Search
October 30, 2022: From Saints to Sinners - the Spiritual Movement of the Week
-
Saints, sinners, death, and eternal life. This pretty much spiritually covers the week ahead. Well, there is still our daily prayer life we devote to our Lord each day. Daily prayer is the surest way of remaining close to the Lord Jesus and all he has accomplished for us in his name. If your daily prayer life is not where it needs to be, then please consider amping up your personal commitment to this most central part of living out our faith.
But saints, sinners, death, and eternal life each year addresses the first week of November on the Christian calendar. November 1, we celebrate All Saints Day. And a celebration it is. These are the folks who have loved Jesus to the end, and did so with the perfection of one or more virtues. They may have perfected feeding the hungry, or caring for the ill, or performing a ministry for years on end that reflected the true presence of Christ working in their lives. They may have perfected humility, gentleness, wisdom, patience, and/or mercy. The number of saints who can be listed are so far beyond the scope of this column. But two or three of them will suffice.
One of my personal favorites, if you will, is St. Padre Pio. It doesn’t hurt being a priest in a parish where many, but not all, of the names are of Italian heritage. One thing I love about this Parish of St. Anne is how the number of backgrounds and heritages represented here are spread across the globe very nicely. We have our being American in common, for which we hopefully give thanks. But coming together as a “melting pot” of religious activity and worship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is something that only the Trinity can bring about for the good of ourselves and those around us.
But back to St. Pio. I’ve been blessed to visit the place where St. Padre Pio presently “resides” above ground in a glass case. The case is behind the altar in the chapel located in the monastery where St. Pio did much of his heavenly work in the name of the Lord Jesus. Having seen him twice from just a few feet away, St. Pio looks like he’s sleeping, simply waiting for the resurrection. His incorrupt body, in this case, seems to reflect the holiness of his life. I lack any scientific understanding of how a person’s body remains incorrupt after death, if there is such an understanding, when 99.99999% of us turn to dust.
I think of St. Peter who literally walked with Jesus, who knew the Lord intimately, who spoke with him face-to face, who ate and drank with him at the Last Supper and daily suppers, who was personally called to be the rock of God’s Church by the Lord, a position Peter did not seek out. Yet, even the great St. Peter, who guards the Pearly Gates day and night in eternity, had a body that turned to dust after his death. He is now in a small ossuary underneath the altar at the Basilica named after him in Rome. Was it his three denials of Jesus that sealed Peter’s fate of not remaining incorrupt after death? Was it Peter attempting to block the path of the Lord when Jesus told the disciples he must go up to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of evil men, and be put to death? This resulted in the words of Jesus to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan?” Or was it some unknown sin by Peter that never made it into the Scriptures? Either, way, Peter’s body is now dust. St. Pio’s body is just as dead as St. Peter’s, but remains incorrupt, as are the bodies of Pope St. John XXIII (what did he have over St. Peter?), the body of St. Bernadette, and St. Clare. And likely the bodies of other saints who have not resurfaced from the grave.
This reminds me of a true story I read in a monastic book I read a few years back. The story was that of two novices at a monastery who were instructed by the Abbot to dig up and move the deceased body of one of their fellow monks who died a year or two before, for whatever the reason was. When they reached the body of the holy monk they were reinterring, they saw with their own eyes that his body had remained incorrupt. They nervously reported this to, not the Abbot, but one of their fellow monks who had been in the monastery for decades. He basically told the two novices, “Put him back and don’t tell anyone what you saw.” Pretty funny, and pretty amazing on God’s part, too. Who knows why almost every human body corrupts after death, but a few do not, such as St. Pio. Is the incorrupt condition somehow related to science? Or is it the hand of God choosing to preserve the holy body of a man or woman, male or female, whose life reflected that of pure holiness? I’ll wait until heaven to find out, which is not far off.
As we celebrate all the Saints in the Communion this week, may we be wise enough to take advantage of how God has spread His wings to include in the work of salvation these holy men and women to be examples for us. To study their lives is to study the road to heaven and how their faith in Christ that shone in their good works have brought them to the destination we all desire.
From saints to sinners is the spiritual movement of this week - from All Saints to All Souls, not that the saints had no souls. Or sins to confess, for that matter. All Souls Day concerns the souls of the rest of humanity. This is a large percentage, numbered in the billions by now, with billions more to come. All Souls Day has nothing to do with geography and nationalities. It has everything to do with the human person, and how all of us, whatever our heritage or background, have at least one thing in common - that we are made in the image and likeness of God. This means that all persons have a rational, everlasting soul.
On All Souls Day, we pray for the souls in Purgatory to be released from their “bondage” of not enjoying the complete joy of heaven, where we all belong. Whatever souls may have been condemned to hell, there is nothing we can do on our end to release them from such everlasting horror. Hell is a final statement. Purgatory is not final, but rather leads to heaven. Some folks may consider this nowadays – the belief that hell is final with no advancement up - to be “politically incorrect,” even though it has nothing to do with politics. To say that some souls are in hell, which I do not know, but suspect that hell is not empty, is a realistic statement that hell is a real possibility for all of us. And I’m not talking about unbaptized babies. I refer to people who make choices with their lives that speak to a full-on rejection of God their Creator. I do know a few people in this spiritual mindset. It’s concerning when a seemingly good, sane, rational person chooses to reject all things God. Either way, I’m not the judge and jury. God is. But Catholic teaching is very clear - that hell is real and not an invented fantasy. Jesus refers to this everlasting horror all over the Gospels as he tries his best to draw all people into his Way, Truth, and Life.
Purgatory, on the other hand, is the “middle ground” where souls will one day be called to the glory they desire, but failed in some way(s) to give all of oneself to God in this life. They chose to give some of their treasure to Caesar. Or some God-forsaken political party that has no power to save. The release of souls from Purgatory, which we pray for ardently on All Souls Day, speaks to sinners who die with venial sins. In order to be in God’s presence, their souls must be perfectly cleansed, for no sinful soul can live with God in eternal life. So, how does this state of perfection come about? As Catholics, we pray for their souls, especially loved ones and friends, and those who have no one to pray for them. The highest form of prayer we offer in the Church is the Holy Liturgy, and offering a Mass for the repose of their souls. Let others say what they want about this approach, but this is number one when it comes to releasing souls from “half-perdition,” if you will, and ushering them into the joy they clamor for in the life to come.
This week of All saints and All Souls is celebrated at the perfect time of the year in these parts. The weather seems to be consistent with these two holy days in the Church’s calendar. We’re blessed with days of Indian summer that reflect the warmth of souls who have arrived at their final destination of glory and joy. For a New Englander, the comfortable, warm days of October and November are embraced by most of us, except for skiers, because we all know what awaits in the near future, weather-wise (have you ever heard the word “blizzard?!”). Contrarily, 65 degrees and sunshine at this time of the year is like All Saints Day. And some other days, like the day I played golf a week or so ago, are cold and blustery. The sun may be shining, but when the temps are in the 50’s and there’s a cold wind coming down from our neighbors in Canada, or, the temps are in the low 40’s and rain is pouring down making it as raw as…well, you know. This type of weather day is like All Souls Day. It’s not perfect like San Diego, but it’s not a blizzard either.
And there we have it - an informal discussion of saints, sinners, death, and eternal life. Much more can be said than what’s found in this itty-bitty column read by three or four people, but hopefully it offers some spiritual tidbits for the upcoming week for those who take a glance. We thank the Saints for being examples for us in the faith. Whether they remain incorrupt (St. Pio) or corrupt (St. Peter), they are jewels for us on our path to what God has prepared for those who love Him. And, we pray for all souls who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, that they may arrive, if they have not yet, where the Saints reside. Have a blessed, holy week.
PEACE
For those early Christians, receiving the peace of Jesus meant more than personal well-being. Jesus' own peace included Jesus’ ways of peacemaking. To be children of God meant a peacemaking way of life, as the Matthean beatitude stated clearly. Peacemaking meant forgiveness and love of enemies in the spirit of the gospel. Peacemaking also meant a refusal to participate in warfare. For the first three-hundred years of Christian life, most followers of Jesus could not reconcile war with Jesus’ witness to the making of peace.
In The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and our Response, the Catholic Bishops of the United States pointed out that the Catholic tradition on war and peace, in all its complexities, begins with the Sermon on the Mount. The bishops highlighted the text from Ephesians identifying Jesus as our peace as an objective basis of a religious vision for peace in the contemporary world of sovereign states. Throughout this entire pastoral letter, the intrinsic relation between peace and one's personal life and peacemaking in the social order is emphasized.
One of the most significant sections in The Challenge of Peace is the teaching on “The Value of Nonviolence.” Strong statements on gospel nonviolence are included from different periods of Christian life, including references from the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Although “nonviolence” and “pacifism” are sometimes used synonymously in The Challenge of Peace, this pastoral letter makes it clear that nonviolence does not mean nonactivity in the face of injustice and violence. Gospel nonviolence is always very active, but always in a nonviolent way. From The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality