Homily for 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 2, 2020

Rom 8: 35, 37-39

Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

“What will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8: 35).

We’re about halfway thru our 13 weeks of readings from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and are in our 5th consecutive week reflecting on ch. 8.  Having reminded us of God’s abundant love for us revealed in Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit bestowed upon us, Paul now asks whether there are any limits to the reach of God’s love:  “What will separate us from the love of Christ?”, or more accurately, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”

Paul proposes hypothetical possibilities, human and natural and supernatural, and he asserts that no “creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).  God’s love for us is absolute and all-conquering, no matter how limited may be our perception of it.  It surpasses plagues, natural disasters, human malice, even the power of Satan.  Even in a time of pandemic, Christ continues to offer us the forgiveness of sin and a part in his own victory over death.

The cross reveals the depths of God’s love for us in Christ.  In Romans ch. 6, in our reading for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Rom 6:3-4,8-11), Paul reminded us that when we were baptized we were baptized into the death of Christ, descending into his grave as we descended into the baptismal waters—in the early Church Baptism was always by immersion—and then rising with Christ to a new, godly life.  That—a new, godly life—was the commitment we made in Baptism, and now as we follow Christ, “we conquer overwhelmingly thru him” (8:37).

When we have to deal with evil in the world, it’s important for us to remember that Christ conquers.  A great many of our brother and sister Christians are suffering persecution and even death in China, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and other places.  They cling to Christ, certain that nothing and no one “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).  These brave disciples of our Lord Jesus are doing what tens of thousands of others did in the 20th century at the hands of Nazis, Communists, military dictators, death squads, and others.

Don’t think that persecution and oppression occur only in such situations.  In contemporary Western culture, the principalities that rule our politics, our schools, and our media pressure believers and sometimes mandate that believers separate from Christ, seeking to compel his followers to put their consciences aside and cooperate with abortion (nurses can be fired, doctors have their practices limited); cooperate with funding contraception (which the Little Sisters of the Poor and some others have resisted up to the Supreme Court); cooperate by signaling their approval of deviant sexual practices such as “gay marriage” and transgenderism—which Pope Francis has clearly and often denounced as a false ideology.

For example, a hate crime bill that’s before the Scottish parliament could lead to censorship of Catholic teaching by criminalizing what the Bible and the Catholic catechism teach regarding sexuality.  Such censorship has happened repeatedly on college campuses, even supposedly Catholic colleges like Marquette University.  In social media, it’s called “cancel culture,” intimidating someone with an unpopular, politically incorrect opinion, into shutting up.  And you know that in our country Christian bakers, florists, and photographers have been taken to court for refusing to be involved with homosexual weddings.

Just as Christians in the 1st century, St. Paul’s time, had to be ready to stand up for Christ against the power of the Roman Empire, 

Prisoners' barracks, Dachau (Wikipedia)

and 80 years ago more than 1,000 priests and religious perished at Dachau in the Nazi persecution, we too have to be ready to stand with Christ in defense of the truth of how God has created us in his own image, created us male and female, created us with a dignity that can’t be taken away from us by any law or politically correct trend, regardless of our race, age, national origin, state of health, or any other condition—from the moment of our conception until our natural death.  In fact, our own Declaration of Independence says that our life and liberty and “unalienable rights” with which our Creator has endowed us.  Further, as Christians we know that God has created us for an eternity enjoying his love and friendship “in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Bro. Ky Nguyen Instituted as Acolyte

Bro. Ky Nguyen Instituted as Acolyte

Bro. Ky Nguyen was installed (“instituted,” in technical lingo) as an acolyte on Saturday morning, August 1. Fr. Tim Zak, our provincial, presided over the rite during the community Mass of the provincial house community.  Most of the local Salesian community took part.  Bro. Sal Sammarco represented the formation community of Orange, N.J., to which Bro. Ky belongs while he studies theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University.  Bro. Ky is assigned to the provincial house for the summer in order to take some theology courses online.

Liturgically, it was the memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, and Fr. Tim chose the optional readings proper to St. Alphonsus, linking the great 18th-century saint to Don Bosco and to us as apostles.  Thru his teaching and preaching, especially on the Eucharist and the Blessed Mother, St. Alphonsus was a light to the people of southern Italy, and subsequently thru his influence on others.  He modeled the mercy of God in his moral theology and in the confessional.  As an acolyte, Bro. Ky will attend carefully to Eucharistic matters, and as a Salesian he, like all of us, is called to be a light to the world and a minister of divine mercy.

The ministries of lector and acolyte are canonical steps toward diaconal and priestly ordination, with a formal rite of installation.

Acolytes can “officially” serve at the sacred liturgy, prepare and clean the sacred vessels, and distribute the Eucharist in the absence of a priest or deacon (they aren't “extraordinary ministers”).

Homily for 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 26, 2020
Rom 8: 28-30
Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

“We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8: 28).

As I observed to you a few weeks ago, we’re making our way thru 13 weeks of reading parts of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  We’re now on our 4th week considering the 8th chapter of the letter, weighing our sins in the balance of God’s great mercy, weighing our human weaknesses in the balance of the power of the Holy Spirit.

“All things work for good,” Paul affirms.  “Even during a pandemic?” we may ask.  “Even during a crisis in the Church over sexual abuse?”

(Rembrandt)

Put our situation into a wider context.  You remember the story of the apostles and Jesus being caught in a big storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41).  The apostles were scared out of their wits by the storm’s violence, and Jesus sleeping in the stern of the boat—possibly Simon Peter’s fishing boat.  The apostles woke him up, crying out, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing?  We’re about to founder, and you’re sleeping!”  Jesus rebuked the storm, which ended abruptly, and then he rebuked them as men of little faith.  If Jesus is in the boat with them, how can they think they might go down?  Even so, he implies in his rebuke, is bodily death the worst that can befall us?

OK, the apostles at that point didn’t really know who Jesus was and what great work he was carrying out to conquer sin and death.  For us, if the bark of Peter—the Church—sometimes seems to be foundering, that’s happened more times than we can count in 2,000 years.  Do we forget that Jesus is still in the boat with us?

St. Paul reminds us that God has a purpose, a plan, for all of creation, including us humans, according to which everything will work out well, as we heard 2 Sundays back:  “Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God….  Creation itself [will] be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:19,21).  God’s directing the plan.

You remember Tevye’s song “If I were a rich man” in Fiddler on the Roof.  He asks God, “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?”  According to St. Paul, Adam’s fall and all our human sinfulness shall not spoil God’s vast eternal plan.  How much less will illness or natural disaster, not even bodily death, defeat his plan.  His own Son suffered persecution, torture, and a most painful, shameful death; and he rose triumphant from the grave and was raised to the heights of heaven, enthroned at the right hand of the Father.

God didn’t will the fall from grace of the 1st human beings.  He didn’t will his Son’s rejection by the Jewish and Roman authorities.  But out of all that evil, God worked good, delivering the salvation of all the men and women who come to Jesus as Lord.

“Those who love God,” those whom God has “called according to his purpose,” God takes the initiative of calling to become disciples of Jesus, calling them “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29).  Our destiny as followers of Jesus is resurrection, eternal life, a sharing in the glory of Jesus.  This is the good that God works out for us.  Jesus Christ is “the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (8:29), the firstborn from the grave to eternal life.

If God has called us to this purpose, he’ll justify us—give us his grace of holiness—and then glorify us alongside Jesus because we reflect the person of Jesus—are “conformed to his image.”

In the next passage of this letter, still from ch. 8 (vv. 31-39), part of which we’ll hear next week, Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  Can anyone condemn us?  Or any earthly affliction defeat us?  Paul answers emphatically, “No!  In all these things we conquer overwhelmingly thru him who loved us.”  When we adhere to Jesus, everything else, even plague and human depravity, will fall into place in God’s hands.  “All things work for good for those who love God.”

Homily for Friday, Week 16 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Friday
16th Week of Ordinary Time

July 24, 2020
Jer 3: 14-17
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“I will appoint over you shepherds after my own heart, who will shepherd you wisely and prudently” (Jer 3: 15).

We’ve just begun reading from Jeremiah, by word count the longest book of the Bible.  Most of those words announce doom for Judah and Jerusalem or tell of the prophet’s personal misfortunes—to the extent that the word jeremiad means “a prolonged lamentation or complaint; a cautionary or angry harangue.”

Today’s 4-verse passage is an exception to that tone.  It’s a word of promise, a word of hope.  Judah’s exiles, tho few in number, will be called back to Jerusalem, and there they will prosper:  “When you multiply and become fruitful in the land, says the Lord…” (3:16).  God will give them good shepherds, wise and prudent shepherds (priests and governors) in place of the false, misleading shepherds who brought about Jerusalem’s ruin at the hand of the Chaldeans, aka Babylonians.

The Good Shepherd (fresco in the catacombs of St. Callistus)

In fact, Jerusalem will thrive so much that “all nations will be gathered together to honor the name of the Lord at Jerusalem, and they will walk no longer in their hardhearted wickedness” (3:17).  God’s redemption is forthcoming.  The returned Judeans won’t even miss the ark of the covenant, the sacred sign of God’s dwelling among them—which disappeared when the Chaldeans captured the city and looted the temple—disappeared until Indiana Jones found it.  Instead, the whole city will be the Lord’s throne:  “At that time they will call Jerusalem the Lord’s throne” (3:17).

We hear repeatedly in the gospels and epistles that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the words of the prophets and psalms.  So it is with this passage.

The Father appointed Jesus as a shepherd after his own heart, and Jesus in turn appointed shepherds to continue the work his Father appointed for him.  Shepherding, you remember, is one of the key images in Don Bosco’s 1st dream.  We pray God thru Don Bosco’s intercession to make us wise and prudent shepherds after the heart of his Son and like our father Don Bosco.

Jesus Christ became the ark of the new covenant that God made with humanity.  In him the fullness of Deity resides (Col 2:9).  We have no need to think of or remember the ark that Moses made.  In Jerusalem the Lord was enthroned—on a cross, and from that throne he draws all people to himself (John 12:32), to the throne of grace (Heb 4:16).  We have in our midst the living presence of this Lord who gathers all nations to himself, that they may “no longer walk in their hardhearted wickedness” but might be converted into God’s children by grace and “honor the name of the Lord,” from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  May we be among those who honor the Lord, who glorify our Father in our daily words and actions, who are his witnesses wherever we are.

Homily for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

Homily for the Feast of
St. Mary Magdelene 

 
July 22, 2020
Songs 3: 1-4 

John 20: 1-2, 11-18

Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle, N.Y.

“I sought him whom my heart loves” (Songs 3: 1).

Risen Jesus appears to Mary (by Ivanov)

The little bit that we really know about Mary of Magdala offers us 2 lessons.  The 1st is her seeking Jesus and following him; the 2d is her announcing the Good News, “I have seen the Lord, and he is alive” (cf. John 20:18).

Since the early Middle Ages a mythology has developed around Mary, caused by a false conflation of 3 women who appear in the gospels:  the real Mary, Mary of Bethany (the sister of Martha and Lazarus), and the unnamed sinful woman who fell at Jesus’ feet, anointed them, and dried them with her hair.

According to St. Luke (8:2), 7 demons had gone out of the real Mary, presumably cast out by Jesus; today’s Liturgy of the Hours says explicitly that he did it, however the exorcism is to be interpreted.  Then Mary became one of the Galilean women who followed Jesus along with the 12 and “provided for them out of their resources” (8:3), suggesting that she was a woman of means.

Legends around Mary send her to Ephesus with the Virgin Mary or turn her into a penitent apostle who went with her supposed brother Lazarus and sister Martha to Gaul.

The Mary of the gospels not only followed Jesus but also stayed with him all the way to Golgotha, as all the gospels attest, Luke by implication and the other 3 evangelists by name.  From Golgothat, the 4 gospels agree (Luke by implication, again), she continued to seek him whom her heart loved, coming to the tomb early on Sunday morning with several friends to complete, lovingly, the burial rites for her beloved.

When she finally recognizes her risen Lord, she clings to him.  Most English translations are rather tame, in my opinion:  “Stop holding on to me” (John 20:17); the Vulgate reads, “Noli me tangere.”  I think the Jerusalem Bible’s “cling” is more emphatic, and the Postcommunion prayer goes with that, as well.  Be that as it may, we see the bond of love between Mary and Jesus her Lord.  That’s a model for us as disciples:  to seek the Lord always, to follow him wherever he goes, even to the cross, and to hold him tight and close when we’re with him.

Jesus concludes his meeting with Mary with his commission that she should announce his resurrection.  She becomes the “apostle to the apostles,” in the words of Rabanus Maurus and Thomas Aquinas, the bearer of the Good News to the frightened and skeptical, to Peter and the beloved disciple who have seen the empty tomb but not yet grasped its meaning.  The Lord is risen!  Death is defeated.  All his words of forgiveness and salvation are true.

That’s our commission too—to continue in Mary Magdalene’s footsteps, announcing to everyone that we’ve met Jesus and love him and find salvation in him.  “Thru her intercession and example, may we proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in [the Father’s] glory” (Collect).

Homily for 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 19, 2020

Rom 8: 26-27

Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

“The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8: 26).

Pentecost (Jan Joest)

When the apostles wanted to learn how to pray, it was easy for them to turn to Jesus and ask him to teach them.  And Jesus gave them that most basic of all prayers which we call the Lord’s Prayer.

In the physical absence of Jesus, we can and do still use his prayer.  But often we want more.  We may be unsure of what to pray for, or we may suffer interminable distractions, or we may want some new formula that’s a little less rote, or we may want to be able to put more heart into what we say to God.  There are so many ways in which we feel our prayer to be inadequate, so that “we do not know how to pray as we ought.”

There’s an old Jewish story from Eastern Europe that might encourage us:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate.  There he would light a fire, say a prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to say the prayer, he would go to the same place in the forest and say:  “Master of the Universe, listen!  I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.”  And again, the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say:  “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place, and this must be sufficient.”  Once again, a miracle.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune.  Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God:  “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest.  All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.”  And it was sufficient.[1]

It’s a story of God’s sufficiency when our own knowledge or resources are insufficient.  It’s a story of grace, if you will.  It’s a story of “the Spirit coming to the aid of our weakness.”

In the Our Father we pray that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.  But we seldom know what his will is.  (Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem John Brown’s Body has a magnificent scene in which Lincoln struggles to discern God’s will amid the carnage of the Civil War.)  Too often we try to get God to accommodate himself to our will.  Praying in the Spirit would have us praying like Jesus in the Garden:  “Not my will but yours be done” (Matt 26:39).  We’d leave ourselves open to the apparent frustration of our own hopes and desires.

St. Monica

St. Monica prayed for years and years for her son’s conversion.  When he decided to move from Carthage to Rome in order to pursue his worldly ambitions, she prayed that he’d change his mind or that something would prevent his sailing to Italy, where she was afraid that what was left of his faith and morals would meet complete shipwreck.  God ignored her pleas, and Augustine sailed to Rome.  God had other plans, which became evident when the young rhetoric teacher moved on to Milan—at that time the home of the imperial court and so the place for an ambitious young man to be—and Augustine fell under the influence of Milan’s talented and holy bishop, Ambrose.  So Monica’s more fundamental prayer, that her son be converted, was heard altho at least one of her intermediate prayers, that he stay in Africa, was not.

So our prayer, if it’s really prayer and not just the projection of our own egos, has to rely upon the ultimate wisdom of God, which is to say, on the Holy Spirit.

Such reliance is the best possible way of praying.  “The Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (8:26).  What we don’t know how to pray for, or what we can’t find the right words for, the Spirit knows and puts before the Father—no words necessary.  The longing of our hearts, the Spirit carries to the Father—whether our hearts are heavy or light, whether they are bursting with praise or collapsed in anguish, whether we need forgiveness or guidance.

Of course we can use words too.  In an old column in Catholic New York, Mary DeTurris Poust recounts how one afternoon she “was complaining about some minor problem,” and Chiara, her younger daughter, 5 at the time, said, “Why don’t you just talk to God?”  Chiara one day had overheard her “frazzled” mom “talking out loud to God” and “picked up on the fact” that Mom often talks to God “not in traditional prayer form but as if I am talking on the phone with a friend—when I’m stressed.”  Without intending it, Mary had taught Chiara a wonderful way to pray—just talk to God like he’s your “good friend, someone who will always listen.”[2]

Because God is our friend.  Jesus assures us that we’re his friends, and he’s given us his Spirit to reassure us.  Just a few verses before the passage that’s our reading today, Paul tells the Christians of Rome that the gift of the Holy Spirit enables them to address God as Abba because, in giving them Jesus’ Spirit, he has adopted them as his own children (8:15).  He’s Dad; Jesus is friend and brother.  If that weren’t enuf for them to read our hearts, the Spirit takes care of whatever more’s needed:  “And the one who searches hearts [the Father] knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because he [the Spirit] intercedes for the holy ones [those made holy because he dwells in their hearts] according to God’s will” (8:27).  The Spirit of Jesus, deep within us, makes our prayer to the Father, uttering what we can’t because our human nature is too ignorant or too frail or too distracted or too overwhelmed by our sins or not bold enuf to come to the Father and demand his attention.

What is required of us for prayer is only 2 things:  1st, that we want to pray, that we make the effort, that we put in the time, that we give God a piece of our schedules; and 2d, that we really want to be open to him, to his will, to his desire to make us holy and bring us into his world—not the other way around.  When Paul speaks of “the intention of the Spirit” and of “how we ought to pray,” he’s speaking in the context of our eternal destiny:  “the glory to be revealed for us” (8:18), “creation set free from slavery to corruption and sharing in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21), “the redemption of our bodies” (8:23), our hope of salvation (8:24).  The Spirit of Jesus most gladly intercedes for us, adds his “inexpressible groanings” to the “groanings of creation in its labor pains even until now” (8:22), that we might be saved despite all our weakness.

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     [1] Recounted by Brian Cavanaugh, TOR, The Sower’s Seeds: 120 Inspiring Stories for Preaching, Teaching and Public Speaking (Mahwah: Paulist, 2004), pp. 14-15

     [2] “Building Prayer Into Busy Lives,” CNY, July 14, 2011, p. 35.

Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 12, 2020

Rom 8: 18-23

Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

Do dogs go to heaven?  You’d probably be amazed at what a Google search brings up in response to that question.

On December 11, 2014, the NYT reported that a young boy had asked Pope Francis that question at an audience 2 weeks earlier, after his pet had died, and that Francis had responded, “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ.  Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”[1]  Such a dialog would have been in line with the Pope’s namesake St. Francis of Assisi.  Only, the reporters and editors got the story rather wrong:  Francis never said it; instead, it was St. Paul VI.[2]

St. Paul—not the Pope but the Apostle—isn’t addressing that specific question today when he speaks of the close link between the children of God and the rest of creation.  But he does seem to speak of the redemption of all of creation, along with human redemption:  “Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God” (Rom 8:19), and “Creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21).

In ch. 8 of his Letter to the Romans, part of which we read last week, Paul addresses the tension between “the flesh,” i.e., worldly powers, passions, and tendencies, and “the spirit,” our human nature elevated by the grace of God.  In the verses between last week’s reading and today’s, Paul teaches that the Spirit of God makes us God’s adopted children; he teaches that we may address God as Abba, “Father,” “Papa,” or “Dad,” as Jesus does, for with Jesus we are “joint heirs” of the kingdom of heaven, “if only we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him” (8:14-17)—that’s the last verse before today’s reading.

The Spirit of God is more powerful than our fleshly tendencies.  After his suffering and death, Jesus was raised bodily to immortal life, raised to heavenly glory.  That’s God’s plan for us, too, Paul proclaims:  “The sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (8:18).

“The sufferings of this present time” are manifold, as Paul knew:  persecution, violence, illness, weariness, prejudices, misunderstandings, anguish, abandonment by friends.  We’re in the midst of great anguish and loss from the Covid-19 pandemic, besides the other forms of suffering.  Sometimes many of us must, like Hamlet, grow weary of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and long for an end of “the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (III, I, 66, 70-71).

Paul, however, points to our hope as followers of Jesus Christ.  Creation, including our created bodies, awaits the completion of God’s plan of redemption.  Creation now is “subject to futility” (8:20), including the futility of bodily death, because Adam’s sin took the entirety of creation into rebellion against its Creator.  But now, Paul says, we live “in hope that creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21), the freedom of liberation from our sins, and if from our sins, then also from the penalties of sin—both bodily and spiritual death, eternal damnation.

Paul reminds his readers, including us, that God has already given us a down payment on our redemption:  his Holy Spirit.  We “have the first fruits of the Spirit” (8:23).  “First fruits” is a sacrificial term from Hebrew and other ancient religious practices.  When people offered to God the 1st portions of their harvests—and the first-born of their flocks and herds—they were offering to God the entire crop, flock, or herd, and all of it was sanctified.  Christ is the first fruits of the harvest of bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15:20), and we who follow Christ are thru him sanctified, made holy; and even now possess the Spirit of Christ as the first fruits of our own resurrection, even while in this earthly life “we also groan within ourselves” because of our various sufferings “as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).  All of creation waits along with us, “groaning in labor pains,” Paul says (8:22), waiting for the birth of the “new heaven and new earth” that God promises to his children in the Book of Revelation, ch. 21 (21:1), where “he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death of mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (21:4).  Christ “makes all things new” (21:5).

To sum up, I quote from a commentary:  “Suffering simply can’t compare with the glory or intimate share in God’s life which is the destiny of each believer. . . .  We believers are awaiting final and definitive redemption of our whole selves (our bodies) in confident hope with patient endurance.”[3]

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       [1] Francis “quoted” in NYT, 12/11/14.

       [2] David Gibson, Religion News Service, 12/12/14: https://religionnews.com/2014/12/12/sorry-fido-pope-francis-not-say-pets-going-heaven/.

       Another misquote found on the Net reports that St. John Paul II told a general audience (1/10/90): “Animals possess a soul, and people must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren.”  He added that animals are the “fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect” and that they are “as near to God as humans are.” See http://dreamshore.net/rococo/pope.html.  But JPII didn’t actually say exactly that: debunked at https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/st-john-paul-ii-and-animal-souls/; cf. the papal text at http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/audiences/1990/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19900110.html

       [3] The Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 1089).

Homily for Memorial of Chinese Martyrs

Homily for the Memorial

of 120 Chinese Martyrs

July 9, 2020

Collect

Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Today’s memorial is labeled “St. Augustine Zhao and Companions.”  Augustine Zhao was an elderly diocesan priest who was so severely tortured in prison in 1815 that he died.  As you may know, John Paul the Great canonized these martyrs on Oct. 1, 2000, memorial of St. Therese of Lisieux, patroness of the missions; and coincidentally (or not) the anniversary of the Chinese Communists’ complete victory over the armies of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.

Memorial plaque for the 120 Martyr Saints of China
Saint Francis Xavier Church, Saigon

Just why Fr. Augustine should be the day’s titular isn’t clear to me.  He wasn’t the 1st to die.  Chronologically, he falls about halfway in the period marked by today’s 120 martyrs—between 1648 and 1930.  There are 6 bishops among the 120, as well as many other priests (mostly religious).  So why him?  Perhaps because he was the 1st Chinese priest put to death, tho not the only one.

Besides clergy, seminarians, and religious, the martyrs included parents, widows, children, catechists, and common laborers.  They ranged in age from 9 to 79.   87 were Chinese, 33 European.  The religious were mainly Dominicans and Franciscans; there were also members of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, and others, and religious sisters.

Christianity had been known in parts of China since the 7th century, and it was sometimes welcomed.  The great Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who died in 1610, was honored, and is still honored, as a mandarin because of his vast learning and his willingness to make himself Chinese—“becoming all things to all men in order to win at least some,” as St. Paul says.

But, due to internal jealousies as well as theological issues, the Church’s position regarding inculturation changed.  The Dominicans won the Chinese Rites battle over the Jesuits, and fittingly China’s protomartyr in 1648 was a Dominican, Fr. Francis Fernandez de Capillas.  More virulent persecution didn’t come until the 1720s, and went on sporadically until 1862.  Chinese who apostasized were spared.

The persecutions seemed to end with the intervention of France and other powers.  The missions, both Catholic and Protestant, became associated with European political and economic imperialism.  Hatred for that power, and other issues, burst out in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, during which 86 to today’s saints gave their lives for Christ.  As many as 25,000 Christians may actually have been slain, but documenting them is difficult.

After the Boxers were suppressed by the armed forces of Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, and the U.S., no more missionaries were killed until 1930.  Our confreres Louis and Callistus were the last of the 120 to die for the faith.  When the Communists took over the mainland in 1949, however, they didn’t lose much time in expelling or imprisoning foreign missionaries—most famously Bp. Francis Ford and Bp. James Walsh of Maryknoll—and “re-educating” thousands of lay faithful.

The linkage of Christianity with foreign powers, foreign pressure, and foreign culture lingers today in the tensions between the Catholic Church and Beijing.  The persecution of Christians, Catholics in particular, goes on.  Dennis has told us something of the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party goes, apart from what we read and hear in the media.  Cardinal Zen is constantly warning us of the nature of the CCP, which tolerates no rivals to its authority.

    

It’s the memorial of Augustine Zhou and his companions.  Have you ever wondered about “the companions” component of these big groupings of martyrs—Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean—spread over centuries?  In what sense are Francis Fernandez and Callistus Caravario “companions” of Augustine Zhou?  Certainly not the same way that Callistus was Bp. Louis’s companion, or the victims of the Boxers were at least chronologically, and sometimes physically, companions.

Companion comes from 2 Latin words, cum, “with,” and panis, “bread.”  Someone who shares bread with you is a companion.  All 120 of these martyrs shared bread together, the Bread of Christ’s body and blood; and today, we believe, they keep company with him at the eternal banquet.  The Eucharistic bread that we share today makes us, too, their companions.  We count on their prayers to help us be as faithful to Christ as they were until we join them at the banquet.

Homily for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 5, 2020

Rom 8: 9, 11-13

St. Theresa, Bronx, N.Y.

“You  are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom 8: 9).

The Letter to the Romans is probably St. Paul’s most important writing, abounding in the theology of sin and grace.  We started reading from it 2 weeks ago, and we’ll be hearing selections from it for a total of 13 weeks—fully 25% of a year.

Last week Paul urged us to live after the example of Jesus Christ since we have been raised up with him to eternal life thru the grace of Baptism.

Today he teaches us that God’s Holy Spirit dwells in us; this is also the Spirit of Christ.  Paul isn’t explicit in this passage about our having received this share in God’s Spirit at our Baptism, but that is the case.

Image of the Holy Spirit
part of the "Glory of Bernini" in St. Peter's Basilica

So, Paul says, “You are in the Spirit.”  We are spiritual men and women.  We are to live according to the Spirit.  He says also, “The Spirit of God dwells in you.”  When we belong to Christ, his Spirit comes to us—as it did to the apostles on Pentecost—and takes possession of us and enables us to live according to the ways of Christ.

As God the Father “raised Christ from the dead,” his Spirit also “will give life to your mortal bodies” (8:11).  When we let the Holy Spirit direct our lives according to the ways of Jesus, we are preparing ourselves for resurrection.

But it’s no secret to you that it’s not easy to live according to the ways of Jesus.  It’s certainly no secret to me.  Paul acknowledges the contest, the battle, that we’re all engaged in between the flesh and the spirit.  When he speaks of the flesh, he means our earthly existence and its passions, subject to so many sinful allurements, to the deadly sins of pride, envy, lust, greed, sloth, anger, and gluttony.  In the Collect, we noted that God has “rescued us from slavery,” the slavery of our sins, from enslavement to our passions.

In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul writes:  “The works of the flesh are obvious:  fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery [in our time we might interpret this as black magic and witchcraft], hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, selfishness, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.  I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5:19-21).

Christ came in the flesh—“The Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14)—but he overcame all those temptations and allurements to enable us to rise above such earthly considerations.  Christ gives us his Spirit, to forgive our sins, which lead to eternal death—“if you live according to the flesh, you will die” (Rom 8:13)—and to empower us to live even now on a higher plane so that we’re no longer “debtors to the flesh” (8:12) and can, instead, “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13).

In contrast to the works of the flesh, to the ways that unredeemed people act, according to Galatians the Spirit of God empowers us to practice “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22-23).  Paul calls these virtues the “fruit of the Spirit” (5:22).

These virtues give us life, and thru us give life to everyone around us:  our families, co-workers, fellow parishioners, people we meet in the supermarket or on our walks thru the neighborhood.  “The Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead … will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Rom 8:11) on Judgment Day.  Those virtues are life-affirming now—and affirm our calling to live with Christ Jesus in the kingdom of God.

Victorious Camping Trip

Victorious Camping Trip

On Monday, June 22, Fr. Jim Mulloy and I parked one car at the White Bar trailhead at the end of Johnsontown Rd. in Sloatsburg and another car at the Victory Trail trailhead along NY Rte 106 (Kanawauke Rd.), whence we hiked 2.75 miles to Lake Skenonto.  It was a very hot and humid day, which would be the case for our entire outing.  But the shade was pleasant.

Rhododendrons in full bloom along the Victory Trail

There were quite a few day hikers about, and we also encountered departing overniters.

Fr. Jim's bad ankle was bothering him badly by the time we reached the lake.  Fortunately, we found a good camping spot near the lake’s north end.  He pitched his hammock and was delighted to have a large rock convenient to it on which he could park his pack.  

I used the one fairly level place to pitch my tent.  Both of us relaxed after he'd fetched water.  

A couple of guys fishing on the opposite shore

The lake's shores are delightful.  We weren't the only ones enjoying them, or the water:  various day trippers were out, and one couple camped overnite opposite us, on the other shore of the lake.

I didn't have much to do to round up some firewood--enuf to grill hot dogs for supper.  He'd also brought some marshmallows, and both of us toasted a few of those for dessert.

June 22 was one day after the longest day of the year, so we had more than enuf daylight.  Staying up to read, tho, wasn't very convenient, for lack for good places to sit without getting butt-sore--and in my case, also straining my bad back.  So we did our separate retirements before full dark.

On Tuesday, after Mass, breakfast, and Liturgy of the Hours, we followed Victory Trail .4 mile to its intersection with the Triangle Trail.  I wanted to take an unmarked shortcut to the White Bar Trail, but I yielded to Fr. Jim and we continued on the Triangle, which took us up to some elevation, then down to an arm of Lake Sebago, where one gent was fishing, but not near enuf to the trail for speaking.  Both of us were happy that Fr. Jim's ankle felt a lot better.

The Triangle Trail ends at the White Bar Trail after turning west from Lake Sebago, 1.15 mile from its junction with the Victory Trail.  From its end, from it was .2 mile to the Dutch Doctor shelter, our destination for the day.  We reached it well before noon.

4 young adults were camped behind the shelter—a friendly lot from Virginia.  The shelter hadn’t seen much recent use; it was dirty and full of cobwebs.  It was also dry (we hoped) in case of passing thunderstorms.  The roof looked questionable, and I for one was quite happy there weren't any storms.  Our 4 neighbors, who had only one small tent, didn't trust the forecast and asked to leave most of their gear with us while they went on a long day hike.

Fr. Jim fetched water again, this time from a nearby brook.  It was his idea to bring his Sawyer system and take on that chore.

  

He also did some napping, of course.  We weren't going to make a fire, so I didn't have to hunt for wood (usually my chore).  Besides napping a little, I did some reading, and I explored the area a little bit.  In a mess of rocks found a cute fawn in hiding.  

After supper a larger deer, perhaps its mother, came grazing in front of the shelter for quite a while.

For supper Fr. Jim had some cold stuff he likes; I had freeze-dried pasta in marinara sauce.  Both of us hit the (figurative) around 8:30.

On Wednesday the 24th, Fr. Jim said, "Let's say Mass when we get back to the Prep."  So we were out of camp fairly early--just after 8:00.  It was a straight, slightly downhill shot on the White Bar Trail, 1.55 miles, to our car at Johnsontown Rd.  

En route between Dutch Doctor and Johnsontown Rd.

We covered only about 6 miles over 3 days, without much elevation except that one stretch mentioned, so not an especially strenuous adventure—but enuf when you don’t do it very often and are toting a full pack.

More pictures: https://link.shutterfly.com/pjwxpu7sA7