A major theme running throughout the Gospels for the season of Easter is love.  A few weeks ago, we heard the dialog between Jesus and St. Peter as the Lord asked Peter three times: “Do you love me.”  The following Sunday, we heard about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who lovingly cares for His flock, the Church, even to the point of sacrificing Himself.  Last Sunday, we heard Jesus give His disciples a “new commandment”, that we should love one another as He has loved us.  Thus Sunday, Jesus says: “Whoever loves me will keep my word.”

I sometimes fear that this word “love”, especially as it is used in our Christian context, is misunderstood.  The type of love to which we are called to as Christians is necessarily radical, which I think is one of the reasons Jesus tells us to love as He has loved us, which involves the total gift of Himself for the good of others, not for His own benefit.  Not that there is no room for other forms of love in which we receive affection and support, but we as Christians always need to strive for the Christ-like love toward others.

At the foundation of our love for others is our uncompromising recognition of the dignity of every human life at ever stage.  It can be tempting to think that the Church only cares about the dignity of life for children in the womb, since that is what we so often hear about when it comes to respect for life.  But the Church is likewise insistent that we must see all life as a gift, for each person is a unique, unrepeatable gift of God, created by Him and deserving of love.  No life is without dignity.  Period.  Regardless of the decisions a person has made, regardless of their social and economic status, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their gender, regardless of their age…regardless of anything, all life is a gift and deserves to receive love.  But remember that love is willing the good of the other, not condoning whatever they do, for the most loving thing we can do in some cases is to correct errors, call to repentance, and invite conversion.  

Christian love becomes radical when it asks us to show love to those who are the most undeserving in our mind.  Our country witnessed another horrific example of hatred last week in Buffalo when a gunman murdered 10 people and injured three others in what authorities believe to be a racially motivated attack.  One might ask how and if Christian love applies in this man?  I think you know the answer.  But what does that love look like?  As I mentioned earlier, it absolutely does NOT mean condoning such violence (or any of his motivations), for his actions took the gift of life from these innocent victims.  Christian love does not exclude punishment, for justice is not opposed to mercy.  It is well within Christian love to demand justice individually and collectively to address any affront against human dignity, but Christian love also leaves open the door for conversion.  Think of St. Paul, how he was involved in the persecution of Christians in the early Church, a persecution that led to many deaths.  Had Christians at the time not had a sense of the love to which the Lord was calling them, they would have taken his life and considered it justified.  But they did not.  They left room for the Lord to work in Saul’s (later Paul) hardened heart, to give him an opportunity for conversion, which led to his becoming one of the greatest Christians ever to live, responsible no doubt for countless conversions over the centuries.

Perhaps my bringing this up makes us feel a little uncomfortable thinking about love in the face of such hatred.  But once again, this is the radical nature of the love to which Jesus is calling us, and I stress that it is only possible through His love.  Left to ourselves, we will remain stuck in anger and hatred.  Please do not try to hear what I am not saying on this topic – an atrocity like the one in Buffalo is not acceptable and I am not downplaying it in any way.  It must be rejected and responded to, but I am inviting us to consider how we respond as Christians, not as the rest of the world would respond. In the early Church, Christians were seen as different than the rest of the world, and it was commented on by others: “See how they love one another.”  Would that the same could be said about us in how we live our lives, how we treat others, how we respond to evil, sin and suffering, that we do so always motivated by the love with which Christ responds – a love always seeking the good which is ultimately salvation, for the Lord “desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  (1 Tm 2:4)

Father Alford

This Sunday evening will mark the official conclusion of our Family of Faith catechesis program.  As you hopefully know by now, this program is not just about the few families who have children in the program.  It is meant to include the entire parish.  This is why we have done our best to keep the topics for the program in front of you, especially in our weekly bulletin.  As we come to the conclusion of this year, I would like to revisit a point that I offered at the beginning of this year of formation regarding the moral life in Christ:

Do we truly appreciate that what Christ (and by extension the Church) teaches us and asks of us is actually a true path to freedom and joy?  We will only come to that understanding if we start with the person of Christ and our relationship with Him, hearing His words addressed to us that summarize His desire for us in offering us His teaching: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)  Do you desire this for your life, to have life and have it more abundantly?  I guarantee the answer for each of us is a resounding “yes”!  So what do we have to lose in following the way of life Christ and the Church invites us to live?  I hope you will come to discover, over the course of this year, that we have absolutely nothing good to lose.  Rather, by letting the life of Christ be lived in us, we have everything to gain, most importantly eternal life in Heaven.

In light of this goal that we had for this year, it can be fruitful to bring these points to our prayer.  How have you experienced a more abundant life in Christ through what you have learned over the past year?  Do you feel a greater sense of freedom that comes from following Christ more completely?  Where are you still feeling a lack of freedom in your life?  Where have you found joy over the past year, especially with regards to your faith?  Where have you experienced sadness?

These are just some suggestions to help you in processing this last year, but I want to stress that this processing is not just a private, individual exercise.  Share your thoughts, feelings, questions, desires, and struggles with the Lord in a very honest and authentic dialog.  As I mentioned, living the life of Christ is first and foremost about our relationship with Him, so I invite you to spend some time with Him as you consider these things.

Another very beneficial practice could be to share with another person or two, perhaps your family, some of what is moving in your heart as you consider how the Lord has been working in your life this past year.  While somewhat intimidating if you are not used to sharing on this level, the benefits can be profound, not just for yourself, but for others who will be inspired by your willingness to share on a deeper level. 

If you are not where you had hoped to be at this point in your journey with the Lord, do not be discouraged!  The Lord is looking upon you with great delight that you at least desire to love Him more and follow Him more faithfully, weak though you may be.  Ask Him to help you to continue to grow.  Go to our Blessed Mother too, asking for her continued encouragement and prayers.          Just as it delights a parent to be asked by their child to help them with something, so too does our Heavenly Father and our Blessed Mother delight in us when we ask for their help in a spirit of trust and love.

Father Alford

One symbolic aspect of baptism that has largely been lost to our modern mind is the symbolism of being buried with Christ. The time that the body of Jesus spent in the tomb from Good Friday through Easter Sunday is actually very significant in our faith. According to the Catechism, the original and full sign of baptism is having one’s whole body immersed under water, which is a symbol of being buried in the ground with Jesus. St. Paul talks about this in his letter to the Ephesians when he says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Ephesians 4:9-10). In the Church today, we typically baptize by pouring water on someone’s head, which has great symbolic value of washing away sin. Regardless, the same spiritual effects of baptism are always accomplished when a baptism is celebrated: adoption as God’s child and the forgiveness of all sin. I do admit that baptism by sprinkling is much simpler and less messy than full immersion!

One teaching of the Church that is not very widely know or talked about is that the body of Jesus did not experience any corruption during his three days in the tomb. God’s divine power miraculously preserved Jesus’ body from any sort of decomposition to stay prepared for and foreshadow the Resurrection. Now, Jesus was truly dead in the tomb. His soul separated from his body, went to the realm of the dead, and opened the gates of heaven. But there was still a sort of unity that Jesus kept with his body, even in death. This preservation is a fulfillment of Psalm 16 when it says, “My flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption.”

The body of Jesus was treated with great respect between his death and resurrection because of the respect that his Mother and disciples held for him during his life. The Pieta is one of the greatest works of art ever made, and anyone who sees it is drawn in to consider the grief of Mary as she beheld the body of her dead son. As Christians, we are called to imitate Christ in many ways. We can even imitate Christ in death by showing great respect to the bodies of our deceased brothers and sisters. Our bodies are not free from the corruption of the tomb like Jesus’ body was. As we hear every Ash Wednesday, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” When we die, our bodies decompose until they are resurrected and reunited with our souls on the last day.

With all of this in mind, it is easy to see why the Church prefers that we bury the bodies of our loved ones, rather than disposing of them in some other way. Even in death, our souls keep a sort of connection with our bodies which will be rekindled in the resurrection. The Church does allow for cremation, and there can sometimes be good reason for this such as hygiene during an epidemic, burial in times of war, and most commonly, financial prudence. However, there is great symbolic value to burying our bodies intact, as the body of Jesus was buried. This reminds us that we are not done with our bodies when we die, but we await the glorious day when Jesus will return. Those who have done good will be raised to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:28-29). However, remember that no matter what happens to somebody’s body, God has no problem raising it back up! In this season of Easter, let us continue to give thanks to God for making us in his image and likeness, with the plan for us to live forever with him in heaven!

Feast Day: May 21^st

I hate to disappoint anyone, but there is not an overarching scheme in my choice of the saint for each week.  I look ahead to see who the Church is celebrating, I keep somewhere in the back of my mind the theme of our faith-formation for the month (our Journey to Heaven), and then I do some digging on each saint to see whether one leaps to the top of the list. 

This week it was immediately St. Christopher Magallanes and Companions.  I emphasize “and companions” because as soon as I saw that I knew I had to look into these saints.  Saints often come in pairs or triplets – think of Basil, Gregory, Gregory, Macrina, Naucratius, and Peter (of 4^th century Cappadocia), or John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila (of 16^th century Spain), or St. Teresa of Calcutta and John Paul II (of 20^th century Europe) – and then there are the abundant moments when God pours out grace for many to come to sanctity at the same time. 

The 22 others canonized with Christóbal were not all martyred at the same time, but they were martyred with the same heart.  As persecution gripped Mexico in the 1920s, these priests and laymen each chose to continue to minister as they could under the radar.  It was a crime to celebrate the Mass, to baptize, or teach, but they continued to walk from village to village and offer the sacraments and the solace of grace to those who would come for it.  Violence exploded around them as churches were burned, looted, and desecrated. One particular governor named his sons “Lenin”, “Satan”, and “Lucifer” and his livestock “God”, “Pope”, “Mary”, and “Christ”.  Such was the society these men found themselves living in. 

It was not a slow, imperceptible squeezing of Christianity out of life, it was a quick and brutal attack on Jesus and His followers.  So also would be their deaths.  I turn my focus upon just Father Magallanes and Father Caloca (his companion), who were walking out to celebrate Mass for the feast of St. Rita of Cascia (May 22^nd).  They encountered a shootout between the Christeros and Federal forces, were arrested and hauled off to the local governmental headquarters. They had no rights, no defense, and no trial, and after three days were marched from their cells to their deaths.  The two priests gave each other absolution, encouraged each other in faithfulness, and Fr. Magallanes shouted his final words “I am innocent and I die innocent.  I forgive with all my heart those responsible for my death, and I ask God that the shedding of my blood serve the peace of our divided Mexico.”

These were average men and ordinary priests.  Fr. Magallanes had worked as a priest for 20 uneventful years before persecution broke into his world.  He was angry, as anyone would be, at the injustice of his arrest and the absurdity of the hatred directed against him, against the Church, against the poor Christians trying to keep their faith, and against Our Lord Who came to bring us into the Father’s Love. Yet he held onto that love not only in the ordinary years, but also those last horrible days, and so did all those who are now venerated with him, and so must we. – Fr. Dominic Rankin would be very happy to just be a companion of a saint: Just latch onto the holiness and love in someone else and, through and with them, hang on to Jesus all the way to heaven!

For the past 59 years, the Church has observed the 4^th Sunday of Easter as the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  The reason for this can be found in the Gospel we hear each year on this Sunday.  Although there is a three-year cycle of readings, the Gospel on this Sunday is always drawn from a section of John 10, where Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd.  He invites others to share in His shepherding of the flock by calling certain members to a religious vocation as a priest, deacon, or religious brother/sister.  Jesus has commanded that we pray for those called to these vocations when He said: “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.” (Mt 9:38; Lk 10:2)

While browsing some resources for this day of prayer, I came across two prayers that stood out that I would like to share, inviting us to join in praying on this day.  The first prayer is a prayer that families can pray together for vocations.  What makes this prayer unique (and perhaps challenging) is that is asks for openness to a vocation within the family.  I have heard stories in the past of how families are happy to commit to praying for vocations but are hesitant for that prayer to apply to their own family.  Give this a shot, especially if there are still children in your family who do not yet know their vocation:

FAMILY PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS

Father, increase our family’s love for one another.
May we honor each other in times of happiness or hardship,
bearing with one another in love, just as You love us.

In a special way, help us strive for holiness in our current states of life.
Should You call some of us to the priesthood or religious life,
help us to respond with courage and joy.

Together, we make heaven our goal, and pledge, with Your grace,
to help each other on life’s journey to You.

Through the intercession of the Holy Family:
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Amen

The second prayer is one that I saw a couple of weeks ago while sitting next to another priest at a training session I attended.  It is a beautiful prayer for priests, the shepherds Jesus has already chosen to minister to His flock, asking His protection on them all in their various circumstances:

DAILY PRAYER FOR PRIESTS

By St. Therese of the Child Jesus
O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests;
for Your unfaithful and tepid priests;
for Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields.
for Your tempted priests;
for Your lonely and desolate priest
for Your young priests;
for Your dying priests;
for the souls of Your priests in Purgatory.

But above all, I recommend to You the priests dearest to me:
the priest who baptized me;
the priests who absolved me from my sins;
the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
the priests who taught and instructed me;
all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way.

O Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart,
and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.
Amen.

Father Alford

When I was a teenager, I believe it was a family friend who gave me a prayer card with a simple prayer on it which was a prayer asking God to help me discern my vocation. I remember many times picking up this prayer card in my room after I got home from school as a high schooler, and authentically asking God to show me what my vocation was. It was around this time that I started to develop for the first time a consistent prayer life, at least for a few minutes every day, in addition to family prayers that we said in the evening or the daily Rosary. I remember being “real” with God in prayer and telling him that my path forward was not clear to me. 

After a while, I developed an interior sense that God was asking me to become a priest. With this realization came several different emotions. One of them was a feeling of excitement, as the mystery of that vocation began to interest me. There was also a deep sense of inadequacy, and I don’t mean that I was just being humble. I actually thought that I didn’t have the confidence or skills necessary to be a priest. (I didn’t; that’s why we have seminaries). With this came a sense of fear. But overall, I began to develop a sense of peace in my heart, even when joining the seminary required significant sacrifices in my life. 

Recently, I heard one of our parishioners speaking about prayer, and he said that two essential aspects of a prayer life are consistency and vulnerability. I have learned a lot about prayer since my vocation discernment, but as I review the paragraph that I just wrote, I can see these two aspects of prayer allowed me to actually hear God’s voice in my heart. I was consistent in prayer because I was doing it every day, and usually at the same time of day. I was also vulnerable with God, not trying to impress him with my prayers but just being honest that I didn’t have a clear vision of my path in life, and I needed guidance. 

My official vocational discernment is over now that I have been ordained a priest, but there are still many things that I, and each of us, should be discerning. Things like how we spend our time, how we can best serve our families and our parish, and how God is calling us to enter that “next level” of prayer. 

I am not sure where that prayer card ended up, or if I still have it somewhere in my house or maybe in a book somewhere. I do know that it served its purpose and helped draw me to think about the priesthood. This week the Church prays in a special way for an increase of vocations to the priesthood, religious life, and diaconate. For a vocation to come to fruition, it is necessary for prayer on both ends: on the part of the individual and on the part of the Church. I do not doubt that the prayer of many people helped spur me to pursue the priesthood, while my own fidelity to prayer was also necessary in that equation. 

Jesus once said, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Luke 10:2). Let us make this prayer our own today and for the rest of this week. Master, send out laborers for your harvest! 

Feast Day: May 13^th  

I want to start our tale this week not on May 13^th, 1917, when Our Lady first appeared to Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta in the hills outside of Fatima Portugal, but instead in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, on a lovely May 13^th 1981. It is just a bit after 5pm and Pope John Paul II has just begun to visit the pilgrims packed between the colonnades before his usual Wednesday Audience. He had been delivering a catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount, but today he was going to begin a new theme.  It was the 90^th anniversary of Pope St. Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, and JPII was set to carry forward the Church’s work, there outlined, of defending the dignity of every person, especially the poor and degraded. It had only been 60 years since WWI, and 40 years since WWII, and the Iron Curtain still obscured to the world the full horror of what happens when society worships itself and forgets God, but JPII was not going to abandon the Church’s mission of continuing to proclaim with Christ the freedom and dignity and blessedness of all those who were poor.

He was set to announce, along these lines, the creation of a Pontifical Council for the Family, and on top of this later this evening he was going across the city to open a brand new Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.  All this was perhaps in his mind as he happily handed the 18 month old Sara Bartoli, back to her mother, but seconds later gunfire rang out and the Holy Father collapsed to the floor of the popemobile, his face strained, the prayer “Maria Madonna” on his lips, and blood staining his white cassock.  The horrified security detail sped him out of the square to a brand-new ambulance that the pope had blessed only hours before, providentially praying then for the first person who would ride in it.  Providence also directed the ambulance to the Gemelli hospital, miraculously making the 4 mile trip through Roman rush-hour in only 8 minutes. Divine providence was at work through all the moments to come: the second assassin would flee without setting off his bomb; the bullets fired from mere yards away had missed the pope’s main abdominal artery by millimeters; JPII would loose 75% of his blood over the next hour and would receive an infected transfusion of blood yet he would eventually pull through.  

65 years earlier, Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, who were then speaking to Our Lady for the third time had this singular vision: “… at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

It was only several weeks after his being shot that John Paul II read the above testimony of Sr. Lucia, and it would be a full year before he was able to go on pilgrimage to Fatima, stating there that “one hand pulled the trigger, another guided the bullet”, but by those words he upheld the same sacred freedom that he had meant to speak of during that forgotten General Audience.  As Cardinal Ratzinger would put it when the text above was published: “That here ‘a mother’s hand’‌ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies.”

– Fr. Dominic Rankin this year has set as a goal to always “pray like I mean it.”  That is, to never pray the Divine Office or my Rosary mechanically.  Seeing this week a moment when history was changed by prayer, he is strongly encouraged in this effort!