On the 4^th Sunday of Easter, the Gospel is always drawn from John 10, which is where Jesus speaks of Himself as the Good Shepherd.  This Sunday has therefore become known as Good Shepherd Sunday.  60 years ago, the Church decided that on this Sunday, it would be an opportune time for the faithful throughout the world to pray for vocations, especially for vocations to the priesthood in which the Lord provides shepherds for the Church.  

As I consider this day this year, I note that yesterday (or today if you read this on Saturday) marked the 44^th anniversary of my baptism.  Why is this important?  Because on the day of my baptism, the seed of my vocation was planted, as it is in each one of us.  In its most basic form, we are all called to a vocation of holiness, to become saints one day.  In His perfect plan for us, God has designed the unique way for that holiness to be lived out, which we call our particular vocation, the awareness of which continues to grow as we journey with the Lord.  The discovery of one’s vocation, though, is not an isolated experience.  It involves the entire Church supporting and praying for vocations, thus the command of the Lord: “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.” (Mt 9:38; Lk 10:2)  The prayers of the people of God directly assist in the discovery of how the Lord is calling us to follow Him.

It dawns on me this year that my discerning my vocation to the priesthood was assisted by you (and the entire Church) before you ever knew me, and before I ever thought about the possibility of responding to the invitation of the Lord to follow Him as a priest.  The same can be said for all of us who have been ordained and are privileged to serve you here at the Cathedral.  So I extend my deepest gratitude for those prayers!  I think it also highlights the power of our prayers when we unite them with those of the rest of the Church.  We never know how and when our prayers will be answered, but the Lord uses all of them in His perfect Providence to accomplish His holy will.

During this Eucharistic Year, and as I have committed to reflecting on the gift of the Eucharist more specifically during this Easter Season, there is an obvious connection to the Eucharist on Good Shepherd Sunday.  Without the shepherds of the Church (bishops and priests) we do not have the Eucharist.  Only a priest is able to celebrate Mass and feed us with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.  Add to that the sacraments of Penance, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, and conferring Holy Orders.  As a result, gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist and all of the sacraments necessarily requires gratitude for the priesthood.  That gratitude is for the institution of the priesthood in general, but also gratitude for the individual priests who have been shepherds to us.  I would therefore encourage you to spend some time today calling to mind those priests who have impacted your life.  One of the great blessings of the priesthood is that despite the holiness of the individual priest, Christ still works through them.  Not every priest we have known has always been a reflection of Christ, the Good Shepherd.  Nevertheless, we can still thank God for using those priests to serve us.  Just for your awareness, I share a partial list of the priests for whom I am praying in a particular way today for their role in my life.

Father Joseph Dineen – priest who baptized me;  Father Don Knuffman – priest who heard my first confession;  Father Pat Jakel – priest who distributed Holy Communion to me for the first time; Bishop Daniel Ryan – bishop who confirmed me; Archbishop George Lucas – bishop who ordained me a deacon; Bishop Thomas John Paprocki – bishop who ordained me (and who has been a good father and friend to me my entire priesthood); and Monsignor David Hoefler – my Pastor for two summers as a seminarian, my first Pastor as a new priest, and my closest friend in the priesthood who has been an example and support to me in so many ways.

May we all give thanks to God this day for those Good Shepherds in our lives, praying that the Lord will continue to bless those who are still living, and that through the mercy of God, those who have passed may rest in eternal peace.

(First, a correction: Ss. Philip and James are celebrated on May 3^rd, not May 1^st, as I wrote last week!) Ok, we have a puzzle this week. Who is the St. Alexander mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer? We’re examining the saintly man mentioned among the “apostles and martyrs” in the list given in the nobis quoque prayer [the one that begins “to us also…”] after the Consecration, towards the end of that Eucharistic Prayer. There we find “St. Alexander” mentioned between Saint Ignatius (Patriarch of Antioch, martyred in Rome around 140 AD) and Saints Marcellinus and Peter (a priest and an exorcist, who were martyred in Rome around 304 AD). The problem is, if you do any digging, you’ll find a number of different saints ascribed to be the one mentioned here by the name of Alexander.

Many say that the prayer refers to Pope St. Alexander, the 5^th Bishop of Rome, mentioned already by St. Ireneaus of Lyons already in the late 100s (so, just 70 or 80 years after his pontificate) and in Eusebius’ “Church History” in the early 300s. Tradition holds that the custom of mingling water with the wine at Mass as well as the practice of blessing homes with holy water and blessed salt in Christian homes come from this early Pope, as well as perhaps the introduction to the words of consecration “on the night He was betrayed…”.  Now, things get convoluted as we try to get more details because quickly this St. Alexander is mentioned along with the priests, Ss. Eventius and Theodulus, early martyrs who were all killed and buried a few miles outside of Rome (near Ficulea, where the Christian cemetery there was named after Alexander). 

The problem is that none of those earliest sources mention Pope St. Alexander’s martyrdom (which they do mention of other early popes, and you would think would mention if that were the end of his pontificate), so we don’t know if there were two saintly Alexander’s, one a pope and one not, or if these were the same person. In any case, the Church has traditionally celebrated all three men on the same feast day (May 3^rd) and as martyrs. But, if we look at the structure of the Roman Canon itself, we find that every other pope is mentioned not here in the nobis quoque but in the prayer called the communicantes [“in communion of those we venerate…”] that comes before the Consecration. (And, given the reverence that these early prayers of the Church give to the Bishops of Rome, it would seem odd to toss his name in there after Ignatius and before Marcellinus and Peter.)

Ok, so what is another option? Another claimant for the identity of St. Alexander is the Patriarch of Alexandria with that name from the 310s, an eloquent and orthodox bishop who began the battle against Arianism (working for the excommunication of Arius as well as drafting much of the decrees of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 AD). He crucially named the courageous and faithful St. Athanasius to be his successor as bishop of Antioch. February 26^th. Here as well, an argument can be made to the contrary in that everyone else on this list of saints are martyrs, whereas he is not (even if, like St. Ignatius, he was an Eastern Bishop/Patriarch). 

Finally, a third (or fourth?!) proposal is the martyr, St. Alexander, one of seven brothers or companions, perhaps the sons of St. Felicity, a saintly widow of Rome (not to be confused with the famous St. Felicity and St. Perpetua, martyrs in Carthage), who was martyred along with her seven faithful sons around 165 AD. St. Gregory the Great famously used this holy mother as an example of courage even greater than an ordinary martyr, saying “She was more than a martyr, for seeing her seven dear children martyred before her eyes, she was in some sort a martyr in each of them.” These seven, with their mother, are traditionally celebrated on July 10^th. 

– Fr. Dominic has been unable to tease out the intricacies, and limitations, of the records we have back at the beginning of the Church to figure out which of these St. Alexander’s is the one we call upon in the Eucharistic Prayer, so, you get all their stories this week! As for why he ended up choosing to go with Pope Alexander’s feast day of May 13^th, that is simply because February and March are already passed, and the Sundays of June and July will be more than filled with the celebrations of Marcellinus and Peter (June 2^nd), Barnabas (June 11^th), Peter and Paul (June 24^th), John the Baptist (June 25^th), John and Paul (June 26^th), and Thomas (July 3^rd)!

For the three years that I served as Bishop Paprocki’s Master of Ceremonies, I joined him for many Confirmations around the diocese.  He and I met with the candidates for Confirmation each time before the Mass.  Among other things, Bishop Paprocki would talk to the young people about what to do when receiving Confirmation.  He explained that as he applied the Sacred Chrism to their foreheads, he would say: “Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”  He would then ask them if they knew how to respond, which many did by shouting out “Amen!”  He would then go on to explain what that word means, that it is a word of assent, basically meaning “I believe, it is true, so be it.”  

I always appreciated this brief moment in Bishop’s talk to the children because having an understanding of what this simple, but powerful, word means is very important.  We say Amen all the time, and as a result of that, it can become a little mechanical without our taking time to really consider the significance of what we are saying.

In the first section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which deals with the articles of the Creed, the very final few paragraphs deal with the final word of the Creed, which is Amen.  Here are a few of the main points made by the Catechism:

The Creed, like the last book of the Bible, ends with the Hebrew word amen. This word frequently concludes prayers in the New Testament. The Church likewise ends her prayers with “Amen.” (CCC 1061)

In Hebrew, amen comes from the same root as the word “believe.” This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, faithfulness. And so we can understand why “Amen” may express both God’s faithfulness towards us and our trust in him.  (CCC 1062)

Think about our saying Amen when we receive Holy Communion.  The priest, deacon, or Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion says to us: “The Body of Christ”, to which we respond: “Amen.”  Over my nearly 12 years as a priest, I have distributed communion to thousands of people, and it throws me off when I do not get the expected response.  Sometimes there is no response, sometimes there is an alternate response.  Is that permissible?  Here is what the General Instruction for the Roman Missal says:

the Priest raises the host slightly and shows it to each, saying, The Body of Christ. The communicant replies, Amen, and receives the Sacrament either on the tongue or, where this is allowed, in the hand, the choice lying with the communicant. As soon as the communicant receives the host, he or she consumes the whole of it. (GIRM, 161)

This makes it clear that there is to be a response, and that the only acceptable response is say “Amen”.  With that knowledge, we can now all be in communion with what the Church asks of us, and to respond as she asks is a sign of humility and obedience, two virtues that the Lord loves to see in us!  

Assuming grace, we can conclude that some have never been given those instructions, but anybody who has now read this article knows and can share it with others as well.  Just know this is not meant to call anybody out, for those who make a different response may be making a more intentional response than just an automatic response without any thought to what Amen means.  Regardless, all of us stand to benefit from examining how we respond each time we approach the Eucharist, saying with great faith and devotion: Amen!

Feast Day: May 1^st | Apostles, Martyrs | Imagery: implements of their martyrdom: cross (for Philip), club (for James).

The St. James we celebrate this week is the one described as “the younger” (or “the lesser”) in the Gospels (this, to distinguish him from the other apostle St. James, the son of Zebedee). This same man is given abundant additional description as “the just” (for his impeccable righteousness in leading the Church of Jerusalem, and his being the first martyr among the apostles there), the “brother of Jesus” (perhaps as a relative of Our Lord), “son of Alphaeus”, and “son of Mary [wife] of Clopas” (probably this is the “Cleophas” on the road to Emmaus, an additional name for Alphaeus).  

St. Philip, happily, easily, is just Philip, the Apostle. He probably carried the Gospel to areas of Greece and Syria and would have been martyred there at some point after the Council of Jerusalem. 

This week, I simply draw our attention to the unique fact for which we celebrate these men on the same feast day: their relics, after the early Christian centuries, were entombed together in Rome. Along with Bartholomew (in the Church of St. Bartholomew), Peter, as well as Simon and Jude (in St. Peter’s), and St. Paul (in St. Paul’s Outside the Walls), Philip and James make up the 6^th and 7^th apostles to find their final earthly resting place in the Eternal City (in the Church of the 12 Apostles). (Some hold that St. Matthias, or at least substantial parts of his bones, are also in Rome, in St. Mary Major).

All this leads me to a simple question: Where will you be buried? Who will you be entombed with? I don’t ask this in a macabre way, or even in preparation for your funeral or anything … but each of us will, at some point, come to our final day on this earth, and I think before then we should consider, and prepare, for that moment. Thing is, we often act as if our lives are all about holding onto life as long as we can and avoiding death, but if you think about it, I suspect you’ll find that the places of your life where you felt most alive, were probably marked by a certain kind of death.

Think of an occasion of great joy. Probably it was also a moment marked by sacrifice, by self-gift, by choosing somebody above yourself. What about a tremendous sense of freedom? Did it come after a period of dedication, effort, training, or cost?  What about a uniquely profound relationship? Didn’t it require you to let down your guard, to risk yourself, to accept another, to stay with them through hard times? Life comes in the midst of death. Resurrection comes in the midst of the cross.

I am writing this in the Boston Airport, flying back the day after running the Boston Marathon. I went into the marathon wanting, above all, to stay joyful throughout the race. As the hours ticked down ahead of time, my mind was filling with doubts. My training was too easy, too flat, too inconsistent. I had a sunburn, and a smashed big toe, and heavy legs from marching all over Boston in the days before the marathon. Plus, after the gauntlet of Holy Week, I was feeling a bit feverish and under the weather. Joy was getting eroded by fear. In the hours before the gun went off I collected dozens of prayer-intentions for the race, said Mass, ate and stretched and prepped as best I could, and tried to recover my excitement … but doubt and fear of the suffering to come was winning the upper hand.

I would like to say there was some magical moment when it all switched – perhaps as the rain poured down on us waiting to start?? – but it wasn’t quite like that. As the run began, my legs grew tired all too soon, and my prayerfulness seemed ragged as well. Yet one phrase resiliently stuck in my mind: “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” [Hebrews 12:1-2]. I wanted joy; I was feeling the cross, yet it was as that sacrifice went down, as I fought – body and soul – to keep running, as I endured the death that is any challenge of that sort, joy arose again, but alongside of suffering. The Lord carried me up those hills, and those hills carried me to the Lord. A little taste of death was in fact a little taste of Life.

– Fr. Dominic spent many hours trying to find a translation of the marvelous Menologio of Basil II, now 1000 years old, which has miniature illustrations and accompanying biographies of hundreds of saints including James the Just. Apparently, the internet can do no better than a scan from the Vatican Archives … 

On Holy Thursday, one of the points the Church desired for us to reflect on was that on that evening, the gift of the Holy Eucharist was instituted, a gift that would serve as a continual pledge of Christ’s love for us until He returns in glory.  On this Octave Day of Easter, the Gospel invites us to notice the institution of another sacrament, the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  After appearing to His Apostles after the Resurrection, Jesus tells them: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (Jn 20:23)

It is therefore no coincidence that Jesus asked St. Faustina to ask for the institution of the Feast of Mercy on the Second Sunday of Easter each year, a request that was fulfilled by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000 shortly after St. Faustina’s canonization.  Every year since 2001, the Church has celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday on this Second Sunday of Easter, recalling the beautiful words of Jesus regarding this day:

My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the Fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. … Let no soul fear to draw near to Me. … It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy. (Diary, 699)

Notice how Jesus asks that people go to Confession and to receive Holy Communion, thus emphasizing the intrinsic connection between the two.  It is for that reason that I believe that to truly grow in our love for the Eucharist, we must grow in our love for Jesus’s Divine Mercy offered freely to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

One of the ways to accomplish this is to resolve to never receive the gift of the Eucharist with mortal sin on our souls.  I find it interesting that when people come to Mass, almost everybody comes forward to receive Holy Communion.  Is everybody free from mortal sin?  I sure hope so, but I wonder.  I place myself in the shoes of one coming to Mass, and I realize there were times many, many years ago when I went to Holy Communion any time I went to Mass, even though I did not go every week, sad to say.  When I came to an awareness that my continuing to go to Holy Communion without first going to Confession was a very serious sin, it shook me to the core.  

Perhaps my situation from long ago does not apply to you, and thanks be to God if that is the case.  But, if it does apply to you (and it does not just have to be missing Mass, it can be having any unconfessed grave sins) I plead with you repent and ask for God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to Holy Communion again, confessing anything that needs to be confessed, but especially any times you have received Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin.  What you will encounter will not be judgment, disappointment, or anger.  You will encounter a loving Father who rejoices to have His beloved child back in right relationship with Him.

Then, once we have received that gift of His Divine Mercy, we are cleansed and set free, ready to begin again, ready to receive Jesus in a worthy manner.  And when we receive Holy Communion in the state of grace, this gift will truly transform us.  But if we receive Him in an unworthy manner, we derive no benefit for ourselves and we in effect reject the gift that He made possible for us with His Passion, death, and Resurrection.  So let us run to His mercy and be renewed in His love for us, poured out freely in all of His sacraments, especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist.