Petersboat

A meditation on the readings from today's Mass. It's about the connection between electric vehicle range anxiety (the fear of running out of juice) and the how that can lead us in the spiritual life to be like the Pharisees and Scholars who seemed, in their own ways, to lose trust in God, to suffer a kind of spiritual range anxiety.

This is a recording of a conversation I had with Allie and Mary at the doorway to the church following Daily Mass today. We recorded it with the hopes of inviting you to listen in. I do hope you enjoy and find it helpful in coming to know yourself as one who is beloved of the Father.

A short reflection originally prepared for our Faith Formation students for the month of October, shared here for the parish. Part One considers why we pray; Part Two looks specifically at the Glory Be.

His mother named him Peter John, after each of his grandfathers, PJ for short. But whenever he would cry his mother would give him to her father, Mr. Fulton, to walk him. The townspeople called him “Fulton’s child” so often that the name stuck. He later took it to himself: Fulton J. Sheen.

I first learned of Bishop Sheen when Father McDonald gave me audio CDs of his radio talks, but the world knew him well already as the host of the award-winning TV program opposite Milton Berle called Life is Worth Living. His show was very simple - he had a chalkboard and the Church. But, as they said of Our Lord, “No man ever spoke as that man speaks,” Bishop Sheen was among the most gifted orators of the 20th century. Still, he was fond of thanking his writers at the end of the show: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

The 20th century is numbered among the bloodiest in history, and Communism had a lot to do with that. It wasn’t easy to speak publicly against the errors of that totalitarian ideology, but Bishop Sheen did not cower. History will remember him as one of the last century’s strongest voices raised on behalf of the oppressed.

Bishop Sheen’s power and influence came not from the State but from God. And he was devoted to the telling of how he received it from God - his daily Holy Hour. If it has since become popular to speak of “making a Holy Hour,” that is because of Bishop Sheen. He would say things like, “When I speak, people listen! Why? It isn’t any power of mine. It is the Lord speaking through me. I am merely a poor vessel. Still, He offers us the treasure of Himself in the Eucharist.” The name of Bishop Sheen’s autobiography was Treasure in Clay.

Pope Pius XII sided with Sheen in a dispute against Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York at the time. Enraged, Spellman barred Bishop Sheen from New York City churches and had him reassigned to the Diocese of Rochester. Sheen bore it humbly, choosing not to hate his enemy but to pray for him.

Bishop Sheen wrote more than 50 books about the spiritual life and the Church, because he was a life-long student. A woman close to him recalled finding that he had written careful notes all throughout a book she had given him only a few hours earlier. He was a teacher at heart. Bishop Sheen came of age shortly after Pope Leo XIII called for a renewal of Aquinas’ theology. One of that revival’s greatest fruits, Bishop Sheen became one of its most effective popularizers. But ever the saint, he left all his writings and talks to the public domain so that no one publisher would have exclusive rights to the archive of his legacy.

Let’s end with a joke Bishop Sheen was fond of telling. “There are two types of people in the world: those who wake up and say ‘Good morning, God!’ and those who wake up and say, ‘Good God, morning.’” Bishop Sheen gave morning, noon, and night to God, until he died in his chapel. He often prayed for the grace to die on one of Our Lady’s Feasts, but was found dead on December 9th. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if he passed just before midnight, on the 8th. +

A brief reflection on the meaning of the Sabbath and how taking refuge in it is like entering into new life with God, even now.

This episode offers a way of looking through the lens of Mother Teresa (whose Feast Day is today) at the people in our lives who need us or who ask something from us. Could it be Christ in them...longing for us?

If the Word of God is spoken most powerfully from mother to child over the Baptismal Font, or through the priest over the bread and wine, then the Church speaks the tiny whispering sound that Elijah heard in the desert - the still, small voice of God.

When the Muppets come to understand that they are puppets, something amazing is happening, as mysterious as when a man or woman begins to perceive the meaning of our common humanity.

Sometimes my father would say to me, “Don’t move. I’ll be right there,” and he’d directly intervene to save me from some situation. But other times, he would say to me, “Figure it out on your own.”

For instance, when I broke my arm in the 6th grade he rushed me to the hospital, acting powerfully and swiftly on my behalf. But not long after that, when I told him that I was being bullied on the bus, he said, “Well, if it happens again, hit the guy in the nose.”

I guess being a father isn’t one or the other. As much as it is sometimes stepping in to save the child, it also means permitting the child the freedom to try and to learn on his own. “I’ll always be here,” a father can say, “but I can’t live your life for you.”

I mentioned Game 4 of the NBA Finals, when, after the Knicks had gone up by one point (after being down by 29) the Spurs inbounded the ball with 1.9 seconds left on the clock. The prayer at that point was, “Just don’t foul them.”

And I feel like there’s something similar happening in our Christianity: Christ has won the victory for us, conquering the Evil One on the cross, and His parting prayer for us is, “Just don’t foul one another; Love one another as I have loved you.”