The Quiet Corner,

a weekly meditation on the Sunday Gospel, by the Reverend John A. Kiley,

as published in The Providence Visitor since 1974.

       Over the centuries even pious believers might have pondered why it was Eve rather than Adam whom the ancient author of Genesis depicted as succumbing to the tempting serpent. By singling out Eve rather than Adam, the inspired writer intended that Eve should stand not for womanhood but rather for mankind in general.  In the act of human intimacy, woman is biologically the receiver.  Woman opens herself to the man and receives him physically into the very core of her being.  In the spiritual life, God is the giver; mankind is the receiver.  The whole human race must open its heart, its soul, its mind, and, yes, even its body to receive the vivifying grace of God.  God is the supreme and unique giver.  Man is the intended and predestined receiver.  Eve’s sin, as Pope John Paul II pointed out in one of his weekly talks, was that she was not content to be a receiver; so she became a taker.  Eve (actually all mankind) was not satisfied with the bounty of Eden that God had given her.  The flora and fauna of paradise were not enough.  She had to reach out and grab that forbidden fruit, the solitary item denied her by God.  The Father had showered his gifts upon her lavishly.  She had certainly received a sufficiency.  Yet she wanted more.  Not pleased with God’s largesse, she usurped the role of the giver.  She began to give to herself whatever she wanted, whatever she desired.  She (and thus all mankind) was determined to be a giver, defying her own human nature and denying the Divine nature.  Original sin turned God’s plan upside down.

       Original sin was really an attack on the Fatherhood of God.  In Eve, mankind listened to the devil and thought he knew more than God.  Man was sick of receiving; he wanted to be in charge.  Thus man dethroned God and set himself up as the arbiter of right and wrong, of good and evil.  Original sin was man attempting to become God.  The serpent even promised, “You shall become like God.”  Conversely, in Jesus Christ the believer sees the original order of paradise restored.  Jesus Christ is completely open to the will of his Father.  Jesus is willing once again to receive from the hand of God, to acknowledge the Fatherhood of God, to refrain from manipulating history to his own advantage.  “Thy Will be done,” is Jesus’ motto in prayer as well as in desperation.  Through Christ, God is restored to his rightful place as Father of the universe, as the giver of all good gifts.

       Last Sunday’s Gospel depicts a woman who has experienced a hemorrhage for over twelve years.  She has understandably sought a cure from many doctors but to no avail.  In her desperation the women reaches out and grasps the hem of Jesus’ garment.  Perhaps this frantic measure will assure her of the cure that has been forbidden to her these past dozen years.  If she cannot receive, maybe she can take.  Jesus senses that someone has taken advantage of his miraculous powers and is mildly perturbed.  “Who has touched my clothing?” Jesus inquires of his disciples.  “In fear and trembling,” the woman admits her daring.  The woman recognizes that she has taken things into her own hands and now expects to be chastised for her boldness.  Yet, unlike Eve who was punished for reaching out and grabbing the forbidden fruit, this woman is commended for her faith-filled grab at Jesus’ miraculous power. "Daughter, your faith has saved you,” the Master re-assures her, “Go in peace and be cured of your affliction." 

       The Christian life is not a passive acceptance of fate.  The woman with the issue of blood would not have been more virtuous had she endured her flow until her dying day.  Actually her desperate grab was an act of faith, whereas Eve’s seizure of the fruit was an act of defiance.  The afflicted woman saw the hand of God working in Jesus and fully intended to take advantage of God’s kindness.  Eve saw the hand of God working in Eden and was not satisfied with God’s Providence.  Eve though she knew better than God.  The nameless woman knew she could do no better than to reach out to God and wanted to take advantage of his healing will made visible in Christ.  Eve wanted to be God and take charge of her own life.  The woman wanted God effectively to be God and grant a cure that was beyond all human capacity.  Eve had pride.  The woman had faith.  Through Christ, sinful mankind can acknowledge once again the Fatherhood of God and receive once more the healing gifts bestowed by his Providence.

COMPLETE

       My senior prom from LaSalle Academy was held at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet in the spring of 1958.  My date was Mary Kelly, a classmate from my parish grammar school.  (John Kiley/Mary Kelly – not much imagination there!)  Since we were both seniors, we discussed what we would be doing in the years ahead and what our careers might be.  I observed to Mary that my teachers all thought I should become a priest.  Mary’s response was, “I do, too!”  I guess she wasn’t having a very exhilarating time!

       This tender encounter occurred to me when a local talk show host e-mailed a number of priests asking for information on how women had influenced their vocation to the priesthood.  Certainly the example of a priest’s mother comes quickly to mind.  Obviously the female influence there is both incontestable and incalculable.  A priest’s mother, in my day, was typically a good Catholic – neither the president of the Rosary and Altar society nor the infrequent visitor to church – simply a good Catholic.  She might have harbored hidden aspirations about her son’s religious life but his destiny was in God’s hands, not her’s.  Fidelity, loyalty and commitment toward God, her husband and her Church were the foundation stones these moms quietly donated to their son’s vocation.

       Much more visible and vocal were the contributions that women religious made to priestly vocations in the old days.  The good sisters who staffed our grammar school were living sacramentals who had no reason for existing other than God and their students.  The nuns, as we commonly if incorrectly called them, appeared in the morning and disappeared in the afternoon.  They did not drive cars or eat in restaurants.   It was a cause for astonishment to encounter a nun in a store or on the street.  They had no families of which we might be aware.  Convent life was strictly private as far as parishioners and students were concerned.  And of course their dress was radically different from anything met in daily life.  No doubt these women were capable of some great career possibilities and of raising splendid families for themselves.  Instead they channeled all their efforts and aspirations toward us students, probably sometimes fighting their own ambitions for the greater good of Catholic education.

       Confronting these mysterious woman everyday for nine years was a daily encounter with God.  They taught us about God.  They reminded us about God.  They were unfailingly committed to God.  Prayers were imperative for them.  The lives of the saints were important for them.  The fabric of the Church was respected by them.  They happily blended spirituality with religiosity and did not apologize for it.  As was noted above, women religious were living, breathing sacramentals, never letting us students forget the holy presence of God.  For us kids, these sisters were the embodiment of Roman Catholicism.  

        Some sisters were very vocal, even pushy, about priestly vocations.  My ninth grade teacher used to tell us stories about men who went crazy or murdered their wives or, worse, became Protestants because they neglected a call to the seminary and the priesthood.  On the other hand, great priestly heroes were celebrated in the classroom.  Father Damien of Molokai, soon to canonized, and the founders of Maryknoll and, of course, the cardinals and bishops persecuted behind the Iron Curtain were all extolled as models of priestly zeal and commitment. 

       It is instructive that when I finally did decide to sign up for Our Lady of Providence Seminary College after graduating from LaSalle, the major persons I visited to reveal my decision were the religious sisters who knowingly or unknowingly guided me to that choice.  One sister was teaching at St. Joseph School in Pawtucket.  As I visited with her, I inquired about the nature of the parish.  Her unashamed response was, “Oh, all Irish here, no foreigners.”  Obviously these old nuns were not politically correct but they were religiously correct.  They were Catholic to the core, making religion so real that some of us decided to dedicate our lives to the same ideals, the same Church, the same God.  COMPLETE

       During these summer months, the Church’s liturgy wisely focuses the worshipper’s attention on the Eucharist.  Chapter six of St. John’s Gospel is a glorious exposition on the Eucharist as a sacred banquet, a memorial meal, a cause of grace and a pledge of future life.  All of these teachings would be incorporated by St. Thomas Aquinas into his antiphon for vespers on the solemnity of Corpus Christi, the popular motet O Sacred Convivium.  Not everyone looked as kindly on the Eucharist as St. John and St. Thomas Aquinas.  The sixteenth century reformers proposed a radically different understanding of Holy Communion from the Church’s traditional teaching.  Cranmer in England, Calvin in Geneva, and Luther in Germany rightly understood that the Eucharist and priesthood are intrinsically linked.  Modify the Mass and the priesthood was inevitably modified – in fact, it was entirely eliminated. 

       The reformers did have their legitimate gripes.  The Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and corruption in high places gave society a very grim assessment of human nature.  A private relationship with God replaced the notion of grace being mediated through an all too human Church.   The dissemination of vernacular bibles also made the priest seem less vital to the life of the Church.   Why listen to miserable sermons when you could read the very Word of God at home?  In no small measure, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a repudiation of the Catholic priesthood.  The chickens of high living and poor education were coming home to roost. 

       In 1520 Martin Luther – not the most radical of the reformers -- published documents defining his positions and calling for action. In the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation he appealed to the German ruling classes to throw off the yoke of Rome. He maintained that each believer is his own priest--a doctrine that is still yielding its results today. Luther meant that any layman could attain redemption independent of a priest. The priesthood was only a special vocation not the mediation role to which Catholic theology adhered.  As historians note, with this stroke Luther broke the power of the Church over secular authorities--the power to give or withhold the means of salvation -- and he encouraged the authorities to reform an erring church.

       In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church it is noted that Luther attacked the sacramental system, denied four of the traditional sacraments, and kept only Baptism, the Eucharist, and, in a revised sense, Penance. Confession was possible between laymen. Marriage was a civil affair to which the Church could give its blessing. Ordination and confirmation were rites of the Church but were not sacraments. Extreme unction was unscriptural and, therefore, was wholly renounced. As for the Eucharist, he wanted both the elements of bread and wine distributed to the laity, denied that the Mass was a reenactment of the sacrifice of the Cross, and deviated from the doctrine of transubstantiation, abandoning the Thomistic distinction between substance and accidents. Christ was in, with and under the bread and wine.  But Christ had not actually replaced the bread and wine as Catholics believed.  Luther was not as drastic as some other reformers in denying the Real Presence and his caution possibly led other Protestants to maintain at least some spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament. 

       The elimination of mediation, the priesthood, the Mass, and the Real Presence from the core of Christianity radically altered the nature of the Church.  If every man was his own priest then the Church was hardly necessary at all. The Church might support, encourage, guide, instruct and reprove, but basically each man stood alone before God.  The role of a mediator was banished.  Sadly this spirit of independence is overwhelming our Catholic Church today.  The preference for spirituality over religion is really a repudiation of the notion that the Church is God’s instrument of salvation in our midst.  God the Father choose to mediate his saving graces uniquely through his Son Jesus Christ.  Christ in turn handed his ministry of reconciliation uniquely over to the Church:  “Receive the Holy Spirit etc…”   And the Eucharist is the Church’s supreme work of mediation.    Through the Mass and through the priesthood, the one mediator Jesus Christ essentially continues his Divinely appointed task.         COMPLETE

       The question occasionally arises among Roman Catholics as to whether they should receive Communion when attending Episcopal Church services.  After all, some argue, their Mass looks just the same as ours.  And indeed it does.  Some Episcopal churches are renowned for their vestments, statues, incense and bells.  The difference between their rite and ours appears minimal.  A friend had a good theory about receiving Communion in Episcopal Churches.  If a particular Episcopal priest has valid orders, then his words of consecration are as effective as those of a Catholic priest and worshippers should approach the Communion rail out of respect for Christ’s Body truly present.  If a particular Episcopal priest does not have valid orders then his words of consecration are purely figurative, Christ is not truly present and so little harm is done by participating in a merely symbolic gesture.  Somehow this proposal does not seem to be the best foundation for a decent ecumenical dialogue.

       When King Henry VIII first severed the Church in England from the Church of Rome, the average worshipper would have noticed very little difference on a Sunday morning.  The rites, sacraments and basic beliefs of the Church of England mirrored almost exactly the tenets of the universal Church.  Only now Henry, not the Pope, was the Church’s Supreme Governor.  It was actually under Henry’s young son, Edward VI, that Protestantism began to eclipse Catholicism in England.  Queen Mary’s attempt to restore Catholicism backfired since Protestants who took refuge in Europe during her reign came back to England under Queen Elizabeth more Calvinistic than ever.  While Elizabeth was clever enough to insist on a middle road between Protestantism and Catholicism (bishops, masses and bibles), the celebrated Thirty-Nine Articles outlining the Anglican faith left little doubt about the place of the Eucharist in English worship: Article XXVIII. Of the Lord's Supper.  Transubstantiation is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture; The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. The Eucharist was not to be reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
Article XXXI. Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.  Clearly the Real Presence and transubstantiation were taboo in the island kingdom!

       The Anglican Church in England and the Protestant Episcopal Church here in America continued in this basically Protestant appreciation of the Eucharist until the early nineteenth century.   Perhaps in a romantic nostalgia for antiquity, some clergy within the English Church began to take a second look at ceremony, vesture and liturgical appointments.  The Oxford Movement, also known as the Catholic Revival, began in 1833.  This movement sought to restore the sacraments, rituals and outward forms of Catholicism to the Church of England.  By the mid-20th century, many of the practices advocated by this group had been widely incorporated on both sides of the Atlantic.  This Catholic Revival succeeded in transforming the liturgy of the Anglican Church, repositioning Holy Communion as the central act of worship in place of the daily prayers, and reintroducing the use of vestments, ceremonial, and acts of piety (even Eucharistic adoration) that had long been prohibited in the English church. John Henry Cardinal Newman is perhaps the most celebrated alumnus of this movement. 

       Since the Anglican Mass began to resemble the Catholic Mass in certain aspects, the question was asked of Pope Leo XIII in 1896 as to whether or not Anglican ordinations were valid and whether their Mass was truly a Mass.  In terms that sound harsh in our ecumenical age, Leo XIII declared in Apostolicae Curae that Anglican orders were “absolutely null and utterly void.”  The Pope argued that the three hundred years during which the English church denied the Mass was a sacrifice severed the link with the Apostolic church and fractured any connection with the Last Supper in which Christ instituted the Eucharist as a sacrificial banquet.  The sacrificial nature of the Mass is more important than the ceremonial rites of the Mass in discerning valid priestly orders and in effecting the Real Presence of Christ at Communion.  Apostolicity is more important than appearances.                              COMPLETE

          Father John Farley was a legendary philosophy professor at Our Lady of Providence Seminary College in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.  An insightful teacher and a clever preacher, Father Farley would arrive five minutes late for class with his signature cup of coffee, lengthy cigarette butt and scruffy cassock.  When not commenting on Peter Abelard or Duns Scotus, he would be tossing a basketball in the gym, a sideline that belied his small stature.  Father Farley eventually became pastor of my home parish, St. Charles in Woonsocket, where he would tease the staid congregation by wearing red socks at midnight Mass or toss the skirt of his cassock over his head in imitation of a nun’s habit.  Along with his two sisters who are Sisters of Mercy, Father Farley was one of many vocations from St. Michael parish in South Providence.  True to his priesthood, he is buried today with many of his congregation in St. Charles cemetery near Woonsocket.

       Father Farley had the dubious privilege of being a seminary professor during the transition period from the old Tridentine church of his youth to the post-Vatican II church of his later years.  Although Father could be a great comedian, he happily had a profound appreciation of what the Catholic Church, both pre- and post-Vatican II, truly meant.  One excess of the post counciliar Church was the tossing out all symbols.  Everything should be readily understandable and preferably understated.  Chalices had to be ceramic.  Vestments had to be humble; polyester replaced brocade.  Biblical banners had to be simple; felt and burlap were the norms.  Distinct clerical attire and religious garb became barriers to personal rapport.  Sermons bowed to dialogue homilies. Confessional penances had to be practical.  Forget the three Hail Marys.  Polishing your brother’s shoes or making your sister’s bed was more relevant.  And of course the bread and wine at the Eucharistic table had to be verifiable bread and certifiable wine.  A crusty loaf from Zaccanini’s Bakery and a straw-covered bottle of chianti from Haxton’s graced many an altar table even if not employed for the actual consecration.  Everyone would get the point.  Realism was in fashion; symbolism was banished.

       A bunch of us savants – perhaps it was when we were deacons – inquired of Father Farley regarding the suitability of making the wafers for Communion more breadlike and of presenting wine in a manner more typical of the vintner’s craft.  Father Farley, knowingly standing apart from the trend of the times, observed that no matter how realistic was the loaf presented or how down-to-earth was the wine offered, the two elements represented something beyond themselves.  The bread was not on the altar to draw attention to itself.  The bread was there as a conduit for the Sacred Body of Christ.  The altar bread was a symbol of something greater.  The wine was there to be a vehicle for the Precious Blood of Christ.  No matter how excellent its vintage or picturesque its cask, the wine was meant to stand for something beyond itself.  The quaint uniqueness of the traditional liturgical elements – little wafers of bread, token drops of wine – forced communicants to search beyond the merely observable for a weightier meaning, specifically the veiled but actual Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

       Some post-Vatican II innovators, like Luther, Calvin and their sympathizers, were consciously or unconsciously transforming Sunday worship from a sacrificial banquet into a fellowship meal.   Their preference for the actual over the symbolic, or better, for the literal over the sacramental, was an error that Father Farley saw the post-Vatican II Church embracing.  It was the same error that Protestants made when they swapped the sacraments for the Bible.  And it was the same error that Jesus’ diffident disciples made when they abandoned him after his declaration that his flesh was real food and his blood real drink.  The value of a symbol was lost on them.  All sacraments are by their very nature symbols; they represent something greater than themselves.  Indeed, they produce something greater than themselves.  Boldly overwhelming the actual Body and Blood of Christ with a more realistic loaf and a more practical bottle is at best misleading, possibly deceptive, and maybe even dishonest.   The Bread of Life is above all the Body of Christ.  The former must never eclipse the latter.                    COMPLETE

       Flannery O’Connor (actually Mary Flannery O’Connor) was a celebrated author of short stories in the middle of the last century.  A native of Georgia, Miss O’Connor was characteristically southern in her frame of mind and in her turn of phrase.  But she was also, quite uncharacteristically for a southerner, a dedicated Roman Catholic.  Even in midlife when illness had gotten the best of her, the writer continued to go to Mass almost every day.  While attending a writer’s workshop in Iowa in 1945, the young author was overcome with homesickness.  Happily she found solace for her melancholy in St. Mary’s Catholic Church there in Iowa City.  As author Brad Gooch relates in a new biography, a friend later recalled Miss O’Connor’s words:  “I went to St. Mary’s as it was right around the corner and I could get there practically every morning.  I went there three years and never knew a soul in that congregation or any of the priests, but it was not necessary.  As soon as I went in the door I was at home.”

       Miss O’Connor was not “at home” in St. Mary’s Church in Iowa City because someone smilingly shook her hand at the door and showed her to her seat.  The writer was not “at home” there because she was asked to stand at the introductory rites of the Mass and identify herself as a visitor to that congregation so some volunteer could offer her coffee and a muffin after Mass.  The author was not “at home” at St. Mary’s because of an eager gesture offered over several pews at the sign of peace.  Flannery O’Connor was “at home” in St. Mary’s Church on East Jefferson Street because of the deep Catholic faith that she brought with her from her home in central Georgia to this small university town. 

       Mary Flannery O’Connor’s faith transcended the tastefulness of the Gothic décor, the warmth of the community, even the eloquence of the priests.  It was the Presence of Christ reflected in the time-honored rituals and made real in the familiar sacraments that assured Flannery O’Connor that she was indeed “at home.”  The same religious experience that had nurtured and nourished her in Milledgeville, Georgia was available to her now in Middle America.  For the believing Catholic, the celebration of Mass, the absolution in confession, and a visit to the Blessed Sacrament are spiritual encounters that depend more on the faith of the believer than they do on the skill of the celebrant or the earnestness of the community.  Every Catholic has been gratified by the surprising beauty of a church or by a finely crafted sermon or by the liturgical excellence of a well-trained congregation.  Yet at the same time, Catholics have been renewed and fortified by a basic rite at a summer chapel or by a scantily attended Mass in an inner city or by a toddler-filled liturgy in a school auditorium in the suburbs.  In the event, it is the faith of the believer that draws meaning from the Mass, re-enforcing the Presence and power of Christ in any celebration.

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, the crowds are overawed that Jesus has been able to relieve their neighbor of his speech impediment.  “They were exceedingly astonished” writes St. Mark, “and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”  The crowds were rightly impressed with Jesus’ skill at working miracles.  And Jesus adeptly uses his talents to draw the multitudes closer to him.  Yet sadly, awe at Jesus’ excellence is not sufficient to make true believers out of these people.  The crowds might revel in Jesus’ signs and wonders, but their later fickleness proves the true significance of this man eludes them.  A faith-filled appreciation of the person of Jesus rather than an enthralled acknowledgment of the activities of Jesus is what makes a believer feel “at home.”  And faith in the nature of the Church rather then awe at the splendor of the Church is what makes a Catholic feel “at home.” 

       Fulfillment at Mass and satisfaction in church depends more upon the depth of one’s faith than on the extent of one’s participation.  Catholics nowadays can be very busy at Mass: greeting and reciting and reading and singing and processing.  But active participation is first and foremost an activity of faith, an awareness of the Divine Presence, an attentiveness to the Beyond in our midst.  In the end, it is the sensed Presence of God that makes and will make the true believer really “at home.”       COMPLETE

       A good friend on the West Coast, a dear cousin in the Midwest, and a respected pastor locally were all impressed with the religious novel The Shack by William P. Young, a son of Protestant missionaries in the Orient and the heir to multiple religious influences.  The recent best seller is quite perceptive in its presentation on forgiveness and was refreshingly insightful in discussing the significance of Eden’s Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Yet a couple of items might (or should) lead the Catholic reader to contrast the writer’s images with some traditional Catholic teachings. 

       While it might be the height of political correctness to re-fashion God the Father into a motherly black woman reminiscent of Hattie McDaniels, the author nonetheless does play fast and freely with Divine Revelation and with Christ himself who clearly and overwhelmingly depict God as a Father.  Somewhat redeeming itself, the book suggests that God is actually both mother and father and may be considered legitimately from many different angles.  Since God is indeed infinite, this is true.  Yet it was God the Father’s deliberate choice to reveal himself to mankind pointedly and specifically as a Father.  To gloss over this creedal formula as incidental to Christianity underrates both God as Father and mankind as sons in the Son..

       The notion of hierarchy, so integral to the New Testament and to Catholic Christianity, is crushingly dismissed as a mere front for power as the three Divine Persons discuss their empathetic equality one with another.  The heavenly Father, Son and Holy Spirit might not represent a hierarchy of persons but the Gospels and the Epistles clearly manifest the Church’s communal ordering designed by God.  The disciples were distinguished from the multitudes.  The Twelve Apostles were called apart from the disciples.  Peter, James and John were Christ’s particular intimates among these Twelve.  Clearly Peter was divinely destined for a ministry even beyond his apostolic peers.  Accordingly the Apostles were intent on filling the position of the lamented Judas with a qualified, not an arbitrary, candidate.  The order of deacons was no random selection and the mission to the Gentiles was entrusted to those on whom authoritative hands were laid.  Even to suggest that the hierarchical nature of the Church is at best an organizational tactic and at worst a front for power is a complete betrayal of the Apostolic character of the Church. 

       Certainly not a major element of the author’s work but rather just a little dig at the Roman Catholic Mass was a charming scene in which the major character leaves behind his intimate experience with God and plans to return to life in the everyday world.  The writer pens touchingly, “Without any ritual, without ceremony, they savored the warm bread and shared the wine and laughed about the stranger moments of the weekend.”  Yes, it would be lovely if every weekend Christians could look forward to a romantic interlude with the Divine Persons over a toasty loaf and a bottle of Kendal-Jackson.  Certainly there is more than a hint here that such an informal Divine dialogue would be more meaningful to believers than the ritualized ceremonial Catholics call the Mass.

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, St. Peter is chastised by Jesus Christ for “thinking not as God does but as human beings do.”  Simon Peter had the distinct benefit of being personally educated in the faith by Jesus Christ himself.  And yet this first leader of the early Church still found it difficult to forsake human tendencies in favor of Divine promptings.  The modern day Catholic has a similar challenge from the Master.  The traditional Latin expression “sentire cum Ecclesia” reveals this mandate best.  The alert Catholic will resist the theological fashions of the moment and begin “to think with the Church, to feel with the Church, to sense with the Church.”  Neither Sacred Scripture nor Church tradition is arbitrary.  Both are products of the Divine Will for man’s instruction and direction.   The true Christian will reform and conform himself conscientiously to God’s Divine Word as found in Scripture and Tradition sensing therein the fullness of revelation and the surest path to eternal life.       COMPLETE

       The Gospel versions according to Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke are often termed the Synoptic Gospels because the similarity among them can be observed “at a glance,” as the Greek word synoptic indicates.  Nowhere is this evangelical agreement more evident than in the sacred authors’ reporting of Christ’s triple predictions of his Passion.  St. Mark’s three chapter and verse references to the Passion are most easily remembered: 8:31, 9:31 and 10:33.  But Saints Matthew and Luke are just as resolute to include the triple predictions so that there may be no doubt in any believer’s mind that Jesus was totally aware of the fate awaiting him in Jerusalem and that he embraced that fate with resolve and determination.

       Even after two thousand years of Christianity, the faithful are still scandalized by suffering.  Even ardent believers figure that suffering is a punishment for personal failings and that if one were a really good Christian there would be no suffering in one’s life.  In the popular mind, suffering is a sign of disfavor before God.  “What did I do to deserve this?” is still a question many good Catholics continue to ask.  Sometimes persons do indeed bring sufferings on themselves through neglect or abuse.  Sometimes persons endure sufferings beyond their control: illness, unemployment, violence.  But the suffering that Jesus variously predicted for himself was not simply the result of bad habits or bad luck.  Jesus suffered because of his heroic witness to the truth. 

       Jesus stood for truth in a world of error.  Jesus stood for justice in a world of injury.  Jesus stood for belief in a world of skepticism.  Jesus faced up to evil in its many facets and evil could not tolerate the exposure.  In a world of deceit, truth invites persecution.  In fact, if a Christian experiences no quarrels in his life, no misunderstanding, no aggravation, then his compliance to the truth, his promotion of the truth, must surely be questioned.  As Saints Paul and Barnabas would later advise their converts, "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God."   Bearing witness to the truth was not easy for Jesus and it is not easy for the modern believer.  In fact, harassment from the world is the measure of our conformity to Christ. 

       As the old Protestant consensus that held sway in this country until well into the twentieth century continues to fall apart, the believing Christian, both Protestant and Catholic, will find himself more and more out of step with the prevailing secular wisdom.  Prayer in public life, Sunday as a day of rest, the legal favoring of marriage stability, prohibitions against abortion and illegitimacy and contraception, ill regard for homosexuality, acknowledgment of authority in making individual choices, even a reverential treatment of death and dying – these enduring traditions of Western society are daily questioned and often entirely dismissed.  The Christian who, in the face of secular erosion, dares to defend the faith of our fathers as embodied in these previously common assumptions can expect to be vilified as a reactionary or dismissed as uncaring or pitied as hopelessly out of touch.

       Jesus’ campaign for the truth was not an easy operation.  The crowds were fickle and their support could not be taken for granted.  The apostles were well-intentioned but they could be dense and they could be timid.  Their support was debatable.  The religious authorities were consumed with envy as St. Mark famously notes.  Not only did they deny support to Jesus’ ministry, they actively conspired to eliminate from the Jerusalem scene altogether.  The pagan world had little time for Jesus Christ, including him with those several crackpots who from time to time pointlessly rattled the people and were in great danger of disastrously rattling Rome.  Frankly Jesus was almost on his own.  The Father and the truth were his only collaborators. 

       Courage and determination in the face of great odds have been hallmarks of Christianity through the ages just as fortitude and resolve marked the public life of Jesus Christ.  Ease, comfort, and sympathy were not Jesus’ lot in life nor will they be the destiny of today’s alert Christian.      COMPLETE

       Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, OK, has decided to celebrate Mass at the diocesan cathedral "ad orientem," i.e., facing the altar at the head of the people toward God in the distance in an effort to recapture a "more authentic" Catholic worship.  The prelate added that for centuries, "everyone -- celebrant and congregation -- faced the same direction, since they were united with Christ in offering to the Father Christ's unique, unrepeatable and acceptable sacrifice."  The bishop observed that this collective position stresses the nature of the Mass as an act of worship shared by the priest and the congregation.  The bishop suggested that Mass with the celebrant facing the people lessened this sense of Divine worship comparing the priest behind the altar to a teacher behind her (sic) desk.  Thus the new Mass seems to stress dialogue over worship, sharing over praying, friendship over Sonship.

       His Excellency is quite correct in emphasizing the worship of the Father as the primary focus of the Mass.  The renewal of Christ’s original worship of his Father on Calvary offered by the priest with the people is the primary action of the Mass.  Catechetical elements during the service of the Word and communal components during the service of the Bread must never compromise the orientation of the assembled faithful toward the Father.  The Mass is not chiefly a learning experience nor is it primarily a fellowship event.  The truly authentic Mass abounds with Divine worship.  The fashionable trend toward the Tridentine Mass might owe some of its popularity to its almost exclusive emphasis on worship over dialogue and fellowship. 

       Nonetheless, Bishop Slattery’s turning his back toward his people in order better to face his God reflects a pre-Christian style of worship.  In fact, it indicates a profoundly non-Christian manner of worship.  Thanks to the Incarnation, God is no longer found out there, in the middle distance, just beyond the horizon, East or West.  After the Incarnation, God has become the “Beyond in our midst,” as Anglican Bishop Robinson so memorably wrote.  In the light of the Incarnation, God reveals Himself through the man Christ, through Christ’s Church, through Christ’s sacraments, and, yes, through the Christian community.  God is here, not just hereafter.  Through Christ, religion has become very earthy and very material and very human.  Acknowledging the Incarnation, the contemporary congregation rightly focuses its attention on the sacred elements of Christ’s Body and Blood made visibly present on a central altar.  Through the effective words and elevating gestures of the priest, the congregation gathered before the altar can offer these sacred elements to God who is present there among them just as truly as He is out there beyond them.  Thus Mass facing the people powerfully encourages the worship of God through the fundamental elements of Christ’s Body and Blood, graphically displayed and compellingly central on the altar.  Honoring God out there or up there in heaven ignores the Incarnation.  Honoring God at the heart of the community celebrates the Incarnation. 

       One major error committed by many, perhaps most, priestly celebrants since the Second Vatican Council is the practice of addressing the Eucharistic prayer, i.e., the Canon of the Mass, to the people instead of to God.  The Canon is clearly addressed to God – “We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving…Father, you are holy indeed and all creation rightly gives you praise…Father, we acknowledge your greatness…”  Yet celebrants insist on making a lot of eye contact with the people as they offer these prayers.  It is little wonder that the people and some bishops still think of God as being ‘out there” when celebrants fail to reflect the presence of God enveloping them at the altar.  Celebrants are intent to make indulgent gestures toward parishioners in the pews instead of radiating spiritual contact with God in whose Presence they stand in the midst of the assembly.  Even the obvious paternal orientation of the “Our Father” is compromised by hand holding and other shared signs.  Neither prelates nor priests nor people should routinely turn their backs on restoring the Presence of God to his proper place around the altar.     COMPLETE

       Princess Mae of Teck came from a branch of the English royal family that lived under reduced circumstances.  Although she was indeed a great granddaughter of George III, her family once had to move to Florence, Italy to save money.  Nonetheless, Princess Mae was selected and engaged to marry Prince Eddy, the heir to the British throne.  Eddy, alas, died during their engagement and Mae was quickly re-engaged to Prince George, next in line to the kingdom.  Georgie and Mae became King George V and Queen Mary, happily reigning from 1910 until 1936.  This was not the first time a princess was hastily re-engaged upon the death of her fiancé.  Princess Dagmar of Denmark was engaged to Nicholas of Russia, who should have inherited the Russian Imperial throne from his father Alexander II.  Nicholas, a man of much promise, sadly passed away and his less enlightened brother Alexander became heir to the Russian empire and was speedily affianced to the bereaved Dagmar.  They later became Czar Alexander III and Czarina Marie, parents of the ill-fated Nicholas II, last czar of Russia.

       These royal personages knew that their lives were not their own and that their marriages would be at the service of the state.  Sometimes these unions did develop into love matches like the one King George and Queen Mary quietly experienced.  Other times these arranged marriages had disastrous consequences.  George I’s wife Sophie Dorothea spent her married life locked in a tower in Germany.  George IV’s wife Caroline wasn’t even allowed to attend his coronation.  For royal personages, marriage was first of all an institution and only if they were lucky did it become a love match. 

       Nowadays marriage has become almost entirely a matter of personal relationships.   Marriages are supposed to be romantic affairs, or so most of Western society would like to believe.  Yet love as the sole basis for marriage is fairly new in history.  As the popular musical “Fiddler on the Roof” testified, it was the matchmaker who drew couples together in peasant villages.  Elsewhere it was parents and property and inheritances and religion and nationality that largely guided the marital destinies of young people.  Even within living memory marriageable children were quietly expected to marry “their own kind” and were gently warned about marrying “beneath their station.”  Marriage is not just a question of love, affection and romance.  Marriage is first of all an institution which couples have to ponder before committing themselves.  The old – and never surpassed – homily at Catholic weddings warned of the wider aspects of matrimony.  “My dear friends: You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred, because it is established by God himself and most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future.”  The Anglican wedding rite said it equally well:  “The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”

       Previous generations esteemed marriage because they understood it to have been instituted by God himself and because they knew it would have ramifications that would affect society as well as themselves.  Besides affection, marriage meant religious commitment, child rearing, financial support, home making, social status, physical intimacy, fidelity, compassion in difficulty, and perseverance to death.  Divorce was a scandal in the not too distant past because it defied the accumulated wisdom of society.   Everyone, not just the husband and wife, suffered from a failed marriage.  Nowadays happiness has trumped responsibility, and marriage, as well as the married couple, has suffered for it.

       Queen Mary made the best of her unexpected marriage.  Fifty years later the Duke of Windsor would not share his mother’s respect for matrimony when he pledged himself to the twice divorced Mrs. Simpson.  Queen Mary’s chagrined words to her Prime Minister then still make a fitting comment on the sad situation of marriage today: “Well, Mr. Baldwin, this is a pretty kettle of fish!”       COMPLETE

       One of the saddest results of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was the distressing neglect of Sacred Scripture that resulted in the Catholic Church.  Officially the Church never neglected Scripture.  The pronouncements of the popes and the works of theologians are replete with quotes and references to the sacred texts.  And the Church did have popular methods of conveying Bible stories to the faithful.  The solemnities and feast days of the Church community celebrated all the great Scriptural events.  The Annunciation through to Pentecost and on to the Second Coming was always the stuff of Catholic liturgies.  The rosary clearly was Biblically based; the attached indulgences depended more on meditating on the mysteries of Christ’s life than on the actual recitation of the Hail Marys.  Catholic statuary and frescoes and especially stained glass windows offered visual allusions to all the great events of salvation history.  Catholicism was always Scriptural even if each believer did not have a sacred text ready at hand.  Recall that during most of the Church’s two thousand year history, the majority of people could not read.  And even if they could read, hand copied and artistically illuminated manuscripts were precious items!  Cathedrals were fortunate to possess bibles, let alone manor houses and peasant dwellings.

       Obviously the printing press and especially moveable type ushered in a whole new era in Scriptural availability.  Translations of the sacred text into vernacular languages also made the Word of God accessible to the educated household.  Lamentably the convenience of a printed text in one’s own native tongue dawned on the Christian world at the same time that many within that world were becoming disheartened with the clergy of the day.  Inept sermons, scandalous living, and simplistic theology drove some believers to seek God only in his written Word.  The Bible replaced the Church as God’s instrument of salvation. 

       Since the Reformation, the Bible has become so closely associated with Protestant Christianity and the sacraments so closely aligned with Catholic Christianity that the two strains hardly overlapped on the popular level.  Protestants repudiated the Eucharist and Catholics ignored the Bible.  Protestant preaching became largely Scriptural; Catholic preaching was predominantly theological.  Protestant ministers could quote the Bible authoritatively and expansively; Catholic priests often proffered the lives of the Saints or the musings of scholars.   Even Catholic religious education classes and Catholic school rooms opted more for Bible stories rather than for the Bible itself.   Catholicism was rich enough in tradition, sacramentality, and spirituality that it could survive this meager rationing of God’s Word.  And happily Catholicism avoided (until recently) the worse excesses of liberal Protestant investigations into Scripture.  Nowadays there is great hope for a renewed Scriptural appreciation within the Catholic world. 

       St. Peter commends the power of Holy Writ in his Epistle read at Mass this weekend:  “Indeed the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.”  The word of God is broader than the Bible certainly, but it is effectively contained there.  Pope Pius XII’s Divini Afflante Spiritu in 1943 and the Second Vatican Council’s decrees greatly encouraged the investigation of Scripture by Catholic scholars and lay people.  The readings at daily and Sunday Mass were completely revised to include a broader selection of sacred texts.  Priests were encouraged to preach daily on the Word of God.  The Book of the Gospels was carried in procession and Bibles were often displayed prominently in sanctuaries, sometimes with a vigil lamp, sharing the reverence accorded the Blessed Sacrament.  On the local level, Catholic involvement in the charismatic and Pentecostal movements led many local communities to establish Bible study groups.  Catechisms for school age children became more scripturally oriented.  Gradually Catholics are lifting their Bibles off their coffee tables and placing them on their night stands.  Scripture is coming of age in the Catholic Church.       COMPLETE

       There was a time when ransoming captives was a very relevant act of mercy.  Moors from North Africa regularly captured unlucky Europeans and then demanded ransom from their unfortunate families.  Kidnapping for ransom was a special problem in Spain whose southern provinces were under Mohammedan control.  Religious orders like the Mercedarians, founded by St. Peter Nolasco, were instituted precisely to buy back Christians held captive in the Moslem world.  These religious orders would beg funds used for the release of captives whose families could not afford the bounty.  Ransom was a major preoccupation in the early medieval world.

       When Jesus declares in today’s Gospel that the Son of Man has come “…to give his life as a ransom for the many,” the ancient and medieval worlds knew exactly what he meant.  The devil was holding mankind hostage thanks to original sin.  Adam and Eve had ceded the human race to Satan by their profound disobedience.  Now Jesus would offer his life, his death on the cross, to purchase back all those souls otherwise lost to hell for eternity.  St. Paul re-enforced this notion of ransom when he wrote to Timothy that Jesus Christ was the man “…who gave himself as a ransom for all men.” 

       Certainly mankind is in the clutches of the Evil One.  Original sin is an undeniable phenomenon for anyone who reads the daily newspapers.  Murder, rape, greed, lust and envy are the stuff of daily life.  The devil still holds sway over much of mankind’s activities.  Ancient authors thought that the death of Jesus Christ, the very Son of God Himself, would be sufficient compensation for Satan to release the human race from bondage.  What greater ransom could be paid to the devil than the death of God’s own eternal Son?  Thus Jesus redeemed mankind, that is, “bought back” mankind from the snares of the devil and the penalty of eternal damnation.

       The trouble with the ransom theory of salvation is the thought that God would actually deal with the devil in any way, as if the two were equals.  God paying the devil a ransom, especially with the life of His Own Son, is repugnant to any right thinking believer.  This ransom theory of salvation would yield during the Middle Ages to a satisfaction theory which proposed that the death of Jesus was not a ransom paid to the devil but a just debt paid to God who had been rightly and infinitely offended by our first parents’ ancient sin.  This theory, promoted by St. Anselm of Canterbury and refined by St. Thomas Aquinas, speaks more of God’s justice than his mercy.  Under the ransom theory, the devil was bought-off.  Under the satisfaction theory, God is paid-off.  Neither proposition exhausts the possibilities of God’s economy of salvation.

       The death of Jesus was neither a ransom paid to the devil nor was it simply a debt paid to God.  The death of Jesus was the result of Christ’s bearing witness to the truth.  The mission of Jesus was to bear witness to the truth regardless of the consequences.  Jesus bore this witness perfectly.  His life was a statement that the religious authorities and secular rulers could not abide.  It was neither the devil nor God who demanded Jesus’ death.  He died as a result of mankind’s intolerance for the truth.  Mankind preferred to kill the truth rather than face it.  Happily, for his obedience in bearing witness to the truth, the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead, exalted him, and made him the source of eternal salvation for all who would accept the truth in Christ.  Thus God’s plan for salvation rightly celebrates the obedience of Jesus more than it highlights a payment to the devil or a debt due to God.

       Jesus knew that his sacrifice could appear as a ransom to a conniving Satan.  Jesus knew also that his sacrifice might be understood as compensation for mankind’s obligations to God.  But Jesus knew best of all that his sacrifice was an errand of truth, winning lavish mercy for an un-expecting and un-deserving mankind.                                                                                                        COMPLETE

       Jesus was undeniably a charitable person.  His heart melted when he saw the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd.  His instinct was to feed the multitude in the wilderness rather than send them home unnourished. He was touched by the plight of the widow at Naim on the loss of her beloved son.  He responded to the crippled, the deaf, the mute, the leprous, and, as in today’s Gospel, the blind.  His practical charity certainly surpassed that of his impatient disciples who would silence the blind Bartimaes rather than put themselves out to heed his needs.  In spite of the sizeable crowd that St. Mark deliberately notes, Jesus makes time for this blind beggar on the streets of Jericho.  Christ listens to him, speaks to him and cures him.  So clearly, Jesus had tender feelings and was not hesitant to act upon them.

       Christ’s Church, for its part, has continued this ministry of personal charity down through the ages.  Whether it be St. Martin of Tours splitting his cloak to share it with a beggar or St. Benedict writing a stipulation for hospitality into his rule for the monastic life or St. Peter Claver tending to the physical and spiritual needs of African slaves recently arrived in South America or Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin opening meal sights in lower Manhattan, the Church’s involvement with the physically needy and the spiritually impoverished is rightly celebrated.  

       In recent years these traditional methods of Catholic charity have been sometimes criticized as answering only immediate needs rather than addressing long term goals.  Even Mother Theresa was disparaged on occasion for being more interested in warm clothing and hot meals than she was in systemic change within the world’s governments and economies.  Certainly the larger picture should be taken into account and effective remedies proposed.   Theory should guide practice.  Truth should direct charity.  While lamenting the Catholic Church’s sad involvement with the now discredited community organization known as ACORN, one blogger from Greater Washington astutely observed that some socially active Catholics have “big hearts but small brains.”  But then the writer went on to give credit where credit is due: The Catholic Church is the largest and oldest social welfare organization in the word.  We practically or actually invented hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, shelters, etc.  As such, the “social teaching” of the Church has always been a very high priority, and the execution of the corporal works of mercy is a necessity to salvation.

       Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical, Charity In Truth, addresses this very situation of the need for charity to be both practical and correct.  Charity, as St. Paul writes, “rejoices in the truth.”  And those who would do charity have an obligation to research and appreciate the truth.  Nowadays the Church comes under much criticism for its stands on many issues, especially on sexual morality.  Pope Benedict has been publicly denounced as a murderer because of the Church’s prohibition of condoms in Africa.  The Church is thought insensitive in its stand against same sex marriage:  “If two people love one another…”  The Catholic community is seen as naïve if it thinks it can win couples away from artificial birth control to Natural Family Planning.  The Church appears heartless in forbidding artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization to childless couples.  Embryonic stem cell research seems too quickly dismissed by the Church.  The Church is called reactionary in its total ban on abortion – even resulting from rape and incest.  Yes, the Church can seem overwhelmingly out of step with the moral tendencies of the day.  Yet, as Pope Benedict wisely suggests, the initial responses to life’s problems, the first reactions to history’s challenges, do not always reflect the fullness of truth.  If difficulties with fertility and sexual orientation and marital obligations – as well as all the other predicaments society faces -- were probed more with an eye to the fullness of truth than with a desire for instant gratification, humanity would be much better served.  “Big hearts but small brains” applies not only to Catholic social workers.  It applies to the economic and scientific and political worlds who are satisfied with hasty resolutions to civilization’s long range problems.               COMPLETE

       One of the saddest revisions that occurred after the Second Vatican Council was the elimination of saints from the calendar, from sanctuaries and from prayers.  Saints Christopher and Philomena, Saints John and Paul, among many other of the blessed, were dropped from the Church’s list of feast days.  While many of these elect had little historical basis, many had caught the popular imagination and had endeared themselves to the venerating public.  Every worshipper can recall entering a parish church in the latter half of the last century only to find that a saint’s familiar plaster (and sometimes marble) image had been relegated to the church basement.  Sanctuaries became bereft of Mary, Joseph, Theresa, Anthony, even Peter and Paul.  Prayers, too, lost some of their treasured references to the heavenly world.  Catholics used to confess to “…Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints…”  Sin was understood in a cosmic dimension – the entire balance of the universe was upset by the infractions of the solitary sinner.  Nowadays the sinner acknowledges his faults solely before God and his worshipping brothers and sisters.

       Saints are not simply decorative elements within the Christian life.  Saints are canonically, that is officially, residents of heaven.    The heavenly assembly of saints, and the several choirs of angels as well, and the souls in purgatory for that matter, remind the earthly believer that the Christian life has extra-terrestrial ramifications as well as earthly consequences.  The Christian life is certainly intended to lead the individual to repentance, to conversion and then on to virtue.  But the Christian life is also expected to open the believer’s heart to thoughts of eternity, to a longing for heaven, to a hope for loving reunions, and indeed to a fear of hell.  The celestial elements of Christianity – “the life of the world to come” – are made more real by the symbolized presence of the saints.

       The inclusion of saints in our prayers and in our liturgies recalls that the believing faithful are surrounded by “clouds of witnesses,” to use St. Paul’s happy phrase.  The mention of the saints and the memory of the saints recall all those virtuous deeds and noble struggles that directed them to holiness.  The perseverance of St. Monica, the determination of St. Patrick, the mortifications of Saint Bruno, the detachment of St. Francis, the zeal of St. Teresa of Avila, the social concern of St. John Bosco, the martyrdom of Saints Maximillian Kolbe – all this good example and encouragement are afforded the faithful when they worship God surrounded by the replicas and relics and remembrances of the heavenly court.  The successes of the saints place holiness within the reach of every worshipper as the faithful come to realize that our own brothers and sisters in the Lord overcame temptation, sin, misunderstanding and persecution on their personal odyssey to heaven.  The saints are our models in the spiritual life.

       The saints in fact are more than models.  They are practical teachers who have left behind a wealth of spiritual guidance that successive generations of believers have adapted to their own religious benefit.  To this day The Confessions of St. Augustine, the Rule of St. Benedict, the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Introduction to a Devout Life of St. Francis de Sales, the spiritualities of St. Ignatius, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, the autobiography of St. Theresa of Lisieux, and many other pious works continue to inspire and motivate the faithful.  Their paths to holiness direct us on our pilgrim way to heaven.

       The saints, of course, are master intercessors.  Already enthroned with the Apostles and the Son of God Himself, the saints indeed have access to the king’s ear.  Their prayers are powerful instruments which God allows to sway His Will graciously heeding the needs of all who call upon Him through the intervention of the saints.                                                                                               COMPLETE 

       Judge Donald and Mrs. Ursula Shea, residents of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Warwick, were recently honored when a scholarship in their name was endowed at Providence College for a student who would pursue a career in community service.  During his acknowledgment, Father Shanley, president of the Dominican college, noted that this generous resource would allow the school to equip a worthy student with an educational background that would serve the larger community.  In a period of tight economy and increased tuition, Father suggested that endowments, bequests and legacies are all the more vital.  Providence College can do much good with enhanced resources.  Similarly the Diocese of Providence is currently taking steps to insure that its resources are sufficient to provide for retired lay employees and for retiring priests as well.  Pensions, investments, and health insurance for Catholic school teachers and secretarial staffs as well as for those clergy who have dutifully “born the burden of the day’s heat” are major fiscal concerns.  Whether it be a Catholic college or a Catholic diocese or simply a Catholic family paying tuition to LaSalle Academy or the Prout School, adequate fiscal resources (read a decent bank account) will make all the difference.

         Considering the sensible and prudent need for adequate financial capital in today’s world, the Gospel incident of the poor widow’s reckless liberality toward the temple treasury borders on the fanciful.  The sacred author notes that many rich people put in large sums.  Then a poor widow came along and put in two small coins worth a few cents.   Jesus comments, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."  If understood literally, Jesus’ words would have to mean that Providence College should forgo its endowments and send all its resources off to a poverty-stricken village in Bulgaria.  I certainly hope that the Diocese of Providence does not cash in my well deserved pension to assist an indigenous tribe in Honduras.  Yet if the poor biblical widow is commended for her irresponsible generosity, what choice do authentic Christians of later generations have than to go likewise, sell what they own, donate all to the poor, and store up treasure in heaven?

       It is clear from the history of the Church that Jesus’ commendation of the poor widow never evolved into a universal Christian principal.  All Christians have never been asked to forego all their resources to benefit the needy.  It is true that the early Church at Jerusalem did chose to pool its resources into a voluntary community fund.  Yet the letters of St. Paul testify that this Christian communism was a colossal flop.  The Apostle was regularly begging funds from his newly converted churches for the impoverished “saints” back in the Holy City. 

       Pope John Paul II in his encyclical on moral responsibility, Veritatis Splendor, analyzes the failure of the rich young man to follow the example of the poor widow and donate all his possessions to the poor.  The Holy Father understands the young man’s call by Christ to sell all (and perhaps the widow’s impulse to donate all) as a personal charism bestowed by God on a select individual.  The pontiff compares evangelical poverty to evangelical celibacy.  In his dialogue with the Pharisees on the permanence of marriage and impossibility of divorce, Jesus especially understands celibacy to be a personal vocation from God.  “Not all can accept this word, but only those to whom that is granted”  Just as no one should rush into marriage or celibacy without much forethought and counsel, so Christians should not feel compelled to rush into poverty without measuring the good or ill that might ensue.  St. Francis of Assisi was genuinely called by God to poverty and the results are still with us.  St. Benedict Joseph Labre and Blessed Charles de Foucauld abandoned all to follow Christ and rightly so.  Yet these represent personal decisions, unique calls, individual vocations entrusted by God to chosen souls.  No doubt some Christians are called to give their last two cents to a deserving cause.  Yet for most Christians, fiscal responsibility will most likely demand less dramatic but still worthy acts of charity.                                   COMPLETE

       An advertisement for Lowe’s Home Improvements features a father bragging to this son that he insisted that Lowe’s deliver a new refrigerator, install that refrigerator and then cart away the old appliance.  He is quite proud of himself.  The son of course is starring over the father’s shoulder at Lowe’s truck which clearly indicates that Lowe’s would have offered all those services any way.  The son offers a condescending smile toward his hapless father.  WalMart offered an advertisement of a mother helping her son fix up his new dorm room as he entered college.  When her work was finished she presented him with a loving picture of mother and son.  The son meets a classmate in the corridor who similarly displays a gift from his helpful mother—a loving picture, again, of mother and son.  Do neither of these boys have a dad?  Next to the Catholic Church and Elizabeth Taylor, men take the greatest ribbing on television.  Situation comedies always confer intelligence on the wives and children; men invariably come across as buffoons.  The only televised sympathy men get is for their grey hair and sexual impotence. 

       And it is not just television that demeans men.  Catholics would be surprised how often a priest goes to another parish to celebrate Mass only to find all the male pronouns penciled out of the Sacramentary and Lectionary.  Some have taken the liberty of revising the Sign of the Cross with its explicit use of the male terms Father and Son into the gender neutral “In the Name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.”  Thus a warm relationship (father/son) is replaced by three anonymous functions.  The recent novel The Death of a Pope narrates a discussion resulting in God being addressed as “Our Parent” rather than “Our Father.”  Mary Daley, a professor at Boston College no less, sees the fatherhood of God to be a mere extension of male domination.  Man reads himself into God.  Her book is chillingly entitled, “Beyond God the Father.” 

       Mercifully there are other thinkers who continue to honor God by his scripturally revealed name.  Paul Vitz is a distinguished psychologist (even more distinguished since he became a Catholic) who follows the lead of Jesus Christ who always clearly and faithfully addressed God as Father.   For example, Jesus concludes this Sunday’s Gospel with a paternal reference:  "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."  Vitz writes that when people change the name for God, they have changed their religion. If a small group began to refer to God as "Zeus" we would know that something non-Christian was going on.  He observes that to reject God the Father as a name is to deny the basic Christian creeds.  He insists that abandoning explicit reference to the Father denies the language of baptism and of course it denies the entire theology of the Trinity upon which Christianity and its dogmas have been constructed. Then Vitz gets even more specific.  Jesus himself gave believers the terminology for referring to God as Father.  In the Gospels, he expresses himself in this language regularly, clearly and emphatically.  For Vitz, it is obvious that the notion of God as Father is “a major new theological contribution of Jesus himself.”   Although God certainly acted as a Father in the Old Testament, he is rarely addressed as Father in the Hebrew Scriptures.  “This means that to deny the language of God as Father is to repudiate Jesus and his message,” writes Vitz.

       Vitz is quite right, of course.  The Fatherhood of God is the pre-eminent message of Christian revelation.  If the entire Bible had to be reduced to one word, it would be the word “Father”.   A father is a person who has a plan – a plan for himself, a plan for his family, a plan for society.  Fatherhood consists in resolutely and fully realizing these plans.  Sadly where there is no father, there is no plan, and life just happens.  Witness today’s inner cities.  Fathers give consistent direction and firm encouragement to family and social life.  Consequently, as in today’s Gospel, Jesus does not attempt to second guess God’s plan about the end of the world.  He refuses to devise his own plans.  He knows himself to be the one who has been sent to reveal fully the Father’s plan.  The vocation of all believers is to celebrate God’s Fatherhood by embracing the Father’s plan for salvation as revealed through Christ, through the Church and through the Spirit in man’s heart.                COMPLETE

       The repudiation of Christopher Columbus as discoverer of America and his vilification as conqueror, exploiter and slave owner have become regular autumn festivals on some campuses and in certain cities.  And to add insult to injury, now Roger Williams is being scrutinized for having tricked, misled and abused the Native Americans he found in Seekonk and along Narragansett Bay.  The Italian Columbus and the English Williams number among the legion of white European men now held in ill repute for the exploits that attended the great age of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  No doubt this week the Pilgrims and the Puritans will be demeaned for having usurped the territorial rights of the North Atlantic coast’s native populations.         

       Every era of history has witnessed its excesses as well as its successes.  The Bible testifies to the slavery, war and exile that plagued the Near East in ancient times.  Barbarian invasions transformed the Roman Empire.  Crusades left lasting ill-will in Eastern Europe and throughout the Middle Eastern world.  And perhaps Columbus and Cortez and Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh and Roger Williams and even the Mayflower voyagers left a lot to be desired in their dealings with the indigenous populations they encountered here.  But these men (and some women too if Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth are included) made a significant contribution to world history which is very worthy of celebration. A discussion of their faults, however valid, must not diminish their momentous legacy to later generations.  In his encyclical on the nature of hope, Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI highlights the epochal contribution made by these men and women to history and to Western civilization.

       Pope Benedict insightfully contrasts the medieval world, the age of great faith, with the modern world, the age of great progress.  The Middles Ages placed all their hope in religious faith.  They looked for fulfillment in the next world.  Their cathedrals, their theology schools, their monasteries, their preaching orders, their pilgrimages,  their exaltation of the papacy, their holy wars, these all indicated hope in God, hope in religion, hope in prayer.   On the contrary, men like Columbus and his fellow explorers, men like Leonardo de Vinci and other inventors, and in particular men like Francis Bacon whom the Pope singles out by name, were fascinated with the possibilities of this world.  The Pope suggests that instead of hoping in faith alone, these men began to hope in progress as well.  These men were the first to break out of the medieval mindset and usher in the modern perspective that society enjoys today.  Without the experiments they risked, life would be the same now as it was in the day of Bernard of Clairvaux or Thomas Aquinas or Giordano Bruno.  Columbus and his contemporaries introduced calculated risk and the possibility of progress into history.  The Pope wryly observes that some people dismiss progress as the advancement from the sling shot to the atom bomb.  But if the explorers and the inventors and the astronomers and the thinkers did not have hope in a bigger and deeper and loftier world around them, humanity would still be living in walled cities.  Continuing hope in progress has encouraged experiments in technology, in exploration, in chemistry, in medicine, in government, in education.  Columbus was even more than the discoverer of America; he was a pioneer in man’s vision of progress.  Because he and his kind helped broaden the narrow medieval focus, this article for the RI Catholic is being composed on a computer instead of being penned as a manuscript. 

       Pope Benedict rightly laments the fracture that occurred between hope in faith that marked the Middle Ages and hope in progress that distinguishes the modern era.  Too much hope in human progress crowds out God in modern times just as exclusive hope in faith left little room for progress in the earlier era.  Clearly, the two hopes are not incompatible.  The God who made the spiritual world also fashioned the material world.  Both heaven and earth are certainly worthy of investigation and exploration.   Hope in progress alone sadly does lead to atom bombs and abortion procedures and corporate expansion.  But progress enlightened by faith can fashion this world into a fuller reflection of the goodness and kindness of God himself.                                                                   COMPLETE                                                                 

       On most days in the Holy Land a cooling breeze blows in from the sea shortly before sunset.  The Book of Genesis refers to his refreshing gust as “the wind of the day” and it takes note that it was at this relaxed moment that God the Father would visit Adam and Eve to discuss the affairs of the day.  ‘When they heard the sound of the LORD God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  What should have been an enjoyable encounter became, of course, an occasion for condemnation.  God exiled the first couple from his garden of earthly delights and sentenced them to hard labor on the part of Adam and painful labor on the part of Eve.  Sadly God’s affection for his first two creatures was unrequited.  God had come to visit them; but hey had shamefacedly hid from him.  God’s visit was not appreciated.

       The Lord God continued to visit his people even in their sorry exile.  Much of the Book of Genesis is dedicated to the encounters between God the Father and Abraham, the father of believers, as well as his progeny, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.  The LORD personally blessed Abram: "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you."  Moses, of course, had a similar encounter with this God who takes the initiative in visiting his select people.  The incident at the bush that burned but was not consumed is rightly celebrated.  On that occasion, God freely promised, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”  

       God was never far removed from his wayward people.  He spoke to them regularly through the prophets.  And he dwelt with them mysteriously by his presence at the Temple as the Book of Kings notes, “It happened that when the priests came from the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.”  

       The Christian believer gratefully professes that the presence of God to our first parents, to the patriarchs and to the Jewish people was certainly a true and real presence.  God is always a God who comes, who visits, who dwells.  But this ancient presence fades in the light of the Real Presence of the Son of God in history at Bethlehem, in word and work in the Church, and continuing in flesh and blood  through the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord God is truly present through Christ in the hearts of all believers, in the activity of the Church, and especially in the personal reception of Holy Communion atMass. 

       The Church wisely uses the season of Advent to refresh the minds of believers regarding the wondrous and persistent arrival of God into human history and into human hearts.  The arrival of God through Christ should evoke great awe among the faithful:  “And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”  And when they do they should stand erect and raise their heads because their “redemption is at hand.”  The arrival of Christ into hearts and history is always transformative as the presence of God in the Old Testament had been.  God challenged Adam and Eve to repent.  God challenged the patriarchs to form a people of faith.  God challenged Moses to reform and renew a population that had known only slavery.  The whole Old Testament was a preparation for redemption, a deliverance that has been brought to fulfillment in Christ.  But fulfillment only comes through being present.  The challenge given to all is “to stand before the Son of Man,” to face up to Jesus, to recognize Jesus, to acknowledge Jesus.  Unlike Adam and Eve who shamefully shunned God’s presence, the Christian welcomes God always present in the person of Jesus.                       COMPLETE  

       St. John the Evangelist wrote it memorably and succinctly, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”   The Greek original actually reads, “…and tabernacled among us.”  One innovative translator has rendered that literally, “…he pitched his tent among us.”  The ancient creeds convey the same message in time-honored if unadorned phraseology, “…he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.”  Certainly the Incarnation is integral to Christianity no matter how the event is described.  Yet, just to be sure, St. Luke goes out of his way in today’s Gospel passage to re-assure his readers that the mission of Jesus Christ was not just a spiritual or transcendent or Divine event.  Jesus was a genuine human being and indisputably took his place in mankind’s history.  And this flesh and blood arrival of Jesus Christ into the workaday world continues to have repercussions into the value of daily life, into the nature of authentic religion, and, as Pope Benedict regularly insists, into the agreement of faith with reason.

       As he did at the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, St. Luke specifies the beginning of Jesus’ public life by citing concrete, historical circumstances that many of his readers could no doubt recall.  Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas and even John the Baptist himself were all well known historical figures who would help the first readers and later generations locate Jesus Christ squarely in history.  Jesus was not a metaphorical personality representing an accumulation of wise sayings and insightful maxim.  Jesus was no symbol of human potential.  Jesus genuinely did “pitch his tent among us” and experienced human life to full.  Indeed he was “crucified, died and was buried.”  One cannot get more human than that.

       Because the Son of God became the actual man Jesus Christ, daily life was revealed to have a deeper significance.   Jesus worked out mankind’s salvation by embracing human life fully.  The deepest truths of daily life, of human life, of man’s reason, had been obscured by sin.  Through grace, Jesus enabled his disciples to grasp that truth once again by their unflinching worship of God, their honesty toward neighbor and their charity toward the poor.  Their daily lives were the test of their spiritual lives.  Jesus the God/man made heaven and earth one.  His followers may not separate the two.

       Authentic religion took on a new aspect in the light of Jesus’ humanity.   Again, earthly elements like water, oil, bread, wine, touch, words, harvest festivals, meals, the common life, births, marriages and deaths became the vehicles for impressing God’s eternal truths on time-bound man.  Religion was not a flight into another world as some had thought.  Rather Christianity was an initiation into the Divine world through an ever deeper embrace of all that was good about this world.  The God who made heaven also made earth.  The God known through faith was also the God known through reason.  Christianity, by putting nature at the service of grace, truly celebrates God in all his aspects – earthly and heavenly, materially and spiritually, human and Divine. 

       Perhaps most important for the present day is the need to appreciate the solidarity between faith and reason.  The authentic Christian may not separate sacred duties from secular challenges.  The incarnation of Jesus Christ is a solemn declaration that the truth is one.  Jesus’ Divinity enhanced his humanity; it did not replace it or contradict it.  Today sacred truth might surpass secular truth but it cannot conflict with it.  Faith should give direction to reason and reason should be deepened by faith.  Many in the current generation make faith a merely private matter while assigning reason a public agenda.  For example, while the absence of an established church in America might be understandable, the partition of church and state has lately devolved into the practical elimination of any religion from public life.  This situation is both unChristian and inhuman.  The removal of God from public life denies the Incarnation and, frankly, lowers man’s noble estate.   Christians must continue to celebrate the Incarnation and to ensure the incarnate Christ’s full role in human history.       COMPLETE

     In 1966, during my year as a deacon prefect at Our Lady of Providence Seminary on Warwick Neck, the college freshman class numbered one member who has recently received the personal affirmation of Pope Benedict XVI himself.  I hope I was kind to seminarian Robert Evans from our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Providence who this week is to be ordained a bishop of the universal Church.  I know he was kind to me.  During his years of study at the North American College in Rome, it was seminarian Evans who would secure for me papal blessings for family weddings and anniversaries.  I certainly hope I gave him a decent tip.  The ministries in which Reverend Monsignor Robert Evans has served the Church over the years could not be more varied.  Nor could they be more impressive:  assistant pastor in geographically diverse parishes, pastor and administrator in small and large parishes, service at the diocesan chancery office in Providence, service to the academic community in Rome, service to the diplomatic core in Washington, DC, and now successor to the Apostles as auxiliary bishop of Providence.

       Not too many years ago the church at Providence would be celebrating the “consecration” of Msgr. Evans as a bishop.  Nowadays the church refers to the anointing of a new bishop as an “ordination,” the same word used for the anointing of a priest or a deacon.  Consecration seems a much weightier word; it seems to connote a much more solemn and significant ceremony.  Yet the decision to employ the word ordination for the anointing of a new bishop is not an indication of less pomp or less ceremony.  The episcopate, like the priesthood and the diaconate, should be appreciated as one of the three holy orders, three holy orderings, three holy orientations, by which the priesthood of Jesus Christ is carried out in a diocese.  The deacon is ordered toward service; the priest is ordered toward sacrifice and absolution; the bishop is ordered toward teaching.  An episcopal ordination celebrates the sacramental elevation of a priest into the college of bishops, into the ranks of those men ordered toward the development, dissemination and defense of the Gospel entrusted to the original apostolic band.  Bishops are our tutors in the faith.

       A bishop does now what the Apostles did in the early church, what Jesus Christ did during his public ministry and what God the Father did in the Old Testament.  God the Father guided and maintained the community of believers that had commenced with Abraham.  God the Father guided and maintained the Jewish community which he had initiated through Moses.  These ancient communities were begun at God’s instigation and were maintained by his providence in spite of sin and infidelity.  Jesus Christ guided and maintained the first Christian community consisting of his Apostles, his disciples and the crowds.  He provided for their maintenance through the sacraments he instituted and the Gospel that he preached.  The first apostles maintained communities of believers all around the Mediterranean world.  These first missionaries maintained these infant church communities by their visits, their letters and their ordinations of successors. 

       As later generations of believers grew throughout Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, it was bishops who were entrusted with the formidable task of guiding and maintaining these worshipping communities first of all by preserving the original deposit of faith entrusted to them from Apostolic times and then by intensifying and spreading these truths revealed through Jesus Christ.  After two thousand years the primary mission of bishops has not altered.   Today bishops propose Christian belief in the face of indifference and secularism.  Bishops espouse the sanctity of life in distinction to abortion, fetal experimentation, insufficient health care and euthanasia.   Bishops promote the dignity of the person when confronting immigration, imprisonment, and discrimination.  Bishops uphold sound teaching by tacking scriptural novelties and theological modernism.  Bishops defend society by supporting traditional marriage, just wages and affordable housing.  By theologically insightful words and by spiritually meaningful actions, bishops establish, nourish and maintain communities of faith throughout the world.  Bishop Evans has his work, Christ’s work, cut out for him.       COMPLETE

       In last Sunday’s Gospel St. Luke presented his readers with down to earth examples of practical charity.  Through the words of St. John the Baptist, the evangelist provided a program of care and compassion.  The precursor instructed the crowds to share their own clothing with the poor.  Those who have two cloaks should donate one.  St. Martin of Tours would take this advice literally when he offered the clothing on his back to a street person.  The fathers of the Church would convey the same message when they advised that the extra clothing hanging in one’s closet belonged to the poor.  The Baptist had advice too for the tax collectors and the soldiers – probably segments of the population to whom the religious authorities rarely preached.  He told the tax men to be honest and the military figures to be gentle.  What advice could be more practical and sensible!

       The preaching of the Baptist anticipated the great litany of corporal works of mercy that St. Matthew would record in his famous chapter twenty-five.  St. Matthew would cite the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the ill, and the imprisoned as marginal members of the ancient world community to whose needs the sincere Christian should respond.  But St. Luke does not have to borrow from his fellow evangelist to make his point about matter-of-fact assistance to the needy.  St. Luke uniquely preserved for Christian posterity the famous and touching parable of the Good Samaritan, a name which has become synonymous with hands-on aid to the distressed.  That kindly traveler along the Jericho road involves himself with his abused neighbor sensibly by dressing his wounds, physically by lifting the man onto his own mount, financially by offering his own money as a pledge, and even impartially by overcoming the enduring prejudice between Samaritans and Jews.

       In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, St. Luke graciously presents the Christian world with another unique example of compassionate neighborliness in the visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Nazareth to her senior cousin Elizabeth in Judea.  Mary of Nazareth herself was expecting the Child Jesus, the reader should recall.  And yet she journeyed about ninety miles from Galilee in the north to Judea in the south.  The chances are very likely that Mary walked most of this way (and back), although securing a ride with a traveling caravan was not out of the question.  Either way, her adventure was arduous and her kindness memorable.  Later Scripture scholars would see more than an act of charity in Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.  Indeed the best of the Old Covenant and the best of the New Covenant met when these two women embraced.  And Mary, as the Church would do later, brought the saving Presence of Jesus Christ into the lives of a mother and her unborn child, heralding the gift of universal salvation God would offer the world through Christ.  While the theological implications of this visit are many, Mary’s charitable precedent is obvious.     Authentic faith is written in words of no-nonsense service. 

       Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical, God Is Love, traces the history of practical charity in the Church.  The sharing of resources by the Jerusalem Church, the implementation of the order of deacons to assist widows, Sunday offerings at Mass cited by St. Justin Martyr (ad 155) to enable bishops to assist the poor, the famous incident of St. Lawrence selling the Church treasures to aid the needy, and so on.  The Pope cites the tension in more recent Church history between those who would concentrate on systemic change within society (justice) and those who continue to minister daily to the downtrodden (charity).   Pope Benedict understands justice to be largely the task of the state, although faith can enlighten the path to justice.  But the Pontiff goes on to make a touching and compelling argument for the role of the traditional charity in society: he calls for “loving personal concern.”  The Pope writes pointedly and powerfully, “…the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man:  the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone.’”  The Holy Father accordingly writes without apology, “…Christian charity is first of all the simple response to immediate needs and specific situations…(it is) heartfelt concern.”  The Pope is not against training, organization and expertise.  But bureaucracy is not charity.  Rather charity is active and productive sympathy; what the Pope calls “humanity.”  He makes this very clear.                COMPLETE

       St. Luke ends the childhood life of Jesus with Mary and Joseph finding of the young Christ in the Temple and he ends the public life of the Savior with the two disciples discovering Jesus in the breaking of the bread.  The two stories are actually one.  The details are altered certainly, but the lesson is the same.  The boy Jesus was lost and is found in Judaism’s most solemn locale – the Temple.  The man Jesus is lost and is found in Christianity’s most solemn milieu – the Eucharist.  The similarities are consistent.

       Both the finding in the temple and the sojourn at Emmaus occur in or nearby Jerusalem, the seat of Jewish piety.  So the reader knows that St. Luke’s lesson is going to be very central to the Christian message.  And both incidents occur at Passover.  The Holy Family has journeyed to the heart of Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish release from Egyptian captivity. They enjoy their own paschal lamb reminiscent of that lamb whose blood splattered on the doorpost spared their forebears centuries ago.  The two disciples were also at Jerusalem for the paschal holy day to witness the slaughter of true Lamb of God whose blood would take away the sins of the world world.  So the backdrop for both events is one of historic rescue, deliverance, and freedom.

       Both scenarios describe Jesus as being lost for three days.  It was “after three days” that Mary and Joseph finally make their happy discovery.  Likewise the disciples lamented, “besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place.”  Both parents and disciples were under great stress during their unhappy quest.  "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety," the worried but relieved Mary remarks to her son.  The disciples who encountered the mysterious Jesus did not hide their feelings either:  “They stopped, looking downcast.”  Their dashed expectations are clear from their words: “But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”   Neither the upset parents nor the discouraged disciples quite grasped what was transpiring before their eyes.  Of Mary and Joseph, St. Luke writes, “But they did not understand what he said to them.”  And concerning the disciples the Gospel writer notes, “…their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” 

       St. Luke does have a happy ending for his readers however.   The holy parents and pious disciples do finally discover Jesus.  And they find him in almost the same place!  Jesus advises his anxious parents, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"  In other words, always look for me in church.  Or to use a Jewish reference, you should have known I would be at the Temple.  Here in the Temple the revelation of God, the wisdom of the prophets, the rituals of the priests, and the traditions of the people are enshrined, experienced, available.   Here at the tangible heart of Judaism is the most likely place to find the Messiah! 

       The two disciples enjoyed a similar experience.  Although their eyes were held, Jesus begins to open their minds and hearts to his presence.   The Master conducts a brief service of the Word.   “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.”  Then the Savior enacts his own primitive Eucharistic meal, “…while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”  The Scriptures and the Breaking of Bread – the same sacred enterprise that is now called the Mass led to the rediscovery of Jesus after his death and burial.  Again, it is at the tangible heart of the Christian religion, the Eucharist, that Jesus is perennially discovered. 

      The distressed parents and the two forlorn disciples both found Jesus Christ in the sacramental life of the Church, foreshadowed in the majestic Temple, made real in the simple breaking of Bread.  The message is clear.  If a believer has lost track of Jesus, the most logical and likely place to find him is in Church!       COMPLETE