"Christ can fill that cosmic void in your heart"

Just to prove that nothing is all bad, Trinity Broadcasting, which airs some truly odd and even grossly heretical programming, has started to re-broadcast Billy Graham Crusades from down through the years on Saturday nights. From the time I became a Christian myself (I remember well the night and circumstance I asked Jesus to fill the void in my own heart- in a flash I recognized that only He can fill it, only He can bridge the infinite gap, the gulf between myself and the Father), I have been an admirer of Dr. Graham. You know the preaching is good, Spirit-filled, when it holds a five year-old enraptured and prompts him to start asking serious existential questions.

Privileged as I am to lead our parish RCIA program, I frequently get the question, "Which Bible should I buy?" After warning them away from truly bad versions, like the New World Translation and paraphrase translations, I quote Dr. Graham: "Buy the one you're going to read."

Television preachers often prove to be charlatans. This should shock nobody because they become just like rock stars and, thinking themselves above it all, eschew accountability, worrying about and preaching against the motes in the eyes of other people while pridefully ignoring the beam their own, all the while raking in cash, living an opulent life-style, and generally suffering from what can only be described as a messiah complex. This phenomenon is nothing new. It even goes back to radio days, as Sinclair Lewis' 1926 novel Elmer Gantry, which was made into an award-winning film in 1960, clearly shows. One of the reasons I admire Billy Graham so much is that he has always taken being accountable seriously. He has, what my Evangelical brothers and sisters call, a true heart for the Lord. Dr. Graham is now ninety-two years-old.

Despite being a very public figure, he has always strived to live a simple and quiet life, taking only a modest salary from his multi-million dollar ministry. With Dr. Graham it is never just a show. Graham even overcame his early anti-Catholic bias. In fact, during the ministry of Cardinal O'Connor, when the Billy Graham Crusade came to New York City there were Catholic counselors waiting to talk to Catholics who turned their life back to Christ at the event. Here's a brief clip from his crusade in Milwaukee in 1979 that is appropriate for addressing the transformation today's Gospel call us to. He reminds us that we need help, that is, God's grace to move from image to likeness.

It is my prayer that you hear from the pulpit or ambo in your church this morning something equally inspiring, challenging, and hope-filled- not the old worn-out saw of I'm okay and you're okay. If you're okay, then why did Jesus have to go to the cross for you?

Dr. Graham has written a number of books. I particularly like his books on the Holy Spirit and on angels. Knowing Jesus, living in fellowship, that is, communion with Him is happiness. In a world in which nothing satisfies our restless hearts, He is our hope and our joy.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

"He saved us and called us to a holy life"

"And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. (Matt. 17:2)

"He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Tim.1:9-10)

On this Second Sunday of Lent we are called to further open ourselves, allowing God's grace to build on our nature, to be transfigured, moving from image to likeness. After all, my dear friends, this is what Lent is about!

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

St. Joseph, husband of the Blessed Vigin Mary

St. Joseph holding the Christ child

Roman Catholics throughout much of the world observe today as a holy day of obligation. While the Solemnity of St. Joseph is not a holy day here in the U.S., it is an important day, as is our solemnity next Friday, the Annunciation of the Lord. For those who perpetually confuse Mary's Immaculate Conception with Christ's conception, the Annunciation falls nine months before our observance of the Nativity. In any case, the saints are indispensable and have been since the beginning of the church.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote that "unless we are aware that we are outside the kingdom of God, that we need to knock at a door to be allowed in, we may spend a great deal of our lives in imagining that we are inside, behaving as though we were and never reaching that depth where the kingdom unfolds itself in all its beauty, its truth and its glory." Without trying to be too cute, we know people who are inside, as it were. These people we call saints. We ask them to intercede for us from the inside.

All fathers and husbands should have some kind of a devotion to St. Joseph, who, along with his spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a most efficacious intercessor on our behalf. I want to wish my pastor, Msgr. Mayo and our Vicar General, who is also our Vicar for Clergy, Msgr. Fitzgerald, a happy saint day today!

St. Joseph's day is huge in Italy and in many Italian-American communities here in the U.S. So, my Italian friends, enjoy this break from our Lenten austerity!

Father,
you entrusted our Savior to the care of Saint Joseph.
By the help of his prayers may your Church continue
to serve its Lord, Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever. Amen.

St. Joseph, pray for us

"I guess this is our last goodbye"

This old Police song, off their early album Regatta de Blanc, is certainly about adolescent angst over losing a love, or a supposed love. Nonetheless, it says something really striking about our mindset at times, our self-absorption. If being an adolescent is about anything, it is about being completely absorbed by yourself, seeing yourself as alone, unloved, unworthy, yet with a heart, that is, a desire bigger than the world.

When we become completely turned-in and obsessive about this, it can be tragic and lead to people injuring themselves, starving themselves, or even worse.

These words are particularly striking:

And you don't care so I won't cry
But you'll be sorry when I'm dead
And all this guilt will be on your head
I guess you'd call it suicide
But I'm too full to swallow my pride

My life has been touched several times by suicide. By order of magnitude, from my extended family, to friends, to people who have sought my pastoral guidance, as well as dealing with people in the aftermath of a suicide.

By His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ, shows us that we are always accompanied on our way. He shows us that love is stronger than even death. Further, He is the fulfillment of our desire, as the title of the hymn, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, indicates.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

St. Padric, Dewi Sant and a few Lenten notes

Today is the liturgical memorial of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. For Roman Catholics in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a solemnity and a holy day of obligation. Next to St. Francis of Assisi, probably no saint is better known in the West. Patrick, however, was not Irish by birth. He first went to the Emerald Isle at age 16 after being taken captive in his native England. He was then sold as a slave. He was probably a native Welsh-speaker. He remained in Ireland six years before escaping and returning home. After being formed in monasteries at Tours and Lérins, he was ordained a priest and then a bishop before returning to Ireland as a missionary. As I mention each 17 March, Patrick is something of a pan-Celtic figure. Each entity of Great Britain has its own patron saint: St. David for Wales, St. Andrew for Scotland, and St. George for England.

Incidentally, 1 March is traditionally the memorial of St. David. His memorial remains on the Anglican calendar. I assume that with the institution of the Anglican Ordinariate, St. David’s memorial will resume, in some places, being observed by Catholics, but his feast is not on the Roman calendar, nor on the universal Orthodox calendar.

St. David of Wales

We learn in one of Patrick’s two extant letters that his mother, Conchessa, was a near relative of St. Martin of Tours. It was around AD 433 that Patrick began his mission among the Irish. The date of his death is held to be 17 March 493.

St. Patrick, along with Sts. David and George, is also venerated by Orthodox Christians, given that his life and holiness spread throughout the universal church prior to the Great Schism of AD 1054. Of course, his veneration by our Eastern sisters and brothers is most prominent among the English-speaking Orthodox, who are growing in number, many of whom convert from various Christian traditions, mostly Protestant and, at least in the U.S., many Evangelicals, and even some from Catholicism.

St. Padric of Ireland

While I’m putting up a post, I will take the chance to mention that Tuesday morning I was looking at Arthur Jones’ new Marian blog over on NCR. Given my Lent-long review of my own on-line activities, I take that I went to this webpage as providential. He expresses what I think is a healthy wariness of internet activity (i.e., Facebook, e-mail, Tweeting, etc.), namely ”that we’re all in danger of information overload”, which goes hand-in-hand with the chronic vice of our culture in this age; busyness for busyness’ sake. I say that his wariness is healthy because it doesn’t go to the extreme of dismissing such activity as wholly pointless, or even unnecessary (he starting a blog, after all); on-line activity has its place. My particular challenge is finding and focusing on what is useful for my readers. I am interested to see what fruit this insight bears over these next days and weeks.

I implore, Sts. Patrick and David pray for us. I also invoke the intercession of St. Joseph, whose feast, which is a solemnity and, in most places, but not in the United States, a holy day of obligation, we look forward to this Saturday. Last year, falling as it did on a Friday, we were able to fore go Lenten abstinence. This year, due to the vigil falling on Friday, we will be able to end it a bit early, at sunset.

I also look forward to a solemnity next Friday, 25 March, when I will commemorate and celebrate the Annunciation by having chicken for lunch and eggs for breakfast.

As you walk your Lenten path, Go n-eírí an bother leat (i.e., may road rise up to meet you).

I will end with the beginning stanzas from the Lorca of St. Patrick:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

So, here's a Welshman, Sir Tom Jones, singing a Gospel tune, a little something about another 40 days and 40 nights in the Bible- Didn't It Rain? There's a bit about cat cruelty thrown in for good measure.

Friends don't let friends drink green beer. If you're going to imbibe this evening, enjoy a nice Guinness or a Harp, or, better yet, have a glass of Irish whiskey.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

Following Christ, living in the real world

"As Christians we are always in tension - in anguish and at the same time in bliss. This is mad, ridiculous. But it is true - accepting the dark night just as we accept the brilliance of the day. We have to make an act of surrender - if I am in Christ, there are moments where I must share the cry of the Lord on the cross and the anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. There is a way of being defeated, even in our faith - and this is a way of sharing the anguish of the Lord. I don't believe we should ever say, 'This cannot happen to you'. If we are Christians we should go through this life, accepting the life and the world, not trying to create a falsified world.

"But, on the other hand, the Christian is like someone who lives in three dimensions in a world in which the majority of of people live in two. People who live freely and within a dimension of eternity will always find that something is wrong, they will always find themselves being the odd man out. The same problem was faced by the early Christians when they said their only king was God. People turned round to them and said, 'If you say that you are disloyal to our king' and often persecuted them. But the only true way of being loyal to this two-dimensional world is to be loyal to the three-dimensional world, because in reality the world is three-dimensional. If you really live in three dimensions and do not simply live in two and imagine the third, then life will be full and meaningful" Metropolitan Anthony Bloom from an interview that serves as the introduction to his indispensable book Beginning to Pray.

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis

First Sunday of Lent

Today Lent begins in earnest. Jesus' forty days and our forty days: straight-up, today's Gospel is the scriptural basis for Lent. The temptations Jesus dealt with are archetypal of the temptations we face all the time. It's easy to overlook that Jesus was fasting and these temptations came "afterwards". Strengthened by His fast, he was able to resist what the devil threw His way.

Similarly, when we read about the fall in Genesis, it is easy to miss the obvious, namely that the tree from which our first parents ate was forbidden them, which is a form of fasting. Fasting does not merely consist of not eating, but, at least within the Christian tradition, both East and West, not eating certain foods, like the meat of warm-blooded animals, dairy products, wine, olive oil, et al. for fixed times, as, for Christians, all food is clean.

Fasting is indispensable for anyone who seeks to follow Christ, no matter what anyone tells you. Whose word carries more weight than the Master's? We do not fast for health reasons, to lose weight, to detox. Lent is not the Catholic diet plan. It is undeniable that there are health benefits to fasting. Despite this we fast for spiritual reasons, as Jesus shows us. One reason we fast is that through our self-denial we are strengthened to resist temptation. The great wit Oscar Wilde once averred, "I can resist anything but temptation." Maybe he should've considered fasting.

In his Wednesday audience for Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict reminded us that the Church Fathers taught the interconnectedness of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving:

"Saint Augustine calls fasting and almsgiving the 'wings of prayer', since they prepare our hearts to take flight and seek the things of heaven, where Christ has prepared a place for us. As this Lent begins, let us accept Christ’s invitation to follow him more closely, renew our commitment to conversion and prayer, and look forward to celebrating the Resurrection in joy and newness of life."

St. Paul synthesizes Genesis and today's Gospel, showing us starkly that we are not saved by our own obedience because, frankly, we are disobedient. Only the Son, Jesus Christ, was obedient to the Father in all things, which is why only He can reconcile us to God, to each other, as well as redeem the whole of fallen creation.

On this First Sunday of Lent, let's not forget the people of Japan. Let's fast and pray that the Lord will meet their spiritual needs and be generous in our response to their material needs.

There are several subjects I am actively avoiding this Lent. At the top of my list is the suspension of twenty-one priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia after a Grand Jury report showed credible allegations of child sexual abuse against them. In addition, another priest, this time from the chancery, is being charged with child endangerment for knowingly placing abusive priests in situations in which they could abuse again. I could chime in, but it's all being said or has been said. I refer anyone who is interested to Nicholas Cafardi's piece in Commonweal. I am bereft, especially for the victims. I am disturbed that, even after the Dallas charter, the same mistakes and cover-ups are still going on, at least in some places.

Next on my list is the renewed persecution of Christians in Egypt. Where is the coverage on that? Well, it doesn't fit the preferred narrative of the long discredited fourth estate: "The evil tyrant is gone, democracy is fully realized, even without a revised constitution, and they all lived happily ever after."

Meum cum sim pulvis et cinis