Last month, the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade which granted legal access to abortion in our country.  In the years following that decision, it is estimated that more than 63 million abortions have taken place in our country alone, a staggering statistic to consider.  While this Supreme Court decision was a welcome step in the right direction for the protection of human life, there is much work to be done.  To some extent, changing laws is easy (though it may not seem that way), but the work of changing hearts and changing the culture is FAR more difficult.  But this is where the most important work of the Pro-Life movement lies.  To be sure, every effort, including working for a change in legislation, is necessary when it comes to building a culture of life.  But the work of converting hearts is where we have the most hope for lasting success.  Jesus Himself makes the call to conversion a central theme in His preaching, and it continues to be at the heart of the Church’s work in our world.

In that regard, a new grassroots effort has begun which is inviting the people of Illinois to undertake a campaign of prayer and fasting for the conversion of those in our state. Central to this effort is the recognition that Illinois is one of the states where the legal access to abortion continues, and our state is becoming a place where others will come in order to obtain an abortion.  Even though the recent Supreme Court decision promises to reduce abortions in many places in our country, the opposite will be true for our state.  As Catholics in this state, we cannot be unmoved by this sad situation, thus the invitation to turn to our two most powerful tools in combatting evil and sin – prayer and fasting.

This campaign is asking the faithful to pray and fast every Friday on bread and water, offering up these acts for the conversion of Illinois.  To be sure, we hope that one day the laws of our state will reflect our beliefs in the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.  And while our primary focus with this campaign is protecting innocent life in the womb, it must extend to other areas of life as well, including proper care for the poor, mentally ill, prisoners, etc.  Perhaps as important as anything to pray for is the conversion of heart that is necessary with regards to how we consider one another.  Division has never felt so strong and people on every side of every issue seem more ready to attack those who oppose them, verbally and physically.  While some division is to be expected as we seek to pursue truth and justice, the type of division that is becoming more common in how we speak of and treat others is nothing short of demonic.  That may sound strong, but consider that the primary work of the devil is to divide us, and he will never cease to find ways of making us see others as the enemy and worthy of our fiercest reactions.  The Lord invites us, however, to see others as our neighbors, as brothers and sisters.  Sometimes siblings and neighbors disagree, and there can be a place for that, but we must never lose sight of the necessity of always approaching others with charity, which is to will the good of the other.  And one of the greatest goods we can will for another is their conversion to truth according to God’s will, which will bring about the unity the Lord desires for us as His beloved children.

So let us join in praying and fasting for the conversion of those in our state, recognizing that the first ones for whom we offer our prayers for conversion is ourselves.  Only from that place of being converted ourselves will we be able to work for the conversion of others, motivated always by charity, and never by bitterness, anger, or hatred.

Father Alford

I don’t usually talk about current Church events in my Weekly column, but recently I have felt drawn to think about and follow Pope Francis’ penitential pilgrimage to Canada. I admit that I have only been reading a few articles here and there about his time visiting our neighbor to the north, but I soon hope to sit down for a while to watch some videos, read his homily transcripts, and see how the indigenous peoples of Canada received his visit. Pope Francis has been very clear about the reason for his visit to Canada this week. He is there to apologize for the ways in which the Catholic Church historically mistreated various indigenous peoples, especially in the administration of boarding schools in which native language and dress was prohibited. Recently, graveyards of students have been discovered, probably the remains of students who passed away from illness while studying, with no funds to return their bodies home. 

When I first heard about the Pope’s plan to travel to Canada, I was surprised because it didn’t seem like the Catholic Church was the only or even the primary perpetrator of these sins. The government paid for these schools, and other churches and organizations also administered similar schools. But, these facts do not excuse Catholics from the duty to do what we can to correct injustices of the past. The Church leads the world in many ways, and offering authentic apologies is another way for the Church to lead the world down the path of reconciliation. After Pope Francis met with Canadian Indigenous leaders in Rome, he said, “any truly effective process of healing requires concrete action.” Pope Francis’ concrete action in this case is to humbly ask for forgiveness with sorrow. Although the wounds may still feel fresh to many indigenous people, it is hard to ignore the authenticity and love that Pope Francis carries in his demeanor and words. Pope Francis is an 85-year-old man, and to make the journey to Canada, mostly in a wheelchair, is a striking sign of his authenticity. 

When a Pope visits a certain place, the ripple effect of those events lasts for generations. My first time seeing the pope in person (at least I’m assuming that I saw him, as I was four years old) was when Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis in 1999. Recently some parishioners told me that they were at the same event in 1999 with Pope John Paul II. In 1993, Pope John Paul II had also visited Denver. Although I wasn’t born yet, I have heard that the Pope’s time in Denver impacted an entire generation of young Catholics. His visit contributed to the re-opening of their seminary, the establishment of the Augustine Institute, and several other evangelistic initiatives. In 2015, Pope Francis came to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to celebrate the canonization of St. Junipero Serra. I was there with my seminary at the canonization Mass. Although these events are only a very small part of what popes do in their ministry, the impact of their visit reverberates far beyond the few days spent there. I hope that Pope Francis’ time in Canada is fruitful. In a way, he represents every Catholic around the world, and he shows us how we should respond to sin: not with denials or cover-ups, but with humility and love for the one who has been hurt by the sin. 

On Monday, Pope Francis concluded a homily with the following words. May we all seek true reconciliation in our lives, always through the Cross. 

Dear friends, the reconciliation brought by Christ was no agreement to preserve outward peace, a sort of gentlemen’s agreement meant to keep everyone happy. Nor was it a peace that dropped down from heaven, imposed from on high, or by assimilating the other. The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus reconciles by bringing together, by making two distant groups one: one reality, one soul, one people. And how does he do that? Through the cross (cf. Eph 2:14). Jesus reconciles us with one another on the cross, on the “tree of life”, as the ancient Christians loved to call it.

We continue our unpacking of the ins and outs of celebrating the saints this week, and we start back in the 1500s when the Church’s liturgy was much more varied than it is now. We have grown accustomed to the Mass being in large part the same the world over, and outside of variety in language and culture, you should be able to go to a Catholic Mass anywhere in the world and follow the liturgy pretty well: the prayers, music, movement and rituals should all be familiar. Back before the Council of Trent, however, there were dozens of different missals, and countless different feasts, celebrating different saints, in different ways, on different days, in different countries. Of the many things that came from the Council of Trent, one of the requests it made of the Pope was that he unify the Church’s celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The Protestant reformation had shown a widespread lack of understanding of the sacraments throughout the Church, and though Trent was a spectacular theological response to them, it awaited the work of the Popes that followed that council to put into liturgical form the dogmatic teachings from that council of bishops. This meant a reform of the liturgy that would move most dioceses and orders to a unified Missal and calendar of feast days.  I should note that exception was given to protect traditions that stretched back far into the Church’s history, that being ancient Rites (example: the Ambrosian Rite) as well as particular Rites connected to the great Religious Orders of the Church’s history (like the Dominican Rite), but all the recent customizations of the Mass would be unified in one Roman Catholic Rite.

Pope Pius V would be the one to complete the unifying of the Missal and Breviary in 1568 and 1570, but our story will stick with his successor, Pope Gregory XIII, upon whom fell the task to create a universal calendar. First he painstakingly established a list of all those that the Church considered saints: a document that would become the Roman Martyrology we came across last week. (Gregory would also promulgate the Roman Pontifical, with the rubrics for papal liturgies, and his successor, Pope Clement VIII would promulgate the Episcopal Ceremonial, for liturgies of the bishop, as well as the Roman Ritual, for blessings, other sacraments, and those sorts of things.)

The problem of establishing a common-calendar was actually a pretty gnarly one. Ever since Julius Caesar, the western world had been using the Julian calendar which had years with (on average) 365.25 days. That quarter day was created by the addition of an extra day in each 4 “leap” years. Back then, instead of adding February 29^th, they actually duplicated February 24^th. Funnily enough, with the feast of St. Matthias on February 24^th, they had to decide to celebrate him on the second 24^th of February during those leap-years… But there was a big problem: one year on earth is actually 265.2422 days long, so the extra-day-every-four-years after 15+ centuries meant the calendar was now about 10 days off. 

It is bad enough to have the calendar gradually not quite matching reality, but the bigger reason that Pope Gregory XIII wanted to fix the calendar was that every time we celebrated the feasts of Our Savior’s life (or the saints), we were not quite exactly doing so on their anniversary, and Jesus matters enough to celebrate Him as perfectly as we can! So, Gregory fixed the leap-year problem by adding February 29th on years divisible by four except when the year is divisible by 100 (but, ignoring those years that are divisible by 400). This means that his “Gregorian” calendar has years averaging 265.2425, which is very close to reality (though we’re still set to be about a day off every 7700 years. Obviously, we have not had to deal with that problem yet.) 

Of course, Gregory also had to move the calendar forward those 10 days to catch it up with Earth’s orbit around the sun: so October 5-14, 1582 never happened! Everybody (in a Catholic country) went straight from the 4^th to the 15^th of October in 1582. Plenty of people complained about “losing” 10 days of their life, and plenty of Protestant and Orthodox countries at first refused to accept this Papal dictate at all. In fact, for a number of years, crossing into some countries meant you went backwards or forward 10 or more days (and you thought daylight savings time was bad!). It took until the 1900s for Eastern Europe (Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Russia, Estonia, Romania) and others like China and Turkey to accept the update, and Saudi Arabia held out until 2016! Why those specific days in October? Because Gregory did not want to skip any important feast days, so he held out until right after the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4^th. 

– Fr. Dominic Rankin cannot move onto the final part of this series without recounting one fascinating saintly detail from those ten nonexistent days. St. Theresa of Avila died right about midnight on October 4^th, 1582. So, we are not sure if her last words, “”My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another,” were spoken on the last hour of October 4^th or the first hour of October 15^th 1582! (Just to clarify, the Church decided to celebrate her feast day on October 15^th.) 

This past Thursday, we had the privilege of hosting two church tours for participants of the 16^th International Congress of Medieval Canon Law.  They took a break from their conference, being hosted at St. Louis University, to see some sites in Springfield, with our Cathedral being one of the main attractions.  Although I do not do it regularly, I thoroughly enjoy explaining the many beautiful elements of our Cathedral to those who come to visit this stunning church.  I always walk away from those tours with a renewed sense of gratitude for the privilege of living here and being able to celebrate Mass here every day.

Catholic churches are built to be holy places where people come to encounter the Lord, to step outside of their daily lives and to be lifted up to a higher place.  The beauty of a church serves to foreshadow the beauty of Heaven, the final destination in our journey as Catholics.  As I have mentioned in the past, the most important part of the church is the tabernacle, for behind those golden doors rests the King of the Universe, our Lord Jesus Christ.  He eagerly waits to welcome us, and upon our entrance into house of God, it is fitting for us to give Him our greeting in the form of a genuflection (or profound bow if we cannot genuflect), acknowledging His Real Presence and offering Him a sign of our adoration.

Having first turned to Our Lord in the tabernacle, our eyes behold so many other beautiful things, all of which speak in some way to the various mysteries of our faith.  Historically, churches have been designed to be a place not just to worship God, but to learn about the faith.  Paintings, mosaics, stained glass windows, and statues tell a story about our Catholic faith and how it has been lived out through the centuries.  In a time when many people were unable to read, or when catechetical materials were not readily available, one could learn much by walking through a church, “reading” the story of our faith through the various elements that make up a church.

In addition to my encouragement to make frequent visits to the church to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I would also invite you to consider taking time in the church to read the story of our faith as it is expressed is so many beautiful ways.  Do not be afraid to walk around the church to look more closely at the treasures that fill it.  You will likely be surprised to notice something that you have never noticed.  As you notice these things, ask the Holy Spirit to help you to ponder the story, or the mystery being depicted.  Just as when we pray before the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord invites us to listen to Him as He speaks to us, so too with the church.  If we are open to it, the church will also speak to us though the various elements that adorn it.  One important note – we ask that you respect the holiness of the sanctuary of the church and generally to remain out of that area of the church, but you can still see much of what is there by standing at the foot of the steps leading into the sanctuary.

Let us continue to thank God for the gift of this magnificent Cathedral Church.  We are privileged to call it our home.  May we never become too familiar with this church, but be renewed regularly with a sense of awe at the beauty of such a sacred place.

Father Alford

My name is Fr. Paul Lesupati, Parochial Vicar of Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Springfield in Illinois. I am a native from Kenya. My parents are Jacob Lesupati and Cecilia Lesupati. We are six children in my family four girls and two boys, I am the baby in the family.  My Vocation journey began when I was an altar server. It had been my heart’s desire to become a priest, but I never knew where God was calling me to go and serve. After completing high school, I went to visit my sister in Nairobi and one Sunday I attended mass there at Consolata Church.  While there, I met a Franciscan Priest and I asked him about their procedure for joining their congregation.  After this, I discerned with them for a couple years. After a period of time. I saw that God was not calling me to religious life. 

After completing my university studies in 2015, I went to work with Jesuit Refugees Services which is a Catholic Organization run by the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Fathers).  I enjoyed working with the refugees and those who had been displaced from their countries because of war, by serving them as a social worker.  I was responsible for doing supervision, assessing different cases, and working with different agencies. I focused on refugees who needed someone to listen and understand their issues.  The mission of Jesuit Refugees Services is To Serve, To Accompany and To Advocate. As a social worker, I took the vulnerable client or beneficiaries to the service provider. I was working under the counseling department which covers individual counseling, family therapy, group counseling and a peer group for drug and substance abuse. Under the counseling department, I offered different trainings for conditions such as PSTD, loss and grief, and drugs and substance abuse.

During this time, I felt a strong desire to serve God more closely and discern my vocation. Multiple priests strongly influenced me in my prayer life.  The first was the elderly priest who I met in my life among the Franciscans.  Additionally, the Diocesan priests (such as my own parish priest) played an important role in my vocational journey. The final push came from Fr. Jeff Grant from the Springfield Diocese in Illinois whom I meant at Kakuma Refugee. His life of prayer and emphasis on pastoral care influenced me to be more prayerful and to discern joining the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

My journey to the priesthood from Africa to the United States began in 2016 when, in Kenya, I met the pastor for Blessed Sacrament Parish, Rev. Jeff Grant. He came to Kenya for his sabbatical. He came down to Kenya, and he ended up being at the refugee camp, which is run by Jesuit Refugee Service. During that time, I was also there. I was working as a social worker. I was asked by my project director to help Fr. Jeff Grant because he was new. He needed somebody who could take him around the camp and introduce him to different areas and groups. I said, ‘Well, I am ready to help Father’. My work as a social worker was to visit different groups collecting data, doing assessments, familiarizing myself with their problems, and determining means of helping them. I was working under the counseling department, and they were dealing with trauma and stress disorder.

I was assigned to an area where there were new arrivals, fresh from fleeing from their countries. I took Fr. Jeff Grant, and we went from tent to tent, asking how the refugees were doing, discovering their needs, and finding ways to assist them. I do remember Father Jeff Grant just looked at me. He asked me one question: ‘Paul, have you been a priest before?’ I responded, ‘No, Father’, then Father told me that the way I was talking, listening, and handling the refugees with compassion was more than what could be expected of a social worker. 

After this conversation, I shared my experience with Fr. Jeff Grant that day. He encouraged me to tell him about my vocation journey and my desire for discerning priesthood. I was working with Father Jeff Grant as a pastoral coordinator. I started developing an interest and sharing with him about my desire to become a priest, which was already there. Before speaking with Fr. Jeff, I already felt called to be a diocesan priest. Still, I did not know which Diocese to join. It was after talking with Father Grant that I came to know about the Springfield Diocese in Illinois. I asked him about the requirements and procedures for joining this diocese. He gave me the contacts of the Vocation Director, Fr. Brian Alford. I kept in touch with him through email until he requested that I visit the Diocese in 2017 and 2018. 

I was accepted as a seminarian for the Springfield Diocese in Illinois by Most Reverend Bishop Thomas John Paprocki. On August 26, 2018, I was enrolled as a seminarian for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, and studied at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad, IN. My home parish is Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Springfield where I spent my summer in 2019 working with Fr. Jeff Grant and Fr. Ron Lorilla, and in the summer of 2020, I worked with Fr. Dean Probst at St. Thomas and St. Marie Parish in Newton IL.

 I was ordained transitional Deacon by Most Reverent Bishop Thomas Paprocki on April 9, 20221. I worked as transitional Deacon for my summer internship at Immaculate Conception Parish in Mattoon under the mentorship of Rev. Fr. John Titus. I graduated in saint Meinrad School of Theology with master’s in divinity and I was Ordained priest for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois by Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki on May 28, 2022, and I was appointed Parochial Vicar of Cathedral of Immaculate Conception by Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki. I am looking forward journeying together with you to the path of faith as your Parochial Vicar. Please pray for me and all the priest as we work in the vineyard of the Lord. 

This past week I was chaplain for a Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) retreat in Quincy and at one point during the weekend the young people were asking questions of myself and Sr. Clementia Toalson, FSGM, about the liturgy, specifically differences about the liturgy throughout the history of the Church. Much, of course, could be said on this topic, but the side of things that I would like to look at today regards the placement of feast-days for saints in the liturgical calendar. 

Usually a saint’s feast day is celebrated on the day that they died. This began early in the Church when they would celebrate the dies natalis [literally “day of birth [into heaven]”] of a martyr, celebrating their entrance into heaven each year on the anniversary of their death. Of course, there are now thousands and thousands of martyrs, and other canonized saints so eventually you had the problem of multiple saints’ feast-days falling on the same day. For this reason, the actual liturgical calendar (of the feast-days that we celebrate at Mass) does not contain nearly all canonized saints, but only a sub-set of the whole list. Just to indicate the extent of this “problem”, if you look up “saints for July 29^th”, you will find St. Theadore, St. Antony, St. Lucilla, St. Eugene, St. Seraphina, and St. Flora (from Afghanistan), St. Simplicius, St. Rufo, St. Beatrice, St. Faustinus, St. Seraphina, St. Felix of Rome, and St. Faustinus of Spoleto (from Italy), St. Paulus Chen Changpin, St. Martha Wang, and St. Ioannes Baptista Luo Tingyin (from China), as well as St. William of Saint-Brieuc, St. Prosper of Orléans, St. Lubus of Troyes, and St. Pope Urban II (from France), St. Olaus (from Sweden), and St. John the Soldier (from Turkey). They all have their feast-day on July 29^th, along with their team captains, the saints we celebrate at Mass, Sts. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus from Bethany.

You can imagine that as saints pile up on one day like that, eventually the Church has to decide who they’re actually going to celebrate on any one day.  So, every few hundred years one Pope or another has to clean up the calendar and pick who gets onto the universal calendar. In addition, some particular locations celebrate saints who are important for them, but are not important enough to be celebrated throughout the whole church. Example: St. Kateri Tekakwitha, who we celebrated here in the USA on July 14^th, but other countries around the world would not be obligated to celebrate her at all because she would not be as important a patron for them. Now, just to add to the convolutedness of this whole thing: Kateri actually died April 13^th which is the day that she is celebrated in Canada, and the Diocese of Phoenix. Why wouldn’t we all celebrate her on April 13^th? Well, Pope St. Martin I already has that day throughout the universal Church, so apparently in Canada and Phoenix Kateri is considered important enough to trump Martin, whereas for the rest of us that is not the case. 

– Fr. Dominic Rankin, because of the multiplicity of saints, often struggles to find one to write upon each week. However, the Holy Spirit is good (no surprise there!) and no matter which saint I choose, I always discover an amazing story, and am often drawn deeper into countless other parts of our faith as well.  As we continue this series, and stay with Sts. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, I suspect we will find ourselves delighted by God’s generosity! Buckle up!