Alleluia!  He is Risen!  After completing our 40-day journey through the desert of Lent, and having once again entered into Christ’s Passion during Holy Week, we now rejoice anew in the victory of Christ risen from the dead!

There is a phrase in the liturgy that has caught my attention in a particular way over the past few years that serve as a sort of reference point for the entire Easter Season for me.  The phrase comes from the Easter Prefaces, which you will recall happens after the Offertory and before the Holy, Holy, Holy, leading us into the Eucharistic Prayer.  All of the Easter Prefaces begin their conclusion with the same phrase: “Therefore, overcome with Paschal joy.”

I think it is important to highlight that this joy is not just any joy, but it is Paschal joy.   How is Paschal joy different?  According to a quick search on an online dictionary, joy is generally defined as an emotion of happiness and delight.  Feeling joy is a great thing, and our faith can elicit very positive emotions.  But in the theological sense, joy is more than just an emotion.  Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  Monsignor Charles Pope, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, explains Christian joy in this way:

The joy referred to here is more than a passing worldly joy. It is deeper than an emotional experience. It is rooted in God and comes from him. Since it does not have the world for its origin but, rather, comes from God, it is more serene and stable than worldly joy, which is merely emotional and lasts only for a time.

(https://blog.adw.org/2013/01/a-brief-treatise-on-the-fruits-of-the-holy-spirit/) 

So, this helps us understand what joy is, but the Church is pointing out a specific kind of joy, Paschal joy.  Paschal joy comes from the glorious truth that Christ has risen from the dead!  Life is victorious, sin has been defeated!  On the day of our Baptism, we became partakers in this victory, and because of that, we have great hope that will shall share in the Resurrection at the end of our earthly journey.  This means that even if we are suffering, even if we are discouraged with how our life here on earth may be going, even if we feel sad at the circumstances of our lives or the world around us, we raise our eyes to God and see the victory that has already been won, and the hope we have for what lies ahead for us.  Therefore, despite how we might feel, we can and should be overcome with Paschal joy as we celebrate this greatest of all feast days.

In 50 days, we will celebrate Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the Church, but we do not need to wait until then to enjoy the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Remaining in the state of grace, receiving the Eucharist regularly, and keeping up our daily prayer with the Lord will fan the flame of the Holy Spirit within us and we will experience the abundance of those fruits in our lives, including joy.  If we begin to feel down and discouraged with what is happening in us or around us, we can simply cry out: “Come, Holy Spirit”, who will remind us of the victory Christ won for us through His death and Resurrection, and meditating on that, how can we not be overcome with Paschal joy?

On behalf of Bishop Paprocki, Fathers Paul Lesupati, Dominic Rankin, Dominic Vahling, Deacon Larry Smith, and the entire Cathedral Parish staff, we wish you all a very blessed Easter!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: March 31^st 

The Gospels tell us that an entire cohort of Roman Soldiers participated in mocking Jesus before His crucifixion, something like 600 soldiers abusing and jeering at Him. Just the night before, Jesus had reassured His apostles, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” [Matthew 26:53] A legion is ten times the size of a cohort, and Jesus has more than a dozen of them, of angels, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of angels. But Our Lord said that while calling Peter back from his sword wielding, and as the soldiers sneered and struck the King of Kings no angels ever appeared.

Jesus instead chose death, self-sacrifice, giving His life in my place, loving us till the end. 

Now, this kind of love is amazing, and we must pause and let it sink in that Our Lord would have embraced all that suffering for JUST me or JUST you. But I think His choice to NOT defend Himself challenges us on a deeper level. If you or I were faced with a tortuous death, an unfair trial, the absurdity of senseless and unjustified suffering, wouldn’t we look for a way out? 

Jesus could have called upon angels, obliterating those trying to kill Him.

Jesus could have refuted the charges, casting on us the consequences of our sin.

Jesus could have accepted the gall, numbing the excruciating pain of the cross.

Jesus could have asked God for comfort, at least feeling the consolation of His Father’s presence.

But at every turn Jesus instead chose love, the kind of love that hurts, that costs, that accepts suffering and scorn from the one being loved. Jesus did not just suffer, He chose suffering, He accepted it for you and me.

And He asks us if we’d be willing to accept it with Him. 

“So the soldiers did these things,but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” [John 19:24-25] How easy it is to brush past this poignant line: The soldiers doing their thing … Do we allow our minds and hearts to consider the full horror of crucifixion?… and then the brief mention of those standing by the cross. Do we know how hard it was for Mary and John and the other Mary’s to stand there, to watch Jesus die so horribly?! Do we realize how hard it was for Jesus to see His friends suffering with Him?

I gave up many little things for Lent – probably all of us did – and I failed in every one of my sacrifices. I chose YouTube to distract myself from a long todo list. I succumbed to dessert at the end of hard day. I took a hot shower when feeling drained or under the weather. Now none of these things are intrinsically evil, but they are all ways that I avoided suffering, said “no” to the cross, told Jesus I would rather find my own comfort somewhere else than stay with Him on Golgotha. I chose the golden calf. I denied Jesus. I embraced Him, and then abandoned Him, because His way wasn’t the one I signed up for.

And then He rose from the dead.

And when Jesus steps forth alive and glorious after that horrible death, He does not just show us that eternal life is possible, and the cross is not the end, but He comes back to me, and you, and Peter and the rest, and gives us another chance to choose Him, cross and all.

Balbina was the daughter of a Roman Tribune named Quirinus. He would have commanded one of those Roman legions, and was currently holding Pope Alexander I and another Christian named Hermes in prison, pressing both to renounce their faith in Christ. Hermes did not know how to answer Quirinus’s interrogations, and so points the tribune towards Pope Alexander, telling him that the Holy Father had raised Hermes’s son from the dead. Quirinus breaks down. His own daughter Balbina has a crippling and disfiguring goiter. Can the Holy Father heal her? Pope Alexander points Balbina away from his own chains to reverence those that held St. Peter just a few decades before. She finds and kisses the shackles of the first pope and is healed, and she and her father are baptized at the hands of Pope Alexander, eventually themselves becoming saints.

The story is beautiful, but the most amazing thing that happened was not the conversion of Quirinus, or the healing of Balbina, but what happened when they were baptized. Quirinus, baptized, no longer needs to scramble to uphold his position. He is a son of God, His identity is secure. Balbina, baptized, is cured of the far worse crippling and disfiguring of original sin. She is pure and free and beautiful as God always wanted her to be. But baptism also plunged them, and us, into Christ’s death. Of course, our being baptized asks us to continue to fight sin in our lives. And to continue to choose to live from a spirit of adoption (rather than that of an orphan). BUT, we must also continue to embrace the cross with Jesus, and receive the gift of His new life in God’s good time. 

– Fr. Dominic always loves to be wished “Happy Easter”, and nothing is happier than Easter, but Easter is no less real when happiness is harder to find.

As the Church begins our annual observance of Holy Week, permit me to take a short break from our ongoing series of praying with the Mass.  To turn our attention to these most important days of the liturgical year is actually not really a diversion from our reflections on the Mass, for the Mass itself was instituted during this sacred week on Holy Thursday.  Christ’s offering of Himself on the Cross for our sins on Good Friday is the very mystery that we enter into every time we are present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Therefore the events of Holy Week are intimately connected with the celebration of the Mass, regardless of when we attend these Sacred Mysteries.  For our reflection as we enter this Holy Week, I would invite us to reflect on how this week was experienced by two of Jesus’s Apostles, Judas and Peter.  

Let us start with Judas.  In the Church’s readings for Mass on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Holy Thursday, and at Good Friday Liturgy, Judas is mentioned in all of them – the only Apostle to claim that distinction.  By keeping Judas before our eyes, the Church is inviting us to see in him the example of what can happen if we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives.  Judas was called to be a follower of Christ.  Jesus said to him, as well as the others: “I have called you friends.” (Jn 15:15)  Before the Last Supper, Jesus says to these closest friends: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Lk 22:15). Judas had his feet washed, like the rest.  But sadly, he was so blinded in his own greed that he continued with his plan to betray Jesus.  In the Garden, Judas identifies Jesus to His captors by giving Him a kiss, to which Jesus responds: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Lk 22:48)  Judas eventually went away saddened at his choice to reject Christ’s love.  But his sadness was not true contrition, for had he been contrite, he would have let that gaze of Jesus penetrate his heart and chose the path of repentance, a path that would have led to a much different ending for him.

The story of Peter is not terribly different.  This head of the Apostles was so firm in his commitment to the Lord.  He promised to never deny Him, that He would even die for Him: “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you.” (Lk 22:33)  But when the time for witnessing to Jesus came, Peter three times denied knowing Jesus, just as the Lord had predicted.  Right after his third denial, Luke’s Gospel recounts the following reaction of Jesus: “the Lord turned and looked at Peter.” (Lk 22:61). Peter remembered what Jesus had said about his denying Him three times, and Luke writes: “He went out and began to weep bitterly.” (Lk 22:62).  Unlike with Judas, the look of Jesus at Peter after his denial did not lead to despair.  Rather, Peter’s contrition was authentic, sorrowful for having denied the Messiah.  This sorrow would not be the end of his story, for he would be reconciled on the shore of the sea after the Resurrection, when Jesus asks Peter three times: “Do you love me.”  Three times, Peter affirms his love for Jesus, to make up for his three-fold denial.  And we know the rest of his story.

Two friends of Jesus, called to be with Him, called to share in His life, called to receive His Body and Blood at the Last Supper.  Both ended up falling out of their weakness.  Both were looked up with love by Jesus.  One despaired, and one repented.  This Holy Week, I invite us to meditate on that gaze of Jesus as He looks upon us.  No matter how many times we may have denied Him or rejected Him through sin, His gaze is one of love, not one of disappointment.  His gaze is an invitation to not flee and hide out of shame or despair, but to run to Him, to be embraced by Him.  He invites us to stand at the foot of the Cross as He gazes down on you with His arms extended in a gesture as if to say: “This is how much I love you.”  May His gaze fill us with sorrow for our sins, but may we find in Him that gift of mercy that He freely offers to us, a gift that can transform our lives this week if we let Him.  For with His mercy, our sins and failures are not the end of our story, they become the places of His victory in us when we surrender those sins to Him.  If you have not yet let Him win that victory over your sins lately, He will be waiting for you in the confessional to welcome you with His merciful love.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: March 24^th 

If you’re anything like me, you have never heard of St. Aldemar.

He was a monk at the famous Abbey of Monte Casino in Italy. That abbey, one of the first established by St. Benedict, around 529 AD, was where the Rule of Benedict was first lived-out and Benedict’s vision of monastic life first seen for everything it could be. When that monastery was sacked by the Lombards in 580, forcing the monks to evacuate to Rome, that way of life began to spread throughout the Latin Church (Pope St. Gregory the Great spoke highly of it just a few years later) and within a few centuries it was the standard for Western Monasticism).  

Probably you do know the Benedictine motto “ora et labora” / “pray and work”. These certainly are the pillars of the life and structure of Benedictine Monasteries. The monks begin their day well before the sunrise singing the first period of psalms and readings (called “matins” from the latin word for morning, probably at 3 or 4am), then, perhaps after a brief break, “lauds” (this is what we would now simply call “morning prayer”, but it took this traditional name from the repetition of the theme of praise, “laudate”, that resounds through the psalms sung at sunrise, Psalms 148-150. At 6am.) Then the monks would go off to various labors around the monastery and surrounding territory – farming, building, writing, teaching … – but always ready to pause their efforts and return to the monastery for another time of prayer. Throughout the middle of the day you would have terce (third hour of the day, 9am), sext (sixth hour, noon), and none (ninth hour, 3pm). The day would also include time for meals, except for feast-days it would be simple fare, a Mass attended by the entire community and individual Masses offered by any of the monks who were priests (concelebration was only done on specific occasions, usually with a bishop), and the day would conclude with the final hours of prayer, vespers (6pm) and compline (9pm or so).

You can see the discipline and intensity of this life, but also the amazing spiritual and cultural fruit that could come from a place of such stability, sanctity, and seriousness. It is no wonder that monasteries became hubs for medieval towns, precursors to schools and hospitals, and engines of evangelization as they moved hearts towards Christ by their prayer and example.  

But we need to get back to St. Aldemar. He wasn’t born a monk of Monte Cassino. Actually, he didn’t even begin his monastic life there. He was born in Capua, Italy (not far from Monte Cassino, but a bit closer to Naples) and happily became a monk in his hometown. A princess of the region came to like the wise and faithful monk and tapped him to be in charge of a new religious house she was building. Exciting, right?! You’re living your best monastic life and then get noticed by a princess and given a brand-new monastery! … but it wasn’t God’s plan.

Aldemar was reassigned by his Benedictine superiors to move to Monte Cassino, a request he obediently followed. The princess threw a fit, Aldemar had to flee to Boiana still narrowly escaping with his life, and eventually winding up all the way North of Rome in the Abruzzi region, where he founded several other monasteries. 

Here’s what I want us to focus on: deep prayer and dutiful work were important, and they must be the backbone of our life too but they didn’t make Aldemar a saint. What got him to heaven was obedience. Here’s what St. Benedict said about that in chapter 5 of his rule:

The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all. Because of the holy service they have professed, or because of dread of hell and for the glory of everlasting life, they carry out the superior’s order as promptly as if the command came from God himself. The Lord says of men like this: “No sooner did he hear than he obeyed me” (Ps 17[18]:45); again, he tells teachers: “Whoever listens to you, listens to me” (Luke 10:16).

– Fr. Dominic made several different promises at his ordination, so do any of you who are married or in any religious vocation, but the most important thing that we offer to the Lord, whether through our spouse, or through our religious superior is our obedience. 

Jesus was obedient unto death. His obedience saved the world! Our emulation of that obedience will be how He saves us.

Read more of St. Benedict on Obedience here – https://christdesert.org/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-5-obedience/ – or in the QR code:

When the Precious Blood is distributed to the faithful at Mass (note, I will address that topic in a future article), there may be the case that, when taking the chalice to consume a drink of the Precious Blood, you notice that there is a small particle of the Body of Christ in the chalice!  You might panic, thinking: “Did the last person spit a portion of the host in the chalice?”  Or, “I saw Father place that little crumb in the chalice, should I avoid consuming it?”  Why is that little portion in the chalice after all?  Let’s explore that very question.

Following the invitation to offer one another the sign of peace, the celebrant of the Mass does and says a couple of things that often go unnoticed.  Here is how it reads in the Roman Missal:

Then he takes the host, breaks it over the paten, and places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly: May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says the following about this action:

The gesture of breaking bread done by Christ at the Last Supper, which in apostolic times gave the entire Eucharistic Action its name, signifies that the many faithful are made one body (1 Cor 10:17) by receiving Communion from the one Bread of Life, which is Christ, who for the salvation of the world died and rose again. (GIRM, 83)

There is an interesting historical connection to this action that I think helps to drive this point about unity home.  I recall hearing about it while in seminary, and then I was reminded of it in a set of articles on the silents prayers of the Mass written by Father Boniface Hicks, O.S.B.  He writes the following:

Another origin for the mingling of a particle of the host in with the chalice was from the spirit of ecclesial unity. A particle from the consecrated host at the bishop’s Mass called a fermentum was brought to the parish church and mingled in the priest’s chalice as a sign of the unity of the priest’s Mass with the bishop’s. With this unity in mind, the priest’s prayer during the ritual action of commingling can take on other dimensions. The particle from the bishop connects the Mass with the whole diocesan Church, and the prayer can serve an intercessory role for all those in the diocese who receive from the bishop’s host. It also reminds us that salvation is not a solitary affair but, like Holy Communion, it is something that we strive for together and that brings us into unity even as it also has a dramatically personal dimension. Seen under the sign of unity, the comingling reminds us that receiving the Eucharist is certainly entering into communion with Christ, but it is also deepening our communion with his Bride, the Church. (https://adoremus.org/2021/11/the-quiet-that-speaks-haec-commixtio-may-this-mingling/)

Although this practice of bringing a portion of the bishop’s host to each church is not longer observed, the significance is still present as a reminder of the unity that is a desired fruit of our reception of Holy Communion.  I’ve written about unity in previous articles, and I think this action helps to strengthen our understanding of how important unity is when it comes to our understanding of and prayer at Mass.  This unity is both vertical (with Christ Himself) and horizontal (with His Body, the Church).  Christ’s death and Resurrection are at the service of both, and as such, our reception of Holy Communion should commit us to striving for a deeper love for Christ and His Church.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: March 17^th 

I want to ask you to read this article less as a story, and more as a meditation. Perhaps find some quiet time to reflect on the moment described in the Gospel passages below when Joseph of Arimathea comes close to Jesus for the first time.

Mark 15: ⁴²And, it being already evening, since it was preparation day, that is, the day before Sabbath, ⁴³Joseph from Arimathea having come (a respected council member who was also himself awaiting the kingdom of God), having taken courage, came in before Pilate and requested the body of Jesus. ⁴⁴But Pilate was amazed that he had already died; and having called over the centurion, he questioned him if he was dead for some time. ⁴⁵And having come to know from the centurion, he granted the corpse to Joseph. ⁴⁶And having bought a linen cloth, having taken him down, with the linen cloth he tied up and put him away in a burial place that was hewn out of rock; and he rolled over a stone against the door of the tomb.

Matthew 27: ⁵⁷But it being evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea whose name was Joseph, who had also himself been a disciple of Jesus. ⁵⁸This man, having come before Pilate, requested the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered (it) to be given up. ⁵⁹And having taken the body, Joseph wrapped it up in a clean white linen cloth ⁶⁰and placed him in his new tomb which he had hewn in the rock; and having rolled a large stone to the door of the tomb, he went away. 

Luke 23: ⁵⁰And behold a man, Joseph by name, being a member of the council, a good and just man—⁵¹he was not in agreement with their decision and course of action—from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was awaiting the kingdom of God. ⁵²This man, having come before Pilate, requested the body of Jesus. ⁵³And having taken (it) down, he wrapped it up with a linen cloth and placed him in a rock-hewn burial place where no one was yet laid. ⁵⁴And it was preparation day, and Sabbath was dawning.

John 19: ^38aBut after these things Joseph from Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus but hidden because of fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate permitted (it). ^38bSo he came and took away his body. ³⁹But there came also Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰So they took the body of Jesus; and they bound it with cloths together with spices, as is the custom among the Jews for burying. ⁴¹But there was in the place where he was crucified a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had ever yet been placed. ⁴²So there, on account of the preparation day of the Jews, because the tomb was near, they placed Jesus.

These are translations from a famous Catholic biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, who carefully compares the details from each Passion Account in his (comprehensive) book, “The Death of the Messiah.”

First, simply notice the details that each Gospel-writer focuses us on. Mark, the vivid storyteller, surprises us when from the least likely place – the Sanhedrin, that council of Jewish leaders who worked to put Jesus to death – comes a man, respected, courageous, seeking the Kingdom, who asks for Jesus’ body. Notice that Joseph is not yet described as a disciple or follower of Jesus. Yet somehow, he is moved amidst all the ridicule and hatred being flung at Jesus, to still be faithful to the Jewish law and seek a proper burial for this misunderstood man.

Matthew, the tax collector, himself having experienced Jesus’ mercy for those with many possessions, emphasizes that Joseph was rich. We find that he gives Jesus his own tomb, painstakingly hewn from the rock, and the simple linen shroud is additionally described as “clean” and “white”, and the scene shows Joseph carefully wrapping Jesus’ body in it. Luke adds that Joseph was “good and just”, not in agreement with all that the Sanhedrin had done, placing greater emphasis than Mark on Joseph’s “awaiting the Kingdom of God”. And John, with his greater spiritual insight, sees in Joseph’s heart already the heart of a disciple, and recognizes amid the bleak tomb a garden, where man was first created, and will soon be re-created.

– Fr. Dominic once had the opportunity to visit Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where under one enormous vault-roof, you can visit the hill of Calvary, the stone on which Jesus’ body was anointed, and the nearby location of His tomb, each enshrined with altars or lanterns, each a quiet witness to the blood God shed for me. When we are given Jesus’ Body – risen! – at Mass, does it reconfigure our hearts, reorder our priorities, like it did for Joseph of Arimathea? Do I stop waiting for God’s Kingdom and start living it? Do I take courage to risk ridicule or rejection to hold fast to Jesus? Do I put all my own riches, even my own mortality, at Christ’s service? Can I see in my own darkness a garden where God will bring resurrection? 

After praying to be delivered from all evil, we now pray more specifically for the grace of peace and unity to be granted to the Church as the celebrant says:

Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles: Peace I leave you, my peace I give you; look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.

The beginning of this prayer is taken directly from Jesus’s Last Supper Discourse, as He speaks about the coming of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.  There is an important line that Jesus says immediately after the promise of His peace, where He says: “Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” (Jn 14:27)

What do we do when our peace is disturbed?  When we feel the burden of our sins, the consequences of things that we have done or have had done to us, or the unease of feeling out of sorts, where do we turn?  We often start with the many worldly outlets in order to try to reclaim peace.  We might get up and step outside for a walk or get some exercise of some sort.  We might call a friend to take our mind off of our current troubles.  More dangerously, we may turn to things that work to distract us, such as food or drink.  These days, more often than not, we pull out our phone and start scrolling mindlessly.  We do anything to avoid that uncomfortable feeling of a lack of peace.  Only after we have run out of options do we turn to God as though He is a last resort.

But the Lord is inviting us to turn to Him first for peace, and His peace is wholly different from what all of these worldly things promise.  Sure, they may give us some relief and produce calm, but simply feeling peace is not the peace that the Lord wants to give to us.  His peace is much deeper than just a feeling.  The peace He gives is the assurance that He is indeed with us, that despite the chaos that surrounds us, He is there with His loving presence to strengthen us and guide us.

One of the greatest ways in which the Lord restores our peace is through the Sacrament of Penance.  I was struck a few years ago with the words that the priest says in the words of absolution, just before the essential words.  He prays that the Lord will grant the penitent “pardon and peace.”  When people come to confession, they feel a lack of peace due to their sins, and it can be difficult to confess their faults.  But after their sins have been wiped away, a remarkable change takes place.  Peace is restored, and the peace is often very tangible as they leave the confessional.  Sure they may feel more peaceful, but the Lord has given them an even more profound peace by drawing them into deeper intimacy with the Trinity, where the love of God guards the peace of His presence.

As we prepare for our reception of Holy Communion in just a few moments, Jesus is promising to give us this same gift of peace.  He comes to dwell in us through the Eucharist and He brings His peace, a peace that reminds us that whatever burdens we may be feeling in our lives at that moment, the Lord is there.  He wants to strengthen us with His grace to face those challenges with the peace of knowing we do not have to solve those problems alone.  We might say that with the Eucharist, the Lord is granting us “nourishment and peace.”  Just because we may not feel that peace in the same way as after going to confession does not mean that that same peace is not there, and for that, we should be most grateful.

Here is a challenge that I would like offer to you this week.  Try to notice how often you turn to worldly things to try to combat the lack of peace in your daily life.  Instead of turning first to your phone or some other distraction, turn to the Lord.  Let yourself hear Jesus making the same promise He made to His Apostles at the Last Supper: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (Jn 14:27)

Father Alford     

Feast Day: March 3^rd 

Last week we accompanied Katherine Drexel up to the point when in a dramatic conversation with Pope Leo XIII, she found her desire to help the poor in America utterly redirected from philanthropic proposals, to a radical giving up of her fortune and dedicating her own life to loving them.  

She conversed with a long-time family friend, Fr. James O’Connor (by this time Bp. O’Connor, a wonderful priest, now given the spectacular title “Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska”), thinking perhaps to become a contemplative nun, uncertain with this idea of becoming a missionary. “I know the privations, the trials, the temptations, and I ask myself, could I go through all these things in a manner suitable for edifying the religious of my order?” His response was unequivocal, “I was never so sure of any vocation, not even my own, as I am of yours. If you do not establish the order in question, you will allow to pass an opportunity of doing immense service to the Church which may not occur again. … Even as a foundress, you will have your faults, but God not you will do the work. He often makes use of very weak instruments. The question is not will you be all you should be, but does God will you to be his instrument.…”

Bp. O’Connor, perhaps unbeknownst to Catherine, had actually traveled to Chicago to speak about the matter with another leading churchman of the day, Archbishop John Ireland (he, fittingly, had been born in the Emerald Isle, making the arduous journey to America with his 8 siblings and mother after the Irish potato famine. From there he would become a priest in the Midwest, chaplain during the Civil war, and by the time of this conversation, a leading and patriotic Archbishop in Minneapolis). Ireland’s thoughts were just as emphatic: “Miss Drexel is just the person to do it, and if she does not undertake it, it will remain undone.” Miss Drexel, meanwhile, decided to go on a retreat, and on March 19, 1889, finally received the grace of docility to the Lord’s plans. She wrote Bp. O’Connor with joy and peace “that I could promise Our Lord to please Him by entering fully into your plan of founding an order. As long as I look on self, I cannot. Our Lord gives and will give me the grace always to look at Him.” For the rest of her life, she would always recount that “The feast of St. Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” 

And so, in 1889, one of the richest women in the world, gave it all away to become a nun. She first begun her postulancy with the Sisters of Mercy in 1889, then made her first vows on February 12, 1891, thereby establishing under her leadership the religious congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored. 

I, Katherine Drexel, called in religion Sister Mary Katharine . . . do vow and promise to God . . . Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and to be the Mother and Servant of the Indian and Negro Races . . . nor shall I undertake any work which may lead to the neglect and abandonment of the Indian and Colored Races.

She would lead that congregation for decades, only slowing down when a massive heart attack in the 1930s left her bedridden for the final twenty years of her life. She would devote immense funds and energy to educate, clothe, feed, and fight for the innate dignity of all oppressed throughout the United States. She traveled all over the country, establishing schools and homes for minorities and oppressed of all sorts, suffering not just the troubles of traveling and accepting the same poverty of those she loved, but also threats and violence from incredible vitriol that her charity stirred up. A bombing was threatened as she opened one convent, St. Elizabeth’s House, thankfully not carried out as she undoubtedly laid the cornerstone. Various of her schools and other buildings were burned down from the backlash her work received. The Ku Klux Klan nailed this notice to one of her schools in Texas: “We give you one week to suppress [services at the parish] or a flogging and tar and feathering will follow.” The week slowly passed, her sisters and their school children living under that horrible threat, but Sr. Katherine did not flinch, and before the week concluded a tornado ripped through the area, demolishing two of the Klan’s strongholds outside of the town. The school remained open.

Mother Katherine faced down ridicule from all sides, and stood against bigotry of every kind, but hers was never a staunch or stoic sanctity. Joy radiated from her, especially amidst the hardships of her call. Even during the last two decades of her life, bedridden, an utterly different cross from the ones she had carried for so many years, but it allowed her to spend her last years with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, simply praying for her sisters and the poor they sought to love and protect. 

– Fr. Dominic finds in some of St. Katherine’s words, a timely word of encouragement: “If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to Him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy which invites us. Press forward and fear nothing.”

The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer asks the Father to “deliver us from evil.”  It is interesting how the next line that the celebrant prays is: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil.”  The work of the evil one is to try to divide us from the Lord and from one another, and so it is indeed fitting that we are praying to be delivered from evil at this point of the Mass.  We have just prayed together to our Father, asking Him to give us our daily bread, to forgive us our trespasses, to not allow us to be led into temptation, and to deliver us from evil.  In just a few moments, we will be receiving Holy Communion, a word which signifies union with the Lord and one another, strengthened by the Sacrament of Unity, the Eucharist.

On the night after the Last Supper, when Jesus was praying to the Father, He stressed His deepest desire for unity in His Church: 

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

(Jn 17:20–23)

The Church often refers to this passage when reflecting on the divisions that exist within Christianity, with the various denominations believing a worshipping in a variety of ways.  And while in a general sense we can say that this division has the fingerprints of the evil one, I think for the purposes of our reflection, we want to consider how we within the Church are divided through the influence of the evil one and our own weaknesses.  In my article three weeks ago, I referenced Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says that “a house divided against itself will not stand.” (Mt. 12:25)  Unfortunately, when I typed out that line a few weeks ago I forgot a very important word – NOT.  Thanks to the careful attention of one of the readers of the column, I was made aware of my mistake, for which I apologize.  Back to the point – it would be helpful for us at this point of the Mass to pray with earnestness to the Lord to deliver us from the evils within ourselves and among the members of our congregation that seek to keep us divided.

In particular, I think it can be good to be attentive to anything within us that may be causing us distress (which we also pray to be kept free from in this prayer) as it relates to our experience at this Mass.  Perhaps you notice somebody who you do not think is dressed all that appropriately.  We can stew on the thought of how disrespectful they are being, and we can find ourselves getting agitated as the Mass goes on.  There may be cause for concern, and I am not doing to poke that hornet’s nest now, but notice how quickly we can allow something that offends us to be turned into something not from God.  We start making judgments about the other person, thinking what we would tell them if we had the chance, or what we are going to tell the pastor so that he can tell them.  We get caught in that cycle and our hearts are far from the unity Christ desires for us.  Other examples abound, such as somebody who is always a half sentence behind or ahead in the prayers, somebody whose singing is not the best, the homily we heard that we did not agree with, the unacceptable temperature of the church, etc.  It might even be a situation not present at Mass, but which is weighing heavily on us as we try to pray at Mass.

Let us be mindful of those things and ask the Lord for His grace to deliver us from the evil of judgment and lack of charity that we sometimes are stuck in during Mass.  This is not to dismiss the need for conversion that might be present in ourselves or in others, but it does mean asking the Lord to free us from any of the shackles that are clearly not from the Lord so that we can better realize His desire for us to all be one.

My challenge for this week is a brief one: spend some time thinking about someone that really gets under your skin.  Instead of gossiping about them to family, friends, or co-workers, talk about them to the Lord.  Tell Him what bothers you about them, pray for their conversion, but just as importantly, pray for your conversion, that you might not be handcuffed by the division in your heart that exists toward them.  Then bring that person to prayer by once again praying the Lord’s Prayer.

Father Alford     

 Feast Day: March 3^rd 

I recently came across an article that included several pictures of saints when they were kids. It had the famous pictures of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, curly hair and impish grin smiling back at us, and the shepherd children of Fatima, Jacinta scowling at the camera with her hand on hip. You will find it well worth your while to check out the other less famous but just as delightful photos at https://www.churchpop.com/photos-12-saints-children/ (or hit the qr code).

But I would like to focus on one particular photo this week, of St. Katherine Drexel at the age of 7. It was probably taken in the summer of 1866, with Catherine’s older sister, Elizabeth, being a few years older than her and her younger (half) sister Louise being only 3. Catherine (her birth name, it would change to Katherine when she took her religious name), was the second girl of her parents Francis and Hannah, but her mother would pass away just 5 weeks after she was born. Her father remarried Emma Bouvier, a Catholic, in 1860, and they lived a pious, if privileged life. Kittie, as she was called, enjoyed the best schools and countless trips around America and Europe and was widely thought to be the prettiest of the girls, each of them set to inherit the millions that their father, a Philadelphia banker, had amassed (equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars today, the fortune begun when Catherine’s grandfather had entered into a partnership with John Pierpoint [J.P.] Morgan). 

But their family would also give tremendous amounts of money to the poor, Emma being widely known around Philadelphia as “lady bountiful”, taking her girls out on walks around the city to find those who were too timid to come asking for help. Francis was of the same mind – helping his wife distribute food, clothing, and rent-assistance to all who needed it – and would leave a tenth of his fortune to charities upon his death in 1885, with the rest of it going to provide for his daughters and their children, and reverting to charitable institutions if they did not use it. He would pray for 30 minutes every evening, leaving an indelible mark of prayerfulness and godliness on his daughters.

But those were the remote influences on Catherine’s vocation. It was one of those family-trips, this time out west, that was the occasion for an utterly unexpected call from God. It was one year before her father would die, and the 20-something year old Catherine was moved by the plight of the Native Americans she saw there. All those moments aiding the poor around Philadelphia, and the poverty of so many different minorities she had seen in their travels all came back to her mind. The Lord was calling her to do something for them. After the death of her father, Catherine and her sisters gave a large donation to the St. Francis Mission of South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation, but the nagging thought that she should do more for them remained in her heart. Again, the extraordinary prosperity of her family ended up opening another door on the path God had in mind for her: the girls went on a trip to Europe in 1887 and met with Pope St. Leo XIII, author of the magnificent encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in which he lambasted the conditions in factories of the industrial revolution, calling Christians everywhere to uphold the dignity of their workers and grant a wage sufficient for their families. 

Now, our wealthy Catherine approaches him, and asks the wizened Pope to send missionaries to these suffering poor in America. Presumably she could finance the entire operation, and possibly it was this idea that she proposed to the Holy Father, but instead he looked at her and said “Why not, my child, yourself become a missionary?” Why not, indeed!? Katherine tried to entertain the idea, but wrote in her journal “I do not know how I could bear the privations of poverty of the religious life. I have never been deprived of luxuries.” It was not necessarily a selfish thought, but a practical one. Could she commit to such a hard life, living it with joy, despite having never experienced anything of the sort? Could she give up not just the fortune, but all the comforts that she had always had to follow this call? Would she?

– Fr. Dominic will return to Katherine’s story, her discernment to come, and the glories accomplished through her, next week. In the meantime, perhaps all of us would find it a powerful prayer to look back on a picture of ourselves as a child of 7, recalling the graces that God has given to us in the years since. Think of the ways you have followed His plan, but also ways that you haven’t followed Him fully. Consider how much love God had for you as a kid, and has for you now, and has given to you every single year between then and now. God has never been annoyed with you, no matter where on life’s journey you were at. He only ever showers us with love and affection, though always calls us to more faithfully follow after Him.