June 2015

DR. PAUL FARMER’S MISSION OF HEALING

ST. ANTHONY JUNE 2015 • $3.95 FRANCISCANMEDIA.ORG

Messenger

Oscar Romero Modern-Day Martyr

Praying the Psalms Nurturing Justice at Home Spiritual Stumbling A Piece of Bamboo

REFLECTION

© SUSAN CHIANG/ISTOCKPHOTO; BACKGROUND © DESIGN PICS/KELLY REDINGER

Creating a child takes no love or skill;

being a parent requires lots of both.

—Michael Josephson

CONTENTS

ST. ANTHONY

❘ JUNE 2015 ❘ VOLUME 123/NUMBER 1

Messenger ON THE COVE R

28 Oscar Romero: Modern-Day Martyr

For 22 years, advocates for the sainthood cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero have heralded his holiness.

On May 23, the Church finally responded with Romero’s beatification.

His cause for sainthood was blocked for decades. Now the Church has beatified this Salvadoran archbishop.

By Dr. Mike Gable

Photo by Octavio Duran, OFM

F E AT U R E S

D E PA R T M E N T S

14 Dr. Paul Farmer’s Mission of Healing

2 Dear Reader 3 From Our Readers

Driven by faith and a commitment to social justice, this Harvard doctor develops healthcare clinics in the poorest parts of the world.

By Donis Tracy

4 Followers of St. Francis Larry Nickels, OFM

6 Reel Time Noble

20 Spiritual Stumbles God loves us in spite of ourselves.

By Heather King

14

100 Miles from Nowhere

10 Church in the News

24 Praying the Psalms These poetic hymns express the range of human emotion—joy, sorrow, excitement, love.

By Father Hilarion Kistner, OFM

34 Editorial Religion and Retail: A Clash in Style

48 At Home on Earth

36 A Piece of Bamboo

The Energy of God and Nature

What can we learn from a simple plant?

By Francesca Notowidigdo

38 Homegrown Justice

8 Channel Surfing

24

Maximize your family’s awareness with these seven practical steps.

By Tom Rinkoski

50 Ask a Franciscan Baptizing Grandchildren Secretly

52 Book Corner Living in the Father’s Embrace

44 Fiction: Country Angels

54 A Catholic Mom Speaks

Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.

By Fay Yoder

Life in the Middle

56 The Spirit of Francis Caring for the Sick

38

57 Backstory

DEAR READER

ST. ANTHONY M essenger

Prayerful Preaching When Fernando Bulhom, an Augustinian canon in Portugal, became a friar in 1220 and took the name Anthony, he had already acquired a vast knowledge of Scripture. After a brief time as a missionary in Morocco and a short time as chaplain for friars in a hermitage at Montepaolo, his talents as a preacher were discovered.

Francis of Assisi was still alive when Anthony was assigned to teach Scripture to the friars in Bologna. In that city he received a letter from Francis, encouraging him in this teaching as long as these studies did not “extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion” (Rule of 1223).

Francis need not have worried. Anthony’s aim was to draw his students to appreciate how deeply God loves them and how they should live as people made in the divine image and likeness. Their later preaching would succeed because of this approach.

Anthony’s talents as a preacher cut short his teaching in Bologna.

The friars sent him to southern France to preach against the Albigensians, who were winning sympathy for their views because of their evangelical lifestyle.

tal Digi as Extr

Click the button on the right for more of Father Pat’s reflections on Anthony as a teacher and preacher.

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Publisher/CEO Daniel Kroger, OFM Chief Operating Officer Thomas A. Shumate, CPA Editor in Chief John Feister Art Director Jeanne Kortekamp Franciscan Editor Pat McCloskey, OFM Managing Editor Susan Hines-Brigger Associate Editor Christopher Heffron Assistant Editor Daniel Imwalle Editorial Assistant Sharon Lape Advertising tammy monjaras

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2 ❘ J un e 2015

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

FROM OUR READERS

Oppose All Forms of Violence against Women I’m writing concerning the April cover story of St. Anthony Messenger— Carol Ann Morrow’s “An Interview with President Jimmy Carter.” Certainly, no one would disagree with the premise that sexual slavery, rape, and other acts of violence against women are intolerable and need to be opposed until they are stopped. I am, however, appalled that Jimmy Carter so easily gets a pass on one of the greatest forms of violence against women which he has supported (and apparently continues to) over the years: abortion. Disingenuously called women’s health care, abortion is neither health care nor is it anything

What’s on Your Mind?

Letters that are published do not necessarily represent the views of the Franciscan friars or the editors. We do not publish slander or libel. Please include your name and postal address. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.

Mail Letters, St. Anthony Messenger 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498 Fax 513-241-0399

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other than a radical form of violence against women.

It is very hard to criticize a man who has done so many good things in his life, things which need to be addressed with a vigor and concern that Jimmy Carter apparently bears in his heart.

But when a good thing has flaws, those flaws must be addressed so that they can be corrected.

Mr. Carter needs to step up his activities to protect women in the womb and to return women to the role for which God made them—mothers and nurturers, not warriors and CEOs. Edward A. Hara Fairfax, Virginia

Leave Out the Rants Let me start by saying that I love St. Anthony Messenger. As a Secular Franciscan, I find much in your magazine to complement my spirituality.

However, in the April issue, the letter titled “Don’t Close Guantanamo” belonged more on Fox News than in your pages. It contained basically nothing spiritual or religious. I can tolerate those who are living out their religion in a pre-Vatican II spirit, but Mr. Fazio’s opinions were hostile and basically political. (Note the inclusion of President Barack Obama’s middle name.)

Please screen your letters more carefully, and leave the rants for other venues.

Theresa Egan, OFS Odenton, Maryland

Hope for More Inclusion Brenda Boenig has it just right in her letter titled “One Day,” from March’s “From Our Readers” column, in which she writes about “the openness of mind and heart” of St. Anthony Messenger as being “often

the only glimmer of hope.”

I really believe that one day Catholic Communion will be available to all Christians baptized in the Trinity. The Episcopalians are on the right track with that. I know that Jesus had only men for apostles. But we need to understand that, in addition to his divinity, Jesus also had a human side. We have to take into account the customs of the times he lived in. Women were often treated as inferior to men, and were basically relegated to the kitchen and the bedroom. If Jesus were walking the earth today, I guarantee he would have female apostles.

I hope and pray that someday all faiths will come together in agreement where there is currently division. After all, aren’t we all under the one, only, and same God? And I don’t feel any less Catholic or Franciscan for my beliefs.

Nick Wineriter, OFS Rockville, Maryland

The Readers’ Voice in St. Anthony Messenger After reading John Feister’s “Backstory” column in the April issue, I was really impressed by how genuinely concerned you are about the use of magazine space. What is also impressive is your consideration for your readers’ voice. I never thought of your magazine space as your voice (or the readers’), which was a new insight for me.

If you want to publish readers’ opinions, that’s wonderful. However, there are some things that are not worth addressing—such as the word catholic being mistakenly capitalized.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed the nuance. Perhaps a personal answer to the letter writer would have sufficed.

Bridget Galdes Lexington, Massachusetts Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 3

F O L L O W E R S O F S T. F R A N C I S

Small Agency Is Rich in Mercy

T

he daily average temperature in St. Louis, Missouri, during January is 31.8 degrees Fahrenheit, just below freezing. For those who make their homes in the area called South City, the threat of having utilities turned off due to lack of payment is very real. In this environment, a small organization called the Franciscan Connection stands ready to assist those facing challenging financial situations.

The Franciscan Friars of the Sacred Heart Province founded the Franciscan Connection in 1991, with a mission of providing “pastoral listening, respectful support, and emergency assistance to low-income St. Louis-area families in times of need.”

Executive director for the agency since 2009, Father Larry Nickels, OFM, handles a great deal of the daily workload, assisted by just two part-time volunteers. His passion for social justice, though, provides plenty of fuel to make real the mission of the Franciscan Connection. “Concern for social justice issues and doing something about them is at the heart of the Gospel of Christ and at the center of the life and witness of all the baptized,” Father Larry explains.

Larry Nickels, OFM

This Chicago native’s Franciscan spirit is evident today, but the road to his vocation was not a straight line. “This path has had many twists and turns,” he reflects. A vowed Franciscan for over 30 years, Father Larry was initially drawn to the Augustinians, as was St. Anthony of Padua. He entered the Augustinian novitiate, but was ultimately asked to step out of formation. “There was a concern that I was choosing religious life because I believed I could not be successful doing anything else,” Father Larry recalls.

Father Larry’s calling to religious life never really went away, and he began looking at other orders, at the encouragement of his Augustinian spiritual director. After seeing the way a Franciscan priest greeted people on the sidewalk outside St. Peter’s in the Loop in Chicago’s central business district, Father Larry felt pulled to the Order of Friars Minor. “My Augustinian background was part of a wonderful preparation for living and working as a Franciscan priest,” Father Larry says.

With an interest in counseling, Father Larry studied social work at Washington University in St. Louis, obtaining an MSW

STORIES FROM OUR READERS Learn more about St. Anthony and share your story of how he helped you at AmericanCatholic.org/ Features/Anthony.

PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

A Miracle in Milan

4 ❘ J un e 2015

A couple of years ago, I was traveling from Milan, Italy, to South Africa. When I landed in South Africa, my suitcase did not arrive.

My heart sank, since I had all my new clothes and presents for my family in it. Desperate, I thought, Only St. Anthony can help me now. I found the St. Anthony Shrine website and sent a prayer request.

The next day, after I sent an e-mail to Milan airport’s customer service with a photo of my lost suitcase, a kind lady called me and asked me to describe the contents of my bag. When she heard my description, she told me that my bag was right in front of her!

Apparently, it had fallen off the conveyor belt and lost its label along the way. I will never forget my story. It was a miracle that my suitcase was recovered, and it’s all thanks to St. Anthony. He is my patron saint now.

—Olivia Brites, Johannesburg, South Africa

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

Click here for more on Father Larry and the Franciscan Connection. Click the button on the left to hear an interview with him.

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA

Living Simply Anthony of Padua moved around a great deal during his 10 years as a Franciscan.

Knowing Jesus well through prayer and his life as a friar, Anthony had no inclination to accumulate a great many things.

That attitude helped make him a very credible preacher.

He clearly “walked the talk”—to use our terminology. His simple style of life disarmed many people who criticized the Church for being extremely wealthy and for being much too involved politically. People saw Christ in him. –P.M.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/GOOGLE ART PROJECT

with a focus on mental health in 2002.

A prominent program the Franciscan Connection offers is emergency utility assistance, where applicants who have run out of options can receive up to $100 to help pay for electric, gas, or water services.

The organization also offers help with school supplies, Christmas baskets, and shoe vouchers. “In August 2014, approximately $5,000 was distributed in the form of shoe vouchers to assist parents with providing new shoes for students returning to class,” Father Larry explains.

Soliciting funding is the greatest challenge facing the operation of the Franciscan Connection, with many donors capable of making only small contributions. Still, Father Larry takes inspiration from the story of Peter curing the crippled beggar in the third chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. “I understand well what it means to have neither silver nor gold, but we have the ability to offer others what we do have—the love and compassion of God for others,” Father Larry explains. “By this accounting, the Franciscan Connection is rich beyond measure.”

—Daniel Imwalle

tal Digi as Extr

To learn more about Franciscan saints, visit SaintoftheDay.org.

S T. A N T H O N Y B R E A D

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Send all postal communication to: St. Anthony Bread 1615 Vine St. Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498

Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 5

PHOTO BY FRANK JASPER, OFM

The National Shrine of St. Anthony is located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Consecrated in 1889, it includes a first-class relic of St. Anthony and serves as a center for daily prayer and contemplation.

The Franciscan friars minister from the shrine. To help them in their work among the poor, you may send a monetary offering called St. Anthony Bread. Make checks or money orders payable to “Franciscans” and mail to the address below.

Every Tuesday, a Mass is offered for benefactors and petitioners at the shrine. To seek St. Anthony’s intercession, mail your petition to the address below. Petitions are taken to the shrine each week.

To post your petition online, please visit stanthony.org, where you can also request to have a candle lit or a Mass offered; or you may make a donation to the Franciscans or sign up to receive a novena booklet.

REEL TIME

W I T H S I S T E R R O S E PA C AT T E , F S P

Noble

PHOTO BY NICOLA DOVE/COURTESY OF ASPIRATION MEDIA

New to DVD in June McFarland, USA Project Almanac Kingsman: The Secret Service Serena The Lazarus Effect

6 ❘

June 2015

Irish actor Deirdre O’Kane is winning critical acclaim for her performance in Noble, based on a true story.

In the early 1950s, Christina Noble (Gloria Cramer Curtis), a young girl from a poor part of Dublin, Ireland, aspires to be a singer when she grows up. She prays and lights candles to Our Lady to care for her sick mother. When she dies, her father, Thomas (Liam Cunningham), an alcoholic, loses custody of the children, and the courts send them to separate institutions.

At 17, Christina finishes school, but more hardships follow when she is raped. Friends bring her to the nuns for care. But Christina is pregnant, and the nuns make her sign a registration form that includes an adoption clause. She is devastated when her son is taken from her.

Christina never stops praying as the years go by. She goes to England in the late ’60s to work, and meets a young man who is setting up a chain of restaurants. They marry and have a child, but the union is fragile. By now it is the early 1970s and the war in Vietnam is raging. She dreams of helping the children there.

It takes Christina (played as an adult by Deirdre O’Kane) until 1989, but eventually she makes it to Vietnam. She looks around and sees homeless children wandering the streets and Westerners there for the sex trade. Christina manages to find funding from oil companies investing in Vietnam, and works the system to set up homes for children.

Watching this small, independent film is like opening a gift and finding something precious inside. It’s inspired by Christina Noble’s extraordinary life, and it is truly one of heroic faith against incredible misfortune.

Her steely perseverance in prayer—and her struggle to be an authentic woman in an abusive world while caring for poor children in Ho Chi Minh City—is inspiring and incredible.

I love Christina’s prayer life. She talks to God in a tough manner because she truly believes.

Not yet rated, PG-13 ■ Mature themes and situations, peril.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

© FILM MOVEMENT

The French independent film Marie’s Story is about a devoted nun and the deaf-and-blind girl she struggles to reach.

Marie’s Story

Groundswell Rising When fracking—the extraction of natural gas by drilling and injecting water and toxic cancer-causing chemicals at high pressure— began in the United States around 2012, Fr anciscanMedia.org

RESOLUTION PICTURES, INC.

Marie Heurtin (Ariana Rivoire) was born blind and deaf in France in 1885. When she is 14 years old, her father (Gilles Treton) brings her to the Larnay Institute, near Poitiers, where the nuns care for and teach deaf girls. But the Mother Superior (Brigitte Catillon) is unwilling to take on a wild child such as Marie.

But Sister Marguerite (Isabelle Carré) feels inspired to teach Marie—to free her imprisoned soul. She writes in her journal that teaching the young child may be why God called her to religious life.

With Marie back at the school, Marguerite must find a way to communicate because the girl’s behavior frightens everyone.

Months pass with little or no progress until Marie allows herself to be bathed and to have her hair brushed.

Marie’s Story is based on a true account of a young girl and her teacher—not unlike Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Sister Marguerite’s health is not good, and she must teach this young girl about faith and heaven in ways never done before.

Director Jean-Pierre Améris and cinematographer Virginie Saint-Martin have created a beautiful sensory version of Marie’s life, letting us glimpse the inner reality of a vibrant soul.

A-2, not yet rated ■ Mature themes.

energy companies told consumers it was a way to find alternative clean fuels. This has proven not to be the case, as director Renard Cohen’s amazing documentary demonstrates in chilling—and heartbreaking— detail.

People in Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania tell of the impact of fracking on the health of communities because wells are built too close to homes and schools. Children and adults have developed health issues such as rashes, gastrointestinal and respiratory problems, and tumors. People bought property and were not told that the chemical rights had already been sold to others, thus destroying land value and the environment.

If there is any good news in all of this, it is how communities are coming together to push back against energy giants such as Halliburton and government agencies that permit fracking to take place. Groundswell Rising shows what people can do when they work together for positive change.

Not yet rated ■ Mature themes.

The documentary Groundswell Rising, which features actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, takes a hard look at the dangers of fracking.

Catholic Cl assifications A-1 A-2 A-3 L O

General patronage Adults and adolescents Adults Limited adult audience Morally offensive

■

The Catholic News Service Media Review Office gives these ratings. See usccb.org/movies.

■

Find reviews by Sister Rose and others at CatholicMovieReviews.org.

June 2015 ❘

7

CHANNEL SURFING

WITH CHRISTOPHER HEFFRON

UP CLOSE

Animal Planet, check local listings One of the reasons James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” has remained a cultural phenomenon is because the story is a wake-up call to our inner explorer. While most of us will never scale a mountain or parachute out of an airplane, through our imaginations we are each the center of our own adventures. Animal Planet’s fun, fascinating new series 100 Miles from Nowhere follows a similar formula: ordinary people are placed in extraordinary circumstances.

In each episode, Matt Galland, Danny Bryson, and Blake Josephson are plopped into an inhospitable location. And over the course of four days, they traverse over 100 miles and brave wild animals, the elements, thirst, hunger, and each other. What gives this program an edge is that it’s completely self-shot. There is no crew—and that gives 100 Miles an in-your-face immediacy that’s hard to turn away from.

Sensitive channel surfers might scoff at some of the coarse language, but that’s a slight distraction. The message of the show is timely: life—whether we’re mired in the mundane or the manic—is an easier journey with friends at our side.

Unlike the sedentary Walter Mitty, Matt, Danny, and Blake prove that adventure doesn’t have to be imaginary. We all have it in us to strive for a life less ordinary.

Man Finds Food

© ANIMAL PLANET/MATT TRAPPE

Wednesdays, 9 p.m., Travel Channel Adam Richman walked away from his previous show, Man v. Food, because it all but wrecked his health. The amiable host traveled from state to state, accepting food challenges from restaurants and their patrons. Watching him dive into a 12pound burger or 15 dozen oysters, needless to say, wasn’t appetizing. Weight gain and depression hit Richman until he walked away from the show and lost 70 pounds. Now he’s back with a more gastro-friendly series, Man Finds Food. And channel surfers would be wise to tune in.

The premise is similar to its predecessor. In this show, which is part travelogue, part culinary expedition, Richman travels the backroads of this country in search of unique eats, how they came about, and how they’re prepared. What makes this series a rich television experience is that Richman avoids quantity for quality. Food isn’t meant to be inhaled in under 10 minutes. It’s meant to be savored— especially with those we care about.

Richman is the draw here. He’s funny without being flip, curious, and genuinely interested in showcasing these culinary artisans and the daily grind of running a restaurant. His enthusiasm and energy are infectious.

In 2014, the average American spent $1,200 on fast food. This show presents an alternative: quality food is out there. We just have to stretch our legs and look for it.

Matt Galland, Danny Bryson, and Blake Josephson are living the high life on Animal Planet’s new series 100 Miles from Nowhere.

8 ❘

June 2015

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

© THE TRAVEL CHANNEL

100 Miles from Nowhere

3

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CHURCH IN THE NEWS

❘ BY SUSAN HINES-BRIGGER

Prayers, Aid Offered for Nepal umbrella organization for more than 150 Catholic relief and development organizations around the world.

Catholic Relief Services, the US Caritas partner, was sending relief materials from north India and working with Caritas Nepal to procure additional relief materials locally and in India.

CNS PHOTO/NAVESH CHITRAKAR, REUTERS

Pope Accepts Resignation of US Bishop

People carry the body of a victim on a stretcher after an earthquake hit Kathmandu, Nepal, on April 25. International aid organizations, such as Caritas Internationalis, are working to provide supplies to those affected by the earthquake.

The day after a deadly earthquake in Nepal, Pope Francis offered his prayers for those affected and encouraged rescue and emergency workers in their effort, reported CNS. On April 28, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which promotes and coordinates charitable giving, announced that Pope Francis had sent “a first contribution of $100,000″ to assist the victims. The money, the council said, “will be sent to the local church, [and] will be used to support the assistance efforts under way on behalf of the displaced” and others impacted by the quake.

At the time of this writing, more than 5,000 people were known to have been killed and more than 6,500 injured after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit a mountainous region near Kathmandu on April 25. The number of casualties was expected to rise, however, as rescue teams made their way into more remote areas.

1 0 ❘ Jun e 2015

The day of the earthquake, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, sent a telegram to Bishop Paul Simick, apostolic vicar of Nepal, assuring him of the pope’s prayers and concern. The telegram said that the pope “offers encouragement to the civil authorities and emergency personnel as they continue their rescue efforts and assistance to those touched by this tragedy.”

Jesuit Father Pius Perumana, head of Caritas Nepal, said the organization is working to provide those affected with tarps, tents, and food, as well as trying to help protect people from the rain and cold. “What the people need immediately is shelter. Temperatures are dropping at night and there is also rain. Children are sleeping outside at night. It is really traumatic for them,” Father Perumana said.

Caritas Nepal is a branch of Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 21 under the terms of the Code of Canon Law, which says, “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office,” reported Catholic News Service (CNS).

Bishop Finn was convicted in 2012 on one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse. He was acquitted of a second count and placed on two years’ probation. He is the highest-ranking US Catholic official to face criminal charges related to the priest sex-abuse scandal that erupted within the US Church in 2002.

The charges resulted from the failure of diocesan authorities to immediately report a computer technician’s discovery of child pornography on a computer used by Father Shawn Ratigan, then pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Butler, Missouri.

The former pastor pleaded guilty to five counts of producing or attempting to produce child pornography, and received 10 years for each count.

He began his 50-year sentence in federal prison in September 2013.

Immediately after Ratigan entered St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

CNS/COURTESY OF CHICAGO ARCHDIOCESE

N E W S B R I E F S N AT I O N A L A N D I N T E R N AT I O N A L Cardinal Francis E. George, OMI, retired archbishop of Chicago, passed away on April 17, following a long battle with cancer. During his funeral on April 23 at Holy Name Cathedral, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle said Cardinal George’s faith “was simple, direct, without pretense or embarrassment, spontaneous, bold, profound, even childlike. He was so utterly a Christian, so utterly a priest, that no circumstance or setting would have seemed to him inappropriate to give witness to Christ,” reported the Chicago Sun-Times. In addition to the cardinal’s family, a crowd of about 1,200, including politicians, business leaders, and other VIPs, as well as priests and nuns, were in attendance.

Sister Jeannine Gramick, cofounder of New Ways Ministry, an outreach to gay and lesbian individuals, was prevented from speaking at a Catholic church in Charlotte, North Carolina, this past May. The Sister of Loretto was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a public program titled “Including LGBT People and Their Families in Faith Communities: A Conference Open to All.” When he learned that Sister Gramick would be speaking at the event, Charlotte Bishop Peter J. Jugis directed Jesuit Father Pat Earl, pastor of St. Peter Church, to not allow her to speak at the church. In 1999, Sister Gramick,

his guilty plea, the diocese filed a petition with the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that he be laicized.

Before the pope’s decision regarding Bishop Finn, members of the Pontifical Commission for Child Protection announced last February that one of their priorities was to ensure measures were in place to promote Fr ancisca n Media .org

CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO

Pope Francis will visit Cuba this September before traveling to the United States. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, announced the visit on April 22. Details of the trip will be released at a later date, said Father Lombardi. US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro both credited Pope Francis with helping secure the deal that led to the meeting between the two leaders last December. The pope had written personal letters to both leaders, and the Vatican hosted a secret meeting between representatives of the countries last fall.

then a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and New Ways’ other cofounder, the late Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent, were censured by the Vatican for their opposition to Catholic Church teaching on homosexuality and marriage.

When she became aware of the situation, Sister Gramick said, “It’s very unfortunate that the bishop did not find out what the program was about because his objection to me is about Church teaching. I’m speaking about the pastoral outreach of the Church, which, very frankly, he should be very supportive of.”

The last of the seven volumes of the St. John’s Bible was presented to Pope Francis on April 17. The Bible, which is renowned for its handwritten text and vibrant illuminations, is a project of St. John’s Abbey and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

The third annual March for Marriage took place April 25, with an estimated 5,000 people gathering in Washington, DC, in defense of traditional marriage, reported CNS. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the US bishops’ conference, called same-sex marriage “the greatest social experiment of our time,” saying that “children do not need experiments,” but rather the love of a mother and father.

For more Catholic news, visit AmericanCatholic.org.

the accountability of bishops in protecting children and upholding Vatican-approved norms for dealing with accusations of child abuse made against Church workers.

Marie Collins, a member of the commission and a survivor of abuse, told the news site Crux, “I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a

conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn't pass a background check.”

Vatican Concludes Investigation of US Sisters On April 16, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced the end of its investigation of the US Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 1 1

Pope Francis Announces Year of Mercy

Religion News Service (RNS).

Sister Sharon Holland, president of the LCWR, said, “We are pleased at the completion of the [investigation], which involved long and chal-

CNS PHOTO/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO

Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a network of 1,500 Catholic sisters that represents about 80 percent of the 50,000 nuns in the United States, according to

Pope Francis meets with representatives of the US Leadership Conference of Women Religious in his library in the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican on April 16.

1 2 ❘ Jun e 2015

lenging exchanges of our understandings of and perspectives on critical matters of religious life and its practice. We learned that what we hold in common is much greater than any of our differences.”

According to the joint final report that was issued, “The very fact of such substantive dialogue between bishops and religious has been a blessing to be appreciated and further encouraged.”

The original report had accused the nuns of promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Following the announcement, a delegation of American nuns met with Pope Francis for 50 minutes.

The sisters said the conversation “allowed us to personally thank Pope Francis for providing leadership and a vision that has captivated our hearts and emboldened us in our own mission and service to the Church.” A St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

CNS PHOTO/MATTHEW BARRICK

On April 11, Pope Francis released the “bull of indicfavorable time to heal wounds, a time not to be weary tion,” announcing a holy year of mercy to begin on of meeting all those who are waiting to see and touch December 8 of this year and run with their hands the signs of the through November 20, 2016, closeness of God, a time to offer reported CNS. In the document everyone the way of forgiveness announcing the holy year— and reconciliation.” ”Misericordiae Vultus” (“The Face of Pope Francis asked that all dioMercy”)—Pope Francis wrote, “If ceses around the world designate a God limited himself to only justice, “Door of Mercy” at their cathehe would cease to be God, and dral—or another special church or would instead be like human shrine—and that every diocese beings who ask merely that the law implement the “24 Hours for the be respected.”

Lord” initiative on the Friday and After announcing the event in Saturday before the fourth week of front of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Lent. He said he will also designate Basilica, the pope handed out and send out “Missionaries of copies of the document to the Mercy” to preach about mercy; archpriests of the major basilicas of they will be given special authority, Rome and to Vatican officials repre- A worker places a gold cross on the Holy he said, “to pardon even those sins Door at the Basilica of the National senting Catholics around the reserved to the Holy See.” Finally, Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in world. he urged all Catholics to spend Washington April 12. It will be opened In his homily at a vespers service more time practicing what tradiDecember 8 at the beginning of the Holy following, Pope Francis said he tionally have been called the corYear of Mercy. declared the year because “it is the poral and spiritual works of mercy.

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Dr. Paul Farmer’s

Mission of Healing Driven by faith and a commitment to social justice, this Harvard doctor develops health-care clinics in the poorest parts of the world.

BY DONIS TRACY

D

PHOTO BY REBECCA E. ROLLINS/PARTNERS IN HEALTH

R. PAUL FARMER is a citizen of the world.

For more than 30 years, this medical doctor, Harvard professor, and founding member of Partners in Health (PIH), an international aid organization, has been a tireless advocate for those who often don’t have a voice in society—the poor, the imprisoned, the marginalized.

Most days, he is traveling. He divides his time between Harvard, where he heads the department of global health and social medicine, and the world—visiting PIH programs, tending to the sick, and raising funds to continue the PIH mission of providing quality health care to the poorest of the poor in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Mexico, Malawi, and the United States.

Speaking to St. Anthony Messenger from Miami International Airport as he waited to catch a plane to Haiti, he says, “I guess I have become Catholic with a small c. My mission has always been to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care.”

According to the organization’s mission statement, “Partners in Health strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.

“When our patients are ill and have no access to care, our team of health professionals, scholars, and activists will do whatever it takes

Fr anciscanMedia.org

to make them well—just as we would do if a member of our own families or we ourselves were ill,” the statement continues.

An Unconventional Childhood Farmer’s vocation to minister to the poor has roots in his past. Born in 1959 in North Adams, Massachusetts, a small town in the Berkshire Mountains, the second of six children, his upbringing was a bit unconventional.

“I was 10 years old the last time I lived in a house,” he explains with a smile.

When he was 7, his family moved to Alabama, and later settled in northern Florida.

In Florida, Farmer’s father bought an old bus, wired it for electricity, and converted it into a mobile home, replacing the seats with bunk beds. The family bounced around from one trailer park to another until, a few years later, his father moved the family into a houseboat, mooring it in an undeveloped bayou, where the family bathed in a creek and bought water from the nearest town.

“My family and I, we lived in unorthodox circumstances,” laughs Farmer. “I mean, I assume everyone has lived on a bus, no?”

Looking back, Farmer believes his “experience of housing” growing up has helped him to feel at home regardless of his circumstances.

After graduating with high honors from Hernando High School in Brooksville, Florida, Farmer received a full scholarship to attend Duke University in North Carolina. That is where his vocation to minister to the poor June 2015 ❘

15

Confronting the Ebola Crisis During a visit to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in October 2014, Dr. Paul Farmer talks with survivors of Ebola about their experiences at holding and treatment units when they were ill.

PHOTO BY REBECCA E. ROLLINS/PARTNERS IN HEALTH

began to take shape. While studying at Duke, Farmer met Sister Julianna DeWolf, a Belgian nun working to improve the lives of migrant workers in North Carolina.

Sister Julianna introduced Farmer to liberation theology, a branch of Christian theology that sprang up in the 1950s and 1960s in South America. It stresses the need for corporal works of mercy, particularly for the poor and underprivileged in society.

“Liberation theology is really very Gospelfocused,” explains Farmer. “It was what was being talked about in the first years of the Church.”

For Farmer, the concept was fascinating.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is not the Catholicism I grew up with!’” he recalls. “Or if it was, I must not have been paying attention at CCD class. I didn’t even know what corporal works of mercy were,” he adds, noting that he was immediately drawn to deepen his faith, something that surprised everyone around him, including himself. “I was raised Catholic,” he explains, “but, like a lot of people in the 16 ❘

June 2015

United States and in Europe, it didn’t stick.”

Renewed in spirit, Farmer threw himself into helping migrant workers, many of whom were from Haiti. He began to forge bonds with the Haitian people, bonds that helped shape his vocation.

“By the time I graduated college, I knew that I wanted to be a doctor to people who were disadvantaged,” he says.

From Harvard to Haiti He applied to Harvard Medical School, where he began a joint degree program in medicine and medical anthropology. Before he began his studies at Harvard, he decided to spend one year in Haiti, learning Creole, working in public-health clinics, and learning about life in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

That was in 1983. What he found was a place that cemented his calling. He began volunteering at a clinic in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and befriended Ophelia Dahl, daughter of the late author Roald Dahl, who St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

E

VERY EBOLA DEATH is a reminder of our failure of imagination,” Dr. Paul Farmer says emphatically.

“Ebola has spread because of poor healthcare institutions—no staff, no space, and no stuff.”

As the Ebola epidemic ravaged West Africa, just as borders were being closed to countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, Farmer boarded an airplane at Logan Airport in Boston to Liberia in order to bring his innovative approach to medicine to Grand Gedeh County, one of the most rural provinces of Liberia—where Ebola has wreaked havoc on its citizens.

Together with Dr. Raj Panjabi, a Liberian-born physician who runs Last Mile Health in Liberia, Farmer began a project that created a top-notch medical treatment facility in Liberia.

“An Ebola sentence need not be a death sentence,” he stresses, noting that very few US personnel who have contracted the illness on American soil have succumbed to its effects.

The idea came about when Farmer realized that the current outbreak of Ebola only has a 50-percent death rate— which means that roughly half of those

“

infected with the disease are cured.

Farmer then wondered what would happen if the current outbreak of Ebola were met with first-rate medical care. Currently, medical facilities in the most affected countries are fraught with problems— lack of trained professionals, lack of medicine, even lack of clean water at times.

If these areas were to have access to modern medicines, what would be the outcome? he wondered.

He brought his idea to Dr. Jim Yong Kim, cofounder of Partners in Health and current president of the World Bank, who met his idea with enthusiasm. Shortly thereafter, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, a network which supplies grants to projects aimed to shape public policy throughout the world, pledged $4 million to Farmer’s endeavor.

The result? A three-year project that has created community-based, resultsdriven care facilities in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Rather than quarantine healthy family members with their sick relatives— or take a “wait and see” approach to suspicious, and also highly contagious, patients—these facilities bring the best of Western medicine to the impoverished area.

Fr anciscanMedia.org

PHOTO BY MARK ROSENBERG

also was volunteering at a medical clinic in the capital. Dahl would later become a founding member of PIH, playing an integral part in the organization.

Farmer also met the Rev. Fritz Lafontant, a Haitian Anglican priest who accompanied Farmer into Haiti’s central plateau, the country’s poorest region. Lafontant had begun a small school in the village of Cange, a town that had been razed in order to build a hydroelectric dam. The residents had lost everything—their homes, their livelihoods, even their dignity.

Farmer recalls, “To me, that was the definition of structural violence,” a term used in liberation theology to refer to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals.

“Say I’m seeing a woman with 10 children.

If this woman says, ‘Every day is a fight for food and water,’ then, of course, it feels like a violence to her,” he says. “It was important for me to walk with these people, to live among them, to really understand them.”

In order to fulfill his vision, more than 100 volunteer physicians, nurses, lab technicians, and other health-care workers have been recruited. These medical professionals not only treat the infirm, but also train local residents with the hope of creating a community-based health-care facility similar to Zanmi Lasante in the Cange region of Haiti.

By training local residents to effectively treat illnesses, the face of medicine may be forever changed in West Africa, not just for the current outbreak, but for any future illnesses that may befall the country.

In addition to creating the health-care facilities, Farmer has appealed to the entire world with a series of YouTube videos that appealed to the world to get involved in order to “stop this epidemic.”

“This illness is taking lives because there is a failure to see that the lives of these people, when they fall ill, are just as important as the lives of the people in our families,” he says passionately.

“Who is my neighbor? It can be a complete stranger in need. This is why the notion of the preferential option for the poor and needy is a very, very, very powerful one.”

Seeing the abject poverty of the people, frustrated by the lack of medical supplies and lack of hope for change, Farmer knew something had to be done. He resolved to build a health-care clinic in Cange that would treat people, regardless of their ability to pay.

Returning to Cambridge to enroll at Harvard

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world,” says Farmer, seen here examining a patient at a clinic in Haiti.

June 2015 ❘

17

Medical School, Farmer realized Haiti was calling him back. For the next three years, Farmer divided his time between Cange and Cambridge, spending as much time as possible ministering to the poor.

Partners in Health

tal Digi as Extr

Farmer’s dream began to take shape during his first year in medical school. Project Bread, a charitable organization whose mission is to end hunger, agreed to provide funding for a bakery to be built in Cange. With the bakery in place, Farmer, together with Dahl and Lafontant, opened Zanmi Lasante—Haitian Creole for “Partners in Health”—a community-based health organization.

In order to create the health-care facility of his dreams, Farmer needed funding. Still a medical school student, Farmer was not sure where to turn.

Click here for more on Dr. Two years later, God interPaul Farmer and his work. vened. Tom White, owner of J.F. White Construction Company, contacted Farmer after reading an article about Zanmi Lasante. White traveled to Cange with Farmer. What he saw fascinated him, and he agreed to provide as much funding as necessary to create a functional clinic with a working lab, access to medicine, and properly trained staff.

Farmer’s dream had come true.

That all was threatened in 1986, when Haitian leader Francois “Baby Doc” Duvalier was overthrown. With the country in chaos,

poverty in the central plateau was exacerbated.

Seeing the instability in Haiti, Farmer realized he needed to find a way to secure Zanmi Lasante. In 1987, Farmer returned to Boston, gathered some of his closest friends—Ophelia Dahl, Tom White, fellow Harvard medical student Jim Yong Kim and former Duke classmate Todd McCormack—and founded Partners in Health.

By 1990, what had begun as a small healthcare clinic in Cange had become a hospital, with a nursing school, blood bank, and operating room. Hundreds of thousands of Haitian residents, regardless of their ability to pay, were flocking to the hospital not only for medical assistance, but also for social services— food, water, job training. Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis were being successfully treated.

Zanmi Lasante was a success.

A Prescription for World Health Where some people might rest after turning around the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Farmer realized that his calling was not limited to Haiti. “I look back now and think, ‘We really pushed ourselves hard back when we started,’” says Farmer with a smile. “All of us, we really knew we could do something.”

Partners in Health next turned its attention to drug-resistant tuberculosis, a growing problem that had led to thousands of lives lost.

Oftentimes, drug-resistant tuberculosis emerges in developing countries when antibiotics are

18 ❘

June 2015

PHOTOS BY REBECCA E. ROLLINS/PARTNERS IN HEALTH

Dr. Farmer does clinical rounds at Botsabelo Hospital along with local and visiting clinicians.

The group evaluates the case of a young man who, among other afflictions, lost his hearing as a result of tuberculosis and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

misused. Using an innovative approach, Farmer had successfully treated many such cases at Zanmi Lasante, and had received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant”—worth over $200,000—that he used to start a PIH research program called the Institute for Health and Social Justice.

Farmer traveled to Lima, Peru, to a shantytown called Carabayllo, where he founded Socios en Salud—Spanish for “Partners in Health.” The success rate was over 80 percent.

He also went to Russia, to a prison where most of the inmates had drug-resistant tuberculosis.

But he never forgot Zanmi Lasante, returning as often as he could to treat patients and live among the Haitian people he loves.

“There’s really a lost art of caregiving,” he says. “We just don’t do enough caregiving in medicine anymore. That’s what the corporal works of mercy are all about. Just think about it—the early years of the Church, that’s when hospitality and nursing started.”

In 1996, Farmer married Didi Bertrand, a Haitian-born medical anthropologist. Two years later, their first child, Catherine, was born. Becoming a family man did not slow Farmer down, though. He continued to serve the poor, flying between PIH sites as often as ever.

An Ongoing Mission By the mid-2000s, Partners in Health turned its attention to another medical issue affecting hundreds of thousands—AIDS. In Zanmi Lasante, Farmer had been able to secure enough medicine to better the lives of thousands of HIV-infected patients. In 2002, Zanmi Lasante received funding from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

A few years later, PIH expanded to sub-Saharan Africa, opening HIV treatment facilities in rural Rwanda, Lesotho, and Malawi.

Through it all, Farmer never lost his sense of mission.

“Liberation theology is about taking care of each other and walking with one another,” he says. “That was exactly what I was called to do. It shouldn’t have to be a nightmare for people in the 21st century to find medical care for themselves and their children.

“We are still involved almost 30 years later because we still believe in this mission,” Farmer continues, noting that PIH has been able to influence public policies throughout the world.

The organization has brought its model of treating the underprivileged to many nations through institutions such as the World Health Fr anciscanMedia.org

Often, it takes a bit of digging to find the cause of a patient’s illness, as was the case with 51-year-old Rose Kaliwo. Eventually, Dr. Farmer and clinicians at Neno District Hospital were able to diagnosis her accurately and get her back on her feet.

Organization and the World Bank, whose current president is PIH cofounder Dr. Jim Yong Kim. “The mission of Partners in Health is so important,” Farmer says emphatically. “It’s going to continue as long as we bring people in.”

Today, Farmer spends much of his time doing just that: looking to the next generation of PIH physicians.

“Dragging people into this work is one of the most exciting things I have done,” he laughs. Then the 55-year-old adds, more seriously, “Finding ways to get the young people involved has taken up a large portion of my time now.”

Farmer is impressed with many of the young people he meets, noting that their level of commitment to the mission of PIH is aweinspiring. “I don’t remember feeling that committed when I was 16,” he says, “and yet there are so many young people today that are.”

Seeing the young people embrace the mission of PIH, Farmer is optimistic about the future.

“The mission of Partners in Health is so important, it’s going to continue as long as there’s a reason to focus our attention on people who are marginalized, sick, or poor,” he says. “It won’t be easy. It’s not like we have it all worked out. But social justice is not going to go out of style.

“If these ideas are as vibrant now as they were 2,000 years ago, then, as the kids say, ‘Do the math.’ How can I not be optimistic?” A

Click the button below to hear about a couple who provide dental care for poor people around the world.

Donis Tracy is a Catholic freelance journalist who lives and works in the Boston area. She is a frequent contributor to The Pilot, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston.

June 2015 ❘

19

Spiritual Stumbles B Y H E AT H E R K I N G

I

© ENRICO FIANCHINI/ISTOCKPHOTO

find there are two types of people who attack me when they discover I’m Catholic. The first are lapsed or disgruntled Catholics who claim to be revolted by the Church but can’t stop talking about it. The second type are always trying to get me to say something bad about other (in their eyes, lukewarm) members of the Church. None of these folks can bear the gap between how a follower of Christ should be and how a person who claims to be a follower of Christ actually is.

But you have to be somewhat nuts to sign up for something that is basically impossible to achieve. As Thomas Merton observed, “We must remember that in order to choose religious life, you must be a misfit. . . .”

Christ did not confine himself to politics.

He didn’t say, “We need more rights.” He didn’t say, “Let’s overthrow the Romans.” He said, “We need to live in total integrity and love. In order to do so, we need a Church, and because we are never going to do so perfectly, the Church will inevitably also be imperfect.”

To avoid the scandal of the cross, which is to say the scandal of the Church, is impossible.

How could a Church made up of us be anything but imperfect? What Church would take us except a Church that tolerated imperfection?

Where else would we drag ourselves to pray for the people we resent at any given moment—our mothers, our spouses, our kids, our friends, our politicians, the other people in church—but to church?

Where else would we go to be reminded of the perpetual death and perpetual rebirth but to Mass? In order to try resurrecting the Church Fr anciscanMedia.org

God loves us in spite of ourselves.

we keep wrecking, we have to keep going to church—because we need Christ: to walk with us, to live.

Driven by Fear, Freed by Love Religion doesn’t mean acting better than other people. It means, if we’re lucky, getting to act a little better than we used to ourselves. As the writer Madeleine L’Engle observed, “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

You can’t do that if you’re driven by anger or fear. You have to have some kind of joy. Click the button above And this seems to require looking at our darkest to hear an interview wounds: our resentments, our seemingly hard- with Heather King. wired patterns, neuroses, fears. We must look at the things we’re ashamed of, the things we’re guilty about, the compulsive patterns we can’t shake free of—no matter how hard For more on Heather King tal we try. That, to me, is the real Digi as and the topic of spirituality, Extr challenge of Christ, and what click here. sets me on fire about the Gospels.

We all want to learn compassion, but as we go about trying to be of service to the world, we are going to uncover some very difficult truths about ourselves and others. And that’s what we have to work through. That’s the hard stuff: family stuff, sex stuff, our identity as a person who has a certain kind of career or political leaning. Our reputation in the community, perhaps.

We may decide to give up certain things, June 2015 ❘

21

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maybe many things, out of love.

Money, sex for a time—maybe forever. But that’s where the joy comes in.

The politicians tell us that our enemies are dangerous, terrorists are dangerous, people who don’t support the United States are dangerous, but the really dangerous idea is the Gospels. Dangerous because you consent to not be useful, to not be productive, to not be relevant. Dangerous because you never know whether you have staked your life or whether you’re a sham and a coward.

Dangerous because you offer up your entire self and you’re no better or kinder, no less petty or more generous, no more effective, squared away, or “together” than when you began. You’re more crushed, uncertain, and vulnerable. You’re more human. And that’s the good news.

Joy Abounds To be human is a perilous undertaking. We are all here with our broken, shattered hearts, hoping against hope for the Second Coming and trying to not kill ourselves or each other before it arrives. We expend our entire strength to eke out the tiniest act of kindness. We roll our rock, with Sisyphus, up a mountain whose top we’re never going to reach.

And we know that, in the end, we die alone and pray to be stand-up enough—just once or twice in our lives—to comfort someone else who is dying, as Christ comforted the repentant thief who was nailed to the cross beside him. That’s faith.

That’s the Resurrection.

As Thérèse of Lisieux neared the end of her life, her older sister Céline, frustrated at having so much less charity than she would have liked, exclaimed, “Oh, when I think how much I have to acquire!”

“Rather,” Thérèse replied, “how much you have to lose.” A This article is adapted from Heather King’s book Stumble: Virtue, Vice, and the Space Between (Franciscan Media). She lives in Los Angeles and speaks nationwide. Her blog can be found at shirtofflame.blogspot.com.

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Praying the

Psalms

These poetic hymns express the range of human emotion— joy, sorrow, excitement, love.

B Y FAT H E R H I L A R I O N KISTNER, OFM

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“

T

he Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” (NRSV, Ps 23:1-6).

Psalm 23 may well be everybody’s favorite. It emits a sense of peace. If we are down, it lifts us up by reminding us that God is with us always. No matter how dark a valley might be, we sense that God is taking care of us.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

© GIVAGA/INGIMAGE

What makes the Psalms so powerful for us Christians is that they are prayers in God’s own words. The divine words are given to us in human dress, and they express the most fundamental thoughts and emotions of human beings. They express the joys, the sorrows, the ups and downs, and the excitement of the human heart. Even though humans composed the Psalms, they always look to God. While deeply personal, the prayers are seldom, if ever, individualistic. They convey a sense of being one with the rest of God’s people.

The word psalm means “hymn of praise.”

The Book of Psalms contains hymns of praise, but also petitions, thanksgiving songs, prayers Fr anciscanMedia.org

of confidence, wisdom psalms, and royal psalms. While attributed to David, he probably wrote only a few. In fact, psalms are ascribed to a number of other individuals and groups.

Taken together, the Psalms eloquently tell God’s story. Look at Psalm 104. While the first chapter of Genesis offers us a solemn and stirring dramatization of creation, Psalm 104 takes a beautiful, lyrical approach: “Bless the Lord, my soul! Lord, my God, you are great indeed!

You are clothed with majesty and splendor, robed in light as with a cloak. You spread out the heavens like a tent; setting the beams of your chambers upon the waters.” Then we see mountains popping up and thrusting their

Click the button below to hear Father Hilarion speak about the Psalms.

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peaks into the sky and water rushing up and down the mountains. We see God providing food for animals and humans. A nice touch is that God provides “wine to gladden our hearts.”

Click here for more l Psalm 78 takes us through a t i Dig as on the Psalms. the history of Israel from the r t Ex exodus to the anointing of David. We hear of the wondrous deeds God performed for his people. We hear of the gratitude, as well as the rebellion, of God’s people. “Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a warrior shouting from the effects of wine. He put his foes Jesus, the good shepherd, provides us support, much to flight [note that Israel’s enemies are God’s enemies]; everlasting shame he dealt them” like the staff provides (NAB, v. 65-66). support for shepherds Apparently, God does not mind being while in the field.

described in rather earthly language (after all, these are God’s words). The psalm ends with a reference to David: “He chose David his servant, took him from the sheepfolds. From tending ewes God brought him, to shepherd Jacob, his people, Israel, his heritage. He shepherded them with a pure heart; with skilled hands he guided them” (NAB, v. 70-72).

It has always struck me that, if we did not have the rest of the Old Testament, we would have about all we need in the Psalms.

Favorite Psalms Anyone who prays the Psalms over a period of time is bound to have some favorites. As a Franciscan and a Scripture scholar, I would like to share my personal favorites.

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

—Psalm 23 As Christians, we especially think of Jesus. He is our good shepherd and pursues us even when we turn against him. The “still waters” he finds for us remind us of Baptism. The banquet he provides reminds us of the Eucharist.

In praying the Psalms, I also like to indulge in some fantasy. The oil reminds me of the oil used in Baptism, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, and Holy Orders.

I find a symbolism in the rod and the staff.

The rod chases harm from the sheep. The Sacrament of Reconciliation chases evil from our lives. The staff gives support to the shepherd as he walks through the pasture and covers difficult terrain. Through the Sacrament of Matrimony, Jesus supports the spouses, and the grace of the sacrament enables the spouses to support one another.

“Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness.”

—Psalm 51

© NOPOW/ ISTOCKPHOTO

This is the most famous of what the Church calls penitential psalms. The psalmist recognizes he has committed serious sin. He admits his guilt before God and confidently pleads for forgiveness. Note the beautiful words: “A clean heart create for me, God; renew within me a steadfast spirit. Do not drive me from before your face, nor take from me your holy spirit.” He recognizes that God is calling him to bring the message of forgiveness to others: “I will teach the wicked your ways, that sinners may return to you.”

As sinners, we can make this psalm our own. I find this psalm an encouragement when 26 ❘

June 2015

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

I realize that I have neglected God’s grace.

God will not give up on me. He even will allow me to bring his mercy to others.

After failing to help someone in need or fostering a grudge, I can go to God and pray, “Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness. . . . Wash away all my guilt. . . . A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.” It may take a while for this to sink in, but this prayer may be a start in renewing my life with God. It may even prompt me to seek reconciliation with someone I have hurt (or who has hurt me).

“I will extol you, my God and king.”

—Psalm 145

“Blessed those whose way is blameless.”

—Psalm 119 In the New American Bible, this is entitled “A Prayer to God, the Lawgiver.” It has 176 verses, and all but one mention God’s law. The psalmist displays a marvelous love for God’s law. But this has nothing to do with legalism.

Fr anciscanMedia.org

© STEVE DEBENPORT/ ISTOCKPHOTO

The psalmist expresses the Jewish appreciation of the grandeur of God, and his sentiments easily become our own. As a Christian, I like to read the psalm with Jesus’ life in mind. So much of the psalm can be applied to Jesus.

Jesus is indeed our king, whose name we will bless forever. Generation after generation praises his mighty works. Throughout his public life, Jesus was “gracious and merciful.” He was “good to all, compassionate to every creature.” His “reign is a reign for all ages.” It is easy to pick up almost any passage in the Gospels and find Jesus realizing these beautiful words.

We might see Jesus’ “wonderful deeds” in feeding the hungry, healing the sick, raising the dead. We see his “abounding goodness” in his passion and death. His resurrection speaks of the “glory of [his] reign.” Again, “The Lord is trustworthy in every word, and faithful in every work.” I find Jesus continuing all his work in those who serve the poor, who risk their lives in working for peace.

Blessed Mother Teresa comes to mind, as well as Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Those who work to change weapons of war into plowshares work in the spirit of Jesus. There is a gentleman who comes to our neighborhood soup kitchen who has a smile to light up the whole room. I told him I would like to take him to all the leaders of the world. Such a smile would force them to seek peace.

The Hebrew author shows his love for God’s law because he sees it as an outstanding proof of God’s love.

God has shown his love by creating and saving his people. The psalmist can only respond by expressing his love for God. Keeping the law is a way of expressing that love, and a willingness and desire to carry out God’s will.

Psalm 119 is a fine expression of this love.

It is like a steady rain of love: this is what we want to do—over and over again. This is the way we want to prove our love. Praying this psalm, I appreciate the tremendous love the people had for God. As we pray this psalm, it is not too difficult for us to enter into the psalmist’s joy at being so loved by God and having such a marvelous

vehicle to bear witness to that love. As a Christian, I can go one step further. Jesus has brought the law to its fulfillment, and therefore every mention of law becomes a reference to the Gospel. I can pray, “In your [Gospel] I take delight; I will never forget your word” (v. 16).

Or again: “I lift up my hands to your [Gospel]; I study your [Gospel], which I love” (v. 48).

In this way, I remind myself of what my life is all about. I appreciate this all the more as I think of Pope Francis encouraging us to “live in Gospel joy.” A

We mirror Jesus’ acts of mercy by feeding the hungry.

Father Hilarion Kistner, OFM, is the editor of Sunday Homily Helps (reading commentaries and homily outlines). Ordained in 1955, he has a licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Biblicum in Rome. Over the years, he taught Scripture, served as a retreat director, and recently wrote The Gospels According to St. Francis (Franciscan Media).

June 2015 ❘

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PHOTO BY OCTAVIO DURAN/PAINTING BY JOSUE VILLALTA

Oscar Romero

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St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

Modern-Day

Martyr

His cause for sainthood was blocked for decades.

Now the Church has beatified this Salvadoran archbishop.

BY DR. MIKE GABLE

T

“

HEY SHOT ROMERO! They shot Romero!”

“When I first heard those words shouted down the hallway of our convent in December 1980, I thought, Who is this guy? He must be important. I’ve got to learn about him, as I need guidance for my vocation,” says Sister Rebecca Trujillo, SNDdeN, of New Mexico. “I became impressed by this Salvadoran archbishop’s humble way of being with and listening to the poor that transformed his life and ministry.

“He could see the root of evil and oppression. Romero realized how our own actions really make a difference. So I prayed, asking him to help me discern my mission that inspired me to 20 years of organizing programs for [people with] special needs and oppressed women and children in Nicaragua. Those words, ‘They shot Romero,’ set my way to be.”

Sister Rebecca is just one of millions who have been empowered by Archbishop Oscar Romero’s option for the oppressed. And it was that Christ-like example also that inspired Pope Francis to have him beatified on May 23.

A Faith in Process Born in Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador, in 1917, Oscar Romero was trained by his father to be a carpenter, but he went on to the seminary and later studied in Rome for a licentiate in Fr anciscanMedia.org

theology. After his ordination there in 1942, Romero returned to El Salvador to serve as a pastor for 20 years, eventually becoming a seminary rector. He served the Salvadoran bishops’ conference and directed a fairly conservative archdiocesan newspaper.

On February 23, 1977, Romero was appointed archbishop of San Salvador, much to the relief of the junta government and the aristocracy, who saw him as an ally. Two percent of the population owned 60 percent of the land, and 14 families were said to own the country. Those in power were worried about the rising movement of liberation theology. (Essentially this is a theology that asserts that God has a preferential option for the poor, and that people of faith need to transform social, government, and economic systems that keep people poor.)

A few weeks after Romero was installed as the new archbishop, his friend Father Rutilio Grande, SJ, was brutally killed with companions for organizing Salvadoran peasants. The government failed to investigate. After this stunning experience, Romero then fully committed himself to walk the same path—a major, personal transformation in the Spirit.

Through sermons, radio broadcasts, processions, and the like, this once-timid archbishop began to denounce the government’s rapidly growing violence, building a massive local and global following. By February 1980, Romero wrote to US President Jimmy Carter, June 2015 ❘

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CNS PHOTOS/OCTAVIO DURAN

(Right) Archbishop Oscar Romero took to the radio waves to deliver stirring sermons and speak out against the repression by the Salvadoran junta.

(Above) Romero embraced his role as a pastor to his flock and, like Christ, reached out with love to those on the periphery of society.

(Above right) Romero’s funeral on March 30, 1980, drew thousands to San Salvador’s Metropolitan Cathedral, a testament to the martyr’s resonance among his beloved Salvadoran people.

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June 2015

strongly urging him to end military support to the Salvadoran junta. His pleas were ignored, and over the next number of years, the Reagan administration would direct roughly a million dollars per day to the military regime. This led to the killing of 100,000 and, some believe, as many as 300,000 Salvadorans—one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in our hemisphere.

The Ultimate Sacrifice On March 23, 1980, Archbishop Romero delivered a now-famous homily ordering soldiers to stop killing their own countrymen. “It is time to regain your conscience. In the name of God and the name of the suffering people, I implore you, I beg you, I order you, stop the repression!” The very next day, Romero was shot while celebrating Mass, as plotted by military and other local leaders. Forty people were killed by gunfire and explosions at Romero’s funeral.

This was a turning point that mushroomed into a full-blown war against the poor. Before his assassination, Romero stated, “As a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed, I shall rise in the Salvadoran people.” His words are still chanted

today, “They can kill me, but they will never kill justice.”

Some have speculated that, in the past, some Salvadoran bishops and popes have been slow to work toward Romero’s beatification process because of his affiliation with liberation theology, and/or that he was killed for mostly political reasons. However, one month after Pope Francis’ March 2013 election, he “unblocked” Romero’s canonization case. As a result, the Holy Father declared on February 3, 2015, that the Salvadoran archbishop was killed as a martyr for the Catholic faith, which meant there was no need to prove a miracle for his beatification. This is the last step before sainthood. The formal beatification ceremony will take place May 23 in San Salvador.

Speaking for Pope Francis, Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the chief promotor of Romero’s sainthood cause, said Romero’s murder was part of a “climate of persecution against a pastor who followed the evangelical experience, the documents of the Second Vatican Council, of Medellin [Latin American Bishops’ Conference 1968 statement in favor of the poor], and had chosen to live with the poor to defend them from oppression. Romero was killed because of this perspective.”

Who Was This Martyr?

So what did—and does—Romero mean to those who worked with him and know of his life of solidarity? There are posters and T-shirts, all over this hemisphere, especially in Central America, that give him these titles: pastor, prophet, martyr, and now . . . “Saint of the Americas.”

Pastor: At the age of 21, Franciscan Brother Octavio Duran, OFM, of El Salvador met Romero at his archdiocesan seminary, and St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

CNS FILE PHOTO

Fr anciscanMedia.org

PHOTO BY OCTAVIO DURAN

conducted many radio interviews with him.

Octavio often followed Romero to the villages to photograph visits demonstrating his love for the poor, even though the Salvadoran military would sometimes harass him.

Octavio noted that on one of his visits, Romero was shivering with fear as the soldiers approached his jeep with pointed rifles. Later, Octavio observed, “The radio and camera allowed me to better know this friend, pastor, and prophet: as a friend who said he did not fear death, as a pastor who stayed and protected his flock, and as a prophet who decried injustice and oppression the Salvadoran people suffered.” He added, “Romero is a symbol of courage, and as a pastor he gave voice to the voiceless during the time when his archdiocese was persecuted.”

Maryknoll Missioner Father John Spain, who ministered with Romero, and later carried his coffin, notes, “As a pastor, he wanted to get to a fuller grasp of the situation. He was a good listener. He also looked for help from diplomats and Church leaders when a foreign priest was falsely accused and expelled from the country. . . . I felt his support.”

Two valiant Nicaraguan women who developed small Christian Base Communities in their Managua neighborhoods in the 1970s and ’80s still speak of the empowering qualities they learned from the pastoral archbishop in the neighboring country. Doñas Adilia Luna Salina and Nieves Saballos Zapata point out, “By listening to his friend Father Grande, walking with his people as a good pastor, and by being open to the Holy Spirit, Romero changed and got involved! He’s a good example for us as he demonstrated how to ‘capacitate’ people, especially women like us. He showed us how to grow in self-confidence. And he still lives in us!”

In his homily of October 30, 1977, Romero simply stated, “The pastor has to be where there is suffering.”

Prophet: A minister for pastoral social work at Holy Cross Parish in San Salvador, Jose Neris Aria Valladeres, strongly believes that Romero was true prophet “who spoke in the name of God, denouncing injustices being committed against the rights of people, like the many farmers and catechists who were killed for having Bibles.” Aria argues that the archbishop was a prophet because he left the comfortable and the privileged in order to take the side of those who suffered more; consequently, he chose to eat and live more simply.

Romero also chose to speak the truth about

the causes of social conflicts and stood in solidarity with the needy, while calling for the forgiveness and reconciliation of Christ. “He cared for his sheep, obeyed God, prayed to Mary, and loved God’s word,” says Aria. He adds, “Romero has inspired me to offer my life in service to the local homeless to help deliver them from the darkness of life.”

Ren Austing and his fellow parishioners of St. James of the Valley Church in Wyoming, Ohio, have had a 20-year sister community relationship with a Christian Base Community in El Salvador. Ren and his wife adopted a Salvadoran child years ago, who is now 22 years old. “This experience has greatly expanded our definition of family,” notes Austing.

(Above) Every year since Romero’s assassination in 1980, many Salvadorans march to celebrate his memory and vision for a peaceful El Salvador.

June 2015 ❘

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Salvadoran Sister Rosa Estevana Guevara offers up a prayer at Oscar Romero’s tomb in San Salvador’s Metropolitan Cathedral on March 22, 2015, two days before the anniversary of his death.

“If I am killed, I shall rise in the Salvadoran people.”

—Archbishop Oscar Romero

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June 2015

“Romero for me is a prophet of love, integrity, faith, patience, and healing. With humble listening to the poor and prayer, he transformed his perspective of how the Gospel needed to be lived, which led him to be an outspoken and active presence,” writes Austing.

He adds, “Romero is present-day proof that the Gospel works in our lives and is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago, and that its fruits are peace and joy. Resurrection, i.e., defeat of death, is real. He’s a model to emulate in his prayer life and devotion. He is a challenge to me to improve my internal discipline and prayer life that I struggle with. He is also a model of the Church being open and guided by the Spirit.”

How has Romero impacted him and his parish? Austing said he made one of his factfinding mission trips to El Salvador in 1986 during their horrendous hostilities. This led his parish to join the sanctuary movement to take in Salvadoran war refugees as a way to express their opposition to the US government’s support of the Salvadoran military junta. With their parish partners, they have provided over 400 scholarships to children of their sister community, as well as built a community library and pastoral center with them.

Parishioners are also visiting their US congresspersons to improve economic and social conditions in El Salvador that create the migration of thousands of Salvadorans, and to change our inhumane immigration laws. Austing says that his parish’s relationship with Sal-

vadorans and the life, death, and resurrection of Romero provides pride in our Church that continues to produce saints like Romero, despite all of its flaws of being an institution administered by fallible humans.

Martyr: Salvadoran composer Guillermo Cuellar was commissioned by Archbishop Romero, before his death, to write the nowfamous Misa Popular Salvadoreña. It is based on Cuellar’s work with Romero as a young adult, his reflections with the Christian Base Communities, and his commitment to social justice.

He writes about his martyred friend, “Monsignor Romero was a special human being because he decided to give his life in a conscious way. I think his main legacy is that he taught us to be good Salvadorans, to give the best of our lives for our people. As he said, ‘If you kill me, I will raise up in my people.’ The Salvadoran Catholic Church was the Church that most embodied the ideals of the theology of liberation that Romero embodied himself.

Romero lived and decided to give his life like Christ did.”

Msgr. Ricardo Urrioste served as vicar general for Blessed Archbishop Romero in San Salvador and was his close friend and confidant. He was asked, “Was Romero being manipulated by the Communists or other groups?” Urrioste replied, “Yes. He was manipulated by God. He was a man of prayer, a Churchman who greatly loved the poor.” While some have claimed that Romero was a Marxist, Urrioste points St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

PHOTOS BY OCTAVIO DURAN

out that after theologians in the Vatican and the pope read his writings and homily, they declared him a Church martyr.

Romero’s Legacy Urrioste asserts that this was his legacy: “He was a man who sought God, a man who had the courage to be the voice of the voiceless in Salvador when there was so much outrage, so much death, and no one said anything except him.” He spoke up for “the respect for the human person created in the image and likeness of God.” Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez of Honduras frequently points to the importance of the Eucharist as part of Romero’s heritage. He explains how both the archbishop understood and Pope Francis understands today that Jesus truly comes to each of us in the breaking and sharing of the bread, his body. This sharing of the life of Jesus, says Rodriguez, should lead us to practical solidarity, to be custodians of the earth, to seek the common good, and to go out as missionary disciples from our parishes.

“God helps us to multiply what we are willing to share,” he says. He adds, “The Holy Father calls us ‘to have the smell of the sheep’— Fr anciscanMedia.org

to be among the poor, to change the world Smiles abound in a church by being with those who suffer most, which in San Salvador as students in colorful dress Romero did so well.

“Romero had a dream that we must build perform a folkloric dance together,” proclaims the cardinal, who heads dedicated to Romero on Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals. “Economic March 22, 2015. globalization is dehumanizing us. However, “Romero offers us a profile of holiness and commitment to the youth to construct a more just and humane world. It is not fair that the only commodities that we can export are illegal immigrants because there are no sources of work or horizons Click here for more on of hope for the poor.” tal Digi as Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Rodriguez sums up the senExtr timents of Latin Americans and now the worldwide Church: “We must overcome the culture of death, and overcome evil with good. Let us continue our commitment for a more just and peaceful world with the power of the resurrected Christ and motivating presence of Romero!” A Dr. Mike Gable is the director of the mission office for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and an adjunct professor of theology at Xavier University. He and his wife were Maryknoll lay missioners in Venezuela in the 1980s.

June 2015 ❘

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EDITORIAL

Religion and Retail: A Clash in Style Abercrombie & Fitch is accused of religious discrimination. How should consumers respond?

Full disclosure: I was no stranger to Abercrombie & Fitch in my youth. That’s what people my age wore, until Kurt Cobain and the Grunge movement of the mid-’90s made flannels and ripped jeans must-haves for Gen-Xers. But I can’t deny that a lot of my time and money were spent in Abercrombie’s oppressively fragrant shops.

Nowadays it’s too great an assault on my senses to even walk by the store—and I’ve aged out of their target demographic. But had I applied for a job at Abercrombie as a 20-something, I would have likely been hired. If I were a Muslim woman with a head scarf, I would have been a harder sell.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, resident Samantha Elauf knew this too well in 2006 when she was denied a sales position at the retail giant for wearing a hijab during her interview, a violation of Abercrombie’s “look policy,” which forbids hats or head coverings.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission successfully sued on behalf of Elauf to the US District Court of Oklahoma on the grounds of religious discrimination.

But in 2013, the US Court of Appeals 10th Circuit overturned the decision. Last February, the case was heard before the Supreme Court. A verdict is expected this month.

Hijabs are a faux pas to Abercrombie, it seems. Intolerance, however, is still in vogue.

Dubious History Abercrombie has a history of problematic business practices. Its quarterly publication, which ran from 1997 to 2003, often depicted sexually explicit images. Message t-shirts as far back as 2002 have depicted Asians, Appalachians, and many young girls as poor, uneducated, and dim.

In a 2006 interview, then-CEO Mike Jeffries said his company’s clothes were for “cool” kids and that overweight teens should shop elsewhere. Jeffries’ words resur3 4 ❘ Jun e 2015

faced in 2013, which caused a media backlash. He resigned a year later.

What’s more, the corporation was added to the “Sweatshop Hall of Fame” by the International Labor Rights Union in 2009.

The Elauf case is another unfavorable chapter in the company’s history.

While Abercrombie’s clothes are, to be fair, of high quality, there are too many moral missteps to ignore. Perhaps most insidious is how their clothes are marketed to young people; to be more specific, certain kinds of young people. While teens face cyberbullies and pressure from peers to look a certain way, to then face a clothing chain who body-shames or labels them “different” isn’t just intolerable. It’s disgusting.

Shopping with a Conscience Should people of faith care about how retail giants such as Abercrombie, Walmart, or Lowe’s treat their employees or market their products? If they discriminate against or mock religion, race, gender, age, or sexuality, yes. When there are divisions, it should be our mission to bridge them. It’s what God calls us to do.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28) are not just sage words. They remind us that saying we’re one in the body of Christ matters less than actually proving it.

But we should do our research first. Sites like the Better Business Bureau (bbb.org) are a solid place to start. Find out how your favorite retail companies fare and then make an informed decision. Shop sensibly. Big business depends on our money to keep the lights on. We have more power than we know.

In time, hopefully, clothes that shame the overweight or tease minority groups or celebrate gender bias will no longer be manufactured, let alone sold. Fashion that hatefilled, after all, is so “last season.”

—Christopher Heffron St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

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A Piece of

Bamboo What can we learn from a simple plant?

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

BY FRANCESCA NOTOWIDIGDO

I

T IS DIFFICULT TO SAY if my love for all creatures, great and small, developed because I was named after St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment. Or if I was born with an innate understanding of St. Francis’ deep love for animals, the environment, and life. My appreciation for God and God’s creations, though, grows from everyday experiences.

Recently, a student bought a piece of bamboo to keep in our martial-arts school. He planted it in a small terra-cotta pot with a plain green glaze—the type you would find at Home Depot for about $5. It was a pretty piece of curly bamboo, but it was not healthy, and was dying in the school. It became progressively wan and yellow. The leaves that started to emerge from its happier days began to shrivel up and turn light brown and crispy. There was no new growth. Clearly it needed more light, and was also lonely. So I adopted it.

The mornings when I would come to the school to train, I would place it outside to take in the sun and to be near the other plants and creatures for company. The bamboo began to turn greener and new leaves began growing from the top. One day, I forgot to bring the bamboo back inside after I did my morning routine, so it was left outside overnight.

The next time I came to school, I noticed the pot was missing. I assumed someone took it home, or put it back in the school near the Buddha statues. Then I saw dark potting soil strewn across the stone crop where the bamboo pot used to be. About three feet away, on top of a spiderweb-covered patch of ivy, I saw a tangle of yellowish, rust-colored roots sticking up. The sun was beating down on them, drying them up. It was the piece of bamboo. Someone had torn it out of the pot and tossed it to the ground.

I was surprised and saddened that someone would do something so thoughtless and careless. I put the bamboo in an old water bottle to bring it home, where it is recovering near a sunny window near a newly propagated Christmas cactus that was a gift from my aunt and godmother. This piece of cactus is very special, because it came from a plant that belonged to my grandmother, who understood

plants like no one else. She taught me how to love plants.

I found it curious that someone would give more importance to the pot—the lifeless outside vessel or shell—than to the life of the bamboo that was residing inside of it. The bamboo was thrown away with no thought that it would perish once it had been dislodged and its roots exposed. It also seemed very odd because whoever stole the pot took it with the idea to replace it with another plant. So that person thought that the other plant that would soon replace the bamboo had more importance than the bamboo already in there.

Interesting.

The bamboo now resides in a new terracotta pot, a pot which used to hold a lemon tree that I planted from seed two years ago that it had outgrown. I placed some small, interesting rocks in the pot that I collected at Weko Beach when I visited my niece and godchild this summer. I believe these stones have a good energy. I ponder the idea that some life needs a pot or vessel, someone to care for it, and connection with other life and probably a combination of other circumstances/elements in order to thrive. Without this set of circumstances it would die.

It also occurred to me that some creatures have different needs to live, like the 250-yearold maple tree I can see from my window.

Our needs may be few, but our needs vary depending on who we are. This tree is a hardy old-timer and is doing fine for now. But, clearly, life needs other life to live, and when one type of life finds other life that harmonizes together, life thrives. We are all connected.

The piece of curly bamboo is already growing new leaves and its color is changing into a deeper green, and the Christmas cactus is developing some fine hairlike bits on the tops of its leaves, which will soon grow into new branches and leaves. I realize that while I help these plants to grow, they are helping me to understand and cultivate a deep respect for God and God’s creations. Indeed, these plants are helping me to grow, too. A Francesca Notowidigdo is a freelance writer and artist in New York. Her artwork has been shown in New York, Florida, and Chicago. It can be seen at notoartstudio.com.

June 2015 ❘

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Homegrown Justice Maximize your family’s awareness with these seven practical steps.

BY TOM RINKOSKI

“Your family life is sacred because family relationships allow the Lord to work through you. The profound and ordinary moments of daily life—mealtimes, workdays, vacations, expressions of love and intimacy, household chores, caring for a sick child or elderly parent, and even conflicts over things like how to celebrate holidays, discipline children, or spend money—all are threads from which you can weave a pattern of holiness.”

—“Follow the Way of Love,” US Conference of Catholic Bishops

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

Parents desire a better world for their children.

But how can families enter a lifestyle of justice and peace to bring it about? Justice has to find a home in the grid of ferrying children among sports, school, and church. Families may be willing to redesign the maps of their lives— leaning in toward justice—but are frightened at the thought of juggling one more thing in their lives. Some have made a start by recycling, changing purchasing habits, and using public transportation. But most know there is more.

I hope young families learn from the successes and the mistakes of the baby boomers and try a different strategy, though I don’t believe it can be done alone. And while the journey to just living isn’t easy, it’s not impossible—as ministries such as JustFaith (just faith.org) show us. After years as a parent, then grandparent, I dare to suggest some steps.

Redefine What Justice Means Parents need to begin by rethinking justice.

Justice is too often thought of as righting Fr anciscanMedia.org

wrongs, being held accountable for actions, and everyone getting their day in court. In our religious tradition, we get trapped in the puzzle and paradox of balancing justice and mercy. As a parent and grandparent, I have come to accept this paradox as one of the predominant colors of family life. We’d like to think of our call to be holy and just as pure— focused, controlled, and without blemish— but, like love in a family, it’s a rather messy proposition.

In family, we do not love people in the abstract; love takes place in real time. It is more like the virtue of hospitality practiced

by Dorothy Day: welcoming in persons off the streets, the homeless, the poor, and the hungry. The call to holiness—and the call to justice—isn’t about shunning the world, but about loving the world.

Parenting falls into the trap of thinking in terms of winning, and we work hard to ensure that our children will be successful. Justice can get caught up in winning a race, too. GradJune 2015 ❘

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Parents can help open their children’s eyes to the true meaning of justice and build compassion by encouraging them to volunteer at food pantries and other organizations that serve those in need. © STEVE DEBENPORT/ISTOCKPHOTO

Click the button below to hear an interview with a retired couple who work with Mercy Volunteer Corps.

ing systems seem to surround and define our children. In desiring a grading system for justice, we toss around terms like fairness and equality. However, justice is not so much about any one journey or single measurement, but about how we journey together.

We do need to integrate what we have learned from our family and faith traditions, but we also need to accept that there is no final definition of what constitutes justice.

We require roots and wings, even if we don’t fully understand the mystery of growth and development. Not only is it possible to be just and still struggle with sin, but it is actually an integral part of the process.

Seven Basic Steps

1

Teach Relationships

In order to grow justice, we need to help our children build healthy and successful relationships. Marriage and family life are a laboratory in which we explore the mysteries of these relationships. Beginning with marriage, and later with parent-and-child bonding and sibling rivalry, the learning pilgrimage deepens with school friendships, as well as first loves and dating. But to incorporate justice into the development of relationships, parents need to assist children in learning to build relationships beyond the margins of the comfortable.

Justice will only root itself when we grow personal friendships with those who are poor and at risk. This is especially difficult to do as a parent, because we worry and fret about safety. While this is a critical concern, our

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fears have reduced the boundaries of our vision, reinforced our hidden racism, and limited our growth and development. Fear is never a secure place from which to build relationships.

I urge parents to step beyond acts of charity and actually build real-time connections between their children and children at risk.

Start the adventure at your local Catholic Worker House, Catholic Charities office, or city shelter. As always, this begins with the parental example!

Open up hidden relationships. Parents can motivate children to discover the real people—too often, children—who make their clothes, pick and process their food, and stand in the background of news stories. The time that we give to reading labels on products becomes a deeper exercise than simply looking for calorie counts and salt content. To find out even more, Internet research can assist us in making this into a journey of discovery and insight.

2

Promote Prayer

Prayer is essential to grounding justice in Jesus. In my own life, I’ve been encouraging our children to try the method called centering prayer—which involves quiet meditation. That way, early on, they get to know their center, so they can move forward from a solid and safe place. Many would suggest quiet meditation and centering prayer are antithetical to the activity levels of children.

My experience as a religious educator for over 40 years indicates otherwise.

Quiet reminds us that not all knowledge can be packaged into words, sentences, and St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

Prayer is a powerful way for families to ground justice in Jesus and embrace the stillness that can give way to deeper knowledge.

Don’t worry if it takes some getting used to!

speeches. Certainly, centering needs to be anchored in a spiritual life that includes many different types of prayer, but centering prayer is a uniquely deeper dive into our relationship with Jesus.

Begin growing centering prayer by taking walks in the woods, fostering a quiet space in your home, teaching quiet, sitting for brief periods of time. Working in a garden without unnecessary conversation helps to realize the value of presence. Emphasize that listening is as important as talking. You give your children a rare gift when they know how to stop and search inside for resources and connections.

It’s OK if it feels a little silly at first.

PHOTOS IN CIRCLES ARE FROM CNS; PHOTO OF GANDHI IS FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

3

Build a Justice Vocabulary

We need to assemble a vocabulary with which to speak about justice. This needs to be practical, earthy vocabulary that can be used on the playground at school, as well as at home. Some of this vocabulary will come from the Bible. But there are other sources, such as folktales, dreams, and brainstorming.

Currently, I hear a new vocabulary as we teach children a language to deal with bullying at school.

Key vocabulary words for speaking justice could include forgiveness, tolerance, mercy, love, nonviolence, etc. One could discover this vocabulary by reading the lives of the saints—including St. Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Blessed Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There is a growing array of peace tales from all around the world to mine. I knew a teacher who nurtured this type of vocabulary-building Fr anciscanMedia.org

by inviting children to rewrite the endings of standard folk and fairy tales, such as those from the Brothers Grimm. There are movies and documentaries that invite us to see beyond the horizons and safety of our neighborhoods.

These resources will assist our children in building vocabularies that help them to ask key questions that we never dreamed of at their age. These questions help them to understand not only what is happening in their world, but why.

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Practice Nonviolence

5

Live Simply

Models of Holiness for Our Children

We know from human history that violence has not worked. Bullying at school is a manifestation of how deeply violence has ransacked the lives of our children. A new way will not begin until we, as parents, teach it from infancy forward. Heaven knows we get plenty of opportunities to practice problem solving in normal family life!

Our practice of nonviolence will evidence itself in the ways we discipline our children.

The language we use to describe our schools, workplaces, communities, and country reflects our values and commitments. Consider the way we ask questions, the names we use for each other, and the solutions to problems we seek. The practice of nonviolence will become real in how we teach our children to solve problems.

Justice asks us to believe that creating a better world is not a matter of more, but of depth and breadth. I am not against TV, smartphones, and technology, but I am June 2015 ❘

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PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

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frightened by the limits they place on our relationship building.

Living simply does mean giving up stuff, adjusting purchasing habits, and changing patterns of behavior—none of which is easy.

At one stage, simple living may mean regular visits to the local Click here for more library instead of buying books. resources on social justice In another, it may mean buyand peacebuilding. ing secondhand clothes and furniture. In still another, it may present itself in buying food from the local farmers’ market or purchasing Fair Trade products.

There is an abundance of options to integrate simple living into family life. Parents can develop a plan to live simply by carpooling, or, at least, by reducing the amount and frequency of car trips.

Take a trip to the local library instead of buying books. Parents can plant the seeds of justice in their children through simple living.

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Parents seeking justice will have to become more intentional about items brought into the house, and be prepared to explain the rationale of bringing them home. This is easier to achieve when parents are thoughtful about their role of parenthood.

6

Cultivate Imagination

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Teach Problem Solving

As persons who have chosen the career of parenting, we have entered a space that sits on the edge of what we know and what we don’t. In order to live in this inbetween space, we need to be grounded in healthy relationships and steeped in imagination. Imagination is the doorway to possibility, and it is our connection to the sacred.

Our task as parents is to grow our children into believing “six impossible things before breakfast,” in the words of Lewis Carroll.

In this environment, prayer will take flight.

Imagination assists us in not becoming mired in the daily onslaught of bad news, and prevents us from losing the hope and dream of justice in the face of a world that is sometimes ripe with sin. Imagination is what will empower us when “brain exhaustion” sets in—after we have burned ourselves out by overthinking the problem.

To nurture imagination, parents can encourage reading, telling stories, laughing, taking nature walks, and openly talking about wishes, dreams, and hopes. Imagination is inviting children to write their own set of psalms, expressing the terrors, lamentations, and joys that are a part of their lives.

When I was involved with my children in a program named Odyssey of the Mind, imagination helped us to navigate beyond the horizons of what we knew to find the improbable.

It also helped us arrive there with smiles and stories. Imagination should be applied to the kitchens, living rooms, and all the spaces we live in. Imagination requires continual exercise to remain healthy, and parents need to courageously and credibly apply imagination to the task of growing a new generation.

Justice shows itself in the nitty-gritty of our daily lives, in how we solve everyday problems. Until we learn new ways of problem solving, we will continue to return to old solutions that keep us bound up. Family life is full of a series of problems searching for solutions: broken dishwashers, cars that won’t start, children late for school, jobs lost—the list goes on! Parents are prime teachers of justice in St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o r g

Difficult but Not Impossible Parenting is a long-haul effort—a pilgrimage of sorts. It isn’t easily measured by any one criterion, by some sense of “arrival.� We are cocreators with God, and the biblical story is a journey with which any parent can identify.

While it might be more edgy and hip to take your kid to a protest march as a way of

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

how they bring up their children to face the adversity and annoyances that life hands them.

Children and teens will observe and learn from how couples work out the demands of marriage: spending money, celebrating holidays, and determining who does chores. In the same way, our children attentively encode how we interact with the world that surrounds us, and they take note of the attitudes we bring to bear in meeting difficult situations head-on.

Parents should begin their self-examination by taking a look at how they discipline at home. Discipline is about teaching—about orienting children toward a better way—as much as it is about solving a problem. How does what you do for discipline in your house teach children good problem-solving skills? fostering the value of justice, in the end it may not be more effective than this sevenstep path. The work of developing children with values, dreams, and hopes is difficult.

But it is not impossible. A Tom Rinkoski is a married father of three and grandfather of six from Gainesville, Florida. He holds a master’s degree in education from Boston College, and has over 40 years of experience in various aspects of Church ministry.

We are cocreators with God, and the biblical story is a journey with which any parent can identify.

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43

Country Angels Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.

F I C T I O N B Y F AY Y O D E R

T

HE LATE JULY winds that blow across southern Pennsylvania are warm with a special sweetness that comes from ripened corn and full-blown roses. It was on such a day in 1932 that a traveling man entered my parents’ yard.

I was 5 at the time; the summer sun warmed the rough wooden steps

leading to the farmhouse back door. My thoughts were on the doll whose auburn curls, brown eyes, and rosy cheeks were so much like my own that my father could not resist buying her. As I redressed her worn body, I was so intent upon my conversation with her that I did not notice the stranger in our yard until his shadow fell across us.

“Excuse me,” he said, and I tilted back my head, squinting against the sun as I found my eyes traveling high up to his face. I was captivated by the color of his skin, brown as a gingerbread man, and his eyes the color of the coal my father mined each day, but not hard like when it comes from the ground. Instead, they gave off a soft glow, like when it’s warming your hands. A wide-brimmed hat covered his head, and tattered coat and pants hung from his frame, as if they had outgrown their owner. White teeth appeared, and I stared at their contrast against the dark face. “I was just wondering if your parents might be home, and if they could spare a sandwich in return for some work.”

“I’m not allowed to talk to strangers, but I’ll get Mama. She can talk to anyone.”

His mouth broadened into a smile, and I climbed the steps, pulled open the screen door, and scampered into the kitchen where Mama sat at the table, her Bible open in front of her. Slim as a reed, she wore a printed dress covered by a green apron that brought out the same color ILLUSTRATION BY TARYN GEE

in her eyes, and made her auburn hair look like polished chestnuts.

“There’s a man outside who wants something to eat,” I said, and watched her eyes widen in surprise before she headed toward the door.

“May I help you?” she asked. The man pulled off his hat to reveal short-cropped, curly hair.

Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 4 5

“I was hoping I could get a sandwich and a little milk in exchange for any work you might have. Water would do, too,” he added quickly. “I just don’t care much for coffee.” He twisted the hat in his huge hands as he spoke.

“We have a cow, so there is plenty of milk,” Mama answered. “As for work, there’s a stack of wood over by that tree.” She pointed across the yard.

“It would be well worth a meal to have it stacked by the fence.”

He stopped twisting his hat and smiled. “Thank you. I’ll stack it right up.”

“Come along, Carrie,” she instructed as he went to the wood my father had chopped the night before. “You can help me.”

“Why’s he that color?” I asked as soon as the door shut behind us.

“He’s a Negro, Carrie. His ancestors came from a land far away called Africa,” she explained.

“Like we came from Switzerland?”

I asked, recalling the stories she and Daddy had told me about our ancestors. “Did they come for religious freedom, too?”

She paused. “No, their story is different from ours. We’ll talk about it tonight when we have more time.

Right now you go out to the truck patch and bring in two ears of corn. I think a little more than a sandwich is needed.”

T

he screen door slammed behind me as I skipped to the small garden where cornstalks stood in straight lines like soldiers on parade.

The leaves rustled and made my legs

ANSWERS TO PETE AND REPEAT 1. There is another seagull in the sky.

2. The stripes on the beach ball have switched places.

3. Sis is wearing sunglasses.

4. Pete has a bandage on his side.

5. The boat has a stripe on it.

6. A starfish has washed ashore.

7. Sis’ bathing suit has a ruffle on the bottom.

8. The tide has come in farther.

4 6 ❘ Jun e 2015

and arms itch where they touched them. I broke off two ears the way Daddy had taught me and carried them back to the house.

Water was boiling when I returned, and Mama had carved last night’s roast beef into thin slices and piled them high between two pieces of homemade bread. She pulled the husk from the corn, and I took the golden silk and held it to my face, making a mustache.

“You know that will make your face itch,” Mama said, laughing. “Now run upstairs and wash.”

I scurried to the bathroom, made the washrag soapy, and lathered not only my face, but my legs and arms as well. My dress and the bathroom floor were wet when I finished. Using the towel, I began to wipe up the mess I had made. Still on my knees, I heard a familiar sound that drew me to the bathroom window where I could look down onto the yard below. The man had already stacked the wood, removed the ax my father left in the block the night before, and was using it to finish cutting the remaining chunks into thin pieces of kindling.

I stood for a long time looking at the scarecrow-like figure as he raised his long arm and brought it down with a crashing blow, pieces of wood peeling away like skin from an orange.

There was a rhythm to his work that reminded me of the time I had seen my mother and father dance in our living room to music from the radio.

B

y the time I returned to the kitchen, Mama had fried a skillet of potatoes in ham drippings, turning them golden brown. I looked at them with longing, and thought of the cottage cheese she had made from curdled milk the night before, which was now in the icebox. She saw my look and smiled. “I made enough for you, and we’ll take the bowl of smearcase along. Perhaps he will like it as well as you do with the fried potatoes.”

The sound of chopping stopped.

Mama raised her head, listened, picked up a towel and cake of soap I had not noticed, and walked to the door.

“There’s an outhouse at the end of that

path, and a spigot around the side of the house where you can wash up,” I heard her say. “Your lunch is almost ready.”

“Thank you,” I heard the answering rumble of his voice.

I watched as she pulled a plate from our cupboard—not the ones we always used, but instead the fine china we saved for holidays. Next came the tall crystal glass. The corn, fried potatoes, and sandwich were arranged on the plate before she opened a drawer and pulled out the white linen tablecloth and napkin I had not seen for months.

Our best silverware was pulled from another drawer.

“Carrie, bring the smearcase to the picnic table out back,” she instructed.

I picked up the bowl filled with frothy white cottage cheese, and followed my mother to the backyard, where we often ate in the summer. We always used our oldest cloth and it looked strange to see the snowy tablecloth spread there. The bowl I carried was set on the table, and I followed my mother back to the kitchen, where I was handed a pitcher of cold milk. She picked up the heavy plate of food, and another with a slice of cake.

When the stranger came around the corner I saw him stop, his eyes growing large with disbelief, as he looked at the banquet my mother had prepared.

“I can’t eat from that,” he said, pointing to the fine china. “What if I break something?”

“Then it’s broken,” she answered.

“Things don’t mean as much as people.”

“I only asked for a sandwich.”

“And I only asked for a pile of wood to be stacked. We both did a little more.”

“May I eat my potatoes with you?”

I asked. “We already ate lunch, but Mama made extra for me.”

His eyes went to my mother and she gave a slight nod before he answered, “I’d be honored.”

O

n that summer day, I sat beneath a tree and listened to a man named Mr. Johnson, who told me about a family he had to leave behind because there was no St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

work in his hometown. For the first time, I heard the word Depression and would later learn what it meant. Mama worked in her flower garden as we talked and listened to all he had to say. He was gone by the time Daddy came home. The dishes were drying in the drainer, but the snowy cloth remained on the table outside.

“We’ll use it tonight before I wash it,” Mama said.

“Why did you use your fine china and the tablecloth for a hobo?” Daddy asked.

She smiled. “I didn’t see him as a hobo. As Carrie came into the house I was asking God to send someone my way whose life I could touch with his love. God sent Mr. Johnson.” She paused before adding, “Maybe that is only half of it. You know, the Bible says that sometimes when we do something for a stranger, we entertain angels unaware. Maybe that is what I did today.”

Daddy hugged her then, for a long time, and so did I.

I

n the next few years, more wandering men found their way to our farm. From that day on, Mama always found a job for them and fed them in the grand manner she had fed Mr. Johnson.

“Respect is as important as the food,” she told me. “These men don’t want charity; they want to earn their bread.”

Gradually, the economy improved and wanderers no longer came to our back door, but the way Mama treated them stayed with me. I applied her ethics to my own career as I climbed the corporate ladder.

I had children of my own the next time I saw Mr. Johnson. Daddy was gone, claimed by black lung. Mama was preparing to sell the house and move to a supervised apartment in town. I had come home to help her move.

“What have I given to this world?” she questioned as we sorted through old magazines featuring Roy Rogers, and boxes of seashells from our annual trips to the beach. Even though a thousand words crowded my mind, I could Fr ancisca n Media .org

not find the ones that would reassure her. Instead, I found myself wondering about my own life. Would I someday be left to sort through my first-edition books and Tiffany glassware and wonder what I had done to warrant having spent my life on earth?

We were sitting in the front yard, resting with a glass of cold lemonade, when the shiny car pulled up. The driver opened the door and walked slowly toward us. He was not as tall as I remembered. He used a cane, his hair was salted with silver, and his body was thick, but I immediately recognized the smile and softly glowing eyes.

“Mr. Johnson!” I cried in disbelief.

His smile broadened, as it had so long ago.

“Carrie?” he asked, and I nodded as I rose to embrace him.

“I’ve wanted to come back for years,” he admitted, “But I thought this house might not exist. I thought maybe that day God just created a place where two angels could make

me feel whole again.”

He looked toward my frail mother, and then went to kneel by her chair.

“I met you at the lowest point in my life. I was ready to give up and you made me feel like something special.

I left here knowing I could do anything I put my mind to, and I did. I found a job and didn’t hesitate to work hard because you showed me what doing a little more can mean. I have my own business now, and I credit it to you.”

I saw tears glisten in my mother’s eyes as she reached out to lay her hand against his dark cheek. “That day I thought you might be an angel,” she said, and was rewarded with a deep, rumbling laugh.

“Maybe we were each other’s angels,” he said. “Maybe that’s what we are all meant to be on God’s green earth.” A Fay Yoder is a freelance writer from Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. Prior to her retirement, she served for 18 years as editor of The New Republic newspaper.

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Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 4 7

AT HOME ON EARTH

❘ BY KYLE KRAMER

The Energy of God and Nature

U

infinite outpouring of love, and how the only barriers to our accepting that freely offered gift are the ones we ourselves create.

I wonder: Could that fundamental rightness I felt about using solar power have stemmed from how similar it is to accepting God’s love? Could A Bright Future it have been some sort of sacrament, a visible sign that Read passages such as shows us how divine love Isaiah 55:10-11, Psalm 8, works?

Psalm 42, and Psalm 104.

Bear with me. On any Can you see how the human timescale, the sun’s natural world helps reveal power will last essentially forsomething of God’s reality? ever, compared to the measly 100 or so more years we may It’s possible to install solar get from fossil fuels—not to power on your home mention the pollution from without a lot of upfront burning them all. And, costs through solar power unlike fossil fuels, there’s purchase agreements with more than enough for everycompanies such as Solar one: the amount of solar City. energy hitting the planet in just 40 minutes, for example, Even if you can’t put solar would power all the world’s panels on your own roof, energy needs for a whole you can still invest in them year! The only real question through companies such as is how we can harness and Mosaic. make use of all the free renewable energy that is given to us every day.

The natural world has always been a source for our religious imagination, so maybe it’s not crazy to think that there could be parallels between using the sun’s energy and opening ourselves to the loving energy that ultimately sustains all things. Maybe doing what’s good for the planet could be just as good for our souls. A

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Kyle Kramer is the executive director of the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

In many ways, our relationship with the earth is a reflection of our relationship with God. 4 8 ❘ Jun e 2015

tal Digi as Extr

Click here for more on this topic.

Click the button on the right to hear an interview with Kyle.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

PHOTO FROM INGIMAGE

ntil last fall, my family and I lived in a solar-powered home, and the long, sunny days of June were a high point for us. Our solar water-heating system delivered a practically endless supply of free hot water. Our roof full of photovoltaic panels made two or three times the electricity we needed, which spun our electric meter backward and made us look forward to receiving our electric bill, since the utility company would owe us money.

Since selling that house, I’ve thought a lot about why it was so satisfying to live by the sun. Of course, saving money was nice— even if it was several years before our systems paid back their upfront costs. I also loved the feeling that we had become part of the solution to environmental problems, contributing something positive back to the commons of energy production.

There’s something deeper, though, which I’ve realized more fully in the pain of its current absence: a spiritual and theological connection. When I think about how the Trinity operates in the world, I think of an

LIGHTEN UP

“My dad says people who have pets live longer.”

“And promise not to drink straight from the carton in the fridge....”

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF OTHERS ARE THE TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS. In his chapter-by-chapter exploration of the Gospel of John, Jean Vanier shows that these two great loves are expressions of a single relationship. Including stories from his work with L’Arche, Vanier shows you

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Life’s Great Questions Fr ancisca n Media .org

Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 4 9

ASK A FRANCISCAN

❘ BY FATHER PAT McCLOSKEY, OFM

Baptizing Grandchildren Secretly At a recent meeting, the topic of unbaptized grandchildren came up. I have been told by many priests and deacons that I could not baptize my grandchildren because it can only be administered once.

What happens when grandparents baptize their grandchildren, and no one is ever told? What if, many years later, that grandchild decides to become a baptized Catholic? Since the soul is already

marked from the first Baptism, what happens?

I understand that one should not baptize a child if the person is not in a position to raise the child as a Catholic, which is my case. My grandchildren live far from me.

You have made the right decision in this matter. The lack of Baptism does not jeopardize that child’s eternal salvation. Likewise, the fact that a

No Unforgivable Sin

CNS PHOTO/ L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTER

What sins against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven?

In Matthew 12:31, Jesus says: “Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” The New American Bible’s footnote for this verse explains that the blasphemy is attributing to Satan (previous verse 24) what is the work of the Spirit of God (previous verse 28).

Technically, blasphemy is claiming for oneself what belongs to God alone. In that sense, it would be blasphemy to say that a person could commit a sin that exceeded God’s power to forgive.

During a penance service at St. Peter’s Basilica on March 13, Pope Francis announced a Holy Year of Mercy to be celebrated throughout the world from December 8, 2015, through November 20, 2016.

Commenting on the Gospel passage about the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears (Lk 7:36-50), the pope emphasized the merciful love of Jesus that evoked the sinful woman’s love.

“God forgives her many sins; he forgives her for all of them, for ‘she loved much’ (Lk 7:47); and she adores Jesus because she feels that in him there is mercy and not condemnation. . . . The hero of this encounter is certainly love, a mercy which goes beyond justice.

“Do not forget that God forgives Pope Francis goes to confession. all, and God forgives always.”

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child is baptized does not guarantee that child’s salvation.

Since many Christians regard their faith as the greatest gift (in addition to life) that they have received from God, it is perfectly understandable that Christian parents should baptize infants and, thereby, share with them this great gift. In the New Testament, we have two very explicit stories about a “whole household” being baptized with an adult convert: Cornelius the centurion (Acts 10) and Paul’s jailer in Philippi (Acts 16:16-34).

When Jesus tells the apostles not to prevent children from coming to him (Mt 19:13-15), the terminology he uses resembles that used by the early Church regarding Baptism. This story may have been intended as a support for baptizing children.

Why, then, did I say that you made the right decision not to baptize your grandchildren? Baptism of an infant or a child indicates the parents’ intention to raise this child as a follower of Jesus. This should never be done against the parents’ wishes.

At the same time, you should not sell yourself short that the good example of your own lived faith is not having a positive influence on your grandchildren. You may be having far more influence than you realize.

What if an unbaptized child falls sick and dies? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them.

Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinSt A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

der them” [Mk 10:14; see 1 Tm 2:4], allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism” (1261).

The same merciful God dealing with unbaptized infants who die can certainly sort out the situation of an infant who was secretly baptized and later baptized as a teen or an adult.

Different Customs In Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, people make the sign of the cross from head to waist, right shoulder to left—and with thumb, index finger and middle finger joined.

In the West it is from left shoulder to right and with an open palm. Why? According to the “Sign of the Cross” entry in The Orthodox Church: 455 Questions and Answers, by Stanley Harakas, the individual use of the sign of the cross began in the second century, and liturgical use in the fourth century. In the sixth century, using the thumb and other finger(s) emphasized belief in Christ’s two natures and in the Trinity (the fingers not used). The liturgical use in the West dates to the ninth century.

The sequence you describe was mandated for the West in the 13th century, but the last steps were later reversed.

Ash Wednesday Questions My lifelong curiosity prompts me to ask: 1) When and how did Ash Wednesday originate? 2) What was the specific thinking that inspired this practice? 3) Can you recommend reference sources on this subject?

by Pope Urban II in 1099 for the day that was formerly called “the beginning of the fast.” The Mass texts of Lent predate Pope Gregory the Great, who died in 604. The custom of a 40day Lent was observed in the East and the West by the year 400, inspired by Jesus’ 40-day fast in the desert, and used as part of the Church’s preparation of people to be baptized at the Easter Vigil.

Ashes were a penitential symbol already in the Old Testament. They are linked to sackcloth in Isaiah 58:5, Jeremiah 6:26, Jonah 3:6, Daniel 9:3, and Esther 4:3. They also appear in Matthew 11:21 and Luke 10:13.

The term “dust and ashes” occurs in Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19 and 42:6, Ezekiel 27:30, and Sirach 17:32 and 40:3.

More information is available in The Liturgical Year (by Adolf Adam), The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Thomas Talley), The Liturgical Year: Lent and Holy Week (Adrian Nocent, OSB), and the New Catholic Encyclopedia. A

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Father Pat welcomes your questions!

Send them to: Ask a Franciscan, 28 W. Liberty Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498, or Ask@FranciscanMedia.org. All questions sent by mail need to include a selfaddressed stamped envelope. This column’s answers can be searched back to April 1996 at StAnthonyMessenger.org.

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Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 5 1

BOOK CORNER

❘ BY CAROL ANN MORROW

Living in the Father’s Embrace Experiencing the Love at the Heart of the Trinity

By George T. Montague, SM The Word Among Us Press 134 pages • $11.95 Paperback/E-book Reviewed by ANTHONY GITTINS, CSSP, author of 15 books on scriptural, biblical, missiological, and anthropological themes.

Author George T. Montague, SM, is a respected New Testament scholar and former presi-

WHAT I’M READING ■ Three

Days: The Search for the Boy Messiah, by Chris Stepien

■ Life’s

Greatest Lesson, by Allen Hunt

■ Nudging

Conversations, by Carrie Gress

■ St.

Francis of Assisi: A Biography, by Omer Englebert

■ I’m

Not OK. You’re Not OK. But It’s OK!, by Chris Padgett

■ Your

God Is Too Boring, by Jon Leonetti

Matthew Kelly is a New York Times best-selling author of 16 books, an internationally acclaimed speaker, and a business consultant to some of the world’s largest and most admired companies. In Catholic circles, Matthew is perhaps best known for his book Rediscover Catholicism (Beacon Publishing), where he presents practical ways to help the Church thrive.

5 2 ❘ Jun e 2015

dent of the Catholic Biblical Association.

Montague draws on a lifetime of personal and professional experience, and he aims to present the love of God as a reality that can shape believers’ daily lives. The book is not a scholarly work, but Montague casts a wide net over adult Christians seeking a deeper awareness of God. It is thus not about religion so much as it is about revelation, not about academic or theoretical knowledge of God so much as it is about a personal relationship with the Creator as Father.

The title is bold and unambiguous. There are rare references to the maternal face of God, but the paternal image is explicitly developed throughout. Many will find this entirely acceptable, though some may feel that other aspects of God—as Creator, as Provident One, or as connected with some feminine images—might have been acknowledged. And though some female readers may be drawn closer to the paternal face of God, others may find this book is not for them. Speaking of God, the author acknowledges that “no words will do.” Yet he uses the masculine pronoun consistently—even in reference to the Holy Spirit.

The classical formulation of the Father sending the Son might have been more nuanced. Also, the theme of theosis—the human divinization as God’s gift through the Incarnation—could have been offered as an encouraging example of God’s paternal concern for all humanity. Likewise, a careful distinction between the old Semitic sacrifice and the new sacrifice might have been particularly helpful. The difference between expressions of empirical fact and statements of faith is not always made clear.

The book has many attractive features and will be well-received by the publisher’s target audience. Many chapters are illustrated with helpful anecdotes and striking images. It is devotional in style, and its contents tend toward piety rather than spirituality. The chapters are short, and the author’s faith and pastoral concern are palpable. Many readers will find the reflections on gift and reciprocity and healing to be particularly helpful.

The book is a good introduction to one of the human faces of the Creator.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

BOOK BRIEFS

Peace to the Caregivers!

The Way of Serenity Finding Peace and Happiness in the Serenity Prayer

By Father Jonathan Morris HarperOne 240 pages • $24.99 Hardcover/E-book

Then Comes Baby The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First Three Years of Parenthood

By Dr. Greg Popcak and Lisa Popcak Ave Maria Press 262 pages • $16.95 Paperback/E-book Reviewed by SANDY HOWISON, an editorial consultant and freelance writer. Married for 35 years, she and her husband are the parents of five grown children.

Dr. Greg Popcak and Lisa Popcak—the executive director and vice president, respectively, of Pastoral Solutions Institute—draw on their own years of parenting for Then Comes Baby. Much of their advice mirrors the nurturing philosophy known as “attachment parenting.” They recommend almost constant parental contact with the child.

They advocate breastfeeding, “baby-wearing” using a wrap or sling, and co-sleeping or bed-sharing. (However, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against babies sharing the parents’ bed for safety reasons.)

The book is most useful in explaining children’s developmental stages. Knowing the physical and mental abilities of babies and toddlers aids not only parents, but also grandparents and caregivers. Granted that only the mother can breastfeed, but the father often seems relegated to the role of “Keeping Mama Happy” (chapter 5).

Spiritually, parents are encouraged to pray together with the baby and take children to Mass at an early age. While this reviewer would have liked more suggestions for spirituality, the ones included here are readily applicable to other caregivers as well as parents. Then Comes Baby shouldn’t be the only baby book on the shelf, but it offers plenty of down-to-earth advice.

Fr ancisca n Media .org

Father Jonathan Morris explores the famous Serenity Prayer phrase by phrase, and, accented by personal stories, touching narratives, and relevant Bible passages, sheds light on the sense of hope at its root.

From Fear to Faith A Worrier’s Guide to Discovering Peace

By Gary Zimak Liguori Publications 144 pages • $12.99 Paperback/Kindle If left unchecked, countless what-if questions can come to dominate our daily lives, leaving us total nervous wrecks! Gary Zimak, a chronic worrier, shows how faith can put fear in its place with practical steps, examples from the Bible, and unique prayers to combat anxiety.

A Book of Uncommon Prayer 100 Celebrations of the Miracle and Muddle of the Ordinary

By Brian Doyle Ave Maria Press 192 pages • $14.95 Paperback/E-book Brian Doyle’s collection of prayers defies categorization. From prayers of gratitude for new shoes and suntan lotion to hymns to Mary and St. Anthony of Padua, A Book of Uncommon Prayer celebrates the ordinary and the holy with humor and grace. —D.I.

Books featured in Book Corner and Book Briefs can be ordered from

St. Mary’s Bookstore & Church Supply 1909 West End Avenue • Nashville, TN 37203 • 800-233-3604 www.stmarysbookstore.com • stmarysbookstore@gmail.com Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 5 3

A CATHOLIC MOM SPEAKS

❘ BY SUSAN HINES-BRIGGER

Life in the Middle

T

he other morning, my 4year-old daughter, Kacey, came to me and asked me to tie her shoes. A few minutes later, my 81-year-old father asked me to do the same thing. After that, I helped my kids get ready for school, arranged my dad’s medicine and breakfast, and packed lunches—all before I left for work. And so it goes.

Welcome to my life as a caregiver, where the line between daughter and

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Click here for resources on caregiving.

caretaker often blurs, and the road before me remains uncharted. But I’m not alone. I’m one of more than 65 million unpaid caregivers providing for “loved ones with chronic conditions, disabilities, disease, or the frailties of old age” (Caregiver Action Network).

On the other end of that caregiving spectrum are my four children.

And here I sit—right in the middle.

To say it’s not the easiest spot to be is an understatement. The bottom line, though, is that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Challenges and Blessings When my husband, Mark, and I made the decision to move in

5 4 ❘ Jun e 2015

with my dad, it was both the most difficult and most natural decision I’ve ever made. I wanted my dad to be able to stay in his home of over 50 years. Mark and I had discussed buying a new house, and this move seemed to be a step in that direction.

I welcomed the opportunity to spend time with my dad and allow my kids to witness the blessings of helping their grandpa. Yet I also worried about what that entailed. But we made the leap and quickly found out—a sort of trial by fire. It has proven to be just as I expected.

I see the look of pure joy on my dad’s face when our dog curls up on his lap and they both take a nap, or when I see him interact with my kids St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARY KURNICK MAASS

CARE FOR THE CAREGIVER One of the most important things I have learned during this process is the need for self-care. I can’t even count the number of times I have been reminded of the airline instruction to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. So many times, though, instinct jumps in and we caregivers forget.

Here are a few things I have learned from my experience. I offer them in the spirit that they may help someone else on the same road: • Ask for help. For far too long, I saw this as a sign of weakness or failure. Of course, I should be able to do this. After all, this is my dad. Fortunately, I have two wonderful sisters who remind me that we’re in this together.

and their friends, and I think: This was definitely the right move. But I also have seen the looks of concern on my children’s faces when we have had to call in medical assistance for their grandpa. In those times I wonder: Am I doing the right thing? Each day is a struggle between the two.

Seeking Sustenance As happens so often in times of uncertainty in my life, I have turned to prayer to help me face those questions. Sometimes I find solace in just a few quiet moments, other times in prayers I have found in my many

• Feel what you feel. There are times when I get frustrated, angry, sad, or a wide range of other emotions. It’s OK, and it’s normal.

• Step away. Sticking to my exercise routine makes a world of difference. The physical exertion offers me a chance to burn off anxiety and stress—and keep myself in prime shape for my role as a caregiver. If exercise isn’t possible, though, try to engage in an activity that you enjoy—read, do a puzzle, watch TV. Whatever it is that takes you away, even for a brief period of time, is worth it.

• Go surfing. There are a number of websites, such as aarp.org, that offer suggestions for ways caregivers can care for themselves. Read over them for some ideas.

searches on caregiving websites. But, more often, my prayers consist of nothing more than “God, help me,” “God, give me strength,” “God, give me patience,” or, simply, “God, I need you.” On particularly challenging days, I find myself wondering, “God, where are you?”

The bottom line is that caregiving is an extremely fulfilling and challenging experience, whether it be for an elderly parent, a child, a spouse, or another relative. It’s good to know that I am not alone. And I know that when I look back on this time, I will see it for the blessing that it is. A

Click the button to the left to listen to Susan’s “Marriage Moments.”

Do you have comments or suggestions for topics you’d like to see addressed in this column? Send them to me at “A Catholic Mom Speaks,” 28 W. Liberty St., Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498, or e-mail them to CatholicMom@FranciscanMedia.org.

PETE AND REPEAT These scenes may seem alike to you, But there are changes in the two.

So look and see if you can name ILLUSTRATION BY TOM GREENE

Eight ways in which they’re not the same.

(Answers on page 46)

Fr ancisca n Media .org

Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 5 5

THE SPIRIT OF FRANCIS

❘ BY GINA LOEHR

CNS PHOTO/ L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTERS

Reaching Out to the Sick

“

I

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Pope Francis receives a letter from a child during a visit to the Bambino Gesù children’s hospital in Rome.

tal Digi as t Ex r

Click here for more on Pope Francis’ ministry to the sick.

Gina Loehr has written, with Al Giambrone, Saint Francis, Pope Francis: A Common Vision (Servant Books).

Caring for the Sick Francis could be severe with his own body but could readily adjust fasting for other friars.

2 Celano 22 reports that a friar once cried out in the middle of the night that he was dying of hunger. Francis directed the other friars to get up and join him in eating with this friar so that he would not be embarrassed. Francis then preached to them about discernment. —P.M.

St A n t h o n y M e s s e n g e r . o rg

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIE LONNEMAN

n every suffering brother and sister that we embrace,” Pope Francis said in 2013 while visiting St. Francis of Assisi Hospital in Brazil, “we embrace the suffering body of Christ.” Perhaps such encounters with Christ are the motivation behind the Holy Father’s consistent practice of reaching out to the sick.

Even during his pre-papal ministry, Jorge Bergoglio regularly knelt down before people in pain, offering the tangible touch of compassion. His long-standing tradition has been to wash and kiss the feet of oft-forgotten individuals, including AIDS patients, mothers in a maternity hospital, prison inmates, people who are paralyzed, elderly people, and individuals with cerebral palsy, annually at the Holy Thursday Mass. He has continued the tradition as pontiff, but his embrace of the sick has not been limited to this ritual.

Pope Francis kisses patients while visiting hospitals such as the one mentioned above and the Bambino Gesù children’s hospital

in Rome. He also regularly gives special attention those with physically disabilities.

For example, when some 600 people in wheelchairs lined the front rows of a Vatican auditorium, the Holy Father embraced all of them, one by one.

“Caught up as we are in a frenzy of doing, of producing,” Pope Francis said on the 2015 World Day of the Sick, “we forget about giving ourselves freely, taking care of others, being responsible for others.”

Thus, even amid his busy schedule, he makes time for personal visits to suffering friends. When Cardinal Mejía had a heart attack, the brand-new pope scooted over to the hospital to comfort his friend, visiting him three more times before the cardinal’s death that December.

Such care for the sick models the compassion St. Francis showed eight centuries earlier, as Pope Francis is well aware. Not only does the Holy Father imitate his namesake in this way; he encourages us to do the same. “To embrace, to embrace,” he emphasized at St. Francis Hospital, “we all have to learn to embrace the one in need, as St. Francis did.” A

BACKSTORY

Romero in Person

T

he photographs in this month’s cover story on Blessed Oscar Romero were taken by a friar whom you’ve seen in these pages before. Octavio Duran, OFM (of the Holy Name Province in New

York), was first discovered for us by art director Jeanne Kortekamp back in 2008. Little did any of us know, at the time, of his close relationship with Archbishop Romero.

As a young man, Brother Octavio, a Salvadoran, had been a seminarian

PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER HEFFRON

in Romero’s archdiocesan seminary during El Salvador’s horrific civil war.

A natural journalist, he became involved in the media project of the archdiocese. In a phone conversation with Jeanne and me, he recounted once when he was told to interview the archbishop. “Me? Interview the archbishop?” he asked, and was dispatched to the archbishop’s office. As he was setting up his recorder, Romero instructed him: “Make this like a relaxed conversation, not like questions and answers,” recalls Octavio. Good advice! Eventually he traveled as a photographer with the archbishop.

Archbishop Romero made plans to send Octavio on a scholarship to Texas. It was there, after Romero’s murder, that the young seminarian connected with Franciscans from New York, and then joined them.

Before then, at Romero’s funeral, as you can see in Mike Gable’s story on p. 28, he had witnessed a bloodbath.

CNS PHOTO/COURTESY OCTAVIO DURAN

Franciscan Brother Octavio Duran sits with his camera, with the grounds of the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy, behind him. He is editor of The Anthonian, magazine of the OFM’s Holy Name Province.

Only on his most recent trip back to San Salvador, from which the photos in this issue come, he told Jeanne and me, did he find healing.

“I feel like a different person now,” he earnestly explained as he told his story to us. On this trip he expressed his grief, putting his difficult experiences 30-some years ago into a new perspective. He knows he is lucky to be alive, he says gratefully. “I knew that something was going to happen” within, he says, as he made his plans. And he was right: “I went there with an empty heart, and came back with a full one.”

There will be a time, I resolved as we hung up the phone, when we devote a feature to Octavio himself. Maybe when Blessed Romero is canonized. Another article idea is percolating.

Editor in Chief @jfeister

Fr ancisca n Media .org

Ju n e 2 0 15 ❘ 5 7

ST. ANTHONY M 28 W. Liberty Street Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498

essenger

WHO AMONG US HAS NOT ASKED ST. ANTHONY’S HELP? Join us as we celebrate the feast of St. Anthony of Padua on June 13.

St. Anthony, saint of miracles and patron saint of lost and stolen articles, is one of the most well known disciples of St. Francis of Assisi.

www.stanthony.org Visit www.stanthony.org to learn more about the National Shrine of St. Anthony or to post your prayer requests or light a candle.