A Brief Musing about Rejection and Conflict

 

The Paulus Institute made a measured declaration about their disappointment over the DC Cardinal's prohibition of our Vigil Mass of the Assumption planned for our Country's National Shrine. They did well to do so and their statement fits the bill. My own disappointment over this bureaucratic dismissal of good people's best efforts has no real importance. I do not see myself as a man on a mission somehow stymied by whomever. I would have loved to enjoy this gathering of good and believing people in Mary's "house" in Washington. It was not to be. For me personally, that sort of sums it up.

As such, I have nothing to say beyond the statement of the Paulus Institute, but as I ponder this picture from the Corpus Christi procession at the Sacred Theology Conference back in June in Spokane, I wonder why some are so taken up with trying to "scatter the sheep": Quare fremuerunt gentes... Why would anyone pretending to be of Christ's Church lash out at the lambs?

In his NY Times article of yesterday, Ross Douthat seems to think that those who, regarding the motu proprio, prognosticate the "success" of this latest attempt at suppression of the Mass of the Ages do not have all of the present variables in hand, which make our world different from that of France in 1848. I think he knows what he is about.

Another day is coming. Be of courage, little flock!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Life of Katharine Drexel

 

THE GOLDEN DOOR

by Katherine Burton, 

1957, P.J. Kennedy and Sons, New York

The hope which motivates me to review the books I read has always been that of encouraging others to read them and draw joy or inspiration from them. One presupposition, then, is that a book be accessible. Most of the books I read are easily obtained on Kindle, although I do occasionaly buy actual printed books. On the rare occasion, when I buy out of print books, it is usually because I have become enthused enough by someone else's review to go hunting for the book. Actually finding these rarer books and at a manageable price, however, is not a foregone conclusion.  

In the case of St. Katharine Drexel, I have had this particular book on my wish list for a long time, not because of any rave reviews I had read, but because the saint herself is mine as a South Dakotan. This so also because of one of our priests whom I knew from my youth, a former chancellor of the Diocese of Sioux Falls originating from Boston, who had found his way to South Dakota and to the priesthood through the encouragement of Mother Katharine, to spend his summers from Boston College out here on the reservations.

As the price had come way down and in celebration of retirement, I bought the book and now have read it. The author, Katherine Burton has done an incomparable job. 1957, just two years after the foundress' death, was thirty years distant from Mother's beatification in 1988 and a scarce half century before her canonization. Nevertheless, her masterful biography of this great American woman makes for enjoyable reading and the best sort of hagiography. 

Beneficence and social justice certainly mark the life and work of St. Katharine Drexel, but with absolute finesse, the author makes clear that at the center of her life and mission was her love for and attentiveness to Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

"The Golden Door" is the door of the Tabernacle, the image and the inspiration in part for Katharine's vocation coming from a dream of her stepmother Emma Drexel, so binding her to her patron saint: "Go before the Golden Door-The Tabernacle-and say, 'In Thee I place my trust.'" St. Catherine of Siena.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel

the Saint Michael in my chapel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. 

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

   When we are young we often resent having our judgment or insights discounted given our presumed lack of maturity or experience. If a priest has never worked in a parish or if he has never been entrusted with the administration of a parish, it is generally classed as a deficiency in his general formation or preparation for ministry. As I had five years at home before returning to Rome for graduate studies and for my life-long career as a Vatican diplomat living and working in various countries, people usually hesitate to level against me this dismissive criticism in discussing my pastoral action and fruitfulness in ministry. The five years between 1976 and 1981, plus two years in Prague administering the little English language parish there, seem sufficient to have given me a pass. The real question is, despite credits earned and curriculum vitae, whether one has learned life's lessons and truly has acquired wisdom. In point of fact, many times despite one's experience, life lessons are not learned because of one's superficiality or lack of reflection on life and lessons to be learned.

    I would like to think I have learned a few things in life during my years abroad and in fact I am convinced that I have, but my first six months of retirement here at home in South Dakota and a direct experience in one parish and substituting elsewhere has made clear to me at least one thing which previously in life I had either ignored, missed entirely or played down in my overall reflection on Catholic life. I suppose, I could be partly excused not so much for my forty year absence from the upper Midwest, but because of the different cultural experiences which have been mine, especially in Ukraine and Central Europe, most recently in Switzerland. Even though they were all Catholic experiences, there were some significant differences. By way of one example, I totally missed the gravity of the resistance on the part of some lay people and priests in the United States to the Communion rail, both as a church fixture and as a powerful sacramental.

    If a hundred years ago, I had claimed that rejection of the Communion rail was of the Devil, people could have dealt with it. Today, such statements are attributed to the likes of sad old ladies, craky old men, and out of control young priests cruising for cancellation by their bishops. Saying that a rabid rejection of the Communion rail is fiendish would not pass either, let alone were I to call into question that seemingly detached and pseudosophisticated dismissal of the rail by some rather urbane members of the clergy as the little folk's attachment to something either nostalgic and/or passe'. Part of the reason for this is our loss of a sense of the transcendant, of the consequences beyond this world of our thoughts, actions, and omissions. We fight our battles without an eye to the world to come and this is not exactly something new. The problem is perennial, but seems to have engulfed more and more of Catholic society going back at least a century.

   Now already for a long time, it is my impression that "confrontation and conflict" seem to be recurring themes providing color and drama generally for discourse on matters of world view, but particularly when matters of the faith come to talk. In this exercise and depending on which side of the argument you stand, individual or personal bravado and no small amount of rancor toward the little folk or toward the haughty and woke powers that be seem to be in the ascendancy. Beyond the given topic, whether it be liturgical reform, some aspect of moral teaching, all manner of issues related to the so-called culture wars, in defense of justice and truth, one might say that a major concern when people argue on life and faith seems to be striving to win the argument by their own force of will or finesse. The confrontational character of the approach of countless lay people to all matters Catholic is defiant and has reaped a harvest of priests who either scorn them or dare not speak of right and wrong or of objective moral truth in the presence of their menacing fists, figurative or not. It would seem that you can only speak tongue in cheek of having God on your side.

    One notices among more conservative Catholics the inclination to attempt to defend the faith at all cost, to vanquish the foe, or at least to strive to do something of that sort. What I am alluding to however is problematic, not because it is permeated by zeal for the Lord's House but because it smacks of the viscerally human and the this-worldly, losing itself in confrontation and conflict. This type of bitter argument is notable for its anarchic premises. Even at its most conservative or traditional it bristles at the very thought of a teaching authority holding forth within the Church. We are on our own and hence exasperated, being far from the supernatural perspective implied in consciously lining up with the Virgin in battle array (thinking of the imagery of the Legion of Mary). Despite much effort on the part of some, we as a whole are still not back to invoking St. Michael the Archangel and recognizing our struggle as absolutely exalted, pitting us, with Michael as our hero, against the principalities and powers who turned their backs on God. I hope that makes more understandable the claim that off-hand or otherwise rejection of the Communion rail is of the Devil. Denying the dominion of the Evil One here on earth does not simplify matters one iota.

    People very often go on the defensive, sometimes and not seldom they seem to be overwrought and to give the impression of being under siege, not so much by the forces of evil but simply by this corrupt generation, and that hence we must be living in the worst of all times. The temptation to panic and to outright despair is the greatest I can remember it in my 70+ years, even if the first 20 of childhood and youth were thankfully quite sheltered from life's storms. The conflict today seems not so much rooted in God as in ignoring His role in the course of human events, while fixating on the bad will of human actors whose resources far surpass mine (lump them together and call them oligarchs or big tech, if you will). I do not know if a statistical analysis would be of any significance or help in clarifying what I am driving at, but it would be curious to have figures and compare the frequency of the use of words in everyday correspondence or literature, between today and two generations ago, like "perpetrator" or "predator" when applied not to animals but to fellow human beings. It would be my impression that common discourse today on the human plain is much more inflammatory and brutal, because the field of battle has become all too this-worldly.

   Don't get me wrong! It is not my intention to dismiss people's worries and deny personal responsibility for improving the state of our world and the Church. I think we have many and great reasons for concern. But we cannot dismiss St. Paul: "For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Eph. 6:12)

    Do you pray the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel every day? Have you sufficiently searched your own soul in response to the reports of failing belief in the real Presence of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar? Have you asked yourself why these rumors calling into question the wisdom and beauty of the counsel of Pope Benedict XVI in his blessed motu proprio Summorum Pontificum? Why would anyone fight the fruits of enrichment, which are tending toward a better ordering of Novus Ordo liturgy, more devotion, better music, worship ad Orientem and hence focused on Christ, to the return to use of Communion rails? I am sorry, but I find no diplomatic way in describing disrespect for the TLM except to see it as diabolical. Why else are traditional Catholics not accorded the same indifference which masquerades as tolerance so liberally accorded to others who would harm us or worse if they could or when they can?

    As I say, "confrontation and conflict" leave me cold and suspicious. What is at stake is not my thing but the thing of God, if you will. Make the prayer to St. Michael your own and recite it daily with fervor. Join ranks in the fight against Satan with our angelic hero. Our fight is against spiritual forces, for it was not the Council at the middle of the last century which tore out Communion rails and stubbornly refuses to bend the knee to the Lord of Life. Pray and ally yourself with Michael!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI 

Faith is Confident Assurance

 

13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

at St. Mary’s in Salem

26-27 June 2021

 

Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24

2 Cor 8:7. 9. 13-15

Mk 5:21-43

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “Do not be afraid; just have faith… Little girl, I say to you, arise!”

        Our Gospel today tells of a lady in the crowd being healed after reaching out secretively to touch Jesus. Then we hear the account of Jesus raising from the dead a 12-year-old girl and giving her back to her parents. In this chapter 5 of his Gospel St. Mark shows us Jesus as God effortlessly bringing healing and life to those who reach out to Him.

“Do not be afraid; just have faith.” That is what Jesus says to the girl’s parents. To the woman in the crowd who was healed by reaching out to touch Him, Jesus reassured her by saying, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

        In the face then of two miracles, the inevitable question seems to be: “How did these people among all others in need, perhaps even in more desperate need than they, how did these people rate to receive such great and unexpected favors? And why at this particular moment in their lives?” It is clear that these two miracles are not just everyday stuff. Even in Jesus’ own day and time these events were exceptional. In our lives too, we may pray for miracles of healing, but none of us has any illusion about God stepping in to bring a loved one back from death. What is going on here? What is the message?

In its choice of a Scripture passage from the Book of Wisdom to shed light on this Gospel passage, the Church seeks to help us understand, to understand Who God in Jesus Christ is and what should be the object of our prayer. Can we or how should we approach Christ to seek His favor in our time of need?

Certainly, it is clear to us that we must count suffering and death as our lot in this life. We cannot escape hardship and perhaps even great tragedy in life. It is clear to us even before we reach adulthood that none of us is exempted from sickness, suffering, and death, the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve. The message for this Sunday, however, is that we are not simply born to suffer and die. Divine revelation teaches us that God made us for more than the time allotted to us on this earth between the cradle and the grave. Hence the words of the Book of Wisdom:

        “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living… For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”

        With this Sunday’s readings, Jesus and His Church seem to want to help us sort things out offering us a couple of immensely powerful signs of divine favor, as Jesus brings healing out of suffering to one person and restores life and family joy to another. Jesus heals and raises up from the dead freely, gratuitously, and with great compassion. The principal requirement for sharing life with the Lord would seem to be placing our trust in Him and thereby parting company with the devil. We cannot have it both ways. “…by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”

At least once a year at Easter we renew our Baptismal Promises, which have us renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises. But do we really choose Christ to the exclusion of Satan? Do we truly break with the devil and hold to Christ? Can Satan claim us as part of his company, yes or no?  To say it positively: How do we go about placing our lives firmly in Christ’s hands? Part of the answer to that question can be ours if we seek to live our lives reflectively. If prayer is a constant in our lives and if daily, we examine our behavior and our motives and never close a day without seeking the Lord’s forgiveness for sins and failures, then we are on the right path. A good examination of conscience at the end of each day is an earnest commitment to break with Satan and to seek fellowship with the Lord. Jesus intervenes where people have faith and confidence in His power to save.

Do we love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves? How do we fare with the ten commandments? Do we fulfil the duties of our state in life: as a son or daughter, as a student, as a husband or wife, as a priest, given my relative wealth or poverty, do I help others in need? Have I broken with Satan’s pride?

More often than not, people protest their righteousness going through life. They are willing to complain about others, to criticize and even sometimes condemn others, all the while insisting on their own decency. They pass through life mediocre or indifferent by failing to seek the Lord’s forgiveness and His powerful assistance. They keep Jesus at arm’s length or fail to open up their lives as did the lady in the crowd to His healing. What should be the result of my entrusting my life to Christ? What can I expect in life if Jesus is my point of reference and my consolation? What if in my need I turn to the Lord? What if I take Him at His word? “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

The girl was not dead yet when her parents came asking Jesus to heal their daughter. They came asking the Lord to restore her to good health, already a tall order, but thinkable and no doubt doable for the Master. Death unexpectedly intervened and you could imagine how this must have crushed her mother and father, but Jesus stepped in. The Lord of Life took control of the situation. “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

 Make no mistake, I am not making a pitch for the power of positive thinking, but rather asking you to renounce sin and live in the freedom of God’s children. Much of what we find burdensome in life might lose its sting or weigh less heavily upon us if we would but cast our cares upon the Lord as did the people in the Gospel.

Whether my prayer and virtuous living improves my chances for seeing or experiencing God’s favor in my life is not the point. Opening ourselves up to the Lord and burning all of our bridges to stuff begotten of Satan, however, is. If we consciously seek Christ’s Kingship over us, if we live in His love, hope is ours. We will most certainly be consoled by the Lord Who wills not death but life for us. “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Way of the Penitent

 

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

at St. Mary’s in Salem

19-20 June 2021

Jb 38:1.8-11

2 Cor 5:14-17

Mk 4:35-41

 

        Every place in the world where I have lived has celebrated both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. I would say that in most countries Mother’s Day falls on about the same Sunday in May, but Father’s Day varies quite a bit from country to country. For instance, in Italy Father’s Day is always observed on the Feast of St. Joseph, on March 19, which is very Catholic and very appropriate.      So, first off today, I would like to extend best wishes to all dads on this their day and with June bind it and them to Christ in His Sacred Heart.

Talking with the plumber who came to install my water heater in Sioux Falls the other day, he was quite insistent on how desperately American society needs integral families with both a mother and a father. He put the accent on the importance of fathers in raising children and I will do it too. May God bless our fathers those living and those who have preceded us in death. Know of your value, dads, after the example of St. Joseph, to found and protect the family! O St. Joseph, we entrust our fathers to your powerful intercession. Through these men, strengthen our families and prosper the life of your Church!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “Who shut within doors the sea…? When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, and said: This far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!”

        In the Old Testament Book of Job, God Almighty challenges the holy man Job, demanding that he back down on his complaining about being unjustly punished in this life. The Lord required of Job that he acknowledge God for Who He is, the Almighty, the only one who keeps the rolling and roaring floods under lock and key. Man cannot hold God to account for the misfortune we experience in life, even when it seems unjust, as it certainly did in the case of Job. The Lord commands the wind and the waves, besides having brought into being all that there is.

This first reading for the 12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time gives us the proper context to understand then what happens in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus calms the storm on the lake and the men in the boat are confronted with a reality far beyond their life’s experience. All of a sudden, they realize that they can see God. The Lord Jesus calms the storm by a simple command, and He teaches them something that up until that moment they had not reckoned with in terms of their teacher.

        “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

        It is a rhetorical question since the reality is right there staring them in the face. They do not need anybody to answer it for them. “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” Beyond a shadow of a doubt Jesus cannot be anyone other than God Himself.

        The Book of Job presented God’s People in the Old Testament with a monstrous challenge. For just about everyone back then it challenged the common assumption that God punishes evil and rewards good already in this life. Thanks to the scandal of Job’s terrible suffering, believers could no longer ignore or explain away the problem of evil but had to face the age-old question. Holy Scripture deprived them of their supposed common wisdom, that the one who suffers must have some hidden fault or crime? No, that is not how life works! Here in the Bible, we have the question posed in the extreme case of the good and righteous man, seemingly confirmed as such by God Who has so blessed Job up until this point in his life. How is it that all of a sudden then God permits the just man, the truly holy man to suffer, taking everything away from him: great wealth, even basic property, his family, his physical health and even his personal dignity or self-respect?

        The expression “It is not fair!” sort of sums up the mentality back then and even now. Most of us may have met someone or may even have a family member who is at odds with God because they are convinced that God is to blame for the suffering which they do not deserve. “It is not fair!” they cry and sometimes turn their back on God, maybe even in anger. The point is, that they make too little of the consequences of the sin of our first parents, of Adam and Eve. They ignore the reality of original sin which ushered suffering and death into our world. Beyond that they claim reward for good behavior and favor or protection from God for innocence. The Book of Job says no, you cannot; God is not obliged to reward the righteous with health, wealth, and prosperity. What to do? How are we then to live in this world?

Certainly not by challenging God or denying His justice and love! “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” Two points, then, are worth holding to firmly. One: Jesus is God, and His word is law. And two: None of us has Job’s credentials and as such we have much less reason than he to complain about misfortune in this life, this side of heaven.

I make these two points because of the danger in society today, even among Catholics, to deny or ignore Christ’s sovereignty. There is something heartrending about the conservative commentators who have nothing more to offer than the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They treat the United States as exceptional and claim favor in this life without reference to Jesus, the only God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The liberal commentators are even worse off, those truly tragic figures, who ignore Christ and claim as progress complete moral relativism, as if God were no longer in charge of His universe. Godlessness is not an option. It cannot be. All through the history of the Church we can find examples of saints who witnessed to God’s sovereignty and our beholding to Him.

        One of the most mind-boggling things I think I have ever read is the “Treatise on Purgatory” by Saint Catherine of Genoa. She was born in the year 1447. She describes great happiness and relief at being caught up into the terrible sufferings of Purgatory! Why? Simply because she is not lost and at some point or another heaven and not hell awaits her.

        St. John Climacus, born around 579 A.D. in his classic work, “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”, has a chapter entitled, “On Painful and Genuine Repentance, Which is the Life of Godly Convicts, and Concerning the Prison”, in which he describes the horrible punishments taken on by monks in the Sinai desert, who took on prison sometimes voluntarily for dread of losing heaven for failing to sufficiently repent of their sins.

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

        Maybe St. Catherine of Genoa and St. John Climacus are a bit much to take on, especially if prayer and penance have been neglected up until this point in your life. Even so, I would be remiss, if I did not urge you to examine your conscience and seek to stir up in your heart the love of God in Christ Who offered Himself up on the Cross for our salvation. Penance should mark our lives not just in Lent but all year long.

        Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Following the Scent

 

A few years back a group of priests invited me to come to the Marian Shrine at Knock in Ireland to speak to them about the reverent celebration of the Eucharist. At the time, I can remember being genuinely edified by these brothers in the priesthood. My one challenge, as I saw it, was to confirm them in the conviction that reverence at Eucharist was the crown jewel in a full spectrum approach to Catholic life, enabling the Sacrifice of the Mass to be what it is intended to be, namely the source and summit of Christian existence. The Council Fathers understood and taught that the Mass is not a stand alone. Our daily lives (prayer, penance, study, works of charity, uprightness, etc.) lead us toward the summit which is Holy Mass. The Sacrifice of the Mass in turn is the source of all we need by the grace of God to live as we ought that life in the world.

Some people will try to interpret that understanding as somehow rendering a family's choice of which form they attend, ordinary or extraordinary, of the Roman Rite (to use the language of Summorum Pontificum) to be a neutral choice. Obviously they are excluding such aberrations as clown masses, puppet masses, and dancing in church by the celebrant, but little else. Would that it were that simple a choice for the Catholic family! Sadly, it is not.

Sadly, because over decades of use and abuse the missal of Pope St. Paul VI has been thoroughly compromised and not just by dancers and puppets. The option provision, for example, which may have been intended to be limited in its scope, ends up being applied even to the specific formula for the valid celebration of a given sacrament. As a consequence, we have experienced the devastation and insecurity of invalid baptisms, demanding the repeat of all sacraments for young men who thought they were priests when in point of fact they had not even been baptized as infants in the faith of the Church, thanks to "these or similar words".

Egregious as these instances may truly be, my worry is not so much for the matter of validity as it is for the matter of reverence. Be assured also that just plain irreverent behavior is not what I have set my sights on, although it should be exposed and rooted out. No, rather what worries me is an atmosphere in church, marked by an all-pervading awkward sort of ignorance or unconsciousness. People do not seem to know how to behave in church. So many of them are not unlike the young man who has never been taught to take off his hat upon entering a home or for that matter on entering a church. Few people today could remember being taught as a child, as I was to tip your hat or make the Sign of the Cross simply walking, riding or driving by the front of a church for respect for the Lord Who dwells therein. Perhaps most adults have suffered sports injuries which keep them from genuflecting or kneeling before God, but I worry about all the young people and children either so oblivious or sadly hesitant when it comes to bending the knee.

How did we get to this point of being so dull really and unteachable. Faithlessness is that of which we are ailing. We are hemmed in and blocked in our attempts to express devotion. I am thoroughly convinced that it is, yes, for lack of an adequate liturgical vehicle to inspire a culture which in turn animates liturgy. We need to point to a home life which no longer teaches children to pray, which fails to inspire the next generation to thoughts about the God Who loves us and calls us each by name. But there has to be a summit of expression to which this love tends without hectic, a beautiful, silent place which confirms and further enobles the homely convictions of the smallest child and the frailest adult in advanced age. The way the missal of Pope St. Paul VI has played out has robbed us of the sublime, leaving us at best with theater, but rarely.

People ask me if I worry about what might happen to Summorum Pontificum and I respond no. I tell them our own bishops and priests worry me more, men who cannot bring themselves to admit that the Novus Ordo is up a creek without a paddle. I worry more about the consequences for the whole Church of things like the Dijon intervention, which either do not understand or deny how the Roman Church has been about the business of nurturing the faith in our people since apostolic times.

No doubt I would have better spent my time asking St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church to put in a good word for us before the Throne.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

 

Buyer Beware! Caveat Emptor!

 

11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

at St. Mary’s in Salem

12-13 June 2021

Ez 17:22-24

2 Cor 5:6-10

Mk 4:26-35

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “…we walk by faith and not by sight.”

        The Church’s liturgy for this Sunday presents us with two rather suggestive images: one, the parable of the mustard seed spoken by Jesus in today’s Gospel, and the other, the prophecy of the small tender shoot plucked from the top of the Lebanon cedar in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel. Both of these images from Holy Scripture are all about our hope for glory, rooted in the power of God to bring us, no matter how small or insignificant we may see ourselves, to flourish and thereby really to conquer in this life and for eternity. 

        “With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.”

        As a freshman in college in first semester, I had a required course in English Composition to take. Truth to be told, the teacher was not all that bad, even if for some reason he did not like me… But that is another story! One of the things I learned in that class had to do with journalism and news coverage, which back then as now was determined by the dominant press narrative. Let me explain!

My college days were back during the Viet Nam war, and in class we would take articles on the same war events from Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report and compare them, especially for content. The magazine news articles should have all read about the same because they depended on the same AP News Service or its equivalent back then for the basic story. None of the magazines had its own reporters on the ground to form an independent opinion of what was happening in a given battle or skirmish of that war. Notwithstanding they reported the facts differently, with each magazine putting its own spin on those events. You wondered what was actually happening and why editorial commentary could not be labeled as such. With events so reported, it was anybody’s guess as to what was really happening there in Viet Nam on any given day. Today, we would probably be more cynical and aggressive, crying about fake news, and wondering out loud about what was actually happening.

        I bring this up because of those couple sentences from Mark’s Gospel, explaining how Jesus taught his disciples. Obviously, this has nothing to do with news reporting but rather with teaching the true faith.

        “With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.”

        My question to myself would be whether Mother Church is doing as well with the faithful today as Jesus did back then with His disciples. Are Catholics generally enabled by the preaching and teaching we receive to know and begin to comprehend the faith which comes to us from God alone or are we left to every wind of doctrine which comes along? I am worried about basic Church teaching both of a doctrinal nature and with regard to morality. What are we being taught or not taught? Maybe more importantly, I am concerned about the Gospel message being so proclaimed as Jesus did for the sake of the truth which comes from God alone and in order to give people hope.

Understanding the parable of the mustard seed, as it applies to the Kingdom of God, let us say as it applies to the Church in the world ushering in Christ’s rule, has to be one of the key Bible passages in this regard for our understanding the Christian life and its importance for us and for our world. We the Church are that tender shoot from the top of the tree, destined to grow into a mighty Lebanon cedar. We the Church are that dinky mustard seed small as it is, like the ones we may have seen in the Dijon mustard we put on our hamburger or hotdog. It is that tiny seed which, when planted, can grow into a bush big enough to be called a tree with place for birds to nest or find refuge.

“…we walk by faith and not by sight.”

The whole COVID crisis can help illustrate this distinction between being guided by Christ’s teaching or being left to our own designs. At least in the United States now, concerning COVID many more people are beginning to see that much of the early information we were fed was not necessarily true. It may have been intended to condition or control us. I know people who were so frightened by news reports that they stayed away from Holy Mass and Communion for over a year. To the extent that the Church leaders bought into these scare tactics and bowed to short-sighted government bureaucrats, they as well were in some cases guilty of having blindly sacrificed the faith and its truth about the meaning and destiny of human life to what self-appointed guides were promoting with the slogan “Follow the Science”. In some states, everything was locked down, but nobody was really caring for the most vulnerable, namely the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. We have numbers for those who died, but not for those who because of the lock-downs or arbitrary mask mandates fell into despair and perhaps committed suicide or otherwise ruined their lives and the lives of their families.

“…we walk by faith and not by sight.”

What does it mean to live in God-given hope? What does it mean to truly have faith in God in Jesus Christ? In a lot of ways, such questions should in the first place be posed to Church leadership who in this time of crisis abdicated their responsibility to shepherd the flock entrusted to their care. Simply because none of us is knowledgeable enough to sort out everything, we need to hold to absolutes and put into perspective today’s equivalent of the supposedly all-knowing news magazines of my youth.

If we read the lives of the saints, we will note the number of them who died young serving the sick during plagues or pandemic. They did not recklessly throw their lives away but served Christ in the sick and those in need. They served a truth far beyond self-preservation. Their conviction, their truth was rooted in the second great commandment of love of neighbor. Very simply, we need to let ourselves be taught by God and keep the government bureaucrats outside the sanctuary and away from our loved ones.

        Both the parable of the mustard seed and the Lebanon cedar in the prophecy of Ezekiel are all about our hope for glory, rooted in the power of God to bring us, no matter how small or insignificant we may see ourselves, to flourish and thereby really to conquer in this life and for eternity.  The grass withers and the flower fades, but the love of the Lord endures forever.

        Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI