“Remember me . . .” These words recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke (23:42) begin the last prayer of a condemned and dying man—the Good Thief. Addressed to Jesus, who was crucified next to him on Calvary, this prayer was certainly his last, and it may have been his first. But God’s mercy is so rich that with those simple but sincere words, the thief received infinitely more in his conversion than he could ever have stolen in his lifetime.

I couldn’t help but think of these words of Dismas, the Good Thief, as I finished a pastoral visit to the Morgan County Correctional Complex last month. The humble men Father Michael Sweeney, Deacon Norm Amero, Sean Driscoll, Paul Beanblossom, John Cross, and I met that day asked only one thing: to be remembered.

Many movies have been made about the life of Christ, but the 1927 silent film The King of Kings made a great impact on me, especially two of its significant scenes.

The first depicts a group of grieving men and women, mourning Christ as he carries his cross to Calvary. But their mourning suddenly turns to anger, as the two thieves carrying their own crosses behind Christ come into view. In striking contrast to their earlier demeanor, these same people begin hurling both insults and garbage at the thieves.

The second scene shows the grieving mother of Dismas standing beneath the cross of her son. The caption accompanying the image of this silent film has the anguished mother saying, “He was my son.” At these words, Mary leaves her place beneath the cross of Christ, walks over to the woman, and embraces her.

These scenes are a powerful reminder of how we must all be the face of Jesus, not only to those we feel deserve mercy but also to those the world believes are undeserving. We can at times be tempted to act like the unmerciful servant in the Gospel parable who has been forgiven the greater debt but who nonetheless turns on someone who owes a far lesser debt (Matthew 18:23). We can be tempted to ignore the pain of the imprisoned and their families, or we can, like Mary, stand beneath their cross to offer consolation and help. Is this not the heart of the works of mercy?

We mustn’t overlook the fact that many today are imprisoned spiritually by sins that are sometimes far worse than the offenses that have led others to be physically incarcerated. As with the debtor in the parable of the unmerciful servant whose family was also threatened with imprisonment, people’s attachments and addictions can also create a horrible imprisonment for their family members.

Still others, suffering from illness or old age, can experience a kind of physical imprisonment that calls no less for our help. Our works of mercy must be both corporal and spiritual if we are not to neglect any of the forms of imprisonment.

It is also good for us to remember that because of sin, we all deserve punishment. Christ was crucified between two thieves to show us the two ways of responding to God’s mercy. One thief wanted to be taken down from his cross and rejected the Divine Mercy, but the other accepted his place on the cross and embraced what the other had rejected. But how few today take advantage of those healing words of Christ, not unlike those spoken to the Good Thief, which we hear pronounced in the confessional: “Your sins are forgiven.”

I think it is especially profound that before receiving Holy Communion in some Eastern Catholic Churches, everyone repeats aloud the words of the Good Thief: “Remember me, O Lord, in your kingdom . . .”

I am so grateful to those whose works of mercy include visiting the imprisoned. Although many people routinely do so, like those who accompanied me last month during my pastoral visit to the prison in Wartburg, I would also like to thank Father Jim Harvey in Crossville, Deacon Tom McConnell in Chattanooga, and Deacon Mark White in Fairfield Glade for their many years of tirelessly reaching out to the imprisoned and those on death row. Such efforts help to bring Christ to the “upper room” of those living behind barred doors (cf. John 20:19).

“You ought to be dead.” Not a day has gone by since my near-death experience last August when I haven’t recalled those words of my doctor, spoken in the blunt manner doctors are sometimes known for. He immediately followed those words with the only explanation he could come up with for my survival, a reason that ought to have been more obvious to me than to him: “I can’t explain it,” he said, “except for the power of prayer.”

Does God hear our prayers, and can he bring good out of suffering and tragedy? Absolutely. And if I needed to be persuaded of this before, I sure didn’t need it after my hospitalization.

Perhaps because I consider Pope John Paul II to be my spiritual mentor, I see in a very humble way a certain parallel between my near-death experience and the assassination attempt on his life in 1981. John Paul II saw his miraculous survival as a mystery of the “Divine Mercy,” and I believe that was also the case for me. Like the bullet that miraculously zigzagged around every major organ in John Paul II’s body, a number of zigzagged events undoubtedly contributed to my survival.

It was May 13 when John Paul II was shot, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Mother in Fatima in 1917. It was the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15 when I was hospitalized in such dire straits last year. John Paul II attributed the altered path of the bullet to Our Lady, and I can now see how the Mother of Mercy’s maternal arm drew me away from danger at all the right moments.

I had traveled to Fort Lauderdale to see my dear friend, retired Maronite Archbishop Francis Zayek. He was gravely ill and preparing to return to Lebanon. My spur-of-the-moment decision to visit him placed me within two and half minutes of the only hospital in the area that had the necessary equipment, trained physicians, and technicians to treat the condition I had suffered as the result of an abscessed tooth, which led to diabetic ketoacidosis and cardiogenic shock. It wasn’t even minutes that put me within the reach of death but seconds.

On hand were all the right doctors, nurses, and technicians, but even then, they did not expect me to pull through. I know that as word quickly spread of my hospitalization, so many of you dropped to your knees and prayed fervently for me. For your prayers and sacrifices on my behalf, I am forever grateful.

When John Paul II later visited his would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca, in jail, Agca asked him, “So why aren’t you dead?” As John Paul II carried those words with him for the rest of his life, so I shall also carry those words of my doctor: “You ought to be dead.”

On Aug. 22, as I was being driven to the airport for my medical flight back to Knoxville, Father David Boettner and Deacon Sean Smith, who were at my bedside during my hospitalization and were accompanying me home, looked up above the airport entrance and saw the word Jesus written across the sky. As hard as we searched, we couldn’t see the airplane we supposed had written those letters in the sky. It was the memorial of the Queenship of Mary, and I had been given another marvelous sign of the Divine Mercy in my life. I felt as though Our Lady had written that name above all names in the sky so I would never forget that Jesus had a plan he expected me to fulfill.

Why did I survive? As a bishop, a successor of the Apostles, I feel I have been called in a more intense way to be an apostle of prayer, having been the miraculous beneficiary of so many prayers. I also have come to understand that my sufferings were the key that unlocked doors not only in my life but also for this diocese that otherwise might not have opened.

The “mystery of Mercy” I experienced last year prepared the way for the new convent of the Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich. The loving arm of Mary that saved me from death has grown into an extension of her embrace with the establishment of another religious order in our diocese, the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary. These and so many other things that have transpired in the past year have convinced me that sufferings have purpose.

Since that most special day of Aug. 15, I am reminded every time I look at a crucifix that in our earthly life we do not share so much in the resurrection of Christ as we do in his sufferings upon the cross. But because Christ redeemed suffering by experiencing all our earthly pain in his own body, I know that suffering has meaning and purpose.

I pray none of us will lose sight of this most important lesson. God does bring good out of our sufferings and the tragedies of life.

Message to Young Adults in their 20s & 30s From Bishop Stika from Deacon Patrick Murphy-Racey on Vimeo.

Bishop Richard Stika’s 2010 Baseball Message from Deacon Patrick Murphy-Racey on Vimeo.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel about the necessity of becoming as little children (18:3). I must admit, though, I sometimes find myself agreeing with the artist Pablo Picasso, who said, “It takes a long time to become young.” But I hope to receive a lesson on this over the course of the next two weeks, when I will be visited by eight of my nephews and nieces.

Pope John Paul II is remembered as the pope of the youth, among many other things, and he often referred to them as a “special treasure” of the Church. He noted that as we get older, it’s not uncommon for us look down on youth and perhaps become overly critical of them. But this mindset limits us to a “ministry to youth” rather than also emphasizing a “ministry of the youth.”

Pope John Paul II made this point during his 1999 visit to St. Louis, which I helped coordinate. During his address to the youth at the Kiel Center, where more than 20,000 people had gathered, he said something I’ll never forget: “Jesus does not have ‘contempt for your youth.’ He does not set you aside for a later time when you will be older and your training will be complete. Your training will never be finished. Christians are always in training. You are ready for what Christ wants of you now” (Jan. 26, 1999).

The youth are not the Church of the future but of the present. The rich young man who came to Christ with the question “What must I do?” (cf. Mark 10:17) turned away from Christ because of his many material possessions. But it was the treasure of his youth that first led him to Christ. The youth of today seek Christ with the same energy and the same questions: What must I do in life? and What brings meaning and fulfillment?

“Ministry to the youth” is a reminder that Jesus is in conversation with them, as he was with the rich young man. “Ministry of the youth” is the sharing of their energy for Christ with others, especially with those whose energy for holiness has waned under life’s hardships. This is why I love being surrounded by our youth and visiting our schools and hanging out with them. They show me God’s goodness and remind me that God asks us anew each day to “follow me” (cf. Mark 10:21).

The liturgical calendar and our celebrations of the saints can help us remember that the history of the Church is a history of youth because the Church is eternally young. I think of some of those very young saints whose love and energy for life did not deter them from expressing it sacrificially, as did St. Maria Goretti, St. Tarcisius, and St. Agnes, to mention just a few.

A modern-day saint I think we should especially look to is Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. Although he lived only 24 years, his energy for holiness and joy continues to minister to countless people. Pope John Paul II called him a “man of the beatitudes,” and his sister, Luciana, said, “He represented the finest in Christian youth: pure, happy, enthusiastic about everything that is good and beautiful.” This is the ministry that is particular to our youth.

I am very grateful to those in our parishes and schools who work so tirelessly with our youth and young adults, helping them recognize their place within God’s loving plan. I would also like to thank Al Forsythe and Karen Byrne of our diocesan Youth and Young Adult Ministry as well as Lourdes Garza and Blanca Primm for their Hispanic Ministry youth program. I offer special thanks as well to Marian Christiana in Chattanooga for her work as diocesan coordinator of Marriage Preparation and Enrichment.

These and many others remind me of that most memorable visit of John Paul II to St. Louis, when he reached out to the youth in such a masterly fashion, challenging them to realize their place, here and now, within the Church.

He reminded them, as I do now, that “training in devotion” includes frequent reception of the Eucharist and recourse to the sacrament of reconciliation.

Our youth thrive from training that perfects their gifts and directs their energy, both physical and spiritual. School activities and programs are one way of maturing and perfecting the gifts of mind and body. But I want to especially challenge all of you, particularly our youth, to participate in your parish community and become, like Blessed Giorgio, “an explosion of joy.”

History fascinates me, and every year as Independence Day approaches, my thoughts turn to the events that formed us as a nation. Of course, I love to celebrate baseball and hotdogs—two things that have come to define us as Americans—but there is something unique about our country and our liberty that sets us apart as a nation.

The first visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in 1979 is etched in my memory. I had recently graduated from St. Louis University and was discerning God’s calling to the priesthood. I could not have imagined then that in 20 years’ time I would be in charge of coordinating the pope’s last visit to the United States, when he came to St. Louis in 1999.

I still recall the words of John Paul II when he visited Ellis Island, standing beneath the Statue of Liberty where these words are inscribed:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Commenting on this great symbol of our nation and these words of hope, John Paul II challenged us not to forget that without the truth that comes from God alone, liberty loses its foundation—and that it is Christ who truly sets us free (cf. John 8:32).

Traveling to Philadelphia that same day, John Paul II highlighted the words of our Declaration of Independence, which he called a most “remarkable document” in the history of man: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Although this is the most commonly quoted part of the Declaration, I am struck by the words it closes with, expressing the commitment of the 39 men whose signatures would immediately follow: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Unfortunately, our nation has not always been committed to applying these rights to all people. Two examples in our history are the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and Roe v. Wade in 1973. As any student of history can see, some of the most tragic events in the world have been preceded by an abandonment of the sacred truths about man and his relationship with God. Sadly, the Civil War, the most costly war in our nation’s history, with more casualties than all of our other wars put together, followed in the wake of the first court decision. How I pray that we will be spared a similar fate of deadly division as a result of the second court decision.

In one of the great ironies of history, Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate forces during the Civil War, first turned down an offer extended by President Lincoln to command the Union Army. Two years later, on July 4, 1863, General Lee withdrew his forces from Gettysburg, following the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Many saw in this event what they believed was a divine sign that our nation would once again be united.

But though at this time of year we celebrate the struggles and sacrifices, both political and of the battlefield, that have helped preserve our freedoms, we mustn’t forget that liberty is above all spiritual and involves a constant struggle against what truly enslaves: sin.

On those Sundays of the Fourth of July weekend when we often close Mass with the hymn “America, the Beautiful,” I try to make a special prayer of one particular verse, when we sing, “America! America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!” I pray also that all of us may experience the freedom that best helps us to be the face of Jesus.

Women religious have always played an essential role in the Church’s growth and missionary endeavors. One need only think of the many sacrifices and contributions of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas (South Central Community) and the creation of St. Mary’s Hospital in 1930. Today St. Mary’s Health System treats more than 1 million patients a year.

I am also thinking of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus “Ad Gentes” who minister so effectively to our Hispanic brothers and sisters. I am likewise grateful to the many other women religious whose countless contributions have helped our diocese become what it is today.

With this in mind, I am greatly pleased to welcome The Evangelizing Sisters of Mary, first founded in Northeast Uganda, to our diocese. They bring their charism for catechetical instruction, teaching, health care, and social ministry to our diocese. Their main charism, though, is planting the Church among people who do yet believe in Christ and to bring the Church to its full development where it is already growing. We will initially be joined by three sisters: Sister Maureen Ouman and Sister Claudia Aya, who will teach at Sacred Heart Cathedral School, and Sister Dorothy Njala, who will assist at Catholic Charities.

As you will remember, last year our diocese was blessed to welcome another order, the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich. These sisters, in addition to their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, also profess a fourth vow, one of service, which is lived out through the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Sister Maria Lin Pacold, who has been here since the East Tennessee foundation was formed, recently departed for Tulsa, Okla., in order to complete her medical residency training. I will greatly miss her, but I am pleased to welcome in her place Sister Mary Elizabeth Ann McCullough, who joins us from Portland, Ore.

Sister Mary Timothea Elliott, RSM, recently joined us from Denver after many years teaching at Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary, where she was the founding chair of the Scripture department. She was also one of the seven founding sisters of her order and is therefore referred to as “Mother” within her order. Sister has a doctorate in sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and is a scholar in ancient and modern languages. She will be a great blessing to us as diocesan director of the Christian Formation Office.

We are also blessed by the growing presence in our diocese of the Dominican Sisters of the St. Cecilia Congregation, whose motherhouse is in Nashville. They have been a visible presence in East Tennessee for 60 years, since they first began assisting at St. Mary School in Oak Ridge, and on June 25 the congregation will celebrate its  150th anniversary. The sisters have also assisted at Knoxville Catholic High School since 2005 and will begin serving at Notre Dame High School in Chattanooga and at St. Joseph School this coming fall. The congregation has doubled in size over the past two decades, to more than 250 sisters, which is a wonderful sign of hope and blessing to the Church.

Last year we were most blessed to receive a special gift from outside our diocese that made possible the purchase of a convent home near my residence for the Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich. This outside party once again has blessed us with a special gift in honor of Justin Cardinal Rigali and has permitted the diocese to purchase a house that will serve as my new residence. This is providential, as the Sisters of Mercy, who expect more sisters to arrive soon to help with their work here, will move into my larger former residence. This will allow the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary to move into the Sisters of Mercy’s vacated convent home.

A bishop’s residence is far more than simply a home. It’s a center of diocesan hospitality as an inviting expression of the “Father’s house.” It’s a place where the bishop can gather with not only his priests and with civil and religious leaders from the community but also with members of his flock and parish leadership teams. It is, as President Andrew Jackson once said of the White House, the “people’s house.” But it’s also a place where the welcoming message of the Gospel is shared. Its chapel is an expression of the cathedral church and an intimate place of prayer and the sacraments, where friendships unite around the “breaking of bread.” This home will also be a place where Cardinal Rigali, in future years, will spend a significant amount of time.

When I reflect on my youth and how my own calling to the priesthood was helped and strengthened by the witness, prayers, and sacrifices of consecrated religious sisters, I feel truly humbled and grateful. Please join me in thanking Our Lord for the gift of so many vocations and for those whose lives are dedicated to being a gift to the Church and to the priesthood.

One of the first highlights of our pilgrimage was our visit to the monastery of Jasna Góra, where the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is enshrined. As I said in my last column, I am especially drawn to this image of Our Lady holding the child Jesus. Eastern Catholics have a term for icons in which Mary points to Jesus, as she does in this icon, that means “one who shows the way.” I think of this when I hear the motherly voice of my GPS, who directs me along my travels, especially where the roads are unfamiliar.

When Pope John Paul II visited this shrine, he used to say, “I have come to listen to the heartbeat of my Mother.” If we stay close to the heartbeat of our Mother, we will never lose our way.

Pilgrimages not only help to reorient our steps toward the infinite but also help us to re-consecrate places of horrible desecration and sin. One such place, which John Paul II called the “Golgotha of the contemporary world,” was the Auschwitz death camp. The joyful mood of our pilgrimage quickly became somber and silent as the ordinary sites along our route of travel gave way to the entrance of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people perished during the Holocaust.

As we made our solemn procession through the camp, we paused where saint and martyr Father Maximilian Kolbe willingly took the place of one of 10 men condemned to death by starvation. Knowing their great fear, St. Maximilian wanted to accompany them in their final journey to “show them the way” he had learned from his Mother, whom he called the Immaculata. In the starvation bunker with the other condemned men, he preached his finest homily during the liturgy of his martyrdom.

As we departed this place of such extraordinary suffering and death, I was struck by how quickly its barbed-wire confines faded from view as we again returned to ordinary surroundings. But isn’t it often true that evil lies alongside the ordinary and frequently goes unnoticed or ignored?

Isn’t this the familiar story of the beaten and stripped man, left half dead and ignored along the roadside of history, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)?

Just think about how many drive by one of our abortion clinics in Knoxville every day without realizing the evil occurring there or maybe choosing not to notice.

And what about the many other terrible wrongs, such as slavery and the long struggle to obtain civil rights, the injustices against Native Americans, and the mean-spirited bashing of immigrants, to whom we all bear a particular resemblance as we journey to our true homeland?

After such an emotional experience in Auschwitz, we visited the birthplace of John Paul II in Wadowice. A personal blessing for me was to be able to lower my pectoral cross into the waters of the baptismal font of the church where John Paul II had been baptized. But the highlight of our pilgrimage was our visit to an orphanage run by religious sisters in the building that had once been John Paul II’s preschool. As the children, some of whom were physically or mentally handicapped, broke into the traditional Polish children’s songs my mom and her sisters used to sing, I was overwhelmed by these orphans’ simple joy.

Another blessing for me occurred during our visit to Kraków, when I was able to meet with Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Kraków, who had been Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary before and after his election to the papacy. After John Paul II’s death, he wrote of his experiences in the book A Life with Karol (Doubleday, 2008). It is a fascinating story of a man and pope who stayed close to his Mother’s heartbeat and followed Our Lord to his true homeland and ours.

While in Kraków, we also visited the church where St. Faustina is buried. As many of you know, my episcopal motto is Iesu confido in te: “Jesus, I trust in you,” the words Jesus directed St. Faustina to have written beneath the image of his Divine Mercy.

These words are so important to recall because we are all foreigners traveling on a road where the only passport of real value is the love of the Good Samaritan and the one language we need to know is the language of faith.

As a young boy attending the church and school of the Epiphany of Our Lord in South St. Louis, I still recall the ceremonies and processions, with the statue of Mary and everyone singing the hymn, “Bring Flowers of the Fairest,” with its refrain, “O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today! Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May . . .”

All this came back to me again this past week as part of a pilgrimage to Poland’s famous shrine, Jasna Gora (literally, “bright mount”), where the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is enshrined. Icons are one of the great gifts of our faith and proclaim in line and color what Scripture communicates by words.

I have always been drawn to this image of Our Heavenly Mother holding the child Jesus. The reason for this attraction has little to do with the artistic quality of the image.

The dark facial features of Mary in this icon have caused many to refer to her as the “Black Madonna of Czestochowa.” Her right cheek was scarred by the desecration of an invading soldier’s sword nearly 600 years ago, leaving two deep furrows that almost give the appearance of tears. Though her expression looks like one of sorrow, she seems to beckon those who contemplate her gaze to make a complete offering of themselves to her. But she seems especially to desire our hardships and sorrows, which she takes and hides within her dark blue robe patterned with golden flowers.

Having then purified our offering with her maternal tears and care, she seems to offer, with a gesture of her right hand, everything to Christ. In turn, with his right hand raised, Christ seems to bless the offering from his mother, while embracing the Book of Gospels in the other.

When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to Poland after being elected pope, he returned to Jasna Gora to thank Our Lady of Czestochowa and to remind his countrymen and the entire world of Mary’s maternal love and care for each one of us. He reminded them of the birth of the Church at Pentecost in the Upper Room, where the Apostles had gathered in prayer with Mary. He reminded them that the Church is our spiritual Mother in the likeness of the one who is also the Mother of God. And finally he called us to consecrate ourselves to her and often to visit that Upper Room of prayer with Mary.

In contemplating this icon, which meant so much to Pope John Paul II, we can better appreciate his apostolic motto, Totus tuus, which is the beginning of the prayer of St. Louis De Montfort: “I am all yours, and all that I have belongs to you, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, your most holy Mother.”

But any discussion of the Blessed Mother would be incomplete if we failed to mention the importance of the rosary, the great school of Mary, through which we contemplate with her the face of Christ.

To highlight but one of the mysteries of the rosary—the finding of Jesus in the temple—we learn something of the broader maternal vocation of Mary in the reply of Jesus to his mother: “Why did you search for me? Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).

Jesus was where he was supposed to be—in his Father’s house. But as Mother of the Church, Mary goes in search of each of her children wounded by sin in order to help lead them to the Father’s house, most especially when they have lost their way in life and despair of hope.

As we approach the great Solemnity of Pentecost, let us recall and heed the words of Mary at the wedding feast at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5).