Bishop Emilio S. Allue', SDB (1935-2020)

Bishop Emilio S. Allué, SDB (1935-2020)

The Covid-19 virus on the morning of April 26 claimed the life of Salesian Bishop Emilio Simeon Allué, emeritus auxiliary bishop of Boston. Bishop Allué died at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Boston, where he’d been hospitalized for over a week. He was 85 years old, a professed Salesian more than 63 years, a priest more than 53 years, and a bishop more than 23 years. He was the first, and so far only, Salesian bishop in the U.S.

Emilio was born to Domingo and Juliana Carcasona Allué in Huesca, Spain, on February 18, 1935. He entered the Salesian formation program at Gerona in 1954 after completing his secondary schooling and was admitted to the novitiate in Tarragona in 1955. There were 63 novices at the start of the year! (There were two other large novitiates in Spain at that time.) Bro. Emilio made his first vows at the novitiate on August 16, 1956.

Immediately after his profession, Bro. Emilio was sent as a “missionary” to the U.S. to continue his Salesian training at Don Bosco College in Newton, N.J., where he formally enrolled on October 1. One of his novitiate companions, Bro. José Santa Bibiana, came with him to the U.S. and is still spending the rest of his life in the New Rochelle Province. They were part of a contingent of Spaniards sent to the U.S. in that era, including Bro. Javier Aracil and Bro. José Ros among others.

Bro. Emilio graduated from Don Bosco College in 1959 with a B.A. in philosophy and did his practical training at Don Bosco Tech in Paterson, N.J., from 1959 to 1962, teaching math. He returned to Europe to study theology at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome in 1962, where he was ordained on December 22, 1966. He earned an STL the following year and returned to the U.S. He became an American citizen in 1974.

In 1981 Fr. Emilio also earned a PhD in theology at Fordham University in New York. His dissertation was entitled “The Image of Virgo-Mater in the Liber Mozarabicus Sacramentorum.”

As a priest Fr. Emilio taught and filled administrative positions: director of campus ministry at Salesian Junior Seminary in Goshen, N.Y. (1967-1970), with the young professed Salesian brothers at Don Bosco College, where he taught theology (1970-1972), and at Don Bosco Tech in Paterson, where he also taught Spanish (1975-1977); director of Salesian Junior Seminary in Goshen (1972-1975); and treasurer at Don Bosco Tech, Paterson (1977-1978), and Don Bosco College (1980-1982).

When he was teaching theology at the College, some of his students (including your humble blogger) were quite ready to engage in “theological disputation” with him, sometimes seriously and sometimes just in the way of college seniors (even seminarians) with their elders.

Fr. Richard Crager tells a story from those two years in Newton that Fr./Bp. Emilio always enjoyed rehearing. As young Salesians still in formation, then-Bro. Crager and then-Bro. Jim Marra were in charge of Newton’s Camp Don Bosco during a couple of summers. They spent freely on what they saw that the camp needed, and the camp was financially quite successful as well as giving the boys a highly enjoyable experience that kept them coming back or extending their season. But Fr. Emilio came to them one day and said, in effect, “I would like to know what you wish to buy. Tell me, and I’ll see that you get it—anything within reason.” The two young confreres decided they’d see how far they could push that, and as often as they asked for something, the community’s treasurer would supply it. Finally, they thought, “Let’s ask him for a bocce court. He’ll never do that.” But the next day, the College’s construction contractor, Mr. Monteleone, showed up and began building the court. At that point Bro. Richard and Bro. Jim gave up trying to outsmart Fr. Emilio. And to their pleased amazement, the court was a tremendous hit with the older campers.

Fr. Emilio entered parish ministry in 1978 at Mary Help of Christians Parish in New York City (1978-1979) as assistant pastor and administrator of nearby St. Ann’s Parish (1979-1980). He also did a stint of a few months as chaplain of the Salesian Sisters in North Haledon in 1980. From 1982 to 1990 he was pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in New Brunswick, N.J., director of the Salesian community there, and also director of Hispanic ministry for the diocese of Metuchen.

In the process of consecrating the new chapel of the Marian Shrine in 2008, 

Bp. Emilio pours sacred chrism upon the altar.

Fr. Emilio became shrine director at the Marian Shrine in Haverstraw, N.Y. (1992-1995). Besides his strong Marian devotion, he actively promoted the devotion of Divine Mercy. In 1995 he returned to Mary Help of Christians Parish in New York City as parochial vicar, whence he was summoned in 1996 by Pope John Paul II to the episcopal ministry in Boston. Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, said, “His appointment demonstrates the Holy Father’s concern for the large Hispanic community in the Boston area.”

Bp. Allué himself thanked “almighty God for this unmerited gift that comes now into my life from Jesus’ merciful love. I accept His Will to be of service and to work among the people of this archdiocese with deep faith and complete loyalty to the Holy Father” and the cardinal. “I am confident,” he continued, “that Mary, Mother of the Church and Help of Christians, will walk with me as I proclaim the values of the Gospel of Love and Life.”

            He was ordained bishop on September 17, 1996, by Cardinal Law at Boston’s Holy Cross Cathedral and was given pastoral responsibilities for the West Region (1996-2000), the Merrimack Region (2002-2008), and Hispanic ministry (2008-2010). His episcopal motto reflected his Salesian character: Da mihi animas, indicating, according to Boston’s Pilot (7/2/10), his desire to work in priestly and episcopal service for the salvation of all.

On the Halloween Day following his episcopal ordination, according to both Fr. Dominic Tran and Fr. John Puntino—recounting what the bishop told the Salesian community—he drove from Boston to South Orange to give a day of recollection to the men in formation, wearing his episcopal cassock and pectoral cross. When he stopped to pay a toll somewhere en route, the collector inquired about his outfit: “Is that a a costume or are you really a priest?” The new bishop’s response was, “I have news for you. I am a bishop!”

Testifying to Bp. Allué’s great sense of humor, Fr. Puntino also reports another story that the bishop enjoyed telling. On one feast of St. Francis of Assisi, probably when the bishop was episcopal vicar for the West Region, he was blessing animals outside a parish and noted the variety of pets. As he was walking along, he saw a young girl and asked her, “And what animal have you brought?” She turned, pointed to the little boy behind her, and said, “My brother.”

When Bp. Allué turned 75 in February 2010, he submitted his resignation as an active bishop to Pope Benedict XVI, as church law requires, and the Holy Father accepted it on June 30. He continued episcopal duties in the Boston Archdiocese as requested and resided at St. Theresa’s Parish in West Roxbury. He also carried out Salesian ordinations in 2002 and 2012 and consecrated the new chapel at the Marian Shrine in 2008. Eventually he moved into the Regina Cleri Residence for Boston’s retired priests.

In 2012 Bp. Emilio ordained Bro. Miguel Suarez to the diaconate at the Marian Shrine.

One of the bishop’s former provincial superiors described him as “a man of pleasant character, friendly, a hard worker, persevering, cooperative, [with a] good sense of responsibility, a good community man [and] a good administrator.”

In Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley blessed the body of Bp. Emilio on April 29 before it was transported to the Salesian cemetery at Goshen for burial that afternoon.  Fr. Tim Zak, provincial, presided at a small, private rite of burial.

Homily for 3d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
3d Sunday of Easter

April 6, 2008

1 Pet 1: 17-21
Acts 2: 14, 22-33                              
Luke 24: 13-35
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Scout Leaders, Putnam Valley, N.Y.

As we continue to shelter in place, my collection of old homilies is getting a good workout!

“Conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct … with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1: 17-19).

St. Peter is addressing recent converts to Christianity.  He could be addressing any Christians, tho—recent or veteran converts, people raised as Christians from birth.  He speaks to us in the secular culture of the 21st century as much as he did to former pagans in the morally rotten culture of the 1st-century Roman Empire.

The 7 Deadly Sins (Hieronymus Bosch)

People everywhere are tempted by what Peter calls “futile conduct.”  That means idolatry:  worshipping gods that are not God and cannot save us, cannot ransom us from the power of evil, cannot give us everlasting life.  It means all those things to which men and women look in vain for lasting happiness:  to wealth—Peter explicitly refers to “perishable silver and gold” (1:18)—to health and beauty, to power and influence, to comfort and pleasure.  Those are pretty much the temptations that the Devil threw at Jesus (Matt 4:1-11), and they are the temptations that try to seduce all of us.  Like Faust, a lot of people would sell their souls for something—something that at the end of their lives, “in the final time” (1 Pet 1:20), would prove awfully empty, futile, perishable.  Some of those people could be us.  Certainly we’ve yielded plenty often to the seductiveness of greed, sloth, lust, pride, gluttony, anger, and envy.  (Those are what we call the 7 capital sins or 7 deadly sins.)

St. Peter reminds us that we have set our hope elsewhere—not on anything empty, futile, perishable, but on “the precious blood of Christ,” whom God has raised from the dead and glorified (1:21).  And God has promised to include us along with Christ because Christ has “poured forth the Holy Spirit” upon us:  the Holy Spirit who is “the Lord and giver of life,” as we profess in the Creed; the Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters that gave birth to all life “in the beginning, when God made the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1-2); the Holy Spirit that became the breath of life in God-shaped clay and made it into a man (Gen 2:7); the Holy Spirit that overshadowed the Virgin Mary and empowered her to give birth to our Savior (Luke 1:35; cf. Matt 1:20).

That Spirit has come upon us, too, in Baptism and Confirmation.  That Spirit touches us in the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist—note that at Mass the priest invokes the Holy Spirit over the bread and wine, that they might be mysteriously, sacramentally transformed into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, and that we might become sharers in that body and blood.

A couple of years ago Pope Benedict welcomed to St. Peter’s Square all the boys and girls of the diocese of Rome—of which he’s bishop—who had just made their 1st Communion.  Unrehearsed, he invited them to ask him questions about Jesus.  One little fellow asked:  “My catechist told me that Jesus is present in the Eucharist.  But how?  I can’t see him!”

And the Pope, master teacher and theologian that he is, explained—off the cuff!

      No, we cannot see him, but there are many things that we do not see but they exist and are essential.  For example, we do not see our intelligence, yet we have intelligence.  We do not see our soul, and yet it exists and we see its effects, because we can speak, think, and make decisions.  Nor do we see an electric current, for example, yet we see that it exists; we see this microphone, that it is working, and we see lights.  And so, we do not see the very deepest things, those that really sustain life and the world, but we can see and feel their effects.

      So it is with the Risen Lord:  we do not see him with our eyes, but we see that wherever Jesus is, people change, they improve.  A greater capacity for peace, for reconciliation, is created.  Therefore, we do not see the Lord himself, but we see the effects of the Lord.  So we can understand that Jesus is present.  And as I said, it is precisely the invisible things that are the most important.  So let us go to meet this invisible but powerful Lord who helps us to live well.*

It was, of course, that invisible Lord who was suddenly revealed to the 2 disciples at Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30-31,35), which in the 1st days of Christianity was the term for what we call the celebration of the Eucharist or the Mass.

But the eyes of those 2 disciples were made ready to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread thru the reflection on the Scriptures and the dialog with the Lord that preceded their stop at Emmaus.  Under the tutelage of Jesus they searched for the plan of God in the Bible; they searched for the meaning of the events of their own lives in the Word of God.  They pondered all that with Jesus.  My brothers and sisters, we must do the same:  we must read and reflect on God’s Word, the Sacred Scriptures, and we must pray with them (as well as praying in other forms), which is what dialog with God is.  And then the Eucharist will have an impact upon our lives, will help us to live well, as the Pope said to the little boy.  Then the Holy Spirit will direct us on our sojourning thru life, will help us to live reverently despite temptations, as St. Peter says, will direct us despite our sins and lead us to turn away from them, will bring us toward “the final time,” the day when Jesus Christ returns in his glory to usher us, too, into eternal life as God’s dearly beloved children.

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    * Adapted from quotation in “The Narrow Gate,” Fairfield County Catholic, 3-29-08, p. B7.

Homily for 2d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Easter

April 19, 2020

John 20: 19-31
1 Pet 1: 3-9
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
and Salesian H.S. Livestream

Introduction to Mass

Brothers and sisters, on this 8th day of Easter, the end of our Easter Day festival, we gather at the Eucharist—a baker’s dozen of us in person [i.e., the provincial residence SDBs] and many more present by grace and t he mysteries of technology, to profess our faith in the living presence of Jesus our Lord and God.  In this troubled time, we may come with fear and doubt like the apostles.  We pray the Lord to strengthen us, encourage us, and send on us his Holy Spirit of forgiveness for our sins.

“Thomas said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks …, I will not believe’” (John 20: 25).

In his homily last Sunday, Fr. John [Serio] spoke of the disciples’ missing the signs all around them concerning the life and ministry, the passion and resurrection, of Jesus.  In today’s gospel Thomas the apostle continues to miss—or rather, disbelieve—the signs.  This is the same Thomas who about 2 weeks earlier had urged his companions to return to Judea with Jesus and there die with him (John 10:16), and then with them had witnessed the raising of Lazarus.

Incredulity of Thomas (Maerten De Vos)

Now he’s a skeptic.  He must have been afraid to be around his fellow apostles in the days right after the crucifixion—social-distancing himself, so that he wasn’t with them when Jesus appeared to them on Easter nite.  Now he’s a skeptic, refusing to believe they’ve seen and spoken with Jesus risen, and been commissioned by him to continue his ministry of salvation, bringing divine mercy, the forgiveness of sins, to humanity (John 20:21-23).  Maybe Thomas is afraid all this is too good to be true; if he doesn’t raise his hopes, they can’t be crushed—as the hopes of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus had been crushed by Jesus’ death (Luke 24:21).  (That companion probably was “Mary the wife of Clopas,” one of the women who stood by Jesus’ cross [John 19:25].)  Maybe—in spite of the sign of the raising of Lazarus—all these reports that Thomas hears now seem to him like nonsense, wishful thinking produced by the lively imaginations of Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, and all the rest.

Thomas is slow to believe, or as Fr. John said last week, slow to interpret all the signs, even the testimony of his friends.  St. John the Evangelist tells us that Thomas was called Didymas, or the Twin (20:24); we call him Doubting Thomas.  Yet who of us can say for sure that if we’d been in his shoes—or his sandals—we’d have been any less skeptical?

Right now, in the spring of 2020, we are in Thomas’s sandals—not concerning belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth but concerning belief that Jesus is still present in our midst; concerning the testimony of the Church, the ongoing witness to God’s mercy, that Jesus continues to walk with us as he walked with Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas.

Where is Jesus, we may be asking—in all the suffering around us, in the fear, in the disputes about whence came this virus and how to respond to it and how soon to resume “normal” life?  According to the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples of Jesus sheltered in place for 50 days between Passover and Pentecost.  How long are we going to be in lockdown, not “for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19) but for fear of a microscopic bug?  Why is God allowing this to happen to us?

Thomas had his doubts resolved with a gentle reproof from Jesus (20:27) and physical evidence.  Jesus’ following words are addressed to us:  “Blessed are those who haven’t seen but have believed” (20:29).  We’ll get no physical evidence that Jesus remains, living, among us, no evidence that the sufferings of the sick and the anguish of their families are linked to his passion, to the nail marks in his flesh.  Ours is an age far more skeptical than Thomas ever was, demanding physical, scientific evidence for almost everything—but in many cases disbelieving such evidence, discerning, instead, “fake news”; witness the abundance of conspiracy theories about such matters as the death of Elvis, UFOs in the Nevada desert, and the origins of Covid-19.

How much harder, then, for us to grasp that we “have to suffer thru various trials, so that the genuineness of [our] faith, more precious than gold that is perishable …, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” as St. Peter says in the 2d reading (1 Pet 1:6-7).  When Jesus reveals himself at his 2d coming—with those same nail and spear marks—we’ll comprehend the mysterious ways in which he’s been with us thru every trial and challenge all our lives and thruout all the ages—even when mankind’s been harassed by the 4 horsemen of war, famine, plague, and death (cf. Rev 6)—accompanying us toward our share in his victory.  Hence, citing St. Peter again, even in a pandemic, you can “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1:9).

In fact, in these days of such trial and suffering, Pope Francis has been challenging us not just to believe but also to be hopeful.  He’s voiced the hope that, as the world has shared the common scourge of pandemic and—maybe not quite enuf—worked together to defeat it, humanity might become less divisive and more united than it has been, united in pursuit of a more universal charity, united in the pursuit of peace, united in uplifting all who are marginalized and suffering.

In a meditation published in a Spanish magazine on Friday, the Holy Father says, “If we act as one people, even in the face of the other epidemics that lie waiting for us, we can have a real impact.”

Among the things that we can change, he includes acting responsibly against hunger, so that no one dies of starvation when there’s enough food for everyone. He asks: “Will we continue to look the other way with complicit silence in the face of those wars fueled by desires for dominance and power? Are we willing to change the lifestyles that plunge so many into poverty, promoting and encouraging us to lead a more austere and humane life that enables an equitable distribution of resources? Will we adopt, as an international community, the necessary measures to stop the devastation of the environment or will we continue denying the evidence?”

“The globalization of indifference will continue to threaten and tempt our journey.… We hope our journey will find us with the necessary antibodies of justice, charity and solidarity.”[1]

Pope Francis isn’t alone in finding reason to hope amid intense suffering.  Pontius Pilate presented Jesus, just scourged nearly to death and crowned with thorns, to the screaming mob—“Behold the man!”  

"Ecce Homo" (Antonio Ciseri)

Of that scene Benedict XVI writes:  “In Jesus, it is man himself that is manifested.  In him is displayed the suffering of all who are subjected to violence, all the downtrodden. . . .  There is another side to all this, though:  Jesus’ innermost dignity cannot be taken from him.  The hidden God remains present within him.  Even the man subjected to violence and vilification remains the image of God. . . .  So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope:  God is on the side of those who suffer.”[2]

May Christ, victor over death, keep us ever hopeful.  May our faith enable us to bring his life, his goodness, his justice, and his mercy to a skeptical and hurting world.

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     [1] “Un plan para resucitar,” Vida Nueva, April 17, cited by Ines San Martin in CRUX, April 18, 2020.

     [2] Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week, From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), pp. 199-200.

Homily for Easter Sunday

Homily for Easter Sunday

April 20, 2003

Acts 10: 34, 37-43
Col 3: 1-4
Nativity, Brandon, Fla.

“Everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins thru his name” (Acts 10: 43).

The Risen Christ appears to the apostles

St. Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles this morning are addressed to the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household, and to men and women of every time and place.  Jesus of Nazareth spent his earthly life preaching God’s love and mercy, healing the sick, and forgiving sinners.  God the Father showed that he was at work in Jesus by “anointing him with the Holy Spirit and power” (10:38).

The Father further ratified Jesus’ words and work by raising him from the dead and elevating him to a place at the heavenly throne (Col 3:1).  Peter is a witness to Jesus’ public life and to the resurrection, and he interprets their meaning for Cornelius and us.  That meaning is that Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament; that God has appointed him the judge of every man’s deeds, unto eternal life or eternal condemnation; that all sinners who believe in Jesus will have their sins pardoned and be granted eternal life (Acts 10:42-43).

St. Paul addresses us directly:  “If you were raised with Christ” (Col 3:1).  We were raised with Christ symbolically as we came out of the waters of Baptism; those waters symbolized death, the penalty of sin, and our wish to die to sin and live for God.  So the waters that covered us or were at least poured over us were our death in union with Christ’s death on the cross, and our emergence from the water was our rising with Christ—sins forgiven, life promised.

In that context, that we are already united in promise with Christ in his heavenly life, Paul urges us to “seek what is above,” to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth” (Col 3:1-2).  While we’re on earth, we must necessarily have earthly concerns:  family and other personal relationships, war and peace, the good order of society, food and shelter, work and play, and so much more.  What Paul means is that our loyalty to God and our moral convictions must always take 1st place in our lives.  How we go about forming our relationships and ordering our society and conducting our daily business must always be in conformity with God’s plan, with the example of Christ, who “is seated at the right hand of God” and is our life (3:1,4).

In the verse immediately following today’s reading, Paul continues:  “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:  immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and … idolatry” (3:5).  He goes on to denounce other sins:  anger, slander, lying, and more (3:8-9).  And he urges us to act like “God’s chosen ones,” people God has chosen for eternal life, people who have repented their sins and been forgiven.  We should be compassionate, humble, gentle, and patient.  We should love one another in practice and not just in words (3:12-14).  That is how we seek what is above and put to death what is earthly in an unhealthy way—our vices.

Paul concludes today’s passage, “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory” (3:4).  The one appointed to judge every man and woman who has ever lived (Acts 10:42) will return from heaven.  He will raise every human being from the grave, from the depths of the sea, from ashes, and he will gather us all and pass judgment on us all.  Those who have hidden their lives in Christ (Col 3:3), i.e., made him the model of their lives, will be raised to eternal life with Christ their Redeemer:  sins forgiven, death conquered, crowned with glory.

“Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining.  Have mercy, Victor King, ever reigning!  Amen.  Alleluia.” (Sequence)

Homily for Good Friday

Homily for Good Friday

April 13, 1979

Heb. 4: 14-16
Salesian Community, Marrero, La.

I was still a “baby priest” (less than a year ordained) when I preached this homily.

“We have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb 4: 15).

The Letter to the Hebrews identifies Jesus our heavenly high priest with our human condition.  Altho he is the Son of God, standing before God as an equal when he speaks for us, yet he is one of us.

Although a man in every way, tempted in every way, he did not sin.  Every other priest has had to intercede for his own sins as well as the offenses of others.  Jesus alone stands pure before God.

The Kiss of Judas (Giotto)

Jesus is our high priest.  He has become one of us.  When we say he can sympathize with our weaknesses, we mean he has felt them.  The word sympathize means, literally, “to suffer with.”  When we say he did not sin, we do not mean he was not tried.

For he was as brutally tested as any man has ever been.  Recall stories you have heard about the tests of endurance, of patience, of faith that men and women have undergone:  flood, famine, war, concentration camps, disease, loneliness, poverty, exile, misunderstanding….  Remember some of your own tests of faith:  a difficult teacher, an unexpected death in the family, the misunderstanding of a spouse, the loss of a job, the burden of undesired responsibility, unresponsive students, a bad habit (long-winded preachers?)….

Now look at Christ!  Was he tempted any less than you have been?  Look at his life as a carpenter’s son in a dirty little nowhere called Nazareth.  He belonged to a conquered people ruled by a selfish tyrant.  His own family thought he was nuts.  The men he might have expected to be the first to hear God’s word in his voice—the learned men, the priests, the scribes—these men by and large rejected him.  His closest followers were a dozen nobodies—probably pretty literally a dirty dozen:  stinking fishermen, sweaty farmers, a reformed crook from Rome’s Internal Revenue, all unlettered and uncultured.

When he spoke, everyone agreed with him, but no one understood.  When he said, “You must take up your cross and come after me,” they argued about who was most important.  When he told them they must forgive those who wronged them, Peter wanted to know the legal minimum number of times he had to do it.  When he said those who were rich would have difficulty entering the kingdom, they wanted to know what reward they would get.

They came to Jerusalem, the royal city, and he did the slave’s work of washing their feet.  He warned them he was about to be betrayed by one of them perhaps hoping Judas would hear a word of grace and not do it.  But he did it…one of the Twelve.

They all swore loyalty.  They all ran like chickens from a fox.  Peter was ready to go to prison and die for him … until a serving girl tested him.

Was all that not temptation enuf for the Son of God to lose faith in the mankind he had come to save?  To lose faith in the Father’s will for him?

It was enuf, but it wasn’t.  Which of us would not have said, “I’m fed up with you turkeys!  I’m going back to my carpenter shop and mother’s home cooking.”  But he received the traitor’s kiss, accepted an unjust arrest, and begged that his followers be allowed to run away.

He got a quick trial before a prejudiced court on perjured evidence. He was beaten, spat on, laughed at, turned into the village idiot by the Palestinian “Saturday Night Live” crowd.  He was hustled to governor to tetrarch back to governor, neither having the stomach to dispense justice, both concerned for their careers, neither bothered about a trampy-looking, strangely silent Jewish prophet that no one else seemed to want either.

Be done with him then.  I wash my hands of it.  Crucify him.  He looks like a wretch, a slave; he claims a kingdom; elevate him to a slave’s throne…on a cross.  I’ll sport with him further:  Write over his head, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

It must have hurt.  What must have hurt the Son of God more was to hear God’s people, the people who had struggled for centuries to have no king but the Lord God, to hear these cry out, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).  Did they not speak truly?  For the very Word of God they had just condemned.

After this psychological and moral torture, the merely physical torment began:  the Roman pre-execution flogging, 60 or so blows with the metal-tipped lash, and 80 pounds of wooden deathbed to lug up and down the rough, narrow, crowded streets.  He was thrown to the ground; nails were driven thru his flesh; crossbeam and its human sacrifice were jerked into position and suspended between heaven and earth.  He was naked before the world, thirsty, still mocked … and absolutely alone.

Why, even God had left him!  Did he expect a last-minute deliverance?  It may be.  He who had saved others now faced the moment of truth, the moment of death, the ultimate loneliness, the total desolation.  “My God, why have you abandoned me?”  Where are you?  Have you left me here to my doom?  Haven’t I been faithful, and should not you be faithful?  Do something! Can you do anything?  Can I trust you still?

The very psalm Jesus quoted from was his answer.  Psalm 22 begins, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” and concludes, “Men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn” (vv. 30-31).  And Jesus entrusted his life to the Father.  He trusted the Father even unto death.  With the Father, not even death mattered.  God is present, no matter what disaster befalls us, no matter how absent God seems to be.  Jesus had passed the ultimate test; all the bitter vinegar sinful men and jealous demons had to offer him.  “It is finished”; and he gave up his life (John 19:30).

At any one of a dozen points, Jesus might have said, “It is finished,” and meant, “I can’t take this any more.  God asks too much.  Men are too foolish to love any more.”  Truly we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, for he himself has endured them.  He was truly tried in every way we might be.  Unlike us, he was innocent; he sinned not.  He has joined our condition and suffered our fate totally, even unto death, not as the price of his sin but of our sin.

The humanity of Christ is the bait God offered on the fishhook of the cross that Satan might swallow him in the jaws of death and be conquered when those sinful jaws split open on Sunday morning and humanity—our humanity—rose out of them alive and well in Christ Jesus, our victim and our priest.  As surely as he was tested, so shall we be.  But he sympathizes with us and will raise us up to victory with him.  “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16).

Homily for Holy Thursday

Homily for Holy Thursday

April 4, 1996

Ex 12: 1-8, 11-14
Collect
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.

I've posted a Holy Thursday homily almost every year since 2009. Here's an older one.

“Seeing the blood, I will pass over you” (Ex 12: 13). 

Is there any story in the Old Testament more dramatic than the exodus?  Israel was saved by the blood of the paschal lamb and by their passage through the waters of the sea.  The liturgy of the Easter triduum shows that Israel’s redemption is a paradigm for our own.  We are saved by the blood of the Lamb and by our passage through the waters of Baptism.

Every Easter season Johnny Hart goes poetic in his comic strip B.C. in tribute to our redemption.  Last Sunday his peg-legged poet scribbled, in part:

                   His heart has been pierced
                             that yours may beat,
                   And the blood of his corpse
                             washes your feet.
                   Picture yourself
                             in raiment white
                   Cleansed by the blood
                             of the lifeless knight.

It’s not great poetry, but it expresses our faith:  faith that the blood of Christ cleanses our sins and causes God’s wrath to pass over us; and more, that blood marks us as belonging to Christ.

(by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret)

St. Paul tells us that every time we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s body and blood we proclaim his death (1 Cor 11:26).  Our responsorial refrain, paraphrasing Paul, reminds us that our cup “is a communion with the blood of Christ (see 1 Cor 10:1).  Only figuratively does the blood of Christ wash over us.  Really, in this sacrament of the Eucharist it pours into us and is internalized.  We commune with it, become one with it, belong to Christ.

Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we do more than proclaim the death of the Lord, just as our Jewish brothers and sisters, by eating the Seder, do more than commemorate the exodus.  We enter the saving mysteries, we become active partakers.  God marks us even now with the blood of the Lamb, marks us as his own, passes over us, and saves us.

Christ “commanded us to celebrate [this supper] as the new and eternal sacrifice” (Collect).  The new and eternal sacrifice is his own body and blood, a sacrifice which he consummated on the altar of the cross.  But our bread and wine sacramentally, mysteriously, by divine power and divine love, become his own body and blood and so become that same “new and eternal sacrifice,” the body given for us, the blood spilled for us.  Our bread and wine become a sign of the new and eternal covenant.

St. John begins his account of the Last Supper by reminding us that Jesus loved his own to the end (John 13:1).  The opening prayer of our liturgy echoes this when it recalls “the supper which your Son left to his Church to reveal his love.”  It reveals his love because it is that same body that was nailed to the cross, the same blood that flowed from his scourged back, thorned head, and pierced limbs.  This body and blood which he gave for us on Calvary he gave in sign beforehand in the upper room, and he gives it tonight upon this altar, at this table, once again revealing his love in the one eternal sacrifice.

This supper that Christ leaves to his Church reveals God’s love for us when we find in it—quoting again from the opening prayer—“the fullness of life and love.”  The full life and love of Christ ought to be the energy that flows from eating this food.  And this divine energy of life and love compels us—“the love of Christ impels us,” to cite Paul once more (2 Cor 5:14)—to be life-givers and love-bearers to our neighbors.

We commune with the body and blood of Christ; we become one with him.  Jesus “loved his own in this world, and would show his love for them to the end” (John 13:1).  The example which he has given us, we must follow:  “As I have done, so you must do” (John 13:15).  This supper will continue to reveal God’s love for the Church to the Church, and to all mankind, to the extent that you and I who eat this supper, who commune with him, in deed and thought and attitude become one with him and make God’s love evident and personal.

Homily for Tuesday of Holy Week

Homily for Tuesday of Holy Week

April 7, 2020

Is 49: 1-6
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“Hear me, O islands, listen, O distant peoples” (Is 49: 1).

Today’s the 3d day in a row on which our OT reading is one of the Servant Songs from Isaiah.  We’ll hear the 4th on Friday.

(National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington)

There’s no universal agreement on the identity of this Servant of the Lord.  Just in today’s passage, he might be identified as the entire people of Israel, especially when Israel appears to be addressed:  “You are my servant, Israel, thru whom I show my glory” (49:3).

On the other hand, he seems to be an individual, a prophet of some kind.  E.g., “The Lord … formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him” (49:5).

There’s no reason why the Servant of the Lord can’t be “both-and,” which happens in a lot of Christian theology—both the whole of Israel, and an individual person.  He’s the entire nation called by God to be a testimony to the “distant peoples,” “concealed in the shadow of God’s arm” (49:2) but destined to be drawn out and fired like an arrow to get everyone’s attention in the Lord’s good time, Israel as the Lord’s glorious people among all the nations, “a light to the nations, that his salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (49:6).

At the same time the Servant is a single individual who embodies the prophetic role of Israel, perhaps even this prophet whom we know only as Second Isaiah, preparing exiled Jacob for their return to Jerusalem.

There is universal Christian agreement that our Lord Jesus is the Servant of the Lord, the one “called from birth, from [his] mother’s womb” (49:1) to reveal the glory of God (49:3), to gather Israel to the Lord (49:5), even the new Israel that includes distant peoples, to raise up new tribes for Jacob and to extend the Lord’s salvation “to the ends of the earth” (cf. 49:6).

We know, as well, that Christ’s Church now stands in his stead as the Lord’s Servant, bringing the light of the Gospel to the nations (as the central document of Vatican II says in its 1st 2 words:  Lumen gentium.  God called the Church, formed it as his servant from eternity, brought it to birth in the womb of the baptismal font.  Thus, by Christ the Lord’s commission, we too are the Servant of the Lord, chosen from birth, called and missioned to enlighten the nations with the Gospel, especially the nation of the young, even the so-called “digital continent,” to be messengers of mercy gathering God’s children to him again.

At times we may “think we’ve toiled in vain” (49:4), frustrated that our reach is so short—shorter still in this time of restriction; or, Lord knows, not always appreciated even in normal times.  But with the courage of the Lord’s Servant we keep striving, knowing that God will provide a recompense (49:4) even if our success here below is “concealed in the shadow of his arm” (49:2).

Homily for Palm Sunday

Homily for Palm Sunday

April 8, 1990

Matt 27: 11-54
Holy Cross, Fairfield, Conn.

An oldie from the files.  We’ll be blessed with a community Mass at home tomorrow (Sunday) with Fr. Provincial scheduled to preside.

by Johannes Moskos

“He saved others but he cannot save himself” (Matt 27: 42).

Two weeks ago a friend and I went whitewater rafting in Pennsylvania.  It’s a lot of fun, especially in the spring, when the water’s high and swift.  It can also be dangerous because of rocks and underwater snags in the rapids.

The guides give every group a safety orientation before they start out, including advice about what to do if you’re thrown from your raft into the rapids.  Part of that advice, of course, concerns getting back into your raft once you’ve caught up with it again, or vice versa.  Your instinct is to grab the gunwale and try to clamber over it, like hopping a fence.  It’s nearly impossible on a rubber raft shooting rapids while your feet are treading water.  So what you have to do is turn your back to the raft and let someone in it grab you under the arms and haul you in; it’s actually easier than it sounds.

This is actually rapids on the Potomac.  No pix 

on my computer from my many whitewater rafting trips on the Lehigh.

That day a lot of people went into the drink in one or another of the many rapids in the Lehigh’s upper gorge.  Yours truly was one of them, tho he’s no novice to spring rafting.  So was the very experienced captain of our raft, a fellow bigger and heavier than I.  My friend John pulled me into the raft by himself, but it took both John and me to get Russ back in.

On the way home that evening, John said to me, “It must be a really helpless feeling to be in the water like that, knowing you can’t save yourself but have to have someone else save you.”

That’s exactly what grace is.  We’re helpless:  we can’t save ourselves; we need someone else to save us.  Grace is what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about.

Jesus spent his public live saving people from their bodily afflictions, assuring us that God’s love would also overcome our spiritual afflictions.  As a man he experienced all of our frailties, including suffering and mockery, to let us know how deeply God loves us and how closely God identifies himself with our problems, our hurts, and our fears.  As a man Jesus had to experience death to let us know that God’s love for us conquers even death.

How ironic was the jeer of the Jewish leaders: “He saved others but he cannot save himself!...  He relied on God; let God rescue him now if he wants to” (27:42,43).  Jesus’ trust in his heavenly Father endured passion and death; and the Father, we know, justified his trust by raising him from the tomb.  As St. Peter later told those same Jewish leaders, “God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31).

We can’t forgive our own sins.  We can’t raise ourselves from the grave.  But Jesus Christ embodies God the Father’s love for us—the cross and the resurrection are our evidence of that.  We place our trust, we put our faith, in Jesus Christ, who saves us from our sins.  In him we will be raised from the grave on the last day.  St. John tells us, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (3:16).

Salesians Respond to COVID-19

Salesians Launch Coordinated Response to COVID-19

Photo: Don Bosco Network (Liberia)

(ANS – Rome – March 31, 2020) – Over the course of a few weeks, COVID-19 has gone from being a Chinese national problem to a pandemic involving the whole world. While the contagion has spread day by day in new regions and countries, the Don Bosco Network, the coordinating body of nine of the most important Salesian NGOs, has been hard at work. Under the patronage of the Rector Major, it has initiated a coordinated response to the current emergency under the guidance of the Congregation’s emergency response coordinator, Fr. George Menamparampil – coordinator of the Congregation’s mission office.

Already three years ago, based on the experience matured in various circumstances faced by the Congregation through the years, the Rector Major had appointed an emergency response coordinator, namely the coordinator of its mission office. On March 25, he promoted a video conference in which 47 people participated, Salesians and lay, from all the regions of the Congregation and from the Salesian Central Office.

In addition to sharing information and good practices, they decided to follow a number of actions: map the needy people the Salesian centers can reach at this moment, identify what they need; evaluate the resources available for the needs of individual circumscriptions (provinces/vice provinces); share best practices; carry out advocacy work through the Salesian presence at the U.N. and the European Union; develop fundraising campaigns in an orderly and coordinated manner; monitor and accompany the distribution of resources – both bilaterally and internationally.

The emergency response team, promoted by the Missions Department and supported by the treasurer general, have developed the operational tools to follow up on these lines of action (protocols for requesting/offering aid, materials for information, auditing, reporting, etc.). These tools were shared with the 90 circumscriptions of the Congregation, and a regular flow of information and the sharing of materials and resources has already been registered via, also, the email address created for the occasion: solidarity.covid19@sdb.org.

Among the numerous actions already reported:

Salesian Missions, the Salesian mission office in New Rochelle, in collaboration with the NGO Rise Against Hunger, has informed us that it will send a shipment of rice and soy-based foods to Peru. They are currently evaluating whether it is possible to make the shipment earlier (initially scheduled for June), and whether it is possible to integrate it with soap and hygiene products.

In India, the Salesians are increasing their efforts to save lives and prevent COVID-19 through as many as five projects; they are also collaborating with the government to adapt a higher education institution, with its boarding schools, for use as a hospital for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

Meanwhile, the Swiss Salesian NGO Don Bosco JugendHilfe WeltWeit is supporting the Salesian projects in the provinces of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Tiruchy, with a contribution of circa 80,000 euros.

In Croatia many young people of the Salesian Youth Movement are volunteering in the initiatives of the Red Cross and Caritas by bringing help to the homeless.

In the Anglophone West African Province, thanks to the experience of the Ebola epidemic, the Salesians have already prepared hygiene tools in all their works and have launched information campaigns (via the web, radio, flyers) for the prevention of contagion.

Finally, the Salesian presence at the U.N. is working, together with numerous other civil society organizations, to press on the member states for the adoption of global measures to support development worldwide.

“This is an interprovincial and international operation, for the benefit of all humanity, especially the weakest: migrant workers who have been stuck in their workplaces, the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly, the beggars.… Don Bosco is on the march and solidarity is always alive. Let’s spread hope,” says Fr. Menamparampil.

In the next few days, Fr. Angel Fernandez will relaunch the DBN initiative through a short video.

For more information, visit: www.donbosconetwork.org. 

Rector Major Offer Message of Faith and Hope

A message of faith and hope from the Rector Major

(ANS – Rome – April 1, 2020) – Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime addresses to all Salesians, the Salesian Family, and all catechists, animators, young people, and families an invitation to strengthen our faith and intensify our prayers in the critical period in which are living.

In his message, the Rector Major recalls the prayer of Pope Francis on March 27, a prayer which Salesian communities from all over the world joined in force. “The Pope left us this message, the only one possible: an outlook of faith and hope,” Fr. Fernandez emphasized, recalling the words of the Gospel quoted by the Holy Father: “Do not be afraid.”

In addition, Don Bosco’s successor thanks the entire Salesian Family for how it is responding to the emergency caused by COVID-19. On the one hand, he praises the many initiatives designed to continue carrying out formative and celebratory activities; on the other, he recalls the importance of continuing to follow the regulations dictated by civil authorities. Finally, he addresses a special thought to the poor and to all those who “if they can’t work, they can’t eat.” It’s everyone's duty, as upright citizens, to think of how to help the neediest in this difficult moment.

The complete video is available in Italian, English and Spanish on the ANSChannels.