A General Chapter

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Every six years my community, the Passionists, has a general chapter. This is our 47th general chapter and delegates from all over the world are here in Rome to elect leaders– a superior general and his council– and to chart the course for the future.

What’s our mission in the church and in the world? What are the challenges we face? What practical decisions can we make together?

Charting the course for the future may be a good way to describe what we doing here. In the retreat chapel where we pray every day the altar has become a ship as well as a table, and nets promising a catch fall from the ceiling. A model of an old sailing ship stands on one side of the altar. We have a voyage to make.

An article in the news around October 12 described the map and the mapmaker Columbus followed on his way to America. The map and the mapmaker get little credit, but without them Columbus wouldn’t have gone on to the “New World.” The mapmakers didn’t get it all right; sometimes they put imaginary islands where there were none, but their work was enough that Columbus and the others set out and got there.

I think that’s what we are doing here at this chapter. Maps are being drawn–not perfect– but they’ll help the community, the global community, sail on its way and put down the nets.

October 19th we celebrated the feast of St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionists. He gave us the first map. Still good, but we’re updating it now. We do what we can, and hope it’s God’s plan for the catch.

Signs of the Times

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Today members of the Passionist general chapter here in Rome went to see Pope Francis at the Vatican. In the picture above I’m ten rows back, but all of us were able to meet him and shake his hand at the end of our meeting. He gave us each a rosary and his blessing.

The headline for the story on the Vatican website was “Passionists are Called to Read the Signs of the Times.
You can read the story here.

I hope we do.

29th Week of the Year b

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October 21th SUNDAY TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 53:10-11/Heb 4:14-16/Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45 (146)

22 Monday
[Saint John Paul II, Pope]
Eph 2:1-10/Lk 12:13-21 (473)

23 Tuesday
[Saint John of Capistrano, Priest]
Eph 2:12-22/Lk 12:35-38 (474)

24 Wednesday
[Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop]
Eph 3:2-12/Lk 12:39-48 (475)

25 Thursday
Eph 3:14-21/Lk 12:49-53 (476)

26 Friday
Eph 4:1-6/Lk 12:54-59 (477)

27 Saturday
[BVM]
Eph 4:7-16/Lk 13:1-9 (478)

29th Sunday b: James and John

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For this week’s homily, please play the video below.

St. Paul of the Cross

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October 20th, we celebrate the feast of  St. Paul of the Cross in the United States.

A saint leaves a legacy, a blessing for the church and especially for members of communities he founded or inspired. What legacy did the saintly founder of the Passionists leave?

Paul of the Cross died October 18, 1775, a year before our American Revolution and fourteen years before the French Revolution. Twenty three years after his death, the French revolution spilled over into neighboring Italy and the Papal States. Napoleon imprisoned the pope, Pope Pius VI, religious houses and church resources were taken over by French forces; the Catholic Church in Italy, like the Catholic Church in France, was seemingly crushed by the French general and his powerful army.

In May of 1810 the situation got worse. Napoleon declared an end to the Papal States and ordered the new pope Pius VII to be imprisoned in Savona, Italy. His police led thousands of religious from their religious houses back to their homes and told to start another life. Among them were 242 Passionists, the community Paul of the Cross founded in the previous century.

The old church was dead, the emperor said. He would replace it by a new one of his own. In that thinking, the Passionists too were dead; they would hardly have a role in Napoleon’s church. Of course, the church didn’t die and neither did the Passionists.

Historians usually credit the brilliant diplomacy of Cardinal Consalvi, the pope’s secretary of state, for keeping the church alive and getting it on its feet again after Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. But diplomats weren’t the only ones responsible for the church’s restoration. Most of the credit belonged to ordinary believers who kept the faith and remained loyal.

The same was true for the Passionists. We certainly gave the church an inspirational figure at the time, St. Vincent Strambi, the Passionist bishop and first biographer of Paul of the Cross. Before Napoleon’s troops invaded Rome in 1798 Pius VI asked Vincent to preach in the city’s four major basilicas to strengthen the Roman people. After Napoleon’s defeat, Pius VII called Strambi to Rome again to preach a 9 day retreat of reconciliation–not everybody stood up to the French invaders.

But besides Strambi, what kept the Passionists alive were certainly those ordinary religious who were driven from their monasteries and came back to continue the work that St. Paul of the Cross envisioned a century before. They were the faithful ones, faithful to what they learned from him.

Paul of the Cross not only preached the mystery of the Passion of Jesus; he lived it. He held on to his dreams through hard times. Humanly speaking, the Passionists, the community he founded, should have gone out of existence many times, from its tenuous beginnings to the years it waited for acceptance by the church. The mystery of the Cross was present in its birth, its growth and its life.

Now as then, the Passion of Jesus brings life, not death.

Today’s Saints

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I was in St. Peter’s square yesterday when Pope Francis canonized five saints, two of them well known, Paul VI, who was pope as the Second Vatican Council ended and Archbishop Romero of San Salvador who was shot to death while celebrating Mass at the Hospital of Divine Providence on March 24, 1980.

Pope Francis, a believer in symbols, wore the blood stained cincture that Bishop Romero wore when he was shot and celebrated the Mass with Paul VI’s favorite chalice and carried the pastoral cross he carried on his pastoral journeys.

The square was filled on this bright sunny day, the crowd spilling over to the neighboring streets. You can see more here.

I remembered in the square yesterday Blanca and Julio who lived in El Salvador at the time the archbishop was murdered and revere him as a holy man and so I took some pictures of the many who came from their country to honor Romero as a national and even an international hero who spoke for the justice for the poor. Blue was everywhere.

I’m sure Pope Francis was delighted to canonize Romero. We need bishops like him.

And what about those saints canonized yesterday not so well known? The pope said in his homily that holiness takes different forms. The saints not well known are just as important and those that are. That’s true.

28th Week of the Year. b

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October 14  TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 

Wis 7:7-11/Heb 4:12-13/Mk 10:17-30 or 10:17-27 (143) 

15 Monday Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church 

Memorial 

Gal 4:22-24, 26-27, 31—5:1/Lk 11:29-32 (467) 

16 Tuesday

[Saint Hedwig, Religious; Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin] 

Gal 5:1-6/Lk 11:37-41 (468) 38 

17 Wednesday Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr 

Memorial 

Gal 5:18-25/Lk 11:42-46 (469) 

18 Thursday Saint Luke, Evangelist 

Feast 

2 Tm 4:10-17b/Lk 10:1-9 (661) 

19 Friday USA: Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs 

Memorial 

Eph 1:11-14/Lk 12:1-7 (471) 

20 Saturday

[USA: Saint Paul of the Cross, Priest; BVM] 

Eph 1:15-23/Lk 12:8-12 (472)

28th Sunday b: The Rich Young Man

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For this week’s homily please play the video file below.

“My Joe, with the Pope.”

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fol pope

October 11th is the feast day of Saint John XXIII,

In the fall of 1962, when I was studying in Rome. Bishop Quentin Olwell, a Passionist from Brooklyn, was made bishop of Cotabato in the Philippines and was visiting Pope John XXIII on his first “ad limina” visit.

Fr. Theodore Foley, then assistant to the Passionist superior general, came to my room and said. “Get a briefcase; we’re going over to the Vatican. We’ll be Bishop Olwell’s secretaries for the day. Sometime they let you in to see the pope.”

And that’s what happened. At the end of the bishop’s visit, they invited us into the pope’s library. He received the bishop’s “secretaries” quite genially, we shook his hands and got our picture taken with him.

I remember he asked me where I was from. I told him the United States. Then he said to me “Be like St. Gabriel,” a young Italian Passionist student who died at 24, close to my age then.

Pope John was named Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” that year, I think, but my mother, who always carried this picture in her purse and would show it to anyone she could, would say; “This is my Joe, with the pope.”

Today, I am in Rome again, at the 47th General Chapter of my community, and during this time we will be visiting Pope Francis at the Vatican. What will he say to us? Pope John, now Saint John XXIII, inspired the Second Vatican Council, which is still “in session”, in my opinion. A revolutionary event that’ s still unfolding.

I hope it will unfold in the meeting I’m part of these days.

Pope Francis (Sketch by Duk Soon)

27th Sunday of the Year b

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OCTOBER 7 SUNDAY TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Gn 2:18-24/Heb 2:9-11/Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12 (140)

8 Monday
Gal 1:6-12/Lk 10:25-37 (461)

9 Tuesday
[Saint Denis, Bishop, and Companions, Martyrs; Saint John Leonardi, Priest]
Gal 1:13-24/Lk 10:38-42 (462)

10 Wednesday
Gal 2:1-2, 7-14/Lk 11:1-4 (463)

11 Thursday
[Saint John XXIII, Pope]
Gal 3:1-5/Lk 11:5-13 (464)

12 Friday
Gal 3:7-14/Lk 11:15-26 (465)

13 Saturday
[BVM]
Gal 3:22-29/Lk 11:27-28 (466)