Let Freedom Ring!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

It's been a while. Things got pretty busy as I wrapped up the school year with final papers and exams, but, praise God, I'm back now at Holy Family for the summer, and looking forward to dig in to parish life.

I preached this morning at the annual outdoor Mass on the Holy Family lawn. We were blessed with beautiful weather – downright "spacious skies" overhead, and "amber waves of . . . corn" in the distance. I thought I'd share my homily with you. Hope you enjoy it, and have a blessed holiday!

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Fourth of July 2014

Holy Family, Fond du Lac, WI

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12

Matthew 9:9-13

America – land of the free, home of the brave. It is a great joy to be back home. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Fr. John Mitchell. I was here last summer, and was away this year at school in Rome. I’m back now for the summer before returning for one final year of studies. Almost there!

Being away from America for most of the year, I always find I come back with fresh eyes, able to see anew what it is I love about my homeland, and also where her weaknesses lie. One of the things that always strikes me strongly when I return is the great abundance of our land. Drive through the country, and there is acre upon acre of fresh and thriving corn. Walk into the grocery store, and there is a whole 30-foot aisle devoted solely to different kinds of potato chips! Or walk into a Starbucks and the variations of kinds of frappe, lappe, iced, mochaccinos you can get is truly dazzling. In Rome, they have caffè and cappuccino…with a lot or a little milk. That’s it!

In many ways, this abundance is part and parcel of the freedom we enjoy here. We have free markets and a freedom of the press and artistic expression that have generated a creativity and wealth that is in many ways unparalleled in the world. And yet, for all our wealth, there is a kind of famine in our land. “Not a famine of bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord,” as the prophet Amos phrases it for us today. We enjoy great freedom, but as our culture becomes more and more secular, our freedom seems to be losing its moorings – an image us lake-lovers can understand well.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, “Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; …[and] it attains its perfection when directed toward God.” True freedom is not SIMPLY the ability to surf 1000 XM radio stations. True freedom actually lies in the choice of what is good. Anyone who’s gotten caught in the snare of channel surfing has experienced this: Until you actually choose the good and delight in it, the mere presence of options can actually be overwhelming and paralyzing at best . . . and at worst, confusing and destructive to our souls.

True freedom is not just a negative freedom from restrictions, but a positive freedom for what is excellent . . . and excellence often requires sacrifice to achieve. Our football team knows that. The more sacrifice they put in, the freer and more facile they become in their undertaking.

In many ways, our nation seems like it is at a crossroads. For many years now, it has raised up the idea that “freedom = options”…without any reference to the goodness or badness of those options. Since 1973, we’ve been terminating the lives of an average of 3,288 babies in the womb a day in the name of keeping open our options. In 2012, 46.5 million Americans were living in poverty, while many of us, myself included, were deciding which frappuccino to try next. There is now a strong movement afoot to say that marriage, which is a sacred covenant between one man and one woman, ordered toward the procreation of children, should also now include the option of being between two men or two women, and thus no longer ordered towards procreation. And then, in a new twist, it is also now being suggested that in the name of offering the option of birth control methods that also happen to entail life-terminating drugs and devices, the consciences of employers must be violated. Praise God we had a huge victory in this battle on Monday as the Supreme Court ruled that the owners of Hobby Lobby will not be forced to violate their consciences by the law.

These questions, though they may seem political, are actually pre-political. They are questions of right and wrong. And this is precisely why they are questions of freedom. The Catechism goes on to point out that, “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to the ‘slavery of sin.’”

This is why it is so important in our nation that we use our freedom to uphold not just our options, but what we know by reason to be right and good. It is why it is so important that the free exercise of religion and of conscience be upheld by our nation’s laws…because all true religion and exercise of conscience is a search for what is true and good and beautiful…and the good and true and beautiful is what rightly orders our freedom and makes it flourish, makes it true.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus exhorts us to, “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” What do these words mean? They are words of the prophet Hosea, in ch. 6 vs. 6, where he declared that the Northern Kingdom of Israel had become sick and wounded by sin. God had appointed Israel to be a physician to the other nations, but they contracted the very disease they were sent to eradicate. They became caught up in the kind of idolatry that the surrounding nations were involved in, and began offering God empty sacrifices without a corresponding conversion of their hearts.

God does not want their lip-speak if their hearts are not converted…if they are not living in midst of the nations but with a focused mission to draw the nations closer to Him and to reveal his love for them. He desires mercy – hesed, in the Hebrew – steadfast, covenantal love – love that is faithful to the covenant He established with them and thus reveals the full glory of the love He has in store for all the nations. Jesus desires this hesed love of his disciples – of you and me.  And he desires it precisely so that we can be the healers of our land – the salt of the earth – the ones who reveal the glory of God’s plan for all the nations. 
As we celebrate the remarkable freedom that we enjoy in this great land today, and as we give thanks for the long list of great men and women who have gone before us with many sacrifices to make this freedom possible, let us not forget that with great freedom comes great responsibility. As disciples of Jesus Christ in the midst of this great land, we have received a great mission and role to make sure that the civilization we are a part of becomes truly a civilization of love – hesed love – not sick under a gluttony of undirected options, but truly free in choosing and fighting for the goodness that God invites us to and desires that we have the courage to embrace and share with our whole land. 
May God bless America on this day.

Sts. Philip & James

One of the graces of being a student in Rome is the opportunity to get to know the saints more closely – to walk where they walked and to pray at their tombs. In particular, Rome is a place to encounter the early martyrs of the Church whose witness to the truth and beauty of what they had encountered in Jesus Christ even to the shedding of their blood gives us the courage to not only believe in Jesus, but to bear our own witness to him in our own time, despite whatever fears might hold us back. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," as the Church Father Tertullian so artfully put it. Their witness (in Greek, μαρτυρια, martyria, martyrdom) becomes the seed that bears fruit in inspiring the conversion and witness of the Faithful down through the ages.

Today is the Feast of Sts. Philip and James the Lesser, two of the Apostles, brutally martyred for their profession of faith in Christ, who are buried in a church that is literally right around the corner from my residence. Their feast has been celebrated together in May since 1570, when their relics were brought to this church and placed under the main altar. They're still down there! And today I had the honor of celebrating Mass over their tomb with two Milwaukee seminarians studying here in Rome, some other pilgrims who joined us as we began Mass, and one of Milwaukee's transitional deacons, Nathan Miniatt, who will be ordained a priest in Milwaukee on May 17.

In today's Gospel, we recall Philip's eager exhortation to Christ, when he says, "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us." Jesus responds, "Whoever has seen me, Philip, has seen the Father also." In our own time, it may seem like, "If only I too could see the tombs of these Apostles, that would be enough for me to then believe more whole-heartedly." But as the tombs serve to point us to the Apostles, so the Apostles serve to point us to Christ, who in turn points us to the Father. In fact, the gift we have in the Eucharist is our greatest point of encounter with the Father, because it is our greatest point of encounter with Jesus, who makes himself present in this way in every Catholic parish and chapel around the world! In the Eucharist, we see Jesus, risen from the dead and poured out as a living sacrifice given to feed and strengthen us in our faith and bold witness. This is the love the Father has for us.

Let us ask the intercession today of Sts. Philip and James, that we might have their same courage and faith in following Christ and believing in the Father's love for us and for the whole world.

Saints!

We're still basking in the glow here from the canonizations of Saints John XXIII and John Paul II. I had the privilege on Sunday, along with over a hundred other student-priests from the Roman universities, to distribute Communion at the Canonization Mass.

It was an immense grace to walk out into the sea of upwards of a million pilgrims with the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Risen Christ in the Eucharist, and to feed the crowds with this living bread, come down from heaven.

As I thought back on the extraordinary moments when I experienced such crowds drawn by Pope John Paul II when he was still with us in the flesh, at World Youth Days and even in that very square when I was in college, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and with tears of joy for the way that St. John Paul's witness of holiness and zeal shaped my life. I was grateful for my parents, who named me after this great saint-to-be who now is, and for my siblings and friends who have given their lives in service to the Church in all kinds of ways largely because of the witness and hope that St. John Paul II inspired in us.

Later in the day, I had the privilege of preaching at a Mass for the pilgrims traveling with Archbishop Jerome Listecki and Bishop Donald Hying of Milwaukee. Since not all were able to get into St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for the Canonization Mass, they wanted to be sure everyone had a chance to attend Sunday Mass. Preaching too was an immense grace for me, on this day of joy and gratitude for God's Providential care for each one of us. What follows is the text of my homily.

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Divine Mercy Sunday

Canonization of JPII & John XXIII

Rome, Italy – 27 April 2014
John 20:19-31

“Peace be with you.” . . . I’ll say it again, “Peace be with you.” This phrase, I think, sums up the many things that we celebrate today – the solemn close of Easter week, the Feast of Divine Mercy, and, of course, the canonizations here in Rome of two great popes, John XXIII and John Paul II. What a gift for us to be here in Rome during this time of grace! I think the message that pulls it all together for us in a beautiful simplicity and power is Christ’s exhortation which he repeats several times in today’s Gospel: “Peace be with you.”

Today is historic, but I think in order to understand just how historic it is, we need to go back at least 14 years to the first Feast of Divine Mercy, proclaimed by Pope John Paul II himself at the canonization of another great saint – the first saint of the new millennium – St. Faustina Kowalska.

St. Faustina was a simple Polish nun and mystic, who had visions of Jesus Christ showing his wounds to her, just as he did to the apostles of the Upper Room in today’s Gospel. He gave her a simple prayer for our time: “Jesus, I trust in you.” And you may know the famous image of Divine Mercy that St. Faustina had painted to spread the message of her visions.

About 20 years after St. Faustina’s death, the Holy Spirit inspired another great saint, Pope John XXIII, to open the Second Vatican Council. Under the Spirit’s inspiration, he saw that the Church needed to open the wings of her embrace so that her timeless message would not be lost to the ears of a rapidly changing world.

The fruit of St. John XXIII’s vision for the Council can perhaps best be expressed by the opening words of one of the Apostolic Constitutions that came from it, called Gaudium et Spes – “the joys and the hopes.” The document opens with what arguably could be considered the “nut” of the whole Council. It begins, “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” The world’s hopes and pains are our hopes and pains because they are the hopes and pains of Christ, who loved the world so much that he came to suffer and offer his life in sacrifice to save and redeem it.

Pope John XXIII set this mission for the Church in the modern world in motion, and Pope John Paul II then brought this call to fruition. His papacy was marked by the implementation of this call and of the message of the Second Vatican Council. And how did he do so?

John Paul II was, I’ll even go so far as to say, obsessed, with the New Millennium. He saw it as a time of an abundant outpouring of grace on the Church and the world, and thus of radical renewal for the Church and the world. And he marked this New Millennium by canonizing St. Faustina and instituting this great feast of Divine Mercy Sunday. He saw this message of Divine Mercy as the message for our time – as the answer to the “joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men and women of this age.”

He had lived through the horrors of the Second World War and the reign of Communism in his homeland, so he knew firsthand the fears and bewilderment that are the fruit of this age, and that can often mark the hearts of men and women today.

. . . And in the midst of this fear and uncertainty, Christ comes and proclaims, just as he did to the apostles in the Upper Room – “Peace be with you.”

He then shows us his wounds, just as he did to his apostles. He shows his wounds to a wounded world, because somehow, mystically, miraculously, divinely, his wounds have power to heal our wounds. In some way, seeing his wounds sears the wounds that we have – and there are many wounds to sear in this age.

So, I want to read to you an excerpt from the homily that St. John Paul II gave at the canonization of St. Faustina, on the first Feast of Divine Mercy. He wrote, “…[A]s the Apostles once did, today too humanity must welcome into the upper room of history the risen Christ, who shows the wounds of his Crucifixion and repeats:  Peace be with you! Humanity must let itself be touched and pervaded by the Spirit given to it by the risen Christ. It is the Spirit who heals the wounds of the heart, pulls down the barriers that separate us from God and divide us from one another, and at the same time, restores the joy of the Father's love and of fraternal unity.”

As we continue in our prayer during this Mass here today, at this particular and holy time in each of our lives as we have each been drawn here to be in this holy city on this most holy of days, let us ask the Lord for the grace to open our hearts to let the Holy Spirit – so alive and active in the hearts of his saints – to let the Spirit come alive anew in our own hearts. Let us allow him to show his wounds to us and speak his message of peace deep within our souls . . . so that we may become living bearers of this peace, and witnesses – apostles – of this message of mercy for our time.

St. John XXIII, pray for us. St. John Paul II, pray for us. St. Faustina, pray for us. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Canonization Eve

The excitement is building here as Rome prepares for tomorrow's canonizations of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. I took this snapshot yesterday mid-morning at St. Peter's Basilica. 

There wasn't even an event happening and they already had to close the streets to car traffic because of the influx of pilgrims. Predictions I've heard of the total number of pilgrims expected to come to Rome for the canonization vary from 800,000 to 7 million! That's quite a range! We'll see what happens tomorrow. One thing is for sure – there will be a tremendous outpouring of God's grace and mercy on this most historic of Divine Mercy Sundays!

Exsultet!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Last night, as you know, the Easter Proclamation, called the Exsultet ("Exult!"), was proclaimed at Easter Vigils around the world. After our 40 days of Lenten preparation, the proclamation is a magnificent outpouring of the Universal Church's pure joy at the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is my favorite moment of the year, and, really, the definitive moment for all time and creation, proclaimed anew each year. Soak in the joy below. God bless you! And Happy Easter!

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven,

exult, let Angel ministers of God exult,

let the trumpet of salvation

sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,

ablaze with light from her eternal King,

let all corners of the earth be glad,

knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,

arrayed with the lightning of his glory,

let this holy building shake with joy,

filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.

Therefore, dearest friends,

standing in the awesome glory of this holy light,

invoke with me, I ask you,

the mercy of God almighty,

that he, who has been pleased to number me,

though unworthy, among the Levites,

may pour into me his light unshadowed,

that I may sing this candle’s perfect praises.

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And with your spirit.

V. Lift up your hearts.

R. We lift them up to the Lord.

V. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

R. It is right and just.

It is truly right and just,

with ardent love of mind and heart

and with devoted service of our voice,

to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father,

and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his Only Begotten.

Who for our sake paid Adam’s debt to the eternal Father,

and, pouring out his own dear Blood,

wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness.

These, then, are the feasts of Passover,

in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb,

whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.

This is the night,

when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children,

from slavery in Egypt

and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

This is the night

that with a pillar of fire

banished the darkness of sin.

This is the night

that even now, throughout the world,

sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices

and from the gloom of sin,

leading them to grace

and joining them to his holy ones.

This is the night,

when Christ broke the prison-bars of death

and rose victorious from the underworld.

Our birth would have been no gain,

had we not been redeemed.

O wonder of your humble care for us!

O love, O charity beyond all telling,

to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!

O truly necessary sin of Adam,

destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!

O happy fault

that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

O truly blessed night,

worthy alone to know the time and hour

when Christ rose from the underworld!

This is the night

of which it is written:

The night shall be as bright as day,

dazzling is the night for me,

and full of gladness.

The sanctifying power of this night

dispels wickedness, washes faults away,

restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,

drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,

accept this candle, a solemn offering,

the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,

an evening sacrifice of praise,

this gift from your most holy Church.

But now we know the praises of this pillar,

which glowing fire ignites for God’s honor,

a fire into many flames divided,

yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,

for it is fed by melting wax,

drawn out by mother bees

to build a torch so precious.

O truly blessed night,

when things of heaven are wed to those of earth,

and divine to the human.

Therefore, O Lord,

we pray you that this candle,

hallowed to the honor of your name,

may persevere undimmed,

to overcome the darkness of this night.

Receive it as a pleasing fragrance,

and let it mingle with the lights of heaven.

May this flame be found still burning

by the Morning Star:

the one Morning Star who never sets,

Christ your Son,

who, coming back from death’s domain,

has shed his peaceful light on humanity,

and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

Good Friday

"And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split." (Mt 27:50)

The thunder of the powers of darkness seems to be ringing out this evening in Zaragoza, Spain. I am here on pilgrimage after a very blessed retreat in Loyola, Spain, where St. Ignatius had his conversion. (Thank you for your prayers!)

Every Holy Week, Spain's streets come alive with colorful processions that mark the events of Christ's Passion, death, and Resurrection. In between the usual liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, hundreds of members of religious brotherhoods here parade the streets with floats that depict scenes from Christ's Passion. They accompany their floats with a steady and deafening beat of drums that fills the city all day long.

As I listen this evening (now past midnight!), I can't help but relate the noise of the drums with the apparent victory that the chaotic powers of darkness celebrated today, thinking they successfully killed God. In fact, we know that by his death, Christ destroys Death and claims for us the definitive victory over sin and evil. But tonight, the drums beat in mocking pride – not yet aware of how hollow they will sound come Sunday.

Interestingly, the drummers hood themselves in "capirotes" that look to American eyes a lot like the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. But the hoods here were traditionally worn by penitents who, in medieval times, would walk the streets in these "dunce caps" to be mocked and spat upon, while preserving their anonymity. Fused with the beat of the drums, the hoods now seem to signify the penitence we all share for wounding Christ with our sins and our desire to stand in solidarity with him who, for our sake, did not shield his face "from buffets and spitting." (Isaiah 50:6)

As we move into Holy Saturday, the day when all the earth stands still in quiet expectation of Jesus' Resurrection, let us not forget that whatever drums might be beating incessantly in apparent victory in our lives, none are too great for God to silence in His own time and in His own wisdom. Indeed, as the Psalmist puts it,

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult." (Ps 46:1-3)

"Come away..."

As anticipated, life has gotten quite busy as Lent comes to a head and the holy days of Christ's Passion, death, and Resurrection come fast upon us.

As if (and surely it is) by God's good Providence, I happen to have scheduled my annual retreat at the precise moment when all the busyness and noise of life was seeming to crescendo to an unappeasable pitch. So, I now turn off the radio of life for a time, and turn to answer the Lord's call given to his disciples in the sixth chapter of Mark's Gospel:

³⁰ The apostles returned to Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹ And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³² And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

Please pray for me as I now enter into retreat, and be assured of my prayers for all of you.