Author: Christine Jordan

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  Jesus says, as I have loved you, God never ceases to love us, we are the work of His hands and made in his image.  God will hate our sin but he’ll never hate us.  Even when we’ve turned away from Him, His love still presses upon us trying to find a weak spot in the hard shell of our self love and through this weak spot he can enter and turn us back to him.

At every moment we have God’s complete attention, His undivided love.  Right now God is thinking of you, looking directly at you, loving you.  God loves us with a terrific and infinite love and he’s always aware of our present problems; he cares tremendously about what happens to us.  And out of the burdens we carry today, burdens imposed upon us by the ignorance or malice of others or by our own foolishness, out of these burdens God is going to bring good to us.  It’s the certainty of this truth, of God’s love for us; that has to be the foundation of our life.

St. Catherine of Siena was very certain of God’s love; it was the foundation of her life.  St. Catherine, born in the 14^th century, was the youngest of 25 children in the Benincasa family.  She was a mystic and a brilliant author and because of the brilliance of her writings she’s a Doctor of the Catholic Church. St. Catherine like all the Saints had a deep and abiding love of the Eucharist.  Many chapters in her book, “The Dialogue” are devoted to the mystery of the Eucharist.  She writes that there are four qualities, or attitudes of the heart, that we have to have in order to strengthen and deepen our reception of our Lord in the Eucharist.  These four qualities are faith, love, desire, and conversion.

First is faith, a living faith firmly believes in the Trinity’s personal love for each of us.  “God cares for each of us as if she alone existed, and for all of us as if we are but one.”  Jesus within the Eucharist wants to be intimately united with us so that we can share in his divine life.

Second, is love and our faith leads us to love.  When we realize how much we are truly loved by God, the only adequate response is to love in return.  And the best way we can express a free, self-giving love for God is to love our neighbor.  The Eucharist is the self-giving love of the Savior and fruitful reception of Holy Communion deepens our love for God and neighbor.

Third on St. Catherine’s list is desire.  She wrote that our human actions are finite, but our desires can be infinite.  We can desire the infinite; we can and should desire God Himself, because He desires us.  If we don’t expect much from Holy Communion we won’t receive much.  Desire determines the spiritual fruitfulness of Holy Communion.  The more we desire the more fruitful.   Desire for God will direct all of our actions toward giving him glory and honor, not only at Mass but during every moment of our day.  We always pray to the Holy Spirit for an ardent desire of God.

Fourth on the list, is conversion and as we grow in faith, love, and desire the Holy Spirit more clearly reveals to us our shortcomings.  We see how much more we need to change.  Conversion is a process of growth, we patiently move forward, step by step.  We turn away from our old ways of living and begin thinking and acting like the Person we receive in Holy Communion.

I once read that after receiving Communion the Eucharistic bread remains in our stomach for up to fifteen minutes.  During that short period of time after receiving Communion we contain within ourselves the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord.   We are walking Tabernacles.    In the short period of time after having  all received the Eucharist, we all have the real presence of Jesus within us and we can in a very real way see how we’re all each other’s brother and sister and how we all make up the One Body of Christ.   This helps us to follow the new commandment that Jesus gave us:  Love one another.  In loving one another we love Jesus.

May we like St. Catherine see the Blessed Sacrament with the Eyes of Faith, receive the Blessed Sacrament with the Hands of Love, and Taste the Blessed Sacrament with a Holy Desire.

May we be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Cardinal Dolan of New York once related a story from a time when he was part of a study group on tour in the Holy Land.  One day while hiking, the group encountered two shepherds enjoying conversation and a smoke.  And while these two shepherds had been talking their two grazing flocks had become completely mixed together.  Through their guide, the group asked how the hundreds of sheep would sort themselves out and follow the correct shepherd.  Eager to impress these tourists and hoping for a gratuity, the two men stood at a distance from one another, yelled something incomprehensible, and began walking in opposite directions.  Immediately, the sheep fell in line behind the proper shepherd.  And then the two shepherds began to show off, they exchanged clothing and once again stood apart and shouted.  So familiar were the shepherds’ voices to the sheep that these animals ignoring the disguised outward appearance again followed their own shepherd.

“My sheep hear my voice,” says Jesus in today’s Gospel, “I know them, and they follow me.”  A few verses earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus states that sheep follow the shepherd “because they recognize his voice,” whereas “they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”  The focus of today’s liturgy is hard to miss:  in addition to the Gospel, the opening prayer, the responsorial psalm, the second reading from Revelation, and the prayer after Communion all speak to us of the Good Shepherd.

It’s interesting to note that Judaism and Christianity are the only two major World religions that describe God as a Shepherd.  A shepherd is one who walks closely among his sheep.  He’s so close he smells like his sheep.  He’s covered in their grime.  He knows them well; he knows them individually and can tell when something is just not right.  He knows when they’re sick and need attention.  He knows when they’re tired/distressed and need rest.  He knows when they’re hungry and need food.  He tirelessly searches for the straying and lost.  He protects them from predators. And finally he knows when his sheep are just too exhausted and need to be carried.  This is our Lord this is our Good Shepherd.

As Cardinal Dolan experienced, sheep are very good at knowing the voice of their shepherd and following it.  Now I’ve had this experience myself.  Today is the perfect day to talk about Buck, the “wonder lamb.”  When I was a kid Grandpa Ankley gave to my brother Matt and me a newborn lamb.  I remember the night he gave it to us, he brought it right into the kitchen and set it free.  Matt and I, with great excitement, chased it all over the house, we chased it until it peed under the kitchen table.  Mom was not smiling.  Buck went to the barn.  Buck was very young and needed to be bottle fed, which we did.  He attached to us quickly, he knew our voices.  He followed us everywhere, when we walked, when we ran, and even when we rode our bikes, Buck followed closely behind.  Everywhere that Chris went that lamb was sure to follow.  Now sometimes in his ovine exuberance he would race ahead of us.  In those moments he’d lose sight of us and become disoriented and frightened.  He’d begin to baa loudly.  But all we’d have to do is call out to him, call him by name, and he’d come running with his tail wagging behind him.  He knew the voice of his shepherd.

Today Good Shepherd Sunday is also known as World day of Prayer for Vocations.  The Church gives us this day to remind us that the Good Shepherd is constantly calling out to us, constantly calling us each by name.  In fact the word vocation comes from the Latin word vocare which means to call.  Each of us was created out of a unique Divine love.  Our Lord loves us each in a unique one of a kind way.  If he were to stop thinking of us and to stop beholding us with His Divine gaze, even if only for a nanosecond, we would cease to exist.  And so with great love, at all times, our Lord sweetly calls out to us.

Now our good shepherd calls us not only to the big things of holiness and vocation, but he also calls us to follow him in the little everyday things we do.  Now sometimes we listen like those sheep in the Middle East, and we follow but sometimes we ignore and let the noise of the world interfere.  Today I think, it’s maybe a little more difficult to hear that divine voice with all the noise of our modern culture.  So we need to set aside time every day for silence.  We need a bit of silence every day; no TV, no radio, no headphones, no whatever noise making distracting device we may own.

In that regular and repeated silence we pray. We pray in order to hear that voice of our Shepherd.  In the Old Testament we read of the prophet Elijah and he heard the voice of the Lord but he only heard the voice in a tiny whispering sound.  Elijah didn’t hear our Lord’s voice in earthquakes, or winds, or fire.  He didn’t and couldn’t hear our Lord’s voice in the noise of the world.  He only heard it in the silence.  This Church is the perfect place for silence, the perfect place to know, to learn, and to listen for the voice of our Shepherd.

The last line of our second reading was this, “For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd us and lead us to springs of life-giving water, and He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.”  Our Lord does not love us because we’re so good, He loves us because He’s so good.  And He’s not attracted to our gifts, virtues, and talents, but rather, He’s attracted to our weakness, brokenness, and sin.  And He loves us and calls us, not because we deserve it, but because we need it.

If ever we stray may we quickly recognize His voice and come quickly back to Him.

May we be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher Ankley

From a sermon by Saint Bernadine of Siena

The faithful foster-father and guardian

There is a general rule concerning all special graces granted to any human being. Whenever the di-vine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfil the task at hand.

This general rule is especially verified in the case of Saint Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord and the husband of the Queen of our world, enthroned above the angels. He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: “Good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your Lord”.
What then is Joseph’s position in the whole Church of Christ? Is he not a man chosen and set apart? Through him and, yes, under him, Christ was fittingly and honorably introduced into the world. Holy Church in its entirety is indebted to the Virgin Mother because through her it was judged worthy to receive Christ. But after her we undoubtedly owe special gratitude and reverence to Saint Joseph.
In him the Old Testament finds its fitting close. He brought the noble line of patriarchs and prophets to its promised fulfilment. What the divine goodness had offered as a promise to them, he held in his arms.

Obviously, Christ does not now deny to Joseph that intimacy, reverence and very high honor which he gave him on earth, as a son to his father. Rather we must say that in heaven Christ completes and perfects all that he gave at Nazareth.

Now we can see how the last summoning words of the Lord appropriately apply to Saint Joseph: “Enter into the joy of your Lord”. In fact, although the joy of eternal happiness enters into the soul of a man, the Lord preferred to say to Joseph: “Enter into joy”. His intention was that the words should have a hidden spiritual meaning for us. They convey not only that this holy man possesses an inward joy, but also that it surrounds him and engulfs him like an infinite abyss.

Remember us, Saint Joseph, and plead for us to your foster-child. Ask your most holy bride, the Virgin Mary, to look kindly upon us, since she is the mother of him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns eternally. Amen.

Dear Friends,
St. Vincent de Paul lived in 17th c Paris France. And sometimes in the afternoon he liked to take a walk to clear his head. On one particular afternoon a crying woman ran up to him. She was inconsolable. In between the outbursts of tears and sobbing he was able to piece together what had happened. Her husband, that morning, had jumped form a bridge into the river. He had taken his own life. The woman was broken with grief. She feared the worst for her husband’s soul. But in a moment of Heavenly grace, St. Vincent de Paul was given a bit of knowledge of what had happened that morning on the bridge. He said, “Madam, do not be afraid, in that time and distance from the railing of the bridge to the water’s surface your husband repented, he is saved.” Go and pray for him!
On this Divine Mercy Sunday we are reminded that our Lord is always reaching out to us. Even in that millionth of a second between life and death, he still reaches out to us. In that short span of time, in that millionth of a second this is what the conversation may have sounded like:
Jesus speaking with a despairing soul:
Jesus: O soul steeped in darkness, do not despair. All is not yet lost. Come and confide in your God, who is love and mercy.
-But the soul, deaf even to this appeal, wraps itself in darkness.
Jesus calls out again: My child, listen to the voice of your merciful Father.
-In the soul arises this reply: “For me there is no mercy,” and it falls into greater darkness, a despair which is a foretaste of hell and makes it unable to draw near to God.
Jesus calls to the soul a third time, but the soul remains deaf and blind, hardened and despairing. Then the mercy of God begins to exert itself, and without any co-operation from the soul, God grants it final grace. If this too is spurned, God will leave the soul in this self-chosen disposi-tion for eternity. This grace emerges from the Merciful Heart of Jesus and gives the soul a special light by means of which the soul begins to understand God’s effort; but conversion depends on its own will. The soul knows that this, for him, is final grace and, should it show even a flicker of good will, the Mercy of God will accomplish the rest.
My omnipotent mercy is active here. Happy the soul that takes advantage of this grace.
Jesus: What joy fills My Heart when you return to me. Because you are weak, I take you in My arms and carry you to the home of My Fa-ther.
Soul: (as if awaking, asks fearfully): Is it possible that there yet is mercy for me?
Jesus: There is, My child. You have a special claim on My mercy. Let it act in your poor soul; let the rays of grace enter your soul; they bring with them light, warmth, and life.
Soul: But fear fills me at the thought of my sins, and this terrible fear moves me to doubt Your goodness.
Jesus: My child, all your sins have not wounded My Heart as painfully as your present lack of trust does – that after so many efforts of My love and mercy, you should still doubt My goodness.
Soul: O Lord, save me Yourself, for I perish. Be my Savior, O Lord, I am unable to say anything more; my pitiful heart is torn asunder; but You, O Lord…
Jesus does not let the soul finish but, raising it from the ground from the depths of its misery; he leads it into the recesses of His Heart where all its sins disappear instantly, consumed by the flames of love.
Jesus: Here, soul, are all the treasures of My Heart. Take everything you need from it.
Soul: O Lord, I am inundated with Your grace. I sense that a new life has entered into me and, above all, I feel Your love in my heart. That is enough for me. O Lord, I will glorify the omnipotence of Your mercy for all eternity. Encouraged by Your goodness, I will confide to You all the sorrows of my heart.
Jesus: Tell me all, My child, hide nothing from Me, because My loving Heart, the Heart of your Best Friend, is listening to you.
Soul: O Lord, now I see all my ingratitude and Your goodness. You were pursuing me with Your grace, while I was frustrating Your benevo-lence, I see that I deserve the depths of hell for spurning Your graces, Jesus (interrupting): Do not be absorbed in your misery – you are still too weak to speak of it – but, rather, gaze on My Heart filled with goodness, and be imbued with My sentiments. Strive for meekness and hu-mility; be merciful to others, as I am to you; and, when you feel your strength failing, if you come to the fountain of mercy to fortify your soul, you will not grow weary on your journey.
Soul: Now I understand Your mercy, which protects me, and like a brilliant star, leads me into the home of my Father, protecting me from the horrors of hell that I have deserved, not once, but a thousand times. O Lord, eternity will hardly suffice for me to give due praise to Your unfa-thomable mercy and Your compassion for me. (From the Diary of St. Faustina)
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His Mercy endures forever.
Let us be great Saints,
Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

Some 1600 years ago a man by the name of St. Jerome wrote these famous words.  What is often surprising to most people is that Jerome wrote these words in a reflection on Isaiah.  Now Isaiah is in the Old Testament and what Jerome was saying, is that to truly know the full identity of Jesus we have to be familiar with all that was written about Him centuries before, and we must be familiar with the many events recorded in the Old Testament, the events that prefigure what Jesus would do for us.  If we’re to understand Easter, really understand Easter, we need to know the Old Testament, because all of it prepares for Jesus.

Salvation history is a drama.  And God is the author.  Great authors often start their novels with characters and events, which at the time; seem obscure and insignificant but later turn out to be crucial for understanding the ending of the story.  The Bible is like that.  Now, we don’t have time to address all the figures and events that foreshadow Jesus and the great day of Easter.  But we must, absolutely must, know well at least one event.  That event is known as the Exodus, and it is found way back in the second book of the Bible.

The Jewish people, the Israelites, had been slaves for 430 years in Egypt.  And for that whole time they were oppressed by the cruelty of the kings of Egypt, the pharaohs, who took away their freedom and dignity and used them to build the cities and monuments of Egypt.  430 years!  That’s almost twice as long as the history of our country.  Imagine what our national psyche would be like if, from the date of our founding, we had lived as slaves to another people?  Despair would be rampant.  Hopelessness would be the norm.  Life would seem, and would be in many ways, meaningless.  But God rescued the Israelites from their slavery.  He did this by raising up a man named Moses, through whom He worked great signs and wonders.

The greatest of all the signs and wonders happened shortly after the Israelites left Egypt when Pharaoh, suddenly awakened to what he had lost, sent his army after them to bring them back.  That army finally caught up to them and trapped them at the shores of the Red Sea.  And suddenly the Israelites were stuck.  In front of them was a body of water.  And behind them was the most powerful army in the world.  So they did what I would do, what many would do.  They complained!  They cried out! They despaired!  They thought it was hopeless.  They thought that the God who had rescued them from slavery would be unable to save them.

But then Moses said to the people.  In the midst of all their fear, and confusion, and despair, Moses instructed the people to turn around and to look at the Egyptian army.  And as they did so, full of fear, he said to them, “Look well at this army, this enemy that you see today, for you will never see them again!”  And with that the waters of the Red Sea parted, and the Israelites walked through as if on dry land, and when the Egyptian army followed in after them, the waters returned to their normal place, destroying forever the slave masters and oppressors of the Israelites.

That event, that real event, is meant to help us understand what is happening today and why we are celebrating with such joy, not just today, but for the next 50 days (we had 40 days of fasting for lent, we now have 50 days of feasting and joy for Easter).  The waters of the Red Seas were a foreshadowing of the sacrament of baptism.  And just as the Egyptians were drowned in those waters of the Red Seas, so are the sins of those baptized drowned in the waters of the font.  Just as that water broke pharaoh’s stranglehold on the Israelites, so will the water of the font destroy the grip of the powers of hell.  And Jesus, the new Moses, the one whom Moses foreshadowed, speaks now to those about to enter the waters of baptism and says, “Your sins, those enemies and memories that chase and harass you and accuse you and tell you that you are stuck the way you are, you will never see again!”

What difference does Jesus’ death and resurrection really make for our lives?  It makes all the difference in the world!  The Exodus told the Israelites, and Jesus’ death and resurrection tells us, that God exists.  He cares.  He saves.  He rescues. He intervenes.  He gets involved.  He get his hands dirty, he gets His hands bloody.  And He does this because He loves.

Many of us, I know, feel trapped, hemmed in by present circumstances at work, in our marriage, at home, in our family, our personal life.  We can feel like the Israelites staring at the Red Sea in front of us and the Egyptian army behind us; or like Jesus’ mother Mary and John the Apostle standing at the foot of the cross on Good Friday.  All can look bleak.  There seems to be no way out. But just as all that was foretold in the Old Testament was fulfilled in Jesus, so all that he has promised us will also be fulfilled.  The enemies that chase and harass us and cause us so much fear and sadness in our lives, and the greatest of those enemies is death, one day we will never see them again.  It might be a while yet until that happens, but it will happen, as surely as the Israelites pass through the Red Sea as on dry land, as surely as Christ truly and bodily rose from the dead.

I have two stories about lives that were transformed by Christ’s resurrection.  The first is about a working class-man with almost no education.  He tried to make something better out of his humble, poor life, by going to work for a friend who was starting a new company.  He was hoping for a new lease on life, but it didn’t work out.  In fact, his friend was arrested and thrown in prison, wrongly condemned for a crime he didn’t commit.  In the end, he was brutally killed by a furious mob.  The working class man was not only discouraged by this failure, but he was actually afraid that the same thing might happen to him.  So he disowned his old friend and, dejected, went back to his former life.

The second story is about a talented woman with a poor reputation who had squandered her abundant gifts.  She never got respect, and never did anything to deserve it.  A slave to her own sin, she cried herself to sleep night after night.  She simply couldn’t imagine a better life than the one she was living.  Then she met someone who gave her hope, the same man from the first story, who was starting a new business.  She also went to work for him, trying to get a new lease on life.  But then he was murdered, and her hope was extinguished.

And what happened next?  Well, they found out that Jesus rose from the dead, and that made all the difference, for the woman’s name is St. Mary Magdalene, and the man is St. Peter.  Putting our faith in Christ, our stories become just like theirs.

This truth, that Jesus’ resurrection has destroyed death forever is what takes the sting out of our tears.  This truth that the devil has been stripped of his power just as Pharaoh was stripped of his power is what enables us to live with hope.  The basic message of Easter is perhaps simply this:  what God does best is to turn trash into gold, darkness into light, and death into life.  His power is literally beyond anything we can ever, ever imagine.  And His love, His love, is even greater than his power.   Happy Easter!

Pax et Bonum,

Rev. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Today is Palm Sunday and these palms we hold are the ancient world’s symbol of triumph. People would wave them at the King or his general as he entered the capital city after a successful campaign. Christians see them as a symbol of our Lord’s triumph and definitive victory over sin, and death, and hopelessness. That’s why we place them on our crucifixes. Today is also known as Passion Sunday where Catholics throughout the world once again turn their hearts and minds to the suffering and death of Jesus. Whenever we enter a Catholic church we see the different images of the passion. In the fourteen Stations of the Cross we see the passion played out. And right now I want to focus on station number six, Veron-ica wipes the face of Jesus.

Now in the movie, “The Passion of the Christ” by Mel Gibson the actress who imitated the actions of St. Veronica had con-version experience, right there in the midst of filming the scene. Sabrina Impacciatore is an Italian actress and although she had grown up Catholic, she had long ago stopped practicing her faith. At the time when they began filming, she was at a spiritual low point in her life. She later explained that she really wanted to believe in Jesus, but she just couldn’t do it.

Her scene in the movie is quite memorable. Jesus is carrying his cross to Calvary and he falls again for the third time. The crowds surge in around him, abusing him as he lies on the ground. Without much success the soldiers try to control the crowds. And gliding through the middle of all this confusion is Veronica. She looks at Jesus with love and devotion. She kneels down beside him and says, “Lord, permit me.” She takes a white cloth and wipes his face which is covered with blood, dirt, and sweat. She then offers him a drink. It’s a brief moment of intimacy in the middle of violent suffering. Sa-brina said it was a very hard scene to film. The churning crowd kept bumping into her and disrupting the moment of inti-macy. And so they had to film it over and over again. Twenty times they had to film it before getting it right.

And that was providential. Because after twenty times of kneeling before the suffering Christ, looking into his eyes, and calling him Lord, the actress felt something start to melt inside her. She wasn’t seeing the actor pretending to be our Lord; she was seeing our Lord himself. Later, she explained that while she looked into his eyes, she found that she was able to believe. “For a moment,” she said, “I believed!” That experience lit the flame of hope in her darkened heart.

Sabrina finally understood the words Jesus spoke from the Cross when he said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” The brutality of the scene made a big impression on her. She found herself thinking, “Jesus is someone I can trust, he went through this for me.” Even when we reject him, scourge him, crown him with thorns, betray him, and finally crucify him, our Lord still continues to love us. The Passion is God saying to us, I will keep loving you.
The name Veronica comes from the two words vera and icon and these two words mean true image. This true image re-fers to the image of Jesus’ face that was left on the cloth that was used to wipe his face. This relic is kept at the Vatican and scientists can’t explain it. Vera icon, the true image, eventually became Veronica, the name given to the anonymous woman who loved Jesus. As Christians, all of us are supposed to be a Veronica, a true icon, a true image of Jesus. Be-cause it’s only in him, only when we live in his image, living as a true icon of our Lord, that we can truly be happy.

When we pray the Stations of the Cross, right before station number six we sing of Veronica. We sing, “Brave but trem-bling came the woman, none but she would flaunt the Roman, moved by love beyond her fear.” So as we enter into Holy Week, like Sabrina that actress, like St. Veronica herself, let us look into the eyes of our Lord, giving ourselves to him in all things. Praying for the grace to not be afraid to love. To pray for the grace to not be afraid to bring Him all of our sins, to bring to him our hurts, our doubts, our troubles, our hardness of hearts, our everything. Trusting Him in everything. In doing this our Lord will transform us, making us into a true image of Himself.

Let us be great Saints,

Rev. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

There’s a saying that every Saint has a past and that every sinner has a future.  In all three readings today we look forward.  We look to fresh beginnings and we look to not getting trapped in the past.  All three readings today tell us that we have a God who makes all things new, he doesn’t want us trapped in the exile of sin, and in this we find hope.

A few weeks ago we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and in St. Patrick we see a saint with a past, he spent the first fifteen years of his life ignoring God and for him we know God made all things new. When we think of St. Patrick we usually think of a man dressed in green Bishop’s clothing holding some sort of a shamrock.   But St. Patrick is so much more than just a man dressed in green covered in shamrocks.  As Bishop of Ireland he was pretty much responsible for the conversion of the whole island.   Even though he lived in the 4^th and 5^th centuries we do have some of his letters.  We have his autobiography “The Confessions” and we have a letter he wrote to a man who had kidnapped some of his newly baptized flock; we also have his great prayer the Lorica.

St. Patrick was born in Cumberland England in the late fourth century, probably around the year 389.  And even though his grandfather was a priest and his father was a deacon Patrick spent the first fifteen years of his life ignoring God.  Not really believing all that his religious family taught him.  He rebelled.  When he was fifteen, however, Patrick’s life changed forever, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates.  He was sold into slavery and he spent the next five to six years shepherding sheep on a lonely Irish mountain.  It was during this time that Patrick experienced a conversion.  Patrick would later write that his slavery was the door into his recognition of God.  Slavery was his door to finding God, finding God to be the friend of his soul.  In Irish he called God his Anam Cara, his soul friend, Anam meaning soul and Cara meaning friend.

After six years of slavery Patrick escaped, probably first to France and then later back home to England.  He was twenty-two.  His captivity had meant spiritual conversion and recognition of his calling to the priesthood.  He went first to France to study for the priesthood; he was ordained and spent the next 15 or so years in France.    Patrick was not the most learned of priests, he would later be criticized for his lack of theological knowledge.  He was, however, still consecrated a Bishop at the age of 43.  At that time he was beginning to realize that his growing desire was to preach the Gospel to the Irish.

In a dream he said it seemed that, “All the children of Ireland from their mothers’ wombs were stretching out their hands to me.”  He understood the vision to be a call to do mission work in pagan Ireland.  Despite opposition from those who felt his education had been defective, he was sent to carry out the task.  They weren’t expecting much from him.  However, early on through his preaching Patrick made numerous converts.

In his preaching Patrick was emphatic in encouraging widows and widowers to remain chaste and encouraging young women to consecrate their virginity to Christ.  He ordained many priests, divided the country into dioceses, held Church councils, founded several monasteries and continually urged his people to greater holiness in Christ.   He baptized and confirmed thousands and thousands and thousands of people.  In his thirty years of evangelizing much of the Island was converted.  And later, missionaries from Ireland would go on to convert the continent of Europe.

Yet in spite of all this success Patrick met great opposition and criticism from other Church officials.  They didn’t like the way he conducted his missions, they still thought him a bit dumb, and even though he lived a life beyond reproach, they criticized him for the sinful behavior of his younger years, something that had been forgiven decades ago.  He was condemned by the religious people of his day, in much the same way the woman caught in adultery was condemned by the religious of her day.

But Patrick resisted, in the midst of the accusers he clung to Christ, in the same way the woman of today’s gospel learns to cling to Christ, the new friend of her soul.   In both these cases it was religious people who wanted to trap Patrick and the woman in their past sins.  Religion is to be used as a power of liberation, of looking forward of being freed of a sinful past.  Our solidarity in sin ought to awaken in us a greater compassion for others, it shouldn’t prompt us to attack but instead should prompt us to solidarity.

As St. Augustine once said the misery of the woman caught in adultery meets the mercy of Christ.  And when Jesus tells her to go and do not sin anymore he’s emphasizing the future, he’s emphasizing that because she is to become a future saint.  And he’s telling her to follow God’s upward calling in himself, the call to be holy. He makes everything new.  Now we might be imprisoned by past sins, we might cringe about something in our past that causes shame, maybe we can’t let go of resentment, maybe there’s some roadblock to reconciliation, or maybe we’re convinced that God won’t forgive.  In all these cases we are misery, but mercy is always right in front of us.  Jesus is always with us.  As St. Patrick once prayed:  Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.  Salvation is of the Lord.  Salvation is of the Lord.  Salvation is of the Christ.  May your salvation O Lord, be ever with us.

Saints always have a past and sinners always have a future.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Earlier this week in thinking about today’s Gospel, thinking about a Father and his sons, I thought about my own father and an incident that I haven’t thought about in a very long time.  It involves my Dad, my brother Matt, and me.  One day, in early spring, I was about seven I think, dad came home pulling into the driveway with his white Chevy truck.  Matt and I went out to meet him and with our exceptional eyesight we spied two candy bars sitting on the dashboard.  Of course we asked, “Are those for us,” knowing that they probably were.  Dad said, “Yes” but then he told us not to touch them, leave them; they’re for later, for after dinner.  He then pulled the truck into the barn, candy bars still on the dashboard, doors unlocked.  He then took the tractor and went out to the field behind the house to plow.    Matt and I just watched Dad plowing the field just going back and forth, back and forth.

Temptation was too great; you probably know what happened next, we went to the barn, easily opened the unlocked truck and grabbed the candy.  Now I think most kids would have eaten them right there, but before eating them Matt and I did something a little more obnoxious.  We went to the back yard and started waving to Dad as he plowed the field.  We were jumping up and down, waving our hands, clutching those candy bars, saying, “Ha Ha we got the candy bars, you couldn’t stop us.”  The effects of original sin were alive and well in our young hearts.  Though washed free of Original sin in baptism the attraction to sin remained. I’m sure Dad saw us jumping up and down waving to him and maybe he thought, “How nice my boys are waving to me.”  He couldn’t hear us and I’m sure he couldn’t see the candy bars in our hands.  He knew later of course.

Now there were consequences to our actions, I don’t remember what they were, but I do remember being very sorry.  But Dad never held a grudge and he quickly forgot about the whole incident.  I’m sure we all have our own “candy bar story” of some sort, when we took something, that we just couldn’t live without, taking something and trying to hold on to it, not wanting to let it go, when it would have been, eventually, freely given to us.

In our parable today, maybe one of the greatest parables, the younger son wants something of a much greater value.  He wants it bad.  He wants his inheritance, saying to his father, “Give to me what is mine, give me my inheritance, I can’t wait, I want it now.”  In a sense he’s saying to his father, “I wish you were dead already, hurry up and die, so I can have what’s mine.”  Its all about me, what I want, what I need, me me me.

Now in this parable we get a look at the spiritual life, everything about the spiritual life is in this parable.  To begin with; everything we have is from the Father, our being, our breath, our life, our everything.  God is like a father who gives and gives and gives.  His whole being is for giving.  We’re the children of a hyper generous father.  And when we receive that divine life as a gift we’re meant to give it away.  What we receive we give away, and to live this way is to live in the Loop of Grace. Giving away what we’ve received.  Now the youngest son wants none of this, telling the father, give me what I’m due and get out of my life.  He wants the gifts without the relationship.   And the father respects his freedom.  If you want to go, I’ll let you go, says the father.   So the son leaves taking with him all the father’s gifts.  And in the parable it says that the son sets off to a distant country, and in the original Greek this could also mean he set off to the great empty space, he totally cuts himself off from the father.     In his father’s house the son had everything he needed, he had a fullness of life.  But cut off from that divine life, out in the great empty space, the son’s life soon enters a famine, living in the space of his ego, thinking only of himself; all that the son has received is squandered and lost.   Without a connection to the father he suffers from lifelessness and dryness, he suffers everything we imagine a famine of the soul to be.

Eventually coming to his senses the son goes home, his contrition isn’t perfect, but it’s enough and when the father catches sight of him the father’s heart is filled with compassion (I had a confessor once tell me that the moment we enter the door of a confessional our Father’s heart in the very same way is filled with compassion for us).  Now all this time the father’s been looking and waiting for his son.  God hates our sin not because he’s the heavenly policeman but because sin makes us less alive, so if we enter the great empty space of sin he’s always watching and waiting for us to return.   Now the father in the parable catching sight of his son runs to meet him, embraces him, and kisses him.  For the listeners of Jesus’ time this would have been very odd.  Not the kissing or the embracing but the running.  The patriarch does not run to meet people let alone running to meet a son who’s squandered his property.  But out of love the father humiliates himself to welcome back his son.  He then dresses his son up reminding him of his nobility as a son of the father, and restores him to his original dignity as a beloved son.

Rembrandt painted the homecoming of the prodigal son.  And it’s a very dark painting; the only light in the painting seems to come from the Father.  Light radiates from the Father’s heart as he embraces his son.  We have a Father in heaven who is crazy in love with us, a Father who’s always inviting us into his own life. And even when we enter the great emptiness of sin, he still pursues us and waits for us.   Because his mercy endures forever and his love for us is ever unwearied.

Let us be great Saints,

Rev. Christopher J. Ankley

From a letter of Saint Leo the Great, pope

The mystery of man’s reconciliation with God

Lowliness is assured by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity. To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that was incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer. Thus, in keeping with the healing that we needed, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, was able to die in one nature, and unable to die in the other.

He who is true God was therefore born in the complete and perfect nature of a true man, whole in his own nature, whole in ours. By our nature we mean what the Creator had fashioned in us from the beginning, and took to himself in order to restore it.

For in the Savior there was no trace of what the deceiver introduced and man, being misled, allowed to enter. It does not follow that because he submitted to sharing in our human weakness he therefore shared in our sins.

He took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible, though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself.

Thus the Son of God enters this lowly world. He comes down from the throne of heaven, yet does not separate himself from the Father’s glory. He is born in a new condition, by a new birth.

He was born in a new condition, for, invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time. Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man, capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death.

He who is true God is also true man. There is no falsehood in this unity as long as the lowliness of man and the pre-eminence of God coexist in mutual relationship.

As God does not change by his condescension, so man is not swallowed up by being exalted. Each nature exercises its own activity, in communion with the other. The Word does what is proper to the Word, the flesh fulfils what is proper to the flesh.

One nature is resplendent with miracles, the other falls victim to injuries. As the Word does not lose equality with the Father’s glory, so the flesh does not leave behind the nature of our race.

One and the same person – this must be said over and over again – is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man. He is God in virtue of the fact that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He is man in virtue of the fact that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

Dear Friends,

St. Boniface was an Englishman born in the 8^th century.  But he spent most of his life as a missionary to Germany.  He devoted his life to reforming the young German Catholic Church and to converting the pagans living in the countryside.  Now many times in art St. Boniface is shown swinging an axe, pretty cool.  Because very early on in his life of missionary work he undertook the task of chopping down an enormous oak tree.   This tree was considered sacred to the people worshipping Thor.  St. Boniface advertised the fact that he was going to chop the tree down.  People came from miles around just to watch the spectacle.  They didn’t try to stop him because they thought he’d be struck dead for attacking this sacred tree.

He wasn’t struck dead.  And after hours and hours of chopping, the tree finally fell.  He used the wood to build a chapel.  This was the beginning of that area’s conversion to Christianity.  St. Boniface was a great missionary and as a result the Pope invited him to Rome.  He didn’t stay long, however, because the Pope made him a bishop and then sent him right back to Germany.  This time, he was sent to reform the Catholics that were already there and to continue his evangelization of the non-Christians.

As a reformer St. Boniface got very little respect, especially from those who needed reform.  There were some very hard-headed priests in Germany, priests who were not doing what they were supposed to be doing.  They were poorly educated, superstitious, and morally lax.  Even the secular leaders were unappreciative of his reform efforts.  They preferred working with the slacker priests.  In a moment of exhaustion, disappointment, discouragement, or maybe even frustration St. Boniface wrote the following:

“In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses.  Our duty is not to abandon the ship but to keep her on course…I am terrified,” he goes onto say, “When I think of all this I would gladly give up the task of guiding the Church which I have accepted, if I could find such an action warranted by the example the early Christian Fathers or by holy Scripture.  But I can’t.  So let us stand fast in what is right and prepare our souls for trial.  And let us wait upon God’s strengthening aid.”

All of us at one point or another have, like St. Boniface, felt exhausted, disappointed, discouraged, or frustrated.   A trial of some sort.  Somedays the cross just seems too heavy.  For those of us who’ve felt this way, the Gospel today is for us. It’s proclaimed here today to give us courage in the face of whatever beats us down.  It’s proclaimed here today to help us “stand firm” in the Lord.  It’s proclaimed here today to give us a glimpse of the ending, of the glorious outcome, not only for Jesus but for each one of us, if we stay close to Him.  It’s proclaimed here today to help us when our crosses, our struggles, and our challenges threaten to overwhelm us.

In the Bible our Gospel today is sandwiched between two predictions.  The Transfiguration of Jesus, when the apostles catch a glimpse of our Lord’s glory and majesty shining through His human nature, happens immediately after Jesus’ first prediction of His betrayal, suffering, and death, and immediately before His second prediction of His betrayal, suffering, and death.

The first prediction happens right after Jesus asks the Apostles what the crowds are saying about Him.  “Who do the people say that I am?” He asks.  Peter steps up and says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  But then Jesus goes on to tell them that He, the Son of the living God, will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and suffer much, and be put to death, and, on the third day, rise from the dead.   At this Peter grabs Him and says, “Never, Lord!”  And then Jesus grabs Peter and says, “Get behind Me, Satan.  You are not thinking as God does but as man does.”  And if this wasn’t shock enough for the Apostles, Jesus goes on to tell them that if anyone would come after Him and be His disciple it will mean sharing in His suffering, it will mean taking up his or her own cross, it will mean dying to self.  And only after this will that follower share in Jesus’ glory.

The cross, for the first century Palestinian was more than just an image for suffering.  It was disgrace and torture.   His listeners then, and today, can easily become discouraged at the prospect of a Cross.  And so in the face of all of this, while on the mountaintop during the Transfiguration, it’s almost as if Jesus was saying to the Apostles, “What you are seeing right now is real!  Hold on to it!”  And, in our case, He’s saying to us, “What you are hearing proclaimed in your midst is real! Hold onto it! However, he goes on to add, “Before it all finally comes to pass there will be hardships.  But remember this day on the mountain when those hardships come.”  Now we too have other mountain top experiences.  Those moments of profound happiness, those moments of great joy, those moments of intense closeness to God. Where there is true happiness and joy, God is present.  They are times filled with light and presentiments of Heaven.  God gives us these moments to give us strength for the difficult times of the cross.  Remember them.

St. Boniface used the image of a ship to represent the Church.  all of you, when you come to church and sit in a pew, are sitting in what church architects call the nave.  Nave comes from the Latin word navis which means ship.  It’s where we get the word navy from.  As St. Boniface said the Church, the great ship, is being pounded by the waves.  The Church as an institution and each individual within is pounded by the waves of the cross.  But Jesus calls us to hold on!  He calls us never to be ashamed of the cross.  It has redeemed this world.  He tells us not to fear to suffer for the sake of justice.  He tells us not to lose confidence in the reward that He has promised.  He reminds us all today that the way to rest is through toil.  The way to life is through death. And if we are steadfast in our faith in Him and in our Love for Him and one another, we will win the victory He has won.  

Let us never jump ship, because this ship will take us to Heaven. 

Let us become great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley