St. Thomas More Chicago

Father Robert Behnke

The Third Sunday of Easter
On this Third Sunday of Easter, today we honor our mothers; our mothers who still live with us on earth, and our mothers who we pray are now in heaven.  A blessed and happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers present today; you each will have a special remembrance in this Mass.
It is more than a little ironic that, during this month of May when the Church celebrates the miracle of Easter and during May gives its special veneration to the Mother of God, and when Hallmark, American Greetings, thousands of FTD florists, Macy’s and Target, and myriads of Catholic children and grandchildren, as well as children and grandchildren who profess other beliefs or even no belief, give thanks to mothers and honor to motherhood, at this very same time it became necessary last Wednesday for the Catholic Charities of Illinois to warn that they may have to halt adoption and foster care services if Illinois law requires them to place children with homosexual couples.  This news story was in the papers, and I heard it once on the radio early one morning last week, but it certainly has not received much news highlight, as far as I can tell.

The Holy Family, our example

Catholic Charities wants legislation making it clear that, when Illinois' new civil union law takes effect on June 1st—in less than a month—they can refer same sex couples to other organizations instead of servicing them, without risking a lawsuit or loss of state money.  So far, that measure has been bottled up in a Senate committee.  …There's a real possibility that we will be forced out of foster care and adoption…, Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, said at a statehouse news conference.  Naturally, promoters of the homosexual agenda in Illinois (who want us to believe that there is no such thing as a homosexual agenda), are countering that Catholic adoption programs have two choices: either to include everyone in their foster care and adoption services, or to choose to cut ties with state government; …If they do not want to let gay couples adopt or be foster parents, fine. Let them do it on their own dime and not on millions of dollars of Illinois taxpayers…, said Rick Garcia, who helped pass the law establishing civil unions in Illinois.  Catholic Charities in Illinois places children only with married couples or single people—not with couples living together without benefit of marriage.  They, in keeping with the 2000-year-old teaching of the Church, consider couples in civil unions to be unmarried and therefore not eligible to adopt or provide foster care through their programs.  They also say their religious beliefs rule out changing that policy and treating homosexual couples in civil unions as if they were married.  Refusing to place children with homosexual couples could open the Catholic Charities to lawsuits, or lead state government to cut off funding.  Catholic Charities in Illinois is the key to foster care in some parts of the state; they now might be forced to halt their services and thus leave certain locales completely without access to foster care and adoption services.  Twenty percent of adoptions and foster care are handled by Catholic Charities in the state of Illinois.  Please consider a practical act of belief, in motherhood, fatherhood, and family, by contacting your state senator and asking him to support SB—Senate Bill—1123—which will, if enacted, exempt religious institutions from having to place children in foster care, or having to place children up for adoption, with same sex couples.
My having been blest to have grown up with one mother and one father, I cannot imagine my having had, instead, two fathers and no mother, or two mothers and no father.  A mother’s love in the life of her child is absolutely unique and irreplaceable.  Just ask someone who has lost their mother, especially if that loss was premature and unexpected, or recent—even if that mother recently lost was greatly advanced in age.  Or ask someone who has had to assume the place of an absent mother in the life of a child—that has to be one of the most difficult challenges on the face of the earth.  My own mother died more than ten years ago; I still miss her terribly, especially on days like today, but I thank God daily for my having had her for 54 years.  So I believe that those who claim that having two fathers and no mother, or having two mothers and no father, is just as good as having a single, unique father and a single, unique mother, are spouting nonsense.  The law of nature—the natural law God has engraved on the heart of every person—the revealed law of God—the example of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—and just common sense—all these realities tell us that one father and one mother is God’s unique and definitive plan for all his children.  Why else would Our Lord, as His final gift to the Church from the altar of the cross, have given us His own Mother to be our Mother—and to be the Mother of the Church?  Why does the Church give such great honor and love to her whom we call Our Blessed Mother, today, and throughout the month of May, in the midst of the season of Easter, the most important and most joyful time in the Church’s liturgical calendar?  The uniqueness of motherhood is absolutely essential for the human family; two so-called mothers (without a father) dilute the uniqueness of the place of mother in the human family, and then the essence of motherhood simply evaporates.
For all Our Lord’s careful explanation of the scriptures to the two disciples in today’s Gospel, yet they still fail to recognize Jesus.  The evidence is right there before them, but they still cannot make the necessary connection; they lack the clarity of mind and heart that comes from absolute faith.  Their minds are so weighed down with the violence of the crucifixion that they cannot imagine how God can bring new life from death.  So Our Lord gives them a Sign, the Sign that He had invested with an absolutely unique meaning at the Last Supper...He took bread, said the blessing  broke it, and gave it to them…  What St. Luke calls The Breaking of Bread (…He was made known to them in the Breaking of Bread…) became the Church’s initial Biblical name for the Holy Eucharist, for the Sacrifice of the Mass.  This Breaking of Bread has a powerful effect on the two disciples; we are told that …their eyes were opened and they recognized Him….  The Sign was His Gift of Himself to them, just as it is His Gift of Himself to all of us, raising the imagination of mind and heart so that we see clearly the reality of what lies before us in our future; a future that is immediate, and a future that is everlasting.
What lies before us now, in our immediate future, is, I am afraid, difficult times—times of suffering, criticism, pain, insult, ridicule—the very same realities that lay in the immediate future of the apostles just after Our Lord’s resurrection—the apostles who did come to see their suffering as a privilege; the apostles, who, Scripture tells us, rejoiced…that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name…of the Lord Jesus; the apostles, who we hear in the first reading would let nothing stand in the way of their professing publicly their absolute faith in the Lord Jesus, His teaching, His will for us, His Church.  The peace and tranquility that many of us are blessed to remember in the life of the Church during the 40s and 50s and the very early 60s—all that has been replaced by disdain for Christ, disdain for His Church and for what it teaches—especially for what it teaches about human life—especially human life in the womb and the human lives of the infirm and the elderly; disdain for what the Church teaches about family, motherhood and fatherhood.  Even if some Catholics—even if most Catholics—decide to roll over and play dead—nonetheless, the Church will survive until the end of time: that is the Easter promise of the Risen Lord.  But if you and I choose not to play dead (because be certain: this is no game to be played), but if we choose instead to imitate the apostles, who—in the words of Peter, the Rock; Peter, the first pope—must obey God rather than men, we have the same Sign, the same Gift, the very same Breaking of Bread, the same Most Holy Eucharist, to strengthen us, to make us prepared for, and to make us spiritually immune to, the ridicule and suffering that will inevitably come our way, now, in the present, but not to last forever.  Before the two disciples in today’s Gospel recognized Our Lord…in the Breaking of Bread…, St. Luke reminds us that they did not understand that it was…necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory….  And we must never lose sight of the truth that, in receiving this Bread of Angels, it is not a corpse we receive; in Holy Communion we receive no dead body, but a Body that is alive forever—the very Body of the Risen Lord, the Pledge of our future glory.  Today especially we remember all our mothers who remained faithful to the end and so whom we have lost but for a little while; we pray that we may remain faithful, so that we might see them again, again alive—alive now with the life of the Risen Lord Jesus.  For all those who remain faithful, Easter assures us that suffering, ridicule, even imprisonment for the Faith, even bodily death, are necessary, but still only a pause, merely a moment, on the way to the joy that will last forever.

Father Robert Behnke

The Nineteenth Sunday of the Year, August 8, 2010
One of the more unusual courses I took in the major seminary was a seminar course titled “Pastoral Music.”  At the time, 40 years ago, we had to take a certain number of courses in each of the theological disciplines – Scripture, moral theology, dogmatic theology – but our choices within those disciplines were all electives.  “Pastoral music” was a course in what, after the Council, was called “pastoral theology.”  The priest who taught the class was the seminary’s director of music (in retirement now, I believe he still resides at the seminary in Mundelein), and the purpose of the class, as well as I can recall it 40 years later, was to train future priests in the importance of music in worship, especially in the Mass.  The professor Father Wojcik wanted especially to encourage future priests to sing at Mass – or more properly, to sing the Mass.  The distinction between “high” and “low” Mass was effectively done away with in the so-called “new” Mass of the 70s, and many priests no longer were praying the Mass by singing.  Anyway, the most challenging part of the seminar was that each seminarian had to compose an original musical piece that could – theoretically, at least – be sung at Mass.  None of the pieces composed in that seminar ever made it out of the classroom and into the chapel!  But there was one composition that I remember well (not mine), because of the text the composer chose to utilize; it is a line from this evening’s Gospel.  We heard it tonight as “…Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  In the composition, that came out to be sung as “To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”  That seminarian, a seminary classmate, a good friend, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago for 37 plus years, did me a great favor with his original composition.  Both the words and the simple sing-song melody became embedded in my memory bank; they have come to the surface of my memory very often in my 37 plus years of priesthood as events in the Church and in the world have developed and warranted.
“To whom much has been given, much will be expected…” was mentally playing in my mind and heart and soul this past week, after the news broke that a certain Vaughn Walker, a federal judge in California, overturned California Proposition 8, the voter-approved measure that barred legal recognition of same-sex marriages in the state of California.  The voters of California had, two years ago, approved Proposition 8 by a 52% majority in response to a court ruling that required state recognition of same-sex unions.  Judge Walker essentially told 7 million California voters: “You can’t do that.”  Without a doubt, this issue will land before the United States Supreme Court.  And, lest anyone believe that this is an issue only in California, back in 2003, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saw the handwriting on the wall. In his vigorous dissent from the Court’s majority decision in the Lawrence case—a case which struck down a Texas law against sodomy-- Justice Scalia wrote
If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is (as the Supreme Court ruled in this case) "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution" (again, as claimed by the Supreme Court)? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case (the Supreme Court holds) "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court.
Justice Scalia’s accurate prophecy is all the more unsettling because Justice Anthony Kennedy- a Catholic - and —by general consensus, the key “swing vote” when the Proposition 8 case makes it inevitable appearance before the Supreme Court—voted with the majority in Lawrence.  We need to brace ourselves.
The restriction of marriage licenses to male-female couples, Judge Vaughn Walker tells us, reflects “an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation.”  The 7 million California citizens who voted for Proposition 8 presumably thought there was a rational reason to define marriage as a male-female union. But in what has become an increasingly common display of judicial arrogance, Judge Walker substituted his own opinion for the judgment of the people.
How have we gotten to this point, in a nation in which the overwhelming majority of the population claim to be Christian, and in a nation in which 25% of the population call themselves Catholic?  How could the accumulated wisdom of countless generations – what G. K. Chesterton once called “the democracy of the dead” – generations of Americans who understood the nature of marriage in a way that the judge, and more and more Americans today, find to be untrue - how could this “accumulated wisdom” now be in danger of extinction?
“Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage,” Judge Walker asserts, and by his decision he seeks to make it so. But he offers no logical support for that bald assertion. The words “no longer” in the judge’s sentence are critical. Was there a time when gender had been an essential part of marriage, but now that time has passed? If so, what now has changed? Has there been some fundamental change in human nature? Or some fundamental change in our understanding of marriage?
There is, unfortunately, a gaping hole in the arguments that have been advanced by many supporters of traditional marriage. There has been a fundamental change in the popular understanding of marriage: the widespread acceptance of contraception.  With the routine use of contraception having severed the link between marital love and procreation—and virtually every institution but the Catholic Church mistakes the perversion of contraceptive behavior for a good—marriage has come to be seen in a very different light.  A couple entering into marriage may or may not plan to have children.  The presumption of a growing family has been lost.  Marriage is widely seen as simply a union between two loving partners.  Healthy young couples, to all appearances happy in their marriages, speak openly about “someday” beginning a family—thereby implying that the family did not begin when they exchanged vows.  A marriage is seen as a union of two people; the age-old recognition that “baby makes three” is now missing. Child-bearing has become an afterthought: something added on, something inessential.
But if marriage is no more than a loving partnership- if marriage does not involve the acceptance of children according to the will and the mind of God because of the availability and the wide acceptance of artificial contraception-why should marriage be restricted to partners of opposite sex?  Because of the wide acceptance of the morality of artificial contraception, defenders of traditional marriage are now forced to rely on weaker arguments.  Can they invoke the authority of tradition?  Progressives are anxious to dismiss especially authority based on tradition.  Or can they worry over the welfare of children?  Social scientists are eager to provide some studies suggesting that same-sex couples might be equally good parents.  Or can they cite the command of the Almighty?  Obviously, secularists insist that God and so religious beliefs have no place in public debate.  Can they note that acceptance of same-sex marriage could lead to acceptance of other heretofore illicit relationships: three-way unions, incest, even bestiality?  Homosexuals denounce these as “scare tactics,” and sympathetic voices in the media laugh off such concerns as absurd.  It is noteworthy that the current governor, as well as a former governor of California who now serves as state attorney general (both Catholics) declined to offer any sort of a vigorous defense of their state’s law; they recognized the weakness of the rhetorical positions they would be forced to advance.
            The catechism speaks about children being “granted” to parents by God.  Modern society speaks about parents “planning” a family, as one would “plan” a meal or “plan” a vacation trip.  God has given to us – we who more and more numerically resemble the “little flock” of which Our Lord speaks in tonight’s Gospel – God has given us His kingdom.  That kingdom of God here on earth includes the irreplaceable gift of holy Matrimony – including children, children granted by God, family life informed by God’s grace, parents living “…to see their children’s children…,” the gift of dancing at the wedding of one’s grandchildren.  But also “…Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more….”  What is the response of faithful Catholics to the homosexual agenda in which the goal of same-sex “marriage” is only a step toward the abolition of marriage altogether as a natural and governmentally protected reality?  Children have already become completely optional in marriage because of the legality of abortion.  Is the response of most Catholics a mere passive response – “Oh, well, what can I do about it?”  Is it a practical silence?  Do you accept without hesitation the Church’s teaching that contraception is an intrinsic evil?  Have you ever written, have you ever emailed, have you ever called, the president, the governor, your Congressional representative, your senators, your state legislators, city officials, making your beliefs about the homosexual agenda known?  Do you vote for those who support the homosexual agenda because it seems only one issue of many, just as abortion is falsely portrayed as only one issue of many?  Admittedly, at this point, constantly telephoning, emailing, writing, may very well seem like preaching to the chronically hard-of-hearing.  But if even half of the 68 million American Catholics did this – if even half of the 25% of Catholics who regularly attend Mass did this - even the hardest-of-hearing and the hardest of heart in Washington, Springfield, city hall – and maybe even in the federal courts in California – would be forced to hear and listen to something vitally important, and something that might very well save their immortal souls.  And you and I also will someday hear that simple little ditty followed by a question asked by Our Lord Himself – “You to whom much has been given, you from whom much will be expected; what did you do with the treasure of faith and grace and truth given to you…by Me?”
            +In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

By Father Behnke

Father Robert Behnke

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
"Thou shalt love The Lord Thy God…Thou shalt love Thy neighbor as Thyself….”  Can there be a word in the English language that is so often misunderstood and thus so often misused as the word “love”?  I love…ice cream…my dog or my cat…my job…winter or summer…my mom and my dad…my friends…my wife or my husband…God.  The fact that Our Lord commands in another place that we must…love our enemies…bears great significance to understanding that word “love,” as well as the other word…neighbor.  The 613 commands of the Law of Moses are distilled in the Old Testament into these two commands found in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy; Our Lord repeats them, but as we know from His parable of The Good Samaritan, He gives the word neighbor an enlarged meaning.  For me, for many others, that is surely one of the great challenges of this commandment.
To understand the word love, as given in these two commands to love God and love our neighbor, perhaps it is better to figure out what that word love does not mean.  After all, we should not compare our love neither of God nor of our neighbor to our love of ice cream.
I am not a particularly rabid fan of prime time entertainment; were I given a test of naming current prime time entertainment TV shows, I would flunk.  More to my taste is I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners.  But after my father died, I would often stop in to see my mom around suppertime, and she would often enough be watching TV.  She introduced me to Everybody Loves Raymond.  For those unfamiliar, the Barone family – Raymond, wife Deborah, girl Allie and twin boys Michael and Geoffrey, live across the street from Raymond’s parents Frank and Marie and his older brother Robert.  The Barones are all Catholic, and many of the episodes portray especially Raymond and his wife as being certified cafeteria-type Catholics; this portrayal is often subtle, soft, and meant to be inoffensive, and so all the characters come across as good, morally speaking.  I am certain that many miss that Catholic Raymond and Deborah and their children demonstrate little apparent knowledge of the Faith; their behavior shows their lack of knowledge.  One episode that demonstrates all this quite clearly features Allie asking questions about life.  At first Raymond thinks Allie wants to know the facts of life, so he gears himself up for this.  But not so. Allie’s question is this: If we all go to heaven when we die, then why does God put us here?  Raymond first swallows his tongue and comes up with answers unbelievably goofy (“There is an overcrowding problem in heaven”).  But then the adults in the family attempt to figure out a serious answer.  They even call their parish priest, Father Hubley, for an answer (Father Hubley never calls back, at least not by the end of the show).  The question remains unanswered at the end (there is a kind of unspoken, fuzzy, feely, resolution, but no clear answer); no clear answer can be given, because there is no answer to that question, because the question itself is faulty, assuming facts not in evidence.  Allie’s question needs to be corrected by her parents, but it is not.  And sadly, this is a question stated in many ways today, all of which end up assuming the same false premise: God’s love is more powerful than anything, and so how can an all-loving God allow people to suffer eternally for their sins?  He cannot, and so consequently – as little eight-year-old Catholic Allie states – If we all go to heaven when we die, then why did God put us here?  If Allie were to think about her question long enough, and if she knows anything at all substantial about her Catholic Faith, she may be able to figure out that there is a problem with her premise – we all go to heaven when we die.  Only when she changes that premise can her question – why did God put us here – be satisfactorily answered.  Indeed, if we all go to heaven when we die because God’s love is so powerful that it supersedes His justice and His holiness, then will He not even draw the devil to Himself in the end?  If we all go to heaven when we die, if God’s love is unrestricted in the human sense, why did He ever allow hell and the devil and his fallen angels in the first place?  Why did He bother to banish Adam and Eve from paradise?  Why did He allow them to fall into sin?  Why did He banish Cain after Cain murdered Abel?  Why did He destroy the earth by flood?  Why did Israel end up in Egyptian slavery?  Why did He allow His Divine Son to become a man and die a horribly innocent death on the cross?  Why do some Christians bother to perform acts of penance or acts of charity?  Why did Our Lord bother commanding love if everyone in the end goes to heaven no matter what they do, even if they equate loving God and neighbor with loving Italian food?  Why bother with any of this if, in the end, nothing we do or don’t do on earth matters anyway, because, as Allie has obviously been taught, we all go to heaven when we die?
The Church, as we see today from the beatification of Blessed John Henry Newman, is quite cautious in declaring with absolute certainty that any particular individual is in heaven.  Compared to just the billions and billions of Catholics who have lived and died over the past 2000 years, only a tiny fraction has been declared to be in heaven.  St. Thomas More died a martyr in 1535, but his canonization only took place 400 years later, in 1935.  And the Church is infinitely more cautious in declaring that any one certain individual is in hell – that kind of declaration has never happened; the Church has never stated with certainty that any one particular individual is damned, simply because we cannot know a person’s final state of soul at the moment of death.  But that is a far cry from what can be called universal reconciliation – the popular belief today that there is no hell, because everybody goes to heaven when they die.  The Church has a word for that belief: presumption. One presumes on the mercy of God and so lives his life more or less as he pleases.  But even little Allie, were she to reflect on her young life, would see the foolishness of this lie.  As all children, Allie at some time misbehaves, and, her parents, being decent parents, punish her for that misbehavior.  She may not feel particularly loved as she is punished, but she still in her heart knows that her mom and dad love her.  The bromide used by parents punishing their children this hurts me more than it hurts you, spoken in genuine sincerity, is likewise spoken in genuine love.  If a parent would let a child do whatever he wants, is that a sign of love or a sign or possible weakness or neglect?  God is neither weak nor neglectful; God is no pushover.  Rather God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – is perfect in justice, love, and mercy.  And genuine love can neither destroy justice, nor cancel it out.
It is no secret that the apostolic journey of Pope Benedict that took place these past few days stirred no little controversy in Great Britain.  The crowds of the faithful, however, seem unperturbed by whatever controversy there was.  Now as far as I could tell, the Holy Father did not use the word “hell” even once.  But he did not have to; he spoke of conversion, faithfulness to Christ, vocation, penance and shame for child abuse, the Church and all the world finding its own deepest meaning in the meaning of the Blessed Sacrament.  What was the point of anything the pope said, or even of his coming, from Rome to England and Scotland – no walk in the park even for an 83-year-old pope – if in the end our choices in life make no difference and so have no meaning?  Why bother to beatify Cardinal Newman, why bother to beatify or canonize anybody, if sainthood is assured us all, since going to heaven at the end of life is what it means to be a saint?  But Our Lord’s parable of Dives and Lazarus teaches the world that our choices on earth determine our eternal destiny.  The Holy Father undertook this “apostolic journey” – the Holy Father “bothered” to make the trip – to “…speak the truth in love…”; because love demands the truth be spoken; because love and truth are two sides of the same coin; because Our Lord Who is love incarnate, is “…the Way, the Truth, and the Life….”  The Holy Father continues to “bother,” because so much of the world knows not the Truth and so cannot know the meaning of the command to “…love God…and love Thy neighbor as thyself….”  Is it too dramatic, too exaggerated, to warn the world that it may be going to hell in a hand basket?
Believers are rightly shocked by the horrors of human suffering as a result of what the Church rightly calls sin.  It is unimaginable for one who believes in God Who is Love, at the same time to believe also that sinners unrepentant at the moment of death of grievous mortal sin can nonetheless reach heaven.  But the sufferings of Christ on the cross teach us that one who suffers on this earth does not sin in the suffering, nor endanger his immortal soul; earthly suffering and eternal suffering are not at all the same.  To this point, the words of Blessed John Henry Newman are instructive; these are his words from his Apologia pro Vita Sua – a history of his religious opinions – his contrasting the horror of suffering to the gravity of sin ought to lead us to both repentance and frequent, even devotional, confession:
The Catholic Church holds it is better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremist agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.
The most extreme human suffering on earth does not have eternal consequences.  The moral actions of man do.  Even an unrepented venial sin is shocking and awful in its effects.  When Our Lord taught us to pray, the final petition of His prayer was “…and deliver us from evil.”  Why bother to make this prayer for deliverance from evil of there is no evil from which we can be delivered?  To love God with all we are, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, means that the evil of sin can have no place, no home in our lives; it means that we know there is a place called hell and know there is nothing good about it; and so it means we know the meaning of life, the meaning of supernatural love we have known from childhood: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.


By Father Behnke

Father Robert Behnke

You may remember that two days ago the talk of the town was not the mayoral election, nor the events in Egypt, but the weather.  There was actually a handful of people here at Masses on Wednesday – the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, also known as Candlemas, the day on which candles are traditionally blessed – candles which are symbols of Jesus, the Light of the world – candles to be used in church during the coming year as well as in your home when a priest or deacon brings the Blessed Sacrament to the sick – and then a few more people managed to come on the following day, Thursday, the Feast of St. Blase.  For the blessing, two blessed candles in a kind of cross-shape are placed around the recipient’s neck; the priest prays Through the intercession of St. Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness…and then concludes by making the Sign of the Cross.

 Candles, those blessed for use in church and in homes, are for us symbols of our Christian vocation given at our baptism.  At baptism, the newly baptized is given a candle and told Receive the light of Christ.  Parents and godparents of infants and small children are told …this light is entrusted to you, to be kept always burning brightly….  This powerful symbol of light is mentioned often in Scripture, in both the Old and the New testaments; in Isaiah: the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in a land of gloom, a light has shone…; we hear this read on Christmas at midnight.  Today we hear from Isaiah that…light shall rise for you in the darkness…; the responsorial psalm repeats the refrain…The just man is a light in darkness to the upright.  When Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple on the 40th day after His birth, the prophet Simeon hails Him as...a light to reveal you to the nations….  And Our Lord Himself tells His disciples both …I am the light of the world….and in today’s Gospel…you are the light of the world….

Is this mere poetry, or just use of what is sometimes called a primordial symbol – a symbol easily understood by people of every time and place and culture – in this case, light and darkness; who, after all, does not recognize the meaning of darkness and light?  Or is the revealed word of God telling us something more: more important, more about God, more about those who want to follow God, possess God, be possessed by God?  If you had been able to attend Mass on Thursday, you would have seen that the Mass vestments were red, a symbol of shedding one’s blood for Christ; the ribbon joining the candles today for the blessing of throats is red for the same reason, as well as the stole around the neck of the priest.  St. Blase was a martyr – that was his witness; that was how he, by the grace of God, joined together those two truths taught by Our Lord: …I am the light of the world….and…you are the light of the world….  His light was no mere empty symbol; St. Blase shed his blood in imitation of Our Lord Who shed His blood for us.  St. Blase configured his life to the life of Our Lord; he could truly say, with St. Paul…I live now, not I, but Christ lives within me….
I hope you will give attention, in today’s bulletin, that Father Campbell, once-a-week for four weeks on the next four Mondays, will offer a course Introduction to the Social Teaching of the Church, a course which I am confident will be most interesting and so well worth your time and effort.  Reading materials for the course include Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, written to honor the 100th anniversary of the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII.  Leo XIII is best known for this 1891 encyclical, which was the Catholic Church’s response to industrialization, class conflict, and the growth of capitalism.  Famously, Pope Leo defended both private property and the right of the workers, while critiquing both Marxism and unbridled capitalism.  Major social encyclicals which followed - Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno and also John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus - honor Rerum Novarum not only by commemorating its fortieth and hundredth anniversaries but also by reinforcing and developing its most important teachings.
But Rerum Novarum was not Pope Leo’s first or his only social encyclical.  In fact, from the first year of his papacy, 1878, until his last encyclical in 1902, Pope Leo devoted much of his magisterium to social issues.  While Rerum Novarum continues to be celebrated today because its wisdom has been proven and its advice put into practice, another social encyclical, Sapientiae Christianae, which Pope Leo issued one year before Rerum Novarum, has largely been ignored, with devastating consequences for the Church and the world.
In Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo defines the duties of Catholics in civil society that are more basic and thus even more important than those described in his more famous encyclical.  What Pope Leo does is explain how Catholics are to understand what Our Lord, the Light of the world, means – what Christ wants of us, what He wants us to do as Catholics when the Faith is challenged, or denigrated, or ridiculed, or ignored even by some Catholics as often happens today – what Our Lord means when He tells us today …you are the light of the world….  121 years ago, Pope Leo clearly foresees the difficulties of being a faithful Catholic in modern civil society.  He emphasizes that Catholics need to obey God, even if that brings them into conflict with civil authority.  Here, 121 years ago, is what Leo XIII wrote if civil law clearly contradicts divine law: …then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty; to obey, a crime….  Unfortunately, Pope Leo finds, already 121 years ago, societies are more and more frequently instituting exactly the sort of legislation that contradicts divine law.  To be able to discern which laws must be resisted, Leo says that Catholics must …make a deep study of Catholic doctrine.  Once imbued with this doctrine, it is their duty to defend the truth, publicly….
How can Catholics be …the light of the world….in imitation of The Light of the world if they are ignorant of the teachings of The Light of the world?  Both commands – to learn doctrine, and to proclaim it – have too often been ignored by Catholics, especially in the last fifty years.  At the very time when the Second Vatican Council provided a detailed blueprint for the Church, many Catholics lost any distinctive sense of Catholic identity; then, in the 1990s, when the Catechism of the Catholic Church provided a detailed and accessible compendium of all that Catholics must believe, many Catholics stopped teaching and learning doctrine.  That is precisely why opportunities such as Father Campbell’s once-a-week-for-four-weeks course are so very important.  How can we proclaim, and how can we defend, what we don’t know?  If you have ever had a Jehovah’s witness come to your door, ask yourself if you felt competent to debate with him the meaning, and to correct his misunderstanding, of what is taught by the Catholic Church.
This might not have been the tragedy that it has been if the past fifty years had been an age of strength of faith and practice of tradition, but clearly it was the very opposite: an era of change and deep challenges to the most basic Catholic moral teaching.  We have a Catholic governor applauding civil unions and claiming that, in this, his faith motivates him and supports his action; we have several Catholic candidates for mayor who support laws permitting abortions and same sex marriage; do they not know their Catholic Faith, or do they not care what it clearly teaches?  In the face of the sexual revolution and the rise of no-fault divorce, abortion, contraception, and overt homosexuality, indifference and retreat have been the comfort-zone responses of most Catholics who cite “prudence” and “diversity,” masking a desire not to lose credibility with the world around them.
Pope Leo XIII, however, had no patience with silence, with this sort of comfort-zone: again, he writes…To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe…. 121 years ago, this pope proclaimed that the only ones who win when Christians stay quiet are the enemies of truth.  The silence of Catholics is particularly disturbing, the pope says, because frequently a few bold words would have vanquished the false ideas.
And these words of Pope Leo, written 121 years ago, could have been written this very afternoon, so apt they are in describing what it means today to be …the light of the world….: these words: …Christians are born for combat….It is part of their nature to follow Christ by espousing unpopular ideas and by defending the truth at great cost to themselves….One of the main duties of Christians is…professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine…; a second is…propagating it to the utmost of their power….  In these dangerous times, it is not enough to preach the Catholic Faith only through personal example.  Pope Leo insists that Catholics must preach the Faith…by open and constant profession of the obligations it imposes….A negative reaction from the public, far from being a sign of mistaken ideas, can serve as evidence of exactly the opposite fact….Jesus Christ…, the pope says,…has clearly intimated that the hatred and hostility of men, which He first and foremost experienced, would be shown in like degree toward the work founded by Him….
In short, it is not enough, in being…the light of the world…to be merely what society calls “a good person,” or merely to give good example.  Many of the social problems in the West today would not exist if Catholics had taken this encyclical seriously over the past 121 years.  But it is not too late.  It is never too late, because Jesus, TheLight of the world, has guaranteed that He is with us until the end of time.  So when you come forward today, to have your throat blessed, or infinitely more importantly, when you come forward in adoration to receive in Holy Communion the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Him Who is The Light of the world, keep in mind that that Light, the Light of the world, bled for you; that St. Blase shed his blood in total and complete witness to TheLight of the world; and that, indeed, as Pope Leo also wrote 121 years ago, Satan still …prowls about the world, seeking someone to devour….and so we too have been, in Pope Leo’s own prophetic words, …born for combat.

Fr. Behnke

(Given on 2/6/11)

Father Robert Behnke

Once again in the announcements tonight, you will hear about the short course Father Campbell is presently offering.  I refer to it as a short course because it is offered on the four Monday evenings in February, and the first of those Mondays has already passed.  Nonetheless, I want to encourage you, as I did in my homily last weekend at another Mass, to take advantage of this special opportunity.  I can vouch for this being an opportunity, since I attended last Monday’s first session with about ten others; several folks mentioned that, but for the cold and snowy weather, they would have come last Monday.  I can understand how difficult it may be to come out again at night after a long and a hard day’s work; nevertheless, actually, I wish the whole parish would come, both because, as I already said, I can vouch that Father Campbell is doing a fine job in his presentation, but also because the topic of the course – the social doctrine of the Church – is so important, yet many Catholics are so unfamiliar with it, and the understanding of its importance is crucial for our times - our times in America and our times in the world.  If you think not, reflect for a moment on the major news story of the past several weeks – Egypt: its radical, immediate, change in its government; its effect on the stock market; its effect on the price of oil and so on the prices gasoline and heating fuel and airline fuel and airline ticket prices and thus its effect on transportation and jobs and employment and unemployment; the prominence of what the media refer to as “the Muslim Brotherhood” – and what, in all these effects, are right and just and Christian and loving and pleasing to Our Lord.  I have heard it often claimed that the social doctrine of the Church is among the Church’s best-kept secrets.  I spoke at Mass last week about how, if the world had paid attention to what Pope Leo XIII wrote 121 years ago in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, many of the world’s problems and catastrophes of the last 121 years might have been avoided.  To be a faithful Catholic means, as Pope Leo wrote 121 years ago, that each of us must grow in both knowledge and propagation of everything the Church teaches; how can we defend and how can we spread truths we don’t know? 

Over the past generation or so, there has been a serious flaw in the implementation of Catholic social teaching in the United States.  Many Catholics, including many Catholic leaders, have thought to promote big government solutions to social problems with little thought to the negative consequences of subordinating every aspect of the social order to the power of the State, something which all the popes going back 120+ years to Pope Leo XIII have stated is not what the Church teaches or wants to see practiced.   Although this is slowly beginning to change, as our bishops are now finding themselves in an increasingly adversarial relationship with government on strictly moral grounds, it is important to observe that this long-time default position has been derived from a false understanding of the Catholic social principle of solidarity – a principle which Father Campbell explained well last Monday and something which I am certain about which he will speak again.
Many Catholics, especially Catholics and their leaders in the great industrial cities of America which have had such large Catholic populations, have confused solidarity with the adoption of governmental social programs.  But right at the beginning of his most recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate – Love in Truth - Pope Benedict identified this as an error when he wrote: Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State.   He also discussed the propensity to rely on large, impersonal institutions, which can never be a substitute for solidarity…asense of responsibility on the part of everyone…and to mature into a love that ‘becomes concern and care for the other’….  I hear in those words of Pope Benedict a contemporary echo of the words Our Lord speaks in the Gospel tonight:  …whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven….whoever is angry with his brother is liable to judgment….Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise….you will not be released until you have paid the last penny….everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart….whoever divorces his wife…causes her to commit adultery….Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’  Anything more is from the evil one…. Over and over again, Our Lord – perhaps with more than just a hint of righteous anger coming from His knowledge of how often His commandments are broken, avoided, disregarded, passed over, or minimized in importance – is telling us you and I are responsible for what you and I do; you and I are responsible for what you and I do both for others and to others.  Again, in the words of Pope Benedict – the Vicar of Christ - …a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone….
Unfortunately, in America, too much confidence has been placed in those social institutions of government, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective of personal care, personal solidarity, responsibility for the need of every citizen in any and all circumstances automatically.  In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because personal responsibility for oneself and for others, for the authentic Christian, is primarily a dimension of the vocation received at the moment of baptism: …thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (not thyselves)….as long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it for me….  But this free assumption of responsibility in solidarity is precisely what is lacking when we always turn to government to implement broad social solutions rather than our doing our personal duty as baptized Christians.
In fact, a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity requires engagement with another key Catholic social principle, namely subsidiarity.  The meaning of subsidiarity is that things should be done on the lowest level possible, and that if assistance is needed from higher levels of organization, the higher levels should, whenever possible, assist the lower levels rather than replace them.  That is why, for example, most of the experience of the Church for most Catholics takes place in their local parish rather than at archdiocesan headquarters or in Rome, and why the Catholic Church does not, as do some Protestant denominations, have huge massive mega-churches.  This is a foundational Catholic social principle which is written into Church law as well as Church practice.  Subsidiarity is essential to human dignity because it ensures that people are directly involved in the solutions to their problems, and that these solutions are implemented and controlled at the levels closest to home, where they can be influenced or even managed by those most affected.  That is why, for example, in this little parish there is a food pantry on site for those in need.
Subsidiarity encourages both personal responsibility and the creative development of community-level organizations to assist individuals in the resolution of particular problems.  These could be neighborhood associations, churches, businesses organized to provide needed services, fraternal organizations, unions, professional associations, and charitable groups, with the involvement of formal government bodies only when the power of law and law enforcement genuinely needs to be invoked.
All of this has an intrinsic supernatural dimension, as we see clearly from the words of Our Lord in tonight’s Gospel.  Can we ever expect the government – especially our current government – on its own, to stop, or even to curtail, certain sins and crimes like abortion, euthanasia, same-sex unions, research using human embryos, cloning, if we just sit back and wait and say to ourselves something like…it’s the government’s place to take care of this; it has nothing to do with me…?  Is that the straight Yes or No Our Lord requires from me, or is my multiplication of excusing words something that is…from the evil one…?
In most cases, the invocation of the power of the State diminishes personal responsibility.  We will like this only if we mistakenly think it gets us off the hook.  In other words, the invocation of State power typically means: the State will make things right; therefore, I don’t have to worry about this any longer….  But, of course, in most cases, the State cannot make things right at all.  As the Pope writes…institutionsare not enough, for human development…involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone….
Especially if you are a Chicago resident voting next week for mayor and city clerk and city treasurer and alderman, but no matter where you reside, keep in mind two definite truths:  The Church’s magisterium – its authority to teach authentic apostolic truths - exercised by the popes especially in their encyclicals, including all the great encyclicals treating social truths and justice - this teaching magisterium operates always under the promised guidance of God the Holy Spirit.  Western culture, including our American political system, while seemingly at the present time a greater and a stronger thing, sadly has no such supernatural guarantee.  So, whom will you trust, with your life, and with your soul?
Father Robert Behnke

Fr. Benjamin Reece, S.T.D. (Cand.)

"So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was being made to God for him by the Church without ceasing”   Acts   12:5
Catholics have prayed for the Pope as the successor of St. Peter since the earliest days of the Church,  but the need for this prayer “without ceasing” has never been greater than today.

The Papacy as an institution and the Pope as a person is assailed almost daily from the right and the left,  from the east and the west, from inside the Church and from without.  Added to this are his extreme frailty and the tenuous state of the Church in a  modern, secularized world. We also know that the Pope has powerful enemies, not of this world; that the demons themselves are seeking to destroy the Church.  That is why Jesus reassured Peter that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church.

This means however that there is a real and present danger from their malicious influence and and hellish intrigue.  Jesus told Peter that “Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat and I have prayed for you that you may turn and strengthen your brethren.”  St.  Peter himself tells us that “the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour,  stand up to him strong in faith.”  Pope Leo XIII was shocked in his famous vision when he saw that the Devil had been give a period of time to tempt the Church and so he composed the famous St. Michael prayer to be recited after low Mass.  Finally, Pope Paul VI boldly announced that the smoke of Satan had entered into the Church.

The horrible homosexual scandals of recent years are only the tip of the iceberg of these demonic plots.  Widespread dissent and heresy in high places are symptoms of the most malevolent and successful satanic conspiracy in history to destroy the holy Catholic Church.  Satan cannot succeed ultimately, but he has seduced many souls and these horrible scandals and the orchestrated media campaign against the Church have weakened her moral authority and undercut the new evangelization.  The new springtime of the Church, so longed for at Vatican II, has not yet been realized due to this masterful, demonically organized plan to infiltrate and corrupt the Catholic Church.

The Need for Unceasing Prayer

With the decrease of contemplative orders in the world, the laity must realize their universal call to holiness through a renewed and intense prayer life.  This is being realized in many prayers through Eucharistic Adoration and Reparation.  It is the laity with their Bishops, parish priests, and consecrated souls who must answer this call to unceasing prayer so as to be sentinels on the walls of the Church, driving back the modern demonic assaults and liberating Mother Church from the devilish intrigues that are occurring even in her bosom.

The Saints are excellent teachers in this battle for souls and they give us an inspiring example of the power of prayer for the Holy Father as the Vicar of Christ.  We see how the early Church prayed for St. Peter and the liturgy contains prayers for the Pope as the Bishop of Rome since the 3rd century.   However, modern saints have been increasingly attentive to the need of prayer for the Pope especially since the time of St. Catherine of Sienna.  St.  Catherine lived in a time of great corruption and confusion in the Church, and she offered her life as a victim soul for her own sins and for those of  the clergy,  including the Pope who was resisting God’s call to move back to Rome:

               ”This soul then, being purified by the fire of divine love, which she found in the knowledge of herself and of God, and her hunger for the salvation of the whole world, and for the reformation of Holy Church, having grown with her hope of obtaining the same, rose with confidence before the Supreme Father, showing him the leprosy of the Holy Church, and the misery of the world, saying, as if with the words of Moses, ‘My Lord, turn the eyes of thy Mercy upon Thy people and upon the Mystical Body of the Holy Church, for thou wilt be the more glorified if Thou pardonest so many creatures, and givest to them the light of knowledge, since all will render Thee praise when they see themselves escape through Thy infinite goodness from the clouds of mortal sin, and from eternal damnation; and then thou wilt not only be praised by my wretched self, who have so much offended Thee, and who am the cause of instrument of all this evil, for which reason I pray Thy divine and eternal love to take Thy revenge on me, and to do mercy to thy People, and never will I depart from Thy presence until I see that thou grantest them mercy.’”  (The Dialogues of St. Catherine of Sienna,  A Treatise on Discretion).

What stands out in the prayer of the Saint in comparison to our modern “prophets” is her humility and ardent love for the Church.  She doesn’t focus on other people’s sins but on her own, and for this reason her prayer for the Church is heard by the Eternal Father.  How many pseudo-prophets, addressing the Bishops after the scandals had even an ounce of such humility or love? And with what arrogance do we see modern Catholics chastising the universal Church and the Papacy, as if sinless themselves.

Yet Our Lord does not hesitate to give advice to his prelates and Bishops though his beloved Catherine,  especially about the need to reprove sinners with holy fire and spiritual unction.  Our Lord makes the point to her and to the Church of all times,

               ”That correction is necessary before words of encouragement, neither the civil law, nor the divine law, can be kept in any degree without holy justice, because he who is not corrected, and does not correct others, becomes like a limb which putrefies, and corrupts the whole body, because the bad physician, when it had already begun to corrupt, placed ointment immediately upon it, without having first burnt the wound.  So, were the prelate, or any other lord having subjects, on seeing one putrefying from the corruption of mortal sin, to apply to him the ointment of the soft words of encouragement alone, without reproof, he would never cure him, but the putrefaction would rather spread to the other member, who, with him, form one body under the same pastor.  But if he were a physician, good and true to those souls, as were the glorious pastors of old, he would not give salving ointment without the fire of reproof.  And, were the member still to remain obstinate in his evil doing, he would cut him off from the congregation, in order that he corrupt not the other members with the putrefaction of mortal sin.    But they act not so today, but, in cases of evil doing, they even pretend not to see.  And knowest thou wherefore?  The root of self love is alive in them, wherefore they bear perverted and servile fear.  Because they fear to lose their position or their temporal goods, or their prelacy, they do not correct, but act like blind ones, in that they see not the real way in which their position is to be kept.  If they would only see that it is by holy justice that they would be able  to maintain it.  But they do not, because they are deprived of light. but thinking to preserve their position with injustice, they do not reprove the faults of those under them, and they are deluded by their own sensitive self love, or by their defire for lordship and prelacy, and they correct not the faults they should correct in others, because the same or greater ones are their own.  They feel themselves comprehended in the guilt, and they therefore lose all ardour and security, and, fettered by servile fear, they make believe not to see.  And moreover, if they do see they do not correct, but allow themselves to be bound over with flattering words and with many  presents, and they themselves find the excuse for the guilty ones not to be punished.  In such as these are fulfilled the words spoken by my Truth, saying:  ‘These are blind and leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch.’”  (The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Sienna, ‘A Treatise of Prayer’.   p.245-246)

St. Catherine of Sienna was a great mystic,  a victim soul, a stigmatist, and the consecrated Bride of Christ.  Yet even her efforts were only partially successful:  getting the Pope back to Rome, but not really able to cure the Church of her spiritual leprosy.

The Prayer of other great Saints for the Church and the Pope

Most if not all modern Catholic Saints have had a special devotion to the Papacy, and have prayed frequently and ardently for the Vicar of Christ as the successor of St. Peter.   Most notable in this group was the redoubtable, soldier saint—St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a true Trinitarian mystic and a man of the Church whose men took a special vow of obedience to the Papacy.  This was not merely some moral or practical arrangement, but an outgrowth of an ecclesial spirituality that saw the Divine founder of the Church choosing Blessed Peter as the foundation of the Church’s faith.  St. Ignatius was not merely a converted military man who was not serving a new earthly master, but a mystic whose faith helped him to see the necessary connection between obedience to God and obedience to the papacy.  We cannot say that we love Jesus and not love his Bride the Church, even in her human and tainted condition.  Hence, love for the Pope and prayer for him are integral to authentic Catholic spirituality.  Indeed, this kind of love and loyalty to the Papacy have been universalized by the example of Loyola and his men.

Certainly, since the time of St. Ignatius this practice of prayer for the Papacy has been a normal practice of every canonized Saint.  With Luther’s rebellion, the role of the papacy was more and more seen as the stabilizing force in the Church and as a Divine guarantee of her triumph over the gates of Hell.  Consequently the Saints of the Counter Reformation, and the survivors of the age of Masonic revolution, looked to the papacy for guidance and found it in a series of holy Popes.

Among these modern saints we can cite St. Don Bosco whose famous vision of the Church as a ship under assault from the forces of evil is resolved when a holy Pope steers her between the two pillars of Marian Devotion and Eucharistic Adoration.  The sober English convert, Venerable John Henry Newman, was so devoted to the Mystical reality of Peter as the Vicar of Christ that he walked barefooted between the train station and the Pope’s residence.  Saint Jose Maria Escriva made an all night prayer vigil his first time   in Rome from a room where he could see the Holy Father’s window.  St. Padre Pio, in his final days, sent Pope Paul VI a message assuring him of his prayers during the ecclesial revolt triggered by Humanae Vitae.  Finally, we can see the extraordinary closeness of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta with our current Holy Father, and the continuing example of her holy sisters who pray for and sacrifice for the intentions of the Pope.

Less well known, but of great importance in understanding this spiritual principle, is the example of Blessed Jacinta of Fatima.  When we read of the Fatima apparitions and the response of these children to the requests of Our Lady and the Angel, we are usually astounded by their intense spiritual life and the Heroic degree of virtue which has been attained by such little children.   Constant prayer was accompanied by serious penances such as wearing a rough cord of rope,  going without water on very hot days,  and giving up food and sleep.  In addition to this, the children were subject to incredible pressure to deny their story, through family disbelief, and even harassment by priests and civil officials.  At one point, they even were led to believe that they would be boiled in hot oil unless they revealed their secret from Our Lady.

Jacinta was also told that she would suffer greatly in order to enter into heaven, and she accepted such sufferings as from the hand of God and Our Mother.   In fact, she would die all alone in a hospital bed in far away Lisbon of the influenza, and this sorrowful, lonely death she offered to the Lord in reparation for the sins of the world and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  She also offered these incredible sufferings for the Holy Father and the Church.  Indeed, she was given several unique visions of the sufferings of the Holy Father in order to inspire her prayer and sacrifice for him.  In Lucia’s account of the Fatima story we read of how little Jacinta learned who the Pope was,

“Two priests who had come to question us, recommended that we pray for the Holy Father.  Jacinta asked who the Holy Father was.  The good priests explained who he was and how much he needed prayers.  This gave Jacinta such love for the Holy Father that, every time she offered her sacrifices to Jesus, she added:  ‘and for the Holy Father.’  At the end of the Rosary, she always said three Hail Marys for the Holy Father, and sometimes she would remark:  ‘How I’d love to see the Holy Father! So many people come here, but the Holy Father never does!’  In her childish simplicity, she supposed that the Holy Father could make the journey just like anybody else!”   (Fatima in Lucia’s own words—p.50-51)

In her extreme simplicity,  how could she have ever supposed that the Holy Father would one day journey to Fatima to Beatify,  and perhaps one day canonize her.   Jacinta’s prayers and sacrifices for the Holy Father were intensified during her time in prison, and especially when she thought that she would die,    Her cousin Lucia writes in her memoirs of how a scared, little Jacinta faced death with the intention of offering it  for the Holy Father,

                “I soon realized that she was crying.  I went over and drew her close to me, asking her why she was crying:  ’Because we are going to die,’ she replied, ‘without ever seeing our parents again, not even our Mothers!’  With tears running down her cheeks, she added, ’I would like at least to see my mother.’  ‘Do you want, then, to offer this sacrifice for the conversion of sinners?’ ‘ ‘I do want to, I do!’ With her face bathed in tears, she joined her hands, raised her eyes to heaven and made her offering:   ‘O My Jesus! This is for love of you, for the conversion of sinners, for the Holy Father, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. ‘”  (Fatima in Lucia’s own words, p 52)                                                      

Perhaps, when Jesus told us that we must become like little children, this was the type of child he had in mind!  How one wishes that some of our modern theologians would read this story and weep for their sins of arrogance, disbelief, and cowardice in the faith.

From Peter to Benedict XVI, the head of the Church has been a special object of the Lord’s predilection, Satan’s scorn, and the Church’s ardent prayer.   Throughout history, this prayer has grown more intense during the Pope’s illness or imprisonment or when attacked by the church’s enemies, such as the case of Pope Pius VII who was imprisoned by Napoleon or Blessed Pius IX who was forced to flee from Garibaldi and company.  Today, our Pope is physically free to roam the world, but he is encircled by enemies, seen and unseen, who hinder his action and frustrate his plans.  Let us add our own feeble prayers to his as this holy Pope finishes his course, to join the Saints and Angels in heaven.  If we do so, we too will be in that long line of saints and sinners who offered unceasing prayer for Peter and his successors, the Vicars of Christ on earth.  May we especially remember our Pope in our daily Rosary, and  follow the example of Blessed Jacinta of Fatima, and the requests of Our Lady of Fatima.



Fr. Benjamin Reece, S.T.D. (Cand.)

Find more information on The Apostles of Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim here : http:/www.apostlesofjesuschrist.org/

Father Robert Behnke

The First Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2011
During my experience of nearly 38 years of hearing confessions, something that amuses me, saddens me, and puzzles me – all at the same time – is the occasional penitent who begins their confession with words something like …Father, I have nothing to tell you…, or,…Father, I really have nothing to confess…or words to that effect.  Apart from the fact that the sacrament cannot take place without the confession of some sin (even a forgiven sin from the past; in one parish I had an older parishioner who came every Saturday to confess an abortion that had taken place years earlier, but this individual confessed it again and again, Saturday after Saturday, so full of sorrow were they), two questions come to me.  The first, which I never ask, though I would like to do so, is Then why are you here?  The other question, which I often – nearly always – ask is Will you please tell me your secret, because I never have a difficulty in thinking of sins to confess when I go to the sacrament myself?  But, on reflection, I sense those who say they have nothing to confess are perhaps saying I want to be a good Catholic, and I know confession is part of that, so I am here–I just don’t know what I can or should say.  And that, I sense, is a symptom of the much greater problem of so many Catholics–probably the majority – who never go to confession.
We are faced on this 2011 First Sunday of Lent, as we are each year, with the Gospel’s account of Our Lord’s temptation by Satan.  Now it would seem that, if a man could not possibly sin, then he could not be tempted. Indeed, in our fallen condition, we experience temptation as a real choice–when tempted, we really could fall.  Moreover, we know that those who are so conformed to God as to be entirely freed from the possibility of sin-the saints and angels in heaven-these are also freed from all temptations.  Yet, when it comes to the person of Christ, a doubt perhaps arises.  We are inclined to think that Christ could not sin–since, of course, He is fully God.  Yet, on the other hand, we know that Jesus was truly and really tempted by Satan; the Gospel tonight tells us so.  Thus, the question: could Christ have sinned when tempted by Satan?  Moreover, if Our Lord could not sin, how can we say He was truly tempted?
In asking this, we attempt a human understanding of a profound divine mystery: Jesus Christ is an altogether unique Man-a Man Who is God.  Our Lord is a Divine Person with two natures, God and Man.  Thus, the question really is: Could God sin?  The answer, simply and absolutely: no.  It is an absolute impossibility for God to sin.  God did not make sin, nor could He make sin – for He is perfect Goodness and Love.  Plus, to sin is not an ability, but rather an inability.  The possibility of sinning is a defect, a weakness, an inability, an imperfection.  Precisely because God is perfectly free and all powerful, He is impeccable, unable to sin.  And because Our Lord is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, He could never sin.  Moreover, even Our Lord in his humanity could not sin.  From the first moment of His existence, Jesus Christ enjoyed the beatific vision–He enjoyed the knowledge and love of God which is given the blessed in heaven, none of whom can sin.   Yet sin and temptation are not the same.  Sinning is not somehow a necessary part of human nature and human freedom.  Adam’s fall was devastating to human nature; man was not created to be a sinner.  The sin of Adam did not liberate man but enslaved him. Therefore, Christ’s freedom from sin in no way makes Him less human, but rather makes Him the perfect Man.  But Man He is still, and so as Man He is subject to temptation.  The Gospel shows us this today; these temptations were truly waged against Him by His mortal Enemy, Satan, the Father of Lies.  Moreover, we may add that Christ’s temptation was even more intense than our own–since He persevered through to the end.  He suffered temptation longer and more intensely than has any other man, but He did so without sin (because He had no inclination to sin as do we, as a result of the sin of Adam) and He suffered temptation without even the possibility of sin.
            At his excellent first class on the Holy Eucharist this past Thursday, Father Reese reminded us that Our Lord could have redeemed and saved the world with just a thought and by His shedding but a single drop of His blood.  Why then the temptations, the agony, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails, the cross?  Father Reese’s answer was the very same I heard from Sister Adalena when I was in the second grade: our sins were so great, but God’s love was even greater.  Greater even than the sin of Adam, who was, when he introduced the world to sin, the perfect man-Adam was man as God originally created and intended man to be.  God’s love is greater even than all the sins of all the centuries from Adam to now.  Greater even than the sins of all the genocidal holocausts of the 20th century-the Armenian, the Ukrainian, the Jewish, the Rwandan.  Greater even than the genocide going on right now in Libya.  Greater even than the genocidal holocaust going on right now under our very noses in abortion mills all over the United States and all over the world (just in New York City, last year there were 55,391 deaths from all causes other than abortion; there were from abortion 82,475 deaths).  If we but consider for a moment the sheer magnitude of God’s love made incarnate in the life and death and resurrection of Our Lord, a love greater still than all the sins committed since the world’s creation, a love manifested in the drama of His suffering and death because of the greatness of the world’s sins, how could anyone ever say with a straight face…I have nothing to confess?
            The sin of many in our time seems to be the sin of self-satisfaction: I am satisfied with myself, with my life, with the way things are going; I have nothing for which to apologize to anyone, including God, and I neither can nor want to get any better because I am pretty much perfect as I am.  Whoever may have those sentiments needs to know that they have been placed in their hearts by the Father of Lies and the Prince of Darkness.  Father Campbell reminded us at dinner last night of something Pope Benedict has said, more than once: the world acts today as if God makes no difference; He is irrelevant.  This, too, was the sin of Adam, who in effect said to God You are irrelevant to my happiness, to what I want, to what I will do.  I could easily imagine hearing Adam say to God, I have nothing to confess to You, because I have no need of You.  Each time one of God’s human creatures, and especially one of His adopted children, speaks those unfortunate words, the Father of Lies dances with glee.
            In the face of a world that thinks God is irrelevant, those who know that God is God and we are not, must witness to an unbelieving, nearly diabolical world, the practice of the presence of God.  Practicing this awareness of God’s presence is always a work in progress.  How easily are we distracted; how hard it is to be aware of Our Lord’s role in all that we are and do.  Because of our tendency to forget, we may make a firm resolution to remember God at the start of our day, and then become so immersed in the requirements of our day’s responsibilities and activities that we emerge at the end of a hectic and taxing day only to realize we have not turned toward God even once.  So we should set for ourselves personal reminders-a selection of specific triggers-at intervals during our day to lift us out of our mundane absorptions and awaken us to opportunities to turn to God.  For example, that is the purpose of church bells, ringing the Angelus, or the time for Mass, reminding us to pray or to hurry to Mass.  Interestingly, church bells are blessed with the Oil of the Sick, as a way of joining those too sick to come to Mass to join their suffering to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  For some, a reminder might be the ringing of the telephone (always at the worst of times); the ringing could serve as a reminder to say a prayer asking God for patience.  When a baby cries, the cry could serve as a reminder to a mother who might ask Our Lady to help her to respond to her little one in union with Mary’s Immaculate Heart, and to place herself before the Infant Jesus at one with her child, and to gaze on Him with love.  A plumber is called to a home, he can pray that the grace of baptism will reach and cleanse each member of that household.  A loan officer at a local bank may ask God on behalf of each new client for the wisdom to use resources prudently and for God’s glory.  A road worker might offer quick petitions for the safety of the motorists who must navigate the work zone.  An elderly man or woman could choose to invoke Saint Joseph every time he or she feels their age in the pain of muscle or joint.  It really does take practice to make these things work, lest we too frequently fail to observe the signs we have chosen, and so only rarely pause in moments of deeper recognition and simple prayer.  Our world has tried its best to remove or ignore reminders of the reality of temptation, sin, and salvation by divine love.  But habits which acknowledge God’s enduring presence can be formed with such reminders to which we have chosen to give our attention, and more and more we may be always ready to turn toward the One who made us.  And in time the world will notice.
This effort never ends, but it does grow easier as it becomes habitual.  Gradually we learn to focus frequently on the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit, whether directly or through the intercession of Mary or one of the saints.  This is a school of sanctity.  In this school, we become ever more perfectly oriented toward God, and ever more finely tuned to His will.  In the end, we can become almost continuously aware of God’s presence, providence and love.  The distance between earth and heaven grows short.  We become ready, at last, for something more-for heaven itself.  And we will make the Father of Lies weep and grind his teeth-because the world will notice.
The liturgy tonight reminds us that Our Lord allowed Himself to be tempted as we are; He chose to suffer, more than we ever would or could, because sin is so pervasive, but not more pervasive than the pervasiveness of Our Lord’s love.  If much of our world thinks God makes no difference; if the world thinks it owes God no apology; if the world thinks it has nothing to confess; if sin continues rampant in our world; if the world chooses to give in to the Father of Lies, we know better; so we will do otherwise.  We know sins are great, but we know His love is greater.  He chose to overcome the sin of the world by His love.  So He was tempted; so He suffered; so He died.  When you’re right, you can’t be wrong.  When You’re God, You’re always right.  God makes all the difference.  And the world cannot help but notice the difference.
Father Behnke