Feast Day: November 1^st | Patronage: everything under the sun| Iconography: every possible human characteristic

A question that has been bumping around my mind as we approach All Saints Day: What is the common denominator among the Communion of Saints? What does every saint have in common? 

On the one hand, every saint is so different! Some lived during times of persecution and had to persevere through martyrdom, or just the pressure of a culture that had no room for Christ.  Some were acclaimed and praised for their Christian witness – and had to battle the pride that comes with accomplishments – and others were unappreciated or unknown – and had to carry the daily cross of littleness. Among that Communion you have lecturers and leaders, scientists and singers, helpers and healers, martyrs and mystics, and some who traveled the world, and some who were limited to the smallest of abodes.

At every Mass, no matter the other saints mentioned or not during the Eucharistic prayer, at some point we always ask the intercession and communion of all the saints, but what exactly joins us all together? I found myself a bit confused by it all. We’re called to join, and emulate, and befriend the saints, but they are not only different from each other, but different from us! Not only are we led to ask what St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist have in common? Or what is the same between St. Lucy and St. Linus? But also: what can I emulate about St. Matthew and St. Maximilian Kolbe? How do I live a life like St. Paschal Baylon, St. Philip Neri, and Ss. Peter and Paul? 

And the question gets harder when we consider the entire Communion of Saints, which includes not only those in glory with the Lord, and those of us still pilgrims on earth, but also those being purified in purgatory (CCC954)? What is the same between me, St. Barnabas, and one of the holy souls? St. Barnabas was a great apostle to the Gentiles with St. Paul. Me, not so much. And, the holy souls are no longer able to preach or produce at all; they can hardly be said to even pray, for they are primarily receiving and being cleansed by God’s Love alone.

Now, hopefully it didn’t take you as long as I to see where this was heading. The only thing that is held in common by all those in heaven, purgatory, and us here below – between every saint and saint-in-the-making; that is, everyone who is united to Christ – is participation in the Love of God. It’s not great courage, nor eloquence, nor optimism. It isn’t found in what they do, say, or accomplish. Not even how much time they spend praying, or fasting, or begging, or giving themselves away. Each of these things are just different manifestations of God’s Love at work in different hearts.

But how do I apply that to myself? “Be more loving!” is not only somewhat unclear, or apt for misinterpretation, or vague, but because my understanding of “love” is limited, this sort of goal ends up forgetting about the examples of the mystics, the holy souls, the contemplatives, the shut-ins, the comatose. Are they not able to be saints?? Of course not! I need to go back to the Lord to learn about Love again.

Here’s where I’m at for now: the saints weren’t just good at giving love, they were also good at receiving love. I think this better incorporates the examples of those simplest, littlest, or contemplative saints. But there’s more to it than that: the saints didn’t just have any kind of love – they weren’t just nice, or charitable, or generous, or patient, or compassionate, or protective, or bold, or secure, or intelligent, or capable – they may have been any of those things, or none of them, yet there was always a fire of Love within them that wasn’t of their own making. They had God’s Love moving them and engaging in them every different person or situation that came their way. They didn’t see the world like an ordinary person, they saw it in terms of Divine Love. They perceived the world; they engaged everything around them; they responded to every person or situation (including themselves) somehow like God Himself does. They understood everything through a lens of Love: In this situation, where is God’s Love at work? As I look on this scene, what does God love about it? In this person, how is God’s Love alive in their heart? Throughout this day, this task, this occasion, when has God bestowed His Love on me?

So then, how do we emulate all the saints? We need merely, yet entirely; simply, if absolutely, become people of Love. How do we do that? Let’s start by taking Jesus’ words to heart: “Love one another as I have loved you” and begin by noticing one way today that God has loved me.

– Fr. Dominic will begin with today: Today I spent the morning with Fr. Michael Meinhart: we talked over different things, enjoyed the crisp autumn morning, had some scrambled eggs, and prayed the breviary with each other. And, in that simplest of ways, God was good to me.

Many might think that with the homily finished, the Liturgy of the Word has come to it’s conclusion.  But the Creed and the Universal Prayer (or General Intercessions) are to be included as the final liturgical actions for the Liturgy of the Word.  We will focus on the Creed this week, and the Universal Prayer next week.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal gives a good description of why it is we include the Creed in the Liturgy of the Word:

The purpose of the Creed or Profession of Faith is that the whole gathered people may respond to the Word of God proclaimed in the readings taken from Sacred Scripture and explained in the Homily and that they may also honor and confess the great mysteries of the faith by pronouncing the rule of faith in a formula approved for liturgical use and before the celebration of these mysteries in the Eucharist begins.

(GIRM, 67)

What strikes me sometimes when I am professing the Creed is all that has gone into the formulation of this great summary of our faith.  The Creed which we profess every Sunday is the fruit of the first two Ecumenical Councils of the Church, held in Nicaea and Constantinople.  A lot of discussions, disagreements, and debates took place in order to come to an accurate articulation of what we believe.  For example, when we profess that Jesus Christ is “consubstantial” with the Father, I am reminded of the very in-depth description in seminary of how the Council Fathers labored intensely in order to come to agree on that single word to express that great mystery.  When the Church introduced a new English translation of the Roman Missal in 2011, I remember some people sort of dismissing the need to use this complicated, technical term in the Creed.  But I think using it is a nod of appreciation for the very hard work done by those Council Fathers to help us come to be able to better explain what we believe, an effort that we can easily overlook.

Another helpful way of praying the Creed comes from a suggestion offered by Venerable Bruno Lanteri, whom we have encountered a few times in these reflections.  Recall that he invites us to “choose a biblical figured whose sentiments express those he desires in that part of the Mass.”  For the Creed, Venerable Bruno writes:

At the Profession of Faith, I will seek the sentiments of the heart of the martyrs.  At Mass, when you say “I believe on one God…I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” profess this, proclaim this, affirm this, Venerable Bruno urges, with the sentiments and heart of a martyr. Say it as a martyr would, from your heart, with all your being, ready to lay your life on the line for the faith you express.

(Gallagher, A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass, p. 48 – Kindle version)

To those who died for the faith as martyrs, the Creed was more than a simple mechanical reciting of words.  Those words were the firm foundation upon which their lives were built, and they were unwilling to compromise on that faith, even if it cost them their lives.

Remember that when we profess the Creed, we are not limiting our profession strictly to the words of the Creed, but by extension, we believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God.  So that means assenting to all that the Church teaches, and if we struggle with some of those teachings, perhaps we can remember the martyrs as we profess the Creed, asking for their intercession to accept and live these teachings, seeing them for what they truly are, the path to freedom, life and peace, not always in this life, but certainly in the life to come.  

Feast Day: October 28^th | Patronage: Simon: Curriers, Woodcutters, Tanners; Jude: Desperate Causes| Iconography: Simon: Saw of Martyrdom; Fish, Boat, or Oar (because he was a fisherman); Jude: Club of Martyrdom, Holding Image of Jesus (of Edessa), Carpenter’s Rule, or Scroll/Book from his writing the Epistle of St. Jude.

St. John Henry Newman helpfully sketches what we know of these two great Apostles: 

And hence we draw an important lesson for ourselves, which, however obvious, is continually forgotten by us in the actual business of life; viz. to do our duty without aiming at the world’s praise. Mankind knows nothing of St. Simon’s and St. Jude’s deeds and sufferings, though these were great; yet there is One who “knows their works, and labour, and patience, … and how they bore … and for His Name’s sake laboured, and fainted not.” [Revelation 2:3] Their deeds are blotted out from history, but not from the Lamb’s book of life; for “blessed are they who die in Him, … that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” [Revelation 14:13]

– St. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 8, “Sermon 12, Vanity of Human Glory.”

Newman goes onto describe how these men, in fervently proclaiming the Gospel getting little or no earthly praise, remind all of us Christians to eradicate vanity from our hearts. The great (at this time still Anglican) preacher notes that it is sensible and proper to seek respect from those who know and love us. Friends and family, who know what we’re about, who have seen our virtue and received our generosity, can rightly honor us for those qualities. There is nothing wrong with receiving a true compliment. Someone who loves you should rightly acknowledge where God’s grace has made you good. True humility acknowledges one’s qualities and talents, and Who gave those gifts to us.

However, to crave the admiration of the wider world – a intermittent acquaintance, a superficial friend, one of a thousand Facebook contacts, or just the public eye in general – is to rest our hearts on shaky foundations, to build our houses on sand. We find ourselves flustered and busy, scrambling every which way to get a bit of praise to keep us going, and, worse than that, we have subtly abandoned our Christian confidence that God sees us, knows everything of who we are, and will never cease to love us. Pulling out our phone during an empty moment, popping between apps to see if anybody has engaged with us, isn’t just a distraction, it’s corroding our relationship with God. Newman calls us out:

This love of indiscriminate praise, then, is an odious, superfluous, wanton sin, and we should put it away with a manly hatred, as something irrational and degrading. Shall man, born for high ends, the servant and son of God, the redeemed of Christ, the heir of immortality, go out of his way to have his mere name praised by a vast populace, or by various people, of whom he knows nothing, and most of whom (if he saw them) he would himself be the first to condemn? It is odious; yet young persons of high minds and vigorous powers, are especially liable to be led captive by this snare of the devil. 

What has this to do with Ss. Simon and Jude? Well, we know these men had to give up those places where they sought worldly recognition – Simon would no longer find honor amongst the Zealots, Jude accepts being a “servant of Jesus Christ” [Jude 1:1] rather than leaning on his relatedness to Our Lord – but this is also vividly portrayed for us in their final resting place. Both are buried together under the central altar in the left (South) transept of St. Peter’s Basilica, and, until 1814 there was a lovely painting (by Agostino Ciampelli) depicting these two saints above their altar. However, in that year as mosaics replaced paintings throughout the basilica, Guido Reni’s “Crucifixion of Saint Peter” was moved from the sacristy out to their altar. Then, since 1961, because of Pope John XXIII’s tender love for St. Joseph, a mosaic instead of St. Joseph holding Jesus sits above their bones. 

I suspect each of these saints is not particularly bothered by any of this. Each of them have truly found all the praise and glory they need from their Heavenly Father.

– Fr. Dominic has recently discovered an simple way to wage war against vanity: keep holy the sabbath. When I instead use Sunday to catch up on little tasks or pack quiet moments with empty entertainment, I haven’t done anything wrong, I just looked for delight in things that won’t last. It’s like trying to make a meal out of cotton candy. It will satisfy me! My rule: Only do things that give God glory, and/or are truly restful on Sunday. Nothing else. And … the battle is real!

(Read the rest of Newman’s Sermon here!)

When people are “How was Mass?”, more often than not, they mention something about the homily.  Ideally, they will say that they really liked what the homilist preached about.  Though, if we are honest, sometimes the comments (though usually not made to the preacher) is that it was too long, or that it was boring, that it did not make sense, or something like that.  Interestingly, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anybody say anything about a homily being too short…  Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate feedback about my preaching, as do many priests.  Even though it might be the most memorable thing we take away from Mass, the homily is not the most important part of the Mass.

With that said, the homily is still very important and my above statement is not meant to dimmish it’s integral role to the Mass.  Here is what the General Instruction of the Roman Missal has to say about the homily:

The Homily is part of the Liturgy and is highly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.

(GIRM, 65)

First of all, note the phrase “highly recommended.”  Some might read this and think: “Why not omit the homily then?”  Two paragraphs later, the GIRM states that a homily is to be given on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation and that “it may not be omitted without a grave reason.”  So don’t get your hopes up about not having a homily on Sundays or Holy Days!

The next thing to notice is that the homily is “necessary for nurturing the Christian life.”  Pope Benedict XVI expanded on this in his 2007 Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist, where he wrote:

Given the importance of the word of God, the quality of homilies needs to be improved. The homily is “part of the liturgical action”, and is meant to foster a deeper understanding of the word of God, so that it can bear fruit in the lives of the faithful. Hence ordained ministers must “prepare the homily carefully, based on an adequate knowledge of Sacred Scripture”. Generic and abstract homilies should be avoided. In particular, I ask these ministers to preach in such a way that the homily closely relates the proclamation of the word of God to the sacramental celebration and the life of the community, so that the word of God truly becomes the Church’s vital nourishment and support.

(Sacramentum caritatis, 46)

The homily helps us to understand how God’s Word is helping us to more faithfully follow the Lord and live as His disciples in our daily lives.  This is a tall task for a preacher, given the variety of ages, states in life, and circumstances of the people to whom he is preaching.  But I point this out as something to consider when we listen to a homily that might not “hit home” for us.  The chances are very good that somebody in the congregation that day needed to hear what was said.  And even if we ourselves were not particularly moved by the homily, we can nevertheless thank God for the hearts that were touched.  In either case, the homily should always strengthen our hunger for the Eucharist that we are preparing to receive.  In the case that we feel dissatisfied with the homily, that can serve to remind us: “Though I may feel disappointed with the homily, I will not be disappointed with the gift of Jesus I am about to receive.”  If we are moved to gratitude with the homily, we bring that thanksgiving with us into the Liturgy of the Eucharist, knowing that the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations received from the homily will only be strengthened by our reception of the Eucharist, thus guarding them in our hearts as we return to our daily lives.

Feast Day: October 9th | Patronage: Poets, Anglican Ordinariate, Converts, Theologians, Scholars | Iconography: Wearing Red Cassock (of Cardinal), or Black Cassock (as Oratorian), and Biretta (as Cleric) or Zucchetto (as Cardinal), sometimes holding Book (as Scholar)

Last time we got through Newman’s first conversion to Christianity, but his discovery (over a number of years) of the absolutely necessity for faith to be grounded on truth (and not the kind that can be interpreted however I want), as well as the reality that this truth didn’t always fit nicely between two poles; it wasn’t the nice, simple, sensible mean-between-extremes, sometimes God asks us to follow Him off the edge.

1845: Newman writes “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” He began it as an even deeper dive into the Church Fathers to prove for himself once and for all that the doctrines, devotions, practices, and accretions of the Roman Catholic Church were aberrations from the original Christian beliefs and practices. And the more he studied the more he discovered that each and every quibble or complaint he could throw at the Roman Church could be traced back to fledgling ideas that the Church had always held. 

And so, in his little study at Littlemore, having stepped back from the Oxford Movement (really, his catholic-tendencies had caused him to be driven from it), Newman fell on his knees before the fiery little Passionist priest, Fr. Dominic Barberi, and was received into the Catholic Church. Rain streamed down outside, Newman’s friends and colleagues abandoned him, and perhaps his mind went back to Malta, where he was also wet and alone … but wasn’t this far worse? He had chosen Christ, and immediately gotten the cross. Wasn’t there supposed to be a honeymoon-period?

1846: Newman studied for the Catholic priesthood in Rome. He had to re-memorize the bible because they used a different translation… He felt rather silly among the youthful, naïve seminarians… He banged his head on Pope Pius IX’s knee when trying to bow before him. You get the picture, but he was ordained a priest, and returns to England founding an oratory (after the model of St. Philip Neri) of priests to live in community.

1854: He is tapped to be the rector of the new Catholic University of Ireland, a project that was befuddled by all sorts of disagreements, and candidly Newman was a poor leader amidst those challenges. He writes a tremendous essay that orients the whole project, “The Idea of a University”, proposing that such a place of education is not merely to impart knowledge but to fashion virtuous individuals … but it still kind of went up in flames and Newman goes back to his oratory in disgrace.

1859: He writes a famous piece “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” to flesh out an idea he had floated in his magazine, the Rambler. He wasn’t claiming that the faithful defined, or dictated, the Church’s beliefs, but that one could take a read on what the faithful believed overall and discover the Church’s faith in that. Like one consults a watch, or a doctor consults the pulse of his patient, to discover what is already there. Just so, one could consider the entirety of the Church, especially her littlest and humblest members, even during the worst crises (think back to those years when Arianism ran rampant among the leadership of the Church) and find that they still had a sense of where the truth actually was. Of course, the idea ruffled feathers and raised eyebrows and Newman began to be sidelined by Catholics even more. 

1864: He responds to the sarcasm and scorn of Charles Kingsley, putting words on the reason for his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. (I’ve tried to offer some of the bigger contours of this auto-biography in these articles.) This work actually restored his credibility in many ways in both Anglican and Catholic spheres. He lays bare his academic nature and quest for truth all through the history of the Church, and while whipped about by so many different controversies and challenges of his own day. 

1870: He writes “An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent”, a dense work, basically describing how the things that are most important to us – the love of a friend, the beauty of autumn, the presence of God – can never be scientifically proven, nor even described. No, all these sorts of things marvelously convince and captivate us by innumerable smaller considerations in their favor, not one bullet-proof argument.

1879: years later, when made a cardinal, he would describe this entire journey: “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. … Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.” 

Sometimes our call is faithfulness. Not success, not comfort, not following the obvious road, but trudging after the Master as he takes the narrow-way. So it was for Newman, but there was grace enough on the way to carry him through!

– Fr. Dominic leaves you with another hymn that Newman wrote, this one an extract from a poem after his conversion, the “Dream of Gerontius” which follows a dying man as he makes his way through temptation, death, and purgatory and up to paradise with God. You’ve probably heard it before: Praise to the Holiest in the Height.

After having listened to the words of the Gospel proclaimed, the deacon or priest announces: “The Gospel of the Lord”, to which we respond with great joy: “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!”  At this point, if you pay close attention, the priest or deacon does something unique.  He will bend down to kiss the Book of the Gospels (or the Lectionary).  If the Bishop is present, and a Book of the Gospels is used, the minister reading the Gospel will bring the Book of the Gospels to the Bishop to kiss the book and impart a blessing.  At various times in the Church’s history, the ritual action of kissing items during the liturgy was more frequent, but in our current form of the liturgy, the only time a kiss is employed is here and when the altar is kissed at the beginning and end of the Mass.  

In doing some research on this kiss, I came across a beautiful reflection on this action from the book The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by Father Nicholas Gihr.  He writes:

The Book of the Gospels, or rather, the sacred text of the Gospels in general, represents our divine Savior Himself and was, therefore, ever (the same as the images of Christ) a subject of religious veneration … After having tasted and experienced in the Gospel how sweet the Lord is, how faultless His doctrine, how good and refreshing His consolations and promises, the heart of the priest overflows with happiness and joy, and he kisses the words of eternal life, in order to testify his profound reverence, his great and ardent love for them. (p. 482)

Even if only the bishop, priest, or deacon kisses the book at this point, all of the faithful can express the overflowing joy and happiness of hearing the Word with our resounding response of “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ” and a desire, at least in our heart, to kiss the Word of God as well.

Along these lines, it is a pious practice for the faithful that, when concluding their personal reading of the Scriptures, that they physically kiss the Bible as a sign of reverence and gratitude.  This is one of the reasons why I much prefer reading Scripture from a physical Bible, not an e-reader or smartphone.

There is one more somewhat hidden thing that happens as the minister kisses the book.  He would say quietly:  “Through the Words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.”  Although these words are said silently, notice how the petition is that our sins be wiped away, so it is a prayer for all present that the power of the Word of God would bring about a conversion of heart and even wipe our sins away.  Of course, this is not a sacramental absolution as with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but nevertheless, the power of the Word of God is capable of purifying our hearts and turn away from sin.

One final point to consider on this action comes from a series of reflections on the silent prayers of the Mass that I came across a few years ago.  These come from a modern spiritual author, Father Boniface Hicks, O.S.B., and when concluding his reflection on this prayer said silently at the end of the Gospel, he offers the following beautiful words that I myself am happy to be reminded of:

This gesture moves his heart outwards to the congregation to whom he prepares to preach. He unites himself with the faithful at this point. He is in need of hearing the Holy Gospel and having his sins wiped away as much as anyone else. The moral unity with the faithful expressed in this prayer can help to overcome the temptation to “face off” with the congregation and to preach at them. To the contrary, he should realize he is in need of the Gospel and even his own homily as much as his people are.

Feast Day: October 9th | Patronage: Poets, Anglican Ordinariate, Converts, Theologians, Scholars | Iconography: Wearing Red Cassock (of Cardinal), or Black Cassock (as Oratorian), and Biretta (as Cleric) or Zucchetto (as Cardinal), sometimes holding Book (as Scholar)

John Henry Newman, the agnostic young man, turned Anglican cleric and scholar at Oxford who then leads a dramatic reform of the Anglican Church only to shockingly convert to Catholicism in the middle of his life (and career) in 1845, only to find himself ostracized by the Catholic Church just as much as by the Anglicans … he’s a hard man to fit onto one page. But we can get to know him as a saint quite quickly. See, the thing with saints is that they live lives just as complicated and filled and up-and-down as all of us, but their lives come to have a focus, a center, a simplicity in the midst of all of it. I think this is actually a good definition of a saint: to live a life centered, grounded, anchored on God, and this is something we can quickly discover in the life of Cd. Newman.

A few biographical threads that will triangulate his heart: In 1816, a few years after his teenage conversion to Evangelical-Calvinism, he had a decisive realization that – though his encounter with Christ was certainly crucial to his eternal salvation – the principal of solo fidei was an insufficient anchor for true faith. There had to be something rock-solid to conform oneself to, something revealed, not just felt, something universal, not just subjective. Faith only survives if it is grounded on dogma.

A second pillar: After going to Oxford, and then becoming an Oxford Don and Anglican Prelate, Newman finds himself attracted inexorably to studying the Fathers of the Church. In the 1830s he began work on one of his famous works, “The Arians of the Fourth Century”, which chronicled the battles throughout the Church over the divinity of Christ, including the period when practically every bishop of the Church had fallen into heresy, with St. Athanasius – and countless lay people – holding fast to the truth … and the truth prevailing. Tired from this battle of his own, Newman embarks on a sabbatical/journey around the Mediterranean. He was moved by the site of some of the places where St. Paul preached, annoyed by the devotions of the Catholics in Rome, and he got quite ill in Malta. 

There he was, quarantined, in a chilly stone building overlooking the cantankerous sea, it was Christmas eve and he had no way to celebrate the Nativity of Christ. Yet down from his window were a group of Maltese Catholics happily celebrating the feast, unhindered by the inclement weather and their isolation. God was planting more seeds than Newman knew, but already this brush with death moved Newman to rededicate his life to the reformation of the Anglican Church. He, and several other men, were convinced that the Anglican Church was sliding too far into “liberalism” (not in a political sense, but insofar as it was drifting too far towards the subjectivism that was already eviscerating the protestant Churches.) They proposed that Anglicanism must instead find its way back to being a ”middle way” between Roman Catholicism (too many devotions, too much “popery”) and Liberal Protestantism (which had forgotten the doctrines/creeds of the Church, and the incarnational-sacraments of the Early Church). 

Thing was, though many people were convicted by the tracts that they were publishing, and even though Newman especially was ever more clearly articulating and fleshing-out the principals of the Oxford Movement, he was also discovering its weaknesses. It had tried – by choosing the middle way – to avoid the superficiality and flimsiness of liberal Protestantism as well as the devotionalism and archaism of the Roman Catholic Church, and to return to the core of Christianity: the doctrines and practices, the biblical and liturgical ardor of the Early Church. They didn’t hesitate to call what they were seeking the “Catholic” Church, for they used that word in its original sense: universal. What did the whole Church believe from its beginning, that was what they wanted to hold.

The only problem was that the whole church, the universal church, didn’t ascribe to a “via media”, and neither did Jesus Christ Himself. As Newman continued to plum the riches of the Church Fathers, especially the heroic St. Athanasius, he discovered that often heresies were themselves the “middle road” between two extremes, while the truth was actually one of the extremes! Consider the Arian controversy: Arianism claimed Jesus was just a particularily high-creature, not the same essence as God [hetero-ousia]. The other extreme was to say that He was fully God, the same essence [homo-ousia], consubstantial with the Father. The middle-way, the easier road, the balanced one, was to say Christ had a similar substance [homoi-ousia] to the Father. And it’s sure easier to hold onto Jesus’ humanity if we only have to mesh that with His being similar to the Father, but this middle way is also wrong! Jesus claims: “I and the Father are one” and if He is just similar to the Father then can He really save us?

More to come as Newman followed this Truth through.

– Fr. Dominic leaves you with a hymn that Newman wrote after his dramatic days in Malta, “Lead Kindly Light”. He didn’t know, but he would faithfully follow that Light, which was Christ, through a lot of thick and thin in the years to come. So should we. (QR code links to BYU Vocal Point’s rendition.)

When we arrive at the time for the proclamation of the Gospel at Mass, we have reached a very important point of the liturgy, though I sometimes wonder if we overlook just how important it is.  I think for some of us, the Gospel is seen as a sort of preparation or introduction to the Homily.  As preachers of the Homily, we often have people offer comments to us after Mass about our preaching.  Do not get me wrong, we appreciate the feedback.  But it is pretty rare to have somebody comment on the Gospel, which is ALWAYS more powerful than the best homily because it is God speaking to us, usually with the very words of Jesus Himself.  Here is what the General Instruction of the Roman Missal has to say about the Gospel:

The reading of the Gospel constitutes the high point of the Liturgy of the Word. The Liturgy itself teaches the great reverence that is to be shown to this reading by setting it off from the other readings with special marks of honor, by the fact of which a minister is appointed to proclaim it and by the blessing or prayer with which he prepares himself; and also by the fact that through their acclamations the faithful acknowledge and confess that Christ is present and is speaking to them and stand as they listen to the reading; and by the mere fact of the marks of reverence that are given to the Book of the Gospels. (GIRM, 60)

I think what I have written already regarding our listening attentively to the Word of God is sufficient for how we should approach the Gospel.  But I want to share a few things that lead up to the proclamation of the Gospel that often go unnoticed or unappreciated.  When the celebrant stands for the Gospel Acclamation, if there is a Deacon present, the Deacon will ask for a blessing from the celebrant, who says quietly: “May the Lord be in your hearts and on your lips that you may proclaim His Gospel worthily and well, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  If there is no deacon present, the celebrant (or concelebrating priest, says a similar prayer silently: “Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.”

The Church has the minister pray for God’s blessing to proclaim the Gospel worthily, signifying how these are not just mere words that we are proclaiming.  It is a humbling privilege to proclaim the Gospel and this prayerful preparation is a good reminder.  For the rest of the faithful, there is no such prayer, but I would call your attention to how the Gospel is introduced.  After the initial exchange of “The Lord be with you…and with your spirit”, the minister announces that he is about to proclaim a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  The faithful then respond: “Glory to you, O Lord.”  As with so many of our responses, this can be very automatic without our even really thinking about what we are saying.  But consider what saying this means.  We are NOT responding back to the minister as though saying: “Thanks for letting us know, I hope you do a good job reading.”  No, we are making a profession of faith that we are about to hear the Lord speaking to us from that most important section of Sacred Scripture where we hear the very words of Jesus Himself.  Our response is one of glorifying God for this gift we are about to receive.  The following words of Jesus come to mind as I think about how privileged we are to listen to the Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Mt 13:17)

Over the years, the Church has extended to the faithful the opportunity to join in the gesture made by the minister at this point, making a Cross on one’s forehead, lips, and heart.  There are no scripted words for the minister or the faithful at this point, but many have come to see it as an opportunity to pray that the Gospel will be in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts, such that our encounter with the Gospel about to be proclaimed will find rich soil in our hearts to produce fruit in our lives.

Feast Day: October 5^th | Patronage: Immigrants, Missionaries | Iconography: Wearing Cassock with Rosary (as priest and redemptorist), Holding Crucifix or Bible (as preacher), Surrounded by Immigrants

During his papacy, the Great Pope St. John Paul II canonized 482 saints, and beatified some 1344 individuals. A constant theme of his papacy was not only the call, and genuine capacity, for every one of us to become saints, but also to put before our eyes countless examples of sanctity: that there is no single recipe for holiness! God’s grace can work in any life! During the Great Jubilee of 2000 (heads up, we have another jubilee year coming up in 2025!), JPII continued this rampant pace of canonizations and beatifications, listing among the saints individuals you may know like St. Faustina Kowalska, Katherine Drexel, and Josephine Bakhita as well as beatifying humble characters like the little shepherds of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, as well as great world-shapers like the Popes Pius IX and John XXIII.

One of the first to beatified during this tremendous year was the Redemptorist priest, Francis Xavier Seelos. Born in Germany in 1819, as a young man he was moved by stories of redemptorist fathers who had given their lives to be missionaries serving throughout the young country of the United States, and so as a seminarian he embarked on a ship that would bring him across the Atlantic and onto American soil at New York in 1843. (I should mention that the famous immigration center at Ellis Island would not begin operations for almost 40 years, and the Statue of Liberty would not welcome poor and tired masses until 1924.) Fr. Seelos was ordained a priest in the famous St. James the Less Church in Baltimore (sadly, much destroyed in a fire in 2020), and went on to serve at St. Philomena’s in Pittsburg (where St. John Neumann was pastor and where Fr. Francis Seelos would follow him as pastor until 1854). He devoted energy and attention primarily to preaching – constantly honing his craft with a grace-filled engaging and relatable style – and hearing confessions – welcoming “German, English, French [and] whites and of blacks” (as he wrote about it) with tenderness, attentiveness, and empathy.

He thus worked at various parishes throughout Maryland – enduring the cross of being moved like so many other parish priests – and then in formation-work in the Redemptorist seminary in Annapolis. There, in June of 1863, we come to one particularily famous moment of his life, when he traveled to Washington DC to meet with the President Abraham Lincoln to ask that his seminarians not be drafted to fight in the Civil War. Lincoln, in his conscription act, had not exempted clergy or religious, and Fr. Francis was committed to convincing him otherwise. He wrote to his sister of the gravity of the situation:

If one is chosen in the draft, he has either to go, or to pay $300.00. Because we have so many young members, that would have amounted for us to the gigantic sum of $25,000 or more. I decided then, with the permission of the provincial, to go to Washington with another father and to present personally to the President and other officials our situation. … If I do not succeed in obtaining a release from that unjust injunction, we will rather go to prison than to take up arms.

Seelos would later recall that “I liked President Lincoln very much when I went to see him. He spoke to us in a sincere, free, and friendly manner.” Though the President did not grant an official exemption he must have assured the good father that he would personally protect his seminarians for few if any were ever drafted and Seelos would happily write his sister that “the storm passed over thanks to God and the intercession of Mary.” He had less enthusiastic words regarding the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, “If the feast of rough characters should ever be celebrated in the Church, Stanton will get an octave added to it.” (all these quotations from Sincerely, Seelos: The Collected Letters of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos.)

He actually suffered being removed from his position as Prefect in the Seminary for being too obliging and happy towards the men under his care. Though it must not have tarnished his overall character for he was soon recommended to become Bishop of Pittsburg. Entreating Pope Pius IX to instead let him become an itinerant preacher, he began some years of traveling throughout Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri (including a two-week parish mission at St. Mary of Victories in St. Louis in October, 1865), New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. He finally made his way south to New Orleans in 1866, there prophetically telling the New Orleanians that “I have come here to pass the rest of my days and find a last resting place.” And so he did, in the end caring for victims of yellow fever in 1867, eventually contracting the painful disease himself and dying on October 4^th of that year, at the age of 48.

– Fr. Dominic simply notes that Fr. Seelos took for his religious name and patron the great missionary St. Francis Xavier. And though he followed that famous evangelist in his travels and preaching, in so many other areas he could have easily been discouraged by his dissimilarity to the great Jesuit. His travels may have seemed comfortable in comparison, and certainly he did not baptize tens of thousand for Christ. Yet he was called to a different sanctity: that of the confessional, of the complexities of war and American politics, of lots of miles on horseback throughout the American Midwest. Our sanctity can also be found in the humility of the confessional, in enduring our own era’s messiness, and even in the daily miles we have to cover.

As we continue to consider the Liturgy of the Word, I would like to focus our attention this week on the Responsorial Psalm.  While it can be difficult to stay focused during any part of the Liturgy of the Word, I think it can be particularly difficult to feel connected to the Responsorial Psalm.

I find this interesting for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the Responsorial Psalm demands more attention from the congregation as we are expected to respond, either with signing or speaking, depending on the Mass.  Second, the Psalms constitute the most sacred and ancient prayers of the Church.  Christ Himself prayed the Psalms, and the Psalms have been at the heart of the Church’s liturgical worship, both at Mass and in the Liturgy of the Hours.  But for some reason, we find it hard to pray the Psalms well.

When I was in seminary, I took a class on the Psalms as Christian Prayer.  In that class, we read a variety of sources that dealt with the Psalms, from a general overview of the Psalms to commentaries on various individual Psalms.  There is one particular reading that I still recall fondly as it really opened my mind and heart to a greater appreciation of the Psalms.  It comes from a letter written by St. Athanasius to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms.  A few passages will suffice to show how we can all experience the Psalms in a more significant way:

All Scripture of ours, my son both ancient and new is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, as it is written. But the Book of Psalms possesses a certain winning exactitude for those who are prayerful. Each sacred book supplies and announces its own promise. Yet the Book of Psalms is like a garden containing things of all these kinds, and it sets them to music, but also exhibits things of its own that it gives in song along with them.

And it seems to me that these words become like a mirror to the person singing them, so that he might perceive himself and the emotions of his soul, and thus affected, he might recite them. For in fact he who hears the one reading receives the song that is recited as being about him, and either, when he is convicted by his conscience, being pierced, he will repent, or hearing of the hope that resides in God, and of the support available to believers – how this kind of grace exists for him- he exults and begins to give thanks to God.

Another helpful resource comes from the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright who has a beautiful book on the Psalms, titled The Case for the Psalms.  In words similar to those of St. Athanasius, he writes:

Those who pray the Psalms day by day…are putting themselves in the position where, when faced with a sudden crisis, they will discover close at hand a line or two of a psalm that is already etched into the heart and mind and says just what they want to say, only most likely better than they could say it themselves in the heat of the moment.

(Kindle edition, page 25)

On this point, I can say that this is absolutely true for me.  As one who is exposed to the Psalms each day, both at Mass and in my praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, there are so many lines from the Psalms that are close at hand when I need a phrase to latch onto in turning to God in prayer throughout my daily life.

This is therefore an encouragement to try to pay close attention to the Responsorial Psalm at Mass in particular and the Book of Psalms in general and see how, waiting there for us, is a prized gift of God’s Word capable of speaking to every emotion and responding to every need we have.