My generation is probably familiar with a quote from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben in the 2002 movie: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I’m sure someone else had said this line many years before Uncle Ben, but it is actually a good expression of our duty as human beings to choose good and avoid evil. Last week I wrote about the Church’s understanding of free choice, and I would like to expand on that today. 

Free will implies a great responsibility that we have been given to choose the good. It is possible to gradually lose one’s freedom over time, if bad decisions are made over and over again. From the very beginning of Genesis, we see that a misuse of free will led to a lessening of the freedom of Adam and Eve, as they were banished from the Garden of Eden, having made their decision to reject God and choose sin. Paragraph 1739 of the Catechism says, “Man’s freedom is limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God’s plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin. This first alienation engendered a multitude of others. From its outset, human history attests the wretchedness and oppression born of the human heart in consequence of the abuse of freedom.” 

Sin begets sin, as holiness begets holiness. After the Original Sin, Adam and Eve turned to blame, then not telling the whole truth to God about what had happened. Sin reduces our freedom, and a habitual sin is called a vice. Good actions increase our freedom, and good habits are called virtues. St. Paul often talks about this freedom in his letters. He wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). By submitting to God’s will and accepting his grace, we become free to live lives of virtue and goodness. For someone who follows the false idea of freedom, or doing whatever one wants, freedom can actually be lost. “By deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth” (CCC 1740). 

Jesus has saved us so that we can have the glorious freedom of the children of God. God adopted us as his sons and daughters when we were baptized, and he invites us to call him “Father.” God does not want us to see him simply as a master or a rule-maker, and he doesn’t want us to follow his rules simply because we are afraid of making him angry. He invites us to the fullness of life through prayer and the sacraments because he loves us and wants what is best for us. May we all confidently turn to God as our heavenly Father in true freedom. Sin is only an illusion of freedom, and it is our responsibility to seek that which is truly good. 

Feast Day: November 4^th   

Much could be said about the saintly archbishop of Milan whose life we look to as an example of holiness and faithfulness this week.  He was made shepherd of that important archdiocese shortly after the Council of Trent and worked his entire life to place its teachings, and directives, into the hearts of his flock.  He worked to reform the clergy in his diocese, who were considered so corrupt that a common saying was “if you want to go to hell, become a priest”.  And, if those sobering words do not convince us of the challenges that faced him, in 1576 a famine struck the city, and then the Bubonic Plague.  

The wealthy and those in power fled the city as it was ravaged by the terrible disease, but the archbishop stayed.  As food supplies dwindled, and the numbers of caretakers plummeted, the still-young Archbp. Borromeo spent his own fortune (and then went deep into debt) to procure food, and distribute it himself to the overflowing hospitals and leper houses.  He was surrounded by the sick and dying, and with little help from his own fearful priests, who had abandoned the sick without natural or supernatural sustenance, Charles himself fed some 70,000 people during the coming months, and gave countless suffering persons absolution, anointing, and viaticum.  Famously, he offered Mass on street corners so that the faithful could receive the sacraments with less risk of catching the dreaded plague.

This month, we have considered the saints as exemplars of those who have walked the path to heaven before us.  As we consider how we are doing on that journey ourselves, and how strongly our own lives are directed towards eternity, there is a final lesson to be learned from Charles’ ministry during those terrible 16 months in Milan.  Seeing that there were far too few priests to bring the sacraments to the dying (some 25,000 would die in his archdiocese during those days), the archbishop drafted a “Last Will and Testament of the Soul”, which were distributed widely so that anyone could sign it for themselves, committing their souls into God’s hands if their death came with no chance to receive absolution or Holy Communion.  A few excerpts are sufficient to ask each of us if we are as courageous as they in choosing heaven in the midst of our own sufferings!

[I desire to] pass out of this life, armed with the last sacrament of extreme unction: the which if through any let or hindrance I should not then be able to have, I do now also for that time demand and crave the same; beseeching his divine majesty that he [God] will be pleased to anoint my senses both internal and external with the sacred oil of his infinite mercy, and to pardon me all my sins committed by seeing, speaking, feeling, smelling, hearing, touching, or by any other way whatsoever.  [I repent from my sins of] murmuration against God, or the Catholic faith … any sign of bad example … [and] all the evil whatsoever, which I might have then done or said.  

[I give] infinite thanks [to God, for all His gifts, especially my] Vocation to the holy knowledge of him and his true Catholic faith.  [And] I am willing, yea, I do infinitely desire and humbly crave, that of this my last will and testament the glorious and ever Virgin Mary, mother of god, refuge and advocate of sinners, (whom I honour specially above all other saints,) may be the chief Executress, together with these other saints, my patrons, all whom I invoke and beseech to be present at the hour of my death, that she and they may comfort me with their desired presence, and crave of sweet Jesus that he will receive my soul into peace.

Amen!!  May all of us have the courage to pray this prayer!  

– Fr. Rankin will spend this week taking to heart Charles Borromeo’s words, at this same time, to the priests of his diocese: “We have only one life and we should spend it for Jesus Christ and souls, not as we wish, but at the time and in the way God wishes. It would show great presumption and neglect of our duty and God’s service to fail to do this, with the excuse that God could not replace us by others more capable of working for His glory. This does not mean you should neglect human means, such as preventatives, remedies, doctors, everything that you can use to keep off infection, for such means are in no way opposed to our doing our duty.  … [but] Do not be so forgetful of your priesthood as to prefer a late death to a holy one.”

October seems to be one of the most active months in the Church’s year, apart from the liturgical seasons of Lent, Easter, Advent and Christmas.  As I have previously written, this is the month of the Rosary, in addition to being Respect Life Month.  This Sunday, we add another important annual celebration – World Mission Sunday.  It is worth sharing a portion of the letter that Bishop Paprocki wrote for our celebration this year:

World Mission Sunday joins all Catholics of the world into one community of faith. At Mass that Sunday, we recommit ourselves to our common vocation, through Baptism to be missionaries, through prayer, participation in the Eucharist, and by giving generously to the collection for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. 

Pope Francis’s message for World Mission Sunday this year reflects on the theme: “We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). He reminds us that, “as Christians, we cannot keep the Lord to ourselves,” as we “recall with gratitude all those men and women who by their testimony of life help us to renew our baptismal commitment to be generous and joyful apostles of the Gospel.”

Think of what our lives would be like if we did not have people who were willing to teach us and witness to our Catholic faith?  We would be overwhelmed with all the wordly values and would be missing out on so many blessings that give meaning to our lives and true hope for our future.  But thanks be to God, there have been people, many people, who have been like those first disciples and felt the obligation and opportunity to share the Good News with us as missionaries.

Perhaps on this World Mission Sunday, we can spend some time in prayer, calling to mind those missionaries who have been instruments of our receiving the faith.  For me, I recall my mother in a special way, who taught me how to pray, and who made sure I was able to learn about my faith and to practice it by going to Mass.  I know that she had this passed on from her mother and father, who likely received it from their parents as well.  I think of the priests who served at my parish growing up.  I think of my brother priests with whom I share the privilege of being a missionary sent to proclaim the Good News, how so many of them, by their word and example, have been a powerful witness to me.  I also think of many of you who have shown me the love of God through the witness of your lives as disciples of Jesus.

Who are those missionaries in your life that have brought you to where you are now in your relationship with Christ?  Bring them to the Lord and ask Him to bless them for their generosity in sharing this most beautiful gift with you.  Then I invite you to ask the Lord for the grace to be willing to continue the chain, passing on this Good News to those you encounter in those places to which the Lord has sent you as a missionary – your families, your workplaces, this parish, and the community around you.

Father Alford     

For many years, the slogan “my body, my choice” has been used in defense of legal protection for abortion. The idea is that a woman should have complete autonomy over her own body because we live in a free country, and to put limits on abortion takes away a woman’s “right to choose.” More recently, this same slogan has been employed by people who, for various reasons, do not want to receive a Covid vaccine. This article is not about vaccine guidance, as our bishop has given very clear guidance on this for the past year or so in our Catholic Times. In addition, our Catholic Times also publishes Fr. Tad Pacholczyk’s bioethics column, which recently has covered the topics of Covid and vaccine mandates. 

Whenever the slogan, “my body, my choice” comes into play, it usually indicates a lack of understanding of what freedom is. Our Catechism gives a good definition of freedom in paragraph 1731: “Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate action on one’s own responsibility.” Free will can be used for good or evil. God made us in his image and likeness, giving is the ability to think (reason) and choose (will), which ultimately gives us the unique ability to love as God loves. 

Human freedom is the reason that our society has laws, even laws against certain types of actions which only affect our own bodies. We are not able to just walk into a pharmacy and buy any type of medication for ourselves because some substances can be harmful if used in the wrong way. We need a doctor’s prescription to buy and take certain drugs, because doctors are trained to know what is good for our bodies and what is bad for our bodies. Drugs such as heroine and cocaine are illegal because they are bad for people and bad for society. As I wrote recently, this is grounded in at least a basic understanding of the natural law: human beings are designed to flourish and grow in relationship, which can be perceived by any clear thinker. 

Recently the Speaker of the House of Representatives and fellow Catholic Nancy Pelosi made an interesting but shockingly immature statement about freedom regarding abortion. She said, “I believe that God has given us free will to honor our responsibilities.” For this reason, she supports the legalization of abortion so that everybody can have the freedom to choose abortion and utilize their God-given free will. Speaker Pelosi does not have a basic understanding of what the Church means by “freedom.” Of course, God made us free, but the whole reason for having a legislative system is because people can use their freedom to make evil decisions, and as a society we need to prevent that from happening when we can, or punish people when they make gravely evil decisions. I would be interested to hear Speaker Pelosi give her thoughts on why our government exists, since her understanding of freedom seems to mean that nothing should be illegal. 

As Catholics, we should not use the phrase, “my body, my choice” because it misrepresents why God made us. A better slogan would be “my body, God’s gift” because none of us are totally autonomous or independent. (Or maybe we just shouldn’t use slogans…) We depend on God for our existence, and we depend on other people in many ways. God has given us the gift of community because he made us as one human family and he wants us to grow, love, and suffer in union with each other. One person’s actions can have an impact, for better or worse, on that person’s family and community. May we all seek true freedom, which is ultimately found through a relationship with God, who made us in his image and likeness. 

Feast Day: October 28^th   

The apostles Simon and Jude are given the same feast-day because tradition holds that they were martyred together in Persia or Armenia, having carried the Gospel with great success to the pagan peoples north of Israel.  We know precious little of what took place between Galilee and Armenia, but this, I think, points us back to the middle of their story, and asks a profound question: how were they changed by getting to know Jesus?

We are introduced to Simon and Jude early in the Gospels, at the point where Jesus chooses the 12 men called into particularly close relationship with him.  There, at the end of the list, before Judas Iscariot is listed, we are told that Jesus named as apostles “Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.” [Luke 6:15-16; Acts 1:13 names them both in this same fashion].  

Simon, we are told, is a “zealot”, a term that will, in a few decades, go down in infamy as the name of the violent revolutionaries who tried to kick the Romans out of Israel, and upon whom the anger (and might) of Rome was levied, destroying Jerusalem, the Temple, and hundreds of thousands of Jews finding refuge there in 70AD.  Those terrible days were far in the future when Simon stood out of the crowd of Jesus’ followers and was named an apostle, yet this is the word that Luke uses to describe him when he gets to writing down his Gospel account of that morning.  

Something in Simon’s character called to mind the zealous Maccabees who had revolted against their Hellenistic despots a century before Christ.  (It is enlightening to recall that two of the Maccabean brothers were themselves named “Simon” and “Judas”, so our two apostles have popular names associated with the great heroes of a century before.)  “Zeal” is the word also used to describe Paul’s fiery temperament, originally directed against those who believed Christ to be the Messiah, and after his own encounter with Christ, transformed into a fiery love for the Body of Christ, His Church.

In Paul, we get to witness the moment of that transformation, and though we do not get a similar scene for Simon, as he began to follow Jesus, his zeal as well was redirected and captured for the sake of Christ.  We get the briefest glimpses of this process in the Gospels.  On the one hand, Jesus offers all the apostles an example of true, God-like, zeal.  On the Passover, in the Temple, seeing the money-changers he overturns the tables, looses the animals, and drives the merchants out of the house of God.  The apostles can only have watched wide-eyed as their meek rabbi and miracle-worker tore through the temple precincts.  One word came to mind: zeal.  They recall Psalm 69:9 “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  

Fast forward to a later Passover.  This time Jesus has left the Temple and made his way to the upper room, this time it is not righteous anger, but sadness and compassion that fills his eyes.  He takes off his robe, He washes their feet, He returns to the meal: “he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  And then Jude, the son of James, for the first and only time in the Gospels, speaks “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” How will you be made manifest?  The people hailed you as Messiah and successor to David when you entered Jerusalem, do we now go the rest of the way and crown you king?  When does the victory happen?  What should our zeal look like?  “Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” [John 14:21-24]

In this answer, of course, both men are transformed.  Of course, Simon’s zeal had to be reordered from earth, to heaven. But his friend and companion, Jude, also had to reorder his own life, in his case his identity had to be reordered from earthly heritage, to heavenly.  Both men encountered Jesus, and found in Him the fiery love that comes from His Heavenly Father.  It is a zeal for God, and like God, and a love for God, and from Him.

– Fr. Rankin, has only slowly befriended Simon and Jude.  It’s so much easier to relate to the more fleshed-out characters of Peter or John (or any of the many more recent saints we also know more about).  But sometimes the Lord deepens our relationships with the saints simply on that spiritual level, without as many of the personal details we usually desire.  Such was the case as He drew me close to St. Jude because my sister’s convent is entrusted to his patronage, and St. Simon, in that wrestling match to give my zeal to the Lord.

Last week, I shared with you a practice that I have when praying with the mysteries of the Rosary, asking Mary to help me better understand what she wants me to see from each decade.  I had also mentioned how I often use the final two Glorious Mysteries (the Assumption of Mary and the Coronation of Mary) to ask for the grace to strengthen my desire for eternal life, the final destination to which all of God’s children are called.

As I continue to reflect on the Rosary during this month of October (the month of the Rosary), I think of the many different places and times where I have prayed the Rosary.  One set of memories sticks out in a special way during this month of October which is also Respect Life Month in the Church.  While I was in seminary in St. Louis, a group of seminarians would travel across the river to Granite City every Saturday morning to pray in front of the Hope Abortion Clinic.  The first time I went, I had no idea what to expect.  There were a few different groups around the building and we joined a group of Catholics who were peacefully praying the Rosary.  The group would pray all 20 mysteries of the Rosary, something I had never done before.  They used a little booklet of Pro-Life Rosary meditations to introduce each decade, giving the group something to consider as we prayed each decade.  Those meditations often come to mind as I pray the Rosary now, and the meditation introducing the Assumption is one that I have found particularly powerful:

The Blessed Virgin Mary was taken body and soul into Heaven because she is the Mother of God. Mother and child are united. The Assumption reminds us that they belong together. We pray that society will see that it cannot love women while killing their children, and cannot save children without helping their mothers. We pray that people will be touched by the pro-life question, “Why can’t we love them both?”

That question would often sit in my mind as I prayed the Rosary, especially as I saw women entering the clinic for an abortion.  For each woman, there was a story, often a very sad story such that they felt as through they had no option but to go through with the pregnancy.  While some on the sidewalks tried to appeal to the mothers that there was a human life in their womb and that they needed to turn back from having the child in their womb taken, this often did not register.  As one woman told me who had done much counselling for women faced with an unplanned pregnancy, those appeals almost never worked, because the women were so sacred about what this pregnancy meant to themselves.  The counsellor said that what these women needed most was to be loved, to be encountered with love, not defined by the action they were about to take.  Those women who encountered somebody on the sidewalk who loved them and appealed to them, not just the baby in their womb, were those most likely to reconsider because they were able to reassess their own value and dignity, which opened their hearts to move beyond the fears and to finally recognize the gift they had been given with the child in their womb.

As we pray the Rosary during this Respect Life Month, perhaps we can ask our Blessed Mother to touch the hearts of all the good people who work to build a culture of life, that as we undertake our various efforts, we may always be motivated by an authentic and generous love not just for the unborn children in the womb, but especially for the women who carry that gift of life.  May we one day have a culture in which these women will find in us a loving encounter with Christ, for being touched by His love for them will be the most effective means for them to choose life.

Father Alford