SOME REFLECTIONS ON SAINT JOSEPH

 

The Bible does not say a lot about Saint Joseph.  Granted, Matthew and Luke, with their extensive accounts of the Nativity of the Lord Jesus, do tell us something. 

Matthew, of course, begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Joseph (to which we will make reference later), to his discovery of Mary’s pregnancy, his decision to divorce her quietly,(1) and his obedience to the angel who appeared to him in a dream and told him to take Mary as his wife.  Likewise, we hear from Matthew of the second dream warning Joseph to take Mary and the child to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.  But once they have returned from Egypt, Joseph disappears from Matthew’s Gospel. 

In the Gospel of Luke, Joseph is less prominent.  Mary is described as "a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph,” and throughout the second chapter he is constantly mentioned with Mary by name or as “they," referring to the parents of Jesus. Luke also presents Joseph as the genealogical father of Jesus, and as his reputed father.(2)

And even Mark and John make oblique references, consistent with Matthew and Luke.  Mark, for example, the earliest Gospel written, does say that Jesus comes from Nazareth (five times, in fact-(3)) and he is the only evangelist to say that Jesus was a carpenter.(4)  Which fits in with Matthew’s description of Joseph as a carpenter and the fact that anyone who ever does mention Joseph says he comes from Nazareth.

John's Gospel mentions Joseph twice: when Philip acclaims Jesus as "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph”(5) and in a sarcastic utterance "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven’?" (6)

Beyond that, it’s all apocryphal, relying on much later non-biblical material of doubtful authenticity.  But for the Church, the Biblical record has been enough to help us to understand who Saint Joseph is and what he means to us.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Beyond a retelling of the Biblical record, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (7) affirms that Jesus, like any good son, fulfilled the commandment to honor his father and mother perfectly “and was the temporal image of his filial obedience to his Father in heaven.”  the Catechism goes on: “The everyday obedience of Jesus to Joseph and Mary both announced and anticipated the obedience of Holy Thursday: "Not my will…” and that “The obedience of Christ in the daily routine of his hidden life was already inaugurating his work of restoring what the disobedience of Adam had destroyed.^”(8)  Finally, the Catechism also affirms Saint Joseph’s role as “St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.”(9)

And while, as you have seen, there is much we might say of out  blessed patron, allow me to offer three brief reflections on his role in our lives and the life of the Church concerning Joseph as Guardian of Jesus, Patron of the Church and a good Lenten example for each one of us.

CUSTOS: THE SERVICE OF FATHERHOOD

First, Joseph as Father and Guardian (or as the Latin says, Custos) of the Christ, a title first bestowed on him by It was Pope Leo XIII.

Joseph was the husband of Mary and was given the role of father of Jesus.  This is why Saint Matthew starts his Gospel with the words: “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”(10)  That’s why Joseph has always been called “Mary’s spouse,” why the angel says to him “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife,”(11) and told him to name the child, Jesus.  Because Joseph was his father.  

Saint Joseph, then, through all those “hidden years” cares for Jesus, just as any father cares for his child.  

And there is a certain irony in all this, not to be missed.  For here you have Joseph exercising authority over the one through whom he was made, explaining the scriptures to the one who is the source of all truth and protecting the omnipotent Son of the Living God. 

Nonetheless, and here is a great mystery, Joseph was, day in an day out, the guardian of the mystery “hidden from ages past,”(12) the revelation of the face of God.

Like any good father, Joseph sacrificed for his Son.  He got up with Mary for the two am feeding, he dropped everything whenever his son needed him, forsake the pursuit of money or sleep or any other human necessity for the sake of his son.

All because he loved Jesus, showering him with “all the natural love, all the affectionate solicitude that a father's heart can know.”(13) Joseph cared for Jesus, nurtured and protected him above all other concerns.  And Jesus, in turn, obeyed him as his father and rendered to him that honor and reverence that children owe to their father.”  And through this filial and fatherly love, human bonds were deepened. 

PATRON OF THE CHURCH 

And it is because he is guardian of the Christ, that Saint Joseph has been recognized as the patron of the Church by Pope Pius IX.

It was 1870, and it seemed the whole world was against Pope Pius IX.  “In these most troublesome times,” he wrote, “the Church is beset by enemies on every side, and is weighed down by calamities so heavy that ungodly men assert that the gates of hell have at length prevailed against her…”(14)

The Papal States had just been taken away from the Pope by Garibaldi, a large portion of the people of Italy had turned against him, to the extent that he was defended against the populace by Swiss and German troops.  

Times were changing rapidly and the Pope was often besieged, sometimes not recognizing the signs of the times imperfectly, as when he wrote to Jefferson Davis in the opening days of the American Civil War, addressing him as the “Illustrious and Honorable President of the Confederate States of America.” I understand that Mr. Lincoln was not pleased.

So it seemed to Pius that the whole world was against him and against the Church he sought to steer, so he turned to heaven and in 1870, the second year of the First Vatican Council, he declared St. Joseph as Patron of  the Universal Church.

What this meant, Pope Leo XIII would later write is that, “in the same way that Saint Joseph once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ.”

That’s the same Pope Leo XIII who in 1884 declared the universal Church to be under e patronage of Saint Joseph.

What does it mean that Saint Joseph is patron of the Churchl?  It means the same thing for us as it did for Jesus.

Like any good father, Saint Joseph is first an example for us of what it means to be a good man.  I have always loved the quote from Lewis Mumford that people learn ideas “not by discussion and argument, but by seeing them personified and by loving the person who so embodies them.”(15)

By loving Saint Joseph, the personification of the sanctifying love of Jesus his son, we become sanctified, we become loving.  By adopting the paternal patronage of the just man, we become just.

Thus because Joseph teaches us how to be a follower of Christ and how to be a Church which hears the word of God with reverence,(16) we find in him, as Pope Saint John Paul II described it, “the model of obedience made incarnate…the man known for having faithfully carried out God's commands.”(17)

Picture this holy patriarch cradling the Christ child in his arms as Mary sleeps, sheltering mother and child on the flight into Egypt, and in the home at Nazareth.

Up until recently, except for Padre Pio, St. Joseph was the most popular saint in Italy, although St. Francis of Assisi always gave him a good run for his money. 

It’s because St. Joseph is the accessible saint, the quiet father in the background, the good man, achieving sanctity not through mighty deeds but, through “a life lived in the greatness of every day life, but with steadfast faith in Providence.”

He is the one described by Dei Verbum, who “hearing the word of God with reverence”⁶ manifests “an absolute readiness to serve faithfully God's salvific will.”⁷ 

PRIMACY OF THE HEART

And he is the best example for us when he is sleeping.  

When an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him the will of God, he is “receptive to God’s plans and not simply to his own.”(18)

• Finding the virgin he loves to be with child, he prepares to divorce her quietly in order to spare her whatever shame he can.  But when an angel whispers into his sleeping ear: “Do not fear to take her as your wife,” he does it. 

• Threatened by Herod’s wrath, he hears the angel yet again, now telling him to take mother and child and flee to Egypt. And, again, he listens and obeys, “discreetly, humbly and silently, even when he finds it hard to understand.”

Perhaps this is why so many depictions of Saint Joseph show him sleeping.  But his is not just any kind of sleep.  It is the sleep of a man so inwardly in tune with God that even at rest “the depths of his soul are open and receptive.”(19)  It is the kind of sleep described by the Song of Songs: “I was sleeping, but my heart was awake.”(20)

And herein is the lesson this Patron of the Church leaves with us for Lent.  Listen to the quiet of your heart,

Ours is a world of sensory overload, imbued with a cacophony of beeps and tweets and incessant talk.  All trying to sell us, convince us and distract us from the sanctuary of the silent heart.  As Cardinal Sarah reminds us: “There is no place on earth where God is more present than in the human heart. This heart truly is God’s abode, the temple of silence… The Father waits for his children in their own hearts”(21)

And Pope Saint John Paul II reminded us in his great Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos(22) that this silence extends beyond our Saint Joseoph’s sleep, as we can imagine him silently plying his trade as a carpenter in the house of Nazareth.

For while we so often speak of the great deeds of men, the secret of Saint Joseph is in his silence, his putting away of all the distractions, his listening to God alone in the silence of hid heart.  Or, as his namesake, our beloved Pope Emeritus once pour it:

“Joseph, who sleeps, but who at the same time is alert to hear the voice that rings out in his soul and from on high…someone who unites inner recollection and promptness…, inviting us to withdraw a little from the tumult of the senses; to recover our inner recollection; to learn to look inside ourselves and to look up, so that God can touch our souls and speak his word to us.”(23)

So let us thank the Lord for thus Custos of the Christ, this Patron of this Cathedral and the Church throughout the world.  And let us learn from him, in littleness, silence and joy.

_____________________

1 Matt. 1:19.

2 Cf. Luke 3:23 and 4:22..

3 Mk 1:9,24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6.

4 Mk 6:3.

5 Jn 1:45

6 Jn 6:42

7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 532.

8 Cf. Rom 5:19.

9 CCC, no. 1014.

10 Matthew 1:1.

11 Matthew 1:20.

12 RC, no. 25.

13 Pius XII, Radio Message to Catholic School Students in the United States of America (February 19, 1958): AAS 50 (1958), p.174.

14 Sacred Congregation of Rites, Decree Quemadmodum Deus (1870)

15 Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life (1956).

16 Cf. Dei Verbum. Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council has said, the basic attitude of the entire Church must be that of "hearing the word of God with reverence,”(46)

17 RC, no. 30.

18 Pope Francis, Inaugural Homily (19 March 2013).

19 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Homily (March 19, 1992).

20 Song of Songs 5:2.

21 The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise by Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat, Translated by Michael J. Miller, Ignatius Press, 2016. page 23.

22 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos (August 15, 1989). 

23 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Homily (March 19, 1992).

On the Ten Commandments

Saint John makes a remarkably contemporary-sounding statement at the conclusion of today’s Gospel. It’s psycho-anthropological tone is worthy of Dr. Phil: “Jesus would not trust himself to them…because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to tell him about human nature. He himself understood it well.”

Which brings us back to that rather long reading from Exodus (I think they’re getting us ready for Holy Week!) in which the Lord gives us ten commandments, each based on his knowledge of the humans he had created:

The first one is simple: Follow God and him alone. The God who is one, constant, unchangeable, faithful and just: the source of all that is good and loving and true. For the very purpose for our being is to become like him. 

He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent. As the Catechism observes: “Who could not place all hope in him? Who could not love him when contemplating the treasures of goodness and love he has poured out on us?”

And the second commandment is just like it: You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. A child interprets this commandment as a prohibition against swearing or saying bad words. But it is so much more than that. For the name of the Lord is Holy and he reveals it to those who believe in him, inviting them into the intimacy of his friendship. It is the name to be cherished and adored.

You know what it’s like to say the name of your closest friend out loud? It calls him to mind and to heart. So too, with the name of the Lord.

When we say the name of Jesus, we are called to bow our heads as a sign of respect. For, as Saint Paul reminds us, his is the name above every other at which every knee must bend in the heavens and on earth and under the earth, for Jesus Christ is Lord.

Perhaps that is why one of the most beautiful prayers, originating with the first monks of Christendom, consists only in the Divine name: just repeating over and over again: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

And then there is the third commandment: to “keep holy the Lord’s day,” which is why we are gathered here, on a day when we refrain from working for ourselves and rest only in him. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”

And then the commandments tell us how to love like God. 

First to love those who first loved us, our father and mother. For just as we must love our heavenly father who created our first parents, so we must love and honor those who conceived us in an act of love, nurtured and cared for us in self-sacrificing love.

And the next time you go to the nursing home, remember the sage advice of Sirach: 

“O son, help your father in his old age…even if he is lacking in understanding, show forbearance; …Whoever forsakes his father is like a blasphemer, and whoever angers his mother is cursed by the Lord.”

But so great is the love which God has implanted in our hearts that it overflows to all the world. So, you shall not kill, certainly, but even more you shall cherish all whom God has made.

I am made to love you, not just as I love myself but as I love God. For every human being, from the weakest to the strongest, from the most powerful to the most vulnerable possesses an inherent dignity which makes us fit only for love.

It is that same human dignity which is violated when people are used as things for our entertainment, occasions for our passing pleasure, rather than mysteries to be loved. Thus, the sixth commandment.

We are called to love one another with a chaste love, a pure love which desires only the happiness and holiness of the other without self-interest. True love means that I desire only that you be led closer to God, to know that perfect peace which comes from doing God’s will and drawing closer to him.

God’s will is that all sexual activity, all acts of corporal procreation have loving meaning only with the Sacrament of Marriage and that anything short of that is a dead end and cannot lead us to holiness and truth. In the words of the Catechism, “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him…[tolerating] neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.”

The seventh commandment, as well, is rooted in love, refusing to steal from anyone, keep something that belongs to anyone, committing fraud, paying unjust wages, or taking advantage of someone in light of their ignorance or hardship.

And just as one sin leads to another, so greed leads to lies, for at the root of every evil is the lie, as Eve learned from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. We who seek to be like Jesus, seek to follow the one who is the Truth; and the opposite of Jesus is Satan, the father of lies. So the next time you are tempted to “fib” or tell “a little white lie” just ask yourself, who are you pleasing. Jesus or Satan?

And finally, the last two commandments are about the kind of lying which says that everything is mine and is destined to make me happy: the lie that people are things whose purpose is to bring me pleasure and the purpose of life is to grab for all the gusto I can get, no matter who gets bought or sold and no matter who gets hurt.

Ten Commandments, which the Church asks us to reflect on this Lent as a sort of Examination of Conscience. And she gives them to us because no one has to tell her about our human nature. And she knows that in these ten little commands, we are given the key to happiness in this life and in the next.

Jesus and the Devil and Us....

This is my homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Mark’s Gospel is different than Matthew and Luke. There is no account of Jesus’ birth, just the story of John the Baptist, the Baptism of Jesus, a bri

That’s quite a way to begin a public ministry: by casting out a devil. Jesus, we are told simply turns to the possessed man and says “Quiet!  Come out of him!” and the man has a convulsion and with a loud cry the spirit comes out of him.

Now, I’m afraid if Mark approached a modern screen writer with that script it might not make the cut. It lacks the dramatic appeal, the extended tension and the sudden surprises that modern horror films use to portray an exorcism.

There are four such films making the rounds on Netflix, Hulu and HBO now.  One is called The Vatican Tapes in which “a priest and two Vatican exorcists do battle with an ancient satanic force to save the soul of a young woman.” Then there’s The Evil Dead  in which “5 friends go to stay at a remote cabin only to accidentally release a bunch of demons from a book.” 

The third is Deliver us from Evil in which “a police officer encounters a frightening alternate reality when a renegade Jesuit priest (notice there’s always a renegade Jesuit priest in these movies?) convinces him that demonic possession may be to blame for the gruesome murders.”  And finally The Rite, in which a seminarian “reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, he meets an unorthodox priest (I wonder if he’s a Jesuit) who introduces him to the darker side of his faith.”

Those of us who are a little older remember bring scared out of our wits by Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, but the plot really hasn’t change much over the years. 

But what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel is something more than starring in a fictional horror film. What Jesus is doing is real life. As real as the next sin I am tempted to commit, the grudge I am tempted to hold or the next war we are tempted to wage.

Since God created mankind in his own image and likeness, endowed with the free will to love or to sin, the world has been one long struggle between light and darkness, walking toward and alongside the Lord or walking away from and against him.

Eve and her husband chose to walk away from God, and that original sin was redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary, as in a perfect sacrifice of love, the Son of the Living God offered his life to set us free from our original sinfulness.

But, as the Catechism reminds us, there is a bit more to the story, for, “behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.” The author of genesis depicts him as a snake in the grass, or perhaps in a tree. 

Another movie I remember from years ago depicts him as a little red man with horns and a long tail, whispering into my ear: “Go ahead!  Don’t worry!  It’ll be a lot of fun!”

He is the fallen angel who goes variously by the name of Satan or the devil. Like our first parents, this angel was originally made to be good, but with the free will God gave him, he and the other demons chose to reject God. Thus, does Saint John call him “a liar and the father of lies.”¹ The Lord Jesus himself calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning.”²

The Prince of Darkness then, is far more frightening than any horror movie can portray, for he doesn’t just jump out from behind the door and make us scream, he tempts us to reject the God who made us: to choose selfishness instead of love, hate instead of mercy and myself instead of my brother or sister.

Yet Satan is far less powerful than the scary movies, for he is just a creature like us, and no match for the God who made him.

And while the darkness of this world, from selfishness to murder to pandemic sickness can all be traced back to the Devil and his minions, we are the sons and daughter of God, who made heaven and earth, whose only Son by the Power of his Precious Blood, shed for us upon the Altar of the Cross for our salvation,

Seven times does Jesus Exorcise demons in the Gospels, and each time it is by a simple command. “Come out of him!” “Get out of there!”  Be gone!” And the devil has no choice but to obey.

For, in the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, the Cross of Christ is the devil’s ruin. And while the powers of darkness may still tempt us to choose power or wealth, or pleasure over sacrifice, mercy and a holy life, we always have a choice. Or, again, in the words of Pope Benedict: 

Overcoming the temptation to subject God to oneself and one’s own interests…giving God first place, is a journey that each and every Christian must make over and over again. “Repent” is an invitation we [will soon] hear during Lent, it means following Jesus…; it means letting God transform us…It means recognizing that we are creatures, that we depend on God, on his love, and that only by “losing” our life in him can we gain it.

That’s not quite so scary as the latest horror movie, I’m afraid. But it’s real life, in which the powers of darkness and sin have nothing to offer us but a dead end of crippling selfishness. But you have been called to the freedom of the children of God!  And how blessed you are to be called to the supper of the Lamb!

_____________

1 - 1 John 3:8; John 8:44. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 392.

2 - John 8:44; cf. Matthew 4:1-11.

A Hymn Sung by an Old Friend

Leo Nestor was a dear friend and an extraordinary musician. I will always treasure my memories of one of the most talented composers, conductors and teachers I have ever known, but more than anything else, I am consoled to remember him fondly as a great friend.

Leo died in 2019 and left behind a wonderful testament to his faith in the compositions he so brilliantly created. Back in 1998 Leo asked me to write the text for an Easter hymn he was preparing for the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I just learned tonight that the hymn will soon be published as a part of a collection of his 49 hymns. Here is the text:

When first he showered grace within my mother’s womb,
Christ knew my heart, my face, and freed me from the gloom.
Then washed by water, in his blood,
he made this child a son like him,
both cleansed and freed by second flood. 

O undeserving grace which leads me to the tomb,
to rise to see his face, born of the Church’s womb;
Now one with Christ the Lord above
I rise from tombs of secret sin,
to gentle patience, mercy, love. 

I sing of Christ who gives what I can never take,
a grace that’s only his all pains and thirsts to slake.
Which bears all sorrows, fears and pain,
his presence makes my weakness strength
Till I shall rise with Christ again.

Leo served with me on the Committee which helped prepare the USCCB document Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship. So when I think of him singing with the angels before the face of God tonight (he's probably conducting them!), I recall a line from paragraph 15 of that document:

Christ always invites us to enter into song, to rise above our own preoccupations, and to give our entire selves to the hymn of his Paschal Sacrifice for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Sing well, Leo. Sing well.

Memento mori on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think it was a Peter Seeger who used to sing a little ditty that went:

I get up each morning and gather my wits, 

I pick up the paper and read the obits. 

And if I’m not there, I know I’m not dead, 

so I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

I never understood that song when I was younger, but now I live it.

You know, there were seventy-five obituaries in the Telegram this pasr week. A lot of them in their nineties, like Daniel and Christine and Barbara and Raymond and Jennie and Josephine and Dennis and Margaret… Still sad for their families, but they don’t jump out at you.

But then there are the other ones, the ones I notice a lot more since I turned 68. Like Johnny at 65 or Dan at 61 and Eric at 60 and Patricia, who the obituary said died after a brave fight with Covid at the age of 58. Those kinds get to me, but then there’s Chris, who died at 33 or Daryl, who had a heart attack at 41.  I tend to stop reading when I get to those.

That kind of an obituary is what is referred to as a memento mori, a reminder of death…and not just someone else’s death. My death. The kind we will speak indelicately about when we start Lent next month: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

It’s why the Roman Missal from which I pray at that altar has a Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death. I pray it much more lately than I ever did before. Here’s the opening Collect:

O God, who have created us in your image
and willed that your Son should undergo death for our sake, 

grant that those who call upon you
may be watchful in prayer at all times,
so that we may leave this world without stain of sin
and may merit to rest with joy in your merciful embrace. 

It’s a wise sentiment as old as the ancients, as the stoic philosopher Seneca once wrote: “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

Perhaps you’ve heard of those Roman triumphs, when a great general would be rewarded for his victory by passing beneath an arch amidst the cheering throngs. But few noticed the soldier always positioned in the chariot right behind the general, and as the crowds grew louder he would shout into the general’s ear: “Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori!” Look behind you. Remember you are mortal. Remember you must die!

Social Security has a digitized memento mori conveniently included on their site at ssa.gov. It’s innocuously entitled a “life expectancy calculator,” and all it asks for is you gender and date of birth and with the click of the return key it informs me that I probably have 17.6 years left. Not 17.5 or 17.7, mind you, but 17.6. 

I should probably start planning.

Indeed….I probably should. For despite the Social Security Administration, Jesus tells me I will know not the day nor the hour, and, as Paul practically screams at the Corinthians: “I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out…the world in its present form is passing away!”

He’s like a modern day Jonah, finally doing what the Lord told him to do (after getting thrown overboard, eaten by a whale and spat up on the land…but that’s another homily)…Jonah is walking through the streets of Ninevah yelling: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed, “

He probably read too many obituaries. Or maybe he understood the message those obituaries teach: that life is too short and despite SSA.gov, we have no idea how short a time that will be.

Listen to Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, just before he calls his first disciples:

“This is the time of fulfillment.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent, [today!] and believe in the gospel.”

That’s why Simon and Andrew abandoned their nets and followed him. It’s why James and John left their father in the boat and followed him. Because there is a terrible urgency about the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom which is not about yesterday or tomorrow, so much as about today.

Because in Jesus, the Kingdom of God is at hand. The same Jesus who tells us: 

today, find the man without a coat and give him yours;

today, look for the one who is sick and comfort her;

today, seek our the stranger and welcome him home;

today, find the one who hurt you and forgive her;

today, pray, repent, read the scriptures…. go to Church.

Today! For you may not have a tomorrow. 

Today!  For the Kingdom of God is at hand!

But it’s so easy to forget the urgency of life amidst all the stuff that keeps me so busy, until I’m walking through the cemetery and come across that old gravestone…it’s hard to read the letters, worn out by the elements and the acid rain, but it has been saying the same thing since 1792: 

Remember me as you pass by

As you are now so once was I

As I am now you soon will be

Prepare yourself to follow me.

Today is the time! The Kingdom of God is at hand!

Pope Francis and the Gospel of Life

Delivered to a Morning of Recollection on the Gospel of Life, 23 January 2021.

In these late pandemic days, as we all become obsessed with the efficacy of new vaccines for COVID-19, I am reminded of the origin story of the first vaccine, the first antibiotic, penicillin.

The popular version of the story, of course, involves the Scottish researcher Alexander Fleming. Seems Dr. Fleming, who was doing research on flu viruses, returned from a two week vacation to find a plate of staphylococcus culture which he had mistakenly left on his workbench. In his absence, something had begun to grow on the glass petri dish, something which appeared to have killed the staphylococcus and was soon to become the first antibiotic, which he named penicillin.

But then, as Paul Harvey used to say, there’s the rest of the story. 

After publishing his discovery, Fleming abandoned penicillin, judging that it was just too difficult to produce in mass quantities.  

It was not until ten years later that his research was picked up and completed by Howard Flory and Ernst Chain, who injected mice with the antibiotic, which cured scarlet fever, meningitis, diphtheria and bacterial pneumonia. Today it is “the most widely used antibiotic in the world.”¹

But what if Fleming had simply left penicillin on the shelf?  What if Flory and Chain had not brought their own insights to the problem? Well, the world would have been a very different place.

For first flush discoveries are by definition preliminary, foundational and incomplete.  No human being ever sees the full picture right away. And the best way to perfect something is for a second set of eyes to get involved.

That’s because each of us has our own unique history, with our individual strengths and weaknesses and our own way of looking at things. And no one of us have the last word…just the latest word, awaiting the refinement of future generations.

So it is with the Gospel of Life. The great work of Pope Saint John Paul II in writing his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae would not have been possible without Pope Pius XII’s 1945 Gratissimam sane, the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, and Pope Saint Paul VI’s Encyclical letter Humanae Vitae. Each Pope’s proclamation of the Gospel, then, is built on the foundation of his predecessors, brick by brick.

For not only is each pope a different person, each is called to speak to a different world than his predecessor knew. And so it is with Pope Francis.

The context of life for JPII and Francis could not be more different. 

Karol Józef Wojtyła’s mother died when he was nine. A strong Polish patriot, he became an accomplished philosopher, a linguist and an actor. By the age of twenty had lost his mother, his father and his brother and was, in a real sense, all alone. His world view was formed by the rise of Nazism and after it communism. Reamarkably, he was ordained a Bishop at 38, made a Cardinal at 47 and become Pope at 58.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born 16 years after Wojtyła, could not have been more different,. There were five kids in his big Italian family. He grew up in Argentina and worked as a chemist, a janitor and a bouncer in a bar. At 21 he had half a lung removed and became the following year joined the Jesuits. Bishop at 56, a Cardinal at 65 and pope at 77, he reached each of those ministries at an age nearly twenty years older than his saintly predecessor.

Pope John Paul II was an academic who saw the world through the lens of the Second World War and Poland’s struggle with communism. Pope Francis is a practical Jesuit who spent most o his life working with the poor, living a polarized world intoxicated by digital data.

But the one thing that makes them both the same is their dedication to the Gospel of Life, seen albeit through the lens of their times.

Which is why I am equally amused and dismayed by a media which portrays Popes Francis and John Paul II as believing different things. In the words of Pope Francis, both are Catholic and both simply believe what the Church teaches.

Listen, for example to these words of Pope Francis, which could have as easily come from the pen of Pope Saint John Paul II; 

Our defense of the innocent unborn…needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development.²

Another example: Last November 22nd, on the occasion of the recent and tragic liberalization of Argentinean abortion laws, Pope Francis sent a handwritten note to a group of women working to defeat the law, asking in regard to abortion: “Is it fair to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to resolve a problem?”³

And again: 

I cannot stay silent over 30 to 40 million unborn lives cast aside every year through abortion. It is painful to behold how in many regions that see themselves as developed the practice is often urged because the children to come are disabled, or unplanned. Human life is never a burden. It demands we make space for it, not cast it off. ... Abortion is a grave injustice. It can never be a legitimate expression of autonomy and power. If our autonomy demands the death of another, it is none more than an iron cage.⁴

Like his Polish predecessor, Pope Francis’ disdain for abortion is closely connected to his love for the mothers this act so deeply wounds. Once, reflecting on how to care for a mother who has repented of aborting her child, the Holy Father recalled: 

“The problem is not in giving forgiveness, the problem is in accompanying a woman who has come to the realization she has had an abortion. …Because many times – indeed always – they have to meet with their child. And many times, when they cry and have this anguish, I counsel them: ‘Your child is in heaven, talk to him, sing him the lullaby that you did not sing, that you could not sing to him.’ And there is found a way of reconciliation for the mother with her child. With God it’s already there: it’s God’s forgiveness. God always forgives. But mercy also means that she needs to work this through.”⁵

From the child unjustly killed to the mother who mourns him, Pope Francis’ love for human life extends to all whose dignity is disrespected by an uncaring world. I return to his words: 

“Equally sacred…are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.”⁶

But why, Pope Francis has asked repeatedly, why do we neglect such persons? Why do we fail to appreciate their inherent, and irreducible value?

It is, he suggests, because we fail to see them as persons. Rather, we mistake them them as things to be used, traded and disposed of when they become inconvenient or burdensome.

Such a throwaway culture, the Pope suggests fosters 

“a mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable…[and makes] room for only a select few, while it discards all those who are unproductive.”  Such a mentality reduces a person to a “a mere product in a marketplace which can be discarded as so much trash.”⁷

So how do we combat such a culture of death, a culture which reduces people to products to be bought and sold and disposed of for our own convenience?

The antidote, the Holy Father proposes, is what he calls a “Culture of Encounter.”

In such a culture, each and every person is treated with a deep and profound respect, with humility and love. It is not enough to lecture the world on what is right, the holy Father suggests, as if I were the perfect person and all they need to do is to be perfect like me!  It is not enough to just yell at the world: “Don’t do that….be perfect like me!”

No, I must see in each person I meet, and especially in those whom I find hard to love, the presence of Christ and I must love and respect and be humbled by their presence. In the poor and the prisoner, in the one who constantly contradicts me and who tries to cast me as their enemy…in them I must see Christ, in them I must, as the Pope prescribes “seek above all else to love them no matter how troublesome or inconvenient they may be.”⁸

For it is only by such a face-to-face encounter with others that we can dismantle the structures of disrespect and discord which so burden out world.

Such humble love and respect accomplishes so much more than enacting laws or donating money or publishing books. For it is only the physical presence of the other which changes us and, again to quote the Pope, “challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction.”⁹

From such personal encounters grows a love of all who are marginalized, monetized and forgotten. Such a personal encounter, again in the Holy Father’s words, leads us to hearts which ache for: 

“vulnerable children on the pavements of a large city, at the bottom of a boat overladen with immigrants; children who are not allowed to be born, who cry because no one satisfies their hunger with no toys in their hands, but weapons, victims of war, abortion and poverty.”¹⁰

Thus, the Holy Father calls us to begin to live the Gospel of Life by extinguishing hatred and violence in our own hearts, before we seek to cure the hearts of others. Listen to what he says about the landscape of cyberspace: 

“Even Christians can be caught up in networks of verbal violence through the internet and the various forums of digital communication. Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped ... and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned…Here we see how the unguarded tongue, set on fire by hell, sets all things ablaze.”¹¹

The disciple of the Gospel of life, then, must be dedicated to a “consistent ethic of life,” and must also be a disciple of a Gospel of Reconciliation, which seeks to evangelize not by force, but by love, calling us to “confront every form of polarization which would divide…”¹²

This is how Pope Francis, like Pope Saint John Paul II before him, proclaims the Gospel of Life from his own experience and to his own world, teaching us that along with the need for just nations, just laws and just societies, freed from the corruption of using others, along with promoting a common recognition of the dignity of each human person from conception to natural death, we must strive to recognize the infinite dignity of the human person standing right in front of me, the one whom God has put into my life.

Such a Gospel of Life is not primarily political, although it is rightly committed to political ends. Nor is it primarily theoretical, although it is grounded in a philosophical and theological system.

Rather, as Pope Francis teaches us, the Gospel of Life is profoundly personal and it calls us to love like Jesus. For it is only with the language of love that the Gospel can be proclaimed and understood.

Allow me to conclude with some of the most beautiful words our Holy Father ever spoke in this regard.

“Love for the other cannot be reserved for exceptional moments, but must be constant in our lives. That is why we are called, for example, to safeguard the elderly like a precious treasure and with love even if they cause economic difficulties and inconveniences, but we must protect them. This is why we must give all the assistance possible to the sick, even in the final stages of their lives. This is why unborn children are always to be welcomed; this is why, ultimately, life is always to be protected and loved, from conception to its natural end. And this is love.”¹³

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1 - https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/penicillin-an-accidental-discovery-changed-the-course-of-medicine

2 - Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exultate, no. 101.

3 - Pope Francis, 22 November 2020.

4 - Pope Francis, Let Us Dream, page 115. November 28, 2020.

5 - Pope Francis. 27 January 2019.

6 - Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exultate, no. 101.

7 - Pope Francis, July 13, 2015.

8 - Pope Francis, October 20, 2017.

9 - Pope Francis, Evangelium Gaudium, no. 88.

10 - Pope Francis, 29 March, 2019.

11 - Pope Francis, 18 April 2019.

12 - Pope Francis to U.S. Congress, September 25, 2015.

13 - Pope Francis, 6 May 2018.