When remembering the early saints of the Church, we extoll most greatly the men and women, young and old alike, who gave their lives for their belief in Christ. They were more willing to shed their blood in the course of horrifying tortures and executions than to renounce their Christianity. Over the course of time, these great witnesses of the Christian faith came to be known as “martyrs,” after the prophecy and command of Jesus, “You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The word, “witness,” is simply an English translation of the Greek word Martyrion – martyr. A martyr, therefore, is one who gives a witness of their faith, and the supreme witness of Christian faith comes in a willingness to die for belief in Christ. These martyrs held fast to their faith: their belief that Jesus was the Lord of life and death, that he had conquered death, and that in Him, they too would rise from the dead.

The ninth chapter of St. Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis is titled: “On the Fervor of His Charity and His Desire for Martyrdom.” With the previous intensity of the life of St. Francis, maybe this title doesn’t sound too terribly odd. And, in fact, many saints in the history of the Church desired martyrdom. Still, I think if we ponder that desire for a moment, we will realize just how far it is, generally speaking, from the desires of our own hearts.

When we think of what we want our faith to give us, we rarely think of sufferings. We want joy, peace, happiness, and tranquility. We sadly so often think that experiences of suffering – spiritual and physical – point to a distance between us and God. Saints like St. Francis and the many martyrs in the history of the Church teach us that the reality is very much the opposite. In suffering we draw close to Christ crucified. A certain level of happiness can certainly be a sign of the presence of God, but it is not the only one. 

I think of a quote also of St. Rose of Lima: “Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase. Let men take care not to stray and be deceived. This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.” (Office of Readings)

She expresses well the reality that St. Francis knew also. In this chapter, St. Bonaventure records the journey St. Francis took to visit the Sultan King of Egypt. St. Francis knew that the King in Egypt had essentially made it a capital crime deserving of death to be a Christian in his kingdom. St. Francis, in his desire both to be a martyr and to spread the faith, journeyed precisely there to Egypt to shed his blood in witness to Christ. 

He was brought before the King and proclaimed Jesus to him. St. Francis proposed a test of fire to prove the reality and existence of the Christian God. He was so willing to die in service to God that he impressed the King. No one took him up on the fire contest, and the King was so impressed with St. Francis’ zeal and poverty that he allowed him to go free. He did not kill St. Francis for being Christian. While this saddened and perhaps humiliated St. Francis a bit, he was not perturbed, and returned to Italy to continue living his religious life (Life of St. Francis, 9).

In order to remain free from sin in this life, we will suffer many trials of faith. May St. Francis’ prayers give us strength to persevere to the end!

Shortly after I began this series of bulletin articles on the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a parishioner asked if I was going to be moving in July since I was only planning for the series to run through June.  At the time, I knew full well that I was indeed going to be moving, but I was not free to share that information at that point.  To be clear, my upcoming move only slightly factored into my decision to do this series.  My greater reason, as I mentioned at the beginning of the series, has been to offer some reflections on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the bishops of our country prepare to consecrate our county to the Sacred Heart of Jesus next week on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

In my first article, I mentioned that my favorite part of the Litany was the final invocation, which is slightly different from the others, but offers a fitting summary of the prayer:  Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine!  But when it comes to the standard thirty-three invocations of the Litany, the one I like the best is the following:

Heart of Jesus, King and Center of all hearts, have mercy on us

Part of the impetus for the bishop’s deciding to consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is due to this year being our country’s 250^th anniversary of independence.  Prior to that time, we were under the rule of the King of England.  In the Declaration of Independence, there were several complaints enumerated against the King with the conclusion that such a leader was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Thus it was declared that we were absolved of our connections with the British Crown and therefore free to govern ourselves.  As a result of our negative experience with the King of England, any mention of being ruled by any king has sounded somewhat offensive to our ears.  But the kingship which Jesus desires to exercise over us is different altogether.  In the prayers from the Solemnity of Christ the King, we hear that His kingship is one of “truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love and peace.” (Preface) With those qualities, how can we not desire Him to be the King of our lives?  And yet, there is still hesitancy in our hearts to let Him be King, even if His reign promises these desirable attributes.  To let Christ reign requires surrender on our part, and that is never easy.  When we surrender to His reign, to His will, to His plan for our future, uncertain as it may seem, we are opening the door to a peace that the world cannot give, a peace which we cannot guarantee for ourselves if we take full control of our lives.  Only in our surrender to Him can we find peace.  Only in our surrender to Him can we truly find hope, the type of hope which “does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5)

Although I am writing this article just before I head on retreat, I know that I will be spending a lot of time this week inviting Jesus to reign more fully in my heart as King, and in doing so, to let His will, His plan, His love be more firmly fixed at the center of my heart.  For my 15 years as a priest, I have tried to keep Him always at the center, and that has given me freedom to let Him use me as He has seen fit in a variety of ways, and in all of them, He has shown me the goodness of His love for me in blessing me with graces that have sustained me while also being of benefit to the Church.  By continuing to let Him reign fully at the center of my heart, I have no doubt that He will continue to bless me abundantly in whatever lies ahead, and I have that same confidence for all of us as we continue our loving, trusting surrender to His reign as King and center of our hearts.

St. Bonaventure begins chapter nine of the Life of St. Francis in the usual way, with a long poetic series of verses outlining the theme he will cover during the chapter. A set of lines from this introductory poem of chapter nine sticks out to me:

St. Bonaventure writes, “In beautiful things / he saw Beauty itself / and through his vestiges imprinted on creation / he followed his Beloved everywhere, / making from all things a ladder / by which he could climb up / and embrace him who is utterly desirable. / With a feeling of unprecedented devotion / he savored / in each and every creature – / as in so many rivulets – / that Goodness / which is their fountain source” (Life of St. Francis, 9.1).

Before even going into the theme of this chapter, which I plan to do next week, I have to comment on these lines – they are absolutely incredible! 

Central to these two poetic sentences is the idea that we can come to a knowledge of God and have an experience of God in and through the things he has created. This language is very dear to the heart of St. Bonaventure, who writes in depth on this theme in his most famous text, “The Soul’s Journey into God.” We can see God in his creatures insofar as he dwells there and he is in them, and we can see God through them as through a window or mirror. Clearly, the concept so central to St. Bonaventure’s work came right out of the lived sainthood of his great model St. Francis, who learned it from Christ himself. 

The word, “vestiges,” used above signifies God’s “footprints.” The imprints that God has made in creation are seen clearly as created things reflect qualities of God himself. For example, there is a beauty in the sunset – I see God in and through the sunset’s beauty; there is beauty in another human being – I see God in and through that person’s beauty (and this goes for both physical beauty and beauty of soul); there is goodness in a person’s kind action – I see God in and through that action; There is truth in a word or in someone’s speech – I see God in and through that speech.

Was St. Francis captivated by the beautiful things of this world? He was allured by them? Well… sort of, yes. He was captivated and allured by these things – but not by the things themselves. No, he was captivated by the beauty which was the source of their beauty. He was captivated by them because they revealed God to him. He was allured by them because in them he found a “ladder” to the source of all beauty. 

And this image St. Bonaventure uses – incredible! A “fountain” and its “rivulets.” To carry on this image, we can say, in a word, that God “flows” himself into his creatures. This is not to say that we are God in a pantheistic sense, but that he is flowing in and through us by forming in us his attributes – virtues, goodness, beauty, truth, charity, simplicity, piety, etc. And this “flow” can be understood by those who pay attention.

St. Francis paid attention.

And “he savored in each and every creature… that Goodness which is their fountain source.”

So, stop and smell the roses. Slow down. Slow. down. Slow … down… and don’t just smell them! Savor in them the Goodness of God who is the source of their goodness, beauty, truth, simplicity, etc. Savor in your friend, husband, wife, co–worker, person on the street; savor in the birds, the sky, the trees, the grass; savor in these things God’s perfections. 

St. Francis, pray for us so that we might pay attention to God’s “vestiges” in his creation!

Having completed the 50 days of the Easter Season with the celebration of Pentecost last Sunday, the Church provides us with three solemnities in short order, sort of as a way of easing us back into Ordinary Time.  Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.  Next Sunday, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).  Then on the following Friday after Corpus Christi, we have the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Several years ago, a friend of mine shared with me a little book that had some reflections on the Litany of the Sacred Heart by Pope St. John Paul II.  I do not personally have the book, so it can hard to track down some of those reflections, but I have been able to locate some of them.  I came across one brief reflection in which the Holy Father addresses the following image from the Litany of the Sacred Heart:

Heart of Jesus, of infinite majesty, have mercy on us

The reflection comes during an Angelus address that he offered while making a pastoral to Veneto in Italy.  In his address, he said the following (translated from Italian to English):

Behold: the infinite majesty of God is hidden in the human heart of the Son of Mary. This Heart is our covenant. This Heart is the closest presence of God to human hearts and to human history. This Heart is God’s marvelous “condescension”: a human heart that beats with divine life—divine life that beats within a human heart. (Angelus, 16 June 1985)

As he continues his reflection, he explains how it is in the Eucharist that we are given access to His heart, and he uses another image from the Litany, that the Eucharist is the “house of God and gate of Heaven”.  He then says:

“House”: through Eucharistic Communion, the Heart of Jesus extends His dwelling into every human heart. “Gate”: in each of these human hearts, He opens the perspective of eternal union with the Most Holy Trinity. (ibid.)

The goal of the Christian life is to live in greater intimacy in the life of the Most Holy Trinity, a gift given to us in Baptism and deepened throughout our lives.  We will share the fullness of this intimacy in Heaven.  Because we can hear how difficult the Trinity can be to understand, we maybe shy away from thinking of life with the Trinity or perhaps think we need to understand the Trinity in order to access this gift.  But the Trinity is not first and foremost about understanding an idea.  It is about relationship with God, who is three-in-one, and God is love.  So life with the Trinity is about receiving and living in that love of God, which we have access to through the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  In that regard, I like to share the following quote which I have used in the past about the topic of the Trinity:

When people tell you that they don’t understand the Trinity and Unity, you should reply: I don’t understand it either, but I love it and venerate it. If I understood God’s greatness, if God fit into this poor head of mine, my God would be very small. And yet, He does fit — He wants to fit — in my heart, in the immense depth of my soul, which is immortal. (St. Josemaria Escriva)

In so many gardens around the world, one might find a statue of a man in a long robe, with a tonsure haircut, a bird on his shoulder and several animals at his feet. This man we all recognize as St. Francis of Assisi. For the vast majority of even faithful Catholics in our contemporary Church, this conception of St. Francis is familiar. He is the saint of the animals. If you went to a Catholic grade school you probably remember a pet blessing on October 4 each year.

Hopefully, if you’ve read any of the articles in this series, you’ve realized by now that the animal-loving part of St. Francis was only a direct consequence of his deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ, the one who created the animals. St. Francis loved Jesus, and he loved poverty. His love for Jesus and poverty was lived out, as I covered last week, in an authentic piety – a compassion, care, and love for God and for all those St. Francis met.

The animals, in some supernatural way, responded to the piety of St. Francis. Maybe they saw in him some resemblance to humanity before the sin of Adam and Eve. Maybe they saw in him a resemblance to their own innocence. As even the scriptures note, all creation praises God. These animals praise him essentially automatically, simply by living according to God’s design. 

Well, St. Francis lived his life as far according to God’s design as possible. Every fiber of his being sought to serve the Lord. This was his piety, and it was noticed by the animals.

St. Bonaventure includes so many stories about wild animals like rabbits and birds that came to St. Francis to be near to him. One bird came near and would only leave after St. Francis turned and gave the bird his blessing (Life of St. Francis, 8.8). St. Francis once told a sheep to praise God, and it would enter the Church the brothers were praying in, bow down, and seem to pray (8.7). St. Francis would speak to them calling them, “brother,” or “sister,” in a loving way, and they responded with something near friendship. 

What lesson can we take from this?

It is somewhat difficult, in our current culture, to understand the perspective that St. Francis had toward these animals. Why did he love them? He loved them because they were loved by Christ. He loved them in reference to Christ. And they loved him because of his love for Christ. He didn’t simply have a knack with animals. He didn’t have a special superpower to commune with nature. No, he lived an active love toward them as a part of God’s creation and because of God’s love. 

It is very common in our culture to idolize our pets and to love our animals inordinately, for their own sakes, and even at times above other human beings. St. Francis’ love for animals is actually a very good model for all of us – a model of truly indifferent love for these creatures of God. He did not love the animals simply because they were animals or because of anything they did for him; he loved them because they were loved by God. He did not love them for their own sakes; he saw their place in creation as the servants of God and the servants of human beings. 

May St. Francis pray for us that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom and understanding in order to properly see the design of the universe. May he pray that we would be filled with piety, to draw near to our creator with love, affection, and the innocence of the animals!

Attentive readers of this bulletin will recall the series that Father Daniel wrote last summer on the various stanzas of the Sequence for Pentecost, so I do not need to go into great detail to explain what the Sequence is, but rather to jump right into focusing our attention on one of those stanzas this week for our reflection.  It fits well with the invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart that I have chosen for this Pentecost Sunday.  Here is the stanza from the Sequence, followed by the invocation:

You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;

Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, have mercy on us

The final line of the stanza is often translated with the phrase “sweet consolation”, and it speaks to how the Holy Spirit brings us peace in the midst of the difficulties we face in our lives.  In fact, peace is listed by St. Paul as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, or characteristics we can find in our lives when the Holy Spirit is present in our souls through God’s grace.  

Devotion to the Sacred Heart fits well in this regard, as we know how, through His humanity, Jesus experienced so many of the emotions that we face in our humanity as well – sorrow, rejection, abandonment, physical suffering.  As a result of that, He is truly able to have empathy with us.  We know the experience of finding consolation from a friend who is willing to enter into suffering with us (the meaning of compassion), not in a cold, detached way, but in a way that knows suffering as well.  When we bring our burdens to His Heart, He receives us not as a burden, but as a guest, and He pours into our hearts His loving consolation that brings us peace.

St. John Henry Newman had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and reflected on how the Eucharist is that constant presence of that beating Heart of Jesus, inviting us to find in this gift the relief for which our souls long.  It is a beautiful image to think of, and one that can really help us as we come to receive the Eucharist at Mass.  In those moments of quiet right after receiving Him, we can ask Him to enter those places of anxiety, fear, sorrow, or suffering.  We can expect to find the gift of His consolation when we invite Him in this way in this moment of deep intimacy.  While we can and should use our own words for this prayer, we could also use the following from Newman, as it summarizes this theme so beautifully:

O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still. Now as then Thou savest, Desiderio desideravi—”With desire I have desired.” I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O my God, when Thou dost condescend to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink Thee, and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me, O make my heart beat with Thy Heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace.

As we move into the eighth chapter of the life of St. Francis, we continue to dive deeper into the great virtues which St. Francis possessed through his unity with Christ. The virtue that St. Bonaventure focuses on in this chapter is “Piety,” a virtue that is exceedingly important for our lives of faith, but one that very often gets little focus. 

Generally, and sadly, it seems that “piety” is used almost in an insulting or mocking way to ascribe to some people an overly “pious” way of living their faith. This critique, however, comes from an impoverished view of piety – a view that sees the virtue of piety as something to do only with the external actions of faith. If I see someone who kneels in a church, prays the rosary, lights candles, practices devotions, I might call them pious, and rightly so. The virtue of piety, however, encompasses much more than these outward expressions of the faith. It is something deeply interior to a person, and it may or may not be expressed in these outward ways.

This chapter begins with some beautiful lines by St. Bonaventure:

“True piety, which according to the Apostle, is helpful for all things, had so filled Francis’ heart and penetrated its depths that it seemed to have appropriated the man of God completely into its dominion. This is what drew him up to God through devotion, transformed him into Christ through compassion, attracted him to his neighbor through condescension, and symbolically showed a return to the state of original innocence through universal reconciliation with each and every thing” (The Life of St. Francis by Bonaventure 8.1).

That is quite a quote! And immediately, we see that St. Francis’ piety had very little to do with his outward devotional practices. This is not to say that he lacked those! No, rather, he practiced his faith, but what we call “Piety” in him was something deeper than the outward practices. It was what undergirded the practices. In a footnote to this section, the editor writes, “The Latin term is pietas which has a much broader scope than the English “piety”; in the context of this chapter it includes love, devotion, affection, reverence, kindness, fidelity, and compassion” (8.1, footnote). A “pious” action filled with these characteristics is one that is full of a holy goodness, but a “pious” action without these characteristics is empty and meaningless. 

St. Francis’ piety was truly the great gift of the Holy Spirit that led him to do the will of the Father in remarkable ways. It led him to love his brothers and sisters here on earth with an intense devotion. It led him to draw near to sinners and to lead them to God. It led him to care for the poor with a special love, kindness, and reverence. It led him to seek to remain poor and in that poverty to remain faithful to Christ his Lord and King. It taught him to look upon all those who were poor – whether from a lack of physical means or a lack of moral and spiritual uprightness – as his own brothers and sisters. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Piety answers, “Yes, he is Christ to me and I serve him as I serve the Lord.”

In this way, we see that a truly pious person is someone not to be mocked but to be praised and revered! If I see a person practicing devotions, lighting candles, giving to the poor, etc., and I consider that they do it out of love, devotion, affection, etc., what a great joy it is to see the Holy Spirit at work in their life! God-willing, these exterior actions speak of a deeper interior life and lead to greater actions of love and charity in the world. 

May St. Francis pray for us all that we may be filled with a greater spirit of Piety!

As my time at the Cathedral is coming to an end, I am noticing how different aspects of life here, of which I have grown accustomed to, are about to become memories of the past.  To be sure, they will be memories that, when I recall them, will bring me great peace and joy as I recall the many blessings of having served here, some of the happiest years of my nearly fifteen years as a priest.

One thing that came to mind as I reviewed the readings for this Sunday (the Ascension of the Lord) was something from the Responsorial Psalm.  It is not any specific word that I will remember, but rather something unique that accompanies those words as this psalm is sung at the masses this weekend.  The response is as follows: “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.” (Ps 47:6) As that verse is sung, Mark Gifford always adds a little trumpet blast from the organ.  I usually remember that it is coming, but every time I hear it, I cannot help but smile – it brings me great delight, and I am sure every time I hear this verse in the future, even if not accompanied by this musical flourish, I will remember what happens here with that same delight.

Though Psalm 47 certainly has its own Old Testament context, possibly connected to the Feast of Tabernacles, our liturgy for this Sunday sees it as connected to Jesus ascending to Heaven to take His place forever as the King who will reign supreme for eternity.  The psalm is a jubilant expression of the praise in Heaven as the saints clap their hands and shout with joy, blowing trumpets as they gather around their King.  I have therefore chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this feast of the Ascension:

Heart of Jesus, delight of all the saints, have mercy on us

This feast day invites us to consider the delight that we will have when we finally are welcomed into this wonderful scene when we reach the end of our earthly pilgrimage.  It is so hard for us to grasp this delight will far exceed any of the delights we experience in this life.  And yet, it is true!  This does not mean that we downplay the delights of this life.  We accept them with gratitude, recognizing them as the gifts that they are from God, but we rejoice in our belief that something more awaits us.  And unlike the delights of this world, which bring so much joy in the moment, but often turn into memories that may fade, the delight of the saints is ever present and never diminished.  It reminds me of a line with which I sometimes conclude funerals.  It comes from the conclusion of The Last Battle, the final installment of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, wrapping up the many adventures of delight had by the main characters:

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. 

On this feast of the Ascension, we recall the new way Jesus desires to relate to his people. Formerly, during his hidden life on earth and his public ministry, he walked among his people in the ordinary way any human being does. He spoke to them, prayed with them, taught them, and healed them. He worked incredible miracles, but from any outward viewer’s perspective he looked and acted like a normal human being. As Isaiah prophesies, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (53:2). This ordinary appearance ceases, however, after the resurrection. 

When Jesus appears to his apostles after the resurrection, he is generally somewhat unrecognizable, although they can see it is him when he makes it known to them. Still, he does not remain with them for long in this new form – he ascends to heaven after forty days. There, from his throne, he now SEEMS to be far away from us. He SEEMS now to simply have no appearance at all. He seems to have left.

As we repeat every year, however, the thought that Christ has left us is a mistaken thought. He has not left, rather, he has chosen to exist in a new sort of relation toward us. Before, he came to us in an ordinary, physical, earthly way. Now he has ascended, but not to leave. He has ascended in order to be even closer. Before, someone could only get close to him by walking toward him. Now, I call him to mind and he is there with me. His presence has become more universal and heightened – not because he has become some sort of ethereal spirit, but because in his physical body, he has gone to a place that needs no movement on our part to access. 

Additionally, he has not only gone there, but he has granted to his Church (the apostles and disciples) the power to unite people to him in an intimate union that St. Paul called being “one body” in Christ. This union has come to be known as the “mystical body of Christ” or “the Church.” We say that from heaven Jesus exercises a headship over his body and that we form one body with him. 

St. Augustine speaks about how we cannot speak about the head without the body or the body without the head if we want to speak of the whole Christ. Jesus has willed reality to be such that he is incomplete without his body, and that we are incomplete without the rest of the body and our head. This is a great mystery!

Pope Pius XII says, even more strikingly, that although “Christ the Head holds such an eminent position, one must not think that he does not require the help of the Body. … Christ has need of His members. … That is not because He is indigent and weak, but rather because He has so willed it for the greater glory of His spotless Spouse. Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action.” 

I end here by simply briefly calling our minds back to St. Francis. See how he lived out his union with Christ his Head and Lord. We see so clearly in his life how Jesus worked the sanctification of so many precisely through Francis’ actions and words. If St. Francis had not been the apostolic disciple that Jesus called him to be, where would the Church be now? 

How is Jesus calling you and me to live more intentionally as a member of his body, sharing in the mission of our Head and Shepherd?

In the final few weeks of the Easter Season, the Gospels for Sunday and the weekdays come from the section of John’s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourse.  Jesus is preparing to bid His disciples farewell, not just when He dies on the Cross, but also when He bids them farewell at the Ascension, which we will celebrate next week.  His coming departure was no doubt a source of great anxiety and sorrow for these friends of His with whom He has shared His life for three years.  In the midst of this special time He spends with His friends, He offers them various promises meant to bring them peace in the midst of their sorrow, not the least of which is the one we hear in the Gospel for this Sunday: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always…I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16, 18) A few verses later, He offers another powerful promise: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” (John 14:27)

There are so many other promises that the Lord offers throughout the Gospels that are a source of peace, but these are especially consoling because of their proximity to the sad events that will soon follow.  Through our Baptism, we have received this gift of the Lord’s presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.  And yet, we still find ourselves feeling troubled or afraid.  In those moments, we would do well to return to these promises which Jesus makes to His friends, promises not meant just for them, but for us as well, for we are indeed among His friends because of the new life He has poured into us through His grace.  As we hear those promises addressed to us personally, in the here and now of our lives, in our fear and uncertainty, we discover His peace.  With that in mind, I have chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this week:

Heart of Jesus, our peace and reconciliation, have mercy on us

The inclusion of reconciliation with peace is not coincidental.  Our greatest experience of unrest in our relationship with the Lord comes not so much when we are afraid about the future, but rather when we have turned away from Him through our sins.  In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus offers us these beautiful words: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” (John 15:9) Yet, when we sin, we choose to depart from His love.  Instead of remaining in His love, remaining in His promises, remaining in His grace, we wander off into darkness, we wander off into a place of sorrow.  But the Lord, the Good Shepherd, goes after us, desiring to bring us back into the fold, desiring to restore us to His love, desire to restore our peace through the gift of His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Over the past couple of years, I have been struck by the words I am privileged to say to every lost sheep who has made their way back to the love of God in confession – “may God grant you pardon and peace.”  When our sins are forgiven, all the promises are renewed in us and for us, and a peace washes over our souls.

May the grace of the Holy Spirit guard this peace in our hearts and deepen our faith in His many promises to us, that He will be with us until the end of time, that He will not leave us orphans, and that He will love us to the end.