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.

Palm Sunday

Before the Palm Sunday procession today, we read the account of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem from the Gospel of Luke. The final line of the Gospel is the reply of Jesus to the Pharisees who told him to tell his disciples to be quiet: "I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!" This line always reminds me of a poem by Richard Wilbur, who was the United States Poet Laureate in 1987. Though it's called "A Christmas Hymn," it's a reminder that the mystery of the Incarnation is not only about God becoming a baby. It's about God becoming human in order to share in our life and our death. Here's the poem:

A Christmas Hymn

And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver

On the various trips I take to give parish missions, retreats, and talks I make new friends and meet new groups. This morning I concelebrated Mass at a convent of the Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver. Before meeting the Sisters I learned a bit more about them and what I learned made me look forward to our meeting.

First, they publish a very good bi-monthly magazine called "Echoes from Africa and Other Continents." In it they publicize the monthly prayer intentions of the Holy Father.

Secondly, they are named after the Jesuit saint who ministered to African slaves in Colombia.

Thirdly, their foundress, Blessed Mary Theresa Ledochowska, was the sister of Fr. Wlodomir Ledochowski who as the General Superior of the Jesuit Order from 1915 to 1942.

These Sisters promote mission awareness and I look forward to working with them to do the same through the monthly mission intentions of the Holy Father.

St. Joseph's in West St. Paul

From St. Louis to St. Paul. I left the former and drove to the latter on Friday, arriving at St. Joseph's Church in West St. Paul, Minnesota. I've known Fr. Michael Creagan, the pastor, for about ten years, having first met him when I was on the staff at the Jesuit Retreat House in Lake Elmo, MN and he was an associate pastor at St. Michael's Church in Stillwater, MN. A few years ago, when he was pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Robbinsdale, MN, he invited me to give a parish mission on the Sacred Heart. Tonight and tomorrow night I'll be speaking on the theme, "Living the Eucharist." Having spent about ten of my years as a Jesuit in the Twin Cities, it's good to be back, though the temperature change from Missouri to Minnesota was a bit of a shock.

Vatican II and Offering Up

As I was praying the Divine Office or Breviary this morning, I was happy to see something in the second reading of the Office of Readings. That reading was an excerpt from the Vatican Council II's pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, "Gaudium et Spes" (#37 and 38). The reading talked about the new commandment of love which Jesus gave us and went on to say:

Jesus "assures those who have faith in God's love that the way of love is open to all men, and that the effort to restore universal brotherhood is not in vain. At the same time he warns us that this love is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life. ... Yet he makes us all free, so that, by denying their love of self and taking up all earth's resources into the life of man, all may reach out to the future, when humanity itself will become an offering acceptable to God."

The is the "Offering Spirituality" of the Apostleship of Prayer. Jesus offered himself to the Father. He wants to join all creation to himself and to his perfect offering. We are part of that creation and we strive to join everything--every moment of the day, every work and prayer, every thought and feeling, every breath and heart beat, everything we touch and influence by our actions, all of the creation that we are and that surrounds us--to Jesus' perfect offering.

As the document says, this offering is an act of love that "is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life."

This is the meaning of the daily or morning offering prayer that we commit ourselves to praying and living.

The Yellow Food Bus

One of the blessings of giving parish missions around the country is seeing how the Holy Spirit is at work in different ways in different parishes. Here at St. Dominic Savio Parish near St. Louis, Missouri, there is a very active St. Vincent de Paul Society. They have a small yellow school bus with which they go around to various restaurants and bread thrift shops to pick up food before it's discarded. Then they take it to food pantries around the area. They do this five out of seven days a week! It's truly a work of mercy and an example of the following description from the parish web site: "Our parishioners are living examples of true Christian love. They are supportive of each other, reach out to each other and work together to fulfill the gospel mandate of Jesus Christ." I would add: And they reach out to those in need beyond the parish community. At Mass this morning I quoted a slogan I saw some years ago: "If it were against the law to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" There's plenty of evidence here at St. Dominic Savio's.

Baptismal Consecration

Yesterday morning and today, as part of the parish mission I'm giving in Affton, Missouri, I went around to the grade school classrooms to talk about baptism. Most of the students had no memory of their own baptism, but in a few cases there were students who had been baptized as children, and in some other cases they had been present at the baptisms of their siblings. They remembered that the ceremony included water, oil, a candle, and a white garment.

We then talked about the oil, the sacred chrism. I asked them: "Besides baptism, what other three times is sacred chrism used?" The easiest of the three other times was the sacrament of confirmation. With a little prompting they were able to figure out the third time--at the ordination of a new priest. But they had trouble with the fourth time. An eighth grader was the only one to answer: "At the blessing of a new church."

Sacred chrism is very special. It is used to anoint the walls of a new church, setting that space aside for a holy purpose. It's used to anoint the altar of the new church, setting it aside for a holy purpose. It's used to anoint the hands of a newly ordained priest, setting them aside for God's service, the holy purpose of offering the sacraments. And it's used to anoint the heads of the baptized and the confirmed, setting these Christians aside for a holy purpose, consecrating them for God's service. One of the ways that we serve God and fulfill the holy purpose that we've been given in baptism and confirmation is to pray.

At this point in our little baptismal lesson I asked the children if they ever prayed for other people and they went through a survey of the people for whom they pray. Then I showed them how at every Mass we pray for the local bishop and for the pope. This is a general kind of prayer and I asked them: "If the pope asked you to pray for something would you?" The answer I get is usually a pretty spontaneous and enthusiastic "yes!" And then I told them about the very specific monthly prayer requests of the pope. In some cases I was able to show the students the Apostleship of Prayer web site and how to get to the "Kids' Page" or the "Teenagers' Page." And I left every teacher with a leaflet that has the pope's intentions for the year and with the encouragement to remind their students about those intentions at the beginning of each month.