Doing Greater Works as We Climb

In the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Cycle A (John 14: 1-12), we see Jesus at the Last Supper getting impatient with his apostles.  He has been with them for several years.  He is giving them his final discourse and they clearly do not know him.  In response to Philip who asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus says: “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”

Right before this Jesus had declared: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus, fully divine, is the truth about who God is.  God is love, a love that is willing to give all for the good of humanity.  Jesus, fully human, is also the truth about what humanity is meant to be.  Jesus is the way to live.  Following Jesus and the trail to heaven that he has blazed, we will come to the eternal life for which we were made.

In his Ascension Day homily in 2013, Pope Francis compared Jesus to a mountain-climbing guide: “In Christ, true God and true man, our humanity was taken to God. Christ opened the path to us. He is like a roped guide climbing a mountain who, on reaching the summit, pulls us up to him and leads us to God. If we entrust our life to him, if we let ourselves be guided by him, we are certain to be in safe hands, in the hands of our Savior, of our Advocate.”

Jesus is not only ahead of us on our journey through life, having arrived at life’s goal, he is with us.  He is present in the Eucharist.  He is present in his Body, in our brothers and sisters.

This latter presence is what some of the early Christians missed.  The first reading (Acts 6: 1-7) shows that the early Church wasn’t always the idyllic picture of harmony that is painted in earlier chapters of Acts (see 2: 42-47 and 4: 32-35).  There was racism and division.  The Greek-speaking Christians were being neglected by the Jewish Christians.  In response, a new ministry developed to care for the poor. 

But without a change of heart that leads one to see in every person a brother or sister in Christ, new ministries are not enough.  A deeper vision of unity is required.

The second reading (1 Peter 2: 4-9) provides that.  The Church is a “spiritual house” that has Jesus as its cornerstone.  Members of the Body of Christ are “living stones.”  We are “a holy priesthood,” “a royal priesthood.”  Through baptism we share in the priesthood of Jesus who replaced the old animal and grain sacrifices before him with his one perfect offering of himself on the cross.  This offering is made present every time we celebrate Mass.  There we offer the “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.”  We offer ourselves with Christ for the salvation of the world.  Then we go forth from Mass to live the “spiritual sacrifices” in our daily lives.  

This is the spirituality of offering that is at the heart of the Apostleship of Prayer.  We begin each day offering ourselves—all our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings; all our thoughts, words, and deeds; every breath and every heartbeat.  This offering of our day to God with Jesus is very important and can work wonders.

Jesus promised this when he said in the Gospel: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones that these, because I am going to the Father.” 

Really?  Do I believe that we can do greater works than the ones Jesus did during his earthly life?

Three events of the last one hundred years should convince us that our faith-filled prayers can work wonders.  All three are connected with the Blessed Virgin Mary’s appearances at Fatima, Portugal in 1917.

First, there is the story of Jesuit Father Hubert Schiffer about whom I wrote August6, 2016.  He and several other Jesuits, living near the epicenter of the first atomic bomb, survived and lived for several more decades.  A Defense Department expert could not find any physical reason for their survival.  He concluded that a power greater than that of an atomic bomb protected them from harm.  According to Father Schiffer, “we believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”

In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and I’m convinced that prayer was behind its destruction.  See my blog post of October 3, 2016 for a photo of a section of the wall that can be seen at Fatima.

Lastly, on October 13, 1991, a movie about Fatima was shown on Soviet television.  The movie was repeated on November 7, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.  On Christmas Day, the flag of the U.S.S.R. at the Kremlin was lowered for the last time.  The Soviet Union broke apart and Communism ended its stranglehold on that part of the world.  Since then, 29,000 churches have been built or reopened, the number of monasteries has grown from 15 to 788, the 500 theological seminaries are full, and the Russian government spends over $100 million a year for the restoration of churches. 

I believe these are miracles wrought by prayer. 

But wars and conflicts continue.  The threat of nuclear war remains and has perhaps intensified.  The Message of Fatima is as essential as ever—prayer and sacrifice for the conversion of sinners.  When he visited Fatima a year after the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II said: “In the light of a mother’s love we understand the whole message of the Lady of Fatima. The greatest obstacle to man’s journey towards God is sin, perseverance in sin, and, finally denial of God.  The deliberate blotting out of God from the world of human thought. The detachment from him of the whole of man’s earthly activity. The rejection of God by man.  Can the Mother, who with all the power of her love nurtured in the Holy Spirit, who desires everyone’s salvation, keep silence about what undermines the very basis of their salvation?  No, she cannot.”

Nor can we keep silence.  We pray and we offer our lives, one day at a time, for peace in the world and the salvation of all.

Faith, Prayer, and Humility

The first reading from Sunday’s Mass (Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C) is from the Prophet Habakkuk. As you read the words with which it begins, what scene comes to mind? 

“How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”

What comes to my mind is Aleppo, Syria.  If you watch the news or read the paper with any compassion a prayer must well up: “How long, O Lord?  Why?”  We want God to intervene in this hopeless situation of the Syrian civil war. 

But God will not intervene except through us.  God won’t force his plan or his will on humanity. God won’t take human freedom away. 

God wants human cooperation to fulfill his plan.  When Jesus walked this earth his hands were tied by people’s lack of faith.  According to Matthew 13: 58, when Jesus returned to his native town of Nazareth, “he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.” 

The reading from Habakkuk ends with a vision of justice and peace.  Through the prophet God tells us to be patient and to have faith. 

In the Gospel (Luke 17: 5-10), the apostles ask Jesus: “Increase our faith.”  Jesus responds with an image of impossibility—that faith the size of a small seed can uproot a tree and send it into the sea.  Isn’t peace just as or more impossible?  But faith and prayer can do the impossible. God and the human person working together can bring about miracles no less impossible as the displacement of trees. 

One such miracle was the survival of several Jesuits who were in Hiroshima at ground zero when the first atomic bomb was dropped.  (See my blog post of August 6, 2016.)  Not only did they survive the initial blast but subsequently none of them experienced the effects of radiation.  How was this possible?  Fr. Hubert Schiffer, S.J. said it was because they prayed the rosary and lived the message of Fatima.

If you go to Fatima today you will see the results of another miracle.  There is a large piece of the Berlin Wall on display.  Why?  It tells us that faith-filled prayer brought down that wall and the Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that it represented.  Faith and prayer can bring down walls and change governments.  It can transform hardened hearts.

But in the second part of the Gospel Jesus tells us that something else needs to accompany faith.  Perhaps it is an essential ingredient of real faith.  Humility.  Humility recognizes one’s true condition.  We are not masters of ourselves but servants of God.  We cannot trust in ourselves but only in God.  Humility is a foundational virtue because all the others—even charity, which St. Paul called the greatest (1 Corinthians 13: 13)—can become a source of pride that ultimately leads us to think that we are all-powerful and in control. 

Jesus shows us the way of humility, “taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2: 7), bending down and washing feet (John 13: 1-16), and offering himself on a cross for our salvation.  His focus is not on himself but on God the Father and God’s other human children.  In the Eucharist he continues to humble himself, making present his life-saving death and resurrection and then giving himself to us under the humble appearances of bread and wine.  In the Eucharist he invites us to sit and dine while he serves us!

The vision of peace is possible but its realization requires faith-filled prayer.  The greatest prayer is the Eucharist where Jesus gives himself to us to transform us.  Here we receive the Body and Blood, soul and divinity, including the Sacred Heart, to tear down the walls that separate us and to transform our hearts.  

The Power of Prayer

Is God all-powerful?  When he walked this earth was Jesus God?  Was Jesus all-powerful?  Most Christians would answer “yes” to these questions, and yet we have a scene in the Gospels where Jesus appears to have limited power.

Mark 6: 1-6 tells of Jesus’ return to his hometown of Nazareth where he is rejected.  The neighbors take “offense” at Jesus because he is too familiar to them.  He can’t be a prophet or a wonder-worker.  “Is he not the carpenter?”  As a result, “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.  He was amazed at their lack of faith.” 

It seems that Jesus’ power was limited by people’s lack of faith.  This makes sense.  God created humanity so that we—God and us—would work together tending the earth and caring for God’s human family. Being all-powerful, God could have done everything by himself.  But love involves sharing and so God created humanity to share in the work.  Children experience the love of their parents when they are invited to help them in the work that adults do.  They feel special and included.  And so it is with God.

Mary—whom the poet William Wordsworth called “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”—is the model for humanity.  She cooperated completely with God’s grace and became the “Mediatrix of Grace,” the means by which the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became human.  She was a perfect channel for God’s grace to flow into the world.

Sin and lack of faith block grace’s flow.  Thus Jesus’ powerful love was blocked by his townspeople’s lack of faith.  Conversely, faith-filled prayer and action open channels for God’s powerful grace to enter the world.

When he met with Polish Bishops recently, Pope Francis told them: “We can all have an open heart and think of spending one hour in the parishes, an hour a week, of adoration and prayer. Prayer moves mountains!”  Open hearts, like the Immaculate Heart of Mary, allow the power that created the universe to enter the world. 

The message that Mary gave to three children in Portugal in 1917 was “prayer and penance.”  Mary said that if people prayed, especially a daily Rosary, and offered sacrificial actions like fasting, a greater war than the one that was currently going on could be avoided.  People did not listen and the world endured a second “world war.”

But many people did listen. They prayed and did penance.  In 1989 something happened that those of us who grew up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s never expected.  The Berlin Wall came down. A large portion of it is now on display at Our Lady’s shrine in Fatima.  Then, two years later, the Soviet Union broke up as the Communists lost power. 

But before that, as though to prepare the stage for what many thought was unthinkable—the end of the Soviet Union—prayer wrought another miracle.  On May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square.  By all accounts he should have died.  He didn’t and afterwards he attributed his survival to Our Blessed Mother.  He said that while one finger pulled the trigger, another finger guided the bullet millimeters away from certain death.  That bullet now rests in a crown used to honor Our Lady of Fatima.  In the millennial year 2000, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “That here ‘a mother’s hand’ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies.”

Perhaps an even greater example of the power of faith-filled prayer is a little known story within a larger event that occurred seventy-one years ago today.  On this day in 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  Eight blocks from where the bomb went off was the Church of Our Lady’s Assumption. Next door was the rectory where eight Jesuit missionaries resided.  One of them was Fr. Pedro Arrupe who later served as the General of the Jesuits from 1965 to 1983. Another was Fr. Hubert Schiffer who had just finished celebrating Mass and was sitting down to breakfast when the blast occurred. He wrote: “Suddenly, a terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunder stroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me, whirled me ‘round and round’ like a leaf in a gust of autumn wind.” 

All around there was devastation, but, while damaged, the church and rectory stood and became a makeshift hospital for those who survived the blast. Dr. Stephen Rinehart who worked for the U.S. Department of Defense testified:  

 No way any human could have survived nor should anything have been standing at 1 kilometer.  I think there were a few badly burned survivors at ten to fifteen kilometers (all—except the Jesuits—died within fifteen years of some form of cancer). There are no physical laws to explain why the Jesuits were untouched in the Hiroshima air blast. There is no other actual or test data where a structure such as this was not totally destroyed at this standoff distance by an atomic weapon. All who were at this range from the epicenter should have received enough radiation to be dead within at most a matter of minutes if nothing else happened to them.  There is no known way to design a uranium-235 atomic    bomb, which could leave such a large discrete area intact while destroying everything around it immediately outside the fireball (by shaping the plasma). From a scientific viewpoint, what happened to those Jesuits at Hiroshima still defies all human logic from the laws of physics as understood today (or at any time in the future). It must be concluded that some other (external) force was present whose power and/or capability to transform energy and matter as it relates to humans is beyond current comprehension.       

Fr. Schiffer, who died in 1982, said: “We believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.” 

The ways of God are mysterious.  The Rosary is not magic.  Somehow God wanted to give a sign of the power of faith-filled prayer and the special protection of Mother Mary, Our Lady of Fatima. 

The question is: do I take faith and prayer seriously?  Events in our lives, in our nation, and in our world test our faith.  It’s easy to get discouraged and give up.  But if prayer can move bullets, bring down the Berlin Wall, and protect eight Jesuits from the atomic bomb, shouldn’t I trust in its power to continue to work wonders?    

The Importance of Fatima

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima.  We remember how on May 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children--Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta--and gave them an important message for the world. It wasn't a new message but as old as the Gospel where we read in Mark that the first recorded words of Jesus after his baptism and the temptations in the desert were: "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (1: 15).

On May 13, 1982,  one year after the attempt on his life, St. John Paul II visited Fatima and offered the Blessed Mother the bullet that had struck him and which he was convinced did not kill him because her finger guided it away from doing mortal harm. (I wrote here about this bullet which was affixed to the crown that is placed on the statue of Our Lady on special occasions.)

 Pope John Paul II said:

"These are the first words of the Messiah addressed to humanity. The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel. This call was uttered at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was addressed particularly to this present century.  ... The call to repentance is a motherly one, and at the same time it is strong and decisive."

The call of  Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima has not lost its urgency.

Pope Francis has a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. In his first Angelus Address after being elected pope, he mentioned a statue of Our Lady of Fatima that came to Buenos Aires on pilgrimage shortly after he became a bishop there in 1992. Then, in 2013, two months after his election, Pope Francis asked the Patriarch of Lisbon to consecrate his papacy to Our Lady of Fatima.  Cardinal Policarpo did so on May 13, 2013 with these words: “O Blessed Virgin, we are at your feet to carry out the request clearly expressed by Pope Francis to consecrate to you, O Virgin of Fatima, his ministry as Bishop of Rome and universal pastor.” 

On the anniversary of the last Fatima apparition, October 13, 2013, during the Marian Day of the Year of Faith, Pope Francis entrusted the world to Our Lady of Fatima with these words:

Blessed Virgin Mary of Fatima,
with renewed gratitude for your motherly presence
we join in the voice of all generations that call you blessed.

We celebrate in you the great works of God,
who never tires of lowering himself in mercy over humanity,
afflicted by evil and wounded by sin,
to heal and to save it.

Accept with the benevolence of a Mother
this act of entrustment that we make in faith today,
before this your image, beloved to us.

We are certain that each one of us is precious in your eyes
and that nothing in our hearts has estranged you.

May we allow your sweet gaze
to reach us and the perpetual warmth of your smile.

Guard our life with your embrace: 

bless and strengthen every desire for good;
give new life and nourishment to faith;
sustain and enlighten hope;
awaken and animate charity;
guide us all on the path to holiness.

Teach us your own special love for the little and the poor,
for the excluded and the suffering,
for sinners and the wounded of heart:
gather all people under your protection
and give us all to your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus.

Amen.

In two years, Pope Francis hopes to go to Fatima for the centenary of the apparitions.  

Clearly Our Lady of Fatima important to Pope Francis.  Her message is as important as ever. Sister Lucia, who lived for almost eighty-eight years after Mary appeared to her, wrote in a book published in 2000 ("Calls" from the Message of Fatima):

"We all desire and long for peaceful days, to be able to live in peace. But this peace will not be achieved until we use the Law of God as the norm and guide of our steps. Now the entire Message of Fatima is a call to pay attention to this divine Law. ...

"God does not wish sinners to perish but rather that they be converted and live. This is the reason why Our Lady urged us so insistently to pray and make sacrifices for the conversion of sinners: Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to hell because there is none to make sacrifices and to pray for them (Fatima, 19th August, 1917). Hence, by our union with Christ and with his Church, we must offer ourselves as victims of expiation and petition for the conversion of our brothers and sisters. Herein lies the essence of our charity: to love those who perhaps do harm to us, contradict or persecute us. Our forgiveness, offered to them in the light of faith, hope and charity, will draw them back into the arms of God."

The Prayer of Abraham

Last Friday night I gave a short talk at the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's monthly All-Night Vigil. My topic was based on the May 18 General Audience of Pope Benedict--Abraham and the Prayer of Intercession.

How did you learn to pray? What were your first prayers like?

I recall my mother kneeling with me beside my bed each night and praying for her and my father, for my sisters and other relatives, and for friends. Later, when I was tucked into bed, I might add a secret prayer--asking for something for myself, like a certain toy for Christmas. Sometimes I prayed in desperation, like the time my sister accidentally splashed dish water into Timmy the Turtle's bowl and he got very sick. I prayed that he would recover. He didn't.

When those prayers of desperation are not answered as we want, our faith is tested. That's especially true when we pray for important and good things--like the health of a loved one. When the loved one dies we ask: "Doesn't God hear?" "Doesn't God care?"

The answer is that God does hear every prayer and does care deeply for us, but sometimes the answer he gives to our prayers is the one that Jesus received in a garden called Gethsemane. Didn't the Father hear the prayer of his Beloved Son? Most certainly. Didn't the Father care for his Son? Yes. Then why? Why did the Father not take the cup of suffering and death away from his Son? Because God had a greater good in mind. It's truly hard to imagine, but God loved the sinful human race so much that he saved us through suffering and death, by sharing in our own suffering and death.

We're made in God's image and likeness. God is a Communion of Persons and as such God is Love Itself. Made in the image and likeness of Love, we're made by love and for love. That is our nature and our destiny. Through baptism we become children of the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, temples of the Holy Spirit. We are called to believe this and to act on it.

What does that mean, to act on this belief about our deepest identity? It means loving as God loves.

Do you love God? Do you have God's love in your heart? Do you share God's concern for the world?

This is what brings us here to the monthly All-Night Vigil. We come together to pray for the salvation of all. We do so like Abraham who, according to Chapter 18 of Genesis, begged God to save sinful Sodom and Gomorrah. As Pope Benedict said last May 18: "By voicing this prayer, Abraham was giving a voice to what God wanted." What God wanted was not destruction but salvation. God wanted to save those two cities and Abraham's prayer gave voice to God's desire. Abraham's prayer opened, as it were, a channel for God's merciful grace to enter those cities. Unfortunately, that grace did not find a welcome, for there was no one to receive it. All rejected it, clinging instead to evil.

God desires to save. This is why God sent the Blessed Virgin Mary to Fatima in 1917. When she appeared in July of that year, the Mother of God revealed to the three children a terrible scene--Hell. Photos of the children that were taken afterwards show how badly shaken they were. They committed themselves to praying, fasting, and offering sacrifices for the conversion and salvation of sinners. The youngest, Jacinta, was particularly moved by what she had seen. She did not want anyone to go to that place of definitive alienation from God.

We are not so innocent. At one time or another we have held on to anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, and hatred. You and I have probably wanted to see our enemies--personal, ethnic, or national--rot in hell.

Not Jesus. He came to save humanity so that no one would rot in hell. He prayed for his enemies who crucified him. The New Testament calls us to bless those who curse us, just as Jesus did.

This is the prayer that unites us to God. This is the prayer that unites us to one another each First Friday and Saturday. Over the years it has united many, some who are no longer with us physically. They are with us spiritually now in a powerful way, praying and interceding with and for us. Good and gentle and holy Father Redemptus is with us tonight, praying.

Our prayer is that God may have mercy on all and give to all the grace to be converted, to accept the salvation that Christ won for us on the cross. We strive to make this a pure prayer, a pure channel for God's merciful grace to enter the world, a channel not clogged by rancor or bitterness.

This is the meaning of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These Two Hearts suffered for love of humanity, for sinners. The Heart of Jesus was pierced on the cross. The Heart of Mary was pierced by the sword of sorrow that only a mother could feel watching her own flesh and blood suffer and die that way. These Two Hearts continue to suffer for hurting humanity. They suffer for the terrible pains and sorrow people inflict on one another. They suffer for the consequences of sin that lead to self-destruction. Their suffering moves us to pray and do penance for the salvation of all those who suffer and for all who cause suffering.

Let us close with the words with which Pope Benedict ended his General Audience of May 18:

Dear brothers and sisters, the prayer of intercession of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever wider to God's superabundant mercy so that in daily prayer we may know how to desire the salvation of humanity and ask for it with perseverance and with trust in the Lord who is great in love.

Fatima and the Apostleship of Prayer

I led an afternoon of recollection yesterday for the local St. Gregory VII Chapter of Catholics United for the Faith. My two talks were entitled "Fatima and Lent: the Call to Prayer and Penance."

The story of Fatima begins, I believe, before Our Lady's appearance there in 1917 and before the appearance of the Angel of Peace in 1916. I think it begins in 1909.

Last May Fr. Jaime Rasura, S.J., who is an associate pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Diego, sent me a copy of a 1909 leaflet of the Apostleship of Prayer. In those days the Holy Father had only one prayer intention that he gave to the Church through the Apostleship of Prayer. In 1929 he added a monthly Mission Intention. His General Intention for January 1909 was "Catholicity in Portugal." The reflection in the leaflet for this intentions reads: "One of the aims of the Apostleship is the union of Catholics in prayer for the needs of the Church. At the opening of the New Year Our Holy Father, who knows so well the wants of his children, urges us to pray for Portugal, which at present is in great danger...."

What danger? In 1908 King Charles I had been assassinated. The country was in turmoil and Pope St. Pius X asked the world to pray for Portugal. Matters only got worse. In 1910 there was a socialist revolution and an anti-religious party took over the leadership of the country. The papal nuncio was expelled, religious houses were closed, processions were banned, priests and religious were forbidden to wear their clerical garb or habits, priests and bishops who opposed these measures were imprisoned or exiled. Perhaps some people at the time thought that their prayers the previous year were in vain.

A few years later God sent the Angel of Peace and Our Blessed Mother to three children and to the world. Part of Secret that Our Lady gave to the children during her appearance on July 13, 1917 was: "In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will be kept always."

I believe that the events in Fatima and all that has followed are directly related to the prayers of the Faithful who answered Pope St. Pius X's call for prayer in January, 1909. In his note that accompanied the leaflet, Fr. Rasura wrote: "How about this 100 year old leaflet? Pray for peace in Portugal and soon after Our Lady appears to the three children at Fatima. Prayers of the A.P. are powerful."

All Night Vigil

For the 533rd time, a group of Catholics in the Milwaukee area gathered for what they call an "All Night Eucharistic Vigil of Reparation and Prayer." Going from church to church throughout the archdiocese, they begin with Mass at 8 PM on the First Friday of each month and end with Mass at 5 AM on First Saturday. During the night they listen to talks, pray the four sets of mysteries of the rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, offer prayers of consecration and reparation, and make the Stations of the Cross. I joined them for about an hour last night, leading a procession with the Blessed Sacrament and giving a brief talk on "Mary, Queen of Peace." Preparing for the talk helped me further process my recent pilgrimage to Fatima. Here's basically what I said...

The All Night Vigil began as a response to Our Lady's call at Fatima to pray, do penance, and show devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For 45 years this group has gathered to pray and sacrifice some of their sleep for the cause of peace.

In 1916, before the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima, a celestial being named the Angel of Peace appeared to three children to prepare them. A year later, on six succesive months, Mary herself appeared. Since its official approval in 1930, every pope has called Fatima "a reaffirmation of the Gospel." Why? Because when Jesus began His public ministry He did so calling for conversion. This was Mary's message at Fatima.

There will be no peace in the world without the conversion that begins in each human heart.

Last December 7 to 14 I went on a pilgrimage to Fatima. This pilgrimage affected me more than my 2006 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Cova da Iria, where Mary appeared in 1917, is a place of tangible peace. All 26 of us pilgrims felt that the first evening that we walked on to the grounds of the shrine. After I returned to the U.S. I met with the superior of the Carmelite monastery in Denmark, WI and she told me "What Lourdes is for the body, Fatima is for the soul." I experienced Fatima as a place of deep healing and of peace. And I had to wonder: why did it affect me more than the Holy Land?

Was it because this is the very place where Mary appeared with a message of peace less than 1oo years ago? Was it because this is the place where the 3 shepherds who saw her are buried? Was it because of the faith of all the people who come there with votive offerings of candles and wax images representing their needs, who come to adore our Eucharistic Lord at the perpetual adoration chapel, who come for the Sacrament of Reconciliation which is available in various languages throughout the day, who walk on their knees in petition and sacrifice down the length of the plaza?

Peace seems like an impossible dream today, but miracles are possible. I saw the results of two miracles at Fatima. One was the huge chunk of the Berlin Wall that is on display there. When I was growing up I never thought I would see the end of Communism in the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet it happened, the result of prayer and sacrifice. The other miracle I saw was a bullet in a crown. After the attempt on his life, Pope John Paul II said, "One finger pulled the trigger; another finger guided the bullet." That bullet should have killed him but it didn't and in gratitude for Mary's protection on that day, May 13, 1981, the anniversary of Mary's first appearance at Fatima, Pope John Paul went to Fatima and made an offering of the bullet that almost killed him. It is in a gold crown that, on special occasions, is placed on the statue of Our Lady of Fatima that sits on the very spot where she appeared. I wondered where the bullet would be located. How could it be artistically added to the crown without destroying its symmetry and beauty? It is in the very middle, under the top, in a spot where it fit so perfectly that the crown needed no adjustment to accomodate the bullet.

Before he was elected pope, when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the Church's interpretation of the "Third Secret" of Fatima which Pope John Paul had allowed to be released. Lucia had always said that it was not within her capacity to interpret the vision she had; this was the Church's task, not hers. Thus the Church's interpretation of the Third Secret--the vision the children had of a bishop in white being struck down as he climbed a hill--is that this was a prophetic vision of what could have happened but which was avoided because of prayer. As the future Pope Benedict wrote: "When, after the attempted assassination on 13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of the 'secret' brought to him, was it not inevitable that he should see in it his own fate? He had been very close to death, and he himself explained his survival in the following words: '...it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death' (13 May 1994). That here 'a mother's hand' had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies."

Miracles are possible. Peace is possible. How? Through the Blessed Virgin Mary's "Peace Plan."
It's really very simple and the All Night Vigil has been implementing it for 45 years. It consists of 1) prayer, especially the rosary; 2) penance, acts of sacrifice for the conversion of sinners and to make reparation for the way in which humanity has treated the Hearts of Jesus and Mary; 3) devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially honoring her on the First Saturday of each month.

Such devotion to the Heart of Mary is more than a prayer that is said and then forgotten. To be devoted to Mary's Heart is to desire to have a heart like hers. This is what the three children at Fatima had.

Whenever Mary appeared to them, Lucia first asked one question--"What do you want of me?" She didn't begin by asking something for herself. She didn't ask "What can you do for me?" She sought not her will but the will of the heavenly visitor. Lucia had a heart like Mary's which sought and totally accepted God's will for her.

Francisco had a heart like Mary's because he was willing to have his heart pierced by sacrifices. Mary sacrificed so much to be the Mother of God and she consoled Jesus by standing under His cross sharing in His sufferings. After Our Lady's visits, Francisco gave himself to offering sacrifices to console Jesus who had been rejected by so many in the world. He spent hours in the church where he and the other children had been baptized so that he could console the One whom he called "The Hidden Jesus."

Jacinta showed that she had a heart like Mary's through her special concern for the Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father. After the July appearance, when the three children were playing in a field, and Lucia and Francisco had gone off to look for some wild honey, Jacinta had a vision of the Pope. When her brother and cousin returned she described it this way: "I don't know how it happened. I saw the Holy Father in a very big house. He was kneeling before a table, holding his face in his hands and he was crying. Outside, there were many people; some were throwing stones at him, others were swearing at him and saying many ugly words to him. How pitiful it was! We must pray a lot for him." I can't help thinking of how Pope Benedict must suffer as he looks out over the world. And how he was grabbed and pulled down at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Perhaps our prayers protected him from injury that night. This is something--prayer for the Holy Father and his intentions--that is a big part of what we try to promote in the Apostleship of Prayer.

So I say to you tonight: be strong, be confident, persevere in your monthly vigil. Encourage others to join you. Miracles are not over. Conversions can happen. Peace is possible. The Queen of Peace promised it, but as her subjects on earth, we must pray and sacrifice for peace. It will begin in our own hearts and from there it will spread into the world.

The Motherhood of Mary

Happy and Blessed New Year! On this first day of the calendar year we celebrate a Solemnity in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. We are celebrating her motherhood. The Responsory in the Office of Readings today says it all:

O pure and holy Virgin,
how can I find words to praise your beauty?
The highest heavens cannot contain God whom you carried in your womb.

Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
The highest heavens cannot contain God whom you carried in your womb.

Mary is the Mother of God. Because Jesus is truly God and truly human we can truthfully call Mary the Mother of God.

Mary is the Mother of Christ. She gave flesh to the Messiah, God's Anointed One.

Mary is the Mother of the Body of Christ, the Church. In Baptism each of the faithful are joined to Christ and become members of His Body. We can truthfully say that Mary is the Mother of the Church and we can say that Mary is the Mother of each member of the Church. She is, in a very real and personal way, my Mother and your Mother.

In 1969 I went on a two week camping trip that changed my life. I and five of my high school classmates and Fr. John Eagan, a Jesuit who taught and mentored us, drove around Lake Superior. From the first morning to the last, when we got into the station wagon to head out, we began the day's journey with a rosary. This was not something we were excited about. We vied for the very back of the station wagon where, behind all the knap sacks, sleeping bags, and tents we wouldn't have to participate in reciting the rosary. But by the end of the trip something had happened to me. It was my turn to be in the back and be free of the obligation to pray the rosary and I opted out. I gave my turn to a classmate and chose to sit up front in order to participate in the recitation of the rosary. I can't help thinking that in a quiet and gentle way Mary heard the reluctant prayers of this youth going into his last year of high school and claimed him as a special son.

I entered into my senior year of high school a different person with a more positive attitude toward myself and toward life. And I began to think: maybe I should do for other young people what Fr. Eagan had done for me. Maybe I should become a Jesuit. The seed of my Jesuit vocation had been planted, but I decided to go off to college first and to experience more of life. I commuted to a small Catholic college a half hour from where I lived. Every day as I drove to school I first prayed a rosary. Sometimes I prayed it very fast in order to get through it as soon as possible so that I could then turn on the radio and listen to the Top 40.

I can't help thinking that this, in a way, is what Blessed Francisco of Fatima did as well. Before Our Lady appeared to him and to his sister Jacinta and his cousin Lucia, they would pray the rosary while tending sheep. But he wanted to play and so he suggested that they shorten their prayers and instead of praying the entire Hail Mary they simply pray the words "Hail Mary." Perhaps this is why when Mary first appeared to the children Francisco could not see her and she told Lucia that he would only be able to if he prayed the rosary. Before he finished the first decade he could see her.

"Hail Mary!" the children shouted. "Hail Mary...." I recited quickly as I drove to school. And Mary answered. She appeared to the children at Fatima and somehow she nurtured the seed that had been planted in my heart. After a few months of college I decided to apply to the Jesuits and was accepted.

Mary, Mother of God. Mother of Christ. Mother of the Church. Mary, my Mother. And that's why I add another title to this little litany: Mary, Mother of my vocation.

To Denmark and Back

That title makes it sound as though I took another trip across the Atlantic, but the truth is that I went to Denmark, Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon and returned yesterday. Denmark is the location of the Monastery of the Holy Name of Jesus, a group of nine Discalced Carmelite Sisters. Mother Mary Elizabeth had asked me to lead the community's Advent Penance Service.


I had the blessed opportunity to meet with Mother for about an hour after I arrived and had one of those "God-incidences" or "small world moments." I told Mother that I had just been to Fatima and her face lit up. Before entering the Carmelites, Mother had been part of a religious group of women associated with the World Apostolate of Fatima. She made several trips to Fatima and so we were able to share our experiences of that special place. She told me: "What Lourdes is for the body, Fatima is for the soul." That certainly rings true for me. I continue to reflect on my recent pilgrimage to Fatima and to savor the graces of that visit.

Before celebrating Mass I had another "God-incidence." In the sacristy was a copy of an icon that I have hanging in my room at the Marquette University Jesuit Community. It was given to me by Fr. Mark Kirby a few years ago when I visited with him in Hamden, Connecticut. He had been a Cistercian monk in Rome and is now founding the new Diocesan Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Obviously, I thought, Mother also knows Fr. Mark and she later told me that he is a good friend of their community.


There is a word for these sorts of connections. A friend of mine, Fr. Raymond Gawronski, S.J., who used to teach at Marquette and now works as a spiritual director and professor at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, calls this "a web of grace." In the Body of Christ we are all connected. But it is also true that within this Body, there are some special connections, like the ones we have in the Apostleship of Prayer and through this blog. It is grace that brings us together.

Fatima Itinerary

The story of Fatima goes back to 1916 when an angel appeared to three children--Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta--in preparation for the Blessed Virgin Mary's appearances. Then in 1917, on the 13th of each month from May to October, except for August, our Lady appeared to the three children in a pasture called the Cova da Iria. In August the children were detained in jail by government officials and Mary appeared to them on the 19th of that month at a place closer to their home--Valinhos. Today a large basilica and plaza have been built at the Cova and a replica of the original chapel (the Capelhina) is in the plaza next to the site of Mary's appearances.


On my recent pilgrimage to Fatima I, and 25 other pilgrims from Wisconsin, the Twin Cities, the Chicago area, and Austin, Texas, flew to Newark and then to Lisbon, Portugal, arriving on December 8. Fatima is about 80 miles north of Lisbon and on the way we stopped in Santarem, site of a Eucharistic miracle that occured in the year 1247. We were able to climb behind the high altar and venerate at closehand the miracle of a Host that turned to flesh and blood.


Our hotel in Fatima was located just outside the grounds of the shrine, a place filled with an atmosphere of peace. I celebrated Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception at the main altar in the basilica and afterwards we visited the tombs of the three children, located just outside the sanctuary.

At mid-morning the next day, I celebrated Mass in the Capelhina, at an altar right next to a statue of Our Lady of Fatima which marks the spot where Mary appeared. Afterwards, we toured the large complex of shrine buildings which include a perpetual Eucharistic adoration chapel and reconciliation rooms. In the afternoon a Sister from the Philippines took us through an exhibit entitled "Fatima, Light and Peace" where we watched a video and saw the various offerings that people have left in honor of our Lady, including the crown which contains the bullet from the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II. At 5 PM I gave the first of three talks for our pilgrimage.


On December 10, after Mass in the Capelhina, we went to Valinhos, the site of the August 19 apparition as well as two of the three appearances of the angel. A short distance away is a village called Aljustrel where we visited the home of Jacinta and Francisco and the home of their cousin Lucia where the angel appeared at the family's well. We also visited the church where the children were baptized and where Francisco visited "the Hidden Jesus" in a wood tabernacle that is still in use. In the late afternoon I gave my second talk which focused on the story of Fatima from 1916 to the present.


Between the Cova and Valinhos there have been erected Stations of the Cross. On the next morning we walked and prayed the Stations which were given by Hungarian Catholics from around the world who had fled their homeland during the post-World War II period of Communist oppression. The Stations end at a beautiful chapel which they also financed. In the afternoon we celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Mass in a new part of the shrine located under the plaza and in front of another large church built to accomodate close to 15,000 people. I gave my third and final talk afterwards.

On December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I had the privilege of celebrating Mass in the Capelhina as the sun rose. After breakfast we boarded our bus and drove to Batalha, where there is an impressive 14th Century church. We then drove to Nazare, a coastal town where one of the oldest known statues of the Madonna and Child is venerated. Many explorers and missionaries, including St. Francis Xavier, paid homage to our Lady here before embarking on their perilous journeys. Though the beach was deserted, I took off my shoes and socks and put my feet in the Atlantic Ocean which was warmer than I'd expected, warmer than Lake Michigan this time of year.


Finally, on Sunday, December 13, we celebrated Mass in the Holy Family Chapel, one of the many chapels in the shrine, and afterwards we burned all the many prayer petitions that we had carried with us to Fatima. We drove to Lisbon where we visited an old defense tower built on the Tagus River, a monument to the Navigators and Explorers, Jeronimos monastery, the Cathedral, and the birthplace of St. Anthony of Padua. We ate lunch in central Lisbon at a sidewalk cafe on a sunny day on which the temperatures were in the 60's.


On December 14 we chased the sun across the Atlantic and arrived in Newark and then in Chicago, giving thanks for a safe journey filled with blessings.

Back from Fatima

I returned late last night from my pilgrimage to Fatima. It was a very blessed time and I plan on writing about the experience over the next week or so. My favorite place was in the beautiful basilica where the three seers of Fatima are buried. Blessed Jacinta and her cousin Lucia (who died in 2005) are buried on the left side of the sanctuary and Blessed Francisco is buried on the right. Above Francisco's tomb there is a statue of him on the wall. He is sitting in a tree with a lamb on his lap and birds all around him. The birds are even on the outer edges of the slab of rock that frames the statue and on the tomb itself. Why?

There is a story told that one day Francisco ran into another boy who had captured a little bird. Francisco begged him to let it go but the boy refused. Francisco offered to pay him to release the bird and ran all the way home and back to get the "ransom money." When the other boy released the bird Francisco called after it, "Now be careful and don't get caught again!"

Like his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, this saintly boy loved God's creatures and didn't want to see any of them hurt. And so the birds surround his statue and his tomb.

Pilgrimage to Fatima

In an hour I will be picked up by Juan Landa, director of Mater Dei Tours, and we will go to O'Hare airport in Chicago where we will catch a flight for Newark and then one for Lisbon, Portugal. I am on my way to Fatima!

Juan and I worked together in the summer of 2006 when I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Juan takes care of all the details and I serve as chaplain for the group. About two dozen of us are going to Fatima today.

I am very much looking forward to this pilgrimage. I don't know if I'll be able to blog while I am there, but you can follow our itinerary at the Mater Dei web site. I am carrying the Apostleship of Prayer and all its members, supporters, promoters, and benefactors in my heart and will be lifting everyone up to our Mother.

As I reflect on this pilgrimage, I think about the connection between the message of Fatima and the Apostleship of Prayer. Three words come to mind: prayer, sacrifice, reparation. When she appeared in Fatima in 1917, these are the things that the Blessed Virgin Mary invited the world to undertake more fervently. She assured us that prayer does make a difference and that sacrifices make prayer even more powerful. Finally, since sin has done so much damage to the world, she invited us to do what Jesus did: to make reparation or repair the damage that sin has caused. These three--prayer, sacrifice, and reparation--are certainly part of the program of the Apostleship of Prayer. I am looking forward to reflecting on this some more in Fatima.