From Stephen to Sri Lanka...

Today we hear the story of Saint Stephen, “filled with grace and power,” and “working great wonders and signs among the people.”¹ It is the story of the death of the first martyr, as he witnesses to the love of Christ. 

The occasion of Stephen’s martyrdom, of course, was a dispute between Christians of Jewish origin and those from the Greek-speaking Diaspora. Stephen, a Deacon of Greek origin, witnesses to the Lord among the Hellenists, to the point that the Hebrews begin to resent his insistence that the Law and the prophets can only be understood in the light of Christ.

A Good Deacon Dies

St Gregory of Nyssa called Deacon Stephen “a good man…sustained by the goodness of his will to serve the poor and defeated his enemies by the Spirit's power of the truth.”² We are told that he preached that truth unsparingly, declaring to all who would hear that Jesus Christ was Lord.

And they hated him for it, including the young rabbi Saul, our patron, who in his pre-conversion days desired the death of those troublesome followers of Christ, especially the ones who were Greek!

So there he is, up there, our own Saul, always dressed in red in Clare Leighton’s windows. There he is, at the top left of the great transept window of the Persecutions.  There sits the red-robed Saul, among the rabbis, scratching his beard in skepticism as the blue cloaked Stephen defends himself against charges of heresy. The young Deacon’s face, Saint Luke tells us, looked like an angel.

But they killed him anyway. As we move to the bottom center of the window, we see the stoning of Stephen, who has been forced to his knees as members of the Sanhedrin drop big rocks on him.

What a contrast between the meek and dying Stephen and the arrogant figure of Saul, holding some of the garments in his arms, while others lie at his feet. For Saul, we are told "approved of his death."³

While there lies the young blue cloaked martyr, looking through the stones and angry faces, straight up to the top of the window, at the face of the Lord, to whom he prays: “receive my spirit.”

The Martyr

Saint Stephen, our first martyr, was also, in the words of the early Church historian Eusebius, the “perfect martyr,”⁴ for he preached Christ Jesus not only by “wonders and signs among the people,”⁵ but by the manner of his death.

As the crucified Christ prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies,⁶ so did the dying Stephen beg the Lord “not [to] hold this sin against them.”⁷

As the crucified Christ commended his spirit to the Father,⁸ so did Stephen pray “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”⁹

And like the Lord was the firstborn of many brothers,¹⁰ so Saint Stephen was the grain of wheat which falls to the earth and dies, though bearing much fruit. For, in the words of Tertullian, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”¹¹

Modern Day Martyrs

For even today, that seed continues to sprout, as the example of Saint Stephen, the prototypical martyr, proclaims the Cross in every land and time, down through the intervening Christian Centuries, even to our own day.

Like three years ago in Yemen, where four Missionaries of Charity, refused to leave their home for the elderly poor, despite the danger.  So, one day as they were preparing lunch, they were shot dead by men who then vandalized the crucifixes and statues in their small church. As the nuns bled to death, they are said to have recited from memory one of their morning prayers, written by Mother Theresa:

Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward.

Or, just two years ago, when the 85 year old Father Jacques Hamel arrived for the nine o’clock Mass in the little parish Church of Saint-Étienne. There he met the usual modest congregation of three sisters, an elderly couple married 64 years and a younger man.  It was during the Prayer of the Faithful that two knife-wielding anti-Christians rushed into the Church and attacked the priest.  As Father was heard to shout “Out with you, Satan,” they slit his throat. 

And the martyrdoms continue. In the first five months of this year alone, more than 20,000 Christians have been forced to flee their homes in Central Africa, the southern Philippines, Nigeria, India and Sri Lanka. In Jolo (Southern Phillipines) 30 were killed in January, another 130 in Nigeria in March and a further 250 were slain in Sri Lanka, just for going to Church on Easter Sunday. They each knew there was danger in following the Cross, but that did not stop them from proclaiming him as their Lord and Savior, just like the Deacon Stephen.

“It might be hard for us to believe,” Pope Francis recently said,” but there are more martyrs today than in the first centuries [of the Church].”¹²  But all martyrs, from Stephen to Sri Lanka, are mirrors of the the Lord upon the Cross,  “united by the same suffering for the name of Jesus, [and] now [sharing] the same glory.”¹³

Blood spatter mark a wall and statue after a blast at St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday

________________

1 - Acts 6:8.

2 - Sermo in Sanctum Stephanum II: GNO X, 1, Leiden 1990, 98.

3 - Acts 8:1.

4 - Die Kirchengeschichte v. 2,5: GCS II, I, Lipsia 1903, 430.

5 - Acts 6:8.

6 - Luke 23:34.

7 - Acts 7:60.

8 - Luke 23:46.

9 - Acts 7:59.

10 - Romans 8:29.

11 - Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 50.

12 - Pope Francis, 5 March 2019.

13 - Pope Francis, February 9, 2019.

Ascension of the Lord

I have some friends whose son left for college for the first time last September.  Oh how his mother wept and even his father didn’t know what to do with himself.  And Michael did everything he could to keep his proud eighteen-year-old frame composed.  But every one of them were flooded with emotion.

Why?  What was it about this moment of leaving for college that was so important?  Maybe it had to do with the empty nest syndrome, of the start of adulthood or just the fact that this was such an important milestone in this young man’s life.  

But whatever it was, the moment his car disappeared over the familiar horizon at the end of their street, the first thing his mother said was, “I wonder when he’ll be back again?”

Indeed, despite all these important worries, concerns and crisis of any departure, the real thing on everyone’s mind is when will he come back!

So it is as the disciples witness the Ascension of the Lord Jesus into heaven.   Afterwards they must have stood there, their mouths agape, staring up into the heavens and longing for the moment when he would return, as promised, at the end of time.

That’s the way it is for us, the modern-day disciples of the Risen Lord.

Amidst all our sufferings and the confusions, and even amidst the multiple joys of this world, we look to the eastern sky and long for him to return!

That’s why on the best of our days we live as men and women awaiting their master’s return…prepared at any moment for his judgment!  

You remember the parable of the unjust steward who in his master’s absence extorted money from his fellows.  Remember what happened to him?! Or the servant who refused to invest and gain a return on the talents the master had entrusted to him?  Remember his fate!  And do you remember the foolish virgins, who while waiting for the bridegroom let their lamps go out!  God forbid we be like them, unready for the master’s return and worthy only of condemnation!

Rather let us be like those first disciples, looking up into the sky…ever ready and ever longing…waiting, as we will shortly pray, in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!

PRIMERA COMUNÍON

¡Así que hoy recibes la Sagrada Comunión por primera vez! Qué día tan maravilloso, no solo afuera, sino también dentro de tus corazones.

Gracias a Dios que nuestros hermanos y hermanas pequeños se unirán a nosotros en la santa comunión por primera vez. Que Dios los bendiga en este día tan especial.

So, today you receive Holy Communion for the first time! What a wonderful day, not only outside, but also inside your hearts. Let us rejoice that our little brothers and sisters will join us at holy communion for this first time. May God bless them on this very special day.

With the Help of Saint Paul this week...

So much has been happening this week at your Cathedral Church!  Last Sunday Bishop McManus welcomed a Cathedral filled with Worcester’s African communities.  Joining our own African community were parishioners from Saint Peter’s, Saint Andrew’s and Saint Joan of Arc. It was a joyous celebration and reminded me of how blessed we are to have so many African-Americans as a vital part of our Cathedral Parish.  

I have been privileged to meet and work with many venerable African Bishops, Priests and lay people through the years, but among the closest to my heart is Archbishop Peter Sarpong, the emeritus Archbishop of Kumasi in Ghana.  I still recall the wise and beautiful words he spoke at the ordination of his successor:

You are going to be a Bishop in order to do one thing: to love your neighbor more intensely. Loving your neighbor, in turn, consists in praying for your neighbor and in suffering for him or her. Christ himself is your exemplar in this. He had the time, the patience, and the courage to pray for his tormentors even when he was on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”(Luke 23:34). Time and time again, Jesus would exhort his disciples to take up their Cross and follow him. Discipleship is inseparable from praying for your neighbor and suffering for him.

Please keep Archbishop Sarpong and all our holy and blessed African brothers and sisters in your prayers.  They have much to teach us!

As you have read in this week’s Catholic Free Press, our beloved Monsignor Johnson will take up his responsibilities as Pastor of Holy Family and Saint Stephen’s Parishes this weekend.  You also, no doubt, read that our beloved associate, Father Matos, has been assigned as the new Pastor of Saint Francis of Assisi Parish in Fitchburg. I encourage you to join me for the Father’s Day Celebration, at which time we will bid farewell to both of these good and faithful servants of our Cathedral Church! (Tickets are available from the parish office!)

We are also blessed to welcome Father Diego Buritica as our new Associate Pastor.  Father Buritica is great young priest and a deeply spiritual man.  Bishop McManus recently appointed him as director of the Charismatic movement in the Diocese of Worcester.  He will be a great blessing to our community and I can’t wait to begin working together for the upbuilding of our Cathedral Church!

Finally, as some of you may have heard, we have been working hard to catch up on all our bills after a cold winter with lots of heating related expenses.  If you can spare an “extra gift” to your Cathedral Church it would help us to pay some of the outstanding bills for Clergy health insurance, the Xaverian sisters, maintenance of the elevator, and water bills.  

In any case, I know that I can count on my daily prayers before the Lord, who has called us to be part of this wonderful work we accomplish in this holy place with the help of Saint Paul.

Saint Mary's Graduation

The graduates from Saint Mary's School in Worcester (seen here during their class trip to Washington D.C.) will celebrate their Graduation at the Cathedral this evening.  These are the remarks I will deliver at the Graduation.

Five years ago, just as you were preparing for your freshman year, Pope Benedict XVI recalled that God requires only one thing of us: “that we become a sign of his action in the world,” in other words, that we discover what he wants us to do and that we do it.

That is the whole purpose of our lives, just as it was with the Apostle Paul, in whose Cathedral Church we gather today. Saint Paul’s struggle to find out who God made him to be is depicted in the great transcept window to my left, depicting the Conversion of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

What Saint Paul learned on the road to Damascus was that true happiness, true purpose in life is not so much a matter of getting our way and plotting our course, as, again in the words of Pope Benedict, “letting go, surrendering to the ocean of God's goodness.” 

Just like Saint Stephen…Let’s go back to him…There he is, fearlessly preaching Christ Jesus before the Jewish elders, before he was falsely accused of blasphemy and condemned to death. 

And there he is, dragged outside the city and being hit in the face with rocks, stoned until he died. Imagine what that would be like, to be unjustly accused of heresy, dragged outside the house and killed as great big stones cracked your bones. And the last thing you hear is your friends damning you to hell. 

Yet we are told he died smiling.  Because he had found out why God had made him in the first place.  And he was the first of the martyrs and first among the early saints.

Just like Saint Vincent de Paul.  Vincent was born by the River Paul, which is perhaps where his family name came from. At the age of fifteen his father sent him to seminary and he was ordained four years later. He expected an uneventful life of scholarship and pastoral ministry as a respected member of seventeenth century French society. He had no idea that God had something else in mind.

On his fifth anniversary of ordination, returning from inspecting an estate he had inherited from a rich relative, 

he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. Over the next two years he was sold to a fisherman (which didn’t work out so well because he got sea-sick), a physician (who died) and an ex-priest with three wives who had converted to Islam. Vincent re-converted him (they were in Istanbul at this point) and returned with him to France, where he was freed and found that he had been entirely changed by his enslavement. He now heard God calling him to a radically mission to the poor…the ones every else would forget.

His enslavement had taught him what was truly important he wrote:

“It is not enough to give soup and bread to the poor. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.” 

And this: “Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.” 

It’s still a long story from there, but let it suffice to say that if God had not led him into slavery half-way across the world, he would have probably ended up as just one more aristocratic French clergyman of the seventeenth century whom no one would ever hear about again.

But God had something else in mind. He needed to make Vincent little so that he could do great things through him, so he could love the ones whom everyone else had forgotten and teach the Church to do the same.

God wrote straight with this crooked-line named Vincent, just as he does with us.

And then to the time of the French Revolution and Jeanne Jugan, whose father died when she was four. Her mother struggled to feed the six children and to secretly provide them with a Catholic formation. So little Jeanne learned from a young age to herd sheep, sew and spin wool. She could barely read and write. 

Jeanne eventually went to work as a kitchen maid and a nurse, until she met the elderly Françoise Aubert and the teenage orphan Virginie Tredaniel and the three of them rented a house and formed a Catholic household of prayer, teaching and care for the poor.

Then she met Anne Chauvin, a blind woman with no on to care for her. She brought her home, put her in her own bed, and went to sleep in the attic. That was only the beginning. Within two years she had packed the house with a dozen elderly people for whom she and her companions would care, day and night. Next they rented a nearby cottage and before you knew it there were forty. Then, thanks to Jeanne’s begging in the streets, the Little Sister of the Poor opened three more houses, and more than one hundred women joined her new order.

But then things changed. The Bishop appointed Father Auguste Le Pailleur to supervise the work of this new order. Father Pailleur, a man of some ambition, removed Jeanne from authority and ordered her to do nothing but beg for money on the street. Twenty-seven years later few acknowledged the old blind lady who lived in a room on the third floor as the foundress, as Pailleur concocted a story about how the whole enterprise was his idea in the first place.

Jeanne was honest with the ambitious priest who had been chosen as her superior "You have stolen my work from me,” she wrote to him early on, “but I willingly relinquish it to you.” When novices would ask her if she was really the founder, she would reply, “They will teach you all about our Congregation in your classes, Dear.” And in her diary she wrote: ”In our joys, in our troubles, in the contempt that others show us, we must always say, ‘Thank you, my God,' or ‘Glory to God' "?

Jeanne died at the age of 86, not as an adored and glorious founder, but as the sweet old nun who seemed happy with whatever God would choose for her fate.

Now imagine Jeanne when she first left home to work as a Kitchen maid. Imagine her when she took in Madame Chauvin. Imagine her when the Congregation thrived and imagine her at 86. God chose the road. She just agreed to walk it, willingly and with joy.

Conclusion

And you, like the young Stephan, Vincent and Jeanne have a road to travel.  God has a plan for you.  And where it leads you is the great adventure which you and God will work out together.

And our prayer for you is that you live as happy a life as Stephen and Vincent and Jeanne…knowing that you have simply done what God has asked of you: picked up the crosses he will send you and got on with it. Giving all to God in an act of love, in imitation of the perfect sacrifice of him who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but who took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of a little child, and who offered the perfect kenotic sacrifice upon the altar of the cross. 

And what does this God have in store for each of you? Fame or ignominy? Admiration or infamy? Success or abject failure? In the end, it really doesn’t matter, does it? 

All that matters is that we obediently follow the way he has set out for us, expecting only that his love and his grace will get us through. For we are not made for ourselves, but for him who first breathed life into these bodies and who teaches us how to live and to love in his name. We know not where the road leads. All we have to do is follow it.

Lord Jesus, gentle Shepherd,

you are the way, the truth and the life.

Lead me, guide me 

and give me the grace 

to follow the path you have chosen for me.

Help me to trust 

in your presence and your strength,

my Lord and my God,

for ever and ever. Amen.

What's Heaven Like?

Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, Saint Paul tells us, what God has prepared for those who love him.

And while everyone from comediens to advertisers for toilet paper have painted a picture of pearly gates, clouds, and half-naked harp playing cherubs, the scriptures and the liturgical tradition paint a quite different picture of our last and permanent occupation. 

But we get a glimpse from the vision Saint John had in the Book of Revelation today.  Three things we can say about heaven.  First, that it’s new.  

Nothing is the way it used to be.

To those of you who are crying now, rejoice!  For every tear will be wiped away.  Every tear: the tear of the mother burying her baby, the man abandoned by his spouse, the grandmother whom no one comes to see, the toddler lost in the supermarket, the lady in the bed moaning in pain.  Every tear will be wiped away.

For there will be no more wailing or pain, or even death. No more saying good bye after 66 years of marriage, no more letting go after 2 years with cancer, no more wondering whether you have the strength to walk from the grave to the car.  No more wailing or pain or death, no more, ever again.

For the old order will have passed away, and the One who sits on the throne will say: ”Behold, I make all things new.”

Second it is perfect.

Now we see as in a dark mirror, Saint Paul helpfully informs us, but what we shall later be has not yet come to light.  What we do know is that the chosen shall be in their glorified bodies, risen from the tomb and clothed in light.

Our bodies will be like the risen body of the Lord, a body not ultimately left for corruption, but destined for eternity in a state which is beyond the laws of biology and physics in “a new condition, a different one, that we do not know but which is shown in the fact of Jesus and which is a great promise for all of us: that there is a new world, a new life, toward which we are on a journey.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Good Friday, 22 April 2011)

Third, it means being with God.

And where shall these perfected persons dwell?  We know that from the Lord’s merciful prophecy to the good thief hanging there beside him: “today you shall be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) The definition of being in heaven is being in the presence of God: apud Deum, ante Deum, cum Deo, ad coram Dei. Before God, in front of God, with God, among those who dwell in his presence.

Over and again we will hear this theme echoed from the psalms and in the Sacred Liturgy: 

Come and show us your face, O Lord, who are seated upon the Cherubim, and we will be saved. (Cf. Ps 79: 4, 2)

Of you my heart has spoken: Seek his face. It is your face, O Lord, that I seek; hide not your face from me.

Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face. (Entrance Antiphon for Weekdays in Lent)

Such are the people who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. (Entrance Antiphon for Weekdays in Lent)

Which leads us to one of the most puzzling lines in the Roman Missal.  It’s in the Second Eucharistic prayer in the commemoration of the dead, and what we pray for them is that God “admit them to rejoice in the light of your face...”

It’s an ancient image of heaven, standing before the face of God, which is resplendent in invincible light.  We first hear it in the Aaronic Blessing that God “make his face to shine upon you.” (Number 6:25)  We hear it in Saint Ambrose’s hymn, splendor paternae gloriae: Jesus, the incarnate image of the Father’s glory is resplendent in light, as one transfigured on Mount Tabor, as one radiant in glory.

And finally, it is a place and a time of Praise.

We are made for praise, and that is our destiny in the Kingdom of God, an occupation echoed in the Isaihan Sanctus which is sung at the end of the Preface of every Eucharistic Prayer, a prayer that transcends the boundaries of time and space.  The moment of Christ’s death on a hill outside Jerusalem is about to become a moment in this morning’s Mass.  The voices of the choir and the three seminarians in the back row are about to be blended with the choirs of angels and the saints.  In the Sanctus the Kingdom of Heaven is already, but not yet, and the Lord Jesus returns to us in his Body and Blood.  Just as he will at the end of time.

So what’s heaven like?  Clouds, harps and white bearded Apostles?  Not quite.

It is the full number of the nations, gathered together in Christ, being transformed into his one people and made perfect in his Kingdom, a place of perfection in his presence amidst eternal praise.  Of such is the Kingdom of God, the fulfillment of our hopes and our final destiny.

A Mother's Day Prayer

Loving God, as a mother gives life and nourishment to her children, so you watch over your Church. Bless these women, that they may be strengthened as Christian mothers. Let the example of their faith and love shine forth. Grant that we, their sons and daughters, may honor them always with a spirit of profound respect. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

                                      - From the Book of Blessings.

Neither Greek nor Jew: From Antioch to Worcester

 

The boat which Saint Paul took on his first missionary journey arrived in what is modern day Turkey, from which he traveled about a hundred miles up the river valleys to the city called "Antioch of Pisidia.” But, as you heard in that first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, his first try at establishing a Church there did not go so well.

I suppose he chose Antioch because it was, by far, the largest city in the region and the center of the Roman government. With four roads leading into the city, it was home to people from everywhere: Jews, Phrygians, Greeks, and Romans.

But what seems to have attracted Paul most to Pisidia’s was its large and well-established Jewish community.  Trained as a rabbi of good Jewish stock, Paul saw in each of his kinsmen a prospective convert to Christianity, this new brand of Judaism.

And so, when the Sabbath arrived, he went immediately to the synagogue and, after the law and the prophets were read, responded to an invitation to preach.  And preach he did, giving a real barn burner of a sermon, the longest recorded in the scriptures.  He began by recalling God’s faithfulness to Israel throughout the centuries, ending with the establishment of the Davidic Kingdom.  But then, he threw them a curveball.  On the heels of the story of King David, he told them bluntly: “From the descendants of [David] God brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, just as he promised.”

No sooner had the words flown from his mouth then the city was divided into two groups: a sympathetic group of Jews and Jewish converts who “invited Paul and Barnabas back] to speak on these subjects the following sabbath;” and a second group “filled with jealousy and violent abuse [who] contradicted what Paul said.”

One week later, we are told, the whole city was there to hear Paul and Barnabas make the divisions even worse by telling the Jews who would not accept Jesus that ‘now we turn to the Gentiles,’ at which all those who were not Jewish rejoiced and converted, and the Jews drove Paul and Barnabas out of town.

So here’s my question: What was going on in the minds of those Jews who drove Paul and Barnabas out of town?  Why would they not accept what he had to say about Jesus?  What stood in their way of accepting the faith?

One factor, I would suggest, had to do with the city of Antioch Pisidia, which at that time was filled with immigrants: Greeks with their strange new language, their different customs and way of life. And then there were the Phrygians, this Balkan people, who worshipped the great “Mountain Mother,” Cybele, all while wearing funny hats and costumes at their festivals.  But the ones who most frightened the old Jews of Antioch were the Romans, who came in like they owned the place.  They had taken over the Temple in Jerusalem and barely a decade later sent 4,000 soldiers to build a base in Antioch Pisidia.

Antioch was changing, and the Jewish community resented it.  Because change is always hard and learning to live with all these new and exotic tribes is the hardest thing of all.

But if only they had been parishioners of Saint Paul’s Cathedral they would have understood.  For from our first days, Saint Paul’s has been the home to new and different groups from all over the world.

It was on May 29th, 1884 that my maternal great grandparents, Nora Lynch and Stephen Loughlin were married here at Saint Paul’s by Father O’Sullivan. The Church had been dedicated just ten years earlier, the same year they were just getting off the boat from Ireland.  

They were part of the second wave of Irish immigrants, that followed the building of the Blackstone Canal some fifty years before that. Drawn to these rows of smokestacks which marked the new factories along the canal in the last decades of the Nineteenth century were “potato” Irish and Swedes.

These “new Irish” came to live in the North End, especially since they weren’t so well accepted by the old more well established Irish who had spread from the Green Island shanties to the tenements of Grafton Hill.  The Swedes settled most famously in Quinsigamond Village, but then spread up Vernon Hill.

And so it is today. Where, according to the latest census Worcester’s largest immigrant communities hail from Ghana, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Albania and Brazil, each facing the same challenge of Saint Paul in Antioch Pisidia.

And so we, the sons and daughters of the Apostle to the Gentiles, are left asking: “How do we preach the faith to a new world, so different from the one we knew as a child?  How do we come to love peoples so different from ourselves and accept them from God as his special gift, a new revelation of his love for us, and a new glimpse of his face.

That is the challenge and the opportunity which stands before us in this Cathedral Church. To be Christ’s Church in Worcester in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.  Not clinging to a past which is no more, nor longing for a future not yet within our grasp, but in the words of Saint Paul, striving, groaning and aching for a Church where there is “no longer Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female. But where all are all one in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.” (Galatians 3:28)

So like Paul in Pisidia, Father Power watching his church be built, or Nora and Stevie walking down this very aisle, let us seek Christ together in the rich mosaic of which  God has made us a part.