Read the entire speech, given to the American bishops ad limina yesterday at this URL:

www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2012/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20120119_bishops_usa_en.html

The Church’s mission is threatened internally by divisions which paralyze her ability to act forcefully and decisively.

On the left, the Church’s teachings on sexual morality and the nature of the ordained priesthood and that the Church herself are publicly opposed, as are the bishops who preach and defend these teachings.

On the right, the Church’s teachings might be accepted. But the bishops who do not govern exactly and to the last detail in the way expected, are publicly opposed.

The Church is thus an arena of ideological warfare, rather than a way of discipleship, shepherded by bishops. And so, the Church’s ability to evangelize is diminished. Cardinal Francis George, May 28 2011 Ad Limina Visit.

This is an interesting and apt description of what is occuring in some of our parishes and dioceses today. There are some, wrapping themselves around the mantle of “conservatism” or “liberalism”, think they understand better than the bishops or the pope how to shepherd the church in matters such as liturgical practice, sexual morality, and the rights of the poor and the immigrant.

Where is our obedience? Where is our humility?

Obedience and humility do not require suspension of reason. Obedience and humility are not foolish or blind. They do not require that we suspend our natural human rights or our contributions to the common good of our parishes and dioceses.

They do require an acknowledgement that God is God and he is at work in those whom he anoints with the responsibility of the episcopacy.

Let us put ourselves aside and faithfully serve the Lord and his people.

Read Cardinal George’s complete address at: www.archchicago.org/cardinal/statement/stat_04/remarks_052804.shtm

What I will probably recall years down the road about this funeral will be the time with the family in the evening, after all else had been done that day. We sat around the living room, talking and reminiscing about family life, about some 55 years of memories of two families that had close to each other in age and size and residence. There was an instinctive need to laugh. The one whom we were grieving was present in our thoughts, but what we were doing was celebrating the fruit of her life in the lives of her husband, kids, sisters, nephews and nieces. There were so many tales to tell, and stories to be told. So much about which we could laugh.

Laughter is good for the soul, they say. Laughter can be the unmistakable sign of the Spirit, and the expression of Christian hope in the life to come and gratitude for the goodness of marriage and family life.

Back  in 1973, when I was a college freshman, a required reading was the book, The Meaning of Success, written by Michael Quoist. I honestly don’t remember its contents nearly 40 years later, but the title has never escaped my memory nor the question, “What is success in the Christian context?”

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta was noted to have said so rightly, “It is fidelity not success that God desires.” Someone recently reminded me that one may lose every battle but win the war — referring to the spiritual battles of life. He went on to say that there was meaning  for Jesus’ three falls on the way to Golgotha, for one might think of his falls as symbols of human weakness which succumbs under the weight of sin, which our Lord was bearing on his shoulders as he walked to Calvary. Falling is not the ultimate problem; whether we get back up is.

So the question remains, “What is success in the context of Christian life? How does one measure it? How does on account for it?”

If you read the Gospels, the answer seems fairly clear for they tell us that when we face our particular judgment after death, Jesus will be asking us only one question, “Did you love and care for me in the poor?”

It all comes back to care for the poor in our love for Jesus.

Success is loving the needy in our midst.

There are two parables in the Gospels that speak of this. In the first, you recall, a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit everlasting life?” Jesus tells him, “Honor your father and mother. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet. Do not commit adultery” The man said, “I have kept all these. What else must I do?” Jesus said, “Sell all you have and come, follow me.” Here was a man who obeyed the 4th through the 10th commandments, all of which have to do with loving one’s neighbor, i.e., the poor. But he couldn’t obey the first 3 commandments which were love of God above all else.

In the second parable, the Good Samaritan, we hear of priests and Levites passing by an injured man, avoiding him because of ritual impurity. They were focused on their love of God and the first three commandments, but neglect the last seven.

St. Vincent de Paul reminded us that there is no sin to interrupt our ritual prayers if a poor person asks for our help, for it is Jesus who is asking.

Let us not get caught up in the cultural definition of success as positive outcomes, production and the bottom line. Doing less is often success.

Is not success in the Christian context approaching closer and closer to the beatific vision, to the constant recognition of Jesus in each person we meet and reaching out to them?

It is a matter of vision.

This is what heaven will be.

We tend to think of poverty as the lack of resources, especially material or financial one. To be honest, I have never seriously lacked what I have needed in these areas even though I have never been nor will I ever be “rich” in those ways. It just isn’t in the cards for me given my vocations and my value system. But I think poverty is something quite different than that for many of us.

Johannes Metz’s book, Poverty of Spirit, of which I have referenced in the past, was a real eye opener for me many years ago when Bishop Robert Brom of San Diego sent it to me. He was bishop of Duluth, Minnesota at the time. Metz speaks of the different faces of poverty, including the poverty of provisionality and the poverty of finiteness.

Provisionality and finiteness….. all things have a certain limitation or provision to which they are subjected. Even our duties and obligations, as sacred and imperative as they may be, they too  expose us to the poverty within us and thus our radical dependency upon God.

Any of us who have promised to pray faithfully the Liturgy of the Hours understand this well. Every day, over and over again, we pray the psalms, read the readings, and make the petitions for ourselves and for all the Church. Every day without exception. A serious obligation; a repetitive action that will need doing again.

Provisional and finite….. exposing us to our poverty as human and our dependence on the benevolence of God.  The psalms are all about this.

The painting of a house (which will need redoing in 10 years), the maintenance of a vehicle, the instruction and discipline of a student… gosh, even eating and sleeping…. all speak of the finiteness of life and how provisional much of life is.  Qoheleth spoke well in Ecclesiastes when he bemoaned, “Vanities of vanities! All things are vanity!”

The difference between Qoheleth and we Christians is we have no need to moan about this for it has all been redeemed, for we know that God breaks through time and place and enters our world and takes on our poverty in all its forms, save sin.  As Christians, we find joy in the provisional and the finite. St. Terese of Liseaux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Venerable Solanus Casey, OFM all have live this poverty to the full, with joy.

It is not beyond us to do the same. For heaven’s sake, it is our calling!

Not everyone shares this sympathy of mine for hope. Nietzsche, for example, calls it the “virtue of the weak”. According to him, it makes the Christian a useless, separated, resigned person, extraneous to the progress of the world. Others speak of “alienation”, which, they say, turns the Christian away from the struggle for human advancement. But “the Christian message”, the Council said, “far from deterring men from the task of building up the world… binds them, rather, to all this by a still more stringent obligation.” (GS, 34 and Message to the World of the Council Fathers, 20 October 1962.

In the course of the centuries there have also appeared from time to time affirmations and tendencies of Christians that were too pessimistic with regard to man. But these affirmations were disapproved by the Church and were forgotten, thanks to a host of joyful and hardworking saints, to Christian humanism, to ascetic teachers, whom Saint-Beuve called “les doux”, and to a comprehensive theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, puts among the virtues jucunditas or the capacity of changing things heard and seen into a cheerful smile — to the extent and in the way appropriate (cf. 2.2ae, q. 168, a.2)….. When St. Thomas declared that joking and making people smile was a virtue, he was in agreement with the “glad tidings” preached by Christ, and with the hilaritas recommended by St. Augustine. He overcame pessimism, clothed Christian life in joy and invited us to keep up our courage also with the healthy, pure joys, which we meet on our way.

Read his address in its entirety at: Papa Luciani on Hope.

Take home point: God has redeemed the world, and that includes you and me. God has created us for happiness and put within us, in our very nature, the capacity for cheerfulness and hope. It is the gift of his Spirit. So let us spend this day in hopeful confidence that God indeed is at work in a beautiful way, and he binds together faith and love with the virtue of hope.

Her blog is: A Deacon’s Wife.

Reminds me of what our pastor has said on a number of occasions: “There is no extra grace attached to bowed heads and somber faces!”

Christian joy is one of the main things that attract others to the faith. We Catholics have more than ample reason to rejoice with all that we have been given and have become as members of Christ’s body. We have been given a full measure of God’s Spirit that beckons us to rejoice in the Lord always.

Yes, I say it again, rejoice!

Thanks, Mrs. Kehoe, for the reminder.

“There is a type of simplicity that would be better described as ignorance. It consists in not even knowing what may be virtuous. Many abandon the innocence of true simplicity so they don’t have to bring themselves to virtue and to honesty. Since they lack true prudence that comes to the good life, their simplicity is not the same as innocence. Therefore, Paul warns his disciples, ‘I wish you would be wise in the good and immune from evil…. Don’t act as infants in judgment; but may you be as infants to evil.’

“Regarding this, even Truth himself enjoins his disciples: ‘Be prudent as serpents and simple as doves.’ He necessarily united one with the other in his warning such that the cleverness of a serpent may teach the simplicity of the dove, and the simplicity of a dove moderate the cleverness of the serpent.”

We are to be both as a serpent and as a dove. We are to be wise and simple.

I am reminded of the many saints who in so many ways were very simple people in their views of life and manner of living, yet taught such a wisdom that those of great intellectual complexity, i.e., the learned theologians, were silent.

I am also reminded of the conflict between Paul and Peter in the early years of the Church. Paul might be called the more clever of the two men, certainly more learned and literate, and Peter the more simple. Paul moderated Peter, yet to Peter was given the keys and the burden of pastor of all the Churches. Peter’s simplicity was of more importance, yet Paul’s learnedness was also needed.

Serpents and doves……. Let us cultivate both aspects of our spiritual lives.