Homily for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 15, 2024
Creed
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

This is the 2d part of a presentation on the Nicene Creed.  The 1st was given on the 22d Sunday of O.T.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ” (Nicene Creed).

Two weeks ago, we began an exposition of the Creed, the statement of our most basic beliefs as Christians.  We considered 4 lines pertaining to God the Father.  (If you missed that homily, you can find it and 13 years of my Sunday preaching at sdbnews.blogspot.com.)

The longest part of the Creed, 20 lines, concerns God the Son.  This part has 2 sections, one considering the Son in himself as God (7 lines), the other considering his relationship with us as a human being.

In the 1st line of this part, we acknowledge Jesus Christ as our “one Lord.”  The Roman emperors claimed the title “Lord”; it was a claim to be divine and a demand of absolute sovereignty over lands and peoples, which all their subjects except the Jews were obliged to honor by burning incense to the emperor’s image, i.e., by worshiping him.

The baptism of Christ (Perugino)

As regards the sacred Scriptures, Lord is the term which the Jewish people used for God, as in today’s 1st reading (Is 50:4-9):  Adonai in Hebrew, Dominus in Latin, Kyrios in Greek, as in our Mass rite, Kyrie, eleison, “Lord, have mercy.”  (Yes, that’s Greek, not Latin, a remnant of the ancient Roman liturgy that was celebrated in Greek before Latin became a Christian language.)  So, we Christians are professing that Jesus Christ is our lord and master, not the emperor or any other ruler.  We’re saying that he is God, like his Father, the Kyrios of the Jewish Scriptures.

The Creed continues to emphasize the Son’s divinity, stating that belief in several ways.  Jesus Christ is the “Only Begotten Son of God … begotten, not made.”  The Father didn’t create the Son but gave birth to him; he was “born of the Father before all ages.”  The Creed is refuting the heretical belief that the Father created the Son at some point, that the Son is a creature—a creature more noble and elevated than any other creature, but not God.  It was to debate the divinity of Christ that the council of Nicea was convened in 325, and the Creed is the council’s resolution of that debate.

So the Creed states and restates that “the Only Begotten Son” is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”  It’s as if the bishops at the council of Nicea are saying, “Do you get the point?”

Then they add, “consubstantial with the Father,” i.e., “of the same exact substance as the Father.”  Substance isn’t a biblical term but one from Greek philosophy adopted by the Church.  It means the essence, the core being of something, what makes a rock a rock, a tree a tree, a human being a human being.  Here, it means the divine nature.  Whatever God the Father is, the Son is exactly the same.

Finally, the Creed affirms that all of creation was made thru the Son, who is the very voice of God:  “thru him all things came to be.”  St. John says that in the 1st lines of his Gospel:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  All things came to be thru him, and without him nothing came to be” (1:1,3).  Again, the Son’s not a creature but a creator.  “The Word” is God the Son, thru whom the Father made “all things visible and invisible” when he spoke in the beginning:  “When God created the heavens and the earth … and said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen 1:1,3), and God spoke one thing after another into being, as you can read in Genesis ch. 1.

That’s the 1st part of what our faith professes about “one Lord Jesus Christ,” God the Son in himself.  Next time, the Son’s activity on our behalf.

“This is our faith.  This is the faith of the Church.  We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Homily for 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 15, 2024
Mark 8: 27-35
Villa Maria, Bronx

“He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must … take up her cross, and follow me” (Mark 8: 34).

In the last years of the last century, a bishop emeritus resided with us at the provincial house.  He left me, at least, a few memorable quotations.  (I’m the only one who lived with him still at the house.)  One of his sayings was, “In the Middle Ages they practiced fasting and the discipline.  Now we have meetings.”

Few are the rank-and-file religious who relish meetings.  For most of us, meetings are a penance, a cross, thru which we take a few paces in the Lord’s footsteps. Perhaps that’s a cross you’re largely spared these days.

But the cross will find you anyway.  You don’t have to go looking for a cross to carry alongside or behind Jesus.  Even Jesus preached, “Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Matt 6:34).  Every day brings its troubles.  When those evils, those troubles, those crosses come, blessed are we if we recognize them and—if we don’t exactly embrace them lovingly—accept them and do our best to bear them.

There are 2 crosses that we all have to bear almost daily.  One is physical suffering, pain, or discomfort—from the weather, from something that breaks down in the house (the a/c or the elevator), from our frail bodies, from having to get up in the morning earlier than we’d like.

The other is written of by a certain Fr. Jean du Coeur de Jesus d’Elbée, recorded in Magnificat a few years ago.  “We have a tendency,” he writes, “to become obsessed by the faults of those around us. . . .  Their faults make us suffer, and this suffering in turn reminds us of them continually.”[1]  Unless you’re quite different from me, unless your community’s a lot different from mine, you’re all irritated by this or that mannerism of a sister or by some thoughtless word or by some perceived privilege she gets, etc.  Such is human nature.  It wasn’t for nothing that St. John Berchmans exclaimed, “Mea maxima poenitentia vita communis” [My greatest penance is community life.]

When we were young, the sisters at school encouraged us to offer up our sufferings—physical or interrelational—to and with Jesus.  Fr. d’Elbée goes a step further and encourages us to look for the virtues of those we live with rather than at their faults.  “As much as you can, ascribe good intentions to your neighbor.”[2]  The Little Flower urged the same advice:  “When the devil ties to put before the eyes of my soul the faults of this or that sister who is less appealing to me, I hasten to seek out her virtues, her good desires.  I tell myself that if I have seen her fall one time, she may well have undergone a great many victories that she hides thru humility….”[3]

If the cross is hard to bear, we must remember that Jesus walks ahead of us.  We’ve chosen to follow him, and we know where he’s going; we know where he wants to lead us.

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[1] October 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Homily for Wednesday, Week 23 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Wednesday
Week 23 of Ordinary Time

Sept. 11, 2024
Luke 6: 20-26
Salesian HS, New Rochelle, N.Y.

A firefighter stands under the flag of Two World Trade Center, 9/15/2001
U.S. Navy Archives Collection AR/643

Some events in our lifetimes sear themselves into our memories.  For one generation older than Bro. Bernie’s and mine, it was the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, which killed 2,400 Americans, which Pres. Roosevelt described to Congress and the American people as a date that would live in infamy.  For my generation and Bro. Bernie’s, such a date is Nov. 22, 1963, when Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  And for most Americans alive today—not you young men who hadn’t been born yet—Sept. 11, 2001, is such a date.

On Sept. 11, four terrorist gangs used passenger airplanes to attack the U.S. by crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania when the passengers on that 4th plane fought back.  Almost 3,000 people were murdered that day, including my Scoutmaster from Troop 40 Mt. Vernon.[1]

Those terrorists did what they did because they hated the U.S.  They hated the U.S. because we have a long history of defending Israel, which we do out of sympathy for the Jewish people, 6 million of whom were murdered in Hitler’s Holocaust.  In seeking to protect the Jewish people from unreasoned hatred, we’re practicing the beatitudes of Jesus[2]—compassion for the weak, assistance to those in need, standing for the lives of the innocent.  How necessary that remains was evidenced, once more, last October 7 when Hamas massacred 1,200 Jewish people.  That date probably will live as a day of infamy for Israelis.

Such events prompt us toward self-defense, of course, and perhaps to aggressive actions to prevent more violence.  That seems like a contradiction:  violence to prevent violence.  It’s certain that we need to find more effective solutions, better paths toward peace.  We also need prayer:  not just for the innocent victims of violence, and not just for our own defenders like our troops, but also for the perpetrators of violence—prayers of forgiveness, prayers for their conversion, prayers that God will change the hearts of world leaders and of ordinary people so that we all may respect every person, every child of God, and desire harmony rather than vengeance or the possession of every inch of the Holy Land, or of Ukraine, or any other land where people are suffering from others’ hatred or greed.

May God convert all of us to his ways of thinking and acting.  May he lead us to peace.[3]

A Prayer[4]

Lord God, in you we take refuge at the memory of this day of satanic brutality and terror.  Grant eternal rest in your place of light, refreshment, and peace who those who were murdered on this day.  Give those still suffering and who lost loved ones great trust in your providence and mercy.  Forgive the evil men who carried out those attacks and others who continue such wickedness.  Bless with strength and perseverance those who continue striving to protect us from further violence.  Move those intent on further atrocities to holy fear and swift repentance in the light of your eternal justice.  Help us all renew our faith in your Son’s victory over sin and death thru the shedding of his blood out of love for us and his resurrection.  We ask this thru the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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[1] See From the Eastern Front: Troop Forty Remembers (sdbnews.blogspot.com).

[2] Today’s gospel is Luke’s version of the beatitudes, briefer than Matthew’s (5:3-12).

[3] See also From the Eastern Front: Homily for 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (sdbnews.blogspot.com).

[4] Based on a prayer in a parish bulletin last weekend.

Homily for Tuesday, Week 23 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
23d Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 10, 2024
1 Cor 6: 1-11
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“You were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6: 11).

Baptism image (St. Callistus Catacombs)

St. Paul recalls the pre-conversion history of his disciples in Corinth and laments that some of them mistreat one another yet.  Then he reminds them that they’ve been washed clean and made holy, implying that they ought to live in the holiness bestowed upon them by the Spirit of God.

All of us come to religious life with a history, and we make more history in our communities—trying to live as brothers “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Sometimes by God’s grace we’ve been good brothers, touched by the power that comes forth from Jesus, as we hear in today’s gospel (Luke 6:19); and sometimes we haven’t been such good brothers.  “You inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers” (1 Cor 6:8), Paul writes.

But the one who has sanctified us and justified us doesn’t leave us.  The Spirit of the Lord Jesus remains and continues his work.  Jesus “called his disciples to himself” (Luke 6:13).  He called us to himself—that we might praise God “in the assembly of the faithful” (Ps 149:1) and that we might love our brothers and assist them in our common pursuit of life in Jesus Christ.

Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 8, 2024
Ps 146: 6-10
Notre Dame Sisters, Villa Maria, Bronx

“The Lord sets captives free” (Ps 146: 7).

In the collect we prayed for “true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.”  Isaiah promised that the God of Israel would come thru with salvation, salvation expressed in healing and in landscapes transformed by water (35:4-7).  Jesus heals a deaf man who has a speech impediment besides (Mark 7:31-35).  St. James points to the richness that comes from faith and inheriting God’s kingdom (2:5).

Salesian Missions' Clean Water Initiative provides villages in Africa
with new boreholes, hand pumps, and in some projects, water tanks.

Freedom from physical ailments is a wonderful blessing—as we who feel the effects of age know well.  Freedom from a harsh environment or from environmental degradation is a blessing.  Missionaries point to Christ and his blessings by working to heal bodies with medical care, to heal hearts broken by injustice and violence, to improve people’s lives by providing safe drinking water and by providing homes for orphans and schools for the young.  Thru missionaries, “The Lord raises up those who are bowed down” (Ps 146:5).

But the greatest freedom offered to us is that God saves us from our sins and their penalty.  Our faith in Christ leads us to this “true freedom” (Collect), to the “divine recompense” of the Savior (cf. Is 35:4).  Our “everlasting inheritance” (Collect) will be the new creation, the new Jerusalem, of which the book of Revelation speaks, where the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, and the lame leap (cf. Is 35:5-6), as foreshadowed by Christ’s healing ministry.  Our inner selves, our hearts shall be made clean and new, as Ezekiel promised (11:19), fulfilling the new covenant that Jesus contracts with us as a gift of divine grace (cf. Jer 31:31; Luke 22:20).

Pope Leo the Great’s sermon on the beatitudes speaks of this wondrous transformation of our selves:  the bodies of the saints “will be transformed by a joyous resurrection and clothed in the glory of immortality.  No longer opposed in any way to their spirits, their bodies will remain in perfect harmony and unity with the will of the soul.  Then, indeed, the outer [person] will be the peaceful and unblemished possession of the inner [person].”  Our perishable nature will be clothed with immortality, St. Leo adds, citing St. Paul (LOH 4:216; cf. 1 Cor 15:53).

So, thru the grace of Jesus will the Lord set the captives free from our sinful, perishable nature and make us “heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him” (Jas 2:5).

Salesians in Indonesia

The Salesian Presence in the World’s Largest Islamic Country

(ANS – Jakarta, Indonesia – Sept. 4, 2024) – As the first stage of his 45th apostolic journey, the longest of his pontificate, Pope Francis chose Indonesia: a country where the Salesians have been present for 34 years and have various works and numerous apostolates at the service of young people – and, as Don Bosco wanted, especially the poorest and neediest.

Indonesia is a Southeast Asian country located between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the largest archipelago state in the world, consisting of over 17,000 islands, many of which are uninhabited, while the largest islands – Java, Borneo, Papua, Sumatra, and Sulawesi (Celebes) – are home to most of the population.

Indonesia is an ethnically diverse country, with about 1,300 distinct native ethnic groups. The government officially recognizes only 6 religious denominations: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Out of a total of about 275,000,000 inhabitants, 86.7% of the population is Muslim (which makes it the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world) and 10.7% are Christians (7.6% Protestants, 3.12% Catholics). In absolute terms, there are about 8.3 million Catholics spread across 39 dioceses.

The Salesians arrived in Jakarta, the capital, in 1985. They lived in a small rented house that was right in front of a mosque. Fr. José Carbonell Llopes was the first director of that house. At the time, the Salesian presence in Indonesia was not aimed at a specific work, but was mainly a basis for the entry of Salesian missionaries into East Timor, which was still under the control of the Indonesian government.

But when the Salesians settled there, many requests for intervention began to arrive. The nearby Strada Technical Institute run by the Jesuits asked the Salesians to celebrate Mass once a month and to administer confession to Catholic students. This was how Salesian vocations in the country began to grow.

For almost 15 years, the attention of the Salesian works and their development remained focused on East Timor. It was not until 1999, when the Indonesian army left East Timor, that the Salesians began to develop a Salesian pastoral work in Indonesia and indeed, after having been for years a provincial delegation in the Indonesian-East Timor Vice Province, in 2018 it was established as an Autonomous Salesian  Vice-Province of Indonesia (INA), dedicated to St. Louis Versiglia.

Today the INA Vice Province comprises 8 Salesian houses, scattered over 3 islands: Blitar, Purwodadi, Surabaya, Tigaraksa, and 2 centers in Jakarta, all on the island of Java; then the house of Sumba, on the island of the same name; finally, Labuan Bajo, on the island of Flores, with a predominantly Catholic population, opened in 2022 at the behest of the rector major, Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime.

On a personal level, INA today is animated by 59 Salesians and has sent several of its men as missionaries to such countries as Ecuador, Brazil, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea.

One of the distinctive features of the Salesian mission in Indonesia is vocational formation. The Salesian centers offer courses in English, computer science, motor vehicle maintenance, mechanics, carpentry, welding, management of electrical systems, and other technical courses aimed at helping young people find decent access to the world of work. And these centers have also developed good collaboration with local industries and companies.

The Salesians are known for their work at the service of young people and for the Preventive System they offer in schools, in vocational training centers, in convents, and in all their activities. “Wherever we go, we meet many young people, abandoned and poor,” Salesian Fr. Andre Delimarta told the Salesian Bulletin at the time of his service (today he is a missionary in Malaysia). “These young people are in great need of not only educational and spiritual assistance, but also economic assistance. Many of them come from poor families, from farmers whose livelihood depends on the random conditions of nature. For example, Sumba students pay for school attendance with seeds or animals: goats, pigs, or chickens.”

The presence of the Salesians in Indonesia, which arose in a multi-religious environment and as a Christian minority, is itself a full manifestation of the purpose of their presence: the good of young people, whatever religion they profess.

The future of the Salesians in Indonesia appears bright today: they are appreciated by the people and the local Church, their work is often required not only for technical formation, but also for youth ministry in parishes, to preach retreats for young people, organize activities and seminars, not to mention the many bishops who wait for the Salesians to go to help the young people of their dioceses prepare for the future.

Nor should we forget, among the encouraging factors, the low average age of Indonesian Salesians, and the presence of the Salesian Family, which is slowly growing and which in any case already sees Salesian Cooperators, Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, hundreds of past pupils from different vocational training centers, and some members of the Association of Mary Help of Christians.

Homily for Thursday, Week 22 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
22d Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 5, 2024
1 Cor 3: 18-23
Luke 5: 1-11
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise” (1 Cor 3: 18).

The Scriptures tell us repeatedly that God’s word or God’s law or the Gospel of Jesus is the source of wisdom.  Don’t put your trust in princes or in transient wealth.

The miraculous catch of fish
(Rubens)

Nor in your personal knowledge or experience, as today’s gospel shows.  Simon certainly knew more about fishing in the Sea of Galilee than a carpenter from Nazareth.  But he put himself under the carpenter’s direction, and something astonishing happened (Luke 5:9).

You’ve probably heard the anecdote about Mother Teresa (today’s saint), in which someone told her, “Mother, I wouldn’t do what you’re doing for a million dollars.”  She replied, “Neither would I.”  Being guided by the wisdom of the cross—rather than by politicians, philosophers, or pundits—open for us “the present and the future” (1 Cor 3:22).  Submitting ourselves to the carpenter, belonging to Christ and thru him to God (cf. 3:23), brings forgiveness of our sins, contentment, good relationships with our brothers, and the hope of eternal life.

Camping at Lake Skenonto

Camping at Lake Skenonto

On Labor Day weekend, I hiked to Lake Skenonto in Harriman State Park. Specifically, I went out on Sunday, Sept. 1, after my 2 parish Masses and came home on Monday afternoon. I asked my longtime camping partner Fr. Jim about coming, but he’s still having a bad time with one ankle and regretted he couldn't come.

View of the lake from my campsite

There are 2 routes to Lake Skenonto; we usually use the shorter one, the Victory Trail southward from Kanawauke Rd. (Rte 106). That’s 2.15 miles, then another ¼ mile to where I wanted to camp at the south end of the lake. Desiring a little more hiking/exercise, I opted for the longer one from Johnsontown Rd. in Sloatsburg.  That follows the White Bar Trail 1.75 miles past the Dutch Doctor Shelter to the Triangle Trail trailhead, where it makes a sharp left turn and goes about .1 mile to an unmarked short cut directly to the lake (about .7 mile), on which you cross from Rockland into Orange County.  Otherwise one would pick up the longer Triangle Trail (1.15 miles) past Lake Sebago with some ascents and descents besides more trail.  My route was 3 miles and took 2 hours with a gain in elevation from 535' at the parking lot to 912' at the lake.

There were a lot of cars in the parking lot; some of the hikers might have been going elsewhere, e.g., to Almost Perpendicular on the Blue Disc Trail.  I hiked a short distance apart from a family of 4 who must have stopped at Dutch Doctor.  There were people already at the shelter.  One woman was solo camping a little before the shelter, where the Tuxedo-Mt. Ivy Trail crosses the White Bar.  After early afternoon rain, the sky gradually cleared to make a fine evening.

At the lake, the only people I saw were camped on the eastern shore.  

In the center, campers on the eastern shore

At the south end, there’s a little, secluded spot close by a creek flowing into the lake--thus, a water supply.  I got there at 5 o’clock, set up camp, fetched some water, and went down the lake till I found a spot from which I could get into the lake for a short swim.  Then back to camp for supper, Evening Prayer, hanging my bear bag, making a fire, swatting at mosquitoes (I used plenty of repellant and a head net), and relaxing till about 9:30.  Supper was freeze-dried spaghetti and meat sauce, trail mix, and dried apricots, with Crystal Lite. I was missing steaks off the grill at home, which would have been better, of course.

The evening dew was quite heavy, compelling me to put the rainfly onto my tent.  It was good I did, because the nite got pretty chilly.  I felt the chill because I’d brought only a bag liner to sleep in, not a regular sleeping bag (figuring it would be a warmish nite--but it wasn’t).  As usual, I tossed and turned a lot.  When Mother Nature got me up at 3 o’clock, the stars were impressive.

I got up for real shortly after dawn broke, got my bear bag, and made breakfast:  oatmeal, coffee, a granola bar, some mixed nuts.  After breviary and some reading, I offered Mass on a small, flat rock.  More reading, then down the length of the lake for another swim.  Meanwhile, a lot of day hikers had wandered by my camp without discerning it thru the underbrush.  On the trail up the lake, I met a young couple departing from their camp, heading home to Brooklyn.  Maybe theirs was one of those cars at Johnsontown Rd.  There was a party of 5 day hikers and a dog at the lake access at the north end; the dog was enjoying some swims, chasing a stick thrown in for her.

The lake from its north end

It's not easy to see, but there's a beaver lodge
in the middle of the photo.

Back to camp for lunch (tuna sandwich, Crystal Lite, another granola bar), then packing up.  Packing’s always a harder chore than setting up, and it usually takes me a good hour to do it in orderly fashion (more or less), and to double-check the area lest anything be forgotten.  

A visitor at my camp--a blue-tailed skink.

I left camp around 1:30 and got back to the car just before 3:00.  Google Maps told me the way home via I-287 was mostly clear, and home I was at 4:20.  Then I got a leftover steak as part of my supper.

Photos: https://link.shutterfly.com/fDiRfbwFAMb

September Message of the Vicar

THE MESSAGE OF THE VICAR

Father Stefano Martoglio, SDB

While continuing my service as vicar in the coming months, quietly, very simply, and completely in continuity, I’ll replace the Rector Major in leading the Congregation to the general chapter that will open on February 19, 2025.

Dear readers of Salesian media,

I’m about to write these lines with trepidation because, having been a reader of the Salesian Bulletin since I was a child in my family, I now find myself on a different page, having to write the first article, the one reserved for the Rector Major. I do so willingly because this honor allows me to give thanks to God for our Father Angel, now a cardinal of Holy Roman Church, who has just finished ten years of valuable service to the Congregation and the Salesian Family, following his election at General Chapter 27 in 2014.

Ten years later, he’s now completely at the service of the Holy Father, to do whatever Pope Francis will entrust to him. We continue to carry him in our hearts and accompany him with grateful prayer for the good he’s done for us because time doesn’t diminish but, rather, strengthens gratitude. His personal story is a historic event not only for him but also for all of us. Although he leaves us, in the canonical sense, for an even greater service to the Church, he remains always with us and within us.

In complete continuity

Now, as a Congregation, and by extension as a Salesian Family, how do we move forward? Quietly, very simply, and completely in continuity.  According to the Salesian Constitutions, the vicar of the Rector Major also has the task of filling in for or replacing the Rector Major in case of need. This will be the situation until the next general chapter. The Salesian Constitutions say this in a more organic and articulated way, but this is the fundamental concept. Remaining in my service as vicar in the coming months, I will replace the Rector Major in leading the Congregation to the general chapter that will open on February 19, 2025. This is indeed a demanding task and one for which I ask you immediately to pray and invoke the Holy Spirit for fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ, with the heart of Don Bosco.

My name is Stefano

Before moving on to the important things, a few words to introduce myself. My name is Stefano, and I was born in Turin to a typical Italian family. My father, a Salesian past pupil, wanted to send me to the same school that he had attended in his time; my mother, also a past pupil of a Catholic school, was a teacher. From them I received life, and a simple, concrete faith life. This is how my sister and I grew up; there are only the two of us.

My parents are already in heaven, in God’s hands, and they’ll break into huge smiles seeing what’s happening to their son. They’ll surely comment  “Don Bosco, keep your hand on his head!”

As a Salesian I always belonged to the province of Piedmont-Valle d’Aosta, until GC27, when I was asked to coordinate the Mediterranean Region (all the Salesian realities around the Mediterranean Sea, on the three continents that overlook it, but also including Portugal and some areas of Eastern Europe). This beautiful Salesian experience transformed me, making me international in the way I see and feel things. GC28 took a further step, asking me to become vicar of the Rector Major, and here we are! I’ve spent the past ten years alongside Father Angel, learning in those years to feel the heart of the world, in a Congregation that’s truly spread over the entire earth.

The near future

The service I’ll give in these coming months, until February 2025, is to accompany the Congregation to the next general chapter, which will be celebrated in Valdocco (Turin), starting on February 16, 2025, with a retreat, before the work begins on the 19th.

Dear friends, the general chapter is the highest and most important moment in the life of the Congregation. Representatives from all the provinces of the Congregation gather together (we’re talking about more than 250 confreres) to do three things, essentially: to get to know each other, to pray and reflect in order to “think about the present and the future of the Congregation,” and to elect the next Rector Major and his entire council. This is the very important moment that Father Angel addressed in his reflection on its theme: “Passionate about Jesus Christ, Dedicated to the Young.”

This theme that the Rector Major chose for our Congregation will be articulated in three different and complementary aspects: the centrality of Christ in our personal lives and religious consecration; the dimension of our community vocation, in fraternity and in co-responsibility with the laity to whom the mission is entrusted; and the institutional aspects of our Congregation: an evaluation of the animation and governance by our congregational leadership. These are three aspects of a single, life-giving theme.

Our Congregation needs this general chapter experience very much after so many events that have touched us all. Imagine—our last general chapter began very close to the beginning of the pandemic, and it was precisely because of Covid that it had to end early.

Building Hope

To celebrate a general chapter is to celebrate hope, to build hope through institutional and personal decisions that allow us to continue Don Bosco’s “dream,” to give it a present and a future. Each of us is called to be a dream, the dream in God’s heart, and a dream come true.

In our Salesian tradition, there’s a beautiful phrase that Don Bosco spoke to Father Rua when he recalled him to Valdocco from Mirabello—really to take Don Bosco’s own place: “You were Don Bosco in Mirabello. Now you’ll be that here at the Oratory.” This is what really matters: “to be Don Bosco today”—this is the greatest gift we can give the world.

Homily for Memorial of St. Gregory the Great

Homily for the Memorial of
St. Gregory the Great

Sept. 3, 2024
1 Cor 2: 10-16
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor 2: 12).

Statue of St. Gregory
at St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome

Paul addresses this language of the Spirit to the Christian faithful of Corinth.  On this memorial of St. Gregory the Great, we can note that he was a man who had turned from the world—even if he hadn’t been captured by “the spirit of the world” while he lived in the world—and had become a monk.  He allowed the Spirit to capture him for God’s service, even into service he didn’t desire—first as a papal diplomat, then as bishop of Rome.

The collect for his memorial invokes “a spirit of wisdom” upon those to whom God has “given authority to govern.”  You, brothers, have the laudable practice of praying regularly for your superiors—local, provincial, and general.  All who are charged to govern God’s people certainly need the help of divine wisdom.

Gregory responded to the Spirit by caring for a very troubled flock with gentleness and love, as the collect suggests, and the authority of service.  His times were troubled by floods, famine, and plague (that sounds like the 21s century!) and by constant danger from the semi-barbarian Lombards and the tense relations between those Lombards, the Byzantine emperor, and the general population of Italy.  Gregory worked as both a diplomat and an evangelizer in that context, and as the equivalent of Catholic Relief Services for the population.  Thru his preaching and his writings, he prompted God’s flock toward holiness and his fellow bishops toward sound pastoral care.

That our present leaders—Francis, now on a physically challenging pastoral visit to the far reaches of the world; the bishops of our country; and our congregational leaders—might be Spirit-filled, wise men of God who will help us all to flourish is a worthy and necessary object of our prayer.

Homily for 22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 1, 2024
Creed
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“I believe in one God” (Nicene Creed).

Every Sunday and holy day we proclaim our Christian faith in the statement we call the Creed.  The form we use most of the time is called the Nicene Creed because it was formulated at the 1st Ecumenical Council, which met in the city of Nicea in 325.  Next year the Church will be celebrating its 1,700th anniversary.

Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325)
 holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of (as refined in 381)

The bishops who met at Nicea thought it was important to lay out our faith in plain language, but in a little more detail than in the much older Apostles’ Creed.

The Creed begins with a very personal statement, which it repeats 3 more times:  “I believe.”  Most of you will remember that for 40 years (1970-2010) our Roman Missal used the plural form, “We believe.”  That was an attempt to highlight what the whole Church believes.  This common, shared faith is emphasized at the sacrament of Baptism after the one to be baptized, or an infant’s parents, have professed the Creed.  The priest or deacon concludes that part of the rite by stating, “This is our faith.  This is the faith of the Church.  We are proud to profess it, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

But the original form of the Creed in both Greek and Latin is in the singular, not the plural.  Each Christian must take personal ownership of the faith.  What everyone else believes isn’t sufficient for me as an individual called to a personal relationship with God.  It’s important, it’s necessary, that I claim this common faith and make it mine.

What do I believe?  In contrast to the beliefs of many ancient peoples, and some still today, I believe in one God, not a whole array of gods, such as the gods the Hebrews contended with in the Old Testament or the gods of mythology like Zeus, Athena, or Odin.  It also means that we worship God alone—and not any part of his creation, like the sun, the stars, the trees, or the earth; nor fame, fortune, power, or pleasure; nor a human being like the Roman Emperor or some modern-day tyrant.  God alone is Lord, to be adored and served.  That’s why we come to church on Sundays:  to worship the one God thru his Son Jesus Christ.  That's why early Christian martyrs were put to death--and it still happens.

The Creed is laid out in trinitarian form:  our belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  A 4th “I believe” claims the works of the Holy Spirit:  the Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life.  The Holy Trinity is what distinguishes our belief “in one God” from the faith of Jews and Muslims.  They also believe in one God, but a “unitary” God, not a Trinity.  How God is one, but 3 Persons at the same time, is the greatest mystery of our faith.  And it was the immediate cause of the Council of Nicea in 325, because many Christians were denying that Jesus Christ is God.

We acknowledge immediately that this one God is “the Father almighty.”  He is the Father of Jesus Christ, as Jesus claimed many times in the Gospels.  But because of our relationship with Jesus, he’s also our Father.  It must be said that “Father” is a metaphor; it’s symbolic language.  God doesn’t have a gender.  In view of his “fatherhood,” we call him he or him because that’s what our limited language allows us to do, and because Jesus spoke that way.  St. Paul also noted that all fatherhood or paternity derives from God the Father (Eph 3:15).  Most of our translations read that “every family in heaven and on earth” takes its name from the Father; but Paul’s Greek (and its Latin equivalent) speak of Pater (Father) and patria or paternitas (fatherhood).

And that’s true not because of any masculine action on God’s part but because of his generative action, the action of creation.  God is the “maker of heaven and earth.”  We can say, metaphorically, that he fathered everything that’s created.  No matter how vast or how old the universe is, it had a beginning.  God begot it.  Atheists may claim that the universe is eternal; it created itself.  That makes as much sense as to say that your sons and daughters created themselves; you had nothing to do with it.  It’s worth observing that 2 of the greatest scientists of the universe—Nicholas Copernicus, who proposed in the 16th century that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa, and Georges Lemaitre, who died in 1966 and proposed the Big Bang theory of  the origin of the universe, were both Catholic priests.  People of faith can discover the great truths of how the universe may have begun and how it functions.

Next, the Creed states that this one God is the “maker … of all things visible and invisible.”  The version we used for 40 years spoke of things “seen and unseen.”  One commentator on the change of wording to “visible and invisible” quipped that from where we live we can’t see the Great Wall of China; it’s unseen.  But that’s not what our faith’s talking about.  Obviously, we understand what the visible universe is, even if the seeming infinity of the Milky Way and worlds beyond it are way beyond what most of us can grasp.

But what’s the “invisible” creation?  It doesn’t mean unicorns or the Loch Ness monster!  It means angels—saintly ones like my patron St. Michael, and fallen ones, Satan and his wicked gang.  God created all of them.  The fallen angels are his creatures too.  They’re not the work of some evil God or half-god, as some people have believed at various times.  At the same time, God didn’t create evil.  That’s the work of Satan and his cronies, the work of men and women who surrender themselves to sin, and of an earth that has followed our human initiative in rebelling against the good order that God created.  God doesn’t create earthquakes or plagues; those are in some mysterious way we can’t grasp the fruit of the disorder that sinful human beings have introduced into what God created.

“This is our faith.  This is the faith of the Church.  We are proud to profess it, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  This is my faith and your faith.  We profess and make it our own.