HOLY WEEK AT THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL

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Cardinal Rigali Addresses Visitation House Dinner

Visitation House

Annual Fund Raising Dinner

March 24, 2010

Remarks by His Eminence

Cardinal Justin Rigali

I wish to express my gratitude to Bishop McManus for his kind invitation to be with you this evening. I am delighted to support the important work of Visitation House.

Five years ago, the vision of a small community of disciples of the Gospel of Life to establish a home for homeless mothers was realized with the foundation of Visitation House. Last year, sixteen babies were born into a safe and loving environment thanks to your efforts, and this evening eight expectant mothers are in a warm and safe house, and not on the street, because of your help.

Two of the greatest scourges which our country endures are the killing of unborn children and homelessness. The first is an unimaginable holocaust which compromises the moral fabric of our country. The second grows from our failure to meet even the most basic needs of families, especially in urban minority settings. When a homeless woman is so desperate as to consider the termination of her pregnancy these two horrors merge into one.

Such horrors touch not just the life of the mother, but threaten the innocent child whom she carries in her womb as well. If Visitation House did not exist, how many more children would have been taken from us? If Visitation House did not exist, how many more mothers would have carried the stain of guilt in their hearts? If Visitation House did not exist, how many more women living on the Streets of Worcester would have been pressured to abort their child?

This is precisely what our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, was talking about when he insisted that “the protection of unborn human life likewise requires attention: care must be taken that pregnant women in difficult conditions do not lack material help...” (Pope Benedict XVI to Members of the Regional Board of Lazio, January 12, 2006.)

The Visitation

Your work for Visitation House can only be understood, however, by meditating on the mystery of the Visitation of our Blessed Mother to her Cousin Elizabeth.

The story of the visitation is the story of an encounter of four persons: two mothers and the two infants they carried in their wombs. The unborn infants were, of course, our Blessed Lord and his cousin, Saint John, soon to be known as the Baptizer. And the mothers were our Blessed Lady and Saint Elizabeth.

The Visitation is introduced by the Annunciation, as the Angel Gabriel declares to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she is to bear a Son and name him Jesus and that her older cousin Elizabeth is already in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

As Saint Luke tells us, the Blessed Virgin’s first reaction to this great good news is to proclaim her acceptance of the will of God, despite her fear. Then, no sooner does the angel leave her presence than the Blessed Virgin sets out “in haste” for the hill country where her cousin Elizabeth lives.

Why does Mary so quickly set out on such a laborious journey? Precisely because, as our Holy Father has reflected, she is moved “by the mystery of love that she had just welcomed within herself, [and so] she set out "in haste" to go to offer Elizabeth her help. This is the simple and sublime greatness of Mary!” (Pope Benedict XVI, homily for the Marian Vigil Concluding the Month of May, May 31, 2008.)

What happens when Mary reaches Elizabeth’s house is an interaction more beautiful than any artist could depict.

Moved by the love of the child she carries in her womb, the Blessed Virgin runs to greet her cousin, who exclaims: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Meanwhile, John the Baptist welcomes the Christ and the Blessed Mother by leaping for joy within his Elizabeth’s womb.

It is good that your house bears the name of so beautiful a mystery as the Visitation, the only time in all the scriptures when the actions of two unborn children play such an important role.

Likewise, the deep and mutual love and concern of both pregnant mothers for each other prefigures the care and concern which you demonstrate every day for the unborn and homeless child and the mother. Truly it is of such little ones that Christ spoke when he said whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me. (Matthew 25:40)

You carry on the tradition of the Visitation in your support of homeless mothers and their unborn children. It has, truthfully, been a while since I have spoken at a Pot Luck Supper. But I could not resist being among you this evening as you seek to promote and sustain such an important work.

Pope John Paul II on Lent

In one of the first Lenten messages of his Pontificate, the servant of God, Pope John Paul II, reflected on how this Holy Season can foster “a spirit of recollection, prayer and attentiveness to the Word of God [and] encourage us to respond generously to the Lord’s call as expressed in the words of the Prophet: Is not this the fast that I choose… to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house? … Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say: ‘Here I am’” (Cf. Isaiah 58:6,7,9)

In calling us to a deeper concern for the poor, the Holy Father reminded us that the first victims of poverty and homelessness are often the children. It is for this reason that we must “recall with what determination our Lord Jesus demonstrated his solidarity with children: he called a small child to himself, set him in their midst and declared: Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and he commanded: Let the children come to me.” (Matthew 18:2, 5; 19:4)

The Holy Father continued: “I strongly urge you, in this liturgical period of Lent, to allow the Spirit of God to take hold of you, to break the chains of selfishness and sin. In a spirit of solidarity, share with those who have fewer resources than yourselves. Give, not only the things you can spare, but the things you may perhaps need, in order to lend your generous support to the actions and projects of your local Church, especially to ensure a just future for children who are least protected.”

This is the work of Visitation house, a work which is at the front lines of the struggle to protect the life of every human being from conception to natural death.

I will pray for the success of this good work and I thank God for the ways in which the miracle of the Visitation is lived out today on Vernon Hill in Worcester.

Vespers at the Cathedral

CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL

The service of Vespers or Evening Prayer is part of the Church's Liturgy of the Hours. As the evening approaches and the day is about to end, we, the Church, pause to remember the blessings that the Lord has bestowed on each of us during the day and pray for our redemption. It is a time when we raise our hands as praise and sacrifice. We affirm our faith in the light that knows no setting. We offered Vespers together at the Cathedral on March 20 as the sun was setting on the first day of Spring.

Before we did, many of us joined together in the Cenacle to share a simple meal of soup and bread as sisters and brothers in Christ. To read more about the Liturgy of the Hours, Google Books has portions of the USCB's Liturgy of the Hours available at this site. There are many other places online where you can find information about the daily prayers of the Church but the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way:

The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, "the divine office."46 This celebration, faithful to the apostolic exhortations to "pray constantly," is "so devised that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God."47 In this "public prayer of the Church,"48 the faithful (clergy, religious, and lay people) exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized. Celebrated in "the form approved" by the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours "is truly the voice of the Bride herself addressed to her Bridegroom. It is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father.49

See further here #1174.

THE LOST SON

Last weekend I spent some time with the parents of those young people who are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Penance for the first time. There’s a great short video of THE LOST SON which we use with the kids in these sessions. I thought you might enjoy it.

Monsignor Moroney

HOLY FATHER'S PASTORAL LETTER TO THE CHURCH IN IRELAND

Our Holy Father has just published a pastoral letter to the Church in Ireland on the subject of the crisis which has emerged from the sexual abuse of children by priests and religious and the failures to adequately respond to this grievous sin.

It was not so many years ago that the same crisis deeply affected the Church in the United States. The Church in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) is just beginning this same painful self-examination.

I strongly recommend this letter to your reflection. The extraordinary and blunt honesty of the Holy Father’s recollection and his clear view that only prayer, penance, honesty, truthfulness and courageous action can bring about the healing so desperately needed. Here's the link: PASTORAL LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER POPE BENEDICT XVI TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND

Here's a link to the Child Protection Website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops so you can see how our bishops have reacted to the crisis here in the United States.

WITH THE HELP OF SAINT PAUL

My Dear Brothers and Sisters:

First, I want to thank you for your generosity to Partners in Charity. We are well on the way to making our goal. Many have still not had the opportunity to make their gift but we hope you will do so, by making a gift today. Pledge envelopes are, once again, available in each pew, as are golf pencils. Once completed, please place them in the collection basket.

Congress continues to debate health care reform. While the House passed a health care bill that prevents the federal government from funding elective abortions, and includes provisions making health care affordable and accessible for all, the Senate rejected this and passed a bill that requires federal funds to help subsidize and promote health plans that cover elective abortions, while forcing purchasers to pay directly for other people’s abortions. Congressional leaders are now trying to figure out how the rules of the House and Senate could allow the final passage of a modified bill that would satisfy disagreements between House and Senate versions. Final votes may take place as early as this weekend. The U.S. bishops continue to strongly oppose abortion funding, and call for critical improvements in conscience protection, affordability for the poor and vulnerable, and access to health care for immigrants.

In your bulletin today, you’ll find an insert from the U.S. Bishops Conference asking you to please contact your congressional representatives immediately and urge them to address these moral issues. The flier/bulletin insert includes a web address that allows you to send an email message to Congress with a click of a button. The bishops have asked for our swift action and our prayers. Thank you for your help. We can help make sure that health care reform will protect the lives, dignity, conscience and health of all. Health care reform should be about saving lives, not destroying them.

As you have heard, my homily this weekend is an invitation to take part fully in the last days of Lent and the Sacred Paschal Triduum. We live in a society which has become so good at denying reality, especially the reality of death.

We sometimes have reminders: the sudden death of a close friend or relative, rumors of a pandemic like H1N1, the feeling you get as you walk from the nursing home to your car, or the latest twinge of late middle age that heralds what is soon to come.

Each reminder of death is a gift from God, for it reminds us of how few days we have to accomplish what God has given us to do: to love, to forgive, to heal, to sacrifice, and to learn to be like Jesus. The greatest gift we can receive is to learn what life is about and to use each minute he gives us to do his will! That is where true happiness lies.

In the course of writing my homily, I went back to visit some old friends: the epitaphs which are such a testament to the wit and wisdom of our New England forebears. There’s one I just couldn’t work into my homily, but it’s one of my favorites, so I use it to close this week’s column.


Here lies a poor Atheist.
All dressed up,
and NO PLACE to go!



In the Lord,
Monsignor James P. Moroney

Homily Fifth Sunday of Lent 2010

The Resurrection of Lazarus

Is here anything we dread more than the horror of death?

The most frequent theme in movies is not romance, or love, or comedy, but death. Only thirteen films have won more than seven Oscars, and all but two of them have had at least three deaths. The top three: Ben Hur, Titanic, and Lord of the Rings I, were all about life and death and the struggles and suffering on the way.

Not unlike today’s Gospel: replete with the anger, mourning and horror of death:
The agony of Martha: Lord, if you’d been here, my brother would never have died!
The sorrow of Jesus, who trembles and weeps at the grave of his friend
And the Horror of death: 4 days in the tomb...a stench

Is there anything we work to deny more than this?

Yet when this Cathedral was founded, death in downtown Worcester was impossible to deny. The average life expectancy was forty years and one in four babies died before reaching their first birthday. Indecent housing, cesspools running into the Blackstone canal, contaminated water, poverty, and hunger allowed diseases like typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, rickets,tuberculosis and scarlet fever to thrive.

One history tells the story of a woman who was born at home, along with eleven other children. Four of the babies died as infants at home, where they were waked in the front parlor and carried by their parents to the cemetery.

This intimacy with death and dying is reflected in the epitaphs on 19th century gravestones, like this one, found frequently throughout New England:

Remember friend, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
And as I am, so you shall be,
So prepare now, to follow me.

Used to be that everyone was waked at home, and almost everyone died at home. Now death is no longer an everyday event, whether for kids or for us old people. We often grow old in nursing homes, where the rigors of aging go unseen. Then we die in an ICU and are waked in a Funeral Home.

Now much of this is an improvement, but some of it is driven by a denial of death and a refusal to admit that this tongue now speaking to you will someday cease (I promise you!), and this body will be lowered into the ground with prayers and tears (lots and lots of tears, I hope!) and that just as surely as the bodies of my grandparents rest in the cemetery, so will I!

Yet we’re so afraid of death, and we spend so much time denying it!

We euphamize death like no other reality, suggesting that she has just passed away, crossed over, expired, gone to meet her maker, in a better place, at rest, denying that we have a perfectly good word in English which we studiously avoid: she’s dead.

We glorify youth and seek nothing more than to distance ourselves from “the ravages of age,” citing statistics about how much longer we will live than the last generation. But Willard Scott has never raised the age of the Smucker honorees and when, in not too many years, he joins their ranks, his segment on the Today Shows will end.

We console ourselves by billboards and journals, that heart disease has never been more treatable, chemotherapy more effective, or pharmaceuticals more available....but how many more years do any of them add? Ten? Five? Two? The end of the story is always the same, for Ponce de Leon never found it.

We memorialize, paying now by the column inch and the carved letter in stone, telling ourselves that we will be immortalized in the hearts and minds of generations yet unborn! But, as Emily Dickinson once reminded us: “After a hundred years -- no one knows the place;”

Yet despite all our efforts, the operative question is not if I’m going to stop breathing, but just when and how. For from the creation until today, not very many of us have made it out alive.

Christ

We’re so afraid! But in Christ, we need never be afraid, ever again! For he has defeated death definitively! It is Christ Jesus who said:

I am the resurrection and the life….

He who eats my body and drinks my blood will never really die...

Lazarus, come out! Untie him! Let him go free!

All this is an invitation to admit your deepest fears, to place them into God’s hands, and to never be afraid again. It is an invitation and to walk the next fourteen days to Easter with Christ, as we celebrate the holiest moments of the Church’s year.

An invitation to the next week at morning Mass, when the intrigue mounts and the forces of this world plot to kill the Christ, to have done with him!

An invitation to the Sunday of the Passion and the Palms, when, as in life, the victory is but a prelude to suffering, and sufferings are transformed into perfect joy.

An invitation to the Sacred Paschal Triduum, to the Mass of the Chrism and the oils and the Priesthood, to sitting with Jesus in the Upper Room, to walking with him on the road of sorrows, and to waiting at a tomb in the middle of the night.

I invite you to join me on this journey not just because ‘it’s good to go to Church,’ but because the most desperate parts of our hearts NEED to go to Church;

That profound sorrow you felt when you lowered that person whom you loved into the grave with tears falling on the dirt….you need to join it with the death of Christ!

That little, mourning, painful place behind your heart that never healed…that still aches exquisitely whenever you think of the loved one who died? ...you need to join your heart to the one pierced for our salvation.

All those fears and deaths and sins and pains...we need to join them to the Cross of Jesus, to cry with Mary, to suffer with the Christ, and to sing joyful songs at the empty tomb.

For his sorrows are our sorrows. And his victory is our victory. And these coming days are the meaning of our lives!

Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector

Homily for Saint Patrick's Day

Homily at Saint John’s Seminary

Evening Prayer

Saint Patrick’s Day, 2010

I want to thank you for the opportunity of offering a few thoughts on Saint Patrick, a patron not only of the Irish but of this great Archdiocese. Indeed, his statue blessed me this morning as I was forced by the high waters to enter the seminary grounds from Commonwealth Avenue, and I suspect he looks down upon you with a particular love and with particular blessings this evening as well.

Three small points I wish to offer, introduced, I hope, in an appropriate form:

For we gather as one in this place

each trusting in God’s holy grace

with Patrick the Priest

to reflect at his feast

on his Passion, Perdurance and Faith

Passion

When 1550 years ago, Patrick of Wales died in his beloved Ireland, it was after living a life filled with a passion for God: a passion so evident, that his very presence ignited a fire of faith which still burns, in good times and in troubles, on the Emerald Isle.

That passion was first ignited, ironically enough when he was taken as a sixteen year old slave slave. His seminary, he tells us, was lived out in a solitary pasture, where he was forced to tend sheep, living in exile among a strange people in a strange and craggy land.

Yet, he reflects in his Confessions, those days of suffering, far from the comforts of home, were days in which God’s love and his Faith flourished. He writes of the lonely days he spent as a young shepherd:

"Many times a day I prayed. The love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. In a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night. I used to get up for prayer before daylight whatever the weather--snow, frost, rain-- without suffering any ill effects. The spirit within me grew fervent."

At one point, that passion led him to flee Ireland and attempt to return home. With the same unbounded determination I see in so many of you every day, he was undeterred by mere physical realities in this quest. If God (or at least his passions) wanted him to do it, no mountain or bog would remain unclimbed or uncrossed as he walked almost two hundred miles to get home.

He was not very much younger than you when he arrived home, overjoyed to be away from those troublesome Irish. He must have dreamt about that moment on Endless star-lit nights in Irish pastures and longed for those who spoke his language, with whom he felt at home and among whom he had grown up for many years. Not so very different than those of you who come to these strange shores from great countries far away.

Yet no sooner did he return home than he had a dream in which a man named Victoricus came to him with a big stack of letters. This somulant mailman was, scholars suggest, Saint Victorious, a saint of whom Patrick’s Father, nd ordained and learned deacon himself, may often have spoken. Victorious, we are told, was a vociferous advocate for missionary activity, especially to the dark and mysterious lands which lay north of Britain.

One of the letters was addressed to Patrick himself, and it began with the words: ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ It said: 'We beg you, young man, come and walk among us once more.'"

Perdurance

So Patrick returned to ireland, and for thirty years he labored in the Irish vineyard. And here, as often is the case in the best of our lives, his youthful passion was transformed by God into full fledged perseverance. One of the more obscure iconographic signs of the great Saint illustrate this well.

It is of a crozier stuck in the mud, or the bog, to be more precise.

It seems that after responding to the vision, Patrick was making his way through a part of Ireland now now known as Aspatria, a place so stubbornly pagan that he could preach until he was blue in the face and these stubborn celts would just sit there and scowl. And so, the ever persistent evangelizer jammed his wooden crozier into the ground and swore he would not shut up until the faith had taken root in that obstinate land. Upon which, roots sprang from the base of his crozier and the great walking stick grew into a small tree, at which the people repented and were baptized by the hundreds.

Such was the perdurance of his faith that he could wait a lifetime, if that’s what it took, for the Faith to take root. He desired neither comfort nor prestige, and its a good thing, because he seldom got much of either.

Of his life preaching the Gospel he once wrote, "Daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity. But I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself entirely into the hands of God Almighty who rules everywhere."

That perdurance, built on the foundation of passion, is what makes a good saint and its what makes a good priest. We need the passion ignited by deep prayer and long hours spent with the Lord and the ineffable consolation of hearts comforted and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. We need passion tempered by the love of holy obedience: obedience to the Gospel, obedience to those whom God has placed over us as our spiritual fathers, and obedience to the truth.

That perdurance is often sorely missing from our society, and sometimes, sadly, from our Priests today. But it is the most essential element in a renewal of Priestly life and one which, thanks to the grace of God, is more and more embraced by our brothers in parish ministry.

A revival of reflection on the ars celebrandi and a renewed liturgical reform leads us to a fervent search for authenticity and interiority in a world which prides itself on slick pitches and shiny exteriors. A deepening appreciation of our obligations to the poor, the dispossessed and the ones whom everyone else would forget, marks a fresh new moment of Gospel Justice in a Church which sometimes seems the lonely voice in the current healthcare debate: the only public institution whose incessant articulated concerns are for the unborn child and the undocumented stranger.

There are many signs of a new golden age of the Priesthood in our country, and not a few of them are sitting right in front of me this afternoon. Saint Patrick would have embraced them all, but he would also have insisted that each will wither and die unless it is rooted in humble faith.

Faith

For the reason we celebrate Saint Patrick in Boston this week is not because of the greatness of Ireland or the influence of the Irish. No, this feast is not really about my great grandparents getting off the boat from Kerry or politicians teasing each other in South Boston or dying the Chicago River green.

We celebrate Saint Patrick because of his faith. Because in his particular time and place he chose to listen to God’s call and respond to it.

We celebrate Saint Patrick precisely because he realized that it was not about him, but about God: that without the Lord he would be nothing. “I beseech all who believe in and fear God,” he once wrote, “that if I have demonstrated any small thing according to God’s pleasure, to remember that it was all God’s Gift.”

You can hear that faith, that utter dependence upon God in The Deer’s Cry, Lorica, a Christian hymn written in the form of Druidic incantation, attributed to him from the eighth century Liber Hymnorum:

I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness, Through the confession of the oneness

I arise today Through the strength of Christ's birth....crucifixion and resurrection
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
the service of archangels,
prayers of patriarchs,
preaching of apostles,
innocence of holy virgins,
and deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

Which is why it is so good to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with you, my dear brothers, who seek only to give your lives to the same Faith and to be consecrated in the same Priesthood as he was.

Take courage from his example, as you take comfort in his intercession and trust in his friendship. For he was once as you are now and through his prayers and your perseverance, you shall be as he became.

For in the end, to borrow from Saint Augustine, this is our own mystery which we celebrate on every’s saint’s day. And the question is ever the same: will we, like this good Saint, choose the Lord. The Servant of God, John Paul II said as much when he once told us, candidly:

“What I really want you to realize is this: that God counts on you: that he makes his plans, in a way, depends on your free collaboration, on the oblation of your lives, and on the generosity with which you follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in the depths of your hearts. The Catholic faith of Ireland today was linked, in God’s plan to the fidelity of Saint Patrick. And tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, some part of God’s plan will be linked to your fidelity – to the fervor with which you say Yes to God’s word in your lives.”

Third Sunday Of Lent 2010

The Woman at the Well
Homily by Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector

Who is this woman, alone at the well when Jesus approaches? Notice the first thing we hear about her, that she’s alone and its noontime. Now I don’t know about you, but the last time I would choose to go to draw water from the well would be noontime. It’s hot, and its Palestine!

No wonder she’s alone, no one in their right mind would choose to go draw water in the noonday sun. They’re all home sitting under the grape vines having lunch.

So why does she go at noontime? Precisely because she knows she’ll be alone. She’s “the unclean Samaritan woman” whom no self-respecting Jew would ever be alone with. She’s been married married five times, and she’s shacked up with a sixth.

So she’s a sinner, and alone.

And she’s poor. She has no servant to draw water for her. Indeed, no son or daughter. And “the good for nothing significant other number six” she’s living with sends her out in the noontime sun to get him some water.

She’s alone. She’s a sinner. And she’s poor.

Which is just why Jesus seeks her out.

Alone

You know what it feels like to be alone. Just go out and look at the school yard sometime and watch for the kid who’s standing all by himself watching the other kids play. Do you remember what it was like to be the only one they didn’t choose? Is there any greater feeling of desolation?

I had an illustrious football career when I was in school. I was in fourth grade. And I was thrilled when they chose me to play.....I was delighted when they threw the ball to me and beyond ecstasy when I caught it and ran, my head down, with every ounce of energy in my eight year old body racing toward that goal. With unimaginable joy I passed between those goal posts and looked back and realized that I had run the wrong way.

And at that moment, at the end of my illustrious if short-lived athletic career, I felt unimaginably alone, abandoned, and desolate.

The way a man feels when he drives home with a pink slip in his pocket. The way a child feels when her mother’s too busy to listen to her story. The way a wife feels as she walks down the steps of the court house after the divorce. The way the girl and the boy feel when they find out they’re pregnant. The way the old man feels when he finds out it's cancer. The way the old woman feels the first day in the nursing home. The way they feel when they bury their father.

Alone, and desolate, like the woman at the well.

But then the Good Shepherd comes looking for his sheep. He always comes looking. He seeks us out, calling us by name, hoping that we will know his voice as well as he knows our hearts. He looks in all the dangerous places, all the out of the way places, all of the places where the monsters and the dangers lurk.

I cherish an old print which hangs in my room and which I gaze at whenever I feel alone. It shows a little lamb which has fallen off a cliff and is all wrapped up in a heavily brambled bush. The lamb is petrified and barely able to keep from tumbling into the rocky cavern below. Not too far away the vultures circle, ready to feast on the carcass that is soon to be delivered into their talons.

But then there is the shepherd, whose face is colored with hues of compassion and concern. He braces himself with a rough stick in his left hand, while he reaches down with his right, just about to grasp the lamb by the scruff of its neck. And you know what he’ll do then. He’s put the lamb on his shoulders and bring it home to pastures where there is only safety and beauty and love.

But the lamb can’t see that. He’s looking desperately at the vultures and the craggy rocks below. But never fear: the shepherd will be undeterred. For no sheep, no matter how much he trembles, is ever abandoned by the shepherd who loves his own and leads them home.

She’s alone. At the well. But not for long.

And then there’s her sin. It’s a pretty bad sin. It’s a sin that has come to possess her life. A habitual sin...over and over...from broken relationship to broken relationship. Like Henry VIII and Elizabeth Taylor wrapped into one, her life is a seemingly endless stream of hurt, and pain and broken promises.

Like all sin, her sin is rooted in the lie, and Jesus knows that he is the only cure to her disease. Only he who is the Truth can wipe away the lie.

So he helps her tell the truth about herself.

"Go, call your husband, and come back."

"I have no husband."

"You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"

The encounter with Jesus (the way, the truth and the life) is the only antidote to sin. For to look in his eyes as he hangs upon that cross, to hear his word as it is proclaimed from that pulpit and receive his absolution in that confessional is the only way to break the cycles of self-destructive sin, to kill the lie.

So many times we live the lie. So many times we are caught up that sin which just won’t go away. We’re like Saint Paul: “I know I shouldn’t do it, but I do it again!” How can we get past it? How can I get the courage to confess it? How can I finally tell the truth?

Come to the truth. Come to Jesus.

Like her who came to the well with her sin. But not for long.

And finally, her poverty.

She is poor. She has nothing to give. But what does Jesus do? He asks her for a cup of water? She’s got practically nothing! And he asks her to give of the little she has left.

Listen to the Preface for today’s Mass:

Jesus, who, when he asked the Samaritan woman for water to drink,
had already created the gift of faith within her;
so eagerly did he thirst for her faith,
that he kindled within her the fire of God's love.

It’s like the poor woman to whom God sent Elijah. Whatcha doin, he asks her. I am going to take my last cup of flour and my last drop of oil and I am going to bake the last loaf of my life. For once my son and I eat it we will have nothing else and we will die.

So what does Elijah do? Do you remember? He asks her to split the bread with him. Take what little you have and give it away. And then you will live.

And she did. And the cupboard was miraculously filled with flour and the oil bottle just would’t go dry. Give me a cup of water, and you will have all that you need.

SO, WHEN YOU ARE ALONE AND UNCLEAN….let the seeker of lost sheep come looking for you

AND WHEN YOU ARE STUCK IN SIN….let him give you the grace to speak the unspeakable sin and set you free from your pitiable estate!

WHEN YOU ARE POOR AND HAVE NOTHING….give away the little you have, and he will fill you with all you really need.

Like the poor sinful woman all alone.

To whom Jesus came.

Column on III Lent

My dear brothers and sisters,

I want to begin by reminding you that next Sunday is the in-pew appeal for Partners in Charity. At all parish Masses, we will have an opportunity to provide for the charitable, educational and ministerial mission of the Catholic Church throughout the Diocese by making a pledged gift during the in‐ pew solicitation. In doing so, we will unite our diocesan family and become partners in charity and partners with Christ. Though the Diocese has a goal, and our parish has one as well, the most important goal is that every family join in providing for the charitable works of the Church.

This week you will have an opportunity to view the video in which Bishop McManus explains this year’s campaign as the Diocese looks to you once again for your support. Please make a commitment based on your gratitude to God for the blessings in your life as well as your willingness to assist others. And most importantly of all, pray to St. John Vianney, our patron, for the success of this important initiative!

Also, this week, I wanted to say a word about a sad tragedy being enacted just a few blocks from the Cathedral Church. As you may know, Planned Parenthood recently opened a new clinic at 470 Pleasant Street.

I visited the website of the new “Health Center” and read the following statement: “Abortions are very common. In fact, more than 1 out of 3 women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.” I pray that this statistic is not true. In any event, however, the purposeful taking of the life of even one child is an unimaginable horror.

I am told that approximately seventy-five abortions are performed on Thursdays, Fridays and every other
Saturday at the Pleasant Street facility. On each of these days groups of people gather to pray outside the clinic between 8:00am and 10:30am. I encourage you to consider joining them on occasion, and plan to do so myself.

If you wish to join others to pray for the children and their mothers, you can park at Blessed Sacrament Parish, 555 Pleasant Street and walk across Park Avenue. If you do go to pray, I would encourage you to simply pray (bring a rosary) in a calm and peaceful manner. Make sure to obey all laws and be aware of the “buffer zone:” make sure to stand outside the clearly marked white line on the sidewalk. Others who are present will help you to understand what the law requires.

Across the street from Planned Parenthood is Problem Pregnancy (at 495 Pleasant Street). This agency is run by some of our own parishioners who have worked for years with mothers in crisis, helping them to understand the alternatives to abortion which they can choose. Please pray for all the good folks who work at Problem Pregnancy! They are very dedicated folks!

Finally, I ask you to join me on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays in praying for each of the mothers who are struggling with this terrible decision. Ask the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular to guide them. Perhaps we might make the prayer of Pope John Paul II our own.

In the Lord,

Monsignor James P. Moroney
rectorsaintpauls@aol.com



O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy.

Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life. Amen.

Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995)

Homily on the Transfiguration (II Lent)

The Transfiguration of the Lord has been proclaimed as a Lenten Gospel from the first days of the Church. Along with last week’s Temptation in the Desert, next week’s Samaritan Woman and the Man Born Blind, these Gospels form a sort of Catechism of our Salvation.

Today’s lesson is a meditation on the glory of the Lord, a foreshadowing of the Resurrection and that day at the end of time when the Lamb slain for our sins will take the place of the sun and the moon as the eternal light of our heavenly home.

A Manifestation of His Glory
As told by the Evangelists of the Synoptic Gospels, the Transfiguration is set on Mount Tabor, where the Lord’s face is seen to change in appearance and his clothes become dazzlingly white.

This unequivocal manifestation of the divinity of Christ was said by Saint Thomas Aquinas to be the Lord’s “greatest miracle,” not only providing us with a glimpse of heaven, but a reminder of who Jesus is when, as at his Baptism, a voice thunders from the clouds: “This is my beloved Son, Listen to Him”

Through Passion to Glory
But is there something more going on here than a mere revelation of the divinity of Christ, as hinted at by the Preface in today’s Mass, which gives us a hint as to what the full meaning of the Transfiguration really is. Here’s what it saysL

For after he had told the disciples of his coming death,
on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory,
to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets,
that the passion leads to the glory of the resurrection.

What then is the greatest secret of life which the voice from the cloud insists we should listen to? What is the deeper meaning of the Transfiguration? That the passion leads to the glory of the resurrection.

In the Transfiguration, then, we have the first real glimpse of the Mystery which we will enact during the Sacred Paschal Triduum. That Easter Glory is always preceded by the Passion of Good Friday; that the dazzling light of the Resurrection is always preceded by the dark sorrow of the death of the Lord; and that Eternal Life is a gift which comes only through the Cross.

There are hints of this all through today’s Gospel. Who does Jesus take up with him to Mount Tabor and who falls asleep while he goes up to pray? The same three whom he will bring up to the Mount of Olives on Good Friday and who will fall asleep as he will pray in such agony that he will weep blood. Tabor is a rehearsal for Olivet, the same cast of characters, the same script. But Tabor is glory, while Olivet is passion. Two sides of the same coin, two dimensions of the same saving mystery.

The Exodus
And as the Lord appears transfigured, resplendent in glory, what is it that Moses and Elijah are discussing with him. They spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem we are told. His exodus, when like the Moses he would lead God’s chosen ones out of slavery, parting the waters of death that they might know a new life in a promised land flowing with milk and honey.

The slavery from which Moses delivered the Israelites was a servitude to Pharaoh and his chariots and charioteers, but there is one far greater than Moses here, for Jesus leads us from slavery to sinfulness, selfishness, and the love of darkness and death.

The waters through which Moses led his people was the Red Sea, but the waters through which Christ leads us are the waters of death itself, which after his victory will never be able to drown anyone ever again.

The new land into which Moses led the chosen people was Israel, but the land into which Christ leads us is the heavenly Jerusalem where there will never again be crying out or weeping or sin or pain or death.

Thus does the Lord save us by a new Exodus, of which the first is but a vague foreshadowing. As Moses lifted his staff and parted the waters of death, so Christ is raised up upon a Cross, by which all death is destroyed and all who are joined to him will live forever.

Through the Cross to Glory
Such is the meaning not just of the Transfiguration, but of all of life. Through that Cross and our participation in Christ’s suffering and death, we who have died with him in Baptism can know eternal glory with him in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Abraham learned this lesson in a shadowy way when God sealed the first covenant with him. By that Covenant Abraham, who with Sarah his wife, was childless and old, would become the Father of as many descendants than were stars in the sky and would inherit the land of Israel. But even this first covenant was sealed by a bloody sacrifice of undefiled heifers, goats, rams, turtledoves, and pigeons. And do you remember what happened when Abraham offered the sacrifice? It was dark, we just heard, and in the midst of the sacrifice there appeared a flaming torch, a sign of the presence and the glory of God.

The Sacrifice of the Altar
The Sacrifice we offer in an unbloody manner upon that altar today is a fulfillment of the sacrifice of Abraham, our Father in the Faith. It is the sacrifice of the flesh nailed to the Holy Cross and the Precious Blood which flowed from his pierced side. It is our only hope, the source and the summit of our entire lives.

Let us join the sacrifices of our lives with this perfect sacrifice. The harsh words we have forgiven, the cruelty we have put aside, the temptations we have resisted, all that we have given up for holiness, the kindnesses we have shown to the stranger, the compassion we have showered on those in pain, and the prayer we have offered in the middle of the night...let these sacrifices be mixed with the hosts on that paten, and mingled with the wine in that cruet, that your sacrifice and mine might be joined to his perfect sacrifice and transformed into the food we need for this journey, the very Body and Blood of the one who will return in glory at the end of time, and who will lead us home to that Holy Mountain where we will rejoice in the light of his glory forever.


Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector