In just a few days, we will enter the holy season of Lent.  Many of us approach Lent with an eager spirit, seen especially by the huge turnout we get at our masses for Ash Wednesday.  One would think it is a Holy Day of Obligation (which it is not).  I do not think that is the reason why most people come, though.  We have an awareness deep down that we need Lent.  We approach Lent with a recognition that there are things in our lives where we do not have peace.  It might be our relationship with another person, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with different attachments or bad habits, and at the root of it all, our relationship with the Lord.  Therefore, I think we can see Lent as a time where, through the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we have an opportunity to experience reconciliation in those various relationships and so recover the peace that our hearts desire.  With that in mind, I have chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for our focus this week, and in some ways, for the upcoming season of Lent:

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

In the Gospel for this Sunday, we continue to hear from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus offers a more thorough teaching on some of the Ten Commandments.  A casual reading of the Decalogue (another name for the Ten Commandments) seems to suggest a list made mainly up of things we should not do.  However, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, they “point out the conditions of a life freed from the slavery of sin. The Decalogue is a path of life.” (CCC 2057) They are a path of life because they are all ordered toward something very positive: love, for all of the commandments are summed up as ways in which we love God and our neighbor.  When we fail to live that law of love, we experience division which deprives us of peace.  Living according to the commandments reverses that.  

Perhaps as we prepare for Lent and what practices we want to undertake, spend some time over the next few days thinking about the relationships I mentioned above.  Where are we not experiencing peace?  Ask the Lord to use whatever your Lenten practices are to be at the service of bringing reconciliation through the Heart of Jesus to those relationships and thus restore peace in your life.  

Our Lenten journey is leading us to Easter Sunday, but it must go through Good Friday.  On that day, Jesus died on the Cross which makes our reconciliation with God possible, articulated well by St. Paul:

God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation. (Rom 5:8–11)

The life of St. Francis of Assisi… how might one describe it? It is at the same time a life of gravity and a life of lightness. It is a life of a powerful and influential man but a man powerful only in his extreme weakness. It is a life lived at a particular point in time, but a life affecting all time afterward. It is a life of joy but also of suffering. Francis gave his life to the Lord and Jesus gave it back to him as an adventure to the cross. 

In many ways St. Francis is one of the greatest saints who ever lived, to the point of being called an alter Christus – another Christ. He desired in the depth of his being to live the Gospel call of Jesus Christ – the call to poverty, chastity, and obedience. He served the poor, spoke with the rich and powerful, and brought about great reform in the Church through his holiness.

After his death, the order he founded was looking for someone to write his biography and the choice fell to St. Bonaventure. St. Bonaventure took up this task and went on to do research into the life of St. Francis, visiting the places he had been throughout his life. He then wrote a biography that remains a trustworthy source for us today on the life of St. Francis. 

This biography is not arranged in perfectly chronological order like most biographies are arranged today. Instead, St. Bonaventure wrote about St. Francis’ life using a set of different themes which are somewhat arranged in the order of activities in the life of Francis. In this way, St. Bonaventure opens up the heart of St. Francis and demonstrates the ways in which St. Francis takes on the life of Christ. 

As we move forward into this year of St. Francis, I am going to reflect upon one chapter at a time in these bulletin articles. It may take only 15 weeks (the number of chapter), but it may also take more, in case a chapter or two needs more articles to fully enjoy it.

As a prologue to the article series, I reflect briefly on the introduction to the Biography:

I want to lift up an image that St. Bonaventure uses very indirectly to describe the life of St. Francis. 

“This, then,” St. Bonaventure writes, “is my principal reason for undertaking this task, that I may gather together the accounts of his virtues, his actions and his words – like so many fragments, partly forgotten and partly scattered – although I cannot accomplish this fully, so that they may not be lost (John 6:12) when those who lived with this servant of God die.”

In this sentence, St. Bonaventure sets up a comparison between the memories of the life of the man Francis and the leftover fragments of bread and fish in the Gospel account of the multiplication of loaves. I find this fascinating and beautiful! The idea is this – St. Francis put his little self in the hands of God. God brought about a great multiplication of virtue and experiences in the life of Francis that blessed the Church and was truly nutritious food for the Church. After the death of the holy man, it is the job then of St. Bonaventure to collect those fragments left over so that none of it is lost. 

I think this is an amazing way to consider a holy life. Would that all of our lives could end with good and holy “fragments left over” in the minds of all our loved ones and in so many others in the world we don’t even know. May the Lord bless and increase our efforts at sanctity. May he help us surrender what little we have into his hands so that he can bring about a great harvest in the world!

For this week’s invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart, I have chosen to jump almost to the very end of the litany.  The invocation for our reflection is as follows:

Heart of Jesus, hope of those who die in You, have mercy on us

There is a very particular reason I chose this invitation.  You see, as I am sitting down to write this article, it is a Saturday afternoon, and earlier today, I celebrated a funeral Mass for an infant from our parish who died just under twelve hours after being born.  The death was expected, as the parents were aware of the diagnosis for several months leading up to the birth.  Though that does not take away the sadness of the situation, it at least helped with having some time to process what would likely happen.

There are various words that could have been used to describe the atmosphere as we gathered for the funeral, words such as “heart-breaking”, “sorrowful”, “tragic”, “unfortunate”, just to name a few.  But the word that I kept coming back to was quite different.  That word was “hope.”  Perhaps my spending an entire year writing on the topic of hope last year had me predisposed to this theme, but I think it was more than that.  The reason that hope rose above every other feeling was because of something that took place after the infant was born, but before it died.  The infant was baptized and confirmed, and in doing so, was made an adopted child of God through Jesus Christ and given the promise of inheriting eternal life.  The prayers for the Funeral Mass for a Baptized Infant express this hope in such a beautiful way, and the Church is never more certain about the salvation of a soul than with an infant who dies shortly after being baptized.  The opening Collect reads (with the key phrase in bold):

Most compassionate God,
who in the counsels of your wisdom
have called this little child to yourself
on the very threshold of life,
listen kindly to our prayers
and grant that one day we may inherit eternal life with him (her),
whom, by the grace of Baptism, you have adopted as your own child
and who we believe is dwelling even now in your Kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

The sting of such a sad loss is certainly lessened by this beautiful belief that this infant is at rest in Heaven.  It also provides a helpful reminder to all of us who are still on our pilgrimage of life, that we too have good reason to hope that because of our baptism, if we die in the Lord, we also believe that we will rise though Him to eternal life. In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul reminds us: “We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over Him” (Rom 6:9), and when we die in the Lord, neither does death have power over us.

Is there ever really an “ordinary” year in the Church’s life? Maybe, but this year isn’t one of them! About a month ago, the Jubilee year of Hope ended with the conclusion of 2025, and here in the Cathedral the Bishop celebrated a closing ceremony at the 10:00 AM Mass, after which the Jubilee cross was removed from the sanctuary and the opportunity to receive the Jubilee indulgence in the Cathedral ended. 

Right on the heels of this “end,” however, the Holy Father, pope Leo XIV announced a “beginning,” not another Jubilee year, but a specially dedicated year nonetheless. The year 2026 will be celebrated in honor of the eight-hundred year anniversary of the passing of St. Francis from this earthly life to his eternal life. Here are some of the words of the Vatican office which announced the special year:

“His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, Minister of our faith and our joy, establishes that, from 10 January 2026, coinciding with the closing of the Ordinary Jubilee, until 10 January 2027, a special Year of Saint Francis shall be proclaimed, in which every faithful Christian, following the example of the Saint of Assisi, shall become a model of holiness of life and a constant witness of peace.”

The Holy Father grants also, in a similar fashion to the Jubilee year, plentiful opportunities for indulgences. I’ve modified this text a bit to make it more readable, but it is taken directly from the document announcing the Year of St. Francis: 

“the Apostolic Penitentiary … grants a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer according to the intentions of the Holy Father), also applicable in the form of suffrage for the souls in Purgatory:

[to all] who, with a heart detached from sin, participate in the Year of Saint Francis by 

1. Visiting, in the form of a pilgrimage, any Franciscan conventual church or place of worship anywhere in the world dedicated to Saint Francis or connected to him for any reason, and there:
2. Devoutly follow the Jubilee rites or spend at least a reasonable period of time in pious meditation and raise prayers to God so that, following the example of Saint Francis, feelings of Christian charity towards their neighbours and authentic vows of harmony and peace among peoples may spring forth in their hearts, 
3. Concluding with the Our Father, the Creed and invocations to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Clare and all the Saints of the Franciscan Family.

As far as I can tell, the closest Franciscan Church to us here in Springfield is at Corpus Christi Priory near Riverton. This year is a perfect opportunity to visit this beautiful Church to pray for the intercession of St. Francis and to obtain a plenary indulgence.  This year is going to be a year of a great outpouring of grace upon the Church through the intercession of the great St. Francis of Assisi. He is one of my favorite saints and I am excited to celebrate this year. Part of my celebration will be to begin writing a series of articles here considering the life of St. Francis, his example, and his encouragement for the Church to grow in holiness. May God bless us all through his prayers! Amen.

In the Sunday readings during Ordinary Time, we find that the first reading from the Old Testament and the Gospel are usually linked by a common theme.  The Second Reading, however, is not necessarily so, but rather offers selections of continuous readings of other books of the New Testament, usually from the writings of St. Paul.  As we are at the beginning of the Year A readings, we have been hearing from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.  In today’s reading, St. Paul highlights the paradox of how God chooses the weak to shame the strong:

God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise,
and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,
and God chose the lowly and despised of the world,
those who count for nothing,
to reduce to nothing those who are something,
so that no human being might boast before God. (1 Cor 1:27-29)

Such is the case with Jesus when He came into the world in the Incarnation.  To those who were expecting a great and powerful leader who would defeat Israel’s enemies, they were disappointed as they encounter Jesus who is “meek and humble of heart.” (Mt 11:29) Jesus seems to be weak and lowly, but St. Paul writes in his letter just before our reading for today: 

For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor 1:22-24)

As mentioned above, the Gospel for today’s Mass is not intended to be explicitly connected to the Second Reading, but we can see how well-connected they are, for indeed all of Scripture is related, though not always explicitly.  The Gospel for today, the Beatitudes, follows this theme treated by St. Paul.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Beatitude in this way:

they are the paradoxical promises that sustain hope in the midst of tribulations; they proclaim the blessings and rewards already secured, however dimly, for Christ’s disciples; (CCC 1717)

The Beatitudes, very much contrary to the wisdom of the world, are one of the most important and succinct expressions of wisdom that Jesus preaches in the Gospel.  Both the paradoxical examples of His life and His teaching make the following invocation of the Litany of the Sacred Heart a fitting choice for this Sunday’s readings:

Heart of Jesus, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
have mercy on us

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of finding a book that you’ve really loved because it draws your heart up into a certain depth of joy and excitement while you’re reading it. I’ve experienced that with some writings of saints like St. Charles de Foucauld, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Bonaventure, St. Augustine, and some books of the bible like Revelation. I’ve also found it to be the case even sometimes when reading more academic theological articles that seem to “get it” about where the world is at and what could lead us all closer to God. Most recently, I think I felt that powerful heavenly sensation while reading a book called “A Song for Nagasaki” about the Japanese man, Takashi Nagai. His writings quoted in that book, words he wrote after living through the atomic bomb that fell over Nagasaki, were incredibly powerful and at times led me to tears.

This article isn’t about Takashi Nagai, though, but rather about the experience of finding words such as those he wrote. The human mind is an incredible creation of God. He made us able to express reality in words – reality that we can hardly grasp through our senses, and even reality we cannot receive at all through our senses. What is love? What is suffering? What is goodness and truth and beauty? These things can be observed in different ways in the world, but so often they are best discovered in the written or spoken word. We receive our understanding of them through stories and through the beauty of a life retold. 

When we find a book that does this for us – a book that leads us to God in our thoughts – we have found a treasure. These books, articles, poems, or texts, are real gifts that we should hold on to in our memories and read again and again. Truly, it seems the Holy Spirit often uses writings like these and stories like these to lead us into a renewed and deepened relationship with God the Father. 

Finally, I would like to share an imaginative poem about the awe, gratitude, and wonder of coming across the thoughts of a saint in the written word. May the Lord grant us all the grace to find and treasure words that lead us to him. Amen!

Within the wooded regions of this land
I found a small oak cabin, now forlorn
But bathed by amber candlelight … unmanned.
Perplexed, I turned the doorknob, smooth and worn.
Inside, door closed, I lit a larger fire
And by its greater glow saw walls of white.
Walls covered by small papers, once entire,
Held shreds of poems, scattered lines in flight.
These fragments speak of life and wisdom old
What man could know? “…a love from love divine, 
Shines forth in pure desire…” I read and know 
A saint and man of prayer composed this line.
Oh blest mysterious light that drew my heart
To this small saint’s inspir’d celestial art!