12th Week of OT 2020 - Tuesday - The most important choice

Scripture often describes life as a choice between two ways. In Deuteronomy, Moses speaks of the way of life and the way of death. The very first Psalm speaks about the difference between the way of God which leads to life and the way of the wicked which leads to doom. The book of Proverbs, too, differentiates the path of wisdom, which leads to harmony with God, and the path of wickedness, which is one of greed, violence, foolishness, which leads to destruction.

Because we are endowed with free will, humans are able to choose their path: we might not be able to choose our race, our family, or the economic status in which we begin life. And we remain powerless over a great many things throughout life. But one choice is always available to us. We are always able to decide to follow God’s way or not.

We think of the first real moral choice in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had to decide between the way of obedience and the way of disobedience. And we know that the choice of disobedience at the beginning of human history had terrible consequences.

The Lord takes up this motif of two ways in the Gospel today: a way that leads to life and a way that leads to destruction. And the Lord even describes these two ways: the way that leads to life is narrow, few are truly willing to conform themselves to walk this path, the way that leads to destruction is wide and broad; the Lord sees many souls walking this path, and so this teaching is a warning to a sinful selfish world, change your ways, change your path before it is too late.

Few verses in the Bible are as sobering as these. The Lord challenges us to look at our lives from the perspective of where we are headed. The stakes are extremely high—our eternity is determined by the choices we make in this life.

Now many of our contemporaries don’t like to think about eternity. They like to live under the delusion, either, that everyone automatically goes to heaven, or that this life is all that there is. But that is not the message of the Bible, that is not the message of Our Lord. Our choices matter. If everyone went to heaven, if heaven was guaranteed, then faithfulness, obedience, self-sacrifice, really wouldn’t matter.

We must not allow ourselves to be swept up by the attitudes and faithlessness of the world, but rather we must make the choice, daily to follow Christ down the narrow path, in the moment of temptation, we must exert real moral effort to remain obedient to God, and if we have turned our back on God, and begun to wander down that destructive path, we must repent, and turn around, for the direction we are facing at the end of life will determine our eternity.

With the help of God’s grace, may we choose, wisely…for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the Holy Spirit may guide the selection of a new bishop for Cleveland, that he may be a man of  wisdom, of deep Christian faith, hope, and love.

For the protection of the unborn, and that people of goodwill will work together to enshrine the protection of the unborn in law and in the hearts of all.

For the conversion of those who do not believe in God, for Catholics who have left the Church, those guilty of heresy or schism, and for a return to the sacraments of those who have fallen into serious sin.

For the sick and afflicted, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, for victims of natural disaster,  those who suffer from war, violence, and terrorism, all victims of abuse, especially children, for the mentally ill, those with addictions, and the imprisoned, for those who struggle to live the call of Christian chastity, for the comfort of the dying and the consolation of their families.

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, for the repose of the soul of Margaret Gorczyca, for whom this mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord.

June 22 2020 - Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More - Highest Expression of True Faith

In the course of his ministry, our Lord took up the task of forming his disciples to continue the Gospel mission—sending them out through Galilee to heal and preach. And he was very clear that just as he would be rejected, his truth would be rejected, so they would be rejected. While he came to gather the divided peoples of the earth into one kingdom, through one faith and one baptism, that unity would be rejected. Responses to the Gospel would range from full reception to hostile rejection—so much so that in our passage from Matthew today, we hear how the Gospel’s rejection would cause discord, even hostility, within families.

The stories of the thousands of Christian martyrs throughout the centuries has been a repetition of that dynamic—though the Gospel is meant to unify—the prideful, those unwilling to bend the knee and to change their hearts—will lash out against Christ and seek to silence him.

Such was the case of the two martyrs we honor today, the bishop St. John Fisher, and the statesman, St. Thomas More. When King Henry VIII claimed headship over the Church in England and sought to rewrite the doctrines passed on by Christ to the apostles, he enacted law forcing all bishops and government officials to sign their names to his lies.

Bishop John Fisher was the only bishop in England who had the courage to oppose the king’s lies and usurpation of religious authority, and Sir Thomas More, former chancellor of England and close friend of the King’s was the highest-ranking layman to not take this oath acknowledging the king’s claims. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually beheaded.

Yes, there will be pressure, worldly pressure, pressure from coworkers, neighbors, political groups, even members of our families, the Lord warns. You will be tempted to give in, to compromise the Gospel, to become silent when we should speak.

John Fisher and Thomas More experienced tremendous pressure from other bishops, statesman, and family, not to mention the threat of death. But they allowed the courage of Christ to flow within them. Their lives of holiness prepared them, as the Collect says, “to bring the true faith to its highest expression.”

These men are our great heroes, and we do well to honor them, emulate them, and invoke their heavenly intercession, that we like them might have the courage to remain faithful to Christ, to preach and live His Gospel, despite all temptations and pressures, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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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 through the intercession of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, people of faith may remain vigilant in defending religious liberty and preaching the Gospel courageously.

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, and for Paul Becker for whom this Mass is offered.
Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.

12th Sunday of OT 2020 - The sin of Adam and the Grace of Christ

After many months, Lent, Easter, and the Feasts of Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi, we have returned again to the Sundays of Ordinary Time, called such, for we focus not on any Extraordinary, major event from the life of Christ or major dogma contained in our creed, but on how the grace of God is meant to animate the ordinary aspects of our life.

For the remainder of Ordinary Time, all the way until the end of November we will read extensively from the Gospel of Matthew, and until mid-September we’ll read from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Matthew and Paul will be our spiritual directors, helping us to open our minds and heart to the grace of God in the ordinary circumstances of our lives.

And since we’ll be spending so much time with them, I’d like to say a word about Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul’s letter to the Romans is a great masterpiece of theology, a clear, thorough, and systematic presentation of the Christian faith. Profound enough for an ordinary Roman to be intrigued by the Christian faith, and clear and systematic enough that an ordinary Roman could understand it. The Letter doesn’t tell a story, like the Gospels, which follow a narrative structure. Rather it unpacks the theological implications of Our Lord’s incarnation, saving death, and glorious resurrection. What does it mean for the Church, for saints and sinners like us, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

If you’ve never read Paul’s letter to the Romans from beginning to end, this is a perfect time. Reading the letter in its entirety will help you internalize Paul’s message and teaching. Every Christian at least once in our lives should read the Bible in its entirety, not necessarily straight through from Genesis to Revelation, but at least each book of the Bible in its entirety, some time in your life. Speaking of the ordinary life of the Christian, reading the Bible should be part of our Ordinary Lives, our every day lives.

A day shouldn’t go by, where we don’t read something of God’s Word. Even if it’s just a single paragraph that you read and ponder throughout the day, God’s Word will ground you, and enlighten your path in these chaotic times. God’s word helps us to understand our reality and understand ourselves. It helps us to put our priorities in order. It guides our actions, and helps us to have a rightly ordered mind and heart, and it increases our hunger and thirst for the righteousness described in its pages.

In today’s second reading, Paul seeks to explain one of the most important questions ever, a question that philosophers and theologians, mystics and poets and ordinary folk have grappled with, since the moment we gained the ability to ask such questions: why is there suffering in the world? Why do we suffer? Why do people die in earthquakes and plagues, and through famine. Why do families, and nations become divided and go to war? Why do innocent babies suffer. Why do children seem to turn on their parents, why do parents neglect their duties to their children. Why are peoples subjugated and enslaved to satiate the greed and lusts and pride of those in power?

The different world religions all attempt to answer that question. St. Paul, once the student of the great Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel, and now a convert to Christ, a believer that Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, seeks to answer that question in his letter to the Romans: why is there suffering? And he does so, drawing upon his Jewish roots and his new-found Christian faith. He traces the suffering of the world all the way back to Adam and Eve and he shows that the solution to the suffering, salvation from suffering, comes through the New Adam and His Church, the New Eve, the new Mother of the saved.

Where did suffering come from? According to Genesis, there was a time before suffering, when Adam and Eve lived in a state of friendship with God. In the garden of Paradise, Adam and Eve walked in harmony with God in the cool of the evening in easy fellowship. Their minds and wills were effortlessly attuned to God’s mind and will, the way friends are naturally attuned to one another. Adam and Eve’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs were met through their friendship with God; they were without suffering.

But then, as St. Paul explains in our reading today, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.” Prior to sin, our inner life and outer life were ordered according to the will and mind of God. But turning our will against God through sin, nearly everything about us became disordered. We desire too much of what we don’t need: money, power, and pleasure; and too little of what we do need: prayer, good works, obedience, patience and peace. Human life, which was meant for immortality and grace, becomes disordered toward mortality and selfishness. From that disorder arises all the suffering and war  of the human race.

St. Paul having identified sufferings origins, then identifies sufferings remedy. Though death reigned throughout the generations of Adam because of the sin of the one man, through the gracious gift of another man, Jesus Christ, death is defeated, humanity is reordered to God and we are saved of suffering and death.

Yes, death and disorder continue to wreak havoc in the lives of the members of our human family. Just turn on the news, right? But what the news does not often report, the most miraculous and marvelous activity in our world today: how Jesus Christ continues to transform lives, how the grace of God overflows into the members of the Christian family, the body of Christ, the Church. The news, for the most part does not report how faith in Jesus Christ transforms the lives of ordinary people, enabling us to overcome what is fallen in us, what is perverted in us, what is selfish in us.

Turn on the news, you will find one story after another of division along political, racial, national and international lines—the effects of fragmentation in the human family, to effects of death and greed and corruption. You want proof of original sin, turn on the news. But open the bible, read St. Paul, study the lives of the saints and you’ll find a different story. Had we spent more time cultivating the grace of Jesus Christ, how different the nightly news would be.

So, if the 24-hour news cycle won’t report it, our task, is clear, Our Lord is clear in the Gospel today: shout the Good News from the rooftops. Christian grace can overcome all transgression. You want to build a society of peace, turn to Christ. You want to overcome the division in your family? Turn to Christ. You want to overcome your fallen tendencies—your lust, your pride, your selfishness? Turn to Christ. Shout it from the rooftops.  Because the news won’t report it and our politicians won’t acknowledge it.

On this Father’s Day weekend, many of us our so grateful of the faith of our Fathers, our Fathers who have been instrumental in our reception of the faith. And yet, perhaps too we think of all those fathers in the world today, maybe the fathers of our grandchildren or nephews or neighbors who want little or nothing to do with the saving faith—who have forgot their most important job, to help their children become righteous.

Ordinary Time is a wonderful time to pray and fast for those fathers, and to look for opportunities to call them to action—to take up, once again, the mantle of being a leader—a faith leader--for the sake of their families and for the future of our society. For only a house built on the solid foundation of Christ, can ever hope to withstand the intense and destructive winds of the world. If you truly care about these Fathers, call them back to the Faith, back to church.

Where will you find the words to say? Ponder the Scriptures. This week, turn to God’s word and ponder it every day. Ask God to enlighten you. Ask God how His holy word can help you in the concrete, ordinary circumstances of your life, with your ordinary sins, and your serious sins, with the ordinary drama and trials of your family, and the serious ones. If he is quiet, ask him all the more, in the words of the psalm today, “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” Revive my heart, enlighten my mind, transform me by your grace, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Corpus Christi 2020 - Eucharistic Miracles and Real Presence

We come to the great feast of Corpus Christ, the origins of which date back to an extraordinary event in the year 1263.  A priest named Peter of Prague was making his way from his home city of Prague to Rome on pilgrimage. Peter of Prague was a pious priest, though he harbored some doubts about the Lord’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Perhaps, this is why he was making the pilgrimage, to help renew his Faith. Well, as he neared the Holy City, Father Peter stopped in the Italian town of Bolsena to offer his daily Mass. And during Mass, a miracle occurred which certainly cleared up his doubts. At the moment he lifted up the consecrated host, the host began to bleed. The blood ran down his hands and his arms and dripped down onto the corporal on the altar.

Astonished, Peter of Prague quickly made his way to the nearby town of Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV was visiting.  He knelt down before the Holy Father and confessed his former doubt of the Real Presence told the Pope of this extraordinary miracle. The Pope sent a delegation of Cardinals to investigate, and when the facts were ascertained, he ordered that the Host and the corporal bearing the stains of Blood be brought to him.  After seeing the signs of the miracle himself, the Pope ordered the sacred items to be placed in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where they are still on display.

Traveling with Pope Urban during this period was the greatest theological writer of the time, of all time, no? St. Thomas Aquinas.  In honor of this miracle, the Pope asked the Dominican friar to compose the liturgical prayers for a feast honoring the Real Presence of the Lord. We celebrate that Feast today, the Feast of Corpus Christi.

There are many stories of Eucharistic miracles throughout the centuries like the one experienced by Peter of Prague, miracles in which the Lord God bolsters the faith of the doubting, or gives supernatural proof of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

One of my favorites is from 13th century Portugal: the story goes that there was a woman living in the town of Santarem, Portugal. The woman had begun to suspect that her husband was unfaithful, for he had withdrawn his affections. She became desperate to win back her husband’s attention, and so she turned to a strega, a witch. The witch promised that the husband would again love her like before, but for a price. The woman was tasked with stealing a consecrated host from church and bringing it to the witch. This frightened the woman, as she knew this to be a terrible sacrilege, but she agreed. After receiving communion in her parish church, St. Stephen, she did not consume the host upon receiving it, but took the host out of her mouth and placed it in her scarf.

On her way to the house of the witch, a miracle occurred: the Holy Host began to bleed. The woman panicked, and out of fear, she hurried home and placed the scarf with the Host at the bottom of a wooden chest in her bedroom. Her husband returned home, and the two retired for the evening, though due to her dreadful state she could barely sleep, the guilt of her sin tormented her—she could not get the image of that Bleeding Host out of her head.

And then, in the middle of the night, brilliant rays of light began to shine from the chest. The couple awakened to the spectacular vision of angels kneeling down and adoring the Host contained in that wooden chest.

The woman could no longer keep secret her terrible deed. She confessed her great sin to her husband. Both repented and spent the rest of the night kneeling in adoration and reparation before the miraculous Host.

The next morning they informed the parish priest who returned the Host to his parish Church of St. Stephens in a solemn procession. The host continued to bleed for days, when it was finally encased in a reliquary made of bees wax.

A hundred years later, the new priest went to move the reliquary to the tabernacle, when the beeswax disintegrated, but the bleeding host remained. The host was placed in a case of glass, and throughout the centuries, it has bled repeatedly, and several images of Our Lord was seen in the host.

These stories are important, they bolster our faith in the Real Presence, the remind us that in each host, in the smallest particle of each host, is the body and blood of Our Lord, who says in the Gospel, my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink. Now, most of us will never witness an Extraordinary Miracle, of seeing a bleeding host, and that’s fine because and we don’t need to. Blessed are those who believe without needing such extraordinary measures. The gift of supernatural faith enables us to know that Our Blessed Lord is truly present in the Eucharist. And, if you are struggling to believe this doctrine, please ask the Lord for help: Lord help my unbelief. Don’t just write off this doctrine as superstition, ask God for help. If you believe yourself to be too modern, too intellectually sophisticated to believe in the Real Presence, you do need help, you do need God to help ignite a faith that has grown cold, or polluted by worldly categories.

There is a crisis of faith in the real presence. Last August, remember, Bishop Robert Barron made national news lamenting a recent Pew Research report that over two-thirds of Catholics have lost their faith, or never had faith, that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist—that bread and wine are truly transformed, not just symbolically, but truly, into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

Two-thirds of Catholics. Perhaps they’ve been failed by their Catechists, perhaps by faithless clergy or religious, perhaps by their parents who themselves exhibited little-to-no Eucharistic faith, or they themselves have allowed secular materialism to destroy their faith. Whatever the reason, we must pray and work for a renewal of Eucharistic faith. The more the Eucharist is profaned or abandoned, the more we need to receive it with love and reverence.

Again what does it matter? Belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist is an essential doctrine of our Saving Faith. It is a conduit for grace, and transformation. Belief in the real presence leads us to make our lives worthy of its reception, to strive to adorn our souls with virtue, to make our souls fitting receptacles, spiritual tabernacles for our Eucharistic Lord.

The Eucharistic is not just a symbol. We don’t love symbols, we don’t kneel down and adore symbols, we don’t strive to better ourselves for a symbol. But we do kneel down and adore the Eucharist, we treat it with the highest level of reverence we can muster, because the Eucharist is really and truly Jesus Christ, present. He is truly present in the tabernacle. He is made present on the altar through the prayers of the priest. He is truly present as you receive him in Holy Communion. And he makes Himself present that you may love Him, and adore Him, and know Communion with God through Him, and receive the transforming grace you need to be faithful to Him in the concrete circumstances of your life. Helping you, like Him, to become a pleasing sacrifice to God, to be broken and shared for others.

May this feast help us to enshrine the Eucharist with Love, with worship in spirit and in truth, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

10th Week of OT 2020 - Friday - Promoting Strong Christian Marriage and Authentic Holiness

Since Monday we’ve been reading from Jesus’ most famous sermon, his sermon on the mount.  In this sermon, Jesus teaches his followers how to live so that the life of God may take root in their hearts and grow in their lives. 

In these first verses of his Sermon, the Lord is constantly referencing the law of Moses. He speaks about the need to keep the commandments of Moses to the point where one’s faithfulness to them surpasses that of the scribes and the pharisees. He quotes the decalogue: “You have heard from your ancestors, Thou shall not kill, Thou shall not commit adultery”, but then calls his disciples deeper. Christians aren’t just to avoid adultery, they must avoid any thought, conversation, or behavior which might lead to adultery; they must avoid lustful gazes, per
verted fantasies, and must avoid the situations which might give rise to adulterous temptations.

And not only does the Lord wish us to avoid the physical act of adultery; he wants for us way of life and spirituality which craves chastity and purity.

This morning we hear the Lord’s prohibition of divorce. Again, he quotes the teaching of Moses, and explains how the allowance for divorce by Moses clearly falls short of what God wants for us. Again, he calls Christian disciples to something more. Don’t just avoid divorce, but the sort of behavior which  leads to divorce: the great acts of selfishness and sins against fidelity yes, but also the attitudes and behaviors which slowly undermine marriage—the impatience, the cutting remarks, the resentments, the selfish indulgences, the poor communication, the failure to reach out for help when things get rocky.

Christian couples must crave and strive for the attitudes and behaviors which promote healthy marriage, and the prayer life to support it...and we must help them, because the world sure isn't.

To quote our departed Bishop Richard Lennon: “when marriages are centered on God, they will be charged and changed by God’s presence. But when they are centered on false idols of money, pleasure, or the pursuit of the good life as our world understands it, they will reap a harvest of exhaustion and unhappiness.”

It is significant that the Lord speaks about Marriage so clearly in his Sermon on the Mount, for he knows marriages, solid Christian marriages which are filled with His Divine Life, will be fundamental for His Church. Our world certainly does not promote healthy marriages, so our Church and our parish, need to fight for strong, healthy, Christ-centered marriages which surpass the corrupt, empty values of the fallen world.

And may we all seek the life of virtue, prayer, and penance which enables us to be filled with the Divine Life God wants for us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the preaching and teaching and charitable works of the Church will inspire all people to seek to radical holiness and obedience to the commands of God.

That those in public office may govern with wisdom, put an end to all political corruption, and work for a society of authentic justice and peace with special care for the most vulnerable.

For an end to oppression, racism, hatred, addiction and injustice. For the healing of all the sick.
For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life, for a strengthening of marriages, for all single people who strive to follow Christ, and for the grace to utilize our spiritual gifts for the building up of the Church.

That those who have died may share in the joy of life-everlasting; for our deceased family members, friends, and fellow parishioners, for all the poor souls in purgatory for Earl Kestler, for whom this Mass is offered.

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.

10th Week of OT 2020 - Wednesday - Beatitudes of Christ and Law of Moses

We continue to read from the Lord’s great Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. The Lord, remember, began his sermon with the Beatitudes. Like Moses atop Mount Sinai communicating the law of God to the Israelites, the Lord, atop the mount of Beatitudes delivered a set of new commandments for his disciples: we must become poor of spirit, we must mourn our sins, we must become pure of heart, we must hunger and thirst for righteousness, we must be willing to be persecuted for the Gospel.

After delivering these new commandments, the Lord, just a few verses later, explains the relationship of his teachings with the commandments delivered by Moses. As we heard today, he says, I’ve not come to do away with the Law, but to fulfill the Law. The beatitudes do not replace the law of Moses, they are added to it in a sense.

Christian disciples will need to keep the tenets of the moral law, the 10 commandments and such, in order to remain in right relationship with God. But then, we must also keep the beatitudes and all the teachings of the Lord, and all of his authoritative interpretation of the Old Law, so we may become salt of the earth and light for the world, as we heard yesterday. Our inner conformity and outward activity must set an example for non-believers, for little ones, for children, neophytes, and those weak of faith.

It is amazing how the Lord connects our duty to God and our duty to our neighbor. We have a duty to God to follow these commandments, a duty to the Lord to strive to live out the beatitudes, and in doing so, we point our neighbor to a deeper love of God. When we fail in our duty to keep the commandments, we are also, in a sense failing our neighbor. And when we fail to love our neighbor, we are failing to love our God.

But, when we do obey the commandments and teach others to do so, our Lord says, we will be great in the kingdom of heaven. We merit, through obedience and love, greater and greater shares in the divine life of God. The one who loves little will be rewarded with little, but the one who loves much will be rewarded with much.

With the Lord’s help may we truly mourn our failures to keep the commandments, and repent of them, that is to change our minds and change our hearts, that they may be conformed in all things to the mind and heart of Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the preaching and teaching and charitable works of the Church will inspire all people to seek to practice and keep the commandments of God.

That those in public office may govern with wisdom, put an end to all political corruption, and work for a society of authentic justice and peace with special care for the most vulnerable.

For an end to oppression, racism, hatred, addiction and injustice. For the healing of all the sick.

For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life, for a strengthening of marriages, for all single people who strive to follow Christ, and for the grace to utilize our spiritual gifts for the building up of the Church.

That those who have died may share in the joy of life-everlasting; for our deceased family members, friends, and fellow parishioners, for all the poor souls in purgatory for Dennis Dentzer, for whom this Mass is offered.

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.

June 9, 2020 - St. Columbkille - Light your light shine before others

My first parish assignment as a newly ordained priest was to St. Columbkille parish in Parma. St. Columbkille is Scotland’s most revered saint and, in Ireland, he is honored second only to St. Patrick. A missionary, St. Columbkille is credited with taking Christianity to Scotland.

Born of royal bloodlines on both his mother’s and father’s side in County Donegal in northern Ireland on December 5, 521, his proper name was Colum MacFehlin MacFergus. The name Colum means dove. As a young boy he spent much time in church and soon the suffix “cille,” the Gaelic word for Church, was added to his name. He was called “Colum-cille”—Dove of the Church.  Sometimes, he goes by the name St. Columba of Iona, not to be confused with St. Columban, or the St. Columba who was a Spanish virgin in the 7th century.

Columbkille spent the first fifteen years of his priesthood working among the poor in his native Ireland and became famous for his works of charity and preaching. He also spent time as a scribe, copying the Scriptures. The great illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells, is attributed to St. Columbkille.

Tradition asserts that there was a bit of a feud between Columbkille and St. Finian over the ownership of a particular manuscript, and the feud got so heated that Columbkille had to leave Ireland. Columbkille left Ireland in 563 with twelve fellow monks, and landed upon the Scottish Isle of Iona, where he established a monastery which served as a base for his evangelizing mission. He spent the next 34 years establishing churches and schools, and staffing them with many disciples who were attracted by his ardent penance, fervent prayer, sincere preaching, and deep confidence in God. Columbkille died in 597 and is honored as the Patron of Scotland.  He is a patron of poets, bookbinders, and a co-patron of Ireland.  And you can still visit the Iona Abbey, on the Isle of Iona, off of Scotland

Columbkille and the saints exemplify our Lord’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: we like them are to shine with the light and life of Christ, so much so, that when people meet us they glorify God. They see the good works we do, they hear our speech, and they think, there is a person connected to God, this is how you are meant to live life.

Sometimes we are ashamed of appearing too Catholic, too fervent about our faith, but the saints stop caring about that, they stop making excuses, they stop holding back, and give all of themselves to God. And in doing so, they become lights which draw others to God.

May St. Columbkille help us to give to God more generously, to consider how we can give more of ourselves for the building up of the Church, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the preaching and teaching and charitable works of the Church will inspire all people to seek to practice the beatitudes of Christ.

That those in public office may govern with wisdom, put an end to all political corruption, and work for a society of authentic justice and peace with special care for the most vulnerable.

For an end to oppression, racism, hatred, addiction and injustice. For the healing of all the sick.

For an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life, for a strengthening of marriages, for all single people who strive to follow Christ, and for the grace to utilize our spiritual gifts for the building up of the Church.

That those who have died may share in the joy of life-everlasting; for our deceased family members, friends, and fellow parishioners, for all the poor souls in purgatory for Bishop George Murry, bishop of Youngstown and for Paul Becker, for whom this Mass is offered.

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.