When we arrive at the time for the proclamation of the Gospel at Mass, we have reached a very important point of the liturgy, though I sometimes wonder if we overlook just how important it is.  I think for some of us, the Gospel is seen as a sort of preparation or introduction to the Homily.  As preachers of the Homily, we often have people offer comments to us after Mass about our preaching.  Do not get me wrong, we appreciate the feedback.  But it is pretty rare to have somebody comment on the Gospel, which is ALWAYS more powerful than the best homily because it is God speaking to us, usually with the very words of Jesus Himself.  Here is what the General Instruction of the Roman Missal has to say about the Gospel:

The reading of the Gospel constitutes the high point of the Liturgy of the Word. The Liturgy itself teaches the great reverence that is to be shown to this reading by setting it off from the other readings with special marks of honor, by the fact of which a minister is appointed to proclaim it and by the blessing or prayer with which he prepares himself; and also by the fact that through their acclamations the faithful acknowledge and confess that Christ is present and is speaking to them and stand as they listen to the reading; and by the mere fact of the marks of reverence that are given to the Book of the Gospels. (GIRM, 60)

I think what I have written already regarding our listening attentively to the Word of God is sufficient for how we should approach the Gospel.  But I want to share a few things that lead up to the proclamation of the Gospel that often go unnoticed or unappreciated.  When the celebrant stands for the Gospel Acclamation, if there is a Deacon present, the Deacon will ask for a blessing from the celebrant, who says quietly: “May the Lord be in your hearts and on your lips that you may proclaim His Gospel worthily and well, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  If there is no deacon present, the celebrant (or concelebrating priest, says a similar prayer silently: “Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.”

The Church has the minister pray for God’s blessing to proclaim the Gospel worthily, signifying how these are not just mere words that we are proclaiming.  It is a humbling privilege to proclaim the Gospel and this prayerful preparation is a good reminder.  For the rest of the faithful, there is no such prayer, but I would call your attention to how the Gospel is introduced.  After the initial exchange of “The Lord be with you…and with your spirit”, the minister announces that he is about to proclaim a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  The faithful then respond: “Glory to you, O Lord.”  As with so many of our responses, this can be very automatic without our even really thinking about what we are saying.  But consider what saying this means.  We are NOT responding back to the minister as though saying: “Thanks for letting us know, I hope you do a good job reading.”  No, we are making a profession of faith that we are about to hear the Lord speaking to us from that most important section of Sacred Scripture where we hear the very words of Jesus Himself.  Our response is one of glorifying God for this gift we are about to receive.  The following words of Jesus come to mind as I think about how privileged we are to listen to the Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Mt 13:17)

Over the years, the Church has extended to the faithful the opportunity to join in the gesture made by the minister at this point, making a Cross on one’s forehead, lips, and heart.  There are no scripted words for the minister or the faithful at this point, but many have come to see it as an opportunity to pray that the Gospel will be in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts, such that our encounter with the Gospel about to be proclaimed will find rich soil in our hearts to produce fruit in our lives.

Feast Day: October 5^th | Patronage: Immigrants, Missionaries | Iconography: Wearing Cassock with Rosary (as priest and redemptorist), Holding Crucifix or Bible (as preacher), Surrounded by Immigrants

During his papacy, the Great Pope St. John Paul II canonized 482 saints, and beatified some 1344 individuals. A constant theme of his papacy was not only the call, and genuine capacity, for every one of us to become saints, but also to put before our eyes countless examples of sanctity: that there is no single recipe for holiness! God’s grace can work in any life! During the Great Jubilee of 2000 (heads up, we have another jubilee year coming up in 2025!), JPII continued this rampant pace of canonizations and beatifications, listing among the saints individuals you may know like St. Faustina Kowalska, Katherine Drexel, and Josephine Bakhita as well as beatifying humble characters like the little shepherds of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, as well as great world-shapers like the Popes Pius IX and John XXIII.

One of the first to beatified during this tremendous year was the Redemptorist priest, Francis Xavier Seelos. Born in Germany in 1819, as a young man he was moved by stories of redemptorist fathers who had given their lives to be missionaries serving throughout the young country of the United States, and so as a seminarian he embarked on a ship that would bring him across the Atlantic and onto American soil at New York in 1843. (I should mention that the famous immigration center at Ellis Island would not begin operations for almost 40 years, and the Statue of Liberty would not welcome poor and tired masses until 1924.) Fr. Seelos was ordained a priest in the famous St. James the Less Church in Baltimore (sadly, much destroyed in a fire in 2020), and went on to serve at St. Philomena’s in Pittsburg (where St. John Neumann was pastor and where Fr. Francis Seelos would follow him as pastor until 1854). He devoted energy and attention primarily to preaching – constantly honing his craft with a grace-filled engaging and relatable style – and hearing confessions – welcoming “German, English, French [and] whites and of blacks” (as he wrote about it) with tenderness, attentiveness, and empathy.

He thus worked at various parishes throughout Maryland – enduring the cross of being moved like so many other parish priests – and then in formation-work in the Redemptorist seminary in Annapolis. There, in June of 1863, we come to one particularily famous moment of his life, when he traveled to Washington DC to meet with the President Abraham Lincoln to ask that his seminarians not be drafted to fight in the Civil War. Lincoln, in his conscription act, had not exempted clergy or religious, and Fr. Francis was committed to convincing him otherwise. He wrote to his sister of the gravity of the situation:

If one is chosen in the draft, he has either to go, or to pay $300.00. Because we have so many young members, that would have amounted for us to the gigantic sum of $25,000 or more. I decided then, with the permission of the provincial, to go to Washington with another father and to present personally to the President and other officials our situation. … If I do not succeed in obtaining a release from that unjust injunction, we will rather go to prison than to take up arms.

Seelos would later recall that “I liked President Lincoln very much when I went to see him. He spoke to us in a sincere, free, and friendly manner.” Though the President did not grant an official exemption he must have assured the good father that he would personally protect his seminarians for few if any were ever drafted and Seelos would happily write his sister that “the storm passed over thanks to God and the intercession of Mary.” He had less enthusiastic words regarding the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, “If the feast of rough characters should ever be celebrated in the Church, Stanton will get an octave added to it.” (all these quotations from Sincerely, Seelos: The Collected Letters of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos.)

He actually suffered being removed from his position as Prefect in the Seminary for being too obliging and happy towards the men under his care. Though it must not have tarnished his overall character for he was soon recommended to become Bishop of Pittsburg. Entreating Pope Pius IX to instead let him become an itinerant preacher, he began some years of traveling throughout Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri (including a two-week parish mission at St. Mary of Victories in St. Louis in October, 1865), New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. He finally made his way south to New Orleans in 1866, there prophetically telling the New Orleanians that “I have come here to pass the rest of my days and find a last resting place.” And so he did, in the end caring for victims of yellow fever in 1867, eventually contracting the painful disease himself and dying on October 4^th of that year, at the age of 48.

– Fr. Dominic simply notes that Fr. Seelos took for his religious name and patron the great missionary St. Francis Xavier. And though he followed that famous evangelist in his travels and preaching, in so many other areas he could have easily been discouraged by his dissimilarity to the great Jesuit. His travels may have seemed comfortable in comparison, and certainly he did not baptize tens of thousand for Christ. Yet he was called to a different sanctity: that of the confessional, of the complexities of war and American politics, of lots of miles on horseback throughout the American Midwest. Our sanctity can also be found in the humility of the confessional, in enduring our own era’s messiness, and even in the daily miles we have to cover.

As we continue to consider the Liturgy of the Word, I would like to focus our attention this week on the Responsorial Psalm.  While it can be difficult to stay focused during any part of the Liturgy of the Word, I think it can be particularly difficult to feel connected to the Responsorial Psalm.

I find this interesting for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the Responsorial Psalm demands more attention from the congregation as we are expected to respond, either with signing or speaking, depending on the Mass.  Second, the Psalms constitute the most sacred and ancient prayers of the Church.  Christ Himself prayed the Psalms, and the Psalms have been at the heart of the Church’s liturgical worship, both at Mass and in the Liturgy of the Hours.  But for some reason, we find it hard to pray the Psalms well.

When I was in seminary, I took a class on the Psalms as Christian Prayer.  In that class, we read a variety of sources that dealt with the Psalms, from a general overview of the Psalms to commentaries on various individual Psalms.  There is one particular reading that I still recall fondly as it really opened my mind and heart to a greater appreciation of the Psalms.  It comes from a letter written by St. Athanasius to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms.  A few passages will suffice to show how we can all experience the Psalms in a more significant way:

All Scripture of ours, my son both ancient and new is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, as it is written. But the Book of Psalms possesses a certain winning exactitude for those who are prayerful. Each sacred book supplies and announces its own promise. Yet the Book of Psalms is like a garden containing things of all these kinds, and it sets them to music, but also exhibits things of its own that it gives in song along with them.

And it seems to me that these words become like a mirror to the person singing them, so that he might perceive himself and the emotions of his soul, and thus affected, he might recite them. For in fact he who hears the one reading receives the song that is recited as being about him, and either, when he is convicted by his conscience, being pierced, he will repent, or hearing of the hope that resides in God, and of the support available to believers – how this kind of grace exists for him- he exults and begins to give thanks to God.

Another helpful resource comes from the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright who has a beautiful book on the Psalms, titled The Case for the Psalms.  In words similar to those of St. Athanasius, he writes:

Those who pray the Psalms day by day…are putting themselves in the position where, when faced with a sudden crisis, they will discover close at hand a line or two of a psalm that is already etched into the heart and mind and says just what they want to say, only most likely better than they could say it themselves in the heat of the moment.

(Kindle edition, page 25)

On this point, I can say that this is absolutely true for me.  As one who is exposed to the Psalms each day, both at Mass and in my praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, there are so many lines from the Psalms that are close at hand when I need a phrase to latch onto in turning to God in prayer throughout my daily life.

This is therefore an encouragement to try to pay close attention to the Responsorial Psalm at Mass in particular and the Book of Psalms in general and see how, waiting there for us, is a prized gift of God’s Word capable of speaking to every emotion and responding to every need we have.

Feast Day: September 27^th | Patronage: Pharmacists, Physicians, Surgeons, and Twins | Iconography: Wearing Turbans (because they’re from Arabia), Carrying Scrolls or Instruments of Medicine, Standing Side by Side (as Twins), Holding Palms or Crosses, or Shown as Beheaded (for their Martyrdom)

Saints Cosmas and Damian are primarily known for giving away their services as physicians (and pharmacy) for free, a spectacular act of generosity that brought many of those they treated to Christ. And, it also brought down on them the ire of the governor of Cilicia (modern day Turkey), who was seeking victims during the persecution of Diocletian in 287 AD. They were so well known, and loved for their flagrant charity that they received the nickname anargyroi, “the silverless”, or even “the holy unmercenaries” during their lives. After their deaths they became even more well known, when the stories of the heroic courage of Cosmas, Damian, and their younger brothers in the face of torture spread around the continent. Churches dedicated to their honor were built in Jerusalem, Egypt, Mesopotamia, as well as in Constantinople, Syria and even as far as England. I should mention that the Eastern Churches not only have multiple feast days for Cosmas and Damian, but actually reverence an entire class of saints called the “anargyroi”, those who did works of charity without asking for any recompence.

I think we can learn much from the saints of this sort: their other-worldly generosity that not only is unattached to the pleasures and goods of the world, but goes out of their way to put complete confidence in God to provide for them because they’re not looking to provide for themselves. I love that title “the holy unmercenaries”, because it just emphasizes how these men and women operated completely opposite my own inclinations. How often do I engage in some work, project, effort, or event because I think I’ll get something out of it? Or, at least, does that make up part of my motivation? We often repeat, and live by, the idea that: “God helps those who help themselves”, but saints like this show us that God’s generosity isn’t dependent on our efforts, success, profitability, or paycheck. There’s something challenging to me in this: what if I were absurdly, irresponsibly, unthinkingly generous? What would happen?

I don’t think all of us are called to this kind of radical charity or poverty. Jesus asks the rich young man to “sell everything, give to the poor, and come and follow Me.” But He didn’t ask that of the women who provided for Him out of their means, or from Ss. Louis and Zellie Martin who raised their holy children (including St. Thérèse the Little Flower) very comfortably. But does that give us all a pass so that we don’t have to take seriously the countless saints who did live radical generosity? How do we discern between these different examples of holiness? How do we know what God is asking of us?

First, we pray. We ask God: “Are you asking me to be more generous?” Perhaps we extend ourselves slightly more in giving away our time, attention, love, money, or possessions, and then we see what happens! Does love grow in my heart? Does God’s peace abide more firmly inside of me? Do I find faith or hope or courage or self-sacrifice growing within me? Do I have a clearer idea of God, a better sense of His presence, a greater trust in His closeness? If those things are growing it means that God is at work and we should take seriously how we might be more generous.

But there’s a second part of this too.  What if saints weren’t primarily people who were really good at giving? What if they were really good at receiving? What I mean is that every saint who strikes us by their radical charity, first knew they were the beneficiaries of the radical love of God! Have we opened our hearts to God’s kindness? His mercy? His compassion, presence, joy, or courage? I think an awful lot of us make our way through life not much loving like God because we haven’t much opened ourselves to His love. So, we live mostly human lives with only a sprinkling of grace and gratuity, just enough to be nice, and polite, and practical, but not exactly divine… Ss. Cosmas and Damian show us the freedom and abundance that reign instead in the heart that has first drank deeply of God’s love.

– Fr. Dominic just last week was impressed by God’s generosity when he had several talks to give for a retreat, and again and again found the Lord providing exactly the idea or story or passage that was needed to continue forward. The minute I thanked Him for those gifts, somewhere in the back of my head was the thought: “oh, I shouldn’t have been so needy there, I won’t bother God the next time…” BUT, since when did God say He was bothered my request? When did He ask me to figure things out on my own because He’s too busy right now??!  (He didn’t! But now I have a line of thinking that I know to reject next time!)

A few weeks ago, I introduced a resource that I have personally found very helpful in praying the Mass more intentionally.  That resource is A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass: The Eucharistic Wisdom of Venerable Bruno Lanteri, written by Father Timothy Gallagher, O.M.V.  Venerable Bruno invites us to “seek the sentiments and the heart” of various biblical figures at the various parts of the Mass.

When addressing the Liturgy of the Word, Father Gallagher writes:

At the Readings and Gospel, I will seek the sentiments and the heart of a disciple.” When the First Reading, the Second, and the Gospel are proclaimed, ask for a heart like those of the disciples who heard Jesus on the mountain, by the lakeshore, and in the Temple. Listen as they did, with the same deep attention, undivided heart, and receptivity: when his Word is read at Mass, Jesus speaks to you just as he did to them.

(p. 45 of Kindle version of book)

Last Sunday, we resumed our watching of The Chosen with Episode 1 of Season 3.  The beginning of that episode has Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount.  As He preaches words that are so familiar to us, the camera shows the faces of those listening to this great sermon.  They are rapt in attention as they hear these words for the first time, and you can tell that the Word is really hitting home.

So many of us struggle with trying to listen attentively to the Word of God as it is proclaimed at Mass.  Sometimes we struggle because we cannot really hear all that well physically, either due to hearing impairment or the less-than-stellar sound system that a church may have.  Sometimes we might have the attitude that these readings (especially from the Old Testament) do not have much direct bearing on us now.  Sometimes, we are so familiar with the passages that we tune out thinking: “I’ve heard this before, I know how it goes, I know how it ends.”  Sometimes it is just our not being good at keeping focus and paying attention, something we seem to be getting worse and worse at as a society.

One of the recommendations that I have received in this regard, and one that I have also put into practice, is to read the readings ahead of time.  That way, the Word has been given a chance to be planted.  When the Word is proclaimed again at Mass, it’s not unexpected, but received with greater familiarity.  One might object that having read the readings ahead of time may contribute to our just tuning the reading out because we know how the reading goes.  While that could happen, I do not think that reading ahead of time causes that zoning out, but rather prepares the soil of our hearts to be more attentive to what the Lord wants to communicate to us as we listen attentively to Him speaking to us just as He did to His disciples.

Perhaps I could offer another practical suggestion regarding our paying more attention to the Scriptures at Mass.  Once we sit after the opening Collect, there is always a brief pause as we wait for the lector to approach the ambo and begin the reading.  There is also a pause before the other readings as well.  Those brief periods of time could be a good opportunity for us to say a short prayer, asking the Lord to help us listen to Him with the heart of a disciple who is hearing His Word for the first time and to be open to the specific Word or phrase that He has reserved for each of us individually here and now.

Feast Day: September 23^rd | Patronage: Popes, Various Schools and Parishes that have taken him as their saint | Iconography: Papal Tiara or Pallium, Holding Book as Preacher, Balding because even saints grow old.

Linus was the first successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome. As early as St. Irenaeus (AD 180), we find him described as entrusted by St. Peter (and St. Paul): “the blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.” [St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:3.3.] Eusebius, the bishop and historian in the 300s, follows suit in saying that Linus was “the first to receive the episcopate of the church at Rome, after the martyrdom of Paul and Peter” [Eusebius, Church History 3.2.] and St. Jerome agrees with him. Now, there are a few (later) accounts that claim that it was Clement who actually St. Peter, with Linus and Cletus being something more akin to auxiliary bishops, assisting but not entrusted with the full office of Peter. Still, the weight of evidence tends towards Linus being the first successor of St. Peter, then Cletus, then Clement. He would have been martyred around the year 78 or 80 and was buried, along with many Christians who loved their first Holy Father, near to St. Peter’s grave on the Vatican Hill.

One fascinating insight into this early saint and leader of the Church is actually found in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. At the end of that letter, as Paul concludes his words to that beloved coworker of his, he mentions several people to pass his greetings onto, and several that send their greetings with his. One of the latter is Linus!:

Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. 

[2 Timothy 4:19-22]

Now, this letter would have been written towards the end of St. Paul’s life, probably when he had already come to Rome for his trial before the emperor and a decade or more after his many adventures with Timothy. I love the fact that here in Rome, under the most unlikely of circumstances, we have the great Apostle to the Gentiles not quite in chains but certainly hampered from his globe-trotting earlier days, happily stranded with St. Peter laying the foundation for the Church’s heart in the Eternal City. And there, somehow mixed into this fledgling Church is a young man named Linus, growing in his faith under the tutelage of the greatest of the Apostles. Here he is, perhaps some years into his work as a priest or bishop with the craziness of revolving emperors and sporadic persecution, and he stands by as St. Paul pens a final letter to his favorite sidekick. We don’t know if Linus ever met Timothy (though Paul certainly hopes that he would come to Rome!), but somehow they seem like kindred spirits. Separated far from one another in shepherding different parts of the Church, both young bishops got a front row seat to the astonishing work of the Holy Spirit in the early Church, and both also were faced by the same overwhelming uncertainties of guiding and guarding those earliest communities of disciples. 

Thing is, the Holy Spirit hasn’t stopped working, nor has the Lord ceased to connect saints-in-the-making to one another to inspire and encourage one another.

– Fr. Dominic was recently with a handful of the priests and seminarians of the diocese down in the Alton deanery for an informal evening with young men considering how to follow the Lord wherever He is calling them. I cannot help but consider the parallels between our brotherhood – often spread from one another, but working in the same vineyard – to those leaders in the early church. Each of us was inspired by others before us, and each of us also passes that torch onto other men to step into the same spiritual fatherhood. It’s daunting, truly, but we also come to realize that Christ is the one who guarantees that the torch won’t go out.