One of the few films I’m looking forward to:

This is a cause I am praying for:

Father Ciszek’s cause is moving forward in Rome

SHENANDOAH – It may seem that the cause for canonization of Shenandoah native Father Walter J. Ciszek is at a standstill, but according to a co-postulator of the effort, the investigation is continuing at the Vatican.

Monsignor Anthony D. Muntone, a Shenandoah native and priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown, provided the news Sunday during the 26th annual Father Walter Ciszek Day Mass in St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church, 229 N. Jardin St., Ciszek’s native parish.

Muntone and the Rev. Thomas F. Sable are co-postulators of the cause. Postulators work with the sponsoring diocese to collect the materials necessary and take the case to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

“I know that many, many of you wonder how far is the cause and can we hope that maybe next week or next month to learn that Father Walter has been declared a saint,” Muntone said from the pulpit at the conclusion of Mass. “I wish that I could say ‘Yes’ to those questions, but I can say this afternoon that the cause is moving along, and it’s moving along very nicely, and it’s very encouraging. There are a lot of things working behind the scenes that’s not very visible, and because it’s not visible, we get the impression that nothing is happening, but a whole lot is happening.”

Continue reading…

If you have never read Fr. Ciszek’s He Leadeth Me, I highly recommend buying a copy and getting started ASAP.

Today is the feast day of the North American Martyrs: St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brebeuf and their six companions. All eight died on North American soil, and three – St. Isaac, St. Rene Goupil, and St. John de Lalande – are the only Church-recognized martyrs to shed their blood in what is now the United States.

This past summer my family made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs, built at the location where Jogues, Goupil and de Lalande died. It was a powerful experience, and I wrote about it in OSV Newsweekly:

My family descended into the ravine, following the footsteps of one martyr-saint who had searched there for the bones of another. As we traced the downhill path alongside a small stream, we read the words of St. Isaac Jogues describing his search for the body of his Jesuit companion, René.

Killed at the hands of the Iroquois Indians, St. René Goupil would become the first canonized martyr of the United States. We were passing over the holiest ground in our country, we realized, in this out-of-the-way valley in New York.

Continue reading…

North American Martyrs, pray for us!

Today is the feast of St. Theresa of Avila, the great doctor of prayer. If you are serious about prayer – and you can’t be a Christian without being serious about prayer – and you don’t know where to start, then I recommend to you her classic work The Way of Perfection. This simple book emphasizes the importance of prayer and that perseverance is the most important virtue when it comes to prayer. She writes,

Those who want to journey on this road and continue until they reach the end, which is to drink from this water of life…they must have a great and very resolute determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever work is involved, whatever criticism arises, whether they arrive or whether they die on the road, or even if they don’t have courage for the trials that are met, or if the whole world collapses. (The Way of Perfection 21.2)

Commenting on this passage in my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew, I wrote,

Perseverance is a prerequisite for being a Christian; without it, we become like the seed that cannot take root in the soil (cf. Mt 13:1-8). Instead, we must strive to plant ourselves deep in the soil of the Word of God, gaining strength to withstand temptation, persecution, and tribulation; and not only to withstand them, but to grow a “hundredfold” in the faith.

The model of perseverance is Jesus, who from the beginning knew the mission of his Father and would not be deterred from it: neither the flattery of the crowds, nor the pressure from his own disciples, nor the threats from the religious and political leaders could change his course. He persevered through every hardship and temptation. It’s a mistake, however, to believe that following the Father was easy for Christ because he was the divine Son of God. The agony Jesus experienced in Gethsemane (cf. Mt 26:36-46) puts to rest any thought that accomplishing the Father’s will was not a struggle for him; it is no less a struggle for each Christian to fulfill the Father’s will for their lives.

The perseverance needed during great trials is born of forbearance in everyday hardships. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23 emphasis added). Every day, we can experience martyrdom through all the slight instances of suffering each day brings: enduring the small offenses of others, denying our personal desires for the sake of the good of family or friends, and serving others in small daily, perhaps unseen, tasks. These actions, the fruit of a persistent life of prayer and devotion, are what make possible the ability to stand strong in the face of overwhelming opposition.

“You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much” (Mt 25:21), Christ said to the man with five talents. By dying to self in small, everyday affairs, we gain strength to die to self in times of great persecution and strife. When everyone else preaches conformity to the world and its passions, the Christian continues to be founded on the Word of God, Jesus Christ. When worn down by the temptations of this world, we who desire to be saints must turn to Christ and ask for a share in the perseverance the Lord had in following the Father’s will.

If you don’t pray regularly, start today! And persevere!

Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the greatest men who ever lived and my all-time favorite saint. My family has a deep devotion to St. Francis and many years ago my wife and I decided to make him the patron of our family. We composed a prayer for this consecration and I thought I would share it today:

Jesus, our Savior, under the patronage of St. Francis of Assisi, we desire to consecrate our family to you. We pray that you will grant us the grace to live lives imbued with the charisms of poverty, humility, and charity so powerfully exemplified by your servant Francis.

Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace of detachment from material things, and gratitude for the riches of the Father’s blessings. Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace to love and serve the poor and the suffering. Through the intercession of St. Francis, we seek the grace to live out single-minded, consuming devotion to Christ, bringing the Gospel to the world in our words and actions.

Lord, unite our family in zeal for your kingdom, and bring us all to everlasting happiness with you.

St. Francis, pray for us.

Today is the feast of the greatest Latin Scripture scholar of all time – St. Jerome.

Jerome is most famous for his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. This translation became the norm in Western Christianity for more than a millennium, and its impact was far-reaching. One area, however where it had an (unintended) impact is in the debate over the filioque (“and [from] the Son”), that addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which has caused such division in the Church.

When translating John 15:26 (“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me”), Jerome used the Latin verb procedere to translate the Greek word εκπορευεται (“proceeds from”). This decision is not a bad one, as both mean “proceed” or “come forth from”. However, by the time of Jerome, this Greek word had come to take on a particular meaning in Greek theology – a meaning that was not there originally. It was used to designate the Holy Spirit’s unique mode of proceeding as opposed to the begetting of the Son in the Godhead. But the Latin term had no such meaning in the West; it could be used interchangeably for both processions.

For example, in John 8:42 (“Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me”) Jerome again uses the Latin verb procedere, yet the Greek term used is εξηλθον, which means “come forth”, but by Jerome’s time was not identical to εκπορευεται. So in the Latin, both the Son’s procession and the Spirit’s procession used the same broad term – procedere – but the Greeks used different terms for them. Both East and West agreed that both processions could not be identical, so in the West there developed an understanding that the Spirit’s procession was “from the Father and the Son“, a development that did not take hold in the East, which saw the begetting of the Son and the generation of the Spirit as distinct even though both were “from the Father.”

It is important to note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Jerome’s translation; the fact is that the languages are just different and any translation sometimes has to use the best word available even if it is not an exact match. Furthermore, the Greek language, like every language, had developed, so the term εκπορευεται came to have a precise theological meaning in the East which it did not have at the time of the New Testament. Even without Jerome’s translation decisions the debate over the filioque might have erupted, but the human constraints of language surely played their part in this divisive phrase.

St. Jerome, pray for us!

Today is the feast of my favorite Evangelist and tax-collector, St. Matthew. Contrary to most modern biblical scholars – but consistent with the overwhelming tradition of the Church – I believe that Matthew’s was the first Gospel written, and it has always been my favorite Gospel. I particularly love the story of his conversion, told in stark terms but rich in meaning. As I wrote in Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew:

Matthew’s story of his own conversion is perhaps the most personal account found in the four Gospels (Mt 9:9-13). In typical Gospel fashion, the narrative is short and modest, yet it reveals a profound self-understanding and a deep dependence upon Jesus.

The story really begins when the Evangelist, after recounting the core of Jesus’ preaching in the Sermon on the Mount, begins to detail the other pillar of Jesus’ public ministry: healing the sick, the lame, and the possessed. Beginning in Chapter 8 and culminating in the story of the paralytic in 9:1-8, Matthew describes the healing of a leper, the cure of a centurion’s servant, the restoration of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the exorcism of two demoniacs. The disease of the person or method used by Jesus does not matter — the result is the same: instant healing…

Immediately after the story of the paralytic, Matthew recounts his own calling. This context is important: he has established Jesus as a true healer of body and soul to lay the groundwork for his own transformation.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Mt 9:9-13

Here, Matthew is defending his apostolic call against those who might question a tax collector as one of Christ’s closest collaborators. As a tax collector, Matthew has the most despised of jobs: he not only had to interact with “unclean” peoples, but he also worked for the hated Romans. And if Matthew was like most tax collectors of his time, he collected taxes above the Roman rate in order to line his own pockets. On the Jewish social scale, he was no better than a prostitute — yet Jesus personally called him to be one of his inner circle of followers.

The beauty of this conversion story lies in Matthew’s recognition of his own state — he knows he is a “sinner,” yet he rejoices that his sinfulness has brought forth the great mercy of Christ. Furthermore, he is telling his readers that all who would follow Christ must first recognize their own sinfulness. Christ is not interested in the “righteous” — he wants to call sinners to his table and bring them to salvation.

St. Matthew, pray for us sinners!

In recent years it has become fashionable to question the sexual orientation of historical figures. Was Lincoln gay? Was Alexander the Great? This search has also reached into the lives of saints of the Catholic Church, and one of the main figures whose sexual orientation is in question is the just-beatified John Henry Cardinal Newman.

NPR just ran a story last week entitled “Was Cardinal John Henry Newman Gay?” In it, his relationship to Ambrose St. John is found to be suspiciously close and thus some modern people believe this may mean that Cardinal Newman was homosexual. Although the article is careful to never suggest that Newman had a sexual relationship with St. John, there are real problems with this type of speculation.

The most significant problem is that people who suggest that Newman was gay are transferring our culture into another, very different, culture. In today’s society, heterosexual men rarely express outward affection for other heterosexual men. It would be very odd, for example, for me to sign a letter to a male friend “with much love” or “your dearest friend”. However, this was not the case in Newman’s time. It was very common for men to express affection for other men outwardly in and even in flowery language. If you read any of the letters of Newman and the other men in the Oxford Movement (married or celibate), you notice immediately that they are very outward in their expressions of affection for one another. And this is the case with most educated men of Newman’s time. So when a modern person reads such letters, he must be careful not to inject our culture’s reserve to Newman’s time. Just because Newman wrote affectionately to other men says absolutely nothing about his sexual orientation, one way or another.

Regarding Newman’s close friendship with Ambrose St. John, the same cautions must be noted. Because of the rise of the homosexual movement, most heterosexual men are very hesitant to form deep attachments to other men, for fear of being misunderstood. The idea of two unmarried men being very close friends and yet having no sexual attraction to one another is becoming more and more foreign to those of us seeped in today’s over-sexualized culture. Yet this was not the case in Newman’s time. Newman and St. John were very close to one another, but that says absolutely nothing about either of their sexual orientations. Also note that they belonged to the Oratory of St. Philip, which is not a religious order with vows, and thus there is no binding rule against strong friendships like you might find in actual religious orders.

It is important to note that one’s sexual orientation does not need to have an impact on their sanctity. Every single person affected by Original Sin has disordered passions, and all of us need to overcome them. This is true no matter one’s sexual orientation. So even if it were discovered that some saint or blessed from the past was attracted sexually to the same sex, it would not detract from their struggle for sanctity. But at the same time, it is a meaningless gesture to try to “out” past figures with no real evidence, and often such an effort is used by those who wish to normalize the disordered passions of homosexuality.

So, was Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman gay? We have absolutely no reason to believe so, and speculation on the topic says more about those who push that idea than it does about Newman.

A new trailer has been posted for There Be Dragons, the upcoming movie based on the life of St. Josemaria Escriva. It looks quite promising:

This week Pope Benedict is traveling to England to beatify John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the most influential English Catholics in history. Among Catholics, the idea that is most associated with Cardinal Newman is his theory of the development of doctrine. This theory argues that over time the Church’s understanding of divine revelation grows and develops, deepening our knowledge of these truths of our faith. Today most Catholics accept this theory as correctly interpreting the history of the Church’s doctrinal teaching and see it as the practical application of the Holy Spirit’s guidance to all truth that Jesus promised (John 16:13).

But this was not the case in Newman’s time. When he first proposed this theory – in the late 1830′s, a few years before he became Catholic – his ideas were seen as quite radical. It was still twenty years until Darwin’s famous On the Origin of Species, which proposed evolutionary processes in the development of biological species, and the common understanding of history in Newman’s time was a strictly static one. Everyone believed that although time went on, most things basically stayed the same. This was true in Christian doctrine as well – what 19th century Catholics believed was identical to what 6th century or 3rd century Catholics believed. But Newman’s study of history – combined with his probing mind – realized that this is not the case; that, in fact, our understanding of divine revelation is not identical to a 6th or 3rd century Catholic’s understanding. The Church’s constant meditation on divine truths over the centuries – guided by the Holy Spirit – has led to a deeper understanding of those truth. How the Trinity was expressed in the 4th century was a development – and an improvement – from how it was expressed in the 2nd century.

Newman liked to compare the Church to a tree, which grows organically from a seed to a sapling to eventually a full-grown mature tree. The essence of the tree is the same, but its outward appearance does change. Likewise, the Church does teach the same truths today that it did in previous centuries, but our understanding of these truths has developed and therefore outwardly they may appear on the surface to be different.

Many in Newman’s time accused Newman of heresy on this point. They felt that any suggestion that our faith was not identical to the faith of a 3rd century Catholic meant that the content of the Faith had changed. In other words, both could not be correct. But Newman realized that what is true in microcosm is true in macrocosm as well. If an individual believer’s understanding of the faith grows and develops during his lifetime (and it should), then the combination of all individual believer’s understanding must also grow and develop.

What Newman also recognized during this study of the development of doctrine is that there must be some objective party which can determine if a new understanding is a legitimate development or an illegitimate heresy. How can we know that Arius’ teachings on Christ are heretical but the unscriptural word “homoousis” (used in the Nicene Creed) is doctrinally legitimate? Time and again, no matter the issue, Newman saw that it was Rome that made the correct determination in this regard. It was Rome that protected the faith from innovation but guided it in its development. Thus, shortly after completing his work Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, he followed his own developed understanding of the Faith and entered the Church of Rome.

Today is Labor Day, but unfortunately a lot of Americans are out of jobs right now. I have noticed that one of the most popular search phrases in my blog statistics is “novena for finding a job”, which takes you to a post I did over a year ago on praying a novena to St. Josemaría Escrivá for finding a job. So I thought this Labor Day I would post it again.

First here is an article on the powerful intercession of St. Josemaría Escrivá for finding a job.

And here is a PDF download of the novena prayer itself.

St. Josemaría, pray for us!

I’m sure there have been more than three great popes in our history – but there are only three which history has given the title “the Great”: Leo I, Gregory I and Nicholas I (somehow, Nicholas I is always forgotten in that list). Today is the feast day of St. Gregory the Great, and patristic scholar extraordinaire Mike Aquilla gives us a nice summary of his life:

St. Gregory the Great, whose feast is today, Sept. 3, was the first monk ever chosen as Pope. He had grown up in one of the few remaining old aristocratic families in Rome. Before taking his vows, he had been an important politician in the city, so he had some experience with administration. Nevertheless, he hadn’t intended to become the most important politician of his age. Things just turned out that way. There was work to be done, and only Gregory could do it.

Rome was in bad shape when Gregory became her bishop. The plague that had killed Pope Pelagius was still raging. The city had been kicked around like a football between Goths and Vandals, with Greeks from the Eastern Roman Empire periodically stepping in to inflict even more damage. Fires and disastrously bad weather added to the catastrophes. And the constant threat of invasion from the north by the horrible Lombards kept the survivors in terror.

These Lombards were a particularly vicious sort of barbarian, at least to their enemies. They massacred everyone in their path, except for the few who might be useful as slaves. The Lombards who weren’t pagans were Arians, so they had no qualms about plundering the orthodox churches and slaughtering the clergy. Cities emptied as they approached, and soon Rome and Ravenna were the only substantial cities left in the northern half of Italy.

In theory, Italy was governed by the Roman Emperor in Constantinople, through his exarch in Ravenna. In practice, the exarch was nearly powerless, and the Eastern Empire had enough problems of its own to worry about. The exarch might be able to hold onto Ravenna, with its naturally impenetrable defenses, but he couldn’t do much about it when the Lombards decided to march on Rome. No one was left to defend the once-proud city but Gregory. It was lucky for Rome that Gregory had both experience in government and a deep and sincere faith. It took both qualities to save the city.

Continue reading…

St. Gregory the Great, pray for us!

Today it is common for “sophisticated” Catholics as well as non-Catholics to scoff at pious practices of the past, such as asking St. Anthony’s intercession in finding lost objects. But I for one think such practices are completely legitimate and well within our Faith.

Yesterday I was trying to find our checkbook before Mass. My wife and I had looked everywhere for it during the past week, but could not find it anywhere. I was about to give up and break into a new set of checks when I remembered St. Anthony. I said a quick prayer asking him to help me find it before Mass. A few minutes later I was talking to my wife and she remembered then that the checkbook was in the pool bag. Thank you St. Anthony!

Then I figured I had his attention, so I asked him for help in finding my son’s belt. It had been missing for over a month. I walk into his room, look under his bed (which I had looked under numerous times in the past month), and voila! there it was! St. Anthony was on a roll!

I might be unsophisticated, but at least I don’t lose things for very long.

St. Anthony, pray for us!

Last month my family went on vacation in New York and while there we took a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs. I wrote an article about this trip for the latest issue of OSV Newsweekly:

My family descended into the ravine, following the footsteps of one martyr-saint who had searched there for the bones of another. As we traced the downhill path alongside a small stream, we read the words of St. Isaac Jogues describing his search for the body of his Jesuit companion, René.

Killed at the hands of the Iroquois Indians, St. René Goupil would become the first canonized martyr of the United States. We were passing over the holiest ground in our country, we realized, in this out-of-the-way valley in New York.

Continue reading…

If you are able to get a copy of the print version of this issue, be sure to check out the photographs which accompanied my article – they were taken by my daughter Lucy!

Today is the feast of the first martyrs of Rome, commemorating those Christians who died during the persecution of Nero around 64AD. One cannot overestimate the impact of martyrdom on the early Church, as until the 4th century, the Church was the Church of Martyrs.

During this time there was no formal process of canonization; most of those raised to the altars took a simple, if painful, path: they died for the faith. We can see the central place of martyrdom in Christianity with the account of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, in the Acts of the Apostles. That account is a turning point in that book’s story of the early Church. Fourth century St. Ephrem the Syrian sings the praise of the martyrs in his Hymns on Paradise:

Those who have been crowned for our Lord’s sake
with the martyr’s death by the sword
shine out in glory there
with their crowns
because their bodies despised
the persecutors’ fire.
Like stars do they blossom
in Paradise

We who live our faith in comfort and safety can easily forget the sacrifice others have made to pass on that faith. It is unlikely that any of us will face a “red martyrdom” but we must remember that all of us are called to “white martyrdom,” in which we continually die to self in order to “live in Christ.” This can be done by the mother who does the same tasks every day joyfully in order to serve her family or the businessman who gives up professional advancement or more money in order to spend more time with his family. Every day presents opportunities to die to self – we just need to recognize them and, by the grace of God, unite them to our Lord on the Cross.

Holy martyrs of Rome, pray for us!