St. John the Baptist – I
Beloved in Christ, today is the Birth of St. John the Baptist, and how can we understand the significance of John the Baptist?
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As we know, the entire Old Testament and the events and persons found there, are ‘types,’ that is symbols and prophecies which point to one thing: the coming of Jesus Christ. The Old Law was a preparation for the New, and everything in the Old was taught in figures, in symbol, and in shadows, until the Savior would come. For this reason we say, that the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New, and the New Testament reveals the Old.
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John the Baptist is therefore the boundary between the Old and New. John represents the time past, yet he herald’s the future, as St. Augustine says.
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Elizabeth was old and barren – just like the Old Law. John’s Father, Zechariah, was a priest of the Old Law, while Christ is the priest of the New Law. John was born of a woman too old for childbirth, Jesus was born of a youthful virgin. John’s birth was not at first believed, but Jesus’ birth was received with Faith.
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The father of John, Zechariah lost his voice and could not speak, and in this he represents the Old Testament prophets whose meaning was hidden and obscure. But finally his tongue is loosened with the birth of John, and he speaks. His tongue is loosed because John is the prophet who will herald the coming salvation.
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St. Augustine says that the birth of John the Baptist is at the time of the summer solstice; days now become shorter, and daylight fades. Christ will be born at the winter solstice, when light begins to grow.
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‘I must decrease, he must increase,’ said John. Today is the fading of the Old Law which was lifeless, and the coming of the New Law, which will give light, and eternal life.
Christian fathers
Beloved in the Lord,
St. Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”, is a favorite saint of many people. I pray to her every day. But how are saints made? The answer must be: ‘In as many ways as there are different saints,’ and this would be true. But it’s also safe to say, that in many cases, parent’s play a critical role in the formation of a saint.
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For St. Therese, her mother died when she was quite young, and her father became the most influential person in her life. She writes many things about the influence of her father. Here is one thing she says about her time growing up:
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‘One of my favorite amusements was making colored mixtures of seeds and the bark of trees. I would put them n a cup, promptly offer them to Papa, and entice him to taste them; then my dearest Father would leave his work, and with a smile, pretend to drink. I would never be able to stop, if I told you of the thousand and one incidents of this kind. How shall I make you understand the love that my Father lavished on [me].
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Friends in Christ, today is Father’s Day; we cannot underestimate the critical influence father’s have – or can have – on their children. Fathers are not just a ‘2nd adult’ in the home, but they bring unique gifts and influence that no one else can.
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Let us speak first of all, of the blessings of a father on the human formation of a child. For example, children whose fathers are involved in their life, do better in school. On average, when fathers are active in their child’s life, kids have better intellectual functioning, academic achievement, and better verbal skills. The U.S. Dept. of education found that children of highly involved fathers were 43% more likely to get A’s in school. Children whose fathers played with them as infants, have higher IQ’s and better cognitive capacities. As toddlers they start school ahead of other kids. and are found to handle the stress of school with more patience.
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But the influence of a father also helps a person’s emotional development. Children who have a loving father, are more emotionally secure: they are less likely to get in trouble or use drugs and less likely to tell lies or experience depression.
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Sons with involved fathers have fewer behavioral problems, while daughters have stronger self-esteem, and are less likely to become involved in unhealthy relationships with men. Generally speaking, while mothers stress nurturing, fathers tend to promote independence and an orientation to the outside world, both of which are important. As a result, children who have active fathers in their life tend to be more comfortable exploring the world around them and more confident in exploring their surrounds.
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By the way, fathers interact with their children in playful activity, children learn to regulate their feelings and aggressive impulses without losing control of their emotions. These are all direct effects of father on kids.
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But here is an important indirect effect: a man’s relationship with his wife. A father who has a good relationship with his wife will also tend to be more involved and spend time with his kids. A woman who feels affirmed by her children’s father is usually a better mother. Fathers who treat their wives with respect and handle disagreements in a mature way tend to have sons who understand how to treat women. Girls who have respectful and loving fathers see how they should expect men to treat them. So these are some of the benefits of a good father on a child’s social and intellectual development.
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But there is something even more important than these, and that is the spiritual health of a child. It doesn’t do much good to be well-adjusted socially and do well in school, if the person does not get to heaven. There could be nothing more tragic for a parentt than to find that his or her child in the end, is lost to God. ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but in the end lose his soul? ‘ says the Lord. So a life of faith in Jesus Christ is the most important thing, and that is evidenced by the heart-broken parents whose children are not living their Faith.
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I think we here know this, and we wish children to follow Jesus, remain true to the Holy Faith, and reach Heaven – but here is an interesting thing: Fathers have a lot to do with it. There was an important study done, which shows that it is the religious practice of the father that mostly determines whether children will continue to practice their faith.
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If both mother and father go to Mass every week for example, 33% of their kids will be faithful to Mass in the future, 41% will go sometimes. If the father does not attend Mass but the mother is faithful, then only 2% of their kids will be faithful in the future, while 37% will go sometimes.
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When dad is not going to Mass, it really hurts the future faith of the children. What is really interesting, is that if ONLY dad goes to Mass, not the mother, the children are even MORE likely to practice their faith in their adult lives. What this means, is that it is the religious practice of the father that above all, determines the future practice of the children’s faith, and therefore, their salvation.
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The reason for this seems to be that while children take their cues about domestic life from mom, their conceptions of the world outside come from dad. If dad takes faith in God seriously, then the message to their children is that God should be taken seriously.
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Catholic fathers are a huge blessing to their families when everyone knows that dad stands with Christ, that he is humble, and places himself under the rule of God.
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We see in the gospel today how the disciples are fearful of the wind and the storm: but when they call on Jesus for help, the storm is calmed and they are safe. So too the family, when the father calls on Christ, to be in their home, his children will not be afraid of the storms of life. The attitude of the Christian father is expressed in the psalms: ‘If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do the builders build. If the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain does the watchman keep vigil.” The Catholic father knows that all his efforts will come to nothing, unless they are done with Christ. But when the children see that he humbles himself before Almighty God, and bends the knee on Sunday to his Maker, then they are infallibly taught to do the same.
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Let our Catholic fathers always say as did Joshua, ‘As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’
Let us conclude by invoking the great patron of fathers, St. Joseph: Oh good St. Joseph, protector of the Holy Family, guide our Fathers and grant them the grace and Will, to emulate your faithfulness to God and so bring their own dear children safely to the glory of heaven.
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[Entrusted to the prayers of St. Paul]
St. Romuald
Friends in Christ, today is the Feast of St. Romuald. St. Romuald was born about the year 950, and in his youth he lived a rather sinful life, and became a complete slave to his passions; yet sometimes, while he was hunting in the woods, he would stop and pray, and say, ‘How happy were the ancient hermits who served God.’
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Then something happened which would change his life. When he was 20 he heard that his father had an argument with a relative about some family property; his father challenged this relative to a duel: basically, a sword fight to the death. Forced to be present at this event, Romuald watched in horror as his father killed the man; he was so sicked by it, that he felt the need to do penance for his family. He fled to a nearby monastery, and there lived a life of prayer and austerity which even surprised the monks. Romuald’s example had such an influence on his father, that his father entered another monastery to atone for his sins, and stayed there the rest of his life.
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Romuald was graced with many gifts from God; he was often able to foretell future events, nevertheless he fought a life-long battle against temptation and the devil. More than once, people tried to kill him, and in another instance, out of envy, a man accused him of a scandalous crime. For a long time, many believed the story which he endured with patience, until he was ultimately vindicated.
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St. Romuald founded a number of very austere monasteries, the most famous of which is that of Camaldoli in northern Italy. It lies beyond a mountain very difficult to get to, the descent from which is a sheer precipice, looking down upon a pleasant valley. In this place Romuald built a monastery, which gave birth to a new, very strict order called the Camaldolese.
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A visitor said, ‘The very sight of this solitude in the midst of the forest helps to fill the mind with the love of God. The monk’s cells are built of stone, each having a little garden and a chapel for Mass.
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Romuald once passed 7 years in solitude and complete silence. While on a long trip, he died at a different monastery; 25 years earlier, he had predicted that he would die in that manner, in that place, on that day. When we think of the bad start St. Romuald had, living a life far from God in sin, we are inspired with the hope that it is never too late to begin again, and that penance is part of beginning again.
The power of the Our Father
Friends in Christ, today in the Gospel Our Lord teaches his Apostles the best way to pray. He teaches them the Our Father.
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The Lord’s Prayer should be said many times a day, it is the privileged prayer of the Church, because it was given by Jesus himself. Emeritus Pope Benedict, in a book he wrote called ‘A New Song to the Lord’ (p. 170), he recalls a story of two philology students who had never had any kind of religious instruction, but they attended a sermon by Helmut Thielicke at St. Michael’s church in Hamburg. What impressed them most was the Our Father that was prayed together at the end, which everyone knew.
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Being without any religion, they had never heard it before. Since everyone else seemed to know it, they were ashamed to ask anyone where this prayer came from, instead, they went on a search for this text themselves. Their attempt to find it in the public library failed. They could not find the text in the library of the school of theology either.
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The matter became ever more baffling until they finally hit upon an idea: they would watch religious services – the Mass – on television, and listening carefully, they were able to write down the Our Father as it was being prayed. They wrote about this experience: ‘Thus we finally had a copy of the Our Father in the bag!,’ they said. This episode eventually would lead them to enter the Catholic Faith.
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It is easy for us to take for granted this beautiful prayer given to us by the Son of God, in Person. St. Teresa of Avila advocates saying this prayer very, very slowly, and meditating on each phrase. This is a way, she says, to converse with God.
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This is a prayer with power; it can even convert a person to Christ, and save their soul.
Don’t be a Show-off
Friends in Christ, today Our Lord warns us not to give alms to win the praise of others, not to pray in a showy way, so that others notice, and not to fast so as to attract attention.
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One of the most shameful vices is to be a show-off, or to be a braggart – always looking for attention and talking about oneself.
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Boasting, says St. Thomas, is to make false claims in praise of one’s own qualities or accomplishments. It is an attempt to make oneself seem bigger or above, what one really is.
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Doing things to attract the attention of others, so that others will rave about us, is really a form of immaturity. A person who is seeking even in a minimal way to walk the life of Christ, surely knows that what matters is God’s impression of us; after all, he sees the heart.
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If we do something meritorious before God, some good thing, and then go around bragging about it, we lose the merit of that deed. The Lord says today, if you do things for the praise of others, then you have had your reward.
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Bragging can occur for two reasons: It could be out of arrogance or out of vanity. Boasting because a person is arrogant has its root in pride, St. Gregory the Great says that boasting is a form of pride with the goal of vainglory.
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People will be braggarts about the amount of money or investments they have, the kind of house they have, or even their looks or their hairstyle. But as Our Lord says, this kind of vainglory can creep into even our spiritual life, in which case, alms-giving, fasting, and our prayers can become actions in search of only the attention of others.
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We should therefore conduct our life with decorum and restraint, and do everything, not for the eyes of others, but for the glory of God.
Love your enemies
Beloved in Christ, there are many people with the name Catholic, who when they see someone who is a friend, will show courtesy to them, greet them with a smile, be sure to not speak ill of them, and may even help them with some task. But if it is a person they do not care for, or someone who has slighted them in the past or hurt them – well – they don’t give them the time of day.
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Jesus says, that is exactly how the pagans live, and he is right. People who could care less about God – they are kind to their friends, but disdain their enemies. Our Lord is saying, if you are a Christian, you love all people, those you find affable, and those you do not. This is a test for our life, to find out if we are real Christians or not.
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Sometimes, our enemies should go home – surprised! Surprised that we stopped and chatted with them, or helped them in something.
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Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies.’
Francisca del Valle says: The Holy Spirit wants us to never do any deceitful act against our neighbor. Rather, we should give a special place in our heart to those who are against us. We should never speak in any way, of the weaknesses, faults, or sins of our neighbors. If we are persecuted, we should be quiet in the face of it, and open our heart full of affection for those people, however often they try to hurt us – never showing the slightest sign of resentment.
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St. Francis de Sales says, consider those people whom you find disagreeable and tedious. It is in these cases that we must practice fraternal love. Examine yourself to see if you are well-disposed toward them.
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‘But how can I love someone who hurts me or is against me? How can I change the way I feel about that person? Firstly, it is impossible to LIKE everyone. Some people are downright cruel or have truly abraisive personalities, we don’t like that. But we are to love them. That means, we wish the best for them, desire good for them.
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Jesus clarifies this: ‘I say unto thee, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ If in our daily prayers, we include those persons who are against us – ‘Lord, help him in his life; pour your blessings on him, guide him – this is the way that we truly love those who are against us.
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We might only love our friends out of self-interest, but we can be sure we love others for love of God when we love our enemies. This is the mark of a Christian.
Final Perseverance
11th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Beloved in the Lord,
In 1839, two young seminarians who were good friends, decided to make a pact: ‘Whoever dies first, they said, ‘should return from the grave and tell the other of what happened.’ What they did not expect, was that one of them would soon die.
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The other mourned his loss, as he attended the Funeral. That night, he couldn’t sleep. His bed was in a dormitory with 20 other seminarians; everyone else was sleeping, but he sat on the edge of his bed, and thought about the events of the day.
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Suddenly at midnight, it began: it sounded like a dull roll, then the eerie sound grew louder. It grew in intensity and the vibrations echoed off the walls like many horses or an engine. The whole dormitory was now wide awake, and then came a sound almost like an explosion, as the doors flew open.
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What entered the room was not a shape that could be identified, but a light, changing in color. As all the boys watched, it spoke: Calling out the name of the young man seated on his bed it spoke three words: ‘I am saved!’ Then it vanished.
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The seminarians all ran out of the room in fear, but not the young man seated on his bed. He had peace. His friend had kept their pact, and he was happy, because he was saved.
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Now you might say, ‘Father, that’s just another one of those “stories,”‘ until we consider who tells it to us. That young man who saw and heard all of this, was none other than St. John Bosco.
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Friends in Christ, no one knows for certain, when they die, whether they will be saved or lost; whether they will reach heaven, or hell. If a person dies in mortal sin, they will not be saved, that much is certain, because mortal sin means that a person has turned away from Christ, in a serious way has acted against God’s commandments and has not repented. One must be a friend of God to be saved. For this reason, no one should be too smug about how they will fair on judgment day.
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I meet people who think they are doing just fine, but they are living an immoral life. They are deceived. They are not on the path to heaven, but they think they are.
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And even if we feel that we are trying to follow the Lord faithfully, we cannot be certain of what state we will be in on our last day. And this brings us to the question of ‘Final Perseverance:’ persevering in Faith, in a life faithful to Christ, all the way to death. The devil will no doubt try to tempt us in the final hour, even with our past sins. And so we pray that we will obtain the ‘grace of Final Perseverance;’ we pray to obtain this grace, because it is a sheer gift of God. In no way can we earn it.
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Only God knows who will persevere to the end and be saved, and who will be lost. We call this Predestination. God knows, in his plan, who will persevere and reach heaven and who will not, and go to hell. God already knows whose names are written in the Book of Life, and whose names are missing.
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Jesus tells us today about the little seed, that grows into a giant mustard tree. This is how our faith and life of virtue should be: growing all our life until it is a study tree at our death. Then we will have confidence that the Lord will welcome us into his kingdom. But like a growing plant, the Christ-life in us must be tended to.
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So on the one hand, the mercy of Christ is ever urging us on to hope. On the other hand, we must never presume that we in any way deserve heaven. That is the sin of ‘presumption:’ presuming that God will bring me to heaven – no matter what. It is pride. Even the great St. Paul said that he does penance, ‘lest after having preached the gospel, I myself might be lost.’ So if this great saint didn’t presumed on his salvation, we certainly may not. I tell you that we priests often feel like St. Paul. ‘Lord, grant in your mercy, that I will persevere, that after having preached the gospel I myself will not be lost.’
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We read about King Joash in the Book of Kings. The Lord gave him so many graces and blessings; he did great good for a time, but in the end, he turned away from God in moral disaster. There are plenty of examples of people who were very good for some or most of their life, but in the end turned from God: The great Tertullian, King Saul, Judas of course, and many more, even today. They failed, because they did not persevere in grace.
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A very holy woman used to bury the martyrs;[i] it was sort of her mission; she found one who actually still had life in him; she nursed him back to health, and when he was better, temptation lead them both to commit sin, and afterward they entirely left the Catholic Faith. St. Paul says, ‘take great care, lest ye fall.
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When we walk out of a good Confession, resolved to be faithful, we can have confidence that we are a friend of God. But we must remember: we are not yet saved. As Holy Scripture says: ‘He that perseveres to the end, he shall be saved.’
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On judgment day, as the Book of Life is opened with the names, we will desperately search for our name there. As St. John says, ‘Anyone whose name was not found written in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.’
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Some people speak foolishly about ‘once-saved-always-saved;’ they say that all you have to do is declare Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, and then it doesn’t matter what you do or what kind of sin or evil you do. Hogwash! As if my commitment to Jesus today is sufficient for the rest of my life? This is the sin of presumption. Such an idea is not in the Holy Scriptures – rather, the opposite.
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In many places, St. Paul writes letters to other Christians – who have fallen back into sinful ways. Does he tell them that they are still alright, and will be saved? No.
‘DO NOT ERROR,’ he says. ‘Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor the evil-tongued, nor the greedy will inherit the kingdom of God.
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He is writing to people who once had faith, but they have fallen back into sin. They can be forgiven, but they must change their life. Otherwise, as he says, they ‘will not inherit the kingdom of God.’
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Mother Church tells us over and over, to pray for the grace of Final Perseverance. It is a gift from God of which none of us is worthy. But Jesus desires that we persevere; the whole reason he has come and died for us, is to offer us the grace to choose the right path; all we have to do is cooperate with his grace, which he offers in abundance.
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‘But when I think about judgment and the end of my life and all my sins, I get nervous.’ Then go to Mary. St. Alphonsus says, devotion to the Mother of God during our life, will bring us joy at the end.
‘You will experience joy at your death, he says, if you can at that time remember that you have loved Mary. Nor will this joy be withheld from you, even if you have been for a time, a sinner, provided that from this day on, you live rightly, and love this dear and merciful Lady.
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Mary, pray for us. Jesus, have mercy on us. That our names will be found written in the Book of Life.
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[Entrusted to the prayers of Audrey Santo. If a miracle occurs through her prayers, please contact the Little Audrey Santo Foundation]
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[i] Preparation for Death, p. 320
His Heart is waiting for you
Sacred Heart of Jesus
Friends in Christ, at the very beginning of the 20th century, mankind seemed to be on the way to ‘progress.’ Science and reason would be the hope of everything, and religion – especially the Catholic religion – was seen as outdated and irrelevant – especially by the elites and intellectuals. Darwin had shown us our origins, and man was finally on the march to glory, using knowledge and science – without religion.
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Just before that 20th century started, in May of 1899, Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Annum Sacrum. He asked the bishops to consecrate the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – ‘this image of the infinite love of Jesus.’ It was providential that he asked for this consecration, because the 20th century would begin not with man-made success, but with World War I, then the Great Depression, then the horrors of World War II – deaths of thousands in trenches by mustard gas; Christian killing Christian, man against man; racial hatred, Gulags, Auschwitz – bombings, nuclear bombs, torture, Gestapo, KGB, the Cold War and the most Catholic martyrs of any century of history.
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But the Modern Era – having been seen to be a failure at creating human happiness – has led now to the Post-Modern Era, in which people no longer believe in anything, and without God, young people commit suicide, and Europe and the US have near-zero birth rates; no babies, no future – there is an angst on this earth.
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Pope Leo had prepared the world for what was coming; as if to say, ‘On the path you are heading, what you will desperately need is Jesus. The loving heart of this Savior, who, like a father welcoming his child home who has made a mess of his life – this Savior wishes to draw each person back to his heart.
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As if to re-emphasize, to re-iterate this, at the end of the 20th century, and as we head down the fearful path of nihilism – John Paul II pointed the way again for us. As if to say, ‘world, what you are going to need very much, is the Divine Mercy of that Heart of Christ. When you find yourself wrecked from your misguided ideas and your moral experiments, run to the merciful heart of Jesus who is waiting; his love is waiting for you.
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People may not have noticed, but Pope Benedict himself, spoke very often, and emphasized, that we need to have a close friendship with Jesus; so he wrote the book, Jesus of Nazareth – about the humanity of Christ, who came to die for you and for me. Central to Benedict’s papacy, was the need for a personal love for Jesus.
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And these days, our Holy Father – what is he emphasizing for a lost and confused world? The mercy of Christ.
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From Leo XIII to today, Mother Church has recognized that the path that we are on is so destructive and poisonous and noxious, that we have only one recourse: to turn to this loving Heart of Jesus. When Jesus saw the crowds turning away, he asked Peter, ‘What about you?’ And Peter gave the answer for each of us: ‘Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’
St. Barnabas
Friends in Christ, Today is the feast of St. Barnabas.
Barnabas is called an apostle, but he is actually not one of the original 12. His full name is Joseph Barnabas; he was a Greek-speaking Jew, born on the island of Cyprus. He became a Catholic soon after the death of Christ in the original community at Jerusalem.
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As we read in Acts of the Apostles, he was so committed to the Faith, that he sold the property he owned and gave it to the Church.
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Now when St. Paul had just converted to the Faith, no one trusted him because he had been a persecutor of Christians. The Jews saw him as a traitor, and the Christians thought his conversion was a trick. Only one man understood him, and that was Barnabas. Barnabas was a very gentle and patient man, and because of his special gift of being able to sympathize with others, he was called the ‘Son of Consolation.’
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It was Barnabas, perhaps the most lovable of all the persons of the early church, who had looked kindly on this lonely brother Paul, and saw the soul of a great apostle. It was Barnabas who stretched out his friendly hand to Paul, and introduced him to Peter and James.’
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Paul and Barnabas soon went about converting the city of Antioch to the Faith. In about the year 48, Barnabas accompanied Paul on the 1st great missionary journey. In Lystra, the people were so impressed with the miracles they saw, that they called Barnabas a god; they thought he was the god Jupiter, probably because he was such a big person.
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St. Dorotheus says that Barnabas first preached in Rome, and became the bishop of Milan, Italy. He preached the gospel with Mark in Cyprus, and took with him the Gospel written by St. Matthew; he would often hold the Gospel over sick people, by which they were cured.
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One day, Barnabas saw nude men and women involved in a pagan feast, and so he cursed their temple; immediately a part of it fell in and crushed them, and it was there that the people put a rope around his neck, and dragged him out of the city to be burned alive.
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They put his bones in a leaden urn, intending to cast it into the sea; but St. Mark in the middle of the night, took the bones and buried them secretly in a crypt.[i]
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In a letter that St Barnabas wrote, he says: ‘The Lord was ready to undergo suffering for our soul’s sake, even though he is Lord of the whole earth; having thus renewed us by forgiving our sins, he refashioned us and gave us the souls of children.’
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[i] They remained there until the year 500, until Barnabas himself appeared to a man to reveal their location.
