Requiem Mass for the Departed Brethren of the SSC *

Mosaic of Crucifixion
National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows
Belleville, Illinois

Given at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, Belleville, Illinois

What a great privilege it is to join in the offering of Requiem Mass for the repose of the souls of our departed brethren in the Society of the Holy Cross! An integral component of our vocation as Catholic priests is the offering of the Holy Sacrifice for both the living and the dead. Likewise, we do well to teach those committed to our spiritual care the duty and joy of praying for the souls of the faithful departed.

This morning, I want to propose that our contemporary culture presents us with an opportune moment for preaching the Catholic doctrines of Purgatory and prayer for the dead. These doctrines contain a message of hope that people today are longing to hear. The time is ripe. But first, a few reflections on the nature and purpose of this Requiem Mass will help illustrate why this is so.

Let’s think for a moment about our relationships with those who have gone before us in this Society. Some of them are priests about whom we’ve read in the history books, like Lowder and Mackonochie. Others are priests we’ve known personally, who perhaps influenced us by their examples and teaching. Still others are priests whom we never knew at all. Regardless, we take this opportunity to offer our prayers that they may rest in peace until the Day of Resurrection.

Now, narrow the focus a bit and think specifically about those priests, now departed, who had the greatest influence on us while they were alive. We need not confine ourselves to priests of our Society. But let’s call to mind whomever it was whose example inspired us to consider a call to the priesthood. Or who mentored us at significant times in our discernment, formation, and training. Or who gave us the special words of support, advice, and encouragement that we particularly needed at some point. Perhaps some of these figures are still here with us in this earthly life, in which case we can certainly thank God for them, pray for them, and perhaps thank them personally. But as we get older, we find that more and more of them have joined the ranks of the faithful departed.

Now, as we think on them, I will venture with near certainty that two features stand out simultaneously in our memories. First is whatever it was that we found influential or inspirational about them: their learning, their wit, their compassion, or their dedication to their flock. In many cases, I daresay, they were men of genuine holiness. But second, and this is crucial, they were not without their faults and flaws! Perhaps they could be cranky or bad-tempered. Perhaps they were prone to excesses of one sort or another: food, drink, or worse. Like all of us, they had their besetting sins. Sometimes, indeed, that is precisely what makes our stories about them so entertaining!

So, at one and the same time, they were good and even holy men; and yet they were sinners. This dual reality sets the agenda for what we’re about this morning. We can almost imagine a covenant between the living and the dead members of our Society. They influenced and inspired us during their earthly lives with the vision of priesthood to which we found ourselves called. And in return for all they gave us, we fittingly offer two things on their behalf: first, our prayers for their souls to speed them on their journey into the fullness of God’s presence; and second, our perseverance in the priestly vocation to which their examples and guidance inspired us. We pray for their souls in the recognition that when they died God wasn’t yet finished with them – just as we hope that those who come after will pray for us. That is what this Requiem Mass is all about. And we do our best, with God’s help, to keep faith with our forebears by persevering in our priestly vocation. That is what this entire Synod, indeed the entire life of our Society, is all about.

Now, to return to my earlier point: today, the Catholic doctrines of Purgatory and Prayer for the Departed offer a message of hope that people in our culture desperately long to hear. An integral component of our perseverance in our priestly vocations will be regularly to offer Masses and prayers for the dead.

In my pastoral experience over the past twenty years or so, I’ve noticed two broad attitudes towards death and life after death among many of the people to whom I’ve ministered as they’ve either faced their own deaths or the deaths of their loved ones.

The first basic attitude might be called a functional atheism. It takes the view that this earthly life is all that there is, and once you’re dead, you’re dead. The light is extinguished; life is annihilated; all is darkness. A hundred years ago or so, people feared death because they feared hell. Today, few people seem to fear hell but plenty of people fear nonexistence.

Over and against functional atheism, the Catholic tradition affirms the reality of life after death. We pray for the faithful departed because we have the assurance that in Christ they are alive. That confident proclamation is good news that people today, especially the bereaved, need to hear, but so often don’t hear from those who have pastoral responsibility for them.

The second basic attitude is the diametric opposite of the first: what might be called a functional universalism. It cheerily affirms not only that our departed loved ones are still alive, but also that they’re already in heaven in the fullness of glory. From this basic attitude arises the enormous cultural pressure in a great many of our churches to turn funerals into those gaudy celebrations that have aptly been described as “premature canonization ceremonies.”

The difficulty with this second posture is that is subtly leads those who are bereaved into denial of the very real shortcomings, flaws, and sins of the departed. Again and again, I hear the bereaved say things like, “He must be in heaven because he was such a good person.” The irony is that when the departed was alive, this was often not what this person was saying about him. On the contrary, he was often a source of enormous irritation and exasperation to those around him.

Against functional universalism, the Catholic tradition affirms not only that hell is a very real possibility for those who knowingly, willing, and decisively reject God’s love and goodness, but also that when we die none of us is ready to see God face to face. With the exception of Our Lady, at the time of our departure we all have some way to go in the way of further purification and sanctification before we’re ready to enter into the fullness of God’s presence.

The good news is that we don’t have to deny the all-too-real shortcomings and flaws of the departed in order to entertain the hope that they’re ultimately destined for heaven. Instead we pray for them, humbly asking God, by the merits of Christ, to bring to perfection the good work that he began in them in this life.

In the 1930s and 40s, the British writer and anti-war activist Vera Brittain offered an interesting insight about comforting those who mourn. In the First World War, her fiancé, her brother, and two of her best friends were killed in the trenches – devastating losses, the emotional wounds of which she carried for the rest of her life.

When we encounter people who’ve experienced such losses, we often don’t know what to say; and we may well be tempted to think that there is nothing we can say. But in her 1942 book Humiliation with Honour, Vera Brittain registers her disagreement with those who say that mere words can never be much help: “The power of words,” she writes, “is greater than anyone can calculate. … The use of the right words at the right time can transform the existence of a man or woman from desolation to glory. But you may have to live a whole lifetime before you learn how to choose those words.”

I don't know about you, but I have certainly have not yet lived that whole lifetime! I have learned, however, that the one thing I can say that’s almost always pastorally helpful is: “Your loved one is in my prayers.” Better still, “I will remember him at Mass.” Or best of all, “I will say Mass for him.” Regardless of their personal beliefs, those recently bereaved are often touched, sometimes even deeply moved, when they hear that we’re praying for the one whom they’ve lost – perhaps because we’re offering them so much more than mere words.

So, today we keep faith with those who’ve gone before us in the Society of the Holy Cross – not only by offering this Requiem Mass for the repose of their souls, but also by rededicating ourselves to the priestly vocation they exemplified to us during their earthly life. And a key component of perseverance in our priestly vocations must always be offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead.

(*  Note: SSC stands for Societas Sanctae Crucis, Society of the Holy Cross.)

Feast of the Holy Cross (Sermon at the 10 am Mass)

The proper name of today’s Feast is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. In the year 326, in the newly Christian Roman Empire, the Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, had come to Jerusalem on a mission to locate the sites of Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher. She directed excavations at the place identified by local tradition; and, lo and behold, at the bottom of a cistern three crosses were found. The problem was that no one could tell which one was the Lord’s cross, and which two were the crosses of the thieves crucified with him.

At this point Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem intervened and proposed a solution. Crippled and sick people were brought to touch each of the three crosses. The one that produced miraculous healings was thus identified as the True Cross. Bishop Macarius then raised up the True Cross for all the people to see – and the Latin word verb to lift or raise up is exaltio. Hence the Exaltation of the Holy Cross really means the lifting or raising up of the Holy Cross. The paradox we celebrate today is the transformation of an instrument of shame and death into an effective sign of healing and life.

You may have noticed that following my name in print I often append the initials SSC. Occasionally, some have wondered if they stand for Saint Stephen’s Church – but, no, they’re actually the initials of the Latin name of the society of priests to which I belong, Societas Sanctae Crucis, the Society of the Holy Cross.

During the coming week, I’ll be traveling to St. Louis to attend the annual SSC Synod. This gathering is always held as near as possible to Holy Cross Day, the 14th of September. The Society of the Holy Cross originated in 1855 in the Church of England, when six priests met at a mission house in the Soho District of London to form as association for mutual support and encouragement, continuing priestly formation, practice of the spiritual disciplines, and the cultivation of personal holiness.

These men already knew well what it meant to take up the cross. They had already dedicated their lives and ministries to the Catholic revival in the Church of England. For this reason, they had already encountered hardship, privation, opposition, and costly personal sacrifices.

They found themselves excluded from the Church of England’s more comfortable livings. Instead, they had gone into the industrial slums of the English cities and had founded mission parishes in dangerous and squalid surroundings. Their efforts to reintroduce Catholic ritual and ceremonial into Anglican worship had drawn fierce opposition. Protestors occasionally disrupted their liturgies and sometimes riots even broke out in the streets around their churches. Their bishops often kept them at arm’s length and refused to visit their parishes out of disapproval of their ritual innovations.

The founders of the SSC understood that if they were to persevere in the face of such challenges, they needed to cultivate a systematic approach to the Christian life that would sustain and strengthen them in their work. Within a year of their founding, the SSC organized the first retreats held in the Church of England since the Reformation featuring extended periods of silence punctuated by spiritual addresses. Members of the Society took vows in which they committed themselves to a Rule of Life including daily Mass and daily recitation of the Divine Office.

These priests understood that to bear the cross that had been laid on their shoulders in the form of Catholic witness in the Church of England, they had to intentionally embrace a life of spiritual discipline and self-sacrifice. In this way, they would lift up the cross so that it might become a sign of healing and salvation in the lives of their flocks. So, to remind themselves of this dimension of their priestly vocation, they named their society after the Holy Cross.

The Feast of the Holy Cross reminds us that the same principle holds good for all Christians, not just for clerical members of a particular priestly society. All authentic Christian discipleship entails taking up the cross and following Jesus in one way or another.

This message is not particularly popular these days. Many people seem to want a version of Christianity that will meet their needs on their own terms – whether for spiritual comfort, aesthetic gratification, intellectual stimulation, or simply the fellowship of like minds and kindred spirits. But, as you’ve heard me say many times before, religious consumerism is the opposite of authentic Christian discipleship.

Every once in a while, someone comes into my office and tells me that they’re feeling spiritually dry and not getting anything much out of Sunday Mass anymore. My initial response is almost always to ask what else they’re doing to nurture their relationship with God the rest of the week. Are they setting aside a time for prayer every day? Are they reading any of the daily offices? Are they coming to any of the weekday Masses? Do they ever attend retreats or quiet days? How long has it been since they’ve made their confession?

It often seems to come as a surprise when I explain that the Anglo-Catholic way really comprises a complete package, of which these practices are integral components. While the Sunday Mass is the most important part of the package, it’s not fair to expect it to bear the weight of sustaining one’s spiritual life if one is neglecting all the other parts. The system is a comprehensive whole, and each part works best only when all the other parts are working as well. So, if you want to get more out of Sunday Mass, you need to put in more – and not just on Sundays but throughout the week as well.

At this point, the person sometimes protests. I’m already doing everything I can. My life is too difficult; I’m being pulled in too many different directions; there are too many demands on my time and attention. But that’s precisely the point. Already a cross is laid on your shoulders. The best way to find the strength to bear that cross is by practicing the spiritual disciplines that will help you face all the other demands and challenges of your life.

It’s difficult but not impossible. We can’t always expect the practice of Christianity to be easy, comfortable, or convenient. There are indeed times when it requires hard work and positive self-sacrifice.

The promise of Holy Cross Day, however, is that the way of the cross is the only true path to genuine fulfillment, joy, happiness, and peace. By having suffered and died upon it, Our Blessed Lord has transformed the cross from an instrument of shame and death into a sign of forgiveness, healing, hope, and salvation. But in a sense, it’s not enough just to take up the cross and follow Jesus. Like Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem so many centuries ago, we’re called to lift up the cross and raise it on high, so that people may look upon it and be saved.

Proper 19, Year A (Sermon at the 8 am Mass)

Matthew 18:21-25

For many people, forgiving those who’ve hurt us is one of the most difficult demands of the Christian Gospel.

Some years ago, in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” Susan Sarandon played the nun, Sister Helen PreJean, who became the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row in the days leading up to his execution. One of the film’s most dramatic moments involved Sister Helen’s encounter with the parents of the two young people murdered by the prisoner. They desperately wanted the execution to go forward; and they deeply resented the idea that this nun should be attempting to bring the condemned man any solace or comfort in his last days. Their lives were consumed by the desire for retribution. And watching the film, one’s reaction might well be, “Who can blame them?” If we were in their position, forgiveness would probably be the last thing on our minds.

Yet, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And the parable in today’s Gospel embodies our Lord’s teaching of forgiveness.

Today’s Gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off. There, Jesus was teaching the disciples how to deal with fellow Church members who wrong them in some way. What Jesus said was: If your brother sins against you, take the matter up with him privately; if he refuses to listen to you, take two or three witnesses; if he refuses to listen to them, tell the matter to the whole Church; if he refuses to listen to the Church, then cast him out.

So, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Peter replies, “All right, Lord. But suppose he repents and asks to be forgiven? How many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” In other words, doesn’t there come a point when someone’s hurt you one time too many, and you just can’t forgive them again no matter how contrite or sorry they are?

Peter probably thinks he’s being enormously generous in offering to forgive as many as seven times. But Jesus says no, not seven times, but seventy times seven. The phrase “seventy times seven” is a biblical euphemism that means an infinitely large number. For the Christian, there must be no limit to our willingness to forgive.

We need to understand, however, what forgiveness is and what it isn’t. When someone has hurt you, forgiveness does not mean waving your hand and saying, “Oh, that’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not all right, and it does matter. If it really were all right, there’d be nothing to forgive.

To ask forgiveness is to admit that one has done wrong. And to forgive is not to excuse the wrong, or to pretend that it didn’t happen. Rather, forgiveness means overcoming our instinct to strike back. It involves letting go of our desire for vengeance and retribution.

Forgiveness of this sort does not mean that a violent criminal shouldn’t go to jail. It does not mean that a chief financial officer who’s embezzled company funds should get to keep either his job or the money. It does not mean that a woman should continue to live with an abusive husband. It does not mean that the Church should move priests who’ve molested children from parish to parish and cover up their crimes. In each of these situations, decisive steps are necessary to safeguard the community and to protect the innocent.

But even in tough situations like these, forgiveness means refusing to be ruled by the hatred, malice, vindictiveness, and desire for revenge that can consume us and poison all our attitudes and behavior. It means refusing to let our lives and identities be defined by the ways in which we’ve suffered or been victimized. After a would-be assassin shot him in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II exemplified Christian forgiveness when he went to the prison a year later and personally forgave his attacker.

The parable in today’s Gospel teaches us how to become forgiving people. A king releases a slave from a debt of ten thousand talents. But then the same slave refuses to forgive a debt of a hundred denarii owed to him by another slave.

The key to the story is the difference between the two debts. A denarius was a silver coin roughly equal to the day’s wage of a laborer. But a talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. So, the ten thousand talents that the servant owed the king was an astronomical sum. There was no way that the servant could have paid off the debt. On the other hand, the one hundred denarii that the servant was owed by his fellow servant was an infinitesimal fraction of the ten thousand talents. So, it cost the king infinitely more to forgive the debt owed by the servant than it would have cost the servant to forgive the debt owed by his fellow servant.

Our Lord’s point is that we find the motivation to forgive those who’ve sinned against us only when we realize how much more God has forgiven us. To become truly forgiving people, then, we need to realize our own sinfulness and our own need for forgiveness.

Only then can we begin to appreciate the sheer magnitude of Christ’s love for us. He died on the cross to forgive us our sins and reconcile us to God. It cost him far more to forgive us than it will ever cost us to forgive anyone else. So, to become forgiving people, we need to keep our gaze fixed on the cross. Then, and only then, will we know the freedom and joy that comes from being able to forgive others just as God has forgiven us.

Howard Thurman, the African-American preacher and civil rights leader, tells of visiting an elderly black man in hospital. During the visit, the man declared, “You’re looking at a man who cannot die. Not long before the Civil War I barely escaped from the plantation with my life. I was accused of doing something I had not done. The master had me dragged to the smokehouse. I was stripped to the waist and my hands were tied to one of the crossbeams. I was whipped until I fainted, then revived with buckets of cold water and flogged again.

“The next thing I remember was the darkness of the night and someone was cutting me loose and helping me dress in fresh clothes that hurt my skin. Oh, how it hurt! Whoever this was helped me to escape into the woods. Finally I came to the river and got across the Ohio to freedom. Ever since I have been kept alive by hatred for the man who beat me. I suppose he has long since died. The only thing is, I know I dare not die until I forgive him.”

Thurman visited the man many times over the next few weeks. One day he entered the room, and the old gentleman greeted him in great excitement. He said, “It happened last night. It finally happened.” A few days later, the old man died. He knew that none of us can find true freedom, in life or in death, until we learn to forgive.

Note: Portions of this sermon appeared in the "Sunday's Scriptures" section of The Living Church, Vol. 249, No. 4 (September 7, 2014), 59. The Howard Thurman story originally came from a commentary by Will Willimon in Pulpit Resource.

Sermon for Proper 18, Year A

Sunday 7 September 2014

Matthew 18:15-20

The great historian of diplomacy Herbert Butterfield once remarked that to understand the dynamics of conflict among nations and peoples, one need only spend a month in a typical parish choir. In addition to being a distinguished historian, Butterfield was a Christian thinker of some depth, and my guess is that he spoke from experience.

Life in the Church – not just the choir but every part of the parish – does not always exhibit the harmony, peace, and love to which we’re called as Christians. Today’s Gospel explicitly acknowledges this hard reality. Jesus is under no illusions. He knows that short of Heaven itself conflicts and disputes will take place even among members of the same congregation. Moreover, in the earliest days of Christianity, as for much of the Church’s history, the people with whom one worshiped on Sunday were also one’s neighbors: the people with whom one lived and worked, and bought and sold, throughout the rest of the week. So conflict within the parish was potentially divisive and disruptive to the social fabric of the entire community.

To avoid such division, our Lord gives some straightforward, practical directions on what to do when another member of the Church hurts, offends, or wrongs us in some way. These instructions consist of three steps.

First, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”

In other words, the person with the grievance must take the initiative to rectify the problem. Yet, how often this is not what happens! We suffer some insult or injury and, instead of taking the matter up with the perpetrator, we start sulking, feeling sorry for ourselves, and nursing a grudge. Or, worse still, we complain to everyone but the person who’s offended us. Nothing stirs up division and dissension more than people grumbling and complaining behind one another’s backs. On certain occasions, I’ve unwittingly said or done something to upset someone, only to discover weeks, months, or even years later that that person told everyone else about it but me! But here our Lord instructs us: If someone has offended you in some way, first of all take it up with that person: directly, and privately. That way, you might be able to reach some sort of mutual understanding and achieve reconciliation without stirring up trouble and making the situation worse.

Sometimes this direct approach works; sometimes it doesn’t. So, then, the second step: “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of one or two witnesses.”

The biblical background here is that the Old Testament repeatedly requires that no one should ever be condemned on a charge of wrongdoing except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. One witness alone is not enough without corroboration. The New Testament carries this principle over into the life of the Church, as for example when Saint Paul writes “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (2 Cor. 13:1).

As an aside, every so often a parishioner will come to me and make some accusation against another parishioner: so-and-so is saying this and doing that! And almost always, my instinctive response is to tell them that I really can’t do anything about it unless and until I’ve heard the accusation from more than one person. Otherwise, it’s just uncorroborated hearsay. With one or two exceptions, the biblical principle still holds good today: admit no charge except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

So, our Lord is saying that if we can’t work out our differences one to one, then we need to bring one or two others into the picture. There’s always the possibility that these third parties might be able to help us see some merit in the other person’s position that we can’t see by ourselves, and help mediate between the two points of view.

But if this process of mediation fails, and our mediators agree that we’ve been wronged, then we’ve gained the necessary two or three witnesses when we go to step three: “tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

The early Christians took this command, “tell it to the church,” quite literally. When members of the congregation had personal complaints against one another, they would stand up in church on Sunday morning and air their grievances. Then the whole congregation would listen and try to arbitrate, or render a judgment. The Eucharist could not proceed until both parties were reconciled, or else until the guilty party, if unrepentant, had been expelled from the assembly.

Of course, this procedure caused more problems that it solved, and was gradually abandoned. It survives in symbolic form in our liturgy, however, as the Passing of the Peace, which is really a symbolic gesture of the forgiveness and reconciliation with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ that’s required of us before we approach the Lord’s Table together.

But what can it mean in today’s world to “tell it to the church”? The understanding that eventually gained acceptance was that telling it to the church could be equally well accomplished by telling it to one of the church’s authorized representatives, namely the clergy.

In other words, if another member of the parish hurts or wrongs you in some way, first, take the matter up with that person directly. If that doesn’t work, try getting one or two friends to mediate. And if that doesn’t work, then bring the matter to one of the parish clergy. I say this not because we clergy relish the thought of meddling in our parishioners’ disputes—we don’t. Yet discord among the members wounds the whole Body. So, the Church has a legitimate interest in promoting reconciliation and forgiveness among all its members. And one of the responsibilities to which the clergy have been ordained is known as the ministry of reconciliation. Frankly, when people in the parish are at odds with one another, it is the clergy’s business.

Even within the Body of Christ, conflicts and disputes are inevitable. We’re still sinners, after all, and we’ve all got a long way to go before God is finished with us. What makes Christianity distinctive, however, is not the absence of conflict, but rather the ability to achieve forgiveness and reconciliation when conflicts arise, as they inevitably will.

In today’s Gospel Jesus gives some practical directions on how to work towards forgiveness and reconciliation. The point of the three steps is that we must do everything we possibly can to be reconciled and at peace with one another. The goal is not to cast anyone out, but rather to keep everyone within the fold. Christ has shown his love for us by forgiving us and reconciling us to God. And it’s precisely in mutual forgiveness and reconciliation that we begin to show Christ’s love to the world.


Note: Portions of this sermon also appeared in the "Sunday's Scriptures" section of The Living Church, Vol. 249, No. 4 (September 7, 2014), 58.