This past week on Tuesday, our daily readings addressed the question of the Sabbath and what role in plays in the life of faith. The passage that we read is Mark 2:23-28. The Gospels depict Jesus and his disciples walking through a field of grain (maybe wheat or barley) on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. As they walked, they picked some of the grain from the stalks, and I assume that they ate it too. The Pharisees criticized Jesus and said that what his disciples were doing was unlawful. They were referring to the Third Commandment in which God commanded his people to keep holy the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day was a day of rest, but the question was how far that rest should extend. Some like the Pharisees took a very strict interpretation, and these people criticized Jesus for picking grain or even offering healing on the Sabbath. 

This Gospel scene is a good one for us to focus on as we discuss the role of the Lord’s Day in our life as Christians. In response to the criticisms of the Pharisees, Jesus called them to reflect on the meaning of the Lord’s Day and why it exists in the first place. Profoundly and succinctly, he said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” As Jesus often does, he calls us to think about how God made things “from the beginning.” This was his strategy when it came to teaching on marriage, as he points us to Genesis for the true meaning of marriage. In the same way, we can look to Genesis for the meaning of the Sabbath. 

The creation story in Genesis says that on the seventh day, God rested. The number seven is always significant in scripture, symbolizing completion or harmony. Seven is also the number of a covenant. To make a covenant official, the word used in Hebrew is similar to the number seven (so I’m told). So, giving the seventh day of each week to God was a sign of their covenant with him. This covenant was renewed every Sabbath by prayer and rest. 

The Sabbath was made for man. The Jewish people, and later the Church, have always recognized the importance of keeping holy the Lord’s Day. With the beginning of the New Covenant, the covenant day has been transferred from Saturday to Sunday. This is to honor the resurrection of Jesus, and in keeping with the traditions of the earliest Christians. The primary way that Catholics can keep the Lord’s Day holy is by attending Mass. To voluntarily not attend Mass is a way of breaking the covenant that we have with God. We need to go to Mass each Sunday (or Saturday evening) to renew that covenant relationship and be sustained with the Body and Blood of Jesus. For those in our parish who cannot attend Mass because of being homebound or quarantined, it is good to watch Mass if possible (although not required), or at least set some time apart during the day to pray with the Sunday readings. 

However, attending Mass is not the only way that we should keep Sunday holy. The Lord’s Day should still be a day of rest for us as Christians. This does not necessarily mean physically resting (although that is good too), but it is primarily a sort of spiritual rest. The day should be marked and set apart from the other six days in the week by some family prayer time or visits to the homebound. Sunday is a good day to study a spiritual book or renew connections with family and friends. Keeping Sunday as a day of rest is a reminder to us that we are made for more than work. In heaven, there will be no more work to do, and we will be able to enter into the rest that is eternal with our heavenly Father. The Sabbath was made for man, because we need rest and renewal in God’s merciful love. 

Feast Day: January 27^th 

Sometimes the Lord’s call comes amidst a constellation of positive elements – talents, affinities, capacities, charisms – that come together in one particular person.  Think of the boldness combined with theological acumen of St. Paul, or the fervor and energy and love for the Gospel of St. Ignatius Loyola, or the patient and merciful character of Mother Teresa.  This is not simply “following your heart”, for we all know how far our instincts and character can carry us far from the Lord and living out of His love, yet at the same time, God’s call often does fit with some of our own inclinations and proclivities.  

Other times, our vocation, our call, grows from a place of pain and loss.  Here still, God does not call us to something that is disingenuous from who we are, but He can often surprise and transform us by His graces of conversion, conviction, or consolation.  Notice that this fits as well with the examples above: St. Paul – who’s life was turned upside down on the way to Damascus; St. Ignatius Loyola, who was moved to turn aside from the glorious life of the battlefield; and St. Mother Teresa, who lost much in leaving her family and religious community to serve the poorest of the poor.

This second means seems to be the one that we see especially operative in the life of St. Angela Merici.  Born of Italian farmers in 1474, she lost both her parents by the age of ten, after which she and her older sister Giana we raised by an uncle, but sadly, she lost that older sister a few years later, and by the time Angela was 20, she also lost her uncle.  Of course, we only have a sketch of her story – we don’t know the waves of grief and struggles with responsibility that may have swept over this young woman – and yet by this time in her life she had already grown to a deep level of intimacy with the Lord.  From Him she received the consolation that her sister had entered heaven (she died without receiving the Last Rites, and so had no chance to prepare to meet her Judge) as well as the first urgings to devote her life to the Lord, choosing to become a third-order Franciscan.  

She was a beautiful young lady and worked hard to dislodge from her heart any of the many temptations towards vanity that were offered to her.  She felt no call towards the contemplative life and ended moving back to her hometown where her brothers still worked the land.  How did she feel walking through her childhood home again?  Did the weight of those losses crash down on her anew?   What was happening in her heart as she contemplated her future?  We fruitfully ask these questions because they are the same questions that we confront in our own lives sometimes. 

Perhaps she could not see the Lord at work right then, but we can because it was there, back home, that she came to know many young girls poor, stuck without education, not knowing Jesus, and she began to invite them into that home, to care, and teach, and love them.  And it was there, over the years to come, that other women joined her in that mission of helping to raise and restore those hurting girls.  They dedicated themselves to prayer and penance and charity in their homes, and entrusted themselves to the patroness of St. Ursula.  Eventually Angela would more formally establish the group with a rule, working towards becoming a religious order, the Ursuline Nuns, in the decades to come.  Her mission stemmed from her own early suffering: “disorder in society is the result of disorder in the family”, she would say.  The Ursulines would be the first nuns to set foot in our country in 1719, and came to our diocese in 1857 at the request of Bp. Juncker, where they would establish multiple different schools and educate many thousands of young-people over a century and a half.  

– Fr. Dominic Rankin visited the Holy Land during Christmas break 2015-2016. It was moving to see all the actual places where so much of the Bible happened.  St. Angela Merici also was able to go on pilgrimage to the land of Jesus (in 1524).  She did not get to see any of it though because she was struck with a fluke episode of blindness during the entire trip (being spontaneously healed on her journey back).  Like so much of her life, she astonishingly took it as another cross to carry with Jesus, and came back with greater faith and love than when she left. 

As we continue to consider the Ten Commandments, the road map given to us by God to help us to get to Heaven, Jesus teaches that these commandments can be understood as two expressions of love – for God and our neighbor.  In Matthew’s Gospel, He teaches the following:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.
(Mt 22:37-40)

The first three commandments are directed toward the love of God and the following seven commandments are directed toward the love of neighbor.  I would like to focus on the Fourth Commandment in particular this week.  In beginning to address this commandment, the Catechism says the following:

The fourth commandment opens the second table of the Decalogue. It shows us the order of charity. God has willed that, after him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God. We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority. (CCC 2197)

The Catechism explains how observance of this commandment extends beyond honoring and respecting our physical parents, but touches on the many and various types of relationships that exist in society and how they should be lived out according to our faith.  One such relationship is that of “citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it.” (CCC 2199) In that regard, the Church reminds us of the obligation that exists on both sides.  On the part of the government, care must always be taken so that no laws are established which are “contrary to the dignity of persons and the natural law.” (CCC 2235) Assuming that is the case, then citizens have the obligation to obey and collaborate with the government in securing the common good.  However, the Catechism also makes it clear that as citizens, our “loyal collaboration includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice [our] just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community.”  (CCC 2238) Furthermore, the Catechism teaches us that “the citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospels.” (CCC 2242)

There is a lot to ponder here, and it is well worth our prayerful consideration of this important teaching.  On the one hand, our general posture should be one of submission to authority, not always assuming that it is contrary to the common good.  But we must not be naïve either, for there are indeed many laws which do threaten the fundamental rights of the human person, which then require our response, not simply to oppose those in authority as an end in itself, but to work for securing the common good and the respect of humanity.

This coming Saturday marks the 49^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade which cleared the way to easier access to abortion in our country.  The Catholic Church continues to remind us of our right and duty to decry this violation against human dignity of our most vulnerable, the children in the womb.  Our efforts to address this sad situation is more than just changing laws, which is necessary.  More fundamentally, it is about changing hearts so that our love of neighbor is shown in concrete ways to those who struggle with a pregnancy for which they do not feel prepared.  When these women can experience a society that shows genuine love for them, they will have the courage to choose the great gift of life that has been given to them by God.  In comparison, changing laws is much easier than changing the hearts in a society that has, in many ways, grown cold toward one another.  Either way, much is asked of us as Catholics to ensure that our love of neighbor is something we actually live, not just simply profess.

Father Alford    

Parents are often shocked to hear their kids say their first “cuss word.” While it may be funny to hear a child give voice to a word that they do not know the meaning of, it is also a cause of embarrassment and shame for their parents at the same time. This is because the parents know exactly who taught them how and when to say this word! It is an important lesson in using our words only for building others up and praising God.

The Second Commandment reads, “You shall not use the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.” By extension, this commandment means that we should also not use vulgar or suggestive speech. At certain points in our lives, I am sure we have all struggled to keep purity of speech. Young people often tend toward making lewd or suggestive jokes with their friends, and it can be hard to not fall into peer pressure to join in on what is thought to be fun. Some workplaces, especially with workers who do manual labor, are so full of foul language that it just becomes a regular part of one’s vocabulary. And many people have the habit of saying, “O my God” for no good reason.

As Christians, our speech is very important. Even if we do not say bad words in front of our kids or friends, God still hears our speech and our own ears hear our speech. It can be easy to write off using cuss words as not being a big deal, and in some cases, this may be true. However, we should not underestimate the power of the words we say. Imagine if “O my God” were replaced with a racial slur. The people around you would be shocked and ask you why you said that. If you said you didn’t really mean it, so it is no big deal, the people around you would say that it is still a big deal. Jesus talked about how our speech expresses the depths of our hearts when he said, “Do you not realize that everything that enters the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled into the latrine? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile” (Matthew 15:17-18). What comes out of our mouth first comes from our heart (and our brain).

One of my favorite scripture passages on this topic is found in the letter of St. James. James is one of the most practical books in the bible, and if you think your faith needs to be more practical, turn to this book. He writes at length about the power of speech in chapter 3: “If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their whole bodies. It is the same with ships: even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination wishes. In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretentions. Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna” (James 3:2-6). Our tongue is like a bridle in a horse’s mouth or a rudder on a ship. We can usually tell by someone’s speech if they are happy or sad, angry or content, Christian or not. May we all use our speech to build others up and give honor to our God. If we struggle with profanity or saying God’s name in vain, the Hail Mary can be a good remedy. The best way to overcome a struggle is with a counterattack. The Hail Mary is centered on the name of Jesus. When you find yourself struggling with speech, say a few Hail Mary’s and focus on giving honor to the name of Jesus.

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.