News – Page 44

Our Lady of Fatima

Feast Day: May 13^th

I want to start our tale this week not on May 13^th, 1917, when Our Lady first appeared to Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta in the hills outside of Fatima Portugal, but instead in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, on a lovely May 13^th 1981. It is just a bit after 5pm and Pope John Paul II has just begun to visit the pilgrims packed between the colonnades before his usual Wednesday Audience. He had been delivering a catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount, but today he was going to begin a new theme. It was the 90^th anniversary of Pope St. Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, and JPII was set to carry forward the Church’s work, there outlined, of defending the dignity of every person, especially the poor and degraded. It had only been 60 years since WWI, and 40 years since WWII, and the Iron Curtain still obscured to the world the full horror of what happens when society worships itself and forgets God, but JPII was not going to abandon the Church’s mission of continuing to proclaim with Christ the freedom and dignity and blessedness of all those who were poor.

He was set to announce, along these lines, the creation of a Pontifical Council for the Family, and on top of this later this evening he was going across the city to open a brand new Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. All this was perhaps in his mind as he happily handed the 18 month old Sara Bartoli, back to her mother, but seconds later gunfire rang out and the Holy Father collapsed to the floor of the popemobile, his face strained, the prayer “Maria Madonna” on his lips, and blood staining his white cassock. The horrified security detail sped him out of the square to a brand-new ambulance that the pope had blessed only hours before, providentially praying then for the first person who would ride in it. Providence also directed the ambulance to the Gemelli hospital, miraculously making the 4 mile trip through Roman rush-hour in only 8 minutes. Divine providence was at work through all the moments to come: the second assassin would flee without setting off his bomb; the bullets fired from mere yards away had missed the pope’s main abdominal artery by millimeters; JPII would loose 75% of his blood over the next hour and would receive an infected transfusion of blood yet he would eventually pull through.

65 years earlier, Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, who were then speaking to Our Lady for the third time had this singular vision: “… at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

It was only several weeks after his being shot that John Paul II read the above testimony of Sr. Lucia, and it would be a full year before he was able to go on pilgrimage to Fatima, stating there that “one hand pulled the trigger, another guided the bullet”, but by those words he upheld the same sacred freedom that he had meant to speak of during that forgotten General Audience. As Cardinal Ratzinger would put it when the text above was published: “That here ‘a mother’s hand’‌ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies.”

– Fr. Dominic Rankin this year has set as a goal to always “pray like I mean it.” That is, to never pray the Divine Office or my Rosary mechanically. Seeing this week a moment when history was changed by prayer, he is strongly encouraged in this effort!

Mary, Mother of Priests

One of my favorite months of the year is May. The grass is green, flowers are blooming, and the weather (generally) gets warmer, which, for me, means more opportunities for going fishing! When I have been in parish assignments with schools, May was always a time to celebrate another school year coming to a close, capped off with graduations and other festivities. May is a month when we also recognize our mothers on Mothers Day. That day provides me an opportunity to be grateful for the gift of my mother, my grandmothers, and so many who have been very motherly to me as a priest. Along those lines, the Church invites us to have a special awareness of our Blessed Mother during this month, which is dedicated to her in a special way. For many years now, Mary has been such an important person in my life and I find myself expressing my gratitude to her and for her in a special way this month, especially when I pray the Rosary. May is also a month when I think about the priesthood, since so many of the priests of our diocese (myself included) were ordained in the month of May. In recognition of that, the priests of the diocese gather in early May each year for our Priests Jubilee during which we honor those celebrating significant anniversaries of their ordinations.

As I reflect on all of these aspects that make May a pretty remarkable month, these final two – Mary and the priesthood – come together in special way with the Marian title of Mary, Mother of Priests. By virtue of their ordination, priests share in the life of Christ in a very unique way. Because priests share this sacramental bond with Christ through Holy Orders, their relationship with Mary is likewise unique. Mary certainly loves all of her children, but she has a special affection for those sons of hers who are continuing the life of her Son in priestly ministry. I have felt this love from Mary in so many ways as a priest, and I know so many of my brother priests have also found in her that motherly care which is a source of great encouragement and strength.

As you hopefully are aware, we have been asking the parish to pray three Hail Marys each day. One of those Hail Marys is for the clergy of our parish. I know I speak for all of us that those prayers for us are greatly appreciated. For this month of May, though, could I ask you to please pray an additional Hail Mary for all of the priests of our diocese? As you likely know, it is usually in May that we hear about priest assignment changes. That can be a difficult time for a parish, but also for a priest. So please keep those priests in your prayers in a special way, asking Mary to intercede for them during this time of transition. At the end of this month, we will be ordaining two new priests for service in our diocese – Deacon Zach Samples and Deacon Paul Lesupati. Please commend them to the prayers of Mary as they prepare to enter into this beautiful life of the priesthood.

Father Alford

Who wrote the Gospel of Mark – St. Mark, or God?

St. Mark has been getting the royal treatment around here recently. Last week, Fr. Rankin wrote his saint article on St. Mark, and it covered two pages. As I celebrated Mass on St. Mark’s feast day on Monday of last week, I started thinking again about our Scriptures and how blessed we are to have the Word of God handed down to us from nearly 2000 years ago. I was intrigued by a line I read in my meditation book that morning. According to St. Clement of Alexandria, a bishop who lived from 150-211, Mark wrote his gospel down “at the insistence of the Christians of Rome.” What if the Christian community had never encouraged Mark to write down his account of the Gospel? Would God have found another way to communicate the truth that Mark has given us? I honestly don’t know.

Our belief in the inspiration of the scriptures remains a great mystery of our faith. Typically, we write articles, books, or letters using our intellect and doing our best to communicate a message that needs to be passed on. So, if Mark (and all biblical authors) used their intellect and put a lot of effort into writing a short book about the life and teachings of Jesus, how can we say that God was actually the author of these books? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Bible to be dropped out of the sky, straight from heaven? Some other religions believe that revelation occurred like this. Mormons traditionally believe that Joseph Smith discovered the Book of Mormon on golden plates buried in a hill, where the prophet Mormon had buried them around 300. Also, Muslims believe that the Quran was dictated to Muhammed verbatim in Arabic, and he repeated it to his scribes to write down.

It is a common saying in the study of our faith that “grace perfects nature.” God does not nullify or cancel who we are as human beings when he shares his divine nature with us through the sacraments. With this in mind, it actually makes sense that God would want the biblical authors to use their natural gifts as part of the process of writing scripture. Biblical books and letters were always written by a human being, but the Holy Spirit guided the thoughts and words of the authors to be exactly as God wanted them to be. The word “inspired” comes from the Latin word spiritus, which literally means “spirit”! So when I hear that the early Christians urged Mark to write the Gospel down, I can see how much the Holy Spirit was involved in the whole process. First, God made mark with significant literary talents, provided him with a literate education, made him a companion of St. Paul, St. Peter, other apostles, and the early Christians, and maybe even a companion of Jesus himself. Then, as Mark sat at a desk with some kind of parchment or animal skin, the Holy Spirit guided him to the words to say in Greek, even as Mark worked really hard to craft such a beautiful Gospel. He may or may not have not known that he was writing an Inspired work of scripture.

Because Mark wrote the Gospel using his human mind, the Church needs to undertake serious scholarly research to figure out what he intended to say throughout the Gospel. If you were to read any ancient writing (think of the Odyssey or Gilgamesh), you would most likely try to find some sort of guide through the text, such as a commentary or online lecture about the cultural significance of each book. The same is true for the Bible, which was written in Hebrew and Greek, and has been translated into other languages for us to read.

Understanding the scriptures has always been a challenge for believers, and thankfully God gave us prophets, and later, bishops of the Church as the authority to teach the meaning of Sacred Scripture. I always take comfort in the fact that Saint Peter himself – the first pope – found the writings of St. Paul hard to understand! He wrote, “In [Paul’s letters] there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16).

The Second Vatican Council promulgated a document on Divine Revelation entitled Dei Verbum, or the Word of God. There are several points in this document that I thought may be helpful to leave here for further reading. If you have read this far, thank you for bearing with me! I understand that not everyone is interested in some technicalities of how God’s Word is passed down to us, but I think it’s pretty cool. Here are parts of paragraphs 11 and 12 of Dei Verbum.

Holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.

In composing the sacred books, God chose men, and while employed by Him, they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).

However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.

So, to answer my initial question in the title, the answer is “both”! Both God and St. Mark are true authors of the Gospel of Mark.

The Feast of Mercy

On April 30, 2000, Pope St. John Paul II celebrated Mass on the Second Sunday of Easter at St. Peter’s in Rome. That in itself was not something altogether significant, given that the Pope lives at St. Peter’s and many papal liturgies are celebrated there. But this Mass was unique. Instead of celebrating Mass inside the basilica, he celebrated it outside, in the Plaza, something that is done only for extra special occasions so as to be able to accommodate large crowds. The special occasion for this Mass was to celebrate the first canonization the New Millennium. The saint canonized on that day was a fellow Pole, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, known as the apostle of Divine Mercy. On that day, the Holy Father officially decreed that the Second Sunday of Easter would be known throughout the Universal Church as Divine Mercy Sunday, per the request of Jesus Himself to St. Faustina as recorded in her Diary:

I desire that the first Sunday after Easter be the Feast of Mercy (Diary, 299)…I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which grace flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet.
(Diary, 699)

The message of Divine Mercy is extremely powerful as it reminds us of the depth of the Lord’s love for us, His children, and how He desires to free us from the burdens of our sins. I recently heard a description of God’s mercy that has really impacted me. The priest who shared it with me spoke about the experience of a child who has been injured, running to their mother or father in pain. Seeing their child suffering, the parent has only one thing in mind – attending to the wound. The parent is not trying to figure out what happened or why it happened, they just want to bring relief to their child. This is like what happens when we run to the Lord for His mercy. We run to Him in need, injured by our sins. Seeing us suffering, the Lord goes right to the pain to heal us. To strengthen this image, I recently came across these beautiful words of St. Faustina in her Diary:

When I see that the burden is beyond my strength, I do not consider or analyze it or probe into it, but I run like a child to the Heart of Jesus and say only one word to Him: “You can do all things.” And then I keep silent, because I know that Jesus Himself will intervene in the matter, and as for me, instead of tormenting myself, I use that time to love Him.
(Diary, 1033)

Think of this image the next time you go to confession, such as at our 2 PM Divine Mercy Service this Sunday. Bring your sins before the Lord as an injured child before their loving Father. Show Him your wounds by telling Him your sins and let Him do His work of healing. Explanations of why and how these sins came about are rarely necessary. The more we try to explain ourselves, the longer we delay His mercy from entering in to bring us His healing love!

Father Alford

St. Mark

Feast Day: April 25^th

I would like to introduce you to a lion this week. No, it is not a wild lion – be not afraid! – but it is certainly not a tame one either – petting and photographing will not be to your advantage! – in fact it is a far more formidable beast than even the most powerful of the kings of the savannah! I speak, of course, of St. Mark the Evangelist and his Gospel. Within a hundred years of Jesus’ Resurrection, the Church had linked the Four Evangelists to the four creatures spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel which later reappear symbolically in the book of Revelation: the lion, the bull/ox, the man, and the eagle, all of them worshipping God. St. Irenaeus was the Church Father who linked these with the authors of the Gospels, seeing in the lion an image for Mark, whose Gospel begins in a desert with the roaring of John the Baptist: “prepare the way of the Lord.”

How are we to approach a lion? How are we to approach the Gospel? How are we to approach Christ? On the one hand, if we come infear and hesitation, we will never get close enough to truly understand what, and Who, is there before us. Consider the women at the end of Mark’s Gospel, who find the tomb empty and run away in wonder and fear. Only Mary, who takes back her courage and goes back to the tomb, has an encounter with the Risen Lord. Do our fears or trepidations keep us from engaging the Gospel in its entirety? Do we allow ourselves to be challenged by it? Do we take back our own courage and come back, even if we don’t feel up to grasping or grappling with God right now? Or, do we close God’s book, or never open it, or more subtly, just close our hearts and never open them to these potent words of God? Will we let these pages capture us anew?

On the other hand, we can also approach these sacred words as we would a declawed tabby, to pet and prod and provoke into chasing a laser-pointer around the room. We want to be delighted and comforted and so we turn to the story of Jesus looking for warmth and encouragement. We pick out the bits that console us, and skim over the parts that ask us for something more. We like to hear John speak of baptism, not so much of his call to repent and turn from sin. We enjoy listening to Jesus’ words of forgiveness and compassion and healing, not as much His prediction of rejection, persecution, and crucifixion.

The reality is that we are apt to be wildly disappointed whether we come to the Gospel of Mark hoping to avoid the ferocious lion, or to embrace only the kitten, for St. Mark’s Gospel is meant to both chase us, and comfort us. In C.S. Lewis’ book series, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, Aslan, the Christ figure, is portrayed as a giant but gentle; strong but self-sacrificing, lion. We memorably meet Him with Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but He also appears in a less-read book of that series, The Horse and His Boy. There a poor, abused, boy, and a royal, but lonely, girl, and two talking horses – all of them starting from the pagan faraway lands – find their paths come together as they begin an adventure that carries them through the desert back to Narnia. Only at the end of their journey do they finally meet Aslan, and discover that He had guided, and guarded, and chased them all the way to their true home.

“Who are you?” [Shasta, the boy] said, scarcely above a whisper. “One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep. “Are you—are you a giant?” asked Shasta. “You might call me a giant,” said the Large Voice. “But I am not like the creatures you call giants.” “I can’t see you at all,” said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, “You’re not—not something dead, are you? Oh please—please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world!” Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. “There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”

Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat. “I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice. “Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.

“There was only one lion,” said the Voice. “What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and—” “There was only one: but he was swift of foot.” “How do you know?” “I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?” “It was I.” “But what for?” “Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.” “Who are you?” asked Shasta. “Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it. Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too. The mist was turning from black to gray and from gray to white. This must have begun to happen some time ago, but while he had been talking to the Thing he had not been noticing anything else. Now, the whiteness around him became a shining whiteness; his eyes began to blink. Somewhere ahead he could hear birds singing. He knew the night was over at last. He could see the mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now. A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun. He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful.

I think we discover a similar truth every time we truly encounter Our Lord, including when we find Him in the pages of Scripture. Yes, He sometimes challenges and sometimes comforts; He sometimes roars and sometimes reassures, but all those times, and all the in between times, He is there, close, helping, prodding, healing, forgiving, and loving us home.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has actually encountered more lions than deserts. He has only seen three deserts (the Chihuahuan and Great Basin in the USA, the Negev/Judean in Israel), but has seen multiple lions both in zoos and on the Serengeti. He has encountered St. Mark’s Gospel many more times than that and plans to maintain this ratio of lion-engagement going forward.

Living in the Light of the Resurrection

Alleluia! How good it is for us once again to sing this song of Easter victory. Having fasted from this word throughout Lent, resuming its usage should fill out hearts with joy as we recall the victory of light over darkness in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. During these next 50 days of the Easter Season, this light will shine brightly in the form of the Easter Candle, placed prominently in the sanctuary near the ambo where the Good News of Easter is proclaimed in the Scriptures.

For those who were at the Easter Vigil, this theme of light was present throughout the liturgy. I never cease to be moved by the scene of the newly-lit Easter Candle entering into the darkened Cathedral. When the deacon chanted for the first time: “The Light of Christ”, we responded with a resounding “Thanks be to God!” We thank God because this light reminds us that in the midst of the darkness of the world in which we find ourselves, Christ’s light of hope, Christ’s light of victory burns undimmed, inviting us to follow that light as He continues to lead us. This is expressed in the words that the bishop said as he lit the candle from the blessed Easter fire: “May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”

On this day, we are reminded that, as Christians, we should never succumb to despair in the face of evil, suffering, or sorrow, for Christ has transformed death into life and defeat into victory. Yet, we still find ourselves going through life as though we do not really believe this. There is still doubt in our hearts because we do not see the victory taking hold. We continue to see war and strife, oppression, persecution, hatred, pain, and darkness all around us. We look at the circumstances in our lives, in the world, and the Church, wondering what the outcome might be. Will good win out over evil or not?

As I said, as Christians there is no room for us to doubt what the outcome will be. The outcome has already been decided. This victory of the Resurrection was one that He won not just for Himself, but for us, to set us free from sin and death, and to give us the gift of eternal life. When we are confronted with darkness, as we are each day, the Lord invites us to turn to the light of Christ, burning from the Easter Candle, but more importantly, burning in our hearts by virtue of our Baptism, the gift which marked us as recipients of His victory. In that light we receive strength to press forward in hope, following His light. But this victory is not something the Lord will force upon us. He will only grant it to those who desire it. And if we desire it, we commit to following the only path that will guarantee it – fidelity to His teaching and His Church. If we think we can reach victory by another way, we have been deceived by one of the many false lights that promise hope, but in the end, only lead to defeat. May we not fall victim to these false, worldly lights, but keep our eyes fixed on the true light of Christ who will lead us on to victory!

The Resurrection of the Body

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!

Blessed Bees

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!

Praying with the Cross

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:

Who is that?
Why is He there?
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

Movie Recommendation – The Prince of Egypt

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!

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