St Raphael on Marriage

Today is the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. In the Old Testament book of Tobit, St Raphael encourages Tobias to marry Sarah: “But do not be afraid, for she was set apart for you before the world existed” (Tobit 6:18).

This beautiful verse reminds us that it is not only priests and consecrated religious who have a special vocation in the Church. Although marriage is by far the more common vocation, it is no less a specific call that requires help from above to discern. And the reason it’s specific is that one called to marriage is never called to marriage in general, but in particular.

That is, if you are called to marriage, God’s design from all eternity is for you to marry a specific person – and for that person to marry you! If you are married, thank God for how he arranged your first meeting with your spouse, no doubt with the help of your guardian angels. Who knows? You may have even had the assistance of that heavenly matchmaker, St Raphael himself.


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New Mass Seminar Tonight!

For all of you in the GTA, part one of a three-part series on The New Mass – the new English translation of the Roman Missal – starts tonight! It all takes place at St Justin Martyr Parish in Unionville at 7:30 PM. See you there!

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On the Feast of Saint Matthew

The readings for today’s Feast of the Apostle Matthew remind us of what the Church is (a hospital for sinners), and what it does (mission).  As to the former, in the Gospel from Matt 9, Jesus reminds us of  “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do...I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” So, once we’ve been healed by the Great Physician, what happens next? We are sent out ourselves to seek the spiritually sick, and bring them to Jesus. That’s where the latter, the call to mission, comes in.

And whose responsibility is this mission? The first reading, from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, tells us: “But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. And he gave some as Apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4). The role of the hierarchy (bishops, priests, and deacons) is to “equip the holy ones (the laity) for the work of ministry”. The hierarchy sanctifies the people, who then go forth to sanctify the world.

That is, we can’t expect Father to go out and evangelize the world, although no doubt he will do more than his fair share of faith-sharing. Evangelization is our job – and we must “preach the Gospel at all times, and, if necessary, use words”, as St Francis of Assisi urged. Undoubtedly, we must use words to explain our faith, and we must know something about it to communicate it to others – you can’t give what you don’t have. But to gain a hearing, the “salt” of our Catholic Christian way of life must first cause others “to thirst” for what we have.  Come to think of it, just like a certain carpenter-rabbi from Galilee once did with a house full of spiritual seekers, friends of a tax collector named Matthew.

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Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

Today Pope Benedict capped his monumental visit to the UK by beatifying Cardinal Newman, who has been a hero of mine since I discovered him around the time of my re-version in 2004. Back then, I was a cradle Catholic who had become a Protestant pastor, and was being convinced (against my will!) of the truth of Catholicism. At first I thought that it would be possible to remain where I was, and simply attempt to educate Protestants about Catholic beliefs through my preaching and teaching. I didn’t think it was necessary for me to actually return to the Catholic Church – until I met Newman. He made me realize that it was not enough to recognize, and even promote to others, the veracity of the Catholic faith. I actually had to be in corporate union with the Church Jesus founded if I hoped to attain salvation, once I knew it to be the true Church. As Lumen Gentium 14 put it: “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved”. That’s the dangerous thing about truth – once we recognize it, we are obliged to act on it. It’s something Newman knew full well.

So, how did I get to know Newman? By divine providence, I was at a conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I visited the famous Eerdmans discount theological bookstore. It was there, of all places, that I found a book on Cardinal Newman by a Catholic priest, Stanley L. Jaki, called Newman’s Challenge. Reading about Newman’s courageous conversion gave me the strength I needed to return home myself. Fr. Jaki relates in the book that on the occasion of his reception into the Catholic Church, the most famous Anglican in the world wrote personal letters to several of his friends and family members, outlining his reasons for embracing the Church of Rome. Newman also spoke of why he couldn’t keep silent about what he had discovered:

Newman revealed the innermost recesses of his powerful mind by repeating that he was about to be received “into the One True Fold”. On October 9, 1845…he assured his own sister…that “if I thought that any other body than that which I recognize to be Catholic were to be recognized by the Saviour of the world, I would not have left that body”. Five days later he wrote to her that it would have been a betrayal of Truth (writ large) had he kept from others his most considered conviction that the Church of Rome was the Catholic Church. He told her that he could not live with a conscience guilty of dissimulation, with the guilt that he had deprived others of the Truth: “What a doom would have been mine, if I had kept the Truth a secret in my bosom, and when I knew which the One Church was, and which was not part of the One Church, I had suffered friends and strangers to die in an ignorance from which I might have relieved them.” He knew which was the pain to be dreaded more: the temporal pain he would feel because he had to pain others, or the eternal pain he would eventually suffer by choosing not to pain them and thereby not to inspire others to convert as he did (Newman’s Challenge, p. 81).

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On the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

One of the optional Gospel readings for today’s feast comes from the Fourth Gospel – John 19:25-27:

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

In the Gospel accounts of the Passion, Jesus only spoke seven times from the cross – and these were not throwaway comments. What was he doing on the cross? Accomplishing our salvation. And so, everything he said from the cross has to do with exactly that. We should pay close attention to his words. When Jesus entrusts his mother into John’ care, he’s not simply making domestic arrangements, but making a powerful point about life in God’s family, the Church: We can’t claim to have God as our Father, or Jesus as our divine elder brother, without having Mary as our mother.

Interpreters of John’s Gospel often point out that John, the son of Zebedee, although in all likelihood the author of this Gospel, never identifies himself by name in the book. Instead, he refers to himself as the “beloved disciple”, or “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. This is more than mere humility on John’s part; he is making a profound theological point: he (and his conduct) represents the model disciple of Jesus. It is John, who, unlike the others, doesn’t desert Jesus, remaining by the cross to comfort the Blessed Mother. And it is the “beloved’ disciple” who takes Mary into his home. Like him, all of us “beloved disciples” of our Lord must invite Mary into our “homes” – our very lives – and learn from her how to love Jesus more and more each day.

Postscript: For those of you in the GTA, my Bible study on The Gospel of John begins this Thursday! For more information, please email me using the “Contact” tab on this site.

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Pope Benedict on the Nativity of Mary

Today we celebrate the Nativity of our Blessed Mother, nine months after the Feast of her Immaculate Conception on December 8. There are only three persons whose births are celebrated with a liturgical feast in the Catholic Church: Jesus himself (of course), Mary, and John the Baptist.  Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 1 about the genealogy  of Jesus can seem to some as exciting as reading through the local phone book. But Pope Benedict, preaching on a Marian pilgrimage to Austria on the Nativity of Mary back in 2007, sheds some light on the deeper meaning of this text:

The Gospel passage we have just heard broadens our view. It presents the history of Israel from Abraham onwards as a pilgrimage, which, with its ups and downs, its paths and detours, leads us finally to Christ. The genealogy with its light and dark figures, its successes and failures, shows us that God can write straight even on the crooked lines of our history. God allows us our freedom, and yet in our failures he can always find new paths for his love. God does not fail. Hence this genealogy is a guarantee of God’s faithfulness; a guarantee that God does not allow us to fall, and an invitation to direct our lives ever anew towards him, to walk ever anew towards Jesus Christ.

Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction, travelling towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own even to the journey and to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims of Jesus’s genealogy there were many who forgot the goal and wanted to make themselves the goal. Again and again, though, the Lord called forth people whose longing for the goal drove them forward, people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening of the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was made possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were searching – people who did not rest content with custom, but who looked further ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many others. Because their hearts were expectant, they were able to recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and thus they could become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of the Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area and in those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus travelled, there were expectant people who were not satisfied by what everyone around them was doing and thinking, but who were seeking the star which could show them the way towards Truth itself, towards the living God.

A brief note on the icon, The Nativity of the Theotokos (Greek: “God-bearer”): you may notice that Mary’s crib resembles a temple. Fitting, for in carrying our Lord in utero years later, she was indeed a true temple, the living God existing within.

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The New Mass App “Registers” in the Papers Again!

The latest edition of the Catholic Register has a new story about how apps are impacting faith – and yours truly was cited in the article! Here’s the quote:

Cale Clarke, co-creator of The New Mass app, believes these faith apps are good for the future of the Church. “I think we have to use every means available to us in order to spread the Gospel…These apps are just a platform to reach people who otherwise might not be interested… We’ve got to take advantage of the means that we have.”

Read the rest here – and, no, that’s not me in the picture…that guy has some cool facial hair my wife would never allow me to grow, much to my chagrin.

Thanks again for all your support, guys!

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Headline Bistro Serves Up The New Mass!

The fine folks at Headline Bistro have kindly published my latest article! Check it out, along with the rest of their excellent site, here!

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