It has been very difficult to blog in recent weeks. To say I have been busy is an understatement, but it is the reason for the paucity of posts. I spent several days last week in Mundelein, Illinois at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary attending the 25th annual Courage Conference. I have been very busy also at the office here at Gundersen. I will get back to posting, hopefully, in the very near future.
Glad all of you continue to glance at these weblog pages again and again. Have a splendid day!
At noon, Rome time, today the Holy Father appointed Bishop Frank J. Caggiano bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport. Until now, Bishop Caggiano was an auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Bishop Caggiano was born in Brooklyn on March 29, 1959 and studied theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York. He was ordained a priest in 1987. He then went on to obtain a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1996. He was ordained a bishop in 2006.
Congratulations, Diocese of Bridgeport!
As you know, the Holy Father is in Brazil to take part in the bi-annual World Youth Day. He is making quite a stir (in a good sense) down there – no surprise!- and it is my hope he re-energizes South American youth in their faith, the faith of their fathers and mothers.
I want to bring to you the text of his homily from today. As is now his custom, he again organizes his thoughts around three key concepts. Here is the homily:
Your Eminence,
My Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
What joy I feel as I come to the house of the Mother of every Brazilian, the Shrine of our Lady of Aparecida! The day after my election as Bishop of Rome, I visited the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, in order to entrust my ministry to Our Lady. Today I have come here to ask Mary our Mother for the success of World Youth Day and to place at her feet the life of the people of Latin America.
There is something that I would like to say first of all. Six years ago the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean was held in this Shrine. Something beautiful took place here, which I witnessed at first hand. I saw how the Bishops – who were discussing the theme of encountering Christ, discipleship and mission – felt encouraged, supported and in some way inspired by the thousands of pilgrims who came here day after day to entrust their lives to Our Lady. That Conference was a great moment of Church. It can truly be said that the Aparecida Document was born of this interplay between the labours of the Bishops and the simple faith of the pilgrims, under Mary’s maternal protection. When the Church looks for Jesus, she always knocks at his Mother’s door and asks: “Show us Jesus”. It is from Mary that the Church learns true discipleship. That is why the Church always goes out on mission in the footsteps of Mary.
Today, looking forward to the World Youth Day which has brought me to Brazil, I too come to knock on the door of the house of Mary – who loved and raised Jesus – that she may help all of us, pastors of God’s people, parents and educators, to pass on to our young people the values that can help them build a nation and a world which are more just, united and fraternal. For this reason I would like to speak of three simple attitudes: hopefulness, openness to being surprised by God, and living in joy.
1. Hopefulness. The second reading of the Mass presents a dramatic scene: a woman – an image of Mary and the Church – is being pursued by a Dragon – the devil – who wants to devour her child. But the scene is not one of death but of life, because God intervenes and saves the child (cf. Rev 12:13a, 15-16a). How many difficulties are present in the life of every individual, among our people, in our communities; yet as great as these may seem, God never allows us to be overwhelmed by them. In the face of those moments of discouragement we experience in life, in our efforts to evangelize or to embody our faith as parents within the family, I would like to say forcefully: Always know in your heart that God is by your side; he never abandons you! Let us never lose hope! Let us never allow it to die in our hearts! The “dragon”, evil, is present in our history, but it does not have the upper hand. The one with the upper hand is God, and God is our hope! It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone, including our young people, feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure. Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols. Dear brothers and sisters, let us be lights of hope! Let us maintain a positive outlook on reality. Let us encourage the generosity which is typical of the young and help them to work actively in building a better world. Young people are a powerful engine for the Church and for society. They do not need material things alone; also and above all, they need to have held up to them those non-material values which are the spiritual heart of a people, the memory of a people. In this Shrine, which is part of the memory of Brazil, we can almost read those values: spirituality, generosity, solidarity, perseverance, fraternity, joy; they are values whose deepest root is in the Christian faith.
2. The second attitude: openness to being surprised by God. Anyone who is a man or a woman of hope – the great hope which faith gives us – knows that even in the midst of difficulties God acts and he surprises us. The history of this Shrine is a good example: three fishermen, after a day of catching no fish, found something unexpected in the waters of the Parnaíba River: an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Whoever would have thought that the site of a fruitless fishing expedition would become the place where all Brazilians can feel that they are children of one Mother? God always surprises us, like the new wine in the Gospel we have just heard. God always saves the best for us. But he asks us to let ourselves be surprised by his love, to accept his surprises. Let us trust God! Cut off from him, the wine of joy, the wine of hope, runs out. If we draw near to him, if we stay with him, what seems to be cold water, difficulty, sin, is changed into the new wine of friendship with him.
3. The third attitude: living in joy. Dear friends, if we walk in hope, allowing ourselves to be surprised by the new wine which Jesus offers us, we have joy in our hearts and we cannot fail to be witnesses of this joy. Christians are joyful, they are never gloomy. God is at our side. We have a Mother who always intercedes for the life of her children, for us, as Queen Esther did in the first reading (cf Est 5:3). Jesus has shown us that the face of God is that of a loving Father. Sin and death have been defeated. Christians cannot be pessimists! They do not look like someone in constant mourning. If we are truly in love with Christ and if we sense how much he loves us, our heart will “light up” with a joy that spreads to everyone around us. As Benedict XVI said here, in this Shrine: “the disciple knows that without Christ, there is no light, no hope, no love, no future” (Inaugural Address, Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Aparecida, 13 May 2007, 3).
Dear friends, we have come to knock at the door of Mary’s house. She has opened it for us, she has let us in and she shows us her Son. Now she asks us to “do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). Yes, Mother, we are committed to doing whatever Jesus tells us! And we will do it with hope, trusting in God’s surprises and full of joy. Amen.
I would draw your attention to the addition of a page to this weblog entitled Conferences and Retreats. You can find the tab for this page under the header image above, and some information regarding it along the sidebar to the lower right.
Should you need a presenter at a day of reflection or a retreat, I would be honored if you considered me. My passion is preaching and teaching, and I have a lot of experience in the fields of marital therapy and mental health.
God bless each of you!
Deacon Bob
“… Apart from this body, outside this unity of the Church in Christ, outside this Church… faith loses its ‘measure’; it no longer finds its equilibrium, the space needed to sustain itself.” — Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei, #22
Here is a wonderful slideshow of the celebration held in Canale d’Agordo in northern Italy last fall. It was a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Papa Luciani (Pope John Paul I). I hope someday to be able to travel to this mountain town and see all of this myself!
Click on the link:
http://www.flickr.com//photos/paparatzifan/sets/72157631325024774/show/
News like this is difficult to hear, but I bring it to your attention because this is not the only such crime committed against Christian women in third world nations. It speaks not only of the condition and station of women in many cultures, but also of the persecution of Christians throughout the world.
In Orissa, India, a 28 year-old nun was lured into a place, kidnapped and raped for a week by a group of men. Only two men have been arrested and many more have vanished.
Here is a link to the story in AsiaNews:
www.asianews.it/news-en/Orissa:-Catholic-nun-gang-raped-28475.html#
Let us pray for this nun, and for the men who have committed this crime.
“In the intimacy of my soul I feel contented because it desires nothing but the will of God.” — St. Veronica Giuliani, OSC
Here is my homily for this weekend. God bless all of you!
Audio in two parts:
15th Sunday or Ordinary Time – Cycle C, 2013
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C, 2013, Part 2
Text:
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C
July 13/14, 2013
Dt 30: 10-14; Col 1: 15-20; Lk 10: 25-37
I want to begin by quoting Pope Francis, who said the following on July 8th of this year on the island of Lampedusa, Italy:
“… we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor guy,” and we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions ..” Pope Francis, July 8, 2013
Who is my neighbor?
Our faith is a very demanding faith. Our Catholic religion sets high standards. Just think of it. We must go to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. We must always tell the truth and respect other’s property. We must protect every human life. We must be willing to die for our faith. Marriage can only be between a man and a woman. We must become a son or daughter of God. We must live as Jesus Christ himself lived. We must go out and transform the world. We must give our entire life to God.
Yes, these are some of the demands of our faith. We are supposed to live up to them. Thank God for his mercy and forgiveness, because we all fail in living up to these demands, don’t we?
Today, in the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, as our Holy Father reminds us, we are faced with another very demanding aspect of our faith: We must love God with all our souls, with all our minds, with all our strength, with all our being; and we must love our neighbor as ourselves.
Yes, it seems impossible, doesn’t it? How in the world could our faith demand this from us too, in addition to all the other demanding aspects of Christianity?
Thank God for his mercy and his strength!.
I would like to focus today on the question posed by the man in the Gospel, “Who is my neighbor?” This question demands an answer.
Back when I was studying theology in Rome, and then in my classes during diaconate formation as well as in my private studies, I learned that the Scripture scholars speak of a basic theological principle that our Lord was teaching in this parable, i.e., the subject of love is defined, but the object of love cannot be defined. What does that mean?
Said plainly, we know who it is who is to do the loving: you, and you, and you, and you, and me. Each of us who have been baptized into Jesus Christ must love our neighbor. This is clearly defined. What we don’t know is who will be the object of our love, in other words, who we must love today, because no one is excluded from the list of possibilities. We cannot predict who our neighbor will be, because it could include anyone.
Who is your neighbor? Your husband? Your wife? Your children? The person next door? The people in the nursing home? The person who is from the other political party? The atheist? The public sinner? The person who mistreated you in your childhood? What about the terrorist who has killed and maimed others? How about Al Qaeda? What about all those people in our prisons? What about that homeless person you saw yesterday?
How can we possibly love these people? Only by God’s grace and mercy. Only if we can overcome our fear of loving. Only if we can overcome the unloving mindset of the world in which we live. Only if we allow God to work through us.
When we see the sinner, or the atheist, or politicians and others who advocate an immoral agenda, or terrorists and madmen we want to call them “evil” and we want to distant ourselves from them, to not touch them in any way if we can avoid it. We have to overcome this way of thinking if we are to love our neighbor.
A lot of us fall into a trap in thinking that out there is a great battle going on between God and Evil, as if two beings were competing and fighting to see who wins. No, it isn’t that way at all. God exists, and evil is simply the absence of God in a place or in the life of a person. Satan has been completely destroyed by Jesus Christ. This is a fact of our faith. We really have nothing to fear when it comes to loving our neighbor.
Just as cold is only the absence of heat – and that is a fact of physics – and darkness is only the absence of light, so too evil is the absence of God. Yes, Satan exists and tries to confuse us, but his power has been broken by Jesus Christ.
So, do not fear, for God has conquered Satan, and has given us the truth, and has cast light into the darkest of places.
So when we meet someone who is far from God, we must bring God to him. When we meet someone who is “wrong” or living in darkness, we must bring God’s truth and light to him. It is God’s work that we do, not ours. He does the work, we just hand him on to those who need him. We do that by how we live and speak. That is our vocation, to bring light, truth and goodness – to bring God – to our neighbor.
To those who have shut him out, we must crack open the door.
To those who have dimmed the light of faith, we must light a lamp.
To those who live in error, we must speak the truth.
To those who would hate, we must bring God’s love.
Our faith, our religion, is a demanding faith. We cannot deceive ourselves or excuse ourselves by making it is easy or dumbing it down. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. We never know for sure who that neighbor will be on any particular day, but we know without a doubt that we are to be the people who must love him or her today.
Do not fear the demands of our faith, for it is always all about God in the end. It is God’s work we do, not our own. It is God’s grace and our cooperation with that grace that wins the day. Nothing is impossible with God.
Fear not to live out fully the teachings and the demands of our Catholic faith! Open wide your hearts to Jesus and remain attached to the Catholic Church, and God will work wonders with your life!
Here is a YouTube video I ran across this morning. It is a video meant to inspire the faith. The beginning few seconds are not indicative of the rest of the video. Take a look at it and let me know what your impressions are.
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=cT9WiVSpw1w
“… we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility; we have fallen into the hypocritical attitude of the priest and of the servant of the altar that Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor guy,” and we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions ..” Pope Francis, July 8, 2013, Lampedusa, Italy
“The more Christians immerse themselves in the circle of Christ’s light, the more capable they become of understanding and accompanying the path of every man and woman towards God.” — Lumen Fidei #35, Pope Francis
The Holy Father has given his approval to the canonization of both Pope John Paul II and John XXIII. In a rather unusual move, Pope Francis has dispensed with the necessity of a second miracle in John XXIII’s case. (Please note the error I made in my July 3 posting about this. I had said a second miracle was approved in regard to John XXIII; that was incorrect.)
The only question now is when the canonizations will occur, although all signs indicate they will be before the end of the year, either in October or December.
Soon-to-be saints John Paul II and John XXIII, pray for us!
Pope Francis’ first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, was released today and can be downloaded and read from the website of the Holy See (www.vatican.va). I am pouring over it this morning during an hour’s unexpected patient cancellation.
On page 16 there is a piece on faith and idolatry. I present it as today’s “Quote for the Day.”
“Idols exist, we begin to see, as a pretext for setting ourselves at the centre of reality and worshiping the work of our own hands. Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. Those who choose not to put their trust in God must hear the din of countless idols crying out: “Put your trust in me!” Faith, tied as it is to conversion, is the opposite of idolatry; it breaks with idols to turn to the living God in a personal encounter.”
The Holy Father spoke today on the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle on encountering the living God through the wounds of Christ. I ran across this in an email from a brother deacon in my diocese who spends enormous amounts of time and energy tending to the physical needs of the poor in southern Minnesota. He has opened a free medical clinic in the western part of the diocese and has enlisted the help of numerous other healthcare providers to assist him. Deacon Dave was delighted to read what I have copied below, and he mailed it to all deacons in the diocese this evening.
I too am gratified, because just a couple of hours ago, I preached a homily reflecting the same thoughts shared by the Holy Father. (Always nice to have confirmed by the Pope what you are preaching from the ambo!)
Here is the article from the Vatican Information Service.
| POPE FRANCIS: ENCOUNTER THE LIVING GOD THROUGH CHRIST’S WOUNDS |
| Vatican City, 3 July 2013 (VIS) – This morning, during Holy Mass at Santa Marta on the feast of St. Thomas Apostle, the Holy Father affirmed that “to encounter the living God it is necessary to tenderly kiss Jesus’ wounds in our hungry, poor, sick and incarcerated brothers and sisters”. After the Resurrection Jesus appears to the apostles, but Thomas is not there: “He wanted him to wait a week”, said Pope Francis. “The Lord knows why He does such things. And He allows the time He believes best for each of us. He gave Thomas a week. Jesus reveals himself with His wounds: His whole body was clean, beautiful and full of light”, continued the Pope, “but the wounds were and are still there, and when the Lord comes at the end of the world, we will see His wounds. Before he could believe, Thomas wanted to place his fingers in the wounds. He was stubborn. But that was what the Lord wanted – a stubborn person to make us understand something greater. Thomas saw the Lord and was invited to put his finger into the wounds left by the nails; to put his hand in His side. He did not merely say, ‘It’s true: the Lord is risen’. No! He went further. He said: ‘God’. He was the first of the disciples to confess the divinity of Christ after the Resurrection. And he worshipped Him”. “And so”, continued the Pope, “we understand what the Lord’s intention was when He made him wait: He wanted to take his disbelief and guide him not just to an affirmation of the Resurrection, but an affirmation of His Divinity. The path to our encounter with Jesus-God are his wounds. There is no other. In the history of the Church several mistakes have been made on the path towards God. Some have believed that the Living God, the God of Christians can be found by the path of meditation, and indeed that we can reach higher levels through meditation. That is dangerous! How many are lost on that path, never to return? Yes, perhaps they arrive at a knowledge of God, but not of Jesus Christ, Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. They do not arrive at that. It is the path of the gnostics, isn’t it? They are good, they work, but they have not found the right path. It is very complicated and does not lead to a safe harbour”. “Others”, the Pope continued, “have thought that to arrive at God we must mortify ourselves, through austerity and the path of penance – penance and fasting alone. These do not arrive at the Living God, Jesus Christ, either. They are the Pelagians, who believe that they can arrive by their own efforts. But Jesus tells us that the path to encountering Him is to find His wounds. We find Jesus’ wounds in carrying out works of mercy, giving to the body – the body – the soul too, but – I stress – the body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked, because he is humiliated, because he is enslaved, because he is incarcerated, because he is in hospital. These are the wounds of Jesus today. And Jesus asks us to take a leap of faith, towards Him, but through these His wounds. ‘Ah, good! Let’s set up a foundation to help these people, to do so many good things to help them’. That is important, but if we remain on this level, we will be merely philanthropists”. “We need to touch Jesus’ wounds, caress Jesus’ wounds, bind them with tenderness; we must kiss Jesus’ wounds, literally. Just think: what happened to St. Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. To touch the living God”, Pope Francis concluded, “we do not need to attend a ‘refresher course’ but to enter into the wounds of Jesus, and to do so, all we need to do is go out onto the street. Let us ask of St. Thomas the grace to grant us the courage to enter into the wounds of Jesus with tenderness and thereby we will certainly have the grace to worship the living God |
