All Saints

We gather to honor the Saints.  Those who now live in heaven, gathered around the throne of God, singing:

"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 

to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength,

honor and glory and blessing.”

It is the last scene, God willing, we will see, the precursor of our eternity, joined with the angels and the saints in one grand chorus of joyous praise to the Lamb upon the throne, the Alpha and Omega, the one who was and is and ever will be, the Lord.

Such is the glory of God.  It is a glory we can see even now, as we stand this side of heaven. The glory of a Creator, reflected in his creation, in all the wondrous complexity and beauty of the springtime, of plants and animals newborn and overflowing with life. 

Indeed, each day of our lives is but an unfolding of the glory of God, as we come to know him bit by bit in the wonders he place before us. For God created time, and all time is ultimately his creation, made to mark the passing of all the days and nights of our lives. (Cf. Sirach 43:2,6.)

The Sacred Liturgy, the Holy Mass which we celebrate today, opens a door into that Heavenly Kingdom.  It directs us away from a certain self-centeredness, and focuses our eyes on God.  That’s why the Altar is placed at the center of every Catholic Church, the Altar we venerate with a Kiss and a bow, just as we venerate Christ. And that’s why just above it hangs the cross of the crucified Christ, the Cross which is the Altar upon which the great High priest offered the perfect sacrifice of praise which is our hope and our salvation.

For this is what we were made for, and this is what heaven is going to be.  Not puffy clouds with angels playing harps, but perfect joy, pure love and praise in the presence of the glory of God.  Listen to the description of heaven in the Book of Revelation:

Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” (Rev 4: 8b.)

A great multitude of saints and angels, like the roar of Niagra Falls or the snap of a peal of Thunder, praising the glory of the Lord for all eternity, as day and night they sing: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.” (Rev. 4:11)

May we be found worthy of that heaven which eye have not seen and ears have not heard, but which has been prepared for us, that Heavenly Jerusalem where we will hear  “the voice of many angels around the throne…and the number of them [who were] myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.” (Rev.. 5:12)  For ever and ever.  Amen.

On Halloween

This evening, in the dark, things will go bump in the night. Demons and devils and goblins and such, many disguised as little children during the day, will ring that door bell and demand a treat, lest they be forced to think up some dreadful trick to pull on you

.

But this is not the only night that things will go bump in the your house. For if you pick up the crosses God gives us, it’s often a very bumpy ride.

Saint Paul compares it to a woman in labor, groaning in pains from deep within, straining for the redemption of our bodies and of our very selves.

Such straining often takes place at night, as when Peter struggled to remain faithful to the Lord and failed. It was night.

It’s often after the gloaming of the day that such struggles occur, when the doubts and the fears come out to play, when old rages or panicky gasps crawl out from beneath the veneer of respectability that we maintain during daylight hours. At those moments when we are most like our primordial selves we work out our redemption, like Peter beside the campfire trying to choose Jesus or himself.

But it is such nights that make this journey blessed. For when you face the bumpy ride you never do so alone. It is a blessed share in his blessed Passion, which transforms you, deepens you and makes you ever anew. It is the dark purgatory of the living, which refines you into the fire-tried gold he has called you to be.

And no matter how scary things get, rest assured that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor present things, nor future things… will ever separate us from the love Christ, who is our hope and our salvation.

On Being Missionaries...

How come you’re here?  Why do you come to this place to worship the Lord?  It seems to me it is for the same reason the disciples came to Jesus.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, right after John the Baptist has called  Jesus “the Lamb of God…[he] who takes away the sins of the world,” two of the Baptist’s disciples began to follow Jesus.  One of them was Andrew, who, after meeting Jesus, goes to find his brother Peter, and brings him to Jesus.

The next day, Jesus goes to the Sea of Galilee and finds Phillip, who in turn, goes out and finds Nathanael, who he brings to Jesus, and Nathanael follows him.

So there is only one way to become a disciple: to meet Jesus.

Now, for most of us, the one who literally carried us to Jesus was the one who gave us birth.

You’ve probably seen pictures of it, or at least heard stories of the day your parents and godparents first brought you to Church.  “What do you ask of God’s Church for your child,” the priest asked them. And from that day they sought to introduce you to life in Christ.  They were the first missionaries you knew, and they led you to Jesus.

There are more exotic missionaries, as well.  Like Sister Veronica and Sister Maria Louisa, who came to us from an International community founded to bring Jesus to people far far away.  One was born in Italy ad the other in Mexico, and they came to Worcester, to lead us and all the the other little missionaries to Jesus, that we might have a personal relationship with him.

Fr. Mark Marangone, s.x., Provincial of the Xavarian Missionaries, was with us a couple weeks ago when Bishop McManus honored Sister Maria Louisa.  Fr. Mark once wrote that the job of each Baptized man and woman is to “make of the world one family” by leading each man and woman to Jesus.

Each one of us knows someone who needs to be led to Jesus.  Maybe it’s a friend or a co-worker.  Maybe it’s a son or daughter who has stopped going to Church.  Each one of us are called to be missionaries, leading people to Jesus.

But who am I to be a missionary, you might say?  

You know who you are? You are just like Saint Andrew.  Of all the Apostles, Andrew is one of the least known.  He is only mentioned by name in twelve verses of the Bible, and in eight of those he is simply referred to as Peter's brother.  He is nearly always mentioned second and wasn’t even included among those closest to Jesus.  His only claim to fame was that he brought people to Jesus.  He started with his brother.  And then, when the young boy with 5 loaves and 2 small fish came to him, he brought the boy to Jesus.  And when there were some Greeks who were looking for Jesus, it seems Philip didn't know what to do, but Andrew took them to Jesus.

We don’t have to be heroic or members of a world-wide missionary order.  We don’t need new languages or great stamina.  What we need is such a love for Jesus Christ that we want to lead people to him.

That’s how we live as Missionary Disciples, obedient to Jesus’ command to "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

The patron of this Cathedral Church was made the first Missionary Disciple when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus in a dramatic conversion.  From that point on, his life was one long series of relationships, who he introduced to Jesus.

Like Barnabas, in the bottom left of the great Missionary window, who introduced Paul to Peter and became his constant companion in leading people to Jesus.  

That’s them on the bridge, a little further up, heading to Antioch on their missionary journey, in search of people to lead to Jesus. 

Among their first converts was Barnabas’ young cousin, John Mark, whom you see in a boat with Paul and his Uncle on the way to Salamis in the Mediterranean Sea.

They passed through the whole island of Cyprus where they were less than successful at converting a sorcerer named Elymas (he’s he one embraced by a big green snake), although Paul is seen above him trying his best to get him to know the Lord.

John Mark went home (that’s a story for another day), but there near the top left of the window you can see the tiny figures of Paul and Barnabas in the mountains of Pisidia.

Then at the bottom of the middle of the window Paul is in Lystra, where he told the story of Jesus to a man who had never been able to walk before. But when Paul commanded him in the name of Jesus to walk, the man sprang up and began to dance.

The crowds grew very excited, and no matter what Paul said, they tried to worship him and Barnabas as Gods.  You can see them sacrificing a bull to them. There’s a good lesson here for missionaries: Always remember that missionary work is never about the missionary, but only about Jesus.  The missionary, like John the Baptist, must decrease, that the people might come to know Jesus alone.

Maybe to remind him of this, God allowed Paul to experience many failures, including the time they stoned him and left him for dead, with the dogs sniffing at his carcas. You can see Barbabas dragging Paul’s limp body away by a golden chain.

Above that Paul sets out on his second missionary journey through modern day Syria where, in the company of Silas and Luke he meets Lydia, a seller of purple dye (yup, she’s the one in the purple), whom Paul Baptizes in the name of Jesus, along with her household, two of whom are sitting at their feet. 

But then Paul encounters a quite different woman, a fortune teller who was possessed by a demon.  We can see Paul exorcising her with Silas standing behind him. 

But Paul and Silas suffered for exorcising the girl, as her friends rose up and threw them into prison (if you look closely, you can see rats and spiders in the prison), but then you see the two disciples miraculously freed from their chains.

We could go on and one (and we will in a video we are preparing on these wonderful windows), but let’s stop with the image of Saint Paul in glory at the top, as he looks across the Church at Jesus.  For all the missionary journeys were about introducing people to Jesus, just as we are called to do.

It’s like Saint Paul wrote to the young Bishop Timothy in words we heard just a few minutes ago.  As he spoke to Timothy, so he says to us:

“I charge you in the presence of God 

and of Christ Jesus,

who will judge the living and the dead…

proclaim the word;

be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient;

convince, reprimand, 

encourage through all patience and teaching.”

Proclaim the Word, who is Jesus the Lord.

Christianity is not for sissies...

There is a view of religion, and of Christianity in particular, that it is about the avoidance of conflict and smoothing over hurt feelings.

And while it is true that love is patient, gentle and self-sacrificing, love does not (contrary to that old movie) mean never having to say you are sorry.

Rather, to paraphrase Betty Davis, ‘Christianity is not for sissies.’  It begins in the poverty of the manger and reaches its climax nailed to the wood of the Cross.  It is the very definition of conflict: a blazing fire at the intersection between good and bad, light and darkness, virtue and evil.

This blazing fire immolates deceit, hatred and selfishness. It spontaneously combusts where the weak are exploited, the innocent are convicted and the hungry are ignored.

And it will end in the blazing fires of Hell, which will consume all who turn from love and truth in Christ.

So the world would do well not to mistake the gentleness and self-sacrifice of the followers of Jesus for a capitulation to darkness. Rather, it is but an imitation of our Savior, who gave his life in meekness: the perfect sign of self-giving love; but who will also come with justice, to judge the living and the dead.

The Catacombs

Tonight we started our new class, entitled Introduction to Liturgical Art.  The first session was on the catacombs.

Pope Saint Callistus

There are times, I am afraid, when we think that our modern age is the first to encounter controversy and colorful characters.  But even in the pre-internet age, even in the first centuries of the life of the Church, life was messy and complex, as was the case with Saint Callistus, the sixteenth Pope.  I guess it goes to show you that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The life of the sixteenth Pope is clouded by history, but one account tells us he was born a slave of Carpophorus, a Roman banker, who did a lot of business with the somewhat unpopular Christians of the early third century. There is some indication that Callistus became a Christian, as Carpophorus put him in charge of the monies which Christians had collected for the care of widows and orphans.

But then the young Callistus made a terrible mistake.  He lost the Christians’s money.  And we don’t know how.  Perhaps he just misplaced it, perhaps he mis-spent it or maybe the bank went bankrupt.  But, in any case, he lost the money and decided to run away to escape facing a charge of larceny.

He only got as far as the port of Ostia, not far from the Rome airport of today, where be was arrested and thrown into jail.  The merciful Christians, however, convinced the judge that Callistus was good for the money and should be released and given the chance to recover their funds.  No sooner was he released, however, at least according to one account, than he was rearrested at the Jewish synagogue where he tried somewhat too forcefully to either borrow money or collect debts from some of his friends.

So, he’s now in his 30’s and once back in prison, where he was denounced as being a Christian, which under the Emperor at the time got him sentenced to hard labor in the salt mines of Sardinia. Within a few years he was a broken man, but then, by the grace of God, he was finally released with some other Christians at the request of a priest who was close to the favorite mistress of the Emperor Commodus.  Go figure.

Two successive popes, then recognized his piety and scholarship, and so he was ordained a Deacon at the age of 39 and placed in charge of the first piece of real estate owned by the Church, a cemetery on the Appian way called to this day, the Catacombe di San Callisto.

Nine popes were buried there and there is an indication that Callistus became an able administrator and valued advisor.  

So, in 217, when Callistus was about 57, he was elected Bishop of Rome.  But the controversies of his life were to continue.  

Callistus, perhaps because of the three times he got out of jail, had a keen appreciation for mercy.  And up until then, those who committed adultery and murder were thrown out of the Church for good. No change of forgiveness for adultery and murder. But Callistus decided to admit them to the Order of Penitents and eventually reconcile them.  He faced a lot of push back for this controversial stance, including the election of a less merciful rival as the first anti-pope, who claimed an equal claim to the Papacy until well after Callistus’ death.  

Callistus was to remain pope for only five or six years in all, at which point an anti-Christian mob threw him into a well, where he died.  Ironically they had to pull the body of he who had been the manager of the first Christian cemetery out of a well in the middle of the night in order to give it a proper burial.

So, since the days when Paul would describe himself as a slave, called to be an Apostle of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, through the extraordinary struggles of the first martyr Popes and even to our own day, the Christian life is a messy business.  But a messy business in which good and holy men, imperfect but holy men, sought to give their lives to the one who died to save them on Calvary hill.

Saint Callistus, pray for us!

Religion, Politics and Archbishop Romero

Religion and politics.  What’s a Catholic citizen to do?

From the days when Father Power preached from this pulpit to today it is a thorny and a challenging problem, ever calling us back to the pure proclamation of the Gospel in a world beset by really confusing political, social and economic realities.  It can be a mess.

One thing is certain, we can never stop proclaiming the Gospel, in season and out. Whether it be the right to Life, the dignity of the poor and the immigrant, Religious Liberty or the integrity of the Seal of Confession, the Church has a right and responsibility to preach the Gospel.

But none of this is politics.  It is proclaiming the Gospel, in every political and economic setting. I’m a priest.  Party, politics and economic systems are not my bailiwick.  I preach Christ Jesus and him crucified and risen, and it is his Gospel and his Church for which I would lay down my life.

So why talk about this now? Because Bishop McManus has invited Cardinal Chavez to celebrate the noontime Mass tomorrow.  His Eminence is an old friend and collaborator of Saint Oscar Romero, who was killed by government agents for defending the rights of the Church and her poor in El Salvador.

In Latin America of the 1960’s, not a few sons and daughters of he Church argued that the ordained and religious should preach an overthrow of unjust structures and organize political resistance to unjust political structures. For some, this meant working for the election of this group or that, while for many others, it meant preaching very particular socio-economic gospels, most of them based on Marxist political theory.

Such was the state of affairs in El Salvador, a country governed by terror and oppression, Archbishop Oscar Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador. A deeply spiritual priest of Opus Dei, he was not known for his political views. And so many of the more radicalized priests feared Romero’s more traditional style would compromise their advocacy for the poor and the oppressed.

It’s a long story from there, but they were very wrong.  Indeed, Archbishop Romero’s radio homilies on Sunday nights were listened to by three quarters of the citizens of El Salvador, as he spoke against injustice, defended the poor and the oppressed and insisted on respect for the rights of the Church.

Notice he never advocated a particular political ideology and never associated himself with a particular party. Such a path would, in the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, lead only to “rebellion, division, dissent, offence and anarchy.”  Romero chose to preach Christ crucified more than Marx redefined, seeking not the victory of political ideologies, but the saving of souls.

Indeed, while no one was more relentless in fighting against the oppression of the poor and the persecution of the Church, no one was ever as clear that he was seeking neither temporal or political victory.  For the Church, Romero insisted, is not about the reform of governmental structures, but the conversion of human hearts.

Archbishop Romero was killed for preaching that Gospel.  Literally shot to death while saying Mass in a hospital for the terminally ill.  He finished his sermon, stepped away from the lectern, and took a few steps to the altar as a man with a gun emerged from a car in front of the chapel. He shot him in the heart.

As many as fifty people were shot to death outside the Cathedral the day Saint Oscar Romero was buried and the civil war in El Salvador was to drag on for years to come.

So what are we to we do in the face of immoral government leaders, who ignore the rule of law and persecute the poor?  Each and every citizen has the right and the responsibility to take a full and active role in political life and to seek to apply the moral mandates of the Gospel to our civic structures, preserving the rights of every citizen to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But the Church does not accomplish this task by our advocacy of political parties or movements or by redacting or inventing new political ideologies.

I’m a priest, not a politician.  And I am called, like Saint Romero, to preach the Gospel, which includes a defense of the poor, the unborn, the old, the stranger and the orphan.  But, like Saint Oscar and Saint Paul, sitting in prison, chained like a criminal, I preach no earthly doctrine, but “Jesus Christ, raised from the dead,” and him alone. 

And while the forces of this world may sometimes put us in chains, Saint Paul reminds us, “the word of God is never chained.” And we are called to “bear with everything” that we might lead every man or woman we ever meet to that salvation which is Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Saint Oscar Romero, pray for us.

Some simple thoughts on peace...for the Feast of Saint Francis

Did you ever hear about the time Saint Francis walked from Assisi to Egypt? It was 994 years ago at the very moment that the Sultan of Egypt was engaged in mortal combat with the Fifth Christian Crusade.

Now it probably took about a year to walk that distance into a war zone so fierce that the Sultan had decreed that anyone who brought him the detached head of a Christian would be rewarded with a single golden coin.

St. Bonaventure, in his Major Life of St. Francis, tells us how the Saint and his companion just walked right into the enemy camp, where they were predictably placed in chains, beaten and dragged before the Sultan.

And then it began.  Like Pilate before the Lord, the great Sultan had no idea who was before him.

Who sent you?  the Sultan asked.

God. Francis replied.

And why did he send you? the Sultan asked.

To save you and to teach you the truth, he answered.

“When the Sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage,” Bonaventure tells us, “he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.”

Here you have this medieval Goliath of a Sultan with an army so powerful he and his brother had conquered the whole Middle East, but he was conquered by the simplicity of the poverello.

It was an unfair imbalance for a diplomatic negotiation. But Francis did not arrive as a diplomat, but as someone who loved that Sultan and wanted to obtain his soul for God.

In other words, Francis saw Peace not as the prize at the conclusion of an effective political negotiation, but as the opportunity to love the one who had been cast as his enemy, to humanize him and recognize him as his brother.

Which is why his example is so good for me.  I am no diplomat.  My entire knowledge of international diplomacy comes from observing Jed Bartlett and Leo Magarry in the Situation room of the West Wing.  I, frankly, have no idea how to solve geopolitical conflicts.

I am not a diplomat.  I am a Priest.  But as a Priest I know the road to true peace is to love and to pray.  

Peace, as Saint Francis teaches us, begins and ends with dying to all my self-serving power grabs, and loving the one who is right in front of me, who has been cast as my enemy.

But its so much easier to hold dearly to a grudge and to speculate on my next act of revenge than to forgive my brother for whom I hold a grudge.  My grandmother used to speak of Irish Alzheimer's: where you forget everything except the grudges.

Or, as Dorothy Day used to say, “My prayer from day to day is that God will so enlarge my heart that I will see you all, and love with you all, in God’s love.”  

Now that’s a prayer for peace.

Homilies on the Death of Gervais LaRochelle

Homily at the Wake               

We never know.  We never know God’s good time.

You suspected it three years ago when Jarvis first got cancer.  But then he got better.  And then it came back.  And then he got better.

And then they thought it might make it to next year.  And then it was thanksgiving.  And then it was just a few days.  You never know.

So, Jesus tells us, not knowing the day nor the hour, we must be ready at any time for the Lord to call us home.  Maybe tonight?  Maybe next year?  Maybe in twenty years?  Who knows.

Jarvis knew that he did not know when he would die, but he also knew what he knew.  He knew that God loved him.  He knew that God made him to give what he knew, to give the strong faith he had received, to spread it to his children.  That’s why he married Virginia.  Because she deeply believed that what life is all about is believing and loving and striving for holiness.  Of course, it helped that she was beautiful and bright and so easy to get along with.  But at the root of it all was the hunger for holiness which joined them together, the hunger for God.

A hunger so deep that it was fruitful, and planted the faith so deeply in their hearts of their children and grandchildren and everyone whom they met, that it shone forth like a lamp, enlightening the lives of everyone whom it touched and bringing them joy.

Joy as at a wedding, when the bridegroom arrives and knocks.  The bridegroom came knocking at 6 Cotuit Street the other day at just about five O’Clock.  And how blessed was that servant whom the master found vigilant at his arrival.  That servant who had received the Apostolic Pardon and absolution and the consolation of the Sacraments.  That servant who knew the Cross as well as the glory, and whom you sang into the arms of his beloved Lord.

May that Lord judge him with mercy, as we now pray the last prayer he heard upon this earth.  So may our voices be joined with the angels in heaven.

Homily at the Funeral

Sixty-three years ago, Camillien and Cecile brought their little baby to the Church of Sainte-Aurélie, named after an Ursuline nun of the 19th century, in the town of the same name. It was a small and faithful town, bordering on the U.S....today the census lists 901 souls living there. But on that morning, the priest looked down at the child of Camillien and Cecile and gently poured water from a small golden shell. And as the water ran over the baby’s forehead he said: Ego te baptizo, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctus: “I baptize you, Gervais, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus began a great journey, as Gervais was joined to the death and rising of Christ Jesus.

Day by day and year by year, he came to know Christ Jesus. He learned to love and to forgive and to live in the model of his Lord and Savior. When they crossed the border they came to live in Holyoke and even after the tragic death of his father, Gervais continued to grow in the deep faith to which Cecile and the family clung with all their might. I’m sure Lucie, Sylvie, Serge, Marguerite Boudreau and Jean Pierre could tell many stories if the faith of their mom and how it sustains them, even to this day.
And then he met Ginny. And Ginny and Jarvis stood before the altar at Sacred Heart in Weymouth and promised to remain faithful to one another and to God: a promise they lived for forty years. And from that faithfulness, God brought forth John and Jo, Tony, Pauline, Joel, Robert, David and Grace as concrete signs of the willingness of Jarvis and Ginny to cling to faithful love in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death.

In fact, on the day, after they were married, Jarvis and Ginny knelt before that altar in Weymouth as the priest, extending his hands over them, blessed them with a quotation from Psalm 128: videas filios filiorum tuorum: May you live to see your children’s children. And so faithful was God’s love for them that they lived to know and to love twelve grandchildren, with two more on the way.
And so we gather here to pray for Gervais, a man who loved to pray. A man who knew right from wrong, and would not hesitate to remind you, if you needed reminding. But a man who came to grow in his appreciation for God’s infinite mercy. “If you want to get to heaven,” he used to say “work on getting someone else to heaven.” And so he spent his life trying to get you all to heaven.

He was even willing to take the road of suffering and sorrows if that’s what it took. He picked the harder way, he prayed for the harder way because, like his beloved Lord, he knew it was God’s will that he might pick up his Cross and carry it with obedient love.
So, don’t let your hearts be troubled, for there is a secret we heard in the Gospel here today. A secret which Jarvis knew and lived and carried with him all the way to death. He learned it from another son of a carpenter, who told him there were many rooms in his Father’s house.

And just as Jarvis sided more homes than he could count in one lifetime, he has now gone to prepare a place for you in heaven. He and Jesus are working on a place for you to live with him in heaven. A place where Randall, Katie, Mary, Ian, Evelyn, Catherine, Elysse, Robbie, Lily, Joey, Hanna, and Claire and each one of us can be with him in the presence of Jesus with all the angels and saints, singing God’s praise forever in a place we can’t see yet. Because he’s still getting it ready for us.

But as the Liturgy tells us, some day we will see Jarvis again and he will run out to meet us and he will lead us to Jesus, who is the way to heaven, the truth about everything and the hope of eternal life.

So join with the whole Church in praying for Gervais, this good man, that Christ might judge him with mercy, lead him gently home to his side and prepare for all the just a place to rest with him in glory forever.

Mary, Mother of the World, Novena to Our Lady of LaSalette

It was 1846 as Maximin and Melanie were tending the cows when they saw the Lady weeping. She told them of a great famine which would come upon the world and that the only salvation from it was honoring God’s Name, going to Church on Sundays and prayer. Soon thereafter the great potato famine struck France and then most of Western Europe, killing more than a million people in Ireland and forcing more than twice that number to flee their homes.

Thus Mary is pictured seated upon a globe, for her message of prayer to avoid a horrible punishment was not just for a small village in Southeastern France, but for the rest of the world, as well.

135 years later, in 1981, the Blessed Virgin appeared in a small town in the south of Rwanda, named Kibeho. There she identified herself as Mother of the World and, while weeping, warned three small children that unless the world turned to repentance and prayer a great suffering would come upon the land. Thirteen years later, the Rwandan Genocide broke out in that country in which a million members of the Tutsi, Twa and Hutu tribes were slaughtered. One of the worst massacres took place in the school room where the Blessed Virgin had appeared to the children.

What do these apparitions in mid-nineteenth century France and late twentieth century Africa tell us about the Blessed Virgin Mary? Three things:

First, that the Blessed Virgin Weeps;

Second, hat she prays for us;

and third, that she is Mother of the World.

First, we learn that Mary weeps when she sees the evil men do. She who was conceived without sin also stood on Calvary Hill and witnessed the evil which nailed her Son to the Cross. We can also imagine her weeping as she fled into Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, as she stood in the Temple unable to find her child, cradled his dead body in her arms and placed his body in the tomb.

Each night every priest or religious and perhaps many of you, pray Night Prayer, including the Gospel Canticle of Simeon, who with his weary arms holds the baby Jesus in his arms and whispers to God: “Now Lord, you can let your servant go in peace, for my own eyes have the seen the salvation you have prepared, the light to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”

And after that joyous canticle, he turned to Mary and told her this baby would be the rise and fall of many, concluding with the words: “and your own heart will be pierced with a sword.”

At that moment, Saint Alphonsus Liguori tells us, “the joy which had filled Mary’s heart must have been turned to sorrow, a sorrow which would perdure and a foreshadowing of the Cross on which her Son would offer the perfect sacrifice.”

For her suffering was a participation in the Cross of her son, just as each of the Crosses God sends to us is a way of participating in the Cross of Jesus. “Whenever you suffer,” Mother Theresa once told an old woman, “it is really just Jesus loving you so much that he is holding you closer to his Cross.”  “But could I ask him,” the woman responded, “not to hold me quite so close!?”

For from suffering we learn what it means to love others, as compassion grows from witnessing pain. “In [Mary’s] tears,” Pope Francis once said, “we find the strength to console those experiencing pain.”¹

How many people we meet in pain every day. This morning I sat with a longtime parishioner of the Cathedral who has been undergoing chemo therapy for brain cancer for almost a year now. Her house was filled with all kinds of folks from hospice, helping her to prepare for her final days. But when I came in she sent them all into the other room. “He helps me more than all those pills” she told them firmly, “For when I receive Holy Communion, I receive Jesus, and he stays with me when it gets tough in the middle of the night.”

She knows the sorrow of the Blessed Virgin whose heart was pierced with a sword, and the Virgin Mary knows her sorrows, too. Now, and at the hour of her death.

Second, we learn from LaSalette and Kibeho that Mary prays for us, that we might be delivered from the hands of evil men, and even worse, that we might not be evil men ourselves.

That’s why we ask for Mary’s intercession through all our lives, we “poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” 

“By the tears which flowed from your eyes,” the Novena to our Lady of Sorrows begins, “obtain for us, O Mother of Mercy, true contrition for our sins, persevering fervor in the divine service, and the particular favors we ask in this Novena.”

That is why you bring the sorrows and the fears of your lives to this Miraculous Medal Novena, just as I remember doing every Wednesday night when I was growing up. I remember, as a freshman in High School, coming out with old Father McCarron (to be honest, he was probably younger than I am now) and kneeling on the bottom step of the altar (yup, he was definitely younger than I am now) and praying to Mary for all the world-shattering needs I carried in my adolescent heart. And you know what? She heard my prayers.

As I know she will, all the way to the hour of my death, for that is what the Mother of God does for a living. She intercedes with her Son on our behalf. And what Son can resist his mother’s intercession, “now and at the hour of our death.”

My favorite place to pray in Washington, D.C., where I lived for many years, is the Irish Chapel in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. There’s no fancy sanctuary or big mosaic...there’s not even an altar in this chapel. Just a statue of the Blessed Virgin with the Christ child playing on her lap in the middle of a gurgling fountain. 

But on the wall, not far away, is a 1200 year old Celtic Prayer that boldly states: There is no hound as fleet of foot, nor young soul so quick to win the race, nor horse to finish the course, as the Mother of God to the death bed of one who needs her intercession. It’s like the line in the Memorare: Never was it known that anyone who fled to Thy protection, implored Thy help or sought Thy intercession was left unaided. 

For Mary, in the words of our beloved Pope Emeritus, watches “over us, her children: the children who turn to her in prayer, to thank her or to ask her for her motherly protection and her heavenly help, perhaps after having lost our way, or when we are oppressed by suffering or anguish because of the sorrowful and harrowing vicissitudes of life. In serenity or in life’s darkness let us address Mary, entrusting ourselves to her continuous intercession so that she may obtain for us from the Son every grace and mercy we need for our pilgrimage on the highways of the world.”²

For Finally, Mary is the Mother of the World, in LaSalette, Rwanda or Worcester she is the Mother of Mercy. A late medieval and early Renaissance devotion to the Blessed Virgin depicts her with an enormous cloak, under which she gathers all those who are in need. As a mother cradles a crying child in her arms, so Mary gathers each of us to herself with the compassion and hungering love which she learned from her divine Son.

Her Divine Son, who, in the words of our beloved Pope Emeritus, “Looking down from the Cross, from the throne of grace and salvation…gave us his mother Mary to be our mother. [For] yes indeed, in life we pass through high-points and low-points, but Mary intercedes for us with her Son and helps us to discover the power of his divine love, and to open ourselves to that love.”³

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

__________

1 - Pope Francis, 8 October 2016.

2 - Pope Benedict XVI. 22 August 2012.

3 - Pope Benedict XVI, Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 23 September 2011.