"That These People May Live"

Today's Gospel (Mark 10: 35-45) is preceded by Jesus' third prediction in Mark's Gospel about his impending suffering, death, and resurrection.  What is the apostles' reaction?  Confusion?  Upset?  No, they are only focused on themselves.  James and John want seats on either side of Jesus when he comes into his reign.  The others are jealous and angry at this request. 

How sad Jesus must have felt at all this.  Yet, he uses this moment to teach the apostles and us about true greatness.  It does not involve honor and power.  It does not seek a position in which people look up to you.  That is not the way of Jesus, nor is it the traditional Lakota way.

Last night I finished reading a book about the great Lakota leader Crazy Horse--"The Journey of Crazy Horse" by Joseph Marshall III.  Marshall emphasized the humility of Crazy Horse that led him to sacrifice himself for his people.  He wrote: "He understood that what is accomplished in the name of and for the people belongs to the people." 

This is the spirit behind the Sun Dance, the great Lakota ceremony in which people make offerings of their flesh or a pierced so that the people may live.  They offer themselves and their flesh for the good of the tribe. 

Jesus did this so that all people may live.  He sacrificed his flesh so that all people would be freed from sin on their earthly journey and freed from death when it ended. 

Jesus humbled himself.  He--the Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity--emptied himself of glory, position, and power and came among us as a weak one.  As the second reading (Hebrews 4: 14-16) says, he was a compassionate high priest, able "to sympathize with our weaknesses" because he "has been similarly tested in every way" that we are.  He knows the struggle. 

In the end, he sacrificed himself on the cross.  In the words of the Gospel, he gave "his life as a ransom for many."  He took our place, freeing us from slavery to sin and to death.

Our first reading (Isaiah 53: 10-11) comes from the fourth "Suffering Servant Song" in which the prophet predicts the Passion of God's Son.  A few verses earlier, Isaiah wrote that the Servant of God would be "pierced for our offenses."  He offered his flesh that all people may live.

Every celebration of Holy Mass makes this sacrifice present.  Jesus, the Head, renews his perfect offering and invites us, the Body, to offer ourselves with him that "these people"--those present, family and friends, national and ethnic groups, and even our enemies--may live.

On October 29 we will remember the first anniversary of the death of a good man who offered himself for others.  Fr. Bob Gilroy, S.J., was born in 1959.  After college he worked in a school for the blind.  He went back to school, earned a degree in art therapy, and then entered the Jesuits.  For ten years, at one time or another, he served the Lakota people at St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud and at the Sioux Spiritual Center where I worked with him.   He was a hospital chaplain, a spiritual director, and instructor in art therapy.  Like Jesus, he was a compassionate priest because he shared in people's weakness.   He suffered childhood diabetes, many resulting health problems, and a kidney transplant. Throughout, he kept his smile and distinctive laugh.   

In closing, let me share with you a poem that he wrote to accompany one of his paintings.  In its simplicity it reminds me of the lyrics of Lakota songs:

Christ is everything.
Stay close to him.
There is nothing else to do. 

On the Streets and in the Cold

While it's very mild (59 degrees F) today in Springfield, IL where I am helping with a retreat for seminarians from Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis, the U.S. has experienced some very cold weather recently.  Perhaps not as cold as Russia where the high temperature the other day was minus 18 F; nevertheless, one member of the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network in Arkansas was not happy as I offered to share Wisconsin's cold with him.  And it's been unseasonably cold in Italy where the temperatures dipped below freezing.

With the cold and how it affects people who are homeless in mind, Pope Francis, in his first urgent monthly prayer intention, asked us to join him in praying for them.  At the end of his Angelus Message on Sunday, January 8, he reminded the world of his monthly prayer intentions and he invited all “to join the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network which spreads, even through social networks, the prayer intentions that I propose every month to the whole Church.”  He said that in this way “we carry on the apostolate of prayer” and foster “communion.”

Then he went on to offer his first urgent intention, saying, “In these days of such great cold I am thinking, and I invite you to think, of all the people living on the streets, hit by the cold and by the indifference of others. Unfortunately, some have not survived. We pray for them and ask the Lord to warm the hearts of others to help them.”

Throughout his service as pope, the Holy Father has confronted "the culture of indifference."  He has challenged all people to open their hearts to suffering humanity everywhere, but especially right in front of us--in our families, in our parishes, and on our streets.

One way that we can keep those who are suffering from the cold in mind and pray for them in a powerful way is to "offer it up."  I thought of this on Sunday when I stopped for gas on my way from Milwaukee to Springfield.  The temperatures were hovering around 20 but the wind made it feel like single digits.  My initial reaction upon leaving the warmth of my car was to complain, but that negative attitude quickly changed when I remembered the Holy Father's urgent intention for this month.  There are some people for whom the cold and wind are not a minor inconvenience or pain but a grave suffering and threat of death.  I allowed my own minor pain to remind me of them and to pray for them.

As Pope Francis reminded us in "The Joy of the Gospel" (#279): "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."

A Corpus Christi Homily

At the Last Supper, Jesus faced three dilemmas and offered one solution.  The dilemmas were the result of his love.

The greatest act of love for another is to die for that person.  At the Last Supper Jesus told his apostles, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15: 13). Yet Jesus laid down his life not only for his friends but for his enemies. As St. Paul put it: "For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5: 6-8).

Jesus wanted to prove his love for all people of all time and he wanted everyone to experience that love.  But he could only die once. How could he make that act of sacrificial love present everywhere and always?

He said: "This is my body, which will be given up for you; do this in memory of me" (Luke 22: 19).

He created a New Passover to go with the New Covenant.  This Memorial Meal makes present the very event it commemorates.  Now people of all time, and not just those who stood under the cross at Good Friday, can be present as Jesus offers himself up for their salvation.  He does not die again but he makes his life-giving death and resurrection present through the the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The second dilemma of love is this: when you love someone you want to be always near that person.  But Jesus had to go. He said: "I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you" (John 16: 7). Jesus must leave this world in order to send the Holy Spirit.  But he wants to stay close to his followers and he even promised that he would not leave them orphans, that he would return (see John 14: 18). He promised "I am with you always, until the end of the age" (Matthew 28: 20). How can he go and also stay?

"This is my body."  He remains close to us in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament.

Thirdly, love desires not only to be close but to be one with the beloved. Love desires union.  How can Jesus unite himself to the apostles and then to Christians of all time?

"This is my body. Take and eat."  Jesus comes to us in a form in which we can receive him. He unites himself to us in Holy Communion where the two become one.

That is the gift which we celebrate today.

This has two very practical implications.

First, we who receive the Eucharist are one with Christ and are transformed by our union. In his homily at the closing Mass for World Youth Day 2005, Pope Benedict XVI said: "The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood."  Through a Holy Communion we are parts of the Body of Christ, "his own Flesh and Blood" in the world today.  This confirms Jesus' teaching in a parable about the Last Judgment in Matthew 25. Whatever we do to or for one of his least brothers or sisters, we do to or for Jesus.  Whatever we fail to do for one of his and our least brothers and sisters, we fail to do for Jesus.

Second, the sacrificial offering of Jesus replaced all the animal and grain offerings that preceded him. His was the one perfect sacrifice that took away the sins of the world and reconciled humanity with God and one another.  Now we, as members of his Body, join him in making that perfect offering as we celebrate Mass.  Then we go forth from Mass to live the offering we have made with Christ.  In the words of St. Paul, we offer our bodies "as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12: 1).

We thank God for the gift of the Body and Blood of his Son Jesus. We adore Jesus present in the Eucharist. We open ourselves to the grace of the loving union in which the two become one flesh. And we return love for love by offering ourselves every day as we pray the Daily Offering.

The Daily Offering, prayed and lived, is the best response to Jesus' gift of himself to and for us.

Total Love

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 22:34-40) a Pharisee, who was also “a scholar of the law,” asked Jesus a question that teachers and rabbis were often asked—“which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  With 613 laws given by Moses, it would be natural to want to prioritize them. 

Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 which commands that God be loved with all one’s heart, soul, and mind.  This was such an important law that to this day the Jewish people write it on a piece of paper and place it in a small receptacle that is attached to the doorpost and is touched upon entering and leaving one’s house.  This is a concrete way of declaring one’s intention to live by that law inside and outside of one’s home.

Recall last Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 22: 15-21). Jesus was confronted by Pharisees and asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, the pagan emperor who used those taxes to oppress the Jewish people.  Jesus responded by taking a coin and asking whose image was on it. After being told it was the image of the emperor, Jesus said: “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  What belongs to God? We do. Every human person is made in the image and likeness of God, is stamped with God’s image, and therefore belongs to God.  St. John wrote that God is love. Made in the image of love, we are made by love and for love.

Love does not ask “What’s the minimum requirement?” A marriage in which one spouse asks the other “What’s the least I need to do to keep you happy?” won’t last very long. Love asks “What more can I do to show you my love? What more can I do to prove my love for you?” The love that the greatest commandment requires is a total love.

But if our love of God is to be total, how can we fulfill the second commandment that Jesus quote—Leviticus 19:18 with its command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Aren’t these two commandments in conflict?

No, they are actually one commandment. When you love someone you share the interests and desires of the one you love. You love what he or she loves. To love God means to love what God loves. And what does God love? You. Me. All humanity. All God’s children.  Loving God totally means loving our neighbor.

Jesus once said that the greatest love was to lay down one’s life for another. Jesus is the proof of God’s love for us. Jesus shared our life and laid down his life on the cross to prove God’s love for us. 

The world’s view of love is actually the opposite of love. The world tends to say that love is a feeling. I love whatever makes me feel good, whatever gives me pleasure. This is the opposite of love which is not about getting but giving.  In his encyclical God is Love Pope Benedict said that our definition for love must begin at the pierced side of Jesus, that opening to a heart that showed the world the deepest and truest love ever known.  True love is total. Ultimately it involves sacrifice.

Have you ever heard of Tom Burnett? He was on United Flight 93 which crashed into a field in Shanksville, PA on September 11, 2001.  In college he had stopped going to church and went searching for God. In time he returned. He worked for a medical technology firm in California and was close enough to home that he would have lunch there. According to his wife Deena, in 1997 he stopped coming home for lunch. Deena thought that Tom, who was accustomed to working 70 hours a week, was simply spending his lunch hour putting in more time at work. Six months before his death, he revealed to her that he was going to the 12:10 Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church.  In an interview, Deena said: “He told me that he felt God was telling him he was going to do something. Something big. But he didn’t understand what it was.”  He figured that if he went to Mass, God’s will for him would become clear.  Deena went on: “He knew that what he was going to do would impact a lot of people. And he knew one other thing: it had something to do with the White House.”

Imagine Tom Burnett, an ordinary guy. He has no desire to go into politics, much less aspire to be president.  Yet he has this sense that God is calling him to something big and it somehow involves the White House. You can hear him thinking, “What does my life have to do with the White House?”

On September 11, 2001, thousands of feet above the earth, Tom Burnett knew what his life had to do with the White House. He and the others on that plane knew where it was headed. They knew they had to do something, even if it meant sacrificing their lives to prevent a greater tragedy from happening.

Where did Tom get the understanding and courage to do what he did? The Eucharist. There he heard the Word that guided him through life. There he received the Body and Blood of Christ that transformed him into someone who could love God and his neighbor with a total, self-sacrificing love. 

What Tom and the others did was heroic. We may think, “That’s not me. I’m not a hero.” But each of us, in his or her own way, is called to heroic love. It may be parents sacrificing themselves for the good of their children. It may be a spouse dealing with the unemployment and depression of the other. It may be children trying to care for a parent with Alzheimer’s.  Each of us in one way or another is called to love sacrificially. The power to do so comes from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where Jesus makes present his life-giving death and resurrection, where he proves once again how loveable each of us is.  

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.

On the Feast of St. Jeanne Jugan

August 30 was the feast of St. Jeanne Jugan, the foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor. I celebrated Mass at St. Joseph’s Home in Palatine, IL. My homily was based on these special readings: Isaiah 58: 6-11; 1 John 3: 14-18; and Matthew 5: 1-12a.

We are celebrating a great saint today—Jeanne Jugan. Of course she would shudder at those words. She aspired not to be great but to be little.  She once said: “Be little, little, little; if you get big and proud, the congregation will fall.” And another time, “Only the little are pleasing to God.”

Why? Because this is God’s way. How did God choose to save the world? Not with worldly power and glory. Not with an army of angels that would force people to follow God’s way. God saved the world by becoming little—a little baby.

In his homily at Midnight Mass on Christmas 2008, Pope Benedict said that our first experience of God is one of distance. God seems so far above and beyond us. This transcendent God drew near, bridging the distance by becoming one of us. Pope Benedict went on to say that our experience of God is also one of glory and grandeur which provoke fear in us. So God became a tiny baby in order that we would no longer fear but love, for people love tiny, newborn babies. 

St. Paul wrote that the Son of God became poor in order to make us rich. He emptied himself and became little and in need of love and care. He shared our life with its sorrows and joys, its sufferings, both physical and spiritual when he felt totally abandoned as he hung dying on a cross. He shared in death itself.

The cross looks like a failure, but God’s ways are not ours. The failure of the cross is really a triumph in which the power of love wins over sin and death. 

“Love.” That word is used in so many different ways that it has lost its meaning. We talk about loving our pets and ice cream. We love whatever and whomever makes us feel good, gives us pleasure. It’s all about “me” and how I am feeling.

In our second reading St. John says that love is not about feelings and not about words, but about deeds and action.

This is why “hospitality” is such an important word. Hospitality is love in action.

It begins in hearts—hearts open to others, to all, especially the poor and the sick, the neglected and rejected of what Pope Francis calls our “disposable culture.”  We must open our hearts to them just as the Sacred Heart of Jesus is open to them.

This is what Jeanne Jugan did. Her heart was open to the elderly poor. She felt their need.  She had compassion and suffered for their sufferings.  And she responded. She not only opened her house to them; she gave up her own bed to that first poor blind woman that she carried into her home. 

This spirit of hospitality lives on today in the Little Sisters of the Poor. Their Constitutions state: “Consecrated hospitality is, in the midst of the world, a witness to the mercy of the Father and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus.”

Hospitality means opening our hearts, our doors, our wallets.  But ultimately the greatest hospitality is sharing the life of the other. Jeanne Jugan shared in the poverty of the poor, becoming a beggar for the beggars.  Her complete trust in Providence, not having endowments or investment income, continues today as the Little Sisters depend upon the generosity of others.

In his Lenten Message this year, Pope Francis said that Christ did not love us like someone who gives a little out of his or her abundance. He gave all and sacrificed his very self.

So did St. Jeanne Jugan who wanted to be known by her religious name Sister Mary of the Cross. She shared in the sufferings of the Crucified One as did His Mother who stood under the cross and suffered as only a mother could watching her son suffer and die. Mary joined her sufferings to those of Jesus for the salvation of the world. St. Jeanne also offered herself and sacrificed what was most dear to her, her own congregation. It was taken from her when she was relieved of any leadership position and lived a hidden life in the novitiate where the young did not even know who she was.

She was able to do this because she had become little. She had become the last and least. She found her strength and consolation in one place—in Jesus, who assured her that blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure of heart, blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are those who suffer persecution.

When he canonized her in 2009, Pope Benedict said: “In the Beatitudes Jeanne Jugan found the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life.”

He went on to say: “This evangelical dynamism is continued today across the world in the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor, which she founded and which testifies, after her example, to the mercy of God and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus for the lowliest. May St. Jeanne Jugan be for elderly people a living source of hope and for those who generously commit themselves to serving them, a powerful incentive to pursue and develop her work!”

We gather for the Eucharist, a word that means “thanksgiving.” We are grateful for the Sisters who faithfully live the charism of St. Jeanne Jugan. We are grateful for the staff, workers, and volunteers who share in that charism. We are grateful for the benefactors who support the Sisters in following their charism of total trust in God.  But most of all, we are grateful for the residents who give us an opportunity to love and care for Jesus who said “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.”

The Mounted Serpent

It was in the form of a serpent that the evil spirit entered into the garden of innocence and tempted the first human beings.  Thus it should be no surprise that serpents came to afflict the Israelites who had complained against God and Moses (see Numbers 21: 4-9). The serpents were a consequence of turning from God. But what is surprising is that an image of this evil, the serpent, became the source of healing. God told Moses to make an image of the serpent and to fix it on a pole. Anyone who had been bitten by the serpent would find healing by looking upon the mounted serpent.


Even more surprising, Jesus uses this image of the serpent to refer to himself. He told Nicodemus that "just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3: 14-15).  How is it that Jesus uses this image of evil for himself?


St. Paul helps us understand this.  He wrote: "Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree'" (Galatians 3: 13).  He also wrote: "For our sake God made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5: 21).  Christ "became sin" and in that way became the source of healing and new life. He identified himself totally with sinful humanity and took upon himself the sins of the world.


He also took upon himself the consequences of sin.  Again, St. Paul: "And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross..." (Colossians 2: 13-14).  Jesus took upon himself the judgment, the result of sin, and allowed it to be nailed into his own body on the cross.  He made reparation, repairing the damaging consequences of sin, by offering himself on the cross. 


In another place in John's gospel, Jesus refers to his being lifted up. He said: "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM..." (8: 28).  How is it that people will realize that Jesus, when he is lifted up on the cross, mounted like the serpent, a curse and sin, is God, I AM?  Because God is love (1 John 4: 8, 16).  What proves love? What is the greatest sign of love? What proves that Jesus is Divine Love itself?


St. Paul answers: "For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5: 6-8).


Christ continues to give proof of his love when he is lifted up at Mass. At every Sacrifice of the Mass he makes present his life-giving death on the cross.  Our faith is that Jesus is God and that he is present in the lifting up at Mass.  His Body and Blood, lifted up, overcome sin and death. The serpent is defeated. 

Pope Benedict's New Ministry

I got up early this morning and spent about a half hour on the treadmill getting exercise both physically and spiritually as I prayed the rosary. When I returned to my room to stretch I turned on the television where I heard the "breaking news" and saw photos of Pope Benedict. At first I thought he had died. Then I was shocked to hear that he had resigned.  It is taking some time to digest this news.

In the announcement of his resignation, Pope Benedict told the Cardinals whom he had gathered the following reason for his resignation:

"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

As we talked about the resignation in the office this morning and wondered how we could make a smooth transition as we publicize Pope Benedict's monthly prayer intentions, Michael, one of our part-time employees and the coordinator of our volunteers, reminded us of something very important. He said, "Now he'll be the praying Pope." Not that Pope Benedict has not been a Pope who has prayed intensely as he strove to be faithful to his call and ministry, but now prayer and sacrifice will be his primary mission. 

Today is the 21st World Day of the Sick and the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.  Is it a coincidence that Pope Benedict chose this as the day on which he announced his resignation due to health concerns and his growing weakness? With God there is no coincidence. 

When he resigns Pope Benedict will focus his attention on a different but very important ministry.  Here is what he wrote at the beginning of his Message for this World Day of the Sick:

"This day represents for the sick, for health care workers, for the faithful and for all people of goodwill “a privileged time of prayer, of sharing, of offering one’s sufferings for the good of the Church, and a call for all to recognize in the features of their suffering brothers and sisters the Holy Face of Christ, who, by suffering, dying and rising has brought about the salvation of mankind” (John Paul II, Letter for the Institution of the World Day of the Sick, 13 May 1992, 3). On this occasion I feel especially close to you, dear friends, who in health care centres or at home, are undergoing a time of trial due to illness and suffering. May all of you be sustained by the comforting words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council: “You are not alone, separated, abandoned or useless. You have been called by Christ and are his living and transparent image” (Message to the Poor, the Sick and the Suffering)."

In his Message for this day, Pope Benedict also mentioned St. Anna Schaffer whom he canonized last October 21, saying that she "was able to unite in an exemplary way her sufferings to those of Christ."

He said the following in his homily at the time of her canonization:

"Anna Schaeffer, from Mindelstetten, as a young woman wished to enter a missionary order. She came from a poor background so, in order to earn the dowry needed for acceptance into the cloister, she worked as a maid. One day she suffered a terrible accident and received incurable burns on her legs which forced her to be bed-ridden for the rest of her life. So her sick-bed became her cloister cell and her suffering a missionary service. She struggled for a time to accept her fate, but then understood her situation as a loving call from the crucified One to follow him. Strengthened by daily communion, she became an untiring intercessor in prayer and a mirror of God’s love for the many who sought her counsel. May her apostolate of prayer and suffering, of sacrifice and expiation, be a shining example for believers...."

The world doesn't understand this. Some commentators said that the Pope is retiring so he can enjoy a well-deserved rest. No. On rare occasions  Popes have resigned but they don't retire. Pope Benedict will be moving to a new and powerful ministry for the Church and the world. In great humility, he will leave the work that he has faithfully offered to God and will now focus on offering up his prayers and sufferings.

What's in a Name?

I'm in St. Charles, Missouri, right outside St. Louis these days for a parish mission at Saints Joachim and Ann parish.  As always, I preached at all the Masses this weekend and invited the parishioners to take advantage of this opportunity where you don't have to go away to make a retreat but where the retreat comes to the parish.  Here's a bit of my homily:

We've all heard the expression, "What's in a name?"  It's a dismissive expression meant to say that names are not important.  What's important is the person.  But in the first reading, part of St. Peter's speech in Acts Chapter 4, we hear about a name that is very important as well as powerful.  It's a name that can heal a crippled man.  It's the only name, according to St. Peter, "under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved."  It's the name "Jesus." 

Several years ago a fifth grader asked me, "What was Jesus' middle name?"  I asked him what was Jesus' last name and he answered, "Christ."  I told him that at the time of Jesus they didn't have last names or middle names the way we do and that "Christ" was actually a title and not a name.  It means "Anointed One." 

At each of our baptisms we were given this title--"Christian"--for at baptism we were anointed with the Sacred Chrism.  We were joined to the Body of Christ and became Christians, Anointed Ones.  In the second reading from the First Letter of John we hear that God has bestowed a great love "on us that we may be called children of God."  But we are God's children not just in name but in reality for St. John continues: "Yet so we are."  This is not only our name but our deepest identity.

Every Fourth Sunday of Easter is known as "Good Shepherd Sunday" because that is what our Gospel is about.  It is also World Day of Prayer of Prayer for Vocations.  The Holy Father writes a special message for this day every year and in his message this year Pope Benedict quoted St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians 1: 5.  God "chose us, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him in love."  Commenting on this, Pope Benedict wrote: "We are loved by God even 'before' we come into existence! ... every human person is the fruit of God's thought and an act of his love, a love that is boundless, faithful and everlasting."  Think of it: God had you in mind from all eternity.  The thoughts of God are eternal.  It wasn't as though 9 or 10 months before your birth God decided, "I think I'll make so-and-so."  From all eternity God planned to create you.  You give God a pleasure and glory that no other person can give him. 

Then Pope Benedict wrote: "The discovery of this reality is what truly and profoundly changes our lives. ... Dear brothers and sisters, we need to open our lives to this love.  It is to the perfection of the Father's love (cf. Mt 5: 48) that Jesus Christ calls us every day!  The high standard of the Christian life consists in loving 'as' God loves; with a love that is shown in the total, faithful and fruitful gift of self."

God loves totally.  This is the meaning of the story of the Good Shepherd.  Unlike the "hired man" who runs when the wolf comes, the Good Shepherd risks his life for the sheep.  I suspect this teaching would have been shocking to those listening to Jesus.  What human would risk his or her life to protect animals?  It is just as shocking that God would do such a thing for his human creatures.  God became human, suffered, and died.  God sacrificed all to save his human flock.  We must be worth very much for God to do this. 

But we are not just sheep.  Our baptism has raised us up and joined us to Christ, the Good Shepherd.  We are called and empowered now to love as God loves, to make a total gift of ourselves to God and to his human flock for whom he sacrificed all.  At baptism we were anointed to be Good Shepherds with Christ.  We received the Holy Spirit to empower us to love like the Good Shepherd.  The Sacred Chrism with which we were anointed is used on only a few special occasions.  When this church building was first consecrated its walls were anointed with the Sacred Chrism, setting this space aside for a sacred purpose, for worship.  At the same time the altar of this church was anointed with Chrism, setting it aside for a sacred purpose, for worship.When I was ordained my hands were anointed with Sacred Chrism, setting them aside for a sacred purpose, for worship.  And when each of us was baptised and confirmed, we were anointed with Sacred Chrism, setting each one of us aside for a sacred purpose, for worship.  We fulfill this task by gathering as we do today to worship God together.  But we also worship God when we leave Mass.  We are called to worship God with each moment of our day.  Our entire life is meant to be an act of worship, an act of love for God and his flock.  The Morning Offering helps us to begin each day mindful of our holy call to worship God in our daily lives. 

Jars' Concert

Though I like music, I'm not much of a concert-goer. But when Fr. Phil Hurley, S.J., our director of youth and young adult ministry, asked me if I was interested in going to a "Jars of Clay" concert, it didn't take me too long to say "yes." I'm a fan of Contemporary Christian Music, having been introduced to it by a spiritual directee of mine when I worked at the Jesuit Retreat House in Minnesota ten years ago. That's when I first started listening to "Jars of Clay."

So on Saturday, after spending a quiet afternoon in the Kettle Moraine area near Holy Hill, Wisconsin, with the colors just past their peak, but the temperatures up to 70, Fr. Phil and I went to the concert in Hartland. "Jars" have been around now for fifteen years and, in honor of their anniversary, they opened their set with songs from their first, self-titled album. This is not "Worship and Praise" music. It's music in which I find a deep resonance with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est," Pope Benedict XVI wrote: "By contemplating the pierced side of Christ, we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: "God is love" (1 John 4: 8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move" (#12).

The first song of both the concert and Jars of Clay's first album, "Liquid," leads to this contemplation. Here are the lyrics:

Arms nailed down,
are you tellin me something?
Eyes turned out,
are you looking for someone?

This is the one thing,
The one thing that I know.

Blood-stained brow,
are you dying for nothing?
Flesh and blood,
is it so elemental?

This is the one thing,
The one thing that I know.

Blood-stained brow,
He wasn't broken for nothing.
Arms nailed down,
He didn't die for nothing.

This is the one thing,
The one thing that I know.

"Liquid" invites us to see Jesus on the cross suffering and dying for us. How do we respond? I'm reminded of the "Colloquy" that St. Ignatius invites the one who has just made the First Exercise of the First Week of the "Spiritual Exercises" to make. He writes:

Imagine Christ our Lord present before you upon the cross, and begin to speak with him, asking how it is that though He is the Creator, He has stooped to become man, and to pass from eternal life to death here in time, that thus He might die for our sins. I shall also reflect upon myself and ask:
"What have I done for Christ?"
"What am I doing for Christ?"
"What ought I to do for Christ?"
As I behold Christ in this plight, nailed to the cross, I shall ponder upon what presents itself to my mind.

This song also reminds me of St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians 3: 7-11. To paraphrase: I consider everything as nothing because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. All I want is to know Christ.

Another of their songs was "Worlds Apart" with the following lyrics:

I am the only one to blame for this
Somehow it all ends up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icharus I collide

With a world I try so hard to leave behind
To rid myself of all but love, to give and die

To turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves
More deeply than the oceans, more abundant than the tear
Of a world embracing every heartache

Can I be the one to sacrifice
Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow

To love you -- take my world apart
To need you -- I am on my knees
To love you ---take my world apart
To need you -- broken on my knees

Again we are asked to consider both ourselves and the love that was shown us on the cross. And we're faced with the question of our lives: will we "sacrifice" or "become another nail" and "grip the spear"?

Our lives are a response. We either ignore the love of Christ crucified or we respond with love for love.

On the way to the concert Fr. Phil played a CD with a Jars of Clay song from their 2009 album "The Long Fall Back to Earth." The song is "Heart" and the refrain is:

Offer your heart, I've given you mine
Give me your heart, you already have mine

Blessed Louis Guanella

As I come to the end of my retreat with the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, I’m grateful for a surprise favor: learning about their founder, Blessed Louis Guanella, who enrolled in the Apostleship of Prayer when he was he was a twenty year old seminarian in his native Italy.

Fr. Guanella was born in 1842, died in 1915, and was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1964. On July 1, 2010 Pope Benedict approved a miracle attributed to his intercession, thus opening the way for his canonization. He founded two orders: for women, the Daughters, and for men, the Servants of Charity. This wasn’t their original name. They were first called the Sons of the Sacred Heart, but Fr. Guanella changed that so they would not be confused with other men’s congregations.

It’s clear, though, that devotion to the Sacred Heart was the inspiration for all he did. His early biographer, Fr. Leonardo Mazzucchi, of the Servants of Charity, in his book “The Life, the Spirit and the Works of Father Louis Guanella,” wrote: “He had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at a time when very few people practiced it. This devotion was to be the most fruitful source of his angelic piety, the inspiration of his particular love for the Blessed Sacrament and his practice of daily communion…. Therefore, he then and always thereafter promoted the Apostleship of Prayer, which is a useful and important form of this devotion” (page 19).

Fr. Guanella wrote an inspiring prayer book entitled, “In the Month of Fervor: Thirty Scriptural Maxims Developed on the Sacred Heart of Jesus for Christian Souls.” The following is a prayer at the end of his reflection for the third day entitled “The Heart of Jesus at His Birth in Bethlehem”:

O Most Holy Heart of Jesus, I cannot love you as the Blessed Mother loved you. I feel bad about it. I would like to love you, as the chaste Joseph did. At least, O Lord, make me love you with simplicity and affection equal to that of the devout shepherds. How happy will I be when I will really begin to love you! How fortunate I will be when, enkindling my accent, I will be able to applaud around you with the choirs of angels, saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will!”

It should be no surprise that the first church he built was dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Fr. Louis D’Antuono said the following about Fr. Guanella, this church, and the statue of the Sacred Heart in it: “With that he wished to show that they (i.e. the orphans, the aged, the needy women in the house) must not seek comfort except in this divine and compassionate Heart, who living in this world felt a lively pity for the poor and the unfortunate. Those poor residents are sick and afflicted, more in heart than in body. Since it is the heart that resents the strokes of bad fortune, it is the heart that gives them the greatest torment. So, there was a need of a heart to cure them and give them the lost peace. Very well then, Father Guanella, knowing that, sought this heart and found it in the Heart of Jesus. So the Church was consecrated to the Divine Heart. Father Guanella wanted to procure consolations for his residents, and gave them a Heart which is the source of every consolation. He wanted to procure mercy for them and gave them a Heart essentially merciful. He wanted to give them a father, a friend, a lover, and gave them the Heart of Jesus, Who is not only the father and friend of the poor but puts Himself in their place: What you do to the poor, he said, you do to me. That statue, raised in the new church, seems to say to all who pass through this blessed door: ‘These poor, these aged, these sick people, these unfortunate ones are my children. Do good to them and I will give you a reward’” (pages 78-9).

The love of the Heart of Jesus led him to especially love those who were most abandoned—the poor, the developmentally disabled, the elderly. Prayer led to service. This too is part of the Apostleship of Prayer. His biographer, Fr. Mazzucchi, wrote:

“In February 1894, Father Louis wrote: ‘We must always pray, but at this time it is necessary that we make prayer a real apostolate.’ So he presented the Apostleship of Prayer, which he wanted to institute in the Church of the Sacred Heart…. Later he wrote: ‘The Apostleship of Prayer is like the center of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The prayer of the agonizing Jesus pierces the Heart of God. This prayer, thus passing through the Sacred Heart, penetrates heaven and earth. In supplicating, the fervent Christian imitates this prayer of the Divine Incarnate Word. Thus the prayer of the good people sustains the world today, that it may not crash under the weight of iniquity’” (page 90).

In June 1912 Blessed Louis Guanella said: “Our Works gushed forth from the most august Heart of God, Who has fructified and sustained them; and we cannot expect them to prosper and be inflamed with charity unless we unite ourselves to the Heart of Jesus Christ to perceive His virtues and draw forth His favors” (page 171).

This devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which led him to have compassion on the poor and neglected of society, and to practical works of charity on their behalf, also inspired his love for the Eucharist. He saw the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist and often made reference to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. On Easter, 1913 he wrote: “Let us seek to make our life the life of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, well convinced that we must fill our hearts with the spirit of faith and charity if we want to do good to our souls, to alleviate the grave needs that surround us, and to relieve the many corporal and spiritual miseries of our neighbors” (page 171).

In summary, we can quote Fr. Mazzucchi again: “We have affirmed that Father Louis Guanella’s piety was directed, above all, to honor and implore the mercies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus present in the Eucharist. As an Apostle of the Eucharist, Father Louis chose the Sacred Heart of Jesus as protector of his Work. Since he knew that daily material and spiritual graces would be abundantly showered from the Divine Heart upon his Houses, he wanted his followers to draw the strength, power of sacrifice, enthusiasm, and tenderness of Christian charity from that same Holy Heart” (page 348).

Blessed Louis Guanella was an Apostle of Prayer whose life was centered on the Heart of Jesus which, in the Eucharist, transformed his own heart. This led to a life of loving service and sacrifice. He lived a Eucharistic life, making an offering of himself with Jesus on behalf of those most forgotten and neglected.

I’m grateful to have discovered this new friend and fellow member of the Apostleship of Prayer.

Turn, Turn, Turn

"Turn, Turn, Turn." Folks of a certain generation will recognize those words as the title of a song by the Byrds that came out in the '60's and used the words from today's first reading at Mass, Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11.

It's actually a pretty grim view of life. Time is depicted as a series of cycles--ups and downs, good times and bad. Because God, as the reading says, "put the timeless into their hearts," people ask questions like, "Why?" "To what end or purpose are all these cycles?" "Is that all there is?" "Why do I feel that there should be more?"

Why? Because God created each of us with the "timeless" in our hearts. There is more. We're made in God's image and likeness. There is something immortal about us. We're made by Love and for Love.

Jesus redeems time from its meaninglessness. Who is Jesus? That's the question in today's Gospel (Luke 9: 18-22). Peter gets the answer right, telling Jesus He is "the Christ of God," the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Savior. Immediately, Jesus rebukes him. Why? Because of all the misconceptions surrounding "the Christ." Jesus teaches that "the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected ..., and be killed and on the third day be raised." He is not a political redeemer who will help Israel shake off the Roman rule. That would simply lead to one more cycle of war and victory and peace for a while, or war and defeat and further suffering. No, Jesus is not a political redeemer or messiah. He is the Redeemer of time itself. The Redeemer of death.

This is what He did on the Cross. His victory over time and death on the Cross continues in the Eucharist.

Now, in every celebration of the Eucharist, the timeless act of the Redemption breaks into time. The moment of His death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave is made present in every Mass. This is the true focus of the Mass. It is the Holy Sacrifice in which Jesus' perfect offering of Himself is made present again in time.

Blessed Louis Guanella, the founder of the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence and the Servants of Charity wrote a little book called "The Angel of the Sanctuary." In it we find these words: "In the Holy Mass, the Christian spiritually sets his heart for Mount Calvary, where he witnesses the agony and death of Jesus Christ, and finally his glorious resurrection."

At every Mass we are present at that moment because it is a timeless or eternal event that breaks into time. At every Mass we are able to unite ourselves to Jesus' perfect offering. We offer ourselves with Him to the Father in a perfect act of love.

In his Apostolic Exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis," Pope Benedict wrote that the Eucharist is a mystery to be believed, celebrated, and lived. We believe that in every Eucharist the eternal event of the Redeemer's death and resurrection is made present. We celebrate that event accordingly, with loving reverence. And we live it. We participate most fully in the Eucharist when we make an offering of ourselves with Jesus. Then, having communed with the Body and Blood of Christ, we leave the celebration to live the offering we have made.

We renew that offering often, beginning each day with a Morning Offering. We strive to recall that offering throughout the day as we offer our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings, every thought, word, and deed, every breath and heart beat. And at the end of the day we make a review of the offering that we have made.

In this way, time is redeemed. It is no longer an ongoing and meaningless cycle that ends in death. Every moment of the day, joined to Jesus' perfect offering on Calvary and in every Mass, becomes significant, eternally significant.

Priesthood of the Faithful

Yesterday, Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter, I came upon a favorite sermon of mine in the Breviary. It's from St. Peter Chrysologus and it's based on a Scripture passage (Romans 12: 1)that we often use in the Apostleship of Prayer to provide a Scriptural basis for making a daily offering of ourselves, all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of our day.

The sermon begins with love. We are only able to make a loving offering of ourselves if we are deeply aware of the offering that Jesus has made for us. Thus, St. Peter Chrysologus writes:

Listen to the Lord's appeal: In me, I want you to see your own body, your members, your heart, your bones, your blood. You may fear what is divine, but why not love what is human? You may run away from me as the Lord, but why not run to me as your father? Perhaps you are filled with shame for causing my bitter passion. Do not be afraid. This cross inflicts a mortal injury, not on me, but on death. These nails no longer pain me, but only deepen your love for me. I do not cry out because of these wounds, but through them I draw you into my heart. My body was stretched on the cross as a symbol, not of how much I suffered, but of my all-embracing love. I count it no loss to shed my blood: it is the price I have paid for your ransom. Come, then, return to me and learn to know me as your father, who repays good for evil, love for injury, and boundless charity for piercing wounds.

Then St. Peter Chrysologus talks about the call of the baptized to make a return offering of themselves to the Lord. He says:

Listen now to what the Apostle [Paul] urges us to do. "I appeal to you," he says, "to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." By this exhortation of his, Paul has raised all men to priestly status.

How marvelous is the priesthood of the Christian, for he is both the victim that is offered on his own behalf, and the priest who makes the offering. He does not need to go beyond himself to seek what he is to immolate to God: with himself and in himself he brings the sacrifice he is to offer God for himself. The victim remains and the priest remains, always one and the same. Immolated, the victim still lives: the priest who immolates cannot kill. Truly it is an amazing sacrifice in which a body is offered without being slain and blood is offered without being shed.

A bit later, St. Peter Chrysologus, after making reference to a quote from Psalm 40 that also appears in Hebrews 10, he concludes with a practical exhoration on how to live the offering that all the baptized faithful are called to make:

Paul says: "I appeal to you by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living and holy." The prophet said the same thing: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but you have prepared a body for me." Each of us is called to be both a sacrifice to God and his priest. Do not forfeit what divine authority confers on you. Put on the garment of holiness, gird yourself with the belt of chastity. Let Christ be your helmet, let the cross on your forehead be your unfailing protection. Your breastplate should be the knowledge of God that he himself has given you. Keep burning continually the sweet-smelling incense of prayer. Take up the sword of the Spirit. Let your heart be an altar. Then, with full confidence in God, present your body for sacrifice. God desires not death, but faith; God thirsts not for blood, but for self-surrender; God is appeased not by slaughter, but by the offering of your free will.

Faith in Recovery

Last night I went to St. Mary of the Hill Parish to speak to their "Faith in Recovery" group. What is "Faith in Recovery"? They describe themselves as "A Mental Health Ministry in Faith Communities." There are a number of groups that meet throughout the Milwaukee area.

The title of my talk was "Can Suffering Have Any Value?" and the ad for the talk described it as follows:

"Suffering can be mental, physical, or due to circumstances in our lives such as job loss, broken relationships, stress and anxiety. The world approaches suffering as having no value. How can we have a balanced approach to suffering? Does our Christian faith give us an answer to this question? What about the spirituality of 'offering up' suffering?"

One of the goals of "Faith in Recovery" is to help people understand mental illness. One of their brochures has the following facts: 1) "mental illness is far more common than cancer, diabetes, heart disease or arthritis;" 2) "more hospital beds are occupied by people with serious mental illnesses than with any other disease;" 3) "it is estimated that 1 in every 4 families is affected by mental illness."

My family is among the 25% that has been affected by mental illness.

I began my presentation talking about my family and how my oldest sister Judy struggled for years with a dependency on pain-killers. Both of my parents died of cancer, my mother when she was 68 and my father when he was 75. When my sister turned 60 she developed a terrible anxiety that she too was going to suffer and then die of cancer. She was so afraid of dying of cancer that she could no longer face living. In early 2003 she went through a series of 13 electroshock treatments. On December 23, 2003, she put a plastic bag over her head and suffocated herself.

Why? That's the question that went through everyone's mind. Of course we knew the immediate answer. She couldn't kill the pain of her depression and anxiety so she killed herself. But why was this illness of hers "terminal?" Why couldn't she get better? Why didn't God answer all our prayers for her the way we wanted them answered? Why, as the title of the book goes, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

It seems easier to deal with physical illnesses and the deaths they cause. We don't blame the person with cancer, unless he or she was a smoker. We don't tell them to just work a little harder and they'll get better. Somehow the illnesses of the mind don't receive the same sympathy. We tend to blame the person who is depressed and expect that if they just tried harder they could get better. We don't get angry at the person with cancer, but we easily slip into anger at the person with a mental illness. We don't tell the cancer patient to get over their symptoms and we feel sorry for them when they experience bad side effects from their medications and treatment. We don't have the same sympathy for the mentally ill; we expect them to use will-power to get over their symptoms and we try to ignore the side effects of their medication.

I can't help thinking that Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit poet of the Nineteenth Century, struggled with depression and/or spiritual desolation, perhaps "the dark night of the soul." Some of his verses certainly describe what people who struggle with an illness of the mind feel.

In one sonnet, he writes:

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.

Those who struggle with mental illness know the mountains of the mind and how dangerous they can be. At times they hang, as it were, by a thread over a precipice. Those of us who have not struggled in this way have a hard time understanding.

Another among what are known as "The Terrible Sonnets," captures the experience of darkness and despair and the silence of God.

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must yet, in longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

How does the poet deal with this? How does he try to deal with himself?

"My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

Illness, pain, suffering--these lead us to ask "Why?" But there is no satisfactory answer. It is a mystery in the truest sense of that word. Not something we will understand this side of eternity. And suffering is inevitable in everyone's life, but we have a choice in how we deal with it. I offered three suggestions that I have found helpful.

First, the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Basically this is a prayer of acceptance. It leads us to accept suffering when it comes and cannot be avoided instead of reacting with resentment, blame, self-pity, or denial. Acceptance doesn't take away the pain, but it can lead to inner peace.

Second, the 12 Step spirituality of recovery programs. The 12 Steps of AA are not just for alcoholics, drug or sex addicts, over-eaters, or the spouses, children, and friends of them. They're for everyone. Bill W., the author of the 12 Steps and founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, used the 12 Steps to deal with a compulsion to drink that was out of control. After some time of sobriety he ended up facing a new challenge--depression. He came to realize that he could use the same program that got him sober and helped him maintain sobriety to deal with depression. He wrote an article about this called "The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety."

Third, the Apostleship of Prayer. At the beginning, in 1844, the Jesuit seminarians learned to make a prayerful offering of their frustrations and sufferings. In this way they found meaning and purpose in them. Years later Dr. Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, wrote a book about his experience entitled "Man's Search for Meaning." He concluded that under the terrible conditions of a concentration camp, people didn't survive simply to survive. Those who survived generally had a purpose that transcended mere physical survival. They were committed to surviving for a greater purpose that transcended themselves--a family, a research project, a work of art, God.

Ultimately the secret of the Apostleship of Prayer is that the pains and sufferings we meet in life can have value. It's the value of prayer which, when joined to sacrifice, becomes most like the prayer of Jesus. To offer up the pains and sufferings that come our way helps us find light in darkness. It helps us to trust that even when all we have to offer is our pain, we are doing a great work because it's joined to the work that Jesus accomplished on the Cross when He saved the world.

Homily for Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

On Saturday, April 10, I was honored to preach at a special Mass honoring Fr. John Hardon, S.J., during the annual conference of the Institute on Religious Life. The readings were for Saturday of the Octave of Easter: Acts 4: 13-21 and Mark 16: 9-15. Here is what I said:

I am grateful and deeply consoled to be preaching in honor of my brother Jesuit, Fr. John Hardon. I only met Fr. Hardon once, and briefly at that. It was at a fund-raising dinner for Mercy Academy, a small, private, Catholic school in Milwaukee. I remember his talk as though it were today. He said that in the future Catholics, if they are going to be faithful Catholics, will have to be ready to be martyrs. It was a striking statement which, as I thought about it, rang true to me. In the more than ten years since, his words have proven to be true.

And this shouldn't surprise us. Jesus Himself predicted that His followers would be persecuted. He even said that this persecution would come from members of one's own family. It shouldn't surprise us if opposition and persecution arise from within our family, whether it's our blood family or religious family, or from within the Church itself. This is the story that we see so often played out in the Acts of the Apostles, including today's reading.

Fr. Hardon once said: "You do not remain faithful to the Savior without paying for it." That was true for the Apostles of Jesus' time. It's true for modern apostles, like Fr. John Hardon. And it's true for us.

Why? Because Jesus is the Truth. He said that He was the Truth and that He came to witness to the truth. The world has always questioned truth. Our ancestral parents questioned the truth of what God had told them. Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" The world rejects truth, so much so that Pope Benedict has said we are living in a "dictatorship of relativism."

I'm sure at one time or another you've heard someone say something like this: "Well, that may be true for you but it isn't for me. You have your truth and I have mine." I'm always tempted to ask, in response to that, "But how do you know that's true?"

You see, deep down in every human person there is a sense of truth. There is a standard by which we judge something to be objectively true or false, right or wrong, good or bad.

But people deny this. Why? It's part of the "hardness of heart" for which Jesus rebukes the Apostles in today's Gospel. Before Pentecost, the hearts of the Apostles continued to be hard, closed to the truth. Our world continues to have unconverted, hard hearts that reject the truth.

Where do we find the ability and courage to witness to the truth, and to do this as Christ did, as Fr. John Hardon did? Where do we find the ability to speak and witness to the truth without rancor, without resentment, without hating those who oppose or persecute us?

We can see the example of Jesus and of Fr. Hardon and try to imitate them in speaking the truth boldly with love. But that isn't enough. It isn't enough for us, just as it wasn't enough for Fr. Hardon. We need something greater that will give us the power to speak the truth with love.

Fr. Hardon found the ability, the strength, and the courage to love in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He practiced devotion to the Sacred Heart in very practical ways. He used invocations like "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in Thee!" He did this throughout the day. He once said: "Over the years, every time I pick up the telephone, before I talk to whoever called, I make an aspiration to the Sacred Heart. It helps; you never know who is on the other side."

Fr. Hardon was deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus whom he found in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Holy Eucharist. He often wrote about the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. He articulated our belief that since Jesus is truly present, Body and Blood, soul and divinity, in the Most Holy Eucharist, His Heart is present there as well.

There are two places in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapters 11 and 36, where a great promise is made. Through the prophet, God said that He would take from our bodies our stony, hard hearts and give us natural, human hearts. Where was this prophecy ever fulfilled? I know of nowhere except in Jesus who gave Himself for us on the cross and gave Himself to us in the Eucharist. There He give us His Heart to replace our hard hearts.

The imagery of the Sacred Heart shows a Heart on fire, on fire with love. This Heart is on fire with love for the Father. It's on fire with love for the truth. It's on fire with love for souls. The fire of love burned within the Heart of Jesus and He could not keep it to Himself. Nor could the Apostles, once they were enflamed with the fire of the Holy Spirit. It was impossible for them to contain the truth and the love they knew. As they declared in the first reading today: "It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard." They could not keep it to themselves. They could not hold it inside. It had to come out, just like the Heart of Jesus.

I once asked a group of children to whom I was showing an image of the Sacred Heart, "Why do you think Jesus' Heart is on the outside of His body?" One little girl responded, "Maybe He loves us so much, He can't keep it inside." So it is for the one who, like Fr. Hardon, knows the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He must speak the truth and do so with a love that bears witness to the truth.

Jesus shares with His Apostles and with us the work of communicating the love of God. He told them: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature." Fr. Hardon answered this call. But notice, Jesus said to proclaim the Gospel to all creatures, not just human creatures. What does that mean? Even though Fr. Hardon's middle name was Anthony, I don't think he ever followed his namesake and preached to the fish. Nor did he follow St. Francis' example and preach to birds and other animals. Fr. Hardon wasn't a Franciscan but a Jesuit.

I think he answered this call to preach to every creature by faithfully living out the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. At the beginning of them there is a reflection entitled "The First Principle and Foundation." St. Ignatius has us reflect on our purpose in life. We are here on earth to prepare for heaven. We are here to give glory and praise to God. Thus we are to use the creatures of the world in a way that helps us fulfill that purpose. If some creatures get in the way of our attaining our purpose, we are to reject them. If they help us in attaining our purpose, we are to use them. In using them in this way, we ennoble them. Like the beautiful music of this Liturgy, the sounds alone mean nothing, but when brought together for God's glory and praise, they become beautiful and noble. This is what it means to preach the Gospel to all creatures. We lift up the creation around us and bring it under the reign of Christ the King. We proclaim to all creation its purpose--the praise and glory of God--and in doing so we claim all for the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

This brings us to another of aspect of the Spiritual Exercises that can be found in Fr. Hardon--his zealous response to the call of Christ the King. In the Exercises there is a meditation on the call of a king. St. Ignatius has us first imagine the call of an earthly ruler who wants to set the world right. If such a leader captures our imagine and desire to overcome the evil in our world, how much more ought Christ the King? Fr. Hardon answered that call with his all. Fr. Hardon was a true soldier of Christ. He battled for the truth. He battled for the authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. He battled for the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

But his battle was also a hidden one. Yesterday morning, Fr. Benedict Groeschel said that Fr. Hardon was "utterly dedicated" but "not a fanatic." He was not an extremist. That's because he won the interior battle. He resisted the temptation to resent or hate those who opposed him. He won the battle for love, for pure love with no ego concerns. He did not battle to win the esteem of others or support for himself, but to win souls for Christ.

And the weapon in this battle was the Cross, the love of Christ. His weapon, which he so often talked about, was sacrificial love, suffering.

We are all called to do battle. No one is neutral or on the sidelines. In this regard I'm reminded of a statue in Omaha. It's in Heartland of America Park near the downtown and the riverfront and it's dedicated to the veterans of World War II. It consists of a group of figures. First, there is a soldier dressed in his khaki dress uniform, holding his cap in his hand and bending down to a girl who is running into his arms. He's the veteran of the front lines who's returning to his family. The girl, holding a stick with a small American flag on it, represents all the people who prayed and who through their patriotism supported those who were fighting far from home. And then there's a boy, saluting the returning soldier and pulling a wagon that's filled with all sorts of odd things and junk: paper, wire, cans. In the effort to fight the forces of evil, nothing was wasted. The boy represents all the saving and sacificing that people back home did in order to support the war effort. And then there's a woman dressed in overalls with a wrench in her back pocket. Her name is ... yes, "Rosie, the Riveter." She represents all the women and wives who remained behind and worked in the factories to provide the materials for the war. Lastly, there are two other figures, a man and woman standing side by side, an older couple whom, when I first saw the group of statues, I assumed were the parents of the young man returning. But as I went around the statues and looked at them from the other side, head-on, I could see they weren't his parents. Together they were holding in their hands the tri-folded flag representing the sacrifice they had made--the son who didn't return.

We are all called to do battle in a war that is bigger than World War II. The battle line for this war crosses each of our hearts. We are called to do battle with ourselves, with temptation and sin, with the devil, with the world that is under the influence of the devil. And our weapon in this war is love.

We are called to love, and to lose. That's right, to lose. To lose ourselves in Christ. To die to ourselves. To offer all to Christ and with Christ, in every Mass, to the Father. This is the meaning of the Morning Offering which Fr. Hardon prayed and encouraged others to pray as part of their involvement in the Apostleship of Prayer. In offering ourselves and losing ourselves we find ourselves. We find Christ and eternal life.

This is the meaning of the "martyrdom" that Fr. Hardon predicted. It's only in that Daily Offering, in living in union with Christ's perfect offering at Mass, in living a Eucharistic life by offering ourselves with Christ, in letting the Heart of Jesus reign over us and transform us--only in this, will we be able to survive as Catholics.

Seven days after Fr. Hardon's death on December 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic Letter to the Church for the new millennium. It's called "Novo Millennio Ineunte" and in it the Holy Father challenged the Church to go deeper, "Duc in altum!" I want to conclude with words which echo Fr. Hardon's:

"Christians who have received the gift of a vocation to the specially consecrated life are of course called to prayer in a particular way: of its nature, their consecration makes them more open to the experience of contemplation, and it is important that they should cultivate it with special care. But it would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today's world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but 'Christians at risk'".

We must go deeper. We must enter more deeply into the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus as Fr. John Hardon did. Then we will be able to speak the truth courageously with love. Then we will be able to pray in a way that fills our whole life. Following Fr. Hardon there, entering into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we will offer all and receive all.

Light Weigh

On my recent trip to St. Louis for a parish mission at St. Dominic Savio Parish, I met a young woman who resonated with my message of seeing our lives--and every moment of them--as Eucharistic, as an invitation to make an offering of ourselves with Jesus to the Father. She resonated with it because this idea of "making offerings" has been part of a healthy eating program to which she belongs. It's called "Light Weigh." Some of the materials she showed me included a daily journal in which one makes a review of the day, looking for God's presence, gifts, and challenges in every hour of it.

She also shared with me a 2001 "Our Sunday Visitor" article about "Light Weigh" where the following comments caught my attention:

"The key is eating a smaller amount and offering the rest as a sacrifice for a specific intention."

"In addition to weight loss, [one participant] says the idea of offering sacrifices as gifts to God has helped everyone in her family. 'I home school our four children, and when things get frustrating, we all grab the sacrifice beads,' she said."

What are "sacrifice beads?" A string of beads on which one counts the sacrifices or good deeds that one does. Marie Martin, the older sister of St. Therese, gave her a set of such beads when she was quite young and her mother Zelie, who died when Therese was only four, once wrote about her: "Even Therese wants to start making sacrifices now. Marie has given each of the little ones a chaplet on which they can keep count of their good deeds. ... But the most charming thing of all is to see Therese slip her hand into her pocket time and time again and move a bead along as she makes some sacrifice."

I share all this as an example of how the spirituality of "offer it up" has all sorts of contemporary applications. While it's wonderful to see how it is helping people in the Light Weigh program lose weight, it's even more wonderful to imagine the spiritual power of those sacrifices and all the good they are doing in the world.

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.