Feast Day: June 5th

I know this article will appear in your hands a day after we celebrate St. Boniface’s feast day, but his words on scripture this week were too good to pass up!  

We start our tale in 720AD, with Boniface up by the North Sea (between Norway and Germany these days), where he receives a letter from a good friend, the Abbess of Minster on the Isle of Thanet, back in England near Canterbury.  (Funnily enough, the “Isle” of Thanet is no longer an island these days, but it was when St. Eadburga sent her note.)

Be it known to you, my gracious father, that I give thanks without ceasing to Almighty God because, as I learned from your letter, He has shown His mercy to you in many ways and jealously guarded you on your way through strange and distant lands. First, He inspired the Pontiff who sits in the chair of Peter to grant the desire of your heart. Afterwards He humbled at your feet King Radbod, the enemy of the Catholic Church; finally He revealed to you in a dream that you would reap God’s harvest and gather many souls into the barn of the heavenly kingdom. – Abbess Eadburga to Boniface (720AD)

Of course, we no longer have all of their correspondence, but we hear again from Eadburga in 732, asking Boniface to pray for her parents, and then in 735, we finally hear his side of the story:

To the most reverend and beloved sister, Abbess Eadburga, Boniface, least of the servants of God, loving greetings.  I pray Almighty God, the Rewarder of all good works, that when you reach the heavenly mansions and the everlasting tents He will repay you for all the generosity you have shown to me. For, many times, by your useful gifts of books and vestments, you have consoled and relieved me in my distress. And so I beg you to continue the good work you have begun by copying out for me in letters of gold the epistles of my lord, St. Peter, that a reverence and love of the Holy Scriptures may be impressed on the minds of the heathens to whom I preach, and that I may ever have before my gaze the words of him who guided me along this path.  The materials [gold] needed for the copy I am sending by the priest Eoban.  Deal, then, my dear sister, with this my request as you have so generously dealt with them in the past, so that here on earth your deeds may shine in letters of gold to the glory of our Father who is in heaven.  For your well-being in Christ and for your continual progress in virtue I offer my prayers. – Boniface to Abbess Eadburga (735AD)

I take note not only of their friendship via that slow, but sublime, means of hand-written notes, but also just how much Boniface cherishes the words of Scripture.  Not only is he anguishing over just getting a copy of the Epistle of Peter, he sends gold so that it could be written with gold ink.  Do his words strike us as strange?  Does his commitment to the Word of God seem over the top?  I ask his intercession today that I might be inspired by His love!  “…that a reverence and love of the Holy Scriptures may be impressed on the minds of the heathens to whom I preach, and that I may ever have before my gaze the words of him who guided me along this path.”  What a saint!

– Fr. Dominic Rankin writes to his own sister, a Dominican Nun, to keep her appraised of his ministerial work and to ask her prayers as well.  He currently considers it unlikely that a reigning monarch will reach out to him having gotten to know Sr. Mary Thomas, but that seems to be what happened to Boniface through Aedburga…

Having thus briefly mentioned these matters, there is one other favour I have to ask, which, from what I hear [from Eadburga], will not be difficult for you to grant, namely, to send me a pair of falcons, quick and spirited enough to attack crows without hesitation and bring them back to earth after catching them. We ask you to procure these birds and send them to us, since there are few hawks of this kind over here in Kent, which produce good offspring, quick-witted, mettlesome and capable of being tamed, trained and taught for the purpose I have mentioned. – King Ethelbert, Requesting Falcons from Boniface (748AD).

In late March of last year, as the pandemic restrictions were just beginning, I recall various people making comments about finding the good in the midst of such challenging circumstances.  Many people commented on how those restrictions made possible more time together as a family.  Those hectic schedules that often defined the lives of families prior to the pandemic were no longer an issue, and families found themselves together in ways they had not before.  Families commented on how they appreciated having the opportunity to have meals together and to spend time doing activities together with the free time that the pandemic had afforded them.

At the same time, our parish families really suffered as we were forced to suspend public masses and indeed all of our gatherings as a family.  We had to settle for virtual community.  It was something, but it was far from sufficient as our sense of being a part of a parish family was strained.  In an attempt to foster some sense of parish family unity, we have used the pages of our Cathedral Weekly to focus on the Sacraments, in parallel with our families involved in our Family of Faith family catechesis program.

With much of our society returning to “normal”, it is my hope that our experiences, particularly with these two types of families, have left an impression upon us.  For our physical families, many of the demanding schedules are returning.  And while there may be some sense of relief in going back to some of those fulfilling experiences, it is my prayer that the time of togetherness during the pandemic has instilled a desire to make time as a family more a part of the new normal moving forward.  Going back to “normal” where our lives are so hectic that we barely meet one another in the family is not out goal, but to create a new experience of family life that values time together in the midst of the lives we live.

As a parish family, it is my hope that our being deprived of being together has instilled a desire in us to place a higher priority on making our parish family an important part of our lives.  Going back to “normal” parish family life as it existed before the pandemic is not our goal here.  As positive as some of our experiences may have been, I think we can all admit that there was a lack of family unity in our parishes.  This is something with which virtually every parish has experienced in recent decades.  We want to move forward with a greater sense of belonging to this family, not just individuals who drop in and drop out, but who gather together joyfully as brothers and sisters united who long to be together as a family of love.

While we use the title Family of Faith for our family catechesis program, I hope we can see it in a broader sense as a phrase that describes our larger parish family.  We are a family of faith, we are a family of hope, and we are a family of love.  As we celebrate the perfect family of love in the Holy Trinity this Sunday, let us pray that our own families and our parish family will move forward renewed in our desire for greater unity in love with and for one another.

Father Alford     

The devil hates marriage. The devil in fact hates all of us because we are made in the image and likeness of God. However, the devil especially hates marriage because marriage is a particularly beautiful reflection of God’s own love for his people, and marriage is the setting for God to create new life in his image. St. Peter tells us, “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9). When the devil first tempted Eve, his goal was to turn Adam and Eve against each other, which also turned them against God. There is a spiritual battle going on between good and evil, and this battle will continue until the Lord comes again. We need to play our part in this battle by praying for the spiritual protection of our families, and by praying for our young people whom God is calling to the great vocation of marriage. 

There is a prayer for families by Pope Francis that the Knights of Columbus have promoted over the past several years. I hope we can all say this prayer at least one time this week. Going forward, may we all remember to keep families and engaged couples in our prayers. Many of our good people have been called by God to pray for seminarians and priests. Thanks to their prayers, we have been given many vocations to the priesthood, especially in this diocese. However, I believe that God is also calling our prayer warriors to pray for couples who are getting married. Having and forming a family is one of the most concrete ways to leave a spiritual legacy in the world, but it is no small task. 

Pope Saint John Paul II laid the foundation during his pontificate for both a renewal in our seminary formation and in our understanding of the sacrament of marriage. For many years, he taught the world about the theology of the body: how our bodies are an expression of our personhood and of God’s plan for our lives. We are a pilgrim Church on earth, meaning that we have a long way to go before we are perfect. Our seminaries and marriage preparation programs will never be perfect. However, we know that God provides for all of our needs. Let us commit ourselves to praying for our married couples and to supporting them in any way we can. I thank God today for the gift of all of our parish families who are great witnesses to love and generosity through the grace of God. 

Prayer to the Holy Family

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, in you we contemplate the splendor of true love; to you we turn with trust. Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that our families too may be places of communion and prayer, authentic schools of the Gospel and small domestic churches. Holy Family of Nazareth, may families never again experience violence, rejection and division; may all who have been hurt or scandalized find ready comfort and healing. Holy Family of Nazareth, make us once more mindful of the sacredness and inviolability of the family, and its beauty in God’s plan. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, graciously hear our prayer. Amen. 

Prayer composed by Pope Francis and offered on the feast of the Holy Family, Dec. 29, 2013.

May 31^st

These past months, we have watched the saints through the lens of the sacraments, gradually getting to know these exemplars of faith, these icons of living a Christ-ian life, with an eye to what they teach us about the 7 sacraments.  However, for the summer, we will no longer have an overarching theme for each month (until September when we will make it to the third pillar of the Catechism: our life in Christ).  It took me a bit of brainstorming to find some aspect of our faith not covered in the Catechism, but after some thinking on it I would like to take these summer months to examine the lives of the saints each week interwoven with scripture.  Of course, scripture comes up all the time in the Catechism, and we’ll find ourselves especially digging into praying with scripture in year 4 (so after next year), but it does not examine particular passages of scripture, which is what I want to do during these essays over the summer, but, as always, taking the saints as our guides in that endeavor!

For this first week, we remain with our Mother Mary.  The feast of the visitation happens each year on May 31^st, as we conclude the Marian month, and our scripture passage then is an obvious one:

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” 

[Luke 1:39-45]

Much of what we might learn from this passage begins with the lovely detail Luke mentions of John’s leaping within Elizabeth’s womb.  From many centuries before, we find the story of Jacob and Esau’s squirming within their mother Rebekah told with the same words.  Bringing her own pregnancy into her conversation with God, the Old Testament matriarch heard these alarming words: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” [Genesis 25:23] How different is the cavorting of John!  When Jacob reached maturity, he would make off with Esau’s birthright and blessing, whereas John would boldly, and humbly, proclaim, “He must increase, but I must decrease” [John 3:30].  

Yet if John’s reverence and delight at the coming of Christ offer us an inspiration for our own approaching before the Lord, perhaps another Old Testament character sheds further light on the scene.  We now fast-forward several more centuries and find ourselves watching David as he finally brings the Ark of the Covenant, the throne and promise of God’s presence, into his capital city, Jerusalem.  He asks, standing in the same hill country of Judea outside of Jerusalem, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”[2 Samuel 6:9], words that would be echoed by Elizabeth’s “what is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” [Luke 1:43].  “And David”, like John, “danced before the Lord with all his might”, but more than that, “David was belted with a linen ephod^” [2 Samuel 6:14].  David, robed like a priest, dances as his Lord comes to him; John, the son of a priest, does the same.   

But there is more. (When it comes to the Bible, there is always more!)  Elizabeth praises Mary “blessed are you among women”, as we do in every Hail Mary, and these words too come from the heritage of Israel.  Judith is praised in like manor after saving the Israelites from the Assyrian attacker, Holofernes – “O daughter, you are blessed by the Most High God above all women on earth” [Judith 13:18] as was Jael, even further back in Israelite lore, when she assassinated the Canaanite general, Sisera – “Most blessed of women be Jael.” [Judges 5:24]  Now, I can’t leave us standing by Judith holding Holofernes head and Jael showing the dead body of Sisera to the beleaguered Israelites!  We see here, in even stronger words than before, Mary’s role in which she untwists the broken history of Israel.  Just as the leaping of John now shows delight and humility (rather than the deception of Jacob), and just as his celebration is without ulterior motive (unlike David’s brining the Ark into his city), so the high praises of Mary, come not from her conniving in order to save the nation, but her willingness to allow God to fight the true enemies of Israel with His own invasion.  

– Fr. Dominic Rankin reads the Bible every day.  And every day the Holy Spirit takes him down an unexpected road that always carries him one step closer to God.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated.” (1 Cor 13:4)  These words from St. Paul are words we often associate with weddings.  I would say that the vast majority of couples for whom I have witnessed their marriage vows have chosen this reading for the Second Reading of their wedding liturgy.  After all, at the heart of marriage is love, and St. Paul’s words are indeed a beautiful description of this gift of love.

However, I never miss the opportunity to invite the couples to listen more deeply to the type of love that St. Paul is describing.  He is not describing a feeling, which can sometime be how our world looks at love.  And in fact, when a couple no longer “feels” love for the other, they question whether it is worth staying in the marriage.  The love of which St. Paul speaks is the same love that Jesus Himself speaks to us, which we heard in the Gospel two Sundays ago: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15:13)  This love (in Greek agape) is a self-sacrificing love for the good of the other.  It is a love that sets aside personal interests and feelings in service of the one who is the object of the action of that love.  

Listen to the words that describe this type of giving love, that it is: “patient, kind, not jealous, not pompous, not inflated, not rude, does not seek its own interests, is not quick tempered, does not brood over injury, does not rejoice over wrongdoings.”  To live this type of love is HARD – in marriage, in family life, in Holy Orders, in everything!  But is it impossible?  No, because the Lord never commands anything that is impossible.  But it only becomes possible when His love is within us through the gift of sanctifying grace.  After all, as St. John tells us: “God is love.” (1 Jn 4:16)  The Lord makes it possible to live this type of love through the Sacrament of Matrimony, which He gave to the Church so that couples could persevere through “sickness and health, in good times and in bad” and so realize the promise that St. Paul mentions at the conclusion of his treatment on love, that “love never fails.” (1 Cor 13:8)  All of the sacraments, in fact, impart this love to aid us in the fulfillment of our duties as Christians.  This agape love, this self-sacrificing love cannot fail because God cannot fail.  If there is a failure, it is never because God’s love has failed, but that we have not let God’s love work in us and through us.

As we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded of how powerful God’s love in the gifts of the Holy Spirit can be.  The same Holy Spirit that was able to do so many remarkable things throughout the Acts of the Apostles, and throughout the life of the Church, is available to each of us.  These gifts enable us to live the Christian agape love in any and all of the circumstances of our lives through the sacraments which the Lord gave to His Church to ensure that this love could be lived.  Let us all make that earnest plea: “Come, Holy Spirit” today, asking that our hearts will be more open to letting God’s love work in us and through us in ways that can transform marriages, families, relationships, our parish, the diocese, the Church, and the world!

Father Alford     

For the past several weeks, we have been looking into the great beauty of the sacrament of Matrimony and the many graces that Jesus gives to married couples through this sacrament. However, human sin is still very much a part of our everyday life, and all relationships are affected by sin. This has negative effects on marriages. You may have heard the word “annulment” used in the conversation about Catholics and divorce. My intention with this column is to briefly explain the distinction between a divorce and an annulment and hopefully dispel a few misconceptions. 

It is true that that Catholic Church does not allow for divorce, and this is for a very simple reason: Jesus condemned divorce by his teachings. He said, “I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32). Moses allowed for divorce in his teachings, but the words of Jesus explain why this is no longer the case: “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). In the same conversation, Jesus said, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Matthew 19:6). God is the one who joins a couple together in a sacramental marriage, and human beings have no authority to separate what he has joined. 

A declaration of nullity is not the same thing as a divorce. A declaration of nullity declares that a marriage never took place to begin with. This declaration can be granted for several reasons. A common reason is that the marriage did not take place in the Church. (Read last week’s article for why Catholics must get married in the Church.) Another reason why a Catholic could seek a declaration of nullity from the Church is that one of the spouses on the wedding day was not capable of entering into marriage, or simply lied at the statement of the vows. At the wedding, both the bride and groom promise to be faithful in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, etc. Tragically, some people later find out that their (apparent) spouse had actually lied on the wedding day, because they were having an affair at the time of the marriage. Sometimes, a man or woman is not psychologically capable of entering into a marriage, but this is not discovered until later on. There are priests, psychologists, and laypeople who are trained to help investigate situations like these to determine whether a failed marriage ever took place to begin with. 

There are some situations when Catholics can and should seek a physical separation or even a legal divorce from their spouse. In a case where one of the spouses is abusive, it is best for the physical and spiritual well-being of the spouses that they live separately for a time or permanently. However, a legal divorce does not mean that the sacrament of matrimony never took place. It is possible that even a sacramental marriage can fall apart because of the presence of sin and the choices that people make. Even if a Catholic seeks a legal divorce, the Church still considers that person to be married sacramentally. This is not in itself a reason to stop coming to Church or stop receiving Holy Communion. However, a Catholic is not free to enter another marriage unless a declaration of nullity is granted by the diocese. 

Talking about divorce and annulments is not easy. We do not live in a perfect world, and some marriage situations are admittedly complicated. However, God gives many graces to married couples, and it is worth the time and effort to make sure that the marriages among our parishioners are valid and receiving all the graces that God desires to give them.