Category Archives: spirituality

Feasts for Tired Believers

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Central Italy, 1800s

The Passionists celebrate two feasts immediately before Ash Wednesday. The Solemn Commemoration of the Passion of Jesus Christ on the Friday before Ash Wednesday. The Prayer of Jesus in the Garden on Tuesday before that day.

Both feasts are inspired by our missionary founder, St. Paul of the Cross, (1694-1775). He spent many years announcing the graces of lent in the villages and towns of the Tuscan Maremma in Italy..

It was a challenging task. The Tuscan Maremma was then a place where graces seemed gone. It was the poorest, most troubled part of Italy in Paul’s day, an area in Central Italy facing the Mediterranean Sea, almost 2,000 square miles– roughly the size of Long Island and New York City together. Only gradually, towards the end of the 1700s, after his death, did it begin inching towards recovery.

St.PaulCross.017

Now Tuscanny is a popular tourist destination. Then it was an unhealthily mix of hills and swamplands. Malaria was widespread, roads often impassible, dangerous because of bandits. Farmlands were abandoned; beggars everywhere. The people in isolated villages and hill towns suspected outsiders.

Paul and his companions preached there for many years. Every year it was the same; it never seemed to change. You need other eyes and another kind of heart to work in a world like that and not get tired.

And so as they packed their bags for their lenten journey into the Tuscan Maremma they had to remind themselves what was there before them: the mystery of the Passion of Christ. They needed to pray so they wouldn’t forget. That’s what Jesus did before the mystery of his Passion.

It’s still so today, isn’t it? These two feasts are for all kinds of tired believers, who face the world where things don’t seem to change. We need another way of seeing things and another kind of heart to journey on..

If you want to pray these feasts with the Passionists, go here.

Following Jesus Christ

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I like Rembrandt’s drawing of Jesus preaching to a crowd. All ages, shapes and sizes of ordinary humanity are there. . Jesus’ disciples, like Peter, James and John are there, but they don’t stand out.Some of his enemies are there; they don’t stand out either. They’re all there listening, except maybe the little child on the ground playing with something he’s found. Jesus sheds his light on them all, even on the little child.

Did Rembrandt find these faces in the people of his neighborhood, ordinary people? If so, this crowd could be us.

Mark’s gospl recall Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.. Some women from Galilee follow him. He calls Zachaeus, the tax collector, down from a tree to join him. Follow me, he says to a blind man begging in the same place for years. He called people of every shape and form, sinners, tax-collectors, everyone.

They follow him, not just to see him die, but for glory. “Come with me this day to paradise, “ Jesus says to the thief on the cross. Our creed says he descends into hell, to those waiting for centuries for the redemption he brings. He calls all generations to follow him.

Following Jesus to glory means taking up our cross each day.“Then he said to all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily *and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’” ( Luke 9, 23-24 )

Jesus speaks to “all”. Everyone in this world has a challenge to take up and a burden to bear. “Take up your cross.” It’s a cross distinctly ours, not the physical cross Jesus bore; it’s the cross we bear. “Do you want to see the cross? Hold out your arms; there it is.” (Wisdom of the Desert)

He blesses those who share his cross. He gives them strength to bear what they have to bear and to carry out the mission they have been given.

Even the little child in Rembrandt’s painting is blessed with his grace, even though he’s in his own world, playing with some little thing, not hearing a word. Even the child is blessed. Light falls on him.

St. Josephine Bakhita: February 8

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An heroic African woman from the Sudan, Josephine Bakhita was kidnapped by slave traders when she was 9 years old and forced into slavery for almost 12 years. Pope Benedict XVI wrote of her in his encyclical letter “On Hope” as an example of God’s gift of hope. “To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope.”

“I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life.

Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ.

Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person.

She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited.
What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God.

She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”.

On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people.

The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.” Benedict XVI “Spes salvi” 2007

Josephine Bakhita died February 8, 1947 and was declared a saint in 2000. She is the patron saint of the Sudan and victims of human trafficking. For more on her, see here.

The Numbers are Down:Mark 4:24-34

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The Sower. Jame Tissot

Numbers seem to indicate power and popularity. We think that way; Jesus’ disciples must have thought that way too. In Mark’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry in Capernaum before an enthusiastic crowd. At the end of his first day, the whole town gathers at the door of Peter’s house and word reaches out to other towns and places that a prophet has come. The numbers go up. (Mark 1, 21-34)

But then enthusiasm dies down as Jesus’ authority is questioned. Religious leaders from Jerusalem and the followers of Herod Antipas cast doubts about him. His own hometown, Nazareth, takes a dim view of him.. Gradually, Capernaum and the other towns that welcomed Jesus enthusiastically turn against him. His numbers go down.

Why are the number going down, his disciples must have wondered? It didn’t make sense. Jesus’ answer comes in Mark’s gospel today. God’s kingdom is coming; God is at work in the world, but human beings are mostly unaware of it:


“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.” (Mark 4, 28-34)

Great power is at work in the scattered seed, but we know little how it grows. The seed takes time, with its own law of growth; a great harvest will come, but still there’s mystery we don’t see. We sleep.

Meanwhile, we worry about numbers. Why are growing numbers giving up going to church or synagogue? Why are there so few vocations to our religious communities? So many of the good things in this world seem to be diminishing.

What can we do? Look into the signs of the time. Treasure the seed we have. Scatter it as we can. Be patient as we sleep. The Kingdom of God comes.

Reading Mark’s Gospel

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Mark

Mark 1, 7-11-  Mark 8, 14-21

After the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus we read at Mass from the first 8 chapters of the Gospel of Mark until Ash Wednesday.

Mark’s Gospel makes no mention of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem but begins with his baptism in the Jordan River. Then he describes his miracles and teaching in the towns around the Sea of Galilee– the Jewish towns first, then in the gentile region. Then Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and his death and resurrection.

Until recently, Mark’s Gospel received little attention compared to the gospels of Matthew, John or Luke. It was hardly read in the liturgy. Earlier commentators thought Mark was simply a synopsis of Matthew’s Gospel. Commentators today, however, recognize Mark’s Gospel as the first to be written and appreciate the powerful way it tells the story of Jesus. It’s not just a simple portrayal of historical facts or a synopsis of Matthew. It’s rich in symbolism of its own.

Mark’s Gospel, for example, begins in the waters of the Jordan River, where Jesus is called God’s beloved Son on whom the Spirit rests. Water is a recurring image in Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ ministry.

John Donahue SJ, a recent commentator on the Gospel of Mark (Liturgical Press, 2002) , points out the symbolic nature of the various events in Jesus’ ministry, beginning with his baptism in the Jordan River and then his ministry around the Sea of Galilee. As the Spirit rested on the waters of the Jordan, so does the Spirit stir the waters in Galilee, drawing more and more to Jesus, God’s Son. Crossing from the western to its eastern side of the Sea – from a side largely Jewish to a side largely gentile – Jesus and his disciples bring the gospel to gentiles as well as Jews. 

The storms Jesus and his disciples face on waters of the Sea of Galilee are more than historic storms; they symbolize the fearful challenge and rejection to be faced in bringing the gospel to others. (Mark 6:45-52)

“As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,” Jesus calls some fishermen, Simon, his brother Andrew, James and his brother John. He makes them “ fishers of men.” (Mark 1, 16-19) Along the sea, Jesus teaches the crowds in parables.

The journeys of Jesus and his disciples to Tyre and Sidon, seaports on the Mediterranean Sea, are also more than historical markers. The Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man, both gentiles healed there, are signs that the gospel must be brought over the seas to the gentiles at ends of the earth. ( Mark 7:24-37) 

Jesus multiplies bread on both sides of the Sea of Galilee in Mark’s Gospel. The gentiles are to be fed and blessed as well as Jews. (Mark 6:31-44; Mark 8:1-10)

The Spirit moves in the waters of the Jordan, the Sea of Galilee and the waters beyond yet, as Mark’s Gospel indicates repeatedly, the Jewish leaders, the pharisees, scribes, Herodians, members of his own family, his disciples, do not understand. Neither do we.

Still, the Spirit works through the waters, softening, cleansing, strengthening, giving new life.

I suspect Mark’s gospel had an important affect on the early community of Roman Christians as they survived the Neronian persecution in the 60s, when Peter and Paul were killed. A common opinion is that Mark, a disciple of Peter, wrote this gospel in Rome in part to support the Roman community after their experience. He reminded them of Peter’s words and example.

Our readings from Mark end on Ash Wednesday.

John Neumann, January 5

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Neumann
Shrine of St.John Neumann, St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia

Today’s the feast of St. John Neumann,. “The sacrament of Holy Orders is at the service of the communion of the church.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church). John Neumann served the church in an heroic way as a priest and bishop. He’s one of the founding figures of the church in the United States.

Born in Bohemia in 1811, John Neumann was drawn to serve the church in the new world as a young seminarian. Arriving in New York City in 1835, he was immediately accepted for ordination by Bishop Dubois and ordained at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Canals and railroads were transforming the new nation then. The Eire Canal, completed in 1828, connected New York harbor and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes region, causing an explosive population growth in the cities and towns along its route. Bishop Dubois sent the newly-arrived priest to minister to the many Catholic immigrants settling there.

First as a diocesan priest and then as a Redemptorist religious, Neumann founded  numerous parishes and missions in the cities and towns along the canal and railroad lines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and New York.

He spoke a number of languages and learned to speak others, even Gaelic, as he reached out to the diverse immigrant population, many poor Irish workers on the canal. He wore himself out in his tireless efforts and joined the Redemptorist Order looking for the support and stability that a religious order provided, yet as a Redemptorist he continued establishing churches and parishes through the northeastern United States as a preacher and catechist.

In 1852 Neumann was appointed bishop of Philadelphia, where the Catholic population was rapidly growing. He was a tireless shepherd, building over 100 new schools and 50 churches, until his death in 1860. Convinced that young people needed good formation in the faith, Neumann fostered Christian education and wrote two catechisms. He preached continuously, administered the sacraments and encouraged the Forty Hours Devotion and other devotional practices in his diocese.

John Neumann served the church as a zealous priest and bishop. He left his own homeland to work tirelessly to build the Catholic Church in the United States. He was a true missionary of Christ.

We need priests and missionaries like him today. Not only priests who leave their own homeland to minister in different countries, but priests who minister in an evolving church where the boundaries are not fixed.

O God, who called the Bishop Saint John Neumann, renowned for his charity and pastoral service, to shepherd your people in America, grant by his intercession that, as we foster the Christian education of youth and are strengthened by the witness of his brotherly love, we may constantly increase the family of your Church.                       Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

January 1: Mary, the Mother of God

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Mary sorrows copy
Mary. El Greco

Today we celebrate the oldest feast in the Roman calendar honoring Mary, the mother of God.  We celebrate it in the Christmas season because she is the unique witness who guarantees the mysteries of Jesus, born of Mary.. 

Who else but Mary could tell us about the early life of Jesus? It had to be her. “Mary kept all these things in her heart,” Luke says in his gospel. 

Mary and Joseph are our key witnesses to the early life of Jesus. People after the resurrection of Jesus must have asked Mary about those early years: How was he born, what was he like growing up? They must have questioned her. 

She must have told them of God’s invitation to bear his Son, of his birth in Bethlehem, the shepherds, the strangers from the east, Herod’s attempt to kill her child, the old people in the temple who recognized him, their flight into Egypt. 

She would have told them he grew up like other children, She and Jospeh were mother and father to him. They held him in their arms, fed  him, clothed him, taught him his first words, helped him take his first steps, brought him to the synagogue, instructed him in their tradition, taught him to pray, listened to his questions. Angels didn’t bring him up. They did. 

The words we hear in Luke’s story of their journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover are surely hers: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you.”

Yet, he was a Child beyond others. Her witness to that was so important. All looked to Mary for her word. He was God’s Son. She was God’s humble servant, She was the Mother of God. 

This ancient feast celebrates Mary’s witness to the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. Churches of the Byzantine and Syrian rites celebrate this feast on December 26. The Coptic rite celebrates it on January 16.

From earliest days to later councils, the church turned to  Mary when it asks “Who is  Jesus?” We call on her this Christmas season to tell us who he is.

“Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, we praise, bless, and glorify your name on the Solemnity of the Motherhood of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary.  For by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit she conceived your Only Begotten Son, and without losing the glory of virginity,  she brought forth into the world the eternal Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. “ (Preface for the feast)

The papal Mass for her feast in Rome begins with this chant:

Hail Mary, most beautiful of our human race,                                                                          Virgin worthier than all others,                                                                                            enthroned in the heavens above.

Hail Mary, Virgin bearing the Child                                                                                           who sits at the Father’s right hand,                                                                                      ruling heaven and earth and all things,                                                                                            once hidden in your womb.

Hail Mary, the Uncreated God created you,                                                                                 the Only-Begotten Son loved you deeply,                                                                                      the Holy Spirit made you pregnant in a wholly divine way.

God wonderfully made and called you,                                                                                     his hand-maid, to be the mother of his Son.                                                                                        No other was made like you.

Be our mother, our comfort, our joy,                                                                                          and after this our exile,                                                                                                                    may we be with you in heaven forever.

December 18: Joseph, Son of David

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Nativity

In the gospel of Matthew  Joseph, the husband of Mary, has an important role in Jesus’ birth and early years. Mary points to him to tell the story of the birth of Jesus in the illustration above.

Matthew’s gospel calls Joseph  a just man, someone who listens to God rather than to himself. He does God’s will. He’s a carpenter, the gospels say, certainly not someone privileged – but he’s a “son of David” from the royal family who gives the world a Messiah.

During their betrothal, which in Jewish tradition was more than the modern engagement we know, Joseph finds that Mary is pregnant. A just man, he struggles to find a way to divorce her quietly when, in a dream, an angel of God tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.

Here is the key part of the angel’s message: “For it is through the Holy Spirit 
that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Like Mary, Joseph believes God’s message. Like Mary, he sees more than human eyes and a human mind sees. “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” He believed what we say in our creed: “(Jesus) was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.” Jesus became one of us, God was with us.

Artists early on pictured Joseph with his head in his hands, listening in sleep to the angel’s message. In a dream later he heard the angel telling him to take the child and his mother to Egypt to escape Herod, the king. He was a man of great faith.

The medieval artist who painted the picture above has Mary pointing to Joseph as a witness to whose Child this is who’s’ born in a stable. They are the first to believe and they will care for Jesus with all the love and care they can give him.

Joseph has his hand on his head.. The angel spoke to him in dreams. Faith is like a dream where God speaks to us in another way.

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

The gospels for the remaining days until Christmas are from St. Luke, recalling the angel’s visit to Mary and her relative Zechariah. Matthew’s gospel will be read again after the birth of the Child, when Joseph will be warned of danger and takes the Child and Mary to Egypt and then to Nazareth..

Feast of The Immaculate Conception

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Why does Mary, the Mother of Jesus, have such a big place in our church? The words of the angel in Luke’s gospel, words we often repeat in prayer, are an answer: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”

Mary is filled with God’s grace, gifted with unique spiritual gifts from her conception, because she was to be the mother of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.

She would be the “resting place of the Trinity,” and would give birth to, nourish, guide and accompany Jesus in his life and mission in this world. To fulfill that unique role she needed a unique gift. She would be free from original sin that clouds human understanding and slows the way we believe God and his plan for us.

“How slow you are to believe” Jesus said to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. Jesus made that complaint repeatedly as he preached the coming of God’s kingdom. “How slow you are to believe!” “What little faith you have!” “Do you still not understand!” Human slowness to believe didn’t end in gospel times. We have it too.

Mary was freed from that slowness to believe. “Be it done to me according to your word,” she immediately says to the angel. Yet, her acceptance of God’s will does not mean she understood everything that happened to her. “How can this be?” she asks the angel about the conception of the child. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.”  But the angel’s answer seems so incomplete, so mysterious.

Surely, Mary would have liked to know more, but the angel leaves, never to return. There’s no daily message, no new briefing or renewed assurance by heavenly messengers. The years go by in Nazareth as the Child grows in wisdom and age and grace, but they’re years of silence. Like the rest of us, Mary waits and wonders and keeps these things in her heart.

That’s why we welcome her as a believer walking with us. She is an assuring presence who calls us to believe as she did, without knowing all. She does not pretend to be an expert with all the answers. She has no special secrets she alone knows. “Do whatever he tells you,” is her likely advice as we ponder the mysteries of her Son.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated 9 months before the feast of the Birth of Mary (September 8). The feast  was extended to the universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1708.

 Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854)

Do Whatever He Tells you

Advent: Tuesday, 1st Week

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Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom

“The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” (Isaiah 11,1)

A child stands atop Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in Tuesday’s first reading at Mass. Edward Hicks, the Quaker painter, made over 100 copies of this scene from Isaiah, carefully indicating in the far left the peace treaty between William Penn and the native peoples of Pennsylvania in colonial America.

It takes a child to believe the astounding promises Isaiah makes. Adults, hardened by the experience of life, struggle with the prophet’s words. That’s why Advent invites us to become children, not physically, of course, but spiritually.

Become like little children. That’s what Jesus told his followers,  and he praised the childlike:

“I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.” Luke 10

Only the childlike believe in great promises.

What does being “childlike” mean? Here’s what St. Leo the Great said about Jesus’s teaching on spiritual childhood: To be a child means to be “free from crippling anxiety, to be forgetful of injuries, to be sociable and to keep wondering at all things.”

A little child in its mother’s arms has no worries. It’s a good place to be, free from anxieties and a mother’s voice promising all will be well. Advent brings that grace back  to us; a grace we can lose so easily.

Jesus experienced that grace in Mary’s arms. Herod’s soldiers, like Isaiah’s Assyrian armies, were on their way. It’s a poor place where he’s born, no room in the inn, but the Child in his mother’s arms has no fear. All will be well.

Injuries come. The world can turn hostile. The promises may seem far away, but from infancy to his death, Jesus knew he was a child of God, his Father, in God’s caring hands and destined for God’s kingdom.

Help us, Lord to become like children