Who Can Be Saved?

Sometime in the 2nd half of the 3rd century, a young Egyptian named Anthony arrived at Church, just as the Gospel account we just heard [Mark 10:17-30] was being read.  The future Saint Anthony of Alexandria, the so-called “father of monks,” was 19 or 20 at the time. Hearing Jesus’ words, Anthony felt that they had been spoken directly to him. Not long after, he gave away his possessions, in order to lead a life of intense self-denial in the Egyptian desert. Ever since, many have followed Anthony’s lead, interpreting Jesus’ words as a call - not necessarily for everyone in exactly the same way - to embrace an evangelical style of life, formalized eventually in what we now call the vocation of consecrated religious and apostolic life in the Church.

 

All that, obviously, was still far in the future when Jesus looked lovingly at the rich man and said, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, then come, follow me.” These words, we are told, caused the rich man to go away sad.  What, exactly, was the source of his sadness? Here was this man, who came to Jesus of his own accord, who all his life had observed all the commandments. Yet, when he heard Jesus’ invitation to go even farther, to enter into a closer relationship with Jesus by changing his relationship with the world, his face fell, and he went away sad. Why? Because, so we are told, he had many possessions.

 

That, the Gospel seems to be saying, is what possessions will do to you!

 

The rich man’s sadness reminds me of one of Pope Francis’s descriptions of our contemporary situation:

 

Today we experience the paradox of a globalized world filled with luxurious mansions and skyscrapers, but a lessening of the warmth of homes and families; many ambitious plans and projects, but little time to enjoy them; many sophisticated means of entertainment, but a deep and growing interior emptiness; many pleasures, but few loves; many liberties, but little freedom… The number of people who feel lonely keeps growing, as does the number of those who are caught up in selfishness, gloominess, destructive violence and slavery to pleasure and money.

The Pope continued by comparing our experience today to that of Adam alone in the Garden before the creation of Eve: so much power and at the same time so much loneliness and vulnerability. The remedy for Adam’s isolation was, of course, a relationship with another person. The remedy for the rich man’s isolation, Jesus seems to be suggesting, is likewise a renewed relationship with his fellow creatures, one which privileges people over possessions. Adam was lonely because he was, literally, alone in the world. Today we are lonely in a world full of people because we prize our individuality and thus suffer from a diminished solidarity with those with whom we share our common home.

 

It wasn’t just the rich man who was shocked and dismayed by Jesus’ words. In the kind of society in which Jesus’ lived, wealth was seen as a sign of blessing – a notion which our own consumerist society seems to have taken to its ultimate extreme. No wonder Jesus’ disciples were exceedingly astonished and worried “who can be saved?” No wonder if we, who live in the richest society in the history of the world, if we too ask that same question and ought to be worried as well!

Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, New York, October 10, 2021.

Photo: San Antonio Abad, painting by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664)

Saint John Henry Newman

Today, October 9, is the liturgical commemoration of Saint John Henry Newman (1801-1890), one of the patron saints of the Paulist Fathers, canonized just two years ago in 2019.

Newman was an influential member of the English Oxford Movement while still an Anglican, prior to his conversion to Catholicism and his reception into the Church on this date in 1845.

He was the author of a famous autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1866), The Grammar of Assent (1870), the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865, published in the new Paulist magazine The Catholic World), and the popular hymns Lead, Kindly Light and Praise to the Holiest in the Height. A priest of the Birmingham Oratory, Newman was created a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the United Kingdom at an open-air Mass in Birmingham on September 19, 2010.  Newman’s significance for the wider English-speaking world was reflected in the presence of the Prince of Wales at his October 2019 canonization ceremony in Rome.

Newman never visited the United States, but Paulist founder Isaac Hecker visited him several times in England. After Hecker's death, Newman wrote:

"I have ever felt that there was this sort of unity in our lives - that we both had begun a work of the same kind, he in America and I in England, and I know how zealous he was in promoting it." (Letter to Paulist Fr. Augustine Hewit, February 28, 1889).

(Photo: Portrait, Newman in Choir Dress, by John Everett Millais, 1881)

Lepanto

450 years ago today, on October 7, 1571, the Holy League for the Defense of Christendom, under the leadership of Don John of Austria (son of Emperor Charles V) with a formidable fleet, finally and decisively defeated the Turks at the Gulf of Lepanto, effectively ending the long-term Ottoman naval threat to Europe. (There would be one more decisive military encounter between Western Christendom and the Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1687, after which Ottoman power would be in continuous decline until the 20th century.)

Pope Saint Pius V attributed the Christian victory at Lepanto to the intercession of the Mother of God, whom the faithful had invoked by praying the rosary, and October 7 is still celebrated as the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Even Protestants celebrated the Christian victory over their common enemy, and the Protestant King of Scots James VI (the future King James I of England) composed an epic poem celebrating Don John's victory.

Actually, the Ottoman threat to Europe did not disappear immediately. According to historian Diarmaid MacCulloch (The Reformation, Viking, 2004, p. 55), "Islamic raiders enslaved around a million western Christian Europeans between 1530 and 1640; this dwarfs the contemporary slave traffic in the other direction, and is about equivalent to the number of West Africans  taken by Christian Europeans across the Atlantic at the same time." MacCulloch considers the fear engendered in Europe by this aggression "an essential background to the Reformation, convincing many on both sides that God's anger was poised to strike down the Christian world, and so making it all the more essential to please God by affirming the right form of Christian belief against other Christians. It is impossible to understand the mood of sixteenth-century Europe without bearing in mind the deep anxiety inspired by the Ottoman Empire."

It has been suggested by some that one of the defining features of the post-Cold War world has been the rise of a more militant Islam and "the deep anxiety" that this has inspired throughout the Western world. The two situations are not the same, and the differences between the sixteenth century and now are major. Christendom no longer exists, and opposition by Europeans and Americans to certain Muslim states and non-state actors, whether militant or immigrant, is motivated much more by secular factors than by religious ones. Islam itself is divided along sectarian and national lines. It is impossible to speak univocally about Muslims, just as it is impossible to speak univocally about Christians or secular Westerners. 

The one constant, however, is that "deep anxiety," which undoubtedly exists on both sides. The post-9/11 "War on Terror" partakes of some of the same apocalyptic anxiety, such as Europe experienced during the Reformation period and the post-Reformation wars of religion. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the notable exception of the PLO, terrorism had been more a left-wing Western phenomenon (the IRA, the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Weathermen, etc.). At present, probably the greatest terrorist threat to the United States may now be from domestic right-wing, white supremacists. Even so, the end of the conflict in Afghanistan has heightened anxiety about that country possibly once again becoming a safe haven for terrorist activity.

For Europe, on the other hand, Islam is now a domestic reality in a way in which it never really was before. When Charles de Gaulle visited Moscow in December 1944 to seek Russian support against any revival of Germany, he is supposed to have said: “I deal with Stalin as François I dealt with Suleiman—with this difference, that in sixteenth-century France there was no Muslim party.” (He was referring, obviously, to the French Communist party.) Now, however, France has a significant Muslim minority. How European states, with much less of a tradition of immigration and assimilation than the United States, can successfully integrate immigrants from non-Western countries is a major challenge for those societies.

Hopefully, Europe's remaining Christians and its many former Christians and the new immigrants continuously coming to Europe's shores will figure this out more peacefully than their sixteenth-century ancestors were able to do, and will successfully set out on a new path toward a realistic accommodation of different traditions in an inevitably more multi-cultural, globalized Europe.

(Photo: The Battle of Lepanto, painted by Paolo Veronese, 1528-1588).

A Cathedral for the World

In our local liturgical calendar, today is celebrated as the feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of New York's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, perhaps the most famous and most visited Catholic cathedral in the United States.

When the Diocese of New York was created in 1808, it had one church, Saint Peter's on Barclay Street, dedicated in 1786. Thanks to the Napoleonic Wars, New York's first bishop never made it across the Atlantic. So it was Boston's Bishop John Cheverus who dedicated the first Saint Patrick's Cathedral (now a Basilica) on Mulberry Street in 1815. It was New York's fourth bishop (and first archbishop), John Hughes, who planned the construction of the present magnificent structure on 5th Avenue at 50th Street. His intention was "to erect a cathedral in the city of New York that may be worthy of our increasing numbers, intelligence and wealth as a religious community" and "a public architectural monument of the present and prospective greatness of this metropolis of the American continent." Designed by architect James Renwick, Saint Patrick's was formally opened by Hughes' successor, John Cardinal McCloskey, in 1879. It was finally consecrated by Archbishop John Cardinal Farley on October 5, 1910.

According to archdiocesan historian Thomas Shelley, in those early years "two parishes set the standard for the rest of the diocese, the new cathedral and the Paulist Church of St. Paul the Apostle." 

The combination of its neo-gothic grandeur (modeled on the cathedral of Cologne, Germany) and its accessibility at the heart of midtown Manhattan have made Saint Patrick's a constant stopping point for both resident New Yorkers and visiting tourists. When I was a boy, it was just a given that when the family went downtown to, for example, Radio City, we would "make a visit" to Saint Patrick's, a visit that was itself a unique amalgam of religious devotion and domestic tourism. That habit has lasted into adulthood and even old age. That is certainly a tribute to what a special place Saint Patrick's is - especially for us New Yorkers, for whom it is everything that Archbishop Hughes hoped and predicted. 

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

All churches are special places, of course. As a priest, I am very fortunate to have served in two very different but especially beautiful and historic churches – Saint Paul the Apostle in New York and Immaculate Conception in Knoxville, TN, the Victorian Gothic “Mother Church” of that 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 always special places. From time immemorial, people have had their 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 and dedicated 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.”  

So too Archbishop Hughes and his successors planned and built and consecrated New York's great Cathedral, a gloriously neo-gothic imitation of the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany, located (like its model) at the heart of a great city center. I was privileged to visit the Cologne Cathedral during the 2005 World Youth Day. As part of the program, we went on pilgrimage, walking across the Rhine River on the Hohenzollern Bridge (the most heavily used railway bridge in Germany) to the cathedral's shrine of the Magi. The cologne Cathedral is big and grand and illustrates the legacy of the Old World of Christendom. Its American imitator is likewise big and grand and signifies the aspirations of the New World.

But, when we commemorate 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 New York's principal church, Saint Patrick's is, in a sense, the church of everyone in this city. and, since this is a city of and for the entire world, it is a church for everyone from far and near. 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.

And, when we commemorate the dedication of a church, and especially when we celebrate that of a cathedral church, we also celebrate the relationship, the community connection, 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.

We need all three. We need places where we can be Church. We need to be a people who aspire to be Church and to build the Church in our city and our world. And we need the relationships with one another. the community connections, that can make this possible.

Throughout the United States, the Church is largely built - both physically and also spiritually - for a world that flourished a century ago. It was a world which the Catholic Church effectively reflected in cathedrals like Saint Patrick's and as effectively enriched, nourished, and served by means of cathedrals like Saint Patrick's and the community connections and relationships represented by such structures. Such places, their people, and the relationships they represent are now being challenged, no less than the New York Catholics of Archbishop Hughes' time were being challenged, to respond to new needs and new situations in ways which continue the accomplishments of the past and continue to foster faith and hope as we enter an increasingly uncertain future.

Nursing Nuns and a Vicar Cop

 

Two of my all-time favorite British TV series - Call the Midwife and Grantchester - have now returned for another new season of PBS.

Season 10 [!] of Call the Midwife continues the story of the nuns and their lay collaborators at Nonnatus House in the poor Poplar district in London's East End, bringing the sisters and their extended community of health workers, patients, and neighbors up to 1966. Originally based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, who had worked with an Anglican religious nursing order, the Community of St. John the Divine (founded in 1849), serving the poor from their convent in London's East End, the series has continued beyond its original setting in the 1950s, still depicting the the day-to-day work of the midwives and the challenges faced by those they seek to serve, enriching each season with recognizable historical events and their effects on the characters' religious and social lives and the medical storylines.

It is now1966! So the Sisters are experimenting with an innovative plan to fund their ministry to Poplar's poor, and maybe modifying their Habits in the process. Tragically Dr. Turner and the midwives are confronting yet another new man-made cause of illness, deformity, and death for both parents and babies. And religious life remaions an unpredictable and challenging journey at every stage of life.

Meanwhile, also starting out in the 1950s but set in a Cambridgeshire village, Grantchester is based on an expansion of James Runcie's The Grantchester Mysteries, about an Anglican village Vicar who involves himself in solving murder mysteries with a local detective. For the first three seasons, it featured Vicar Sydney Chambers (James Norton), replaced in the next three seasons by Vicar Will Davenport (Tom Brittney), both of whom have unofficially partnered with Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green). We are now starting season 6, set in 1958.

In Cambridgeshire 1958, Reverend Will ("I am my work, and my work is me") really needs a vacation. So he and his whole Grantchester crowd - curate Leonard Finch (Al Weaver), housekeeper Mrs. Chapman (Tessa Peake-Jones) and her husband Jack (Nick Brimble), also Geordie with wife Cathy (Kacey Ainsworth) and their less-easy-to-entertain children, and even Leonard’s boyfriend Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale) - go to Merries Holiday Park, which is indeed as horrible a place as it sounds. Of course, the very next day, there is a body on the floor. Inevitably, Will and Geordie get to work and quite quickly solve the crime in time to return home on schedule. Meanwhile, however, an ominous cloud hovers on the horizon for Will's curate.

Welcome back, both series, for what will surely be another memorable season!