Category: Pastor’s Corner

Dear Friends,

Our gospel today begins with the phrase, “Great crowds were traveling with Jesus.”  They were following because they had found someone who was many things.  He was a miracle worker, he was a charismatic presence, and he was a great preacher; he spoke in a way they had never heard before.  He set their hearts on fire.  And they all wanted to follow him and it was easy to follow him.  All was going so well.  And so Jesus challenges this group and in a sense he says to them, “Will you follow me to the bitter end, you’re here now, but will you follow me to the bitter end.” As we know only a few were there at the bitter end.

Our Lord then lays out the cost of discipleship.  He tells them how to follow.  And he gives them the great challenge of detachment.  Detachment is the heart of the spiritual life Detachment is loving God first and then loving everything and everyone else for the sake of God, to love God and to love everything else for the sake of God.  And when we get this right we have found the narrow path.

Writers of Spirituality will say that detachment is an attitude of the heart. God calls a few people to give away all their possessions. Think of St. Francis of Assisi.  He allows the rest of us, however, to keep some of what we own, but not cling to it. Detachment means getting rid of our “selfish clinging” clinging to things or clinging to people.

Spiritual writers will also say that detachment is a response to God’s love for us. For example when we fall in love with someone, everything and everyone else in our life begins to pale in comparison to this beloved. We change our schedules we change our priorities. We spend money and time on this person without feeling like it’s a sacrifice.  If, on the other hand, a young man were to always watch football with the guys rather than have dinner with his girlfriend, she would rightly question his feelings for her.

What about us? Would we rather watch football (or go shopping, or spend time with friends, or read, or do whatever).   Would we rather do all these things rather than pray and spend time with God? Would we pray even if we didn’t “enjoy” it? What if God allowed us to lose all our loved ones and possessions, as happened to Job in the Old Testament, would we still love Him and follow Him? Would we have inner peace?

Our Lord calls us to put love for Him above everything else. When we can truly do this, then we are detached and on the narrow way.  And to describe this spirit of detachment Jesus uses the word “Hate.”  He says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” This word hate that Jesus uses is not aggression; this word hate is used as a Jewish exaggeration, used to make a point.  We “hate” our family members in the measure they become little gods to us.  They become little gods to us when their opinions and expectations become our ultimate goal or where pleasing them becomes the ultimate goal.  We “hate” them in the measure they become little gods to us. If they have become little gods to us, we don’t “hate” them enough.

When we look at the life of Saint Francis, we can see this spirit of detachment, we see a man who made a break from his family his father especially.  He still greatly loved his family but he loved our Lord more.  Francis’ father wanted him to enter into the family business.  And that was a good thing but Francis had to follow God’s plan instead, putting God’s plan ahead of his own father’s plans.  At one point Francis’ father had locked him in the house because he was selling things from the warehouse and then giving the money to the poor.  He was selling off his father’s things.  Francis escaped and again began selling his father’s inventory.  Eventually the father brought legal charges against Francis.  The case was brought before the local Bishop, who sided with the father ordering Francis to return all that he had taken.  Francis agreed and he made plans to restore everything he’d taken and he even went a step further giving back the clothes he was wearing.  So that he was totally naked in the church square.  And standing there naked he said to his father, “I have called you father on earth; but now I say, ‘Our Father, who are in Heaven’.” He still loved his earthly father but God was his number one.

The Bishop then gave Francis an old woolen coat to wear. Francis found a piece of chalk so that he could draw a cross on the old coat, he put it on and he began his work.  Working with the sign of the cross on his coat Francis began in earnest to carry his cross.

Now when Jesus tells that great crowd of followers that they must, carry their cross  they would have been shocked.  We today think of the cross in spiritual terms but that crowd would’ve seen the cross as death in utter agony, and humiliation, and nakedness.  Our Lord was telling them unless you crucify your ego, your selfish wants, you cannot be my follower.  Our Lord was telling them unless you love me first, and first, and first, and then love everything else including your own life for the sake of me, if you don’t do this you cannot be my disciple.  This is the foundation of our spiritual life.  Something we always work at with God’s grace.

At the beginning of his conversion St. Francis prayed often in the Church of San Damiano and on one occasion he heard a voice coming from the cross saying to him, “Francis go and repair my Church, which you see is falling down.”  Every time we carry our cross putting Jesus in first place we, like St. Francis, help to build up the Church.  Let us always follow Jesus, even to the Cross.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In 13^th century Italy there was a woman named Margaret.  She was a very beautiful woman.  And growing up she learned to appreciate her looks in a prideful way, using her looks to her advantage.   She used her looks to gain the praise and attention of men.  She used her looks for the gain of material gifts.  She used her looks as a way of controlling men and this she found worked with the poor man as well as with the wealthy man.    And being poor herself she set her sights on a wealthy man named Arsenio.  By the age of 17 Margaret found herself living in Arsenio’s castle as his mistress, they never married.  Margaret left behind any concern for God or neighbor. She gave up the faith of her childhood.  She gave up prayer, Mass, and the Sacraments.   It was all about her and her wants.

Living in that castle Margaret had the best food, the best clothing, the best entertainment.  She had the best of everything there was no pleasure she didn’t indulge. For ten years all was well until one day Arsenio failed to return home.  Margaret grew concerned so she went in search of him.  And she found him eventually out in the woods under a pile of brush.  Someone had murdered him and hidden the body.  That moment was a turning point in Margaret’s life.  She began to wonder, “What happened to the soul of Arsenio?”  He had the same attitude she did, focused more on pleasure and self than on anything else.  Where is his soul?  Margaret then began to wonder what would happen to her if she were to die at that moment.  This moment became her moment of conversion.

Margaret spent the next 33 years trying to humbly put her focus on God and her neighbor; she did this by working with the Franciscans helping the poor.   She worked at learning humility.   Margaret’s long conversion process was not always easy; as we can imagine, there were still moments of great temptation when she wanted to return to her old way of life.  She was still beautiful and it could’ve happened.  But, with God’s grace we now know Margaret as St. Margaret of Cortona, a patroness to invoke against temptations.

In our Gospel today Jesus tells us to be humble, to take the lowest place, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.  Spiritual writers will often write that humility is the queen of all the virtues.  It is the foundation of the whole of our spirituality. St. Bernard of Clairvaux was once asked to name the four Cardinal virtues and instead of answering prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance he said instead, “The four cardinal virtues are humility, humility, humility, and humility.”  He then went onto say that the word cardinal means hinge and everything hinges on humility.  Humility opens the door to the hearts of others and humility opens the heart of God.

St. Paul once asked the question, “What do you have that you have not received?”  In order to truly pursue truth and goodness it’s necessary to let go of the ego and to realize that everything we have, everything, is a gift from God.  And one of those gifts I want to focus on right now is the Sabbath.  As Mark’s gospel says the Sabbath was made for man, a gift for each of us.  And one way Catholics can practice humility is to go to Mass every Sunday, putting God ahead of everything else at least for one hour out of 168 hours in a week.

In my twenties, for a whole decade I went to Mass every Sunday.  But I didn’t do it out of humility or love; I did it out of fear.  I was scared to commit a mortal sin, because it is still a mortal sin to willfully miss Sunday Mass.  A sin that must be confessed in the sacrament of reconciliation before Holy Communion can be worthily received.  No, for that decade of my twenties, I went to Mass out of fear of committing sin.  I didn’t dwell on this fear, but I reasoned; what’s an hour out of a whole week.  I wasn’t there to fully praise God; I wasn’t there to fully thank God,   I wasn’t there to repent, and I rarely received our Lord in Holy Communion.  Sometimes I’d go to Mass with a friend and we’d just talk and whisper throughout the entire Mass.  I didn’t fully appreciate and receive the gift of the Mass.  There was no conscious and full participation.

However, the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath, and the precept to attend Sunday Mass kept me going to Church week after week, month after month, year after year.  And during that time God was working on my soul without me even noticing.  The rule was good for me; it kept me going to Mass every Sunday until finally love took the place of fear.  Without the incentive of a rule I wouldn’t have gone to Mass and I’m sure I wouldn’t be here now.    I don’t need the rule now but it was helpful in its time.

Despite the great accomplishments we may achieve we are still dependent on the goodness and generosity of others-parents, teachers, friends, and most importantly we are dependent on God.  We receive His life, we receive His love, and we receive His forgiveness.  And we receive all this, not because we deserve it, because we don’t deserve it, but because He is infinitely generous.  And that should always keep us humble.  And in this humility and love let us attend Mass every Sunday praising God, thanking God, repenting of sin, giving Him our problems, giving Him everything, and then receiving Him in the Holy Eucharist.

We need the grace of God that we receive at Mass we need the holy friendship of those around us.  Because we can’t do it alone; God doesn’t want us to do it alone.

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In first century Middle East, at night, sheep would sometimes be gathered together in a sheep pen, a high walled pen, a sheep fold.  This was a way to keep them safe, safe from thieves, and animals that might want a midnight snack.  These pens were so constructed that there was only one gate there was only one way in and one way out.  And in this gateway entrance the shepherd would spend the night.  He’d sleep right there in the gateway.  Hopefully, waking up if anyone tried to enter to steal a sheep or eat a sheep.  To get into the sheep pen you’d have to go through the narrow gate and through the shepherd.   The shepherd was the narrow gate.

And in our Gospel Jesus tells us, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”  Jesus is that narrow gate; he’s that gate into the sheepfold of heaven.  And right here at St. Jerome’s we see that narrow gate symbolized in three different places.  First we have the gate of 72 inches leading us into the area of the baptismal fount, where once baptized we are washed clean we are made members of our Lord’s mystical body, made members of his flock.  Second, we have the door, a gateway of 12 inches, opening into the tabernacle, which keeps for us, the holiest of holies, our Lord, our Lord who is our food, food to keep away the weariness, food to strengthen us, food for the journey home to Heaven.  Third, we have the door leading into the confessional, a gateway of 36 inches, a gateway leading to a place of healing and cleansing.  The journey home to Heaven can be rough and we sometimes stumble and fall.  We need a place of healing.  The narrow gate leading to the confessional is where we can more fully enter into the life of Christ, receiving his healing touch.  The good shepherd heals us.

I want to talk a little more about this gateway to the confessional; I want to give you a view from my side of the screen.  The confessional I think is a joyful, humbling, and inspiring place a place where people let God’s love win.  So what do I see during confession? First, I see the mercy of God in action.  I  regularly come face to face with the overwhelming, life-transforming power of God’s love.  I get to see God’s love up-close and it reminds me of how good God is.  Not many people get to see the way in which God’s sacrifice on the Cross is constantly breaking into people’s lives and melting the hardest of hearts.  Jesus consoles those who are grieving their sins…and strengthens those who find themselves wanting to give up on God or on life.

Second, in the confessional I see a person who is still trying.  I see a saint in the making.  It doesn’t matter if this is the person’s third confession this week; if they are seeking the Sacrament of Reconciliation, it means that they are trying.  Going to confession is a sign that you haven’t given up on Jesus.

Now sometimes people will ask if I remember people’s sin from confession.  As a priest, I rarely, if ever, remember sins from the confessional.  That might seem impossible, but the truth is, sins aren’t all that impressive.  They aren’t like memorable events in our lives, like the birth of a baby or a wedding…sins are more like garbage.  And if sins are like garbage then the priest is like God’s garbage man.  If you ask a garbage man about the grossest thing he’s ever had to haul to the dump, maybe he could remember it.  But the fact is, once you get used to taking out the trash, it ceases to be noteworthy, it ceases to stand out.

When we begin to realize that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is less about the sin and more about Christ’s death and resurrection having victory in a person’s life, the sins lose all of their luster, and Jesus’ victory takes center stage.  In confession we meet the life-transforming love of God…freely given to us every time we ask for it.  We meet Jesus who reminds us, “You are worth dying for…even in your sins, you are worth dying for.”  Whenever someone comes to confession, I see a person who is deeply loved by God and who is telling God that they love Him back.

Third, the third thing a priest sees when he hears a confession is his own soul.  I am humbled when someone approaches Jesus’ mercy through me.  Hearing someone’s humility breaks down my own pride.  Jesus trusts me to be a living sign of His mercy.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen once told priests that we scarcely realize what is happening when we extend our hands over someone’s head in absolution.  We don’t realize, he said, that the very Blood of Christ is dripping from our fingers onto their heads, washing the penitent clean.  The confessional is a powerful place.   I offer God’s mercy, love, and redemption…and I don’t want to get in Jesus’ way.  The priest stands in judgment of no one.  In the confessional, the only thing I have to offer is mercy.

Confession is always a place of victory.  Whether you have confessed a particular sin for the first time, or if this is the 12,001^st time, every confession is a win for Jesus… and I, a priest, get to be there.  I get to sit and watch Jesus win His children back.

Our Lord wants a relationship with each one of us.  He wants us to know Him. And to regularly enter the narrow gate of the confessional is to know His merciful love and His deep forgiveness; it was for this that he died.  Through the narrow gate we find Jesus, at the baptismal font, the Holy Eucharist within the Tabernacle, and the confessional. The sacraments are our gateway home.   Let us stay within that narrow gate of his Divine love.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us become great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

At our baptism we each received a small candle.  It was lit, by our Godfather, from the larger Easter candle.  And after it was lit we were told, “…this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly.  You have been enlightened by Christ, and are to walk always as a child of the light.  Keep the flame of faith alive in your heart; when the Lord comes, may you go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.” 

A saint once said that on that day of our baptism a flame was lit in our heart:  a flame that chased away the darkness of sin, a flame that thawed the ice of disbelief, and a flame that warmed our heart to the love of God.

Through that sacrament, Christ, our Savior, united us to himself, making us members of his own body, the Church.  He claimed us for his own, forgave the debt of our sin, and made us his brothers and sisters, the sons of faith burning until we meet our Lord.  To be prepared for our Lord at an hour we do not expect.  Now that hour could be our death or the end of time.  And daughters of his own Heavenly Father and co-heirs with him to the kingdom of heaven; our souls were given a completely different kind of life.   A life completely different from the life we received by nature.  At Baptism the life of God was poured into our souls.  And this new life, or sanctifying grace, gave us the power to know God in faith, to desire to be with him in hope, and to love him, both now and in heaven.  At baptism like the good servants of today’s Gospel we were told to keep the flame

In the 17^th century there was a French Carmelite monk by the name of Brother Lawrence, who was always prepared and always kept his baptismal flame lit by living what he called “The practice of the presence of God.”  At the age of eighteen Lawrence had a profound conversion experience that would affect the rest of his life.  It was winter time and he found himself staring at a bare tree.  It was winter and of course the tree had no leaves.  But Lawrence began to think that in just a few months the tree would have leaves and buds and then blossoms and from the blossoms there would be fruit.  This simple awareness of the change of seasons made Lawrence aware of the presence and power of God in his life. By the grace of God a lifeless soul could be made fruitful.  After a short stint in the army Lawrence entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris.  He remained there until his death at the age of seventy-seven.

Brother Lawrence spent the first 15 years of religious life working in the kitchen.  He was responsible for preparing meals for 100 men.  He really hated this job.  So it was in this setting that he began to practice the presence of God.  Always trying to remember that God was there even as he was doing everything he detested, washing dirty dishes, dealing with smoky stoves, and doling out the morning gruel to sometimes grumpy monks.   But with time and practice, even in the midst of that kitchen, he was able to perfect his prayer of the presence of God. So that even in the most hectic of times he wouldn’t forget God, he knew that God was there.

When asked for advice on his way of prayer Brother Lawrence would say that his way of prayer was to take delight in and become accustomed to God’s divine company.  God is there, present, no matter what we are doing.  “He’s there whether you realize it or not” he would say.  It is so very good for us to acknowledge His presence.  It would be shameful to trade such a relationship for a trivial foolishness.  This way of prayer is a habit formed by frequently bringing our mind back into God’s presence, over and over throughout the day.  He would tell people to be patient; you don’t become a saint in a day.  Don’t become discouraged if you fail to remember God’s presence at some point in the day, that’s what confession’s for.    He gave examples of simple prayers beginners could use when working and doing chores, prayers that could be repeated many times throughout the day, prayers to remind themselves of God’s ever presence prayers such as, “My God, I’m completely yours” or “God of love, I love you with all my heart.” Or simply, “Thank you God.”  It doesn’t matter what the words are, he would say, just make yourself aware of His presence.  This simple awareness of God is the holiest, surest, the easiest, and most efficacious form of prayer and with time faith increases and becomes more intense.  So while serving grumpy monks he was praying, “My God, I’m completely yours,” or “Thank you God,” or “God I love you.”

Brother Lawrence found great joy in doing little things for the love of God.  Doing all the smallest of chores just for the love of God, “The Lord doesn’t look so much at the greatness of our works as at the love with which they are done.”  Lawrence said, “Our sanctification depends not on changing our works, but on doing for God what we would normally do for ourselves.”  Change the focus, offer it to God.  In practicing the presence of God, something we can all do, Lawrence was prepared like the good servant of today’s Gospel.  He was ready to open the door when he heard the knock of his master.  The Lord’s coming, of course, can mean one of two things:  either the moment of our death, which we all know can be very sudden; or, it can mean the Lord’s return in Glory at the end of time, which can also happen at any moment.  Were the Lord to return right now, this moment, would he find us ready to welcome him?  Would he find the flame ignited in our hearts at baptism still burning steadily and maybe increasing in its brightness?

After receiving the last sacraments as he lay dying, Brother Lawrence was asked what he was doing, what he was thinking about.  “I am doing what I will be doing throughout eternity,” he replied, “I am blessing God, I am praising God, I am adoring God, and I am loving him with my whole heart.  This is what our vocation is all about, brothers, to adore God, and to love him without worrying about anything else.” 

My prayer for us today is that we are able to do the same in preparation for our Master’s return.  Let us remember our Lord throughout all the hours of every day prepared for that final knock.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

A few years back during one of those gigantic East Coast storms there was a multi-car accident.  Many people were injured and a few even died.  This news program I was watching interviewed the daughter of one of the women who had died in the pile up.  The daughter talked about how short life is and how sometimes death can sneak up on us without warning.  The accident, “really moved her” she said.  I thought she was going to go on and say how we need to be spiritually prepared and how we always need to be ready for death so as not to be taken by surprise.  But instead the daughter went in the other direction saying, “life is so short I need to go and buy those things I’ve always wanted.”  “I need that big screen TV; I need to buy those things that I want, before it’s too late.”  There was no mention of God at all.

Today’s readings remind us that we can sometimes get caught up in idolizing the things of this world, idolizing all the goods and products that surround us and when taken to an extreme it’s called hedonism, an idolizing of the world.  At the other end of the spectrum is Puritanism a demonizing of the world, saying that all that is of the world is evil.   The proper Catholic response is a balance of both extremes.  It’s both a yes to the world and a no to the world.  A yes to the world taken too far is hedonism while a no to the world taken too far is Puritanism.  We should enjoy the world; it’s good because God made it and gave it to us, while at the same time understanding that it’s not as important as the God who gave it to us.  Everything in moderation.

In our first reading Qoheleth (King Solomon) is someone who had it all.  He had knowledge, material wealth, fame, power, influence, and sensual pleasure.  And he called all of these vanities.  To put our trust in these things is vanity.  To obsessively pursue these things is vanity.  They are good, because God made them and gave them to us, but they are not God.  Only God is the ultimate good, only in God is ultimate infinite joy to be found.

In the narthex of the Old Cathedral in Saint Louis Missouri there hangs a painting which depicts King Louis IX (the future St. Louis).  He’s kneeling before an altar on the night before he’s to be named king of all France.  On the floor beside him is the golden crown and scepter that he’ll be given the next day.  On the altar in front of him, however, is a crown of thorns.  St. Louis had a life-long devotion to our Lord’s crown of thorns, a relic which he himself had received as a gift.  To house this relic he built La Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel), a masterpiece of architecture and even today a popular tourist destination.  We can’t help but wonder what anxiety King Louis may have felt that night.  He the future king of France, someone who wanted to be holy, was to carry upon his head a crown of gold while the King of kings, carried upon his head a crown of thorns.  Could he, be rich and powerful and, yet at the same time, remain a disciple of the Lord?

In the Gospel today Jesus warns us “To guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”  Our Lord does not say that the Christian cannot be rich; he says, rather, that the rich must be careful, not letting their wealth and possessions become the reason for which they live.  It’s very difficult to keep focused on loving God when we are preoccupied by the thoughts of owning more and more possessions, and by the constant determination to be as comfortable as possible in this life.  Materialism steals our attention from God and distracts us from our principle concern; the salvation of our soul.    If we are too preoccupied with material things, then we are not going to pay enough attention to the spiritual life, which requires detachment from things so that we can attach ourselves to God.

St. Francis de Sales in his book Introduction to the Devout Life teaches us detachment from things and possessions and how to exercise a real poverty of spirit even though we may be materially rich.  First he says, we need to remember that nothing that we own, really belongs to us.  Nothing belongs to us.  Everything belongs to God.  And, God has been pleased to give more to some, than to others, because he expects those who have more, to use what he has given them for his greater honor and glory.  Second, this means that those who have must be generous with those who have not.  Christ was poor, and the poor reflect his face.  Third, he recommends seeking out the poor, serving them in some capacity, feeding them, cleaning their houses, caring for them in some way.  And fourth, as a test we can measure our own attachment to material things, and material comforts, de Sales asks us to consider our reaction when we find ourselves inconvenienced in some way, by a storm, power goes out, a theft of some sort, or maybe we received bad service or bad food at a restaurant or maybe the hotel where we stayed had an uncomfortable bed.   If we find ourselves agitated, impatient, frustrated, and angry, we would know, then, that we are not as detached as we ought to be.

By following these four concepts King Louis IX became a saint, even though very rich King Louis lived a poverty of the spirit.   Everyday St. Louis invited 120 poor people into his own house, and he fed them personally (bread, wine, meat, and fish), also giving them money as they left.  Before dying St. Louis wrote a letter of advice to his son who would succeed him.  It’s good advice for us today.  Here are a few excerpts, he wrote:  my dear son love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength.  Without this there is no salvation.  If the Lord bestows upon you any kind of prosperity, thank him humbly and see that you become no worse for it, either through vain pride or anything else, because you ought not to oppose God or offend him in the matter of his gifts.  Be kind hearted to the poor, the unfortunate, and the afflicted.  Give them as much help and consolation as you can.   And finally everyday thank God for all the benefits he has bestowed upon you, that you may be worthy to receive greater.

“Let Christ be your possession and your strength, don’t get drunk on other things.”  Pope Francis

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

St. Monica was born in North Africa in the early 4^th century.  She was born into a very devout Catholic family.  She knew her faith and she practiced it.  But even so she was married off to a Roman pagan by the name of Patricius.   After marriage Monica went to live in her husband’s home.  The mother-in-law was also in residence.  Both Patricius and his mom had bad tempers and the mother-in-law in more than one source is always described as cantankerous.  They were a challenge to Monica.  They didn’t appreciate her prayer life or her care of the poor or her piety.  But Monica never gave up her faith or the practices of her faith and she never hid her faith either.  And with time both her husband and mother-in-law asked for baptism.  God used Monica to win them over; he heard her prayers for their conversion.  In our Gospel today our Lord teaches the disciples to pray, and later he tells them, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  Be persistent in prayer.  Now many times St. Monica is held up as a model of one who prays well.  She persisted in prayer.

And today St. Monica is known mostly as the mother of St. Augustine.  She’s known as the mother who prayed almost 20 years for the conversion of her son.  She spent almost 20 years begging God with daily tears and prayers to convert her heretical and pleasure-loving son.  Augustine knew of her prayers.   And her example later helped him to explain how God answers our prayers in three different ways.

He once wrote, “If we ask God for something in prayer, God can say one of three things in response.”  First, he can say OK, and give us what we ask for.  Second, he can simply say no, which means that what we are asking for is not good for us.  This too is an answer to prayer, and, as every parent knows, sometimes it’s the most loving answer of all.  Third, he can say OK, but not now.  And to this response Saint Augustine would say that God makes us wait because he wants to give us more.  God is inviting us to be persistent so that he can stretch our hearts, making them able to receive more grace, stretching our hearts the way you stretch out a burlap sack so you can fill it to the brim.  He explained it this way, “Suppose you want to fill some sort of bag and you know the bulk of what you will be given, so you stretch the bag or the sack or the skin or whatever it is.  You know how big the object is that you want to put in and you see that the bag is too narrow so you increase its capacity by stretching it.  In the same way by delaying the fulfillment of our desires God stretches our souls.  By making us desire more, he expands the soul, and by this expansion he increases the soul’s capacity to receive.”

Yes, no, and not now are the three answers that God has to choose from.   In responding to our prayers of petition it’s either yes, no, or not yet and he always chooses one of them.  Pope St. John Paul II once referred to the parish as a school of prayer.  It’s where we pray the Mass; the most perfect of prayers and learn to pray.  I want to share with you a way of praying, it’s called the A-R-R-R prayer, sometimes referred to as the pirate’s prayer.  ARRR!  You might even already be praying this way, you just didn’t know it.  The letters stand for acknowledge, relate, receive and respond.   The first step is to acknowledge; openly and honestly we acknowledge how we are before God.  What are you experiencing?  What is moving in your heart?  What are your thoughts, what are your feelings, and what are your emotions?  An example from my life; on a Friday a few years ago I was anxious and stressed.  It was going to be one of those days.  And I remember that I had just exposed the Blessed Sacrament.  It should have been a moment of peace.  But kneeling in front of that altar I was anxious and stressed.

The second step is relate; bring yourself as you are into relationship with God.   Tell God what you’re experiencing.  He knows, but tell him anyway, speak to Him from your heart, your thoughts, your feelings, and your emotions.  And so kneeling in front of the altar, I told God I’m stressed out here.  I need your help; I can’t do this by myself.

The third step is receive; listen to what God is doing with the movements of your heart, your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, and your memories.  Receive his presence and the constancy of his love.  Spend some time receiving his love.  I spent some time in quiet prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, celebrated Mass and then went about my day with its appointments and meetings.  It was about 2:00 in the afternoon when I met by accident Fr. Klingler walking down Michigan Ave. in downtown Kalamazoo.  He gave me the counsel of an old experienced priest.  He put everything into perspective.  I don’t even remember exactly what he said, but I do remember a weight being lifted from my heart.  We are never forgotten by Heaven.  God used Fr. Klingler to answer my prayer.

The fourth step is respond; what we receive from God impels us to respond in gratitude and with a renewed heart.  I remember walking away from Fr. Klingler looking upward and saying, “Thank you.”  I was probably smiling too.

God is all around us.  And to pray is to breathe in God.  And in breathing in God He resuscitates and revives and enlivens our souls.  We exhale our own self will and agenda to inhale the Divine.  With time as we more and more breathe in God, as we more and more pray, we are made over more and more in His Divine image.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel we see two approaches to life.  First there’s Martha, and we can imagine that she’s industrious and in a hectically busy way she always looks after her guest.  She probably radiates a hullabaloo and from sheer enthusiasm makes a lot of bother for herself and for her guest.  Then there’s Mary who sits at the feet of Jesus just listening to him speak.  She has time entirely for him and is full of interest in him.  Martha has welcomed Jesus into her home while Mary has welcomed Jesus into her heart.  She makes him a gift, not of her activity, but of her attention.

Martha is making a great deal of trouble for herself and she’s in danger of forgetting the most important thing; what use is all the trouble and anxiety if in the midst of all that work she no longer has time for Jesus.  What use is her hospitality if she wears herself out and has no energy to be with Jesus.  Seeing to things and taking trouble to be hospitable are not bad, but they shouldn’t swallow everything up.  It’s necessary to be active but our activity and our work needs to be supported by contemplation, moments of tranquility, reflection, and prayer.  We can’t do it without prayer.  Listening comes before acting, prayer before action.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Most likely Jesus was a frequent guest at their home in Bethany, a small village about two miles from Jerusalem.  Many of us find it easy to identify with Martha.  She welcomes Jesus and his disciples into her home and immediately goes to work to serve them.  Hospitality in the Middle East is very important and Martha believed in it.  We can imagine her frustration when her sister Mary ignores the rule of hospitality and sits to listen to Jesus, just sitting there, not working.  But instead of speaking to her sister, she asks Jesus to intervene.  He doesn’t.  Jesus’ response isn’t unkind and gives us an idea of his affection for her.  He observes that Martha is worried about many things that distract her and keep her from really being present to him.  He reminds her that there is only one thing that is truly important, listening to him.  And that is what Mary has done.  In Martha we see ourselves, worried and distracted by our work, and sometimes forgetting to spend time with Jesus, it is, however, comforting to note that Jesus loved her just the same.

When I was very young we would sometimes visit my Dad at work.  He was a machinist who worked for GM; he worked there for 30 years.  He worked at various plants in Flint, but the one I remember most is plant 29.  Every year there was family day when the plant was open to visitors.  A very interesting place, I remember the assembly line with cars chugging slowly along as they were being built.  I remember a huge oven with flames shooting out; I don’t know what it was used for but it was hotter than you know what.  I remember a pigeon who had built a nest outside my dad’s window, something a future veterinarian would remember.  I remember my dad’s work area with its huge tool chest, taller than me.  He opened it for us to show us everything inside.  I remember that on the inside top lid there were three photos, a photo of me and one each of my brothers Matt and Joe.     But there was also something else I remember, something a future priest would remember, there was a crucifix tacked among the photos.  And today I wonder, did my Dad use it as a reminder of where his focus should be? Did he use it as a reminder of the One who gives him his strength in the midst of all his work?  Work he did to support his family.

Our Gospel tells us that Jesus sees that Martha is, “Anxious and worried about many things” and these work things distract her and keep her from being present to Him and listening to Him.   We too can become worried, anxious, and distracted by all the many tasks we have to complete and we too can sometimes forget to spend time with Jesus or we can sometimes forget that Jesus is always our focus.  This can easily happen to a priest as well.

But work doesn’t have to interfere or distract us from Christ. And we all work even if retired because there are still many household tasks and services for others that need to be done.  We could be like my Dad and place a crucifix or a picture of Jesus in our work space.  Reminding us that Jesus is our focus in all that we do, reminding us to listen to him.  The catechism tells us that work honors the gifts and talents that God has given to us.  Work can redeem us. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, we collaborate in a certain fashion with the Son of God in redemptive work.  This is a beautiful way of saying, as my Mom would say, “Offer it up.”

In last week’s Gospel we heard, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind.”  And to love this way means that the whole sum of our life is for God.  Even when God is not consciously in our thoughts, if we’ve given Him our day, offered him our day the moment we get  up in the morning, then God will be in our hearts and hands as we pursue our work.

There’s an old prayer that a priest once recommended I pray every day and in this prayer we offer up to God our day, we offer him our work.  It’s a way to make our whole day into a prayer, to focus our day unto Him.  It’s called the daily offering, so even when our focus is elsewhere we’ve given our day and our work to God.  The priest who gave it to me told me to tape it to my bathroom mirror.

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

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

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

There once was a boy by the name of Jimmy.  He was in the second grade and after learning about baptism in religious ed. he went home to baptize his dog.  As soon as he got to his house he went into the kitchen for a large glass of water.  He then ran to the backyard to find his dog Spot.  Once he had Spot under control he began pouring water over the dog’s head saying, “I baptize you Spot in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” After this he added, “Now you are a human being.  Speak to me.”  Slowly Spot rose up on his hind legs until he was standing straight up. “Well” Spot said, “I’ve never talked before.  Just give me a little time to get used to it.  I have a feeling that you and I are going to get along very well.”  “But first, let’s talk about this dog food you’re feeding me.”

Now of course, this incident never happened, except in Jimmy’s vivid imagination.  It is, however, a good illustration of what did happen to you and me when, in Baptism, God chose to share His own divine life with us.  Before Baptism there was an impassable gulf between God and us.  We couldn’t possibly enjoy what God enjoys, no more than a dog can enjoy reading a book.    We couldn’t possibly communicate adequately with God nor God with us, no more than a dog owner can share his inner most thoughts with his dog.  He just won’t understand.  For a dog to be able to think and speak and to share his owner’s loves and joys, the dog would have to be raised to the level of a human being.  He would have to be given a human nature.  For the dog this would be a super nature, a kind of existence above the nature of a dog.

Although Jimmy couldn’t humanize his dog Spot, God could and did divinize you and me.  We’re not little gods, we don’t cease to be human but with baptism we are made like God.   In Baptism God gives to us a supernatural life, a kind of life above the nature of a human being.  In His great love God raises us to His own level.  He chooses to share with us His own divine life.  He chooses to share his Sanctifying Grace and this grace guides us, strengthens us, and inspires us.  And in return God asks for our love.  He calls us to love him out of our own free will.

As we just heard in our Gospel, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind.”  This is a very definite command and it can seem a very hard command, maybe even too hard or impossible.  How can I love God with all my heart and strength?  And if I really loved God with all my heart, being, strength and mind shouldn’t I feel it a little bit, like I feel when I love other people?  When love is strong, sometimes just hearing the name of the one we love can make our heart beat faster, it can give a lift to our spirits.  But I never catch my heart beating faster at the mention of God’s name, nor do I feel the least bit excited when I think of Him.  How can I ever hope to love God with all my heart?  When we think this way we’re confusing sentimental love with the pure love of spirit-for-spirit which is the basic nature of our love for God.  The love of human for human almost always has an emotional or sentimental basis.  It’s a love that we can feel.  It’s not necessary, however, that there be any emotional content in our love for God.  Real love for God rests in our will, not in our emotions.

Now it’s true that some people, especially the saints, have been able to feel their love for God in an emotional way. It’s a grace and a consolation.  St. Philip Neri, for example, at the thought of God would often be seized with such violent palpitations that his whole body would tremble.  This was a special grace that God gave to St. Philip yet it wasn’t these violent palpitations that measured the intensity of his love for God.  Our love for God as was St. Philip’s is not gauged by feelings and emotions, but by what we stand ready to do for God.  True holiness is measured by charity, by how we love God and our neighbor.  If in our mind and heart we are genuinely convinced that nothing and nobody are to be preferred to God; if there is nothing that we have, any position we hold, or any one person that we would ever let stand between us and God, then our love for Him is real.  Think of Mother Theresa she spent many years loving in spiritual dryness without feeling the consolation of God’s love, yet through His grace she remained faithful and continued to serve God and her neighbor.

Another gauge of our love for God is the extent to which the thought of God dominates our day.  If we love God we live for God.  This doesn’t mean we’re thinking about God all the time.  What it does mean is that always, just below the surface of our mind, is the conviction that what we’re doing, we’re doing for God; our labor, our recreation, our family relationships, our social responsibilities, our whole sum of life is for God.  Because even when God is not consciously in our thoughts, if we’ve given Him our day, the moment we wake up, then He’ll be in our hearts and hands as we pursue the tasks of our life.

In today’s Gospel we are like the victim found at the side of the road.  His wounds were cleansed with oil and wine while our wounds have been cleansed in the sacraments of baptism, reconciliation, and the Holy Eucharist.  The victim recuperates at the inn while we recuperate inside the Inn of the Church.  And during our life long recuperation, with the grace of God, and we can’t do it without his grace, we learn to love more and more until we reach that perfection of love in Heaven, where we know we will love God with a whole heart, with all our being, with all our strength, and all our mind.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley

Dear Friends,

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

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

Even though the Skeltons were not Catholic both Richard and Valentina attended a Catholic school (St. Martin of Tours in Hollywood) and for the Protestant family the two high points of the trip were Lourdes and their audience with Pope Pius XII.  At Lourdes Red showed great faith saying, “God alone can save my boy’s life as science has done all it can.”  At the Vatican the Pope spent a great deal of time talking to the Skeltons.  He blessed Richard and the other members of the family and gave them religious medals.  And as they were leaving the Pope gave them these words of comfort, “Life is eternal because of God.  So if life is taken away from one person in a family they are never separated because the family will always live together in eternal life with God.”

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

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

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

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

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

A nine year old boy dying of leukemia chose to rally behind the cross.  Let us always do the same, always glory in the Cross of our Lord.

Let us be great Saints,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley