Category: Pastor’s Corner

Dear Friends,

Today’s gospel gives us an end-of-the-world feeling but Jesus doesn’t give us any specific information as to when it will happen.  He does, however, warn us to be alert and to be on the lookout.  He doesn’t want us to live carelessly or superficially but at the same time he doesn’t want us to get into a panic about the end of the world.

What Jesus announces in today’s Gospel isn’t harmless:  “There will be hardship.” But when it’ll happen we aren’t sure because we aren’t given any dates.  And even if we aren’t visited by earthquakes, famines, or pestilences, smaller things may occur:  our health may fail, marriages may struggle, death will take away our loved ones, businesses may fail, and jobs are sometimes lost.  These are hard and when they happen to us they can feel like the end of the world.  So how do we deal with it?  Jesus gives the answer and his reply is stand firm, trust in me; I will not let you fall.  I will give you the wisdom, I will give you the words I will give you the strength.  “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” 

In our Gospel we heard, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”  Hearing this reminds us of so many horrific events that have occurred throughout the centuries even up to our own day.  I have a story from a period of great suffering when the world around many people was ending.  And it’s a story about a woman named Irena Sendler.  And for those whose world was ending she acted as the heart, hands, and voice of Christ.

Irena Sendler was a Catholic social worker at the time of the German invasion of Poland.  And she was a senior administrator in the Welfare Department. In 1942 the German army herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto.  The Ghetto was sealed and all the Jewish families behind its walls awaited a certain death.  Irena was so outraged by what was happening that she wanted to fight back so she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement.

With her connections in the Welfare Department Irena was able to get a pass in order to gain access into the Ghetto.  She visited everyday bringing food, medicine, and clothing.  But 5000 people were dying every month from starvation and disease.  She had to do more, she thought, and that’s when she decided to help the children get out.  Irena at first began smuggling the children out one at a time in an ambulance.  But that was too slow so she recruited workmen to help with the smuggling.  Children were taken out in gunnysacks, body bags, toolboxes, potato sacks, and even coffins.  Some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances.  One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw.  The children entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians.  Irena accomplished much of her incredible deeds with the assistance of the Church.  She once said, “I sent most of the children to religious establishments; I knew I could count on the sisters.”  No one ever refused to take a child from her.

With her connections in the Welfare Department Irena was able to give each child a forged identity document.  They were placed in homes, orphanages, and convents and Irena carefully noted, in coded form, the child’s original name and his or her new identity.  She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor’s back yard.

Eventually the Nazis became aware of Irena’s activities and in October of ’43 she was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.  Her legs and feet were broken but they couldn’t break her spirit.  She trusted.  Irena was hated for doing the work of our Lord.  Yet she trusted our Lord knowing He would help her through it all.  He would not let her fall.    Sentenced to death Irena was saved at the last moment when members of the underground resistance bribed one of the Gestapo agents to halt the execution.  She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Nazis.

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2500 children she had saved and tried to reunite them with their families.  However, most of their families were dead.  Irena never considered herself a hero and always said, “I could have done more.”

Because of our Baptism we can say along with St.  Paul as he writes to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.”  And for those children whose worlds were ending Irena was Christ’s heart, hands, and voice.  Our Lord will help us through any difficulty, any hardship giving us his wisdom and strength, maybe even using us in the process to help another.  Let us imitate Irena, probably not on the same grand scale, but let us trust in our Lord when our world or someone’s world seems to be ending and let us be as Christ forgetting about ourselves and acting the way Christ himself would act, because maybe God is using us to be as his heart, his hands, and his voice.

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

There once was a woman who made a deal with Death:  she told Death, “Don’t come to get me unless you first give me a warning.”  Give me a warning before you take me.  Death accepted her demand and the woman lived life without fear of death.  She took courage from the thought that she could attain salvation by repenting like the Good Thief, at the last moment by making a good confession after she got her warning.  One day, after many years, Death suddenly came for the woman, but she objected furiously, “This isn’t right! She said.  You promised me that you’d warn me before you came!”  “And since you haven’t warned me about your arrival, I’m not ready for death.”

But Death calmly answered, “Dear sister, I don’t do you any injustice.  God has given you warnings about my arrival for many years now.  How long has it been since your hair starting turning grey?  Didn’t you notice the signs of aging the gradual reduction in the glow of your skin and the wrinkles?  These were signs that the time to leave your physical body was approaching. You didn’t take these signs seriously.  You wasted your time and now there’s no time left.  You have to come with me.”  Helpless and sad the woman followed Death.

Now there was a young man in college enjoying his youth.  Believing he had lots of time before Death would arrive, so he lived without cares or worries, not thinking much about the future.  However, Death came for him too.  The young man shouted angrily, “I won’t come with you! I have not received any warnings like you gave to the old woman who died.  My hair hasn’t turned grey and I have no wrinkles.  This isn’t fair! I want to keep living!”  Death answered the young man saying, “Dear brother, I show you no injustice.  Sufficient warnings were given to you too.  Don’t you remember the death of your college classmate in the car accident?  Don’t you remember the boy in your neighborhood that died from illness?  Don’t you read of the deaths of young people in the newspaper every day?  All these were your warnings.  I come in search of any human, anytime, anywhere.  However you discarded the message that you should always be prepared for my arrival.”  With great sadness, the young man also followed Death.

One of today’s greatest theologians, Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna Austria, recently attributed the declining influence of Christianity, in the West, to the decline in our awareness of the bigger picture.  The bigger picture of Heaven.  He argues that since so many modern Christians don’t take seriously the Four Last Things of the four last things of death, judgment, heaven, and hell.  And by ignoring these last four things we’ve become less dynamic, less purposeful, and less committed.  We are less committed to doing great things for Christ, the Church, and the world.  He goes on to say that it’s as if Christians have lost the orientation that for centuries defined the direction of our journey.  We’ve forgotten that we are pilgrims and the goal of our pilgrimage is heaven.  He says we don’t long or yearn for Heaven the way we used to, we take it for granted that we’ll all get there, but will we? Scripture says no such thing.  Without an awareness of the big picture we have no reason not to get swallowed up in  earthly self-indulgence and earthly self-centeredness.

One thing we can do to keep the grace of the resurrection and the grace of Heaven in our lives is to keep death in mind, to not forget about it.  Our society doesn’t like to think about death and eternal life that may be why we have so many gadgets and entertainments to distract us.   The Church has always encouraged us to keep death in mind.  Many of the Saints kept skulls as reminders of their own eventual future death.  But some might ask, can we keep death in mind without becoming morbid and depressed?   Yes, we can.

Our Lord doesn’t want us to mope around. He wants us to live life to the fullest, just as he did and all the saints before us.  Those most focused on Heaven do the most good on earth.  One easy and effective way we can keep death and Heaven in the mind is to simply pray the Rosary every day.  This is going to be an advertisement to pray the rosary.  The Rosary keeps the bigger picture in mind in two ways.  First, it uses the two beautiful prayers of the Our Father and the Hail Mary.  The Our Father directs our hearts to heaven, and even mentions heaven.  The Hail Mary reminds us that we don’t live forever by ending with the phrase, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”  Second, the Rosary combines those prayers with a meditative reflection, in Mary’s presence, on all the events in Christ’s life – from his birth through his resurrection.  Praying through the different mysteries of the rosary every week takes us on a complete tour of the bigger picture of Heaven.

As you might expect I have a story about a man whose conversion involved praying the rosary.  His name is Bartolo Longo.  In 1841 Bartolo was born into a devout Italian Catholic family that prayed the rosary every day.  When he was ten Bortolo’s mom died.  From that time on he slowly drifted from the faith.  When Bartolo entered Law School he became involved with the occult, taking part in séances, orgies, and fortune telling, at one point even practicing as a satanic priest.  Unsatisfied with merely practicing his new pagan religion he also felt it was his duty to publicly ridicule Christianity and he did everything within his power to get rid of any Catholic influence in the public life of his town.  He even convinced many other Catholics to leave the Church and participate in the occult rites.

Bartolo lived this lifestyle for ten years.  He was a lawyer by now living in Pompeii.  He was materially successful however; there was no joy in his life.  He was depressed, paranoid, confused, and nervous.  He lived within a constant storm of anxiety.  It was during this time that he would take to the streets at night, just walking about aimlessly, despairing about his life.  It was during one of these walks, while coincidentally standing outside of a small dilapidated chapel that he heard the words, “Return to God!”  In the silence of the night he heard it again, “Return to God.”  In fear he sought out a Catholic professor, who convinced him to leave his satanic practices.  This professor also introduced him to a priest who heard his confession.   He hadn’t gone to confession in over 15 years.  At this early point of his conversion he again would find himself walking the streets at night, still looking for that peace, again he found himself outside that dilapidated chapel, and there in the quiet of the night he heard the words, “If you seek salvation, promulgate the rosary!”  “If you seek salvation, promulgate the rosary!”  Teach people to pray the rosary.

And that is what he did.  After re-learning it himself he taught people to pray the rosary,.  He visited every home in that valley, giving everyone a rosary.  He formed a confraternity of the rosary; he formed missions to promote the rosary.  He even restored that little ramshackle chapel where he first heard that still small voice.  Bartolo had found the peace he was seeking.  Now Bartolo wasn’t an immediate success but with time many people in that valley came to love and pray the rosary. Bartolo continued promoting the rosary into his old age he would evangelize young people at parties and in the local cafes.   He died in 1926, at the age of 75.  Pope Saint John Paul II beatified him in 1980 calling him the Apostle of the Rosary.   That little ramshackle chapel would eventually be enlarged and re-consecrated as a basilica officially renamed the Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Pompeii.  Many miracles have been reported at this basilica.

To keep our minds focused on the bigger picture of Heaven, of where we want to go, helps us to live each moment of life in God’s light.  Again, those most focused on heaven do the most good on earth.  Tomorrow, we may not have the chance to love; so we love today.  Tomorrow, we may not have the strength and health to work; so we work sincerely today.  Can we repent tomorrow?  Can we forgive tomorrow? Can we help others tomorrow? We can’t be sure.  Today is the day gifted to us by God.  Let us live this day in His truth and beauty and goodness, using this day as if it were the last.  This is the best way to prepare for eternal life.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

I have a story about a man named Armogastus; he was a royal count who lived in the 5^th century.  He was a close collaborator with King Theodoric who ruled Italy.  Theodoric was a very powerful man in the Byzantine Empire second only to the emperor himself.  The bad news about Theodoric, however, is that he was a heretic.  He was an Arian who didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus.

Theodoric was a heavy handed ruler and for the sake of unity he demanded that all of his royal officers and nobles believe the same thing, that they all become Arians.  All the nobles and officers quickly obeyed the king’s command, all except for Armogastus.  He refused to abandon the Catholic faith.  The king tried argument and reasoning and persuasion to bring Armogastus into the Arian Church.  The king liked Armogastus and didn’t want to lose him as an advisor.  The king eventually grew frustrated and gave up.  So he offered Armogastus a choice; he could either renounce his Catholic faith, or he could die.  “Then I at once choose death,” Armogastus answered.  Instead of executing him right away, however, the king decided to torture him for a time.  Armogastus responded to all torture with complete resignation and prayer.  He could not be broken.  Theodoric would have eventually beheaded him but the Arian priests stopped him, saying that it would only cause Armogastus to be honored by the people as a martyr.  Eventually Armogastus was stripped of his royal title, all his wealth, and he was banished from Italy.  He spent the rest of his days in Carthage as a herder of cows.  Before dying he said, “It is a glorious thing to be dishonored before men in the cause of God.”

For our first reading, this weekend, we heard from the book of Wisdom.  This book was written 100 years before the coming of Christ and it forms a preparation for the fuller teachings of Jesus and his Church.  And in today’s first reading we hear of the theological concept:  love of predilection. Which is a fancy way of saying, God’s love comes first.  Before anything happens in our lives God’s love is there first, always willing the good.  As we heard, “For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made…and how could a thing remain unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?  But you spare all things because they are yours.  Lord and lover of souls!”  Our spiritual tradition is built upon this passage.  Everything that exists has been willed into being by God and is sustained in being by God.  We can think of it in this way; the universe and everything in it exists and is sustained in being by God in the very same way a song exists and is sustained in being by a singer.  Our Lord continually sustains us and wills us into being.  If He were to stop we would cease to exist.  That is love.

Now we sometimes think that we have to earn God’s love saying to ourselves, “If I’m good God will love me.”  But this is wrong.  God’s love comes first.  We should be thinking instead, “I’m good because God loves me.”  Armogastus was spiritually courageous, he gave witness to his faith by defying a king,  enduring torture, and finally exile.  And he was able to do all of this because God loved him first.  He was virtuous in response to the one who loved him first.

Now what about the bad, Zacchaeus was a very bad man.  As chief tax collector he stole from his people, and he stole from the tax collectors beneath him.  He was probably the  most hated person in his community.  How does God deal with a person like that or with a gangster, or a murderer, or a rapist?  How does God deal with the worst of the worst?  Again we go to the first reading from the Book of Wisdom, “O Lord and lover of souls…you rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O Lord!”  Jesus, face of the living God, looked at Zacchaeus and said to him, “Come down, I’m staying at your house.”  Jesus is not being soft on sin; he knows who Zacchaeus is and what he does.  But he is also a lover of souls, both the found souls and the lost souls and he does all he can to save them.  Staying at the house of Zacchaeus is a metaphor.  Jesus is moving into his life, in a sense saying, “Zacchaeus, I want to be the Lord of your entire life.”  Love comes first; Jesus loved him and realizing this Zacchaeus repented and salvation came into his house.

Our souls are meant for eternity, we were created for it.  Heaven is our true home and we have no future whatsoever apart from the love of our Lord.  So let that love inspire us to give witness to our faith like St. Armogastus.  Let that love draw us to repentance like Zacchaeus.  Let that love more and more take over our life remembering that no matter where we go or what we do Love is there making the first move, waiting to be received.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

These past few weeks in the Gospels we’ve been hearing about prayer.  And today we hear two prayers, the prayer of the tax collector and the prayer of the Pharisee.  And so I ask the question, why was the tax collector’s prayer better than the Pharisee’s prayer?  His prayer was better because he made a connection with God; he was praying to God, while the Pharisee only made a connection to himself, he was praying only to himself.  Saying to himself look at me I’m so holy.

At that time tax collectors were despised by the Jewish community.  Tax collectors were the Jews who collaborated with the occupying Roman forces by collecting taxes from their fellow Jews.  They often collected more than the law required and pocketed the rest. They were considered ritually unclean and had no right to enter the Temple.  St Matthew was a tax collector before our Lord called him to be an apostle. The Pharisees were the exact opposite.  They were the most respected members of the Jewish community, the elite, and the undisputed religious leaders of the nation.

And yet, Jesus praises the tax collector’s prayer and criticizes the Pharisee’s prayer.  Theologians see in the tax collector’s simple 8 word prayer, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner” a complete summary of Christian spirituality.  There are many monks who pray this prayer as they meditate.  This prayer, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner” when prayed devoutly from the heart makes a connection with God because it recognizes two things.  First it recognizes God’s greatest quality in relation to us, his mercy.   The word mercy comes from the Latin word “misericors” which when broken down to its two parts is miser:  wretched, miserable and cor: heart.  Literally the word mercy, means to take someone else’s wretchedness and misery into one’s own heart.  There are old holy cards from the 19^th century that depict this.  They show the soul in the form of a little bird flying into the pierced opening of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  That’s what our Lord does with us; if we let him, he takes us into his merciful heart.  Second, the tax collector’s prayer recognizes his need for that mercy.  He accuses himself of being a sinner, someone who has selfishly abused God’s gifts and has used his neighbor for selfish gain.  The Pharisee’s prayer on the other hand shows no knowledge of God’s mercy or of his need for it; his prayer is an exercise in self-admiration.  Our Lord wants to take us into his heart, but he can only do that if we let him, acknowledging our need for mercy.

Bernard Nathanson was such a man who late in life came to realize his need for mercy, his need to be drawn into the heart of our Lord.  No one did more to legalize abortion in this country than the famous atheist doctor, Bernard Nathanson.  In the 1960s, he and a handful of collaborators set to work to legalize abortion.  As he recounts in his book they fabricated statistical studies, they leveraged the media dishonestly, they lobbied Washington, and they mounted a legal strategy that manipulated abused women.  They used every means available, much of it immoral.  He helped to open the door to the more than 60 million abortions that have been performed in this country since 1973.  75,000 of which were performed by Dr. Nathanson himself, he even aborted his own child.

But with the development of the ultrasound things changed for Dr. Nathanson.  The ultrasound enabled him to see what happens inside the womb during an abortion.  It stopped him cold.  He stopped performing abortions and became a pro-life activist.  But he still couldn’t sleep at night.  Often he’d wake up in a cold sweat haunted by the thousands of lives that he had ended. He began to think about committing suicide.   He just couldn’t live with himself.   As he says in his book he needed to wash away his sins, but he couldn’t find a way of doing it.  At this point in his life, he witnessed a silent pro-life demonstration outside an abortion clinic in New York City.  It was a moment of grace.  He saw people praying; he saw their faith and he saw their peace, he was intrigued and began to think there might be some hope for him.  A priest reached out to him soon afterwards and in 1996 at the age of 70 Dr. Nathanson was received into the Church at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  He was baptized, confirmed, and made his first holy communion.  His sins were forgiven.  Asked later why he entered the Catholic Church he said, “No religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church.” 

Our Lord loves going after the sinner he loves going after each of us.  This is one of the characteristics of our Lord that we should brag about and think about, and delight in.  No sin is too big for Christ’s mercy.  We should never doubt the size of his heart.    His mercy is infinite like the ocean.  Even the greatest sins are small and finite when compared to the immensity of his ocean of mercy.  We could think of all our sins as fitting into those small plastic buckets we take to the beach, all of our sins heaped into that bucket.  It’s very foolish to think our little bucket is too large and deep to be ever filled to overflowing by his ocean of mercy.  The only thing that can hold back God’s mercy is when we refuse to receive him.  He will not force his way into our life.  He respects our freedom but as soon as we turn to him and reach out to him in reconciliation he rushes towards us and floods us with is his mercy, forgiveness, and grace.

This is why Jesus praised the tax collector’s prayer the tax collector knew his bucket was empty of grace and only contained sin, and so he let it be filled with mercy.  The Pharisee on the other hand thought he could fill up his bucket all by himself, so he turned his back on mercy.  Today’s first reading told us that, “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds it does not rest until it reaches its goal.”  Sirach also tells us that God is paying attention to the pleas of widows and orphans, the two most helpless groups of people in the ancient world.  We too are helpless in our spiritual life, we need God.  Only God knows the extent of the weaknesses, the wounds, and the sins that torture our souls.  And today God is reminding us that he not only knows about them, but he’s poised to overwhelm them with his grace.  All we have to do is turn to him, and say from the heart, “O God be merciful to me a sinner.” 

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

At the very first Christmas after traveling 90 miles on a donkey while very pregnant, giving birth in the extreme poverty of a shelter where animals are kept and then placing her newborn in a manger, a trough that animals eat out of; Mary is never shown to complain.  In the face of humiliation, poverty, and rejection she doesn’t complain, instead as we read in the Gospel of Luke she prayerfully, “Kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:18).

Mary’s response to these trials and humiliations can serve as a model for how we should handle the little crosses we face each day.  How do we respond when our life is disrupted, when other people or events shake up our life and our plans suddenly have to change?  How do we feel when we are not treated well, when we are not recognized or appreciated or not given the attention we think we deserve?

Many of us become anxious when difficulties come our way.  We may panic and worry and pour all our energy into trying to fix the problems all on our own.  Or we may just sulk when things are not going our way and complain when we’re not being treated well.  Mary’s example, however, reminds us that no matter what may happen in our lives, we go to God first asking God what he might be trying to teach us through these crosses that come our way.  Perhaps we have the opportunity to grow in patience or humility.  Or maybe God wants us to grow in greater trust or surrender of our own willfulness.  There will always be suffering in this fallen world, but God can bring good from those difficult situations and use them to help us grow in certain ways that are for our spiritual good.  The next time something frustrating or painful happens in our lives, we should pray and ask God what he is trying to teach us through these crosses.  We, like Mary should keep all these things, pondering them in our hearts.

I have a story about a 5 year prayer of the heart.  About 30 years ago there was an Irish evangelization movement that brought hundreds of young men and women to Dublin.  These young people felt called to evangelize the British Isles.  These young people were randomly assigned to groups of two.  These groups of two, either two men or two women, were then randomly assigned a city to evangelize.  They would spend a whole month in that city.  These young people were not allowed to have money and they could only bring one change of clothing.  For all of their needs they had to rely on the generosity of the people they encountered.  After one month of evangelizing they would be picked up and taken home.

Katie and Susan, strangers to each other, were paired together and sent to London.  They arrived late in the day and it was almost dark.  They had no money, not even for an emergency.  So they decided to stop at the first Catholic Church they could find.  They found a Church but it was locked, however, there were lots of lights on in the rectory so they knocked on the front door.    And after a few knocks the door was finally opened by a nervous priest.  Katie and Susan told Father about their evangelization program; showed him their documentation and then asked his if he had a place for them to stay and possibly a bit of food to eat.  Even though there was plenty of food and space in the rectory and the empty convent next door. The priest quickly turned them away without even thinking about it.  Katie and Susan even offered to stay in the church, sleeping on a pew.  But the priest denied them.  He didn’t even send them away with a snack.  The priest watched as they walked away.

Katie and Susan didn’t know what to do.  But across the street a new building was going up.  So they decided to sleep there.  For their first night in London they slept in a cold, drafty, under construction apartment building.  With a street lamp outside of his window to help him see, the priest watched them enter the building and he could see them clearly in the first floor apartment huddled in a corner.  The priest didn’t sleep very well that night.  He tossed and turned and every couple of hours he got up to see if the young women were still there in that building across the street.  They were, huddled in the corner looking very cold.  Finally, at five in the morning Father couldn’t take it any longer.  He got up and went to the building.  He wanted to invite them into the rectory for a few hours of rest and a big breakfast, but they were gone.  Katie and Susan hadn’t slept very well and they had had enough so they got up and left.  Father never saw them again.  The rest of their month went very well.  Katie and Susan met some wonderful people through their efforts of evangelization and they always had enough to eat and a place to rest each night.

Fast forward five years, unknown to each of them Katie and Susan again sign up for the evangelization project.  And out of a hundred women Katie and Susan were again randomly paired up.  And again, out of the many cities available, they were randomly assigned to go to London.  Katie and Susan were amazed and happy to see each other again.  They hadn’t spoken to each other in a very long time; they didn’t even expect to see each other.  What are the odds they said that we’d be back together again, going back to London.  Once in London the very first place they wanted to visit was the Church where the priest had turned them away five years previously.  They were going to try again.  So they knocked on the door and the very same priest opened it.  They were about to say, “You probably don’t recognize us” but before either of them could get the words out of their mouths.  Father burst out saying, “Please forgive me, I should never have turned you away; it was like turning Christ away.”  After calming down a  bit the priest went on to explain, “Every day for five years I’ve prayed for you both but mostly every single day over the past five years I’ve prayed to God for the opportunity to ask you to forgive me.”  And now here you are, “Please forgive me.”

This is the power of prayer.   Pray always without becoming weary.

For five years that priest pondered in his heart repeating and asking for the chance to make amends face to face.  His persistent prayer, I am sure, softened his heart and made him more generous and open in all the other areas of his life.

Pray always without becoming weary.

Because of the fall of our first parents our hearts have the tendency to become knotted in worry and anger, and anxiety.  But let us look to the example and intercession of the BVM, who can lead us to God the undoer of all knotted hearts.  At the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass we lift our hearts to the Lord.  At that moment give him your cares, give him your worries, give him your sorrows, give him your anger, give him your anxieties, give him your prayers, give him your joys, give him your thanks, give him everything.  And in return let our Lord give you the prayerful heart you are meant to have.

Let us become great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In ancient Israel, there was nothing more pitiable than a leper.  Since the disease was contagious lepers were prohibited from entering any town.  When they were on the move and walking about they had to continuously make a loud noise and shout, “Unclean!” so that people would know that a leper was approaching and they could clear the area.  They couldn’t be within 50 yards of a healthy person.

Their life was one of total isolation: no friendship, no sense of belonging, no affection.  And in today’s Gospel we meet 10 of them.  They stood off at a distance and shouted to Jesus saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”  There’s something about this man, they just knew he could help them.   And Jesus heard them, and saw them, and he really looked at them, into them.  Our Lord may have been the first one in years to see them not as monsters or freaks but as men and women made in his image.  We want to be looked at in the very same way.  We want that look from our Lord; we want that same divine gaze.  Spiritual writers will say that that look from Jesus is the look of Divine Innocence.  In Luke’s gospel the centurion who witnessed the death of Jesus states, “This man was innocent beyond doubt.”  Jesus embodies harmlessness and this harmlessness is sometimes foreign to us because we sometimes want to harm others, whether it’s in anger, frustration or in comments we make.  We want to harm.  The brokenness within us wants to harm.  But when we look into the face of Divine Innocence, when we look into the face of Jesus and it has to be into the face and not just at the face.  When we behold and look into the face of Divine Innocence, this is to know that we are accepted and that our sins are forgiven.  There’s no scowl or a furrowing of the brow.  None of the things we do when confronted by someone else’s sin.  This innocence of divine love is experienced by us as mercy.  Divine love meets with the evil we have done, and remains love.  Divine love meets with the evil we have done, and remains love.

Now sometimes it’s hard for us to look into the face of someone we’ve wronged.  Just think back to when you were a kid and couldn’t look your dad in the eye after doing something he told you time and time again not to do.  But you did it anyway and you were caught.  You couldn’t look him in the eye; you could only stare at your shoes.  You didn’t want to see the scowl and the disappointment in his face. Sometimes it’s the same with Jesus we find it difficult to go to him.  We find it difficult to look into his face.  Instead of going to Jesus when we struggle we sometimes go to an artificial consolation, maybe its possessions, or gadgets we buy, going after some pleasure, some diversion, or any of the multitude of distractions our world can throw at us.  But our Lord’s face is the one face we should never fear looking into.  He’ll never look away and there will never be a scowl.  In our struggles let us look to the loving face of Christ.

I want to share with you a prayer by Fr. Emory Petho.  This is the priest we went to for confession; he was my Dad’s pastor back at his home parish of St. Mary’s in Burnside.  He helped me to see the face of Jesus in the confessional.  Fr. Petho died 28 years ago and he’s buried just a few feet away from my parents.  He wrote this prayer about the face of Jesus.  There are many people who have a devotion to the holy face of Jesus.   This devotion is based on the miraculous images of our Lord’s face found in the Shroud of Turin and Holy Veil of Manopolo.

Be my Joy

Holy Face of Jesus

Be my Strength

Holy Face of Jesus

Be my Health

Holy Face of Jesus

Be my Courage

Holy Face of Jesus

Be my Wisdom

Holy Face of Jesus, image of the Father

Provide for me

Holy face of Jesus, mirror of thy Priestly Heart

Be my zeal

Holy Face of Jesus, gift of the Spirit

Show me Thy love

Holy Face of Jesus, saddened by sorrow

Grant my requests through Thy merits.

Amen

By Fr. Emory Petho

In the midst of our own struggles and temptations and sins do we always seek the face of Jesus, seeking him in scripture, in prayer, the sacraments, the tabernacle, the monstrance? We all have a bit of leprosy, something that separates.  We all have something that embarrasses or humiliates, something that makes us want to stare at our shoes.  Maybe no one else knows about it.   In the midst of our own struggles, temptations, and sins do we always seek the face of Divine Innocence?

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

Not long ago at a confirmation retreat, a priest asked all the students to name their favorite part of the Mass.  Of course one smart aleck said it was the closing hymn that was his favorite part.  The other more serious answers included the readings, the homily, receiving Holy Communion and finally one serious young woman by the name of Mary said it was the Creed, the Profession of faith that was her favorite part.  And when asked why, she said that years earlier her family had experienced a great tragedy.  A tragedy that filled her dad and siblings with hate but it was her mom that changed everything.  And she did it by reciting the creed everyday out loud in front of everyone.  Before eating, as they all sat around the table, Mary’s mom recited the creed.  And she did this day after day to remind them, first, that God was there, He was there in their midst, second, He loved them, God loved them ecstatically, and finally and most importantly, if they believed in God, if they believed that he was there and that he loved them, then this belief had some serious implications for their lives.

Our Gospel today began with the words, “The Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  What we didn’t hear was the verse before it.  It goes like this, “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.  And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.”  It was after hearing this seemingly impossible command that the apostles ask for an increase in faith.  They wanted more faith so that they could forgive as they were told to forgive.

When Mary was a baby, her family lost everything they had.  This happened because Mary’s older brother, John, had been kidnapped.  The leader of the gang that had kidnapped John demanded a large sum of money in return for John’s life.    Mary’s family sold everything, the house, the car, anything of value was sold.  And after they had given the man everything, all they received in return was a bag containing John’s lifeless body. They’d been double-crossed. As you can imagine they were devastated.  A couple of years later, unannounced, the gang leader showed up at their home, and he asked them to forgive him for what he had done.  “I’m dying of an aggressive cancer,” he told them, “and I want to be reconciled with you before I die.”

Mary’s father wanted nothing to do with the man.  Mary’s brother refused to even acknowledge the man’s request for forgiveness.  Mary’s sister spoke of her intense desire for the man to die a painful horrific death so that he would pay for what he’d done to John and to them.  This kind of talk went on for days.  Mary’s mother, however, kept silent, carefully listening as her family uttered over and over hateful-thing after hateful-thing against the man who had been responsible for the murder of her beloved son.

One night, while the family discussed again the man’s request for what felt like the thousandth time, Mary’s mother got up from the table and went into her bedroom.  After a while, she came back into the dining room, sat down, and with a broken yet firm voice, started reciting:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:  who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.  He descended into hell; the third day he rose again form the dead; he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints…

At this point, Mary’s mother made a long pause.  And almost in a whisper, she continued:  the forgiveness of sins…and then she repeated in a louder voice…I believe in the forgiveness of sins…and a third time, she shouted:  I believe in the forgiveness of sins!  After a long silence, with everyone staring at her, Mary’s mother finally said:  Forgive if you want to be reunited with our beloved John.  Forgive if you want to take part in the resurrection of the body.  Forgive if you want to enjoy life everlasting.  And she repeated:  Forgive if you want to be reunited with our beloved John.  Forgive if you want to take part in the resurrection of the body.  Forgive if you want to enjoy life everlasting.

Every night sitting at the dinner table, in reciting the creed, a profession of faith, Mary’s mom reminded her family that God was there in their midst, He loved them and then finally she was reminding them, if you believe in God then this belief has serious implications for your life.

It was not easy, but with time, persistent prayer, and the repeated sacramental graces of Reconciliation and Eucharist they were able to forgive.  And they found peace.

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  Mary’s family said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  We say to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

I have three stories about the ignored.

First story, There once was a rich young man by the name of Alexis.  He was Catholic and lived in Rome during the fourth or fifth century and he lived at a time when it had just become legal to be a Catholic.  People could finally practice the Christian faith out in the open.  When Alexis was a teenager, he decided that he wanted to give up everything, give up his wealth and give up his place of privilege in Roman society.  He wanted to live a life of poverty and prayer, and he wanted to do this all for God, but his parents had other plans for him.  They had arranged for him to marry a rich young woman.  And because it was their will for him he went along with it.  He really listened to his parents.  Yet on his wedding day when he saw his bride for the first time, he had second thoughts, and it’s not what you think☺.  This woman was smart, loving, and beautiful, and she would be a great wife, but even so, he asked for her permission to leave her for God.  She gave him the permission.   So he left.

He made his way to Syria, where he lived the life of a beggar.  Any money he received he first shared with the many poor people around him using only what was left over for himself.  When he wasn’t begging he was praying in the various churches of the city.  After living this way for several years people began to recognize him for his extraordinary holiness.  People would come to him for advice and to ask for his prayers.  They called him the living saint.  And this made him very uncomfortable.  So after seventeen years in Syria he made his way back to Rome and to his parents’ house.  He came as a beggar to his own house where he’d grown up.  His parents didn’t recognize him and so he started living under the stairs leading up to the front door.  His parents allowed him to live there not knowing who he really was.  And there he stayed spending his time begging for food, praying in the churches of Rome, and teaching the homeless about God.  With his parents never realizing who he was, even though they passed him and looked at him every day as they went to and from their house.

Now the servants of that house were quite cruel to Alexis and though he could have ended all these sufferings just by telling his parents who he was, he chose to say nothing.  Alexis lived this way for 17 years.   It was a hard way of life.  And one morning the servants found him dead under the stairs.  But before burying him they went through his few possessions even going through the pockets of the jacket he was wearing.  And in one of his pockets they found a note.  The note explained to them who he was and how he had lived this life of penance and prayer from the day his wedding was supposed to take place until then, a total of thirty-four years.  Writing that he did it all for the love of God.  Praying and sacrificing for the people of God.

When Alexis’ mother came to look and to hold the dead body of her son she cried out, “My son, my Alexis, I have known you too late! You were there all the time and I never really saw you.” She was heartbroken.  This woman had seen her son every day for seventeen years yet she didn’t really see him.  She had heard her son every day for seventeen years yet she didn’t really hear him.  She had invited her son into her home yet she didn’t really invite him in.   He got only as far as the space beneath the stairs.  It was a superficial relationship.  Alexis’ parents looked at their son every day for 17 years without ever seeing him.  And then it was too late.

Second story our parable in the Gospel.  In our parable too the rich man ignores the man living on his steps. He totally ignores Lazarus, stepping over him every day without helping him.   In no way does the parable condemn the man for being rich.  Being wealthy was thought to be a blessing from God, an outward sign that God had favored a person.  On the other hand, the poverty of a person like Lazarus was thought to be a curse from God.  The belief at the beginning of the parable for the people listening to Jesus would have been that the rich man would have been carried off by angels to the bosom of Abraham and that Lazarus would have been the one sent to the netherworld.  Our Lord’s parables usually destroy expectations, and with this parable Jesus radically reversed expectations.

The sin Jesus pointed to is the fact that not only did the rich man not assist Lazarus, the rich man completely failed to notice Lazarus.  Even in death, the rich man saw Lazarus as nothing more than a servant.  For God, failure to notice the suffering of a fellow human being is inexcusable and merits torment.  It’s curious that the rich man is nameless while the poor man is given a name and his name Lazarus in Hebrew means, “God comes to help.”  By giving him a name Jesus points to the poor man’s significance he is not just a nameless nobody.

The parable states, “When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.”  This mention of Angels being sent to poor Lazarus was a powerful signal.  The presence of angels signaled the presence of God.  The presence of angels also signaled God’s protection.  The role of the angels was so important that the parable could have stopped right there with the mention of the angels and it would have had the same impact on its first century audience.  The angels came for Lazarus.

Third story, Twenty eight years ago I lived in Detroit and every morning I had to walk three blocks and most every morning I passed the same gentleman sitting in a doorway with his hand extended asking for change.  He wasn’t very clean, he didn’t smell too good, and he must have been injured in a fire because his face was severely scarred.  I wish I could tell you that I gave him money every day but I don’t even remember if I ever did.  Excuses, however, I do remember the excuses that would come into my mind, like, “Oh he’ll just use the money to buy beer or maybe drugs,” or maybe I’d think, “Why doesn’t he just get a job?”  Sometimes I would walk on the other side of the street to avoid him, his presence made me uncomfortable.

Have you ever been in a similar situation?  Were you uncomfortable?  If you were that’s good.  We should be uncomfortable.  We should be uncomfortable seeing our brothers and sisters in need. Today’s Gospel is meant to bother us, to get under our skin and to maybe even irritate or sting and that’s good because like an oyster that’s irritated by a grain of sand produces out of that irritation a pearl of great value and in the same way when our conscience is stung or irritated something of great beauty can be produced in our souls.

We live in a country of great wealth, and even if we are not the wealthiest, compared to most of the world we live in abundance.  And so there are two questions we can ask ourselves:  Why has God permitted me this wealth, whatever level that might be?  And what does he want me to do with it?  Cardinal George once said, “The poor need the rich to get out of poverty, and the rich need the poor to get to Heaven.”  The next time we encounter a man sitting in a doorway asking for change, look at him, really look at him, and see him.  We can ask ourselves, I can ask myself, “Why has God placed him in my path.”

Let us become great Saints,

Fr. Christopher Ankley

Dear Friends,

Today’s parable about the crafty steward is meant to wake us from a spiritual slumber.  It’s a wakeup call.  The steward squanders his master’s property and he gets caught.  He knows he’s going to lose his job and he’s desperate.   There’s no social security and no unemployment check waiting for him.  He’s too weak for manual labor and he’s too proud to beg.  He’s frantic and needs to act quickly so he comes up with a scheme.  A scheme that’s immoral, pathetic, and far from foolproof but it is a decisive action.  The steward moved when the situation called for action.  And the rich master is impressed.  He calls the steward prudent and even though it was immoral the steward knew what to do to save himself.

Jesus uses this story about material wealth as a metaphor for our spiritual life.  We are motivated to take action when we have failing bank accounts, we are motivated to take action when we have broken cars, and we are certainly motivated to take action when we have failing physical health.  But are we just as motivated to care for our spiritual life when it’s in jeopardy?  The unjust steward realized his desperate situation and acts.  What is our spiritual situation like?  Are we ready to act?

I want to share with you a story about a man who, when faced with a desperate situation, took action.  And the action he chose was to grow closer to God.  John Newton was born in 1725.  His devoted Christian mother hoped that he would one day become a minister.  But she died when John was six and John’s life took off in a very different direction.  At the age of 11 he went to sea to be with his dad who was a sailor.  John worked on merchant ships with his dad and he gained quite an education on board those ships growing farther and farther away from God, until one day he stopped believing.  Eventually John’s dad retired and they went their separate ways.  John eventually found himself as a captain of a ship used in the slave trade.  Slaves were picked up in West Africa, where they were crammed into the hold of the ship with barely enough room to breathe.  Receiving little food or water many died before ever reaching North America.

In 1748 sailing to England John experienced a profound spiritual wake up call.  His ship the Greyhound encountered a severe storm off the coast of Ireland.  As massive amounts of water poured into the ship, threatening to sink it Newton amazed himself by crying out, “Lord have mercy on us!”  Spending the next 11 hours at the ship’s helm battling the storm he reflected on his life and his rejection of God.  This experience marked the beginning of his conversion.  That date was March 10, 1748, the day of his turn around, and from that date forward John avoided profanity, gambling, drinking, and womanizing.  It was a few years later, however, before he gave up the slave trade.  On his last trip as a slave trader he turned back when at the half way point to America.  He returned the slaves to Africa and gave them their freedom.

John Newton did eventually become a minister as his mom had hoped.  He became an Anglican priest and a strident abolitionist, but I think most of us today know him as the author of the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”  Now you know the rest of the story.

This story of John Newton is a story of one of God’s children returning back to Him, opening the door to Him, opening that link to eternity.  John Newton had the opportunity, (like we do, right now, today) to look at his life before he died, to see things that he wanted to change and to change them.  He had those eleven hours to reflect on his life.  He had the opportunity to welcome God back into his life and make Him the Biggest part of it and he did.  John took action and reconnected with his faith.  He responded to God’s amazing grace.  He realized at that point, I think, that he like the rest of us was not meant for this material world, but meant for the eternity of Heaven.  We have that same opportunity to respond to God’s grace.  If we’re feeling a little distant from God, we can invite Him back into our lives.  If something is gnawing at us or unsettling us, we can reconcile with Him.

God is patient and always calling us back to Himself, always waiting for us.  In the days of the Old Testament He spoke through the prophets to call back his Israelites.  Today He speaks to us through Christ His Son, He speaks to us through His Church and He speaks to us through our Pope.   Pope Francis once wrote of an encounter with God that changed his life.  On September 21, 1953, a 16-year-old boy named Jorge Bergoglio was planning to go out to celebrate with friends an Argentinian national holiday called Students’ Day, which is always held on the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.  Jorge decided to start the holiday by going to pray at his parish church dedicated to St. Joseph.  When Jorge arrived at the church, he saw a priest he didn’t recognize but one who seemed to radiate holiness. He decided to approach him and asked him to hear his confession.  We don’t know what Jorge said to the priest or what the priest said in response.  But we do know that that confession totally changed not only the teenager’s plans for the day, but for the whole course of his life.  Pope Francis would later say, “For me, this was an experience of encounter:  I found that someone was waiting for me.  Yet I don’t know what happened.  I can’t remember. I don’t know why that particular priest was there, whom I didn’t know, or why I felt this desire to confess.  But the truth is that someone was waiting for me.  He had been waiting for me for some time.  After making my confession, I felt something had changed.  I was not the same. I had heard something like a voice or a call.”  “I realized that God was waiting for me.”

God is ever faithful even when we’re not, God is always waiting.  None of us knows when we’ll see God face-to-face, but all of us will and all of us want to be sure we’re ready for that moment.  Let’s not wait for tomorrow.

The unjust steward was very quick to take action when his material world was in jeopardy.  Let us always be quick too, but quick to take action when our spiritual life is in jeopardy because it profits us nothing to gain the whole world if in the process we lose our soul.  Our Lord was waiting for John Newton, he was waiting for the 16 year old Jorge Bergoglio and he’s waiting for us too, waiting to receive us with open arms.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In our Gospel today we are reminded of two truths of our faith.  First, God created us in love, He created us in an ecstatic love, and in this love He created us to participate in his divine life by being in friendship and union with him.  Second, with our God-given free will we sinned and rejected God’s love choosing instead to trust in ourselves rather than trusting in Him.  However, God constantly reaches out to us, to bring us back, into a right relationship with Him.

A few years ago I read the book, Brideshead revisited.  It was written by Evelyn Waugh a British Catholic convert from the first half of the twentieth century. This book is about a wealthy British Catholic family, the Marchmains.  And a few members of this family, if they had been living at the time of Jesus, they’d be eating at the table with him in today’s Gospel.  They were sinners spending their lives trying to get as far away from God as possible. Eventually, however, these wandering Marchmains responded to God’s ever pursuing grace because as we heard in the second truth; God constantly reaches out to us.  And a priest character in the book describes this grace of God reaching out to us, in a way that I’ve never forgotten.  This is God talking about someone who finally responded to his grace, (using God voice) “I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

God lets us live in freedom and sometimes in that freedom we wander away maybe even far away, but He always pursues, tugging on that line and hopefully we eventually respond to that tug of grace.  In today’s Gospel we heard three examples of God’s grace at work.  And this grace has a logic that is so very different from the logic of this world.

The logic of the world is about control and division. It’s about who’s in and who’s out.   This logic of the world tells us, if you hurt me I’ll hurt you back and if you do something for me I owe you.  But the logic of God’s grace is totally different because grace is a free gift.  And if we were to think with the logic of grace we’d have to say instead, “Even though I don’t owe you anything I’m going to give you something,” and “Even though you’ve hurt me I’m not going to seek revenge,” and “Even though you won’t forgive me, I’ll forgive you and give you a gift.”  It’s this logic of grace that we see in today’s Gospel, a logic that looks to the other instead of looking inward at self.  The shepherd leaves ninety-nine valuable sheep in search of one whom he may not even find.  This goes against the logic of the world.  Why risk so much for one sheep worth so little compared to the rest?  And then there’s the woman who diligently tears apart her house in search of a coin that’s only worth about a penny.  Would we do the same?  Do we think with the logic of grace, seeking the lost and the estranged, giving and forgiving without expecting anything in return?

Our Gospel today ends with the famous parable of the prodigal son but it could also be called the prodigal sons because both sons have turned away from their father.  They think with the logic of the world.  The younger son says in effect, “I’m unwilling to wait for you to die, so give me what is due to me.”  And the older son says to the Father, “I’ve been like your slave all these years and you owe me.”  These two sons think only of themselves and the father responds to this greed not with the logic of the world he instead responds with the logic of grace telling them, “Everything I have is yours.”

The younger son eventually comes to repentance and there’s a line that always moves me.  “While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.  He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.”  An elderly wealthy man, at the time of Jesus, would never run out to meet his son, especially one who had left him and squandered all his money.  It wouldn’t be dignified he would lose all respect and social standing in the community.  But the father loves his son and as we heard in the second truth, God always reaches out to us to bring us back into a right relationship with Him.

Father Hoppough one of my professors at the seminary used to tell us that we are like the prodigal son whenever we stand at the threshold of the confessional.   At the sight of us God the Father is filled with compassion, He sees our heart, and He is ready to forgive, He runs to us, He embraces us, and He kisses us.  This is a consoling thought that comes to me whenever I go to confession because going to confession is not fun even for a priest.  It’s a humbling experience, but also a very good experience.

Two truths, God created us in love to participate in his life, and if in sin we stray from that love he pursues us and when we turn back to him in repentance there is much rejoicing among the angels of God in Heaven.   

“I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley