In October 2024, I attended a Pastor Workshop hosted by the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.  In one of the sessions, one of the seasoned pastors from that archdiocese mentioned how he had developed the practice of offering an annual State of the Parish address the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  The thought was to situate his reflections on the previous year in the context of gratitude for all of the blessings they had received, serving as a reason to be hopeful for the year ahead.  Inspired by this, I offered my first State of the Parish homily last November on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I am happy to continue that tradition this year as well.

Included in this bulletin, you will find an insert with some numbers which highlight certain aspects of the state of the parish over the past year, including financial numbers, sacramental numbers, and Mass attendance.  Though these numbers give some insights into the past year, they only provide a small part of what has taken place over the past year.  As I have been preparing for this weekend, reflecting on all that has taken place, there is a word that describes what I am feeling regarding the current state of our parish, and what I expect looking forward.  That word, likely not surprising, is hope.

Admittedly, my view may be somewhat biased toward this theme as it has been the underlying topic of all the bulletin articles that I have written over the past year, having offered a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on Pope Benedict XVI’s beautiful encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe salvi.  My reason for examining this document is due to Pope Francis declaring 2025 to be a Jubilee Year of Hope, so that theme of hope has been very much front and center.

Though I will reflect more specifically on my reasons for hope for our parish in my homily for this weekend, I will highlight one here.  An aspect of this past year that gives me so much hope for the future is the large number of weddings in which I have been involved.  At one point, there were four weekends in a row with weddings here at the Cathedral.  I had the privilege of celebrating three of those, and though I did not celebrate the fourth, I had the joy of doing the marriage preparation for that couple.  In addition to the several weddings celebrated here, I also attended other weddings outside of the parish, most recently last weekend in Indianapolis for a former student of mine from the time I taught at St. Anthony High School in Effingham.  Related to these weddings is the joyful news from several other recently-married couples who have shared with me that they are pregnant or have welcomed new children into their families over the past year.

During a time when it seems as though Catholic weddings and baptisms have declined, this past year has shown that that trend is not a given, but that it can be turned around.  The skeptic might doubt such an optimistic view, but I see these instances as reasons to be very hopeful for the future of the Church, both here in our parish, and on a larger scale in the Church.  Please pray for these young couples and for their families.  They will be a key part of the future of carrying on the life of our parish that we have all been blessed to receive from those who have come before us.

In his commentary on Psalm 85 (86), Saint Augustine uses a very relatable image to describe an experience many of us have when we go to pray. We experience distraction. Sometimes distraction is not our fault, and sometimes it is maybe a little bit (or more) our fault than we would like to admit! I am going to quote this longer passage because it really only works as a whole and teaches a lot about cultivating some discipline in prayer:

“Imagine a man whose friend has begun a conversation with him. He wants to reply to his friend’s remarks, but then he sees his friend turning away from him and saying something to someone else. Who would tolerate such behavior? Or suppose you appeal to a judge, and arrange with him to hear you in a certain place, and then as you are addressing him you suddenly brush him aside and begin to chatter to your friend, will he put up with you? Yet God puts up with the hearts of all those people who say their prayers while thinking about all sorts of things. I will not even mention evil thoughts; I am leaving out of consideration thoughts that sometimes run on perverse lines, abhorrent to God. Simply to think about irrelevant matters is to dishonor him with whom you have begun to converse. Your prayer is a conversation with God: when you read, God is speaking to you; when you pray, you are speaking to God” (St. Augustine, translated by Maria Boulding, Exposition of Psalm 85). 

Again, while that is a longer quote, I think it is an excellent image for the way we often find ourselves distracted before God. When we pray, we can consider him a conversation partner. It takes some effort and discipline on our part but holding that attention on Him and His words can be a very fruitful place to remain in prayer. I remember a friend of mine in the seminary kept a quote up on a markerboard outside his room: “Prayer consists of attention.” 

To speak about prayer in this way is not to make prayer a thing purely of human effort. The attentiveness is a real cooperation in the grace of God. God gives the gift of that attentiveness to his presence and his word, and for our part, we must cooperate and do what we can to keep our minds on the Lord and free of needless distraction.

Distraction, we know, is a part of prayer. I have found that one of the best ways to “fight” distraction is to make the distraction itself a part of my conversation. If all I can think about when praying is the baseball game coming on later, then I tell that to Jesus. If all I can think about is what I said to someone earlier, then I tell that to Jesus. If all I can think about is the homily I am going to give in three days, then I tell that to Jesus. You get the idea. We are incarnate creatures and the thoughts in our mind are going to be a part of our prayer. When evil thoughts do come, as St. Augustine mentions, they are meant to be ignored, shunned, or given to Jesus as something to be destroyed, not tolerated. 

I find myself especially drawn to the last sentence: “When you read, God is speaking to you; when you pray, you are speaking to God.” St. Augustine is speaking here particularly about the scriptures. When we read these sacred texts, God is truly speaking to us. The scriptures are a perfect way to begin this sort of conversational prayer. We can read a passage and allow God’s own words to be a springboard into the conversation we have with him. That way we aren’t simply searching through the scriptures for an answer to a question we have. There is nothing particularly wrong with that approach, but it is so much simpler when we allow God to speak first and we respond. 

May the Lord free our minds and hearts to listen to him in his Word. Amen!

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to celebrate the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, better known as All Souls Day.  Though Catholics are familiar with the existence of All Souls Day, many who only who go to Mass once a week do not observe it liturgically since it only falls on a Sunday every handful of years, as it did this year.  Our wider exposure to this important celebration brought to our attention the Church’s beautiful, though often misunderstood, doctrine of Purgatory.

Over the next few paragraphs of Spe salvi¸ Pope Benedict offers some helpful theological considerations on this topic.  During this month of November, during which the Church invites us to have a special care for the souls in Purgatory by praying for them, it is fitting for us to have this as the topic for our consideration as this document on Christian hope comes to an end.  In paragraph 45, the Holy Father begins his reflections on Purgatory by acknowledging the belief by the Jewish people in an “intermediate state” between death and Resurrection.  This is seen especially in Jesus’s use of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, which we heard at the end of September for the 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The pope writes:

This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. (SS 45)

He then explains how this Jewish belief was taken up by the early Church “and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory.” (ibid.) Not feeling it necessary to examine the complex historical development of this doctrine, the Holy Father offers a succinct explanation of what we believe regarding the judgment we all undergo at the moment of death, which will set up a more fruitful conversation about Purgatory:

With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are. (ibid.)

The pope begins the next paragraph with this following important assessment: “Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life.” (SS 46) That paves the way for a consideration of Purgatory, to which we will return in two weeks.

I’ll invite you to use your imagination today!

Once upon a time there was a King – an old-style Medieval sort of King. Today, we see him leaving his castle, alone, on his horse, and travelling out through the surrounding towns and villages. He reaches a small dusty dirt path as the day nears its end and makes his way into thick woods. The path is somewhat overgrown, but he knows it. He has been here before. As he passes by a small stream and the miniature valley it creates, he sees a clearing ahead. Through a thicket of trees, the reddening sky appears, and he is in a grassy clearing. On one side is a wooden fence surrounding a small cabin. 

On the front of the cabin is an unusual door with no handle. Inside the fence, the King gets off his horse, goes up to that door and knocks on it. The owner of the cabin opens up the door and seemingly unsurprised, says, “My King, I was expecting you.” 

The last (and first) time the King came, this subject of the King was taken aback, and since the house was not clean or ready for the King, had not wanted him to come in. This new friend of the King was possibly the poorest of His subjects and was, therefore, somewhat embarrassed. The King had simply smiled and taken off a ring from his finger. He left that sign of royal dignity on the porch rail, promising to return.

The owner of the cabin now showed the King into a tidier house and they sat down, talked, and ate together. After they had eaten, the King’s subject brought the ring back to the King. “No, that was for you, my friend,” the King said. “I do not want it back. And that reminds me!” He quickly opened a bag he had been carrying. “I have more for you.” The King handed over a set of clothes he had brought from the palace, much finer than anything in the cabin. Speechless, there was no refusing the King.

The King would return in this way many times; each time bringing something for the cabin or for his new friend; each time deepening their friendship through conversation and his presence.

After some time in this way, we find the King travelling his route once again. He stops and meets his friend at the cabin. On coming inside, the King says to his friend, “I have nothing left of my possessions to give to you that you do not have. But I want you to come to be with me at the castle. I have chosen you to be my heir. As I have explained in the past, I have claimed you as a child of the royal family.” 

“But I know you still have work to do here, so you do not have to come now. Complete your work here. I will continue to visit. When your work is finished, come to the castle to receive your inheritance. Remember who you are.”

And you, Christian, remember who you are and remember whose you are. You have been claimed by a King, who comes repeatedly to give you his very life in Holy Communion. May that friendship grow ever deeper until the day of eternity dawns and we enter, God willing, the heavenly mansion of our King!