Feast Day: October 6^th 

Admittedly, we do not know a lot of particulars about St. Mary Frances. She grew up in Naples in the early 1700s in a middle-class family (her father wove lace and/or sold clothing – carrying the fantastic title of “haberdasher” – which also brought in a decent income for his family), but they lived in a rough part of that city. Furthermore, though her mother was pious and patient, her father was a man quick to anger and harsh with his family, if not outright abusive to them. Her young life was marked by the traumatizing clash of a nominally Christian home with the very unchristian experience of incessant work and hard treatment even at a tender age. At 16 her father arranged for Anna Maria (her baptismal name) to marry a rich man from the area, though Anna protested that she wanted instead to enter the Third Order of St. Francis. 

She had gotten to know the friars there in Naples, part a branch of the Franciscans having been reformed by the great St. Peter of Alcantara back to a rigorous living of holy poverty. A certain Father Theophilus convinced Anna’s father to allow her to enter their order and so it happened on September 8^th, 1731. In a certain way, this transformed the rigors of her life into sweet sacrifices for the Lord. She still lived at her home, though now wearing the religious habit and having been given the new name of “Mary Francis of the Five Wounds”, a nod to her love of Our Lady, St. Francis, and the Passion of Christ. From that house that had been for her a place of great sadness and suffering, now she had won a measure of freedom in her father’s permission to enter the consecrated life, and all the hardships that remained were now more formally consecrated to Christ and could flower into works of charity and a deep life of prayer. 

In this Sister Mary Frances already shows us a way forward in those moments when any of us encounter suffering, whether inflicted on us, or just as part of living a human life. Can we consecrate those crosses? Can we carry them with love, let them lead us to generosity and charity rather than self-protection or anger? This is not an easy transformation! All of us carry wounds in our hearts, and they often feel like places where we can’t love as we want, or ought; places where we have been beat-down or broken, where it’s hard enough to just persevere with those pains, much less to discover freedom and generosity in those things. 

This was a long process for Sister Mary Frances. She spent a lot of time in prayer, and working with the poor, day by day stretching her heart to be able to love rather than hate, to give rather than protect herself. She got a spiritual director, and a confessor, who she went to frequently for counsel and forgiveness. Sometimes that walk with the Lord was lifegiving and beautiful, and sometimes her wounds were reopened. Some of those priests that gave her direction or the sacraments were harsh or clueless, they did not represent Christ well, and so the Heavenly Father’s face was again mis-represented. She endured physical pain at times too, reputedly feeling in her hands at least the pain of the Christ’s nails, and other ailments too – some of them healed at the intercession of St. Raphael, some of them which she had to bear with patience for her whole life. 

Eventually she and another Franciscan tertiary, Sister Maria Felice, moved into a home with a priest/chaplain living on the floor above (he, a pious man, must have been a healing example of priestly-fatherhood for her. Both sisters would generously take care of him over the coming years.) It was a simple family home, so they had to make do renovating some of the rooms to be their chapel and places for their work with the poor. Gradually, it was her charity and patience despite all the crosses she carried that led many to come to her for counsel and compassion. 38 years she lived in that little place at Vico Tre Re a Toledo (where a church now dedicated to her as a saint still stands) just encountering people who were hurting in different ways, and from a heart stretched by her own hurts, met every one of them with delight and love. 

She died on October 6, 1791, beloved by the townspeople and hailed immediately as a saint and exemplar of holiness. She would be canonized in 1867 (by Pope Pius IX), the first saint from Naples!

– Fr. Dominic takes one more lesson from Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds: contentment with the day’s labor. She did not accomplish much over her life. Lived with her crosses, loved those who were around her, prayed every day, and just that was enough to make her a great saint. No huge conversions, no changing world history, no transformation of the city of Naples … she just lived each day with as much love as she could muster from her encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist. What if we were content with the same? 

As promised, after introducing the Four Pillars of Stewardship and Discipleship, we are going to look at each of these pillars, reflecting on how they are currently being lived here at the Cathedral and where there may be room for growth.

When naming this pillar, the Synod states simply that hospitality calls for us “to invite people proactively to join us in prayer, especially Sunday Mass.”  Perhaps the first thing we think about when we hear hospitality is how we receive people who come to us, making them feel seen and welcomed.  That is important, but notice how the definition is not so much about welcoming as it is inviting.  A sign of hospitality is our willingness to extend the invitation for people to come to experience Jesus.  After all, this is what prayer is most fundamentally, having a personal relationship with Jesus.  The greatest prayer of all for us as Catholics is, of course, the Mass.

Putting the emphasis on invitation over simply welcoming is admittedly more intimidating.  For in welcoming people, the hard work has been done.  The other person has entered through our doors, and we just need to receive them with cheerfulness and gratitude.  As I said, that is indeed important.  But to go to a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, and to actually invite them into something can be hard.  We fear being rejected, or we fear that we might not be able to respond to questions that others might have about our faith.  However, whenever we are firmly grounded in our own personal relationship with Jesus and our love for our Catholic faith, especially the Mass, how can we not want to invite others to that same experience?

For some people who are not Catholic, inviting them to Mass might not be our first step, as they could feel overwhelmed.  For those individuals, perhaps the invitation is simply an offer to pray with them.  As you read that, perhaps that gives you anxiety!  If we personally know Jesus and are comfortable talking to Him in prayer, what is so hard about inviting another person into that?  Again, if it feels awkward to do that, perhaps that is an indication of our need for deepening our relationship with Jesus, so that we can be more willing to invite others to experience Him as well.

If the person we are thinking of inviting deeper is a Catholic, but one who has been away from the practice of the faith, perhaps our invitation is not first to come back to Mass, but first to go to confession.  To make the invitation more acceptable, we can offer to go with them and also go to confession.  Again, that might cause us anxiety, as perhaps it has been some time since we last went to confession.  But just know that the Lord desires to free us from our fears, and more importantly, to free us from our sins, so that experiencing His love and mercy for us, we will be the more willingly to invite others to that same encounter.

Of course, we can and should invite others to join us for Mass, and as with confession, offering to go with them to Mass so that they do not feel isolated, as though they do not belong.  To be with that person, to pray with them, to pray for them before the Lord can be a powerful form of hospitality.

Pray to the Lord this week, asking Him if there might be somebody He is asking you to invite to encounter Jesus more deeply.  Pray for that person by name for several days, then, with faith, offer whatever invitation is most appropriate for where they are in their journey of faith.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: September 29^th 

This week we celebrate the three archangels named in scripture: Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael and I’d like to take the opportunity to do a bit more of a theological dive with you into the ministry of the angels rather than just a relating of their story. In our profession of faith, we state that “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” Notice that before we even get to Jesus, His resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the Church, our own resurrection … we already have stated that we believe in “all things visible and invisible.” That’s where the angels fit in! Though we do not often see the invisible, we believe in it! And in a world where we spend an awful lot of time just with “the visible”, it’s important to reaffirm our choosing to accept God’s revealing to us that there is an entire invisible world which we are also part of.

That said, to discover more about the archangels, we can simply turn to the prayers for the Mass on their feast-day. The priest, having received the offerings of the people and brought them to the altar, but before beginning the preface and the Eucharistic prayer, prays these words:

We offer you a sacrifice of praise, O Lord, humbly entreating, that, as these gifts are borne by the ministry of Angels into the presence of your majesty, so you may receive them favorably and make them profitable for our salvation. Through Christ our Lord.

If the words ring a bell, it may be because they echo a similar prayer said during the First Eucharistic Prayer, after the consecration:

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

During that prayer the priest bows down at the altar, folding his hands because he is not so much leading this prayer as inviting the angels to join our offering, and carry it, and us, into the heavenly liturgy. This part of the Mass, and part of our faith, is worth reflecting on. The Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on calvary for our redemption, as well as an encounter with His Body, risen and glorified, which nourishes, sustains, sanctifies, and continues to transform us after His likeness. The Eucharistic sacrifice is for our redemption, our transformation into saints, and our worship of God. Where do the angels fit in? 

We’re confronted by an amazing fact here: that though the angels are “purely spiritual creatures” with “intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 330, emphasis in original), despite their surpassing us in so many ways, they have allowed themselves to be humbly concerned with our salvation. If you recall your Baltimore Catechism, remember what it says about the three Archangels: “The Archangel Michael drove Satan out of heaven; the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin that she was to become the Mother of God. The Archangel Raphael guided and protected Tobias.” (Baltimore Catechism, Question 221) These are the glorious archangels, but they have lowered themselves to helping us out!

Aquinas gives us a deeper insight into this, describing the difference in how the angels and demons (fallen angels) relate to us: “Man can of his own accord fall into sin: but he cannot advance in merit without the Divine assistance, which is borne to man by the ministry of the angels. For this reason the angels take part in all our good works: whereas all our sins are not due to the demons’ instigation.”(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, Part I, Question 114, Article 3, Reply to Objection 3) All our good works – our prayers, our sacrifices, our acts of charity, our growth in virtue – is linked to the life and work and worship of the angels! This means not only that our lives are intrinsically intertwined with the spiritual (this should not surprise us: we are body and spirit!), but also that there is a personal, relational, reality to this. We are not on our own trying to deepen our spiritual life, grow in virtue, avoid sin, or come to know God … we are befriended and attended to by the angels in that walk with the Lord!

– Fr. Dominic has often turned to Our Lord, and the saints, for inspiration and help in the journey of discipleship, but there is something uniquely comforting to know that the angels too – these tremendously powerful spiritual creatures – are also on our side, walking with us, helping us in big ways and small. This week I am going to try and remember this fact a lot more! When I’m working, or running, or shopping, or forgiving, or praying, or falling asleep … all of these occasions will be better if I recall that the angels are there with me!

After laying out the mission statement, the Fourth Diocesan Synod offers four pillars as a way to focus on how to give flesh to this mission.  Here is what the next declaration reads:

To further this mission, the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is committed

to implementing the Four Pillars of Discipleship and Stewardship, namely:

1. Hospitality – to invite people proactively to join us in prayer, especially Sunday Mass;
2. Prayer – to provide well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments and other occasions for prayer as signs of hope and paths of grace to Heaven;
3. Formation – to study the Bible and learn more about Jesus and our Catholic faith; and
4. Service – to serve each other, especially those in need, by practicing charity and justice.  (Synod Declaration 1b)

When I presented this declaration to our parish Pastoral Council a few months ago, we reflected briefly on how each of these pillars are being lived out here at the Cathedral.  For each of them, we were able to point to efforts that are already in place, but we also acknowledged that there is certainly room to grow in each of these areas.

In the next few articles, we will be looking at each of these pillars, reflecting on how they are essential expressions of what it means to be a parish community of disciples.  I will also point out some of the ways that we see these pillars at work here in our parish.  Then I will invite us to pray and think about how the Lord is inviting us to go deeper with each of these pillars.

As we begin these reflections, I am seeing the Providence of God working in the timing of this topic!  As you will see later in the bulletin, we are looking to hire a new member of our parish staff.  In the past year, we have experienced some major changes with the sudden passing of our former Business Manager, Bill Vogt.  Our bookkeeper, Jan Sgambelluri, retired and moved away from Springfield.  Her replacement, Steven Kehoe, left last month for the seminary.  We have been getting by, thanks in large part to the great work of our Parish Secretary, Kim Gunter, who has picked up several things.  However, we are all doing more than we can probably handle, limiting our availability to do the things that would be most beneficial to our roles and the flourishing of our parish.  Therefore, we are looking to hire a new Business Manager.  I have it in my mind that an ideal candidate would be an intentional disciple who reflects these four pillars in how they live.  In a parish that is dedicated to helping our parishioners to grow as missionary disciples, those who work for the parish really need to have that same passion.  Technical skills are great, but far more valuable is one who brings with them a love of Christ and His Church, and a hunger to share the Good News of the Gospel through their support of the mission of the parish, hidden though it may be at times.

Since so many of you have been so good at praying those three Hail Mary’s each day for the parish, I would ask that as you offer the first one, which is for the parish in general, that you specifically ask that the Lord would help identify the person He most desires to fill this position of Business Manager.  

Father Alford     

Feast Day: September 22^nd

It was 57 years until the birth of Christ when Julius Caesar sent his best commander, Servius Galba, to seize the St. Bernard Pass from the Gauls (of course, he had a different name for it, the “Poeninus” Pass, a name possibly derived from the erroneous assumption Hannibal had used this pass to invade Italy during the Punic wars. Livy, an ancient historian, instead thinks this name derived from a local god worshiped by the Gallic tribes who lived there.) In any case, this was one of the few ancient routes between (what is now) Italy, France, and Switzerland, and it remained one of the few passes through those mountains until a tunnel was bored in 1964! Napoleon – 18 centuries after Augustus successfully took the pass and established a garrison and temple to Jupiter on the heights – would use this same route to send 40,000 troops against the Austrians in 1800.

Our story happens during the reign of Maximiam, co-emperor with the infamous Diocletian, who two centuries after Julius and Augustus called up a Legion from Thebes, in Egypt, to assist him in putting down a rebellion in Burgandy. These crack troops endured the march to the top of the pass, 8000 feet above sea level, and then stopped. St. Eucherius, a successor of the famous St. Ireneaus, as Bishop of Lyon, sets the scene for us about a century and a half after the fact:

Acaunus is almost 60 miles from the city of Geneva, and is 14 miles distant from Lake Lemannus into which the Rhone flows. The place itself is situated in a valley among the Alpine peaks and those travelling there find the path narrow and dangerous and the crossing difficult; for the hostile Rhone has left in the foothills of the rocky mountain a ridge which travellers can barely pass. When the narrows of the passes have been conquered and left behind, a not inconsiderable plain is suddenly revealed among the mountain cliffs. It was in this place that the holy legion had halted.

The Theban Legionnaires were Christians, and they would not offer sacrifice in honor of Maximiam, nor attack their fellow Christians in Gaul. Bp. Eucherius had himself braved the pass, seen the jagged peaks, the ruins of pagan temples, the Roman road and milemarker XXIII to visit the shrine built by the local Bishop Theodore to the martyrs of the Theban Legion. 

You see, the Christians of Thebes knew what it was to be persecuted for their faith. Their hometown was where the sensual god, Dionysus was born, as well as the demigod, Hercules, and the location of the legendary tale of Oedipus. Many of these men had endured previous persecutions, as had their fathers over the previous century. They would not worship the emperor, and they would not kill their fellow Christians. Maximian, Eucherius reports, commanded the legion to be decimated, one out of ten of the men executed for their disobedience, but they still would not budge. Eucherius imagines the response that these heroic soldiers, led by their commander, St. Maurice, sent back to Maximian:

… they sent to Maximianus as he still burned with madness a message as brave as it was pious, which is said to have run in the following vein: “We are your soldiers, O emperor, but God’s servants, nevertheless, a fact that we freely confess. We owe military service to you, but just living to Him; from you we have received the pay for our toil, but from Him we have received the origin of life. No way can we follow an emperor in this, a command for us to deny God our Father, especially since our Father is your God and Father, whether you like it or not. Unless we are being forced on a path so destructive that we give offence in this manner, we will still obey you as we have done hitherto; otherwise, we will obey Him rather than you. We offer our hands, which we think wrong to sully with the blood of innocents, against any enemy. Those right hands know how to fight against wicked enemies, not how to torture pious citizens. We remember to take arms for citizens rather than against citizens. We have always fought for justice, piety, and the welfare of the innocent. These have been the prices of our dangers hitherto. We have fought for faith; what faith will we keep with you at all, if we do not exhibit faith to our God?”

Maximian’s anger burned hotter and he ordered the execution of the entire cohort, sending other Roman armies to do the task. The Theban Christians laid down their swords and died by the hundreds. We still know dozens of their names – Alexander. Alverius. Candidus. Chiaffredo, Constantius… “Acts”, reports of their martyrdom, slowly trickled out to other Roman outposts by survivors. (It seems likely it was not the entire Legion that had refused the command, perhaps it was one cohort, one tenth of a legion, that had been detached, sent ahead, refused Maximian’s command, and were the ones executed. This also makes sense of Eucherius’ reference to the Legion being “decimated”, because that punishment had not been used for centuries, though if in fact one cohort was executed, that would be one-tenth of the entire Theban Legion.)

– Fr. Dominic holds in mind not only St. Eucherius’ thrilling record, nor just the image of all these men’s bones, but one other image: Nowadays, as this ancient road crests the mountains between Italy and Switzerland, between the fallen temples of Jupiter, and Mercury, and older gods … a cross now stands. On that cross is inscribed three simple words: “Deo Optimo Maximo”, “to the Best and Greatest God.” So lived the Theban Legion, so must we.

Having reflected on the various elements of the first sentence of our diocesan and parish mission statement, the following sentence is added to sum up the mission:

Accordingly, the community of Catholic faithful in this Diocese is committed to the discipleship and stewardship way of life as commanded by Christ Our Savior and as revealed by Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

What catches my attention in this sentence is the use of the phrase “way of life.”  Discipleship and stewardship is not meant to be a program or an initiative with a beginning and an ending.  Rather, it is intended to be a way of life that guides us in all of our thoughts, words, and actions.  Being a disciple and a steward is not something just for Mass on Sunday, but our entire lives are meant to be ordered to following Jesus and living according to His teachings, those revealed in both Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

It is important to come back to a fundamental point as it relates to our Catholic faith, namely that being a disciple is not first and foremost about observing rules.  Rather, Christianity is about being in relationship with a person, Jesus Christ.  We can see this in the account of the call of the Twelve as recounted in the Gospel of Mark:

He went up the mountain and summoned those whom He wanted and they came to Him. He appointed twelve [whom He also named apostles] that they might be with Him and He might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. (Mk 3:13-15)

Before sending them out, Jesus called the Apostles to “be with Him.”  This indicates the desire that Jesus has to first be a friend with us by our spending time with Him, especially in prayer, worship, and learning about Him.  From that closeness with Him, we come to know Him and love Him, as we discover just how much He loves us.  Then, from that place of friendship and awareness of that depth of His love, we willingly and joyfully go out, letting our lives be lived in union with Him and according to His will in everything.

There is a quote that I often think about when considering the call to make following Jesus more than just an occasional activity, but truly a way of life.  It is often attributed to the former Superior General of the Jesuits, Fathe Pedro Arrupe, SJ.  Perhaps I have used this quote before, but it is worth sharing again, as it speaks so beautifully about the call to make discipleship and stewardship a way of life:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, 
than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, 
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: September 15^th 

3 times he had already gone back to Italy. This time it was for good. The year was 1907, and Fr. Paulo Manna, a 35-year-old would-be missionary, was returning to his home country ill, a “failed missionary” as he called himself, to Burma (now called Myanmar). It had looked so hopeful. He had entered the Institute for the Foreign Missions at the age of 19, was ordained a priest at 22, and by 25 arrived as a missionary in the Eastern Burma territory of Toungoo, meeting his beloved Ghekkú tribe for the first time. 

A perusal of pictures from the Institute sketches the scene: a smiling, grizzled, priest clad in white is surrounded by the local children, grinning from ear to ear, everyone standing in front of a new school, or an ambulance, or collected in a makeshift choir. Now Fr. Paulo was leaving that all behind because of tuberculosis. He didn’t make the cut as a missionary. One year later, in 1908, he went on pilgrimage to Lourdes. He did not go asking for a physical healing, nor even for clarity on what to do next, he just asked for greater personal holiness and purity, and eternal salvation for himself and everyone he loved. Kneeling at Our Lady’s shrine, he surrendered the failure into God’s hands.

What was God intending for him? Where was this zeal for carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth supposed to carry him if not to the ends of the earth? He looked at what was already happening in the Church for the work of the missions. Three different major organizations were already founded: the Propaganda Fidei, which begun by the lay woman, Pauline Jaricot, in 1815, its first big initiative being a worldwide collection to support the Church in Louisiana (this being just a few years after the Louisiana Purchase, that second diocese of the United States was an overwhelming territory for Bp. Louis Dubourg to care for). There was also already the Society of St. Peter the Apostle, founded in 1889 by another lawwoman, Stephanie to support the training of local clergy in mission territory. And, lastly, there was the Association of the Holy Childhood, which collected alms from children in Christian lands to support their peers growing up in poverty throughout the world.

So you had organizations fundraising for missionary lands, training foreign priests, and caring for impoverished children. What remained? Years later this is how Paulo Manna described the breakthrough: 

We missionaries often wonder why the work of the conversion of the non-Christian world goes so slowly. We usually give various reasons to explain this painful fact, and in truth the problem may be considered from many angles, some of which do not concern our responsibility. But for the part that does concern us, and it is the main part, the problem has a very clear solution. To save the world, God in his infinite wisdom wanted to have co-workers. God does his part well: do the people called to help him do their part equally well? … The missionary problem has been, and still is almost ignored by the Christian people. Those who were interested in the past were always a minority, and it is extremely painful to see today too, although some progress has been made, how the enormous question is far from being understood and faced fully by clergy and people.

The world will not be converted by one great missionary, nor an organization that trains priests or funds schools, or builds hospitals. All that is splendid, and necessary, but the breakthrough that was needed was to make every Catholic in the world a missionary. To remind the Church, every single member of the Church, that they were also called to be missionaries in their own backyard. 

And so he began the fourth and final of the great Pontifical Mission Societies of the Church. Its work would be to cultivate in all priests, and laypeople, a sense of the missionary work of the Church, and the call to mission that was given to them. Three years later, in 1919, Pope Benedict XV penned an apostolic letter to the world dismembered by World War I, choosing as his theme Christ’s mandate to “proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Vatican II would also take up Manna’s insight, that every Christian is called to be a missionary in their own part of the world. What was the only pre-requisite to be a missionary? Vatican II would call it the “universal call to holiness”, but Manna described it decades before:

… neither brilliance nor prudence, nor courage have made [the great missionaries] great in our eyes and the eyes of God. They have been great, they have saved many souls, they have founded Churches, mainly because they were holy men, that is, spiritual men. This is the secret, the soul of their zeal, their perseverance and their success; this is the solemn teaching they have handed down to us and which I love to remind you of, so that our missionaries of today and those of tomorrow may always build upon it the first and essential reason for their own sanctification and the sanctification of the souls that are, and will be entrusted to them.

– Fr. Dominic often likes to engage those big questions: How to share the Gospel? How to save our country? How to make an impact? How to bring peace to our world? Bl. Manna tells us that all of those are answered by a simpler question: “What today is getting in the way of my holiness?” 

The final phrase of the first sentence of our diocesan and parish mission statement is likely the most important in the entire statement.  After committing ourselves to being “dedicated missionary disciples of the Risen Lord” and “steadfast stewards of God’s creation”, we express that we are a people “who seek to become saints.”

When considering this call to become a saint, I am reminded of a famous quote by the French Catholic author, Leon Bloy, who wrote: “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”  I do not know about you, but when I read that quote I am both encouraged and discouraged.  First of all, I am encouraged by reading this, as it kindles something that is within each and every one of us, that desire to be holy, to be close to God, to one day be among His elect in Heaven.  This desire was planted in our hearts on the day of our Baptism, and that desire is always at work in us.

At the same time, I cannot help feeling somewhat discouraged.  If you are like me, then there is the glaring reality that I am far from becoming a saint, at least as I consider who the saints are.  When we think of the saints, we think of the many saintly examples that the Church provides for us, sort of the Hall of Fame of Sanctity.  We look at figures like St. Paul, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Maximilan Kolbe, St. Teresa of Kolkata, just to name a few.  In them, we see heroic examples of courage, we see dedication to the poorest of the poor, we see holy souls who lived totally united to God.  Then, when we look at ourselves, we realize that we usually do not measure up, and we experience that discouragement.

About ten years ago, I had a chance encounter with a fairly new Catholic musician named Danielle Rose.  I looked up her music and was struck in particular with a song that she wrote, titled The Saint that is Just Me.  The song begins like this:

O I thought I’d be heroic and inspiring.
I wanted to offer you the greatest sacrifice.
Like all the saints who’d gone before me,
I tried to prove my love for you, and so to gain the prize.

After singing about how she tried to imitate a variety of saints, she sings these words that speak hope into that feeling of discouragement:

When you hung upon the cross looking at me,
You didn’t die so I would try to be somebody else.
You died so I could be the saint that is just me.

This is the saint that the Lord is calling us to be – not another St. Francis or St. Clare, not another St. Therese of St. John Paul II.  He is calling you and me to be “the saint that is just me.”  This means that whatever our circumstances may be in our lives, God is calling us to be a saint through our fidelity to where He has called us.  He will never deprive us of all of the graces we need, for He desires that “all be saved” (1 Tm 2:4), which means that He desires all to become saints.

Therefore, as we proclaim that the ultimate goal of our mission as a diocese, as a parish, and as individuals is to become saints, let us be filled with hope and joy, never falling into discouragement, thinking the road to holiness impossible, even when faced with our weaknesses.  Let us be encouraged by Jesus’s response to St. Peter when he asked the Lord about who could be saved.  Jesus said: “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” (Mt 19:26)

Father Alford     

Feast Day: September 8^th 

It was winter, in Trier Germany, in 1148, and Bernard of Clairvaux had brought to Pope Eugenius III a fascinating document that had been anxiously sent to him the prior year by a middle aged nun 60 miles East of them, at the Benedictine Monastery of Disibodenberg. It was a vivid, profound, iridescent presentation of the Christian vision of the world. Orthodox, but unique. Traditional – in the way it drew in the lines of thought from the great teachers of the faith down through the centuries – yet creative, and balanced, and beautiful. The nun had received little education, but had experienced an illumination of her mind by the grace of God and, after keeping the visions to herself for decades, but had now decided to begin writing them down and wanted to ask for the blessing of the Holy Father. 

To give you a greater glimpse of the mind of this woman, St. Hildegard of Bingen, I offer an image she wrote herself – of her own place in God’s work – to Pope Eugenius III after his encouragement of her continued writing and teaching: 

Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I ‘”A feather on the breath of God.”

But she was also a poet and hymnist. Consider just one  line from her hymn praising the Blessed Virgin, Ave, Generosa (and this is a translation! It is simple, yet lovely; sublime, and captivating!): 

Thus your womb held joy,
when harmony of all Heaven
chimed out from you,
because, Virgin, you carried Christ
whence your chastity blazed in God.
Your flesh has known delight,
like the grassland touched by dew
and immersed in its freshness:
so it was with you,
o mother of all joy

She was also an artist, drawing images so that other people could picture something of what she saw in her mind under God’s inspiration. See here a self-portrait of sorts, included in her most famous theological work, the Scivias (it was the first part of this work that had been sent to Pope Eugenius III by means of Bernard of Clairvaux), in which she tries to depict her experience of receiving these insights from God (depicted with tongues of fire, though her eyes are still able to see, and her hand to write them down). (This image is from the original Wiesbaden Codex which was made at the end of Hildegard’s life, which was actually lost in 1945 at the end of WWII, then discovered to have been confiscated by the Soviets, who were then tricked out of it when some scholars swapped it for a similar looking book … I kid you not!) 

But Hildegard was not just visionary, and composer, and preacher, and iconographer, and mother superior of that community at Disibodenberg, and Doctor of the Church, AND someone who seriously called out the political leaders of her day both secular and religious (she once wrote to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who was meddling again in the election of a pope, “I see you like a little boy or some madman living before the Living Eyes.”)!!

All of this is amazing, but on top of this, she was also the first person in the world to fully articulate the Christian understanding of the full sexual complementarity of men and women. That men and women have equal dignity AND meaningful differences, and we can hold onto both truths (the world long struggled with the first truth, and in our day struggles with the second one. Hildegard nails both, and exemplifies both in her own uniquely feminine, but undoubtably gutsy, life). 

What has all this to do with St. Disibod?? He lived 500 years before Hildegard, had a miserable go at trying to a bishop in Ireland, so he traveled to Germany and built a little monastery near Bingen, at the confluence of the Nahe and Glan rivers. That little hermitage, which grew into a monastery during his life, some centuries later would be a bustling monastic powerhouse, with orders of men and women there. And there a little girl, having extraordinary visions, would enter the convent as a teenager, and grow up to change (and challenge) the way the world saw women a thousand years after. 

Such is the impact of a failed missionary who was faithful to the prodding of the Holy Spirit to try instead to start a monastery.

– Fr. Dominic is often discouraged when some project that seems important falls apart, or when the project at hand today doesn’t look promising. St. Disibod couldn’t understand his failure in Ireland wither, or why God was sending him to start a monastery in Germany. His job, and ours, is to just keep following the Lord anyway.

Returning to our unpacking of our diocesan and parish mission statement, the next phrase to consider is where we express our desire, as missionary disciples, to be “steadfast stewards of God’s creation.”  

In the early 1990’s, the Bishops of the United States issued a Pastoral Letter on Stewardship, Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response.  In that document, they reflected on the image of stewardship by citing the Parable of the Talent in Matthew 24:14-30.  The story is about a man going on a journey who “called his servants and entrusted to them his property.” (Mt 25:14)  He gave each of them a different number of talents.  Upon his return, he commended those servants who used the talents entrusted to them, and he punished the one who did nothing.  Here is an important point the document makes on this parable:

The silver pieces of this story stand for a great deal besides money. All temporal and spiritual goods are created by and come from God. That is true of everything human beings have: spiritual gifts like faith, hope, and love; talents of body and brain; cherished relationships with family and friends; material goods; the achievements of human genius and skill; the world itself. One day God will require an accounting of the use each person has made of the particular portion of these goods entrusted to him or her. (p. 20)

The first thing that a steward needs to acknowledge is the primacy of God for everything.  All that we have is a gift that has been entrusted to us by God, and He is asking us to be good stewards of those gifts.  As Christians, that stewardship is expressed in generously sharing our gifts with others, not just clinging to them selfishly as though they were our exclusive property.

Perhaps one of the most valuable, and seemingly scarce, gifts is our time.  We are pulled in so many different directions that when we are asked to consider giving an extra hour or so, we are hesitant to do so.  In fact, we would just as soon give an extra $20 to a cause than take an hour of our valuable time to volunteer for that same cause.  We often conclude that our time is more valuable, and that somebody else will step up to fill the need.  We sadly are aware of the fact that when this dynamic exists, a small number of people are left to do the majority of the work, resulting in their getting burned out more quickly, when had everybody been willing to be generous with a little bit of their time, the burden would have been more equally distributed.

Speaking of our stewardship of time, the Church asks us for an hour each week to set aside to worship Him at Sunday Mass.  If we acknowledge that all the time that we have comes from Him, how can we possibly not want to give Him that hour of thanksgiving and prayer each Sunday?  If we commit to this most fundamental form of stewardship, we will be well on our way to being open to being good stewards of all of the others gifts with which the Lord has blessed us, and be ever more willing to share them generously for the good of others.

Father Alford