YOU ARE STANDING ON THE SPOT

“Where you see a red rose bush, there was a Jesuit told to lay down on the ground on his chest before he was executed.”

 

It is one thing to look at a stained glass window or a statue or take in a reading about someone being martyred for the faith.  It is even something to hold on to a relic of a person, a piece of bone perhaps, who shed their blood for Christ.  It is another thing to stand where they stood and speak to people who are of the age that they could have witnessed the blood.

 

The Church faces many trials in the United States, but “you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.”  Once in Slovenia we saw a restored church building that had odd striped sections on the outside of the building.  Our guide told us that is where “the communists” through in the bombs and when the church was restored they left those sections decorated like that to remind future generations of when the Church was persecuted.

 

How powerful that is.  “THIS IS THE SPOT.”  No wonder the Church has always promoted pilgrimages.  “Here is the ground.  Here is the bullet.  Here is the blood stained shirt.”  It is not theory.  It was not because they were drug lords but because they practiced the Catholic faith and set about bringing that freedom to others.  There was nothing more important to them.  “Love for life did not deter them from death.”

 

That was part of the marvel of our mission trip to El Salvador.  To tell the truth, there is not much to see there.  But in another respect there is everything to see.  During the height of the civil war men with guns entered the Jesuit University, took the Jesuits and two women who were staying in the dorms (unexpectedly for the campus was supposed to be empty) and took them out on the lawn and shot them.  The ploy failed however when a witness came forward to say what really happened and that began the end of the civil war.  Today that area is a rose garden where a red rose was planted for the men and two golden roses for the two lay women, a mother and daughter.

 

In the shrine near by there are the bloody clothes, the blood tinted grass that was pulled up, the books with a bullet trail ripped through it.  Here is inspiration for living for something greater than the self.  How life lived faithfully and death faced bravely can continue to change the face of the earth; to know that such an action is not carried out in vain but continues to have repercussions both in this life and the next.

HHS vs IHS

“Bareness is God’s playground.”

It is too early (Thursday morning) to have anything too intelligent to say on the HHS mandate ruling.  The full understanding is not yet known and conflicting reports keep coming in.  The exact nature of the ruling and the future for Catholics (and, in reality, the future of all people of faith) is not yet known and we wait with our collect breath held.

In any event, there is no cause for despair.  There is only room for hope.  If there is one thing we learn from Scriptures is that good things are about to happen when the worst is happening.  It is when all earthly hope seems lost that God finally steps in.  It must be that way otherwise we would always assume that this is the natural order of things.  But God steps in when time runs out, when usefulness is past, when all is lost, when the end seems to have come.  It is only then we can say as the Psalmist proclaimed, “If God had not been on our side . . .”

If it should turn out that this latest ruling is in conflict with our faith, that government mandates directly interfere with our relationship with God, have we not repeatedly seen even to this day that this is precisely when the Church unifies, rises up, becomes strong, and saint and martyrs are made?  Should this be the case there is only room for hope and sanctity which may require sacrifice.  It is a time to be thankful that we live in a time when we not only give God lip service, but have the opportunity to serve Him in a dramatic way.  Remember the reading of this morning, “Not everyone who cries out to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven but only those who do the will of my Father.”

Conversely, if people of faith do not have their religious freedom violated, we may be in a more difficult situation.  We may relax and think all is well.  It is not and it would be dangerous to think we may take a collective sigh and not worry and pray any longer.  The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus said recently that “We can see clearly . . . an attempt to redefine religion in American society.”  At every turn there is pressure to minimize religion in society, to narrow the definition of a religious institution, to narrow what it means to be a minister, to narrow religious freedom to freedom of worship.  There have been many attempts to narrow the rights of churches such as when it pitted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the Lutheran Church.  The Catholic Church has had Government reduce, fully defund, and/or no longer make referrals to Catholic adoption centers and human trafficking ministries because of our religious nature even though we have repeatedly had far better (and less expensive) success rates.  Because of this we cannot afford to be satiated in a victory.

This may be the dawn of a new day.  And as we know, dawn only follows after the darkest hour.

FRIDAY FAIR - QUEEN OF MARTYRS

Next in the litany is Queen of Martyrs. The first to represent the martyrs is the first martyr, Saint Stephen. Not only was he the first martyr he is also the first deacon. Here we see him dressed in a dalmatic, the distinctive vesture for deacons. In the particular case the dalmatic is red, the color worn today when we commemorate the martyrs who spilled their blood for Christ.

One of the responsibilities of the deacon at the Mass is the Gospel. At bottom center is the open Gospel book. Three stones lay on top. His witness for Christ was not only his proclamation of the Word, but that he would defend it even to the point of death. On either side of him are the men who stoned him to death for his loyalty to Christ. The stones on top of the Gospel book pay tribute to this witness.

The stones also mimic the vision of the Trinity which he had at the time of his death. Stephen was the first recorded person to pray to the resurrected Christ. In calling out to him he had a vision of the Trinity and here we see the Father holding an orb and imparting a blessing, Jesus in a red martyr’s mantle and holding His Cross at His right hand, and the Holy Spirit descending as both a dove and a tongue of fire.

The second window depicts more modern martyrs, the North American Martyrs who came to the New World to bring Christ to the indigenous people. They were martyred by the Iroquois 1642 – 1649.

NICE, NEAT, CLEAN, RESPECTABLE CHRISTIANITY

I don’t know why people think they have to look to the Devil and the dark side to come up with scary All-Hallows-Eve costumes. Scripture and tradition have their own stable of people and beasts that if you saw them in a dark alley you would probably shock your shorts.

Fortunately those who celebrate this day in a Christian manner only pick nice, respectable saints, not some of those reprobate saints that go around carrying their own heads, or skin, or other body parts. I mean that is just so not done in polite society. And those instruments of their martyrdom with which they are all parading around in heavenly pageantry. Most of them would not be allowed in Church in the state of Ohio for carrying knives, swords, arrows, grills, pinchers, and wheels with spikes on them. Real saints carry flowers or palm branches. That’s what I want to see if I’m dying and going to heaven. Not a bunch of rascals with instruments of torture. One could get the wrong idea of where one has ended up.

Then there are those animals of Scripture. Some are Okay like the animals on the ark, or sheep, or the ox and ass, well, except for that one that talks. Whoever heard of a talking ass? (Don’t go there.) But then you have serpents, seven headed dragons, sea monsters and griffins and the like. I ask you, what business do they have being a part of Sacred Scripture? Sacred Scripture is supposed to be nice, sweet, warm and fuzzy.

Oh! OH! Then there are all those creatures from our symbolic vocabulary! The pelican that pierces its own breast to feed its young with its own blood symbolizing Jesus’ death on the cross! The phoenix that was said to inhabit the Arabian wilderness and lived to be three to four hundred years old and who, from time to time, would dive into a funeral pyre whereupon it would rise from its own ashes restored to its youth calling to mind the resurrection. And that rascally centaur who symbolizes our savage passions and excess but who also, in the life of Saint Anthony Abbot pointed out the way to reach St. Paul the Hermit in the desert. That’s just to mention a few.

Respectability. That’s what we want. Nice, neat, clean Christianity. Robes and palm branches. Very English. Maybe someone playing a harp. Safe. Polite saints not so much begging but asking nicely for candy – perhaps to give to the poor. Now that’s an All-Hallows-Eve for you.