St Mark the Evangelist

Friday, April 25th, was the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. Not too is known about the life of St. Mark, but he is mentioned a few times in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, and once in the first letter of Peter. Piecing these connections together, it seems that Mark was a companion of St. Paul and of St. Peter. According to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical history, he was an interpreter for St. Peter, and he wrote his gospel from Peter's preaching. The Gospel, I should add, is the shortest of the four, so if you have never read one of the Gospels straight through from beginning to end, Mark is a good place to start.

Several early sources identify Mark as the founder and first bishop of the Church of Alexandria in northern Egypt. Alexandria was one of the three major Apostolic Churches in the early centuries of Christianity, the other two being Antioch and Rome. Mark died and was buried in a monument near Alexandria. However, the bones of St. Mark did not rest in peace. In about the year 828, two merchants from Venice, Buono da Malamoco and Rustico da Torcello, secreted the body out and brought it to their beloved Venice (to save the body, they said, from the Muslims). Today, the Basilica of San Marco keeps his relics.

Since I was able to travel this weekend, I was in Venice for the Feast of St. Mark, along with thousands of others. The 10:30 Mass was celebrated by the Patriarch of Venice along with bishops, monsignors, priests, deacons, and a throng of acolytes. I did not attend that Mass, instead I concelebrated the 12:00 Mass, which became the 12:20 Mass because the first had gone so long. That Mass featured myself, a priest from Naples, a pries from Venice, and an older altar serve in an alb whose primary job was to make sure that the celebrant's chasuble was over the back of his chair when he sat. The small Mass was quite a thrill, since it meant that I stood at the high altar for the consecration, over the bones of Mark.
I offered the Mass for a new bishop in my diocese. We have gone many months without a bishop, and we could use a bishop with the wisdom and zeal of an Evangelist.

The Holy Spirit

Homily for April 27th
I only gave one homily this week because I was on a retreat with college students. The Diocese of Green Bay owns a retreat house on Chambers Island in Lake Michigan. Every spring college students come to the island to open the retreat house for the summer season, and every fall we return to close up the retreat house for winter. We had about 40 people come from the Newman Center of Oshkosh, the Ecumenical Center at UW-GB, and Silver Lake College.
A storm blew in the night before, and the next day when we were trying to work, we faced heavy winds from the north-west. It made me reflect on the Pentecost event from Acts:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. (Acts 2:1-4)

Why is the Holy Spirit associated with wind? Perhaps because you cannot see the Holy Spirit, just as you cannot see wind. You can, however, see the effects that wind causes -- trees bend and sometimes break, leaves blow, etc. In the same way, we can see the effects of the Holy Spirit. The first effect is the Church. In fact, the Church is the Sacrament of the Holy Spirit, the visible sign of the work that the Holy Spirit is doing (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 737 and following). Other signs of the Holy Spirit's work include the Eucharist, Priesthood, Confession, and faith. With Pentecost coming in two weeks, now is a good time to pray for a renewal of the Holy Spirit. May God bless us all with a deepening love for and life in the Spirit.

Benedict XVI

This blog has been silent for too long, partly because I have been listening to the Holy Father's visit to the United States of America. If you have missed his addresses, they are well worth reading and reflecting on, especially the homilies.

I was struck by a couple of points that he made fundamental. First was the response to the challenges in our church, our society and our world with a continual emphasis on faith and fidelity to Christ. Faith is fundamental to our Christian call and is the only true Christian response to what we see in the world and the troubles facing our Church. I think of Mother Thresea, whose response to incredible poverty was personal poverty. It seems impossible, but she transformed the situation of the poor from the inside, by becoming an image of Christ. This is our call.

The Pope also continually talked about hope, a hope in the transforming power of God. We believe in God, but do we really believe in a God who can transform pain into joy, bitterness into peace, division into unity, death into live? The resurrection of Jesus proclaims no other God but this powerful, transforming God, and there is no infidelity so tragic as to believe in a lesser God.

Pope Benedict, in a remarkable way, connects both the personal conversion and the conversion of the world with the same single thread, the hope in God. He proclaims hope that God can transform us personally, and can transform the world. In one of his addresses he says:

Through the surpassing power of Christ’s grace, entrusted to frail human ministers, the Church is constantly reborn and each of us is given the hope of a new beginning. Let us trust in the Spirit’s power to inspire conversion, to heal every wound, to overcome every division, and to inspire new life and freedom. How much we need these gifts! And how close at hand they are, particularly in the sacrament of Penance! The liberating power of this sacrament, in which our honest confession of sin is met by God’s merciful word of pardon and peace, needs to be rediscovered and reappropriated by every Catholic. To a great extent, the renewal of the Church in America and throughout the world depends on the renewal of the practice of Penance and the growth in holiness which that sacrament both inspires and accomplishes.

Our hope is not simply optimism, "hoping for the best", it is rooted in our experience that God has saved us, and our trust that he will save us again because he loves us. Often I think we are afraid to hope because we expect to be disappointed, and to avoid the disappointment we never expect to much. But our hope is rooted in the one who never deceives and never deludes. As St. Paul says, our hope does not dissappoint, and as the Psalmist says, those who hope in God will not be put to shame.

Homily for Apr. 20

Easter5 - Built of Living Stones
Jesus is our foundation. We are built, like living stones, into a Church that offers him spiritual worship. Each Christian's unique personality is smoothed by Jesus to fit exactly into the place prepared for you, so that all our lives can sing His praises.
[Readings][iTunes]

Making money making babies

A number of articles have commented on the rise of a new kind of industry, baby making. It all started with IVF, which promised a medical miracle of Biblical proportions; giving life to infertile couples. Despite these promises, it was condemned by the Catholic Church as a violation of the fundamental dignity of the human person, because it introduced doctors into the very private and sacred moment of the creation of life and turned children into a kind of commodity. People complained that the Church had no right to be in the bedroom, but it was exactly the problem of too many people in the bedroom that caused the Church to speak out.
Soon, the couple was out of the bedroom and into the laboratory, as doctors poked and prodded, created dozens of viable embryos and implanted five or six, froze the rest, aborted the less healthy and created a one or two child family made to order, charging the couple an outrageous fortune for treating their bodies like toys and their children like commodities.
Soon science began offering to outsource the eggs and sperm to anonymous donors, and then offering any woman with a womb the promise of being a mother. The offer, of course, deprived any potential children of a very fundamental human right, the need to have a father. Of course, why stop there, since enough money can contract out the gestation and birth and adopt the finished product.
Today it seems that making babies has become a profession. Women in India, some so illiterate that they have to sign the legal contract with a fingerprint, offer their wombs for those willing to pay $5,000 or more for a child. Even educated American women are offering the wombs for a fee. Some might herald this as a breakthrough, a gift of science, making dreams come true.
I appreciate the desire to have a child, but this is a new form of indentured servitude. Feminists rightly complained about women being treated as cattle and valued only for their ability to produce an heir, but is that not what is happening here, not through marriage but through legal contract? Worst of all, children are treated as a product which can be bought for a price. A human life is beyond price, and we should always be careful to treat it that way.

Homily for Apr. 13

Easter4 - The Voice of the Shepherd
Through baptism we become members of Jesus' flock. We must learn his voice and distinguish it from the voices of the theives and robbers. Then we will be able to echo his voice, and we ourselves will help to gather the lost sheep into the flock.
[Readings][iTunes]

What is wrong with the Catholic Church?

We all know the Catholic Church has problems. Every news item on the Church includes one of the following: Mass attendance is falling, vocations are down, most Catholics don't agree with their Pope, or the Church has sheltered sex offenders. There are lots of discussions going on both inside and outside the Church about how to solve the problem. Some say church rules are too permissive, and if the Church were more sacred and separated and demanding, things would turn around. Others say the Church is too strict, and if we were more flexible and connected and permissive, things would turn around. Some people want to catechize our youth better, others want Mass to be more accessible. Everyone is looking for programs that will improve things.

But I think the Catholic Church’s biggest problem right now is not Mass attendance or vocations or doctrine. Our biggest problem is we think we can fix the Church. We look to start new programs or revive old ones, but always believing that the success of ‘our’ Church depends on what WE do. Is the Church not a supernatural institution? Was it not founded by Jesus and guided by the Holy Spirit? We never seem to leave room for Jesus to save his own Church. Maybe we feel we have waited long enough, and since no miracles are forthcoming, we have to fix things ourselves. In a word, we want to save ourselves.

Newsweek commented :
A recent Pew Forum poll emphasized that more Catholics leave the religion of their childhood than do members of any other church, but it somewhat neglected the fact that the church's retention rate is third only to those of Judaism and Mormonism. This mixed state of affairs may partly result from what Catholics, whether active or fallen, have long felt about their church: that is, in Appleby's words, "something more than an institution but almost a metaphysical reality, an abiding truth." In a strongly secular age, that sense may be less accessible to younger Catholics, for whom the church may seem, as Appleby puts it, "just another institution, which must perform to earn members." If so, is Benedict's emphasis on the fundamentals just what the church now needs? (Newsweek, 7 April 2008, Vol. 144 no. 10, p. 42)

I think we should take our cue from Pope Benedict. Instead of a flavor-of-the-month Catholicism that looks for the next big thing, we should focus on the Fundamentals of our Faith. No, I don’t mean just, “Jesus loves me” – this I know. But what, concretely, does Jesus’ love mean? How did I get loved, and what effect does being loved have on me? How does his love call me to live? Too often today, we assume that God’s love is like the other loves we have encountered, prayer gets me through the day in the same way that coffee does, and big institutions like the Catholic Church require fundraising. Let’s allow God to shape our understanding of the world, rather than always letting the world shape our understanding of God. And most Fundamental of all is the belief that God wants what is good for me. He is in charge, and I can trust him with my life. I can also trust him with my Church.

Homily for Apr. 6

Easter3 - See Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread
Two disciples discover Jesus along the road to Emmaus, and he explains who he really is, and how their expectations for him were too small.
Jesus does the same for us at Mass, revealing his true self through the Eucharist. We must invite him to stay: Stay with us, Lord!
[Readings][iTunes]

Lourdes, France

My second stop on the Easter trip was the tiny town of Lourdes, at the edge of the Pyrenees in South-western France. There, in 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl named Bernadette along a river near the town. The apparition was investigated thoroughly and approved by the Church. What keeps pilgrims coming, besides the motivation of prayer, is a spring of water which bubbled up from the ground. Our Lady told Bernadette to wash in the spring and to drink from it, which she did. Pilgrims came to bathe in the waters and many were healed, resulting in an unbelievable number of sick and those in wheel chairs coming to the shrine every year. It is, I believe, the most visited Marian shrine in the world. Our visit coincided with the "HCPT pilgrimage," which brings 5000 people from the United Kingdom to Lourdes every year.

I was able to celebrate Mass three times at one of the small altars in the middle of the basilica. The basilica is three levels, the lower level being dedicated to the mysteries of the Rosary and decorated with mosaics. The middle level has small altars and chapels for Masses, and the upper level is a proper church. It was build beside and above the grotto, while leaving the famous cave intact and open to the air. A statue there shows where Mary appeared to Bernadette, and an altar was set up for outdoor Masses.

Our visit was characterized most of all by water. First, of course, there was the water from the grotto, which I also bathed in, not for any physical healing but carrying some spiritual intentions for certain people. For those who are wondering, this is not the outdoor polar plunge; the water runs into a series of tubs where volunteers help the pilgrims take a dip very privately. Besides this water, there was a nearly constant rain, which rolled across the town and filled the river. Water in the Bible is almost always a creative force, and it seemed fitting for the week following Easter. It was, however, rather cold, and we gratefully took refuge in the coffee shops and restaurants. There are, of course, many ways to celebrate the end of Lent and the Resurrection of the Lord.

Ars, France

The best way to learn about the history of the Church and the lives of the saints is to visit it. The week after Easter I took a pilgrimage to France. Many people think that vacations should not involve too many goals or plans, but we set out with an ambitious four part plan:
1) Sleep
2) Eat
3) Pray
4) See something.
Sometimes it was difficult to fit it all in but we managed as best we could.

Our first stop was the tiny town of Ars in central France, north of Lyon. A French priest named Jean-Marie Vianney was sent there to be pastor in 1818. He had not been a good student of Latin and consequently struggled to learn his theology, even being sent away once from the seminary despite his best efforts to learn. He was finally ordained more because of his evident love of God than any other reason. The bishop was probably thinking of this when he sent him to Ars, saying "There isn't much love of God in that town; you will have to bring it." So the priest set out, on foot, from Lyon to Ars. Near the town he encountered a little shepherd boy and asked him to point out the way to Ars. When the boy did, he said, "You have shown me the way to Ars, and I will show you the way to heaven."

True to his word, the priest set about doing all in his power to preach the Gospel. He soon became famous as a holy man who lived in an austere life and had great gifts. One of his greatest was hearing confessions, and more and more people came to confess to him until he was hearing confessions 16 hours a day. With morning Mass, teaching catechism, and eating, he only slept about three hours a night. It was his prayer that sustained him. In fact he wanted to leave the parish to be more dedicated to the contemplative life, but the bishop and the people refused to let him go, insisting he did too much good in the parish. He died at the age of 73, and soon afterwards a large basilica was added to his parish church to accommodate the pilgrims who came. He was named the patron saint of parish priests. The town today is still very small, but with the presence of the shrine and the pilgrims it has changed forever. We can say that John Vianney brought the love of God, and it is still there today.