Requiem

I began my Paulist life 33 summers ago at what was then our Paulist Novitiate in northern New Jersey. The property was extensive – 1100 acres of rocks and trees and a lake – most of which we never explored. One place we saw a lot of, however, was the cemetery. Soon it was autumn, and we spent many hours raking leaves there. Then in spring, we did more fixing up – including putting up a new crucifix in the center. The cemetery was dear to our novice master’s heart, and he wanted it to be dear to ours as well. Rightly so, for cemeteries are special places for us both as human beings and as Catholics. After all, remembering is a profoundly human activity. To remember those who have died is to acknowledge the importance of their lives - and the common humanity which we share with them. To remember those who have gone before us in faith is to celebrate the different ways in which the grace of God touched and transformed each one of them - and the hope we share with them.

So today we remember in a special way the many Paulist Fathers who have preceded us – from Francis Baker, the first of the founders to die 150 years ago this coming April, to those we have known personally and perhaps even lived and worked with. We remember particularly today the Paulists who have died in this past year - Philip Hart, Richard Boudreau, Robert Pinkston, William Kenney, James O’Gara, and Dennis Hickey – all of whom were part of the larger Paulist story and some of whom were part of our own personal stories. (It was Dennis Hickey, for example, who drove me to the airport the day I moved to Knoxville 4 years ago.)

Every day, at every Mass, we pray in general for all who were pleasing to God at their passing from this life, that they may be purified from their sins and admitted into the company of the saints. And especially today we remember and pray for all whose lives were spent in priestly service as Paulists, especially those who have served here in Knoxville since 1973.

In the Church’s daily prayer, The Liturgy of the Hours, we have been reading this week from the Book of Daniel. Today’s reading ends with the words: Go, take your rest, you shall rise for your reward at the end of days. We pray today that these brother Paulists whom we faithfully remember may hear those words addressed to them, and that we in turn may be made worthy someday to hear them addressed to us as well.

Homily, Annual Mass for Deceased Paulists, Immaculate Conception Church, November 15, 2014.

(Photo: Remembrance of Paulists who died this past year, Saint Paul's college, Washington, DC)

The Pope's Cathedral Is Ours as Well

As I wrote in last week’s Parish Bulletin, I spent the past week in Washington, D.C., at our annual Paulist Pastors and Superiors meeting. As in past years, we met at Saint Paul’s College, the Paulist seminary where generations of Paulist students have lived for now just over 100 years. Half a century ago, Saint Paul’s College housed over 90 students! By my time, we hit a high of 30. Now, of course, we count ourselves fortunate to have 10. It is, inevitably, for all of us who have lived and studied there, a place rich in memories and powerful emotional associations.

Today’s feast fondly makes me recall one particular memory. One day some 30 or so years ago, when we were both students, my best friend in seminary was teasing me in the library about my already disappearing hair. I responded by chasing him down the hall and up the stairs into the chapel, where he finally grabbed hold of the altar, and confidently declared, “You can’t hit me here. This is a church!” (And, no, I did not hit him. Actually, I had no intention of doing so. And, yes, we remain good friends to this day).

But the incident and the words my friend said that day haves tuck with me and  remind me what special places churches are. As a priest, I have been very fortunate to have served in two especially beautiful and historic churches – Saint Paul the Apostle in New York, the “Mother-Church” of the Paulist Fathers, and Immaculate Conception in Knoxville, the Victorian Gothic “Mother Church” of this city. There are, of course, many beautiful churches and many styles of churches, each with its own richness. There are ancient Roman basilicas, rugged Romanesque churches, great gothic cathedrals, and beautiful baroque churches. Unfortunately, there are also any number of ugly churches to be seen - sterile modern structures, whose standard-issue ugliness expresses the spiritual impoverishment of our age, and testifies in its own way to a culture that seems at times to be losing its way.

But, whatever they look like, churches are special places. From time immemorial, people have had special sites – hilltops, sacred springs, stone temples – to which to go to worship. God, of course, is personal, not local, and so is not confined to any one place. Still, as human beings, we can only operate in space and time, which is why God himself became human – in a particular place and at a particular time in human history. So it’s no surprise that, through the ages, God has continued to inspire his people to set aside special places in which to assemble to worship him. So Solomon built the Jerusalem Temple to be a holy house of prayer and sacrifice. So too the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great built the Lateran Basilica in Rome to be the Pope’s special church, his cathedral, and hence “the mother and head of all the churches of the City and the world” – the anniversary of whose dedication on November 9, 324 A.D. the Church solemnly celebrates today. [The photo above is of the Lateran Basilica's papal altar.]

When we celebrate the dedication of a church, we celebrate three things. We celebrate a place, a very special and sacred place set apart unlike any other. We celebrate a people, the people the place represents. And we celebrate a relationship, the relationship that binds the people together.

So, first, a few words about the place. The Lateran Basilica gets its name from the family, whose palace originally occupied the site. In the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine built a church – not in the center of what was still then a very pagan city, but at the city’s edge - a church that was to be the cathedral of Rome. Originally the church was dedicated to Christ our Savior; but in the 10th century Pope Sergius III added St. John the Baptist to the basilica's title. Hence its popular name, the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

The neighboring Lateran Palace became the papal residence, and the whole complex functioned for centuries as the center of Christian life in the city - until the Popes moved to Avignon, France, in the 14th century. When the popes finally moved back to Rome in 1377, the Vatican Palace replaced the Lateran as the Pope’s principal residence.

Even then, up until the unification of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 put an end to papal rule in Rome, it remained customary for the Pope to come to the Lateran to impart the Papal Blessing, Urbi et Orbi (To the City and to the World) on certain special days during the year. 

So that’s the place. But, when we celebrate the dedication of a church, we also celebrate the people the place represents. That is why the anniversary of a church’s dedication is celebrated liturgically as a feast for all those whose church it is. As the Pope's principal church, the cathedral church of Rome. Saint John Lateran is, in a sense, everyone’s church; and so its anniversary is celebrated universally.

It is no accident that one and the same name, “Church,” is used for both the people who continue Christ’s presence in the world and the place where they assemble to experience his presence most directly, by proclaiming his word and celebrating his sacraments.

But, when we celebrate the dedication of a church, and especially when we celebrate the dedication of a cathedral church, we also celebrate the relationship that binds its people together. As the site of the bishop’s cathedra, the chair from which the bishop exercises his teaching office and pastoral power within the local church, a cathedral is a sign of the unity of believers in the one faith, which the bishop proclaims and represents, which is why having a proper cathedral is so important in the life of a local church.
 

It is this unique unity to which we refer in the Eucharistic Prayer when we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Be pleased to grant her peace, to guard, unite and govern her throughout the whole world, together with your servant Francis, our Pope and Richard, our Bishop.

Homily for the feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Papal Basilica of Saint John Lateran, Immaculate Conception Church,  Knoxville, TN, November 9, 2014.

National Vocation Awareness Week

Today, I must travel to Washington, DC, for the annual meeting of Paulist Pastors, Superiors, and Directors. As in past years, we will be meeting at Saint Paul’s College, the Paulist seminary where generations of Paulist students have lived for now just over a century. (The photo is of the statue of Saint Paul in the driveway in front of the Paulist seminary in Washington's main entrance.) Half a century ago, Saint Paul’s College housed over 90 students! We reach a high of about 30 in my time as a seminarian. It is, inevitably, a special place rich in memories and powerful emotional associations. But times change, and new times bring with them new challenges.

One of the most serious challenges for the Church in our present time is fostering the necessary number of vocations, particularly to the priesthood and to religious life. Today is the beginning of National Vocation Awareness Week. In his 2013 Apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, (“The Joy of the Gospel”), Pope Francis underlined the continued need to foster a culture of vocations: “The fraternal life and fervor of the community can awaken in the young a desire to consecrate themselves completely to God and to preaching of the Gospel. This is particularly true if such a living community prays insistently for vocations and courageously proposes to its young people the path of special consecration.”

This has caused me to think about to the two vocation posters prominently displayed at present in the vestibule of the church, and in the parish hall, and also in the parish office. The first (above) features the faces of the bishop and the 14 deacons and other seminarians who are currently in various stages of formation to be ordained as priests of the Knoxville Diocese. The second (left) features the faces of the Vocation Director and 10 Paulist students and novices. (One student has since been ordained, and the four novices on the poster are now students who have in turn been replaced by two new novices.) 

Together, these posters portray 24 faces of otherwise ordinary young men, who have answered God’s invitation in this very special way. A picture, we have always been told, is worth a thousand words. Perhaps those pictures will speak to someone who looks at them in a way that invites him too to become one of the faces on the next set of such posters! Meanwhile, the rest of us need to keep each of them in our prayers and pray just as forcefully that the next two posters will have at least as many – or, better yet, even more – faces on them!

All Souls Day

In the year before his death, Paulist Founder Servant of God Isaac Hecker, wrote: “When, in 1843, I first read in the Catechism of the Council of Trent the doctrine of the communion of saints, it went right home. It alone was to me a heavier weight on the Catholic side of the scales than the best historical argument which could be presented” [“Dr. Brownson and Catholicity,” Catholic World, 1887]. 

By then, some 44 years had passed since Hecker’s initial encounter with the Catechism and its presentation on the communion of saints, but the passage of time had done nothing to dull the impact of what he had found there.  Appropriately so, since the Communion of Saints proclaims the bonds that connect us, not only across space, but even more profoundly across time. The doctrine of the communion of saints, the same Catechism explained, “teaches the practical spiritual purpose of the Creed as a whole. For the great end to which all our study and knowledge of the truths of the Creed are to be directed is our admission into this immense and blessed society of the saints” [The Roman Catechism, Article IX, 23, p. 111].

Yesterday, All Saints Day, the Church celebrated that part of the communion of saints traditionally known as “the Church Triumphant” – not just the Church’s thousands of officially recognized saints, but all those holy ones, known and unknown, who have attained the goal for which we on earth still strive. Living now forever with God, the saints help us by uniting their prayers with ours, thus uniting their intercession for us before God.

Today, All Souls Day, our focus is rather on all the rest of those who have died in God’s mercy and who were pleasing to God at their passing from this life. Every day, at every Mass, but especially today, we pray that they may be welcomed into the light of God’s face and be given kind admittance to his kingdom, along with the saints already in glory.

This afternoon, we will have our annual Rosary Procession at our parish cemetery. Cemeteries are special places for us Christians. Remembering is, first of all, a profoundly human activity. To remember those who have died is to acknowledge the importance of their lives - and the common humanity which we share with them. To remember those who have gone before us in faith is to celebrate the different ways in which the grace of God touched and transformed each one of them - and the hope we share with them.

This being the 160^th All Souls Day in the history of our parish, let us also remember today in a very special way all those parishioners who have been part of the life of our parish community, who quite literally built this parish - if in no other way than by virtue of their personal presence. The Parish Death Registers record the names of those, whose funerals have been celebrated here in our church. What an extensive human history those names represent! Some, we confidently hope, are already among those saints honored yesterday, while others may still be undergoing a process of purification, prior to their entrance into the full joy of heaven, and so may be the beneficiaries of our intercessory prayer on their behalf. What a wonderful network of holy souls whom we hope today to help by our prayers - and who in turn we hope are praying for us!

We remember all those departed parishioners whose commitment to the Body of Christ was incarnated in the charitable and social ministries of our parish - as well as all those who benefited from them. We remember all those students and their dedicated teachers and all whose commitment to the Body of Christ was incarnated in the educational ministries of our parish. We remember all those departed parishioners whose commitment to the Body of Christ was incarnated in the liturgical and musical ministries of the parish. The list goes on and on. All those people, most of whom none of us have ever met! Today, however, we remember them all. And, with them we remember also all those whose commitment to the Body of Christ was incarnated in their priestly service in this parish, among them – since 1973 – the various Paulist Fathers who have served here.

They have all gone before us in faith, in hope, and in love. And today, we remember them all.

May the angels take them into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome them on their way and lead them into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir of angels welcome them, and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may they have everlasting rest.

Homily for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day), Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 2, 2014.

The Communion of Saints at the Cemetery

It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins (2 Maccabees 12:46).

Here in the northern hemisphere, at this time of year - as the sun rises a little later each morning and sets a little earlier each afternoon - there is a sense of time passing by, as yet another tired old year draws to a close. 

In our Catholic tradition, this month of November is dedicated in a special way to remembering and praying for those who have died. Just as remembering the dead is an important human duty, so too praying for the dead is an important Christian one. When we remember those who have died, we acknowledge our common humanity with them. For, like us, they lived, loved, worked, succeeded and failed, hoped and dreamed – both for themselves and for their families. And, like them, we too must eventually die. Our Christian faith, however, redefines for us the universal experience of dying and unites us with those who have gone before us not just in our common humanity but in what the Apostles’ Creed calls “the communion of saints.”

Modern society seems increasingly inclined to downplay death. Christian hope, in contrast, causes us both to treat all of life as a preparation for a good death and not to neglect our duty to pray for those who have gone before us. This is why celebrating a proper Catholic funeral for the deceased is so important. It is an especially privileged moment when the entire Church visibly intercedes on behalf on the recently deceased. But the Church’s intercession is on-going, which is why at every Mass there is explicit prayer for those who have died.


Since 1869, Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, TN, has maintained Calvary Cemetery. Fr, Michael Finnegan, Immaculate Conception’s pastor from 1868 to 1872, celebrated the first burials there and purchased the property for the parish. Located in East Knoxville (adjacent to the burial site of Confederate soldiers killed at the Battle of Fort Sanders), Calvary remains the only Catholic cemetery in Knoxville. Annually on the first Sunday of November, which this year will fall on All Souls Day itself, we gather at Calvary Cemetery as a community to recite the Rosary together for the eternal rest of all those buried there and for all the faithful departed.