Last week, I promised that I would continue our reflections on the second Precept of the Church:  Confession of serious sin at least once a year.  I am humbly asking that you wait another week as another topic has come up that I think deserves our attention.  It has to do with three of our previous Parochial Vicars here at the Cathedral and some confusion about what was recently listed in the Catholic Times regarding the assignments of Father Michael Friedel, Father Peter Chineke, and Father Wayne Stock.

Let’s start with our most recent Parochial Vicar – Father Peter Chineke.  As you are aware, the plan we had in place was to have Father Peter begin full-time Canon Law studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  As we were preparing for this transition, it was brought to our attention that his current immigration status does not really allow us to assign him to full-time studies at this time.  The details are a bit confusing, and if you do not deal with immigration law, I won’t bore you with the details.  We still hope to have Father Peter study Canon Law full-time in the future, but for now, for the purposes of immigration, he needs to be in a parish assignment, thus his being appointed Parochial Administrator at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Decatur, as well as Chaplain of St. Teresa High School and Millikin University, both in Decatur.

If you read Father Peter’s appointment carefully, you will see that it includes information about Father Michael Friedel, and this is where many have been confused.  Due to some unforeseen challenges with another assignment (see below) in Decatur, it became no longer possible for Father Friedel to serve both of his parishes by himself (Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Thomas the Apostle).  Up until July 1, Father Friedel had a second priest to assist him, but after July 1, he was left by himself, as I will explain below.   The solution was for Father Friedel to request a Leave of Absence from his role as Pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle so as to focus his efforts on Our Lady of Lourdes, thus making room for the diocese to assign a priest to take care of the pastoral care of St. Thomas the Apostle temporarily.  The diocese therefore assigned a priest for a month at St. Thomas, then when the situation with Father Peter arose, it made good sense for him to take care of St. Thomas.  Where people have grown concerned with Father Friedel is the mention in the appointment for Father Peter that Father Friedel’s Leave of Absence was necessitated by his Parochial Vicar’s Medical Leave of Absence.  Several people saw “Medical Leave of Absence” and the closest name to that phrase was Father Friedel, so many assumed he was on a Medical Leave of Absence, when in reality, it was his Parochial Vicar.

That brings us to our final priest – Father Wayne Stock, and his situation brings clarity to the last point.  Father Wayne Stock was initially scheduled to take a new assignment on July 1 as Parochial Vicar of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Thomas the Apostle in Decatur, as well as Chaplain of St. Teresa High School.  Unfortunately, Father Wayne has requested and received a Medical Leave of Absence for the time being.  Since this happened after all of the assignments had been made, we needed to pivot to address the situation in Decatur while trying to avoid upsetting other assignments that were already set.

I hope this explanation helps to clear things up.  I know that Father Friedel has been pretty surprised at how many people have been asking about him, if he is okay.  I assure you, Father Friedel is doing great in Decatur.  Nevertheless, I am sure he still very much appreciates your prayers!  The same goes for Father Peter as he settles into his new assignment.  Finally, I invite you to keep Father Wayne in your daily prayers.  Many of you came to know and love him during his time here, and I know he will very much appreciate your prayers during this time in which he is attending to his well-being.

Father Alford

Feast Day: September 9^th | Patron of Slaves, Race Relations, Seafarers, Colombia

Pere Claver i Corberó had just finished his bachelor’s degree in humanities at the University of Barcelona. The 22-year-old had done his father, Pedro (the mayor of his hometown) proud, getting good grades and becoming a leader of his peers. Peter had lost his mother just before going to the university, but he now fondly recalled her injunction that “nothing should come between him and the love of God.” She had prayed constantly for her son’s vocation, asking Hannah and our Mother Mary to lead and protect him. Now her, and their, prayers were being answered because as Pere thought of his future, the thought of becoming a priest continued to flicker through his soul. He had met priests of the new religious order calling itself the Society of Jesus, a gutsy title that fired the heart of the young man.  He had finally written to the Order, putting words on his deep desire to “become a saint, and … save many souls.” God loved that prayer.

The superior general of the Jesuits, Cludio Aquaviva, accepted Pere into the novitiate and he was sent to Tarragona for two years of learning about the order and giving time for God’s grace to deeply enter his heart. As a novice, he kept a notebook with meditations from the various times of prayer, many of them rather ordinary, some too sublime to describe, and some articulating desires that he had not placed in the depths of his heart. On one occasion he penned this line: “I must dedicate myself to the service of God until death, on the understanding that I am like a slave, wholly occupied in the service of his master and in the endeavor to please and content him in all and in every way with his whole soul, body, and mind.” The year was 1602. He returned often to those words in the years to come.

Brother Peter did his philosophical studies at the College of Montesión on the lovely island of Majorca. There he became friends with the lay brother who manned the door to the college, Alphonsus Rodríguez. Rodríguez did not know it, but he was one of the many holy porters that the Church would produce in the years to come. This humble man would be canonized along with St. Nuno de Braganza of Portugal (+1431), St. John Masias (+1645) and St. Martin de Porres (+1639) of Peru, St. Padre Pio in Italy (+1968), and their group now includes Bl. André Bessette of Montreal (+1937) and Bl. Solanus Casey (+1957) of Michigan as well. The 80-year-old Alphonsus would entrust to Peter much of the spiritual wisdom he had received in the simple work of meeting and greeting, passing onto him a profound love for those who need it the most, and encouraging him to go as a missionary to the New World. 

God, in his providence, placed another person in Peter’s life to guide his steps into the future. This was Fr. Alonso de Sandoval, himself a missionary in Colombia who had spent 40 years ministering on the plantations there. Slavery had been made legal there some 70 years before, and ever since that wretched day, the number of Africans being bought, imported, and forced to work had kept growing. Once again, Peter, now a newly ordained Jesuit priest, found his heart fired by the love at work in this man. Fr. Claver had felt that interior-fire in Barcelona after the death of his mother, in Tarragona in the silence of prayer, on Majorca chatting with Br. Alphonsus, and now in Cartagena, assisting Fr. Sandoval to publish his rich knowledge of the customs, languages, and religions he had come to know working with those enslaved in Colombia. He would need that fire every day on the docks of Cartegena. Here are his own words describing the scene:

Yesterday, May 30, 1627, numerous blacks … disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. … We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. … they were naked, without any clothing to protect them. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. … they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see. This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions which somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick. … we declared to them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.

Peter went into those ships almost every day for four decades. He saw almost a million slaves arrive on those docks. He baptized a third of them. One spark of divine love can carry you far.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has never been given the assignment of porter, but it might be a great way to become a saint!

Last Sunday the Lord Jesus reminded us about the virtue of humility and in order to understand all this is for us to turn our eyes to the Lord himself. Today let us turn on the theological virtues, the virtues of faith, hope, and charity have God as their direct object. By faith we know God, by Hope we trust His promises and goodness, and by Charity, we love Him. Many times, in our prayer, we ask for many things, both for ourselves and others. This week we begin reflecting on the theological virtue of faith and how the Catechism of Catholic Church defines it.  Faith is foundational in our Christian life, because it helps us believe, hope, and love God. As I was reflecting on the theological virtue of faith. I remembered my early years attending Catechetical classes and the teaching was based on Baltimore Catechism; I do recall answering this question why God created us? God created us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and at the end we return back to Him. God is our ultimate end. The definition of faith does matter. What matters is the place that faith hold in our daily life. Faith is a gift to see the presence of God in everything; it a new way of looking at myself, others, the event of life. Therefore, the Catechism of Catholic Church state: “The theological virtue of faith is a virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he us truth itself. By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, for this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will” (CCC, 1814).  The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes further to defines Faith as the supernatural virtue, which is necessary for salvation. The Catechism adds that Faith is a divine gift and human act; God moves this act to the contemplation of his very truth (CCC, #. 153-184).  

Furthermore, the Second Vatican Council describes Faith as a personal response to God’s revelation of love. God comes toward humanity and condescends to open up to human beings the secrets of his intimate life, looking for a reciprocal love. Human beings, for their part, turn to God through Faith and open up to him in friendship. The council says explicitly that by faith “man entrusts his whole self freely to God, offering ‘the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals,’ and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him” (Dei Verbum, 5).

Our Faith comes true through the visible God in Christ. The whole Trinity has been revealed in the Person of Christ. We cannot claim, as Christians, that we have Faith in God when we reject whom he has sent to us. Whoever sees me (Christ) sees the one who sent me (God the Father) (Jn 12:45). This is one of the foundational acts of the Christian faith. So as Christians faithful we need to: “turn to the witnesses of faith: to Abraham, who in hope …believed against hope; to the virgin Mary, who, in her pilgrimage of faith, walked into the night of faith in sharing the darkness of hers son’s suffering and death; and to so many others: ‘ therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith”(CCC, Paragraph 165 on profession of faith). As we reflected on theological virtue of faith. Are we ready, like the Apostles, to ask for the gift of faith?  “Lord increase our faith” (Lk 17:5).

We continue our reflections on the Five Precepts of the Church, having looked at the first and fifth precepts: 1) obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, and 5) providing for the needs to the Church. This week, we will jump back to the second precept: Confession of serious sin at least once a year.

Notice two key words in this precept: “at least”, which is consistent with the Church’s definition of the
precepts, that they constitute “the very necessary minimum” of the Christian life. Serious sin is also known
as mortal sin. It is mortal because it kills our relationship with the Lord, and we are the ones responsible for that mortal blow. A serious, or mortal sin, requires that we have full knowledge of what we are doing, that we know it is wrong, and that we do it anyway. The classic example is intentionally skipping Mass without a serious reason (ie being in the hospital, or physically incapacitated by illness or injury).There are many other things in the moral life as well, perhaps most commonly sins against chastity (ie sexual activity outside of marriage, artificial contraception, use of pornography). There are other examples that can be given, but to list them all would take more space than I have.

One of the reasons this precept is worded this way is connected to the third precept: Reception of Holy Communion at least once a year during the Easter season. One must be in the state of grace (having any serious sins absolved through Confession) in order to receive Holy Communion. So if the very minimum is receiving Holy Communion once a year, it makes sense that we confess serious sins prior to doing that. The Church has rightly encouraged us to receive Holy Communion much more frequently because of how important it is for us to receive the graces that come from this gift. So if we receive more frequently, which most of us do every Sunday, then we need to make sure our use of Confessions roughly matches that. In other words, if we plan to go to Holy Communion regularly, we should probably be going to confession more regularly. We must never approach Holy Communion with unforgiven, serious sin on our soul. To do so is to commit an additional serious sin of sacrilege. So if we are aware of committing a serious sin, make it a point to get to confession as soon as possible for two reasons: 1) so that we can receive Holy Communion the next time we are at Mass 2) to avoid being separated from God for eternity. As Jesus reminded us a few Sundays ago, “You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Luke 12:40) The choice is always up to us. We use our free will to either follow or not follow God. We choose to ask His forgiveness for our serious sins in the way He intended it (ie Confession), or we choose not to. And in the end, we either choose to be with Him in Heaven, or we choose not to. Jesus does not condemn us to eternal separation, we choose that ourselves by choosing contrary to His will and not turning back in repentance.

A clarification on this topic is necessary, because it is often misunderstood. Divine law is to keep holy the Sabbath, which as Christians is to keep holy the Lord’s Day. The way we do this is by going to Mass (the first precept of the Church). That obligation is always there, so even if we are not in the position to receive Holy Communion due to unconfessed serious sin, we still need to go to Mass. We are not obliged to receive Holy Communion at each Mass, though we are encouraged to do so, but only if we are aware that we are not guilty of any unconfessed mortal sins.

Since this is such an important and sometimes sensitive topic, I plan to return to it next week, especially since I basically addressed two precepts in this article. In the meantime, ask yourself if it might be time for you to get back to confession.

Father Alford is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in the diocesan curia as the Vicar for Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations.

Recently I was reminded of the need to both prepare ourselves to receive Communion and
say a prayer of thanksgiving after Mass. This practice helps us to receive the graces that God
desires to give us during Communion. The back of our missalette has several prayers to this
end, and I encourage you to make use of them both before and after Mass. Many saints have
written prayers for this same purpose. I share here two prayers written by St. Thomas

Aquinas as a lesson in how to prepare and give thanks for the Eucharist. The language in this prayer is certainly not how we usually speak today, but these prayers are worth at least reading through, to learn a lesson in how the saints pray!

Prayer Before Mass
Almighty and everlasting God, behold I come to the Sacrament of Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: I come as one infirm to the physician of life, as one unclean to the fountain of mercy, as one blind to the light of everlasting brightness, as one poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. Therefore I implore the abundance of Thy measureless bounty that Thou wouldst vouchsafe to heal my infirmity, wash my uncleanness, enlighten my blindness, enrich my poverty and clothe my nakedness, that I may receive the Bread of Angels, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, with such reverence and humility, with such sorrow and devotion, with such purity and faith, with such purpose and intention as may be profitable to my soul’s salvation. Grant unto me, I pray, the grace of receiving not only the Sacrament of our Lord’s Body and Blood, but also the grace and power of the Sacrament. O most gracious God, grant me so to receive the Body of Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, which He took from the Virgin Mary, as to merit to be incorporated into His mystical Body, and to be numbered amongst His members. O most loving Father, give me grace to behold forever Thy beloved Son with His face at last unveiled, whom I now purpose to receive under the sacramental veil here below. Amen.

Prayer After Mass
Lord, Father all-powerful and ever-living God, I thank You, for even though I am a sinner, your unprofitable servant, not because of my worth but in the kindness of your mercy, You have fed me with the Precious Body & Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
I pray that this Holy Communion may not bring me condemnation and punishment but forgiveness and salvation. May it be a helmet of faith and a shield of good will.
May it purify me from evil ways and put an end to my evil passions.
May it bring me charity and patience, humility and obedience, and growth in the power to do good. May it be my strong defense against all my enemies, visible and invisible, and the perfect calming of all my evil impulses, bodily and spiritual.
May it unite me more closely to you, the One true God, and lead me safely through death to everlasting happiness with You.
And I pray that You will lead me, a sinner, to the banquet where you, with Your Son and holy Spirit, are true and perfect light, total fulfillment, everlasting joy, gladness without end, and perfect happiness to your saints.
Grant this through Christ our Lord, Amen.

St. Thomas Aquinas
Prayers taken from catholic.com

Fr. Dominic Vahling serves as a teacher and chaplain at
Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in Springfield.