From a sermon by St. Bernard, Abbot
Let us make haste to our brethren who are awaiting us

Why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this feast day mean anything to the saints? What do they care about earthly honors when their heavenly Father honors them by fulfilling the faithful promise of the Son? What does our commendation mean to them? The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning.

Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints. But our dispositions change. The Church of all the first followers of Christ awaits us, but we do nothing about it. The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them.

Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness. While we desire to be in their company, we must also earnestly seek to share in their glory. Do not imagine that there is anything harmful in such an ambition as this; there is no danger in setting our hearts on such glory.

When we commemorate the saints we are inflamed with another yearning: that Christ our life may also appear to us as he appeared to them and that we may one day share in his glory. Until then we see him, not as he is, but as he became for our sake. He is our head, crowned, not with glory, but with the thorns of our sins. As members of that head, crowned with thorns, we should be ashamed to live in luxury; his purple robes are a mockery rather than an honor. When Christ comes again, his death shall no longer be proclaimed, and we shall know that we also have died, and that our life is hidden with him. The glorious head of the Church will appear and his glorified members will shine in splendor with him, when he forms this lowly body anew into such glory as belongs to himself, its head.

Therefore, we should aim at attaining this glory with a wholehearted and prudent desire. That we may rightly hope and strive for such blessedness, we must above all seek the prayers of the saints. Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession.

Dear Friends,

St. Mark’s gospel is very good about showing us the very human side of the apostles.  I have a copy of what a consulting firm might have said about the original 12 apostles.  This consulting firm wrote:  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 comptroller and right hand man. We wish you every success in your new venture.”

James and John, two of Jesus’ earliest and closest disciples could hardly have chosen a more tactless moment for their request to be seated at his right and left.  They were probably dreaming about their future prominence so they were completely oblivious to his words about imminent suffering and death.  When Jesus asks, “Can you drink the cup I drink?”  They eagerly answer, “We can!” They don’t yet realize what they’re agreeing to.  In the Old Testament, a cup is a metaphor for what God has in store for someone, whether a cup of blessing or a cup of wrath.  It’s only on Golgotha that James and John will realize the deep irony of their request.  They will see that at the right and left hand of Jesus will be two thieves also crucified.  Suffering, the Cross, is the unavoidable doorway to glory, for Jesus himself and his disciples.  The cross is the ladder to heaven.  All the apostles were called to drink the cup that Jesus drank.  From the consulting firm’s description of the apostles at the beginning you wouldn’t think this possible.  But God’s grace builds on nature and with his grace mighty things can be done.

I have a story about my very first convocation as a newly ordained priest.  The convocation is a chance every year for all the priests to meet with the new Bishop and to get to know him better and for him to get to know us better.  Unknown to me it’s a tradition at this yearly convocation for the newly ordained to be a main celebrant at one of the daily Masses.   And part of being the main celebrant means giving a homily.  I thought it was tough preaching in front of a huge church assembly but try preaching in front of fifty priests.  But that went well everything went well until communion.  And that’s when it happened.  The non-permanent altar collapsed and all three cups of consecrated precious blood spilled everywhere.  This spilling of the precious blood made vivid to me the last line of today’s Gospel, “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  He gave his life.  He spilled his blood for us.  He emptied himself totally.

Every Mass we attend we are able to participate in that one sacrifice that took place 2000 years ago.  Each Mass makes present to us today the one sacrifice of Christ and the Mass allows us to drink the cup He drank and to join our sufferings to his suffering.    An old priest once told me that at the elevation of the Sacred Host and Precious Blood, in addition to adoring the Lord, we are to offer up all of our sufferings to God the Father, to unite our sufferings to those of Christ’s.  All physical, mental, social, and financial suffering can be offered.  Our bodies, by being joined to the body of Christ, can be transformed into instruments of redemptive grace.  Our sufferings, willingly united with His, become in a mysterious but real way the means of grace for others.

Fr. Andrea Santoro, an Italian priest who lived and worked in Turkey, wrote this before he was martyred for the faith in 2006, “I am here to dwell among these people and enable Jesus to do so by lending him my flesh…. One becomes capable of salvation only by offering one’s own flesh.  The evil in the world must be borne and the pain shared, assimilating it into one’s own flesh as did Jesus.”

May we be great saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

Dear Friends,

There’s a priest I know and his church has an Adoration Chapel that’s open twenty-four hours a day.  The chapel has only a few visitors at certain hours of the day and sometimes the visitors that do come to the chapel are not there to pray.  So it’s this priest’s job to occasionally check on the chapel throughout the day.  One night, he came upon a well-dressed man reclined in a pew, looking very comfortable, and this man was smoking a cigar.  He even brought his tray to collect the ashes.  The priest’s first impulse was to yell at the man for smoking in the chapel.  But, he held his tongue, and instead asked the man, “What are you doing here?”  The smoker replied, I’m talking to Jesus.”  The priest was surprised by the man’s answer, he hadn’t expected this reply.  The man was obviously a man of faith who believed that Jesus Christ was present within the Eucharist.  The priest left him alone to his prayer but did warn him to be careful with the cigar.  I don’t recommend smoking here at St. Joseph’s.  The only smoke we allow comes from candles and the thurible.  (“The smoke of the incense went up before God and with it the prayers of God’s people.”) Now that smoker knew where to find Jesus.  That man looked upon Jesus and Jesus looked upon him.

In today’s Gospel Jesus looks upon another man but that man doesn’t seem to know he’s looking upon the Son of God. That man calls Jesus a good teacher and in response, Jesus says, “No one is good but God alone.”    Jesus isn’t denying the fact that he is good.  But what he’s doing, is inviting the man to reflect more deeply on why he calls him good.  Is Jesus good because he’s a wise teacher and powerful miracle worker?  Or is it because he treats everyone with kindness?  Or is there a more profound basis for Jesus’ goodness?  Does the man recognize that ultimately, God alone is good, and that what he perceives in Jesus is not merely unusual human qualities but the infinite goodness that belongs to God alone?

It’s not surprising that the man’s youth and wealth are not enough to make him happy.  Many people know this.  The man acknowledges, after all, that he has yet to attain eternal life, which he asks Jesus to help him find.  For this young man the law, morality, a good life … were not enough.  They were a good start, which is why Jesus mentions them first and looks lovingly on the man’s attainment of them.  But, Jesus does not say, “Well done, you have kept the law.  Congratulations!  It’s enough that you’re a good person.  Go in peace.”  No.  Jesus insists that the man is still lacking “he’s lacking one thing.”  He lacks Jesus.

This young man is maybe the most moral man in all the gospels, but he misses out on what his heart was made for.  In the end, the man goes away sad because he’s unable to part with his possessions.  He was attached to things.  He was a good man but not a happy one.  He had many good things, but he didn’t possess Jesus.

We read in the Gospel that Jesus looked at this man with love, “Looking at him he loved him.”  But that man doesn’t seem to have noticed this gaze of divine love, he’s too preoccupied with his own thoughts.  If he had noticed this loving gaze his heart would have been captivated and it would have moved him to surrender all his earthly attachments.  Why does Jesus tell him to sell all that he owns?  Perhaps because the man is bound by his possessions and attached to the independence they made possible.  They were the earthly treasure that was keeping him from freely receiving the heavenly treasure that was standing in front of him.  Jesus wants to set the man free to follow the true longing of his heart without any reservation.  Jesus is asking this man to become as dependent on God’s providence like children who are dependent upon their parents, because it’s to the children that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs.

A modern day example of one who was dependent upon God’s providence is Dorothy Day.  In 1933 she was one of the co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement.  The movement’s aim is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.  One of its guiding principles is to show hospitality towards those on the margin of society.  Dorothy Day, who died in 1980, lived a life of voluntary poverty and service to the poor.   Her trust in God was so complete that she would say, “God sends you what you need when you need it.”  

We studied Dorothy Day’s spirituality at the Seminary and it’s no surprise that the Eucharist had first place in her spiritual life.  She attended daily Mass and had the habit of meditating afterwards where she would often say, “I shall rest happy in the presence of Christ on the altar.”  Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist and praying before Jesus in the Eucharist gave Dorothy Day the strength and courage to serve Jesus in the poor that surrounded her.  Unlike the rich young man Dorothy Day recognized Jesus’ loving gaze and that divine love captured her heart.  It so captured her heart that she surrendered all her earthly attachments.  And for that she is on the path to becoming a recognized Saint in the Church.

Not all of us are called to this type of life that Dorothy Day led but our Lord is asking all of us to not be attached to earthly things, to not put things ahead of him.  And so we work at detachment from things, we work at making our Lord number one.  In the old days Friday was a day of abstaining from Meat.  At Vatican II, except for during Lent, Catholics received a dispensation; we no longer had to give up meat on Friday.  But the understanding was that in place of giving up meat; we would do something else instead; doing some form of penance, fasting, work of charity, or work of piety.  These acts were to express our love and our respect and our honor for the Lord.  If we aren’t already, let us make Friday a special day for our Lord.  These Friday practices can help us grow in our detachment of things.  Is there something in our lives we just can’t seem to live without? Then give it up on Friday, create an empty space to be filled by Jesus.  Let us always possess Jesus.

Christ there in the tabernacle, in his humanity and divinity, is like the sun.  We bathe ourselves in this sunlight which warms and heals us (Dorothy Day).

May we be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

Dear Friends,

More than a century ago a university student, who thought he knew everything, boarded a train in France and sat next to an older man who seemed to be a peasant of comfortable means.  He looked to be simple yet well off.  The student noticed that the older gentleman was slipping beads through his fingers.  He was praying the rosary.  So the student inquired, “Sir, do you still believe in such outdated things?”  “Yes, I do.  Don’t you?” said the older man.  The student laughed and admitted, “I don’t believe in such silly things.  Take my advice.  Throw that rosary out the window and learn what science has to say about it.”  “Science, what do you mean by science?  Perhaps you can explain it to me.”  The older man asked speaking very humbly and looking as if he was about to cry.  The university student noticed that the man was deeply moved and to avoid hurting his feelings any further, he said, “Please give me your address and I’ll send you some literature to explain the whole thing to you.”  The man fumbled into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a card.  On reading the card, the student lowered his head in shame and was speechless.  The card read:  “Louis Pasteur, Director of the Institute of Scientific Research, Paris.”    The deluded student had encountered his country’s leading chemist and the man who would give the world the scientific process that would bear his name – pasteurization.  Louis Pasteur was a man of science but he was also a man of faith.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  Faith and science are not mutually exclusive, truth is truth.  Whether from faith or science truth never contradicts.

The rosary is an ancient prayer, it’s simple and yet very profound.  Pope St. `John Paul II said it was his favorite prayer and he called it a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness.  Pope Leo XIII proposed the rosary as an effective spiritual weapon against the evils afflicting society.  Pope Paul VI called the rosary a Gospel prayer centered on the mystery of Jesus’ saving incarnation.  To pray the rosary is to contemplate the face of Christ with his mother Mary.

The whole month of October is dedicated to the rosary and today October 7th is normally the Feast day of our Lady of the Rosary.  This feast day was established in 1573 by Pope St. Pius V.  The purpose was to thank God for victory over the invading Turkish army at Lepanto a naval victory off the coast of Greece.  And this victory was attributed to praying the rosary.

The development of the rosary has a long history.  It was first, a practice of praying 150 Our Fathers.  While the monks were in the chapel praying all 150 psalms the working brothers out in the fields would pray the Our Father 150 times keeping track with knotted cords of string.  Later there was a similar practice of praying 150 Hail Mary’s.  Soon a mystery of Jesus’ life was attached to each Hail Mary.  The Dominicans did much to shape the rosary we pray today.  They used it to teach and convert those who had left the faith mainly those who denied the humanity of Christ.  In the 16th century the rosary had developed to its present form with the 5 joyful, 5 sorrowful, and 5 glorious mysteries.  In 2003 Pope St. John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries, mysteries focusing on the public life of Christ.

To pray the rosary is to contemplate the face of Christ.  And this is the task of every Christian, to look upon the face of Christ, to recognize its mystery amid the daily joys and sufferings of his human life, and then to grasp the divine splendor of the Risen Lord seated in the glory of heaven at the right hand of the Father.  Pope St. John Paul II said that in contemplating Christ’s face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit.  St. Paul’s words from 2Cor3:18 can be applied to us:  “Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit.”

I urge everyone to pray the rosary.  Carry it with you at all times.  Dig out that First Communion Rosary and carry it with you.  If you have a spare few minutes pray a decade.  Get a booklet on meditations for the various mysteries; they are a great aid in our contemplation.  Or as St Ignatius of Loyola would advise; place yourself into each of the mysteries. For example at the nativity ask yourself, what do I see?  What do I hear? What do I smell?  What do I feel?  Or at the Crucifixion; what do I see?  What do I hear?  What do I smell?  What do I feel?

Come early to Mass to pray the rosary.  Pray the rosary during the week.  Pray it with the whole family.  As a kid my family would pray the rosary together.  And those are some of my fondest memories.  Probably what you’d expect a priest to say, although there were times that I’d get annoyed with my brother Matt.  He’d kneel too close to me and he’d blow his hot breath all over my face.  I just wanted to pound him.   It doesn’t have to be perfect; just get the family together to pray.  Those memories of Matt just make me smile now and they make me love him even more.

The rosary is a treasure to be rediscovered.  It creates an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God.  We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in all the joys and sorrows of our life.  And it builds hope in us that God will bring us to share in His glory.  Use the rosary to grow closer to our Lord.

May we be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

 

From a sermon by St. Bernard, abbot

That they might guard you in all your ways

“He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.” Let them thank the Lord for his mercy; his wonderful works are for the children of men. Let them give thanks and say among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. O Lord, what is man that you have made yourself known to him, or why do you incline your heart to him? And you do incline your heart to him; you show him your care and your concern. Finally, you send your only Son and the grace of your Spirit, and promise him a vision of your countenance. And so, that nothing in heaven should be wanting in your concern for us, you send those blessed spirits to serve us, assigning them as our guardians and our teachers.

“He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.” These words should fill you with respect, inspire devotion and instill confidence; respect for the presence of angels, devotion because of their loving service, and confidence because of their protection. And so the angels are here; they are at your side, they are with you, present on your behalf. They are here to protect you and to serve you. But even if it is God who has given them this charge, we must nonetheless be grateful to them for the great love with which they obey and come to help us in our great need.

So let us be devoted and grateful to such great protectors; let us return their love and honor them as much as we can and should. Yet all our love and honor must go to him, for it is from him that they receive all that makes them worthy of our love and respect.

We should then, my brothers, show our affection for the angels, for one day they will be our co-heirs just as here below they are our guardians and trustees appointed and set over us by the Father. We are God’s children although it does not seem so, because we are still but small children under guardians and trustees, and for the present little better than slaves.

Even though we are children and have a long, a very long and dangerous way to go, with such protectors what have we to fear? They who keep us in all our ways cannot be overpowered or led astray, much less lead us astray. They are loyal, prudent, powerful. Why then are we afraid? We have only to follow them, stay close to them, and we shall dwell under the protection of God’s heaven.

 

 

Dear Friends,

It’s been a little over a week since we remembered the anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001.  There have been a number of articles and shows remembering that day 17 years ago.  And so it’s been on my mind.  Like all of us, I don’t think I’ll ever forget where I was that morning it happened.  I was at the clinic treating cats and dogs and one squealy pig.  And one of our technicians called to tell us that a plane had hit the world trade center.  Now this woman was prone to exaggeration so we didn’t really give it much thought.  But soon after a client came in with the same report and so we turned the small TV on in the office and that’s where we stood for the next few hours.  A lot of clients never even showed up for their appointments that day.

In the course of that morning one of the national network anchors, was summing up all the details for those who were just tuning in.  He mentioned that one of the planes was supposed to be headed for Los Angeles.  He then added looking to the camera saying, “That flight is routinely taken by many stars and celebrities, I bet some very important people were on that flight.”

“I bet some very important people were on that flight.”  In saying that, he meant important people like himself TV news-anchors, or actors, or directors, or politicians, or industry executives, or athletes.  People with rank, with power, with money, with fame, with beauty, with athleticism.  The things that make someone to be great.  The other people on the plane, the regular people, they’ll be missed by their loved ones, of course, but not by the world.  Because, after all, they weren’t “important.”

In the Gospel today, Jesus is speaking to us about greatness. He’s speaking about the greatness, or significance, or importance of each person.  And it’s maybe a bit funny that as Jesus tells the Apostles He’s going to suffer and die, they’re arguing about who is the most important.    (By the way this kind of story is great evidence for the reliability of the Gospels.  If this was all made up, you can bet the Apostles would have made themselves look like brilliant and courageous men.  Instead in today’s Gospel they look like fools.)

Jesus uses the occasion to teach the apostles and us about true greatness and true importance.  And He does so by use of a child.  He calls the child to Himself and put His arms around him to show that he values the child.  In order to grasp the lesson here, we need to know that children weren’t symbols of cuteness and innocence in the ancient world.  Children were symbols of non-persons.  Children at the time of Jesus had no rights, no social status, no value, and no significance.  They were totally dependent on others.  To be kind to a child, to welcome a child, was an act that could bring no reward.

The Gospel message is this, there are no unimportant persons.  There is no “greatest.”  No one, here or anywhere else, is more important or less important than another.  No income or title or celebrity status makes me either inferior or superior to another.  We are all equal in dignity.  We’re not the same, we have different vocations, but we’re all equal.  We all have the same origin and the same destiny.  We all have the same Heavenly Father.  We come from the Father and its our goal to go back to the Father.

Concepcion Cabrera a Mexican mystic once wrote, “Souls are an extension of the Trinity, its Heaven on Earth, and just like the Trinity, they should be respected and loved, since they share in the Divine and the immortal,” an awesome statement.  Read it again, “Souls are an extension of the Trinity, its Heaven on Earth, and just like the Trinity, they should be respected and loved, since they share in the Divine and the immortal.”  The human person is both body and soul and C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia Chronicles would add, “Outside of the Blessed Sacrament, your neighbor is the holiest object ever presented to your senses.”  Every neighbor, including the family member who no longer goes to Church, the kid in class who doesn’t fit in, the man begging for money at the freeway exit, the woman in jail, or the man in rehab, our neighbor.

Now none of this should be a major revelation but we can make it practical.  I have homework, let’s try to call to mind today one person in our life we struggle with, the one who just annoys us to no end, or grates on our nerves, or seems beyond hope.  Then, let’s sincerely ask God this week for the grace to recognize that person’s worth and dignity and importance, for all are important in His eyes. And then let’s act accordingly.

And who knows, we ourselves may be the recipients of extra prayers and graces this week.  Because we ourselves may be the ones that annoy, and grate on the nerves of others.

“Souls are an extension of the Trinity, its Heaven on Earth, and just like the Trinity, they should be respected and loved, since they share in the Divine and the immortal.”  “Outside of the Blessed Sacrament, your neighbor is the holiest object ever presented to your senses.”

May we be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

Dear Friends,

Every Friday all the priests of the diocese receive an email from the Bishop.  Bishop Bradley calls it the B-mail.  In one Friday’s message he talked about visiting St. Mary’s school in Bronson.  To the Students he spoke of the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross.  Now Bishop Bradley always likes to ask the students questions during his homily so he asked them for the definition of “Exultation.”  And they came up with a pretty good answer they told him it meant “Yeah for God, Yeah for God’s love of us.”  That’s pretty good, not what you’d find in the catechism, but pretty good.

This past Friday’s feast commemorates the discovery of the relics of Christ’s crucifixion.  These relics of the true cross were discovered by the Roman Empress, St. Helena.  Early in the fourth century St. Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine went to Jerusalem in search of all the holy places of Christ’s life.   She wanted to build churches at all the holy sites.   When she got to the site of Christ’s tomb she found that a pagan temple to the goddess Aphrodite had been built over it.  And being the empress she had the power to have the temple destroyed.  And so she did, as Mel Brooks might say, “It’s good to be the empress,” and below the temple wreckage according to Tradition the True Cross of Christ was found.

This feast of the Cross celebrates the event of Christ’s Passion, that awe filled event in which God, in Christ, accepted the experiences of suffering and death, allowing himself to feel what we feel, even the terror of the sense of being abandoned by God.  Jesus accepts death on the cross so that he might use it as the means by which he would unite his divine life to us in all things, even in suffering and in death.  He died in body through a love greater than anyone has known.  For Christians, because of God in Christ, suffering and death are not just sad and inevitable facts of human existence, but they have become, in Christ, potential routes of access to God.  Even in these experiences, God is present and working, and even through these experiences; God can accomplish his will to save and to redeem.

Through the Cross Christ shows us the willingness of God to forgive us in the most astounding way.  The cross reveals that the great covenant that God makes with us in Christ offers us the possibility of another chance.  The grace is not deserved, but it is still given.  Now we receive this grace in all of the sacraments, which are the fruits of the crucifixion.  And once we have received this grace Christ asks that what we have been given, we pour into the relationships we have with others, imitating what Christ has done for us in the forgiveness and the charity we share with one another, forgetting about ourselves and focusing on the other.  As our Lord said in the gospel, “Whoever loses himself for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

In our second reading St. James says that we demonstrate our faith from the good that we do, we demonstrate our faith by the way we love.  As we know faith is the door to the spiritual life.  It’s a gift from God and it comes first from God’s own initiative.  Our response, our good works, comes second, all the time inspired and supported by his grace.  Faith is perfected by love; faith is perfected by the gift of our self.  When we help someone, we – if only for a moment – deny our own importance, acknowledging the other person’s importance.  When we help someone, we are giving our life – if only a small portion of it – for them.  Perhaps, this seems exaggerated to say that I gave my life to someone, but what is life other than a series of minutes?  To give a few minutes to help someone is to give a little bit of your life for them. To give years to a spouse, a child, a church community is to give your life for them.  This is how we imitate Jesus, who gave his life for us.  This is how our faith is perfected, by our practice of love.  And it takes a lot of practice and if we mess up we go back to that room and start again, and again, and again.  God is so good.

St. Catherine of Siena describes our faith, as expressed in love in three stages.  And she uses the image of Christ’s body hanging on the Cross as the image of our spiritual faith journey.  These three stages are not exclusive of one anther and all three stages can be present in the same person.   At the first stage our affections begin to undergo a conversion we begin to turn away from sin.  At this stage we embrace our Christ’s feet.  At this point our love for God and others may still be self-centered and maybe fear based.  A major motivation for our conversion is to save ourselves and to avoid the pain of sin and eternal damnation.  This is a great place to start.  And even if we’ve made great strides in our spiritual life we sometimes fall back to His feet, still a very good place to be.

The second stage of the spiritual journey is where we begin to understand important truths about God and ourselves and this is symbolized by the wounded side of Christ.  The purification of the soul continues and there is growth in virtue and understanding.  Our love at this stage is that of a servant.  We love the Lord and are willing to serve Him, but we very much expect a reward both now and in eternity; there is still self-centeredness to our love.

The third stage is symbolized by the mouth of Christ.  At this stage there is a profound and abiding union with Christ.  Our love has grown and become purified to that of a truly loving, faithful son or daughter, or friend, or spouse.  We see our Lord face to face.  At this stage we love the Lord and others with a purified and unselfish love that truly cares for the well-being and interests of the other.  The focus now is not on what we are getting from the relationship but on what we can give.  Our focus is on the other and how to please Him.

Whoever loses his life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel will save it.  The only way to preserve oneself- to attain the ultimate fulfillment for which we are created- is to be willing to give oneself away in love.

May we be great saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

Dear Friends,

At this time, late summer, 21 years ago two women died.  And their deaths dominated the news throughout the world.

These two world-renowned women were about as unalike as any two persons could be.  An article in the newspaper captured the

contrast well when it wrote:  “Diana, tall, glamorous, rich and young, was a romantic figure who won the affections of first a prince and then finally a playboy.  Mother Teresa was short and plain; purposefully poor, dressed always in a cheap cotton sari, and pledged to a man who died 2000 years ago.”

Now it’s very easy to understand why the British princess achieved such fame.  She had all the qualities needed to fascinate us:  wealth, youth, and stunning good looks.  But how do we explain Mother Teresa’s appeal to a worldwide audience from heads of State, to people of all faiths and no faith, to the poor and to the powerful?   She was old and frail, wrinkled and worn, a woman who vowed to be chaste and celibate, obedient and poor.  She had been born to wealth, but chose to be poor.

And yet this tiny woman wielded more influence than many presidents, parliaments, and politicians who work hard to project a perfect image.  Ironically, Mother Teresa never tried to project an image or to give a spin to what she did with carefully crafted words.  Both she and her message were genuine, authentic and consistent.  When she spoke, her words were not “tailored “ to suit the audience. She never watered down her opposition to abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, or contraception, in case anyone in her audience might take offence.

But neither did she ever insult, demean, or vilify those who disagreed with her.  Her strong respect for all human life wouldn’t permit her to treat with disrespect those who did not share her convictions.  Mother Teresa had the rare ability to promote a cause without alienating, and to disagree without demeaning or insulting.

On February 3, 1994, Mother Teresa addressed an audience of 4000 at the National Prayer Breakfast in our nation’s capital.  The audience included President Clinton, Vice president Gore, their wives and many members of congress.  She spoke plainly about the evils of drug abuse, abortion, violence and contraception.  She spoke strongly in support of adoption and natural family planning.  She spoke simple words to the leaders of the richest, most powerful nation in the world.  She said, “The great destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of an innocent child, murder by the mother herself.  And if we accept that a mother can even kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?  By abortion the mother does not learn to love, but kills her child to solve her problems.  And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world…Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but uses violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion…We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all, and that is to destroy love…The poor are very great people.  They can teach us so many beautiful things.”

How did Mother Teresa get away with such plain speaking without offending or insulting?  Perhaps it results from her being such an authentic advocate of the weak, the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable.  She together with other Missionaries of Charity, the religious community founded by her, have taught the world the true meaning of compassion by their quest for the poor, the dying, the victims of AIDS, the unwanted children.

Compassion is from two Latin words that mean “to suffer with” and Mother Teresa shared the suffering of the poor, the world’s rejects.  She and her followers lived in poverty even as they alleviated the poverty of others.  They told desperate mothers considering abortion, “Come to us, please don’t destroy the child, we will take the child.  Come to us we will take care of you, we will get a home for your child.”  And even to hurting post abortive women she would say the same thing, “Come to us, we will take care of you, our good God is rich in love and mercy.  He knows your pain, he knows your sorrow, and he forgives.”

One of the dying, abandoned, unfortunates she took from the slums of Calcutta to her home for the dying told Mother Teresa, “I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die as an angel, loved and cared for.  Sister, I am going home to God.”  He died with dignity and a smile on his face.

With such practical love Mother Teresa answered with her life St. James’ rhetorical question, “Did not God choose those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom he promised to those who love Him?”

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

Religion is all about faith.  And in our catechism’s four parts we see exactly how it all fits together.

The four parts of the Catechism are Creed, Sacraments, Christian Morality and Prayer.  The Creed is faith professed.  The Sacraments are faith celebrated.  Morality is faith lived.  And Prayer is faith deepened.  Religion is all about faith.

Our scripture readings today focus on morality, faith lived.  Faith that is only professed and celebrated is not only useless, it is phony as well.  Or, as St. James in his letter said, “Humbly welcome the Word that has been planted in you, and is able to save your souls.  Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.”

Jesus also accurately labels as hypocrites those who profess faith and at the same time practice immorality.  Quoting Isaiah, the premier prophet of the Old Testament, Jesus says of the Pharisees of his day and all phony practitioners of religion,  “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.  In vain do they worship me.  You disregard God’s commandments.” 

Jesus makes the point that genuine holiness depends not so much on observance of Mosaic dietary law, on what we eat, as it does on what comes from our hearts.  Notice that Jesus is not content to leave this in the realm of generalities. He gets very specific, by mentioning some of the evils that issue from human hearts, evils such as premarital and extramarital sex, theft, greed, murder, deceit, maliciousness, sensuality, arrogance, and an obtuse spirit.  He ended His litany of human evil and sin by saying, “All these evils come from within, from their hearts, and render a man impure.”

In the language of the Bible the heart is the inner depth of a person, its where all the great decisions of life are made.  It’s the source of love and joy but also the source of grief and anxiety.  It’s the source of thought, will, and conscience.  And today Jesus is telling his people that their hearts are far from him.  And the Lord always wants their hearts.  He wants our hearts.  He wants our whole being.

August 19th was the Feast day of St. John Eudes, a French Saint who lived in the 17th century.  He popularized the devotion to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.  But he’s probably best known for his central theme that he repeated often, “Jesus is the source of all holiness, and Mary is the model of Christian life.”  Mary is the one who gave her heart, more than anyone, to our Lord.

At the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel asked her, “Will you give God a human nature?”  She answered with a full hearted yes! So then God took from this woman a human nature.  And in this human nature He taught us, He sanctified us, and He governed us.

Now for the rest of us, everyone who is sitting here, at some point in our lives, maybe when we were very young, but at some point we were called by God and He asked us, “Will you give me your human nature?”  “(Your name here) will you give me your human nature?”

Our Lord wants to continue the incarnation in each one of us; He wants to live his life in each one of us.  As Mary gave him a human nature he continues His incarnation by us, giving Him a human nature.  But as we know it’s not always a total gift on our part.

Fulton Sheen once explained this by using the example of a pencil.  A pencil is a very useful instrument in my hand, he wrote.  If I want the pencil to write the word “God” it will write the word “God.”  It is totally subservient and obedient to my will.

Suppose, however, the pencil had a will of its own.  When I wanted to write the word “God” it might write the word “dog.”  I couldn’t do anything with it.  And why?  Because this pencil would not be completely obedient to my person.  And so, not every one of us gives our human nature to God in such a way that He can use it totally and completely.  We hold back!  We don’t give him our entire heart.

There was a study that came out recently and it found that the happiest people are those that are religious.  And this is because they give their human nature to God, and family, and neighbor.  To give ourselves away in love is to be happy.  The unhappy life is the one where we give ourselves, our human natures to the great substitutes for love, like money, pleasure, power, and honor.

As St. John Eudes once wrote, Mary is the model of the Christian life.  She gave herself totally to God.  St. James in his letter tells us, “Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your soul.”  This word is the word of Scripture, but also the Word made flesh.  So after we receive Holy Communion as we walk back to our pew we are in a very real way like Mary.  We have received Jesus’ body into our body we have become a living tabernacle, we are carrying Jesus into the world.  This is serious business and our Amen after receiving the body and blood of Christ means, “I stake my life on this!”  So if Mary is the model of the Christian life let us imitate her in prayer.  In the prayer she prayed after receiving the Lord into her body and soul.

Soon after the Annunciation Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth greets her with the words, “ Blessed are you who believed”  after hearing this Mary prays the Magnificat, a prayer of one who has totally given her heart to God.  It begins with the words, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”  She is giving her all to God.

After receiving our Lord in communion let us make the Magnificat our prayer as well.  Making our hearts more and more the Lord’s.  Expressing a faith that is openly professed, celebrated, lived, and deepened.  Letting the Lord write beautiful words with our human nature.

Peace and all good,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

 

 

 

August 18, 2018

Greetings to the Church of Saint Jerome,

With humble gratitude I thank the entire Saint Jerome Parish Community for your prayerful support of my vocation.  A year and a half ago Msgr. Osborn accepted my discernment papers for a second time in my life; the first being forty-five years earlier under the tutelage of Father Nadrach. The year passed quickly—I was commissioned at Saint Ann Parish last August and entered Sacred Heart Major Seminary later that month. One miracle after another has brought me to the conclusion of my first year of studies and my first Parish Assignment with you here at Saint Jerome.

Altering career direction in one’s late sixties is a challenge no matter what the vocation. Fortunately the priesthood is not a career: it is a way of living and a commitment to the Lord in service to Him as High Priest under the direction of Pope, Bishop and mentor priests.  This first year brought not only the predictable challenge of learning the course material but also the challenge of relearning how to study as well as how to live with brothers a third my age. In two Semesters my program covered thirteen areas of study including: Evangelization and Catechesis; Field Education I & II; Church History I & II; Synoptic Gospels; Church Fathers I & II; Christology; Research Writing; Method & Pentateuch; Fundamental Theology; Theology of Trinity; along with all my Formation Classes and finally the Desert Pilgrimage. Through your support and the graces of the Lord I had a good outcome to this year of study: my final grade average was a B, which is possibly my most hard earned academic achievement to date. It is now with a great joy in the Lord that I can say I am a second Theologian studying for the Diocese of Kalamazoo.  This is not my work alone but that of the Lord and all of you here at Saint Jerome.  I am so very grateful to be able to share with you as a member of your Community.

Your prayers and the daily graces of the Holy Spirit will give me the energy and love to face each day offering every sacrifice to the Lord in the name of Saint Jerome Parish.  It is an offering that I will gladly make and will continue to make in the days and years of study ahead.  I particularly want to thank Father Chris, and Father Jose’ and Deacon Gary and Chris for all their help and guidance; I learned a lot from them.  I will put to great use all that they have taught me.  Both of your great priests have showed me that a priest’s time is never there’s—it is always God’s time.  Please pray for me that I and my brother seminarians will be as good in our ministry as Father Chris and Father Jose’ are.

Throughout this coming year, I hope to make it back here as often as possible to share with you in the Holy Eucharist and my experiences as a T2 student.  Know that my prayers are with you and continue to be with you, especially before the Blessed Sacrament.  May the Lord ever watch over and protect you.  May He continue to give you the graces intended by the Father from the beginning of time.

In the Light of Christ,

Mr. David Pinto—T2