Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Author: Father Pat Mulcahy

  • Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Mass for the school children.

    Today is the memorial of Saint Vincent de Paul, who is one of my favorite saints. He knew what it meant to be a priest, and he lived it every day. But he didn’t start out wanting to be like that; he had a conversation experience along the way. And I think that makes him a very good saint for us to reflect on today, because we all need those kinds of conversion experiences in our lives, at some point or another.

    Back in the days when Saint Vincent became a priest, some priests had a rather easy life and found ways to become quite wealthy. So that is what he was expecting to happen for him when he was ordained. That was his goal in some ways until he heard the deathbed confession of a dying servant. That encounter led him to realize the extremely great needs of poor people in France at that time.

    That same servant’s Master had been persuaded by his wife to support the creation of a group of missionary priests to serve the poor. The countess asked Father Vincent to lead the group, and although he declined at first, he later returned to do it. That group is now known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians. They take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability and devoted themselves to serving the poor in smaller towns and villages. So Vincentian priests would be missionaries, in a way, to those small towns so that they could live among the people and serve the poor.

    Later, along with Saint Louise de Marillac, he organized the rich women of Paris to collect funds for his missionary projects, founded several hospitals, collected relief funds for the victims of war and ransomed over 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. Over time, this became a parish-based society for the spiritual and physical relief of the poor and sick. This became the inspiration for the organization now known as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. We have an active chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in our parish, and they go out to meet those in need and help them to find the help they need. They are an important part of the Church’s mission to take care of the poor.

    Saint Vincent was also very interested in helping with the formation of priests. He wanted the priests to realize the needs of the poor and to know that the idea of becoming rich isn’t supposed to be part of priestly life. He converted his attitudes from the cynical and even slothful (or lazy) ambitions of the clergy in those days, and turned instead to follow what became his true passion, his real calling, which was bringing Christ to the needy and the downtrodden.

    So Saint Vincent is a good model for all of us. We too are called to be true servants of our Lord, by looking out for the needs of those who maybe don’t have as many advantages as we do, and by caring for the poor and being true friends of those in need. Helping even one person in need is our way of helping Jesus to continue his ministry of loving all people and bringing them to heaven.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Herod had the right idea – well, sort of. He was asking the right question, which is a good start, but he was asking it for all the wrong reasons. Clearly though, it is the right question. And that question is, “Who is Jesus?” It’s a question that has echoed down through the ages; it’s a question we all have to ask at some point in our faith journey, at least it is if we are taking that journey seriously.

    What Herod was hearing about Jesus is pretty much what the disciples told Jesus when Jesus asked, “Who do people say that I am?” Elijah, or one of the prophets, or maybe even John the Baptist. But Herod was the one who killed John so he knew that couldn’t be it, so who is he really? Herod kept trying to see him, and of course, he’d have more than ample opportunity soon enough, after Jesus is arrested.

    So we have the question too. Oh, we know well enough – intellectually – who Jesus is, but we still have to answer that question in our hearts. We can’t let our relationship with our Lord be only an intellectual exercise, or else we won’t have a faith life. So who is Jesus for us? We know he is not just some prophet; that he is not like anyone who lived before or after him. But have we stopped being intrigued by the question, have we lost our fascination with Jesus? Herod kept trying to see Jesus, and it’s the right instinct, or at least it is for us. We have to keep trying to see him too, whether that takes us to a rereading of the Gospels or to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament or to contemplative prayer. Whatever the case, fascination with Jesus is the right way to go, and we have to let ourselves be intrigued by the question again. Who is Jesus for us?

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reminds me of a sound bite for the evening news or a shoddy post on social media. Taken out of context, Jesus is denying his family. And not only that, but Jesus now has “brothers,” so what happened to the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary? Sound bites cause nothing but trouble because you don’t have the context to know what’s really being said. These sound bites take a whole lot of explanation, and the ones we have in today’s Gospel are certainly no exception.

    First of all, let’s tackle the idea of Jesus having brothers. Many ideas surround that issue and have developed over time, as I am sure you can appreciate. One idea says that St. Joseph was an older man, and had sons by a previous wife, now dead. These would be Jesus’ half-brothers. There is no actual evidence for that theory, nor even a tradition of it from the early Church. Another idea comes from the fact that the Greek word translated “brothers” here is general enough that it might also refer to cousins or some other close kindred. So the brothers here would be close family members, not necessarily brothers. This theory is supported by linguistic study and usage, so it’s more accepted. In either case, the Church affirms the perpetual virginity of Mary and this Gospel is not trying to confuse us, but is rather teaching us on another topic.

    The second sound bite is that Jesus seems to turn away from his mother and his relatives and claims that his family is those who hear the word of God and act on it. Well, Jesus certainly wasn’t turning away from his beloved mother or any of his close relatives. We know for a fact that Mary was the first of the disciples. Jesus seems to be more widening his family relationships than restricting them to just those related by blood. Which is good news for all of us who are now included in that family. Giving ourselves to the Word of God, hearing it and living it, we are mother and brother and sister to Christ.

    So I think the call for us disciples as we hear this word proclaimed today is that we are to strive to be in the family of Jesus. We were initiated into that family when we were baptized, and we are called to live that way each day. The family of Jesus hears the word of God and acts on it. That’s what Jesus is teaching us today. So we who would be his brothers and sisters have work to do; amazingly joy-filled work.

  • Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    Today’s readings

    At the age of 15, Francesco Forgione joined the Capuchins and took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was discharged. In 1917 he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo.

    On September 20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his hands, feet and side. Padre Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads of people soon began coming to see him. He would hear confessions for as much as ten hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that their confession could be heard. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew details of their lives that they had never mentioned.

    Padre Pio died on September 23, 1968, and was canonized in 2002.

    The Gospel today contains one of my favorite lines: “Take care, then, how you hear.” It almost seems like a throw-away line, but really, I believe, it’s an essential instruction from Jesus. We disciples are to take care how we hear. Not what we hear, although that’s probably part of it, but how we hear.

    Do we really hear the Word of the Lord? Does the gospel get into our head and our heart and stir things up? Do the words of Jesus get our blood flowing and our imaginations racing? Does hearing the gospel make us long for a better place, a more peaceful kingdom, a just society? That’s how it worked for Padre Pio, and that’s how it’s supposed to work for all of us disciples.

    Take care, then, how you hear.

  • Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

    Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

    Today’s readings

    For those of us who strive to live as disciples, today’s feast is really a great joy. I say that because Matthew was qualified to be a disciple of Jesus in much the same way that we are qualified to be disciples of Jesus – which is to say, not at all, really. Matthew was a tax collector, working for the Roman occupation government. His task was to collect the tax from each citizen. As long as he did that, whatever he collected over and above the tax was his to keep. Now the Romans wouldn’t condone outright extortion, but let’s just say that they weren’t overly scrupulous about what their tax collectors were collecting, as long as they got paid the proper tax.

    So Matthew’s reception among the Jews was quite like they might receive a one of our candidates for the presidency or even news of a tax audit in our own day. No one wants to see that. The Pharisees were quick to lump men like Matthew with sinners, and despised them as completely unworthy of God’s salvation. But Jesus didn’t:

    “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
    Go and learn the meaning of the words,
    I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
    I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

    Which brings us back to us. We should be very grateful to celebrate the call of a man who was anything but worthy. Because he was called, we know that our own calls are authentic, unworthy as we may be. Because he was offered healing, we know that we can have that, too. But all that grace isn’t just ours any more than it was just Matthew’s: just as he spread the Good News by writing and preaching of the Gospel, so we are called to spread the Good News to everyone we know. We are called to write the Gospel in our own day, in the pages of our own lives. Matthew’s call is a day of celebration for all of us sinners, who are nonetheless called to do great things for the Kingdom of God.

  • Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs

    Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs

    Korea was introduced to Christianity in the late 1500s when some Koreans were baptized, probably by Christian Japanese soldiers who invaded Korea at that time. It was not until the late 1700s that a priest managed to sneak into Korea, and when he did, he found about 4000 Catholics, none of whom had ever seen a priest. Seven years later there were over ten thousand Catholics.

    In the 1800s, Andrew Kim became the first native Korean to become a priest when he traveled 1300 miles to seminary in China. He managed to find his way back into the country six years later. When he returned home, he arranged for more men to travel to China for studies. He was arrested, tortured and finally beheaded.

    St. Paul Chong was a lay apostle who was also martyred. During the persecutions of 1839, 1846, 1866 and 1867, 103 members of the Christian community gave their lives for the faith. These included some bishops and priests, but for the most part they were lay people, including men and women, married and unmarried, children, young people and the elderly. They were all canonized by Pope John Paul II during a visit to Korea in 1984.

    All of these men and women witnessed to the faith by giving their lives in love of our Lord. Love for God and one another must consume every disciple, so that every day is an opportunity to lay done one’s life, literally or figuratively, to preach the Gospel.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Simon the Pharisee committed a grave error in hospitality, and a serious error in judgment. In those days, when a guest came to your home, you made sure to provide water for him or her to wash their feet, because the journey on foot was often long and hot and dirty, and it was pretty much always made on foot. But Simon had done no such thing for Jesus.

    Simon’s intentions were not hospitable; rather he intended to confront Jesus on some point of the Law so as to validate his opinion that Jesus was a charlatan. That was the purpose of his dinner invitation. Then, in comes the “sinful woman,” who breaks an alabaster jar full of extremely expensive ointment and anoints the feet of Jesus while she is in tears for love of Jesus and sorrow for her sin. But Simon simply judged the woman to be a sinner, someone to be shunned and ignored, and reckoned Jesus guilty of sin by association. Jesus isn’t having any of that, because Jesus is about forgiveness. He didn’t care about the woman’s past; he already knew it well, but was more concerned that, presently, she had need of mercy. Her act of love and hospitality, her posture of humility, her sorrow for her sin, all of these made it possible for Jesus to heal her.

    But the one who doesn’t think he is in need of healing, symbolized by Simon the Pharisee, can never be healed. And so that’s our examination of conscience today. Are we aware of our need for healing, or have we been thinking we are without sin, without brokenness, without openness to God’s mercy? If so, our moments of reflection today need to guide us to honest and open acceptance of God’s mercy, and a pouring out of the best that we have in thanksgiving. Like the repentant woman, we need to humble ourselves, and pour out sorrow for our sins, and love for Jesus who wants nothing more than to heal us.

    We are offered so much mercy and forgiveness for our many sins. Let us love much so that we might receive the great mercy our Lord wants to give us.

  • Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

    Today is the memorial of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth century German Benedictine nun and Doctor of the Church. She was a writer, music composer, philosopher, mystic, cook, medical doctor, and Benedictine abbess. Clearly she was a very busy woman!

    She was very sick in her childhood, and so her parents promised her to God for her healing. At age 8, she was placed in the care of a Benedictine nun, Blessed Jutta. She was taught to read and sing the psalms. Her holiness of life attracted her to many people, and at a young age, she began having mystical visions. At age 18, she was professed a nun and eventually elected abbess when Sister Jutta died. She went on to found monasteries at Bingen and Eibingen, which she felt was at divine command.

    Although she never had formal education and did not know how to write, she amassed great knowledge of the faith, music, natural science, herbs, and medicinal arts. Her insights and learning were attributed to visions, which were faithfully transcribed by confreres of her spiritual director, which was fortuitous since she didn’t know how to write. Hildegard became famous throughout Europe and people would travel to see her. The works that were transcribed from her visions included commentaries on the Gospels, the Athanasian Creed, and the Rule of Saint Benedict, in addition to Lives of the Saints and a medical work on the well-being of the body.

    After her death, she was strongly revered. She became a saint, and in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, of blessed memory, declared her to be a Doctor of the Church, one of just four women and just 35 saints to be given that title. Pope Benedict XVI called Hildegard, “perennially relevant” and “an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music.”

    Saint Hildegard of Bingen, pray for us!

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Special Needs Mass)

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Special Needs Mass)

    Today’s readings
    Mass with special needs families.

    The Apostle Saint James in our second reading today attacks what is, to me, a very prevalent attitude that people can often have. “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” – we see that kind of thing all the time. When a tragedy happens, we will see people offering their “thoughts and prayers.” And not that that is a bad thing: thoughts and prayers are a great start. Certainly, we believe in the power of prayer and would hasten to encourage prayer as a regular habit.

    But Saint James makes it very clear that thoughts and prayers can’t be the end of our compassion and care for others. He says that, if you say that to the person, “but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” Our faith leads us to thoughts and prayers, that’s why it’s the first thing we think of when there is a tragedy, or someone in our community is going through a hard time. But if we don’t live our faith by working to help those in need then, says Saint James, our faith, “if it does not have works, is dead.”

    I had a priest professor in seminary who always used to tell us, “Brothers, the Christian faith looks like something.” And he’s right, people need to see that Jesus is Lord of our lives and sovereign in the world, and the only way they are going to see that is if Christians live their faith by getting out of the comfort zone, by going beyond thoughts and prayers to a living faith that, as Saint James says, is demonstrated from our works. A watching world isn’t going to see our thoughts and prayers; they are going to see what we do. They need to see by what we do that we are who we say we are, that our God is Lord.

    That’s going to call us to be a little uncomfortable sometimes. It’s going to call us to do what Jesus calls us to do in the Gospel today: to take up our crosses and follow him. There is suffering out there in the world, and if we don’t wrap them in our arms and suffer with them, adding works of mercy to our thoughts and prayers, then our faith is meaningless. We can’t be Catholics for just one hour a week. We have to lose our lives in service of our brothers and sisters. That’s a tough thing to do, but it comes with a promise from our Lord:

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.

    So let’s not stop thinking about and praying for those in need. But let’s stop saying, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” and then forgetting about our brothers and sisters. Let’s demonstrate our faith by our works, taking up our crosses and following Our Lord, losing ourselves for his sake and that of the Gospel that we might save it for eternity.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What feels like a hundred years ago, now, when I was a young adult, I had a membership to a boxing gym that I would go to after work. The gym had a class at that time, and it was a group of people a lot like me, men and women my age who wanted to get some exercise and stress relief after a day of work. One of the things the trainer would do with us was some pad work. He would go around to each of us, and would work with us at our own level, calling out punches and we would have to throw those punches at the pads on his hands. There was a pattern to it, once you learned it, and then the challenge was to keep up with him. But sometimes, we would get ahead of him, and mess things up. Then he’d give us a tap on the arm with the pad, and would say, “You’re way ahead of me!”

    I thought about that with regard to today’s Gospel reading. After professing the fact that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, Saint Peter in classic Saint Peter fashion takes Jesus to task for teaching them that he, the Son of Man, “must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.” Peter was distressed at hearing that Jesus, the one who he just a few verses ago, said was the Christ, would talk about suffering, because they never expected the Messiah to have to undergo any such thing. Jesus turns around and says to Peter, “Get behind me…” Just like my boxing trainer, he is trying to teach them something, but Peter is way ahead of him.

    And that’s no place for a disciple to be. Because disciples don’t get ahead of their master, they follow him. When you’re ahead of the teacher, you can’t learn anything. When you’re following him, you can see what he does, hear what he’s saying, and learn things that lead to life. This is a very important observation, that I have to tell you, came from praying through the Gospel reading at this week’s staff meeting.

    Here’s why this is so important: because Jesus wants the disciples to follow, wants us to follow. He says quite plainly:

    “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
    take up his cross, and follow me.
    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.”

    He’s making it very clear here that winning the kingdom, saving our lives for eternity, means suffering in this life. He was going to model that for them on the way to the Cross, and into the glory of the Resurrection. But if we are way ahead of him, we are absolutely going to be on the wrong road.

    So we are called, by the very words of our Savior, to take up our cross and follow him. That wasn’t just for Saint Peter and the other Apostles; it is for all Jesus’ disciples, including ourselves. There is no other way to the salvation for which we yearn. Following Jesus will ultimately lead us to glory if we do it faithfully. But following him will also lead us to the Cross. Yesterday we celebrated that mystery in the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Yes, we will suffer in this life, in all sorts of ways, yes we will die, but that death will release us to the glory of the resurrection, if we embrace it in faith.

    In our world, suffering is looked upon as something to be avoided at all costs. Commercials on television and social media promise all sorts of relief if we will take this or that pill. Worse than that, people are legislating circumstances for when it’s appropriate to kill ourselves through euthanasia so that we won’t have to suffer, and pro-abortion people want to say it’s okay to abort a baby who has the wrong chromosomes or might suffer in any way. We avoid suffering in every way we possibly can, so it might be hard to get behind this Jesus who says that the way to heaven is to take up the cross, to suffer, to die, and to follow his lead.

    The psalmist sums it up for us today. Yes, the suffering in our lives leads us to experience the cords of death that encompass us. We often fall into distress and sorrow. But when we embrace that suffering and call on the Lord, we will find ourselves freed of death and able to walk before the Lord in the land of the living. We who have embraced and remembered and celebrated the mystery of Christ’s presence in our lives, in our Church and in our world, can approach suffering with great faith. Some years ago now, there was a contemporary Christian song that said “sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.” God won’t always make our tears and pain go away. But he does promise that we will never go through them alone.

    The real truth of life in this world is that there is suffering, and none of us gets a free pass. Even Mary, full of grace, had to watch her Son suffer and die. Even Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and he himself suffered a terrible, painful, humiliating death. None of us gets out of this life unscathed. In some crazy sense, we all are united in the fact that we all suffer, some time and for something. And so it is in fact audacious and even offensive that Saint Peter rebukes our Lord for talking about suffering. Peter himself will suffer a similar fate as that of his Lord, being crucified upside-down. Every one of us, in some way, has to take up the cross and walk with it, because it is only in doing that that we can make our way to the Resurrection.

    And we have to acknowledge, friends, is that we have it a lot easier than our Lord did. We just bear our own suffering; he had to take with him the suffering of every person embroiled in sin in all of time. We have him to help us take up our crosses and to help make those crosses lighter; he had no one except for Simon of Cyrene who helped him begrudgingly. His death had to blast open the gates of heaven; we will just get to walk through it, if we follow him and live the gospel.

    And so, we weak ones who don’t love suffering, we must hear the words that Jesus spoke to Simon Peter spoken also to us. Don’t get ahead of me; take up your cross and follow me.

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.