Feast Day: April 4^th 

St. Isidore the Farmer is one of the most-often chosen saints for confirmation patrons around our diocese.  Being a patron for anyone involved in agriculture or livestock, he is a popular saint especially for our young men in even vaguely rural settings.  However, his feast day is not until May, and he was named after a saint that lived 500 years before him, the saint we celebrate this week: Isidore of Seville.

That first Isidore was born to Severianus and Theodora, a duke and duchess, of Roman heritage (you can tell by their names!) in Spain in 560.  As heresies swirled amongst bishops, barbarians pillaged and resettled swaths of the continent, and the Roman empire split and splintered, we find ourselves looking back to a rough and difficult age.  Yet Isidore’s family must have had laid the foundations for their family deep in the truths of their Christian faith because despite all that turmoil, all of the four children of the ducal family would be eventually hailed as saints (that being Leander, Isidore, Fulgentius, and Florentina – may I just say they had a way with names back then!)  Isidore was blessed to be educated at the Cathedral school in Seville, entrusted with grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the “trivium”, the foundational three elements of a integral and liberating education) as well as arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy  (the “quadrivium”, four higher elements of a classical, liberal, education), as well as, of course, the principles of the faith, Latin, as well as some Greek and Hebrew.  

Just to comment briefly on these parts of his education: it really was not all that long ago that these different elements remained the fundamentals of anyone’s education: think Abraham Lincoln studying law and logic between chopping down trees. Nowadays a “liberal” education is seen as rather unpractical, and we find a constant emphasis on the harder, more mathematical, scientific, empirical forms of knowledge. (Just think of how many times politicians and educators emphasize STEM courses and competency). But, can’t a case be made that we have forgotten the foundation in trying to build ourselves up to the heavens?  I use grammar and rhetoric every time that I speak or write.  I rarely use the quadratic formula. Of course, you might respond that my line of work requires more speaking and less calculating, and that is true, but the quadratic formula is eternally stranded on the level of numbers and mathematics.  It will never solve for the mystery of life; it will never break a flower or rainstorm into their constitutive components; it will never decipher, or discover, Shakespeare; and I’m not going to use it to get to know a friend, nor to stay a friend of God. I am glad that I learned it, yes, yet, it would be a far greater loss to loose the ability to reason and communicate and read and pray, than to not be easily able to “solve for x.”  

Isidore may have become a monk (history has forgotten that particular detail) but in any case, he would follow his own brother in becoming Bishop of Seville right around the difficult year of 600AD.  I would love to comment on all the various episcopal things he did, problems he faced, sacraments he celebrated, and homilies he preached, but I’m going to instead focus on what he was best known for: his safeguarding and teaching of the truth.  It was a volatile, brutal, illiterate age, and so Isidore sat down to compile everything that was to know, putting it all in what would be the grandfather of all encyclopedias, his Etymologiae.  He collected, and saved for all of us, countless excerpts and summaries of ancient texts, truly on almost everything that was known at the time: science, religion, philosophy, grammar, geography, infrastructure, mathematics, medicine, technology, geology, nautical, animal, and avian knowledge…  And, he invented one or two things you might have used today: the period, comma, and colon.  (I used all three in the last five words of that sentence without even trying)  Before Isidore, punctuation did not exist! ENTIREBOOKSWEREMOSTLYALLCAPSANDOFTENWITHOUTSPACES. His invention of punctuation would allow the treasures hard-won throughout human history to be passed along through the hard centuries that were coming.

And, they made writing this article substantially easier.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin has no particular memory of learning these most basic parts of speech, though, funnily enough, he has, for many years, had a disorderly love for the comma. I bitterly remonstrate with a book or article if the author neglected an oxford comma, and throw them in around every appositive phrase, that being a clarifying statement within a larger one, as well as in various other, unnecessary places (see what I did there). My mom was not always impressed, though perhaps I was just trying to make up for the thousands of human writings that never knew the beauty of a proper comma… 

As we celebrate this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are now closer to Easter than we are to Ash Wednesday.  This is one of the reasons that the Church invites us to rejoice on this day.  We call this Laetare Sunday, getting its name from the first word in Latin of the Entrance Antiphon for Mass: “Rejoice (Laetare), Jerusalem!” (Is 66:10)  We visibly express this joy with the rose vestments that clergy have the option of wearing this Sunday.

The notion of rejoicing does not strike us as very Lenten.  Lent feels more like a time to be subdued, to be more sober, to focus more on sacrifice than celebration.  But let us recall the words from St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” (Phil 4:4) Yes, even in Lent!  As Christians, we should always be joyful because of the victory that Christ has already won in His Resurrection, that victory which He shares with us through our Baptism.  However, during this season of repentance, we spend time looking at our lives, noticing where we are in need of conversion.  Seeing those weaknesses and faults, we can get pretty down on ourselves, and our first thought is not to rejoice, but rather to be discouraged about ourselves.

This leads me to the challenge I would like to offer for this week:

Challenge:  Fast from negative self-talk
Fruit:  Fostering a Christian spirit of joy

It strikes me how powerful negative self-talk can be in our lives.  We begin to believe that we are defined by our sins and weaknesses.  For example, if we struggle with procrastination, we will say: I am a procrastinator.  If we struggle with patience, we will say: I am an impatient person.  You know what those labels are in your life, and many of them are likely not something about which you rejoice.  To be sure, it is good for us to know where we need to grow, but we do not want that to turn into a feeling of failure or defeat.  As a Christian, we should look at those areas with a spirit of hope, seeing in them places where the Lord wants to win His next victory in our lives.  As His beloved children, He never stops inviting us to welcome Him in to heal us and renew us.  In that regard, I find the following words of Pope St. John Paul II very encouraging: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

So let’s try our best this week to stop the negative self-talk.  As an added challenge, if you notice that you are beginning to fall into that negativity spiral about yourself, break the cycle with an affirmation that is true: “I am a beloved son/daughter of the Father!”  What a wonderful cause for rejoicing when we call that to mind.  One of the beautiful “side effects” of stopping this negative self-talk is that we will likely begin to see others through the same lens with which we are learning to look at ourselves.  We will less frequently fall into judgments and criticisms of others and begin to see them as brothers and sisters, rejoicing in the gift they too have been given as beloved sons and daughters.

Father Alford     

We will be about halfway through this year’s Lenten season this week. At the beginning of the lent, some of us decided to abstain from certain foods or activities. Others resolved to add some foods to their diets or activities to their daily routines. Still, many people choose to consolidate some additions or subtractions that they already have. Many of us simply have been doing something since the beginning of our Lenten journey.

Where are we now? Have we stopped with our Lenten observances? Have we forsaken Jesus in the wilderness? Have we forgotten that he is still in the desert preparing himself for the ultimate price of our salvation? A price that must involve severe tortures, persecution, beatings, whipping, spitting, and individual and public condemnations? Have we quickly forgotten that he is still in the wilderness, lonely, hungry, thirsty, weak, and isolated? Lent is just halfway. It is not over yet.

The whole idea of making Lenten observances is to deepen our relationship with Christ, to unite ourselves in fraternal solicitude to the suffering Christ. His sufferings and all the hardships he endured are to free us from our sins and show us how to embrace suffering for salvific reasons. The scripture puts it better when it says:

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

1 Peter 2:21-25.

As we continue our Lenten journey, let us increase efforts to stay firm in our Lenten observances. Let us remember that those sacrifices and mortifications must be geared towards bringing us closer to Jesus Christ. Because of this noble reason, we must not entertain any distraction or discouragement in fulfilling our Lenten resolutions. 

The Church encourages us to ensure that whatever we are doing to make a good Lent, we should pay special attention to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Some activities and lifestyles we have embarked upon during this Lent may express less direct connections to these Lenten virtues (prayer, fasting, and almsgiving). When this happens, one should not be discouraged. The important thing is that we must all be doing something to deepen our relationship with Christ this Lent. He continues to endure bodily and emotional torments in the wilderness of our sins. So, let us not back down from our Lenten observances now that we are only halfway through the Lenten season.

May God continue to bless our efforts with more courage and desire to persevere in our Lenten resolutions. Amen.

Feast Day: April 2^nd 

My guess is that no one who reads this article is currently a consecrated hermit.  (If someone is, my thanks for your self-gift to the Lord!  And, please pray for us who carry more evidently the cross of living in the world but not of the world!)  And yet, I think the saint we celebrate, and call upon, this week – St. Francis of Paula – a hermit, and founder of the Order of Minims, is still abundantly applicable to each in the 21^st century.  Born in 1416, in the region of Calabria in Italy (famous now for its lemons, olives, and spicy red peppercino’s… as well as being the toe of the Italian boot), Francis’ story begins before his conception.

His parents, themselves a devoted and prayerful couple, were unable to conceive, and like so many couples now who carry that troubling and lonely cross of infertility, could only go to God with their longing for children and put their hope in Him.  Praying to St. Francis of Assisi, the Poverello from further north in Italy brought their prayers to the Lord, and they finally conceived.  They were delighted to name their little son Francisco. 

Any mother or father reading this, though, knows that conception is only the first of many chances to trust that a child brings to their parents.  As a baby, Francis had an enigmatic swelling around one of his eyes.  Uncertainty, doubt, fear, and worry crashed upon the young couple as their little boy’s eyesight was threatened.  They turned again, continuously, to God, beseeching again St. Francis’ prayers, even promising that when he was older, if their little Francisco was cured, they would let him spend a year with the Franciscans.  This was not a small promise for a poor family, especially before knowing that they would be blessed with two other children in the years to come.  Yet their faithful prayers were rewarded: Francisco was immediately healed.

He would grow into taking for himself the devotion and prayerfulness of his parents, and, to no one’s surprise, and his parents’ pride and sanctification, would in fact spend that year in a Franciscan friary as a young man.  Returning home, they went on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Assisi and Rome after his year of obedience, humility, chastity, and poverty under the rule of St. Francis.  Treasuring that experience, but not feeling the Lord’s directing him to continue with the Order of Friars Minor, the young man found a cave on his family farm and began to live a life of intense prayer and poverty to discern who the Lord was beckoning him to be.  His parents and he both must have found their hearts stretched by the Lord’s silent Love, simply asking all of them to put their trust in Him. The months, and then years, rolled past, and Francis found himself at peace in embracing the life of a hermit.  

Two other men would join him, somehow coming to know of Francis’ holiness and love for God and wanting it for themselves.  More years past and our saint-in-the-making now found himself building a monastery and church in Cosenza (several miles east of Paula). Francis of Assisi so many years before had singlehandedly rebuilt the chapel of the portiuncula, enduring the insults and flung rocks from his previous compadres, but now a new Francis had the help and love of the noblemen, who themselves carried stones to build this Church growing up around the intense poverty of their beloved hermit.  Francis and his followers would embrace a life of complete poverty, chastity, obedience, as well as abstinence from all animal products (meat, cheese, butter, eggs, etc.) 

He was a vegan hermit! How many millennials (and others) have embraced a similar lifestyle in our own say?! Of course, we might fruitfully ask whether that dietary restriction was directed by the Lord … and yet, as I smile at this line of thought, doesn’t this mean that Francis of Paula once again connects to us today?  Are you abstaining from meat for Lent?  Are you unable to eat foods with lactose?  Have you chosen (or been forced into) a vegan diet?  Instead of just enduring it, do it for the sake of God, to be united with Jesus’ simplicity of life.  Instead of changing your diet for mere physical health, do so for your supernatural health!

– Fr. Dominic Rankin will soon be preparing to MC for all the liturgies of Holy Week. It will be a hectic, but heavenly, commemoration of all that Jesus has won for us!  If, like St. Francis of Paula, the Lord calls me home to Himself during the recitation of the Passion of St. John on Good Friday, I’d ask that one of the priests would give me Anointing and Communion, and perhaps Fr. Alford could step in as MC so that the liturgy could continue…  

Our first two Lenten challenges have addressed prayer (praying for our enemies) and fasting (fasting from our Snooze button).  Let us now turn to the third Lenten discipline of almsgiving.  All of our Lenten practices have as their goal making us less focused on ourselves so that we can focus more on loving God and our neighbor.  But our prayer and fasting can sometimes be done with somewhat selfish motives, seeing how they can help us personally in our lives.  I am not saying that it is bad for us to grow personally – Jesus commands us to become holy, as He is holy.  But our holiness will never be complete until it bears the fruit of extending loving mercy to others.  In the judgement scene from St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt. 25:31-46), Jesus makes it quite clear that our salvation depends in large part on our willingness to serve Him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least among us.  It is from this passage that we get the Corporal Works of Mercy.  The practice of almsgiving that the Church invites us to engage in can be understood in a broad sense as undertaking these Corporal Works of Mercy, not simply giving alms to the poor, though that is in fact important.  

This week’s challenge is going to be a little more abstract, but nevertheless fruitful if you choose to accept it:

Challenge:  Learn about the Corporal Works of Mercy then make a specific resolution to perform one of these works during Lent
Fruit:  Continuing to grow more merciful

A simple Google search will bring up many resources on the Corporal Works of Mercy.  You can also open the Catechism to paragraphs 2544-2547 on Love for the Poor.  The USCCB has a webpage with the works listed along with some suggestions on how to practice those works (just search “USCCB Corporal Works of Mercy” and it should be at the top of the list).

Getting back to the point I was making at the beginning of this article, the Lenten discipline of almsgiving really moves us in the direction of turning away from selfish motives to motives of mercy toward others.  However, even almsgiving can be done for self-centered reasons.  Some people practice generosity for the tax advantages.  Some people practice generosity to feel better about themselves.  Some (sadly) practice generosity so that they can be seen by others as being generous.  All of those things may be true, but they cannot be our primary motive when performing works of mercy.  Jesus’s strong words on Ash Wednesday speak to that:

When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” (Mt 6:2–4)

With that in mind, as you form your resolution to practice some work of mercy, it can be helpful to ask yourself this question: “Am I doing this for me?  Or am I doing it for my neighbor?”

Father Alford     

Last March 17, we celebrated the very famous Saint Patrick’s Day. This feast is traditionally Catholic and still is. But it has become more of a secular and cultural fiesta for many Americans of Irish descent and lovers of everything Irish. Today, wholly Irish Americans may be less than ten percent of the entire United States population. But this feast of St. Patrick has remained one of the most celebrated fiestas in the United States mainly because many people in the United States are Irish in various ways. Some are Irish by ancestral lineage. Others are Irish by marriage or identifications with institutions and organizations that are Irish by foundation and tradition.

Recently, I encountered a gentleman who claimed he is one hundred percent Irish. He not only argued to be fully Irish, but he was also very proud of it. This gentleman, a devout Catholic and a great fan of the Notre Dame football team, the fighting Irish, told me incredible stories about Irish immigrants. Particularly dear to him was how they survived and thrived in the United States amidst the many prejudices they endured as poor immigrants. That was during a protracted period of waves of Irish immigration. I tried to understand what he believed was why the Irish immigrants survived and flourished in their new country and would become a critical part of the making of America.

His answer was simple and clear. “They were Catholic and proud of it.” What got my attention was not the Irish immigrants being Catholics. But that they were proud of it. When ethnic churches existed, Irish immigrants had the highest number and most vibrant churches. Many of their young men and women pursued religious and priestly vocations. They would have enough to make up a more significant percentage of the clergy and religious men and women in the country for a long time. One of her young priests in the early 1880s’ would establish an organization that would help take care of helpless Irish immigrant widows and children. That organization would grow to become the most prominent Catholic lay men’s organization in the world today. It is the Knights of Columbus.

These giant strides were possible because the Irish immigrants and their children were proud of their catholic faith. This was even as anti-Catholic sentiments and ethnic chauvinisms were the order of the day.

Today, many of us are concerned about our children and grandchildren not practicing the faith. We worry about the fast disappearance of those social, spiritual, and moral values that we hold dear as Catholics. Some of us are even doubting the possibility of Catholicism in our world by the next fifty years. Well, all these are legitimate concerns. But what are we doing to remedy the situation?

Are we still Catholics? If we are, are we proud of it? The faith of our fathers, this holy faith, let us be proud of it. Only in being proud of it are we able to live it out, fight for it, and hand it down like our ancestors in the faith.