Attentive readers of this bulletin will recall the series that Father Daniel wrote last summer on the various stanzas of the Sequence for Pentecost, so I do not need to go into great detail to explain what the Sequence is, but rather to jump right into focusing our attention on one of those stanzas this week for our reflection.  It fits well with the invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart that I have chosen for this Pentecost Sunday.  Here is the stanza from the Sequence, followed by the invocation:

You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;

Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, have mercy on us

The final line of the stanza is often translated with the phrase “sweet consolation”, and it speaks to how the Holy Spirit brings us peace in the midst of the difficulties we face in our lives.  In fact, peace is listed by St. Paul as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, or characteristics we can find in our lives when the Holy Spirit is present in our souls through God’s grace.  

Devotion to the Sacred Heart fits well in this regard, as we know how, through His humanity, Jesus experienced so many of the emotions that we face in our humanity as well – sorrow, rejection, abandonment, physical suffering.  As a result of that, He is truly able to have empathy with us.  We know the experience of finding consolation from a friend who is willing to enter into suffering with us (the meaning of compassion), not in a cold, detached way, but in a way that knows suffering as well.  When we bring our burdens to His Heart, He receives us not as a burden, but as a guest, and He pours into our hearts His loving consolation that brings us peace.

St. John Henry Newman had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and reflected on how the Eucharist is that constant presence of that beating Heart of Jesus, inviting us to find in this gift the relief for which our souls long.  It is a beautiful image to think of, and one that can really help us as we come to receive the Eucharist at Mass.  In those moments of quiet right after receiving Him, we can ask Him to enter those places of anxiety, fear, sorrow, or suffering.  We can expect to find the gift of His consolation when we invite Him in this way in this moment of deep intimacy.  While we can and should use our own words for this prayer, we could also use the following from Newman, as it summarizes this theme so beautifully:

O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still. Now as then Thou savest, Desiderio desideravi—”With desire I have desired.” I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O my God, when Thou dost condescend to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink Thee, and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me, O make my heart beat with Thy Heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace.

As we move into the eighth chapter of the life of St. Francis, we continue to dive deeper into the great virtues which St. Francis possessed through his unity with Christ. The virtue that St. Bonaventure focuses on in this chapter is “Piety,” a virtue that is exceedingly important for our lives of faith, but one that very often gets little focus. 

Generally, and sadly, it seems that “piety” is used almost in an insulting or mocking way to ascribe to some people an overly “pious” way of living their faith. This critique, however, comes from an impoverished view of piety – a view that sees the virtue of piety as something to do only with the external actions of faith. If I see someone who kneels in a church, prays the rosary, lights candles, practices devotions, I might call them pious, and rightly so. The virtue of piety, however, encompasses much more than these outward expressions of the faith. It is something deeply interior to a person, and it may or may not be expressed in these outward ways.

This chapter begins with some beautiful lines by St. Bonaventure:

“True piety, which according to the Apostle, is helpful for all things, had so filled Francis’ heart and penetrated its depths that it seemed to have appropriated the man of God completely into its dominion. This is what drew him up to God through devotion, transformed him into Christ through compassion, attracted him to his neighbor through condescension, and symbolically showed a return to the state of original innocence through universal reconciliation with each and every thing” (The Life of St. Francis by Bonaventure 8.1).

That is quite a quote! And immediately, we see that St. Francis’ piety had very little to do with his outward devotional practices. This is not to say that he lacked those! No, rather, he practiced his faith, but what we call “Piety” in him was something deeper than the outward practices. It was what undergirded the practices. In a footnote to this section, the editor writes, “The Latin term is pietas which has a much broader scope than the English “piety”; in the context of this chapter it includes love, devotion, affection, reverence, kindness, fidelity, and compassion” (8.1, footnote). A “pious” action filled with these characteristics is one that is full of a holy goodness, but a “pious” action without these characteristics is empty and meaningless. 

St. Francis’ piety was truly the great gift of the Holy Spirit that led him to do the will of the Father in remarkable ways. It led him to love his brothers and sisters here on earth with an intense devotion. It led him to draw near to sinners and to lead them to God. It led him to care for the poor with a special love, kindness, and reverence. It led him to seek to remain poor and in that poverty to remain faithful to Christ his Lord and King. It taught him to look upon all those who were poor – whether from a lack of physical means or a lack of moral and spiritual uprightness – as his own brothers and sisters. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Piety answers, “Yes, he is Christ to me and I serve him as I serve the Lord.”

In this way, we see that a truly pious person is someone not to be mocked but to be praised and revered! If I see a person practicing devotions, lighting candles, giving to the poor, etc., and I consider that they do it out of love, devotion, affection, etc., what a great joy it is to see the Holy Spirit at work in their life! God-willing, these exterior actions speak of a deeper interior life and lead to greater actions of love and charity in the world. 

May St. Francis pray for us all that we may be filled with a greater spirit of Piety!

As my time at the Cathedral is coming to an end, I am noticing how different aspects of life here, of which I have grown accustomed to, are about to become memories of the past.  To be sure, they will be memories that, when I recall them, will bring me great peace and joy as I recall the many blessings of having served here, some of the happiest years of my nearly fifteen years as a priest.

One thing that came to mind as I reviewed the readings for this Sunday (the Ascension of the Lord) was something from the Responsorial Psalm.  It is not any specific word that I will remember, but rather something unique that accompanies those words as this psalm is sung at the masses this weekend.  The response is as follows: “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.” (Ps 47:6) As that verse is sung, Mark Gifford always adds a little trumpet blast from the organ.  I usually remember that it is coming, but every time I hear it, I cannot help but smile – it brings me great delight, and I am sure every time I hear this verse in the future, even if not accompanied by this musical flourish, I will remember what happens here with that same delight.

Though Psalm 47 certainly has its own Old Testament context, possibly connected to the Feast of Tabernacles, our liturgy for this Sunday sees it as connected to Jesus ascending to Heaven to take His place forever as the King who will reign supreme for eternity.  The psalm is a jubilant expression of the praise in Heaven as the saints clap their hands and shout with joy, blowing trumpets as they gather around their King.  I have therefore chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this feast of the Ascension:

Heart of Jesus, delight of all the saints, have mercy on us

This feast day invites us to consider the delight that we will have when we finally are welcomed into this wonderful scene when we reach the end of our earthly pilgrimage.  It is so hard for us to grasp this delight will far exceed any of the delights we experience in this life.  And yet, it is true!  This does not mean that we downplay the delights of this life.  We accept them with gratitude, recognizing them as the gifts that they are from God, but we rejoice in our belief that something more awaits us.  And unlike the delights of this world, which bring so much joy in the moment, but often turn into memories that may fade, the delight of the saints is ever present and never diminished.  It reminds me of a line with which I sometimes conclude funerals.  It comes from the conclusion of The Last Battle, the final installment of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, wrapping up the many adventures of delight had by the main characters:

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. 

On this feast of the Ascension, we recall the new way Jesus desires to relate to his people. Formerly, during his hidden life on earth and his public ministry, he walked among his people in the ordinary way any human being does. He spoke to them, prayed with them, taught them, and healed them. He worked incredible miracles, but from any outward viewer’s perspective he looked and acted like a normal human being. As Isaiah prophesies, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (53:2). This ordinary appearance ceases, however, after the resurrection. 

When Jesus appears to his apostles after the resurrection, he is generally somewhat unrecognizable, although they can see it is him when he makes it known to them. Still, he does not remain with them for long in this new form – he ascends to heaven after forty days. There, from his throne, he now SEEMS to be far away from us. He SEEMS now to simply have no appearance at all. He seems to have left.

As we repeat every year, however, the thought that Christ has left us is a mistaken thought. He has not left, rather, he has chosen to exist in a new sort of relation toward us. Before, he came to us in an ordinary, physical, earthly way. Now he has ascended, but not to leave. He has ascended in order to be even closer. Before, someone could only get close to him by walking toward him. Now, I call him to mind and he is there with me. His presence has become more universal and heightened – not because he has become some sort of ethereal spirit, but because in his physical body, he has gone to a place that needs no movement on our part to access. 

Additionally, he has not only gone there, but he has granted to his Church (the apostles and disciples) the power to unite people to him in an intimate union that St. Paul called being “one body” in Christ. This union has come to be known as the “mystical body of Christ” or “the Church.” We say that from heaven Jesus exercises a headship over his body and that we form one body with him. 

St. Augustine speaks about how we cannot speak about the head without the body or the body without the head if we want to speak of the whole Christ. Jesus has willed reality to be such that he is incomplete without his body, and that we are incomplete without the rest of the body and our head. This is a great mystery!

Pope Pius XII says, even more strikingly, that although “Christ the Head holds such an eminent position, one must not think that he does not require the help of the Body. … Christ has need of His members. … That is not because He is indigent and weak, but rather because He has so willed it for the greater glory of His spotless Spouse. Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action.” 

I end here by simply briefly calling our minds back to St. Francis. See how he lived out his union with Christ his Head and Lord. We see so clearly in his life how Jesus worked the sanctification of so many precisely through Francis’ actions and words. If St. Francis had not been the apostolic disciple that Jesus called him to be, where would the Church be now? 

How is Jesus calling you and me to live more intentionally as a member of his body, sharing in the mission of our Head and Shepherd?

In the final few weeks of the Easter Season, the Gospels for Sunday and the weekdays come from the section of John’s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourse.  Jesus is preparing to bid His disciples farewell, not just when He dies on the Cross, but also when He bids them farewell at the Ascension, which we will celebrate next week.  His coming departure was no doubt a source of great anxiety and sorrow for these friends of His with whom He has shared His life for three years.  In the midst of this special time He spends with His friends, He offers them various promises meant to bring them peace in the midst of their sorrow, not the least of which is the one we hear in the Gospel for this Sunday: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always…I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16, 18) A few verses later, He offers another powerful promise: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” (John 14:27)

There are so many other promises that the Lord offers throughout the Gospels that are a source of peace, but these are especially consoling because of their proximity to the sad events that will soon follow.  Through our Baptism, we have received this gift of the Lord’s presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.  And yet, we still find ourselves feeling troubled or afraid.  In those moments, we would do well to return to these promises which Jesus makes to His friends, promises not meant just for them, but for us as well, for we are indeed among His friends because of the new life He has poured into us through His grace.  As we hear those promises addressed to us personally, in the here and now of our lives, in our fear and uncertainty, we discover His peace.  With that in mind, I have chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this week:

Heart of Jesus, our peace and reconciliation, have mercy on us

The inclusion of reconciliation with peace is not coincidental.  Our greatest experience of unrest in our relationship with the Lord comes not so much when we are afraid about the future, but rather when we have turned away from Him through our sins.  In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus offers us these beautiful words: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” (John 15:9) Yet, when we sin, we choose to depart from His love.  Instead of remaining in His love, remaining in His promises, remaining in His grace, we wander off into darkness, we wander off into a place of sorrow.  But the Lord, the Good Shepherd, goes after us, desiring to bring us back into the fold, desiring to restore us to His love, desire to restore our peace through the gift of His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Over the past couple of years, I have been struck by the words I am privileged to say to every lost sheep who has made their way back to the love of God in confession – “may God grant you pardon and peace.”  When our sins are forgiven, all the promises are renewed in us and for us, and a peace washes over our souls.

May the grace of the Holy Spirit guard this peace in our hearts and deepen our faith in His many promises to us, that He will be with us until the end of time, that He will not leave us orphans, and that He will love us to the end.

Humility is one of those virtues that, generally, everyone knows they need but no one really wants 🙂 … We know it will make us holy, but we know it involves suffering. We know it will make us like Christ, but that transformation comes through the cross. We know it is the primary virtue of so many saints, but that they gained humility through a life of renunciation and obedience. St. Bonaventure calls humility “the guardian and ornament of all the virtues” – it is a foundation for charity, faith, hope, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and all other virtues to be named (Life of St. Francis, 6.1).

Without humility, things fall apart and we become men and women who flex the muscles of our willpower like bodybuilders as we grow in virtue. With humility, we become saints who rest upon the strength of the Lord – we become just as strong in virtue but it isn’t all based on us. 

Of all the virtues that St. Francis excelled in, humility is the one in his life too that could be said to take pride of place. 

The first five chapters of The Life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure are more or less a chronological account of the beginning of St. Francis’ ministry. After finishing this account, St. Bonaventure embarks upon an extended reflection on the different facets of St. Francis’ personality, virtues, community relations, and holiness. Chapter six is devoted to the humility and obedience of St. Francis. 

Among the most striking images that St. Francis used to preach about humility and obedience in the course of his life and ministry was that of a dead body! St. Bonaventure quotes St. Francis as saying this:

“Take a corpse and put it where you will! You will see that it does not resist being moved, nor murmur about its position nor protest when it is cast aside. If it is placed on a throne, it will not raise its eyes up, but cast them down. If it is clothed in purple, it will look twice as pale. This is a truly obedient man.”

When I hear this quote, I am reminded of St. Paul when he said, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Philippians 4:12). St. Francis too knew how to be poor and rich, hungry and fed. He took what came to him in his life and simply trusted that the Lord would provide. 

Clearly, we cannot all become poor to the extent that St. Francis did. He embraced poverty in a radical way according to the state in life that the Lord called him. A monk can do this, a man or woman with a family cannot. Still, what we can all imitate and strive for is the humility that came along with St. Francis’ poverty.

We can pray for the grace of indifference to worldly possessions. We can pray for the grace of seeing ourselves in the way Jesus himself sees us. When we see our goodness through his eyes, we recognize that we have not built ourselves up but that he has given us life and all good things. Through the intercession of St. Francis, may God grant us the grace of true humility. 

In 2008, I attended a summer program in Omaha, Nebraska for seminarians, focusing on spirituality.  It was one of the most impactful experiences of my life, as it was a time when I really learned not just about prayer, but how to pray in a deeper and more relational way.  We had an 8-day silent retreat and there are several graces that came from that retreat that are just as vivid to me today as they were 18 years ago.

One of the images from that summer that I often go back to is that of a statue at which I would often pray.  It was a statue of Jesus with His right hand pointing to His Sacred Heart.  His other hand is extended as if to invite one to come to Him, to encounter the burning fire of His love overflowing from that Sacred Heart.  Whether it was on the retreat I mentioned, or just walking by it during an early evening walk, I always found a sense of peace, and that image in my mind continues to offer an invitation to return to that place to reclaim that peace.

Of the various elements of traditional depictions of the Sacred Heart, I have always been drawn to the fire that emanates from the Heart of Jesus.  When we go to confession, we present to Jesus our hearts that have become tarnished and cold because of our sins, but as we come into contact with the burning fire of His love, our hearts are purified and warmed up.  When feeling dry in prayer, we can draw close to that Heart and we are renewed as we are reminded of His love which continues to burn for us, and to realize how He so longs to share that love with us, constantly inviting us to draw near.  For this reason, I have chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this week:

Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity, have mercy on us

At the beginning of the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus says to His disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” (Jn 14:1) There are no doubt many times when our hearts become troubled.  It can happen as a result of something that has been done to us, such as a harsh word or a perceived slight.  Sometimes we can feel overlooked and ignored.  There are times when we have received some troubling news that leaves us unsettled.  At other times, our hearts are troubled because of something we have done – how we have treated somebody, how we have said something insensitive, how we have given into sin.  When our hearts are troubled, we can tend to turn in on ourselves, hurt, ashamed, angry, or sorrowful, trying to manage the emotions ourselves, which usually leads to our hearts being even more troubled.  In a line that is key to devotion to the Sacred Heart, and one which is depicted so well in the image I recall so fondly that summer, are those offered by Jesus, perhaps to the same disciples, in Matthew’s Gospel:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Mt 11:28–29)

When are hearts are troubled, when we are burdened, instead of turning in, look up and see Jesus with His hand extended, inviting you to draw near to His heart, to experience the glowing furnace of charity for you, and may that love settle you heart and renew your peace.