As he continues to reflect on how Christ brought a new understanding of hope to the early Church, Pope Benedict notes how this new religion of Christianity was not just for those who “belonged to the lower social strata, and precisely for this reason were open to the experience of new hope, as we saw in the example of Bakhita.” (SS 5) There were also many who were more cultured and well-off who began to find a new hope in Christ.  Many had been following the Roman way of life, centered on a view of things being governed by various gods and the cosmic forces of nature and the universe.

The Holy Father quotes the following from St. Gregory Nazianzen, who lived in the latter part of the 4^th century, in the early days of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire.  St. Gregory wrote “that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ.” (SS 5)

On this quote, the Holy Father offers the following reflection, noting its importance not just in those early days of Christianity, but now as well:

This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free.

The Pope’s notes that a worldview of things being governed primarily by the “elemental spirits of the universe” (Col 2:8) “has become fashionable once again today.”  This takes various forms, including reading horoscopes, using tarot cards, and going to fortune-tellers.  Against these practices, the Church has spoken strongly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility. All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.  (CCC 2115-2116)

Some might object that such warnings are unwarranted, but the Church offers them in order to guard us from things that can harm us.  As one author I read on this topic concluded: “By consulting a horoscope to show ourselves our path in life, we usurp the place of God in whose hands we should place our concerns allowing Him to lead us down the path of holiness in discerning his will for us.”  (Angelo Stagnaro, National Catholic Register, Blog entry of June 9, 2020) As we entrust ourselves in faith to Christ alone to lead us down that path, we have the assurance that whatever that path may be, we are sustained by hope, a “hope that does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5)

Feast Day: January 26^th 

We have been slowly making our way up to St. Paula who’s feast was now two weeks ago. She was born into a wealthy and noble family in Rome, in 347 A.D. (so, one decade after the death of Constantine and in the middle of all the civil wars that followed). Jerome was born around the same time (as was St. John Chrysostom actually), and this is all just before Liberius becomes Pope (in 352, his showdown with Constantius II coming up in 355). Jerome, not only a painstaking translator of the Scriptures, wrote dozens and dozens of letters to different supporters, other clergy and theologians, Pope Damasus, friends, monks, and on all sorts of theological topics. And one of the longest letters is written to Eustochium, Paula’s daughter, on the story and character of her mother. 

Noble in family, she was nobler still in holiness; rich formerly in this world’s goods, she is now more distinguished by the poverty that she has embraced for Christ. Of the stock of the Gracchi and descended from the Scipios, the heir and representative of that Paulus whose name she bore, the true and legitimate daughter of that Martia Papyria who was mother to Africanus, she yet preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and left her palace glittering with gold to dwell in a mud cabin. – Jerome, Letter to Eustochium, Letter 108.1., 404 A.D.

The great scholar cites passage after passage of scripture describing the disciple of Christ, how Paula embodied them all. When her husband died in 379, her deepening Christian faith led her to give away all the wealth she had to care for the poor.

How can I describe the great consideration she showed to all and her far reaching kindness even to those whom she had never seen? What poor man, as he lay dying, was not wrapped in blankets given by her? What bedridden person was not supported with money from her purse? She would seek out such with the greatest diligence throughout the city, and would think it a misfortune were any hungry or sick person to be supported by another’s food. – Jerome, Letter 108.5.

So it was that this generous, Christian woman, as Pope Damasus tapped Jerome to begin the extraordinary effort of collecting all the different necessary scriptural texts, comparing, translating, composing, and revising, here was a woman with the means, and heart, to support the work. She left her home, and much of her family, and begins the arduous journey to the Holy Land: sailing south she passed between Sicily and Italy, then through the Adriatic towards Greece, then Rhodes and Lycia and Cyprus – places where Paul preached – Antioch, Phoenicia, Sidon, Zarephath, Tyre – she was tracing Christian history back to its source. Caesarea, Lydda, Joppa, Jerusalem – showing immense reverence for these sacred sites, with Jerome adding citations from all throughout the Old and New Testament to show how she was literally making her way through the entire Bible – and then to Bethlehem. The passage is a tour-de-force of Jerome’s knowledge of the Bible, but also of Paula’s, as she was reflecting on all these different stories as she stopped and prayed in each place. 

Finally, in Bethlehem, she took up her dwelling behind the cave of the nativity, helping to establish monasteries there for men and women and then joining in the work of translating, proofreading, and offering spiritual insight, and practical encouragement, to the more scholarly, forbidding, even irascible, Jerome. She did not just support him, she was an assistant in the work. Her own splendid education made her an invaluable linguistic resource, but her humility, love for the scriptures, passion for Christ, and just the way her heart was moved by the characters, places, truths, and revelations given in the Bible … all of these would have been missed by Jerome working on his own. He did not forget it!:

“You, Paula and Eustochium, who made me undertake this labor… You are my readers, my critics, and my correctors.” – Jerome, Preface to the Pentateuch

“Paula, who was ever intent on learning the Scriptures, left no difficult passage unexplored.” – Jerome, Preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings

“She was my companion in study, correcting me when I erred and encouraging me when I grew weary.” — Jerome, Letter 108.31

If she had not made the difficult choice for Christ amid the grief of losing her husband, to go all in for the Church, to help a crazy scholar on an immense mission, it is hard to see how Jerome would have finished his project. And if he had not, Europe would have been fragmented, disconnected, un-rooted in God’s revelation as it plunged into the difficult centuries to come. But with a unified bible, Christians scattered throughout all that would become Christendom, would pray the same prayers, hear the same passages, learn the same stories and songs and sacraments and truths of the faith. Theology, philosophy, scholarship which would grow into the scientific revolution was made possible. Even our constitution, and all the freedoms we have, those depended on a common belief in human dignity, freedom, responsibility, and rights. And that depended on a common scripture. And that depended on an extraordinary woman.

– Fr. Dominic knows well the bustle and blessings of Rome. It is hard to imagine leaving all that for the entirely unknown, but God has bigger plans for our lives than just for us! 

In the next paragraph of Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict looks to the early Church to see how the hope that Christ brings was more than just a theoretical, or “informative”, hope, but one that was “performative”, in that it has the ability to change our lives, both individually and as a society.

A point of reference to demonstrate this performative quality of hope can be found in St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, the shortest of his writings in the New Testament.  As an aside, we only hear from this letter in the liturgy once in the three-year cycle of Sunday readings (23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C) and once in the two-year cycle of Weekday readings (Thursday of the 32^nd Week in Ordinary Time – Year II).  Since it is so short, perhaps that could be a worthwhile read this week.  With that said, let us consider how the Holy Father sees this passage as so important.

The pope quotes the following words from St. Paul, speaking to Philemon about returning Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus to him: 

“I appeal to you for my child … whose father I have become in my imprisonment … I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart … perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother …” (Philem 10-16)

In explaining St. Paul’s encouragement to Philemon to now see Onesimus no longer as a slave, but “as a beloved brother”, Pope Benedict writes the following:

Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned, stand in relation to one another as masters and slaves, inasmuch as they are members of the one Church have become brothers and sisters—this is how Christians addressed one another. By virtue of their Baptism they had been reborn, they had been given to drink of the same Spirit and they received the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if external structures remained unaltered, this changed society from within. (SS 4)

The encounter with Christ, an encounter which gives us reason for hope, is not just about the promise of eternal life only, but it also transforms how we are called to see one another through a new lens, even as we continue our pilgrimage.  We are invited to see our fellow pilgrims as brothers and sisters who strive to honor and respect one another, loving one another as is appropriate to our state in life.  Distinctions in civil status may remain, but because of the new life given through baptism, those distinctions are no longer primary.  Rather, what takes priority is living the bonds of fraternity with others, under our one Master, whose rule is always rooted in charity.  The idea of our society living this way, which is more than just a theory, but very practical, should fill us with hope in how life and society can be better.

I find this to be a timely message for our society.  Though there have always been divisions, they seem to be more pronounced now than ever before.  We can get preoccupied with some aspect of how we see others, such as their political affiliation, their nationality, their race, just to name a few.  Sadly, that can become the predominant lens through which we view them.  But the gift of grace we have received in our baptism invites us to look through the lens of faith and to see not what divides us, but what unites us as brothers and sisters in Christ.  When that is our starting point, we are far more inclined to work for the good of all, not just what will be best for ourselves.  If all Christians were to live this way, we would indeed see a society transformed!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 26^th 

17 years after mobs tore apart the city of Rome, Christian fighting Christian, the sides divided by why they were backing as successor to Pope Liberius, Pope Damasus I, legitimately the successor of St. Peter, had to choose a path forward for unity in the Church (and in the rapidly fraying empire). Jesus’ mission for every Holy Father was the same:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” – Luke 22:31-32.

The world will always battle against the Kingdom of God. Just as it was up to Peter to stand firm upon Christ for the sake of all the apostles, it was up to Damasus to do so in the 3^rd century. The whole reason that blood was spilled in 366 was over the question of whether unity or truth ought to prevail. Ought we just to go with Arianism if it unites the fragments of the empire?: the bishops and their flocks, the pagans and their idols, the incoming barbarians some of whom are already Arian… Would you deny Christ – deny His divinity, deny His sonship – if it saves the world? That was the question that faced Peter, and now Damasus, and every Holy Pope. In 383, we know he had decided for Christ. That year, Damasus penned an epigraph to be chiseled above the tomb of the early martyrs St. Stephen and St. Tarcisius. We still have the stone with his poem pristinely carved into it:

“You who read, whoever you are, recognize the equal merit of the two to whom Damasus the bishop has dedicated this inscription after their rewards. The Jewish people stoned Stephen when he was instructing them on a better course, he who carried off the trophy from the enemy: the faithful deacon first laid hold of martyrdom. When a raving gang was pressing holy Tarsicius to reveal to the uninitiated the sacraments of Christ that he was carrying, he wished rather to release his spirit, struck down, than to betray the heavenly limbs to mad dogs.” – Damasus of Rome, Epigrammata 15 (ICVR IV, 11078)

Stephen, the first of the martyrs, killed as he claimed to see the heavens opened and Christ at the right hand of God. Tarcisius, carrying the Blessed Sacrament to Christians in prison, refusing to hand over the sacrament to the mob who beat him, holding fast to Christ’s Body to the end. Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity. God and man. These martyrs died defending that truth, now Pope Damasus would uphold them (other saints too) as witnesses to the whole Church of Who Christ truly is. 

One year before, he had begun the first prong of his effort to unify the Church, and it would also have nothing to do with the violence where his pontificate began. in 382, Damasus convoked a synod in Rome, calling bishops and their delegates from around the empire. Among the documents issued from that synod was a list of all the books of the Bible, a “canon” of scripture. For centuries the Church had preached and prayed with these Books, Gospels, and Letters, but some individual bishops and churches advocated for other documents to also be included, other books from the Old Testament, other gospels, letters attributed to the apostles, various teachings from the early church … (many of them now float around as “lost Gospels” and “forgotten books of the bible”). At that synod, these bishops recommended Pope Damasus the list of books that are contained to this day in every Catholic Bible, 46 books in the Old Testament (from the Septuagint which Christ quoted in the Gospels), and the 27 books of the new. This same list would only be infallibly defined by the Council of Trent over a thousand years later, it only being necessary then because the entirety of the Christian Church, East and West, would be in agreement on these books from now until the Protestant Reformation. 

But, there was a giant problem. As the Church had wrestled with defining the faith over the prior decades, again and again debates erupted over language – Greek or Latin for the creeds, Hebrew and Greek for the scriptures – who was to say what meant what, how was clarity to be won, and truth defended, if everyone was talking about the faith using different language and citing quotations from scriptures found in different codices and scripts? Providentially, amazingly, here we had a Pope – certainly no saint yet – yet with the farsightedness to tackle an enormous problem facing the Church. And we also had a brilliant scholar in attendance at that synod with all the skills needed for the enterprise. He was a Roman by birth, but had spent the prior 20 years learning Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Latin to tremendous depth and had also studied (and in many cases rubbed elbows with) the greatest theologians of the Church – Origen, Augustine, Ambrose, Evagrius, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa. These were the men who knew every thread of every heresy and the Lord had placed throughout His Church for the battle fought at that very time. Jerome was the man to make the scriptures accessible to that entire Church of the future. 

– Fr. Dominic was once again setting the stage this week. St. Paula is coming!

If you look up the phrase “take for granted”, one definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is as follows: “to value (something or someone) too lightly : to fail to properly notice or appreciate (someone or something that should be valued).”  Pope Benedict warns that “we who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God.” (SS, 3)  We have a real encounter with God every time we come to Mass, as He speaks to us in His Word and we receive His very being in the Eucharist.  Perhaps because we encounter God so frequently, or because we do not always have a life-altering experience of His love for us with each encounter, we can take Him for granted.

In an attempt to invite us to rediscover the gift of this encounter, the Holy Father introduces us to a modern saint who had a real encounter with God for the first time, an encounter that would change her perspective on hope radically.  The saint is the African St. Josephine Bakhita.  At a relatively early age, she was kidnapped by slave-traders and treated very harshly, which resulted in her bearing 144 scars for the rest of her life.  She was eventually sold to an Italian merchant and she found herself living in a new country.  While in Italy, she began to hear about a new kind of Master.  Pope Benedict writes the following:

Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand” (SS 3)

He then describes how this new awareness of a loving, personal God shifted her perspective on hope:

Now she had “hope”—no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. (SS 3)

She would go on to be baptized and confirmed, and eventually she became a consecrated religious sister.  She then committed herself to sharing the message of the “liberation she had received through her encounter with Jesus Christ”, to spread the message of hope to as many as possible.

The next time we are at Mass, perhaps we can call to mind how we have maybe taken for granted what a gift we have in being able to encounter our loving Master so frequently and so profoundly.  Let us pray that through that weekly (or even daily) encounter, we may come to be reminded of God’s unique and personal love for us, and how that love gives us a hope that the disappointments of this world cannot shake, but which can encourage us to keep moving forward until the fulfillment of our hope is realized.

Father Alford     

As he begins to unpack the biblical meaning of hope, Pope Benedict notes how the terms “faith” and “hope” seem to be somewhat interchangeable.  Though these are in fact two separate theological virtues, they do share much in common.  He cites St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in saying that before they came to a life of faith in Christ, they were “without hope and without God in the world.” (Eph 2:12) Faith involves assenting to all that God has revealed as truth, and that opens the door for us to have hope in the promise that what He has revealed is that we are called to be with Him in Heaven, and that He will provide all of the graces necessary for us to get there.  Much more can be said to distinguish these two virtues, but I think this brief explanation will suffice to show how interrelated they are, while remaining distinct.

The line from paragraph 2 of Spe Salvi that I would like to focus on comes later in the paragraph after the Holy Father treats on faith and hope together.  He references a line from St. Paul’s words to the Church in Thessalonica: “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” (1 Thes 4:13)  The pope then writes:

Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well…The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. (SS, 2)

This is a great gift to be able to leave the future in the hands of God, trusting His fidelity, believing in His promises, so that we can attend to where He wants us here and now, and by our saying “yes” to Him each day, we know that the hope we have for the future will not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5).  In that regard, I want to share a part of a meditation from St. John Henry Newman that I think expresses this interplay of faith and hope in a beautiful way:

Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
necessary causes of some great end,
which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
He may shorten it;
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends,
He may throw me among strangers,
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—
still He knows what He is about.…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

St. John Henry Newman, Meditation (March 7, 1848)

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 26^th 

337 A.D., about two decades after Constantine had allowed Christians to practice their faith throughout the Roman Empire, and a bit more than a decade after the First Council of Nicaea had articulated our belief in the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father (and the corresponding Nicaean creed), that great and complicated emperor, baptized at the very end of his life, died. The giant empire, united under him after so many centuries of being split between various emperors, rent by civil wars, and wracked by persecutions, had before it the possibility of unifying under the banner of Christ. Sadly, the coming decades would be more difficult than might have been hoped.

By 340, two of Constantine’s sons were at war with each other with Constantine II killed as he attempted to wrest Rome from Constans. Constans himself would be assassinated a decade later by the usurper Magnentius, leaving the third son, Constantius II, to wage his own civil war against that upstart, eventually gaining the entire empire for himself. He, as history had it, was Christian, but an Arian, and so it is he who exiles Athanasius for his staunch defense of Orthodox, Nicaean, Christianity, and around 355 demands Pope Liberius to appear before him and agree to a semi-arian statement (and a repudiation of his friendship with Athanasius). Theodoret records this epic conversation, the emperor of the world confronting the successor of Peter.

The Emperor: “One question only requires to be made. I wish you to enter into communion with the churches, and to send you back to Rome. Consent therefore to peace, and sign your assent, and then you shall return to Rome.”

Liberius: “I have already taken leave of the brethren who are in that city. The decrees of the Church are of greater importance than a residence in Rome.”

The Emperor: “You have three days to consider whether you will sign the document and return to Rome; if not, you must choose the place of your banishment.”

Liberius: “Neither three days nor three months can change my sentiments. Send me wherever you please.”

As history would have it, even this dramatic show down, and heroic position of Pope Liberius is clouded by the uncertainties of the following years. Constantius exiled the pope and set up his own puppet anti-pope, Felix II, but later he allowed Liberius to return – some say because the pope had finally capitulated to some of his demands – trying to have co-popes with Liberus and Felix both leading the Church… In any case, by 361, things managed to get decisively worse when Julian became the new emperor. He was the one who attempted to un-baptize himself by plunging himself in a vat of bull’s blood, and he did resume animal sacrifices, revived some of the persecutions of earlier centuries, and (begrudgingly recognizing something that Christians had done quite well) commands the pagan priests to increase their acts of charity. It is worth remembering his words here!:

“These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapē, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes. Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity; and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love-feasts and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods.” – Julian, Letter to Arsacius, High Priest of Galatia (Letter 22)

But the turmoil outside of the Church was sadly just as evident within its walls (quite literally).  In 366, Damasus I and Ursinus were both elected Pope by their respective cohorts of priests and people in Rome (rifts that trace back to the conflict between Felix I and Liberius, and between the Arian and Nicaean disagreements). The gangs around them took up weapons and attacked each other, at one point 137 people were killed inside of the newly built Basilica of Sicininus (now St. Mary Major). Our records of all these events are hopelessly muddled and biased by the acrimony on each side. Those that leaned Arian, of course, side with Ursinus and defame Damasus, and vice versa. That said, the horrible scene stays before our eyes of hatred and bloodshed filling a place dedicated to the worship of Christ. Here is what one young man, baptized by Pope Liberius, and then a protégé of Pope Damasus, writes to his friend

“I was at that time in Rome, and I saw the bloodshed and the disturbance; the factions of Ursinus and Damasus were divided by mutual strife, and the churches were polluted with blood.” – St. Jerome, Letter to Heliodorus (Letter 15):

– Fr. Dominic will bring us back to St. Jerome next week. Crazy twist: the unification of the Christian world, and the conversion of the pagan world, would happen in large part because of Jerome’s efforts. And his life’s work depended on the humility and sanctity of one amazing woman, St. Paula, who we will finally encounter next week!  

On December 29 at the 10:00 am Mass, Bishop Paprocki celebrated the opening of the 2025 Jubilee Year for our diocese as we unite with Catholics throughout the world during this special year.  The theme for this year comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Hope does not disappoint.” (Rom. 5:5).  Our Holy Father, Pope Franics, writes the following about this Jubilee Year:

The coming Jubilee will thus be a Holy Year marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God. May it help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises. (Bull of Indiction, no. 25)

As I was concelebrating the Mass that morning, listening to Bishop Paprocki’s homily and considering this topic of hope, I had a nudge from the Holy Spirit about an idea for my bulletin articles for this coming year.  The thought came to my mind to walk through Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe Salvi.  After Mass, when I looked at the document, I saw that it was 50 paragraphs, which is perfect for doing one paragraph a week for the year!  I have long loved the writings of Pope Benedict, both before his becoming pope, and after.  Among my favorite of his writings is this document, so I am personally very excited to journey through his brilliant treatment on this topic.  It is my hope (no pun intended) that our reflections on this theme will be a very fruitful experience for all who read these articles, as I am sure it will be fruitful for me as I write them.

I do not intend to quote the entire paragraph each week, just the main points, but I encourage you to access the document to read the entire text, one week at a time.  If you search for “Spe Salvi Pope Benedict” on Google, the official Vatican translation should be one of the first results.

The first paragraph is rather short, but it sets the stage well for the document.  The Holy Father begins by quoting St. Paul’s words from his Letter to the Romans as he writes: “’SPE SALVI facti sumus’—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24)” (SS 1)  He then goes on to write that this virtue of hope helps us in facing our present circumstances:

Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. (SS 1)

Notice how he uses the word “if” a few times in proposing this theme of hope.  This will be one of his main goals, to convince us that hope does indeed lead us to a goal, one that is certain, and one that is worth continuing the journey toward.  If you permit me to take St. Paul’s words slightly out of context, our hope in his providing a clear answer to that question will not be met with disappointment (Rom 5:5), but rather, it will only serve to strengthen our hope in what the Lord has “prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9) in the Kingdom.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 12^th 

The year was 1652. On a little island up the St. Lawrence River from Quebec, a small settlement of French colonists was living up to the phrase that the bigger city had named them: “une folle enterprise” [a foolish enterprise]. The little village however called itself “Ville-Marie”, City of Mary, and had been founded to bring the Gospel to the local tribes of the area. From the beginning, those organizing the enterprise had seen it as God’s work and had endured years of work acquiring the land, money, and provisions necessary to establish the colony. They went for no earthly profit, but to build a hospital and school to care for the indigenous population. Delayed by storms, and arriving too late to begin in the fall of 1641, the three ships worth of men, and four intrepid women, finally arrived at the island on May 17^th, 1642, building an altar and offering Mass as their first act in their new home.

Ten years later, after relentless attacks from the local Iroquois tribes the population of Ville-Marie was down to 50, with only 17 capable of bearing arms. The leader of the colony, Paul de Chomedey, a man known both for his leadership and his piety, decided to return to France and try to find men willing to come and work (and defend) the little town. If he could not find 100 or more, he told Jeanne Mance (another leader of the enterprise, a woman who was particularly dedicated to the mission’s hospital having received her calling to that charitable work while on pilgrimage in 1640) they would have to abandon the town. It was a long few years before he returned, with 95 recruits, including the extraordinary young woman, Marguerite Bourgeoys.

She was 33 years old and had long delighted in serving the poor in the city of Troyes, France. Marguerite had been a member of the sodality affiliated with the monastery of sisters in that town since she had turned 15, a group of lay women who would teach and take care of the poor girls who could not afford to board in the monastery school. One day in 1652, the resilient, weather-battered de Chomedey came to visit his sister, one of the canonesses in that monastery. Perhaps it was just a visit, perhaps he was begging her prayers for the colony, but either way it was she who pointed her brother to speak with the magnanimous Marguerite. And, in February of 1653, she accepted the daunting task to leave everything behind and lead the establishment of a congregation of women who could teach in that battered far-off village on the St. Lawrence named after Our Lady. 

A few years of work and they had built a permanent Church – oddly forgotten during those first difficult years – and a few more years and they had their first permanent school operating – albeit in a vacant stone stable (not unfitting given where her Lord had been born). Marguerite made trips back to France, recruiting more women for the work of educating the poor and indigent population around Ville-Marie, and often bringing back “filles du roi” [king’s daughters] as well, impoverished or orphaned girls from France sent over to the colonies by the Crown. They too were loved and protected by the little community of women headed by Marguerite. Each day the women would pray and eat together, a religious community sustain them amidst the hardships of the work and hold them all to the tremendous vision of teaching held out to them by Marguerite: 

Teaching is the work most suited to draw down the graces of God if it is done with purity of intention, without distinction between the poor and the rich, between relatives and friends and strangers, between the pretty and the ugly, the gentle and the grumblers, looking upon them all as drops of Our Lord’s blood

Again and again, church leaders enjoined the community to become cloistered – the almost universal way of life of female congregations at that time – but by 1669, Marguerite’s indefatigable efforts obtained permission from the Apostolic Vicar of New France to continue their active efforts. In 1670 they received a further approval from King Louis XIV. She would establish additional schools over the coming decades, some for different occupations, some in mission villages among the Native communities in the area. By 1692, she was asked to bring her sisters to the city of Quebec and establish there another school for poor girls. Finally, in 1698 the congregation was canonically established, setting a precedent for all active women’s communities today!

Marguerite was widely considered a saint upon her death in 1700, not only from her tremendous missionary work, but also her final years of intense prayer including offering her life so that a younger sister who had fallen ill could be cured. 

– Fr. Dominic will leave you with a final quotation from this saint: “It seems to me that we are charcoal ready to be kindled and that Holy Communion is entirely suited to set us on fire. But when this charcoal is kindled only on the surface, as soon as it is set aside, it is extinguished. On the contrary, that which is fired all the way to the centre is not extinguished, but is consumed.” What group around you needs the Love of Christ? Is the Holy Communion you have been given today the fire meant to carry you into that mission?

A few months ago, I wrote about our entering into the third year of our National Eucharistic Revival, a year focused on mission.  We have reflected on our diocesan / parish mission statement as articulated in our 2017 Fourth Diocesan Synod, and the four pillars of discipleship and stewardship: hospitality, prayer, formation, and service.

As we begin this new calendar year and prepare to shift back into Ordinary Time for a couple of months before Lent, I would like to draw our attention to an initiative that the National Eucharistic Revival team is promoting called Walk with One.

The premise of the initiative is rather simple.  It recognizes that the spreading of the Good News, which we call evangelization, typically takes place in one-on-one encounters, encounters that can happen anywhere or at any time.  While we should always be prepared to give a witness to our faith (cf. 1 Peter 3:15), we can also be intentional in our efforts to share the Gospel message.  This is what the Walk with One initiative invites us to do, to identify just one person with whom we desire to walk toward a deeper relationship with Jesus and His Church.

In last week’s bulletin article, I shared the story of praying for my grandmother, and how this weekend, we would be inviting you to consider the name of somebody whom the Lord has put on your heart to accompany.  I realize this might initially sound intimidating, but at this point, all we are asking for is prayer.  Most of us are not comfortable inviting somebody to come back to Mass or confession, so this time of prayer has two aims.  Obviously, we are praying for the Lord to prepare the hearts of those with whom we desire to journey.  But we are also praying for ourselves, that we might have the courage and the conviction to approach them and offer a more explicit invitation to them at some point in the future.  That invitation may not be just to come to Mass.  It might be inviting them to go to confession with you.  It might be more basic, like inviting them to join you for coffee or a meal so that they can share their story.  The how is not so important at this point, but our focus is on the who.

As we begin this time of prayer for these individuals, let me caution against a mindset that we can sometimes fall into.  We can be tempted to see others as “projects” to work on.  Once we get them back to Mass, then our work will have been done.  No, we want to see these individuals as people, companions on our journey of faith.  We need to love them and be genuinely interested in them.  Even if the person does not immediately accept our explicit invitation, we will not cease to be involved in their lives.  We want to love them where we find them, hoping that the Lord will move them to a different place, using us as His instruments in bringing about that progress.  Regardless of the outcome we hope for, when we sincerely seek to accompany a brother or sister in the Lord, witnessing to our love of the faith, God is glorified, and nothing will have been wasted.  God is far more patient and committed to this than we are, and that can be extremely comforting.

As soon as the Lord places an individual on your heart to walk with, first of all from a distance, begin to pray for them each and every day.  It could be as simple as adding a fourth Hail Mary to the three Hail Mary’s I’ve encouraged us to say each day for our parish, the clergy of the parish, and ourselves.  We might consider spending time in Eucharistic Adoration, offering that time up for them.  We might look for a novena to pray for them.  It does not need to be complicated, just that we do something each day.  Let us also make sure to thank God every day for the good He has planned for us and for them through this commitment to prayer, and whatever concrete actions the Lord may invite us to take in the future.

Father Alford