Blessed Fulton Sheen

 

At long last, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) will finally be beatified today at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, Missouri, at a Mass celebrated by Luis Cardinal Antonio Tagle as the Papal Delegate, Pope Leo's representative. Beatification is the final major step before canonization. From today forward, therefore, Fulton Sheen will be addressed and referred to as "Blessed" and will have his day in the calendar when he will be venerated in certain particular places.

Originally ordained a priest of the Peoria (Illinois) Diocese in 1919, Sheen eventually went on to teach theology and philosophy from 1928 to 1950 at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University. Before that, after finishing his studies at that same Catholic University, he had earned his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Louvain (now Leuven) in Belgium in 1923. His doctoral dissertation was "The Spirit of Contemporary Philosophy and the Finite God". Sheen became the first American to win the Cardinal Mercier Prize for international Philosophy. 

From 1930 to 1950, he hosted a night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC. His fame skyrocketed after he moved to television in 1952, where he hosted Life Is Worth Living until 1957. The program featured Bishop Sheen speaking extemporaneously before a live audience and using a blackboard. The show was in primetime and attracted a mass audience - competing with "Mr. Television" Milton Berle! (My parents watched Milton Berle, not Bishop Sheen) Finally from 1961 to 1968, he hosted the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program. Sheen won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time. 

As a radio and TV personality, Sheen was noted for his anti-communism (a commonplace Catholic position at the time). In the 1960s, however, he also spoke out against the Vietnam War, which cost him considerably in popularity. Along with communism, he also attacked Freudian psychoanalysis for what he saw as its materialistic premises and was a strong critic of modern therapeutic culture.

In 1950, Sheen became the National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. During his 16 years as the Propagation's director, Sheen raised millions of dollars for missionary efforts worldwide. (He also donated $10 million that he earned from his later television programs.) In 1951, Pope Pius XII appointed Sheen as an Auxiliary Bishop for New York, an office he held until 1966, when he was made Bishop of Rochester. His tenure there was challenging, and he resigned Rochester in 1969 and was made Titular Archbishop of Newport (Wales). 

In the late 1950s, the U.S. government donated millions of dollars' worth of powdered milk to the New York Archdiocese. Francis Cardinal Spellman, New York's powerful archbishop from 1939 through 1967, donated that milk to Sheen's Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute to the poor of the world. On at least one occasion, however, Spellman demanded that Sheen pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk. Sheen refused and took his case directly to the Pope. Supposedly, Spellman later confronted Sheen and and promised to "get even" with him. Besides being pressured to leave television,  Spellman famously canceled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and Sheen found himself unwelcome in many New York churches, enduring a true trial and crucible of suffering at the hands of fellow churchmen. Sheen himself humbly never talked about his quarrel with Spellman.

Although my family did not watch Bishop Sheen in the 1950s, I certainly heard plenty about him and eventually saw some of his later shows. I vividly remember his TV programs on the occasion of the death of the Pope and the election of his successor. As a child, I remember reading a book, a commentary on the Mass, which featured photos of Sheen celebrating Mass in his private chapel. I only finally heard him in person, late in his life, when he came to preach at the ecumenical Sunday service in the Princeton University chapel. His impact on the U.S. Church in his time had been enormous. He can be considered one of the first televangelists and certainly pioneered the Catholic Church's engagement with modern media as a vehicle for evangelization and cultural efficacy. When Pope Saint John Paul II embraced him at Saint Patrick's Cathedral just months before his death, the Pope assured him that he had written and spoken well of the Lord and was a true son of the Church.

His cause for canonization was delayed by an unseemly tussle between the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Peoria about possession of Sheen's body, which was originally interred in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1979. In 2016, the New York State Supreme Court ordered Sheen disinterred and returned to Peoria, a ruling reaffirmed by the Appellate Division in 2018. This enabled Peoria to continue pursuing Sheen's Cause, culminating finally in his long awaited beatification today.

On the occasion of the canonization of a 16th-century Spanish Augustinian saint, the then Augustinian Prior General, Robert F. Prevost (Pope Leo XIV), said: "On canonizing a saint, the Church does not only wish to give us a reason for joy and celebration; she wishes above all to praise the Lord, to recognize the working of his grace in the Saint, and to propose to everyone in him a model of life and of Christian commitment."

Blessed Fulton Sheen, outstanding preacher of God's word in the modern world, pray for us!

Autumn

 

Autumn arrives at precisely 8:05 p.m. tonight with the Autumn Equinox. This will be the moment when the sun is positioned directly above the equator. Daylight and night will be equal in length (hence "equinox"). After the equinox, however, the sun's position will gradually move southward. Here in the northern hemisphere, the daylight hours will grow shorter, and the night hours will grow measurably longer. Meanwhile, while summer temperatures may linger for a longer or shorter period of time, sooner or later cooler weather will prevail until by the date of the December solstice (December 21) cold winter weather will, at least normally, be firmly predominant. I eagerly look froward to the day when I will routinely require a coat to go outside! It is this intermediate season, starting warm, ending cold, gradually getting darker, that we call Autumn or Fall.

The word "Fall" highlights one of the more attractive features of this season, as the leaves of deciduous trees change in color from their chlorophyll-induced spring-summer green to bright variations of yellow, orange, and red, and then literally fall to the ground. 

The culturally promoted, elite perspective on the change of seasons is, of course to deplore all this, to lament the fading of summer and the proximate approach of winter. I dissent from all of that. In climates where there are distinct rainy and dry seasons (like the ancient Middle East), the return of rain in autumn represents a renewal of nature in a dry, weary land without water [Psalm 63:1] after the deadly dryness and heat of summer. There are places (California, for example), which (like Israel) have a Mediterranean desert climate and are dependent on the winter rainy season for sufficient water to sustain human and animal life and agricultural production for the summer dry season, when no rain is normally expected. Hence, it is no surprise that autumn is treated as the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar. (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish "New Year," was celebrated 10 days ago.)

I have lived most of my life in places with predictably regular rainfall, where in most non-drought years it rains on-and-off all year long. So autumn's new beginning for me has usually been more social than meteorological - associated with the beginning of the new school year in the academic calendar, a calendar which has tended to set the tone for much of society even for those whose school years are long behind them.

When I was a student (and likewise when I was very briefly a professor) the beginning of the academic year represented for me the much anticipated resumption of normal social activities. Since this pattern likewise largely dominates American parish life, the school calendar and its autumn beginning have been a focal point for me for almost my entire life. Inevitably, September elicits in me an enthusiastic response and the promise of a new start - probably the way the annual seasonal resumption of college football plays a similar role in many more people's lives.

Nothing is ever quite so simple, of course, or so univocal. Autumn is indeed a new beginning, a bright start. But it also, for obvious reasons, has a certain end times feel about it, as the annual dying of the natural world is vividly enacted before our eyes. (That beautiful foliage is in fact dying foliage!) 

The dying of the natural world inevitably acquires more significance for those of us who are old and acutely aware that the sum of our years is seventy, or if we are strong eighty, and most of them are toil and trouble, for their quickly pass and we vanish [Psalm 90:10]. As I said one Advent some years ago, what we see is the end of the natural world, but what we feel and fear is the end of ourselves. So the same season that gives us football tailgate parties and a multitude of variations on the theme of Oktoberfest also sends sobering signals both big and small.

Both autumnal themes symbolically represented both by dead leaves refreshing autumn rains, and are united in the paradoxical language of faith. "Our weakness bears us down, but our faith bears us up. We sorrow over the human condition, but find our healing in the divine promise." [Saint Augustine, Sermon 172].

Festa!

 

This week, legions of tourists and others with money to spend have been pouring into the downtown Manhattan neighborhood which is still somewhat anachronistically labelled "Little Italy" for the  Festa di San Genaro. In the traditional Roman Catholic calendar, September 19 has long been observed as the feast of Saint Januarius (San Gennaro, in Italian), Bishop of Benevento, martyred c. 305 along with six others during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian, the last serious Roman persecution prior to the conversion of Constantine. His relics eventually made their way to Naples, where for centuries, San Gennaro's body has reposed in the Cathedral of Naples. As patron of that city, he continues to be invoked for protection from fire, earthquakes, and the ever-present threat from Mount Vesuvius. 

In the early 20th century, the massive wave of Neapolitan immigrants from one of the poorest regions of the newly created Kingdom of Italy to America made devotion to San Gennaro a popular part of immigrant Italian life in New York City - in the neighborhood that then really was "Little Italy" (and where my mother was born 104 years ago). 

The still popular street festival originated on Mulberry street on September 19, 1926. By 1930, there were 440,250 Italian-born New Yorkers - including all my grandparents and several of my aunts and uncles. As strangers in a foreign land, Italian immigrants faced all the challenges - and opportunities - inherent in immigration. As Catholics, they faced the added challenge of being perceived primarily as a problem by an unwelcoming, predominantly Irish ecclesiastical establishment. As much as anything else, the New York Italian street festivals celebrated an alternative quality of community experience. While the establishment lamented what the immigrants didn't do, the festa demonstrated who they were at heart.

The one-day festa eventually expanded into today's 11-day street fair and a major tourist attraction - New York's biggest and most famous street festival and a great place to go for sausage and zeppole - a combination carnival and charity fundraiser. Operated by a not-for profit community organization, the contemporary festa distributes donations to various charitable organizations. Today's money-spending, sausage and zeppole consuming tourists may know little and may care even less about San Gennaro and his miraculous intercession against volcanic eruptions, but  even now the festa still features a religious procession on the actual feast day, an authentic expression of an immigrant community's heart and the spiritual strength that sustained the struggle of the Italian immigrant experience.

Meanwhile, back in Naples on his feast day, a silver bust containing the head of the saint and a glass reliquary containing a solidified sample of the saint's blood are exposed for veneration. Led by a group of women, called zie di San Gennaro,  the people pray for the famous miracle of the liquefying of his blood. When that happens, the ritual announcement is made to the great joy of all, Il sangue si è sciolto, Il miracolo e fatto ("The blood has liquefied. The miracle has happened"). The Te Deum is then sung, and the reliquary is made available to be kissed by the people. San Gennaro's blood traditionally also liquefies on the Saturday before the first Sunday of May to commemorate the transfer of his relics to Naples and again on December 16, the anniversary of the day in 1631 when a flow of lava from Mount Vesuvius miraculously bypassed the city - thanks, it was believed, to the saint's intercession.

The presence of Mount Vesuvius - a mere 9 miles from the center of Naples, highlights the paradox of Naples, a vibrant, exciting city, on a beautiful bay, in a setting of of incomparable natural beauty, blessed with fertile volcanic soil, but forever threatened by one of nature's most dangerous and unpredictable destructive forces. In a sense, Naples is like a parable of life itself - the blessings and dangers of ordinary human life on earth as well as of the spiritual journey through life on earth to the kingdom of God. How fitting then that the Neapolitans turn so regularly to a saint who has already passed through the blessings and dangers of this life to assist them as they struggle to do the same! 

Image: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy, 1861-1946.

The Uprising (The Movie)

 

The Uprising is a 2026 action film written, produced, and directed by Paul Greenglass and starring Andrew Garfield as the "Ploughman." It is a cinematic dramatization of the 1381 English "Peasants' Revolt" (historically more accurately termed "Wat Tyler's Rebellion") which occurred in the aftermath of the Bubonic Plague ("the Black Death") that had killed off half the country's population, starting in June 1348. The violent events of 1381 have long been considered a major crisis moment in English history.

In 1381, England's king was the 14-year-old Richard II, too young to rule on his own, although he did in fact play a prominent part in the rebellion's actual events. In the film he (Woody Norman) is haunted by terrifying nightmares, which in some sense reflect the haunting of the entire realm in the aftermath of the plague (referred to in the film as "the sickness"). He has an ambivalent relationship with his aristocratic council, which governs in his name, as does his mother, Joan of Kent (Katherine Waterston). Meanwhile, in addition to the economic dislocations caused by the plague, England is engaged in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) with France and desperately needs more revenue, requiring an increase in taxes. Unable politically to tax the Church or the rising merchant class in London, the royal council (composed apparently of nobles and bishops) increases taxes on the peasants, who complain to the local tax collector that they can no longer survive if they have to pay higher taxes.

Enter a "Ploughman" (Andrew Garfield), a widowed farmer whose wife and children had died in the plague. The collector demands that the Ploughman pay death taxes again on his family since he lacks documentary proof of their death seven years prior. The enraged Ploughman accosts the tax collector, and kills a soldier who tries to arrest him. This inspires peasants' revolts across the country, led by the Ploughman and actual historical characters from 1381 - a former soldier Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), and a previously imprisoned, apparently apocalyptically inclined priest, John Ball (Jamie Bell). The rebels march on London, where complete chaos erupts, while the rebels (mainly the Ploughman) negotiate with the King, whom the rebels treat with the veneration that his sacred status confers and that somehow sets him apart from the hated rich. Richard apparently gives in to the rebels and seems to betray his Council. In the end he seems to ally with the rising merchant class, represented by the Lord Mayor of London. The King then betrays the peasants and has Wat Tyler killed. Many of the rebels are massacred, but the Ploughman and a handful of associates escape.

One year later, the king and his mother are traveling through the forest when they are ambushed by the Ploughman and his fellow outlaws. Ultimately the Ploughman spares the King's life, leaving him to live in fear. The film ends with the King haunted as he was at the beginning. This fictional ending seems to evoke the legend of Robin Hood, who, however, historically predated these events by almost two centuries. (Historically, Richard II was ultimately deposed in 1399 by Henry IV, which remotely set the stage for the later Wars of the Roses)

The 14th-century aftermath of the plague was a period of economic dislocation and political transition. The merging merchant class were perhaps the prime beneficiaries (as the film suggests), although historically the peasants also benefited since their reduced numbers increased their power as an economic class, despite repeated legal efforts to keep them in their previous subordinate status. Their violent revolt was a long-remembered component of the chaos that occurred at that time. It continues to fascinate historians (especially those given to class analysis). The film avoids overt references to contemporary populist responses to today's economic and political conflicts, and the rebels' veneration of the sacred person of the King keeps the film firmly situated in its medieval ambience. On the other hand, the setting of the story in a haunted world traumatized by plague perhaps gives it a certain resonance in today's traumatized post-pandemic society, similarly haunted by its own versions of elite corruption and populist rage.

The Only Bridge to Heaven

 

Twenty-five years ago today, this church was filled to overflowing, following the infamous terrorist attack which we had experienced in this city just three days before. Even more than Christmas Midnight Mass, this was the occasion when I saw this great church so completely filled to capacity - filled incidentally as it was originally designed to be. But, on that unforgettable September day, when we assembled that day for Mass, we did what the Church always does on September 14. We celebrated the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the symbol of our salvation. As our first pastor, Paulist founder Servant of God Isaac Hecker, expressed it, The only bridge to heaven is over the cross.  The gates of paradise are only opened with the key of the cross. [Unpublished Spiritual Notebook, 1854]

Historically, this feast commemorates the dedication, on September 13, 335, of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem – built by the Roman Emperor Constantine over the traditionally recognized sites of Christ’s crucifixion and of his burial and resurrection. The next day, the relic of the True Cross (which had been discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Saint Helena in 320) was publicly venerated in the new basilica. Eventually, September 14 became the feast celebrated today throughout the Universal Church.

On one level, this feast was a celebration of Christianity’s triumph over Roman paganism. The date for the dedication of the Jerusalem Basilica may have been chosen to counteract the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome (the god known to the Greeks as Zeus, the Father of gods and men). That Roman site is, ironically, now the site of the Vittoriano, Italy’s 1911 monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy. It was a monument to the triumph of modern secularism over religion and of the power of the rising state over the power of the declining Church.  In the vicissitudes of history, such short-term triumphs clearly come and go, part of our perennial political noise and our overwhelming obsession with power, domination, and control.

In contrast, however, what we celebrate today is Christ’s triumph over our sad history of cosmic evil and human sinfulness  – now transformed, once and for all, through the triumph of Christ’s cross.

Evil and sin do not happen simply by accident – and neither did the cross. It didn’t just happen to Jesus one day, like some inexplicable misfortune – like various sufferings and setbacks, which, when they happen in our own lives, we sometimes all too glibly refer to as “crosses.” Christ’s cross was a direct consequence of his confrontation with worldly power, domination, and control and became the means by which he overcame cosmic evil and human sin.

In Jesus, the cross has become our doorway to salvation. A dreaded instrument of disgraceful death, the cross is now, thanks to Jesus, our gateway to freedom and new life, a triumphant sign of glory. And that is why we celebrate the Cross. As Saint Augustine said in a sermon somewhere around the year 400, You’re a Christian, you carry on your forehead the cross of Christ [Sermon 302, 3].

In the familiar story we just heard, [Numbers 21:4b-9], God punished his perpetually complaining people with serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. But, when Moses interceded on the people’s behalf, he was instructed to make an image of a serpent, mounted on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at it, he lived.

Like the people in the desert, we experience all sorts of sufferings and setbacks and are prone to discouragement. But the mystery of the cross invites us to see our situation differently. It invites us to turn away from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves, and to turn instead to Christ – to delight, as Saint Augustine said in that same sermon, not in the sign of the wood, but in the sign of the one hanging on it. 

The mystery of the cross invites us to turn away once and for all from our obsessive, dead-end focus on ourselves – from both our constant competition for power, wealth, status, and whatever else seems to excite us, and from the seemingly endless sufferings and setbacks that continue to break our hearts - and to turn instead to Christ, so that we may journey through the desert of this treacherous life with hope instead of fear, under the sign of the cross, which alone can conquer in our conflict-ridden, war-torn, terrorized, and religiously and politically polarized world.

Homily for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 14, 2025.

 

A City United in Memory

 

On September 11, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of that morning's horror, Cardinal Edward Egan, New York's Archbishop at the time, celebrated a hastily arranged special Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Later, highlighting the extraordinary bravery, selflessness, and sacrifice of firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical workers (now recalled in a mural near the cathedral's main door), Egan highlighted how that terrible tragedy had revealed "New York at its best."

New York was at its best again, 25 years later, as the city came together this week to remember. The usual ceremonies took place at Ground Zero recalling that day's almost 3000 victims, and various commemorations took place around the city on the anniversary itself and in the days leading up to it. All four living former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — and their First Ladies attended the Ground Zero ceremony, along with Vice President JD Vance. Former mayors attended along with the city's current mayor and other public officials.

On the eve of this anniversary, Saint Patrick's Cathedral again served as the city's spiritual heart. New York's new Archbishop, Ronald Hicks, flanked by concelebrating priests, bishops, and a cardinal (Tobin of Newark), celebrated a special Memorial Mass for families of those lost on 9/11, members of the city's uniformed services, and public officials (present and former). Seated in the very first row were former President Biden, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Watching the livestream, I was especially moved to see how the Archbishop pointedly stopped to greet the three of them as the procession arrived at the entrance of the sanctuary.

The presence of the three of them together in the front row, along with many other present and past public officials, was a vivid reminder of how united this city was in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and how united we could still be. Archbishop Hicks himself highlighted how in this city people of every religion and way of life "stand together, pray together, listen together, and seek the common good together." 

Another very important New Yorker, the present President of the United States, had also been invited, as was his Catholic-convert Vice President. Their absence added additional symbolism to the presence of the former President and of the state and city's current leaders. According to one published account of the evening, President Biden remained for an hour after the Mass, talking to members of the congregation who were there to remember their dead family members. Meanwhile, the presence of the city's first Muslim mayor was a powerful reminder of how this city has especially embodied the unique American experience of immigration (recalled and celebrated artistically in the murals at the cathedral's entrance) - the great American experience of diverse nations and religions coming together here to form something new and special. As Archbishop Hicks noted, one of the lessons from the events being remembered, is how "we need each other."

Needing each other is what causes fragile human beings to come together in families and civil society. Needing each other is the glue that holds a fragile society together and in the end its ultimate strength - something that sadly some of those who were not present at the cathedral Thursday night seem to have forgotten.

Photo: 9/11 Memorial Tablet at Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

25 Years

 

Church bells will ring throughout the city tomorrow morning at 8:46 a.m. to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York, Washington, DC, and, by extension, the entire United States. That time - 8:46 a.m. - corresponds to the exact moment when the World Trade Center's North Tower was struck, a moment and a day which (as the saying goes) "will live in infamy." Tomorrow, as on each of these 25 somber anniversaries, the names of the almost 3000 people who lost their lives in that attack will be read out loud. Meanwhile, our own recollections inevitably turn to that terrible day 25 years ago, a day still marked in memory, so terrible to remember that it lacks even a name and is known only by its numerical date, 9/11.

On September 11, 2001, I was next door at the time of the attack, casting my vote in the NY Democratic party primary, preparing to nominate candidates eager to run for mayor to replace the then unpopular, lame-duck incumbent. It was an inadvertent coincidence, but it remains a reminder that it was our distinctively American constitutional democratic order that was attacked on that terrible day, that the American constitutional democratic order is still very much in jeopardy (albeit in different ways and maybe more from domestic rather than foreign threats), and that the defense of this exceptional constitutional democratic order is an ongoing responsibility which we dare not shirk.

It was a absolutely beautiful late-summer morning. Many of us who were here in New York then remember how the sunny serenity of an that beautiful late summer New York City morning was suddenly transformed into an experience of horror beyond anything most of us had ever imagined we’d see so close to home. And how quickly, everything changed! Our country and our city were being suddenly and savagely attacked, and we all got to see the ugly face of evil in a way my generation had hardly really experienced it before.

 

Soon, even the corner Starbucks shut down, as police barricades went up, closing our street to regular traffic. For days that stretched into weeks, we went around in a daze, past lowered flags, past churches and firehouses draped in black, past posted pictures of missing persons who would never be found, staring at the vacant place in the skyline, as military jets patrolled the now grimly gray, but otherwise empty sky. We watched over and over again as TV told and retold the story, punctuated by occasional accounts of heroic courage and poignantly loving final conversations – powerful lessons not just about how to face death, but how to live a life that makes sense.

 

We still remember – and mourn – those whose lives were wickedly cut short on that day of terror. Our ability to remember one another is one of the things that makes us most distinctly human. When we remember those who have died, we acknowledge our common humanity with them. And we also recognize our continued relationship. Remembering the dead is a fundamental and universal human need, which we neglect at our peril. (Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said that, to understand a community, one should visit their cemetery.)

From earliest times (and down to today in the Church’s daily prayer and in every Mass), the Church also has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers on their behalf. Saint Monica famously said to her son Saint Augustine: “I ask only this of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you may be.” So, besides being a fundamental and universal human need, remembering the dead is also a religious duty, that expresses our faith and our hope.

Meanwhile, of course, life goes on. The events of that tragic day continue to take their toll in lives, as many have sickened as a result of their exposure to toxins on that day. It is estimated that maybe more have died since then as a result than were killed on that day itself. At the same time, the world, with its seemingly intractable social and political problems and conflicts continues to challenge us. Both international politics and domestic politics have changed immeasurably in these 25 years. We have lost the brief and seemingly ephemeral sense of unity of purpose which characterized our response to that tragedy, We remember September 11, 2001, as individuals each bringing his or her own worries, fears, and hopes, and also as citizens collectively concerned for the security of our country, conscious – as world events continue to remind us – of how perilous life can be and how fragile the network of social bonds on which we depend for our survival. 

Violent attacks upon our country and our constitutional way of life have tragically punctuated our history, in each case requiring a response sufficient to restore our sense of national purpose. A proponent of unity and reconciliation in service of the American Dream, Abraham Lincoln famously ended his First Inaugural, in which he had called out the specific threats the nation faced with entreated from those who had also rejected the constitution the rule of law, and the will of the people in elections, with this entreaty: We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

That appeal fell on deaf ears then. 

What might we hope for now in our politically polarized place and time?

Labor Day

 

When I was growing up back in the Bronx in America’s post-war Golden Age, I loved Labor Day, because it meant back to school. I was a nerdy kid, who loved to read, and loved to learn new things. Of course, that was not a fashionable view, so even then I learned the social imperative to conceal one's real feelings. Years later, as a grad student, I dreaded Labor Day because the University library would close the whole weekend for its annual sprucing up before the start of school. In those days, when so few places were air-conditioned, that meant not only no place to read, study, and socialize, but also no place to keep cool and to breathe pollen-free air. 

Labor Day has been a federal holiday since 1894, but it long ago joined most of our other national holidays in losing much of its original civic significance to become just a "holiday weekend" – an opportunity for shopping and other diversions. Even when the American labor movement was still strong and the traditional Labor Day Parade still defined New York’s Union Square, Labor Day was already becoming as much about the end of summer vacation, the last day for women to wear their white shoes and men their straw hats - and less of a serious civic celebration of American workers (and the affluence their astounding productivity had helped to produce).

That great post-World War II quarter century or so of unprecedented, nation-wide, across-the-board prosperity and a strong labor movement seems such a distant memory now in the present era of increasing economic inequality. Millions of Americans now suffer from unemployment, or underemployment, or are working but living in poverty as their basic needs too often go unmet, a situation that we should recognize represents a serious economic and moral failure for our nation. Certainly, one dimension of this failure is our diminished appreciation of the importance of productive work for a fulfilling human life and a flourishing economy. Work is more than just paying the bills. It’s how we realize our potential as productive people and active citizens, and contribute to the common good.

 

The Evangelist Matthew tells us that when Jesus came home to Nazareth, the hometown crowd dismissed him as “the carpenter’s son” [Matthew 13:55]. The context suggests it was familiarity with him a someone ordinary that most upset the people. In thus dismissing the ordinary workman in their midst, however, the Nazarenes missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Today, we are surrounded by workers, whose omnipresence and familiarity make them almost invisible, out of sight, out of mind – the health-care workers who care for our increasingly elderly population, the nannies who watch over the next generation, the drivers and cyclists who do all the deliveries that make our extravagant consumer lifestyle so easy. That so many members of today’s working class are immigrants - that we need to find them from somewhere else -  only highlights how essential they are, while making them that much more vulnerable.

And now, even the educated classes – previously so privileged – feel more and more like proletarians. Soon they may be unemployed, overeducated proletarians, if runaway AI technology continues to have its way. Progress – that most unchristian of concepts – is rapidly rendering obsolete so much of what used to be taken for granted. All of which only makes it that much more urgent to recover an authentic understanding of human nature and human solidarity – and of fulfilling human labor as an essential component of a good life and a good society.

Homily for Labor Day, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 7, 2026.

(Photo: The first Labor Day Parade, New York, September 5, 1882, 

https://barbarasbookstores.com/the-first-labor-day-parade/)

"Come with Your Brothers into the Choir"

 

I don’t typically read “The Ethicist” column in the Sunday NY Times magazine. Sometimes, however, the moral dilemmas are common enough and relatable enough that I find the column somwhat more interesting. For example, one column a couple of weeks ago addressed the increasingly common problem of families fighting and refusing to remain in contact because of differences over politics and related cultural concerns. Of course, people have always disagreed about politics; but, until not that long ago, that would not usually have been seen as a reason to break off contact with someone.

In this particular case, the supposed ethical expert made what I thought were two particularly important points. The first is that family estrangement of this sort “has become sadly familiar over the past decade or so. The strategy of severing all ties with one’s parents has been encouraged by certain high-profile therapists,” supported by social media. Also “therapeutic culture has tended to expand, sometimes recklessly,” conflating complaints that “can arise from genuinely damaging relationships,” with descriptions of “ordinary parental shortcoming.” The second is that if you don’t want to be the reconciler/mediator, that is your choice, but that it may be worth the effort, “your participation might assist people you love in reaching some kind of resolution with one another.” It might, he says, somewhat pessimistically, because what he calls “No-contact culture” is resistant “to almost every effort at reconciliation.”

All this seemed especially on point as I was reflecting on today’s Gospel reading [Matthew 18:15-20], in which Jesus addresses the problem of conflict within the Church community and how to deal with it. Jesus doesn’t pretend, as religious people sometimes try to do, that there will never be conflicts. Conflict characterized the very first human family - Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel – and political and legal procedures to resolve conflicts, which might otherwise descend into endless cycles of violence, revenge, and vendettas, have been a cornerstone of civilized life.

 

It is, however, a very specific sort of “due process” that Jesus proposes – religious rather than secular, but also communitarian rather than individualistic and oriented toward reconciliation rather than legal justice, material compensation, or personal punishment.

Obsessed as we all are in our individualistic society with personal rights, when we speak of “due process” typically what get emphasized are legal guarantees for the individuals involved. The “due process,” which Jesus outlines, focuses less on the individuals and their rights or sensitivities and more on the community. And, most importantly, it is a process aimed not at vindication and separation but at reconciliation and reincorporation into the community.

In that regard, it reminds me of the process in Church law for dealing with problematic people in religious communities. The person is warned and given a chance to change course several times before the process ends in expulsion. That’s because the goal of the process is not expulsion but rather the person’s reconciliation with the community. Expulsion may end up being necessary, but always only as a last resort - as it is in the process Jesus outlines in today’s Gospel, in which only after three tries – individually, in a small group, and finally involving the whole community – is the person expelled.

Even so, the story doesn’t quite end there. The excommunication which Jesus outlines is specified as: If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

Now, in the ordinary world, the meaning of that would have been perfectly clear. As much as possible, devout, observant Jews avoided undue contact with such people, and they probably would generally avoid admitting them into their homes and sharing meals with them. That served a certain purpose in that society, just as judicial proceedings and imprisonment do in our society.

Yet, when Jesus says treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector, he may be muddying the waters a bit, because, of course, we can all recall how Jesus himself sometimes treated Gentiles and tax collectors. Such people may indeed be outside the community, and that may be because of their own bad behavior, but they’re not forgotten. In the divided, highly conflicted North African Church of the fourth century, Saint Augustine (354-430), speaking of the heretical and schismatic Donatist Christians he had to oppose so vigorously, famously said: “My friends, we must grieve over these as over our brothers. Whether they like it or not, they are our brothers” [Commentary on Psalm 32 (33)].

 

For years, I was a fan of medieval mystery stories, like Ellis Peters’ 20 Brother Cadfael Mysteries (set in 12th-century Shrewsbury).  In these mysteries, Brother Cadfael - over and above his avocation as an amateur but very effective detective - is, first and foremost, a Benedictine monk. But, In the 20th and final Brother Cadfael book, called Brother Cadfael’s Penance, Cadfael has, sadly, broken his vow of obedience. But then, at the end of the story, he returns to the monastery and kneels before his Abbot, and the Abbot simply responds: “Get up now, and come with your brothers into the choir.”

 

Unlike Cadfael and his brother monks, we live in a conflict-obsessed society driven by social media and what some, on both sides of the political divide, have taken to calling “cancel culture.” Clearly, we cannot be unaffected by all the vitriolic conflict that surrounds us. Yet, whatever we are or do as a community of disciples, our goal can never simply be to cancel one another. Rather, it must always be to bring us all back together, so that we may eventually all be together, here and now at this altar, and forever in God’s kingdom.

Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 6, 2026.

The Great

Today, the Church commemorates Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who was Pope from September 3, 590, until his death on March 12, 604. He is one of only two Popes officially entitled "the Great" - the other being Pope Saint Leo the Great, who was Pope from 440 to 461. He is also one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church - along with Saint Ambrose (c.340-397), Saint Jerome (c.343-420), and Saint Augustine (354-430).

Gregory was born into a wealthy noble Roman family. His father was a patrician, a senator, and prefect of the city, which last post Gregory himself also held as a young man. After his father's death, he converted his family home into a monastery and became a monk there himself. His monastic life was interrupted when for several years he served as the Pope's Ambassador to the Emperor in Constantinople and then was permanently interrupted when he was elected Pope himself. He was the first pope to adopt the title "Servant of the Servants of God." To improve social services in the city, he organized the resources of the Church introducing an early form of basic accounting. In his liturgical reforms, he famously moved the Our Father to its present position right after the Eucharistic Prayer. The Church's official form of chant also bears his name. He wrote extensively. Many of his sermons and over 850 of his letters survive.

Gregory had a strong a strong missionary commitment and is credited with re-energizing the Church's missionary work among the non-Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is most famous for sending Saint Augustine, who had succeeded him in charge of his Roman monastery, to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons, who had conquered much of what is now England. Roman Britain had, of course, had a Christian community, based in London, but that older Roman British Celtic Christianity was by then largely confined to the west (Wales).   It was from there that Saint Patrick had earlier emerged to evangelize Ireland. But it was Gregory who undertook the evangelization of Anglo-Saxon England, sending Saint Augustine who established his See at Canterbury. 

Gregory wrote to Augustine:   "Almighty God places good men in authority that he may impart through them the gifts of his mercy to their subjects. And this we find to be the case with the British over whom you have been appointed, that through the blessings bestowed on you the blessings of heaven might be bestowed on your people also." Gregory's outreach to England was so successful that English missionaries also in turn evangelized much of what is now Germany. Ultimately, the Church in the English-speaking world is his great legacy, as the English-speaking world has been the beneficiary of Gregory the Great's outward-looking missionary zeal.

Homily for the Commemoration of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, September 3, 2026.

Photo: Altar of Saint Gregory the Great in Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome, where Saint Gregory is buried.

Reading the Aeneid

 

I sing of arms and of a man displaced                                                                                          by Fate, the first to leave the coast of Troy                                                                                    for Italy and its Lavinian shores:                                                                                                  the power of the gods and vicious wrath                                                                                      of unforgetting Juno hurled him far                                                                                            across the sea and lands, and he endured                                                                                    still further pain in war - the price to found                                                                                    his city and install his gods in Latium.                                                                                      The Latin race, the Alban lords, the walls                                                                                   of soaring Rome: from here they all began.

Virgil, Aeneid (Book 1, 1-10).

Homer's Odyssey is everywhere right now, thanks to Christopher Nolan's entertaining - if also problematic - portrayal of it on screen this summer. I first read the Odyssey in high school; the Iliad later. Until this week, however, I had never actually read Virgil's venerable Latin classic, the Aeneid, his late first-century B.C. account of the Trojan prince Aeneas' escape from the calamity of the Trojan War's end and his Odyssey-like journey across the Mediterranean, harassed by the vengeful goddess Juno, until he eventually settled in Italy and became the putative ancestor of the Romans. Being about Rome and having been written in Latin, Virgil's Aeneid may have been the most influential literary work of all the Greek and Roman classics.I knew about the Aeneid, of course, but it remained among the many classics which one ought to know something about without ever actually getting around to reading it. 

Once upon a time, however, the world was very different, and the Virgil-Homer hierarchy was reversed. As Bryn Mawr classicist Catherine Conybeare has noted, Latin-speaking Roman schoolboys "learned to read by sounding out syllables from the Aeneid. The Aeneid taught them to scan lines of poetry, and moreover to interpret them. Children learned swaths of the poem by heart. Later on boys would begin the rhetorical studies on which an imperial career was based by entering imaginatively into the characters from the Aeneid and composing appropriate speeches for them to declaim at crucial moments of choice or crisis. Wherever in the empire their careers took these young men, an apposite quotation form the Aeneid thrown casually into their conversation or their correspondence would immediately establish them as a member of the educated ruling classes" [Augustine the African, Norton, Liveright, 2025, p. 5].

Having been energized by all the renewed classical hype engendered by Christopher Nolan's on-screen Odyssey this summer, I have - with somewhat surprising enthusiasm - returned to the sources, the Iliad itself and the Odyssey itself (albeit in English translations), and I now find myself emboldened to tackle Virgil's Roman-centric sequel - in the 2025 translation by Scott McGil and Susannah Wright (Norton Liveright), which includes a superb Introduction by the famous Homeric translator Emily Wilson. (All references here are to that translation.)

The Aeneid - 9,896 Latin lines written (like the Iliad and the Odyssey) in dactylic hexameter - was composed by Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) in the last decade of his life (29-29 B.C.) It is thought that the poem may have actually been left unfinished - as evidenced by the presence of several metrically incomplete verses. Virgil's hero, Aeneas, was already familiar from the Iliad as a Trojan prince and a son of Aphrodite (Venus). The first six of Aeneid's twelve books recount the story of Aeneas' Odyssey-like wandering from Troy to Italy, including in Book 2 Virgil's violent account of the actual fall of Troy, a grief no words can tell (2.4), returning the reader to the blood-soaked, heroic world of the Iliad. The remaining six books recount the Trojans' ultimately victorious Iliad-like wars with the Latins, with whose name and language Aeneas and his Trojan followers have been destined to assimilate. The poem served as a founding myth for the city (and later empire) of Rome, connecting Rome back to the heroic age of Troy and promoting the legitimate rule of the Julian dynasty as the descendants of the goddess Venus and the Trojan hero Aeneas. Already, almost at the poem's beginning, notwithstanding Juno's hostility, Jupiter had promised Venus, Aeneas' mother, regarding his descendants: I set no bounds of space or time for them; I have bestowed dominion without end (1. 332-333).

Juno's hostility, however, is a constant reminder that with Virgil (as with Homer, who had Odysseus forever afflicted by Poseidon's wrath), we are in a very different moral universe from our own. We are in a world of capricious gods and goddesses, who exercise control over human affairs in unpredictable ways and who can sometimes be appeased but sometimes not. As Virgil himself expressed it, what offense, what painful insult led the queen of heaven to drive a man renowned for faithfulness through such ordeals, such endless miseries? Do gods have so much anger in their hearts? (1. 11-15).

Nor are the gods alone when it comes to complex and intense emotions!

"Hector fights for his country. Achilles fights only for himself." So said Agamemnon in the 2004 film Troy. As Hector's tear-inducing farewell conversation with his wife in Book 6 of the actual Iliad illustrates, Hector was not immune from Bronze Age heroic vainglory akin to that of Achilles, but neither was the movie version of Agamemnon all that wrong in the important personal differences which Agamemnon noted between the two heroes. Ascribed ancestry aside, this was undoubtedly another reason why the civic-minded Romans would have wanted to identify themselves with the Trojan cause and would have taken pride in their supposed Trojan ancestor, Aeneas. And, unlike Achilles or Odysseus, Aeneas' most outstanding trait is not some manifestation of physical or mental superiority but his piety. This too would appeal strongly to the Romans, because piety highlights the hero's relationship with and devotion to both the gods and the hero's human communities (e.g., family and city). Unlike the Greeks', the unique artistry of the Romans was political - as foretold by the ghost of Aeneas' father, Anchises, in Book 6: Remember, Roman, to rule the world (for these will be your arts) and to impose on it an ordered peace (6. 1023-1026). Of course, it would be precisely this passage - reimagined as arrogance - which Saint Augustine would later directly attack in his de-mystification of Roman imperialism in his monumental anti-Aeneid, The City of God!

There is, of course, quite a cost in human terms to dominion without end, to which the women characters - whether Andromache in the Iliad or Dido in the Aeneid - are especially poignant witnesses. Interestingly, the Iliad, dominated by Achilles' seemingly unquenchable rage and filled with destructive battle-after-battle, ends on a humane note as an angry Achilles shows mercy to Priam, Hector's grieving father. In the Aeneid, however, Aeneas in his fury considers but then rejects Turnus' plea for mercy, and the poem ends in violent death - a fitting foreshadowing, perhaps, of the enormous human cost to be exacted in producing the Augustan pax romana, the high price to be paid for empire. He burned with anger as he plunged his blade into his rival's breast. The chill of death made Turnus' limbs go slack, and with a groan, his spirit fled in protest to the shades (12. 1142-1145).