Feast Day: January 20^th

Last week we saw St. Hilary exemplify for us the work of mercy to instruct the ignorant.  This week, we turn our attention to a much more popular saint, St. Sebastian.  Famously a member of the praetorian guard, he continued in that office even under the Emperor Diocletian, caring for and encouraging imprisoned Christians during that tyrant’s persecution, as well as working physical (restoring speech) and spiritual miracles (converting many to the faith) along the way.  He was eventually discovered as a Christian and ordered to be killed by being shot full of arrows.  Of course, dramatically, he didn’t quite die, and was nursed back to health by the saintly Irene, before returning to Diocletian remonstrating him for his cruelty and preaching to him the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Diocletian was not moved by his words and had him martyred fully this time, ordering him to be beaten to death. 

As a youthful martyr, an “athlete for Christ”, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes, runners, archers, and sports – a distinction that has made him a popular patron, and friend, for countless young people in the centuries since – but he is also a patron for plague victims.  Originally, this came from the likeness between the welts which were the primary symptom of the black plague and Sebastian’s pierced and bruised body, but then, a thousand years after St. Ambrose’s sermons on this saint first got his story out, Guillaume Dugay, a composer in Milan, Sebastian’s hometown, composed a beautiful hymn begging the saint’s intercession as the black death raged through the city.  Take a moment to pray the words that follow, and please make the time to listen to this piece sung:

O Saint Sebastian,
always, evening and morning,
at all hours and minutes,
while I am of sound mind
protect and preserve me,
and, O martyr, untie me from the cords
of harmful weakness
called the epidemic.

From this kind of plague
defend and guard me,
along with all my friends.
We confess ourselves sinners
to God and to Holy Mary
and to you, O faithful martyr.

You, citizen of Milan,
you can make cease
this pestilence, if you so wish,
and from God accomplish this,
for among many it is known
that you have from Him this benefit.

Zoe the mute you healed
and restored healthful
to Nicostratus her husband,
and you did this miraculously.
In their suffering you consoled
the martyrs and promised
to them eternal life
and all that’s owed to martyrs.

O martyr Sebastian,
you with us always, remain with us!
And through your merits
we, who are in this life —

Guard, heal, and rule us,
and from the plague protect us,
presenting us to the Trinity
and the holy virgin mother.

And may we so finish life,
that we have mercy
and the company of martyrs
and the vision of holy God.

O how he shined with wondrous grace,
Sebastian, famous martyr,
who bearing a soldier’s insignia,
but caring for his brothers’ victory,
comforted their weakening hearts
with words brought from heaven.

– Fr. Dominic once MC’d for a confirmation at which six of the young men chose Sebastian for their confirmation patron.  They thought it was funny.  I thought it was awesome!  What better patron than a man bold enough to be martyred twice for his faith in Jesus Christ?  Who is your confirmation saint?  Have you asked them recently how they could help you to grow in your faith?

This past Monday, the Church celebrated the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, a feast that was restored to the universal Roman liturgical calendar in 2002.  In previous times, the feast was celebrated on January 1 under the title of the Circumcision of the Lord, in accordance with the Scripture passage: “When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given Him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Lk 2:21) Traditionally, the month of January is dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, so it is well worth our attnetion.  On this feast day, and throughout this month, Catholics are invited to consider the power of this name and the great reverence we should have every time we use it.  In his Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes:

         Because of this, God greatly exalted Him
         and bestowed on Him the name
         that is above every name,
         that at the name of Jesus
         every knee should bend,
         of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
         and every tongue confess that
         Jesus Christ is Lord,
         to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

I find it fitting that this devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus falls during this month when our Family of Faith formation topic is the first four Commandments, with the Second Commandment stating: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” (Ex. 20:7)  Because of this Commandment, there can be a tendency to avoid using the name of Jesus at all out of fear of using it irreverently, but the Lord desires for us to have confidence in calling out to Him by name and always keeping His Holy Name in our hearts.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote the following beautiful words about the Holy Name:

This name is the cure for all diseases of the soul. Are you troubled? Think but of Jesus, speak but the Name of Jesus, the clouds disperse, and peace descends anew from heaven. Have you fallen into sin, so that you fear death? Invoke the Name of Jesus, and you will soon feel life returning. No obduracy of the soul, no weakness, no coldness of heart can resist this holy Name; there is no heart which will not soften and open in tears at this holy name. Are you surrounded by sorrow and danger? Invoke the Name of Jesus, and your fears will vanish.

During this month of the Holy Name of Jesus, may I invite you to pay particular attention to how you use the name of Jesus?  Of course, avoid ever using it in a disrespectful way, but do not let that prevent you from using it regularly in prayer with great devotion, knowing how powerful of a prayer that one single name is for us.  Perhaps you can call this to mind when you say the name of Jesus in the three Hail Mary’s we as a parish have resolved to say each day (one for the clergy of the Cathedral, one for yourself, and one for all members of the parish).

Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary, have mercy on us!

Father Alford    

Feast Day: January 13^th

January 13^th, 367 AD was the day that bishop Hilary of Poitiers, France died peacefully.  He had been born about 57 years prior to well-off pagan parents and had grown from a good classical upbringing to a dramatic early encounter with the Christian Scriptures where he found something he didn’t know he was looking for.  It seems he started towards the beginning because it was when he got to Exodus and God’s words to Moses in the burning bush that finally the sparks caught hold of his heart: “I was frankly amazed at such a clear definition of God, which expressed the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in words most suited to human intelligence.” [Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, I.5.]  He was baptized at the age of 35, along with his wife and young daughter, but only 5 years later the laity and priests of the small Christian community at Poitiers (I saw it estimated around 350) clamored for him to become their bishop. 

He didn’t wait long to get to work.  Within two years we have his first large writing: a Commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, the earliest complete commentary on that Gospel in Latin. Like so many of the bishops of this same time – recall Ambrose in Milan, and Gregory and Basil in Cappadocia – these words were not merely pious reflections of a saintly man, nor just the writings of a scholarly theologian, nor even the authoritative teachings of a successor of an apostle – they were a courageous confrontation against the untruths rampant in his day (and perhaps ours too).

Apostles must therefore take death into their new life and nail their sins to the Lord’s cross. They must confront their persecutors with contempt for things present, holding fast to their freedom by a glorious confession of faith, and shunning any gain that would harm their souls. They should know that no power over their souls has been given to anyone, and that by suffering loss of this short life they achieve immortality. [St. Hilary of Poitiers, Commentarius in Evangelium Matthaei, 1]

Arianism was not just in Italy or Turkey, it was also here in France, in fact, spewing from the pen of Saturninus, the bishop just a bit further south in France.  Rallying what orthodox bishops that he could find, Hilary managed to excommunicate Saturninus and his minions, and had the guts to also write a letter to Constantius II (the Arian son of the Emperor Constantine).  His missive does not survive, but evidently it was rather scathing because Hilary was promptly exiled to Turkey, and when he returned a decade later, he would describe Constantius II as “a tyrant whose sole object had been to make a gift to the devil of that world for which Christ had suffered.” [Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium Augustum]

There, far from home, Hilary dove deep into what first brought him to love the Lord, the Bible.  He wrote his most famous work during, De Trinitate, during these years, but within its pages we find a man expounding doctrine on the bedrock of Scripture:

Since their [the heretics] malice, inspired by the devil’s cunning, empties the doctrine of its meaning while it retains the Names which convey the truth, we must emphasise the truth which those Names convey. We must proclaim, exactly as we shall find them in the words of Scripture, the majesty and functions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and so debar the heretics from robbing these Names of their connotation of Divine character, and compel them by means of these very Names to confine their use of terms to their proper meaning. … For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used … to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible. He [God] fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.  [St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, II.5., multiple translations]

This is a man who could not be dislodged from the truth of Scripture, no matter the consequences, even if it meant exile from his beleaguered flock, and family!  This little boy, Hilarius (his name deriving from the Greek word hilaros, which in fact means cheerful, merry, or happy) was joyous only in remaining faithful to the revelation of God.  Writing a letter back to his people, similar to St. Paul and sounding much like that imprisoned apostle, he says “Although in exile we shall speak through these books, and the word of God, which cannot be bound, shall move about in freedom.” 

His preaching in the Arian East remained so strident in the full truth of the Gospel, that he was exiled from exile.  Sulpicius Severus, a renowned Christian historian of this age of the Church so filled with heresy, and heroes, wrote that the Emperor eventually sent Hilary back to Poitiers frustrated by the “sower of discord and a disturber of the Orient.” He returned to much acclaim, and a faithful flock, and resumed his episcopal duties for the final few years of his life, leaving the Church his final commentary on the Psalms, teaching the ignorant to the very end.

There is no doubt that all the things that are said in the Psalms should be understood in accordance with Gospel proclamation, so that, whatever the voice with which the prophetic spirit has spoken, all may be referred nevertheless to the knowledge of the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, Passion and Kingdom, and to the power and glory of our resurrection. [Hilary of Poitiers, Instructio Palmorum, 5]

Fr. Dominic Rankin has tried his best to bring Hilary’s voice into this quick glance at his life.  For a better, and beautiful, further glimpse, may I recommend Pope Benedict XVI’s words on this great early bishop:

In the account from Matthew’s Gospel that we hear today for the Epiphany, we hear the following: “behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem.” (Mt 2:1) Although there has been speculation about where these magi are from, the Scriptures really do not say more than this.  Regardless, we know that their coming to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem involved a journey of some sort.  That journey, as we hear in the passage, was guided by a star which eventually led them to their destination, seeing the “newborn King of the Jews.”  Without that star to guide them, the magi would likely have been lost and would never have had this life-changing encounter with Jesus.

In the example of the magi, we are invited to see an analogy of our lives as Christians.  On the day of our Baptism, the light of Christ is placed into our hearts and we are called to follow that light throughout the journey of our lives, for that light will lead us to where Jesus dwells most completely, in His home in Heaven.  Without the light of Christ to guide us, we can get lost and we risk never having the opportunity to encounter Jesus in His Kingdom.

Knowing the difficulty that we would face on our journey, the Lord provides us, though the Scriptures and through His Church, a map and a vehicle to guide us toward our final home.  One of the images for the Church is that of a ship, sailing across the choppy waters of this world.  As long as we stay on the ship, we can be assured of our reaching our destination in safety.  The Lord will always provide us the sufficient grace that we need to stay on the ship, but the Lord will never take away our freedom.  This means that if we choose to, we can jump ship and try to go it alone without the protection of the Church, but to do so will have tragic consequences for us.

As we make this journey toward Heaven, the Lord has also provided a map for us to keep us on the right path, to keep us safely on the ship of the Church leading us to our home.  That map is marked out by the Ten Commandments.  By following these directions, we can have great confidence in knowing that we will not get lost on our journey.  Over the next two months, our Family of Faith formation focus will be the Ten Commandments.  Sadly, when many hear about the Ten Commandments, they only hear a set of rules that restrict freedom.  In truth, these commandments are the path to freedom, the freedom of living fully as the children of God. 

As we begin this new calendar year, we continue the journey that we began on the day of our Baptism.  Perhaps there have been times when we have chosen to follow a different map than the one provided by the Ten Commandments.  Maybe we have tried another vehicle for our journey other than the Church.  I invite you to set out on the next leg of your journey with trust in the Lord – His teachings and His Church.  He has given both to us as a sign of His love for us and out of His desire for us to not get lost on our way to Heaven.  Will you trust Him more fully this year?

Father Alford    

Feast Day: January 2^nd

We celebrate this week two of the greatest theologians of the Early Church.  These two close friends, along with Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa, form the three “Cappadocian Fathers” (nicknamed that because of their birthplace in Eastern Turkey, the ancient region of Cappadocia) who almost single-handedly (triple-handedly?) managed to convert the Eastern Empire to orthodox Christianity.  Just as we saw St. Ambrose working so feverishly in the West at the same time (with St. Augustine), so these men preached and taught and argued for the full divinity of Christ, and, as we shall see, the Holy Spirit.  I should mention that the older sister of Gregory of Nyssa, an early nun by the name of Macrina, is a tremendous theologian of her own right, so some have placed her with these three bishops as a 4^th Cappadocian (a Cappadocian Mother, I suppose).  That said, of the five siblings from this family – Basil, Macrina, Naucratius, Peter, and Gregory – all five are canonized saints!  That, I suppose, is what happens when your grandmother is a martyr, your parents are known for their piety, and your children, after plenty of soul-searching, devote their lives to Christ.  That, by the way, is the goal for all parents and grandparents reading this!

But what about Gregory Nazianzen?  Why do we celebrate him along with St. Basil the Great?  Shouldn’t Basil be linked with his brother, or sister, or grandmother in the panoply of the saints?  Why share a feast day with his boyhood friend Gregory?  Gregory, many years later, was preaching at the funeral of Basil, after a lifelong friendship, and lifelong work defending the faith, and explained it thus:

Basil and I were both in Athens. We had come, like streams of a river, from the same source in our native land, had separated from each other in pursuit of learning, and were now united again as if by plan, for God so arranged it. … I was not alone at that time in my regard for my friend, the great Basil. I knew his irreproachable conduct, and the maturity and wisdom of his conversation. … Such was the prelude to our friendship, the kindling of that flame that was to bind us together. In this way we began to feel affection for each other. When, in the course of time, we acknowledged our friendship and recognized that our ambition was a life of true wisdom, we became everything to each other: we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily warmer and deeper.  The same hope inspired us: the pursuit of learning.

This is an ambition especially subject to envy. Yet between us there was no envy. On the contrary, we made capital out of our rivalry. Our rivalry consisted, not in seeking the first place for oneself but in yielding it to the other, for we each looked on the other’s success as his own.  We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit. … Our single object and ambition was virtue, and a life of hope in the blessings that are to come; we wanted to withdraw from this world before we departed from it. With this end in view we ordered our lives and all our actions. We followed the guidance of God’s law and spurred each other on to virtue. … our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians. [Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43, Funeral Oration for Basil the Great, PG 36, 514-423]

I quote him at this length (and encourage you to read the entire homily linked above) because we live in a world of superficial friendships!  I don’t say that lightly!  But, of your friends, which ones would you say you “love” with a fiery, deep, tenacious love?  We hesitate to do so because our world tells us that love is something romantic or sexual … and that’s a lie.  Yes, love can be expressed by romantic or sexual actions, but love, at its core – by definition – is to will the good of another person, and the greater the good we sacrifice ourselves in order to establish in their lives, the greater the love and the deeper the friendship.  How did these two men love each other?  By studying about God together.  By seeking His face side by side.  By preaching and teaching Who He is, together, no matter the consequences.   By encouraging each other in the search for virtue, for valor, for veracity.  This is the basis for true friendship, desiring eternal goods for the other person: faith, hope, love.

If we’re in a friendship to get something less than these, or to give to the other person something less than these, we should not expect that friendship to carry us to heaven.  Of course, every one of our friendships do not need to be of this sort, but some do.  The voyage to God is not a single-player game.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin wanted to write about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy this week.  As he began to tell Basil and Gregory’s story, he realized that his own notion of the corporal and spiritual works as done for somebody, way over there, was off the mark.  These actions – (to super-summarize) of admonishing, instructing, forgiving, comforting, praying, feeding, sheltering, visiting, and burying – are ones we must do for our family and friends, for only then can we extend our love to the stranger afar.

As the Church continues her celebration of the Christmas Octave, she observes this Sunday as the Feast of the Holy Family.  This feast day highlights the fact that the Savior of the world chose to enter into our existence within the context of a family.  The example of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph invites us to see the ideal when it comes to family life, offering all families a model to imitate.

In his beautiful document on Christian Families, Familiaris Consortio, Pope St. John Paul II offers the following charge: “family, become what you are.” He goes on to explain that “the family has the mission to become more and more what it is, that is to say, a community of life and love.” (17)  The Holy Family lived this community of life and love in the most perfect way, and so offers us the closest glimpse of how the family is called to be an icon of the Trinity, the communion of persons in perfection.

No family will ever match the level of love that existed in the Holy Family, much less the love that exists in the Trinity.  Nevertheless, each family should have it as their goal to become a more vivid image of the Trinity in the witness of their family lives.  One of the ways of moving in that direction is to take time to reflect on the example of the Holy Family, noticing the love, respect, humility, and joy they lived.

Another means of growing in love in the family is through prayer.  When a family prays together, they are inviting the Lord, who is a communion of persons, into the community of persons that exists in each family.  One prayer I find particularly helpful for families to pray together is the Glory Be.

When we pray this prayer, we invoke the three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We give them glory for the perfect union of love that exists among them.  But we can also pray this prayer as a petition, asking that the love in our families will more perfectly imitate the love in the Trinity, so that our families become a “little Trinity.”

Perhaps this prayer can be our go-to prayer especially when we have struggles in our families.  Our first thought might not be to give glory to God when we encounter trials, but it is very appropriate to do so.  The Trinity desires to enter into our lives, no matter how messy they are.  All three persons want to redeem whatever is broken in our families, and so giving glory to God in anticipation of that gift is pleasing to God and it renews our sense of hope that we do not have to remain in the mess, but that God offers us a way out.

On this Holy Family Sunday, I want to express my gratitude to all of you who are a part of this parish family.  Just as a regular family has the mission of being a community of life and love, so too does our parish family have that same mission.  It is my prayer that in the year ahead, our family will become more who we are as an icon of the Trinity through our deepened commitment to our love of God and one another.  Merry Christmas!

Father Alford    

Feast Day: December 29^th

When Thomas Becket was martyred by the knights of Henry II, a young monk, Thomas Grim, was at his side.  Surviving being struck by the same sword-blow that first felled the holy Archbishop, he wrote this firsthand account of the bloody evening, and gives us an intimate glimpse of his virtue and courage:

80. After the monks took [Thomas] through the doors of the church, the four aforementioned knights followed behind with a rapid pace. A certain subdeacon, Hugh the Evil-clerk, named for his wicked offense and armed with their malice, went with them showing no reverence for either God or the saints because by following them he condoned their deed. When the holy archbishop entered the cathedral the monks who were glorifying God abandoned vespers – which they had begun to celebrate for God – and ran to their father whom they had heard was dead but they saw alive and unharmed. They hastened to close the doors of the church in order to bar the enemies from slaughtering the bishop, but the wondrous athlete turned toward them and ordered that the doors be opened. “It is not proper,” he said, “that a house of prayer, a church of Christ, be made a fortress since although it is not shut up, it serves as a fortification for his people; we will triumph over the enemy through suffering rather than by fighting – and we come to suffer, not to resist.“

Without delay the sacrilegious men entered the house of peace and reconciliation with swords drawn; indeed the sight alone as well as the rattle of arms inflicted not a small amount of horror on those who watched. And those knights who approached the confused and disordered people who had been observing vespers but, by now, had run toward the lethal spectacle exclaimed in a rage: “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor of the king and kingdom?” No one responded and instantly they cried out more loudly, “Where is the archbishop?” Unshaken he replied to this voice as it is written, “The righteous will be like a bold lion and free from fear,” he descended from the steps to which he had been taken by the monks who were fearful of the knights and said in an adequately audible voice, “Here I am, not a traitor of the king but a priest; why do you seek me?” And [Thomas], who had previously told them that he had no fear of them added, “Here I am ready to suffer in the name of He who redeemed me with His blood; God forbid that I should flee on account of your swords or that I should depart from righteousness.“

With these words – at the foot of a pillar – he turned to the right. On one side was the altar of the blessed mother of God, on the other the altar of the holy confessor Benedict – through whose example and prayers he had been crucified to the world and his lusts; he endured whatever the murderers did to him with such constancy of the soul that he seemed as if he were not of flesh. The murderers pursued him and asked, “Absolve and restore to communion those you have excommunicated and return to office those who have been suspended.” To these words [Thomas] replied, “No penance has been made, so I will not absolve them.” “Then you,” they said, “will now die and will suffer what you have earned.” “And I,” he said, “am prepared to die for my Lord, so that in my blood the church will attain liberty and peace; but in the name of Almighty God I forbid that you hurt my men, either cleric or layman, in any way.” The glorious martyr acted conscientiously with foresight for his men and prudently on his own behalf, so that no one near him would be hurt as he hastened toward Christ. It was fitting that the soldier of the Lord and the martyr of the Savior adhered to His words when he was sought by the impious, “If it is me you seek, let them leave.“

In this article, I don’t have enough room to include Grim’s entire account, but he records the Archbishop’s final words in paragraph 82. “…with another blow received on the head, he remained firm. But with the third the stricken martyr bent his knees and elbows, offering himself as a living sacrifice, saying in a low voice, “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church I am ready to embrace death.“”

Thomas Grim, Vita S. Thomae, Cantuariensis Archepiscopi et Martyris (from James Robertson, Materials for the Life of Thomas Becket, London, Rolls Series, 1875-1885. Vol. 2 of 7. Translated by Dawn Marie Hayes and found on the Internet Medieval Source Book.  Want more?  Scan the QR code for the rest of the account (be warned, his death is brutally recounted):

– Fr. Dominic Rankin recently got together with the five other priests who make up his fraternal support group.  Along with praying, eating, enjoying each other’s company, and hearing about the ups and downs while following the Lord, we also had an Advent gift-exchange.  Unwrapping one of the gifts I was given, one of the other guys exclaimed “is that a sword?!”  No, I am not the happy owner of a sword, but I do now have a fine kitchen knife that will help tremendously in meal-prep in the rectory!