Feast Day: November 24^th 23rd

Usually, it takes me some time to decide between all the different saints who are celebrated on any particular day. This week was different. I saw St. Columbanus, had not even read about where he lived or when he died; I just saw “Patron of Motorcyclists”, and that was that. As I was researching his life, I discovered two additional things. First, Pope Benedict XVI had given a splendid audience on this heroic Irish saint, one with details and depth that I wanted to pass onto all of you. AND, sadly, that my first research was erroneous, and his feast day was actually November 23^rd… So, with that mistake already made, I just decided to give you Pope Benedict’s account of this saint, split between this week and the next. I will be back! But perhaps it is fitting as we celebrate Thanksgiving to just turn back in gratitude to a wonderful holy father who taught the faith so beautifully!

—

Today I would like to speak about the holy Abbot Columban, the best known Irishman of the early Middle Ages. Since he worked as a monk, missionary and writer in various countries of Western Europe with good reason he can be called a “European” Saint. With the Irish of his time, he had a sense of Europe’s cultural unity. The expression“totius Europae – of all Europe”, with reference to the Church’s presence on the Continent, is found for the first time in one of his letters, written around the year 600, addressed to Pope Gregory the Great (cf. Epistula I, 1). 

Columban was born c. 543 in the Province of Leinster in southeast Ireland. He was educated at home by excellent tutors who introduced him to the study of liberal arts. He was then entrusted to the guidance of Abbot Sinell of the community of Cleenish in Northern Ireland, where he was able to deepen his study of Sacred Scripture. At the age of about 20 he entered the monastery of Bangor, in the northeast of the island, whose abbot, Comgall, was a monk well known for his virtue and ascetic rigour. In full agreement with his abbot, Columban zealously practiced the severe discipline of the monastery, leading a life of prayer, ascesis and study. While there, he was also ordained a priest. His life at Bangor and the Abbot’s example influenced the conception of monasticism that developed in Columban over time and that he subsequently spread in the course of his life. 

When he was approximately 50 years old, following the characteristically Irish ascetic ideal of the “peregrinatio pro Christo”, namely, making oneself a pilgrim for the sake of Christ, Columban left his island with 12 companions to engage in missionary work on the European Continent. We should in fact bear in mind that the migration of people from the North and the East had caused whole areas, previously Christianized, to revert to paganism. Around the year 590, the small group of missionaries landed on the Breton coast. Welcomed kindly by the King of the Franks of Austrasia (present-day France), they asked only for a small piece of uncultivated land. They were given the ancient Roman fortress of Annegray, totally ruined and abandoned and covered by forest. Accustomed to a life of extreme hardship, in the span of a few months the monks managed to build the first hermitage on the ruins. Thus their re-evangelization began, in the first place, through the witness of their lives. With the new cultivation of the land, they also began a new cultivation of souls. The fame of those foreign religious who, living on prayer and in great austerity, built houses and worked the land spread rapidly, attracting pilgrims and penitents. In particular, many young men asked to be accepted by the monastic community in order to live, like them, this exemplary life which was renewing the cultivation of the land and of souls. It was not long before the foundation of a second monastery was required. It was built a few kilometres away on the ruins of an ancient spa, Luxeuil. This monastery was to become the centre of the traditional Irish monastic and missionary outreach on the European Continent. A third monastery was erected at Fontaine, an hour’s walk further north. 

Columban lived at Luxeuil for almost 20 years. Here the Saint wrote for his followers the Regula monachorum – for a while more widespread in Europe than Benedict’s Rule – which portrayed the ideal image of the monk. It is the only ancient Irish monastic rule in our possession today. Columban integrated it with the Regula coenobialis, a sort of penal code for the offences committed by monks, with punishments that are somewhat surprising to our modern sensibility and can only be explained by the mentality and environment of that time. 

– Fr. Dominic was further humbled this week. Last week’s collection of saints also included a Blessed! Fr. Josaphat Kocylovskyj, from Poland, is not yet canonized a saint, so perhaps we can all pray for his intercession and if a miracle is granted it could prompt the church to officially give him the title of saint! 

On November 4, the Church celebrated the Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo, who was a cardinal of the Church and Archbishop of Milan.  In a letter he wrote toward the end of his life, he addressed his priests with a variety of exhortations.  The one that always stands out to me as I read it every year is the following:

Are you in charge of a parish? If so, do not neglect the parish of your own soul, do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself. You have to be mindful of your people without becoming forgetful of yourself.

This serves as a reminder to me of the importance of my being diligent to taking care of my soul so that I can be of best service to you in my pastoral care of your souls.  But I think these words can be extended to all of us, especially as we are preparing for my State of the Parish address at all of the masses next weekend.  We will be considering the financial stewardship of the parish, the faith formation opportunities we have had this past year, the sacraments that have been celebrated.  But more important than those facts and figures is the state of the soul of the individual members who make up our parish family.  This is something that I cannot really speak to, as it touches on something that is hidden from my eyes.  It deals with the relationship that each of us has with the Lord.

Perhaps this next week can be a time of personal reflection in which each one of us asks the Lord to shed His light into our souls to help us to see where we are at in our friendship with Him.  Over the past year, how have we grown, if indeed we have grown?  What is our attitude toward prayer?  Are we more or less excited than a year ago about spending time with the Lord in prayer?  What about our love for the Mass?  Do we approach this greatest of all prayer with greater reverence and eager anticipation?  Or, have we let our devotion and dedication slide?  When was the last time we brought our sins to the Lord in the Sacrament of Reconciliation?  When was the last time we picked up the Bible to read or pray with the Word of God?  When did we last pray the Rosary?  How well am I doing with loving my neighbor in my heart?

The list of questions can go on and on, but I think you get the point.  As I pray and discern about what to share next weekend, it would be great if all of us could bring with us an awareness of the present state of the parish of our souls.  No doubt, we will find reasons for giving thanks, as well as identifying areas for growth, similar to our parish community.  We bring all of that to the Lord, especially at the Mass, offering ourselves and our parish to Him, that we might be an acceptable offering to Him, one that we want to continue to purify and strengthen, so that the individual cells of the body of our parish family will make for a more united and vibrant community of intentional missionary disciples of Jesus Christ who seek to become saints!

Also, please remember to share what you are thankful for from the Cathedral.  Information about submitting these expressions of gratitude can be found later in the bulletin or in our eWeekly communications.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: November 17^th 

Gregory died at the age of 70, the bishop of the town of Caesarea in modern day Turkey. He was surrounded by a fervent Christian community despite this being the early 200s when Christianity was still far from accepted throughout the Roman empire

Hugh was a bishop in England in the 1100s, he had been worn out by a recent diplomatic trip through France asked by King John, returning to London for a national council only for his health to spiral and his death to come on November 16^th of 1220. 

Roque was on a ladder tilted up against the little belltower at the All Saints Mission that he and another Jesuit priest had just founded in Caaro, nowadays the southern tip of Brazil. It was the year 1628, and he was working on hanging a bell above their chapel to call the locals to the prayers and formation they would be given there when suspicious locals attacked the priests, leaving their bodies to be burned as the chapel went up in flames.

And Josephat. His last moments were in 1947, near Kiev, where he was imprisoned by the communists who were pressuring him to renounce his Catholic faith. He just had to become a Russian Orthodox priest, just had to abandon his allegiance to Rome, just had to accept reality and let political expediency trump Christ. He was 71 years old, in the Capaivca labor camp, when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, faithful to the last. 

Now, of course the final moment is the one that counts (for us too!), but the rest of their lives (and ours) matters too! None of these saints would have been where they were, and offered their lives to God as they had without the story and decisions that led up to that final moment. 

So back to Gregory. He was a young man growing up in the Roman Empire, gobbling up all that the pagan world could offer when he ran into a unique Christian teacher: Origen. Not himself canonized, Origen is all the same considered one of the great teachers of the 2^nd century, and Gregory was floored by this eloquent, profound, and fervent preacher of the Gospel. He gave up everything, because a Christian, a priest, and then a bishop. Was made eventually bishop of Caesarea where he began his efforts in that city with only 17 Christians, and ended on his deathbed with only 17 pagans. What made all these converts? A zeal like Origen, and the gift of working miracles. His full name is St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, “the wonder-worker”. 

30 years before Hugh’s health collapsed in London he was just the new bishop of the See of Lincoln, in England. He was a Carthusian, and had strenuously tried ot avoid being named bishop, but having directly confronted the king about keeping such sees vacant, he could not refuse for long. (The king had a say in who was named bishop, and while any see was vacant handily received all their income into the royal coffers so he often procrastinated on filling them). But political meanderings, while they might mark the end of his life, in the middle of his life were just a training for the courage he would need elsewhere. Hugh’s most famous moment came when mobs were persecuting Jews throughout the country, on multiple occasions he marched up to the mob and faced them down until they released their victims!

So then, back to Fr. Roque Gonzalez y de Santa-Cruz. He was born in Paraguay in 1576. This was 10 years before St. Rose of Lima, and 13 before St. Martin de Porres, so though they were canonized before him, he is actually the earliest person born in the Americas who is now canonized a saint! He was ordained very young, despite always thinking himself unworthy of the honor. Partly because of this thought he had spent his priesthood seeking out the most remote missionary work he could find – avoiding the limelight – all the while cherishing, protecting, and educating the people he found, quite contrary to the ways of many other Christians who fought and conquered the indigenous tribes. 

And lastly, Bp. Josephat. He was just a man from a little village in Poland who joined the military as a young man before entering seminary and being sent to Rome. After being ordained a priest, he spent some time in seminary formation and then discerned into a monastery, receiving the name Josephat. Eventually he was made a bishop in 1917, spent a few decades shepherding his flock, and then was arrested by the communists for the reasons described above. His life was never flashy, no dramatic showdown, he was just a holy man who died unfaltering in the face of those who would trample his flock. 

– Fr. Dominic decided to offer multiple summarized saints this week because it is the month of November and always helpful to keep the unknown time of our own death before our eyes. Think about it this way, how many more presidential elections do you expect to see? If I make it to 77 (current average life expectancy), I will only see 11 more elections. Helpful perspective…! BUT, I also flashed back to their earlier life because their saintly deaths were the result of little choices along the way: choices to really listen to the Gospel, to stand up against evil, to choose the littlest assignment, to pray every day… One day will be our last. Did I live today to make that last one what it ought to be?

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Pastor Workshop hosted by the Institute for Ongoing Clergy Formation out of St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was a very helpful week, and there are many takeaways that I hope to implement in the coming year in my role as the Rector here.

One of my immediate takeaways came from one of the priest presenters who shared with us about how and when he does his annual State of the Parish address.  My initial response to his comments was one of regret.  I was reminded of how I have really dropped the ball in that regard.  In the four-and-a-half years here, I have never done anything like this.  We have published a financial summary in the past, and perhaps I have written briefly about it in a bulletin article, but I have yet to dedicate an entire weekend to sharing with all of you the state of our parish.  For that, I apologize, but missed opportunities in the past do not define what the future will be, so I am happy to announce that I do indeed plan to do a State of the Parish address!

The priest who presented this topic to us shared that he does his State of the Parish address each year the Sunday before Thanksgiving, which I found extremely fitting.  There is so much for us to be thankful for here at our parish, so highlighting some of those things on that weekend will be a great way for us as a parish family to give thanks to God for the many blessings we have experienced over the past year.  It is also liturgically fitting, as Thanksgiving always comes at the very end of the liturgical year, so doing a State of the Parish address then will be a good way to close out one year, setting us up to enter into a new year of grace in a posture of gratitude and joyful expectation of what the Lord has in store for is in the year ahead.

I would therefore highly encourage you to make every effort to make it to one of our Sunday masses on November 23-24, as I will preach at all of the masses that weekend, working the State of the Parish address into the homily.  One of the topics will obviously be about our financial stewardship here at the parish, with some numbers that show how we are doing in that regard.  I will also give an update on where we stand with our debt, since I have heard that questions have been asked about it, and I owe it to you all to share updates on that key piece of information.  I will also speak about some stats regarding our Mass attendance, sacraments celebrated over the past years, as well as other pieces of information that I hope will give you a feel for how we are doing as a parish.

Since I will be situating this in the context of gratitude for God’s blessings over the past year, I could use your help in making the address more complete.  I would love to hear from you about any of the ways in which you have been blessed by your experience here at the Cathedral over the past year.  I certainly have my own perspective of what I see the Lord doing, but I know He is touching all of us in different ways.  There is information later in the bulletin, as well as in our eWeekly, about how to submit your responses.  I would be most grateful if you would take a moment to share your thoughts.

In the next two weeks, I would humbly ask for your forgiveness for my not making such an address a priority in the past.  At the same time, not dwelling on the past, I ask for your prayers for me now as I prepare for this address, which is something new for me.  This is something you deserve because of your faithful dedication to our parish, and it is something I am excited to offer as your spiritual father.

Father Alford     

Last week, we covered the final of the four pillars of Discipleship and Stewardship, and in that article, I mentioned that there are various ways in which to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  There is one that I would like to focus on in particular this week, which is the spiritual work of praying for the living and the dead.  Now that we are in the month of November, we are invited to pray in a more concerted way for the dead.

Prayers for the faithful departed is one of the greatest works of charity we can offer, for by doing so, we are contributing to the purification that the Lord does for those souls in Purgatory as they continue their journey to their final destination of Heaven.  They rely greatly on the prayers we, as their brothers and sisters, offer for them from our place here on earth.  The Church has such a great love for these souls and a desire that their need for prayers never be forgotten that she has an entire day dedicated to praying for them, which is All Souls Day (November 2).  Only in Heaven will we truly appreciate how much of a gift this day is to so many souls, and we ourselves will likely be beneficiaries of those prayers when we die.  Not content with keeping our attention on these souls for just one day, the Church has designated the entire month of November as a time for praying for these souls.  Finally, during the first week of November, from November 1-8, the Church offers a plenary indulgence to be applied exclusively to the souls in Purgatory.  

I would therefore like to strongly encourage us all to undertake this great work of charity over the next few days.  Sometimes we lament that we do not do enough to help the poor, well here is an amazing opportunity in which I hope we call all join.  Here is how to gain the indulgence – and just so you know, an indulgence can be gained each day during this time, so be generous!

1. Pray at a cemetery – just stop by any cemetery and offer a prayer for the souls who are there.  This prayer can take a variety of forms, perhaps the most simple being the traditional prayer we offer for the faithful departed: “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.  May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.” You call also go online and look up Order for Visiting a Cemetery.  There is a nice order that one can use alone or with a group.  Finally, a perk of our Cathedral is that our sanctuary inside the church is actually a cemetery, as there are four bodies buried there!  The State of Illinois recognizes it as a cemetery, so I think it counts!
2. Pray for the Intentions of the Pope – this can be as simple as praying an Our Father and a Hail Mary with the intention that they be for the Holy Father’s intentions.  This needs to be done each time we visit a cemetery, preferably the same day as the visit, and it can be done at the cemetery itself.
3. Go to Holy Communion – you will need to receive Holy Communion for each indulgence you seek to gain, and that should preferably be done the day you visit a cemetery, if at all possible.
4. Go to confession – you only need to go to Confession once for it to apply for any indulgences you are seeking to gain during a period of time.  The timing for confession can be any time before or after this week, preferably a week or two on either side.  So if you just went to confession, you’re probably good.

For a plenary indulgence, we should be detached from all sin, which is often a little more difficult to quantify and explain, but we need not be overly scrupulous as we consider that point.  If any of these requirements are not completed, the Church can still grant a partial indulgence, which is not insignificant by any means, and it might be just enough for one soul to be finally ready for Heaven!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: November 3^rd  

Around 1590 a Benedictine Monk, Arnold de Wion, published a grand text on the history of the Order of St. Benedict, his “Lignum Vitae”. You probably have never heard of him, or his book, but you may have heard of a few pages found within it. Page 311 is included here, and the text inside that red box can be translated:

The Glory of the Olive
In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit [i.e., as bishop]. 

Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

This, my friends, is St. Malachy’s famous “Prophecy of the Popes”, a list of 112 cryptic Latin phrases penned, it is claimed, by the 11^th century Irish Bishop, referring to 112 Holy Fathers, beginning with Celestine II … and if you count forward 112 popes to this final “Peter the Roman”, you find that this final line would refer to our very own Holy Father Pope Francis.

The story goes that St. Malachy traveled from Ireland to Rome in 1139 to retrieve the pallium (actually two) for the Archbishoprics of Armagh and Cashel. He had grown up near Armagh, in Northern Ireland, having spent the latter years of his young life living with a hermit, Imhar O’Hagan after his parents had both died, though not before they had raised him in the faith.  The labors and conversions of St. Patrick had been forgotten in the intervening several centuries, with some in Ireland returning to paganism, and many now only nominally Christian, not knowing the faith or trying to life a life like Jesus. Malachy dedicated his life to changing that, beginning with his own holiness as a disciple of O’Hagan, and later working industriously as a bishop especially for the holiness and training of his priests.

It was a crazy age. Vikings periodically invaded and different clans battled each other to put their sons on the episcopal throne. In 1129, Archbishop Celsus, knowing his saintliness, named Malachy his successor as Archbishop of Armagh. The custom being at that time that the title should have been given to a member of his family, the Celsus clan instead installed Murtagh on the throne, and then Niall when Murtagh died a few years later. The scene may be humorous to us now: Niall stealing the golden crozier and Book of the Gospels stretching back to St. Patrick from the Cathedral and roiling the crowds into defending his right to the office. Malachy refused to engage his clan in battle staying far away from the church outside of town. Then the Celsus clan invites Malachy to a “meeting”, intending to do him harm, but instead they are moved by his humility and kindness and boot out Murtagh to give the see to its rightful bishop (though they did charge Malachy the cost to get back those relics… so much for Christian charity…)

In any case, it meant that in 1139 St. Malachy was bringing his report to Pope Innocent II in Rome, and there, the tale is told (this from Abbé Cucherat in the 1700s), that the holy bishop had a vision of the future of the Church and gave it to the Holy Father, that long list of enigmatic characteristics of future popes. And then it was placed it in a Roman archive and forgotten for 400 years.

Only one problem: even St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who St. Malachy stopped to visit on his way back from Rome, (and in whose arms St. Malachy would die on a later trip back to Rome in 1148), and who wrote a biography of St. Malachy a few years after his death, does not mention this prophecy at all. Nobody knew about this famous list until it conveniently appears right before a Papal Conclave in 1592. There having been a couple of back-to-back conclaves, tensions were high, and with this prophecy showing up right then, St. Malachy handily offered a ‘prophecy’ (Pope #75) that endorsed Arnold de Wion’s favorite candidate, Cd. Simoncelli. Also interesting to note: it is easy to apply the characteristics to each pope up to 1590, and strained for most in the years since.

– Fr. Dominic finds this a fascinating old document. But if we’re looking for drama and intrigue and actions that impact the future, St. Malachy’s hardiness in toil, humility in leadership, self-sacrifice for the good of the Gospel, and friendship with St. Bernard all matter more to the Church today than a cryptic document ascribed to him. And if Pope Francis is our final Holy Father, then we’d be better off preparing our souls, and our world, to meet Christ, then any time spent scouring old archives, or diving down any other interesting rabbit holes.

The fourth pillar of Discipleship and Stewardship is Service.  The Synod describes this pillar with the following words:

Service – to serve each other, especially those in need, by practicing charity and justice.

I find that one of the most challenging passages in the Gospel is found in Matthew 25:31-46, sometimes called The Judgement of the Nations.  In Matthew’s Gospel, this is Jesus’s final teaching before the Passion Narrative, and it addresses one the most pressing topics – what is expected of us with regards to our salvation.  Jesus first commends those who have served those who were in need, explaining: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me. (Mt 25:40) But, to those who did not serve those who were in need, they are condemned with the following words: “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” (Mt 25:45)

The reason this passage is so challenging is that it forces me to humbly acknowledge the many times when I have failed to recognize Christ in others and failed to be of service to them.  Sure, I am aware of the many times that I have offered charity to those in need, but there are many times where I fail in this.  I suspect this is something with which many, if not most of us, struggle in our lives.

Although the Gospel I just referenced gives some specific ways of serving those in need (known as the corporal works of mercy), there are many ways in which we can serve others.  In fact, even among those traditional works of mercy, there can be a wide variety of ways in which they are practiced.  A great resource on creative ways of practicing the works of mercy (both corporal and spiritual) is the book You Did It to Me: A Practical Guide to Mercy in Action by Father Michel Gaitley, MIC.  

The first work of mercy Jesus mentions is feeding the hungry.  Here at our parish, there are different opportunities for doing this.  A couple of months ago, we hosted a Stuff the Truck event, which provided needed food for Catholic Charities here in town.  Some of our parishioners have been involved in preparing meals for the Helping Hands shelter in the past.  It is not uncommon for us to encounter unhoused people on and around our campus.  Knowing that you might encounter such people, it can be a good practice to bring along some food that you can give to them, as I know some of you have done.

Speaking of our brothers and sisters who may be unhouse or experiencing other challenges in life, I know that it can be difficult to know what to do.  Each one of us should use our conscience to discern what might be the right thing to do.  Just because somebody is asking for money does not mean that that is the most appropriate thing to give to them.  One thing we should not do is simply ignore them.  By this I mean that we should not be afraid to greet them, give them a smile, and perhaps even ask their name.  So many go out of their way even to avoid eye contact.  But acknowledging somebody with a smile, their name, such that they know that they are seen, can go so much farther than we realize.  Always remember those words of Jesus, that when we offer even this seemingly small act of charity, not only do we do it out of love for them, but we do it out of love for Him.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: October 27^th 

In the year 300s A.D., trade had been happening between Rome and India for four centuries. even before the domination of Rome, trade networks over land had existed between Persia and India, and then Alexander the Great’s Hellenic empire and India. But caravans across the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan were slow, difficult, and easy prey for robbers and brigands. By the time of Augustus, with his conquering of Egypt in 30 B.C., a much easier, and more lucrative, trade route had appeared using ships going up the Nile (south through Egypt and Sudan) or down the Red Sea (south along those countries’ coasts), and then using the monsoon winds to carry them back and forth across what they called the Erythraean Sea (now called the Arabian Sea). 

Silk and spices and animals flowed into Rome at the rate of 120 ships a year, and gold and silver flowed out. Pliny, writing right around the time of Our Lord, recounts:

India, China and the Arabian peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and women cost us. For what fraction of these imports is intended for sacrifices to the gods or the spirits of the dead? – Pliny, Historia Naturae 12.41.84.

Now, a sesterce, literally “two and a half”, was a quarter of a Roman denarius, “ten”, both of them originally referring to donkeys, so a denarius could buy you 10 donkeys, a sesterces only 2 and a half, and one hundred million sesterces could buy you 100,000,000 donkeys … or an awful lot of silk and spices and interesting Indian animals. 

Now, by the 300s and the age of Constantine, they weren’t using the Roman Republic’s denarius anymore, having adopted different coinage over those intervening centuries. In 324 A.D., Constantine with victories at Adrianople and Chrysopolis, secured his reign over both Western and Eastern Rome, and decided on two major projects to unify his empire. Firstly, he introduced a new coin, the solidus, weighing less than the prior aureus. Secondarily, he called for the Christian church to hold a council, coming to agreement around our understanding of Christ, this being the famous Council of Nicaea of 325 A.D (firmly rejecting Arianism, that Jesus was not fully divine). And here’s the fascinating thing: both these changes impacted not just Rome, but every other culture they were connected to! Up and down Rome’s trade networks we see a change in the weight of their coins, and a prospering of Christian Churches too as persecutions ceased and doctrinal unity spread.

And so we finally meet our saint this week. Frumentius, in the year 324, was an adviser to the King in Axum, Ethiopia, that king named Ezana. This was a rather surprising twist of fate. Frumentius had been born to a mercantile family in Tyre, Phoenecia, around 300 A.D., but it wasn’t his family’s business that carried him and his brother, Aedesius, down to the famous trading post midway between Rome and India, but rather that they had been captured, and sold there as slaves. Christianity had trickled down to Ethiopia (first of all by the baptized Ethiopian Eunuch of Acts 8!), but had not made many converts. However, Frumentius and Aedesius were the nephews of a Christian philosopher from Tyre, so they knew the Christian faith well, and now they providentially gained the trust of their new master, the King of Axum, who left these two trusted servants as tutors and advisers to his own son, Ezana.

And so it was that by the 320s, Frumentius had the permission of Ezana to encourage the small Christian community around Axum to practice their faith openly, and as they began to build churches and practice works of mercy, the city took notice. They had seen every religion under the sun – eastern Buddhism, Egyptian cults, Roman paganism, Judaism – but Christianity outstripped all of them. And so in 324, when King Ezana reformed his currency to match the new weights instituted by Constantine in Rome, for the first time in the whole world, he stamped not his own visage, or motto, or some other symbol on them, but the cross of Christ. 

Four years later, Frumentius traveled up to Alexandria to meet with Bishop Athanasius, the 20^th patriarch of Alexandria (Christianity in Africa is ancient!) Athanasius did not send back someone else to evangelize Ethiopia, he consecrated Frumentius himself a bishop and sent him back. Around the same time, Ethiopia became the second country in the world to name Christianity its official religion (25 years after Armenia, 52 years before that would happen in Rome). Just one final page in his story: In 356 A.D., the Roman Emperor Constantius II, wrote to Ezana, telling him to replace Bp. Frumentius with Theophilos the Indian. Constantius was a proponent of Arianism and wanted a bishop who agreed with him. Ezana refused, and the great fight for Christ’s divinity that was still raging in Rome and Constantinople and Alexandria continued there in a bustling city in Ethiopia.

– Fr. Dominic will be carrying one particular detail from St. Frumentius through this week. By his beloved flock he was nicknamed “abuna”, “our father” (notice the similarities with “abba”). I also get to be called “father”, not because I have children of my own, but because I have been called by God to “father” His flock, to encourage them, and protect them from heresies and temptations. It’s a precious title, and I pray to St. Frumentius that I could live up to it. 

Feast Day: October 27^th 

In the year 300s A.D., trade had been happening between Rome and India for four centuries. even before the domination of Rome, trade networks over land had existed between Persia and India, and then Alexander the Great’s Hellenic empire and India. But caravans across the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan were slow, difficult, and easy prey for robbers and brigands. By the time of Augustus, with his conquering of Egypt in 30 B.C., a much easier, and more lucrative, trade route had appeared using ships going up the Nile (south through Egypt and Sudan) or down the Red Sea (south along those countries’ coasts), and then using the monsoon winds to carry them back and forth across what they called the Erythraean Sea (now called the Arabian Sea). 

Silk and spices and animals flowed into Rome at the rate of 120 ships a year, and gold and silver flowed out. Pliny, writing right around the time of Our Lord, recounts:

India, China and the Arabian peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and women cost us. For what fraction of these imports is intended for sacrifices to the gods or the spirits of the dead? – Pliny, Historia Naturae 12.41.84.

Now, a sesterce, literally “two and a half”, was a quarter of a Roman denarius, “ten”, both of them originally referring to donkeys, so a denarius could buy you 10 donkeys, a sesterces only 2 and a half, and one hundred million sesterces could buy you 100,000,000 donkeys … or an awful lot of silk and spices and interesting Indian animals. 

Now, by the 300s and the age of Constantine, they weren’t using the Roman Republic’s denarius anymore, having adopted different coinage over those intervening centuries. In 324 A.D., Constantine with victories at Adrianople and Chrysopolis, secured his reign over both Western and Eastern Rome, and decided on two major projects to unify his empire. Firstly, he introduced a new coin, the solidus, weighing less than the prior aureus. Secondarily, he called for the Christian church to hold a council, coming to agreement around our understanding of Christ, this being the famous Council of Nicaea of 325 A.D (firmly rejecting Arianism, that Jesus was not fully divine). And here’s the fascinating thing: both these changes impacted not just Rome, but every other culture they were connected to! Up and down Rome’s trade networks we see a change in the weight of their coins, and a prospering of Christian Churches too as persecutions ceased and doctrinal unity spread.

And so we finally meet our saint this week. Frumentius, in the year 324, was an adviser to the King in Axum, Ethiopia, that king named Ezana. This was a rather surprising twist of fate. Frumentius had been born to a mercantile family in Tyre, Phoenecia, around 300 A.D., but it wasn’t his family’s business that carried him and his brother, Aedesius, down to the famous trading post midway between Rome and India, but rather that they had been captured, and sold there as slaves. Christianity had trickled down to Ethiopia (first of all by the baptized Ethiopian Eunuch of Acts 8!), but had not made many converts. However, Frumentius and Aedesius were the nephews of a Christian philosopher from Tyre, so they knew the Christian faith well, and now they providentially gained the trust of their new master, the King of Axum, who left these two trusted servants as tutors and advisers to his own son, Ezana.

And so it was that by the 320s, Frumentius had the permission of Ezana to encourage the small Christian community around Axum to practice their faith openly, and as they began to build churches and practice works of mercy, the city took notice. They had seen every religion under the sun – eastern Buddhism, Egyptian cults, Roman paganism, Judaism – but Christianity outstripped all of them. And so in 324, when King Ezana reformed his currency to match the new weights instituted by Constantine in Rome, for the first time in the whole world, he stamped not his own visage, or motto, or some other symbol on them, but the cross of Christ. 

Four years later, Frumentius traveled up to Alexandria to meet with Bishop Athanasius, the 20^th patriarch of Alexandria (Christianity in Africa is ancient!) Athanasius did not send back someone else to evangelize Ethiopia, he consecrated Frumentius himself a bishop and sent him back. Around the same time, Ethiopia became the second country in the world to name Christianity its official religion (25 years after Armenia, 52 years before that would happen in Rome). Just one final page in his story: In 356 A.D., the Roman Emperor Constantius II, wrote to Ezana, telling him to replace Bp. Frumentius with Theophilos the Indian. Constantius was a proponent of Arianism and wanted a bishop who agreed with him. Ezana refused, and the great fight for Christ’s divinity that was still raging in Rome and Constantinople and Alexandria continued there in a bustling city in Ethiopia.

– Fr. Dominic will be carrying one particular detail from St. Frumentius through this week. By his beloved flock he was nicknamed “abuna”, “our father” (notice the similarities with “abba”). I also get to be called “father”, not because I have children of my own, but because I have been called by God to “father” His flock, to encourage them, and protect them from heresies and temptations. It’s a precious title, and I pray to St. Frumentius that I could live up to it. 

The third pillar of Discipleship and Stewardship is Formation.  The Synod describes this pillar with the following words:

            Formation – to study the Bible and learn more about Jesus and our Catholic faith;

Having worked with seminarians for most of my time as a priest, I have come to appreciate the Church’s broad view of the term ‘formation.’  In the short definition given by Synod, one might think that formation is just another word for study, especially since the definition uses those two words of study and learn.

When the Church speaks about formation, however, she does so in a more all-encompassing way.  When we look at the word formation, we think about the process of creating something, like an artist forming some raw material into a piece of art.  There is a development and a transformation that is taking place.  This is the same when we speak about formation in our faith.  Though it is important to learn facts about our Catholic belief, that is only a part of what formation aims at.  Under the Lord’s guidance, we desire to be formed to be more and more like Him, which entails the transformation of our entire lives, not just our minds.

The definition given by the Synod explicitly references the Bible, as the Sacred Scriptures are a special means by which this transformation is effected in us.  We learn more about who Jesus is through our study of the Word of God, and that learning is at the service of our entering into a deeper relationship with Him, a relationship of friendship.  A true friend would never be content just knowing facts about another person.  No, a true friend seeks to spend time with the other, sharing on a deeper level their hopes and desires.  As is usually the case, the more time we spend with a friend, the more we begin to direct our lives based on that friendship – how we spend our time, what excites us , what saddens us, what we think about, and how we act. 

Any formation, therefore, that takes place here at the parish should have that in mind, namely fostering a deeper relationship with the person of Jesus.  As mentioned, studying the Bible is an important means for that, and we have a few different Bible studies that are taking place in our parish, thanks be to God.  As you likely know, our parish has a subscription to the online formation platform called FORMED.  There are a variety of programs available for every level, in addition to offering audiobooks, talks from Catholic speakers, and Catholic movies.  Among the topics included are some series on prayer, which is another form of formation.  By spending time with the Lord in prayer, our hearts will be formed to be more and more like His.

As you can see, formation is meant to be understood in a broad way, as anything that serves to help us deepen our relationship with Jesus and His Church, so that, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we can be transformed to live in greater likeness to Him, who has called us to friendship.  Perhaps the words of St. Paul best express what we hope to accomplish through this pillar of formation: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20)

Father Alford    

Feast Day: October 20^th

The year was 1939. It was July, six weeks before Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. A young college student by the name of Karol Wojtyła was one year into his philosophy studies at the Jagellonian University in Krakow. He was a vibrant young man, having joined a theatre group with other students and his precocious ability with languages and love for athletics and the outdoors were already in full bloom. However, during that summer of 1939, with the world watching Germany gearing up for war, the man who would become pope decades later found himself hundreds of kilometers East of Krakow at a compulsory military training camp at Ozomla (nowadays Ukraine, then still part of Poland). He notably refused to fire a weapon, willing to serve his country, but not by violence.

That same summer, just one hundred kilometers south of Karol, a young diocesan priest was doing the simple work of pastoring a couple of parishes in the Archdiocese of Lwów. This would become Lviv, Ukraine, after the war when that country was resurrected, though as part of the Soviet Union, but for now this also was part of Poland. He was the son of a Byzantine Rite deacon, Vasyl, and mother, Maria, having grown up in the further-south city of Mykolaiv with his five siblings. He had entered seminary in 1931 and had been ordained a priest on June 7^th 1936. Fr. Oleksa Zaryckyi was first assigned as an administrator of the small parishes in Stynawa Wyżna (St. Nicholas the Wonderworker) and Nizhna Stynava (St. Michael the Archangel) though by 1939 he had been moved to the Parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Zolochiv.  I include a picture of this Church since it is simply picturesque!  It was built in 1846 and still stands there today!

His early parishes loved him. He was gentle, humble, pious, a good and holy priest and though the War was horrible, he was able to continue the simple work of being a pastor. That all changed when the war ended with the Soviet Union in control of the newly formed country of Ukraine. Fr. Oleksa refused to be joined to the Russian Orthodox Church – the national church allowed by the USSR – maintaining his allegiance to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and for this was arrested and sent first to prison in Złoczew, the released before being rearrested and imprisoned in Lwiw. The MGB (successor of the NKVD) sentenced him to a decade of forced labor in the Gulag, first in Irkutsk (near Mongolia), then Mordovia (East of Moscow), then Omsk (in Siberia). He was released in 1954 and exiled to Kazakhstan.

The records from his arrest and forced labor simply list years and cities, giving us very little sense of his life during that decade. We just know that he survived the Gulag, and as a priest there in Kazakhstan, was named the Greek Catholic Apostolic Administrator of Kazakhstan and Siberia, nicknamed the apostle of Siberia, a work he continued until 1963. Just to press pause and recognize that his flock was at least 150,000 faithful and 150 exiled priests, trying to cover an area of land not much smaller than all of North America. He traveled with just his passport, risking arrest everywhere he went, celebrating Mass or the Divine Liturgy – depending on the Rite practiced by whoever he was serving that day – and did so in houses, mines, wherever they could gather people together. He often skipped meals to keep giving people the sacraments. In May of 1962 was arrested in Karaganda, the charge was “vagrancy”, and sentenced to two years in the Dolinka settlement. He worked as a tailor, did what he could as a priest, but his health deteriorated and he perished in the camp “hospital” (quotation marks original in the records I used for this article).

But back to Karol Wojtyła, himself surviving the Nazi and Communist occupation of Poland, then elected Pope, and in 2001 for the second time setting foot on Ukrainian soil. He thus became the first Pope to set foot on Ukrainian soil (Martin I had been exiled to Cherson, on the Crimean peninsula, but after abdicating the papacy for Eugene I), and there he preached at the beatification of 25 Ukrainians, including our friend Fr. Oleksa:

Rebuild the temple of the Lord: this is the mission to which you have been called and to which you have devoted yourselves. My thoughts turn at this time to your communities, once scattered and sorely tried. In heart and in spirit I relive the unspeakable trials of all those who suffered not only physical exile and imprisonment, but public ridicule and violence because they chose not to renounce the faith. Here I wish to mention, among others, Blessed Oleksa Zarytsky, priest and martyr, who died in the gulag of Dolynka.

– Fr. Dominic has never been to Ukraine, or Siberia, but the kind of holiness exemplified by Bl. Oleksa Zarytsky is not only found in the communist gulag, but simply in the choice to love wherever we find ourselves. And, whenever he has operated from love, the same Holy Spirit that sanctified Fr. Oleksa is at work in him too.