Tag Archives: Passionists

The Sacred Heart: A Heart Says it All

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Faith says great things in simple ways. Sometimes a few words say it all, like the few words of the Creed. Sometimes signs like bread and wine point far beyond themselves to an infinitely generous God.

How is it possible to sum up the love of Jesus Christ for us? Today’s Feast of the Sacred Heart expresses divine love, which cannot be measured, through the human heart. Pope Francis offered an important recent reflection on the Sacred Heart in his Encyclical Letter, Dilexit nos,

The Feast of the Sacred Heart is always celebrated on Friday, the day Jesus showed the depth of his love, the day he faced rejection and gave himself for us. On that day a soldier pierced his heart as he hung on the cross, and blood and water poured out. “Immediately blood and water poured out.”

See these signs with eyes of faith, John’s gospel says. They reveal God’s love for us and for our world. His pierced heart says it all. The heart can never be separate from the Person whose heart it is: Jesus Christ. He can never be separate from the Father and the Holy Spirit, so his heart represents the love of the Trinity for the world.

Consider

Consider who hangs on the cross for you, his death gives life to the dead, his passing heaven and earth mourn,  even the hard stones split. Consider how great he is, who he is. He slept on the cross that the church be formed from his side and scripture might be fulfilled:

“They shall look on him who they have pierced,  One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, blood and water flowed out paying the price of our salvation. He gave his blood that the sacraments might give grace, living water, eternal life.

Bride of Christ, arise and like the dove, like the sparrow finding a home, drink from the wells of your Savior. He is the spring flowing in the midst of Paradise. from him four rivers flow to every heart, watering the whole world and making it fruitful.

Run with longing, cry out from your inmost heart: Beauty of God most high, Shining everlasting light, Life that gives life to all life, Light that illumines every light, Water eternal and unseen, clear and sweet, flowing from a spring hidden from all, A spring whose depths can’t be plumbed, whose height can’t be measured, whose shores can’t be charted, whose purity can’t be muddied. From him flows the river that makes glad the city of God. 

So with songs of thanksgiving, we sing hymns of praise. With you is the fountain of life and in your light we shall see light.  Adapted from St. Bonaventure.

Almighty God and Father,  we glory in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, your beloved Son,  as we call to mind the great things his love has done for us.Fill us with the grace that flows in abundance  from the Heart of Jesus, the source of heaven’s gifts. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,  one God, for ever and ever.Amen.

The Feast of St. Barnabas

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St. Barnabas, 18th century anonymous

Saints share their gifts, and recognize the gifts of others. That’s what St. Barnabas did. He was a gifted teacher of the Gospel; he also recognized the gift of Paul of Tarsus. His feast is June 11.

After his dramatic conversion on the way to Damascus, Paul preached the gospel in Damascus and then in Jerusalem, but his past caused some in Jerusalem to be suspicious of him. “They were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.”

“Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how on the way he had seen the Lord and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.” (Acts 9, 25-27) Barnabas recognized the grace of God in Saul.

Then, as gentiles in Antioch became increasingly interested in the gospel, the leaders of the Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to see what to do. “When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart, for he was a good man, filled with the holy Spirit and faith. And a large number of people was added to the Lord. Then he went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large number of people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” (Acts 11,23-26)

Barnabas recognized Paul’s gifts once again and sought him out to bring the gospel to the gentiles. Previously, the Apostle Peter encountered the gentile Cornelius in Ceasaria Maritima and baptized him and his friends. Now, Barnabas chooses Paul to come to Antioch, and the two embark on a mission to the gentiles. The Acts of the Apostles refer first to “Barnabas and Saul”, then gradually it becomes “Paul and Barnabas.”

Paul emerged as a gifted apostle. The Acts of the Apostles follows him all the way to Rome, while Barnabas is hardly mentioned at all. There are indications he returned to Cyprus where he came from. Did he get sick, or was he too old to embark on something new?

Whatever it was, Barnabas first recognized Paul and his gifts. I noticed on his feast, Paul is quoted in his letter to the Corinthians. “I handed on to you what I myself received…” Part of that was from Barnabas.

Elijah On the Run

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Ourreadings this week and next are from the Book of King are the story of Elijah, the prophet, and his interaction with Ahab the King of Israel and his notorious wife Jesebel.

Elijah is a powerful prophet, one of the greatest of the prophets. He raises people from the dead. He brings fire from heaven on his enemies. Yet he leaves no writings, which means we know him mainly from the life he leads.

According to the First Book of Kings, Elijah is on the run most of the time, fleeing from Ahab and his wife in pursuit. We follow him from water hole to water hole, hiding in mountain caves and isolated wadis in the desert, with scarcely enough to eat. Most of our readings these days are about a fleeing prophet.

It’s a difficult, humbling flight. A popular icon of Elijah pictures him hand to his head, wondering if he will make it, as a raven hovers behind him bringing bread for the day. He’s living through a desperate drought that the king and his enemies see him responsible for. He scrounges for food, even relying on a poor widow with almost nothing of her own.

The powerful prophet is helpless. He lives through a drought, which God alone can lift. He needs food, which God alone can give. He has to wait for God to act.

Yet Elijah learns from this experience. It trains him to see. From experience, the prophet learns to see what others may not see, and so he sees God’s redeeming presence in the far-off tiny cloud that promises rain and the whisper of a wind that says God is here.

In Jesus’ time, people were hoping for a Messiah. Elijah was one type of Messiah some hoped for. He’s closest to the kind of Messiah Jesus was.

Isn’t Elijah in the drought like Jesus in the mystery of his Incarnation and Passion? “He humbled himself, taking on the form of a slave.” That humbling led to death on a cross. He was a rejected prophet, yet God raised him up in power.

Following him into the mystery of his Incarnation and Passion do we also gain a wisdom to see grace in weakness and death? In the small whisper where God can be found?

Praying in Jesus Christ

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Farewell Discourse of Jesus. Duccio

“I pray for them,” Jesus says in John’s gospel as he looks at his disciples in the supper room and also at us who are his own today. We’re so conscious how poorly we pray. We need to remember Jesus is praying for us and in us. 

Is it possible to speak to God, we ask ourselves? We’re so easily distracted, so weak in faith, so bound to life as it is. How can we approach God in prayer?

“Let the Son who lives in our hearts, be also on our lips,” St. Cyprian says in his commentary on the Our Father. Jesus joins our weak and stumbling prayers to his own. He prays in and for us and assures us we will be welcomed and heard.

“I pray for them,” Jesus said in the supper room. He prayed for his disciples there in the supper room. When they left they entered the Garden of Gethsemani where they fell asleep, forgetful of everything. A stone’s throw away, Jesus prayed. His prayer was not only for himself but for them as well.

“I pray for them,’ Jesus says in our liturgical prayers. We speak to God the Father “through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.”

Whenever we pray, whether with others in public prayer or praying alone, he enters our prayer. “Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us,” we say as we begin the Our Father at Mass.

Our confidence in prayer comes, not from our own wisdom, or holiness or faith, but from Jesus who says “I pray for them.”


St. Gemma Galgani

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Gemma Umberta Pia Galgani
(1878-1903)

Gemma Galgani died on Holy Saturday, 1903 in Lucca, Italy. Her death should have been completely unnoticed. She was often sickly in her 25 years of life and had to be taken care of. She left no children or family/. No hospitals, schools or any human achievement bear her name. Disappointments marked her life at every turn. She never got her wish to enter the Passionist Nuns or any other religious community.

Yet, at the news of her death on Holy Saturday, her neighbors gathered quickly in the Lucca’s ancient streets proclaiming “A saint has died.” Today in the Easter season we’re celebrating her feast.

Holy Saturday, the day after Jesus suffered and died, is the day before Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. They report that he ate and drank with them for some days before ascending into heaven. He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. He appeared to them, not just to prove he was alive, but affirm his love for them and for the whole world. He promised life. 

Gemma knew the mysteries of Jesus’ death and resurrection in a special way. She spoke familiarly with the Risen Jesus, as we see from her writings, and in a unique way she bore his wounds in her body.

“Poor Gemma”, she called herself; but she was’t poor. Frail in body and mind, she wasn’t a  failure. In declaring her a saint, Pope Pius XII said that Gemma experienced what the great apostle Paul experienced: “I have been crucified with Christ and the life that I live is not my own: Christ lives in me.

The stigmata, the bodily experience of the wounds of Christ, is a rare experience. It was not reason Gemma was declared a saint. Her heroic life of faith, patience and humility revealed her union with Christ, living in her.

The stigmata is a rare experience given to individuals, but it’s not meant for individuals themselves; it’s given to strengthen the belief of many. In Gemma’s time, “enlightened” thinkers like Freud and Jung were beginning to explore the human person. They were little concerned with God’s presence in human life. They would likely have dismissed Gemma’s spiritual experiences as delusional. A number of  Lucca’s “enlightened” people had that opinion of her.

Gemma’s Passionist spiritual director, Father Germano, was introduced to her while preaching in Lucca. He saw God working in her. The church concurred in his judgment by declaring Gemma a saint in 1940.

Many today still define humanity in human terms and sees success here on earth as our ultimate goal. Gemma is a strong reminder of God’s presence in humanity, in ordinary people, even in unsuccessful, imperfect people. Her devotion to the Passion of Jesus gave her a deep sense that Jesus loved her and lived in her.  She saw her life fulfilled in him and she believed his promise of life beyond this. 

Many today think the spiritual world faraway; for Gemma it wasn’t faraway at all– saints and angels, Jesus himself, were ever at her side. She once wrote: “Often I seem to be alone; but really I have Jesus as my companion…I am the fruit of your passion, Jesus, born of your wounds. O Jesus, seek me in love; I no longer possess anything; you have stolen my heart.”

Lucca Streets
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Lucca St. Michael 3

We’re not alone. Jesus Christ is our companion as well.

You can get St. Gemma’s Autobiography or a The Life of St. Gemma Galgani by writing to the Passionist Nuns, 1151 Donaldson Highway, Erlanger, Kentucky 41018
(859)371 8568

“Then one day I became very discouraged because I saw that it was impossible for me to become a Passionist, because I have nothing at alI: all I have is a great desire to be one. I suffer much seeing myself so far from realizing my desires. No one will be able to take this desire away from me. But when will it come about?” Letter to Germano

Gemm’a buried at the Convent of the Passionist Nuns in Lucca, Italy. The house where she lived before she died has been turned into a museum honoring her. Both places worth a visit.

Her feast day is May 16th.

Voice of the Faithful: Acts 18: 23-38

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Apollos is mentioned  in Saturday’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (18,23-28).   He reminds us that Peter, Paul and the other apostles were not the only teachers in the early church. Others brought the message of Christ to the cities and towns of the Roman Empire. Apollos was one of them.

He’s an eloquent, learned teacher who came to Ephesus from Alexandria, one of the great centers of Jewish and Christian learning, and he drew a following by preaching about Jesus. But Apollos doesn’t know everything, so a Jewish couple, Priscilla and Acquila, “took him aside and explained to him the Way of God more accurately.”

They were disciples of Paul who supported him with a job in their tent business. They traveled with Paul and certainly listened to his teaching, but I don’t think they were ever considered teachers as he and Apollos were. They were considered “hearers of the word,” more likely. Well informed, for sure, but still among those we would call today “the faithful.”

Yet, let’s not forget what important teachers “the faithful” are, as Priscilla and Aquila remind us.

I remember a story a brilliant priest told me long ago about a baptism he was conducting for an infant born to a member of his family. His father was the baby’s sponsor and according to the rite then was expected to recite the Creed.

“Can you say the Creed, Dad?” the priest said to his father.

“Who do you think taught it to you?,” the father sharply replied.

Faith can’t survive in this world without the faithful, ordinary Priscillas and Aquilas explaining it and  passing it on. It begins with parents, godparents and family passing on the faith to children. It continues in daily life as ordinary Christians share their faith with others. The church today needs to strongly acknowledge this key mission of the laity.

Pope Francis is urging the laity to speak out in his call for a synodal church.

Feast of St. Matthias: May 14

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Thomas

May 14th is the Feast of St.Matthias, chosen by lot to take the place of Judas. Appropriately, the feast falls in the Easter season, the time he was selected. Matthias brings the number of apostles back to twelve, symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel who await the promises of God. The Spirit comes after Matthias is selected in Luke’s account.

The qualifications for a new apostle seem simple enough. Peter says it should be someone “who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us. He joins us as a witness to his resurrection.”

Two have those qualifications. Joseph called Barsabbas and Matthias.

Then, they pray:
“You, Lord, who know the hearts of all,
show which one of these two you have chosen.”
Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias,
and he was counted with the Eleven Apostles.” (Acts 1,15-17, 20-25)

Yet, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. To be a witness to Jesus it wasn’t enough to get all the details right about what Jesus did or said, as a reporter or witness at a trial might do. In John’s gospel read for Matthias’ feast, Jesus describes a disciple as one who abides in him, who remains in him– a friend committed to him. So, a disciple cannot be just an on-looker, but one who enters the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. He’s one who weathers doubts and uncertainties as the disciples listening to Jesus’ Farewell Discourse did. He’s like Thomas who sees the wounds in the Lord’s hands and side and learns to trust and believe through them.

I think also that the disciples of Jesus were conscious of their own failures as they selected Matthias. They thought Jesus was the key to an earthly kingdom, but he was not. Surely, they wanted someone who looked beyond their vision as a successor for Judas. They were looking for someone with a new vision of things.

Rembrandt’s wonderful portrayal of Jesus showing his wounds to Thomas (above) presents Thomas, not as a lonely skeptic, but someone representing all the disciples. All the disciples must look at Jesus’ wounds.

Pope Francis in a homily  spoke of the importance of the wounds of Christ for a disciple of Jesus. We’re on an exodus beyond ourselves, he said, and there are two ways open for us. “one to the wounds of Jesus, the other to the wounds of our brothers and sisters.”

“If we are not able to move out of ourselves and toward our brothers and sisters in need, to the sick, the ignorant, the poor, the exploited – if we are not able to accomplish this exodus from ourselves, and towards those wounds, we shall never learn that freedom, which carries us through that other exodus from ourselves, and toward the wounds of Jesus.”

The wounds of Christ and the wounds of our brothers and sisters– we learn from both to see victory over death and to trust in the passion of Jesus.

Like Matthias, we’re called to be witnesses..

5th Week of Easter: Readings and Feasts

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The Acts of the Apostles, read this week, describes  the church’s growth after the Resurrection of Jesus as Paul and Barnabas bring the gospel tos the gentiles in the Asia Minor cities of Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidia. Yet, the mission raised questions in the Jewish Christian community at Jerusalem. Are the gentiles taking over?

To meet what some considered a threat,  a council was called in Jerusalem, which had enormous consequences . Councils are usually important events in the life of the church. The Second Vatican Council that took place in the 1960s was an important event for the church in our time.

The Council of Jerusalem is described on Wednesday to Saturday of this week.

The gospel readings for the remainder of the Easter season are from the Farewell Discourse from John’s gospel. They help us understand the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

“I will not leave you orphans,” Jesus says, yet he will not be with them as he was before. The Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, will teach them all things; Jesus will be present to them –and to us– in signs.

The End is Only a Beginning

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We begin reading the Farewell Discourse from John’s gospel along with the Acts of the Apostles this 4th week of Easter. Facing their loss of Jesus the disciples seem helpless as he says farewell. “I have a lot to say to you, but you cannot bear it now,” he says. The Lord recognizes their paralysis.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, Paul and his companions are not helpless at all. They’ boldly make their way to places that may not seem impressive to us now, but were impressive places then: Pisidian Antioch, Philippi, Athens, Corinth. Important Roman colonies, strategic cities on the Roman grid, steps on the road to Rome itself. Athens, of course, was a key intellectual center of the empire, though maybe a little down-trodden when Paul got there.

Paul welcomed people into his growing ministry. Meeting Lydia, the trader in purple dyes at the river, he baptizes her and her household. How many did she bring to the gospel? Priscilla and Acquila, the two Jews that Claudius expelled from Rome during the Jewish riots of AD 42, became his trusted partners.

Maybe it’s good that we read these two scriptures together.

The Acts of the Apostles tell of a church confidently on its way to the ends of the earth to fulfill its mission.

The Farewell Discourse, on the other hand, says that sometimes a church can be paralyzed in its thinking and acting. But the Lord is the shepherd of both. What seems like the end is only a beginning.

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”

Catherine of Siena, (1347-80)

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St. Catherine of Siena is a doctor of the church and Italy’s patron saint along with St. Francis.

The 24th child in a family of 25 children, Catherine was a saintly teacher and church reformer.  As a young girl, she clashed with her father, who worked dying wool, and her mother, a hardy determined housewife, after she told them she wasn’t going to get married, but was giving herself totally to God.

She cut her hair and began to fast and pray.  She joined a group of women who helped the poor in Siena, mostly widows associated with the Dominican order. They  were suspicious of the pious young girl who kept to herself and at odds with her mother and father.

At 21 years old, Catherine went beyond the mission of the women’s group and reached out further to the church and society.  Men and women, priests and laypeople, from Siena and its surroundings gathered around her. They cared for the poor– famine struck Siena in 1370 and a plague in 1374– but also they sought to reform the church and the society of their day.

At the time, Italian cities like Siena, Florence, Pisa and Padua were fighting among themselves as rival families clashed continuously over political power and economic advantages. In 1309 the popes fled the violence and factional riots in Rome for the safety of Avignon in France, where the papacy remained for almost 70 years. They call it “the Babylonian Captivity.”

Catherine and her companions pleaded with the feuding Italian cities for peace and urged the popes to return to Rome to exercise their mission as bishops of the city where Peter and Paul once led the Christian church. Catherine cajoled, warned and scolded the absent popes to do their duty as shepherds of their sheep and get back to where they belonged.

Without any formal education, Catherine learned to read and write only later in life, which made her an unlikely public figure. She was also a woman teaching and preaching– unusual for that day : “Being a woman, I need not tell you, puts many obstacles in my way. The world has no use for women in a work such as that and propriety forbids a woman to mix so freely with men.” (Letter) Despite those obstacles, Catherine traveled to the warring cities of Italy urging peace and to Avignon to plead with the pope to return to Rome.

Catherine had a deep experience of God in prayer, as the “Dialogue,” her mystical exchange with God, attests. God spoke with her and she shared those words. Her prayerfulness drew others to join her in her mission of peace-making and reform.

Jesus was her “Gentle Truth,” her guide and strength.

As a lay-woman in the church, she was not afraid to speak to power, once correcting a bishop for “ordaining little boys instead of mature men… idiots who can scarcely read and say the prayers.  They consider it beneath them to visit the poor, they stand by and let people die of hunger.”

Tell the truth, God told her. Tell the truth because love impels you. “You must love others with the same love with which I love you. But you cannot repay my love. Love other people, loving them without being loved by them. Love them without concern for spiritual and material gain, but only for the glory of my name, because I love them.” ( Dialogue )  Loving God inevitably means loving others.

She died in Rome in 1378 and is buried there in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Her heart is in Siena.

“This is a sign that you trust in me and not in yourself: that you have no cowardly fear. Those who trust in themselves are afraid of their own shadow; they think heaven and earth are letting  them down. Fear and a twisted trust in their own small wisdom makes them pitifully concerned about getting and holding on to everything on earth and throwing away everything spiritual…The only ones afraid are those who think they are alone…They are afraid of every little thing because they are alone–without me.” (Dialogue)