Praying for Korea

Father Andrew Kim Taegon was the first priest of Korean descent.  Two hundred and ten years ago, he was arrested, tortured, and finally beheaded near Seoul, the capital of South Korea today. His blood watered the soil of the Korean penninsula, where almost six million Catholics live today.

It’s a different story in North Korea, as you can imagine. While there were three and a half million Catholics in the Diocese of Pyongyang 75 years ago, today there is not a single functioning Church in the People’s Republic.  

Most of the Catholics have been killed or imprisoned.  It began under Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il’s father, when the secret police invaded the largest monastery in North Korea, arrested the Benedictines living there and sent them to internment camps.  In the coming years sixteen of the Benedictines were tortured and killed for the faith and nineteen were starved to death.  A few years later, the remaining 42 monks were exiled to Germany.

So pray for the Church in Korea, especially today.  That through the Blood of the Martyrs the Church may be purified, renewed and resurrected to the Glory of God and the salvation of all the people of the Korean penninsula.

Praying for our Leaders...

“First of all,” Saint Paul writes to Saint Timothy, “I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.”

When is the last time you prayed for President Trump?  Or Speaker Pelosi?  Or Governor Baker?  Or Mayor Perry? Or any of our government leaders?

Not second-guess them, moan or giggle about them, criticize or defend them, surf the web for sleezy stories about them, but pray for them. As, Saint Paul admonishes us : pray for them!

Archbishop John Carroll, the first Bishop of these United States, understood the Apostle’s admonition.  But then again, he had to.  He was named our first Bishop by Pope Pius VI in 1789, the year after the Constitution went into effect.

The Archbishop was no stranger to this fledgling government, having been sent in 1776, (along with his cousin Charles, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) and a certain Benjamin Franklin to go to Montreal to persuade the French colony to enter the war on behalf of the Continental Congress.  While his immediate mission failed, it did help later on in establishing a bond with Catholic France which bore fruit at Yorktown, where the largely Catholic-financed French fleet cut off supplies to British General Cornwallis, enabling General Washington to bring an end to the war.  

Later that same year, Archbishop Carrol wrote a prayer and sent it to all the Catholics in the 13 colonies, interceding for the Pope, the Bishop (that is, himself), the President, the Congress and the Governors of each of the states.  Pray for them, Saint Paul admonished.  And Bishop Carrol was obedient to that command.

His prayer for President Washington is short and to the point.  It begins by addressing God, the creator of all that is good:

We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgments decreed… 

He then goes on to ask God to assist “the President of these United States” with his Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude “that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides.” Eminently useful in three ways:

First, “by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion;”

Second, “by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy;”

and third, “by restraining vice and immorality.”

Let’s take a look at each of those prayers for our government.

First, “by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion;”

We need look no further than President Washington’s Farewell Address to hear of the importance of religion in American pubic life, where [he wrote] “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…[ed. note: an indispensable support, mind you] for whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Or his successor, the profoundly rational Mr. Adams of Massachusetts, who wrote to Thomas Jefferson near the end of his life: "I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state…My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth…thus all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework."

So, first we pray that the President encourage respect for virtue and religion.  Then we pray that he ‘faithfully execute our laws in justice and mercy.’

Notice, Bishop Carroll prays now just for justice, but for mercy: a complex Biblical injunction understood well by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who a short time before he died proclaimed “the rule of law is always second to the law of love.”

So, we pray for religion, justice, mercy, and finally, Bshop Carroll prays that the administration conduct its work in righteousness, “by restraining vice and immorality.”

How can the Presidency restrain vice and immorality in our government?  First, by his example, which is why I learned in grammar school to imitate George Washington, caught in the midst of chopping down a cherry tree, but who nonetheless could not tell a lie. Mrs. Luzasak, my third grade teacher, also taught me to be like the young and Honest Abe Lincoln, who whenever he realized he had shortchanged a customer by a few pennies, would close the shop and deliver the correct change—even if the customer lived a day’s ride from the store!

But beyond the content of his character, the President also restrains vice and immorality by the bully pulpit from which he preaches goodness and morality with inspirational words. Words like: 

Ask not, what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.

or

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. 

Or President Reagan, who I can still see sitting in the oval office, consoling us as we mourned the death of the Challenger astronauts, reminding us that they had merely “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

Words like that change lives, recall our better angels and remind us who we are as Americans and faithful believers.

So let us heed the call of Saint Paul, that more important than the complaining or campaigning are the prayers we offer for our leaders in these United States: “That they might by encourage respect for virtue and religion; that they might see to the execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and that they might restrain vice and immorality.”

Then, as our first Bishop wrote in a letter to our First President some 229 years ago, we will say of them: “By [their] example and [their] vigilance…By their exalted maxims and unwearied attention to the moral and physical improvement of our country, [they will] produce the happiest effects.”

The Suffering of a Father whose Son is Lost

SAINT JOSEPH NOVENA

Christ the King Church

I am blessed to be preaching this Novena to Saint Joseph on the day after the traditional feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the middle of a month dedicated to the Seven Sorrows of his most beloved spouse.  Which tells us a lot about Saint Joseph.  But I get ahead of myself.

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 and whispers to God: “Now Lord, you can let your servant go in peace, for my own eyes have 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.

But did you ever notice that of the traditional seven sorrows, the first three were not Mary’s alone.  They were shared by Mary and Joseph. Together, their suffering was a participation in the Cross of their son, just as each of the Crosses God sends to us is a way of our 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!?”

Joseph and Mary knew that feeling, that Via Dolorosa, that Road of Sorrows leading to the Cross of Jesus, especially on that day they went up to Jerusalem.

Chances are that Mary must have been almost hysterical when she realized that Jesus was not with them as they left the Temple precincts.  And Joseph, the custos, the custodian of the child Jesus must have been beside himself with panic, as he ran from one part of the Temple to the other looking for him; his heart must have ached with the fear he would never see him again.

Like those 800,000 mothers and fathers whose children went missing in the United States last year.  Most of them were found, but imagine what life is like for the 24,000 parents who will never see their children again. 

But like those parents, Mary and Joseph must have carried that big heavy cross of doubt: What if we had watched him more closely?  Why did we let him go off with his friends?  Would this have happened if we had?

But like the parents of every lost child, they were asking foolish questions.  For Mary and Joseph were good parents, just like most of those who lose a child are good parents.  Listen to our beloved Pope emeritus:

"Given our perhaps unduly narrow image of the holy family, we find this surprising. But it illustrates very beautifully that in the holy family, freedom and obedience were combined in a healthy manner. The twelve-year-old was free to spend time with friends and children of his own age, and to remain in their company during the journey. Naturally, his parents expected to see him when evening came"

But despite the lack of culpibility, imagine the suffering of Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin as they sought to find their son.  Imagine Saint Joseph as he stares into the crowd with Jesus nowhere to be seem.  It is not unlike the suffering of the father who finds his child has died in the crib, or the parent who stares down the street as no little boy comes home from school.  Imagine the ravaged heart of the father who will never hold that child in his arms again and you will understand why God sent his only Son to seek out the lost, raise the dead child, returning him to his mother’s arms, and lead us to a place where no one will ever be lost again.

But now Jesus was lost, and even when he is found Mary says to him: “Your father and I have sought you with great sorrow.”

Saint Ambrose tries to explain this sorrow as a foreshadowing of the paschal mystery, when he writes: “After three days Jesus is found in the temple, that it might be for a sign, that after three days of victorious suffering, he who was believed to be dead should rise again anti manifest himself to our faith, seated in heaven with divine glory.”

But no amount of theological explication can change the sufferings of Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother as they sought for their child who was lost.

It is the suffering  of one who loves.  One whose heart aches for the coming of the beloved.  It is the suffering of the prophets, who waited for the coming of the Lord.  The suffering of the disciples waiting in the upper room.  And the suffering of each one of us as we carry our crosses, waiting for the Lord to return and lead us home to heaven.

May God grant us the patience, the perseverance and the hope of Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin, as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Unreasonable mercy...

Here's my Homily for the 14th of September on the parable of the Prodigal Son.

You must heard the story.  Probably for the twentieth time.

The youngest son of the two boys, comes to his father demanding his half of the inheritance. In other words, he doesn’t want to wait until the old man dies: he wants the cold hard cash now! 

I know what I’d do if I were that Father...but what happens in Jesus’ story? He gives him a check, no, he gives him cash, and off the kid goes to spend the father’s hard earned money on desperate living.

And when the prodigal son returns, having wasted half of everything the Father ever earned, what does the Father do. He runs out to meet him, throws his arms around him, kisses him and throws a party.

Or recall, if you will, the shepherd who lost a sheep.  What does he do?  He leaves the ninety-nine and goes off in search of the one. If you did that, you wouldn’t be a shepherd for very long, because when you came back what’s to say the ninety-nine would not have wandered off, as well?   But what does the Good Shepherd do in Jesus’ story. He leaves the ninety-nine and goes off in search of even the single sheep who got himself lost.

Or what of the farmer in the Gospel of the wheat and the weeds? He sows good seed in his field, but then an enemy comes at night and sows weeds. The weeds grow up, but what does he do? Does he pull up the weeds like we would? No. For love of the wheat, he leaves the weeds alone, and lets them grow until harvest, when he will finally separate the weeds from the wheat.

Such is the mercy of God. Unbounded. Unreasonable. And far beyond our tiny little hearts. The kind of mercy that forgives not seven times, but seventy times seven times. The kind of mercy that looks at the prostitute forced into confession and tells her, just don’t do it again. The kind of mercy that desires not the death of the sinner, but that he repent and live!

That incredible mercy is our consolation and our hope. But it is also our life’s work. Remember what Jesus taught us to pray? “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Wow! Really?

What about the one that really hurt me? The one that lied behind my back? That one that stole from me? That one that turned her back on me?

God is merciful. Infinitely merciful. And its all he asks us to be, in turn.

Beginning with how sinful we are...

How do most meetings start?  They all the start the same way, with the introduction of the participants and the reading of their biography of accomplishments.  So and so will speak to us today and he has accomplished this or that or something else.

Or they start with an introduction of the gathered assembly.  We have accomplished this and we are going to do this and we will need to accomplish this tomorrow.

But how does the Mass start?  Well it starts in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then the first mention of those of us gathered here is when I invite you to “

What an odd way to begin a meeting.  By admitting your sins.  Everyone else begins a meeting by saying how great they are (and what a pain everyone else is who is not a part of the group.)

But the Lord has told us to remove the log from our own eyes first.  Saint Paul describes himself to Timothy as a once arrogant man.  And we live pout lives humbly and gently, in the model of Our Lord Jesus Christ, servants to all, seeking the last place and begging the mercy of God.

Saint Peter Claver

Just yesterday we heard Saint Paul’s letter to his friend and fellow worker, Philemon, in which he send back Philemon’s slave, Onesimus, catechized, baptized, now to be treated as a brother and not a slave.

Saint Paul saw in Onesimus what his friend Philemon could not…he saw a brother to be loved and not an object to be bought and sold and used.

By happy chance, today is the feast of the great Jesuit Saint Peter Claver, who spent his life in service to the enslaved African peoples in the port of Cartagena, Columbia, where 10,000 slaves arrived each year by boat from Africa. 

Father Claver, we are told, would board the slave ships and would descend directly into the hold, where filth, disease and death were the only companions of the terrified human cargo. As he fed, clothed and nursed the prisoners, he was wont to take off his own cloak and place it over the shoulders of a naked, shivering child. So revered was Father Claver that word began to spread that whoever wore his cloak would enjoy a long, happy and illness-free life.

He famously baptized more than 300,000 slaves, and when he went to visit them after they had been auctioned off to the highest bidder, he would decline the hospitality of their masters and insist on eating and sleeping with the slaves.

All because he recognized in each person, not a slave, but a brother, not a creature, but a human person.

The Church, like every institution, struggled with slavery through the years. Just as enslaved African people built the white house in 1792, as recently as 1838 the Jesuits at Georgetown University sold 272 slaves to pay the College’s debts. All this despite the condemnation of slavery by Popes since the fifteenth century, culminating in Gregory the XVI’s papal bull In supremo apostolatus, published one year later, in which the Holy Father condemned “all believers in Christ, of whatsoever condition [who] unjustly molest Indians, Blacks, or other men of this sort;...or to reduce them to slavery…” All this taking place almost thirty years before the United States of America would outlaw slavery.

It’s a long and ugly history, this buying and selling of human beings, but even today we must ask ourselves how often we use people and love things. And when we do, perhaps we should think back on Saint Paul and Onesimus in prison and Father Claver in the bowels of all those ships.

Divino Niño Novena

This was the second night of our Divino Niño Novena. What a wonderful spirit of prayer and gratitude to God for the gift of his Son! 

 The evening reminded me of Pope Francis' celebration of the Holy Child in the Phillipines a couple years ago, when he reminded is that "The Santo Niño continues to proclaim to us that the light of God’s grace has shone upon a world dwelling in darkness. It brings the Good News of our freedom from slavery, and guides us in the paths of peace, right and justice. The Santo Niño also reminds us of our call to spread the reign of Christ throughout the world.”