Feast Day: October 22^nd | Patron of Popes, Families, Youth, Laborers, Actors, Athletes, Human Life, Poland, the Elderly, and those with Parkinson’s 

For the next few weeks, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite saint-friends: Pope John Paul II. He was one of the inspirations for my own call to the priesthood, and getting to spend 5 years living just a few minute walk to his tomb, and then to get to do additional studies at the Institute founded by him for the study of God’s Love manifested by Holy Matrimony and in family life … boy, it was an amazing gift! I would love to write so much more about his life, his papacy, his writings, and his sanctity, but I think you’d be given a better glimpse into his heart by reading his own words, so these next weeks will be taken entirely from his own reflections. First, from Gift and Mystery, about his first discovering within his heart his vocation to become a priest as a young man (some edits of my own in the following text to make for easier reading than the original clunky translation):

My preparation for the priesthood, which was finished in the seminary, had somehow been preceded by that given me in the life and example of my parents in our family. My gratitude goes especially to my father, who became a widower early. I had not yet made my First Communion when I lost my mother: I was just nine years old. I have not a clear awareness of the contribution that she gave to my religious education, though it was certainly great. After her death and, later, after the death of my brother, I was left alone with my father who was a deeply religious man. I was especially impacted by the austerity of his daily life. By profession he was a military man, and when he became a widower, his life became a constant prayer. I would wake up at night and find my father on his knees, as was always his practice in our parish church as well. Between us there was no talk of a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was for me in some way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.

Later, after the years of my early youth, my seminary became the quarry and the water treatment plant in the baking factory in Borek Falecki. And it was no longer only a pre-seminary, as in Wadowice [my hometown]. The factory was for me, at that stage of life, a real seminary, although illegal. I began working in the quarry in September 1940 after a year spent at the water treatment plant in the factory. It was during these years that I came to my final decision [to follow God’s call the become a priest], and in the fall of 1942, while still working at Solvay, I, a former student of Polish Philology, undertook to enter into clandestine seminary studies. I did not realize then the importance that this would have for me. Only later, as a priest, during my studies in Rome, would I encounter through my brother-priests in the Belgian College the situation of worker-priests and the movement of the Young Catholic Workers (JOC). I realized then that, what had become so important for the Church and for the priesthood in the West – true contact with the world of labor, I already had in my own life experience.

In truth, my experience was not as a “worker-priest” but a “worker-seminarian”. Laboring by hand, I knew what it meant to endure physical fatigue. Every day I met with people who worked hard. I got to know the environment of these people, their families, their interests, their human value and dignity. Personally I experienced a lot of cordiality on their part. They knew I was a student and they also knew that, as soon as circumstances would permit, I would return to [full time] studies. I never met hostility for this reason. They did not give me trouble when I brought books to work; rather, they said: “We’ll watch out for you; you read well.” This happened especially during night shifts. Often they said: “Get some rest, we’ll watch out.”

I made friends with many workers. Sometimes they invited me to their house. Later, as a priest and bishop, I baptized their children and grandchildren, blessed marriages and officiated at many of their funerals. I also had occasion to note how many were hiding their religious feelings and profound wisdom of life. These contacts, as I mentioned, remained very close even when the German occupation ended and continued almost up to my election as Bishop of Rome. Some of them continue still in the form of correspondence.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has to go out of his way to reach the end of the day bone-tired from plain hard work. Neither hard exercise, though tiring, nor the work that good prayer, liturgy, and preaching does require, results in the same tangible tiredness that breaking rocks or trudging to physical-work demands. Yet, I think that all of us know that some lessons can only be learned during a hard day working outside. Certain prayers are only drawn out of us, and strength built up in us, and quiet instilled within us from honest, physical, outdoor, labor. I need to find time for it more often!

As I mentioned in my last bulletin article, the retreat I just completed is a part of a Spiritual Direction Training program in which I am enrolled.  The first year of the program did not really say anything about the practice of giving spiritual direction.  Rather, the main focus was our own relationship with the Lord in prayer.  I could tell that some of the participants initially thought this was unnecessary, as they wanted to jump right into how best to direct others in the spiritual life.  But we all soon discovered the wisdom of taking time to ensure we as future directors were on solid ground with our spiritual lives.  As the saying goes:  You cannot give what you do not have.

As we began the program nearly a year and a half ago, one of the first resources we read was an article titled: “Prayer: A Personal Response to God’s Presence”, by Armand, M. Nigro, S.J.  Having read this article many years ago, I was surprised how returning to it was such a refreshing experience.  As the title explains, the author defines prayer in rather simple terms: “Prayer is a personal response to God’s loving presence.”

Though simple on the surface, this short definition is profound in depth.  It makes clear that prayer is first and foremost about God, not us.  God is the one who is present to us, inviting us to turn to Him in prayer.  We think that it is we who decide when to pray, but in reality, the initiative is on the part of the Lord.  Our deciding to pray is a response to His being present to us.

Beginning our prayer with understanding this dynamic is very important, because it will get us moving in the right direction.  It prevents us from becoming too self-centered in our prayer.  Instead of jumping into telling the Lord what we want, thinking about our needs, our desires, we first acknowledge that He is present.  He has called us, and He is delighted that we are present to Him who has never ceased to be present with us.

The author then proposes a beautiful recommendation on what our first step in prayer should be:

First of all, if prayer is a personal response to God’s presence, then, the beginning of prayer is to be aware of that presence, simply to acknowledge it, to be able to admit: “Yes, God my Father, You do love life into me.  Yes, You love life and being into the things around me and into all that comes into my senses.  You love talents and these longings into me, etc.”  The focus is on God and what God does.

Perhaps the next time you sit, stand, or kneel to pray, whatever form that prayer may take, you can pause and call this important truth to mind.  God, who loves you and delights in you, is already present, and your coming to pray is a response to that presence.  Take a moment to acknowledge His loving presence to you, and thank Him for that gift.  Beginning prayer in this way can be a game changer.

Father Alford

We are back again on the Theological virtue of faith, Hope, and Charity (Love). These Theological virtues are directly connected to God. They are not gain by human efforts but are given to us through sanctifying grace we received during our baptism. These theological virtues, “they are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life” (CCC, # 1813). Today, I would like us to reflect on the theological virtue of charity, a virtue that invites us to examine ourselves on how we relate and our desire to will the good for another person. The theological virtue of Charity is the greatest of all other virtues, it is the one that unites all the other three virtues.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines: “Charity is a theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC, 1822).  It is love that moves us to wish good for others and to do good for others. This love is entrusted to the Apostles and us by Jesus Christ, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9); and ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Therefore, Theological virtue of Charity is the key virtue to love God and our neighbor.

Pope Benedict XVI, reminds us in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, “Charity is love received and given, it is grace, its source is the wellspring of Fathers love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit, love comes down to us from the Son” This is expressed in countless ways as St. Paul testifies, love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick- tempered, it does not brood over injury, does not reject over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Cor 13:4-7). Love is the main point upon which the entire Christian life turns to. To possess the virtue of charity is to possess God; without it, one has nothing and is nothing. Charity is the greatest form of all the virtues. 

Prayer of St. Francis of Assis before the Crucifix at San Damiano

Most High Gracious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart
And give me true Faith, Certain Hope, and a perfect Charity,
sense and knowledge, Lord. That I may carry out your Holy and True Command.

Feast Day: October 5^th | Patronness of World Youth Day and of Divine Mercy

Last week we got to know Helena Kowalska, seeing how the Lord’s gently loved her into the convent. This week, I would like to pick up her story again, finding in this young woman an example of continuing to discern and follow the Lord. After three weeks in the convent the peace and consolations she had been flooded with fled from her heart. She was frustrated by the busy-ness of that particular convent, and found the chapel where once Jesus seemed so clear and close, to be now filled with other sisters, and a nagging feeling of futility in prayer. Helena thought that maybe she was called elsewhere, and this voice got ahold of her heart. She would try to bring the question to Jesus, but found that only silence and unrest filled her soul. One night, in anguish from the uncertainty, she was in her cell, unable to sleep, and threw herself into fervent, anxious, prayer. All the other sisters seemed so serene, so prayerful, so content, but her heart was breaking: where had Jesus’ love gone?

She was desperate. She planned to talk to the Mother Superior and ask to leave the convent. But she first took her breaking heart to Jesus, and He showed the constancy of His Loe. Again, she saw the face of Christ in His suffering, and her prayer immediately became one of concern for Him: “Jesus who has hurt You so?” The Lord seemed so clear then: “It is you who will cause Me this pain if you leave this convent. It is to this place that I called you and nowhere else; and I have prepared many graces for you.” What a gift to hear His voice! What a relief to have such clarity, at last, in her vocation. What a grace to finally realize that she would have to fight against the false voice that disquieted her soul, but that to flee that temptation was actually to make another act of love for Jesus! 

She would bring that prayer to her confessor the following day, and he would reassure her that the Lord’s voice was never the disquieting one nudging us away from love, but only the gentle, never-accusing, one that leads us to purer and greater love. We must all fight to listen only to Jesus’ voice! It takes time, effort, prayer, and trust to know the voice of the Good Shepherd! How easily we are also tempted away from our vocations, often by so many good, but false, reasons: “It would be easier over there.”; “I would do more good if I didn’t have to deal with this hardship or worry.”; “If God called me here certainly I wouldn’t be so annoyed at times … so weak … so unproductive … so humbled.” But the Voice of Truth, the Voice of Christ, is the one that speaks to us in that suffering, not necessarily eradicating it, but also not ignoring it. He knows our lives and vocations are hard sometimes, but that truer and more beautiful love is only found upon His path, sometimes carrying the cross with Him.

Sr. Faustina, as she would be called after completing her novitiate 2 years later (her full name being “Sr. Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament”, named after an early deacon and martyr, St. Faustinus: feast day February 15^th), would find tremendous peace and solace from this encounter with Christ in her suffering. Jesus did not promise that she would no longer suffer. In fact, right before receiving her habit, she had the joyous pain of knowing that her life would often require suffering, but the assurance that those would be crosses that always won the fruits of conversion and mercy for sinners all over the world, and that in accepting them she was stepping up to the cross with Jesus Who had already carried it so far for her.

During the following years of her novitiate she found herself at times completely engulfed in spiritual anguish, feeling the darkness of hell catch ahold of her. It was disconcerting, horrible, painful, and went on for months. Again, her soul cried out to Jesus “where are you?!” and He seemed so far from her. She fought the despair that filled her heart but all her recommitments and acts of trust seemed so ineffective against the torment. Little sparks of grace kept her going: during one time of prayer Mary’s voice broke through the shadows “I know how much you suffer, but do not be afraid. I share with you your suffering, and I shall always do so”, and later, when she professed her first vows (her mom and dad now present!) and found in her heart the ineradicable and ardent desire to empty herself for God. And then, so tenderly and lovingly, His response “You are My joy; you are My heart’s delight.” Somehow, at long last, these words finally broke the darkness and her soul was inundated with the light of knowing herself a daughter of her Heavenly, Beloved Father. Again, sufferings would return, but this bedrock assurance would never budge from her heart. 

Why such suffering for the good young sister? We cannot know, and she did not know then, but beautifully, the Lord would work through her heart so sorely tested, to bring His message of mercy to the world. In some way she had experienced the darkness that we all plunge into when we sin – though sometimes this abyss is not as clear to us as it was felt by her – but by this hard-won personal experience of God’s Mercy, Sr. Faustina would now be able to spread that message to the world.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has often been puzzled by the particular set of circumstances he is going through. Why this Lord? Why this frustration, this experience, this conundrum? What good can it possibly be?!  Every single time, at some point later on, he has found that that hard-won wisdom and grace was something that someone else needed. Trust God that He will carry you through the fight, and that it is worth it in His larger plan.

As you read this article, I am spending five days in silence for my annual retreat that is part of a three-year Spiritual Direction Training program.  Very often, at the beginning of a retreat, I will repeat the request that the disciples of Jesus made to Him in the Gospel: “Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:1)  Perhaps that sounds a little strange to you.  As a priest of more than a decade, shouldn’t I already know how to pray?  Sure, I have learned a lot about how to pray and I have spent many hours in prayer, yet I know full well that the process of growing in prayer is far from over, and that I am constantly in need of learning how the Lord is inviting me into a deeper encounter with him through prayer.

I share that little reflection as a way of encouragement to all of us as we embark on this year of faith formation focusing on the topic of Christian Prayer, the fourth of four sections in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  This first month will provide an opportunity to reflect on the basic question:  What is prayer?  As much as we think we know or don’t know about prayer, there is always room to grow.  So before we even begin to address that question, I think it would be beneficial for all of us to take some time this week making this very simple, yet powerful request: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Making this request is an act of humility on our part, acknowledging that we are not where we desire to be in our prayer life.  But the Lord delights to receive this humble request, for He longs to share His life with us in prayer.  He will never force it upon us, though.  Rather, He patiently waits for us to invite Him in, to let Him reveal His presence to us, and to lead us to greater unity and intimacy with Him.

Asking the Lord to continue teach us to pray is also a recognition that prayer is first and foremost a gift.  Even though we express our desire to learn, perhaps the better word is that our request is a desire to receive the gift of prayer from Him, and in receiving it, to let Him instruct us in how He desires to draw closer to us in the various forms of prayer that make up our lives as Catholics.

Along those lines, we can identify those various forms of prayer in which we engage on a regular basis:  personal prayer and meditation, reading the Scriptures, praying the Rosary, intercessory prayer for our needs and the needs of others, and most importantly, praying at Mass.  We will be addressing all these forms of prayer throughout the year in various ways.  But once again, I invite us all to see these as places to receive anew the gift of prayer that these various forms of prayer are for us.

So before learning anything new (or reviewing what we think we already know) about prayer, let us first ask the Lord in all humility, faith, and love: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Father Alford

Feast Day: October 5^th | Patronness of World Youth Day and of Divine Mercy

This week, I would like to take us back to central Poland in 1905 (though this was two decades before the country would actually be reestablished after WWI) to the poor Kowalska family. They lived in the town of Głogowiec, pronounced something like gwo’govjets if you’re wondering…  As a little girl, Helena, the 3^rd of 10 children, while her family was attending Eucharistic Exposition felt the first stirrings of a call to religious life. She described it as “God’s voice in my soul … an invitation to a more perfect life.” She discovered in her own heart that pull to give herself entirely to Jesus, a sense that Christ desired an exclusive relationship with her. It was a stirring that would at first delight her, but which as the years went by, she would find difficult to reply to.

In this case her parents flatly refused her request to enter the convent once she had finished school. They had good reasons: a big family, not much money, how would they make ends meet without Helena working? How would they possibly pay her dowry to whatever convent she was able to enter? Their daughter would have to live with the practical realities of their life and get a job to support the family. Other girls could listen to their hearts and join the convent, but not her, at least not right now. Helena got a job as a housekeeper, and filled her life with simple work and the pleasures of young life. But God’s love would not cease to tug at her heart. Now trying to turn her back on it, she found the Lord prodding her, her heart had that disquiet that often comes when we step off of God’s path. One day, at 18 years old, she was at a dance with her sister but found herself face-to-face with Jesus, seeing Him suffering, and speaking directly to her: “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?”

The vision shook her, cleared away all the distractions and distance that she had put between herself and Jesus, and reminded her of the gentle, loving voice that had once delighted her. She stumbled from the dance, fell prostrate before the Tabernacle in the Cathedral of Łódź (where she worked, and where the dance was happening), and knew clearly what the voice she had avoided for so long was trying to tell her: “Go at once to Warsaw; you will enter a convent there.” She didn’t know Warsaw, didn’t know any of the convents there, but was willing to take the next step she did know. She boarded a train for the big city, taking nothing but the dress she was wearing, and did not even stop to tell her family what was happening. Christ’s words so long ago had found a place in her heart: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” [Matthew 10:37]

Getting off of the train, the magnitude of the unknown seemed to swallow her. She did not even know which way to depart from the train station. She whispered a prayer to Mary “Mary, lead me, guide me” and found, marvelously, that she knew where to go, at least for that night. God was good to her the following days, always giving enough insight to know her next step: she stopped in the first church she found the next morning, went to one of the Masses being celebrated that morning, and simply knew that she should talk to that priest. He connected her with a prayerful lady who helped her while she visited the different convents there in Warsaw, but Helena found to her sadness that each one closed the door in her face. Again, in the face of such uncertainty, she again appealed to prayer: Jesus “Help me; do not leave me alone”, and with that, finally came across the convent that would one day become her home, the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. The Mother Superior there did not immediately reject the poor girl who stood before her, but instead chose to also simply trust in Jesus. She directed Helena to the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament and waited outside as Helena asked Jesus if this was the right convent. ““Lord of this house, do You accept me?” she prayed (one of the other sisters there had told her to put it that way.) Jesus loves when we ask that question! And He responded immediately in her heart: “I do accept; you are in My Heart.” Helena stepped from the chapel with the quiet peace of someone placing themselves in God’s hands, and the Mother Superior asked “Well, has the Lord accepted you?” She answered, “Yes”, and the good sister responded “If the Lord has accepted, then I also will accept.”

Helena would have to work as a maid for another year in order to have enough money to pay for her habit, but that was all that the convent asked of her, and that year was a beautiful one during which the Lord continued to deepen that longing in her heart to be all His, and His own desire to give Himself intimately to her. She entered the convent on August 1^st, 1925 with much joy. The fight for her vocation wasn’t over, but the Lord’s Love had carried her to the community where He had many graces in store for her.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin is a guy. Jesus has not drawn him in the intimate and spousal way that He wooed Helena’s heart. It was not during a dance that Christ emphatically beckoning him to “come, follow Me”! But Faustina’s story is a beautiful glimpse at how Our Lord sometimes calls women into a life consecrated to Him. I have spoken to many sisters, and they often speak of a call along these lines – an invitation to an exclusive love – that they find the Lord offering to them. That’s beautiful!