First Friday Holy Hour - June 2024 - Sacred Heart and Eucharist

 Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

In 1928, Pius XI wrote a beautiful encyclical called Miserentissimus Redemptor, On Reparation to the Sacred Heart in which the Holy Father described veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the epitome of our entire religion. The sacred heart he wrote, “the sum of all religion” and “the pattern of perfect life.” 

What a bold claim! But, consider: the Sacred Heart represents the entirety of Christ's love and sacrifice. In venerating the Sacred Heart, we are honoring the very core of Jesus' mission - His infinite, redemptive love which led Him to offer His life for our salvation. Thus, the devotion encapsulates the essence of Christianity.

The Sacred Heart is a symbol of the Incarnation. The human heart of Jesus, united to His divinity, is a powerful reminder of the central truth of our faith: that God became man out of love for us. Honoring the Sacred Heart is a way of affirming and celebrating this mystery.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart leads us to a deeper participation in Christ's life and mission. By contemplating His pierced Heart, we are moved to greater love and reparation for sin. We are inspired to imitate His virtues of charity, obedience, and self-sacrifice. In this way, the Sacred Heart becomes a "pattern of perfect life" for us to follow.

And so what a fitting day for us to come to church, to kneel and pray before the Eucharist.

For, the Eucharist is the Sacrament of Christ's love. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us His Body and Blood, the very life that flowed from His pierced Heart on the Cross. The Eucharist is the ultimate expression of His love, the love symbolized by the Sacred Heart—his Body and Blood given out of love for us. As Pope Benedict XV wrote in his encyclical on the sacrament of Charity: “"in the Eucharist Jesus does not give us a "thing' but himself; he offers his own body and pours out his own blood"

So, Eucharistic adoration is an extension of devotion to the Sacred Heart. When we adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, we are in the presence of His Sacred Heart, burning with love for us. 

As we gaze upon him with love this evening, we pray to be more and more transformed to be like him, to be conformed to His Sacred Heart, learning to love as He loves. 

Recall the words of Pope Leo XIII as he consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart. He wrote,  “There is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another.”

May our time with Jesus this evening truly conform our hearts to his for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Christ the King 2017 - Viva Cristo Rey!

“Viva Cristo Rey!” “Long live Christ the King!” These were the last words Fr. Miguel Augustin Pro uttered before he was executed by firing squad by the virulently anti-Catholic government of Mexico on November 23, 1927.

When Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in the 19th century, it also sought to divorce itself from Catholicism. Mexico’s 1917 Constitution brought the seizing of church property, the outlaw religious orders, and the government’s insertion into internal Church affairs. The Constitution prohibited priests from voting or offering any comment on public policy. Priests were also banned from wearing their clerical attire or vestments outside churches. Public displays of faith like the Corpus Christi Procession or praying the rosary publicly were strictly forbidden.

Some Catholics rebelled against the government persecution; the Cristeros movement fought against the anti-Catholic regime, which by the 20s was executing priests and even young people who practiced their faith.

Pope Pius XI wrote three encyclicals denouncing the persecution in Mexico, calling upon faithful Catholics to defend the Church when possible. The persecution finally ended when a Catholic president, Manuel Avila Camacho, was elected in 1940. Yet, when Pope St. John Paul visited Mexico in 1979 it was still illegal for him to celebrate Mass in public.

The most famous martyr of this persecution is the Jesuit priest Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro. When Churches were closed by the government, Fr. Miguel would celebrate Mass in secret to provide the Eucharist for Mexico’s faithful. He became known throughout Mexico City as the undercover priest who would show up in the middle of the night, dressed as a beggar or a street sweeper, to baptize infants, hear confessions, distribute Communion, or perform marriages. Several times, disguised as a policeman, he slipped unnoticed into the police headquarters itself to bring the sacraments to Catholic prisoners before their executions.

Eventually, Fr. Pro was captured and arrested and sentenced to death. The President of Mexico ordered his execution to be photographed in great detail, hoping to incite fear amongst the Cristeros Catholics. You may have seen the photographs of Fr. Pro, dressed in a suit, facing the firing squad, with arms outstretched like Jesus on the Cross. The photographs, instead of inciting fear had the opposite effect, and Catholics began to show great devotion to the martyr—soon the government forbade the distribution of the very photos it had publicized!

When Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King for the universal Church in 1925, Christians were facing grave difficulties: the Mexican persecution of course, the rise of National Socialism which would become Nazism in Germany, Atheistic Communism in Russia, rampant Materialism, Consumerism, and Racism here in the States. The Pope instituted this feast for one, to show “the deplorable consequences” produced when individuals and governments rebel against and reject the Gospel.

Pope Pius XI also wanted to strengthen and encourage Catholics facing persecution, like the Cristeros Catholics in Mexico. This message, this feast, gave Fr. Pro and so many others, the courage to continue to work for the spread of Christ’s reign, despite formidable hostilities.

But this feast is also reminder to all Catholics: that amidst all the trials of life, when we submit our hearts and minds and wills and bodies to the reign of Christ the King, when we live in accordance with the laws of God’s kingdom, we are counted among Christ’s good and faithful servants. Our faith in Christ can and will sustain us in the most difficult moments of life, it can and will transform our fallen world, if we let it. And to those who allow Christ to reign in them and through them, our Good King will speak the words we long to hear: “'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

In the Gospel of the Final Judgment, Our King teaches us that he will judge us, he will determine our eternal destination on how we treated others in this life, whether or not we allowed his mercy to reign in us by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, tending the sick, and bringing the freedom of truth to those imprisoned by the errors of secular culture.

The month of December, and the season of Advent, we know is filled with many demands on our time. So during all of the busyness of the month ahead, we must remember our deepest duty is to Christ: not to contribute to the growing godlessness of our culture, but to bring about his Kingdom through faith, hope, and charity.

The changing of a liturgical season is always a good time to do some self-examination: to examine whether selfishness, pleasure, lust, control, pride, reign in our lives, or Christian generosity, self-control, humility, and prayer. And it is a good time to make a good confession of the times we let sin reign in us, rather than Christ.

This week, I encourage you to plan ahead for Advent, which begins next sunday; plan additional prayer time with your family, additional spiritual reading, additional acts of mercy and charity. Perhaps, try to get to daily Mass throughout the week, to allow the peace of Christ to reign in you.
When we allow Christ to reign in us, he transforms us into instruments of his justice and his goodness. We become partners with Christ in reuniting divided humanity, in extending God’s mercy, truth, and love to all, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

June 23, 2017 - Sacred Heart of Jesus - Our Most Merciful Redeemer

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is an expression of our faith in God’s love and mercy as made visible in Christ. Through the visible wounds of Christ, we see the invisible love of God.

Pope Pius XI described veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the epitome of our entire religion. In 1928, Pius XI wrote a beautiful encyclical called Miserentissimus Redemptor, On Reparation to the Sacred Heart. The sacred heart he wrote, “the sum of all religion” and “the pattern of perfect life.”

We are called to love like Our Miserentissimus Redemptor, Our Most Merciful Redeemer.

Pius XI says, meditating on Christ, “we see Him laboring for man, sorrowing, suffering the greatest hardships, "for us men and for our salvation," well-nigh worn out with sadness, with anguish, nay "bruised for our sins" and healing us by His bruises (MR 13)”. Love means a willingness to suffer for the Will of God, for the salvation of men.

This is why earlier this week, we heard of the suffering of the martyrs as the highest expression of our faith.

The Church is called to make reparation to the Sacred Heart on behalf of all sinful humanity who continues to turn to sin rather than God. The Church makes reparation for all clerics who preach a false gospel, for all of us who are ungrateful for the gifts God bestows upon us, those who respond to the call to spread the Gospel with negligence, those who are indifferent to the Gospel.

Jesus’ overflowing charity, his call to repentance, is met with so much forgetfulness, negligence and contempt. There are attacks against the Church, godless institutions seeking snatch young people, as Pius XI says, from the bosom of their mother the Church.”

Yet, how more lamentable, he says, “among the faithful, washed in Baptism with the blood of the immaculate Lamb, and enriched with grace, there are found so many men of every class, who laboring under an incredible ignorance of Divine things and infected with false doctrines, far from their Father's home, lead a life involved in vices”

What an age we live in! In some parts of the world, Christians die for the faith, in many parts of our own country, many would rather die than practice it!

Love of God certainly impels us to make reparation for our failures to love, and to seek all the more, God’s grace to love as we should, to be faithful to the whole Gospel, not just those parts that suit us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls. 

[below is a link to Pius XI's Encyclical and the Prayer of Reparation with which he ends the encyclical]
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In reparation to the Sacred Heart for all sin and all blasphemy, we pray to the Lord.

For an increase in faith, hope, and love for all Christians, we pray to the Lord.

That our bishops and clergy may be zealous in preaching and teaching the truth of the Gospel, and that our future bishop of the diocese of Cleveland may be a man of true faith and the Holy Spirit.

That this fortnight of prayer for religious freedom may help people of faith remain vigilant in defending their religious liberty and united in making their voice heard on behalf of the rights of the Church.

That our young people on summer vacation may be kept safe from the poisonous errors of our culture, and that their families may be places where the faith is practiced and cherished.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, for the deceased priests and religious of the diocese of Cleveland, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. 

Link to Miserentisimus Redemptor: https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280508_miserentissimus-redemptor.html

Here is the Prayer of Reparation which Pius XI ended his encyclical:

O sweet Jesus, Whose overflowing charity for me is requited by so much forgetfulness, negligence and contempt, behold us prostrate before Your altar eager to repair by a special act of homage the cruel indifference and injuries, to which Your loving Heart is everywhere subject.

Mindful alas! that we ourselves have had a share in such great indignities, which we now deplore from the depths of our hearts, we humbly ask Your pardon and declare our readiness to atone by voluntary expiation not only for our own personal offenses, but also for the sins of those, who, straying for from the path of salvation, refuse in their obstinate infidelity to follow You, their Shepherd and Leader, or, renouncing the vows of their baptism, have cast off the sweet yoke of Your Law. We are now resolved to expiate each and every deplorable outrage committed against You; we are determined to make amends for the manifold offenses against Christian modesty in unbecoming dress and behavior, for all the foul seductions laid to ensnare the feet of the innocent, for the frequent violations of Sundays and holidays, and the shocking blasphemies uttered against You and Your Saints. We wish also to make amends for the insults to which Your Vicar on earth and Your priest are subjected, for the profanation, by conscious neglect or terrible acts of sacrilege, of the very Sacrament of Your Divine Love; and lastly for the public crimes of nations who resist the rights and teaching authority of the Church which You have founded. Would, O divine Jesus, we were able to wash away such abominations with our blood. We now offer, in reparation for these violations of Your divine honor, the satisfaction You once made to Your eternal Father on the cross and which You continue to renews daily on our altars; we offer it in union with the acts of atonement of Your Virgin Mother and all the Saints and of the pious faithful on earth; and we sincerely promise to make recompense, as far as we can with the help of Your grace, for all neglect of Your great love and for the sins we and others have committed in the past. Henceforth we will live a life of unwavering faith, of purity of conduct, of perfect observance of the precepts of the gospel and especially that of charity. We promise to the best of our power to prevent other from offending You and to bring as many as possible to follow You.

O loving Jesus, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our model in reparation, deign to receive the voluntary offering we make of this act of expiation; and by the crowing gift of perseverance keep us faithful unto death in our duty and the allegiance we owe to You, so that we may one day come to that happy home, where You with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, world without end. Amen.

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.