August 9 2021 - St. Edith Stein - Seeker of Truth

 On August 9 on the new calendar, is celebrated St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein who converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher. 

As a young girl, Edith’s intellectual gifts were quite evident, but by her teenage years, she became a self-proclaimed agnostic. Maybe some of you here can relate. Critical thinking and the desire for the truth led Edith to study philosophy. She became a pupil and assistant of the renowned philosopher Edmund Husserl. In the course of her studies Edith met several Catholics whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January, 1922. 10 years later, she entered the Carmelite Convent. 1932. Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany.

Though the Jews were the principle victims of the Nazi’s in World War II, millions of Catholics, including bishops, priests, and nuns were murdered in the concentration camps.  In 1942, the Nazi’s arrested Sister Teresa Benedicta.  She and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, were transported to Auschwitz in Poland by boxcar.  One week later, Sister was murdered in a gas chamber. She is celebrated as a virgin martyr.

In 1998, the german nun was canonized by the Polish Pope Saint John Paul II, who also proclaimed her a co-patroness of Europe the following year.

At her canonization, Saint John Paul said, “For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All.”

I think these words of holy Father Pope St. John Paul give us great hope. Like young Edith Stein, so many young people are searching for the truth. They want lives full of meaning—more than their parents in some respects. They are rejecting the rampant materialism and perversion and promiscuity of the sexual revolution and banal emptiness offered by the internet culture. Like so many of you, they are turning to the true, good, and beautiful of our Catholic faith.

St. John Paul named St. Theresa Benedicta co-patroness of Europe because she is a needed example for the young people of Europe, as a model to emulate in always remaining a seeker of the Truth. She, no doubt, should be invoked for our own nation, our own people, for the same purpose. That new generations may hunger for something more than the emptiness offered by the culture of death, and seek truth, goodness, and beauty in Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls. 

For all those who wander in atheism, agnosticism, those who are cynical towards Catholicism, for moral relativists, and those who reject the Faith, and all lapsed Catholics, that the Holy Spirit will help them discover the Truth of Christ. 

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That the Holy Father, the Bishops and all Clergy and Religious will be shining examples of fidelity to the Truth.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

Homily: Christ the King 2016 - "He must reign in you"

The Feast of Christ the King is a relatively new feast, only being placed on the calendar in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. There is a story of Pius XI walking with a priest-friend of his, Father Carlo Confalonieri were taking a stroll through the Vatican gardens behind St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. And Father Confalonieri could see that the Holy Father was distracted, the Pope wasn’t speaking much. The Holy Father then sat down on a bench, and said to his secretary, “Carlo, I am worried about this man, Mussolini and his fascist party here in Italy. I must admit, he seems to be organizing things well, the trains are running on time, but he preaches this poisonous doctrine, that all of us are subservient to the State. And then I hear the rantings of this man in Germany by the name of Adolf Hitler. He’s preaching about something called ‘National Socialism’; they call themselves the Nazi’s. And he too speaks about this blind militaristic unquestionable obedience to him, and to the party, and to the state; and he’s encouraging racial and religious hatred and division in society.” Pius XI went on, he said, “And what about Russia; I hear about these men named Lenin and Stalin, and this thing called communism; this too seeks to impose a totalitarian authority over our lives.” And he said, “I hear even in the United States, they are boasting of the “roaring 20s”, where there seems to be unbridled, cutthroat capitalism” (which we know would trigger the great depression). Apparently, in the United States,” the Holy Father said, “all that matters is wealth and pleasure. And then I hear of a man in Vienna named Sigmund Freud, he seeks to develop the field of mental health, and yet, at the same time he claims that our whole lives are determined by unconscious psychological drives”

Pius XI then, sort of bewildered stopped, and was silent, and he says, “Fascism, Nazism, Totalitarianism, Communism, Psychological Determinism, Consumerism, Nationalism, Racism” and he banged his fist on the bench and he said, “Basta! Enough! Christ is our King; Our true and only allegiance is to Him and Him alone. Only He is to have total mastery over our lives. Our destiny is to reign with Him in heaven, and seeking heaven is our highest earthly priority, and our other earthly duties come second to that most important priority.”

Soon after the conversation, Pius XI issued the encyclical letter, Quas Primas, in which he instituted today’s feast. Pius XI explained that the “manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics…that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations”

If we want peace in our world, our nation, our families, and our hearts, Christ must be reign in these places. No place can have true peace without Christ as its king.

Pius XI saw the great danger of thrusting Jesus out of the different dimensions of human life and human society. The genocide and mass murder of the Nazis took 11 million lives, atheistic communism resulted in the death of 94 million people.  Pope Francis has continued to voice concern over the deChristianization of economics: how unbridled capitalism and rampant materialism lead to dehumanization—how violence and crime bubble up with the poor are extorted.  

Many critics of the Church blame Christianity for the evils of the modern world: war, racism, sexism... But the truth is just the contrary.

Only through Christianity did the human family gradually come to realize that all people share the same human dignity and have the same basic human rights. Only through Christianity, for example, was slavery recognized as an injustice and gradually eliminated - in fact, in non-Christian cultures even today slavery persists. We must not believe the lie that popular culture wants us to believe: that all religions are the same, and our faith in Christ should not overflow into the laws and customs of our communities. That is the lie that today's Feast was established to expose. If we exclude Christ and Christian values from public life, we will only give more room for anti-Christian values to flourish.

In Quas Primas, Pius XI gave us a remedy, a solution, how to truly make Christ King in our world.

“He must reign in our minds,” the Holy Father explained, “which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.”

Pius XI used a powerful word several times throughout his encyclical. The word is Dominion. We must place our minds, hearts, will, nations, and families under the Dominion of Christ. The word ‘Dominion’ comes from the Latin word “Dominus” the word for ‘Lord’…Sunday is the Dies Domini, the Day of the Lord.

It is a good day to evaluate, who or what has Dominion over our lives. Who or what is Lord of our lives. Is it Christ? His teaching? His commandments? Virtue? Love? Goodness? Decency? Is it the most noble aspirations of the human heart that come from God through Jesus? Do those magnificent things have dominion over our hearts?

Or does anger? Lust? Money? Drugs and Alcohol? Revenge and Hate? The pursuit of prestige or power? Who or what has dominion in your life?

Does Christ truly reign supreme in you? Is his reign evidenced in the choices you make throughout the week? Through your prayer life, through your confession of sins, through the sacrifices you make in order to be more generous to the poor.

He must reign in our minds through our study of the Scriptures and the Catechism. He must reign in our wills be obeying God’s laws and going to Confession when we disobey them. He must reign in our hearts, by loving God more than we love sports, television, entertainment, gossip, material goods. He must reign in our bodies, by allow God to use us to work for justice.

To quote Pius XI once more: “Oh, what happiness would be Ours if all men, individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by Christ! Then at length will many evils be cured; then will the law regain its former authority; peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ.” May not just our tongues, but our whole lives confess that Jesus Christ is King, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.