Today we remember Pope St. John Paul II. We expect all the popes to be holy and saintly, but they’re not, statistics say. There have been 266 popes, but only 95 are remembered as saints, blessed or servants of God. Furthermore, 52 of the popes who are saints are from the first 5 centuries of the church, most of them were martyrs.
Only 2 popes have been canonized since the 16th century until the recent canonizations of Popes John XXIII, John Paul II and Paul VI. Why were these popes canonized? Each was a holy man who played a major role in the Second Vatican Council, a major event in the Catholic Church, which took place from 1962-65 and still inspires its life today.
What was Pope St. John Paul II’s role in that council? The first reading and responsorial psalm for his feast tell us:
Pope John Paul was a missionary who brought the message of Vatican II to the world: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings…” He had a prophet’s role, the first reading from Isaiah says. He fulfilled what Psalm 96 called for: “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.”
John Paul II was a global pope. Inspired by the Second Vatican Council’s call for a church engaged in the world, he made 104 apostolic journeys to all parts of the globe. It was a world increasingly interconnected, with nations and religions in daily contact with one another. He visited mosques and synagogues and Buddhist temples, as well as his own faithful. He reached out to Protestants and separated Christian churches of the east. As the voice of the Catholic Church, he engaged the world, in the spirit of Vatican II.
John Paul II was a charismatic bishop who became pope as new communications were creating a world wide audience and new political movements, like that in his native Poland, caught the attention of people everywhere.
Within his own church, Pope John Paul canonized more saints, from different countries and backgrounds, than any pope before him had done. The Second Vatican Council taught that holiness could be found everywhere.
The three popes, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II had different gifts, but all saw the Second Vatican Council as the path the church should follow. That’s the way they described the way ahead – a path, a way often unmarked, a winding road where the end is not clearly seen. Still, a path is God’s way, who leads the blind on their journey and strengthens the weak till they reach their home.
Ignatius, bishop of the large early Christian center of Antioch, was put to death in the third century in the Colosseum in Rome during the reign of Trajan. His death by wild animals is vividly portrayed in the picture (above) in the church of San Stefano Rotondo in Rome. We celebrate his feast October 17th..
On the way to Rome, Ignatius wrote seven letters to important Christian churches. The letters show him as a skillful teacher and writer; he must have been an eloquent preacher.
In his letter to the Christians at Ephesus, however, you sense his days for words are coming to an end. He’s entering the silence of death where words are not important, Ignatius writes– faith and “ being faithful to the end,” are what count:
“It is better to remain silent and to be than to talk and not be. Teaching is good if the teacher also acts. One teacher ‘spoke, and it was done,’ yet what he did in silence was worthy of the Father. He who has the word of Jesus can also listen to his silence…”
What does Ignatius mean? The Word of God silent? True, in his early years at Nazareth, Jesus is silent. Before his baptism in the Jordan by John he’s silent, until the voice of the Father says, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
Then his public ministry began, yet many didn’t hear him at all. Finally, when he’s arrested and taken to the cross to die, the evangelists say Jesus was silent.
Silence is part of facing the mystery of God. Here and now, some things can’t be known or explained. Like terrorism, natural disasters, the suffering of children. Why? God is silent. Again, Ignatius:
“He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to his silence.”
Martyrs like Ignatius made early Christians aware of what it meant to follow Jesus. It meant following Jesus into the silence of his death and his promise of resurrection. Some, however, were not so brave. As religious persecutions increased, many Christians abandoned their faith rather than face death. All they could see was this world.
The martyr became a significant figure in Christianity, a faithful follower of Jesus, an example for Christians to see further than this life. That’s why martyrs are so frequent in our calendar.
The martyr was also a powerful advocate for the mercy of God, who could turn our fear of death into hope. In the pictures of above, powerful lions tear into the saint, but his face is not turned to them, but to the One who promises life “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.”
Who are the Romans Paul writes to in his letter to the church in Rome? Historians say Jews were the predominant group that first embraced Christianity in Rome, but there were not many Jewish converts at first. A substantial population of Jews at the time lived in Trastevere, across the Tiber River. Claudius had to expel some of them from the city around the year 47 because of violent disturbances in the Trastevere synagogues over Christ. It’s unlikely there was a large number of converts to Christianity from Judaism when Paul wrote his letter.
Many Jews in Rome, faithful to Judaism, would strongly question Paul’s argument that the law was a failure.
Not many Romans, Gentiles, embraced the gospel early on either. I doubt the majority of the Romans would agree with Paul that the Roman gods had failed. Rome was a powerful, successful empire in Paul’s day. I doubt many thought too much about its flaws.
The Christian community made up of Jews and Gentiles was not large, if my reading of Paul’s time is accurate. The Christians of Rome were fervent, but few.
In his letter, Paul pictures sin as a cosmic reality, but cosmic sin is not always easy to see. It was not easy to see in Paul’s day, nor is it easy to see in our day. We identify sin with personal sin, murder, theft, cheating, adultery. Paul is aware of personal sin, yet his focus is on cosmic sin. Harder to see who’s responsible for cosmic sin. Who’s responsible for the sin in wars, armament races, manipulation of world markets, plundering the environment?
The Letter to the Romans has a large place in the Sunday and weekday readings of our lectionary. It can be difficult to read, but we need Paul’s larger picture, which calls for a larger hope. Until the final coming of Jesus, we must live in the world pictured by the apostle.
We thank God for his grace of forgiveness and his promise of new life.
Three popes involved in the Second Vatican Council have been canonized: Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.. They were declared saints, not just because they were popes, but because of their holiness and their involvement and promotion of the council.
Three months after his election as pope in 1958, Pope John XXIII, whom we remember today, called for a general council. It was to an “aggiornomento” , an updating of the church for bringing its message to the people of our time and the world of today. His official biography, which can be found here ends, “Since his death on June 3, 1963, much has been written and spoken about the warmth and holiness of the beloved Pope John. Perhaps the testimony of the world was best expressed by a newspaper drawing of the earth shrouded in mourning with the simple caption, “A Death in the Family.”
I was fortunate to meet Pope John personally in 1962 when Father Theodore Foley and I accompanied Bishop Quentin Olwell, bishop of Cotabato, in the Philippines, on his “ad Limina” visit to Rome. The pope told me to “be like St. Gabriel.” That year Pope John was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.
The popes often describe the council as the path the church must take into the future. Some years ago at a synod of bishops, Pope Francis described that path as the road Jesus took from Jericho to Jerusalem to enter the mystery of his death and resurrection. It’s a winding road, not easy to travel. Here’s a picture of it from the air in the 1930s.
The feast of St. Jerome, the great biblical scholar, is a good time to look at the history of the bible itself. Where does it come from? I happen to be staying today in a place Jerome knew well, the Celian Hill, in Rome.
Our Christian bible comes from two closely related religious traditions: Judaism and Christianity. The first books of any Christian bible come from the Jews, the Jewish scriptures. The rest of the writings found in a Christian bible– gospels, letters– come from Christian writers.
It’s good to remember that before printing was invented in the 15th century, the various writings of the bible were copied on papyri and parchment, materials too limited at first to be bound together in one book. “When you come,” Paul writes to Titus, “bring the cloak I left with Carpus, the papyrus rolls and especially the parchment.” ( Titus 4:13)
Paul does not have a complete bible, but only individual writings. Luke’s Gospel describes Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth taking a scroll of the Prophet Isaiah to read. Unrolling the scroll, he read a passage from Isaiah, probably in Aramaic or Hebrew, then he rolled back the scroll, handed it an attendant, and began to teach. (Like 4:16-30) Something like this:
Ancient scroll Byzantine Museum Wiki Commons
That’s how the scriptures were read in early Christian liturgies, from papyri and parchment copies of individual Christian gospels and letters and various books from the Jewish scriptures.
The first Christians read the books of the Old and New Testament in Greek, the language of the Mediterranean world. Only in the 2nd century did Latin versions of the scriptures begin to appear in Roman North Africa as people began speaking Latin instead of Greek. Versions in other languages, like Syriac, Coptic and Armenian, also appeared as Christianity spread through the world.. Jerome was responsible for the Latin translation.
Codexes or books of the complete Christian Bible appear only towards the 4th century, as printing methods evolved. Only towards the 9th century did complete copies of the Bible become commonplace in the latin Christian world. These complete “books” of scripture were mainly located in a church; some copies might circulate among the wealthy.
Until the 9th century copies of the scriptures were found in mostly in churches, monasteries, and church libraries of western and eastern Christianity . Complete copies of the scriptures were marked for use in the liturgies and feasts of the church. Often the scriptures appeared in lectionaries specifically designed for use in the liturgy. The ordinary Christian heard the Word of God proclaimed and then commented on in a church.
Gospel of Mark. Vulgate
St. Jerome began his important translation of the scriptures from Greek and Hebrew into latin and wrote his commentaries from 382 till his death in 420. His translations, known as the vulgate, were sponsored by friends in Rome, especially Pope Damasus, who looked for a fresh translation of the various latin versions currently in use in the western church.
The Roman church then was experiencing a spiritual revival, and Roman Christians, especially women from the wealthy families on the Caelian and Aventine hills, found Jerome writings and translations from the original Greek and Hebrew inspiring. Like all languages, latin was a developing language and Jerome produced the scriptures in a language they appreciated. Some of his wealthy friends produced copies of his translations and commentaries, which they circulated among themselves.
The Roman senator, Pammachius, whom Jerome called “ my old fellow-learner, companion and friend”, was one of the advocates of the new translations. Like other Roman Christians, he hoped to convert the followers of Rome’s traditional religion through the wisdom of the scriptures. What better resource to win them over than fresh translations of the Christian scriptures from the original Greek and Hebrew and commentaries of a brilliant scholar like Jerome?
Pammachius built an impressive basilica on the Caelian Hill in sight of the Roman Forum, Saints John and Paul. Until then, no Christian church was built in this area in deference to the sensibilities of Rome’s traditional religion firmly established in the temples and monuments of the forum.
Saints John and Paul was the first Christian church to be built in this sensitive area, according to Richard Krautheimer, an expert on Rome’s early Christian churches. The church not only honored two Roman Christian martyrs but it brought the Christian message to the spiritual heart of Rome, the Roman Forum.
Gutenberg Bible. New York Public Library. Wiki commons
Jerome’s latin translations of the scriptures, the vulgate, remained the scriptures western Christians read until the printing press revolutionized communication in the western world in the 15th century. The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the latin vulgate printed in the 1450s, ushered in the mass production of bibles. No longer for a few, the bible became available for all.
The Protestant Reformation benefitted especially from new versions of the scriptures quickly produced in the languages of western Europe. The Catholic Church reacted defensively, fearing that the faithful, uninstructed in the scriptures, would question the traditional teachings of faith. Instead of a biblically grounded spirituality fostered by the flow of printed bibles, the church turned to a spirituality nourished by devotions.
Thanks to the work of Catholic biblical scholars in the last century following in the footsteps of St. Jerome, the Catholic Church recognized the importance of the scriptures at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965 ). In its Constitution on Divine Revelation the church professed her veneration for the scriptures “just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body.”
The scriptures are “together with sacred tradition, the supreme rule of faith… Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture.” They are “the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life.” (DV 21)
“Easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful. That is why the Church from the very beginning accepted as her own that very ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament which is called the septuagint; and she has always given a place of honor to other Eastern translations and Latin ones especially the Latin translation known as the vulgate. But since the word of God should be accessible at all times, the Church by her authority and with maternal concern sees to it that suitable and correct translations are made into different languages, especially from the original texts of the sacred books. And should the opportunity arise and the Church authorities approve, if these translations are produced in cooperation with the separated brethren as well, all Christians will be able to use them. “ (DV 22)
The council also decreed that a treasure of scripture be available in the liturgy of the church.
St. Jerome and later scripture scholars were recognized at the Second Vatican Council, but the task of creating a biblical spirituality in the Catholic Church remains to be done. For Jerome it was not an easy task. His letters reveal that in his day critics strongly questioned his scholarly efforts. Even prominent teachers like St. Augustine were not altogether in favor of Jerome’s new translations, but favored versions they were used to.
Fostering a biblical spirituality today is not an easy task. St. Jerome, pray for us.
For a history of the Bible, see the Bible: A Global History, by Bruce Gordon, , Basic Books, New York 2024
Labor Day Parade 1889, New York City, NYPublic Library
Labor Day is a holiday in my country, a day off. It’s also day to reflect on issues affecting work and workers. Labor Day can be traced back to when our world was agricultural rather than industrial. In many Christian societies, it was a day when people gave thanks for the crops they harvested and prayed for continued blessings. “Prosper the work of our hands, Lord, prosper the work of our hands.”
Labor Day can be traced to the rogation days in the Christian calendar, when people gathered in their church and went in procession through their fields thanking God for his gifts of the earth and asking God’s blessing for the future. Their procession was a walk of appreciation. As they walked through their fields people saw creation as good.
In a gospel suggested for today, Jesus tells us
“Do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” (Matthew 6:311-36)
Each day has its worries, but worrying about tomorrow stops us from appreciating today, Jesus tells us. Worrying about tomorrow can stop us from living today.
That’s not to say we should not reflect on society’s social ills. Labor Day is also a time to call out against poor labor conditions, abusive labor conditions, lack of opportunities for good, meaningful work. There’s the threat that comes now from Artificial Intelligence. How will that impact workers?
Still, Labor Day calls us to take an appreciative walk through our own wheat fields, through the place where we are, looking at the work we do, appreciating the work others do for us. It’s a holiday.
Ten years ago, Pope Francis called for A World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation for September 1st. The day of prayer, coinciding with the publication of his letter Laudato si’ , began a Season of Creation, an ecumenical endeavor shared with other churches and communities that extends from September 1st to October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
Our church calendar, besides feasts and seasons, has days of prayer when particular causes arise. In a recent letter, Pope Leo called the care of creation a particularly timely issue to pray for:
“…given the evidence in various parts of the world that our earth is being ravaged. On all sides, injustice, violations of international law and the rights of peoples, grave inequalities and the greed that fuels them are spawning deforestation, pollution and the loss of biodiversity. Extreme natural phenomena caused by climate changes provoked by human activity are growing in intensity and frequency (cf. Laudato Deum, 5), to say nothing of the medium and long-term effects of the human and ecological devastation being wrought by armed conflicts.
As yet, we seem incapable of recognizing that the destruction of nature does not affect everyone in the same way. When justice and peace are trampled underfoot, those who are most hurt are the poor, the marginalized and the excluded. The suffering of indigenous communities is emblematic in this regard.
That is not all. Nature itself is reduced at times to a bargaining chip, a commodity to be bartered for economic or political gain. As a result, God’s creation turns into a battleground for the control of vital resources. We see this in agricultural areas and forests peppered with landmines, “scorched earth” policies, [1] conflicts over water sources, and the unequal distribution of raw materials, which penalizes the poorer nations and undermines social stability itself…
Environmental justice – implicitly proclaimed by the prophets – can no longer be regarded as an abstract concept or a distant goal. It is an urgent need that involves much more than simply protecting the environment. For it is a matter of justice – social, economic and human. For believers it is also a duty born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed. In a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution, care for creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity.
Now is the time to follow words with deeds.”
( For THE 10th WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION 2025)
Recently, the Dicastery for Divine Worship provided a preliminary text for a Mass for the Care of Creation. A good resource for prayer during the Season of Creation.
MASS FOR THE CARE OF CREATION
Entrance Antiphon Ps 18: 2
The heavens declare the Glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands.
Collect
God our Father,
who in Christ, the firstborn of all creation,
called all things into being,
grant, we pray, that docile to the life-giving breath of your Spirit, we may lovingly care for
the work of your hands.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Prayer over the Offerings
Receive, O Father,
these fruits of the earth and of our hands:
bring to completion in them the work of your creation,
so that, transformed by the Holy Spirit,
they may be for us the food and drink of eternal life.
Through Christ our Lord.
Communion Antiphon All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
cf. Ps 97: 3
Prayer after Communion
May the sacrament of unity
which we have received, O Father,
increase communion with you and with our brothers and sisters,
so that, as we await the new heavens and the new earth,
we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures.
We remember a mother and her son this week, St. Monica and her son St. Augustine. I heard a song long ago that said: “A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing.” Augustine could have sung that song.
In his “Confessions,” he praised God for bringing him “late” to a faith he found beautiful; he also acknowledged a mother’s tears and prayers helped bring him to Jesus Christ. She was like the woman in the gospel. As she brought her dead son to be buried, she met Jesus. He saw her tears, stopped the funeral procession and raised her son to life.
“ I was like that son,” Augustine says. ‘I was dead. My mother’s tears won me God’s life.”
Like many women of her time, we don’t know much about Monica. She married a man named Patricius, a tough husband who put her down and went out with other women. They had three kids, but Augustine was special; she followed him, hoping be would be the person she knew he could be. Above all, she wanted him to have faith.
He was a hard son to deal with, smart, well educated, hooked on the “lovely things” about him, deaf to her advice, blind to the path she wanted him to take, but she followed him anyway, convinced God had something big for him to do, and she finally got her wish
Doesn’t she sound like many today? How many today love their kids, or their husbands or their wives or their friends, but worry they’ll get mixed up in the wrong things–not going to church, deaf to the gospel? But they stick by them anyway.
That’s not easy to do and so it’s good to remember Monica and the moving words to God Augustine wrote in his Confessions. Did he ever show them to her, I wonder?
“O beauty every ancient, O beauty ever new. Late have I have loved thee. You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”
Fittingly, the church celebrates Monica’s feast on August 27th, the day before her son’s.
“Christians live from feast to feast,” St. Athanasius said. The church’s feasts are linked to each other through the year, and every feast is linked to the great feast of the Resurrection of Jesus.
The feasts of Mary follow the pattern of the feasts of her Son, for she shares in his saving work. Following the feasts year by year, we learn the mysteries of God, little by little. Mary was blessed from her conception. ( Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8). We celebrate her birth 9 month later. (The Nativity of Mary, September 7). Her death and assumption into heaven are celebrated Augustus 15th.
The Feast of the Queenship of Mary, August 22, is part of the mystery of her assumption into heaven. Introduced into the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church in 1955, the feast celebrates the privileged place of Mary in heaven. She “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things.” (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 59)
Royal titles were commonly given to God and those anointed by God in the Old Testament; Christianity continued the pratice, giving royal titles to Jesus and Mary. She is called queen in traditional Christian prayers like the Hail Holy Queen (Salve regina) and Queen of Heaven (Regina Coeli):
“Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in the valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show to us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Mary is a queen, but also a mother. She is the Mother of God, Mother of Jesus Christ, Mother of us all, the New Eve, given to us by her Son from the Cross through his disciple John.
Mary knows her greatness is from her Lord, as she acknowledges in her Magnificat:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. He who is mighty has done great things to me; holy is his name.” ( Luke 1:46-55)
In the portrayal above, Fra Angelico captures Mary’s humility; she bows before her Son, her hands closed in prayer. The saints below her know that honors given to her are a reflection of the graces promised to humanity.
“Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”
Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) was born near Naples, Italy, into a noble family. He began life as a lawyer but gave up law to become a priest and devote himself to bringing the gospel to the poor. His sermons and instructions were simple. “I never preached a sermon that the poorest old woman in the congregation didn’t understand,” he claimed. In 1732 he founded the Redemptorists, the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer.
A prolific writer, poet and musician, Alphonsus authored a series of devotional books on Mary and important works on moral theology. He advocated leniency and mercy towards people, steering a course between severity and laxity. In hearing confessions, he said he never denied anyone absolution. We can see why he’s an example for pastoral workers today.
In 1762, he became bishop of Sant Agata dei Goti, a small diocese near Naples, where he worked to reform the clergy and renew its people in their faith. In 1775 he resigned his bishopric because of his health, but continued writing religious and devotional tracts till his death in 1787. In 1816 he was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI. Pope Pius IX declared him a doctor of the church in 1871.
“Hasn’t God a claim on our love? From all eternity God has loved us. ‘ I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved you.’
God gave us a soul endowed with memory, intellect and will; he gave us a body equipped with the senses; it was for us that he created heaven and earth and all things. The truth is the eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son.
By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might spare us, he bestowed on us at once every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these goods are certainly inferior to the Son. He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for all of us: how could he fail to give us along with his Son all good things?”
The prayer for his feast day points out it’s our turn to do what Alphonse’s did:
O God who constantly raise up in your church new examples of virtue, grant that we may follow so closely in the footsteps of the Bishop Saint Alphonsus in his zeal for souls as to attain the same rewards that are his in heaven.
The Victor's Place 