Feast Day: September 1^st 

Anybody know the name Bill Penfield? How about David Werder? Both these fine gentlemen, Bill in the 1930s, and David in the 1980s, have the distinction of setting endurance records in the practice of pole sitting. I suspect that name tells you most of what you need to know, but for everyone’s greater knowledge, pole-sitting is the attempt to sit on top of a tall pole for as long as possible to set a record (sometimes also to make a point). Bill sat on a pole in Strawberry Point, Iowa for 51 days in 1930, only coming down when a thunderstorm threatened his life. (Happily, though his effort was curtailed, he did manage to take the crown from the real pioneer of pole-sitting of that era, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, who had recently defended his own title with a 49-day sit in 1929.)

But those guys have nothing on David Werder, who in November, 1982 climbed up a pole at an appliance center in Clearwater, Washington – he was appalled by the cost of gasoline which had reached 99 cents a gallon – and proceeded to remain on top of that pole for 439 days, 11 hours, and 6 minutes. This meant he spent the entirety of 1983 on top of said pole, though, sad to say, my research indicates that gas only dropped a few cents during that time. I guess he saved plenty of pennies by not driving that whole time…

But neither Bill, or David, can hold a candle to St. Simeon Stylite. That title, “stylite”, actually means he was a pole-sitter of the saintly sort – there was a handful of hermits who endured life on top of pillars for periods of time in the age of the desert fathers, earning for themselves that surname. But Simeon took it to another level. Born in 390, a generation or two after Constantine legalized Christianity around the empire (with worship of Christ quickly becoming the official religion of the empire and gaining huge swaths of the population to the fold), he grew up in the kingdom of Cilicia, in modern day Turkey, and was a shepherd. Around the age of 13 he was listening to (or perhaps reading) the Beatitudes, and was struck to the heart by Our Lord’s words. He left behind his family and occupation and joined a monastery. 

Now, we must take a moment to recall that monasteries, in large part, were an attempt to find a way to carry forward the courage and heroism of the martyrs into an age when few places anymore were out to kill Christians. In the early Church, martyrs were considered Christians par excellence, and the stories of their sacrifice and faithfulness, alongside of the Church’s unprecedented concern for the poor and sick and unimportant, was the primary catalyst for all of those conversions to Christ. The hermits and early monks carried the battle that was waged in the arenas and amphitheaters of the empire into their own hearts and minds as they left behind every earthly comfort and followed Christ in the desert. They would endure not the beasts of the coliseum but the relentless temptations of the Evil One. 

Before we even get back to Simeon, it’s helpful to recognize what is happening here. These monks left behind the distractions and cares and comforts of the world, and this means they could reach extraordinary depths of prayer and asceticism BUT it also entailed directly engaging the battle for Christ in their mind. 

Jesus never said anything about sitting on pillars, but the first words He proclaimed to the world were “repent and believe in the Gospel.” We all love the Gospel I think, but are we willing to do the prerequisite act of repenting? That command, “repent”, literally means “change your mind” [metanoeite], and in their totality. To listen to no voices except the Lord’s, to accept no truth except His, to give no space to any other authority. The rest of the New Testament is relentless on this point: Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Ephesians: 4:22-24: “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Philippians 2:5: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”

St. Simon Stylite spent 37 years on his pillar, seeking not acclaim, but solitude; not desiring any earthly accomplishment but precisely to drive from his mind every voice that was not that of Christ. May he intercede for us that we would know how to similarly engage that battle for ourselves!

– Fr. Dominic does not have a pillar to spend his days upon … but he spends a lot of time in the car and would probably have more the mind of Christ if he left some of those hours empty, expecting the Lord to do great things rather than filling them with noise (or complaining about them).

The longest continuous responsibility that I have had as a priest is serving our diocese as the Director of the Office for Vocations.  In fact, all but two of my thirteen years as a priest has had me involved in vocations ministry.  Over those eleven years, it has been my experience that there are few other causes that people in our diocese are united around than praying for vocations.  We all know how much priests are needed for the continued sacramental life of our parishes, so praying for men to consider a call to the priesthood is a pretty easy ask.  In particular, the people of our diocese love praying for our seminarians, those men who have discerned that God might be calling them to the priesthood, and who have taken a step in faith to enter the seminary.  Our seminarians share regularly how supported they feel because of the prayers and other forms of encouragement offered by the good people of our diocese.  

Regarding seminarians, there are few things that make a parish prouder than when one of their own enters into the seminary.  Here at the Cathedral, we are actually blessed to have two of our current crop of seminarians who call our parish home.  First of all, we have Joseph Tuttle, a name that many of you probably do not recognize.  Joseph is actually originally from Rockford, but he happens to be Father Dominic Rankin’s cousin!  When he discerned the possibility of joining our diocese, we wanted to give him a parish with which to be affiliated, and with Father Rankin living here at the Cathedral, it makes sense for him to call this home.  You may see Joseph around during some of the breaks from St. Meinrad Seminary in Southern Indiana, where he attends.  He has been assigned at different parishes in the diocese the past two summers to get him some more exposure to the diocese.  He is beginning his third year of formation, and God-willing, will be ordained a priest in 2028.

Our other seminarian is Steven Kehoe, a name that might sound a little more familiar if you pay close attention to our bulletin.  For the past several months, Steven has served as our bookkeeper.  He has also been doing a variety of custodial duties as well.  Steven spent several months in a religious order and after leaving, began discerning a call to the priesthood.  Knowing that entering seminary would still be several months off, he was looking for a job and his skills fit our needs perfectly!  Steven would begin just about every day here by attending the 7 am Mass, usually with his parents, Janet and Steve.  When the workday was over, he would usually head back to the church to pray, and then would return home a little before 6 pm, usually with his younger sister, Rose, who usually attends the 5:15 pm Mass.  Although we are happy for Steven that he is beginning seminary formation, he will be missed here in the office, as he made a big impact on the staff in the short time he was with us.  Steven is just beginning seminary, though he already has a college degree.  He is looking at about six years of formation, so God-willing, he would be ordained a priest in 2030.  He is also attending St. Meinrad Seminary.

So, I invite you to continue to pray for all of our seminarians, and especially for Joseph and Steven.  As the Cathedral parish, we have a lot to be proud of already, being the Mother Church of the diocese, and our (healthy) pride is multiplied with these two men from our parish, preparing, God-willing, to be priests one day.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: August 18^th 

This week, having ran up the word count and not finished the story last time, we return to the young priest, Fr. Alberto Hurtado, as he began his ministry to the young and poor in Santiago Chile in the 1930s. It is important to note that he didn’t try to do all the Lord had put on his heart alone. He could have just ran back and forth from class, to the streets, to spiritual direction, and crash into bed having emptied himself in all of it. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not how Jesus did the Father’s will. Jesus called others around him, into friendship with Him, and from there into the mission given to Him by God the Father. So also the first disciples, sent out two by two, and by most saints since. And so also, Padre Hurtado who in the late 1930s began to collect his pupils around him.

Some he went deep, offering spiritual direction and directing retreats for groups of the boys. As it was for Alberto in his younger days, so also for these men it was a profound gift. They learned to pray, to discern, to strive for heroic sanctity. Some would go on to be priests, others good Christian fathers and leaders in their communities. The seeds planted by a priest willing to really befriend them would impact the world for the better for decades to come. But Padre Hurtado didn’t just engage them one-by-one or in small groups, he also enlisted whole cohorts of them into another Sodality of Our Lady. He taught them the catechism, and taught them how to teach the catechism to those stuck on the streets. So it was that his two loves – for the poor, and the young – was combined and multiplied as all of them grew in wisdom and grace. 

And those studies and intelligence that he had been given he was about to unleash in a much bigger way in his pursuit to love the least brothers and sisters of Christ. In 1936, he wrote “The Priesthood Crisis in Chile”, depicting starkly the many little (and poor) towns who had no priest to bring them the sacraments. He also pointed to the dismal lack of formation for catechists, with many men enlisting to teach the faith but few of them receiving the formation they would need for that (much less to discern becoming a priest). For the leaders of the country (and the Church, the political party having a strong sway over the Church hierarchy) this was an unwelcome message. These were problems in the little places far from the important, prosperous, and politically impactful cities. 

And Hurtado wasn’t done. In 1941, he published “Is Chile a Catholic Country?” For a country that was 94% Catholic, his answer – “not yet” – was shocking. But he pointed to the poor on every street and asked the provocative question: If people are starving, hurting, and abandoned, can we really say we are Christian? Or, similarly, if only 9% of women, and 3.5% of men, regularly attend Mass and receive Holy Communion, was Chile really Catholic? 

In 1946 his most famous message was sent: he bought a green pickup truck. The backstory was that a year or two earlier he had encountered one of his beggars on a cold night, shivering on the streets, with no where to find shelter. A few days later he was leading a retreat for women when he spontaneously began talking about that man: 

Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many of the suffering poor, sick and dispossessed, and people thrown out of their miserable slums; Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many years without a mother’s kiss on their foreheads . . . Christ is without a home! Shouldn’t we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children? “What you do to the least of me, you do to me,” Jesus said.

Soon after, with those women’s generosity, the first Hogar de Cristo (Home of Christ) was begun. It was modeled after Fr. Flanagan’s Boys Town in Nebraska, though over time he would open ones for children, then women, and then men. Some were trade schools, some rehabilitation centers, all of them offering shelter and food, but the deeper nourishment of mind and soul as well. Over the next 6 years 850,000 children alone received help as the homes opened across the country. 

As for the truck, as he drove it around picking up the suffering and impoverished, it became an emblem of this crazy wonderful priest, and the crazy wonderful life that Christ means to bring to everyone through His Church. 

In 1952 he was stricken with intense pain and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In every newspaper and in broadcast media the entire country watched his decline. Throughout it all, having been faithful to the Lord in so many ways, the priest only said “I am content Lord.”

– Fr. Dominic is inspired this week to risk bigger things for Jesus. What could happen if we all simply did God’s will each day? What would happen if we lived our lives like a saint? What if our vehicle was known across the country as an emblem of Christ? 

The universal call to missionary discipleship, as I mentioned last week, can seem a little intimidating.  We perhaps have in our mind what a missionary might look like, or at least somebody who publicly proclaims the faith.  We think of people who teach the faith and might think: “I cannot do that.”  You might listen to a priest or deacon preach at Mass and think: “I could never do that.”  But those are only a few expressions of missionary discipleship.

I recently heard Dr. Edward Sri, a well-known Catholic speaker and teacher, use an analogy that I find helpful in this regard.  He described the experience of having seen a good movie.  When we go to our friends, we are eager to share our experience with them.  We are not film critics or experts in cinematography, but that does not prevent us from sharing what we liked about the movie, inviting our friends to go see that movie as well.  The same is true with sharing our faith.  We do not need to have an advanced degree in theology to share our faith.  Pope Francis makes this point in the quote that I shared last week.  The pertinent line is as follows: “indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 120)

Before proposing some practical ideas on how to be a missionary disciple, I want to suggest a possible reason why we might be hesitant to share the faith.  I think we can find the reason in the very next line from the Holy Father in the above-mentioned quote: “Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus.”  I note the use of the phrase: “to the extent.”  One of the principal reasons why we can be hesitant to share the Gospel is because we have not let the love of God in Christ Jesus penetrate our hearts.  Sure, we know that God is love, and we will even be willing to acknowledge that God loves us.  But so many of us have hardly encountered that love in a personal and profound way, such that our lives are changed by it.  We go to Mass, we say our prayers before meals, we may even read the Bible or pray the Rosary, but that does not necessarily equate to personally encountering the love of Christ.  He can and does offer that gift to us through those means, but He will never force Himself on us.  He asks for hearts open to receiving His love and letting that love penetrate to the very core of our being.

Some of you reading this have indeed encountered that type of love from the Lord, and thanks be to God for that!  But some of you reading this may have not truly encountered that love yet.  The good news is that there is hope!  We are never too old or inexperienced to have His love surprise us in a powerful way.  Opening ourselves to encounter God’s love for us is therefore the first and fundamental step in beginning to live missionary discipleship.  Practically speaking, this means taking time each day to open ourselves to encounter that love.  We call this prayer.  We can continue to recite our normal prayers, read the Bible, and go to Mass.  But we need some time each day to come face to face with Our Lord, to be aware of His look of love upon us, and to enter into communion with Him, sharing our hearts with Him, so that we can be more open to the sharing of His heart with us, which is always taking place, just waiting to be received.  As the saying goes: “You cannot give what you do not have.”  We cannot share the Good News that Christ wants to share with others if we have not experienced and are convinced that the Good News applies to us.

So if missionary discipleship seems difficult, perhaps that is a good gauge of where you are in your personal relationship with Jesus.  Have no fear if where you are at is not where you would like to be.  Ask the Lord to open your heart more to His love for you, and that love, once received, cannot be kept to ourselves.  Like the experience of seeing a great movie, we will not be able to wait to share with others the goodness of God’s love and His desire to deepen that love with all of His children.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: August 18^th 

Alberto was only 4 years old, the year was 1905, when the news reached his mother, brother, and he that his father had died. The loss ransacked the life of the little boy. Not only was he now bereft his father, but soon the family’s home as well, and then even the stability of his mother. Alberto and his brother would spend their childhood going from one home to another, cared for as best his relatives could, but deep in his heart he didn’t really have a place, or family, to call home. 

As a young man he was given a scholarship at the Jesuit College in Santiago, San Ignacio. It was a prestigious all-boys school in the capital of Chile, some would see it as a chance for the young man to escape poverty, but Alberto was not moved to flee the sufferings of his youth. He joined the Sodality of Our Lady and began volunteering at a parish and school in one of the poorest parts of Santiago. He would help in the office and library and every Sunday afternoon would visit the poor and destitute in the slums around the Parish of Our Lady of Andacollo (the parish named after a little statue of Our Lady discovered by an indigenous Chilean near the mines of Andacollo in the mid-1500s. Feast day: December 26^th).

As Alberto continued his studies at the Law School at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile he continued to serve the poor every week while also discerning a vocation to the Jesuits. He had a deep desire for marriage, but an ever deeper yearning to care for many more than he could in a natural family. He had begun spiritual direction – a beautiful step to make when in a time of deep discernment – and received the counsel of his spiritual director to hold off on entering an order while still caring for his mother and brother. (He was at that time going to classes and trying to complete his studies in the mornings, and then work various jobs in the afternoons and evenings to provide for his family, and then giving his weekends to visit the poor and those abandoned on the streets!) So it was that this call from God, to give his life for those in need, continued to grow. His spiritual director during these years recalled about Alberto: “He was incapable of seeing pain, nor indeed any need without seeking a way to solve it.” 

Then in 1922, obligatory military service threw a curveball into everything. At this point, it is important to ask ourselves how we would have acted under similar circumstances. I know for myself that when obstacles and delays crash into my plans, or hopes, or attempts to follow the Lord, I often succumb to frustration, anger, or at least discouragement. It is tempting to throw up our hands and just give up on the bigger dreams and call of love. We don’t know how Alberto handled all of this, but his perseverance through the hindrances that would rise up later in his life tells us at least that the Lord taught him an important lesson in perseverance in charity during these tough years. 

In 1923 he earned his law degree and finally entered the Jesuit order. For some, a religious vocation means stability – think of Benedictines (who make a vow of stability to live their life in a particular monastery) or Carmelites, or Poor Clares and other cloistered orders who similarly dedicate themselves to a common life in a particular place. Jesuits are sort of the opposite of this. They commit their lives to live wherever their order, and above all wherever the Holy Father, sends them. Such was the share in Christ’s poverty that Alberto embraced again. But he also discovered in this a relentless joy that could come from no one except Jesus. “”Here you have me, finally a Jesuit,” he wrote to a close friend, “as happy and content as one can be on this earth!” 

He completed his novitiate and was then sent for two years to Cordoba, Argentina studying humanities. Then it was off to Barcelona, Spain to study philosophy and theology, though in 1931 the Jesuits were suppressed in that country and so he had to move on to Louvain, Belgium. There he completed a doctorate in pedagogy and psychology in 1935 having been ordained a priest in 1933. Again, we pause at this point to ask where the heart of the newly ordained Padre Hurtado was after 12 years of ever more advanced studies, so many travels and extraordinary experiences? Well, the first thing he did when he got back to Chile was to begin teaching religion at San Ignacio, pedagogy at the Catholic University of Santiago, and – as it turns out, most important to him – teaching catechism to the poor. He still loved the young, and the poor, more than anything.

Fr. Dominic has also had his fair share of travels and studies in his own path to the priesthood. This is both a blessing, and a challenge, and Fr. Hurtado life reminds him to think back to the “first love” that carried him into seminary. Perhaps all of us this week could recall where our heart was at 18 or 20. What were our dreams then? How had the Lord fashioned our hearts back when we were young? Have we given up on that call or just let it wither as the years have gone by or allowed life’s blessings and burdens to stretch and grow our hearts?

Over the past decade or so, one of the most popular phrases in the Catholic Church has been “missionary discipleship.”  Because of this, there should be no surprise that this term was included in the mission statement adopted by our diocese and, by extension, our parish.

Jesus has invited all Christians to be His disciples, and that word is worth a brief consideration.  A disciple is one who learns from a master, following their example, and letting the master’s teachings guide their thinking and acting.  The first disciples of Jesus spent time with Him to do just this.  Since His Ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit, this discipleship is accomplished through reflecting on His words in the Scriptures, learning His truths more deeply through the teaching of the Church, and letting His life be lived in us and through us through the grace of the sacraments.

Being a disciple, however, is more than just learning and following the Master.  After their initial formation, Jesus sent His closest disciples, the Apostles, to go and spread this message far and wide: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Mt 28:19–20)

Nearly two-thousand years later, this same expectation of spreading the Good News of the Gospel pertains to those who are disciples of Christ.  Before the Second Vatican Council, there was a sense (though not really officially the Church’s teaching) that the missionary work of spreading the Gospel belonged to priests and consecrated religious.  But the Council presented a robust view of discipleship as it applies to all Christians, that we are all called to have a missionary aspect to our discipleship.  How this looks will vary based on our state in life, but nevertheless, we cannot truly claim to be living discipleship if we are not also missionary in some way.  Pope Francis articulates this in a compelling way, in words that have become the heart of this resurgence in the notion of missionary discipleship in the Church:

In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries”, but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.” (Evanglii Gaudium, 120)

Perhaps this sounds a little intimidating, but it does not have to be so.  In next weekend’s bulletin, we will explore this topic a little more, especially as it applies in our daily lives, the special missionary field to which we are called.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: August 11^th   

Let us begin by heading to Rome on May 25^th, 1802. In the wider world, we are shortly after Napoleon’s concordat with Pius VII (in 1801, allowing Catholicism to be practiced again in France) and shortly before the same Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to Thomas Jefferson (in 1803, doubling the landmass of our country). We step down into one of the most ancient, and most revered, of the catacombs, that named after St. Pricilla, North and West of the ancient city where the bones of several early popes and our friends St. Praxedes and St. Pudentiana were all buried before being reinterred elsewhere in the 900s. A group of workers are working in the old and empty tunnels and erupt in excited shouts: there is a small shelf-grave that appeared unopened. Sure enough, behind a set of three tiles inscribed with the ancient letters “LUMENA PAX TE CUM FI” and symbols of arrows, a lance, anchor, and lily (or flame), were found the bones of a teenage girl, her skull fractured, and a glass vial with the residue of what appeared to be blood.

Archeologists are fairly certain that the bones are those of a young maiden, though the vial and head injury are not certain indicators of martyrdom (though that assumption is a sensible one). The letters and symbols do indicate that this is a tomb from the second century, BUT (crucially), the tiles are actually in the wrong order. They should read “Pax te cum Filumena” (“Peace be with you Philomena”), and with the way they are written, we can tell that the reason they are out of order is because at some point they were taken off (a different?) grave and placed over this one.

In any case, the relics were translated a few years later (June 8^th, 1805) to the church of Mungano (near Naples), and later (in 1827) that church was given the earthen tiles with the inscription as well. People began to visit the shrine of the little saint and reports of miracles quickly grew. Popular accounts record that a 10 year old boy, crippled and unable to walk, stood up during the consecration of one of the Masses celebrated in the octave after Philomena’s relics were brought to Mungano. On the same day, during vespers, a two year old little girl, blind from smallpox, received her eyesight after her mother put some of the oil from the lamp above Philomena’s tomb on her eyes. And then a man who did not believe, seeing the miracle, spontaneously received the gift of faith and offered to fund the construction of a chapel to the martyr! More certified accounts record a lawyer from Naples, D. Alessandro Serio, who suffering from an internal illness came to Philomena’s tomb in 1814 hoping for a cure. The illness actually grew markedly worse and he seemed to be on the brink of death, and worse, was incapacitated to such an extent that he could not make a good confession. His wife, still asking for Philomena’s intercession, brought a picture of the saint to him, begging that at least he would recover enough to receive the last sacraments. His pain disappeared and the disease with it. 

The account of these and other miracles led the Congregation of Rites in 1834, to approve Philomena’s veneration during Mass in the region around Mungano. Pope Gregory XVI confirmed (on January 30, 1837) that preliminary permission after having met the paralyzed, and desperately ill, Pauline Jaricot, who returned to Rome after her visit to Philomena’s tomb in 1834 entirely cured. She it was who carried a relic of Philomena back to her home country of France and gave it to a certain Curé de Ars, who was said to have converses with the martyred saint in his prayer, and who routinely credited St. Philomena with marvelous cures of his own health and others (this also handily kept that attention from being given to himself!)

But here’s the hard truth that this whole story gives to us as well. August 11^th was only ever a local feast-day for Philomena. And the possibility of her martyrdom, and all these miracles, and the saints and mystics who loved and spoke so highly of their little “Lover of Light” (as Philomena’s name means), are not the same as canonization. Canonization is an infallible proclamation by the Pope that someone is in heaven, a saint before God whom we can all ask their intercession. No Pope has ever infallibly declared such about the young woman who was buried in the catacombs of Pricilla. In fact, on January 30^th, 1961, Pope St. John XXIII decided to remove St. Philomena from even the local calendars where she had been venerated. That doesn’t mean she’s not a saint, it just means that the Church has not done the careful work to verify the miracles attributed to her (and, considering that saints are canonized also to hold their lives up for our veneration; with no solid historical details of Philomena’s life, it is unlikely that she could be formally canonized.)

– Fr. Dominic is just as disappointed as any of you by this (and other places where the Church’s slowness and caution challenges my own devotions). But here’s a key lesson for all of us: Healings are real whether proven or not. Saints are in heaven whether canonized or not. BUT ALSO, no devotion or personal affection should trump our fidelity to Christ’s Body, the Church, and Christ’s vicar, our Holy Father. Docility to the Church’s way of praying are higher goods than my own pious preferences!

The year 2020 was a year that many people would like to forget, given all of the concerns,  confusion, and complexity surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic that was impacting almost every aspect of our lives.  In the early months of the pandemic, this parish had to experience a pretty major change, the departure of your Rector, Father Christopher House, and your Parochial Vicar, Father Michael Friedel.  As public masses were just resuming, you all had to get used to several new faces, with me assuming the role as your new Rector, and welcoming two newly ordained priests, Father Dominic Vahling and Father Peter Chineke.

Over the past four years, we have come a LONG way in our society and in our parish, even as it relates to the priests who have been assigned here.  Just over a month ago, we said farewell to Father Paul Lesupati, who had spent two years with us, and we welcomed our two new Parochial Vicars, Father Pius Nwiyi and Father Daniel McGrath.  This week, we will bid farewell to Father Dominic Vahling, who concludes his four years here at Cathedral to head off to Ottawa, Canada to complete his studies in Canon Law.

I had mentioned that 2020 was a year that many would like to forget, but for me, it is a year that I will remember fondly, especially because it began a new chapter in my priesthood.  Over and over again, I tell people that one of the greatest graces of being here at Cathedral is the household of priests with whom I get to live and minister.  As Father Vahling prepares to leave, there is a certain amount of sadness, as my entire time here has been with him.  He has been a great priest to live with, and how he has lived his early years of priesthood has been an inspiration to me in many ways, and I have no doubt that I am a better priest for the time I have spent with him.  As his first pastor, I pray that I have been helpful to him as he begins what will undoubtedly be a life in which he will bring many people closer to Christ.  I have found in Father Vahling a good friend and I will be forever grateful to God for our years together here at Cathedral.

One experience stands out as particularly memorable.  In January 2021, we were forced to enter a 2-week quarantine due to close contact with somebody who had tested positive for COVID-19.  We were confined to our floor in the Rectory, but we certainly made the best of it.  Each morning at 7 am, we would celebrate Mass together.  In the evening, we would pray Evening Prayer together, have dinner, then maybe watch something together, concluding the day by praying Night Prayer.  Individually, we each made the best use of our time, but those times we spent together helped make the isolation that much more manageable and even, I daresay, enjoyable!

I will also miss having a “birthday buddy” in the house, as we share the same birthday, though I am 15 years older than he is.  Being a twin, I am no stranger to sharing a birthday, so I am grateful to have another person with whom to celebrate my birthday, especially since my twin sister lives in Texas and we only see one another once a year or so.

Please join me in wishing Father Vahling well in this next year in Canada.  I know that you join me in giving thanks to God for the gift of his presence among us these past four years.  Let us entrust him to our Blessed Mother, the patroness of our parish, that she will continue to pray for him, and keep him close to her Son, inspiring him to do likewise for the countless souls he will touch through his ministry in the years to come.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: August 4^th

St. John Vianney usually, rightly, calls to mind images of a wizened priest in a violet stole. Something like Mother Teresa mixed with Padre Pio, a kindly character whose intense preaching, fervent fasting, and long hours in the confessional have been softened by the two centuries since. 

History gives us our first aid in recovering the actual sanctity of the Cure D’Ars. Take yourself back to 1776 in Philadelphia. 56 men sign the Declaration of Independence, they are the heroes that capture the minds and hearts of 13 colonies, inspiring them to fight for freedom. A decade later, in a small town in rural France, the 4^th child of Matthieu and Marie Vianney was born, and was baptized Jean Marie that same day. Three years later the French Revolution begins, with their Catholic faith and a bloodbath commencing in pursuit of liberty, egality, and fraternity. Hundreds of priests would be killed, and tens of thousands of them would be forced out of the country over the coming decade. His parents, shepherds, would do what they could to care for those impoverished, persecuted, or mourning and their faith impelled them to travel far to find Masses celebrated in secret. At the age of 13, the boy Jean received his first Communion in the kitchen of a farmhouse, receiving into his own body for the first time the Body of His Savior. The windows were covered, because if they had been found, they would have been killed. 

Blessedly, the persecutions abated, but the heroism of the priests who had stayed behind and risked their necks indelibly inspired the young man. By the age of 20 he wanted himself to become a priest. Two obstacles presented themselves: he was woefully behind in his studies, only now beginning his formal education. The shortfall would never be fully overcome. Secondly, just a few years into his studies he was drafted into Napoleon’s army. No exemption for the ecclesiastical student. While reporting for duty he became sick, fell behind, was incorporated into another group of soldiers only to fall behind again. Following a fellow young man who promised to catch them both up, he instead found himself in a company of deserters hiding in the mountains through winter. Only in 1810 were all the deserters throughout the country granted amnesty and he was able to resume his studies. 

The years of seminary slowly flowed by, with Vianney’s ignorance constantly calling into question his capacity to be a priest. Still, his home pastor, Fr. Balley, kept interceding on his behalf, pointing out the piety and perseverance of the young man, and on August 12^th, 1815 Vianney was ordained a priest and became Fr. Balley’s assistant. He continued in that role for 3 years and was then sent to the village (only now famous) of Ars. 230 souls lived there, though none were waiting for him when he arrived. Few came to Mass on Sunday. Work and fun had a bigger place in their hearts than God. It’s true that the gates of hell will never prevail against the entire Church, but they had prevailed against the Church in France. 

And here’s the thing, it wasn’t some gallant St. Paul or St. Francis Xavier who marched into the village that day. Vianney’s first homilies fell flat. There wasn’t an instantaneous turnaround. Multiple times over the coming years the beleaguered pastor walked out of town having given up on converting people back to the faith. But slowly, unperceptively, God’s grace was molding the heart of the ignorant, shepherd boy/deserter and transforming the hearts of the inhabitants of Ars. He began preaching without notes, simply expressing in his own simple way the truth of the Gospel. His piety grew into an all-out dedication to Christ. He ate little, endured the attacks of Satan at night, and sat in the unheated and un-airconditioned confessional for hours. And somehow, slowly, his daily martyrdom drew others back to God. 

Hit the QR Code inserted in this article for more quotations from St. John Vianney on the Eucharist. They are all beautiful. I will leave you with this simple one: “I throw myself at the foot of the Tabernacle like a dog at the foot of his Master.” A dog accomplishes little, knows little, earns little …  yet expects (and receives) everything from its master. A dog takes delight in the simplest gift of attention or play. A dog, without counting the cost, gives itself with abandon to the whims and for the joy of its master.

What if we did the same to Our Lord Jesus in the Tabernacle? What if we didn’t consider whether we had anything to give, but simply gave ourselves, and received Him? What if we didn’t go looking to find joy anywhere else but just stayed at His feet and listened for His voice? What if every little gift God gave us we received with the utter delight, the frenzy of freedom seen in a happy dog?

– Fr. Dominic just came back from the Eucharistic Congress. One line I keep coming back to is this: “Act like a saint.” How would John Vianney pray right now? How would St. Paul preach this Sunday? How would Mother Teresa love this person? What if you, or I, lived like that? 

The mission statement for our diocese and our parish commits us to building a community of disciples, but not just any kind of community.  The mission statement uses three different adjectives to describe this community:  fervent, intentional, and dedicated.   Being intentional and dedicated are fairly easy to understand, so perhaps we can start by considering the word fervent.

A definition I found on Dictionary.com defines fervent in this way: “1.  having or showing great warmth or intensity of spirit, feeling, enthusiasm, etc.; ardent:  2. hot; burning; glowing.”  The word comes from a Latin word which means “boiling.”  As we read that definition, perhaps we focus on the phrase “intensity of spirit.”  As I consider this definition, the first image that comes to mind for me is St. John the Baptist.  He was a fiery preacher, dressing in a strange manner, eating locusts and wild honey, and boldly preaching a fiery message of repentance.  That is certainly one example of what it means to be fervent.  But I think we could also say that both Mary and Joseph were fervent.  When we think of them, we don’t quite get the same image.  St. Joseph does not have any of what he said recorded in the Scriptures, and Mary has very little recorded.  But because they were so close to the Lord and filled with His love, they were no doubt fervent in a different way, a way that was no doubt warm, radiating peace, but not in a way that coming close to them would leave you feeling burned!  The Church needs Christians who are fervent, and that looks different for different people.  What should be common should be that we all have hearts that burn with the love for the Lord and are eager to share that in a manner that fits our state in life.  Perhaps we do not feel particularly fervent when it comes to our faith.  The best way to “turn up the heat” is through prayer and the sacraments.  Here we encounter the God who is love, and by drawing close to His Sacred Heart, our hearts will begin to burn more brightly with love for Him, which will necessarily then overflow in our desire to share that love with others.

Having considered what it means to be fervent, let me say a few words about being intentional and dedicated.  A word that comes to mind that encapsulates these two words is that of being committed.  When we commit to something, we make a decision to take a certain path, and having taken that path, we stay on it.  Think of how this works with one who wants to be in better shape.  One can wish to be more healthy, but until an intentional decision is made to actually do something about that desire, and then to stick with the plan, it remains just an idea.  So too with being a disciple.  We like the idea of being a follower of Jesus, of being called a disciple, but in order to actually be one, a commitment needs to be there, one that is specific in how it will be lived out.  When difficulties arise, as they are bound to, we need to be dedicated to staying on the path when it can be tempting to give up.  In a culture that finds it hard to commit to something, and to give up easily in the face of setbacks, being a disciple of Jesus can be hard.  While we can try to point at the many causes for people falling away from their practice of the faith, I think we have to be honest that giving up ion the face of challenges is a big reason.  That reminds me of a line by the great Catholic author G.K. Chesterton:  “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Let us draw courage from the words of St. Paul, who wrote: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13)  Being fervent, intentional, and dedicated may sound like a lot of work for us, but we take peace in knowing that our commitment is not ultimately dependent on our trying harder, but is dependent on our willingness to surrender to the grace He makes available to us, grace which is both generous and sufficient for us to remain on the journey to the very end!

Father Alford