Saint John XXIII

It was announced last week that final approval has been given to the canonization cause of Blessed Pope John XXIII (1881-1963), and that we can expect to celebrate Pope John's canonization sometime before the end of this year (along with that of one of his more recent successors Blessed Pope John Paul II). 

The pace of Pope John's cause may perhaps seem somewhat slow in comparison with that of John Paul II and some other modern-era celebrity superstars like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, but it is they who are the exceptions. In fact, in comparison with most causes, 50 years may seem a rather short interval between death and canonization. 

Even more surprising than the relatively rapid pace of John's cause, however, is the fact that the Holy Father has dispensed with the requirement for a further post-beatification miracle in John's case. Even that, however, is not completely unprecedented even in this modern era. If I recall correctly, the first native-born US saint, Elizabeth Seton (1774-1821) was canonized in 1975 with only three miracles to her credit - two for her beatification, but only one for her canonization (at a time when two were still routinely required). 

Miracles serve as a kind of external validation for the widespread popular devotion and reputation for heroic sanctity that cause a person's cause to advance in the first place. Through the recognition of a miracle the Church seeks external evidence that her judgment of a person's sanctity is correct. It is a good reminder that it is God who makes saints not we! And, while it is tempting, especially in the case of a pope, to focus on how he acted on the world stage and left a legacy of historical significance, the confirmation by miracle of a saint's intercession also serves to remind us that sanctity is primarily about the transforming power of God's grace at work in someone more than it is about noteworthy accomplishments during one's lifetime.

That said, I am very happy that John XXIII is set to be canonized. I am old enough to remember his reign on the papal throne and to have read his Journal of a Soul shortly after its publication after his death. His reputation for holiness has remained alive in the Church, in spite of the turbulent times and tragic divisions in the Church which began in the years following his death.

Unlike his more aristocratic predecessors, John was of humble peasant background. Having entered seminary at an early age, however, he rose rapidly in the Church's ranks, beginning his priestly career as a Bishop's secretary. A Northern Italian and a keen student of history, which he called "the greatest of teachers," he saw in the great 16th-century reforming Council of Trent and  in its implementation by the likes of St. Charles Borromeo (whose heart he went to venerate in preparation for the Second VaticanCouncil) an example to be imitated in response to the challenges facing the global Church of the 20th century. He was a man of very traditional popular piety and pastoral sensitivity, who derived spiritual sustenance from traditional devotional classics like The Imitation of Christ and from the traditional liturgy he inherited and celebrated devoutly every day. He was open to learning from experience - such as his military service in the Royal Italian army as a seminarian conscript and again during World War I, and his diplomatic service among Eastern Orthodox Christians and non-Christians in Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey and among modern secularists in post-World War II France. He enjoyed people and preferred community to solitude (even ending the tradition of popes eating alone). And, in a way that was obviously both very Italian  and very Christ-like, he showed how loved the world he was a part of and how he sought its salvation.

He seemed to love and genuinely enjoy the Baroque grandeur and pomp surrounding the papacy and had no trouble deriving suitable human and spiritual lessons from it. For example, when being carried on the sedia gestatoria for the first time in 1958, he recalled being a child carried on his father’s shoulders and connected that universal human experience with his spiritual mission: “More than seventy years ago I was carried on the shoulders of my father at Ponte San Pietro. The secret of everything is to let oneself be carried by God, and so to carry him to others.”

Lampedusa

Today, Monday, July 8, Pope Francis made his first major pastoral visit outside of Rome - a pastoral vist of great symbolic and social significance to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Lampedusa is one of the Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean. Governmentally it is a part of Sicily, but geographically it is closer closer to Africa than to Europe. Tourists may know Lampedusa as the site of some of Europe's finest beaches, but Lampedusa is also widely known now as one of the primary European entry points for immigrants from Africa (especially during and after the Libyan civil war). As such, sadly, it has also been associated with the sorts of human tragedies that often threaten immigrants - notably last month's sinking of an overcrowded boat bearing immigrants from Africa and the death of some eight of them. According to the UN, some 500 migrants were reported as dead or missing in 2012, and some 40 more are known to have died crossing from Tunisia to Italy this year.The Sant’Egidio Community has estimated that 19,000 migrants have died the past 15 years.

The Holy See's statement announcing the visit said that Pope Francis was “deeply touched” by the shipwreck, which it called “the latest in a series of analogous tragedies.” It announced that the Pope proposed “to pray for those who lost their lives at sea, to visit the survivors and refugees present, to encourage the residents of the island, and to appeal to everyone’s responsibility to take care of these brothers and sisters in extreme need.”

At Lampedusa, the Pope boarded one of the Coast Guard vessels used to rescue migrants in order to toss a wreath into the water in memory of those who died. He then returned to the island to meet with refugees and to celebrate Mass on an altar built from an old fishing boat and painted in Italy's national colors. In his homily during the Mass, the Pope said: "We have become used to other people's suffering, it doesn't concern us, it doesn't interest us, it's none of our business!"

That is obviously an important message at any time - but especially in this era when economic policies and ideologies are everywhere dramatically damaging traditional social structures and community networks and where even in our own affluent society we see a steady increase in economic inequality. It's an especially important message in the United States right now when sensible and humane immigration reform is being considered in Congress for the first time in years.

The Kingdom is at Hand

Exactly 155 years ago today, on July 7, 1858, Father Isaac Hecker and three other priests founded  the “Society of Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle,” known ever since as “The Paulist Fathers”– the first men’s religious community founded in the United States.  Three days later, the Archbishop of New York assigned them the care of a new parish on Manhattan’s west side – placed, like the Paulist Fathers themselves, under the patronage of Saint Paul the Apostle. In addition to serving as Superior of the new missionary community, Father Hecker also became the first pastor of the new parish, which gave him the opportunity immediately to start implementing his vision for the Paulists in a pastoral context.  Hecker’s vision of the mission of The Paulist Fathers was a monumental one – the conversion of America to the truth of the Catholic Faith.  He envisioned his Paulist parish as simultaneously a vibrant Catholic parish reaching out to evangelize locally and a center from which the Paulists would reach out in mission to the entire country.

Jesus’ action in today’s Gospel [Luke 10:1-12, 17-20] in sending the 72 disciples on a kind of practice run for what they would later be doing full-time after his ascension reminds us that evangelizing (as Pope Paul VI expressed it so well) “constitutes the essential mission of the Church” – in every age and in every society, in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries no less than in the 1st, in Hecker's America and today's East Tennessee no less than in the ancient Roman Empire.

Jesus, we are told, sent the 72 in pairs – not as solitary individuals, but in pairs. Ours is a culture which places a lot of emphasis on our private individual lives and freedoms. But the Gospel reminds us that we are not isolated, solitary selves, but a community of faithful people, formed by the Holy Spirit into one Church, the body of the Risen Christ, to continue his mission in every town and place. Jesus commanded his disciples tp make a difference in their world. So, if we really mean what we say we believe, then what we do in our many relationships and multiple commitments – in our families and among friends, at work or at school, in our society and in the wider world – must make a difference and be recognizable as such. Jesus expects us to be on the same side with him – on the side of God’s kingdom. Being on God’s side, having our names written in heaven (as Jesus says), frees us to join Jesus in making a real, recognizable difference in an always challenging, sometimes very welcoming, but also sometimes sadly inhospitable world. It frees us to tell – and retell –the story of Jesus, to speak his word to any and all, so we too can say to this world we love: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

I’ve long been especially fond of this Gospel which was read at my ordination as a priest at the Paulist parish in Toronto, Canada, one of the many places Isaac Hecker’s community has sought to imitate the 72 disciples in the Gospel in  announcing : “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

From 1900 through 1954, for example, the Paulists undertook extensive missionary work in Tennessee. And, in 1973, the Paulists came to Knoxville. So summer marks the 40th anniversary of Paulist ministry here at Immaculate Conception University Parish. 

As a result, all of us at Immaculate Conception now share the mission of the Paulist Fathers in the mission of the Church. This includes a commitment to evangelization in all its forms, a mission both within and beyond the parish community to draw people of all ages and backgrounds to Christ and his Church, especially those without faith or without a consistent place of worship, or with fragile or minimal identity or connection with Church, or who have withdrawn from the community of the Church – all of whom need to hear Jesus’ message: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

 

Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate conception Church, Knoxville, TN,

July 7, 2013.

Lumen Fidei

Pope Francis has issued his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (“The Light of Faith”). Released today, it official date is June 29, Saints Peter and Paul. Its context, of course, is the current “Year of Faith,” initially proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI in order to mark the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict had apparently intended to end this Year of Faith with such an encyclical, and it certainly seems evident that much of the current encyclical’s actual content comes from him. The Pope himself says as much in the encyclical itself: 

“These considerations on faith — in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this theological virtue — are meant to supplement what Benedict XVI had written in his encyclical letters on charity and hope. He himself had almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own. The Successor of Peter, yesterday, today and tomorrow, is always called to strengthen his brothers and sisters in the priceless treasure of that faith which God has given as a light for humanity’s path” (Lumen Fidei, 7).

In an Vatican press conference today for the official release of the encyclical, Archbishop Rino Fisichella elaborated further, explaining the Pope Benedict had decided to write the encyclical for the end of the Year of Faith, but that Pope Francis is now offering it “as a ‘programme’ for how to continue to live this Year of Faith which has seen the Church involved in many highly formative experiences.”

One likely consequence of this will be an effort to attribute "authorship" to particular passages, to identify which parts and even which themes stem From Benedict and which from Francis. This will appeal especially to the media, whose interest in the substance of anything tends to be minmal and which cares much more about the pope as celebrity personality than about the papacy as magisterium. (I already heard one radio commentator speculate that 3 chapters were from Benedict and the fourth from Francis. That's perfectly plausible, but ultimately beside the point - if one understands an encyclical as an expression of the Church's ordinary magisterium and takes it seriously for precisely that reason!)

That said, a quick first reading of the text does certainly suggest a familiar "Benedictine" theme. It sets faith against the contemporary background of the modern rationalist association of faith not with light but with darkness and the post-modern appreciation of the limits of autonomous reason’s light, resulting in a “shadowy” future “fraught with fear of the unknown” (LF, 3). Against this, the encyclical proposes faith as a powerful light able to illuminate all aspects of human existence, “born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives” (LG, 4).

As encyclicals go, this one is relatively short and easy to read, which also means it can easily be read more than once in order to appreciate it more fully. (That I hope to do and return to this topic again soon!)

The Golden Door

Tonight, just before the fireworks start, I will be flying home to Knoxville to get back to work, rested and renewed these past 10 days by friends and family and familiar places. This morning, as Independence Day dawns here in New York, I think especially of my paternal grandparents (whom I never met), who more than a century ago courageously left behind the dead-end, pointless poverty of southern Italy for a better, more hopeful life across an ocean in a new world. I try to imagine what it would have been like for them to arrive in New York Harbor and there for the very first time to see the Statue of Liberty, her lamp lifted to light the way for them and others like them ever since. And so I honor their memory on this holiday with the hope that this country may continue to be - for generations of immigrants to come - the haven and hope that it was for them.