Closing Mass for the End of the Seminary Year

Last week, on the Feast of Saint Athanasius, I spoke of the great Shrine at the Altar of the Chair in Saint Peter’s Basilica.  It was built by Bernini at the behest of Pope Alexander VII to act as a sort of reliquary for the ancient Cathedra on which it was believed Saint Peter and each Pope for the first nine centuries sat.  

Bernini placed the chair at the center of floating angels and clouds, as if it were descending from heaven.  And on the back of the chair is a relief depicting Christ’s three words to Peter from today’s Gospel: Pasce oves meas….Feed my sheep. (John 21:15-17)

And that is just what you are about to do.  In your pastoral assignments this summer you will feed them.  In response to Peter’s threefold confession of love for Jesus, the Lord gives you three different commands: feed my lambs, pasture my sheep, feed my sheep.  All in the present tense!

So, is your love for the Lord so evident that with Saint Peter you could say, “Lord, you know that I love you!”?

Then feed his lambs this summer.  Feed the littlest and most vulnerable, the marginalized and the forgotten.  Feed them with his word, for, as the Good Shepherd tells us, “I know my sheep and they know me.”  So when you speak in his voice, they will recognize him and run to you.

Feed them as Saint Peter reflects in his first epistle, feed them with  “the pure spiritual milk” of his Word so that by it, they can mature in their salvation. (1 Peter 2:2)  For, as Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 8:3) reminds us and as Jesus abjures the devil, (Matthew 4:4) we live not by bread  alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God. 

So seek out the little poor ones and remind them that Jesus says they are blessed and that, in the end, they will inherit the earth.  Tell them the stories of when he knelt down and washed dirty feet, and then do the same for them.  Explain how he used to seek after the last place and how he told us to give away our shirt as well as our coat and then do likewise for them.  Feed the lambs with his consoling word.

There's a fourteen year old kid you'll meet this summer behind whose eyes is an aching void, hungering for meaning and purpose and truth amidst the chaos and contradiction which is his so-called life.  For he's never really heard Jesus' voice until you will speak it, never knew Christ’s gentleness, humility and trust until you will live it for him. Jesus has set that kid up so that you can meet him and through you he meets the Lord who will change his life.  Feed my lambs.

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And pasture his sheep.  The big ones, the fat ones, the ones all grown up and full of themselves.  Shepherd them all, the forgetful and the slothful, the lost and the stubborn.  Shepherd them, like the dear old woman I buried a number of years ago, who shepherded her kids in life and in death and even after her death.

You see, her son Michael no longer went to Church or prayed.  He was lost. Oh his kids were baptized and they were married in the Church, but it had been a long time since he took any of this Churchy stuff seriously.

And then his mother died…and knowing his story, I was really surprised when he went to Communion, and went back and buried his head in his hands. 

I went to Michael afterward and asked what happened.  He told me that before they went to the wake they were going through his mom’s stuff.  And he happened to pick up her old prayer book---the one he saw her take to Church every day since he was a little kid.  And near the front of the book he found an old worn out holy card of a guardian angel helping a little kid over a dangerous bridge.  And on the back of the card, in his mother’s unique scrawl, he read “MICHAEL, MY DARLING BABY BOY…June 27, 1948”  Each day, for all those years, she had prayed for him…after every Communion, at every morning offering, and in every prayer at night…she had never forgotten to pray.”

“You know,” Monsignor, “he wept before his mother’s grave, “I’m not going to forget any more…I’m going to go back to Church and pray for mom and for my wife and for my kids and for all the poor and the suffering people in the world.  I’ll never forget again what it’s all about!”

And since that day, I have prayed that God make me half the shepherd which that old lady with the worn-out holy card in her prayer book was.

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So, after Eschatological Bocci, get outa here!  They’re waiting for you.  Go feed them. Feed the cuddly little innocent lambs and big fat smelly sheep…feed them with the Gospel of Truth, the Bread of Life and the sacraments which flow from this altar.  

Go feed his lambs and shepherd his sheep!

Beginning the Week with Song...

The last week of the Seminary year began with a beautiful concert of Hebrew Sacred Music, thanks to our own Dr. Janet Hunt and the folks at Hebrew College.  Here's a picture of the evening.

The Fifth Annual Pre-Theo Awards

 

Fiftieth Anniversary of Nostra Aetate

Just a couple evenings ago we joined with Redemptoris Mater Seminary to hear a presentation on the impact of two documents on Jewish-Christian relations: Nostra Aetate and Dabru Emet.

Presentations were heard by Father Dennis McManus and Rabbi Or Rose.  Father McManus, in addition to his work at Saint John’s Seminary, is a Faculty member of the Program for Jewish Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at georgetown University, where he offers courses in the history of Christian-Jewish conflict, autobiography in the Holocaust, and the theory and practice of inter-religious dialogue.  He is also Consultant for Jewish Affairs to the United States Conference of catholic bishops and a priest of the Archdiocese of Mobile in Alabama.

Rabbi Or Rose is the founding Director of the Center for Global Judaism at Hebrew College and co-director of the Center for Inter-religious and Community Leadership Education, a joint venture of Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School. 

Rabbi Rose is also one of the co-editors of  the book My Neighbor's Faith: Stories of Inter-religious Encounter, Growth and Transformation, from whose introduction comes the following passage: 

We live in the most religiously diverse nation in the history of humankind.  Every day, across the country, people of different religious beliefs and practices encounter one another in supermarkets, hospitals, schools, chat rooms and family gatherings.  How has this new situation of religious diversity affected the way we understand the religious “other,” ourselves or ultimate reality?  Will it lead us to overcome the long history of religious intolerance, bigotry and violence that has plagued humanity for centuries?  Can we learn to live together with mutual respect, acknowledging commonalities and differences, working together to create a more just and compassionate world?

Three TV Ads for the Boston Pentecost Collection

Some Thoughts on Saint Athanasius

A little over four hundred years ago, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was given a commission by Pope Alexander VII to build a life-size reliquary for the Cathedra on which Saint Peter and each Pope for the first nine centuries sat.  While the origin of the chair is today in doubt, the shrine has stood as a glorious testament to the Petrine office of assuring unity in the Church.  

The chair, like that ministry, is supported by four Church Fathers: Augistine, Ambrose, Chrysosthom and the “Pillar of the Church” we commemorate today, Saint Athanasius.  He is responsible for introducing the concept of homoousious, or consubstantiality to the Creed and was a great champion on the faith.

But I have just one story to tell you from when Athanasius was still a small boy, playing outside Bishop Alexander’s house by the shore.  It seems, like many good Catholic boys, Athanasius liked to play Mass indoors, and when by the ocean he and his companions would play baptism with the neighborhood children.  The Bishop was concerned, however, that the Baptisms might be valid and called them all inside, reminding them that it is wrong to Baptize without a proper catehumenate, and so they had all best study their catechisms so they could grow up to do the real thing some day.

Which little Athanasius did, indeed coming to understand the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity even better than anyone else before him.  

Which is why we study too.

Boston Ordination to Transitional Diaconate

Cardinal Sean O. O'Malley, OFM, Cap., Archbishop of Boston, ordained six men to the Diaconate on Saturday at Holy Cross Cathedral.  Congratulations to all these men, especially the four new Deacons from Saint John's Seminary: Deacon Jason Rinaldo Giombetti, Deacon Godfrey Musabe, Deacon Joel Americo Santos and Deacon William Paro Sexton.

To watch a video of the Ordination, click here to go to CatholicTV.