I was recently confronted by a gentleman who held strong beliefs against the Catholic Church.  At one point, he criticized the Catholic Mass as something unbiblical.  I simply asked him: “Have you ever been to Catholic Mass?”  To which he quickly responded with a firm “No!”  As we parted ways, I could not help but think of the story of Dr. Scott Hahn’s journey to the Catholic faith.  I recall him sharing how he would slip into the back of the chapel for Mass.  Being so familiar with the Scriptures, he saw unfolding before him a liturgy filled with biblical connections.  The Mass is not mere human invention, but it is firmly rooted in the Scriptures.

One of the many places where this is seen in the Mass is as the celebrant, before receiving Holy Communion himself, says: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”  The first sentence is directly from John 1:29, where St. John the Baptist points out Jesus to his followers.  The second sentence is taken from the Book of Revelation, which reads: “Then the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19:9)

The response from the faithful is as follows: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”  Anybody who has even a casual familiarity with the Scriptures knows that this also comes from the Bible.  It is almost a direct quote from the Gospel of Matthew where the Centurion appeals to Jesus for Him to heal his servant, saying: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.” (Mt. 8:8)  In a resource that I have referred to in this series one other time, I came across a beautiful explanation of how this brief exchange both demonstrates the Church’s use of the Scriptures in the Mass, as well as how this passage in particular is a helpful final preparation for us as we are about to approach Our Lord in Holy Communion:

These were the words addressed by the Centurion to our Lord, who was coming to heal his servant. Once again let us repeat, Holy Church is ever showing how she possesses the happy secret of choosing the loveliest passages of Sacred Scripture, to place in the Holy Mass; as it were enchasing them there, like priceless diamonds! We likewise say Domine non sum dignus [Lord, I am not worthy]. … In our case, it is not for our servant that we beg a cure; it is our own poor soul craving help for herself, and making use of these words as a last appeal to God. We sorely need to be cured; and the nearer we approach the Lord who alone can cure us, the greater should be our confidence in asking. Assuredly nothing can be so certain and manifest, as our unworthiness; but, on the other hand, who is so powerful as the Lord. There is nothing for us, but to appeal to Him, and crave with true humility: sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. Yea, say but one word, and my soul shall be healed! 

(Dom Prosper Guéranger, Explanation of Prayers and Ceremonies of Holy Mass, 64)

What a gift the Mass is to us!  The Word of God is spoken directly to us in the Liturgy of the Word, and it continues to speak to us in a variety of ways throughout the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  Even if we are not familiar with all of the passages and references scattered throughout the Mass, their power is evident, for “the Word of God is living and effective.” (Heb 4:12)  It is that effectiveness of the Word of God that prepares our hearts throughout that Mass, so that at this moment, in which we are about to receive the Word made Flesh in the Eucharist, our hunger for Him prompts us to cry out with all humility that we are not worthy of this gift, while at the same time being moved to gratitude that despite that unworthiness, He desires to come to us to feed us and heal us.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: April 21^st 

Automatic doors are the worst.

I mean that somewhat facetiously, though we have had a decisive down-turn in the number of saintly doormen ever since powered-doors started their climb towards ubiquity in the 1950s. It has been 3 years since I wrote about a saint-porter, that is a saint who achieved his holiness from opening the door for people coming to Church, but there are many such remarkable individuals now canonized saints (or blessed): Paschal Baylon, Charles of Sezze, Didacus of Alcalá, Felix of Cantalice, Alphonsus Rodriguez, André Bessette, John Macias, Benito Solana Ruiz, Bonaventure of Barcelona, Solanus Casey, and today’s saint, Conrad of Parzham.

He was baptized with the name John and the patronage of John the Evangelist, the second to last of 12 children (though only 7 survived past infancy). He was known for his devotion and prayerfulness as a child, visiting the church some distance from his home even during inclement weather and walking all the way to a shrine of the Blessed Mother on feast days. He grew up helping on his family’s farm, though when he was still a teenager lost both of his parents a few years apart. A few years later, following a parish mission, he began to seriously consider religious life and entered the OFM-C (Order of Friars Minor, Capuchins) in 1842.

And then he spent 41 years open the friary door. He was widely known for his charity, patience, and generosity towards all who came knocking, and that he would step into an alcove of their chapel for brief moments of prayer whenever he wasn’t engaged with visitors. One line about him that particularly caught my attention says that he was “eager and ready to receive and help strangers.” He died in 1894, a few days after giving the role of porter to another friar.

Now, back to powered-doors.  The problem isn’t the motors and electronics that make the things operate … but neither was it the physical act of opening and closing the door that made Br. Conrad a saint. The thing that made him a saint was loving individuals, and loving the Lord, every time he encountered someone. And power-doors are one of the many places in our lives where we have avoided encountering others … avoided them needing our love … or us giving them our love.

Think of all the places where our modern world allows us to avoid interacting with others: self-checkout, 2 day shipping, movie streaming, google maps, earbuds. I don’t want to be entire down on technology, but in making our lives “easier”, in many ways our lives are less human, less dependent on others, less open to others. When I go for a jog and smile and wave at a stranger they often look up from their own little world, shocked that someone would speak to them, care about them. And, to be honest, I often find myself in my own zone too, wanting to do my thing, keep to my own plans, not really wanting to be bothered, not really wanting to be noticed, not really wanting to need someone else, or them needing me. 

But to live “my own” life, is not really to live a fully human life at all. We are made for community, for communion, for interaction, for self-gift, and when we risk ourselves and open up to someone else, we discover we are far more who we want to be. Our Lord knew this when He said “whoever would save his lifewill lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” [Matthew 16:25] Unfortunately, we live in an age where our lives are not always asked of us, or when they are we are quick to begrudge the request. As Christians we have to look for ways around this buffered, isolated, narrowed way of life and look for ways to push back against the things that keep us disconnected, solitary, “going alone”. 

– Fr. Dominic is not the best at this! Asked before the Boston Marathon “Why do you run?”, I said some things about offering up miles for people, about praying and soaking in the grace and strength that God gives me, but I completely forgot that running is absolutely an opportunity to sacrifice for others, to cheer them on, to get to know them as you share miles of road together. But these are some of the best moments of those races! The kid you high-five on the sidelines, the person who gives you a cup of water at the aid station, the unexpected person who celebrates with you at the finish line, and the guy you cheered on who says it got him through some tough miles. Those, and so many others, are opportunities to love each other. Those are the places where saints are made.

After the Lamb of God is sung or said, we are almost ready for the high point of receiving our Lord in Holy Communion.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says the following about what happens next: “The Priest prepares himself by a prayer, said quietly, so that he may fruitfully receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The faithful do the same, praying silently.” (GIRM, 84)

Both the priest and the faithful are invited into silent prayer as a way to prepare for receiving Holy Communion, but for the priest, there is a specific prayer (rather an option of two prayers) that he is to pray, but the faithful are not given any specific prayer.  On the one hand, this gives freedom to the faithful to pray from their heart in words that are unique to them, or simply just to be in silence, but we have to admit that sometimes “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” (Rom 8:26) And so a written prayer from the tradition of the Church can help in this time of preparation.

First of all, there is nothing to prevent the faithful from using one of the prayers that the priest uses for his preparation.  I prefer the first option, which is as follows:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.

There are other good options as well.  For example, St. Thomas Aquinas has written a beautiful prayer that can be recited before receiving Holy Communion:

Almighty and ever-living God, I approach the sacrament
of Your only-begotten Son Our Lord Jesus Christ, I come sick to the doctor of life, unclean to the fountain of mercy, blind to the radiance of eternal light,
and poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. 

Lord, in your great generosity, heal my sickness, wash away my defilement, 
enlighten my blindness, enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness. 

May I receive the bread of angels, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 
with humble reverence, with the purity and faith, the repentance and love, 
and the determined purpose that will help to bring me to salvation. 

May I receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, 
and its reality and power.

Kind God,  may I receive the Body of Your only-begotten Son, 
our Lord Jesus Christ, born from the womb of the Virgin Mary, 
and so be received into His mystical body and numbered among His members.

Loving Father, as on my earthly pilgrimage I now receive Your beloved Son
under the veil of a sacrament, may I one day see him face to face in glory, 
who lives and reigns with You for ever.  Amen.

So whether you use one of these prayers or one in your own words, or just maintaining a prayerful silence with no words, the important thing to remember is that this short moment of silence is like making those last minute preparations in your house for that long-awaited guest, so that when Jesus arrives, He may find you ready and eager to welcome Him.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: April 14th

We travel to Holland this week, a little town of Schiedam, named after the river it was perched along. Peter was a laborer, and his (even more hardworking) wife, Petronilla, was the mother of their 9 children. Eight were boys, but right in the middle was their only daughter, Lidwina, or Lydia as we’d probably call her. She was born on Palm Sunday, right as the Passion was being chanted at their local church, an easy delivery for Petronilla thank God in the year of Our Lord, 1380.

One wintery day a decade and a half later, Lidwina was out with her friends ice skating and took a bad fall on the ice breaking one of her ribs. It was an injury that changed the course of her whole life. At first it all seemed to be ramifications from the broken rib: an abscess formed in her chest, eventually bursting, further increasing her pain and nausea. With some periods of remission, she grew increasingly disabled over the coming years. By 19, both of her legs were paralyzed, and her vision limited and over the coming four decades, she would lose feeling and eventually grow paralyzed through much of her body, enduring fevers and headaches, bleeding and blindness. For anyone with chronic pain or who has been bedridden, St. Lidwina is your patron.

Scientists say it may have been the first recorded case of multiple sclerosis. The Catholic Church says she was a saint. And it all came down to the way she endured all those crosses. No one expected, at 15, that she would become a saint in that way. She could have been a virtuous wife and mother, she could have entered religious life, or dedicated her life to God in some other way. Her whole life was open before her! But then she had a bad fall, and a disease no one understood began to ravage her body, and she had a choice to make: to embrace Christ, on the cross, or plunge into the sufferings without Him. 

The path of sanctity perhaps sounds heroic and meaningful, and surely it was, but in some ways it actually made it harder for Lidwina. Now people came by, gawking at someone that was said to be a mystic. Poking and prodding, some scoffing at her reputed holiness, some claiming her charity had worked miracles. She risked deeper union with the Lord, remaining with Jesus amidst the daily struggle to stay cheerful, her mind and heart were more and more filled by Jesus’ Love, and inspired by His cross. She prayed constantly, choosing to fast and make sacrifices beyond even what her illness forced upon her.

Her example is a hard one. At first glance, we have to ask: does being a saint mean suffering for most of your life and dying young? Of course, the answer is ‘no’, Jesus says “I came that you may have life, life in abundance.” But then, where is abundant life to be found at Lidwina’s bedside? And here’s where we get to her sanctity: not in the extremity of her sufferings, nor the miracles or mystical prayer, but in the simple choice to hold fast to Jesus in all those circumstances. We don’t know what her relationship with Our Lord was like before her fall (though we know her parents were faithful and pious, so we must assume their home was one of prayer and devotion), but we know that she did choose Jesus, again and again, in the years after. That is something that we can do as well, whether we’re ice skating or just doing a day’s work. whether we’re suffering or currently in fine health, whether we’re given the grace of mystical prayer or just persevering in spending time with Our Lord before Mass. All of us can make the same choice – of relationship with Jesus – and become just as holy, just as saintly, just as inspiring as St. Lidwina.

– Fr. Dominic has ice skated three times in his life. His current skill-level is “unstable”. He can get up to a fine rate of speed but can only decelerate by hitting the boards … or hitting the ice. Meanwhile, figure-skaters are hitting quadruple-axels and speed-skaters are hitting 60mph … and the Lord is waiting for both of us to do life with Him.