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.

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

Prayer – to provide well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments and
other occasions for prayer as signs of hope and paths of grace to
Heaven;

Since prayer and the sacraments are at the very heart of what we are about as Catholics, one might think that this should be the first pillar of discipleship.  While that is indeed true about the primacy of prayer, placing it as the second pillar is intentional.  If one were to come to our parish and encounter an environment that is not welcoming and not hospitable, chances are they may not stick around to experience prayer or the sacraments because they do not feel that they belong.  But once they have crossed through our doors and feel comfortable staying, they are ready to experience the gift of prayer and the sacraments in our church.

One tangible way in which I think we join these two pillars together is in the fact that our church is open throughout the day every day.  We unlock the doors one hour before the first Mass, which is 6 AM every day except Saturday, which is 7 AM.  We then lock the church after the final Mass of the day, which is usually around 6:00 PM, depending on the day.  Throughout the day, the church is available for anybody to stop in and spend some time in prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  Making a visit to the Blessed Sacrament is a practice that has largely fallen out of practice, but it is something that I hope more people will consider working into their spiritual lives.

This pillar speaks about our parish providing “well-prepared celebrations of the sacraments.”  I believe we do that well here at the Cathedral.  Many of the people of our diocese associate the Cathedral with some of the bigger diocesan celebrations, such as the Chrism Mass, Ordinations, and Confirmations.  These are indeed powerful liturgies that highlight not just the beauty of this church, but also the richness of our liturgical celebrations.  We strive to celebrate our liturgies well and many people comment on their appreciation for these liturgies, whether it be a simple daily Mass or that glorious celebration of the Easter Vigil, and everything in between.

As I consider our Mass schedule here, I am especially mindful of our desire to be a place that offers opportunities that other parishes may not.  In particular, we offer a daily 5:15 PM Mass, which I know is appreciated by those who are not able to get to a morning Mass, or who may prefer to sleep in a little later!  We also have a Sunday evening Mass at 5:00 PM, which I know is a popular time for many throughout the area who may be travelling and are looking for a later alternative to get to Mass on Sunday.  Along those lines, I am perhaps most proud of the fact that we offer fairly convenient times for the Sacrament of Reconciliation every day, something I know many take advantage of.

While all of these aspects of the pillar of prayer are indeed for the benefit of our own parishioners, we are happy that this is a place where anybody can and should feel welcome to join for prayer and the sacraments.  This is something that makes the Cathedral so unique, and it is something we are happy to offer for anybody who comes through our doors.

Father Alford     

Having reflected on the primary work of hospitality, namely, invitation, we can now reflect on the more traditional understanding of that word, which is providing a welcoming environment for those who come to our parish.

One of the things that makes the Cathedral unique is that it is a church to which many visitors come.  First of all, we have visitors from area parishes who come to us for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the availability of our Mass and confession times.  I do not see these individuals so much as visitors as members of our local diocesan family.  Since the Cathedral is the mother church of the diocese, all of the faithful in the diocese should feel at home here.  This is something I love about our hosting Confirmations / First Holy Communions here.  Young people and their families from throughout our diocese get the opportunity to encounter this beautiful church, and in doing so, I hope they come to experience a sense of belonging to something bigger than their own parishes.  And for the children who receive these Sacraments of Initiation, they will always have a special sacramental connection to this church, one that I hope they cherish.  The team from the diocese, under the direction of Sister M. Clementia, FSGM, do a great job of demonstrating this pillar of hospitality for these groups when they come here.

We also get many visitors to our church who are not members of our diocese.  Some find themselves in town for a family event, others are in town to visit the Lincoln sites, and others are in town for various sporting events, just to name a few.  You can often tell who the visitors are when you see them looking around the church after Mass.  I have been very pleased to see some of our regular parishioners approach those visitors, welcoming them and even giving them some information about our church.  In case you are not aware, we have little pamphlets just inside of the church near the Atrium with information about the Cathedral, including some history and brief explanations of the various elements to be found in the church.  Feel free to introduce yourself to any of those visitors and offer them a pamphlet.  I know I have asked people from time to time if they are visitors, and they tell me: “We’re parishioners here.”  I have to swallow my pride in those moments, apologizing, but then realizing it is just an opportunity to get to know somebody I had not previously recognized.  So do not fear making a “mistake” by greeting someone who you think might be a visitor but actually is a regular here.  The very act of acknowledging and greeting another person is a very tangible sign of hospitality.

Much more can be said about how to be hospitable, but I think the core of this pillar is seeing in each person who comes through our doors a brother or sister in the Lord.  We belong to the same extended family, and it should be our joy to see them here, a joy which we can express by making eye contact, smiling, and making a simple greeting.  This is not limited to those official “greeters”, but is something about which we all should be proactive.   We rarely know the stories of the people with whom we worship, and you never know what burden they be bearing.  A simple kind acknowledgment, so easy for us to do, can do a long way in that person feeling seen, loved, and welcomed.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: October 6^th 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Father Alford