During my time in seminary formation, I would often go to a certain church in St. Louis for confession.  The parish was served by two older Capuchin Franciscan priests and they heard confessions every day at 11:00 am.  On one occasion, after making my confession, the priest invited me to reflect on the Cross in a way that I have never forgotten.  He invited me to look at a crucifix (like the one on the end of a Rosary, or one hanging on a wall) and to ask three questions:

1. Who is that?
2. Why is He there?
3. What does it mean to me?

The first two questions were easy to answer, especially for a seminarian who thought he knew pretty much everything about Jesus!  But that third question was much more difficult.  What does the Cross mean to me?  It is a question that I still struggle to answer adequately.  It is this question that the entire Church is being invited to consider each year when we celebrate Holy Week.  We always begin on Palm Sunday by listening to the Passion narrative from one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, or Luke).  We then return to the Passion narrative on Good Friday, this time from the Gospel of John.  The Church offers these two narratives in order to keep the Cross before us.  We look to the Cross, we hear the stories, and we each should ask: “What does this mean to me?” 

For your prayer this week, I would like to invite you to pray with the crucifix and reflect on those three questions as a way of coming to better appreciate the love Christ showed for us in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  But this is not my challenge for the week!  Instead, I want to invite you to something a little more difficult, but much more fruitful, in fact, I think this will be the most fruitful of my Lenten challenges should you choose to accept it:

Challenge:  Attend all the Paschal Triduum Liturgies
Fruit:  Deepened appreciation for Christ’s love for us

Because these liturgies are not “days of obligation”, we do not always give them a lot of priority, opting to focus on Easter Sunday.  But these liturgies are so extremely important to us as Catholics, because they place before us the culmination of God’s saving work for His people.  We are invited to celebrate these liturgies with a real awareness that all that Jesus did, especially in these sacred days, He did for you and for me.  Our relationship with Him becomes much more personal to the extent that we enter into these mysteries with this awareness.  And as we see these events unfolding for us once again, answering that third question – “What does it mean to me?” – will be much easier to answer and will enkindle with in us a desire to live for fully for Him who has died for us.

Father Alford     

This is the first time that I have recommended a specific movie in my Weekly article. I don’t possess any special expertise or training in film criticism, so I am only speaking from my experience!

The 1998 film The Prince of Egypt, produced by Dreamworks at the same time they were producing Shrek, was only moderately successful in the box office. However, it brought to life the story of the Exodus for a new generation of believers and non-believers alike. The story follows the life of Moses, beginning the day his mother put him adrift in a basket, only to be adopted into Pharaoh’s family. As a young man, Moses fled Egypt in fear after killing an Egyptian. However, God’s call to return to Egypt came through the burning bush in which God revealed his name as “I am who am,” a profound revelation of God’s identity as the one who is – the source of all existence. 

Every year around Easter time, I try to at least listen to some of the music from this film as a way to enter into the spirit of the Triduum and Easter Sunday. Without being aware of the Jewish roots of our faith, we cannot fully understand the amazing things that God has done for us throughout history. The Passover was a foundational event in the history of the Hebrew people. God commanded his people to slaughter a lamb and put the blood on the doorpost to save their firstborn from the angel of death. The commemoration of the Passover was the very night in which Jesus gave us the greatest of all the sacraments – the Eucharist. We know that he is the new Passover Lamb, whose blood saves us from eternal death. 

The Jewish people have had a long history of suffering. We often hear about this in the Old Testament. They were exiled from their land, and over the generations, their identity as a people was lost in many ways. In the year 70 AD, Israel as a nation was erased from the map, only to return after World War II and the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died. We should never forget that Jesus is a Jew, and even today, the Jewish people share a history and language with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, and countless other Christians throughout Church history. Sadly, Christians have not been exempt from the sin of anti-Semitism. Many people of Jewish descent today are atheists and do not believe in God. However, there are still many practicing Jews around the world who follow the Law and pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We hope and pray that the Jewish people will all recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. 

I have heard before that the suffering of the Jewish People is, in a way, a fulfillment of the prophecy of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. We believe that Jesus most perfectly fulfills this prophecy, but prophecies can be fulfilled in more than one way. Isaiah wrote in Chapters 52 and 53, “So marred was his look beyond that of man. There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces.” Has there been any nation that has suffered like the Israelites? In a way, they have shared the fate of our savior, Jesus; a fate of being rejected and persecuted. However, we know that God can use this in some way for the world’s salvation, by sharing in the death and suffering of Jesus.  

While taking some artistic liberties, The Prince of Egypt is faithful to the story of the Exodus found in the Bible, even going so far as to directly incorporate some Hebrew words into the dialogue and lyrics. Maybe the reason I like this movie so much is that it presents faith as something to be celebrated and cherished, not made fun of, as so often happens in Hollywood. If you are looking for some family-friendly entertainment as we approach the Paschal celebrations, look up The Prince of Egypt, and you may gain some new insight into God’s plan of salvation for all his people!

Feast Day: April 11^th 

I always love a chance to let the saints tell the stories of the saints! I get to do that this week because St. Thérèse of Lisieux, while the Novice Master in the Carmel of Lisieux, wrote a play for the novices to perform on the Golden Jubilee of another Sister, Sr. Stanislaus, on February 8^th, 1897. They were close friends because Sr. Thérèse had assisted Sr. Stanislaus in the sacristy for two years a few years prior. Now, as she reflected on the life of St. Stanislaus, the Little Flower felt in her soul a premonition like the young Polish Jesuit had felt prior to her: that she would die young but could give greater love to the world from above than while here:

J.M.J.T.
Saint Stanislaus Kostka

CAST

• The Blessed Virgin and the Child Jesus
• Saint Stanislaus Kostka
• Saint Francis Borgia
• Brother Stephen Augusti, a young novice.

Scene 4, The scene takes place at Rome, in the room of Saint Francis Borgia. Moments before, that Superior of the Jesuit order, upon returning to his quarters, was surprised to find there the haggard young man, Stanislaus, who had just finished his 450-mile trek to Rome from Poland and had been left there by Brother Augusti. Francis continues his questioning of the pious aspiring-Jesuit:

FRANCIS: It’s pointless to speak about your success. Tell me, rather, what your reason is for asking to join the Society of Jesus.

STANISLAUS: My Reverend Father, it is because I want to become a saint.  

FRANCIS: Don’t you know, my child, that one can become a saint anywhere; it’s not the habit or the title of the Jesuits that works this marvel.  

STANISLAUS: How then is it, my Father, that all Jesuits are saints?

FRANCIS: All are not saints, and the proof is that I, their General, am a mere sinner.  

STANISLAUS: How can you say such a thing without lying, my Reverend Father? The whole world says you are a saint who performs miracles.  

FRANCIS: The world is mistaken, my child, no need to make much of its judgment. If ever that liar comes murmuring such flatteries in your ears, humble yourself and consider what you are in God’s eyes.  

STANISLAUS: O my Father! even if I could work miracles, it doesn’t seem to me that I’d be able to be proud; the memory of my earlier life would not be erased from my memory. Ah! I am a miserable person, unworthy of the graces of the Good God!… (He weeps.)  

FRANCIS: The Lord pardons even the greatest faults, but I wouldn’t believe you guilty of crimes. To unburden yourself of your sins, if you’re willing to confess them to me, Brother Augusti will leave the room.   

STANISLAUS (stopping Brother Augusti): No, my brother, stay; since I’m going to be living with you, I want you to know the reasons for my repentance, so you will treat me as I deserve. (He kneels before Saint Francis.) My Father, in His mercy, the Good God has deigned to call me to Him, from the dawn of my life; but, rather than telling my [spiritual] director of this calling, I resisted the grace that summoned me for eighteen months. (He lays his head on Saint Francis’ knees and weeps bitterly.) 

FRANCIS (very moved): My poor child, console yourself; your fault is atoned for by the sincere repentance you have shown. The memory of this failing in faith, far from nagging at your soul, will keep it humble, and you know it: there is no sacrifice more pleasing to God than that of a contrite and humbled heart.

STANISLAUS: My Father, what unspeakable consolation you pour over my soul!… Oh! I beg that you’ll now teach me how I may become a saint and make up for the time I’ve lost.

FRANCIS: I think the only way will be for you to despise yourself sincerely, to think the best of others, and to prove to them by every means possible the love that consumes your heart. If you make obedience the rule and the guardian of your charity, you’ll be able to do much good in a short time.

There’s a knock at the door. Brother Augusti goes to answer and comes back earning a letter which he gives, on bended knee, to Saint Francis, whispering a few words to him.

FRANCIS (opening the envelope): Brother Stanislaus, here’s a letter from Poland; your father’s writing you. (He hands him the letter.) Read it right now. (Saint Stanislaus reads the letter, and begins to cry again.) What’s upsetting you, my child? Do you regret having joined the Society of Jesus?

STANISLAUS: Oh no, my Father! I weep at seeing that my parents do not understand the Gift of God. They say I am unworthy of my ancestors and that I have dishonored their family. There is more honor, however, more nobility and glory for our house from my being here as the least among the great servants of God than if I were to become, in the world, more famous than any of my ancestors.

FRANCIS: You’re right, my son; I hope that one day your parents will approve of your vocation, but as to that, did not Our Lord Jesus say. “I did not come to bring peace, but the sword. Who loves his father and mother more than me is unworthy of me.”

STANISLAUS, (raising his eye to Heaven): Now I can say, with the psalmist: “My father and my mother have abandoned me, but the Lord has cared for me. I have chosen to be among the least in the house of my God, rather than live in the tents of the worldly.”  

FRANCIS: My dear child, I can see that God Himself brought you here and wants you to stay here. In a few days, I shall give you the sacred habit; prepare yourself for this grace in silence and reflection. Thank the Lord who’s granted you the great favor of living in His house. (He puts his hand on Brother Augusti’s head.) I give you Brother Augusti as your angel; he’ll instruct you in your external duties. I know your souls resemble each other; further, I grant you permission to share your thoughts and the graces the Lord has been pleased to heap upon His children. (He stands up.) I’ll leave you; the duties of my post require that I be elsewhere.

BROTHER AUGUSTI, (kneeling down next to Saint Stanislaus): My Father, may Your Reverence deign to give us a blessing.

FRANCIS: Dear children, may the Most Holy Trinity bless you both, as I myself bless you with all my heart. (He exits.)

– Fr. Dominic Rankin’s sister, Sr. Mary Thomas, has often spoken about the plays and skits they concoct in the monastery. At first it seems too playful for such a pious place, too carefree to be celestial. Yet, isn’t it us who have flipped things upside down? Why do we take earth so seriously, and act as if heaven were abstract and far away!  May the example of the saints flip our perspective back to God’s way of seeing things!  (Read the rest of St. Thérèse’s play at the QR-code link:)

When you walk into the church for the next two weeks, you will notice something different.  Most of our statues, as well as the crucifix above the tabernacle, will be covered in violet cloths.  This has been the practice of the Church for many years and it happens during what is known as Passiontide.  These are the final two weeks of Lent, beginning on the 5^th Sunday of Lent.  According to one resource I consulted, this practice of veiling images is meant “to serve as a stark and inescapable visual reminder that these two weeks are the most spiritually intense, solemn and mournful weeks of the liturgical year.”  Instead of coasting through the final days of Lent, Passiontide invites us to double-down and so re-commit ourselves to fully embracing the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

During these two weeks, we would do well to keep the Passion of Jesus ever before us, especially during our times of prayer.  This can be accomplished in different ways.  For example, I always try to find time to re-watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  Watching that movie has forever changed the way that I consider what Jesus went through out of love for sinful humanity, myself included.  Praying the Stations of the Cross is another very helpful spiritual practice.  Yet another helpful practice is to spend extra time with the Word of God, especially those passages that focus more specifically on the Passion.  With that said, let me offer you the following challenge for this coming week (which I hope will extend through Good Friday as well):

Challenge:  Pray for 5-10 minutes each day with the Scriptures that focus on the Passion of Christ
Fruit:  Keeping the Passion ever before us as we finish Lent

The obvious place to start are with the Passion narratives from the Four Gospels.  For your reference, they are as follows:

Matthew 26:30–27:66
Mark 14:26–15:47
Luke 22:39–23:56
John 18:1–19:42

Another highly recommended set of passages to pray with during Passiontide are what are known as the Seven Penitential Psalms.  These psalms help to stir up in us a sense of sorrow for our sins, which were the reason for Christ’s Passion.  They help increase our desire for conversion.  The Seven Penitential Psalms are all found in the Book of Psalm, and they are as follows:  Ps. 6, Ps. 32, Ps. 38, Ps. 51, Ps. 102, Ps. 130, and Ps. 143.  The USCCB has all of these psalms listed on one page, along with a link to a reflection on each Psalm.  If you do a search for “USCCB Seven Penitential Psalms”, it should be one of the first items that comes up.

All of these passages should be more than enough material to reflect on during these days, but if you get through them all before Good Friday, go back to those passages that stood out and pray with them some more.  

Father Alford     

We have sadly been hearing a lot about war in the news in the past month or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that war is not a thing of the past. In reality, much of our world was still at war even before Russia’s recent invasion. However, we as Americans are more tuned in to European news than news from other parts of the world. For example, a civil war has been going on in Syria for the past ten years or so, claiming around half a million lives. I admit that most days, I don’t think twice about people who are fleeing their homeland because their towns have been destroyed by war. 

Jesus taught us in the seventh Beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” War is never a good thing, and while self-defense is a legitimate reason to have a standing army, physical violence should only be used as a last resort. It is sobering to consider how often wars have been fought between Christians, especially between Catholics. While it can be helpful to build bridges between nations through diplomatic and economic ties, the best way to unite nations is by a common faith. One of the basic beliefs of our faith is that when we are baptized, we become sons and daughters of God. Knowing that we are children of the same heavenly Father should be reason enough to lay aside our weapons! 

All of this is a long introduction to the person I wanted to write my article about this week: Fr. Emil Kapaun. Usually, I leave the saint stories to Fr. Rankin, because he does such an excellent job with his article each week! Fr. Kapaun is a fairly well-known priest who died in the Pyoktong prisoner-of-war camp in North Korea. His name was back in the news in March of 2021, as his body had been identified in a cemetery in Hawaii, and it was transported back to his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. 

Fr. Kapaun was a member of the United States Armed Forces, but in a role that only a priest can fulfill – he was a Catholic priest Chaplain in the Army. After serving in various duties in Kansas, he was deployed to Burma and India at the end of World War II. However, he is better known for his actions as a chaplain during the Korean War. He was known to be fearless as he ministered to men on the front lines, offering the Anointing of the Sick, hearing Confessions, burying the dead, and carrying the wounded to safety. One time his tobacco pipe was shot out of his mouth, but this did not deter him. While protecting the town of Unsan, Fr. Kapaun’s soldiers were overrun and many of them made a retreat. Fr. Kapaun decided to stay with the wounded while they were captured. 

Fr. Kapaun heroically served his men for several months while they were in the Pyoktong POW camp. He was known to men of all faiths as a leader and one of the best at stealing food to keep his soldiers alive. (His patron saint for these excursions was St. Dismas, the good thief who died with Jesus.) Fr. Kapaun often volunteered to bury the dead so that he could say some prayers while he did so. After a while, Fr. Kapaun became too weak and sick to serve as a chaplain, and even to live. He died in 1951, and it was thought that he was buried in a mass grave. 

As I mentioned earlier, Fr. Kapaun’s body was identified in 2021 in a grave in Hawaii. I do not know the story of how it ended up there, but it was relocated to Wichita, where Bishop Kemme was finally able to celebrate a funeral Mass for him. Fr. Kapaun was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in battle in 1950, and in 2013, President Obama posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor, only the fifth chaplain to receive this award since the Civil War (all Catholic priests). 

Fr. Kapaun was a true peacemaker. As a priest, his job was not to fire weapons, but to bring God’s mercy to people who were in the heart of war, a place of destruction and sadness. Only God can bring about true peace, and he does so through peacemakers such as Fr. Kapaun. 

For more information about Fr. Kapaun, visit frkapaun.org 

Feast Day: April 4^th 

St. Isidore the Farmer is one of the most-often chosen saints for confirmation patrons around our diocese.  Being a patron for anyone involved in agriculture or livestock, he is a popular saint especially for our young men in even vaguely rural settings.  However, his feast day is not until May, and he was named after a saint that lived 500 years before him, the saint we celebrate this week: Isidore of Seville.

That first Isidore was born to Severianus and Theodora, a duke and duchess, of Roman heritage (you can tell by their names!) in Spain in 560.  As heresies swirled amongst bishops, barbarians pillaged and resettled swaths of the continent, and the Roman empire split and splintered, we find ourselves looking back to a rough and difficult age.  Yet Isidore’s family must have had laid the foundations for their family deep in the truths of their Christian faith because despite all that turmoil, all of the four children of the ducal family would be eventually hailed as saints (that being Leander, Isidore, Fulgentius, and Florentina – may I just say they had a way with names back then!)  Isidore was blessed to be educated at the Cathedral school in Seville, entrusted with grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the “trivium”, the foundational three elements of a integral and liberating education) as well as arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy  (the “quadrivium”, four higher elements of a classical, liberal, education), as well as, of course, the principles of the faith, Latin, as well as some Greek and Hebrew.  

Just to comment briefly on these parts of his education: it really was not all that long ago that these different elements remained the fundamentals of anyone’s education: think Abraham Lincoln studying law and logic between chopping down trees. Nowadays a “liberal” education is seen as rather unpractical, and we find a constant emphasis on the harder, more mathematical, scientific, empirical forms of knowledge. (Just think of how many times politicians and educators emphasize STEM courses and competency). But, can’t a case be made that we have forgotten the foundation in trying to build ourselves up to the heavens?  I use grammar and rhetoric every time that I speak or write.  I rarely use the quadratic formula. Of course, you might respond that my line of work requires more speaking and less calculating, and that is true, but the quadratic formula is eternally stranded on the level of numbers and mathematics.  It will never solve for the mystery of life; it will never break a flower or rainstorm into their constitutive components; it will never decipher, or discover, Shakespeare; and I’m not going to use it to get to know a friend, nor to stay a friend of God. I am glad that I learned it, yes, yet, it would be a far greater loss to loose the ability to reason and communicate and read and pray, than to not be easily able to “solve for x.”  

Isidore may have become a monk (history has forgotten that particular detail) but in any case, he would follow his own brother in becoming Bishop of Seville right around the difficult year of 600AD.  I would love to comment on all the various episcopal things he did, problems he faced, sacraments he celebrated, and homilies he preached, but I’m going to instead focus on what he was best known for: his safeguarding and teaching of the truth.  It was a volatile, brutal, illiterate age, and so Isidore sat down to compile everything that was to know, putting it all in what would be the grandfather of all encyclopedias, his Etymologiae.  He collected, and saved for all of us, countless excerpts and summaries of ancient texts, truly on almost everything that was known at the time: science, religion, philosophy, grammar, geography, infrastructure, mathematics, medicine, technology, geology, nautical, animal, and avian knowledge…  And, he invented one or two things you might have used today: the period, comma, and colon.  (I used all three in the last five words of that sentence without even trying)  Before Isidore, punctuation did not exist! ENTIREBOOKSWEREMOSTLYALLCAPSANDOFTENWITHOUTSPACES. His invention of punctuation would allow the treasures hard-won throughout human history to be passed along through the hard centuries that were coming.

And, they made writing this article substantially easier.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has no particular memory of learning these most basic parts of speech, though, funnily enough, he has, for many years, had a disorderly love for the comma. I bitterly remonstrate with a book or article if the author neglected an oxford comma, and throw them in around every appositive phrase, that being a clarifying statement within a larger one, as well as in various other, unnecessary places (see what I did there). My mom was not always impressed, though perhaps I was just trying to make up for the thousands of human writings that never knew the beauty of a proper comma…