Last month, I offered a three-part Adult Faith Formation series on St. Joseph, a fitting topic given our Holy Father declaring this to be a Year of St. Joseph.  In my third and final session, I addressed various devotions to St. Joseph.  One of the general points that I made in that presentation was how the Church connects her devotional life to the rhythm of the days of the week and the months of the year.  For example, Sunday is a day on which we as Catholics are called to have a greater devotion to the Resurrection, for it was on Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead.  The month which we just concluded, May, was given as a time to give special devotion to our Blessed Mother.

As we begin this new month of June, the Church invites us to fix our attention on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart almost always falls during this month (June 11^th, this Friday, this year), so it is a fitting time for us to focus on the Heart of Jesus, which burns with love for us.  This devotion has been one that I have loved for many years, first having been introduced to it when the pastor of my home parish would have the congregation join in praying the Litany of the Sacred Heart on the First Friday of every month.  Throughout this month, I will be reflecting on this beautiful devotion in my bulletin articles.

As the Church celebrates today the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus (also known for it’s Latin title of Corpus Christi), there is an important connection between the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Sacrament, for the Eucharist is the most profound expression of the love of the Sacred Heart.  St. Julian Eymard makes this point in a succinct but profound way: “Let us learn to honor the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist.  Let us never separate them.”

One part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart is the notion of reparation for how often humanity has rejected the love of Christ, especially in the Most Holy Eucharist.  In His revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the Apostle to the Sacred Heart, Jesus had these unsettling words to say:

Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It spared nothing, even going so far as to exhaust and consume Itself, to prove to them Its love. And in return I receive from the greater part of men nothing but ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges and coldness with which they treat Me in this Sacrament of Love.

I have never forgotten these words, and it prompted me to confess any times that I had treated the Lord in this way, especially if I had received the Eucharist unworthily.  On this Corpus Christi Sunday, I invite all of us to take these words to heart, and to ask the Lord to help us to be aware of the times when we have received Him with irreverence or coldness of heart.  In particular, let us be aware of any times we may have received Him unworthily, meaning having committed a mortal sin, then going to Holy Communion without first going to confession.  To do so is to commit the sin of sacrilege, and this is one of the greatest offenses to the love of the Heart of Jesus.  If we are aware of this, then please go to Confession, and be sure to ask the Lord for forgiveness for receiving Him unworthily.  Then, let us promise never to receive the Lord unworthily again, even if it means we refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we make it to confession again.

Father Alford     

Summer vacation is usually a beautiful opportunity to step out of one’s place or routine to see something new, visit a new place, or bond with friends or families. This is especially true in places like the United States, where the summer is a distinct climatic season with warm weather that allows for outdoor activities. Living in the United States for the past five years now, summer is gradually becoming for me what it is for Americans – a special time to do something fun. I have often given little or no attention to the question: what are your plans for the summer? But this time, I have been paying attention to it – more seriously than in previous years. And so, what are my plans for this summer? Am I keeping Christ in those plans?

When I started thinking about some possible things I can do this summer for fun, the first two that came to my mind were to take a week off for hiking somewhere in one of the states I have not been to. The second was to take a week off to visit my aunt and her family in Florida. Whichever one will be the option, the next thing I had to deal with was during that one week off, where will I be attending or celebrating daily Masses? When this question came to my mind, I wondered if I started thinking this way just because I am now a priest, or have I always thought that way? Then I recalled a few incidents in the past where I canceled or rescheduled trips because of the improbability of daily Masses. At that point, I reminded myself that this has nothing to do with my being a priest now. Instead, it is a question about personal priorities – trying to keep Christ in all I do, including my vacations.

So, I began to wonder whether daily and or weekly Masses’ possibilities are among the priorities for people when they make plans for their summer trips and vacations? Thinking about this, I remember one of the gentlemen in my Cursillo group who usually travel to Hawaii for holidays. In one of our meetings recently, something came up. He narrated how having a Catholic Church within walking distance to wherever he was going to stay during his vacations in Hawaii is a critical part of his planning. How awesome! How beautiful it is for us to keep Christ in our vacations?

While vacations are beautiful opportunities to take some time away from work, school, or normal life’s routines to do something fun, it is not a time to separate ourselves from Christ. We are Christ’s. We belong to Him in very inseparable ways. Any attempt to force that separation always, directly or indirectly, results in spiritual dryness, emotional discontentment, sadness, loneliness, misery, and fear even amid families, friends, and fortunes. This summer, as we plan our vacations and trips, let us keep Christ in them all. We can do this by making sure we attend daily Masses where and when possible and weekend Masses unfailingly during our vacations and trips. Let us keep our spiritual/prayer lives even stronger. Happy Summer!

Feast Day: June 5th

I know this article will appear in your hands a day after we celebrate St. Boniface’s feast day, but his words on scripture this week were too good to pass up!  

We start our tale in 720AD, with Boniface up by the North Sea (between Norway and Germany these days), where he receives a letter from a good friend, the Abbess of Minster on the Isle of Thanet, back in England near Canterbury.  (Funnily enough, the “Isle” of Thanet is no longer an island these days, but it was when St. Eadburga sent her note.)

Be it known to you, my gracious father, that I give thanks without ceasing to Almighty God because, as I learned from your letter, He has shown His mercy to you in many ways and jealously guarded you on your way through strange and distant lands. First, He inspired the Pontiff who sits in the chair of Peter to grant the desire of your heart. Afterwards He humbled at your feet King Radbod, the enemy of the Catholic Church; finally He revealed to you in a dream that you would reap God’s harvest and gather many souls into the barn of the heavenly kingdom. – Abbess Eadburga to Boniface (720AD)

Of course, we no longer have all of their correspondence, but we hear again from Eadburga in 732, asking Boniface to pray for her parents, and then in 735, we finally hear his side of the story:

To the most reverend and beloved sister, Abbess Eadburga, Boniface, least of the servants of God, loving greetings.  I pray Almighty God, the Rewarder of all good works, that when you reach the heavenly mansions and the everlasting tents He will repay you for all the generosity you have shown to me. For, many times, by your useful gifts of books and vestments, you have consoled and relieved me in my distress. And so I beg you to continue the good work you have begun by copying out for me in letters of gold the epistles of my lord, St. Peter, that a reverence and love of the Holy Scriptures may be impressed on the minds of the heathens to whom I preach, and that I may ever have before my gaze the words of him who guided me along this path.  The materials [gold] needed for the copy I am sending by the priest Eoban.  Deal, then, my dear sister, with this my request as you have so generously dealt with them in the past, so that here on earth your deeds may shine in letters of gold to the glory of our Father who is in heaven.  For your well-being in Christ and for your continual progress in virtue I offer my prayers. – Boniface to Abbess Eadburga (735AD)

I take note not only of their friendship via that slow, but sublime, means of hand-written notes, but also just how much Boniface cherishes the words of Scripture.  Not only is he anguishing over just getting a copy of the Epistle of Peter, he sends gold so that it could be written with gold ink.  Do his words strike us as strange?  Does his commitment to the Word of God seem over the top?  I ask his intercession today that I might be inspired by His love!  “…that a reverence and love of the Holy Scriptures may be impressed on the minds of the heathens to whom I preach, and that I may ever have before my gaze the words of him who guided me along this path.”  What a saint!

– Fr. Dominic Rankin writes to his own sister, a Dominican Nun, to keep her appraised of his ministerial work and to ask her prayers as well.  He currently considers it unlikely that a reigning monarch will reach out to him having gotten to know Sr. Mary Thomas, but that seems to be what happened to Boniface through Aedburga…

Having thus briefly mentioned these matters, there is one other favour I have to ask, which, from what I hear [from Eadburga], will not be difficult for you to grant, namely, to send me a pair of falcons, quick and spirited enough to attack crows without hesitation and bring them back to earth after catching them. We ask you to procure these birds and send them to us, since there are few hawks of this kind over here in Kent, which produce good offspring, quick-witted, mettlesome and capable of being tamed, trained and taught for the purpose I have mentioned. – King Ethelbert, Requesting Falcons from Boniface (748AD).

In late March of last year, as the pandemic restrictions were just beginning, I recall various people making comments about finding the good in the midst of such challenging circumstances.  Many people commented on how those restrictions made possible more time together as a family.  Those hectic schedules that often defined the lives of families prior to the pandemic were no longer an issue, and families found themselves together in ways they had not before.  Families commented on how they appreciated having the opportunity to have meals together and to spend time doing activities together with the free time that the pandemic had afforded them.

At the same time, our parish families really suffered as we were forced to suspend public masses and indeed all of our gatherings as a family.  We had to settle for virtual community.  It was something, but it was far from sufficient as our sense of being a part of a parish family was strained.  In an attempt to foster some sense of parish family unity, we have used the pages of our Cathedral Weekly to focus on the Sacraments, in parallel with our families involved in our Family of Faith family catechesis program.

With much of our society returning to “normal”, it is my hope that our experiences, particularly with these two types of families, have left an impression upon us.  For our physical families, many of the demanding schedules are returning.  And while there may be some sense of relief in going back to some of those fulfilling experiences, it is my prayer that the time of togetherness during the pandemic has instilled a desire to make time as a family more a part of the new normal moving forward.  Going back to “normal” where our lives are so hectic that we barely meet one another in the family is not out goal, but to create a new experience of family life that values time together in the midst of the lives we live.

As a parish family, it is my hope that our being deprived of being together has instilled a desire in us to place a higher priority on making our parish family an important part of our lives.  Going back to “normal” parish family life as it existed before the pandemic is not our goal here.  As positive as some of our experiences may have been, I think we can all admit that there was a lack of family unity in our parishes.  This is something with which virtually every parish has experienced in recent decades.  We want to move forward with a greater sense of belonging to this family, not just individuals who drop in and drop out, but who gather together joyfully as brothers and sisters united who long to be together as a family of love.

While we use the title Family of Faith for our family catechesis program, I hope we can see it in a broader sense as a phrase that describes our larger parish family.  We are a family of faith, we are a family of hope, and we are a family of love.  As we celebrate the perfect family of love in the Holy Trinity this Sunday, let us pray that our own families and our parish family will move forward renewed in our desire for greater unity in love with and for one another.

Father Alford