When the Church talks about human dignity today, the conversation often centers around the beginning and end of human life. These two timeframes of life are when each of us are most vulnerable, unable to defend ourselves physically, intellectually, or politically in the public square. Because of this, we as Christians spend our time and resources caring for those who are vulnerable through ministries of healthcare and other life-affirming efforts. But, what is the source of this human dignity? The idea of human dignity has certainly not been a universal concept throughout human history. Our human minds can see the goodness of humanity to a certain extent, but it is only through God’s revelation that we can understand our dignity to the fullest extent.

Understanding our own dignity and goodness is essential to living a moral life. Part Three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is entitled “Life in Christ.” This section contains a summary of the moral teaching of the Church, and without an understanding of our dignity, it may seem like an arbitrary set of rules. This section of the Catechism begins with laying out how good God has made us to be. The opening paragraph of this section is a quote from St. Leo the Great: “Christian, recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God” (CCC 1691). Our reason for seeking virtue and avoiding sin should be out of love for the God who made us, and out of a healthy love for ourselves, because we are made in the image of God.

Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Even more than this, we have been purchased at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. God calls us to a lofty, eternal vocation of living with him forever in heaven. Sin distracts us and leads us away from our eternal vocation, while acts of love and virtue lead us closer to heaven.

In the lives of the saints, it is easy to see the goodness of God at work. I love reading Fr. Rankin’s saint articles in our Weekly, because the saints are like a walking catechesis. It can be a challenge to apply the teachings of Jesus to our own lives, but seeing the example of the saints makes it easier for us all to imagine becoming saints ourselves. Conversely, we all probably know people whose lives have been seriously damaged by sin. Thanks be to God, Jesus offers us forgiveness through the sacraments. Like the prodigal son, our loving Father wants to restore the dignity of those who have sold it through sin.

In the next year, we will be writing about some ways in which we can grow closer to God through following his laws. Let us keep in mind the reason for doing what is right – because God made us in his image, and by saying yes to God’s law, we say yes to love.

Feast Day: September 14^th

            Today we have grown accustomed to “going to Mass”, that is, driving over to the church we have chosen as our parish and attending the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist there.  I think for all of us it was a wake-up call last year when, for a time, this typical American practice was taken from us.  Pastors looked out upon empty pews, and parishioners were stranded at home, with limited access to the Eucharist, and only a small part of the experience of the Holy Sacrifice available through livestreams.  It was a trying time, and one that I hope has prodded all of us to dig deeper into how we can both love our Church more, and practice our faith at home in a fuller way.

            In both of those areas, we can learn much from the early church.  In the first few centuries of the Church the Eucharist was almost entirely celebrated in Christian homes.  Those Christians who owned a space large enough to host the small community of disciples would make space in their homes for the Mass to be celebrated and would prepare their homes not only to host their fellow Christians, but also to host the coming of the Lord, making the necessary preparations for the Mass to be celebrated under their roof.  St. Paul references this multiple times in his letters: “Aquila and Prisca send their best wishes in the Lord, together with the church that meets in their house” [1Cor 16:19] and “Please give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church which meets in her house.” [Colossians 4:15].

            This necessary practice, of course, was no longer needed once the persecutions ceased and the Church began to build church-buildings, constructing a sacred space for the growing community to join together in worship.  But, one of the saints we celebrate this week, St. John Chrysostom, a young man in the 300s who would become a firebrand of a bishop in the 400s in Constantinople (in what is now Turkey), knew that the underlying supernatural reality visible in those church-homes had not gone anywhere, even as the congregations had migrated into basilicas.  St. Augustine, a bishop during the same age in Hippo (in what is now Algeria),  coined the celebrated phrase “domestic Church” that would be taken up by Vatican II (especially in Lumen Gentium) and Pope St. John Paul II (especially in Familiaris Consortio), but Chrysostom was preaching the same message in the East.    

In his homilies on the Christian call outlined in Ephesians 5, with wives submitting to their husbands, as the Church does to Christ, and husbands loving their wives, as Christ does the Church, Chrysostom pulls no punches when he zooms out to the reality of the family and home in its entirety.   Calling the home a “miniature church” [micra-ecclessia], he proclaims it the duty and glory of fathers and mothers to establish in their homes the reign and grace of Christ.  This is a reality he finds from the beginning to the end of the bible.  Preaching on Genesis as well, this Doctor of the Church imagines for his congregation what the Christian home should look like as a family returns from Holy Communion:

Returning to your homes, we prepare two tables, one for the food of the body and the other for the food of Sacred Scripture. Indeed, the husband should repeat the readings which were given in the holy assembly; the wife instructing them; the children listening.  Each of us must make a church of his house! Are you not responsible for the salvation of your children? Won’t you one day have to account for it? Just as we, the pastors, must give an account of your souls, so the fathers of families will have to answer before God for all the people of their house. – St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis, 6.2, (translation my own because I could not find this in its entirety in English…)

Are our homes prepared for Christ’s coming?  Do we lave space and time open for Him?  Have we set up an altar, with sacred images and sacred scripture, to remain in Christ’s presence throughout our day?  Do we meditate on His Word together as a family?

– Fr. Dominic Rankin treasures as one of his earliest memories reading with his mom (well, she was doing the reading, he was doing the listening.  This is me at like 4 years old) a little blue booklet of Bible History stories.  I can almost remember the black and white scenes of Adam and Eve, and Noah, and Samson.  Little doses of God’s Word, still with me 25 years later!

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of Summer for many people, especially for students who are resuming (or have already resumed) another year of education.  With each new year comes new material that deepens the student’s understanding of current concepts or introduces him or her to new concepts.  Such is the case with our Family of Faith family catechesis program as well.  As you will recall from last year, I stressed that our entire parish community is a family, so we are all invited into this process of ongoing formation in our faith.  

Last year, our focus was on the second major section of the Catechism which deals with the Sacraments.  This year, we continue to build on that foundation and move into the third major section of the Catechism: “Life in Christ.”  The connection between these two sections can be seen in the introductory paragraphs of this section where we read:

Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, Christians are “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” and so participate in the life of the Risen Lord. Following Christ and united with him, Christians can strive to be “imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love” by conforming their thoughts, words and actions to the “mind … which is yours in Christ Jesus,” and by following his example. (CCC 1694)

At the most fundamental level, the sacraments give us grace, which is a participation in the life of Christ, thus making it possible for us to live our life “through Him, with Him, and in Him.”  And living our lives in union with Christ is the most basic explanation of what this section of the Catechism is all about.  We will cover various topics during this year, including the virtues, the Commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, the Beatitudes, and Catholic Social Teaching.  All of these topics touch on how we should live our lives as Christians – every aspect of our lives – thoughts, words, and actions.  The goal of our lives is not just following a set of rules, but it is all about letting the life of Christ be continued in our lives.

When it comes to the moral life taught by the Church, we so often fail to understand this most important point.  Many people only hear “do this” or “don’t do that” and it seems like the Church is trying to control our lives.  But do we ever stop to put those commandments in the proper context?  Do we truly appreciate that what Christ (and by extension the Church) teaches us and asks of us is actually a true path to freedom and joy?  We will only come to that understanding if we start with the person of Christ and our relationship with Him, hearing His words addressed to us that summarize His desire for us in offering us His teaching: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Do you desire this for your life, to have life and have it more abundantly?  I guarantee the answer for each of us is a resounding “yes”!  So what do we have to lose in following the way of life Christ and the Church invites us to live?  I hope you will come to discover, over the course of this year, that we have absolutely nothing good to lose.  Rather, by letting the life of Christ be lived in us, we have everything to gain, most importantly eternal life in Heaven.

Father Alford     

Day: September 8^th 

We can thank God that we live in the “land of the free and home of the brave”, but the fact of the matter is, if each of us are not moral individuals – upright, wholistic, virtuous, saintly, generous, rightly-ordered, that kind of thing – than freedom just collapses into ruckus, and bravery quickly devolves into rash brazenness (and our national home doesn’t last much longer than that).  This is not just a Catholic idea either!  Benjamin Franklin, to someone who asked him what kind of government the new country would have as the Constitutional Convention closed, famously quipped “a republic”, adding the essential words “if you can keep it.”  John Adams said it more directly: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  And, George Washington, in his final speech to the American people, spoke to this truth at length:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. … And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

This week I open with these lines because I want to emphasize the desperate need our country has for moral individuals, and then I want to point that need directly at my own heart, and beg the Lord for the grace of conversion within myself.  It is so easy to point to terrorists, or tyrants, or television, or temperature-change, or anything or anyone other than myself and say “that’s the problem”; they need conversion.  And it is way easier to complain, or debate, or ignore any of those other things, and therefore push the conundrum out of my area of responsibility, hopefully at least to Capital Street, or maybe as far away as Washington DC, or Afghanistan, or maybe China.

But all of this sells ourselves short, and neglects the chance we have in our heart and in our home to cultivate Christian living.  This week we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Nowhere in the Gospel do we get this precious scene, and yet what human joy must have filled the hearts of Joachim and Anne as they finally held their baby girl, and what supernatural joy must have filled the saints in heaven as God revealed to them His desire for her role in salvation history!  What has this to do with Benjamin Franklin?!  Mary, before we get to her saying ‘yes’ to Gabriel, or holding Jesus in Bethlehem, or staying near through the cross and to the upper room … before any of that happened, she was a girl, with parents, and she was given the gift of a holy heart.  

This happened, at first, at the exact moment she was conceived.  This is what we celebrate at the Immaculate Conception.  Yet we also celebrate her birthday, just as we celebrate all of ours as well: the day we were born and held and seen by our family.  What was so supernaturally special on Mary’s birthday that we dedicate a feast to it in the Church?  On this day, Mary’s immaculate heart was entrusted by God to the care of her parents, and they cared for her well.  Virtue, holiness, morality, freedom… all of these are things that must be established and maintained!  Attacks will come upon us, and upon those we love, from every corner, to distract or destroy the holiness we are meant to have within.  First of all, we must do this in our own hearts – maintaining our interior freedom, our moral compass, our holiness and virtue – and then spouses for each other, parents for their children, teachers for their students, and pastors for their parishioners.  

And if we have done this well, we need not worry about much else!

– Fr. Dominic Rankin fondly remembers celebrating birthdays in his home growing up.  The Rankin tradition was birthday cake for breakfast, followed by some sort of family excursion during the day.  The zoo in St. Louis remains a highlight from one such occasion.  Unfortunately, he was too rambling this week to fit a photograph of the day.  Maybe next time!