision or apparition since the completion of the New Testament — as worthy of belief, we do not believe it like we do the truths contained in the “public revelation” of Sacred Scripture and Tradition, but look to it as a means to live the faith contained in Scripture and Tradition more fully. Public revelation demands an act of faith in the God who sent His Son as His incarnate Word, who founded the Church to share His Gospel, who sent the Holy Spirit to guide that Church into all truth and prevent it from erring, ever, on teaching definitively what we are to believe and do. Such faith is different from any form of human trust, opinion or belief, because it is founded on a trust in God on the basis of which we accept what He reveals, and we build our life on it.

          Private revelation, on the other hand, is accepted as credible and probable with what we could call human faith, prudence, or purified common sense. In the case of Fatima, for example, we can examine the “miracle of the sun” that occurred October 13, 1917 and recognize that what happened defies human explanation — as the reports of communist journalists present that day attest — and adds great credibility to the shepherd children who said that Our Lady would give such a sign. We can similarly evaluate the content of the messages given to the simple pastorinhos, see how they clearly exceed the children’s intellectual formation, recognize how predictions given have come to pass, and notice how they lead us back to Christ and His definitive public revelation. We would not believe in the Message of Fatima the way we believe in the Eucharist or in the inspiration of Sacred Scripture — on the basis of our faith in God Himself — but like we would believe that George Washington really was the first president or that video of an earthquake on the other side of the world testified to real events rather than what may have been doctored.

          If, as the Church teaches, definitive revelation — what we really need to know and believe — finished with the completion of the New Testament, why does God permit and engage in private revelation? The Catechism explains, “Even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries” (66). The future Pope Benedict wrote in 2000 that just because public revelation has come to an end with the fulfillment of the mystery of Christ, “this does not mean that the Church can now look only to the past … condemned to sterile repetition.” Rather authentic private revelations are like the “charism of prophecy,” which “explain the will of God for the present and therefore show the right path to take for the future.”

          Authentic private revelations provide the “actualization of the definitive Revelation” and apply it to our circumstances here and now, so that we may “recognize the presence of Christ in every age,” “understand” and “interpret” the “signs of the times” in the divine light, and “respond to them rightly in faith.” While they do not teach us anything new necessary for salvation, they may offer new emphases, devotions, liturgical practices — like, for example, Jesus’ revelations to St. Juliana of Liège about Corpus Christ, to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque about the Sacred Heart or to St. Faustina about Divine Mercy — that can nurture our faith, hope and love. They can be a “genuine help in understanding the Gospel and living it better at a particular moment in time,” as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, which means that although one is not “obliged” to use that help, they should not be easily disregarded.

              What criteria does the Church use to evaluate private revelations and pronounce some worthy of belief — like the Marian apparitions in Fatima, Lourdes and Guadalupe — and reject the vast majority of claimants, from pure frauds to well-meaning people who mistakenly but earnestly believe they are chosen seers? Approval normally involves several elements, including that the message contains nothing contrary to Christian faith or morals (the deposit of faith), the recipients are credible, there is nothing in the message impeding its being made public, and people are authorized prudently to accept it. That’s precisely what took place in Fatima, as we will explore in upcoming articles.

July 2, 2017

           In June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson, seated in the second-floor parlor of a bricklayer's house in Philadelphia, brilliantly composed the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. After some revision, the bulk of the document was approved by Congress on July 4, 1776. While the Declaration would soon become one of the world's most significant documents, its second sentence is perhaps most famous: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

           Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those words, written over two centuries ago, still resonate in the depths of our hearts, not simply because they are lofty ideals for which we find ourselves compelled to strive, but because they reflect an aspect of man's irrepressible desire to attain and enjoy human fulfillment. They speak not only of the American experiment particularly, but echo the goals of human experience generally. With those words we are reminded of the specific purpose for which we are created and the particular end toward which we are directed; on hearing them, we are moved to realize that to be human, bestowed as we are with the gift of life and dignity, created in God's image and likeness, is truly spectacular.

          Given the many alarming elements present in today's America which seek to deal a fatal blow to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, whether through direct attacks, covert manipulation of public opinion, or through the dissemination and application of counterfeit notions of human freedom, it is easy to fall into despair. That our nation is in peril is not an exaggeration in the least. In the first place, this dire predicament is the effect of secularism's insistence on the detachment of human rights from the moral law. The American crisis is a moral crisis.

           As Christians we are called to analyze culture, and, aided by the Spirit, heal, elevate and purify those elements within it which run contrary to the Gospel. Given how far adrift America has gone, the restoration of her proper course is a daunting task. But regardless of the strength, duration and outcome of the storm in which we are immersed, as Christians, as men and women informed by the light of faith, we will not lose hope. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God alone suffices.” Our hope does not rest on the passing form of this world (1 Cor. 7:31), but on the promises of Christ and the glorious future that awaits us, for "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. 1:9).

           We are called to become, by faith in Christ, members of the divine family and thus enter into the invisible and other-worldly (Jn. 18:36) fellowship of the kingdom of God. Jesus, as the door to eternal life (Jn. 10:7-9), has opened the way to that divine kingdom. Life in Christ is a participation in God's own life and is therefore a substantially and qualitatively new way of living. Speaking of His salvific mission for humankind, Jesus said: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (Jn. 10:10).

          Abundant life! While Thomas Jefferson wrote of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the context of throwing off a despotic British government in favor of an independent nation, Christ speaks of eternal realities which travel inconceivably beyond the temporal, and which will continue with an unending permanency guaranteed by God Himself. We are brought forth from nothingness to life by Christ, sustained by Christ, and gifted with the potential to enjoy everlasting, divinely infused supernatural bliss by Christ's redemptive sacrifice on the cross. So long as we remain in Christ, we no longer simply pursue happiness, but rather it becomes an inalienable and eternal reality – and this wondrous state of existence is available as God's gift to us here, right now, although its fullest dimension is attained only in the next life.

           St. Paul wrote that "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9). Since the glorious state of our future as Christians far exceeds our understanding, there is little that can be definitively said about what awaits those who love God. The temptation, however, is to project our experience of the often meager happiness tasted here through contact with created objects onto the eternal "now" of heaven. That is, since the normal experience of earthly happiness is often so fleeting and unsatisfying, we tend to view the happiness of heaven through an unsatisfactory, temporal lens. Given that, we might not even be too sure we want to live forever!

           Most of us do not have the slightest idea of what supernaturally infused bliss is. What is it like? What does happiness that flows directly from God, an infinitely powerful Being who is life itself, into the very depths of our soul, feel like? What might such a powerful encounter with God's love do to us? To be sure, it is life changing. Additionally, we learn from the saints that it cannot be characterized simply as a feeling of pleasure or security or satisfaction or tranquility, or even all of these put together.  It is far more. Take all the pleasurable experiences in life and fashion them into one event: it would seem as nothing compared to God's favorable gaze upon the soul for even a single instant. A tremendous, unforgettable and fiery love is ignited in the human spirit with but one sudden, unexpected Divine glance – an incomparable love of such depth that all the treasures of the world become less than rusted iron.

           St. Thérèse of Lisieux speaks of an encounter she had with Christ after a period of voluntary mortification she underwent in order to cleanse herself of less than heavenly desires. "God did for me what Ezekiel reports in his prophecies: Passing by me, Jesus saw that the time had come for me to be loved, He entered into a covenant with me and I became His own. He spread his mantle over me, he washed me with precious perfumes, He reclothed me in embroidered robes, He gave me priceless necklaces and ornaments. He nourished me with purest flour, with honey and oil in abundance. Then I became beautiful in His eyes and He made me a mighty queen" (Story of a Soul 101).

            Indeed, divinely infused happiness can be experienced right now. Scripture is filled with numerous references indicating we have access in the present to the love of God, to the consolations of the Spirit and to an infused joy that permeates the soul as a heavenly dew. The love of God is not something to be had only later, after a long life of deprivation and suffering, for our personal God seeks to lift us on divine arms, sweep us into his very life, and caress us in the sweet waters of tenderness. "See, I come quickly; I have my reward in hand" (Rev. 22:12). The journey toward human fulfillment is found in Christ, whose love supplies both our strength and our thirst, for the Lamb is our shepherd who leads us to springs of living waters (Rev. 7:17).

           Christ gave of Himself as an infinite gift of love for all people, past, present and future. What remains to be seen, is whether we will reciprocate that love, for Christ gives His greatest favors only to those who give themselves completely to Him. In the first place, this means living a moral life of virtue and holiness, characterized by diligent and sincere fidelity to God and His teaching presented through the Church. Unfortunately, many brethren, thinking access to the divine treasures of love can be had by halfhearted measures, and who even exhibit a spirit of willful dissent from holy mother Church, fail to understand the meaning of obedience of faith in loving freedom. To have faith in Christ is to assent fully with both intellect and will to all His words and deeds, including whatsoever He has ordained through his Church for our own good. Obviously, it is necessary to believe the Church and adhere to her divinely instituted teachings on faith and morals.

           Giving oneself to Christ is, of course, not easy; for it is a disciplined, prayerful and sacramental way of life opposed to the ways of the world, involving the whole man, both interiorly and exteriorly. "To be in Christ means being a completely new creature. Everything of the old is gone, now everything is made anew" (2 Cor. 5:17). Regardless of the difficulties involved, take courage and remember they are temporary; for as we share in Christ's suffering so too will we share abundantly in His divine glory.

           On this Independence Day, it is important to reflect on what it means to seek life, liberty and happiness. While it is safe to say everyone desires these goods, not everyone understands where they are found. In fact, it is not even a question of where they are found, but in Whom they are found: "I am the way and the truth and the life" (Jn. 14:6). Do we see beyond the present into the window of eternity? Do we truly desire above all else to love God for His sake, to become His child, and to live as a member of the divine family? These are the gifts God offers to man. These are the gifts the Church presents, as the sacrament of salvation, to the world, in order that the world may be brought to Christ. 

June 25, 2017

         In a Church that is two thousand years old, it is hard to have many firsts, but in October 2015, we had one: the first canonization of a married couple jointly as a couple, as Pope Francis in a beautiful ceremony in St. Peter’s Square officially declared Louis and Marie-Azélie “Zélie” Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, among the eternal hall of fame.

          There are several pairs of married saints. We can think of St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother, Saints Joachim and Anne, and Saints Priscilla and Aquila from Biblical times. To them we can add Saints Gregory the Elder and Nonna, the parents of St. Gregory Nazianzen; Saints Basil the Elder and Macrina, parents of Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Macrina the Younger, Naucratius, and Peter of Sebaste; Saints Isidore the Farmer and Maria de la Cabeza; and Saints Henry II and Cunegunda. But they were all, according to the customs and canons of the time, declared saints separately.

           Saints Louis and Zélie were canonized together after a joint process and miracle, an act that showed that the Sacrament of Marriage they received, and the way they lived it together, were not incidental to their individual holiness, but central to their growth. The first purpose of the Sacrament of Marriage is the mutual sanctification of the spouses; their tandem canonization is a clear sign of this Sacrament’s power and meaning. Zélie had wanted to become a Sister of Charity but had been turned away because of headaches and respiratory problems. Louis had sought to become an Augustinian monk but he was rejected because he didn’t know Latin. God sought them to make them saints, and help them become saint-makers, by another path.

          In March, 1858, they passed each other on the St. Leonard Bridge in Alençon. Zélie, a 26 year-old lace maker, heard what she thought was the voice of Our Lady whispering to her, as she looked at Louis, a 34 year-old watchmaker, “He is the one I have prepared for you.” They were married three months later, on July 12^th, the day the Church fittingly chose for their feast day. They grew in holiness together in the midst of better and worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health. They had the joy of becoming parents to seven girls and two boys, but also the sorrow of burying both boys and two of their girls died in infancy. Zélie died of breast cancer when she was 45, when her youngest, Thérèse, was only 4. Louis suffered two strokes and eventually lost his mind due to cerebral arteriosclerosis, spending the last three years of his life in a mental hospital.

          Throughout whatever challenges God gave them, however, they sought not only to be faithful and encourage each other, but to pass on the faith to their children. All five of their surviving girls became religious sisters, a sign both of the faith that they learned in their first “convent” chez Martin and of the generosity of Christian spirit to let their family name “die” in order to praise the Lord’s name forever according to the vocations to which they had discerned He was calling them.

          Often, when I prepare couples for marriage, I ask them twelve questions, so that I can try to meet them better where they are at and take them to where the Church hopes they will be on their wedding day and beyond. I ask how they met, how the proposal happened, what they believe marriage is, what role God has in their relationship, what makes marital love distinctive, what they love about each other, how the other has changed them, what they learned, good and bad, about love and marriage from their families, what their relationship is with each other’s family and friends, and whether and when they intend to start a family. I learn a lot about what makes each couple tick from their responses.

          But the most important question of the dozen I ask is, “Why do you think Christian marriage is a sacrament? What is the purpose of a sacrament?” In response, I often get the sad fruit of poor catechesis — not their fault! — describing how sacraments are merely “rituals to accompany stages of Christian growth” or some definition they have pulled from a Google search. I try to help them to grasp that, in seven different ways, sacraments are signs and means of intimate communion with God, bridges that bring God into our life and us into His and —since God’s life is eternal — that the ultimate purpose of every Sacrament is heaven. We discuss how their first task as a married couple is to help the other to become a saint. This means that if their marriage lasts 75 years, but one or the other doesn’t make heaven, their marriage — as a joint project — will have failed. But even if they struggle through the depths of “worse, sicker and poorer,” if they are able to help each other persevere and cross the eternal threshold, their marriage will have fulfilled its sacramental purpose.

          That opening allows us to talk about whether they are presently helping each other grow in practical ways closer to God or drawing each other further from God. Are they praying together? Going to Mass together? Helping the other to keep the Commandments? Growing in charity, mutual forgiveness and purity together? Assisting each other to learn the faith better through reading the Bible, Catechism and other means of Christian growth? Or are they leading each other into sinful choices or down worldly paths? It is a beautiful thing to see the spiritual light bulbs go off in young couples when they begin to recognize that a Catholic marriage is something far greater than a bond solemnized in a Church building, when they grasp that the greatest gift they could give each other is God, and when they see that if they are going to help the other become holy, they, too, have to be following Christ eagerly on the road of sanctity. It is an even more beautiful thing to see them start to live this way.

          Let us pray that the example and intercession of Saints Louis and Zélie will help all in the Church remember the purpose of marriage and human life — and inspire us to re-propose the Gospel of love, marriage, and family to our contemporaries when so many are suffering precisely because of failures to appreciate, live and proclaim this saving, holy gift.

June 18, 2017

          One of the most beautiful statues ever sculpted by Gianlorenzo Bernini was a life size marble statue of one of the ancestral founders of Rome, Aeneas. It portrays a young, strong Aeneas, fleeing from the fall of Troy. But what makes it special is that Aeneas’ elderly father is so tenderly perched on his son’s shoulders. There the father of Aeneas, frail and weak, is being carried away from Troy by his faithful son on the son’s very back. In the father’s hands are clasped the little religious statues that every good Ancient family had in their home. These were called the household gods. And you realize that the father of Aeneas saved the household gods out of gratitude—because were it not for those gods, his son would have never loved his father enough to put him on his back and take him out of Troy. In other words, the father of Aeneas—and Aeneas—knew that none of them—father or mother or children were self-sufficient—but all—especially the father—needed God and needed to love Him and acknowledge Him (or their gods) or they would never be able to love one another enough to sacrifice for each other.

          Now, you see something similar in the movie Gladiator. There is a scene before some big fight in which we see the brave, noble ex-general Maximus—now reduced to a slave, a gladiator—we see him pull out a little sack containing his little statuettes—his household gods. And he sets them up and he prays to them, and he asks these gods to take care of his family who live so far away in Spain. He who is powerless as far they are concerned knows that only the gods can help his wife and children.

          These strong men prayed because they recognized their place in this world—they recognized that there was a God and God’s laws above them—a God to whom they owed their lives, their prayers, their sacrifices. They knew that to step away from God and His laws was to invite the death for them and for their families. But to cling to God and to pray to Him was the way they could best provide for their families. They knew that everything in their home—health, wealth and safety for their families—followed upon their attachment to God.

          All traditional societies knew this, but the Romans had a name for it—they called this kind of person “Pious.” This in fact is the real meaning of the word “pious,” and it is why countless emperors and twelve popes used it as a name. It does not mean “piety” in the modern American sense of sweet and somber looks, posed hands and heavenward gazes. In the Ancient Roman sense, a pious person—and for our sakes on Father’s Day we can say a father — was stronger than others were, because he was aware of who he was. He was neither all-knowing nor all-powerful—for those are qualities that belong only to the Divine One. He was a mortal—under God. But when he recognized that, that made him the most strong, noble and manly of all. To defer to the Author of all Law was to achieve genuine authority. He was pious. He knew his duties to God, to man and to his wife and to his children.

          For the pious man, there would be no doubts as to what needed to be done. He must give up his life for the sake of those to whom he pledged his life. The pious man—the good father—the strong father—the manly father must offer himself—his body and soul—his nights and days to those to whom he has given his word—his spouse whom he is to love as he loves himself and the children who are the fruit of that love. The pious man must be like Christ Himself. He must be ready to sacrifice his life so that his family might live. He must die for them—if that’s what it takes. But before it comes to that—he must love them and cherish them as Jesus would. “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”And is not a father called by God Himself to give up his life for his family as for God?

          Now a modern father may not have all kinds of opportunities to actually die for his family. Some day he may get those opportunities. But a modern father must still give up things in his life for their sake. He must sometimes go against his more aggressive nature and be gentle to his wife and children. He must not be crabby or rude. He must be kind as Jesus was kind. No father should say he is willing to give up his life for his family if he cannot hold his wife’s hand. Fathers must make sure their wives and children are fed—before they take any food. Fathers must go without so that their wives and families can survive. This at least is the ideal and what fathers and their families must strive for. Our fathers need to be pious. They need to know they cannot do it alone and without God. They need to know that they must pray to the one true God for the strength they need to raise their families—or their families will die. It is that simple.

          The problem is that we live in a profoundly impious world—a world that does not believe in God or that God has a place in our families. Our impious world teaches fathers to be impious. “Hey, real men don’t have to go to church—that’s for women and children. Manly men sit home and watch football and swear and drink. Manly men are rude and crude and take what they want.” At least that is the ideal proposed to us on television and movies 24/7. We may not do those things exactly, but in this impious society—they are held up as the ideal. You may say, “Oh that is that old-fashioned stuff. It doesn’t apply anymore. We are moderns—we do it differently.” Nowadays modern men do not have to marry the women with whom they live. No vows, no commitments—no promises, no pledges. And since a father like that doesn’t even give his children his name —he doesn’t seem to owe them anything else either—pretty neat and pretty clean—and pretty selfish. No need for those kinds of fathers to pray— they only take care of themselves.

          And then of course there are the modern men who did take vows once, but have decided to take up with someone else and abandon the family that God gave them. They say they do this for their personal happiness. A pious father who knows his duty does not worry about whether he is happy—but whether or not his wife and children are happy. Because they—not he—are all that count. Modern understandings of men and marriage are not pious and therefore they produce men that are neither manly nor fatherly. When a father says that another child to take care of is asking too much sacrifice—it is too much burden—and that he will encourage his wife to find a method—either by pills or medical procedures to eliminate that extra burden—well—that is not what real men do. Real men shoulder the burden and help their wives raise those babies (or put their dads on their backs and carry them to safety). That’s what real men do.

          But in order to be strong enough to support their wives, arm in arm, as the two of them raise their children, fathers must be prayerful. We need to see fathers on their knees praying the Mass, praying the rosary, receiving Holy Communion, going to confession. And when our men are traditionally pious, then they will be traditionally manly—full of duty and honor and responsibility— for the lives God has placed in their care. I truly believe that when the men of a parish—or society for that matter—are the fathers they need to be, then the women of the parish can be the mothers that God has called them to be. And lo and behold their children will know the happiness of a family with a father and mother and children all in sweet accord. They will know what it is like to have God calling the shots in their home. They will know what it is like to live in a real Catholic home. And there’s nothing happier than that.

June 11, 2017

          Today of course is Trinity Sunday—the day we celebrate our belief that there are three Persons in One God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When we say we believe in Three Persons—that is not to say that we think that they are three gods. Nor are we saying that there is one god with three attitudes. No there is only one God—one Being who is God—but in this God are three distinct Persons—each of whom is a separate person—but is only the one God. This is a mystery. It is impossible for us to understand it as it is. Though that is not to say that we cannot come nearer to it and see how, it is, at least, reasonable. For example, when Saint Patrick tried to explain the Blessed Trinity to the Irish—and they were having a terrible time accepting One God and three Persons—he showed them the three leaf clover, the shamrock; and he explained that just as in the little clover there are three distinct leaves—but there is only one shamrock—so too are there Three Distinct persons in only One God.

          Now you will find that there is no place in the Bible where it says that there are three Persons in one God. Not one. And any Christian—all the Protestants—the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals who say that there are three Persons in one God—all those who believe in the Trinity believe it because we Catholics have been teaching this for almost two thousand years. Only people who believe in the Trinity—only people who believe that there are Three Persons in one God— can be called Christians. You must believe that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equally God or you cannot be called Christians. That is why if you do not believe that Jesus is God—if you believe that Jesus was only a creature of God—then you have no way of understanding how we are saved. You have no way of understanding how we are to live our lives in this world or how we are going to get to heaven.

          Do you see how it all holds together? The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is not just some abstract, abstruse theological principal that has nothing to do with our lives. The Blessed Trinity is the doctrine that tells us who the True God is and how Jesus is going to save us and how we co-operate with that by our lives. And yes—it is only Jesus who is going to save the world. It is only Jesus who is our true God and true King. Only Jesus! Of course that is why the world is in such a mess because it does not believe in the True God—the Triune God. It does not accept Jesus as King. We see it every day (if we are watching) the life of a world lived without God—without Jesus and without the Church. It is a world of unremitting sadness, violence and tears—a world of wars and bombings—vampires and cannibals—a world of dead babies and broken families—and no one is happy and no one is content. Without Jesus, the Son of God, without the Trinity, we are a world with no history and no future—no fathers, no mothers—no wives, no children. This is where we are—and where we are going.

          All brought to us courtesy of the people who told us to cast off our God—our Trinity and Jesus and embrace the new gods of pleasure and wealth. They told us that would bring us happiness and fulfillment and joy—but it only brought us a nightmare. I think of our young people as they are about to take their place in this kind of world—and they will have a hard time of it. Because if they resist this world and all its false temptation—if they continue to hold to the true God for the sake of their own lives and families, they will be confronted at every turn with the possibility of actually having to suffer for it. Oh it may not be quite as dramatic as priests facing the guillotine in France or nuns being machine gunned in Spain or little boys being shot in Mexico.

          It might be more subtle. Our Catholic young people will be faced with choices about doing things and accepting things and approving things that they find abhorrent and they will have to make a choice—my faith or my life? Maybe they will be nurses or doctors and their superior will tell them one fine day that they have been assigned to help kill babies in the womb. And they (only a few years from Catholic grammar school) will say, “Why I cannot do that! That is murder. I don’t do those things. I only heal!” And the administrator will hiss into the young nurse’s or doctor’s ear, “My dear, if you do not do this—you will have no job. And what will your family do then?” What if one of our young people in the next few years enters in to the military—and their officer tells them that their target is a village—sort of shock and awe for civilians. And our young Catholic hesitates and asks—“Do we really bomb women and children?” And the superior barks “Soldier, do you want a court martial?” What if one our young people becomes a police officer or a lawyer and they are asked to serve arrest papers on some parish priest because he will not perform a gay marriage?

          I do not think that any of this is an exaggeration. This is our near future—and every one of us—old as well as young—is going to be forced to make choices about life and love and duty and responsibility that will not be pleasant. Choices for God or against God—choices to be loyal to the Church or be loyal to the regime. Choices to go along with them and avoid problems—or stay true to Jesus and risk everything.

           So when you say you believe in the Trinity—you do not get just a nice, mysterious, theological conclusion. You get trouble for yourself. You will be ridiculed and mocked and threatened. You might lose your standing in the world—you will certainly lose your comfort zone. But that is what you get when you believe in the Trinity. You get Jesus who is Divine—and you get a Church that speaks for Jesus and you get a way of life and code of conduct and a moral imperative that stands as a constant reproach to those who do not believe as you do.

             Yes, believing in the Blessed Trinity might make this life difficult for you—if you take it seriously. And you may have to shed either your blood or your pride for that belief—but at least it will guarantee you integrity in this life and happiness in the next.

June 4, 2017

           Today, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. Now the word Pentecost literally means “the fiftieth day.” This day was originally a Jewish feast that celebrated the day that God gave the people of Israel the Ten Commandments. And that took place fifty days after the Exodus. How beautifully it all comes together. Fifty days after God saves the Chosen people—from the Pharaoh—from the Angel of Death—from unending slavery—from ceaseless bondage—from sin and misery—He gives them His law—by which they are to order their lives and structure their society. They receive the law which defines them as a nation—which sets them up as a special people who will live their lives in accord with that law and therefore in a manner that will show to the world that they are worthy of God’s love.

          Oh and how proud they were of their Law! They used to say, “No people has a God like we have. No people has a Law like we have.” And they were right. If there were any ancient people who had a law—it was simply a code of law—a code of conduct—a body of rules and regulations for the smooth running of their society. “Don’t do this—don’t do that. Pay this, pay that.” Not much more. How to tax, who to tax and what the government will do if someone cheats you or kills you. But the Chosen people had a real Law—a means by which they could structure not only their society but their lives. This law was simple and direct and deep. It was summarized by Christ Himself as the command to love God and then your neighbor. Simply put, if we understand and observe the first three commandments—by loving God, it will follow that we will be able to observe the other seven commandments by loving our neighbor. This was the Source of the Law that God gave His people—the love of God which issues forth into a love of neighbor. In no better way could the chosen people show how much they loved God and were thankful to Him for having saved them from the Pharaoh than by observing His Law—loving God and then loving their neighbor.

          So Pentecost—the celebration of the giving of the ten Commandments — was the very day the Apostles were commemorating in the Upper Room fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. (I will not say they were celebrating because they were cowering for fear of the Jews—who were not too thrilled to hear about this Risen Messiah.) And so—just as on the fiftieth day after the Passover, God gave His Chosen People the Law of love—how beautiful to realize that on the fiftieth day after the New Passover—the sacrifice of the Lamb of God and His life giving Resurrection—God gives the Church the actual means by which the Church can live the law faithfully and fearlessly. He gives the Church the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, whose name is Love. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son and is the link in Love between the Father and the Son is now given to us. We can observe the Law of Love now, because the Love of God lives within us. I love to think about these things this way—because you realize you cannot make them up—only God can plan it this way—which gives it all the ring of truth. You see how God draws it all together: the Old Testament—the New Testament—the Passover—the Sacrifice of Jesus—the Ten Commandments—the Law of Love and the Holy Spirit.

          And so a band of cowering fishermen and tax collectors is transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into preachers, missionaries, converters, apologists, who charge out into the world—out into the market place—to turn it towards Christ. They explode upon the scene and with a Spirit that can only come from God. This Pentecost Sunday they continue a campaign to bring the whole, unknowing, unbelieving, misbehaving world to a knowledge of the Law of Christ which is the Law of love. And so if the Ascension of Our Lord into heaven was how we realized we needed a Church—Pentecost tells us how that Church will be. The Church will be His presence and voice in the world and it will be fearless and relentless and furious. It will be fueled by the Fire of the Holy Spirit. It will be heard and understood in every language and in every dialect and in every corner of the world—and, of course it will be resisted in every language and in every dialect and in every corner of the world.

          But no earthly force of human agency—no crowd of angry objectors—no jealous king—or petty prince—no uniformed dictator—or suited president will be able to stop that voice or silence it or subdue it or even pervert it—because it is the voice of the Holy Spirit who is God. And it is God who is the living beating loving Heart of the Church and those who reject and resist and abuse that Church—they do so to their own peril.

          There is a typical centuries’ old control strategy to try to prevent the Catholic Church from teaching and preaching the Word of God and His way of life most effectively. Many do not want the Church teaching and preaching in any way for any reason. But it has always been thus. Behind all the persecutions and campaigns, underpinning all the policies and platforms and laws and mandates—is the lying attempt to eliminate Christ as an influence in this world by trying to control His Church. But the history of the world should tell them that the Church will not give in, and eventually she will win. How often even in modern times in the last centuries all the liberal secularists and atheists predicted the end of the Catholic Church. It is all over they would say—nothing can bring it back. And a modern person—seeing all the struggles the Church has had to endure—would be forgiven for thinking—well, maybe they’re right—the Church is dying. It is all over.

          But they would be underestimating the Church—and her resilience and the reason for her resilience: that the Church is of God—and the Holy Spirit is the force behind it all. And the voice of God will continue to go out to the world—no matter the strategies used against the Church. And the Church will not only survive—but thrive. The lesson of Pentecost—fifty days after the Resurrection—is that the Word of God will not be contained or diminished or reduced—but will go out—in every language and dialect and in every corner of the world until the end of time—because it is the word of Love, the Law of love—the gift of God Himself.

May 28, 2017

          Today in the Catholic Church we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord. Sadly, this Feast Day seems to have lost its deeper meaning in the experience of too many Catholics and other Christians. This is a celebration of profound meaning and promise, if we understand the message proclaimed by the Church about who Jesus is and who we are empowered to become in Him. On this Feast of the Ascension, we should ask ourselves this question, "How are we doing?" The Feast presents us with an invitation to examine the relationship between the faith we profess every Sunday in the Creed and its manifestation in the “stuff” of our daily lives. St. Paul encouraged the Christians in Corinth in his second letter to take such an examination regularly: "Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail the test. I hope you will discover that we have not failed" (2 Cor. 13:5).

          Philosophers and Theologians sometimes use the word ontology when considering the essence of being, what makes something what it is. There is an ontological meaning to the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus. It goes to the very essence of the Christian vocation and the plan of redemption. We have ascended with Jesus Christ and are called to live on earth the very realities of heaven, beginning in the here and now. This Feast can also give us insight into the deeper reality of the Feast of Pentecost which we will soon celebrate. The breath of God, His Spirit, has been breathed into His Church - and thus into each one of us - in order to capacitate us to live differently - beginning right now - and participate in the ongoing redemptive mission of Jesus Christ. That mission will not be complete until the One who ascended returns and hands the re-created cosmos back to the Father. That is what the Apostle Paul calls "the plan", or the "mystery" now revealed in Jesus Christ.  The Feast of the Ascension helps unlock the meaning of our lives and the plan of God for the entire created order. No mere intermission, the Feast we celebrate today reveals the inner meaning of the ongoing mission of the Church and our call to participate in it.

          The great western Bishop Augustine proclaimed these words on the Feast: "Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies."

          When we went down into the Font of Baptism, we were incorporated into Jesus Christ, made members of His Body, the Church. Therefore, as Augustine also wrote, "Where the Head is, there is the Body, where I am, there is my Church, we too are one; the Church is in me and I in her and we two are your Beloved and your Lover."  In other words, we have ascended with the Lord! He is the Head and we are members of His Body. We cannot be separated. Augustine, reflecting the clear teaching of the early Church Fathers reminds us that the Head and the Body are the "One Christ." So, this is our Feast as well! We now live in Christ by living in His Body, the Church, of which we are members. We are invited to live in the heart of the Church for the sake of the world.

          Pope St. Leo the Great reflected on the joy the disciples experienced on that glorious day in these words: "That blessed company had a great and inexpressible cause for joy when it saw man's nature rising above the dignity of the whole heavenly creation, above the ranks of angels, above the exalted status of archangels. Now would there be any limit to its upward course until humanity was admitted to a seat at the right hand of the eternal father, to be enthroned at last in the glory of him to whose nature it was wedded in the Person of the Son." Both of these great Christian saints point us to the deeper meaning of this Feast. The Ascension does not mark the end of Jesus' relationship with His Church but the beginning of a new way of His relating to the world - in and through His Church. This way includes every one of us who bear His name. We have also ascended with the Lord. When viewed with the eyes of living faith, the Ascension is capable of transforming the way we view ourselves and live our daily lives.

          Jesus Christ bridged heaven and earth. Through His Incarnation, His Saving Life, Death and Resurrection, we have been set free from the consequences of sin, including the sting of death. We are being created anew in Him daily as we freely cooperate with His grace. One of the Catechism's definitions of grace is "a participation in Divine Life" (CCC #1997). It calls to mind the wonderful words of the Apostle Peter in his second letter. He reminded the early Christians that they were "participants in the Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4). So are we! This Divine Life is mediated to us through the Word and the Sacraments in and through the Church which is the Body of Christ. We are incorporated into the Trinitarian communion of love, beginning now.  The Church is not some "thing," the Church is Some-One, the Risen Christ truly present in the world which was created through Him and is now being re-created in Him.

          The Church is the new Israel sent into the world to continue His redemptive mission until He comes again. Then, when He does return, He will complete the work of Redemption. The Church, as the fathers were fond of saying, is the new world, and the world in the course of transfiguration. The Christian vocation is about learning to live this new relationship in Christ together, with the Father, through the Holy Spirit and for the sake of a world that still awaits its full redemption. The Feast of the Ascension is not some kind of Intermission but a continuation of the Redemption of Jesus Christ.

          Let me conclude with some words from the great Apostle and mystic Paul who reflects on this plan:

          "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved. In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us.”

          "In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth. In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the first installment of our inheritance toward redemption as God's possession, to the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:3-14).

May 21, 2017

         When the fullness of time arrived, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law. All of the expectant waiting for the Savior's coming in the Old Testament was concentrated in our Lady's faith: “In Mary . . . is fulfilled the long history of faith of the Old Testament, with its account of so many faithful women, beginning with Sarah: women who, alongside the patriarchs, were those in whom God's promise was fulfilled and new life flowered." Like Abraham, “our father in faith," who left his homeland trusting in God's promise, Mary abandoned herself with complete trust in the Angel's announcement, thus becoming a model and mother for believers. The Virgin Mary, “perfect icon of the faith," believed that nothing is impossible for God, and thus made it possible for the Word to come to dwell among mankind.

          Our Mother is a model of faith. By faith, Mary accepted the Angel's word and believed the message that she was to become the Mother of God in the obedience of her devotion. Visiting Elizabeth, she raised her hymn of praise to the Most High for the marvels He worked in those who trust Him. With joy and trepidation she gave birth to her only Son, keeping her virginity intact. Trusting in Joseph, her husband, she took Jesus to Egypt to save Him from Herod's persecution. With the same faith, she followed the Lord in His preaching and remained with Him all the way to Golgotha. By faith, Mary tasted the fruits of Jesus' resurrection, and treasuring every memory in her heart, she passed them on to the Twelve assembled with her in the Upper Room to receive the Holy Spirit.

          Our Lady lived out her faith amid a fully human life, that of an ordinary woman. God did not spare her pain, exhaustion in her work or trials of her faith. A village woman one day broke into praise for Jesus exclaiming: Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nourished you. Jesus said in reply: Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it (Lk 11:27-28). It was a compliment to his Mother on her fiat, her 'be it done.' She lived it sincerely, unstintingly, fulfilling its every consequence, but never amid fanfare, rather in the hidden and silent sacrifice of each day. Our Lady “lived entirely from and in her relationship with the Lord; she was disposed to listen, alert to recognizing the signs of God in the journey of His people; she was integrated into a history of faith and hope in God's promises with which the fabric of her life was woven."

          By faith, Mary penetrated into the Mystery of the one true Godhead (who exists in three divine persons) in a way granted to no other creature. And as “mother of our faith," she has made us sharers in that knowledge. We can never hope to fathom this inexpressible mystery; nor will we ever be able to give sufficient thanks to our Mother for bringing us into such intimacy with the Blessed Trinity.

          Our Lady is Teacher of faith. Every aspect of faith in Christian life finds its prototype in Mary: being faithful to God and viewing the circumstances of ordinary life in the light of faith, even in moments of obscurity. Our Mother teaches us to be totally open to the divine will even though it is mysterious, and often does not correspond with their own wishes, and is a sword that pierces their soul, as the elderly Simeon would say prophetically to Mary when Jesus was presented in the Temple. Her complete trust in God's faithfulness and in His promises never wavers, even when the Lord's words were difficult or apparently impossible to accept. Therefore, “if our faith is weak, we should turn to Mary." Amid the darkness of the Cross, our Lady's faith and docility yields an unexpected fruit. “In the person of John, Christ is entrusting all men to His Mother, and especially His disciples: those who were to believe in Him." Mary's motherhood extends to Christ's whole Mystical Body. Jesus gives us His Mother as our mother; He places us under her care, and offers us her intercession. Therefore the Church constantly invites the faithful to turn with particular devotion to Mary.

          Our weakness is not an obstacle to grace. God takes it into account; that's why He has given us a mother. In the struggle which the disciples must confront—all of us, all the disciples of Jesus, we must face this struggle—Mary does not leave us alone: the Mother of Christ and of the Church is always with us. She walks with us always, she is with us . . . Mary accompanies us, struggles with us, sustains Christians in their fight against the forces of evil." In the school of faith, our Lady is the best teacher, for she always had an attitude of trust, of openness, of supernatural outlook, no matter what happened around her. Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.  Let us try to imitate her, talking to our Lord, conversing like two people in love about everything that happens to us, even the most insignificant incidents. Nor should we forget that we have to weigh them, consider their value, and see them with the eyes of faith, in order to discover the Will of God.

          Mary's path of faith, although certainly different in many ways, is also similar to that of each one of us. Moments of bright light alternate with moments of darkness with respect to God's will. When they found Jesus in the Temple, Mary and Joseph did not understand the saying which He spoke to them. If, like our Lady, we welcome the gift of faith and place all our trust in God, we will confront each situation with faith and an abiding hope in God’s providential care. 

          Let us turn to Mary and ask her to help us live by faith and to recognize Jesus in our lives. We need a faith that assures us that nothing is comparable to the Love of God in which we have been made sharers; faith that nothing is impossible for those who work for and with Christ in His Church; faith that all men and women can convert to God; faith that despite our own wretchedness and falls we can be made whole again with God's help and that of those around us; faith in the means of holiness that God has given His Church, in the supernatural value of work and of little things; faith that we can redirect this world to God if we always hold onto His hand. In short, faith that God puts each of us in the best circumstances, whether of health or sickness, of working environment, etc., so that we can become saints, if we respond through our daily struggle.

          Christ lays down one condition: we must live by faith; then we will be able to move mountains. And so many things need moving in the world, but, foremost, in our own hearts. So many obstacles placed in the way of grace! We have to have faith, therefore: faith and works, faith and sacrifice, faith and humility. For faith makes us all-powerful: If you will only believe, every gift you ask for in your prayer will be granted (Mt. 21:22).

          Spurred by a strong faith, let us tell Jesus: Lord, I do believe, but help me in my faith to believe more and worthier! Let us address this same plea to our Lady, Mother of God and our Mother, and Teacher of faith: Blessed art thou for thy believing; the message that was brought to thee from the Lord shall have fulfillment. “Mother, help our faith!"

May 14, 2017

          It is Mother’s Day and our hearts and minds turn to the woman who gave us life and showed us the beauty of steadfast love throughout our lives. Homes are filled with celebrations, and gifts are given to express the profound gratitude we all feel for our mother. On this day, I am always drawn to reflect on one of the last gifts the Lord gave to us before His total gift of Himself on the Cross, the gift of a mother. Moreover, not just any mother, but His own Mother, Mary. May is the month dedicated to Mary, the Mother of the Lord.

          Christian Art and the writings of the Tradition of the Church are filled with reflections on the profound mystery and implications of this gift of a Mother named Mary to the Church. Even those Christians who are a part of the traditions flowing from the Protestant  Reformation, who, for so long have viewed this gift of Mary as a problem rather than a treasure, are beginning to reconsider the implications of this gift.

          A few years ago, I was an invited guest at a celebration of the life and ministry of an evangelical protestant leader. It was a "black tie" affair, accompanied with all the fanfare. I was one of only a few Catholic clergy who attended the event, and I was glad to be there to pay tribute to this man. At the end of the evening, a protestant minister gave the final tribute and prayer to conclude the nights' festivities. The minister’s message, (to the surprise of some present), was that we are living in, what he called a "Mary Moment." With genuine insight he broke open the meaning of the life and mission of the Mother of the Lord as a model for all in that room and beyond who wanted to follow her Son Jesus.

          He offered the life of Mary as a model for all Christians. He encouraged all those present to follow her way of simplicity, humility and obedience. He emphasized the particular words spoken by Mary at the Wedding Feast of Cana when, after imploring her Son to perform His first public miracle (ah, the powerful intercession of a mother!) she directed those who were serving to: "Do whatever He tells you." In this message, he was participating in what the early fathers of the Church did so often and so beautifully, breaking open the deeper mystery of Mary as a gift to the Church.

          Over the years, this kind of recovery of the significance of the life and witness of Mary has touched many Christians. For Catholic and Orthodox Christians, it has always been at the heart of our understanding the meaning of the mission of the Church. Catholics and Orthodox honor Mary as the "Mother of the Lord", the woman singularly chosen in the eternal plan of God to be called "mother" by Jesus, to bear God Incarnate in her womb for nine months and then to give Him to the whole world. The womb of that mother was a "temple of glory", an "ark of the Covenant" and a new "tent of meeting" where heaven touched earth!

          She was also a real mother who was privileged to, along with St. Joseph, raise the One who lived within her for nine months after He was born. In her presence and with her human influence, the biblical texts tell us He "grew in wisdom and stature" in His Sacred humanity (Luke 2:52). Think about the wonder of all of this on this Mother’s Day.

         In the undivided Church, East and West, for the first one thousand years, devotion to and love of Mary was a shining light of the profound prayers, reflections and writings of the Christian Church. When  one probes the lives of Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairveaux, Therese of Liseux, the late Blessed Theresa of Calcutta and so many others within the western Christian tradition, including even Martin Luther, one finds this kind of love for and devotion to Mary. The words of Martin Luther express it with such simple clarity: "Men have crowded all her glory into a single phrase: The Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her."

         Jesus called her "Mother" and He entrusted her, as one of His last and greatest gifts to His beloved disciple and to the entire Church with these tender words of entrustment in the Gospel of John: "When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home" (John 19:26, 27).

         Mary was there at the Incarnation, Birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of God Incarnate. She was there throughout the often called "hidden years" in Nazareth. In the life of the Redeemer, every word and every act was redemptive, revealing as it does the very life of God, the mystery of heaven touching earth, and the deeper purpose of our own lives. She was there in those moments whose impact is timeless. They are still as filled with the invitation of grace today as they were when they first occurred.

          She was there on the great day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, which we will soon celebrate. She was there as the first evangelizer and disciple who gave the first Christian testimony to her cousin, Elizabeth, and won the first convert "in utero" in the person of John the Baptist. This event, traditionally called "The Visitation," is recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke (Luke l: 39-45).

          This encounter immediately follows the visit of the Angel Gabriel to Mary (Luke 1:6-38) and is one of the fruits of her humble obedient response. That response was not a onetime reaction. It was the fruit of a life of surrender and stretched forward to characterize her whole life on this earth and her participation in the eternal communion of Saints. The Prayer of Mary is more about being than doing. It is about surrendered love to God.

          Her "Fiat" in response to the visitation from the messenger of heaven, the angel, provides a pattern of prayer and a way to live for us. It immediately issues forth in the fruit of her praise, her "Magnificat." This canticle begins with the words in Latin Magnificat anima mea Dominum ("My soul doth magnify the Lord"). This hymn of praise is memorialized in that beautiful biblical text which ancient Christian tradition referred to as "The Magnificat" (Luke 1:46-55). The "Fiat" is more than a prayer and the "Magnificat" more than a hymn of praise. Together they constitute a lesson book, a guide, for this journey called life.

          She said "Yes" to the invitation to love and she humbled herself. She confronted her own fears and she entered into a way of living. All of this was in continued response to an original invitation of love, a gift, initiated by a loving God. Her simple response of "yes" overflowed into her "magnificat" of praise. Through this response, she assumed a life's posture of receiving and giving.  She became a fruitful woman, a "God-Bearer" or "Mother of God" (which in Greek is Theotokos). She brought forth the Word of God!  Her "Yes," her humble surrender, is a trajectory of love, a prototype of the vocation of every human person to bear the fruit of surrendered love.

          It reveals the meaning of life for all men and women who are children of the one Creator. God is not meant to be an "add on" to our life. Rather, He is its source and its summit. There is a way, a pattern that all men and women are invited into - not just once, but daily. It reveals the path to authentic peace and is the portal of the mystery of meaning itself. It is what Christian Scripture calls the "more excellent way," the way of love. Mary understood and walked this way with extraordinary humility (cf. 1 Cor. 12:31). She shows us the pattern of love surrendered to Love.

          Is it any wonder that the early Christians painted her image in the catacombs during their moments of fear, persecution and doubt? They found great inspiration from this little woman of great faith. In her "yes" they came to understand that ordinary people can change human history. They were inspired to add their own "yes," their own "fiat" to hers.

          Justin Martyr and many other early Christian apologists found in her "fiat," her obedient "yes" to the angel, the undoing of the "no...I will not serve" given by the first woman Eve. They called Mary "the Second Eve," the mother of a new creation. In her womb was carried the One whom Scripture calls the "New Adam," He was born from her as the first born of a new race of men and women who would find a new birth through His life, death and Resurrection.

          That same Redeemer now resides within, and lives through, all those who respond to the invitation of Love like she did. Mary's choice, her response to the invitation of a God who always respects human freedom, is a singularly extraordinary event in all of human history. However, it is meant to be much more. It is an invitation to each one of us to explore our own personal histories and to write them anew in Him by exercising our own freedom by choosing the more excellent way.

          Mary shows us the way to surrender to God’s loving invitations in our daily lives; a path, to living a life of surrendered love. When we embrace it, it allows Love Incarnate, the Savior whom Mary bore to be, in a real sense, to be "incarnated" in and through each of us so that He can be given to others. We become "God Bearers."

         We become the tent and the ark within which that same God takes up His residence, comes to dwell, in our age - which so desperately needs His saving presence. When we begin to touch and grasp this profound insight we not only find ourselves transformed but learn how to become the vehicles through which Love is incarnated for all those around us. He comes to dwell in all men and women who say "Yes" to Him. "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him" (John 14:23).

         Mary shows us how to participate in the ongoing incarnation of God's Love for the sake of world; to live redemptively. We are called to bear God to an age in need. In living this kind of surrendered life we are transformed and participate in the mediation of God's love to others. The ongoing creative and redemptive work of God's love continues through us. That is, if we learn to respond the same way Mary did: "Behold the servant of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to Thy word." We are living in a Mary Moment. Happy Mother's Day!

May 7, 2017

         God has a plan for each of us, a plan by which He means to sanctify us, and a plan which He has designated as our own personal road to heaven. This is our vocation, our calling. For many, it is marriage. But for other select souls it is the priesthood or religious life.

          “Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear my voice … and they follow me.’” The problem is that so many today do not hear His voice, and some that do hear His voice refuse to follow Him because the passing enticements of the world are too attractive. This is at the root of our present-day vocation crisis and why the Church has observed a World Day of Prayer for Vocations on the Fourth Sunday of Easter for the last 54 years. People often do not hear God’s voice calling them because all of the noise in the world around them has drown it out. There are those who perhaps do not turn off the music because they are afraid of silence and what they might hear in the depths of their soul.

          God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts, but when a person constantly surrounds himself with the noise of television, radio and I-Pods, he won’t hear that voice. There is no shortage of people being called by God. It is just that so many of them are not listening or are not able to hear for all of the noise.

          It used to be that many Catholics at some time in their life at least considered a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Today, it is not even on the radar screen because it does not seem very attractive. They do not see a vocation to the priesthood and consecrated life as desirable. They do not see that it is a special gift from God that He has designed for those select souls which He has called to this special state of life – a gift that will bring them happiness and fulfillment, not only in the life to come, but also in this life.

          Even so, this unique call, in turn, “requires a free response on the part of men and women; a positive response which always presupposes acceptance of and identification with the plan that God has for everyone” (Benedict XVI, “Message of the Holy Father for the 46th World Day of Prayer for Vocations,” 3 May 2009). The one who is “called” voluntarily leaves everything and submits himself to the teaching of the divine Master; hence a fruitful dialogue between God and man begins, a mysterious encounter between the love of the Lord who calls and the freedom of man who responds in love, hearing the words of Jesus echoing in his soul, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” Attracted by God, from the very first centuries of Christianity, many men and women have left families, possessions, material riches and all that is humanly desirable in order to follow Christ generously and live the Gospel without compromise, which had become for them a school of deeply rooted holiness.

         Although the priesthood and the consecrated life are both special calls to sanctity, undertaken by renunciation of the normal ways of the world, there are fundamental differences between the two. The priesthood is a sacrament in which a man’s soul is reconfigured to Christ, so that he becomes an instrument through which Christ works to sanctify others. He becomes a channel by which Christ bestows His life-giving grace on others, primarily through the sacraments. He becomes a shepherd for the flock to keep them from going astray. A man does not become a priest for his own good but solely for the good of others. Sure, it is his duty to strive for personal holiness, but nonetheless, his primary purpose is not to sanctify himself, but to sanctify others.

          Consecrated religious, on the other hand, are persons who give themselves as a total and unqualified gift to God in a radical manner through the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in imitation of Christ, the poor, chaste and obedient. The religious becomes a sign of contradiction to the world by pointing to the ultimate goal. In renouncing the world, they already begin here on earth to live the life of heaven where there are no possessions, where people are no longer given in marriage and where there is perfect obedience, that is, total conformity with the will of God. In seeking personal sanctification, the religious offers himself up as a sacrifice for the world, so that it too may be saved. “To imitate Christ, chaste, poor and obedient, and to identify with him: this is the ideal of the consecrated life, a witness to the absolute primacy of God in human life and history” (Benedict XVI, “Message of the Holy Father for the 47th World Day of Prayer for Vocations,” 25 April 2010).

          Throughout the history of Christianity, the Holy Spirit has raised up many different forms of consecrated life to serve the many needs of the Church and the world. Dating to the very dawn of Christianity, monastic life was among the earliest forms of consecrated life in which monks separated themselves from the world, so that through a balance of the interior life and work, they could offer themselves in unceasing praise to God. In later centuries, the Holy Spirit raised up new forms of consecrated life devoted to the service of the Church in apostolic and missionary work. The first among these were the mendicant orders, like the Dominicans and Franciscans, who are called friars. There are canons regular, like the Norbertines. And there are clerics regular; the most commonly known to you being the Jesuits. There are institutes of contemplative life, which through a hidden life of constant prayer sustains the Church and a world constantly teetering on the brink of self-annihilation. Some think that they live useless and unproductive lives, but if not for their constant intercession before the throne of God in contemplative prayer, we would have all perished long ago. There are secular institutes, societies of apostolic life, consecrated virgins, hermits and consecrated widows and widowers. Because the Holy Spirit is always attuned to the needs of the Church and the world, He is constantly raising up new communities, and in our modern age, even new forms of consecrated life that have never even existed before, such as Opus Dei.

          Over the last few decades, we have had a serious vocation crisis that was due in large part to the mass defections from the priesthood and religious orders, which began in the 1960s. But over the last several years, there has been a rise in the number of seminarians, as well as in certain religious orders. In fact, there has also been an enormous increase in the creation of new communities, such as the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius. God continues to call many men and women. He never ceases to inspire people to offer themselves up by a radical living out of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience as “signs of contradiction for the world, whose thinking is often inspired by materialism, self-centeredness and individualism.” He never ceases to call men to the priesthood to become radical witnesses to the world as other Christs to heal their spiritual wounds and lead them to heaven through the sacraments.

          But we also have to pray to God for vocations; implore Him to send us men and women, who will willingly choose to reject the world for the sake of something far greater; “to imitate Christ, chaste, poor and obedient, and to identify with him.”

          So many people see this short sojourn on earth as the final goal and never truly think of what God’s plan for them is. That is why we have a vocations crisis. God is left out of the picture. And when He is left out of the picture you trudge through life without even considering that He may have a much better way for you to reach heaven. Our life on earth is only a short prelude to our ultimate goal, which is to reach heaven where we will spend all eternity. Our vocation is the means by which God has determined that we will best achieve that goal. And it is also the means by which we have the possibility of achieving the greatest degree of happiness in this life and in the next.

          We have many young people in our parish, and I am certain that God is calling some of them to the priesthood and consecrated life. That is why I am asking all of you, my young parishioners, to keep an open and uncluttered heart, so that when He calls, you will hear Him. And at the same time, I want to ask that the rest of you never cease praying for them, so that when they do hear His voice, they will follow Him with a generous heart.

April 30, 2017

          I was reading the biography of a priest, and one of the things that struck me the most was in the very first few paragraphs of that book (The book is called, A Priest is a Priest Forever). Here is what the priest-author says:

I have always loved the truth. It has been my joy and duty to always teach the truth…The full Gospel must be taught if a man is to be loyal to his priesthood, that is, Christ’s priesthood in him. I cannot be a faithful priest if I am not willing to die for the truth in preaching, teaching the fullness of truth. I must answer to God at my individual judgment if I preach not the truth. I knew I could never hold back preaching the truth, the full Gospel, even if it offended some. Jesus Christ is the Truth.

          These words made me shudder, and even rejoice with an indescribable joy. The concept of being a “martyr of the Truth” is not very much in style today…much less claiming that there is only one, objective Truth, and that that Truth is the Truth of God, the Truth of the Gospel of Christ. However, that is what the Church teaches, and for many years she has done so unabashedly.

          However, in the past 40 years, we have seen within the confines of the Church itself an unprecedented push for a watered-down gospel. Who cannot but think of the severe warning of the Apostle Paul in the following text:” As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed” (Gal. 1:9).

          False gospels (pseudo-gospels) abound in the world today. And yet they cannot drown out the Voice of the one, true Gospel: that of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The secular world pushes the Church to change the Gospel always, embracing the false ideas and ideologies of the world. Many, if not most, ecclesial communities have done so willingly. But the Catholic Church has remained firm in upholding the only Gospel that is worthy of that name.

          However, pressures do exist to embrace an easier form of Christianity — one that would not place any “unnecessary difficulties” on the backs of Christians. Slowly, we have lost a sense of discipline in the Church. This began with small things (or seemingly small things), such as the virtual abolition of fasting and abstinence; the reduction of the Eucharistic fast from midnight to three hours to finally only one hour before receiving Holy Communion; the lack of seasonal devotionals, etc . All of these apparently “small” things have contributed greatly (and collectively) to the almost universal overnight erosion of discipline in the Catholic liturgical and sacramental life. This is not “the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” because it encourages lukewarmness. And holiness is anything but lukewarmness!

          Priests today must have the courage to preach the Truth and the fullness of the Gospel without compromise. I encourage my brother priests to do so, knowing that this will not be easy. But when we were ordained, we did not take a promise of living an easy life. At the reception of Holy Orders, we gave ourselves to Christ and to His Church fully and entirely, without any reservation whatsoever. Please be faithful to the life to which you have been called. The salvation of souls is at stake! Let us not play around with that.

          And as for the laity, I would like to encourage you to challenge your priests to give you the fullness of the Gospel. Thank priests when they have the courage to preach something that is difficult but important to preach. Challenge them to do more when they simply give you a watered-down version of the Gospel. Jesus did not suffer His Passion and die on the Cross in order that we may live comfortable, easy lives. He died on the Cross in order to redeem us from sin. And sin is redeemed only at a very costly price. This was true for Our Lord, and it is equally true for us. Let us not water down the price that Jesus Christ paid for our sins out of pure love.

          After all this, I must make one very important final point. I am not in any way encouraging priests to beat the people over their heads with the Gospel Truth, in a way that would crush them or not respect their own personal journeys of faith. I am not encouraging a harsh or rigid implementation of the truths of the Gospel. All I am saying is that we cannot fall into the opposite error — one that has done much harm in the Church for the past 40 or so years. We cannot replace the vigor and vitality of the call to conversion of heart that the Gospel necessarily incites within souls with a watered-down, almost effeminate version of Christianity. The Catholic Faith is for the poor, for the sick, for sinners and those who are weak…of course it is! But it is not intended to leave people there. It is given to them precisely in order to elevate them to something that is sublime and divine: that is what Gospel conversion is all about. Repenting and converting to the Gospel is an invigorating process. The Gospel is Strength — not just human strength, but Divine Strength. Let us never reduce its power to sanctify by diluting it with a politically-correct pseudo-gospel (which is precisely what the New Age movement is all about).

          In the Gospels, we see that men and women touched the garment of Christ because power came forth from it. Let us use the power of the Gospel in all its fullness, by inviting all our faithful to live out the Gospel Truth in all its fullness and splendor.

          Holy Mary, Mother of the Church, pray that our priests may have the courage to preach the fullness of the Truth of the Gospel of your Son without compromise: for it is nothing less than the salvation of souls that is at stake.

April 23, 2017

          Catholics can easily recall when Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He did it during the first Mass, which began during the Last Supper with the words of consecration and finished the following afternoon when Jesus literally gave His body and shed His blood for us on the Cross.

          But far fewer Catholics know when Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which may be one of the reasons why many today take it for granted. He did it on the day He rose from the dead! The timing of its inception shows just how crucial Jesus considered it in His salvific mission. By doing it on Easter Sunday evening, He also manifested what the sacrament of reconciliation is meant to bring about. Just like in the parable of the prodigal son, whenever we return to the Father’s house through this sacrament, the Father rejoices because his “son who was dead has come to life again” (Lk. 15:24).

          Jesus wanted explicitly to link our resurrection through this Sacrament to His resurrection from the dead. So on the day He rose from the dead, He walked through the closed doors of the room where ten of His apostles were huddled together. He first words to them were “peace be with you.” He had come from heaven to establish the definitive peace treaty between God and man through the forgiveness of our sins and He was about to commission them to continue this very mission. “Just as the Father sent me,” He said, “so I send you!” But since “no one can forgive sins but God alone” (Mk. 2:7), Jesus had to give them God’s power to fulfill this mission. So He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Then He said words that point clearly to the structure of the sacrament of confession as we know it: “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” Jesus didn’t give them the ability to read minds or hearts; therefore the only way that they would know which sins to forgive or retain is if individual sinners told them their sins.

          Just as Jesus three days before had made them His instruments in order to give us His Body and Blood through the sacrament of the Eucharist, so He was making them His instruments, His ambassadors, through whom He would forgive our sin. These two sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist are intrinsically related. Just like a loving mother both cleans and feeds a child, so God through these sacraments both wipes us clean of our sins and fills us with supernatural nourishment.

          Today, we are called to renewal in two areas: a revival in our parish of the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and an increase in Eucharistic adoration. We must receive Christ more worthily and worship our Eucharistic Lord with greater love and gratitude.  The whole Church would benefit from a similar two-fold renewal with respect to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There needs to be a revival both in terms of our receiving Christ’s forgiveness through the sacrament and an increase in worship of our Merciful Lord.

          This Sunday’s Feast of Divine Mercy is an opportunity for us to focus on each of these two priorities.

            In 2000, St. John Paul II instituted this Feast on the Second Sunday of Easter so that the Church might rejoice over Christ’s gift of mercy within the Easter Octave. The Pope announced this new feast during the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun to whom the Lord appeared in the 1930s asking her to spread throughout the world devotion to His merciful love. Private revelations like the one to St. Faustina never disclose to us anything truly new; their purpose is to remind us of what God has revealed in Scripture and Tradition and apply those truths to particular circumstances we face.

           In His appearances to St. Faustina, Jesus wanted to remind all of us of what He said throughout the Gospel: that we need His mercy, that we have to trust in, ask for, and receive that mercy, and that we need to share that mercy with others. And through her, He called us to live five new devotions by which we could more deeply assimilate all of these realities.

          He asked that a feast of His Divine Mercy be established on the Second Sunday of Easter, prepared for by a novena beginning Good Friday. He showed her an image of Divine Mercy, with blood and water flowing from His pierced side, and asked her to spread its veneration. He called on all of us to unite ourselves in prayer to Him on the Cross at 3 pm each day. And He taught us to pray the beautiful Chaplet of Divine Mercy, which explicitly links our prayers for God’s mercy to Jesus in the Eucharist.

          As we continue to celebrate Easter, we turn with trust to Jesus and ask Him to help us experience the true joy of His resurrection through each of these devotions and especially through the resurrection from death to life He wants to give us in a confessional nearby!

April 16, 2017

          Christ is Risen! Let us celebrate this Easter day, dear brothers and sisters, our Lord God, “For He has visited and redeemed His people” (St. Luke 1:68) and with the light of His Resurrection He enlightens the entire universe! Let us glorify our Lord “who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Let us glorify our Lord who, having become a man for us, has died so that by His Resurrection He could open to us doors of new life! For all of us who have been baptized into Christ, in Christ we have died to the old self, so that resurrected, reborn, renewed in Him, we can live with Him forever. Christ is risen from the dead and has become the Firstborn of the dead, so that we too who have died in Adam, may be made alive in Christ, becoming a new creation.

          That is why we, on this bright Day, sing the song of victory to Him who has conquered the power of death, to Him who has conquered the seeming wisdom of the wise men of this world and by His resurrection has saved those who believe in Him. We have seen the fulfillment of the words of the prophets and together with the Apostle Paul we say: “We have come to know the love of Christ which surpasses understanding and have been filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). For just as the power of death, after the fall of the first parents of mankind into sin, entered into this world, so likewise Christ the Lord, as the New Adam, has received the wounds of sin upon Himself, voluntarily, and died for us and destroyed the power of death and has returned man to his original glory. That is why we through the Resurrection learn the meaning and goal of God’s creation, for the Lord has brought everything from non-existence into existence so that it could eternally and without corruption live in Christ, His Only-begotten Son. Saint Maxim the Confessor being inspired by God teaches that we are born into the body, by baptism we are reborn, and by the Resurrection we are eternally born in Christ who, as the First-Born of the dead, renews the entire creation and bestows upon it immortality. By His Resurrection Christ unites this world with paradise, and in paradise He receives before everyone else the repentant thief, giving us all hope that our living in repentance is not in vain. In celebrating the resurrection of Christ, we are celebrating and singing the miraculous Mystery of God who created us to be eternal partakers of the Divine nature, that is, of Divine life, in His Son, the Incarnate, Crucified and Resurrected Christ the Lord.

          Having purified all our senses with fasting, let us look at the unapproachable light of the Resurrection; let us look at Christ who shines in our hearts! Forgiving each other of everything, let us be renewed by the Resurrection into the new life! Let us live with the Resurrected Christ so that we already in this life may experience others and ourselves as One Body, One Church of God! Even though we live in a difficult time, full of unforeseen events and tragedies, we must not, following the example of the ancient Christians, stop rejoicing, and with Christ’s love we must love not only each other, but our enemies also, so that nothing separates us from the way of life which was granted to us by Christ Himself. Our Lord teaches us that if we do not forgive each other, we will not be forgiven, and if we judge, we are already judged. Without forgiving and without seeing our own transgressions towards our neighbors, friends and enemies, we will not be able to receive the light of the Resurrection, nor will we become the recipients of the hope of eternal life where there is no fear, sighing nor sadness. Let us not fear this world, brothers and sisters, for Christ has conquered this world! Let us fear only leaving the light for darkness, and leaving the joy of God’s Kingdom, by which we should live here and now, for the maze of worldly ideologies, bitterness, disunity, hatred and violence! We Christians are not afraid of death; rather we bless those who persecute us. We deeply believe that we are not of this world even though we live in it. Christ, the Eternal Priest, has opened to us the doors of God’s Kingdom, which is our true fatherland, and we in this world are only passengers who are traveling through time and space, witnessing to Christ with our life. Let us, therefore, never forget in whom we are baptized and for whom we live, so that our life’s race is not futile and that our hope is not placed in empty and vain idols of this world and age.

          Let us not neglect love! For precisely according to our mutual love everyone will recognize us as Christ’s disciples. Let us be co-sufferers with those who suffer, let us weep with those who are weeping and let us comfort them with hope in the Lord! Let not our service to God be as a new edition of pharisaic external faith in God! For what reward will we receive? Let us sacrifice for our neighbor! Let us give to those in need! Let us glorify God with humility and with the words of the repentant publican who was forgiven and justified! The people of God today are dispersed throughout the world, but that which unites us and makes us One Church is not a transient ideology of this world, but a deep consciousness that we are united in Christ, in whom we are baptized and of whom we partake in the Eucharist, Holy Communion. Let us therefore make every effort that those who have not come to know the light of Christ’s teaching may see in us the way and recognize in us true successors of the saints of Christ!

          Let us safeguard the holiness of marriage and family, raising our children in faith and fear of God and purity, without forgetting that the family is a “domestic Church” and a foundation of Christian community! Let us regularly participate in the Eucharistic gatherings, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ and in this way becoming One Body of Christ, a chosen People, the Church of the Living God! Let us not forget that it is our calling after the Holy Liturgy to witness in word and in deed to this miraculous Mystery which continues with faith and love, before all those who love us as well as before those who hate us, in short in every time and place. For the Christian our whole life is a continuing liturgical paschal joy. He who lives by it will not see in another person a stranger; instead, he will recognize in every person the image of our Lord, who wants all to be saved. Bearing witness to the joyous news that Christ is truly risen is our daily duty for the Lord calls us by His Holy Spirit not to close ourselves in, but rather to bring others into that joy, and to show them the only way to salvation. The Risen Christ calls us not to be a scandal but a light to the world. When we are ready to admit our sins and to correct ourselves in humility we are not being humiliated but we are showing that the Spirit of God dwells in us.

          Let us not forget, dear brothers and sisters that we are called, wherever we may be and whatever we are doing, to be peacemakers and in so doing to witness to God who grants us peace and is our Peace. That is why it is necessary to give a hand to him who stumbles instead of pushing him into a deeper perdition. Likewise, we should visit the sick and care for them and to those that are lost we need to show the right path. In doing so, we will have the Lord manifested in our works, who Himself told us to be the light of the world. But above all else, may our life be a constant thanksgiving to God for everything and for all!  For what else and what greater offering can we offer to the Resurrected Christ, who brings us from darkness to the light of knowledge and from death into life eternal? Therefore, together with the angels and with all the saints in heaven, and together with our brothers and sisters on earth, let us sing the victorious song and in festal joy greet each other with the greeting: Christ is Risen!

April 9, 2017

          During these three most holy days—the Triduum—Catholics are called to enter into a sublime place of great depth and magnitude, a realm beyond time and space in which our hope strives to join with Love for the satisfaction of our thirst. We journey to this sacred place without sight but not without vision, where we too, as with St. John, desire to lay our head on our Savior´s breast and drink deeply from the inexhaustible well of His Sacred Heart.

          On Holy Thursday, we enter into the Upper Room and, along with the disciples at the Last Supper, receiving the incomprehensibly wondrous gift of the Eucharist—our Lord´s true Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. On this Good Friday, we go and stand along with the Mother of our Catholic Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the base of the Cross. And on Holy Saturday we wait in silence for that moment when the stone is rolled back from the tomb, that moment when our hearts are warmed in the fires of the Lord´s resurrection, when we, along with the saints in heaven, cry out to ourselves and our brethren the world over: "Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you" (Is. 60:1).

          As we stand before the Cross this Good Friday, if we come there in purity of heart as our Blessed Mother clearly beckons us to do with her soft, prayerful hands, we will enter into a mystery of love beyond the world. See the Cross. See the innocent and kind Son of God hanging there, bloodied and battered, fastened to the tree of life with rusted, cruel spikes. Our sacred and loving Lord willingly chose that brutal place of death, that stumbling block, that tree whose wood would in fact pierce the world with the divine sword of Love in order that we might be saved from ourselves. Through His Passion and Death on the Cross, enduring undeserved pain and agony, our God rescued us. He saved us from death—a death we fail to understand—without our asking, without our deserving it, without even our knowledge of it.

         The Last Word our Lord uttered from that terrible yet wondrous Cross was: "It is finished" (Jn. 19:30). This Last Word embodies Christ´s entire mission of salvation: His sweet birth from the Virgin´s womb as God Incarnate; His quiet, ascetic life within the most Holy Family at Nazareth; His countless and beautiful acts as Master and Teacher; and His selfless, radical love so blindingly evident in his Passion and Death. The Word our Savior spoke just prior to his Last Word was, "I thirst." St. John tells us our Lord, "aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, said, "I thirst" (Jn. 19:28). John´s gospel is filled with deep and wondrous symbolism. So too is our Lord´s "thirst."

         At hearing Christ was thirsty, "they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth." It is immediately after Jesus tastes of this wine that he says, "It is finished," and "bowing his head," he hands "over the spirit" (Jn. 19:29-30). It was also a sprig of hyssop that Moses and the People Israel used to apply lambs´ blood to the doorposts in order to save them from the destroyer. "You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. For the Lord will go by, striking down the Egyptians. Seeing the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and not let the destroyer come into your houses to strike you down" (Ex. 12:22-23).

          Christ thirsts on the Cross that His blood will be shed in order that the destroyer will pass over us. Our Lord thirsts for our salvation; Jesus thirsts to accomplish what the Father has willed, and also as He Himself, the Son of the Living God, has willed to accomplish: the Final Covenant sealed in His own blood. From the Cross, in the final moments when Mercy, Love and Compassion Itself is on the threshold of completing the greatest act the universe will ever know, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity experiences His greatest thirst. And, at last, "It is finished" (Jn. 19:30).

          Along with the disciples in the Upper Room, we too drink from the blood of the Final Covenant. The most pure, spotless Lamb, has given Himself over to His Catholic Church, to the People of God, in an indescribable act of thirst and love. At every celebration of the Eucharist, our Lord´s precious blood is mercifully poured out for us that we in our thirst, too, might one day on our deathbed joyfully exclaim: "It is finished."

         It is our Lord who has done all this for us. Come to the Cross. See, like the Samaritan Woman, that it is Christ who first asks for a drink that He may, then, offer us living water. It is Christ who thirsts that we thirst for Him, the Paschal Lamb. It is in the Eucharist that we drink deeply from the well of Mercy which springs up into eternal life. The Eucharist is therefore the living water; it is the gift of God. Jesus says to each and every one of us: "If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked and he would have given you living water." The Samaritan Woman at the well is astonished and wonders—as do many to this very day—where this "living water" is to be obtained, asking, "Where then, can you get this living water?" Jesus leads her further into the mystery of Himself: "Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (Jn. 4:10-14).

          Just a short while later—though many of Hs own disciples find His words preposterous—our Lord reveals the deeper truth about this "living water." The water which wells up into eternal life is His own flesh and blood: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him" (Jn 6:54-56). Let us not stand among those former disciples who quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (Jn. 6:52). Let us, rather, come before the Cross this Good Friday and, along with our Blessed Mother, trust in what God has said He will do. Let us kneel at the Place of the Skull and thirst for He who first thirsted for us. Let us this Triduum, as the Samaritan Woman, say, "Sir, give me this water . . . ." (Jn. 4:15).

          St. Pope John Paul II, in speaking to his general audience in April 2001, observed that the "sacred Triduum is the “mystery of love without limit,” that is, the mystery of Jesus who ‘having loved his own who were in the world . . . loved them to the end’” (Jn. 13:1).

           It is Christ who thirstily loved us to the end—all of us. That is the message of Good Friday. It is Christ whose thirst to accomplish His Father´s plan reached such immense proportions that He willingly endured the death of a common criminal on a Roman Cross. This type of thirst is radical indeed. It is most certainly beyond human. Stand below the Cross and see how God has thirsted for you; how He has selflessly and lovingly given Himself in the Eucharist. Justice demands that you and I too thirst to give of ourselves to Christ, our Savior and our God."The Eucharist is an eloquent sign of this total, free and gratuitous love, and offers each person the joy of the presence of the One who enables us too to love ´to the end´ in imitation of him. The love that Jesus proposes to his disciples is demanding" (Blessed John Paul II).

          The Cross challenges us; it troubles our consciences; it reveals in the light of reality our failings and sin. It demands change and repentance; it demands a new life of unity with Christ and His people. It demands love. Yet the Cross, too, brings us to a new beginning; one where, in sublime wonder, we see that God offers us salvation through His Son that we may forever live with the Holy Trinity. In view of our Lord´s selfless act on the Cross, we might boldly claim that our own death has been put to death by Love.

           When standing before the Cross this Good Friday, let us not forget Christ thirsted to give of Himself in the Eucharist. Let us remember that this Love who pours out His blood for us does so to transform us into something beyond ourselves. We are called to a new life. We are called to pick up our cross. But let us also meet Christ, there, on the Cross, in a new beginning. Let us live the Catholic life always and everywhere. Let us thirst for what we know.

         "He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows."—St. Gregory of Nyssa

April 2, 2017

           A man and a woman had a little daughter that they adored. Audrey was their only child. They lived their whole lives for their little girl. When she became chronically ill and her illness resisted the efforts of the best doctors, the parents became totally discouraged and inconsolable. Soon Audrey did not survive the illness and the parents were completely distressed. They became bitter recluses, shutting themselves off from their family and friends. But, one night the woman had a dream. She dreamt that she was in heaven.

         During her dream, she saw a long procession of little children processing like little angels before the throne of God. Every child was dressed in a dazzling white robe and they each held a lit candle. However, when the woman saw her Audrey, she noticed that her candle was not lit. The mother ran up to Audrey, embraced her in her arms, caressed her tenderly, and then asked her how it was that her candle was the only one that was not lit. Audrey said, "Mother, they often relight it, but your tears always put it out." Just at that moment the woman woke from her dream. The lesson was clear, and its effects were immediate. She immediately told the dream to her husband. They decided to embrace their loss with Christian hope, and that they would no longer extinguish Audrey´s little candle with their useless tears.

           It is not easy to carry our cross. However, Jesus tells us that our cross will always lead to the transformation of our lives. There are three transformations that take place in our journey towards eternity.

          The first change begins at Baptism. The immersion into the baptismal waters symbolizes death and rebirth. The sacrament of Baptism washes away original sin and we are re-created. We are transformed into new creatures. The old self dies, and the new person in Christ Jesus is born. Our new life, which begins at Baptism, is carried out through our daily living of the Gospel. This of course, demands a continual dying to self. Through self-denial, the image of Christ is made visible in our lives. The more we die to self, the more sanctifying grace can transform our lives. "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

          The second transformation takes place by our victory over the trials and tribulations of life. Every challenge, every difficulty, every moment of suffering, is an opportunity to grow. Transformation only takes place through suffering.

          A friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer when he was nineteen years old. He died two years later. Nevertheless, his acceptance of this challenge and the manner in which he embraced his daily suffering not only transformed his life, but it transformed the lives of those who were closest to him. One day after he returned from a long week of treatments at the hospital, his dad suggested that before returning home, they stop by their parish Church and pray the Stations of the Cross together. The father told his son that contemplating how much Jesus had suffered for them would be important, particularly in their present trial. Both father and son had understood the transforming power of the cross of Jesus.

            The third transformation takes place at death. The suffering that the final moment brings upon us makes way for an amazing transformation. Eternal life in heaven, perhaps after a period of further transformation in purgatory, is granted to those who have been found worthy. The last transformation or transfiguration is completed at the Second Coming when our body is reunited with our soul. What awaits us is beyond anything that we can imagine.

           When we consider the eschatological teachings of the Catholic Church, we can understand why the Easter liturgy cries out "O felix culpa". "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer" (Exúltet – The Easter Proclamation from the Easter Vigil Liturgy).

               Good Friday reminds us of the outcome of the cross. Suffering brings about transformation when we carry the cross like true disciples of Jesus. Each of us has a cross to carry. We must all identify our crosses and carry them with patience, joy and love. Why complain about something which is our means to gain eternal life? The glory of Easter Sunday will only take place through the sufferings of Good Friday. However, too many of our contemporaries are like those who stood at the foot of the cross and cried out to Jesus that He should come down from the cross. Many would like to have Christianity without self-denial, discipline, and renunciation. However, Christianity without the Cross is not Christianity at all.

             What is your cross? Maybe you have many crosses to carry. How do you carry your cross? Do you complain? Are you discouraged? Do you run away from the cross? There is only one way to carry your cross. Carry your cross with patience, love, and joy. See in your cross your sanctification and your eternal salvation. Understand that with your cross, united to the cross of Jesus, you have a continual opportunity to save souls and make reparation for so many sins.