Author: Christine Jordan

Dear Friends,

Jesus tells us, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”  Now this is not the fire of a warm cozy fireplace, nor is it the fire of the stake for burning opponents of the faith.  This fire is the fierce love of the Holy Spirit and in those who are receptive it burns away the sin of the heart.  Jesus then tells us, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.”  Why is there division?  There’s division because we have to decide for ourselves:  are we for Christ or against Christ.  Do our hearts belong to Him or to the world, the flesh, and the devil?  Our heart cannot belong to both sides, we have to choose.  And that can bring division, even within a family, when one person decides in favor of Jesus and the Church, and another against.

As we know God is love.  God is love through and through but that love is perceived by us in the context of a fallen world with fallen minds.  In those who hate sin and are trying to rid their life of sin God’s love is perceived as gentle, forgiving, and always there.  However, for those who love sin, and want to justify it they see God’s love as demanding and judgmental.  “Who is God to tell me what sin is they may say.”  It’s the same love but perceived differently.

Just at the turn of the 20^th century in Paris France Elizabeth Arrighi and Dr. Felix Leseur married.  Both had been raised in the Catholic faith.  However, at the time of their marriage Elizabeth was at most a lukewarm Catholic. And Felix while studying to be a doctor had abandoned the faith totally.  He was an atheist.  Their marriage was a happy one.  The Leseurs were well-to-do and they were part of a social group that was very cultured, very educated, and very antireligious.  Dr. Leseur eventually became the editor of an atheistic newspaper that was very anti-Catholic.

At the age of 32, Elizabeth felt that something was missing from her life, everything seemed so shallow and so she went searching.  And that search ended with the rediscovery of her childhood faith.  She had a reversion to the Catholic faith.  From that point on she organized her spiritual life around a disciplined pattern of prayer, meditation, Mass, the sacraments, and writing.  She kept a spiritual journal, writing down everything.  But with this new found faith Elizabeth’s friends and her husband Felix especially ridiculed her mercilessly.   They teased her and talked down to her.  But she always responded with patience and a gentle smile.  She wouldn’t let their comments dissuade her.  And every time her husband tried to convince Elizabeth of her errors it only made her more determined to go deeper into the faith, to study it more, and to strive for greater holiness.  Even with this division in their life they still loved each other.   But they always tried to persuade the other of his or her side.

For the last nine years of her life Elizabeth’s health deteriorated.  She was in constant pain and was mostly confined to a chair or to her bed.  But even with this she still received visitors and she kept to her disciplined spiritual life and she grew in holiness.  Many people would visit because they were drawn by her peace and love and they wanted her advice and spiritual guidance.   As Elizabeth was dying she said to her husband, “Felix, when I am dead, you will become Catholic again and a Dominican priest.”  His response was, “Elizabeth you know my sentiments that will never happen!” He dismissed this as the whims of a dying pious woman.  Elizabeth died of cancer in 1914.  She died in her husband’s arms.

Later as Felix was going through his wife’s papers he came across a letter.  It was addressed to him, and in it she wrote, “In 1905, I asked almighty God to send me sufficient sufferings to purchase your soul.  On the day that I die, the price will have been paid.  Greater love than this no woman has than she who lay down her life for her husband.”  Elizabeth had offered her pain to God over the past nine years.  She did this for the conversion of her husband.  Again Felix passed it off as the fancies of an overly pious woman.

Following Elizabeth’s funeral Felix was scheduled to visit Lourdes where he was planning to write an expose for his newspaper. Lourdes is the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette.  It’s a place of many miraculous healings.   He planned on writing of the fraudulent nature of the place; he reasoned that there were no true miracles taking place at Lourdes.  Lourdes was a big fraud.  But once there and standing in the grotto, in an instant, he received the great gift of faith, a miracle.  Felix quickly reverted to the faith of his childhood.  When he got home he began to read all of Elizabeth’s many journals and as he read them he understood for the first time the divine source of her love, peace, and silent endurance of physical and emotional pain which she offered for his conversion and the conversion of non-believers.  God made it all possible.

Dr. Leseur did become a Dominican priest.  Fr. Leseur died in 1950.  All of Elizabeth’s diaries are now available in a book and her cause for canonization is underway in Rome.

Elizabeth once wrote, “Our outer life is the reproduction of our inner life, and the visible part of us reflects what is unseen; we radiate our souls, and when they are centers of light and warmth, other souls need only to be brought into contact with them in order to be warmed and enlightened.  We give out what we carry within.”  A soul that is burning with the fire of Jesus will try to enkindle others.

Our Lord came to set the earth on fire.  My prayer for us today is that our souls become ever brighter and warmer and that other souls around us will be warmed and enlightened by us, breaking down divisions in both family and community.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

St. John Vianney had a way with stories, always trying to use vivid and sometimes shocking images.  He once talked about a man who had an excessive love of money.  “And at the end of that man’s life” he said, “He was without a heart.  He died a heartless man!”  “His chest was empty!”  “But when the banker opened up the vault the next day, there was his heart.  His heart was found there in the midst of a pile of money.”

At the beginning of our Gospel we heard this, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  I have a story about a woman who made the heart of Jesus her treasure.  It didn’t start out that way; however, she began her life with a heart that was troubled and restless.  She was a woman of great intelligence who searched for truth.  She searched for truth in psychology and philosophy, once thinking that truth had nothing what so ever to do with God.   This woman’s name was Edith Stein.  Edith Stein was born in 1891 in Breslau Germany.  She was the youngest of eleven children born into a very devout Jewish family.    Edith’s father, ran a successful timber business, he died when Edith was 2 years old.  Her mother, a very devout, hard-working, and strong-willed woman, now had to look after the family and their large business.  Which she did, however, she did not succeed in keeping up a living faith in her children.  As a teenager Edith lost her faith in God, she quit praying, and became an atheist.

Edith was a brilliant student and after High School she went on to the University of Breslau where she studied philosophy and women’s issues.  “For a time,” she wrote “I was a radical suffragette.”  She had planned on becoming a teacher.  But after graduating she served as a nurse for a short time in an Austrian field hospital during World War I.  The hospital dissolved and she went back to school to earn her doctorate.

It was at about this time that one of her associates from the University had been killed on the battlefield.  And this dead man’s young widow invited Edith to her home to help her get her husband’s academic papers in order.  Edith hesitated; she had no belief in life after death so she wasn’t sure what she would say to this young Christian widow.  She wasn’t sure she’d find the right words to console her.  But what Edith Stein encountered when she met the widow struck her like a ray of sunlight.  Rather than appearing crushed by her suffering, the young widow was filled with a hope that offered all the other mourners a sense of consolation and peace.  This experience changed her.  The light of faith broke in on her.  And this light of faith came to her in the mystery of the Cross.

Years later she would write about this incident, “It was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power that it bestows on those who carry it.  For the first time, I was seeing with my very eyes the Church, born from her Redeemer’s sufferings, triumphant over the sting of death.  That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and Christ shone forth – in the mystery of the Cross.”   In a search for truth Edith never dreamed she’d find it in Christ.  She began to read the New Testament and the question for her became, would she convert to Lutheranism or Catholicism.

Two events would help her make this important decision.  First, while helping tutor a student she and this student out of curiosity went into a Cathedral for a few moments, just to look around, and as they stood there just taking everything in a woman came in with her shopping basket and she knelt down in one of the pews to say a short prayer.  This was something new for Edith.  In the synagogue, as in the Protestant churches she had visited, people only went in at the time of the service.  But here was someone coming into the empty church in the middle of the day as if to talk with a friend.  She was never able to forget that.  And the second event that helped her in her decision to become a Catholic involved reading the life of St. Teresa of Avila.  She had picked up the book while staying at a friend’s house.  And once she’d begun reading it she couldn’t put it down.  She read it through the night and after finishing it the next morning the very first words out of her mouth were, “This is the truth.”  God is love.

She soon sought baptism and after being received into the Church she pursued scholarship and study as a service to God.  Teaching, writing, and learning all she could about her new found Catholic faith.  It wasn’t until eleven years later that she eventually entered the Carmelite Convent of Cologne, this was the year 1933.  “Henceforth my only vocation is to love,” she would say, praying to God for everyone.  She was now known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and while in the convent she pursued more studies and wrote more academic papers.

With World War II, Edith was moved from convent to convent across Europe trying to evade the Nazi forces.  In 1942 she found herself in Holland and at last she thought she was safe.  However, on August 2^nd she was arrested by the Gestapo.  All Jewish converts to the Catholic faith were rounded up in retaliation for a statement put out by the Dutch Bishops in which they condemned the pogroms and deportation of Jews.  On August 9^th she was killed at Auschwitz.  A fellow professor later wrote, “She is a witness to God’s presence in a world where God is absent.”

At her canonization Pope Saint John Paul II said that, “Her heart remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God.”  For the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus we read this from the Gospel of Matthew, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give your rest.”  St. Teresa Benedicta found rest in the heart of God.  She rested there.  The heart was her treasure.  The love of God became her treasure.  She wrote, “In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, the kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life. This heart is the heart of the Triune Divinity, and the center of all human hearts… It draws us to itself with secret power; it conceals us in itself in the Father’s bosom and floods us with the Holy Spirit. This heart, it beats for us in the tabernacle where it remains mysteriously hidden in that quiet, white host.” 

The heart of our Lord beats for us in the Eucharist.  In the June Magnificat three years ago there was a series of stories about saints devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  And there was a story about a saint named Elzear and his wife Delphine.  They had a very good marriage but sometimes Delphine would worry about her husband’s virtue when he went to Paris on business trips.  To reassure her he would say, “Don’t worry, but if you have any concern go to church and sit before the Blessed Sacrament, go sit before the Eucharist and there enter into the Heart of Jesus and that’s where you’ll find me.  So even if many miles separate us, we can still meet within the Heart of Jesus.”  St. Elzear and his wife Delphine made the heart of Jesus their treasure.

St. Teresa Benedicta’s once restless heart rested in the Heart of Jesus.  May our hearts too rest in the Heart of Jesus.  May his charity become our charity.  Because at the end of our life this is how we will be judged, judged on our charity.  May our heart not be found in the midst of power, pleasure, possessions, or prestige but in the Charity of our Lord.   Not long ago Sr. Laura Toth, one of our parishioners who is now a fully professed Franciscan sent me a beautiful note and she ended with this phrase, “May Jesus draw you more and more deeply into the inferno of His most Sacred Heart.”  She writes the best letters.

And so I say the same to you, “May Jesus draw you more and more deeply into the inferno of His most Sacred Heart.”  May your treasure be the Heart of Jesus.  May your treasure be the love of Jesus.

“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In our Second reading St. Paul tells us, “Seek what is above and not what is on earth.”

Very soon after I was ordained, thirteen years ago, I met a young couple.  They had a daughter who was around 2 or 3 years of age.  They were also expecting a baby.  I’ve lost contact with them; I think they moved back to Boston.  But over the years, I’ve thought of them often.  I’ve thought of them because I was very impressed by their deep faith.  They looked to God for their security rather than looking to their own wealth or to their own ability, or to the ways of the world.  They looked to God for their security.

When I met them they had just received some shocking news.  Their little baby, whom the wife was carrying, after an ultra sound exam, was found to have some severe developmental problems.  The doctors predicted with almost 100% certainty that their little baby would not live very long after being born.   As you can imagine they were strongly urged to terminate, there were just too many problems they were told.  So they changed doctors and found one who would support them and help them carry the baby to term.

They dearly loved their little unborn baby.  They found out that she was girl so they named her Zoe Elizabeth.  They talked to her, they played music for her, and they talked about her to all their friends and relatives.    And they made plans for her baptism the moment she was born.  That’s where I came in.  One day very early in the morning I got an emergency call.  The mom had gone into early labor and they were going to do a caesarean.  They were waiting for me in the hospital.  I was taken into a surgical suite, I was given scrubs and a cap and a mask to put on.  I was right there in the operating room when Zoe Elizabeth was born.  They wrapped her up and brought her over to me.  I’ll never forget her vivid blue eyes and a shocking amount of red hair for such a little baby.  The most perfect little face I’ve ever seen.  As I prayed and poured water over her to baptize her, she gave me the nicest smile.

After her baptism Zoe was placed in the arms of her mom, with her dad holding them both.  Little Zoe died approximately 20 minutes later.  They continued to hold her for most of the day.  That little girl only knew and experienced love.  She was the recipient of so much love.  In her short life that little girl fulfilled the unique plan that God had had for her from since before time began.      I always wonder what seeds of grace were planted by Zoe’s very short life and that young couple’s very strong pro-life witness.  What did the surgeon think?  What was going through the minds of the nurses who assisted with the delivery and helped with the baptism?  And even though the parents didn’t understand why this was happening to them and they were filled with such sorrow, by looking to God for their security and seeking what is above this little girl’s parents were strengthened by His grace and they are at peace.  They have borne a child for the Kingdom of God, whose soul, and one day glorified body, will exist for eternity.  They have borne a little girl who will praise God for all eternity.

In our Second reading St. Paul tells us, “Seek what is above and not what is on earth.”  What if this couple hadn’t relied on God for their security but instead sought what is on earth, seeking an earthly solution.  Many doctors strongly recommended termination as soon as possible.  If they had gone that route, there would still be death, that little girl would still have died, and at their hands.  And I know for sure that in seeking only an earthly solution without God, there wouldn’t have been any grace or peace.  There would have only been sadness and a sense of futility.

There is this great paradox, those most focused on Heaven and the ways of Heaven do the most good on Earth.  Vatican II documents put it this way, “Seeking what is above means living more intensely below.”  And when we look at every single saint in our 2000 years of history we see that this is true. Those most focused on the ways of Heaven do the most good on Earth.

In one of Matthew Kelly’s books he asks two questions:  Are you satisfied with the direction the world is moving in?  And are you satisfied with your life?  These questions are always before us.  If you answered “No” then what is needed are “Holy Moments.”  A holy moment is a moment when you make yourself completely available to God.  You set your self-interests aside, you set aside what you want to do or feel like doing, and for that moment you do exactly what you sense God is calling you to do.  The Saints were masterful at taking the ordinary, everyday events of life and turning them into holy moments.  Maybe it’s as simple as saying a prayer before you begin some routine ordinary task, offering it up for the greater glory of God.

You were made for great holiness.  You were made to sanctify your little corner of the world.  Some suggestions (not an exhaustive list):   Pray a holy hour every day, we can give up an hour of TV or computer time.  Pray the rosary every day.  Perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Take part in the Sacrifice of the Mass more than once a week.  And evangelize; tell others why you love and our Lord and His Church.    If you become who God meant you to be, you will set the world on fire.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

A very simple definition of Charity is this, just three words, friendship with God.  Charity is friendship with God.  And if this is our #1 friendship then it should influence every single aspect of our life.  As Christians this Divine Friendship, this friendship with God, was infused into our souls as the water was being poured over us at Baptism.  As we grew in size and strength and maturity this friendship also grew (I hope).  It grew with the help, guidance, example, and teaching of our Church, our godparents, and our parents especially.  This Divine Friendship, this Charity is also strengthened and sustained with the Sacraments and prayer.  Prayer keeps us close, prayer a conversation between friends, keeps us close to His Sacred Heart.  And today Jesus gives us the perfect prayer, a prayer to keep us close to our Father.

The very first word is Father.  Jesus invites us to share in that deep intimacy of his own relationship with the Father, a relationship that he has described as merciful, giving, attentive to our needs, and forgiving.  To call God Father expresses a deep family bond, not to be taken lightly.  He is someone we can trust.

Hallowed be your name.  Graced by God a mere mortal can hold God’s name in reverence.  We can speak His name!  We are able to say with conviction, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Power and Might!”  We are also asking for our Lord’s assistance in not profaning his Good name with our life and our actions, may my life reflect only His Holiness.

Your kingdom come.  With this petition we pray that God’s kingdom, and not Satan’s kingdom, rule our own life.  Let me know your will Father and give me the grace to do it.

Give us each day our daily bread.  This is a prayer made with confidence in the Father, that all of life’s basic needs may be met.  It’s also a prayer for the Eucharist, our daily food for the journey to the Kingdom.

Forgive us our sins, and there is a reason attached to it, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.    This is a petition asking for forgiveness, but also a constant reminder to forgive everyone.

And finally, do not subject us to the final test.  We ask the Father for protection from the evil one and for strength to bear our trials and to resist temptations.  Give me your strength and grace Father.  Without you I can do nothing, Father!

I want to talk about a saint who lived in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, a saint who understood and lived this friendship with God, this Charity, although it took time to develop and mature.   His name is St. Francis de Sales, he’s the author of the popular book Introduction to the Devout Life.  Francis was born in 1567 and very early on he vowed to become a priest which was much against his parent’s wishes.  They wanted him to become a lawyer.  So at the age of 14 they sent him to the university to study law. Francis still hoped to become a priest but he followed his parent’s wishes and studied law.   It was also at this time while still a teenager that Francis experienced a severe temptation to not trust in God’s offered friendship, love and mercy.  He was always filled with worry and anxiety.  So much so that he prayed every day to be freed of this terrible burden and he prayed to be able to love God as much as he possibly could.  After months and months of prayer he stopped one day at a church to pray the Memorare and while praying in front of his favorite statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary all worry and anxiety left him and his soul was flooded with a deep peace.  His prayer was answered.  This experience taught him to deal tenderly with all the spiritual difficulties and temptations of those he would someday help as a priest.

Francis became a lawyer at the age of 24, but two years later with the consent of his Dad he was finally able to become a priest.  And after his ordination a few years later, for his first assignment he was sent to Geneva.  This was a difficult assignment because most Genevans had left the Church to become Calvinists.  At most there were probably only twenty Catholics in his parish.  His parish was not a safe place.  The Calvinists were very hostile to Catholics especially priests.  He couldn’t even live in his own parish.  He had to live outside the parish boundaries and walk in everyday to his parish church and care for his flock.  He was attacked by would be assassins and he was even chased by wolves once causing him to spend the night in a tree.  But through all of this adversity he trusted God. He leaned into that friendship.   He didn’t let worry and anxiety get the best of him.

So great was his friendship with the Father that even a washed out bridge couldn’t keep him away from celebrating the daily Mass.  A storm had washed out a bridge and this bridge was the only way he could take to get to his church.  But someone had laid a plank over what was left of the bridge structure.  But this plank was also very wet, slimy, and slippery.  So to get across he crawled on his hands and knees, so as not to fall into the water.  He never missed a day celebrating Mass.  That’s Charity, that’s friendship with God.  With time, prayer, and perseverance Francis de Sales was able to bring many of the Calvinists back to the faith.  “Whoever preaches with love is preaching effectively” he would say.

St. Francis de Sales was a man of prayer, a man of the Gospel, and he trusted the Father.  He knew of God’s great love for us.  God never ceases to love us.  We are the work of His hands, a particular image of Himself.  God will hate our sin, but He will never hate us.  Even if we have turned away from God, His love still presses upon us, trying to find a chink in that armor of self-love through which He can enter and turn us back to Him.  At every moment we have God’s complete attention, His undivided love.  God is infinite love and at this very instant, right now, the Father is thinking of you, looking at you, directly loving you.  This love invites us to trust and to deep friendship.

I have homework for you all this week.  Spend ½ hour at some point this week meditating on the “Our Father.”    We pray the Our Father so often that I think we sometimes run the risk of not hearing the words or letting them soak into our soul.  Spend a ½ hour meditating on the perfect prayer, letting those words help you to grow in friendship with God, to grow in charity.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

I want to begin by telling you about two religious sisters.  They both had an important part in my priestly formation.  The first is Sr. Mary Finn.  She lives at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and she has the habit of telling everyone, “Keep your eyes on Jesus.”  So whenever she would see me in the hallway she would ask, “Christopher are your eyes on Jesus?”  I would say yes, sister, but I’m not sure she believed me because she would then say, “Christopher, keep your eyes on Jesus.”  This was always followed with a punch to the arm.  And for a woman in her 70s she could deliver quite a wallop.  She never got the memo about not hitting students, she was old school.  But the message stuck, “Eyes on Jesus!”  “Always!”

The second is Sr. Mary Bridget; she’s a Carmelite living in Boston.  She once played the spoons on TV for David Letterman.  Her community takes care of the aged and infirmed.  They operate a number of nursing homes around the country.  Every Tuesday during my second year of seminary I’d visit patients at their nursing home in Boston, St. Patrick’s Manor.  Now in that facility every resident’s room had a prominent crucifix on the wall.  If anyone removed that crucifix there’d by heck to pay.  Sr. Mary Bridget would make sure of it.  Even the Jewish residents had to keep the crucifix on the wall.  Sr. Mary Bridget explained that the crucifix was there to remind the nurses and the sisters of whom they served.  In serving the resident they were serving Jesus.  So even in the midst of work they knew for whom they served.  Now sometimes the sisters and the nurses would get flustered or anxious or distressed.  In those moments Sr. Mary Bridget would say they’re acting like a bunch of Marthas. For a moment they took their eyes off Jesus.

In our Gospel today Martha, for a moment, took her eyes off of Jesus.  She needed to learn that what we do for Christ has to flow out of what we are for him: true and devoted friends.

It’s easy to overload our agenda with activities and commitments (even good and beneficial ones) that we lose sight of our real goal in life: to know, to love, and to imitate Christ more each day.  Only that will give real meaning to our lives.  Only that will enable us to help others find meaning.  Only that will fill us with the joy we long for.

Jesus isn’t saying that we shouldn’t do things, like serving others, working hard, and honoring our commitments. No, Jesus doesn’t reprimand Martha for her activity.   He reprimands her for being “worried and anxious“ about all those activities.  She’s become so caught up in getting things done, that she’s lost sight of why she’s doing them.  And the result is; frustration, anger, impatience, losing her temper.  Unless we are plugged into Christ and his grace, unless we constantly feed our souls with his words, unless everything we do flows out of our friendship with him – the one thing necessary – none of our actions, even the good ones, can have lasting value.  And only lasting value will give peace to our hearts.

St Phillip Neri learned this lesson well.  His nickname was “Mr. Happy-go-Lucky” and his holiness and good humor made him the most sought-after priest in the city of Rome during the mid-1500s. He was an adviser to popes and cardinals, kings and dukes, but also to beggars and shop keepers and regular people. Universally loved and respected, he reformed a corrupt city almost single-handedly.

One day a young man came to him after finishing his bar exam.  After years of study, the young man had finally made the grade, and was about to begin a promising career in the law. He was also courting a beautiful, popular young lady. He was positively beaming with enthusiasm as he described his optimistic plans: first he would take a respectable job as a legal clerk, and then he would marry his girl.

St Phillip asked him one question. He said, “And then?”  So the young man continued, explaining how he would climb the ladder of success and raise a family.

St Phillip asked him another question. He said: “And then?”  At that, the young man frowned and thought for a moment. Then he started stammering about becoming a famous judge and having grandchildren, but his enthusiasm seemed to be waning.

St Phillip smiled, peered into his eyes, and asked him another question. He said: “And then?” The young man looked at the saint with panic and confusion – he had never thought that far ahead.  He slowly walked away to think things over.  The next day he joined St Philip’s oratory, and eventually he became a holy, fruitful priest.

Not all of us are called to the priesthood or consecrated life, but all of us are called to keep Christ first, to keep our eyes on Him.  Sooner or later, only “the better part” will remain, and if we haven’t chosen it for ourselves, we’ll be left out in the cold.

The crucial sign that we may be following Martha’s footsteps a little too closely has to do with our prayer life.  Not everyone is called to spend 4 or 5 hours a day in prayer as the cloistered nuns do.  But every single one of us is called to at least have a prayer life.  We cannot follow Christ if we do not love Christ.   And we cannot love Christ if we do not know Christ.  And we cannot know Christ if we don’t spend time with him in prayer.

Prayer is doing what Mary did in this Gospel passage:  taking our place at the feet of our Lord and simply listening to him.  And Eucharistic adoration is perfect for sitting and listening.  Bring the Bible, spiritual reading, let our Lord speak to you through them.

He always has something to say to us.  He is always thinking of us.  He always wants to guide us.  If we don’t pray, regularly and sincerely, we frustrate all those desires; we shut out the grace he wants to give us.

As the Catechism says, “Prayer is a vital necessity.”

As St Alphonsus Liguori wrote: “Those who pray are certainly saved; those who do not pray are certainly damned.“

If we find ourselves frequently becoming frustrated, angry, and impatient in the middle of our efforts to do good things, maybe we have let ourselves become so “distracted with all the serving”, so caught up in the whirlwind of our activities, like Martha, that we have forgotten the reason behind them.  Renewing our prayer life is a sure way to remember.

Now one simple way we can do this is to every morning remind ourselves that everything we do we do for the Lord.  There’s an old prayer that a priest once recommended I pray every day and in this prayer we offer up to God our day, we offer him our work.  It’s a way to make our whole day into a prayer, to focus our day unto Him.  It’s called the Daily offering, so even when our focus is elsewhere we’ve given our day and our work to God.  The priest who gave it to me told me to tape it to my bathroom mirror so I’d be reminded to pray it every morning.

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you all my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day, for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins, for the intentions of all my relatives and friends and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father.  Amen. 

In the Gospels we only read of Martha in three passages.  The last we read of her is in John 12 and all that’s written is, “Martha served” she simply served Jesus.  My prayer for us today is that we always serve Jesus in all that we do.  Welcoming him into our home like Martha and into our Heart like Mary.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

There once was a very powerful king.  And he had three questions.  He thought that if he knew the answers to these three questions he would be the wisest and most effective ruler.  He would never fail.  The three questions were these:

1. When is the right time?
2. Who are the right people?
3. What is the most important thing to do?

He then offered a huge reward to the person who could effectively answer all three questions.  The answers he received for the first question; when is the right time?  were all over the board.  One advised saying draw up a schedule of days, months and years and stick to it.  Only in this way can everything be done at the proper time.  Another said pay attention to every tiny detail and do what is required.  Another said it’s impossible to know the right time, hire a magician, he will know.

The answers he received for the second question were also varied.  Who are the right people? Some said administrators; others said intellectuals at the university, the wealthy are the right people to know, while others said the soldiers were the most important people.

And for the third question it was no better; what’s the most important thing to do?  Scientific research, making money, and improving your military skill were some of the answers he received.

The king was not satisfied with any of the answers and no one received the reward.  In order to find the true answers to his questions, he decided to consult a hermit who was famous for his wisdom.  The hermit never left the forest where he lived, and there at his hut he would only meet with the poor and the humble.  The king therefore got rid of his expensive clothing and dressed like a common man, and getting off of his horse before reaching the hermit’s dwelling, he left his guards behind and went on alone.

The king found the hermit digging a garden in front of his hut.  When he saw the king, the hermit greeted him and immediately returned to his digging.  The hermit was thin and frail, and each time he put the shovel into the ground and turned a little clod of dirt, he would breath out very heavily.

The king approached him and said, “I’ve come to you, wise hermit, to ask you for the answers to three questions:  1^st, How can I know which is the time I ought to pay attention to, not allowing it to slip by only to be regretted later?  2^nd Who are the most essential people, those to whom I ought to give the greatest attention?  And 3^rd what are the most important pursuits, which ought to be undertaken first?  The hermit listened, but gave no answer and continued to dig in his garden.

“You’ve exhausted yourself,” the king said.  “Give me the shovel and I’ll work for a while.”  “Thank you,” said the hermit.  He handed him the shovel and sat down on the ground.  After digging two beds, the king stopped and repeated his questions.  The hermit did not answer, but got up and held out his hand for the shovel, saying, “Now you rest and I’ll work.”  But the king didn’t give him the shovel and went on digging.

An hour passed, and then another; the sun had begun to sink behind the trees when the king stuck the spade into the ground and said, “I came to you, wise man, for answers to my questions.  If you can give me none, please tell me so, and I’ll go home.”

“Here comes someone running,” said the hermit.  “Let’s see who it is.”

The king turned around and saw a bearded man running out of the woods.  The man held his hands pressed to his abdomen and blood flowed from between his fingers.  He ran up to the king and fell to the ground, where he lay motionless, and weakly moaning.

The king and the hermit opened the man’s clothing, and found a large wound in his abdomen.  The king washed it as well as he could and bandaged it with his own handkerchief and the hermit’s towel; but the flow of blood wouldn’t stop.  Again and again the king removed the bandage soaked with warm blood, washed it, and re-bandaged the wound.  When the blood at last stopped flowing, the wounded man revived and asked for water.  The king brought fresh water and gave him a drink.

Meanwhile the sun had set and it got very cool.  The king, with the hermit’s help, carried the wounded man into the hut and laid him on the bed.  He closed his eyes and got very still.  The king was so tired from his walk and the work he had done that he lay down on the floor and fell asleep.  And he slept so soundly through the night that when he woke up in the  morning it was some time before he realized where he was and remembered the bearded stranger lying on the bed.  Who was now staring very intently at him with his eyes wide open.

“Forgive me,” said the bearded man in a faint voice, when he saw that the king was awake and looking at him.  “I don’t know you and have nothing to forgive you,” replied the king.

“You don’t know me, but I know you.  I’m your enemy, and I swore to take vengeance on you for killing my brother and seizing my property.  I know you had come alone to see the hermit and I vowed to kill you on your way back.  But when the whole day passed and you didn’t return, I left my hiding place to look for you, and that’s when I came upon your soldiers instead.  They recognized me, and attacked and wounded me.  I escaped from them and I should’ve bled to death if you hadn’t taken care of me.  I wanted to kill you, and you have saved my life.  Now if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful servant.  Forgive me!”  The king was happy to be so easily reconciled with his enemy, and he not only forgave him but promised to return his property and send his own doctor and servants to take care of him.

The king then went outside looking for the hermit.  Before leaving he wanted to ask one more time for the answers to his questions.  The hermit was on his knees planting seeds in the bed that had been dug up the day before.  The king approached him and said:  “For the last time, wise man, I ask you to answer my questions.”

“But you’ve already been answered,” said the hermit.  “How have I been answered?” asked the king.

“How? Repeated the hermit.  “Had you not taken pity on my weakness yesterday and dug these beds for me, instead of turning back alone, that fellow would have assaulted you, and you would have regretted not staying with me.  Therefore, the most important time was when you were digging the beds; I was the most important person; and the most important pursuit was to do good to me.  And later, when that man came running to us, the most important time was when you were taking care of him, for if you had not bound up his wound, he would have died without having made peace with you; therefore he was the most important person, and what you did for him was the most important deed.

Remember then:  First, there is only one important time – Now.  Now is the most important time.  It’s important because it is the only time we have dominion over ourselves.  And second, the most important person is he with whom you are, the person in front of you, for no one can know whether or not he will ever have dealings with any other person.   And third, the most important pursuit is to do good to him, since it’s for that purpose alone that man was sent into this life, to do good.”

“A man fell victim to robbers…a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight.  He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.  Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him.” 

Remember then:  there is only one important time – Now.  And it’s important because it is the only time we have dominion over ourselves; and second the most important person is he with whom you are, for no one can know whether or not he will ever have dealings with any other person.  And third the most important pursuit it to do good to him, since it’s for that purpose alone that man was sent into this life.”

“Go and do likewise.”

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley-

Dear Friends,

In 1957 Red Skelton was one of the most popular comedians on TV.  His show on CBS was always highly ranked.  He’d come a long way from his earlier days as a rodeo clown.  Red was married to a wonderful woman by the name of Georgia and he had two children a son Richard and a daughter Valentina.  Life was very good for Red.  But then toward the end of spring that year his son Richard was diagnosed with Leukemia.  Unlike today, a diagnosis of leukemia in a child of 1957 was the same as saying that Richard was going to die, and die very soon.

So Red and his wife made two decisions.  First, they weren’t going to tell Richard how sick he really was.  He was temporarily in remission and outwardly he looked healthy.  And second, they were going to take their two kids on a sightseeing tour of Europe.  So Red took a leave of absence from his highly rated show and went to Europe with his family.  The press at that time was just as aggressive as it is now.  Skelton informed the newspapers why his family was going on the trip, and he asked for their assistance in helping to keep the secret from his son that he was afflicted with a mortal illness.  Amazingly the American press agreed to help.  It wasn’t until the family reached Britain that Richard learned the truth of his fatal illness.   Reading the news, however, he said, “Everybody says I’m going to die but that means everybody but me.”

Even though the Skeltons were not Catholic both Richard and Valentina attended a Catholic school (St. Martin of Tours in Hollywood) and for the Protestant family the two high points of the trip were Lourdes and their audience with Pope Pius XII.  The Pope spent a great deal of time talking to the Skeltons.  He blessed Richard and all the members of the family and gave them religious medals.  As they were leaving the Pope gave them these words of comfort, “Life is eternal because of God.  So if life is taken away from one person in a family they are never separated because the family will always live together in eternal life with God.”

After they returned to the States, the leukemia came out of remission and it took its deadly course very quickly.  Richard was quite a religious boy.  His room was filled with religious pictures and statues.  Shortly before dying he asked Pope Pius to send him a blessed crucifix.  The crucifix didn’t make it in time.  It arrived just  after his death.  The crucifix, the cross with the image of Jesus upon it, however, was buried with him.  It was placed in his hands.

Richard, even though only nine, understood the great truth of the cross; it’s the instrument of Christ’s victory over death.    It’s our instrument of victory over death and that’s why he wanted an icon of Jesus on the Cross.  In today’s second reading St. Paul totally agrees and for a 1^st century man he says something very odd and strange, something never said before.  He says, “I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  This doesn’t sound strange to us because we see crosses on steeples and in homes all the time.  But to the people listening to Paul, they would’ve been thinking or saying, “What you talkin’ about Paul? That’s crazy talk!”  To his listeners this was madness.  The cross was something unspeakable.  The most miserable thing of torture ever thought up by a cruel person.  To die on a cross was a shameful death.  It’s the last thing you’d ever boast about.  If your son, brother, or husband ended his life on a cross you’d change the subject, if it ever came up in conversation.  You would not be in a mood to boast about it.  The cross was only for revolutionaries, slaves, thieves, or prisoners of war.

In his boasting of the cross St. Paul is inviting his listeners and us into the upside down world of Christian faith, where Christianity turns the values of the world upside down. Where in God weakness becomes strength and where in God death leads to eternal life.   St. Paul then goes on to say, “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  In saying this Paul is not saying that he hates the physical world or the flesh.  He’s not a puritan.  He loves all of God’s creation both physical and spiritual and that includes the body.  What he is saying, however, is that he hates the worldly power of sin, division, and hatred, all the things that contributed to the death of Jesus, all the forces that caused his death.  Now over and above all of this Paul never loses sight of the importance of the resurrection. The world of sin, oppression, and hatred killed Jesus but God raised him up.

As St. Paul believed and as we believe, the cross has conquered the world.  Of course there are still evil skirmishes and resistances to the cross of which we must be vigilant and give witness against, but the cross has already conquered the world.  Now each one of us at baptism received an indelible mark upon our soul, this spiritual mark means we belong to Christ.  And nothing can ever erase this mark.  We could totally turn our back on God and the mark would still remain.  Now this spiritual mark which brands our soul can also be thought of as the sign of the cross.  St. Ivo of the 12^th century wrote that, “For it is by the power of the sign of the cross that all our sacraments are also accomplished and all the illusions of the devil are frustrated.”

So my advice today is, don’t hide your soul’s mark of the cross.  As we know this mark of the cross is not visible to the eye the only way it becomes visible is if we let the cross influence what we say and what we do.  It’s not something to be kept private and separate as our government tells us.  It’s not something to be put on display for only one hour a week here at St. Jerome’s.  The mark of the cross, the mark of our Catholic faith, should influence everything we do all week.  It should be made visible every day and everywhere to everyone.   Don’t hide the mark of the cross that brands your soul.

St. Paul boasted in the cross, a nine year old boy dying of leukemia chose to rally behind the cross.  And so my prayer for us today is that we always glory in the cross of our Lord.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

With you is the source of life

You who have been redeemed, consider who it is who hangs on the cross for you, whose death gives life to the dead, whose passing is mourned by heaven and earth, while even the hard stones are split. Consider how great he is; consider what he is.

In order that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept on the cross, in order that the word of scripture might be fulfilled – ‘They shall look on him whom they have pierced’ – God’s providence decreed that one of the soldiers should open his sacred side with a spear, so that blood with water might flow out to pay the price of our salvation. This blood, which flowed from its source in the secret recesses of his heart, gave the sacraments of the Church power to confer the life of grace, and for those who already live in Christ was a draught of living water welling up to eternal life.

Arise, then, bride of Christ, be like the dove that nests in the rock-face at the mouth of a cavern, and there, like a sparrow which finds its home, do not cease to keep vigil; there, like a turtle-dove, hide the fledglings of your chaste love; place your lips there to draw water from the wells of your Savior. For this is the spring flowing from the middle of paradise; it divides and becomes four rivers, then spreads through all devout hearts, and waters the whole world and makes it fruitful.

O soul devoted to God, whoever you may be, run to this source of life and light with eager longing. And with the power of your inmost heart cry out to him: ‘O indescribable beauty of God most high! O pure radiance of everlasting light! O life that gives life to all life! O light that illuminates every light, and preserves in its undying splendor the myriad flames that have shone before the throne of your godhead from the dawn of time!

‘O water eternal and inaccessible, clear and sweet, flowing from the spring that is hidden from the eyes of all mortal men; the spring whose depths cannot be plumbed, whose height cannot be measured, whose shores cannot be charted, whose purity cannot be muddied.’

From this source flows the river which makes glad the city of God, so that with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving we sing to you our hymns of praise, and by experience prove that with you is the fountain of life; and in your light we shall see light.

Dear Friends,

I recently read a book called “Priest block 25487.”  It was written by Fr. Jean Bernard and in this book he writes about his imprisonment in Dachau.  He was there from January of ’41 until May of ‘42.  Somehow his brother secured his release, but many of his priest friends died at the Nazi’s hands in Dachau.

Fr. Jean was arrested for denouncing the Nazis and was sent to Dachau’s priest block a barrack that housed more than 3,000 priests.  In this book he writes about his starvation, his torture, and the inhuman treatment he received.  But he also writes about his faith and since today is the great Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, I want to share with you what he said about the Christmas he celebrated in Dachau.

For Christmas he said they were allowed to stay up late.  So he and small group of priests made some crude candlesticks from left over margarine.  A priest with a good voice sang the Gloria.  A Bishop gave a homily.  And that was Christmas, but then excitement came when it was whispered that someone had smuggled in a consecrated Host hidden carefully within a piece of folded paper.  After the evening meal when it was quiet, he and a few friends met in the darkness outside the barracks.  They opened the folded piece of paper and stood there adoring our Lord, lying on a humble monstrance of paper.  Fr. Bernard then said, “We carefully divided the precious Host into as many particles as humanly possible to share with one another.  And then as we tenderly partook of Him, the Christ Child entered our hearts.”  He said that they then prayed that their sacrifice would contribute to bringing peace to the world.

Fr. Jean Bernard showed a great love and devotion to our Lord present in the Holy Eucharist.  He showed a great attentiveness and tenderness. And in his heart that Christmas night he even felt the peace of Christ, even in the midst of a death camp.

As our faith tells us, in the Eucharist God is both truly present and hidden.  Not only in the Eucharist but in all of life, God both reveals himself and at the same time conceals himself.  Why does God do this?  The answer is, to draw out from us our free response of faith and trust.  Even true human lovers don’t give or demand proofs or guarantees.  God gives just enough light for lovers, who can find him when they seek him, but not so much as to compel non-lovers and non-seekers to find him against their will.  The lover, God himself, respects the beloved’s freedom.   God respects our free will.  He will not force us.

Again the greatness of the Eucharist is known only to faith, not to the feelings or the senses or the sciences.  Its being (reality) is far greater than its seeming appearances.  The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, and this rests upon Divine authority, in scripture Jesus told us so.   But, if we’re honest with ourselves, there are many “once in a lifetime” experiences in this world that feel more heavenly to us than what happens every Sunday when we receive the Holy Eucharist.  There are many experiences that move us to tears of joy and remain in our memory throughout our lives:  births, deaths, weddings, honeymoons, reunions, sunsets, even winning a baseball game.  In contrast, most of us usually feel very little when we receive the very Body of God incarnate; even though we know that this reality is infinitely greater than anything else in our lives.

This is normal, and God lets this happen for a reason.  God does not always give us heavenly feelings when we receive the Eucharist for the same reason he doesn’t always give us sights of heaven.  We neither feel nor see Christ as he really is so that faith, not feelings or sight but that faith can be exercised, strengthened, trained, and emerge triumphant.  The Eucharist doesn’t look like Christ; and so it tests, not our sight, but our faith:  Do we believe Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and John chapter six or do we believe our human senses?  St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote, “Sight, taste, and touch in Thee are deceived; the ear alone most safely is believed; I believe all the Son of God has spoken:  than Truth’s own word there is no truer token.” 

Just as the Eucharist does not look like Christ to our outer senses; it does not always feel like Christ to our emotions.  Here again our faith is tested.  A faith that doesn’t go beyond human feeling is not faith at all, just as faith that doesn’t go beyond seeing is no faith at all.  Now sometimes God does send us special graces that can be felt when we receive the Eucharist or adore the Eucharist in a Monstrance or the Tabernacle.  Just like Fr. Jean on that Christmas night in Dachau.  And when that happens, it’s an awesome experience.  But he doesn’t always send us these graces that can be felt, not because he’s stingy or unloving, but because he knows exactly what each of us needs, and most of the time we need to exercise our faith, and not to go after good feelings.  A priest I know in Kokomo, a man of deep faith who always prays to himself at the elevation of the Host saying, “I believe but help me in my unbelief.”  He says this three times.  He wants always an ever deeper faith.  As a saint once said, these good feelings we go after are like sugary sweets, but they’re not our food.  Christ himself is our food, feelings are like sugary jelly, and Christ is our bread.

As St. Therese of Lisieux once said, “This holy bread the Eucharist is not meant to remain in a golden ciborium within the tabernacle.  At Mass He comes down to us from Heaven… to find another heaven, infinitely more dear to Him than the first:  the heaven of our soul, made to his image, the living temple of the adorable Trinity (St. Therese of Lisieux).  Come, let us receive Him in great faith.  Living in gratitude and trust.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Once during my seminary studies one of my priest teachers gave me a copy of what a consulting firm might have said about the original 12 apostles.

It is our opinion that the 12 men you have picked to manage your new organization lack the background, educational and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking.  They do not have the team concept.  Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper.  Andrew has no qualities of leadership.  The two brothers, James and John, place personal interest above company loyalty.  Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would lend itself to undermining morale.  We feel it is our duty to tell you that the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau has censured Matthew for unfair business practices.  James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot both have radical leanings and both registered high on the manic-depressive scale.  One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, has a keen business mind and possesses contacts in high places.  He is highly motivated and ambitious.  We recommend Judas Iscariot as your vice president and right hand man.  We wish you every success in your new venture.

And it is to this unimpressive group with so many failings that our Lord says, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  This last line makes all the difference; I am with you always, until the end of the age. “I am with you always until the end of the age.”  The apostles didn’t have to do it on their own; they couldn’t do it on their own.  Without our Lord they couldn’t have done anything on their own.

Now this is something that Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity understood very well, although it took her a while.  She grew up in France in the late eighteen hundreds; she was the daughter of a successful military officer who died of a heart attack while she was still only a girl. Elizabeth was an extremely strong-willed and temperamental child.  Her frequent fits of rage were almost uncontrollable; it was so bad that her mom often called her the “little devil.”  This began to change, however, after her first Communion, when she was eleven.  That afternoon she met for the first time the prioress of the nearby Carmelite convent.  The nun explained that the girl’s name, Elizabeth, meant “house of God,” and wrote her a note that said:  “Your blessed name hides a mystery, accomplished on this great day. Child, your heart is the House of God on earth, of the God of love.”

From then on, recognizing that God had taken up residence in her soul, she waged a holy war against her violent temper.  She didn’t win overnight, but she did win, eventually, and she also discovered her vocation to become a Carmelite sister.

Her mother didn’t like the idea, however, and made her wait until she was twenty-one.  She won friends of all ages during these years of waiting, singing in the parish choirs, arranging parish day-care service for families that worked in the local tobacco factory, and also winning several prizes for her skill at the piano.  She died only five years after entering the convent, at the age of 26, after having suffered horribly for months from an extremely painful disease of the kidneys. But her realization that the Blessed Trinity dwelt within her enabled her to suffer with patience and even with joy.  As she wrote to her mother:  “The bride belongs to the bridegroom, and mine has taken me. Jesus wants me to be another humanity for him, to be another Jesus, in which he can still suffer for the glory of his Father, to help the needs of his Church: this thought has done me so much good.”  Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity had discovered the intimate, loving presence of God that He so eagerly wants to reveal to all of us.

The reason God has revealed himself to us so thoroughly is because he yearns for our friendship.  That’s what he created us for!  But friendship is always a two-way street.

God has done His part by opening himself up to us.  That was what the Incarnation was all about.  That is what the ongoing life of the Church is all about:  the sacraments, Church teaching the sacred Scriptures, and even the beauties of nature, God’s first book of revelation.  They are all ways God has invented to speak to us, to invite us into an ever deeper personal relationship with him.  But that relationship doesn’t happen automatically – friendship never does.

Cardinal Mercier of Belgium (d1920) once made the bold claim, that he knew the secret of holiness, happiness, and friendship with our Lord.  He said, “I’m going to reveal to you the secret, every day for five minutes control your imagination and close your eyes to the things of sight, and close your ears to all the noises of the world. Do this in order to enter into yourself.  Then, in the sanctity of your Baptized soul, which is the temple of the Blessed Trinity, speak to our Lord, saying to Him, ‘O Blessed Trinity, Soul of my soul, I adore You! Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, and console me.  Tell me what I should do; give me your orders.  I promise to submit myself to all that you desire of me, and to accept all that you permit to happen to me.  Just make me know your will.”  Cardinal Mercier goes on to say, “if you do this, your life will flow along happily, serenely, and full of consolation, even in the midst of trial, the grace you need will  be given to you to keep you strong.”

Our Lord says, “I am with you always until the end of the age.”  The apostles, unlikely leaders as they were, Blessed Elizabeth, once described as a devil child, all came to realize they held a priceless gift within.  They were houses of God.  The Apostles, Blessed Elizabeth and you are Houses of God, baptism makes it so.  Your house is part of an awesome and great community.  Let us find that time every day to listen, and to obey the soul of our soul the Blessed Trinity.  And we will be sanctified.

Pax et Bonum,

Christopher J. Ankley