Blog Archives

PAULIST REFLECTIONS: THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE

1/25/2015

Paulist Reflections
The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul
January 25, 2015
An Excerpt from “Paul the Missionary” By Frank DeSiano CSP

Introduction by Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP:

In this essay taken from Paulist Tom Kane’s All You Holy Men and Women: A Paulist Litany of Saints (New York: Paulist Press, 2014) Paulist FrankDeSiano CSP describes the Apostle Paul as a missionary bringing the message of God’s free and absolute love. The Apostle was swept away by it in his conversion. DeSiano writes, “Do we not have to experience what Paul did? Do we not have to be swept up and away by this empowering love? Do we not have to let this love sear our eyes until they view the world as saturated by divine love.” Father DeSiano challenges us as members of the Paulist family to experience radical conversion. To explore this further read the entire chapter by Father DeSiano and the document on Paulist Radical Conversion from the 2014 Paulist General Assembly.

Father Frank DeSiano CSP writes:

Paul’s message of grace – God’s totally free and gracious bestowal of absolute love – becomes both the message and the method of Paul. Grace basically means that we are wrapped up in a field of unlimited love. Love has to expand its circle or else it is not love. Love has to be passionate, embracing , open and persistent. It has to be “all things to all people.”

Paul missionary per excellence, can give us a very respectable way to speak about mission; its all about God’s grace. God’s unrestricted love show in the work, death and resurrection or Jesus Christ, and given to the world through the Spirit. This is what God has done, whether people know it or not, whether people can see it or not. The missionary’s task is not to berate people he or she has already judged, but to open up people to the signs of divine love already in their lives, and already working in the world.

We look at Paul from today’s vantage point; a world teaming with diversity, full of great dreams and dashed hopes, replete with opportunities for coming together or falling apart. In some ways the fundamental insight of Paul – that it is all about God’s generous and unlimited love – is a message the world has barely begun to hear. One can be passionate about grace and one can insist upon it for humankind, but how can anyone make a point of division, of violence, or separation? For centuries right up to the Second Vatican Council, Catholic and non-Catholic Christians saw the possibility of salvation for others in only begrudging ways.

Do we not have to experience what Paul did? Do we not have to be swept up and away by this empowering love? Do we not have to let this love sear our eyes until they view the world as saturated by divine love? Do we not have to let this love break open the stony edges of our hearts until we love as God loves? Love can do funny things to us. It can make us jealous or nervous or persistent or petulant. The purer our experience of love, the more love purifies our motives, making us generous and kind and other-focused, and eager for the good of others, as Paul tells us in his hymn about love (1Cor13).

So in the end with all that love can make us, it can also make us missionaries, bearers of divine love to the world as generously and graciously as God has done this in Jesus, not resting until “God may be “all in all.” (1 Cor 15:28) that is until absolute love may be all in all.

HECKER REFLECTION: HOLY NAME OF JESUS PT.2

1/20/2015

The Most Holy Name of Jesus
A Sermon by Servant of God, Isaac Hecker
(Part Two of Three: 19 January 2015).

Jesus ‘humanity is exalted above all creatures and he has been appointed the Supreme Judge of all men, both the living and the dead. As is His humanity is elevated above all, so also is his sacred name honored above all other names and so it is worthy of the homage of every creature. In the words of Saint Paul, “he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, wherefore God has exalted him and has given him a name which is above all names, so that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bend.”

He shall be called Jesus because he shall save his people from their sins. In this name then is comprised the entire mystery of our redemption. In this name we have unfolded God’s love and mercy. In this name we recognize our greatest happiness, freedom from the slavery of sin. The name had not been known to the Jews. The name had not been unknown to the Jews, the name had existed in the person of Joshua of Jeptha and of Jesus the son of Sirach. But these are mere shadows or at best a deliverer from temporal calamities. With our Blessed Lord His name was the Truth.

In that name we have a development of all the details in the history of the God-Man. He was born in poverty and nurtured in want and affliction, because He is our Savior. He was arrested, falsely accused, cruelly tormented and ignominiously put to death. His holy name explains the mystery, accounts for all the atrocities that he endured. If He rises glorious and triumphant from the dead, if He has resuced us from the slavery of evil. If He has purchased for us a share in the glories of his heavenly home, it is all the fultillment of the meaning of his blessed and adorable name. It is in this great name in which the apostle assures us we are only to be saved. That holy name is a part of every blessing. In that name we are born again unto God. It is the past name on the lips of his devout servants, when the shadow of death is falling thick and fast about him. So too the history of God’s saints enables us to see how great a weapon was in all their temptations, how signal were the victories its pious use enabled them to gain, how deep and pure was the reverence it engendered. And this should be our attitude, our feelings in this regard. Let us cherish and cultivate warmth and affection for the name which bring goodness to us. Let it be our ambition to increase and strengthen our veneration for that blessed name which is exalted above all other names.

Our Holy Church calls upon all her faithful children who know and love the sacred name to make a time of reparation for the blasphemous and irreverent use of the name. We must admit with grief and sorrow that this irreverence is far from US. I suppose that there are a few of us who have not experienced the frequent profanation of the name by those who should know better; those who bow their heads with reverence in the house of God and who then go to their homes and their daily occupations to offer insult to their God and scandal to their neighbor by their profane use of the blessed name. Every outburst is coupled with the name of the Redeemer. No words of mine are needed to portray this heinous vice. The command of the Almighty is clear, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.´

Commentary by Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP

In the Book of Exodus, when Moses went up to Mount Sinai he did something very daring, he asked God what God’s name was. This would allow Moses to call on God, to get God’s attention and perhaps to get God to assist him with divine power. God answers Moses by saying, “I am who I am.” It would in time be translated as “Yahweh.” Here in Father Hecker’s sermon, he tells us that can call upon God through the name of Jesus. Not only is God’s name holy but it is powerful. Father Hecker reminds us that we need to respect the sacred name of God.

The Holy Name Society was founded by the Dominicans in 1564. Its purpose was to deepen devotion to the name of Jesus Christ and to make reparation for the misuse of the holy name. Member pledged not to swear or misuse the name of Jesus. The society was introduced in the United States in the Archdiocese of New York in 1898 and any parish in America was free to establish a society. By the time that Vatican Council II was called, some 60 years later, American membership had reached five million members who were primarily men. Most parishes in the United States formed a men’s group called the Holy Name Society that encouraged members to receive the sacraments regularly. While Holy Name Societies are not as popular in parishes today as they were before Vatican II, they continue to encourage Catholics not to swear, lie or blaspheme the name of God. In the parish of Saint Paul the Apostle in Manhattan the Paulist staff added an additional pledge not to drink alcohol as well as not to swear. Servant of God Father Hecker established a men’s society in the 1870s that would in time become the Holy Name society, as he believed that this helped reduce domestic violence among Catholic families in the tenements that were located in the parish on the west side of Manhattan. By the time that Father Hecker died in 1888, the parish was one of the most active parishes in the United States.

Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C.

HECKER REFLECTION: HOLY NAME OF JESUS

1/12/2015

The Most Holy Name of Jesus
A Sermon by Servant of God, Isaac Hecker
(Part One: 12 January 2015)

“From the rising of the sun until its going down, the name of the Lord is worthy of praise.”
(Psalm 113)

The devout Christian who has learned to know the Redeemer, comprehends the glory and happiness of Christ’s love for us. Every feast in Christ’s honor is celebrated with unspeakable spiritual joy and devotion. The feast of the Holy Name which we celebrate today is one of special glory because its focus is Christmas. Every mystery of Christ, every mercy, every title of honor, every benefit, every effort of divine love which we adore forms a whole sequence of our redemption and justification. The sacred name of Jesus presents to our minds the majesty and glory of his divinity while at the same time we are aware of the endearing charms of his sacred humanity. His name is the title of his supreme majesty and dominion, his glorious victory over sin while at the same time it is to us the expression of all graces and blessings of which he is the inexhaustible source.

In times past we have directed our attention on this feast to the contemplation of the great mystery of the Incarnation. We have celebrated with joy and gladness the festival of the birth of the eternal Son of God the Father among us. On this occasion he first shed his precious blood in the feast of the circumcision and we have come with the wise men from the East to adore Him and lay our treasures at His feet. Today holy mother church invites us to pay homage to his sacred name. The church seeks to cherish and to direct our love and veneration to that blessed name and together to increase our reverence for it. Surely there is no one among us, no one worthy of the name of Christian who needs to be reminded of why this sacred name is venerated.

In the first place it comes from God Himself. It was necessary for God the Father to give a name to Him who is the Son of God. It was necessary that the Father give the name to His own Son, for God alone understood the consubstantial eternal Word, the boundless perfection of His divine nature and the unsearchable mystery of the Incarnation and His office as the Redeemer of the world. Therefore was this glorious name conceived in the infinite intelligence of the Almighty. Therefore was it declared by the ministry of an angel that He should be called Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. Therefore it becomes to us to honor and revere this name that comes from a source which none can be higher or more exalted.

Commentary by Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP

The feast of the Holy Name of Jesus has its origin in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke an angel tells Mary that God has chosen a name for the infant and this same message is delivered to Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew. Saint Matthew also discusses the meaning of the two names of the child, “Jesus” for “Yahweh saves” and “Emmanuel” for “God is with us.” Father Hecker makes the same point in his sermon when he states that God the Father has named God the Son - who is the Word of God made flesh. In chapter 16 of the Gospel of John, Jesus says ”whatever you ask in my name, my Father will give you.” This same point is made by Paul in his letter to the Romans. This is the origin of ending prayers in a variety of styles such as “in his most holy name,” or “through Christ Our Lord.” Reverence for the name of Jesus goes back to early Christianity.

At the time of Father Hecker, a feast day had been set aside during the Christmas season for the Holy Name of Jesus. In time it was eventually merged with the feast of the Circumcision and today has replaced this feast day, de-emphasizing the circumcision rite and like Father Hecker’s sermon, placing emphasis on the power of the name of God. Just as Moses asked God for his name on Sinai so that Moses could call upon him, so Christians know the name of the God man and live in the grace, blessing and power of his name.

Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C.

ISAAC HECKER: SERMON ON THE IMAGE OF GOD

1/6/2015

Sermon for Epiphany,
Servant of God Isaac Hecker CSP

Excerpts from a Sermon delivered at the Church of San Andrea delle Valle in Rome.

It he beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God then created man in his own image and likeness. From the subsistence of the earth God made man’s body. Out of God’s own bosom He breathed the breath of his own life into man, and man became a living soul! Where did man’s life come? From God’s own bosom. For the soul finds no rest until it finds God and reposes in that bosom out of which its life was first breathed forth. The breath of God still moves in us. Reason seeks to know God. The heart longs to possess God. This is the great yearning of all souls; the meaning of the hope of every human heart. The destiny of the soul is to come to God; to be one with God.

Christianity teaches that the soul is the image of God, His living image and likeness. The image has the capacity to take on its original, therefore unions with the soul and God is not impossible. God has united His Divinity with all the infinite attributes of our humanity without change or alteration of either, in one personality. This is called the Incarnation. God became man. There was one who was true God and true man, hi is called Christ

Look at the Gospels from this point of view. Our Lord is introduced to us as a true child of an earthly mother, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. He was not above participation in social amusements and gave his sanction to a marriage ceremony and to further the enjoyment of the guests, at the suggestion of his mother, he change water into wine. His eyes were open to the beauties of nature. He was charmed with the lilies, studied trees, read the meaning of clouds, watched the birds build their nests and listened with delight to their cheering song. The sowing of seed, the ripening harvest the plays and dancing in the marketplace; these and all the varied events of daily life and of human interest, attracted his attention and furnished illustrations for those parables s of his in which he conveyed to men his sublimist of lessons.

It was attached to the city of Jerusalem. He was fond of children. His heart was alive to the feelings of friends. He pitied and blessed the poor, comforted those who mourned and refreshed those who were weary. Jesus was a man whose eyes were open to all things beautiful and whose heart was filled with human tenderness and feeling. Why do men think that this life has nothing to do with the next? If so they are greatly mistaken. God is the author of nature. How admirable is God’s name in all his works. Man is born into the masterpiece of the visible creation, his soul bears the image of his maker and his faculties are a gift from God.

Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C.