Solidarity

Gospel reading at today’s Holy Mass seems eerily familiar.  We just heard it a Sunday Mass 3 ½ weeks ago. Lord Jesus explaining the Ten Commandments.

Christian morality all begins with the fundamental truth: “I am the Lord, your God.”  That sentence is enough, really, to indicate all the demands of Christian morality.  The Sermon on the Mount just spells things out.

Do not murder, do not despise, do not yell at people. Do not nurse so much as the smallest grudge.

Why?  Because God will judge justly. He is the Lord our God. He is everybody’s God.  Judging other people’s souls is above our pay-grade.  We are much better suited to kneeling down and begging God for mercy, for me personally and for the whole human race.

Also: the Lord, our God, will provide. He provides what we need.   So we don’t have to fight amongst ourselves.  We don’t have to contend for what we think we ought to have, to wrench it out of the hands of someone else.  God will give us our sufficient portion.  Our job is to be friends, as best we can.

The Catholic buzzword is “solidarity.” Might be a buzzword, but it’s also a real thing. Pope Pius XII put it like this:

The law of human solidarity and charity, dictated and imposed both by our common origin and by the equality in rational nature of all men, whatever nation they belong to. This law is sealed by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross to his heavenly Father, on behalf of sinful humanity.

We are in this together. We are sinners together. We need Christ together. And we can and do successfully work together and accomplish great things together! When we have the humility to listen respectfully to each other, think of each other’s well-being, and learn to love each other. All of us have this in common: we are perfectly lovable shambling messes.

May we never think of another person as if he or she were a member of a different species. May we never give up hope on communication and concord. May I never forget that one thing, and one thing only, keeps me from going to hell like I deserve: God’s mercy.

And God’s extends that same exquisite mercy to even the smelliest, shrillest, nastiest, most altogether insufferable people in the world. So I had better do the same thing. Since I am one of the smelly, shrill, nasty, insufferable people.

Sacred Heart, Etc.

Click HERE to read an editorial by our Virginia bishops…

…Anybody know who died 323 years ago today? How about the special revelation she received?

The Sacred Heart of Christ beats in the heavenly temple where He ministers as High Priest of all the good things of God. Ever since He ascended into heaven, we Christians have “felt” the beat of His Heart by faith.

Then, out of the superabundance of His love and care for us, He chose to appear to St. Margaret Mary and to make His Heart visible to her. He revealed the image to her for all of our sakes. He did it to renew our intimacy with His love. As Pope Pius XII put it in his encyclical letter on the Sacred Heart of Christ:

[The significance of the revelations given to St. Margaret Mary] is that Christ–showing His Sacred Heart–willed in a special way to call the minds of men to the contemplation and veneration of God’s most merciful love for the human race. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is so important that it may be considered the perfect profession of the Christian religion, for this is the religion of Jesus, and no man can come to the heart of God except through the heart of Christ.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. Christianity. The same thing.

Probably everyone knows, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that: one way to practice devotion to the Sacred Heart of Christ is to spend a Holy Hour in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on the first Friday of every month. As Blessed Pope John Paul II put it, the Sacred Heart of Christ “beats” in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, and by spending time in adoration, we attune ourselves to the beating of His Heart. Also, we practice the devotion by making a good, humble Confession as close to first Friday as possible.

Devotion to the love of God in the Sacred Heart of Jesus liberates us from our self-centeredness. As Pope-Emeritus Benedict put it in his letter on the Sacred Heart devotion:

The experience of love, brought by the devotion to the pierced side of the Redeemer, protects us from withdrawing into ourselves and makes us readier to live for others.

St. Margaret Mary, pray for us, that we might draw closer and closer to the Sacred Heart of the Lord.

Happiness is a Sharp Pencil

We do not want to dwell on the painful loss suffered by the Georgetown Hoyas yesterday evening, as the snow swirled around McDonough Arena.

And most of us men on the Eastern Seaboard need something to take our minds off our sore snow-shoveling backs.

So let’s rejoice in this: On December 21, 1913, the New York World published the world’s first crossword puzzle!

Of all the wholesome amusements ever made available to mankind, the crossword puzzle is certainly the best.

Thank you for the wonderful early Christmas present, o merciful God!

…Also, our dearly beloved late Holy Father is now the Venerable Pope John Paul II! As is the Venerable Pope Pius XII.

Mystical Body, Incorporated

Speaking of 65th anniversaries…Here is a summary I prepared for the 65th anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ.

Inspiration from Rome

I think we can say that the Obama administration will not recognize the right of unborn babies to be protected from violence.

I think we can say that the Obama-Holder Justice Department will try to limit—if not eliminate–the right of medical personnel (and medical institutions) to refuse to participate in acts of violence against unborn babies.

On Sunday, the Holy Father went to the minor Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, the burial place of St. Lawrence the Deacon Martyr. The church also houses the relics of St. Stephen and Blessed Pope Pius IX.

The occasion was the 1,750th anniversary of St. Lawrence’s martyrdom and 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII.

Pope Benedict said:

This monumental basilica…speaks above all of the glorious martyrdom of St. Lawrence, archdeacon of Pope Sixtus II and his right hand in the administration of the goods of the community. I came today to celebrate the Holy Eucharist to be united to you in honoring him in an altogether singular circumstance, on the occasion of the Jubilee Year of St. Lawrence, convoked to commemorate the 1,750 years since the birth to heaven of the holy deacon. History confirms how glorious is the name of this saint, around whose sepulcher we have gathered. His solicitude for the poor, his generous service to the Church in the area of social welfare and charity, his fidelity to the Pope, which led him to want to follow him to the supreme test of martyrdom and the heroic testimony of his blood, spilt a few days later [i.e., a few days after Pope Sixtus was himself martyred], are universally known events.

In a beautiful homily, St. Leo the Great thus comments on the atrocious martyrdom of this “illustrious hero.” “The flames could not conquer the charity of Christ; and the fire that was burning him on the outside was weaker than that burning within.” [St. Lawrence was burned alive.] And he adds: “The Lord willed to exalt his glorious name to such a point throughout the world that from East to West, in the very vivid brilliance of the radiant light of the greatest deacons, the same glory that came to Jerusalem by Stephen also touched Rome by Lawrence’s merit.” [St. Stephen, one of the Church’s first deacons, was the first Christian martyr.]

Statue of Pope Piux XII outside the Basilica of St. Lawrence, commemorating the WWII Pope's visit to the bombed-out neighborhood

Coinciding this year is the 50th anniversary of the death of the servant of God, Pope Pius XII, and this brings to mind a particularly dramatic event in the centuries-old history of your basilica, which took place during World War II, when, precisely on July 19, 1943, a violent bombardment inflicted very serious damages to the building and the whole neighborhood, spreading death and destruction. Never will the memory be erased from history of the generous gesture carried out on that occasion by my venerated predecessor, who ran to help and console the harshly affected people, among the still smoking ruins.

The Religion of Jesus

Three hundred eighteen years ago tomorrow, a French Visitation nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque drew her last breath in the world. She had lived a painful and difficult life. But the Lord had given her a special gift: He appeared to her and showed her His Sacred Heart.

The Heart of Christ had never before been visible to the human eye. Even when He walked on the earth, the Lord’s human heart could not be seen. It was pierced by the soldier’s lance when He hung on the Cross. When He came back to life, His heart began to beat again in His breast. Now the Sacred Heart of Christ is in heaven, along with the rest of His glorified body. His heart is the fitting symbol of His infinite love, the divine love united with the love of a man.

When the Lord appeared to her, St. Margaret Mary saw how the Heart of Christ burns with love for the heavenly Father and for His children on earth. She wrote: “The Sacred Heart is an inexhaustible fountain, and its sole desire is to pour itself out into the hearts of the humble. The divine heart is an abyss of all blessings.”

The revelations which St. Margaret Mary received were a gift for the whole Church of God. The vision of the Sacred Heart is a reminder of the fundamental truths of the Christian religion. Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical about the revelations given to St. Margaret Mary. He wrote:

“Their significance is that Christ–showing His Sacred Heart–willed in a special way to call the minds of men to the contemplation and veneration of God’s most merciful love for the human race. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is so important that it may be considered the perfect profession of the Christian religion, for this is the religion of Jesus, and no man can come to the heart of God except through the heart of Christ.”

Pope Benedict XVI also wrote a letter two years ago about the Sacred Heart.