Without peeking at the answer below, try to guess what year this statement was made by a Catholic bishop: “On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body.” Most people of every culture seem to accept that there is some sort of spiritual existence in the afterlife, and it is usually thought to be a good thing for everyone. We do have an instinct in our human nature that there must be something after this life, because our hearts desire eternal fulfillment, and we recoil at the thought and experience of death. 

Recently in his Sunday homily, Bishop Paprocki gave a teaching on the resurrection of the body. He made the point that when we say every Sunday in the Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” we are speaking about our bodies – not the body of Jesus. We profess belief in his resurrection earlier in the Creed. Contrary to some popular beliefs, we do not become angels after we die. Angels and human beings are very different types of creation, although we do share some similar qualities. 

What happens after we die is in one way a very mysterious process, but also fairly straight-forward according to the teachings of Jesus. When we die, we will be judged in an individual judgment, face to face with God. After this moment, our soul will proceed immediately to the blessedness of heaven (maybe after a purification), or to everlasting damnation (CCC 1022). When the world ends and Jesus comes back a second time in glory, the bodies of all human beings will be reunited with their souls. Jesus said, “The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28-29). God forbid that any of us would miss out on the blessedness of heaven! However, Jesus made it sound like a very real possibility that even people who claim to follow him can be separated from him forever. In the bible, nobody talks about hell more than Jesus. 

When we receive a challenging teaching from Jesus or the Church, it could be tempting to despair or feel totally inadequate to follow the teaching. But God instead invites us to a greater trust in him. He never asks us to do something that is impossible. If we make the conscious decision to follow God’s laws in our lives to the best of our abilities, God will shower graces upon us and help us in many ways to become holier and more authentically human people. 

I hope this is far enough down to not give the answer away from my initial guessing game – the bishop and doctor of the Church St. Augustine said this quote sometime during his ministry between 396 and 430. I thought it was interesting that the same quote could have been said by a bishop today, because some people scoff at the idea of our bodies coming back to life, in an even more “alive” way than before! It has always been the case that some people try to find every sort of pleasure and happiness in this life, which we all know will not last forever. There is always some new “fountain of youth” that is promising to make us look younger for longer. But behind this obsession with living forever is the knowledge that we were made for more than this life. God made our hearts in such a way that they will not be fulfilled until we have found him. 

Easter Sunday is a taste of heaven on earth. Maybe today we are thinking about loved ones who have died and we hope to see again someday. Sometimes our personal lives and the liturgical calendar line up in interesting ways. Wherever we are in life – in the best year ever or the year that we can’t wait to end – Jesus is risen! The problems that we have in life will not last forever, and Jesus wants to live through us on both the good days and the bad days. We at the Cathedral have the privilege of accompanying many people in their spiritual life, on both the best and worst days. Jesus has something to offer to everybody. If we live with Christ in this life, we will also live with him in the next! 

For Christmas and Easter instead of picking a saint who’s feast day falls on that week, I usually choose a saint associated with that feast-day of Our Lord.  This year, I find myself meditating not on a member of the beatified, but on bees. During the most stupendous moment of the Easter Vigil, after the Paschal Candle has been solemnly consecrated, kindled, and carried into the darkened Cathedral … as the priest, other ministers, and then entire congregation, light their candles from that pillar of fire shining with the light of the Risen Jesus … as flames flicker throughout the nave, and every light is set to 100% … the Deacon solemnly incenses the Paschal Candle, enthroned before us all, and begins to sing:

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven, … 
This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.
Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.
O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld!

This is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness. The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty. On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.

This song praises God for all the tremendous moments of His mercy down through human history.  It has been sung for at least a thousand years, with our current version recalling the work of bees twice, and earlier editions harping upon their labors with even greater emphasis.  Why, amid creation and fall and exodus and resurrection, do we turn in praise to bees … humble, buzzing, bees?

For the entire season of Easter, at every Mass, we will relight the Paschal Candle, drawing near again and again to the triumphant light and unending fire of love that is Our Risen Lord, yet that flame that shines His light, that white column decorated and distinguished in the center of our Church, surprisingly depends on the industry of a whole lot of honey-bees. The strength and success of Christ, is here symbolically reliant on a swarm of insects! The Church Fathers, and writers of Scripture, had a more sanctified imagination than we do these days, and it is they who remind us of this and other  ways that bees remind us our own position in the Body of Christ.

Bees live in colonies with thousands of members, each one taking a specific, and essential, place – queen, drones, workers … governing, gathering, directing, defending, reproducing, guarding, clearing, and laying down their lives – for the hive.  We too must submit to, and be sustained within, our communion around Christ. Bees produce honey and wax, both marvelous substances – sweet, nutritious, and incorruptible; strong, malleable, and sterile – all for the sake of a project so much larger than each individual bee, and even the entire hive. In this way, they speak to us of our own call to the work to a charity like Christ, for the salvation of the Church and the world.  Bees, lastly, Augustine, Isidore, and other saints point out, represent to us an example of the virtue of chastity. Of course, those saints did not understand exactly how bees reproduced, yet our modern science only strengthens their point.  Male bees literally give up their lives in order to mate with a queen-bee and continue the life of the hive – talk about laying down one’s life! Yet the queen, as happily noticed by Augustine, can also reproduce asexually (laying unfertilized eggs that do develop into bees) – one of those peculiar natural reminders of Jesus’ own virginal conception as well as the supernatural fecundity and example that celibacy can have.

Community, charity, chastity … all discovered in the buzzing of bees, in some ways dependent on them!  Christ’s victory depends on you too! Our world will not find the perfect Communion that Jesus has won for us if you and I don’t live it out, submitting to His reign, surrendering to His will, and abiding in Him. Our world will not receive the persevering Charity that cascades from Our Lord’s Heart if you and I don’t receive it from the cross and chalice, bearing the Love He entrusts to us and defending that flickering flame through the storm. Our world will not know the victory and delight that is Chastity, if you and I do not take on the burden and freedom of authentic love, upholding ours and others’ dignity, defending ours and others’ bodies, consecrating our and others’ hearts.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin sometimes falls into thinking that carrying the Gospel these days is akin to a single-rep barbell squat: heaving upward hundreds of pounds against the pull of gravity. The truth is that Jesus has borne the bulk of the cross’s weight! We need not lift the entire beam, rather, He asks us to simply approach the flowers of His grace and carry away a few grains of pollen for the nourishment and transformation of the world. I think even I can manage that!

During my time in seminary formation, I would often go to a certain church in St. Louis for confession.  The parish was served by two older Capuchin Franciscan priests and they heard confessions every day at 11:00 am.  On one occasion, after making my confession, the priest invited me to reflect on the Cross in a way that I have never forgotten.  He invited me to look at a crucifix (like the one on the end of a Rosary, or one hanging on a wall) and to ask three questions:

1. Who is that?
2. Why is He there?
3. What does it mean to me?

The first two questions were easy to answer, especially for a seminarian who thought he knew pretty much everything about Jesus!  But that third question was much more difficult.  What does the Cross mean to me?  It is a question that I still struggle to answer adequately.  It is this question that the entire Church is being invited to consider each year when we celebrate Holy Week.  We always begin on Palm Sunday by listening to the Passion narrative from one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, or Luke).  We then return to the Passion narrative on Good Friday, this time from the Gospel of John.  The Church offers these two narratives in order to keep the Cross before us.  We look to the Cross, we hear the stories, and we each should ask: “What does this mean to me?” 

For your prayer this week, I would like to invite you to pray with the crucifix and reflect on those three questions as a way of coming to better appreciate the love Christ showed for us in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  But this is not my challenge for the week!  Instead, I want to invite you to something a little more difficult, but much more fruitful, in fact, I think this will be the most fruitful of my Lenten challenges should you choose to accept it:

Challenge:  Attend all the Paschal Triduum Liturgies
Fruit:  Deepened appreciation for Christ’s love for us

Because these liturgies are not “days of obligation”, we do not always give them a lot of priority, opting to focus on Easter Sunday.  But these liturgies are so extremely important to us as Catholics, because they place before us the culmination of God’s saving work for His people.  We are invited to celebrate these liturgies with a real awareness that all that Jesus did, especially in these sacred days, He did for you and for me.  Our relationship with Him becomes much more personal to the extent that we enter into these mysteries with this awareness.  And as we see these events unfolding for us once again, answering that third question – “What does it mean to me?” – will be much easier to answer and will enkindle with in us a desire to live for fully for Him who has died for us.

Father Alford     

This is the first time that I have recommended a specific movie in my Weekly article. I don’t possess any special expertise or training in film criticism, so I am only speaking from my experience!

The 1998 film The Prince of Egypt, produced by Dreamworks at the same time they were producing Shrek, was only moderately successful in the box office. However, it brought to life the story of the Exodus for a new generation of believers and non-believers alike. The story follows the life of Moses, beginning the day his mother put him adrift in a basket, only to be adopted into Pharaoh’s family. As a young man, Moses fled Egypt in fear after killing an Egyptian. However, God’s call to return to Egypt came through the burning bush in which God revealed his name as “I am who am,” a profound revelation of God’s identity as the one who is – the source of all existence. 

Every year around Easter time, I try to at least listen to some of the music from this film as a way to enter into the spirit of the Triduum and Easter Sunday. Without being aware of the Jewish roots of our faith, we cannot fully understand the amazing things that God has done for us throughout history. The Passover was a foundational event in the history of the Hebrew people. God commanded his people to slaughter a lamb and put the blood on the doorpost to save their firstborn from the angel of death. The commemoration of the Passover was the very night in which Jesus gave us the greatest of all the sacraments – the Eucharist. We know that he is the new Passover Lamb, whose blood saves us from eternal death. 

The Jewish people have had a long history of suffering. We often hear about this in the Old Testament. They were exiled from their land, and over the generations, their identity as a people was lost in many ways. In the year 70 AD, Israel as a nation was erased from the map, only to return after World War II and the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died. We should never forget that Jesus is a Jew, and even today, the Jewish people share a history and language with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, and countless other Christians throughout Church history. Sadly, Christians have not been exempt from the sin of anti-Semitism. Many people of Jewish descent today are atheists and do not believe in God. However, there are still many practicing Jews around the world who follow the Law and pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We hope and pray that the Jewish people will all recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. 

I have heard before that the suffering of the Jewish People is, in a way, a fulfillment of the prophecy of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. We believe that Jesus most perfectly fulfills this prophecy, but prophecies can be fulfilled in more than one way. Isaiah wrote in Chapters 52 and 53, “So marred was his look beyond that of man. There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces.” Has there been any nation that has suffered like the Israelites? In a way, they have shared the fate of our savior, Jesus; a fate of being rejected and persecuted. However, we know that God can use this in some way for the world’s salvation, by sharing in the death and suffering of Jesus.  

While taking some artistic liberties, The Prince of Egypt is faithful to the story of the Exodus found in the Bible, even going so far as to directly incorporate some Hebrew words into the dialogue and lyrics. Maybe the reason I like this movie so much is that it presents faith as something to be celebrated and cherished, not made fun of, as so often happens in Hollywood. If you are looking for some family-friendly entertainment as we approach the Paschal celebrations, look up The Prince of Egypt, and you may gain some new insight into God’s plan of salvation for all his people!

Feast Day: April 11^th 

I always love a chance to let the saints tell the stories of the saints! I get to do that this week because St. Thérèse of Lisieux, while the Novice Master in the Carmel of Lisieux, wrote a play for the novices to perform on the Golden Jubilee of another Sister, Sr. Stanislaus, on February 8^th, 1897. They were close friends because Sr. Thérèse had assisted Sr. Stanislaus in the sacristy for two years a few years prior. Now, as she reflected on the life of St. Stanislaus, the Little Flower felt in her soul a premonition like the young Polish Jesuit had felt prior to her: that she would die young but could give greater love to the world from above than while here:

J.M.J.T.
Saint Stanislaus Kostka

CAST

• The Blessed Virgin and the Child Jesus
• Saint Stanislaus Kostka
• Saint Francis Borgia
• Brother Stephen Augusti, a young novice.

Scene 4, The scene takes place at Rome, in the room of Saint Francis Borgia. Moments before, that Superior of the Jesuit order, upon returning to his quarters, was surprised to find there the haggard young man, Stanislaus, who had just finished his 450-mile trek to Rome from Poland and had been left there by Brother Augusti. Francis continues his questioning of the pious aspiring-Jesuit:

FRANCIS: It’s pointless to speak about your success. Tell me, rather, what your reason is for asking to join the Society of Jesus.

STANISLAUS: My Reverend Father, it is because I want to become a saint.  

FRANCIS: Don’t you know, my child, that one can become a saint anywhere; it’s not the habit or the title of the Jesuits that works this marvel.  

STANISLAUS: How then is it, my Father, that all Jesuits are saints?

FRANCIS: All are not saints, and the proof is that I, their General, am a mere sinner.  

STANISLAUS: How can you say such a thing without lying, my Reverend Father? The whole world says you are a saint who performs miracles.  

FRANCIS: The world is mistaken, my child, no need to make much of its judgment. If ever that liar comes murmuring such flatteries in your ears, humble yourself and consider what you are in God’s eyes.  

STANISLAUS: O my Father! even if I could work miracles, it doesn’t seem to me that I’d be able to be proud; the memory of my earlier life would not be erased from my memory. Ah! I am a miserable person, unworthy of the graces of the Good God!… (He weeps.)  

FRANCIS: The Lord pardons even the greatest faults, but I wouldn’t believe you guilty of crimes. To unburden yourself of your sins, if you’re willing to confess them to me, Brother Augusti will leave the room.   

STANISLAUS (stopping Brother Augusti): No, my brother, stay; since I’m going to be living with you, I want you to know the reasons for my repentance, so you will treat me as I deserve. (He kneels before Saint Francis.) My Father, in His mercy, the Good God has deigned to call me to Him, from the dawn of my life; but, rather than telling my [spiritual] director of this calling, I resisted the grace that summoned me for eighteen months. (He lays his head on Saint Francis’ knees and weeps bitterly.) 

FRANCIS (very moved): My poor child, console yourself; your fault is atoned for by the sincere repentance you have shown. The memory of this failing in faith, far from nagging at your soul, will keep it humble, and you know it: there is no sacrifice more pleasing to God than that of a contrite and humbled heart.

STANISLAUS: My Father, what unspeakable consolation you pour over my soul!… Oh! I beg that you’ll now teach me how I may become a saint and make up for the time I’ve lost.

FRANCIS: I think the only way will be for you to despise yourself sincerely, to think the best of others, and to prove to them by every means possible the love that consumes your heart. If you make obedience the rule and the guardian of your charity, you’ll be able to do much good in a short time.

There’s a knock at the door. Brother Augusti goes to answer and comes back earning a letter which he gives, on bended knee, to Saint Francis, whispering a few words to him.

FRANCIS (opening the envelope): Brother Stanislaus, here’s a letter from Poland; your father’s writing you. (He hands him the letter.) Read it right now. (Saint Stanislaus reads the letter, and begins to cry again.) What’s upsetting you, my child? Do you regret having joined the Society of Jesus?

STANISLAUS: Oh no, my Father! I weep at seeing that my parents do not understand the Gift of God. They say I am unworthy of my ancestors and that I have dishonored their family. There is more honor, however, more nobility and glory for our house from my being here as the least among the great servants of God than if I were to become, in the world, more famous than any of my ancestors.

FRANCIS: You’re right, my son; I hope that one day your parents will approve of your vocation, but as to that, did not Our Lord Jesus say. “I did not come to bring peace, but the sword. Who loves his father and mother more than me is unworthy of me.”

STANISLAUS, (raising his eye to Heaven): Now I can say, with the psalmist: “My father and my mother have abandoned me, but the Lord has cared for me. I have chosen to be among the least in the house of my God, rather than live in the tents of the worldly.”  

FRANCIS: My dear child, I can see that God Himself brought you here and wants you to stay here. In a few days, I shall give you the sacred habit; prepare yourself for this grace in silence and reflection. Thank the Lord who’s granted you the great favor of living in His house. (He puts his hand on Brother Augusti’s head.) I give you Brother Augusti as your angel; he’ll instruct you in your external duties. I know your souls resemble each other; further, I grant you permission to share your thoughts and the graces the Lord has been pleased to heap upon His children. (He stands up.) I’ll leave you; the duties of my post require that I be elsewhere.

BROTHER AUGUSTI, (kneeling down next to Saint Stanislaus): My Father, may Your Reverence deign to give us a blessing.

FRANCIS: Dear children, may the Most Holy Trinity bless you both, as I myself bless you with all my heart. (He exits.)

– Fr. Dominic Rankin’s sister, Sr. Mary Thomas, has often spoken about the plays and skits they concoct in the monastery. At first it seems too playful for such a pious place, too carefree to be celestial. Yet, isn’t it us who have flipped things upside down? Why do we take earth so seriously, and act as if heaven were abstract and far away!  May the example of the saints flip our perspective back to God’s way of seeing things!  (Read the rest of St. Thérèse’s play at the QR-code link:)

When you walk into the church for the next two weeks, you will notice something different.  Most of our statues, as well as the crucifix above the tabernacle, will be covered in violet cloths.  This has been the practice of the Church for many years and it happens during what is known as Passiontide.  These are the final two weeks of Lent, beginning on the 5^th Sunday of Lent.  According to one resource I consulted, this practice of veiling images is meant “to serve as a stark and inescapable visual reminder that these two weeks are the most spiritually intense, solemn and mournful weeks of the liturgical year.”  Instead of coasting through the final days of Lent, Passiontide invites us to double-down and so re-commit ourselves to fully embracing the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

During these two weeks, we would do well to keep the Passion of Jesus ever before us, especially during our times of prayer.  This can be accomplished in different ways.  For example, I always try to find time to re-watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  Watching that movie has forever changed the way that I consider what Jesus went through out of love for sinful humanity, myself included.  Praying the Stations of the Cross is another very helpful spiritual practice.  Yet another helpful practice is to spend extra time with the Word of God, especially those passages that focus more specifically on the Passion.  With that said, let me offer you the following challenge for this coming week (which I hope will extend through Good Friday as well):

Challenge:  Pray for 5-10 minutes each day with the Scriptures that focus on the Passion of Christ
Fruit:  Keeping the Passion ever before us as we finish Lent

The obvious place to start are with the Passion narratives from the Four Gospels.  For your reference, they are as follows:

Matthew 26:30–27:66
Mark 14:26–15:47
Luke 22:39–23:56
John 18:1–19:42

Another highly recommended set of passages to pray with during Passiontide are what are known as the Seven Penitential Psalms.  These psalms help to stir up in us a sense of sorrow for our sins, which were the reason for Christ’s Passion.  They help increase our desire for conversion.  The Seven Penitential Psalms are all found in the Book of Psalm, and they are as follows:  Ps. 6, Ps. 32, Ps. 38, Ps. 51, Ps. 102, Ps. 130, and Ps. 143.  The USCCB has all of these psalms listed on one page, along with a link to a reflection on each Psalm.  If you do a search for “USCCB Seven Penitential Psalms”, it should be one of the first items that comes up.

All of these passages should be more than enough material to reflect on during these days, but if you get through them all before Good Friday, go back to those passages that stood out and pray with them some more.  

Father Alford     

We have sadly been hearing a lot about war in the news in the past month or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that war is not a thing of the past. In reality, much of our world was still at war even before Russia’s recent invasion. However, we as Americans are more tuned in to European news than news from other parts of the world. For example, a civil war has been going on in Syria for the past ten years or so, claiming around half a million lives. I admit that most days, I don’t think twice about people who are fleeing their homeland because their towns have been destroyed by war. 

Jesus taught us in the seventh Beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” War is never a good thing, and while self-defense is a legitimate reason to have a standing army, physical violence should only be used as a last resort. It is sobering to consider how often wars have been fought between Christians, especially between Catholics. While it can be helpful to build bridges between nations through diplomatic and economic ties, the best way to unite nations is by a common faith. One of the basic beliefs of our faith is that when we are baptized, we become sons and daughters of God. Knowing that we are children of the same heavenly Father should be reason enough to lay aside our weapons! 

All of this is a long introduction to the person I wanted to write my article about this week: Fr. Emil Kapaun. Usually, I leave the saint stories to Fr. Rankin, because he does such an excellent job with his article each week! Fr. Kapaun is a fairly well-known priest who died in the Pyoktong prisoner-of-war camp in North Korea. His name was back in the news in March of 2021, as his body had been identified in a cemetery in Hawaii, and it was transported back to his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. 

Fr. Kapaun was a member of the United States Armed Forces, but in a role that only a priest can fulfill – he was a Catholic priest Chaplain in the Army. After serving in various duties in Kansas, he was deployed to Burma and India at the end of World War II. However, he is better known for his actions as a chaplain during the Korean War. He was known to be fearless as he ministered to men on the front lines, offering the Anointing of the Sick, hearing Confessions, burying the dead, and carrying the wounded to safety. One time his tobacco pipe was shot out of his mouth, but this did not deter him. While protecting the town of Unsan, Fr. Kapaun’s soldiers were overrun and many of them made a retreat. Fr. Kapaun decided to stay with the wounded while they were captured. 

Fr. Kapaun heroically served his men for several months while they were in the Pyoktong POW camp. He was known to men of all faiths as a leader and one of the best at stealing food to keep his soldiers alive. (His patron saint for these excursions was St. Dismas, the good thief who died with Jesus.) Fr. Kapaun often volunteered to bury the dead so that he could say some prayers while he did so. After a while, Fr. Kapaun became too weak and sick to serve as a chaplain, and even to live. He died in 1951, and it was thought that he was buried in a mass grave. 

As I mentioned earlier, Fr. Kapaun’s body was identified in 2021 in a grave in Hawaii. I do not know the story of how it ended up there, but it was relocated to Wichita, where Bishop Kemme was finally able to celebrate a funeral Mass for him. Fr. Kapaun was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in battle in 1950, and in 2013, President Obama posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor, only the fifth chaplain to receive this award since the Civil War (all Catholic priests). 

Fr. Kapaun was a true peacemaker. As a priest, his job was not to fire weapons, but to bring God’s mercy to people who were in the heart of war, a place of destruction and sadness. Only God can bring about true peace, and he does so through peacemakers such as Fr. Kapaun. 

For more information about Fr. Kapaun, visit frkapaun.org 

Feast Day: April 4^th 

St. Isidore the Farmer is one of the most-often chosen saints for confirmation patrons around our diocese.  Being a patron for anyone involved in agriculture or livestock, he is a popular saint especially for our young men in even vaguely rural settings.  However, his feast day is not until May, and he was named after a saint that lived 500 years before him, the saint we celebrate this week: Isidore of Seville.

That first Isidore was born to Severianus and Theodora, a duke and duchess, of Roman heritage (you can tell by their names!) in Spain in 560.  As heresies swirled amongst bishops, barbarians pillaged and resettled swaths of the continent, and the Roman empire split and splintered, we find ourselves looking back to a rough and difficult age.  Yet Isidore’s family must have had laid the foundations for their family deep in the truths of their Christian faith because despite all that turmoil, all of the four children of the ducal family would be eventually hailed as saints (that being Leander, Isidore, Fulgentius, and Florentina – may I just say they had a way with names back then!)  Isidore was blessed to be educated at the Cathedral school in Seville, entrusted with grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the “trivium”, the foundational three elements of a integral and liberating education) as well as arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy  (the “quadrivium”, four higher elements of a classical, liberal, education), as well as, of course, the principles of the faith, Latin, as well as some Greek and Hebrew.  

Just to comment briefly on these parts of his education: it really was not all that long ago that these different elements remained the fundamentals of anyone’s education: think Abraham Lincoln studying law and logic between chopping down trees. Nowadays a “liberal” education is seen as rather unpractical, and we find a constant emphasis on the harder, more mathematical, scientific, empirical forms of knowledge. (Just think of how many times politicians and educators emphasize STEM courses and competency). But, can’t a case be made that we have forgotten the foundation in trying to build ourselves up to the heavens?  I use grammar and rhetoric every time that I speak or write.  I rarely use the quadratic formula. Of course, you might respond that my line of work requires more speaking and less calculating, and that is true, but the quadratic formula is eternally stranded on the level of numbers and mathematics.  It will never solve for the mystery of life; it will never break a flower or rainstorm into their constitutive components; it will never decipher, or discover, Shakespeare; and I’m not going to use it to get to know a friend, nor to stay a friend of God. I am glad that I learned it, yes, yet, it would be a far greater loss to loose the ability to reason and communicate and read and pray, than to not be easily able to “solve for x.”  

Isidore may have become a monk (history has forgotten that particular detail) but in any case, he would follow his own brother in becoming Bishop of Seville right around the difficult year of 600AD.  I would love to comment on all the various episcopal things he did, problems he faced, sacraments he celebrated, and homilies he preached, but I’m going to instead focus on what he was best known for: his safeguarding and teaching of the truth.  It was a volatile, brutal, illiterate age, and so Isidore sat down to compile everything that was to know, putting it all in what would be the grandfather of all encyclopedias, his Etymologiae.  He collected, and saved for all of us, countless excerpts and summaries of ancient texts, truly on almost everything that was known at the time: science, religion, philosophy, grammar, geography, infrastructure, mathematics, medicine, technology, geology, nautical, animal, and avian knowledge…  And, he invented one or two things you might have used today: the period, comma, and colon.  (I used all three in the last five words of that sentence without even trying)  Before Isidore, punctuation did not exist! ENTIREBOOKSWEREMOSTLYALLCAPSANDOFTENWITHOUTSPACES. His invention of punctuation would allow the treasures hard-won throughout human history to be passed along through the hard centuries that were coming.

And, they made writing this article substantially easier.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has no particular memory of learning these most basic parts of speech, though, funnily enough, he has, for many years, had a disorderly love for the comma. I bitterly remonstrate with a book or article if the author neglected an oxford comma, and throw them in around every appositive phrase, that being a clarifying statement within a larger one, as well as in various other, unnecessary places (see what I did there). My mom was not always impressed, though perhaps I was just trying to make up for the thousands of human writings that never knew the beauty of a proper comma… 

As we celebrate this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are now closer to Easter than we are to Ash Wednesday.  This is one of the reasons that the Church invites us to rejoice on this day.  We call this Laetare Sunday, getting its name from the first word in Latin of the Entrance Antiphon for Mass: “Rejoice (Laetare), Jerusalem!” (Is 66:10)  We visibly express this joy with the rose vestments that clergy have the option of wearing this Sunday.

The notion of rejoicing does not strike us as very Lenten.  Lent feels more like a time to be subdued, to be more sober, to focus more on sacrifice than celebration.  But let us recall the words from St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” (Phil 4:4) Yes, even in Lent!  As Christians, we should always be joyful because of the victory that Christ has already won in His Resurrection, that victory which He shares with us through our Baptism.  However, during this season of repentance, we spend time looking at our lives, noticing where we are in need of conversion.  Seeing those weaknesses and faults, we can get pretty down on ourselves, and our first thought is not to rejoice, but rather to be discouraged about ourselves.

This leads me to the challenge I would like to offer for this week:

Challenge:  Fast from negative self-talk
Fruit:  Fostering a Christian spirit of joy

It strikes me how powerful negative self-talk can be in our lives.  We begin to believe that we are defined by our sins and weaknesses.  For example, if we struggle with procrastination, we will say: I am a procrastinator.  If we struggle with patience, we will say: I am an impatient person.  You know what those labels are in your life, and many of them are likely not something about which you rejoice.  To be sure, it is good for us to know where we need to grow, but we do not want that to turn into a feeling of failure or defeat.  As a Christian, we should look at those areas with a spirit of hope, seeing in them places where the Lord wants to win His next victory in our lives.  As His beloved children, He never stops inviting us to welcome Him in to heal us and renew us.  In that regard, I find the following words of Pope St. John Paul II very encouraging: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

So let’s try our best this week to stop the negative self-talk.  As an added challenge, if you notice that you are beginning to fall into that negativity spiral about yourself, break the cycle with an affirmation that is true: “I am a beloved son/daughter of the Father!”  What a wonderful cause for rejoicing when we call that to mind.  One of the beautiful “side effects” of stopping this negative self-talk is that we will likely begin to see others through the same lens with which we are learning to look at ourselves.  We will less frequently fall into judgments and criticisms of others and begin to see them as brothers and sisters, rejoicing in the gift they too have been given as beloved sons and daughters.

Father Alford     

We will be about halfway through this year’s Lenten season this week. At the beginning of the lent, some of us decided to abstain from certain foods or activities. Others resolved to add some foods to their diets or activities to their daily routines. Still, many people choose to consolidate some additions or subtractions that they already have. Many of us simply have been doing something since the beginning of our Lenten journey.

Where are we now? Have we stopped with our Lenten observances? Have we forsaken Jesus in the wilderness? Have we forgotten that he is still in the desert preparing himself for the ultimate price of our salvation? A price that must involve severe tortures, persecution, beatings, whipping, spitting, and individual and public condemnations? Have we quickly forgotten that he is still in the wilderness, lonely, hungry, thirsty, weak, and isolated? Lent is just halfway. It is not over yet.

The whole idea of making Lenten observances is to deepen our relationship with Christ, to unite ourselves in fraternal solicitude to the suffering Christ. His sufferings and all the hardships he endured are to free us from our sins and show us how to embrace suffering for salvific reasons. The scripture puts it better when it says:

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

1 Peter 2:21-25.

As we continue our Lenten journey, let us increase efforts to stay firm in our Lenten observances. Let us remember that those sacrifices and mortifications must be geared towards bringing us closer to Jesus Christ. Because of this noble reason, we must not entertain any distraction or discouragement in fulfilling our Lenten resolutions. 

The Church encourages us to ensure that whatever we are doing to make a good Lent, we should pay special attention to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Some activities and lifestyles we have embarked upon during this Lent may express less direct connections to these Lenten virtues (prayer, fasting, and almsgiving). When this happens, one should not be discouraged. The important thing is that we must all be doing something to deepen our relationship with Christ this Lent. He continues to endure bodily and emotional torments in the wilderness of our sins. So, let us not back down from our Lenten observances now that we are only halfway through the Lenten season.

May God continue to bless our efforts with more courage and desire to persevere in our Lenten resolutions. Amen.