St. Francis of Assisi Church

 I am in Springfield, IL, at the Motherhouse of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis where I am helping direct some seminarians from Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis on their annual retreat.



While the weather has been desperately cold, I've stayed indoors where it is cozy and warm.  The Sisters run a retreat and conference center called Chiara Center.  The hospitality has been great.





One of the beauties of this retreat center is the church which clearly shows we are still in the Christmas Season.

This Nativity set is up yearlong and includes St. Francis who is credited with organizing the first living creche.








The church also includes a shrine of St. Therese of Lisieux which depicts various scenes from her life.

The Sisters ran a Tuberculosis Sanitarium here from 1919 to 1973.

St. Therese died of TB and so it was natural to create this shrine in the church and to ask her help for the patients as well as for the missionaries who left this Motherhouse and journeyed throughout the world.

The Triumph of Our Crosses

On September 14 we celebrated the Exaltation or Triumph of the Holy Cross.  I gave the following homily to a group at the Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra, CA.

We are celebrating a great mystery today. It's the mystery of how God saved the world from sin and death.

In the first reading (Numbers 21: 4b-9) we heard of a paradox: how a serpent, the source of death, was lifted up and became a source of healing.

This prefigured Jesus who took upon himself sin and death, was lifted up on the cross, and became the source of ultimate healing.  The cross--an instrument of death--became the instrument of life. The sign of failure and utter defeat became the sign of victory.

In the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches there is a beautiful hymn that is sung over and over again at Easter: "Christ trampled down death by death."

Who would have thought it?  Not Satan who was behind the crucifixion and who thought he had won but was defeated.

Now it's our turn.  Jesus told us to pick up our crosses and to follow him.  We are to pick up the daily hardships, sufferings, and frustrations--all those things that call for sacrifice--and unite them to the cross of Jesus. By following him in this way we follow him to victory.

The Bishops at the end of the Second Vatican Council had a series of messages for various groups of people including the poor, the sick, and the suffering. To them they said:

All of you who feel heavily the weight of the cross, you who are poor and abandoned, you who weep, you who are persecuted for justice, you who are ignored, you the unknown victims of suffering, take courage. You are the preferred children of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of hope, happiness and life. You are the brothers of the suffering Christ, and with Him, if you wish, you are saving the world.

This is the Christian science of suffering, the only one which gives peace. Know that you are not alone, separated, abandoned or useless. You have been called by Christ and are His living and transparent image. In His name, the council salutes you lovingly, thanks you, assures you of the friendship and assistance of the Church, and blesses you.

Of course Jesus is the one Savior of the world. He won salvation through his death and resurrection. But not everyone knows of this victory nor has accepted it. Now each one of us plays a role in the ongoing work of salvation.

Christ won the victory. It may not seem like it, but victory is assured. Evil will not win in the end, just as it did not win when Jesus was crucified.  Have hope! You too will triumph with Christ if you join your crosses to his.

Our human tendency is to want to see tangible results, to know that our prayers and sacrifices--all the sufferings we offer up--are making a difference.  Pope Francis addressed this in his Apostolic Exhortation "The Joy of the Gospel" (#278-9) and he offered a word of hope:

Faith also means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity. It means believing that he marches triumphantly in history with those who “are called and chosen and faithful” (Rev 17:14). ...

Because we do not always see these seeds growing, we need an interior certainty, a conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid apparent setbacks.... It involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit (cf. Jn 15:5). This fruitfulness is often invisible, elusive and unquantifiable. We can know quite well that our lives will be fruitful, without claiming to know how, or where, or when. We may be sure that none of our acts of love will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others. No single act of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful endurance is wasted. All of these encircle our world like a vital force. Sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity. It is not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement. It may be that the Lord uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit. The Holy Spirit works as he wills, when he wills and where he wills; we entrust ourselves without pretending to see striking results. We know only that our commitment is necessary. Let us learn to rest in the tenderness of the arms of the Father....

The theme of our retreat this weekend has been the question of Jesus, "Who do you say that I am?" Our answer today is, "You are the winner!"  You are the one who defeated sin and death with a cross. You are the one who now invites each of us to be a winner.

The Sisters of Life

I am half way between New York City and Albany at St. Joseph Camp which the Sisters of Life are using for their retreat. I am with Fr. Christopher Collins, S.J., and Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J. and we are directing 17 Sisters in their annual eight day retreat.  The Sisters of Life are a new religious congregation which John Cardinal O’Connor of New York City founded on June 1, 1991. 

In a retreat conference, Cardinal O’Connor spoke of the rationale for this new order: “Over the course of hundreds of years Almighty God has inevitably seemed to raise up religious communities to meet the special needs of the day. I am convinced that the crucial need of our day is to restore to all society a sense of the sacredness of human life. Basic to the worst evils of our day is surely a widespread contempt for human life.”

He went on: “Now it seems time for a religious community to pray each day at some length, by way of the Sacred Liturgy, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office, in contemplation before the Blessed Sacrament, in the holy rosary, in various other forms of prayer.  In addition, the community will engage in active ministries which will be an extension of contemplation.”

These Sisters are certainly prayer warriors in the cause of promoting a culture of life, a civilization of love.  Their annual, individually-directed eight day retreat, of which I am blessed to participate, is a prime example of this. 

On the day of their foundation, the Cardinal told them:  “It is your charism to plead for the protection of all human life at every level, with a special focus on those most helpless and unwanted, and to advance a sense of the sacredness of all human life.” 

Cardinal O’Connor told the first Sisters of Life that their consecration was a witness to sacrifice, the antidote to what St. John Paul II called “the culture of death.”  He said: “It will not be through your human persuasion, it will not be through your writings, it will be through your prayer, through your apostolate, through your example of consecrating yourselves that other women will come to understand and will consecrate themselves. It is imperative that you see the relationship between your laying down your life and your encouraging these women to be willing to sacrifice rather than to destroy or permit to be destroyed, the life of their unborn child. This is true not only for the unborn; it is true for all human life, human life which has come to be held in such contempt. The refugees in the Middle East at this moment are enduring unbelievable suffering, not simply because of the war but because the world has accepted this kind of contempt for human life. The world has accepted bombings and artillery fire which, even if destined only against a military adversary, by its nature is going to kill, to maim, to wound, to leave hungry and homeless hundreds of thousands of human beings created in the image and likeness of God.”

Those words were spoken in 1991, but could have been spoken today. Today there are millions “of human beings created in the image and likeness of God” who have been left “hungry and homeless” by war in the Middle East.  During this month of August Pope Francis has asked us to pray in a special way for them and for all refugees.

While reading Cardinal O’Connor’s remarks at the foundation of the Sisters of Life I discovered that another group of Sisters, to whom I gave a retreat acouple years ago, played a significant role in the early life of this new congregation.  They are the ParishVisitors of Mary Immaculate.  The Cardinal placed the early formation of the Sisters of Life in the hands of the Parish Visitors, saying: “I have known you since I was the Bishop of Scranton and Sister Mary played the same guitar for me that she played today. I have admired you. Your lives are contemplative, missionary. That will be the lives that these women will lead. I cannot, and I say this to you sincerely, I cannot think of a congregation anywhere in the world who will give them a better example, who will better model for them our Blessed Mother, who will give them a greater example of devotion to Our Lord and to the service of His people. They will see you as you pray, they will see you in many of your activities. They will learn from you. They will grow rapidly under your care, as Jesus the Christ Child grew in wisdom and grace under the tutelage of His mother and father.” 

The Sisters of Life. The Parish Visitors. One of the blessings of being the director of the Apostleship of Prayer in the U.S. is praying with these consecrated women who are true Apostles of Prayer and who are devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as they live the Daily Offering. 

Retreat in Hawaii

A couple weeks ago, during the coldest week (so far) of our Wisconsin winter, I went to Hawaii to
give a retreat to the priests and bishop of the Honolulu Diocese. The view from St. Stephen’s Retreat Center was spectacular and the weather was perfect, though the local TV weather station told people that we would be having a “two blanket night” because the temperatures were going to fall to 60.  I survived.  This photo is from the dining room and in the distance you can see the ocean.

 

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace is the oldest cathedral in continuous use in the United States. It was dedicated in 1843 and St. Damien, the leper priest of Molokai, was ordained there on May 21, 1864. On either side of the sanctuary you will find pictures and relics of both St. Damien and St. Marianne Cope, a Franciscan Sister who cared for lepers, including Fr. Damien during the last year or so of his life.  Today is Mother Marianne’s feast. Here is a saying of hers: “What little good we can do in this world to help and comfort the suffering, we wish to do it quietly and so far as possible unnoticed and unknown.” 

One of the priests who was on the retreat and whose company I enjoyed at meals was Fr. Cletus  Mooya. He was from Zambia and he came to Hawaii with two other Africans who were members of the Oratorians, a group founded by St. Philip Neri in 1575. They were unable to start an Oratory in Hawaii and ended up becoming diocesan priests for Honolulu. A week ago I was shocked to receive a message that Fr. Cletus had suddenly gone into a coma and died. He was only 40. I hope my retreat, with its focus on the deep, enduring love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, helped prepare him to meet the Lord. May Fr. Cletus rest in peace and may his family in Zambia and the friends he made and people he served in Hawaii be consoled. Amen.

The Special Role of Seniors

One of the talks I usually give on my retreats is about the perspective that death gives to life. Realizing that we are not going to live on this earth forever should make us use the time we have well. I like to quote from Psalm 90: "Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong." Then I look out at the retreatants and observe that we have some "strong" people in the group. The psalm goes on: "Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart."

A few weeks ago I had two retreats with "strong" people. They were residents of the Little Sisters of the Poor Residences for the Elderly in Scranton, PA and Totowa, NJ.  In fact one of the residents in Totowa is very "strong." He's the retired archbishop of Newark who is 101 years old. 

I enjoy giving retreats to "seniors," as one person told me I should call older people. They are often forgotten and aren't mobile enough to get out to a retreat house.  Society in general treats them as useless and unproductive. Yet they play a very important role in the life of society and the Church.  They are wisdom figures. A comedian once said: "You don't get to be old by being a fool."  I enjoyed telling those older retreatants that their prayers, joined to their sacrifices and sufferings, play an important role.  And so that they would know this wasn't just my opinion, I shared with them a quote from Pope Benedict XVI.  He said the following when he visited a home for the elderly November 12, 2012:

"I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man visiting his peers. ... I would like to tell you with deep conviction: it is beautiful to be old! ... We have received the gift of longevity. Living is beautiful even at our age, despite some 'aches and pains' and a few limitations.

"In the Bible longevity is considered a blessing of God; today this blessing is widespread and must be seen as a gift to appreciate and to make the most of. And yet frequently society, dominated by the logic of efficiency and gain, does not accept it as such: on the contrary it frequently rejects it, viewing the elderly as non-productive or useless.

"When life becomes frail, in the years of old age, it never loses its value and its dignity: each one of us, at any stage of life, is wanted and loved by God, each one is important and necessary.

"Dear elderly brothers and sisters, the days sometimes seem long and empty, with difficulties, few engagements and few meetings. Never feel down at heart: you are a wealth for society, even in suffering and sickness. And this phase of life is also a gift for deepening the relationship with God. ... Do not forget that one of the valuable resources you possess is the essential one of prayer: become interceders with God, praying with faith and with constancy. Pray for the Church, and pray for me, for the needs of the world, for the poor, so that there may be no more violence in the world. The prayers of the elderly can protect the world....  The Pope loves you and relies on all of you! May you feel beloved by God and know how to bring a ray of God's love to this society of ours...."

"A Stupendous Gift"

I am blessed to be in the second day of an eight day retreat that I am giving to the Carmelite Sisters of Flemington, New Jersey.  So far I have been reflecting with the Sisters on a beautiful 1999 document, "Verbi Sponsa"--an instruction from the Congregation  for Institutes of Contemplative Life and  for Societies of Apostolic Life.  From beginning to end this document, subtitled "Instruction on the Contemplative Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns, is filled with gratitude for this special vocation.

The first section says that "cloistered nuns" are "a unique grace and precious gift within the mystery of the Church's holiness."  And the conclusion contains this tribute which contains a quote from the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consacrata: "The intention of this Instruction is to confirm the Church's high esteem for the wholly contemplative life of cloistered nuns, and to reaffirm her concern to safeguard its authentic nature, 'that this world may never be without a ray of divine beauty to lighten the path of human existence'."

Next week, using the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and excerpts from Pope Benedict's first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, I will reflect with the Sisters on the Our Father. The Sisters live a cloistered life, apart from the world for which they offer intense prayer. I celebrate Mass and present my conferences through a grill.

I'm especially blessed to be here today, the World Day for Consecrated Life. In 1997 Blessed John Paul II called for this special day on which to remember and pray for all those who are called to the consecrated life like these Sisters and like myself, a Jesuit.  In his Message for the first such World Day, Pope John Paul gave three reasons for instituting this special day.

First, to give praise and thanks to God for the vocation to consecrated life which the Holy Father called a "stupendous gift." He followed these words with a quote from the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, the foundress of these Discalced Carmelites: "What would become of the world if there were no religious?"

Secondly, Pope John Paul wrote, "this day is intended to promote a knowledge of and esteem for the consecrated life by the entire People of God."  From such "knowledge" and "esteem" it is hoped that many more young people will hear God calling them to this life.

The third reason for this special day concerns consecrate people themselves. Blessed John Paul II hoped that this celebration would help them "to acquire a more vivid consciousness of their irreplaceable mission in the Church and in the world."  He wanted them each year "to return to the sources of their vocation, to take stock of their own lives, to confirm the commitment of their own consecration." Doing this, the pope was convinced, "they will be able to give witness with joy to the men and women of our time, in diverse situations, that the Lord is the Love who is able to fill the heart of the human person."

What a blessing it is for me to celebrate the "stupendous gift" of a religious vocation at the Carmel of Mary Immaculate and Saint Mary Magdalen in Flemington, NJ! What a blessing it is to give a retreat to these Sisters during the Year of Faith!

Venerable Catherine McAuley's Sisters

Since last Tuesday I've been in Alma, Michigan where I began a retreat for some of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma-- 2 novices about to make their first profession, 9 Sisters in temporary vows, and 2 perpetually professed Sisters.  It has been a retreat for me as well because I've participated in their celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, their daily Holy Hour, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  I've also enjoyed getting to know a bit about their foundress, Mother Catherine McAuley, whom Blessed John Paul II declared "Venerable" in 1990, the first step toward her beatification.

Catherine McAuley was born in Ireland in 1778 and died in 1841.  In 1827 she used an inheritance to open a home for poor girls, the first "Home of Mercy."  The archbishop encouraged her to start a religious congregation to continue this good work and in 1831 the Sisters of Mercy began.  In contrast to the cloistered contemplative nuns with whom most people were familiar, they came to be known as "the walking sisters" because they went through the streets helping the poor and sick.  Today, in addition to the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they take a fourth vow of service to the poor, sick, and ignorant. 

St. Ignatius, the founder of my religious order, the Jesuits, wrote a prayer of offering ("Suscipe") at the end of his "Spiritual Exercises."  When one comes to know the love of God and the gift of Himself that He makes in Jesus and the Eucharist, one wants to return love for love by making of gift of oneself.  I was delighted that Venerable Catherine McAuley also wrote an offering prayer which the Sisters pray together every day after Mass.  Here is Mother Catherine's "Suscipe:"

My God, I am Thine for time and eternity.
Teach me to cast myself entirely
Into the arms of Thy loving Providence
With the most lively, unlimited confidence
In Thy compassionate, tender pity.
Grant me, O most Merciful Redeemer,
That whatever Thou dost ordain or permit
May be acceptable to me.
Take from my heart all painful anxiety,
Suffer nothing to sadden me but sin,
Nothing to delight me but the hope of
coming to the possession of Thee,
My God and my all,
In Thine everlasting kingdom.
Amen.

Now You Know

Last Wednesday I flew to Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC.  I returned on Friday.  On Thursday and Friday I recorded twelve 25 minute audio and video programs designed to lead people through a "heart-centered" approach to the "Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius."  I recorded four talks each morning and two each afternoon.  It was a bit of a work-out but the material is so familiar to me that it went smoothly and easily.  It is a bit odd to present retreat material to a camera but knowing how people have reacted to it in the past helped.  The one problem was when I told humorous stories or jokes.  With no laughter, canned or live, I wasn't able to judge how long to wait before proceeding to the next point. 

The company for which I made these recordings is "Now You Know Media, Inc." and their catalog of lecture and retreat series is truly amazing.  They even have recordings of talks and conferences of Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton.  I'm not sure when my talks will be edited, packaged, and available but I'm glad to be able to offer to more people the opportunity to grow in their spiritual lives by means of both the "Spiritual Exercises" and Sacred Heart spirituality.

Mary, Model of Womanhood

That was the theme of the retreat I gave last weekend to 90 women at the Sacred Heart Retreat Center in Alhambra, California. From Friday evening to Sunday afternoon we prayed together and I gave five talks and two homilies.

The talks were entitled: "Listen Like Mary," "A Woman and a Snake," "The Genius of Woman," "Mary our Model," and "St. Therese, a Child of Mary." To help me prepare I used the following resources: "Mulieris Dignitatem," Pope John Paul's 1988 Apostolic Letter to Women; Pope John Paul's 1995 Letter to Women, on the occasion of the United Nations Conference in Beijing; the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2004 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World;" and Alice von Hildebrand's little book "The Privilege of Being a Woman."

This is a topic that has interested me for a while. In the 1960's Dr. Karl Stern, a Jewish Freudian psychiatrist who became a Catholic, wrote a book entitled "The Flight from Woman." Part of the back cover's description goes like this: "The scientific revolution of the last 300 years has yielded, in Dr. Stern's view, a de-feminization and de-humanization of society, in the sense that it is a rejection of the kind of wisdom, called sophia, that man comprehends intuitively. 'If we equate the one-sidedly rational and technical with the masculine,' he states, 'there arises the ghastly spectre of a world impoverished of womanly values.'"

More recently, Pope Benedict spoke about the need for the complementarity of the sexes. In an address that he gave in Luanda, Angola on March 22, 2009, he said:

Man and woman are both called to live in profound communion through a reciprocal recognition of one another and the mutual gift of themselves, working together for the common good through the complementary aspects of masculinity and femininity. Who today can fail to recognize the need to make more room for the “reasons of the heart”? In a world like ours, dominated by technology, we feel the need for this feminine complementarity, so that the human race can live in the world without completely losing its humanity. Think of all the places afflicted by great poverty or devastated by war, and of all the tragic situations resulting from migrations, forced or otherwise. It is almost always women who manage to preserve human dignity, to defend the family and to protect cultural and religious values.

I enjoyed the retreat very much and hope to return to Alhambra to give the retreat again in the Fall. Truly I was "blessed among women!"

St. Louis Marian Conference

Last weekend I gave a retreat at White House, the Jesuit Retreat House in St. Louis. There were 77 men on the retreat, most of whom were alumni of Jesuit high schools and universities. After the retreat I moved to Bellarmine House of Studies, five houses near St. Louis University where the Jesuit scholastics live and study philosophy and theology after their novitiate. It's been a quiet and hospitable setting for me. I had all sorts of plans to visit people I know in the area but unfortunately that didn't work out.

On Wednesday I gave a talk at the local Serra Club, a group that works and prays for vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life. I spoke about the spirituality of offering that the Apostleship of Prayer promotes and how this can create a vocation-friendly environment in families and parishes. Ann Moloney, mother of nine who hosts a weekly radio show for moms on the local Catholic station (Covenant Radio), invited me to do an interview with her. We talked more about the spirituality of offering and how it can help busy Moms (and all of us) in the midst of daily activities which often seem to have no importance in the bigger picture but which, when united to the perfect offering of Jesus, have eternal significance. I was also able to record a 30 second spot to promote the Hearts on Fire retreat for young adults which is coming to St. Louis Feb. 24-25. Fr. Phil Hurley and the Jesuit Mission Band just returned from the Bahamas where over 50 people participated in a Hearts on Fire Retreat. They got rave reviews in the local paper.

Today the annual St. Louis Marian conference begins and I'll be giving three talks. Tonight I'll be speaking about "Fatima: the Call to Prayer and Penance." Tomorrow afternoon it will be "Pope John Paul II's Eucharistic Amazement" and on Sunday morning I'll talk about "Living a Eucharistic Life." I'm looking forward to the interaction that invariably follows giving a talk at a conference and meeting people at the table I'll have set up.

On Sunday afternoon I'll return to Milwaukee where I hear winter has also returned.

Prayer

I got back yesterday afternoon from my annual eight-day retreat which I spent alone in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. I basically had no interaction with people and was able to walk on the trails of Peninsula State Park. I also immersed myself in the Gospels. I felt called to focus my retreat this year on the life and teaching of Jesus and my spiritual director affirmed that before I left for my retreat.

As supplementary reading to the Gospels, I picked up parts of the first volume of Pope Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth" where I found some interesting observations about prayer. Chapter 5 is a reflection on the prayer of Jesus, the Our Father. In the preface to his reflections on the actual parts of the Our Father, Pope Benedict writes:

God addresses every individual by a name that no one else knows, as Scripture tells us (cf. Rev 2: 17). God's love for each individual is totally personal and includes this mystery of a uniqueness that cannot be divulged to other human beings.

In other words, each of us is a unique individual and though we share a common human nature we relate to God in unique and very personal or individual ways. I like to put it these two ways: 1) there's a place in God's Heart made just for you and just for me; 2) each of us gives God a delight or pleasure that no other human being can give God.

Pope Benedict goes on to say:

We are all familiar with the danger of reciting habitual formulas while our mind is somewhere else entirely.

So often people ask me how to get over distractions in prayer. I usually respond with "Welcome to the club!" Isn't it consoling to know that the Holy Father writes about being familiar with distractions?

Then he goes on to talk about prayer as relationship and as the foundation of life.

Most importantly, though, our relationship with God ... should be present as the bedrock of our soul. In order for that to happen, this relation has to be constantly revived and the affairs of our everyday lives have to be constantly related back to it. The more the depths of our souls are directed toward God, the better we will be able to pray. The more prayer is the foundation that upholds our entire existence, the more we will become men of peace. The more we can bear pain, the more we will be able to understand others and open ourselves to them. This orientation pervasively shaping our whole consciousness, this silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditating, and our being, is what we mean by "prayer without ceasing." ... This is what prayer really is--being in silent inward communion with God. it requires nourishment, and that is why we need articulated prayer in words, images, or thoughts. The more God is present in us, the more we will really be able to be present to him when we utter the words of our prayers.

In these words I find two approaches to prayer. One is the necessity of spending some quality time with God. This is what a retreat is; it's what a daily period of personal prayer is. This is the "nourishment" that our relationship, our communion with God requires. But we also need a time of prayer in which "the affairs of our everyday lives" are related back to God. This is the Examen or Evening Review or Examination of Consciousness. Through this prayerful review of the day we look back at what we said we were going to offer to God when we began the day with our Morning Offering. We look not only at what we offered to God but what God offered to us--how God was present in the events and people of our day; how God was speaking to us throughout our day. We can in this way "pray without ceasing" because God is present in every moment of our day. The more attuned we become to God's presence there in the moments of our day, the better we will be able to listen and the deeper we will grow in our relationship with God.

The Thief

I've heard that the earliest known image of Jesus depicts him as the Good Shepherd. Today's Gospel (Luke 12: 39-48) gives a very different image of Jesus. After warning his disciples that "if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into," he goes on to talk about the Son of Man coming "at an hour you do not expect." Like many of the parables which are designed to startle us into deeper reflection, so this comparison which Jesus makes is shocking.

Yet many people do think of God as a thief. There is a tendency to think of our lives as our own, not God's. Our gifts and talents and hard-earned possessions are our own, not God's. We see death as God stealing what is rightfully ours. The reality is that everything we are and have belongs to God. This was the meaning of last Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 22: 15-21). Jesus says to give the Roman coin back to the one whose image is on it and to give "to God what belongs to God." We who are made in the image and likeness of God and bear that image belong to God, not ourselves.

Our lives are a series of exercises in letting go. We practice surrender, preparing for the ultimate surrender when God will ask of us our very lives. Our practice of making a daily offering can help us. What also helps is the example of saints, like the North American Jesuit Martyrs whom we honor today, or St. Jeanne Jugan.

I'm giving a retreat to 17 Little Sisters of the Poor at their retreat house and summer vacation facility for seniors in Flemington, NJ. St. Jeanne Jugan, their foundress, was canonized by Pope Benedict in 2009. When Blessed John Paul II beatified her in 1982, he said: "Jeanne invites all of us, and I quote here from the Rule of the Little Sisters, to share personally in the beatitude of spiritual poverty, leading to that complete dispossession which commits a soul to God."

"Complete dispossession." This is not something we like to hear. In our "super-sizing" age where "more is better", St. Jeanne Jugan, like the Gospel, is counter-cultural. We tend to fool ourselves, thinking that we are in control. The reality is that God is God and we are not. We are God's creatures and beloved children. We and all we have belong to God.

The "Admiral"

From time to time a fellow Jesuit from my community at Marquette University calls the office and asks for the "Admiral." That's me. I'm the director of the Apostleship of Prayer but he refers to me as the Admiral of the Ship, the Apostle-ship that is. You can see: he's given to puns. So in light of this title I took the wheel of the boat that took us to Chambers Island last weekend for the retreat I gave there. Here's a photo to prove it, along with another shot from beautiful Holy Name Retreat House.

Door County Weekend

Though I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I'd never been to Door County, the peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan and forms the bay for which the city of Green Bay was named. I'd never been there, that is, until this weekend.

The Diocese of Green Bay has a gem called "Holy Name Retreat House" that is located on Chambers Island, a 45 minute boat ride from the harbor in the town of Fish Creek. I gave a retreat there from Friday to Sunday on the theme "Put out into the Deep: Entering into the Heart of Jesus." My first talk was the homily at Mass on Friday evening and the two talks on Saturday were "The True Love Story: the Sacred Heart of Jesus" and "Entering into the Heart of Jesus through Word and Sacrament." On Saturday evening we celebrated a reconciliation service during a holy hour of exposition, adoration, and benediction. The retreat ended on Sunday morning with a talk on "Living in Union with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus through the Apostleship of Prayer" and with Mass for which some of the 60 or so "Islanders" joined us. Holy Name Retreat House, which is celebrating its 60th year, is a beautiful, holy place, one of only two English-speaking island retreat houses in the world, and I highly recommend it.

On my way to Door County I stopped at the shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, the first and only Church-approved Marian apparition site in the U.S. There is a small church and in the crypt under it is a statue marking the place where Mary appeared in 1859 to a twenty-eight year old Belgian immigrant named Adele Brise.


I also visited the Catholic Youth Expedition camp located in Baileys Harbor. I know several of the staff members and it was a pleasure to spend some time with them, get a tour of the facility, meet some of the other young and enthusiastic staff members, pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy with them, and have lunch. They were getting the place ready for the 140 people who were coming for the Father's Day Weekend Family Expedition.




Though it was a grace to experience for the first time God's beautiful creation--Door County--I am savoring the greater grace of experiencing God's work at the shrine and in the lives of the enthusiastic and faith-filled people at the Catholic Youth Expeditions and Holy Name Retreat House.

I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota these days. Actually, Woodbury, a suburb of St. Paul. I'm giving an 8 day retreat based on the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius to a group of 12 Sisters who are members of an international congregation called the Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver. Each day I give three half hour talks, meet with individual Sisters over a 4 to 5 hour period, celebrate Mass, and participate in a nightly holy hour. It's like being on retreat myself. I always find that in preaching the "Spiritual Exercises" the various reflections, especially on the life of Jesus, become deeper for me.

It's always a blessing for me to meet groups of consecrated persons whom I've never met or known and to find out more about their founders and their charism. The Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver were founded in 1894 by Blessed Mary Theresa Ledochowska (1863-1922). She came from a prominent Polish family, the niece of a brave archbishop who opposed the unjust laws of the German Chancellor Bismarck, who was detained for three years as a result and, when freed, went to Rome where he became the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the Vatican office that organized the Church's missionary work.

Mary Theresa heard stories of cruelty and slavery in Africa and was particularly moved by a speech by Cardinal Lavigerie, the founder of the Missionaries of Africa (the "White Fathers"), who was traveling around Europe denouncing slavery. Here is part of it:

"Christian women of Europe! It is up to you to make these abominations known everywhere and to stir up against them the indignation of all civilized people. Do not leave your husbands, brothers and fathers in peace until they have used their authority, their eloquence and their goods to prevent further bloodshed. If God has given you a writer's talent, put it at the service of this cause: you will find none holier. Do not forget that it was a woman's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, translated now into all languages, that helped bring about the emancipation of slaves in America."

Galvanized by these words, Mary Theresa set to work doing everything she could to bring an end to slavery in Africa and to help the missionaries there. She wrote a play called Zaida, after its heroine, which became a box office success. It was the beginning of her vocation. She wrote to her uncle, Cardinal Ledochowski, in 1889, asking him to find out if the Pope would support her efforts to end slavery by founding a new religious congregation named after the Jesuit saint who called himself "the slave of the slaves forever." He wrote back:

"My dear niece, I hasten to reply to your letter ... in order to dispel any doubts or uncertainty you may have concerning Cardinal Lavigerie's work against slavery, which has the full backing of the Holy Father. Could you imagine any work more worthy of interest or support? ... Do not be afraid then, dear niece, that you could possibly be taking a false step in joining, with so many others, the struggle against the slave trade, especially among the blacks."

With this encouragement, she began her life work of working and praying for the missions, especially in Africa. Her desire was not to go to the missions herself but rather, with the help of other Sisters, to publicize the situation and work of the missionaries and to collect funds to help them. She thought of herself and her congregation as the hidden root that fed the tree which bore the fruit. Everyone could see the tree and its fruit, but these were only possible because of the hidden life that came from the Sisters' prayers, sacrifices, and work to raise funds for the missions. It's a work that continues today through this small congregation of less than 300 Sisters and their magazine Echo (from Africa and other continents).

In her Easter letter of 1916, Blessed Mary Theresa Ledochowska, who was beatified in 1975, wrote about the joy of offering up all in order to bring souls to God:

"I wish you all the riches of peace and the joy of Easter and thinking especially of the beautiful Feast of Easter which, we hope, we will celebrate one day, all united in heaven, united also to the many souls which we will have the grace to save for Heaven by means of our work."

For Greater Things You Were Born

Last weekend I was in Alhambra, California giving a retreat to 94 women at Sacred Heart Retreat House. This evening I'll be giving a retreat to about 50 men at the Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

While the retreats in Oshkosh always follow the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius, the ones in Alhambra have a different theme every year. This year's theme is "For Greater Things You Were Born," a quote from Mother Maria Luisa de la Pena, also known as Mother Luisita, the foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who run the retreat house in Alhambra. Archbishop Jose Gomez, who will be installed as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles next Tuesday, quoted Mother Luisita when he was installed as the Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles last year. Before the retreat the Sisters provided me with a quote from Archbishop Gomez that helped me prepare the five talks I gave. Here's the quote:

Venerable Mother Luisita will tell everyone, "For greater things you were born." That's it, my friends. That is the Good News we are called to proclaim to our city, to our country, throughout this continent and world, "Para grandes cosas hemos nacido." Each one of us has been made for love and for great and beautiful things. There is no soul that God does not long to touch with this message of love. But He wants to touch those souls through us. So let us make our lives something beautiful that we can offer it to God. Let us do everything, even the little duties of our days, out of love for him and for the love of our brothers and sisters.

As I prepared my talks, I couldn't help thinking how well this quote captures the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer. Here's a brief summary of the retreat:

Talk 1: "Put Out Into the Deep" Using the challenge of Jesus (see Luke 5: 4), which Pope John Paul II took up in his Apostolic Letter at the turn of the millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte), I spoke about the call that all Christians have to go deeper in their prayer lives. The Sacrament of Baptism has transformed us. We are now called to be who we have been made to be--children of God. We are called to be holy as our heavenly Father is holy.

Talk 2: "Your Sins Are Forgiven You" In this talk I spoke about the obstacle to holiness--sin--and how in the Sacrament of Reconciliation Jesus waits for us in order to forgive us. In going to that Sacrament we give Jesus the pleasure of healing us spiritually, the thing that He most enjoyed doing when He walked this earth.

Homily at Saturday Mass: "I Believe. Help My Unbelief" I talked about how faith is a virtue, a spiritual muscle, which, like any muscle, physical or spiritual, needs to be exercised in order to develop and be healthy. Faith, like all the virtues, is not an "all or nothing" reality, nor is it a feeling; rather, it is an act of the will, a decision, a choice.

Talk 3: "Abide With Me" This talk was given right before a long period of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. I talked about the amazing gift of the Eucharist and how, according to Pope Benedict's Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, the Eucharist is a mystery to be believed, celebrated, and lived. I focused on what we believe and how we celebrate the Eucharist.

Talk 4: "I Am With You Always" In Novo Millennio Ineunte, Pope John Paul said that in order to go deeper in our spiritual lives our parishes and communities need to be "schools of prayer." I went through seven ways of praying that the Holy Father mentioned: "imploring help," "thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly 'falls in love.'"

Talk 5: "Be A Living Sacrifice" Here is where I talked about the Daily Offering as a practical way to implement Archbishop Gomez's challenge: to do everything out of love for God and love for our brothers and sisters.

Homily at Sunday Mass: "Be Perfect" Sometimes "the perfect" can be the enemy of "the good." The devil loves to discourage us and make us think that we should give up our efforts because the ideal of holiness to which we are called is too high for us. It is. We are weak. But God's grace is powerful. What is impossible for us, is possible for God who gives us His grace through the Sacraments. With our eyes fixed on our goal of holiness, we walk one day at a time, not giving in to discouragement but striving to make progress little by little.

Headed South

In a little while I'll be leaving for Convent, Louisiana and a Jesuit retreat house called "Manresa on the Mississippi." I'll be leading about 110 men in a retreat that begins this evening and ends on Sunday afternoon when I'll fly back to Milwaukee. During the course of the weekend I'll be giving 11 half hour talks designed to lead the retreatants through the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius.

The Jesuits came to a former college in 1931 to begin this retreat center. I'll be giving the talks in this conference room. Unlike other Jesuit retreat houses up the Mississippi River--White House in St. Louis and Demontreville near St. Paul--Manresa does not have an optional recreation period when talking is permitted after dinner. From start to finish the retreat is silent. On the cover of their retreat manual is a quote from a man named Louis Yarrut:

"THE HOUSE OF SILENCE AND SACRED SOD,

WHERE NOBODY SPEAKS TO ANYBODY,

AND EVERYBODY SPEAKS TO GOD."

The chapel was recently remodeled and here is where we'll be celebrating Mass every day.

Lest anyone become jealous that I am leaving frigid Milwaukee where it was 4 below zero this morning, the weather forecast for the next two days in Convent includes a freeze warning. It's going to dip into the upper 20's at night. I'm sure the retreatants will blame me for bringing the cold, but before they can, I'm going to thank them for their Southern Hospitality--helping me to feel at home with the freezing weather.

Retreating or Progressing?

I'm back from my annual eight day retreat and in reporting on it I can't help thinking about the word "retreat." It often carries negative connotations. Armies retreat when they are losing the battle. Going on a spiritual retreat, however, is just the opposite. I'd like to think of it as a way to make progress, to grow, or to move forward. Just the opposite of retreating. And this was certainly my experience of retreat this year.

God was very good to me, but that shouldn't be a surprise. God is always good and, when given the opportunity for quality time with us, He responds generously. My retreat was very blessed and I'll probably need a while to reflect upon all its graces.

First of all, because I was away from the city, my work schedule, and my alarm clock, I was blessed with great sleep. I must have needed it because it seems I'd go to bed around 10 PM and wake up around 7 AM every day. Secondly, I was able to take a walk after lunch every day and the meals I made for myself were pretty healthy. Since our praying spirits are enfleshed in bodies, these things--rest, exercise in fresh air, good food in moderation--contribute to helping one make a good retreat.

I followed what turned out to be a good schedule for prayer, with Mass at noon and holy hours at 9 AM, 11 AM, 4 PM, and 6 PM. In between I prayed the Breviary, cleaned the little house where I stayed, brushed snow off the car and shoveled a bit, did some other reading (back issues of "One," the magazine of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association), or prayed a Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Besides the Bible and the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius, I used two other books that I highly recommend: 1) Fr. Michael E. Gaitley's "Consoling the Heart of Jesus: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat Inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius," and 2) Fr. Thomas D. Williams' "A Heart Like His: Meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus."

After my 7 PM supper I watched videos. Don't be scandalized. Here is a listing of the videos I saw: "The Island" (a Russian film about a monk who struggles with the memory a murder he thought he committed when he was a soldier in World War II); "The Pope: Life and Times of John Paul II"; "Sanctity Within Reach: Pier Giorgio Frassati" (an EWTN show about this beatified member of the Apostleship of Prayer); "Saint Therese of the Child Jesus: An Echo of the Heart of God" (a film that was created in 1997 in honor of the centenary of her death); "Clear Creek Abby: Living the Liturgy" (a promotion DVD from Benedictine monks in Oklahoma); "With God in Russia: The Story of Fr. Walter Ciszek"; "Solanus Casey: Priest, Porter, Prophet"; and "Servant of All: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen".

I find following the stories of saintly people a good way to relax during retreat and so, in addition to those movies, at night before going to bed I began reading a book about a Jesuit who had been the director of the Apostleship of Prayer in Ireland. The book was published three years after his death in 1921 and it's called "Life and Work of Rev. James Aloysius Cullen, S.J." Fr. Mark Kirby, a friend and fellow blogger (Vultus Christi) loaned it to me last summer when I visited him in Tulsa.

It was a great retreat but I have to admit that for the last two days back in the office I've found a lot of work to "offer up."

Off to the Hermitage

I'm about to become a hermit. Later this afternoon I'll be leaving Milwaukee, driving about 40 minutes, and beginning my annual eight day retreat. I can't recall ever making my retreat during Advent but it seems like a natural thing to do. I'll be at a small house that my community owns on Lake Five in the beautiful Kettle Moraine country of Southeastern Wisconsin. It's a familiar place where I've gone for other retreats and weekends of quiet.

I give a lot of retreats during the year. It's been said that everyone who gives or directs a retreat ends up making the retreat as well. I've found that to be true, but I also know that I need time for my own retreat. I cannot give what I haven't received.

Beginning my retreat on the eve of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception seems providential. I want to be like Mary, completely open to God's presence and activity in my life. I want to slow down in order to be attentive and open to whatever God wants to do in the coming days. The First Antiphon for the Psalm in today's Office of Readings in the Breviary confirmed this for me: "Surrender to God and he will do everything for you."

Magnificat Women's Retreat

On Thursday I got up bright and early (something more to "offer up") in order to catch a 6 AM flight to Orange County, California where Kathleen Beckman picked me up. Kathleen is a regional coordinator for a Catholic Women's group called "Magnificat" and is the author of several books including one entitled "Rekindle Eucharistic Amazement." We drove about an hour to the Passionist Retreat House located in Sierra Madre, north of Los Angeles, where I'm helping on a retreat for about 85 women.

We began Thursday evening when I gave a talk introducing the retreatants to the "Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius," and leading them in a consideration of what is called "The First Principle and Foundation." Yesterday I gave two talks: "The Call of Christ the King" and "Discernment."

Today I'll be available for spiritual direction and the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and Claretian Father John Hampsch, noted for his ministry of healing, will be giving talks on the gifts of the Spirit and healing the family tree.

Our retreat ends tomorrow and I'll be giving a talk on St. Ignatius' last exercise, "The Contemplation to Attain the Love of God," and how we can live the total offering he proposes by praying and living the Daily Offering.

Though Milwaukee was in the 60's when I left, our plane had to be de-iced in Denver--a sign of things to come in the upper Midwest. Thus I'm drinking in the beauty of California: the sun, the warmth, and the fragrant flowers right outside my window. I'm also drinking deeply of the faith of the retreatants who are an inspiration as they open themselves up to the Holy Spirit and follow the call to go deeper in their spiritual lives this weekend. This too--this joy--is something to be offered up.