Several years ago, I came across an address given by Pope Francis to the various religious communities throughout the world on the occasion of the Year of Consecrated Life.  In his letter, he invited these communities to do three things: to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with passion, and to embrace the future with hope.  Unknown to me at the time was the fact that this same threefold invitation had been given more than a decade earlier by Pope St. John Paul II as he concluded the Great Jubilee Year of 2000, in which he wrote:

Duc in altum [cast out into the deep]! These words ring out for us today, and they invite us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8). (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 1)

I have found this to be a very helpful formula when facing moments of transition, such as the one that I am facing as I prepare to conclude my time as Rector of the Cathedral. I  have therefore decided that my final three articles will follow those three points.  Fittingly, I begin by remembering the past with gratitude.

The Cathedral will always hold a special place in my heart.  I still remember my very first visit here in 2005.  I came for a priesthood ordination for a man who had been connected to my home parish.  I was in awe at the beauty of the church, and even more so by the beauty of the liturgy.  Though I only recently returned to practicing my Catholic faith at the time, there was something that stirred in my heart as I saw those men be ordained.  I know now that that was the beginning of the Lord revealing to me His plan that led to my entering seminary.  I also remember the great pride as a seminarian coming to the Cathedral to serve at significant liturgical celebrations, not the least of which was the Dedication of the renovated church in 2009.  A few months later, on April 10, 2010, I was ordained a transitional deacon here in this church.  A year later, on May 28, 2011, I was ordained a priest.  Much to my surprise, I moved here in 2013 to live in residence as the bishop’s Priest Secretary and Master of Ceremonies.  Though not as heavily involved in the daily life of the parish, it was home, and I loved the opportunity to spend the early hours of the morning in prayer in this beautiful place.  In the Spring of 2020, I was slated to become Pastor at another parish, but the bishop surprised me when he called and asked If I would become Rector of the Cathedral insteads.  I immediately said ‘yes’, and for the past 6 years, I have served gratefully in this role.

There is not enough space to enumerate all of the things I am grateful for in serving as Rector, but a few come to mind.  First of all, I am so grateful for the gift of priestly fraternity that I have experienced here.  It has been an absolute privilege to live with the bishop, who has been a true father and friend to me, and with several other priests.  For most of those with whom I have served, I had the privilege of being their first pastor.  These men have become such amazing priests and I am filled with gratitude for the gift of serving them and witnessing their growth.  I am also incredibly grateful for the staff with whom I have served day in and day out.  They have been a real gift to me and taught me much about being a pastor, but also in being a spiritual father.  Finally, I am grateful for the people of the parish.  There have been so many lives and situations that I have been invited to be a part of.  Some of those have been the happiest moments, such as with weddings and baptisms.  But there have also been times when I have been able to accompany people in the saddest moments – times of suffering, tragedy, and loss.  And for everything else in between, I am so grateful for how the Lord has used me to be a part of your lives, and as I remember my time here at Cathedral, remembering your stories, your lives, your friendship, your love – I will be eternally grateful to God with a gratitude that will be a source of great peace for however much longer the Lord allows me to serve His Church.

When remembering the early saints of the Church, we extoll most greatly the men and women, young and old alike, who gave their lives for their belief in Christ. They were more willing to shed their blood in the course of horrifying tortures and executions than to renounce their Christianity. Over the course of time, these great witnesses of the Christian faith came to be known as “martyrs,” after the prophecy and command of Jesus, “You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The word, “witness,” is simply an English translation of the Greek word Martyrion – martyr. A martyr, therefore, is one who gives a witness of their faith, and the supreme witness of Christian faith comes in a willingness to die for belief in Christ. These martyrs held fast to their faith: their belief that Jesus was the Lord of life and death, that he had conquered death, and that in Him, they too would rise from the dead.

The ninth chapter of St. Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis is titled: “On the Fervor of His Charity and His Desire for Martyrdom.” With the previous intensity of the life of St. Francis, maybe this title doesn’t sound too terribly odd. And, in fact, many saints in the history of the Church desired martyrdom. Still, I think if we ponder that desire for a moment, we will realize just how far it is, generally speaking, from the desires of our own hearts.

When we think of what we want our faith to give us, we rarely think of sufferings. We want joy, peace, happiness, and tranquility. We sadly so often think that experiences of suffering – spiritual and physical – point to a distance between us and God. Saints like St. Francis and the many martyrs in the history of the Church teach us that the reality is very much the opposite. In suffering we draw close to Christ crucified. A certain level of happiness can certainly be a sign of the presence of God, but it is not the only one. 

I think of a quote also of St. Rose of Lima: “Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase. Let men take care not to stray and be deceived. This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.” (Office of Readings)

She expresses well the reality that St. Francis knew also. In this chapter, St. Bonaventure records the journey St. Francis took to visit the Sultan King of Egypt. St. Francis knew that the King in Egypt had essentially made it a capital crime deserving of death to be a Christian in his kingdom. St. Francis, in his desire both to be a martyr and to spread the faith, journeyed precisely there to Egypt to shed his blood in witness to Christ. 

He was brought before the King and proclaimed Jesus to him. St. Francis proposed a test of fire to prove the reality and existence of the Christian God. He was so willing to die in service to God that he impressed the King. No one took him up on the fire contest, and the King was so impressed with St. Francis’ zeal and poverty that he allowed him to go free. He did not kill St. Francis for being Christian. While this saddened and perhaps humiliated St. Francis a bit, he was not perturbed, and returned to Italy to continue living his religious life (Life of St. Francis, 9).

In order to remain free from sin in this life, we will suffer many trials of faith. May St. Francis’ prayers give us strength to persevere to the end!

Shortly after I began this series of bulletin articles on the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a parishioner asked if I was going to be moving in July since I was only planning for the series to run through June.  At the time, I knew full well that I was indeed going to be moving, but I was not free to share that information at that point.  To be clear, my upcoming move only slightly factored into my decision to do this series.  My greater reason, as I mentioned at the beginning of the series, has been to offer some reflections on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the bishops of our country prepare to consecrate our county to the Sacred Heart of Jesus next week on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

In my first article, I mentioned that my favorite part of the Litany was the final invocation, which is slightly different from the others, but offers a fitting summary of the prayer:  Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine!  But when it comes to the standard thirty-three invocations of the Litany, the one I like the best is the following:

Heart of Jesus, King and Center of all hearts, have mercy on us

Part of the impetus for the bishop’s deciding to consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is due to this year being our country’s 250^th anniversary of independence.  Prior to that time, we were under the rule of the King of England.  In the Declaration of Independence, there were several complaints enumerated against the King with the conclusion that such a leader was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Thus it was declared that we were absolved of our connections with the British Crown and therefore free to govern ourselves.  As a result of our negative experience with the King of England, any mention of being ruled by any king has sounded somewhat offensive to our ears.  But the kingship which Jesus desires to exercise over us is different altogether.  In the prayers from the Solemnity of Christ the King, we hear that His kingship is one of “truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love and peace.” (Preface) With those qualities, how can we not desire Him to be the King of our lives?  And yet, there is still hesitancy in our hearts to let Him be King, even if His reign promises these desirable attributes.  To let Christ reign requires surrender on our part, and that is never easy.  When we surrender to His reign, to His will, to His plan for our future, uncertain as it may seem, we are opening the door to a peace that the world cannot give, a peace which we cannot guarantee for ourselves if we take full control of our lives.  Only in our surrender to Him can we find peace.  Only in our surrender to Him can we truly find hope, the type of hope which “does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5)

Although I am writing this article just before I head on retreat, I know that I will be spending a lot of time this week inviting Jesus to reign more fully in my heart as King, and in doing so, to let His will, His plan, His love be more firmly fixed at the center of my heart.  For my 15 years as a priest, I have tried to keep Him always at the center, and that has given me freedom to let Him use me as He has seen fit in a variety of ways, and in all of them, He has shown me the goodness of His love for me in blessing me with graces that have sustained me while also being of benefit to the Church.  By continuing to let Him reign fully at the center of my heart, I have no doubt that He will continue to bless me abundantly in whatever lies ahead, and I have that same confidence for all of us as we continue our loving, trusting surrender to His reign as King and center of our hearts.

St. Bonaventure begins chapter nine of the Life of St. Francis in the usual way, with a long poetic series of verses outlining the theme he will cover during the chapter. A set of lines from this introductory poem of chapter nine sticks out to me:

St. Bonaventure writes, “In beautiful things / he saw Beauty itself / and through his vestiges imprinted on creation / he followed his Beloved everywhere, / making from all things a ladder / by which he could climb up / and embrace him who is utterly desirable. / With a feeling of unprecedented devotion / he savored / in each and every creature – / as in so many rivulets – / that Goodness / which is their fountain source” (Life of St. Francis, 9.1).

Before even going into the theme of this chapter, which I plan to do next week, I have to comment on these lines – they are absolutely incredible! 

Central to these two poetic sentences is the idea that we can come to a knowledge of God and have an experience of God in and through the things he has created. This language is very dear to the heart of St. Bonaventure, who writes in depth on this theme in his most famous text, “The Soul’s Journey into God.” We can see God in his creatures insofar as he dwells there and he is in them, and we can see God through them as through a window or mirror. Clearly, the concept so central to St. Bonaventure’s work came right out of the lived sainthood of his great model St. Francis, who learned it from Christ himself. 

The word, “vestiges,” used above signifies God’s “footprints.” The imprints that God has made in creation are seen clearly as created things reflect qualities of God himself. For example, there is a beauty in the sunset – I see God in and through the sunset’s beauty; there is beauty in another human being – I see God in and through that person’s beauty (and this goes for both physical beauty and beauty of soul); there is goodness in a person’s kind action – I see God in and through that action; There is truth in a word or in someone’s speech – I see God in and through that speech.

Was St. Francis captivated by the beautiful things of this world? He was allured by them? Well… sort of, yes. He was captivated and allured by these things – but not by the things themselves. No, he was captivated by the beauty which was the source of their beauty. He was captivated by them because they revealed God to him. He was allured by them because in them he found a “ladder” to the source of all beauty. 

And this image St. Bonaventure uses – incredible! A “fountain” and its “rivulets.” To carry on this image, we can say, in a word, that God “flows” himself into his creatures. This is not to say that we are God in a pantheistic sense, but that he is flowing in and through us by forming in us his attributes – virtues, goodness, beauty, truth, charity, simplicity, piety, etc. And this “flow” can be understood by those who pay attention.

St. Francis paid attention.

And “he savored in each and every creature… that Goodness which is their fountain source.”

So, stop and smell the roses. Slow down. Slow. down. Slow … down… and don’t just smell them! Savor in them the Goodness of God who is the source of their goodness, beauty, truth, simplicity, etc. Savor in your friend, husband, wife, co–worker, person on the street; savor in the birds, the sky, the trees, the grass; savor in these things God’s perfections. 

St. Francis, pray for us so that we might pay attention to God’s “vestiges” in his creation!

Having completed the 50 days of the Easter Season with the celebration of Pentecost last Sunday, the Church provides us with three solemnities in short order, sort of as a way of easing us back into Ordinary Time.  Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.  Next Sunday, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).  Then on the following Friday after Corpus Christi, we have the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Several years ago, a friend of mine shared with me a little book that had some reflections on the Litany of the Sacred Heart by Pope St. John Paul II.  I do not personally have the book, so it can hard to track down some of those reflections, but I have been able to locate some of them.  I came across one brief reflection in which the Holy Father addresses the following image from the Litany of the Sacred Heart:

Heart of Jesus, of infinite majesty, have mercy on us

The reflection comes during an Angelus address that he offered while making a pastoral to Veneto in Italy.  In his address, he said the following (translated from Italian to English):

Behold: the infinite majesty of God is hidden in the human heart of the Son of Mary. This Heart is our covenant. This Heart is the closest presence of God to human hearts and to human history. This Heart is God’s marvelous “condescension”: a human heart that beats with divine life—divine life that beats within a human heart. (Angelus, 16 June 1985)

As he continues his reflection, he explains how it is in the Eucharist that we are given access to His heart, and he uses another image from the Litany, that the Eucharist is the “house of God and gate of Heaven”.  He then says:

“House”: through Eucharistic Communion, the Heart of Jesus extends His dwelling into every human heart. “Gate”: in each of these human hearts, He opens the perspective of eternal union with the Most Holy Trinity. (ibid.)

The goal of the Christian life is to live in greater intimacy in the life of the Most Holy Trinity, a gift given to us in Baptism and deepened throughout our lives.  We will share the fullness of this intimacy in Heaven.  Because we can hear how difficult the Trinity can be to understand, we maybe shy away from thinking of life with the Trinity or perhaps think we need to understand the Trinity in order to access this gift.  But the Trinity is not first and foremost about understanding an idea.  It is about relationship with God, who is three-in-one, and God is love.  So life with the Trinity is about receiving and living in that love of God, which we have access to through the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  In that regard, I like to share the following quote which I have used in the past about the topic of the Trinity:

When people tell you that they don’t understand the Trinity and Unity, you should reply: I don’t understand it either, but I love it and venerate it. If I understood God’s greatness, if God fit into this poor head of mine, my God would be very small. And yet, He does fit — He wants to fit — in my heart, in the immense depth of my soul, which is immortal. (St. Josemaria Escriva)

In so many gardens around the world, one might find a statue of a man in a long robe, with a tonsure haircut, a bird on his shoulder and several animals at his feet. This man we all recognize as St. Francis of Assisi. For the vast majority of even faithful Catholics in our contemporary Church, this conception of St. Francis is familiar. He is the saint of the animals. If you went to a Catholic grade school you probably remember a pet blessing on October 4 each year.

Hopefully, if you’ve read any of the articles in this series, you’ve realized by now that the animal-loving part of St. Francis was only a direct consequence of his deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ, the one who created the animals. St. Francis loved Jesus, and he loved poverty. His love for Jesus and poverty was lived out, as I covered last week, in an authentic piety – a compassion, care, and love for God and for all those St. Francis met.

The animals, in some supernatural way, responded to the piety of St. Francis. Maybe they saw in him some resemblance to humanity before the sin of Adam and Eve. Maybe they saw in him a resemblance to their own innocence. As even the scriptures note, all creation praises God. These animals praise him essentially automatically, simply by living according to God’s design. 

Well, St. Francis lived his life as far according to God’s design as possible. Every fiber of his being sought to serve the Lord. This was his piety, and it was noticed by the animals.

St. Bonaventure includes so many stories about wild animals like rabbits and birds that came to St. Francis to be near to him. One bird came near and would only leave after St. Francis turned and gave the bird his blessing (Life of St. Francis, 8.8). St. Francis once told a sheep to praise God, and it would enter the Church the brothers were praying in, bow down, and seem to pray (8.7). St. Francis would speak to them calling them, “brother,” or “sister,” in a loving way, and they responded with something near friendship. 

What lesson can we take from this?

It is somewhat difficult, in our current culture, to understand the perspective that St. Francis had toward these animals. Why did he love them? He loved them because they were loved by Christ. He loved them in reference to Christ. And they loved him because of his love for Christ. He didn’t simply have a knack with animals. He didn’t have a special superpower to commune with nature. No, he lived an active love toward them as a part of God’s creation and because of God’s love. 

It is very common in our culture to idolize our pets and to love our animals inordinately, for their own sakes, and even at times above other human beings. St. Francis’ love for animals is actually a very good model for all of us – a model of truly indifferent love for these creatures of God. He did not love the animals simply because they were animals or because of anything they did for him; he loved them because they were loved by God. He did not love them for their own sakes; he saw their place in creation as the servants of God and the servants of human beings. 

May St. Francis pray for us that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom and understanding in order to properly see the design of the universe. May he pray that we would be filled with piety, to draw near to our creator with love, affection, and the innocence of the animals!

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.