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Prayer
by Father Brown in Texas1/12/2012 9:25:24 AM
I am reading a very good book these days by a Jesuit priest, Fr. James Martin, S.J. It is called "My Life with the Saints" and it contains accounts of how he has come to be devoted to his favorite saints, and then what in their lives attracts him to them. I certainly recommend it to you.
It struck me yesterday that we tend to assume that other people know as much as we do about the saints, and of course, that isn't true. Before I entered the Dominican Order, I knew practically nothing about St. Dominic, and very little about St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Catherine of Siena. And those are three of the most prominent Dominican saints.
So, let me point out to you today that St. Therese of Lisieux, whom the Catholic world calls "the Little Flower", spent months toward the end of her very short life suffering the terrible cross of what is called "the dark night of the soul". It is a very painful experience in which an individual loses most or all of the joy of one's faith and is attacked by doubts and questions about things that were rock-solid in one's mind and heart before.
The Little Flower entered the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux, where she grew up, when she was just fifteen. She died when she was twenty-four. But during those nine short years, she became not only a very great saint, but one of the only three female Doctors of the Church.
We usually think of her as a smiling, happy, young woman for whom the religious life was very close to heaven on earth. But her own autobiography contradicts that idea completely. In her "dark night", she spoke very confidentially to her blood sister who was also her religious superior in the convent, and told her of the spiritual darkness that she was experiencing. Her sister suggested that Therese write down some of the doubts and questionings that were assailing her, thinking that by putting them down on paper, she might gain some relief from them. Therese rejected that idea. No, she said. They are so ugly, so contrary to the goodness of God, that I would feel that I were writing down blasphemy and gross irreverence if I were to put them on paper.
Shortly before her death, during her very severe physical sufferings from tuberculosis as well as the spiritual trials, she cautioned her superior: when a sister is suffering as I am, be careful not to leave bottles of medicine within her reach that could do her harm if she took them all. That sounds a lot like temptations to suicide. And yet this is the great saint whom we think of as the smiling nun who was always gloriously happy in her religious vocation.
I speak of these things today because, as the old saying goes, "misery loves companionship". To know that Therese suffered greatly is of greater help to us than to think of her as always light-hearted and happy. To contemplate Our Lord on the cross is certainly more meaningful than to think of an adolescent Jesus playing games with his teen-age friends in the streets and on the hillsides around Nazareth. The madonnas of our Christmas cards are less convincing than the pietas – those representations of Our Lady sitting on the ground with her dead Son in her arms after he had been taken down from the cross. Have you noticed that we often speak of the Mater Dolorosa (the Mother of Sorrows) but rarely of the Mater Gaudiosa (the Mother of Joys)?
Sin brings suffering, and the toleration of suffering makes atonement for our own sins and those of others. So, as Our Lord tells us, "take up your cross daily and follow Me".
This morning, when I came to my computer, I found on it a letter from a friend in which he asks whether when we say "God's will be done", we are being fatalistic. It's a good question and it set me to thinking about it. The answer is no, we are not being fatalistic. "Thy will be done" is one of the petitions within the Our Father or the Lord's Prayer, dictated to the disciples and to the entire human race by Christ our Lord when the disciples asked him, "Teach us to pray".
Fatalism is defined in my dictionary as "the doctrine that all events are determined by necessity or fate". If fatalism were true, then prayers of petition would be of no use or value. You see, there are four kinds of prayer: that of PRAISE of God; that of THANKS to God for His favors to us, that of CONTRITION to God for having offended Him by our sins, and then that of PETITION to God, asking Him for things we want. If fatalism is true, then we are going to get what has been pre-arranged and -ordained and we are wasting our time and efforts by asking for this or that. So the prayer of petition is useless. However, fatalism is not true. Our relationship with God is very personal. It is a friendship, an ongoing dialogue, and there are many passages in Scripture which indicate that we can influence God's actions by our prayers. One of the most striking of them is that beautiful little episode when a pagan woman north of the Holy Land approached Jesus and asked him to cure her daughter who was very sick. Because Jesus was a Jew and the woman speaking to him was a pagan, he answered in a way that sounds brusque and severe. He said, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs." The woman is so eager to have him heal her daughter that she swallows her pride, accepts his calling her a dog, and uses her cleverness to turn Our Lord's rebuff to her own advantage. "Why, we often throw the scraps from our tables to the dogs who wait hopefully beside them." She was insistent; she was humble, she loved her daughter very much, she believed that Jesus could do what she wanted, and so she kept on asking. And she got what she wanted. One of the saints has said that prayer is "Man's strength and God's weakness."
So, my dear friends, we are not being fatalists when we ask of God for what we want or need. Children are constantly asking their parents for this and that. And good parents can distinguish between wise requests and imprudent or frivolous ones. We ask, and then we wait to see the outcome of our asking. But if we have wise and loving parents, we know that we will be treated with prudence and love, whether we get exactly what we want or not.
Let us be sure that our God is a kind, tender, loving Father and not some colossal machine that "does its thing" under all circumstances. And therefore, let us pray. from Father Brown in Texas |
On the 14th of May, the Church celebrates the feast of the apostle St. Matthias. He was one of the disciples of Our Lord who accompanied Jesus all during Our Lord's public life. Then, when Judas Iscariot turned traitor and hanged himself, the other eleven saw the importance of the number twelve for the apostles, and asked God to choose someone to take his place. The choice fell upon Matthias. In the gospel of today's Mass in honor of St. Matthias, we hear Our Lord saying to the apostles and to us: I call you friends since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father.
Do we realize the tremendous favor that Our Lord shows us by calling us his FRIENDS? To be a creature of God is one thing; to be a friend is much more. How can a mere creature be a FRIEND of the Creator, of the most high God?
This reminds me of a story I heard in the life of two nuns in a monastery in France during the reign of King Louis XV. One of them was of the royal family, a princess and daughter of the king. One day she said or did something to which the other nun objected. The first one said to the second, "Sister, don't forget that my father is the king of France." And to that, the other replied, "And you, Sister, don't forget that my father is the King of Heaven!" It was a nice way of putting the princess in her place without being insulting or contrary.
When Our Lord calls us "friends", He is conferring upon us a very great honor but also a very great responsibility. If we are friends of our Savior, we must act that way. So when we examine our conscience, we must ask ourselves, "Have I acted like a friend of my Divine Lord? Have my thoughts, words, and deeds been worthy of a friend of Christ? Is my relationship with Jesus evident in all I say and do?
St. Matthias, you were considered worthy to be numbered among the closest associates of our Lord. Help me to share that worthiness, at least to some degree. from Father Brown in Texas |
The fact that this is the month of May, dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, reminds me of various prayers that we Catholics have used for centuries in honor of the Mother of God. I remember one time in particular, I drove with some friends down from the San Francisco Bay area to the charming town of Carmel by the Sea in the vicinity of Monterey, California. In the old mission church in Carmel is the tomb of Blessed Junipero Serra, the founder of the first Franciscan missions along the coast of California. Then, a few miles south of Carmel there is a monastery of Carmelite nuns that we visited and where we heard the nuns chant the Divine Office.
As I was sitting in that impressive chapel listening to the Latin prayers being sung, I noticed above the altar an inscription in Latin which I began to translate for myself even though my Latin classes in high school had ended about seven years before that. When I had it all sorted out, I discovered that it was a prayer to Our Lady which says this: Remember, Virgin Mother of God, when you stand before the face of the Lord, that you say good things about us so that he will turn his displeasure away from us. It's a lovely, naive, childlike prayer; you get the impression that a small child is talking to his or her mother and expecting the mother to protect the child from the parental displeasure of the father. You can almost envision the little tyke standing behind his or her mother, hiding behind her skirt and feeling more secure when protected by her gentleness that softens the justice of the father who has been offended by a forbidden raid upon the cookie jar or muddy footprints in the house.
This kind of naivete is also to be found in an old painting I've seen of the Archangel Michael holding a balance in his hand. In one of the pans of the balance there is a human being kneeling, looking very frightened because in the other pan there are his sins all arranged in bales and looking very heavy indeed. But above the pan with the frightened sinner, Our Lady sits in heaven, allowing to fall into the pan her Rosary which is proportionately very large and heavier-looking than the packages of sins on the other side of the balance.
When we say to her "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death", we are really saying, help me in my hour of judgment, my hour when I will need all the help I can get. Your Divine Son Jesus died for my salvation, but having done that, he expects virtue from us. And we have not always been virtuous and grateful for our salvation. So, blessed Mother, be a mother to me. Be a mother of mercy, not of justice. I am counting on you, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. from Father Brown in Texas |
A couple of days ago, one of the men of the Reso family called to tell me that Olga, his mother, had died this past weekend at the age of 98. She would have been 99 in September, and of course 100 years old in September of 2013. When I first went to St. Dominic Parish in New Orleans as pastor in 1971, I came to know Olga and several other members of her numerous family, and I began to record this daily message on the telephone – a practice that my predecessor had begun a year or two earlier. Now, forty-one years later, I have the privilege of sending out another daily message, this time about Olga as the arrangements for her funeral are being made in New Orleans. She was one of the most active parishioners of St. Dominic Parish, singing in the choir, working in the Altar Society, and a participant in the Dominican Laity Group.
I remember that shortly after I met her, we got to talking about family histories, as New Orleans people are so apt to do. She showed me scrapbooks of her forebears in the Pyrenees of southwestern France, near Lourdes. Her maiden name was Arseguet, not a common name in Louisiana since there were very few people from that part of France among the Louisiana immigrants. I seem to recall that she had gone to the Gascon region of southwestern France to come to know the country where her parents came from and to visit distant relatives there.
When her son called me by telephone earlier this week to tell me of her death, he explained that she had made a list of those persons who were to be notified when her death occurred, and that I was among them. This is the first time in my life that this has happened to me, that I am aware of. I am grateful to Olga for including me in that list, and to the family for carrying out her wishes. This morning, I offered Mass for her repose in case she needs prayers, and will continue to do so.
This Thursday, Olga will be laid to her rest. A very significant part of St. Dominic Parish history and of the Catholic history of New Orleans. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have known her realize the significance of this event. To those who didn't know her, she was just a very old lady who has died. But to us who knew her and the details of her life, she was a pillar of the religious and civic community and the kind of person of whom we can all be proud.
Let me ask that you remember Olga Reso in your prayers. And then ask yourself: have I made a positive contribution to my family, my parish, my community as she has done? from Father Brown in Texas |
The first reading at Mass today sometimes brings smiles to those of us who are from New Orleans because in it, SS. Paul and Barnabas are preaching the gospel in Lystra, a town in what is now central Turkey, not far from St. Paul's home town of Tarsus. The two apostles heal a man crippled from birth, and the local people presume that they are gods, so they call St. Barnabas "Zeus", who was the king of the Greek gods, and St. Paul "Hermes", the messenger of the gods because he was an eloquent preacher. The two Christian apostles are horrified that these pagans are trying to turn THEM into pagan gods, and they insist, "We are only men, human like you"!
The reason this is amusing to us New Orleanians is that during our carnival season each year, we have a carnival organization called "Hermes" which has a parade and a ball, and by now, there is probably a "Zeus" too, since the carnival organizations proliferate out into the suburbs of the city and need new gods and goddesses to be named for. It is interesting that when we want to name organizations dedicated to fun, games, and foolishness, we choose the names of pagan gods. When we want to name groups or entities for serious purposes, we give them the names of the Persons of God or the REAL saints. Here we see the difference between truth and fiction; the sacred and the absurd; the sublime and the ridiculous. One of the ways that the success of a given carnival can be gauged in New Orleans is the amount of trash generated in the streets of the city during the carnival time. The beer cans, the paper trash from hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken, soft drinks, and the flimsy beads and other trinkets thrown by the maskers on the floats and young people on the trucks that follow the Rex parade on Mardi Gras day – all of this measures how much fun the city had.
The carnival parades pay mock honor to pagan gods. The parades that we find in Catholic cities like the ones in southern Spain during Holy Week, and cities in Italy at Corpus Christi pay fervent devotion to Our Lord, his blessed Mother, and the saints who are very real, and are our big brothers and sisters in the Mystical Body of Christ. A great difference! One, just foolish fun; the other, deep faith expressing itself in public and celebrating the truths revealed to us by Divine Revelation.from Father Brown in Texas |
In the Vatican Information Service bulletin of today, it is announced that the Holy Father will celebrate Mass in the town of Frascati in honor of its patron saints, Philip and James, two of the Apostles whom the Church honors today.
In 1995, friends and I were traveling in that part of Italy – the Roman campagna, as it's called – when we wanted to visit the town of Nemmi close by. We became confused in reading our map and couldn't find Nemmi! So we stopped a passerby and asked, in our halting Italian, how to get to Nemmi. He thought about it for a moment, tried to give us directions, and then evidently decided that it would be easier just to lead us there rather than try to explain to some confused Americans how to get to Nemmi. So he simply said, "Follow me", which we gladly did. After a lovely drive of maybe three or four miles, we got to Nemmi. He blew his horn, smiled broadly, waved us on into the heart of the mountainous town, and then went on his way. I wonder if he remembers that incident which occurred some seventeen years ago. I doubt it. But my friends and I remember it very clearly and often reminisce about the nice fellow who led us a few miles to Nemmi. His kindness was one of those fragrant flowers that grow along the way of our lives and warm our hearts.
Our Lord tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Will you try to do something for someone else today that you would like him or her to do to you? Or that he or she will remember with delight years after it happens? May God reward the man who led us to Nemmi; may God reward us, too, if we treat others with kindness. from Father Brown in Texas |
Today the Church celebrates the commemoration of St. Athanasius, one of the great fathers and doctors of the ancient Church. He was bishop of the important city of Alexandria in the delta of the Nile in northern Egypt. He spent much of his life combatting Arianism, the most widespread heresy during the years of the early Church. It taught that Our Lord was truly man, but not God. Many Catholics either died or suffered a great deal in defense of the dogma that Jesus is indeed "TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN" as we say in the Divine Praises.
I'd like to call to your attention the name of this saint whom we celebrate today. The name "Athanasius" comes from two Greek words which mean "Not dying". Or, if you prefer, "Immortal", which is the same thing in the Latin rather than the Greek derivation. If you look in the index of a complete book of the lives of the saints, you will find that there are a number of male and female saints named either Athanasius or Athanasia – Undying or Immortal.
And then you will also find a number of male saints named Anastasius, and female saints called Anastasia. This name in the two forms again comes from the Greek and means "Standing up again". It means that after Our Divine Lord gave up his life on the cross and was placed lifeless in the tomb, he rose again and stood up in the newness of his risen life and will remain alive forever. It is interesting to see what names the early Catholics gave to their children, most of those names referring to theological or spiritual concepts taken from Sacred Scripture or from the names of earlier saints who had lived exemplary lives.
The names are sometimes taken from the world of animals. The coming Christ was to be the Lion of Juda, and "lion" in Latin is Leo, so we have a number of Saints Leo. St. John the Baptist called Jesus "the lamb of God". Lamb in Latin is "Agnus", so there have been a number of women named Agnes, several of them canonized. The Holy Spirit descended upon Our Lord in the form of a dove at Jesus' baptism, so there have been many Christians named "Columba" or "Colum" or "Columban", all meaning a dove. The world of flowers has given us the names "Flora", Rose", "Iris", "Lily" and "Lillian", even "Susan", from the Hebrew "Susanna" meaning lily. The flower called hyacinth has given us our Dominican saint Hyacinth, and, because of him, the Texas name "San Jacinto", very well known in Texas history as the place of a battle where Texas independence was won. In the New Testament, we find the mother of SS. James and John called Salome, meaning Peace. We call girls Irene, the Anglicized form of the Greek "eirene", meaning Peace.
I hope that you bear a Christian name, that you know its meaning and derivation, and reflect from time to time upon your being given that name. It is a sacramental, a holy thing, and another link between you and Our Lord Jesus Christ. from Father Brown in Texas |
For many centuries, the Church has held up St. Joseph to us as the patron of the Universal Church and of the grace of a happy death. He is the patron of the Universal Church because he was the head of the Holy Family of Nazareth, and the Church is the much wider family of Christ throughout the world and down through the years of sacred history. He is the patron of the grace of a happy death because he seems to have died between the time Our Lord was twelve years old and the time that Jesus died on the cross and entrusted his blessed mother into the care of St. John the Evangelist who stood with her at the foot of the cross. In what better company can one die than that of Jesus and Mary?
Then, when Karl Marx, Nicolai Lenin, and Josef Stalin spawned the horrors of atheistic communism upon the world, it was decided to establish an international communist labor day to glorify the working man to whom communism paid lip service. May 1st was the date settled upon for that great godless feast. So to counteract the blasphemy of a godless feast day, Pope Pius XII, in 1955, instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and decreed that it would be celebrated on May 1st. Today, as we pray the Liturgy of the Hours, we use as the invitatory antiphon the prayer: Come, let us worship Christ the Lord who was honored to be known as the son of a carpenter". We pray for all working people, we pray in thanks for our ability to support ourselves and our families by honest work, and we pray for those who are having trouble working and supporting those dependent upon them.
The absurdity of atheistic glorification of work is seen clearly in a funny story that has been circulated for years. It says that one day, an atheist went before God and said to him, "We don't need you anymore. We have perfected all science and technology and can make our own heaven on earth. So why don't you just sort of fade away?" God listened patiently and then said, "Before I do that, let me see you produce a single living human being. That will be proof to me of what you say, and then I'll fade away as you ask." "Fine," replies the atheist. So he stoops down to pick up a pile of dirt with which to begin his "creation". But God stops him. "Oh, no!," he says. "I made that dirt; that's my dirt. You go get your own dirt for your creation." What does an atheist do in a case like that? The foolishness of atheism is clearly seen in that simple little story. The many trees that I can see from my window produce millions of leaves each spring and thousands of acorns. How many leaves are produced by the void of atheism or by atheists themselves?
May St. Joseph the Worker bless our world and our Church today and grant us the tremendous grace of dying in the company of his wife and his foster son, Jesus our Lord. from Father Brown in Texas |
On this last day of April, the Church celebrates the feast of Pope St. Pius V, and because he was a Dominican, we members of the Family of St. Dominic have more than the usual reason to celebrate.
I was struck in the last few days by something having to do with St. Pius. Because of her bitter persecution of the Church in the British Isles, St. Pius excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, hoping that that would turn her kingdom against her and force her to treat the Catholics under her rule with justice and the fairness they deserved. But much time had elapsed since her father, Henry VIII, had wrenched the Church away from Rome and made it into a schismatic and heretical group. And her Catholic half-sister had used similar means to try to bring the British Isles back to union with Rome, so the people of the British Isles called her "Bloody Mary" and would have little to do with her. She ruled only 5 years, from 1553 – 1558, then died leaving the throne to Elizabeth who could now complete the divorce of her realms from the Catholic Church.
While thinking about these events, I received a postcard from a friend who was traveling in Rome with his wife. He bought postage stamps at a Vatican post-office, and it happened that the stamp he put on the postcard which he sent to me had been issued in honor of the good relations between the Vatican and the United Kingdom, which is what England and Scotland is now officially called. On the face of the stamp there appears the image of Pope Benedict XVI, the British flag, and Westminster abbey. A far cry from the situation that obtained in 1570 when the English Queen was excommunicated by the Roman Pope! In our own day, we have seen British royalty visit the Popes in the Vatican, and Popes welcomed into Buckingham Palace in London.
This morning at Mass, we prayed for the continuing progress of the good will and ecumenical union between Canterbury and Rome so that even after more than four hundred years, the desires of Pope St. Pius V can be fulfilled. from Father Brown in Texas |
If you have read this daily message for a while, you're probably aware that between October, 1950, and June, 1954, I was on active duty in the Navy and spent much of that time in California – San Diego, Alameda, aboard the aircraft carrier the USS Boxer, Moffatt Field, and then discharge at Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. And one of my most beloved spots in that whole area was the Paulist Fathers' church of Old St. Mary's in Chinatown of San Francisco, with its lending library behind it. The library was presided over by a lovely lady by the name of Minna Berger. She and I got to know one another well since I spent much of my time in that library and in her delightful presence.
On one of my first visits to the library, I noticed on the check-out desk a basket containing holy cards; Miss Berger invited me to take several of them. Two of them had to do with the Holy Name of Jesus. The quotation on one was from the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and it said, "The Holy Name of JESUS is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a shout of gladness in the heart". I was unfamiliar with the impassioned spirituality of St. Bernard, so had never heard that before. I took one or two of those cards with me and kept at least one of them for years. It may still be among my papers and souvenirs. The other holy card that I took from Miss Berger's basket in the library contained a quotation which we find in this Sunday's first reading at Mass. St. Peter is speaking to the people of Jerusalem after he and St. John had cured a crippled man in the Temple. St. Peter declares that he and John had worked the miracle through the name of Jesus and then he goes on to say: "There is no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved." Again, that quotation hit me like a ton of bricks. I was twenty-one years old and very impressionable; quotations like those struck me as being gifts SO true, SO beautiful that I could walk around all day in the delight that they afforded me.
Think of those words of St. Peter, my dear friends, as we celebrate this fourth Sunday of Easter. Whether we think of them as being powerful enough to cure one cripple, or to achieve the eternal salvation of millions of people, they belong to Sacred Scripture and are therefore the words of God. As St. Bernard used to say, "Rest in these truths". Let them permeate your mind and heart and become deeply imbedded in your spiritual life. from Father Brown in Texas |
During most of my childhood and youth, I lived in Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in New Orleans. I went to the parochial school of that name; there I received my first Holy Communion; there was I confirmed by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel. There, I celebrated my first solemn Mass after my ordination in 1963. And there we children were taught by the Sisters to have a special devotion to the Mother of our Lord under her title of Our Lady of Good Counsel; that devotion was celebrated on April 26, so this day and date is special for me.
The notion of having many different titles for Our Lord, His Mother, and various other realities of our religion like the Holy Trinity, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Precious Blood of Christ, the Holy Spirit, leads to the use of litanies, in which we invoke the Triune God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Blessed Mother, and others under a series of titles which, when taken together, give us a rich concept of that person or those divine Persons. Often we recited the Litany of Our Lady either in school or church, and when we came to Our Lady's title of "Mother of Good Counsel" we felt a special pride in calling her by the title of our parish and school. The same thing happens now, when we use the Litany of the Saints, and some of our favorite saints are invoked in the litany. How nice it is to be able to address our heavenly Mother as Mother of Christ ... Mother of our Creator ... Mother of our Savior ... Mother of Good Counsel ...Virgin most merciful ... Cause of our Joy ... Ark of the Covenant ... Gate of Heaven ... Queen of Angels ... Queen of the most Holy Rosary ... and so on.
Heaven knows we need good counsel in the many doubts and decisions of our lives. We find people writing to "Dear Abby" or "Miss Manners" or some other columnist in the newspapers, asking advice in matters of all kinds from very serious moral questions to wedding etiquette. Let us remember that the last time that Our Lady speaks in the gospel, she says to the headwaiter at the marriage feast of Cana, referring to her divine Son: "Do whatever He tells you". You simply can't get better advice or counsel than that. from Father Brown in Texas |
A friend of mine subscribes to the Wall Street Journal, and occasionally sends me via e-mail or regular mail one or more articles from that newspaper. It is remarkably balanced in its journalism and it finds the news of the universal Catholic Church or particular entities within the Church worthy of reporting.
Recently it reported that both Pope Leo XIII who was elected in 1878 and Pope Pius XI, elected in 1922, advocated the concept of subsidiarity in government. These popes were talking about very modern principles of government before most of the world even knew what was meant by those terms.
I can remember that when I was in college, one of our Jesuit professors told us the story that took place during the persecution of the Church by the Mexican government during the 1920's and 1930's. A bunch of government thugs burst into the residence of the archbishop of Mexico City and began rifling through papers they found there. They found bundles of papal encyclicals by the two popes, Leo XIII and Pius XI. One of the government agents began to scan the documents and was amazed to find them agreeing with what he believed and advocated. "Who wrote this stuff?" he demanded. When he was told that two very recent Popes had authored it, he asked, "Why haven't you promulgated it?" The Archbishop replied that he considered it too radical, too dangerous. And the government agent replied: "You are a fool! Had the Church in Mexico been in agreement with its own Popes, we could be friends today rather than enemies."
To consider papal teachings either too radical on one hand or too reactionary on the other is not wise. I don't claim that everything the Pope says is infallible, but I do affirm that what the Vicars of Christ say and write is well worth very serious attention and is usually much more valid than some of its readers and hearers admit. from Father Brown in Texas |
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Mark, the author of the second Gospel and a disciple of St. Peter. Scripture scholars tell us that when we read the gospel according to St. Mark, we are really reading the preaching of St. Peter, which Mark heard time and again and eventually wrote down to preserve for posterity.
St. Mark is thought to be buried under the main altar of the basilica of St. Mark in Venice. He probably died in the city of Alexandria in the Nile delta of Egypt. When Islam was founded and spread across all of north Africa, many of the most sacred objects and relics in that part of the world were brought to the Catholic cities north of the Mediterranean to preserve them from desecration at the hands of the Moslems. Thus St. Mark's body was brought to Venice and became the most precious treasure of that city. Even before that, the four animals which are mentioned in the Book of Revelation were held to be symbolic of the writers of the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The four animals were the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle. These were seen as the four living things which were the wisest, the noblest, the strongest, and the swiftest. Thus the lion has been associated with St. Mark and St. Mark's city, Venice, for centuries.
I hope that you have visited the charming city of Venice or will do so someday. Built on a series of islands in a lagoon at the northeastern end of the Adriatic Sea, it has canals where other cities have streets. The islands are joined by bridges which gracefully arch over the canals high enough to permit gondolas and other kinds of boats to pass underneath them. Everywhere you see the sign of the lion, and the very heart of the city is the large Piazza San Marco – St. Mark Square – providing a beautiful setting for the basilica of St. Mark and its very tall bell-tower from the top of which can be seen wonderful views of the city, its waterways, piazzas, and bridges. In very recent church history, three of the archbishops of Venice (they are traditionally called "patriarchs") have been elected to the papacy. They have been St. Pius X, Blessed John XXIII, and Pope John Paul I.
A few years ago, when I was pastor of Holy Rosary Parish here in Houston, a family of my parishioners brought to me a white marble plaque depicting the Lion of St. Mark. I am very fond of it and hung it over the door of the church leading to the priory. Whenever I see that plaque which probably came from Venice, I am grateful to those who brought it to our parish. Today, on the feast of St. Mark, I will go there to look at it again and pray to St. Mark for those who brought me that very nice souvenir. from Father Brown in Texas |
Today there is a pall of sorrow over much of our parish here in Houston because one of our most active young families lost the eldest of their four children – a thirteen-year-old boy -- in an accident over the weekend. I find myself thinking of this tragedy again and again. How do a young couple feel when they are suddenly told that their first-born son is dead – a boy who had been, on the previous day, as alive and healthy as he could be?
These thoughts take me back to Labor Day, September 5th, 1938, when the news was brought to my mother and me that my father had been instantly killed in an automobile accident that afternoon. My parents had been married for just twelve years; I was eight years old and their only child. I can remember so well my mother's grief when that awful report was given to her. I suspect that she doubted that it could be true. There must be some mistake! My father was in perfect health.
There is something unreal about death. Let us think how Our Lady felt when the dead body of her Divine Son was taken down from the cross and placed in her arms. How can the Lord of Life be dead? How can this divine son of hers who had restored good health to so many, and even life itself to a number of dead persons, be without life himself? Something was terribly wrong. Death is evil; it shouldn't happen. Jesus says in the gospel: "I am the way and the truth and the LIFE!" Be that as it may, we all die and must then await our return to life again and to the joy of being with those we love and those who love us.
I ask your prayers for the boy who died, for his parents and his family. And I ask also that we all pray daily in preparation for our own death, so that we may not be surprised by it, not try to fight against it, but pass from this life into the next with trust in Our Lord and in imitation of our Savior whose last words on the cross were, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."from Father Brown in Texas |
This is a time of the year when tragic events seem to occur more frequently than at other times. Last Sunday, we marked the sinking of the Titanic, which brought about the death of about 1514 people. Today, April 18, is the anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake in 1906, which caused the deaths of about 3000 people.
I remember well that one time, the sacristan of Old St. Mary's Church in Chinatown, San Francisco, brought me down into the area underneath the church and showed me the cracked rock foundation on which the church had stood before the earthquake. The buckling of the earth and cracking of the rock almost totally destroyed the lovely old Tudor Gothic church, which was then rebuilt and stands today at the corner of California St. and Grant Avenue, one of San Francisco's most beloved spots. Thanks to the reruns of old movies, some of us have seen the 1936 movie "San Francisco" with Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, and Clark Gable, which depicts the terrible events of that April 18, 1906. If any of the people who died that day still need our prayers, we might pray for them as we remember that cataclysmic event.
But let us listen again to the words of Our Divine Lord from the gospel of today's Mass. Jesus says: "He who acts in truth comes into the light to make clear that his deeds are done in God." Let's consider those two phrases for a moment. Our Lord speaks of "acting in truth" and of deeds "done in God". We can profitably use them both by way of an examination of conscience. Do we "act in truth" always? Are all our deeds "done in God"? It's all about love of God and love of neighbor. If all that we do, finds its source in truth and is done in God, then we are living as God wills. When we go to our rest at night, can we honestly say to ourselves that we acted in truth all that day, and that all our actions were done in God? If so, we will have a clear conscience and will have pleased our heavenly Father. Let's give that some serious thought. from Father Brown in Texas |
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