The second pillar of Discipleship and Stewardship is Prayer.  The Synod describes this pillar with the following words:

Prayer – to provide well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments and
other occasions for prayer as signs of hope and paths of grace to
Heaven;

Since prayer and the sacraments are at the very heart of what we are about as Catholics, one might think that this should be the first pillar of discipleship.  While that is indeed true about the primacy of prayer, placing it as the second pillar is intentional.  If one were to come to our parish and encounter an environment that is not welcoming and not hospitable, chances are they may not stick around to experience prayer or the sacraments because they do not feel that they belong.  But once they have crossed through our doors and feel comfortable staying, they are ready to experience the gift of prayer and the sacraments in our church.

One tangible way in which I think we join these two pillars together is in the fact that our church is open throughout the day every day.  We unlock the doors one hour before the first Mass, which is 6 AM every day except Saturday, which is 7 AM.  We then lock the church after the final Mass of the day, which is usually around 6:00 PM, depending on the day.  Throughout the day, the church is available for anybody to stop in and spend some time in prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  Making a visit to the Blessed Sacrament is a practice that has largely fallen out of practice, but it is something that I hope more people will consider working into their spiritual lives.

This pillar speaks about our parish providing “well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments.”  I believe we do that well here at the Cathedral.  Many of the people of our diocese associate the Cathedral with some of the bigger diocesan celebrations, such as the Chrism Mass, Ordinations, and Confirmations.  These are indeed powerful liturgies that highlight not just the beauty of this church, but also the richness of our liturgical celebrations.  We strive to celebrate our liturgies well and many people comment on their appreciation for these liturgies, whether it be a simple daily Mass or that glorious celebration of the Easter Vigil, and everything in between.

As I consider our Mass schedule here, I am especially mindful of our desire to be a place that offers opportunities that other parishes may not.  In particular, we offer a daily 5:15 PM Mass, which I know is appreciated by those who are not able to get to a morning Mass, or who may prefer to sleep in a little later!  We also have a Sunday evening Mass at 5:00 PM, which I know is a popular time for many throughout the area who may be travelling and are looking for a later alternative to get to Mass on Sunday.  Along those lines, I am perhaps most proud of the fact that we offer fairly convenient times for the Sacrament of Reconciliation every day, something I know many take advantage of.

While all of these aspects of the pillar of prayer are indeed for the benefit of our own parishioners, we are happy that this is a place where anybody can and should feel welcome to join for prayer and the sacraments.  This is something that makes the Cathedral so unique, and it is something we are happy to offer for anybody who comes through our doors.

Father Alford     

Having reflected on the primary work of hospitality, namely, invitation, we can now reflect on the more traditional understanding of that word, which is providing a welcoming environment for those who come to our parish.

One of the things that makes the Cathedral unique is that it is a church to which many visitors come.  First of all, we have visitors from area parishes who come to us for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the availability of our Mass and confession times.  I do not see these individuals so much as visitors as members of our local diocesan family.  Since the Cathedral is the mother church of the diocese, all of the faithful in the diocese should feel at home here.  This is something I love about our hosting Confirmations / First Holy Communions here.  Young people and their families from throughout our diocese get the opportunity to encounter this beautiful church, and in doing so, I hope they come to experience a sense of belonging to something bigger than their own parishes.  And for the children who receive these Sacraments of Initiation, they will always have a special sacramental connection to this church, one that I hope they cherish.  The team from the diocese, under the direction of Sister M. Clementia, FSGM, do a great job of demonstrating this pillar of hospitality for these groups when they come here.

We also get many visitors to our church who are not members of our diocese.  Some find themselves in town for a family event, others are in town to visit the Lincoln sites, and others are in town for various sporting events, just to name a few.  You can often tell who the visitors are when you see them looking around the church after Mass.  I have been very pleased to see some of our regular parishioners approach those visitors, welcoming them and even giving them some information about our church.  In case you are not aware, we have little pamphlets just inside of the church near the Atrium with information about the Cathedral, including some history and brief explanations of the various elements to be found in the church.  Feel free to introduce yourself to any of those visitors and offer them a pamphlet.  I know I have asked people from time to time if they are visitors, and they tell me: “We’re parishioners here.”  I have to swallow my pride in those moments, apologizing, but then realizing it is just an opportunity to get to know somebody I had not previously recognized.  So do not fear making a “mistake” by greeting someone who you think might be a visitor but actually is a regular here.  The very act of acknowledging and greeting another person is a very tangible sign of hospitality.

Much more can be said about how to be hospitable, but I think the core of this pillar is seeing in each person who comes through our doors a brother or sister in the Lord.  We belong to the same extended family, and it should be our joy to see them here, a joy which we can express by making eye contact, smiling, and making a simple greeting.  This is not limited to those official “greeters”, but is something about which we all should be proactive.   We rarely know the stories of the people with whom we worship, and you never know what burden they be bearing.  A simple kind acknowledgment, so easy for us to do, can do a long way in that person feeling seen, loved, and welcomed.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: October 6^th 

Admittedly, we do not know a lot of particulars about St. Mary Frances. She grew up in Naples in the early 1700s in a middle-class family (her father wove lace and/or sold clothing – carrying the fantastic title of “haberdasher” – which also brought in a decent income for his family), but they lived in a rough part of that city. Furthermore, though her mother was pious and patient, her father was a man quick to anger and harsh with his family, if not outright abusive to them. Her young life was marked by the traumatizing clash of a nominally Christian home with the very unchristian experience of incessant work and hard treatment even at a tender age. At 16 her father arranged for Anna Maria (her baptismal name) to marry a rich man from the area, though Anna protested that she wanted instead to enter the Third Order of St. Francis. 

She had gotten to know the friars there in Naples, part a branch of the Franciscans having been reformed by the great St. Peter of Alcantara back to a rigorous living of holy poverty. A certain Father Theophilus convinced Anna’s father to allow her to enter their order and so it happened on September 8^th, 1731. In a certain way, this transformed the rigors of her life into sweet sacrifices for the Lord. She still lived at her home, though now wearing the religious habit and having been given the new name of “Mary Francis of the Five Wounds”, a nod to her love of Our Lady, St. Francis, and the Passion of Christ. From that house that had been for her a place of great sadness and suffering, now she had won a measure of freedom in her father’s permission to enter the consecrated life, and all the hardships that remained were now more formally consecrated to Christ and could flower into works of charity and a deep life of prayer. 

In this Sister Mary Frances already shows us a way forward in those moments when any of us encounter suffering, whether inflicted on us, or just as part of living a human life. Can we consecrate those crosses? Can we carry them with love, let them lead us to generosity and charity rather than self-protection or anger? This is not an easy transformation! All of us carry wounds in our hearts, and they often feel like places where we can’t love as we want, or ought; places where we have been beat-down or broken, where it’s hard enough to just persevere with those pains, much less to discover freedom and generosity in those things. 

This was a long process for Sister Mary Frances. She spent a lot of time in prayer, and working with the poor, day by day stretching her heart to be able to love rather than hate, to give rather than protect herself. She got a spiritual director, and a confessor, who she went to frequently for counsel and forgiveness. Sometimes that walk with the Lord was lifegiving and beautiful, and sometimes her wounds were reopened. Some of those priests that gave her direction or the sacraments were harsh or clueless, they did not represent Christ well, and so the Heavenly Father’s face was again mis-represented. She endured physical pain at times too, reputedly feeling in her hands at least the pain of the Christ’s nails, and other ailments too – some of them healed at the intercession of St. Raphael, some of them which she had to bear with patience for her whole life. 

Eventually she and another Franciscan tertiary, Sister Maria Felice, moved into a home with a priest/chaplain living on the floor above (he, a pious man, must have been a healing example of priestly-fatherhood for her. Both sisters would generously take care of him over the coming years.) It was a simple family home, so they had to make do renovating some of the rooms to be their chapel and places for their work with the poor. Gradually, it was her charity and patience despite all the crosses she carried that led many to come to her for counsel and compassion. 38 years she lived in that little place at Vico Tre Re a Toledo (where a church now dedicated to her as a saint still stands) just encountering people who were hurting in different ways, and from a heart stretched by her own hurts, met every one of them with delight and love. 

She died on October 6, 1791, beloved by the townspeople and hailed immediately as a saint and exemplar of holiness. She would be canonized in 1867 (by Pope Pius IX), the first saint from Naples!

– Fr. Dominic takes one more lesson from Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds: contentment with the day’s labor. She did not accomplish much over her life. Lived with her crosses, loved those who were around her, prayed every day, and just that was enough to make her a great saint. No huge conversions, no changing world history, no transformation of the city of Naples … she just lived each day with as much love as she could muster from her encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist. What if we were content with the same? 

As promised, after introducing the Four Pillars of Stewardship and Discipleship, we are going to look at each of these pillars, reflecting on how they are currently being lived here at the Cathedral and where there may be room for growth.

When naming this pillar, the Synod states simply that hospitality calls for us “to invite people proactively to join us in prayer, especially Sunday Mass.”  Perhaps the first thing we think about when we hear hospitality is how we receive people who come to us, making them feel seen and welcomed.  That is important, but notice how the definition is not so much about welcoming as it is inviting.  A sign of hospitality is our willingness to extend the invitation for people to come to experience Jesus.  After all, this is what prayer is most fundamentally, having a personal relationship with Jesus.  The greatest prayer of all for us as Catholics is, of course, the Mass.

Putting the emphasis on invitation over simply welcoming is admittedly more intimidating.  For in welcoming people, the hard work has been done.  The other person has entered through our doors, and we just need to receive them with cheerfulness and gratitude.  As I said, that is indeed important.  But to go to a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, and to actually invite them into something can be hard.  We fear being rejected, or we fear that we might not be able to respond to questions that others might have about our faith.  However, whenever we are firmly grounded in our own personal relationship with Jesus and our love for our Catholic faith, especially the Mass, how can we not want to invite others to that same experience?

For some people who are not Catholic, inviting them to Mass might not be our first step, as they could feel overwhelmed.  For those individuals, perhaps the invitation is simply an offer to pray with them.  As you read that, perhaps that gives you anxiety!  If we personally know Jesus and are comfortable talking to Him in prayer, what is so hard about inviting another person into that?  Again, if it feels awkward to do that, perhaps that is an indication of our need for deepening our relationship with Jesus, so that we can be more willing to invite others to experience Him as well.

If the person we are thinking of inviting deeper is a Catholic, but one who has been away from the practice of the faith, perhaps our invitation is not first to come back to Mass, but first to go to confession.  To make the invitation more acceptable, we can offer to go with them and also go to confession.  Again, that might cause us anxiety, as perhaps it has been some time since we last went to confession.  But just know that the Lord desires to free us from our fears, and more importantly, to free us from our sins, so that experiencing His love and mercy for us, we will be the more willingly to invite others to that same encounter.

Of course, we can and should invite others to join us for Mass, and as with confession, offering to go with them to Mass so that they do not feel isolated, as though they do not belong.  To be with that person, to pray with them, to pray for them before the Lord can be a powerful form of hospitality.

Pray to the Lord this week, asking Him if there might be somebody He is asking you to invite to encounter Jesus more deeply.  Pray for that person by name for several days, then, with faith, offer whatever invitation is most appropriate for where they are in their journey of faith.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: September 29^th 

This week we celebrate the three archangels named in scripture: Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael and I’d like to take the opportunity to do a bit more of a theological dive with you into the ministry of the angels rather than just a relating of their story. In our profession of faith, we state that “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” Notice that before we even get to Jesus, His resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the Church, our own resurrection … we already have stated that we believe in “all things visible and invisible.” That’s where the angels fit in! Though we do not often see the invisible, we believe in it! And in a world where we spend an awful lot of time just with “the visible”, it’s important to reaffirm our choosing to accept God’s revealing to us that there is an entire invisible world which we are also part of.

That said, to discover more about the archangels, we can simply turn to the prayers for the Mass on their feast-day. The priest, having received the offerings of the people and brought them to the altar, but before beginning the preface and the Eucharistic prayer, prays these words:

We offer you a sacrifice of praise, O Lord, humbly entreating, that, as these gifts are borne by the ministry of Angels into the presence of your majesty, so you may receive them favorably and make them profitable for our salvation. Through Christ our Lord.

If the words ring a bell, it may be because they echo a similar prayer said during the First Eucharistic Prayer, after the consecration:

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

During that prayer the priest bows down at the altar, folding his hands because he is not so much leading this prayer as inviting the angels to join our offering, and carry it, and us, into the heavenly liturgy. This part of the Mass, and part of our faith, is worth reflecting on. The Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on calvary for our redemption, as well as an encounter with His Body, risen and glorified, which nourishes, sustains, sanctifies, and continues to transform us after His likeness. The Eucharistic sacrifice is for our redemption, our transformation into saints, and our worship of God. Where do the angels fit in? 

We’re confronted by an amazing fact here: that though the angels are “purely spiritual creatures” with “intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 330, emphasis in original), despite their surpassing us in so many ways, they have allowed themselves to be humbly concerned with our salvation. If you recall your Baltimore Catechism, remember what it says about the three Archangels: “The Archangel Michael drove Satan out of heaven; the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin that she was to become the Mother of God. The Archangel Raphael guided and protected Tobias.” (Baltimore Catechism, Question 221) These are the glorious archangels, but they have lowered themselves to helping us out!

Aquinas gives us a deeper insight into this, describing the difference in how the angels and demons (fallen angels) relate to us: “Man can of his own accord fall into sin: but he cannot advance in merit without the Divine assistance, which is borne to man by the ministry of the angels. For this reason the angels take part in all our good works: whereas all our sins are not due to the demons’ instigation.”(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, Part I, Question 114, Article 3, Reply to Objection 3) All our good works – our prayers, our sacrifices, our acts of charity, our growth in virtue – is linked to the life and work and worship of the angels! This means not only that our lives are intrinsically intertwined with the spiritual (this should not surprise us: we are body and spirit!), but also that there is a personal, relational, reality to this. We are not on our own trying to deepen our spiritual life, grow in virtue, avoid sin, or come to know God … we are befriended and attended to by the angels in that walk with the Lord!

– Fr. Dominic has often turned to Our Lord, and the saints, for inspiration and help in the journey of discipleship, but there is something uniquely comforting to know that the angels too – these tremendously powerful spiritual creatures – are also on our side, walking with us, helping us in big ways and small. This week I am going to try and remember this fact a lot more! When I’m working, or running, or shopping, or forgiving, or praying, or falling asleep … all of these occasions will be better if I recall that the angels are there with me!

After laying out the mission statement, the Fourth Diocesan Synod offers four pillars as a way to focus on how to give flesh to this mission.  Here is what the next declaration reads:

To further this mission, the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is committed

to implementing the Four Pillars of Discipleship and Stewardship, namely:

1. Hospitality – to invite people proactively to join us in prayer, especially Sunday Mass;
2. Prayer – to provide well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments and other occasions for prayer as signs of hope and paths of grace to Heaven;
3. Formation – to study the Bible and learn more about Jesus and our Catholic faith; and
4. Service – to serve each other, especially those in need, by practicing charity and justice.  (Synod Declaration 1b)

When I presented this declaration to our parish Pastoral Council a few months ago, we reflected briefly on how each of these pillars are being lived out here at the Cathedral.  For each of them, we were able to point to efforts that are already in place, but we also acknowledged that there is certainly room to grow in each of these areas.

In the next few articles, we will be looking at each of these pillars, reflecting on how they are essential expressions of what it means to be a parish community of disciples.  I will also point out some of the ways that we see these pillars at work here in our parish.  Then I will invite us to pray and think about how the Lord is inviting us to go deeper with each of these pillars.

As we begin these reflections, I am seeing the Providence of God working in the timing of this topic!  As you will see later in the bulletin, we are looking to hire a new member of our parish staff.  In the past year, we have experienced some major changes with the sudden passing of our former Business Manager, Bill Vogt.  Our bookkeeper, Jan Sgambelluri, retired and moved away from Springfield.  Her replacement, Steven Kehoe, left last month for the seminary.  We have been getting by, thanks in large part to the great work of our Parish Secretary, Kim Gunter, who has picked up several things.  However, we are all doing more than we can probably handle, limiting our availability to do the things that would be most beneficial to our roles and the flourishing of our parish.  Therefore, we are looking to hire a new Business Manager.  I have it in my mind that an ideal candidate would be an intentional disciple who reflects these four pillars in how they live.  In a parish that is dedicated to helping our parishioners to grow as missionary disciples, those who work for the parish really need to have that same passion.  Technical skills are great, but far more valuable is one who brings with them a love of Christ and His Church, and a hunger to share the Good News of the Gospel through their support of the mission of the parish, hidden though it may be at times.

Since so many of you have been so good at praying those three Hail Mary’s each day for the parish, I would ask that as you offer the first one, which is for the parish in general, that you specifically ask that the Lord would help identify the person He most desires to fill this position of Business Manager.  

Father Alford