The end of our fifty-day Easter journey is near. It was seven weeks ago that we celebrated the joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday and now the Church celebrates the first of two key events both in our life of faith: this Sunday with the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord into heaven and the second being Pentecost next Sunday. St. Luke teaches us in the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus, having revealed his risen glory to his disciples after the Resurrection, returned to his place with the Father in heaven forty days following his resurrection.

The Lord’s Ascension into heaven is the fulfillment of his mission to achieve our salvation; we might use the phrase that he has come “full circle” in his return to the Father. However, there is a marvelous new reality that makes all the difference for us. In his return to the Father, Jesus takes with him our human nature. When he first descended from the Father in the Incarnation, Jesus joined his divinity to our humanity in an inseparable bond. Jesus’s humanity was and remains real. It was not something that was an illusion nor was it discarded when his earthly ministry was completed. Jesus retains his glorified human nature beyond the boundaries of space and time in heaven. This fact points to the coming reality of the Resurrection of the Just on the last day when not just the soul but also the body will be redeemed and the two realities reunited forever in heaven.

While the Ascension is the fulfillment of the Lord’s saving act for us, it does not mean that his work on our behalf is over. From his place at the Father’s right hand, the Lord Jesus continues his mission as our intercessor, as the one who continually pleads our cause to the Father. Jesus’s return to heaven also stands as a sign of hope for us that where he has gone we also may follow. We are reminded of both of these truths in the Preface of the Mass for the Ascension in which the Church prays:

Mediator between God and man, judge of the world and Lord of hosts, he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

Like the Apostles, we can’t spend our lives looking up at the heavens and wondering “what next?” This great feast of the Ascension reminds us that the Lord Jesus has done his part and, now, we must do ours. With the Holy Spirit going before us, we must continue the proclamation of the Kingdom both in word and action. Every aspect of our lives is to point to Christ, crucified and risen, who will come again in glory. Until that day, we, as his disciples, must be about the work of the building up of the Kingdom of God. The Lord’s Ascension calls us to be a people of action, proclaiming Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins and the coming of the Kingdom here and now.

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various leadership roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.

As the father of two adopted children, my thoughts about abortion and the way forward for the pro-life movement have developed significantly in the past decade. I often remember that Leo and Zelie are survivors who were exponentially more likely to be aborted than adopted. The unique and unrepeatable light that each of them brings into the world could so easily have been snuffed out in a country where there are 1.3 million abortions each year.

Their birth mothers were and are brave. They could have fallen for the lure of the quick fix and gone with the flow of the modern throw-away culture, but they instead did the far harder thing. They gave the gift of life.

Whenever the topic of abortion comes up Leo and Zelie concretize the urgency of a movement for life. Looking into their eyes depoliticizes the discussion and reminds me that I am not pro-life fundamentally because I am against something. I am pro-life because I love life and because I love specific unique and unrepeatable people. I am pro- life because, especially since Aimee and I have adopted children, I know the vulnerability and bravery of women in crisis pregnancies and how adoption can be healing and empowering where abortion scars and tears at the hearts and souls of women.

From a Spark of Goodness to a Flame

Here we are, more than forty years after the Roe v. Wade decision, in a polarized world full of deeply entrenched opinion in which real discussion and genuine dialogue are rare, but ever more urgent. Our opinions are so often highly fortified talking points, guarded against dialogue out of raw insecurity. We like and share and comments in echo chambers. We create straw men, weak caricatures of the opposing position, rather than seeking to understand where some truth or goodness or beauty has been distorted. Perhaps we can blow upon the spark, until it is white hot smoldering coal and in service of full truth.

C.S. Lewis employs this concept in his book , The Great Divorce, where the heavenly creatures can work with even a small spark of goodness in order to bring souls along to heaven:

If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear….
 “Is there hope for her , Sir?
 “Aye, there’s some. What she calls her love for her son has turned into a poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing. But there’s still a wee spark of something that’s not just herself in it. That might be blown into a flame.”
(C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 77, 104)

A Sisterly Embrace, a Pro-Life Message

A few days ago an eighth grader asked a simple question as she prepared to go to D.C. for this year’s March for Life: “How can we make a convincing argument to someone who is pro-choice?”

When asked something like this I almost always think about a Saturday morning some years back when Aimee and I were praying outside of an abortion clinic with a group of students. I was leading the Rosary with a group of teens and Aimee was sidewalk counseling, I think for the first time. It was most typical that women would be dropped off and walk into the clinic alone, but that morning two women walking in together stood out. Aimee approached them on their way in to tell them about alternative services that were being offered right next door. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the exchange and noticed one of the women get right in Aimee’s face angrily while the other, visibly pregnant, walked into the clinic.

As the irate friend headed to her car I watched Aimee follow her. (My Hail Mary’s got faster and I was more than a little worried for Aimee’s safety.)

Just minutes later though, I noticed that those hands that were once flying around in anger were still. There was a major change in body language. Two decades of the Rosary later I witnessed a sisterly hug between Aimee and the other woman, and watched as the formerly angry friend headed back into the clinic to find the woman she had accompanied inside just about twenty minutes earlier.

The Ember of Friendship

Later I asked Aimee about the exchange. “What did you say? How did you do that?” She explained how she did it. First she quietly and confidently took the angry barrage and when she had a chance, asked about the situation.

“What happened to your friend?” she asked her. Aimee heard all about how the friend in the clinic had been abandoned by a former boyfriend when she got pregnant. She heard about her friend’s great financial difficulties, tensions with her family, and intense emotional difficulties. Aimee heard all of this from an invested and protective friend whose hands were flailing. This friend would do almost anything to take care of the woman she loved like a sister. Aimee simply listened and genuinely cared too.

After listening and radiating genuine charity, she had a chance to talk about alternatives to the awful finality of abortion. The formerly angry woman came to the clinic trying to be a good friend. Aimee blew on that glowing ember of goodness until it was white hot, open to truth, and able to burn away tragically flawed thinking. The result was beautiful.

Motivated by Charity

Now I would love to say that she emerged from the clinic minutes later with her pregnant friend, but that didn’t happen. I honestly don’t know what the outcome of her attempted intervention was. The victory of that day may not have averted the tragedy of that specific abortion, but it might have prevented future abortions, and it certainly opened a mind and heart and revealed a simple and powerful way forward.

When we move beyond ideology onto the solid ground of personal encounter, we are more likely to get somewhere. This is a hallmark of the feminine genius, and the path to a change in culture that will come mainly from women upholding the dignity of women. Aimee was able to fight for the unborn by fighting for the empowerment of women….actually, for the empowerment of a specific woman. The dignity of unborn lives shines brightest when women recognize first, even in the sharp pain of a crisis pregnancy, their own dignity. Remember that the whole teaching on morality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church begins with

St. Leo the Great telling us that very thing, “Christian, recognize your dignity.”

So how can we make a convincing argument to those who are pro-choice?

• Listen to the story of the person to whom you are talking
• Find the embers of goodness in their faulty thinking and blowing on them until they are white hot and able to burn away error
• Remind the person that you are talking about their own dignity
• Do more than liking and sharing (Do that too though)
• Make sure that your comments and discussions are always motivated by real charity and love.

Colin MacIver teaches theology and has served as the religion department chair and campus ministry coordinator at St. Scholastica Academy in Covington, Louisiana. He is the author of the guide to Quick Catholic Lessons with Fr. Mike. He and his wife, Aimee, are co-authors and presenters of Theology of the Body for Teens Middle School Edition. They are also co-authors of the Power and Grace Guidebook, and the Chosen Parent’s and Sponsor’s Guides. This article originally appeared on the Ascension Press blog and is used with permission. (https://media.ascensionpress.com/2019/01/15/howwe- communicate-pro-life-message-effectively/)

Sadly, devout Catholics who believe and practice their faith are often cartooned as being out of touch and out of sync with the “world” or at least the “times.” Our priests wear robes as if we still live in biblical times, we occasionally use phrases from an archaic and “dead” language, Latin, and we literally believe that Jesus not only rose from the dead, but forty days later physically, not just spiritually, flew up into the air beyond the clouds, promising to return one day. So, it’s believed, Catholics have had their heads in the clouds ever since. The world, according to the worldly-minded, appears to be something Catholics would rather avoid altogether.

The French philosopher and convert to the Catholic Faith, Fabrice Hadjadj, would, however, disagree with this summation. The Feast of the Ascension is the perfect occasion to reestablish a firm foundation and a better definition of how Catholics truly relate to the world. Fabrice comments that, in fact:

“Christ’s Ascension is not an escape, but the way of being the fullness of everything. Don’t you find it magnificent? We are not asked to detach ourselves from earthly things, but to go to their origin, and this origin is heaven”

Though our hearts truly long to be with him, our feet are firmly planted on his good earth. Just like Jesus. He, after all, never shunned the world, or labelled it as a distraction to be avoided. He did not abandon it or encourage his disciples to do the same. Quite the opposite, Jesus spent long periods of time in a reverent gaze on the book of creation, and pulled his parables constantly from the good things of the earth; wind and water, fire and wheat, bread and birds and lilies. Look at these things, he encouraged us and sees them as so many flagstones leading to “My Father’s House.”

Now we look to Christ on this great Feast of the Ascension and he is going back to that Heavenly Place. Jesus’s word in John 12:32, “When I am lifted up I will draw all men to myself” is a beautiful line pointing to the Cross, but perhaps just as gloriously it lights a way to the Ascension. Like the disciples, with feet on the earth, we allow our hearts to be uplifted and moved by this Word who came and dwelt among us, but who has no where to lay his head. He is a presence that is never stagnant, but dynamic. In him we live and move and have our being, and it’s a being on the move. As the philosophers say we are all “homo viator”— persons on the journey. Jesus made the disciples at Emmaus believe, even after their seven mile walk, that he “was continuing on” and indeed he was. And isn’t his Ascension still more of a beginning than an ending of his revelation on earth? As the line from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books echoes, it’s always “further up, further in.”

The Ascension of the Lord is the bookend to complement the Descension of the Lord; that first touch at the Annunciation. Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger wrote:

“The incarnation is only the first part of the movement. It becomes meaningful and definitive only in the cross and the resurrection. From the cross the Lord draws everything to himself and carries the flesh – that is, humanity and the entire created world – into God’s eternity” (Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord)

That eternity is now unveiled as the very real body of Christ pierces the clouds and carries our hearts up with his. And oh how they are burning within us! His body and blood, soul and divinity now draw all things up and everything is holy now, and everything is made new. The water and wind and rain that touched him are now taken up. The fruit and the bread and the walks and talks and a thousand other things he experienced here are now part of There. You can in fact “take it with you” when all of it has been assimilated harmoniously in holiness.

Now we see more clearly what this world and our time here is really meant to be all about. Again, C.S. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This article is written by Bill Donaghy and featured on the Ascension Press blog. It is used with permission.

(https://media.ascensionpress.com/2018/05/09/things-are-looking-up-the-catholic-vision-and-the-ascension-of-jesus/)

Congratulations to our students in our PSR program who are receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation this weekend! I wish to thank our teachers in the our PSR program for their dedication in teaching our young people the Faith. This is our last group of students to be fully initiated before the Cathedral Parish implements the restored order of the sacraments that you have read about in the Catholic Times and that was promulgated as a result of our Fourth Diocesan Synod. Our children will now be making their first celebration of Reconciliation in second grade and receiving Confirmation and their first Holy Communion in third grade.

As you have read in previous letters, our own Father Stock will be leaving us at the end of June to become pastor of the parishes in Bearsdtown, Arenzville, and Virginia and Father Friedel will become the new chaplain at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in addition to being parochial vicar here at the Cathedral. As Father Stock leaves us, we will welcome Father Dominic Rankin as our newest parochial vicar here at the Cathedral. Father Rankin will be coming to us from finishing advanced studies in marriage and family life in Rome. Father Rankin was ordained for our diocese in 2018. In addition to welcoming Father Rankin, we will also welcome another seminarian for the summer: Grant Wilson, who is a native of Jacksonville and finishing his second year of theological studies in Rome, will be with us for about six weeks from the beginning of July until mid-August. Grant will be present through the parish in various activities.

Other assignments to mention: Father Marty Smith, who served here from 2015-2017, has been appointed pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Jerseyville and St. Patrick Parish in Grafton. Father Braden Maher, who served here from 2016-2018, has been appointed pastor of St. Charles Parish in Charleston and chaplain of the Newman Center at Eastern Illinois University. Last, but not least, our own Deacon David Beagles has been assigned to serve the parishes of St. Anthony in Effingham and Annunciation Parish in Shumway for the summer. Please pray for them and for all of our priests, deacons, and parishes who are in transition this summer.

Finally, with all of these changes, I wish to offer my thanks to you, the parishioners and friends of the Cathedral, for the love and support that you give to the men who come to train and serve here. Maybe we don’t get to hold on to them as long as we would like, but you make it so that, when they leave here, they are ready for the challenges ahead. All of the assignments that I have mentioned are good for us, our diocese, and the greater Church. Let us give thanks to God for these blessings.

I find it hard to believe that Memorial Day weekend is here, that next weekend marks the beginning of June, and 2019 will soon be half over! In the midst of the flying-by of time, please take a moment this weekend to offer a prayer for those who have given their lives in the service of our nation. May the Lord give us the grace to be the people that we aspire to be: one nation, under God. May God bless you and yours!

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various leadership roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.

On Friday, a seminarian I know texted me a photo of a page from Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s A Priest Is Not His Own, and said beneath it, “I thought you’d like that.”

My God yes.

Sheen was describing to priests, as celebrants of the Mass, the meaning of the Offertory. The offering of gifts of bread, wine, and alms—“my sacrifice and yours.” How eloquently he expressed the mystery of a ritual action that is reduced, in most people’s minds, to fishing for money or dropping envelopes in the basket. Or maybe checking the watch to where we stand at halftime.

Do the faithful have any idea what they are really transacting in? Are saying “Amen” to? Giving over? Such ignorance profoundly weakens the Offering’s potential effect to change lives and transform the world. Literally. Annie Dillard captured my sentiments in a passage I seem to quote every other week:

Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

It’s why I get concerned when I see programs or schemes that over-focus on what people should “get out of Mass” by reducing Massconsumption to emotional satisfaction or learning outcomes. By doing this, we strip liturgy of its vast, mysterious, transcendent, and terrifying power. The late Fr. Aidan Kavanagh makes this point: “Although the liturgy does indeed ‘teach,’ it teaches as any other ritual does—experientially, non-discursively, richly, ambiguously, and elementally. Liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.”

Okay, so here’s a nutty stream-of-consciousness scenario that runs through my head as I write:

Jerry: “Hey, what did you get out of Mass today, Tom?” Tom: “Oh, well, hmm, let me think. Well, you know when they pass the collection plate around and then bring the gifts up?”

Jerry: “Sure, what about it? Did you realize you had an empty wallet when the basket came by?”

Tom: “Ha! No, well, it was a little different. I found myself handing over to God’s uncreated Fire my body and soul; all of my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings; my livelihood; my sins and failings; my marriage and family and friends, even strangers and enemies; the living and the dead; angels and demons; all of time and space. I mean, the whole freakin’ universe! But that was a little scary, because I realized I was giving absolutely everything back, handing it all over completely to God’s control and will. It was like saying, ‘Okay, it’s all yours now. All of it. Dispose of it wholly according to your will.’ I was unsettled at what I was agreeing to.

Jerry: “Yikes.”

Tom: “Yeah, well, and after I did all of that . . . oh, wait, I forgot. As I handed all this over, it all somehow got tangled up with everyone-from-everywhere else’s ‘stuff.’ I was like, ‘Wait, that’s my stuff, not theirs!’ But he wouldn’t listen.”

“Okay, so then all that stuff got loaded onto the altar, and then got totally wrecked into the bread and wine we’d brought up, by those words, ‘This is my . . . given up.’ Those are hard words to hear, but it was too late. Then the eternal Spirit fell down on all of it, like free-falling Fire, and burned it up into the Heart of the risen Body of Jesus. It was all like a raging furnace coming out of the now-ruined Bread and Wine. I could hardly breathe.

“Then Jesus, Master Craftsman that he is, started building, out of all of our tangled-up burning stuff, a whole new section of the new creation. Which, I heard said, never ever passes away. And it was amazing; he built it up in a way I never would have imagined doing. Incredibly beautiful, but very strangely new. Everything.

“Okay, then Jesus, after building all this at his altar on high, carried this whole new world he’d made back down toward us, borne on the music of the fiery Spirit. Then he, somehow in that ruined Bread and Wine, came wildly running over toward us out of the sanctuary. But here’s the wildest thing of all. He totally ruined me by commanding me: ‘Eat, drink.’ Eat, drink fire? Unworthy me? Terrifying! But he gave me courage. And now, my God . . . I have eternal life.

“I was undone. Speechless. Unable to move. It was all superintense, more Real than reality. And then I was totally overwhelmed with a gratitude I’ve never felt before. Ever before.

Jerry: “That’s all?”

Tom: “Oh no! There’s so much more. But that’s what comes to mind. Oh no, wait, I forgot! The priest said something at the end, like ‘Go! Be sent!’ But when I looked up at him, he wasn’t there, only Christ, but terrifying in Majesty. He was commanding me: ‘Go! But this time, to ruin our ruined world,’ just like I’d seen done at Mass. And then he said, ‘Bring those ruined ruins back to me, to do this all again next week.’

“I mean, what?

Oh man, I ran! I’ve been running ever since. I just can’t stop. It’s why I’m totally out of breath now and stammering . . .”

Jerry: “Whoa.”

Tom: “Yeah, I know. Who knew? . . .”

Dr. Tom Neal presently serves as Academic Dean and Professor of Spiritual Theology at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has worked for twenty years in adult catechesis, retreat ministry and teaching theology in various contexts trying to make present for others the “Word made fresh.” Tom received a Masters in Systematic Theology from Mount St. Mary’s University and a PhD in Religion at Florida State University.

I often lead group prayer with similar words: “Give us the wisdom to know Your will for our lives and the courage to follow it as we seek to make our community a clearer reflection of the Kingdom of God.” The words acknowledge that we need to be about God’s will, not our own, and in that journey, we will bear greater witness to the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

We talk about how we are called to live a stewardship way of life and that we have been given many good gifts, but it is never truly about us. We are never the main thing. In the same manner, it is never really about our parish. Our combined stewardship may lead to many fruits, like an increased offertory or more vibrancy in parish life. However, it is always about the Kingdom of God and the King, Jesus Christ.

Through our stewardship, we allow our parish community to shine like a city on a hill for others to see and then be drawn toward Jesus Christ. It is about leading people to heaven. Our actions of stewardship do not point toward us but instead to the one who calls us to this life. Our constant prayer needs to be that we always seek to discern God’s will and follow it instead of our own. By doing that, we can transform our own lives, our parish communities, and then the world around us.

-Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS
Liturgical Publications, Inc. Used with permission.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with Thee;
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen
V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.
 Hail Mary, etc.
V. And the Word was made Flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.
 Hail Mary, etc.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the
promises of Christ.

 LET US PRAY
Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy
grace into our hearts, that we to whom the
Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made
known by the message of an angel, may by
His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His
Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

This wonderful prayer evolved from a recitation of three Hail Mary’s following an evening bell around the 12th century to its present form (with morning and midday recitations) in the 16th century.

When prayed in a group setting a leader recites the verses and everyone recites both the responses and the Hail Mary’s in between each verse, as shown above.

Although the Angelus has been traditionally said three times daily, at 6 am, noon and 6 pm, you can pray it at anytime! It is still accompanied by the ringing of a bell (the Angelus bell) in some places such as Vatican City and parts of Germany and Ireland. The Regina Coeli prayer (which may also be sung as a hymn) replaces the Angelus during the Easter season.

This text is an excerpt from the original article appearing on the website: https://www.ourcatholicprayers.com/theangelus.html.

During the month of May, we have been sharing Marian prayers to honor Mary. We hope you will consider praying with us for the intentions of our Parish family.