Spring training

The penitential practices of Lent prepare us to face the trials and demands of life with joy.

I’m always amazed at how quickly we transition from the joy of the Christmas season to the penitential season of Lent, which begins this year on Feb. 22. But Lent reminds us that there is no real and lasting joy apart from the cross of Christ. An essential part of our ongoing conversion, Lent is meant to bring us ever closer to the joy that is Christ.

In one of those nice coincidences of life, the St. Louis Cardinals will begin spring training this year when Lent begins and will officially open this year’s baseball season with their first game on the last day of Lent. The Easter Triduum begins the following day and culminates with the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday night and the triumph of Easter Sunday on April 8.

Permit me to dwell a moment longer on my love of baseball in speaking of the importance of Lent. Spring training, which actually occurs during the winter, is the time when players take up anew the discipline and sacrifices needed to carry them through the entire baseball season. They hope that the skills they hone and the endurance they gain will take them into the playoffs and to the World Series—as was the case for the St. Louis Cardinals last year.

But the baseball season is long, and the hardships of the game intensify as the season progresses. During the peak of last year’s seemingly endless heat wave, I reflected on summer’s “dog days”—which, like Lent, last for 40 days. I wrote then that

Real baseball fans know the importance of the “dog days” of summer . . . [when] teams either renew their passion for the game or succumb to the fatigue of a long season intensified by the heat and humidity. But the teams that advance into the playoffs (like my St. Louis Cardinals always do) embrace the struggle and use it to strengthen and form themselves into a championship team. That’s also true in the spiritual life (Aug. 7, 2011, ETC).

I could not have been happier to see those words fulfilled in my beloved St. Louis Cardinals, who took the discipline of their 2011 spring training all the way to an incredible game six and seven win in the World Series. But their victory began with spring training. Likewise, our training in the victory of Christ crucified begins anew each year with Lent, preparing us spiritually for the hard days that lie before us when life and temptations can wear us down.

Our spring training as Catholics traditionally focuses on a triad of penitential practices: fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. These practices express our commitment to our ongoing conversion in the life bestowed upon us in Christ through baptism. Like a trilogy that’s incomplete if one of its three stories is ignored, these penitential practices must be embraced together.

Of the three, fasting is perhaps the most underappreciated today, but it was the first discipline required in the garden of Eden, when God commanded Adam to abstain—“you shall not eat”—from just one fruit (Genesis 2:16-17). We thirst and hunger for more than the material things of this world, which can never fully satisfy. Fasting directs us to what truly nourishes and comforts us—and that only God can give (cf. Matthew 4:4). Fasting disposes us to make the sacrifices we must make if we are to be the face of Jesus to others in need.

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are traditionally days of fast and abstinence, and we should remember that abstinence from meat on Fridays is observed not only during Lent but also throughout the year (unless substituted with another appropriate sacrifice). We should not think of fasting as giving up something but rather as giving something. That leads us to almsgiving.

Almsgiving reminds us that we are stewards, not masters, of God’s many blessings. We do not live for ourselves but for God and our neighbor. In giving of ourselves and our resources, we increase our capacity for giving as Christ does—without measure.

In addition to continuing your generous financial gifts to your parish church, please participate in Catholic Relief Services’ Operation Rice Bowl. It’s a wonderful way to support the essential work CRS does in helping the poor around the world. Twenty-five percent of what is collected in our diocese will go to Catholic Charities of East Tennessee Inc. to assist the agency with its vital works of mercy here at home.

On Ash Wednesday a national collection will be taken up to aid the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, a region devastated from decades of harsh communist rule. And on Easter weekend we will take up a special collection for the education of our 17 seminarians—the future of the priesthood in our diocese. But as I ask for your generosity in almsgiving, I above all ask for your generosity in prayer.

The Stations of the Cross is one of the Church’s most beloved devotions. The Stations adorn the walls of our churches, but they are not for decoration. Instead, they invite us to meditate on the mystery of Christ’s sufferings. It is in the cross of Christ that we find our own cross and the joy with which to bear it.

Fasting is the soul of prayer, as so many saints have observed. And what fasting is for the soul, almsgiving is for the body of Christ. Without prayer, our almsgiving is limited to the little we can give instead of what God can give through us. That harvest produces yields of “thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:8). I pray your Lent brings you closer to Christ, our true joy.

“Let us go over to Bethlehem to see . . .” (Luke 2:15). Responding to the heavenly announcement, the shepherds set out in a sacred procession to find their Savior, as did the Magi in response to creation’s announcement in the form of a star (Matthew 2:1-12). Our Advent procession, like theirs, has again brought us into the Christmas season (Christmas Eve through Jan. 9), offering a beautiful respite from the year’s journey that is concluding and preparing us to continue our procession into the New Year: a procession to Bethlehem.

The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is about 80 miles, a bit less than the distance from Knoxville to Kingsport. I don’t know about you, but I’d be hard pressed to make a journey of that distance on foot. Some could make the trip more easily than others, but one wonders how unbearable the journey would become once the cell phones and iPods ran out of power. Silence has become almost a form of suffering for many when it should be an indispensable part of our faith procession.

Because of the significance of the solemnity of Christmas, the Church celebrates it as an octave, over eight days—as with Easter. Each of the days from Christmas to New Year’s Day is meant to help further our celebration. But we might wonder why we celebrate the martyrdom of St. Stephen the day after Christmas. The Church has always viewed martyrdom as a day of birth. Just as the infant Jesus was pursued by the sword of Herod, so St. Stephen, as a “holy innocent,” represents the infant Church and its suffering in every age.

But such persecution, rather than weaken the Church, only gives it new life. And with the feast the following day of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, the only Apostle not to suffer martyrdom, we learn through the Gospel to die to ourselves and to draw ever closer to the side of Christ at the Eucharistic banquet and upon the Cross (cf. John 13:23; 19:27).

The Feast of the Holy Innocents, celebrated Dec. 28, recalls the innocent victims of Herod’s murderous envy and those lost to the Herods of every generation. The following day the Church celebrates the life of St. Thomas Becket, bishop and martyr, who in refusing to compromise his conscience and in defending the Church from persecution, awakened justice in the hearts of many.

On Dec. 30 the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, reminding us that whenever the Church is attacked, so also is the family—the domestic church. Lest we be discouraged by this persecution, the Church offers us on the last day of the year a feast to contemplate the life of St. Sylvester I, pope and confessor, often referred to as the “peace pope.”

Having lived under the terrible persecution of the Roman Empire that had raged for three centuries, he was blessed to witness the Church’s triumph and to lead it into an era of peace. It reminds us that the more we suffer for the faith, the more assured is Christ’s victory over the world.

It is particularly fitting that we begin each New Year by celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. Blessed John Paul II described the Church as the manger where the Blessed Mother places Christ for us to adore. So we begin our New Year by taking her hand, that we might not become lost as we continue our journey, the goal of which is the “father’s house” (cf. Luke 2:49).

Unique to this particular year, two major celebrations fall back to back, concluding the Christmas season: the Epiphany (manifestation) and the Baptism of the Lord (Jan. 8 and 9). With these, we are reminded of our procession toward God and also his toward us. Nowhere is this truer than in the Mass.

The procession that marks the beginning of the Mass formally concludes the procession that began with the departure from our homes and our journey to the church. God gathers us together, and the processional cross leads us before the altar. In the procession of the Book of Gospels to the ambo, we allow the Word of God to process into our hearts. To our life, which should be a continual offertory procession, we add our prayers, sacrifices, works of mercy and love, and sufferings—our very self—to what is brought to the altar. And in our Communion procession we are nourished with a foretaste of our life’s goal: fullness of communion with Christ.

The Mass represents both an arrival in our life’s procession and a departure. With the words of dismissal, in their varied formulas, we are commanded to “Go,” to continue our procession to Bethlehem, announcing “. . . the Gospel of the Lord,” and “glorifying” him by our life.

In conclusion, I wish to offer special thanks to those who offer their time and talents through the Cursillo movement, which in its nearly 15 years in our diocese has helped more than a thousand people to better continue their procession in life. I encourage you to take advantage of such opportunities to strengthen your walk in the great procession to Bethlehem.

The season of Advent helps prepare us to receive the gift of Christ every day.

Christmas decorations went up in stores almost as fast as the Halloween costumes, lawn decorations, and paraphernalia came down, marking the transition between the No. 2 and the No. 1 shopping seasons of the year. And given the St. Louis Cardinal’s game six miracle and game seven win of the World Series at the end of October, it might have seemed fitting to begin celebrating the Christmas season almost two months early.

But the Church’s liturgical calendar, with its feasts and seasons that serve to unfold the mystery of Christ, should help us resist society’s attempt to secularize and devalue the truth and meaning of Advent and Christmas.

Christmas without Advent or, for that matter, Easter without Lent, is like a wedding without a courtship, the New Testament without the Old, a World Series without the playoffs. Failing to celebrate Advent separates us from a season of hope that is meant to help us to live differently, to help purify and transform us. For many, Advent represents but a countdown of “shopping days left till Christmas,” and the season’s message of hope is reduced to the ideal present one hopes to receive. And if people should not receive what they want, there is always what many refer to as the “second” Christmas, when “gift exchange” takes on its other meaning and we are able to get what we wanted.

Not since the 1965 debut of Charles Schulz’s A Charlie Brown Christmas have television stations aired a program with a scene as beautiful as Linus’s scriptural answer to Charlie Brown’s question, “Can anyone tell me what Christmas is all about?”

Gone are the Bob Hope and Andy Williams Christmas specials that were not afraid to keep Christ in their music and message. Unfortunately, Charles Schulz’s Halloween program It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, did not feature a similar question, “Can anyone tell me what All Saints day is all about?”

Holidays, lest we forget, are really “holy days,” and All Saints is a case in point. First celebrated as the feast of martyrs, the Church later expanded it to include all her saints, whose example of sacrificial love inspires our own hope in Christ’s final victory. It is this hope we carry over into our commemoration the following day, in praying for the faithful departed: All Souls. But given the extreme market surrounding Halloween, with its secular and dark focus, one has almost the impression that All Saints and All Souls day have been supplanted by the celebration of “All Damned.”

During this Advent, a season of expectant joy, I am reminded of a hymn by Father John Foley, SJ, with a message I wish to convey to you: “Patience, People.” The song’s refrain—“Patience, people, for the Lord is coming”— should remind us that although Christ is among us, especially in the Blessed Sacrament, he is present also in the future that we await but which all too often is overshadowed by our fears.

The hymn also reminds us not to “grumble, one against another.” With the full implementation of the new Roman Missal with Advent’s beginning, we will need lots of patience with one another because we will all make mistakes as we learn the different responses and prayers. Please be particularly patient with your priests during this time. They too will need to get used to all the changes associated with the new Missal, all of which will only serve to deepen our understanding and love of the Mass.

In closing, I’d like to mention another scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas. While playing the psychiatrist, Lucy calls out a litany of phobias to Charlie Brown that might help explain his seasonal depression. When she mentions “pantophobia”—fear of everything—Charlie Brown yells, “That’s it!”

Certainly, to the degree secularism has succeeded in taking hope out of Advent and Christ out of Christmas, society has grown more fearful. But the first words of the angel of the Lord to the shepherds are words we need to embrace in Christ: “You have nothing to fear!” (Luke 2:10).

So long as we endeavor to keep Christ in Christmas and in every day of our life, we will have the hope that casts out all fear. “Patience, people, for the Lord is coming.”

Pray for me.” No doubt we have made this request of others many times and have likewise been asked by others to pray for them. We need help, and people need our help. But although we understand the importance of not neglecting our relationship with others, particularly the poor and needy, too many neglect their relationship with another community that is no less important—the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory.

Most people are pretty selective about those from whom we ask for prayer. After all, when we need specific help with concerns in our everyday life, we generally approach people whom we know are dependable and knowledgeable about what it is we need help with. It’s even better if they have “connections” and can put in a good word for us in the process. If this is the case in our earthly relationships, then all the more should we should seek the help of the saints whom the Church tells us are closest to God.

We celebrate the great Solemnity of All Saints Day each Nov. 1, reminded that the Church exists not only on earth, where we struggle in our pilgrimage of faith (the Church Militant), but also in heaven, where those who are now in glory contemplate the full light of God (the Church Triumphant). We invoke their intercession, as we do in the Litany of the Saints, and ask them to pray for us.

The following day we commemorate All Souls, when the Church recalls all the faithful departed. We are especially reminded to pray for the souls in purgatory (the Church Suffering)—those who have died in God’s friendship but who need to be purged of imperfections from which they were not purified during their earthly life. Like those emerging from darkness into daylight, these souls are not yet ready to behold the fullness of God’s light until they have fully adjusted to the purity of his love. They, like us, need the help of the Christian community to draw nearer to Christ, and therefore they call out, “pray for us.”

Although all analogies are insufficient at some level, we might think of they way doctors and nurses prepare themselves before entering into the environment of an operating room. They must scrupulously wash and scrub themselves and put on clothes that have likewise been purified before they can enter the surgical theater. Likewise, we must be washed and clothed in our wedding garment without “stain or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27) if we are to enter the wedding feast of the Lamb (cf. Revelation 19:7-9).

The saints have entered this feast before us, and we should ask them to help us keep our own wedding garment clean until the day we hope to join them. I have entrusted mine to Our Blessed Mother, to St. Joseph, and to one of the heroes of the Church close to my heart and my priesthood: Blessed John Paul II. Although they are dear to me and I ask for their intercessory help daily, they also have a special relationship with our diocese.

Because our diocese was founded on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on Sept. 8, 1988, Our Lady is our principal patroness. But on Oct. 3 this year I also signed a decree that declared Blessed John Paul II as the co-patron of our diocese, whose feast day we now celebrate on Oct. 22.

So on All Saints and All Souls Day, as we should every day throughout the year, let us honor Our Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, Blessed John Paul II, and all of the saints and implore their special intercession and help, striving daily to pray for the living and the dead.

Please pray for me, and be assured of my continued prayers for you.

Which is more sacred—Mass in the cathedral with a contemporary choir, the extraordinary form of the Mass with Gregorian chant, Mass celebrated on the back of a Humvee in Afghanistan, or the rich liturgy of the Maronite Rite of the Church? I hope you answered that all are equally sacred because in each and every Mass it is Christ who offers the sacrifice and who is offered.

It surprises many to learn that the Catholic Church is actually made up of 23 churches and seven rites. Each of these rites reflects the different cultures and traditions that helped form and shape its particular liturgical and sacramental expression of the one true faith. The rite and church we are most familiar with is the Latin Rite of the Roman Church of the West.

Others may be familiar with the Eastern churches such as the Ruthenian and Ukrainian churches of the Byzantine Rite, which have missions in our diocese. I have bi-ritual faculties in the Maronite Church, which is part of the Maronite/Antiochene Rite. I pray that someday we will also have a Chaldean mission of the Chaldean Rite in our diocese.

The point of this explanation is that all these churches and the rites that represent their liturgical traditions are of equal dignity and are an integral part of the universal Church in communion with the pope.

When I celebrate Mass, whether it is the Novus Ordo—the new order (ordinary form) of the Mass—that everyone is familiar with or the liturgy of the Maronite Rite, it is still Christ who offers the Mass and who is offered. I am but the sacramental image of Christ, and it is he who pronounces the words of consecration, not I. The value of the Mass does not depend on my sanctity (thank goodness) or that of any priest. It is Christ’s sacrifice, and through holy orders, I but lend my tongue and my hands as faithfully as I can to him.

The liturgy we celebrate is a participation in the heavenly liturgy. But what makes the liturgy more reverent in its celebration is not the tradition and culture that helped form its particular richness, but what we bring and offer in every Mass in response to God’s gift.

The Mass is a beautiful occasion of divine exchange. When the priest or deacon pours a drop of water into the chalice of wine during the preparation of the gifts, he quietly prays, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” We offer bread and wine, and Christ gives us his body and blood. We give him our humanity, and he gives us his divinity.

What is it that we offer with the gifts of bread and wine upon the altar? Christ wants to die in us and for us to die in him. When we offer ourselves and all our works in union with Christ’s, we are no longer passive participants but intimate sharers in the priestly offering of Christ through the actions of the minister of the altar.

Here my thoughts go back to the image of a Mass celebrated on the back of a Humvee in a combat zone. With their sacrifices and vigil upon the battlefield for the moment behind them, and mindful of their own weaknesses and mortality and of those who have lost their life, those participating humbly approach Christ’s sacrifice upon Calvary, which is present in every Mass. It is this disposition that helps make the celebration of a Mass of any rite truly reverent.

Let us thank God for diverse ways he gives us to take part in the heavenly liturgy, whether the ordinary or the extraordinary form or one of the rites of the Eastern Church. May they never be a source of tension among us nor the cause of harm to our unity as the people of God.

The science of photography, even before it went digital, has always intrigued me. But nearly 300 years before the first photograph was taken and developed in 1826, we have record of an image of rich color and great detail that developed upon the unlikely photographic film of a poor Mexican peasant’s cloak woven of coarse plant fibers. Capturing the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego in 1531, this miraculous image is not so much a photograph as it is a presence. In contemplating God’s living photograph of their Heavenly Mother, a people of great diversity and culture came to recognize themselves as brothers and sisters and in unity to call God their Father. More than ever, with such growing division in our country today, we should have recourse to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Far too many think that devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is but for the Hispanic community alone; however, nothing could be further from the truth. It seems no coincidence that Guadalupe marks the geographical center of the Americas. For good reason then did the Church declare her the Patroness of the Americas and offer to us her feast day to be celebrated as a continent on Dec. 12.

So I was particularly encouraged by the news last month that the Knights of Columbus, during their annual convention in Denver, had announced a new nationwide Marian prayer program dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Knights also reflected upon their fraternal mission that from their founding in 1882 has helped to serve the needs of migrant people wherever they may be. And so I commend the Knights for the courage to take up a subject that sadly divides so many Catholics today: immigration.

Of particular note during their convention was the address of Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gómez on immigration. His talk and the one he delivered a week later to the Napa Institute are very helpful in better understanding the consistent teaching of the U.S. bishops on this difficult subject. I highly encourage you to reflect on his words, available at http://bit.ly/ABGomez-Knights and http://bit.ly/ABGomez-Napa.

As Archbishop Gomez points out, we are a nation of immigrants and above all a Church of immigrants. But, the Church also teaches that a nation has the right to control its borders and to consider various concerns such as the economy in its decisions. However, the Church also reminds us that we mustn’t exaggerate these concerns. Though we certainly do not condone breaking the law or circumventing the proper procedures for documenting one’s legal entry into the country, there are reasons why people enter illegally.

“Very few people ‘choose’ to leave their homelands,” Archbishop Gómez pointed out. “Emigration is almost always forced upon people by the dire conditions they face in their lives.” His question to all of us calls for honesty in answering, “What wouldn’t you do to provide for your loved ones? To feed hungry mouths? To give your children a better future?” Those we call “illegal,” he reminds us, “are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters—not much different from [ourselves].”

There is room for legitimate debate on comprehensive immigration reform—on how to fix a broken system and on how the undocumented can make restitution and legalize their status. But as Archbishop Gómez emphasizes, it is time to approach these questions not as Republicans or Democrats, conservative or liberal, but as Catholics. It is time for Catholics to cease “privatizing” their faith and to be witnesses of the fullness of the Gospel truth.

I am not a politician, but as a pastor I must emphasize that we have but one true homeland whose citizenship we should seek residency and but one language that we should all strive to be fluent in: the language of faith.

Because Our Lady of Guadalupe appears to us as both an expectant mother as well as a person of mixed race—a mestiza, an outcast—we see in her an image also of those that Sacred Scripture call us to be particularly mindful of: the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner (cf. Exodus 20-22). The new widows and orphans of our day are those pregnant women whose boyfriends or husbands have abandoned them and their responsibility to the life they helped to conceive. And the foreigners roofing our storm-damaged houses, working our fields, are they not like the mestizos of that time who were ostracized as a stranger to both the indigenous people and colonial population alike?

As St. Juan Diego stood before the Church in the person of Friar Juan de Zumárraga, concealing within his cloak the gift of a mother’s love, so I believe the foreigner stands before all of us concealing this same mother’s love behind a shirt stained with the sweat and soil of his labors for a family he left behind to support. We need to remember that the citizenship we seek in heaven requires a particular visa stamp in this life: “For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome . . . as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me” (Matthew 25:35-40).

I can think of no better book to recommend to gain a greater appreciation for the significance of this apparition than Our Lady of Guadalupe—Mother of the Civilization of Love (Doubleday, 2009) by Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, and Monsignor Eduardo Chávez, postulator for the cause of St. Juan Diego. I pray you can read this book as well as the talks of Archbishop Gómez.

In closing I would ask that everyone consider placing in their home an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as well as the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to reflect well upon their message of love and mercy.

Real baseball fans know the importance of the “dog days” of summer, the 40-day period ending in August that typically marks the hottest and most sultry days of the year. It’s during this time that teams either renew their passion for the game or succumb to the fatigue of a long season intensified by the heat and humidity.

But the teams that advance into the playoffs (like my St. Louis Cardinals always do) embrace the struggle and use it to strengthen and form themselves into a championship team. That’s also true in the spiritual life.

It’s said that if not for the weather, most people would have difficulty initiating a conversation. It’s the same with our trials and sufferings: without them many people might neglect their relationship with God. This isn’t to suggest God annoys us into praying—far from it. God wants us only to be filled with his love and peace and especially to share it with others, even when our crosses are heavy and we’re tempted to despair. We would do well to reflect often upon the invitation of Christ, “Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you . . .” (Matthew 11:28).

As a priest for more than 25 years, I’ve learned that the easiest way to lose peace and joy of heart is not to be thankful, especially for our crosses. I am reminded of the words of St. Basil, who said, “Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.” When we give thanks to God, our struggles and crosses can be a source of abundance that drives away the hunger of our soul and that of others.

I always recall this lesson when a new school year approaches, and I hear children bemoaning the end of summer vacation. Yet without the classroom and the struggle that comes with learning, we would remain limited in our capacity to receive what the future offers.

When properly observed, the Church calendar, with its seasons and its many memorials, feast days, and solemnities, can serve as a classroom of education and refreshment for the soul that helps us navigate the trials of life. During the period of time the Church calls ordinary, between the end of Easter and the beginning of Advent, we are blessed to have a number of days dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, who especially longs to refresh our tired souls with the life-giving waters of her Son.

In the upcoming weeks we will be blessed with three such days: the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Aug. 15, followed by the Memorial of her Queenship on Aug. 22, and on Sept. 8 the celebration of her birth and the 23rd birthday of our diocese. Sept. 8 is the day Archbishop Charles J. Chaput will be installed as the new shepherd of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It also marks the beginning of a new chapter in the life of Cardinal Justin Rigali and the Diocese of Knoxville.

As many of you know, my dear friend Cardinal Rigali submitted his letter of retirement last year to the Holy Father on the occasion of his 75th birthday, as required by Church law. With the announcement on July 19 of the appointment of Archbishop Chaput as his successor, I am pleased to announce that Cardinal Rigali will reside with us in the Diocese of Knoxville, at least when he is not in Rome, working with the Congregation of Bishops and other congregations. As far as I know, Cardinal Rigali will be the first cardinal ever to reside in the southeastern United States, yet another blessing for us to be thankful for.

In my next column I hope to share with you the exciting news of the creation of a new foundation. With the pending sale of Mercy Health Partners, we have recognized the need for a foundation that will continue the spiritual and corporal works of mercy that the Sisters of Mercy have so faithfully provided for 81 years. It is these works of mercy that help refresh those impoverished in body and soul.

As we seek ways to refresh ourselves from the unrelenting heat, may we also seek the refreshment only God can give when we experience the “dog days” of life. Aided by Our Blessed Mother and the angels and saints, in a spirit of thanksgiving, may we all be able to pray with St. Paul in the final inning of life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).

And with your prayers, perhaps the St. Louis Cardinals will go all the way to a World Series win!

The world didn’t end May 21 as some had predicted. Personally, I was worried it might until Matt Holliday’s eighth-inning two-run homer broke a scoreless tie and led my St. Louis Cardinals to a shutout win against the Kansas City Royals that day.

Humor aside, it seems lately that I cannot change the channel from baseball to the news without groaning “not again,” as yet another story of natural or man-made catastrophe makes the headlines.

But out of these tragedies we hear stories of heroism and of neighbors helping neighbors, of strangers helping strangers. In the midst of ruin and sorrow, people are experiencing the coming of Christ in others.

It is hard to look back on the past months without asking ourselves, “Is this the beginning of the end times?” Who can forget the horrible images of apocalyptic scale from the earthquake and tsunamis in Japan or the ravages of so many tornados. Here, I particularly think of all who suffered such terrible loss in Greeneville and Cleveland, in Birmingham, Ala., and in Joplin, Mo., in Bishop James V. Johnston Jr.’s diocese. Our heartfelt prayers go out to them.

Catastrophes know no boundaries, and no part of the world seems untouched recently. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers, like slow-moving tsunamis, continue to flood and submerge farmland and towns. Much of China is also suffering record flooding, and an immense volcanic eruption in Chile fills the skies with thick ash clouds. A super-toxic E. coli outbreak in Europe, like the raging wildfires in Arizona, spreads almost unchecked, defying even the best scientific efforts to contain and extinguish the deadly pathogen.

Wars and civil strife have erupted in various countries, and Christian minority populations abroad are brutally persecuted and churches bombed. Fear of nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue nations and terrorists creates national security concerns, and many wonder whether the economy will collapse. Evil is called good, and good evil (cf. Isaiah 5:20), even in our schools, and the addition of a record heat wave only adds to our general discomfort.

And then there are the personal apocalypses of a number of public figures, whose scandalous behavior has destroyed not only their reputations and careers but also their marriages and family life. Especially in the media there seems to be an almost perverse voyeuristic pleasure in watching others exposed to judgment. Perhaps this same attraction lies in part behind the psychology of apocalyptic speculation and so-called “rapture” scenarios that even Protestant theologians can’t agree on.

The apocalyptic passages and books of the Bible can be especially difficult to understand. When the Apostle Philip asked the Ethiopian official who was reading Scripture, “Do you understand what you are reading?” he responded, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:31). The Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is our sure guide.

Certainly we must be ready, watching and praying, for Christ reminds us that he will come when we least expect (Matthew 24:44). But so many people focus on the “when” that they miss his presence now. I think this is the point Christ is making after his long discourse on the end times.

In the final judgment (Matthew 25:31-46), Christ tells us that those who will “inherit the kingdom” and be called “blessed of my Father” are those who fed him and gave him drink, who welcomed him in the stranger, and who clothed and visited him when helping those who are sick and imprisoned. In doing it to “the least of these,” they will not have missed the coming of Jesus. But those who have neglected “the least of these” will be the “cursed” ones,” for they will have missed his coming among them.

There’s nothing like a front-row seat. Although I wasn’t in the front row for the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, I sure felt as though I was. From my seat I was able to overlook the vast crowd, estimated at more than 1.5 million, who filled St. Peter’s Square and the length of the Via della Conciliazione and beyond. Given my view, I felt I had a glimpse of St. John’s heavenly vision, when he beheld “a great multitude which no man could number, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” standing before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9).

This incredible, beautiful image of the universal Church became even more personal for me and for us as a diocese two days later. On May 3 I received the decree signed by Cardinal Antonio Llovera, Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, declaring Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Chattanooga a minor basilica. This honor has been extended to fewer than 70 churches in the United States, and the church is Tennessee’s first basilica.

With this recognition from the Church, the basilica shares a special dignity and connection with the papal basilicas of Rome, particularly the pope’s cathedral church, St. John Lateran. Properly speaking, the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Chattanooga is now the pope’s church. In other words, Pope Benedict XVI has a home away from home, and the universal Church gains a historical as well as spiritual center of prayer and pilgrimage.

The basilica is not just a historical building but also a place of memory. It reminds us of God’s powerful presence in our history and of the faith of those who have labored to build up the local Church. It is a visible sign of God’s work in the midst of our diocese and in our lives. But it also reminds us that we must continue to labor with the bricks and mortar of our faith and works in order to further build up the body of Christ.

A basilica is a privileged place of encounter with the Lord. When we make a pilgrimage to a basilica, it is a sign of our life and the goal of our journey: heaven. A pilgrimage helps us better understand that we are created not merely to live and die but rather to live and triumph over death through the cross of Christ. It helps us long for the tender and loving arms of Holy Mother Church who brings us to the Father who is “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4).

It is especially appropriate that Father George Schmidt is now rector of the basilica. His earthly pilgrimage has always been centered on this spiritual home. Sts. Peter and Paul is the church where he made his first Holy Communion, was confirmed, and in 1970 was ordained to the priesthood.

For the past 25 years he has served as its pastor, and as the basilica’s rector he will bear the title “Very Reverend.” Sts. Peter and Paul is one of the mother parishes of our diocese, and it is wonderfully coincidental that the declaration of the pope’s decision was made on Father Schmidt’s mother’s birthday. God’s ways are indeed mysterious.

The first words spoken by the newly elected Pope John Paul II in 1978—“Be not afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ!”—are words we should recall as we step through the doors of the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul and of all Catholic churches, where our eucharistic Lord waits to greet us.

Of the many memories I have from my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, one remains particularly vivid: the image of a tiny infant in the loving arms of an elderly religious sister from an orphanage we visited in Bethlehem. I keep recalling this tender scene—like an icon that nourishes the faith of one who contemplates its sacred image—and the promise of Jesus that we celebrate at Easter and every Mass: “I will not leave you orphaned: I will come back to you” (John 14:18).

Illegitimacy is particularly taboo in the Arab world. Because of the stigma attached to children born out of wedlock and subsequently abandoned or orphaned, their adoption is rare. There are several reasons for this.

I learned that adoption of Muslim children by non-Muslims is strictly forbidden by sharia law. I also learned that adoption is highly commended in the Quran, which even specifies that the adopted child keep the biological father’s surname. But because a father has shamed his name by fathering a child out of wedlock, the child also carries the stigma of his offense. The shame brought to the unwed mother’s family is also considered very grave.

Since the late 19th century an orphanage in Bethlehem, operated by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, has been a refuge for those who have been abandoned and orphaned. Recalling the nativity of Our Lord, who was born in a cave because there was no room in the inn, the Sisters named the orphanage the Crèche, where those who have been rejected by the “inn” of society are always welcome (cf. Luke 2:7).

The orphanage is run by Sister Sophie and her sisters as part of Holy Family Hospital, under the auspices of the Knights of Malta. Although Sister Sophie is elderly, she has an aura of youthfulness, which one notices as she goes about caring for these infants, a number of whom have birth defects.

As I watched her pick up one such child and rock him gently in her arms, I couldn’t help but think of what a beautiful image of the Church I was beholding. Though she is old, she is forever youthful, caring, and nurturing. The Church rejects no one and especially welcomes those crippled by sin and neglect.

But this image of the Church extends also to those from our pilgrimage group who spontaneously sat down and started to play with the toddlers, entertaining them with games of patty-cake and peek-a-boo. Others took turns holding the infants, competing with one another to see who could elicit a bigger smile or giggle from them. I could almost hear the words of Jesus—“Let the children come to me . . .” and “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me” (Matthew 19:14, 18:5).

Watching this reminded me of how great is the gift of our redemption. Like these children who bore the shame of their parents and were subject to the harsh reality of the law they were born into, we once were orphaned because of the shame of the sin of our father Adam. But because Christ took upon himself the shame of our sin and suffered its penalty upon the cross, he won for us our adoption as sons and daughters of God. In his name we now have life (cf. John 20:31).

As St. Paul reminds us, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:5-6).

All of this filled my mind as we stopped in Emmaus not far from Jerusalem, where we celebrated Mass in the open-air ruins of a third-century basilica. Its site is believed to be the place where after his resurrection Jesus revealed himself in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:13-35). Those who had despaired and felt orphaned by his crucifixion then rejoiced because they had encountered him in the Eucharist as we do at every Mass.

I will carry these memories from our pilgrimage in my heart through Holy Week and into the Easter season and beyond. I ask you to keep Sister Sophie and her sisters and all the orphans they care for in your prayers. I also ask you to pray for Sandi Davidson of Catholic Charities of East Tennessee and her efforts to provide adoption services.

In our preparation for the great celebration of the resurrection of Our Lord this Easter, let us endeavor to open our hearts in a greater way to Christ and to Holy Mother Church. But let us also strive to make an orphanage in our heart to all who feel rejected and lonely in this life.