Scripture Reading: Philippians 2:5–11The Kenosis Hymn
Have this mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave. Being born in human likeness, he was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death—death on a cross.
And because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name above every other name, so that at Jesus’ name every knee shall bend in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father: Jesus Christ is Lord.
The Word of the Lord.
The Ancient Hymn and Adam Christology
These words from your patron, Saint Paul, found in the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians—scholars believe they were the text of an ancient hymn sung by the first Christians in Jerusalem when they gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. So they weren’t the words of Saint Paul; he was quoting the words of a hymn.
This is a very pivotal text. Just next week, when we celebrate Holy Week, you’re going to hear it several times during the sacred liturgies, because it is so foundational, so primal for the Christian Church. It describes the nature of God as being humble—that he came to this earth, that he chose to be with us, and that he chose a further humiliation through his passion, his death.
The affirmation that what he said and did was true is found primarily not in the miracle stories of all the people he cured and the other wonderful things he did, but primarily in the Resurrection. Because as your patron, Saint Paul, said: if he hasn’t been raised, then our faith is pointless. And if we aren’t somehow raised with him, then our belief is in vain. So God raised him. And then the giving of this powerful name—the name of Jesus—which exorcists use to free souls from demons, which has the power to heal. This sacred, holy name of our Savior, given to him now for all eternity.
It is the first way of speaking theologically about our Lord—what is the discipline of Christology, the theology of Christ. For the early Church, the way of doing that was a simple comparison between him and Adam. The first Adam of Genesis, who disobeyed God’s command and found sickness and death. And the second Adam, as Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:45, who was obedient and brings life and resurrection.
The mission cross—with which tomorrow night, when we celebrate the Holy Mass, I will have the opportunity to give you the apostolic blessing (an apostolic blessing is as though it comes from the hand of the Pope himself, and it bestows the plenary indulgence for a parish mission)—is given with the mission cross. On the mission cross, there are several symbols in addition to the image of our Lord. Below him is the image of the Sorrowful Mother with the sword piercing her heart. And below her is a very ancient Christian symbol. I’m sure you can’t see it from where you are, but it’s a skull and crossbones.
It’s a very ancient symbol. If you look at a lot of Christian art—if you go to Rome or other places around the world—you often see images of the Crucifixion with the skull or skull and crossbones at the base of the cross. This is the comparison, the theology of what is called Adam Christology: the old Adam’s disobedience and death, and the new Adam’s obedience and life.
Just a little story. A few years ago, I was traveling through our airport in Pittsburgh, off to another city to preach one of these parish missions, and my mission cross was in my carry-on bag. The TSA agents pulled my bag off the conveyor, and the dear woman takes me over to the counter and says, as she’s opening my bag, “Now, Father, is there anything in here that could hurt me?” I said, “Well, I don’t know—are you in a state of grace?” She pulls out my mission cross and sees the skull and crossbones and says, “Now, Father, do you belong to a pirate order?” The airports are always the best stories.
The Evidence of Faith
The great mystery of the cross is something that’s true. If you struggle with faith being real or verifiable, I would recommend Father Robert Spitzer’s beautiful website called the Magis Center (M-A-G-I-S). The brilliant Jesuit Father Spitzer was a scientist before he was a priest, and he goes into the scientific evidence for faith.
He talks about things like the miracles of the Eucharist, where the elements of the Mass—bread and wine—become actual flesh and blood. There are about a dozen of these that have occurred over the course of history, in different countries and different periods of time. The earliest one was in Lanciano, Italy, in about the 900s. The priest himself was doubting the reality of the transformation of the bread and wine at Mass to the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ—and the host turned to flesh in his hands, and the wine to actual blood.
When they test these miracles of the Eucharist scientifically, they find similar medical and physical characteristics. They are human cardiac tissue. They have living enzymes. And the chromosomes in these miracles have the same characteristics all over the world. It’s inexplicable on a scientific level. The chromosomes show only one set—which would indicate female—and there’s only one set, not two. But he was clearly male. These great miracles of the Eucharist reflect not only the truth of the mystery of the Eucharist, but the reality of the truth of faith.
There’s a difference between a mystery and a myth. A myth is something that is false. A mystery is something that is true and even verifiable, but too great to be fully comprehended, fully grasped.
Many years ago, Archbishop Sheen was giving a talk and trying to explain the difference between a mystery and a myth. He was using the story of Jonah and the whale from the Bible. A man at the talk raised his hand and said, “Archbishop, how is it even possible that a man could spend three days in the belly of a whale?” Archbishop Sheen said, “Well, I don’t know. When I get to heaven, I will ask Jonah.” And the man said, “Well, Archbishop, what if Jonah is not in heaven?” And Archbishop Sheen said, “Well, then you ask him.” Never mess with an Irish wit.
Padre Pio: Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry
The great mystery of the faith that we have the privilege of sharing is epitomized perhaps in the words of Saint Padre Pio: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful, and he will hear your prayers.”
Indeed, we live in an age of profound anxiety. And though our world may be filled with technological marvels and comforts, there’s a deep unease that lingers in hearts, homes, and even at times within the Church herself. The world is sick with fear and confusion, and the earthly members of the Church often sick with forgetfulness—forgetfulness of God, of prayer, of our eternal destiny. In the midst of this spiritual amnesia, the voice of Padre Pio resounds.
This beloved saint was no stranger to suffering. His hands, his feet, and side bore the wounds of our Lord for 50 years. His body was wracked by illness. From the time he was a child, he never enjoyed good health—gastroenteritis, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer of the skin, all kinds of physical sufferings. And of course, the stigmata. Someone once asked Padre Pio if the stigmata was painful, and his response was: “Our Lord didn’t give it to me for a decoration.”
He often said that the most painful wound on his body was not the ones on his hands and feet, but on his shoulder. He bore a wound from where our Lord carried the cross. He wore a cotton T-shirt under his Capuchin habit, and when they would change it, it would pull on the skin that adhered to the wound. It was very painful. We have a relic of that T-shirt in our student house in Washington, D.C., cut from that shirt.
Padre Pio’s Family Struggles
These words of his—“Pray, hope, and don’t worry”—were not just soft spiritual comfort. Padre Pio was one of five children. He had a brother, Michele, and three sisters: Pellegrina, Felicita, and Grazia. They all grew up in the same house. As a family, they prayed the Rosary every night together. Their uncle was the parish priest in the town of Pietrelcina, where they grew up—Father Nicola. They went to Mass every day with him. They prayed the Angelus three times a day together as a family.
When his oldest sister, Pellegrina, left home, she left the faith, and she never spoke to him his entire life. Probably one of the greatest saints of the twentieth century, who brought countless tens of thousands of souls to God, and he had a sister—his own blood sister—who abandoned her faith and wouldn’t even speak to him.
His youngest sister, Grazia, became a Brigittine nun. In fact, Padre Pio took her to the convent in Rome. She spent 40 years as a professed religious sister. At the end of those 40 years, there was a terrible scandal in the convent—the scandal had nothing to do with her—but she left the order over it, and she would never speak to him, as far as we know, until he died. So he had two sisters who at various points in their lives wouldn’t even speak to him. When he says, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry,” he knew what it was to worry about people close to him.
His father and his brother Mike bought a little house near the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, and they lived there for a number of years before his father died. A newspaper reporter was interviewing his father and asked if he thought God was going to let him into heaven. And he said, “Well, God has to let me into heaven because my son is Padre Pio.” I’m not sure it works that way.
The Church Is Being Purified
It’s enough to say that some of the greatest saints struggled, even personally. There’s an old saying: every saint has a past; every sinner, a future. But I will say this: the Church is not dying. The Church is being purified.
G.K. Chesterton famously converted to the Church for the very simple reason that there is only one reason to be a Catholic, and that is because it’s true. There is no other reason. We’re not better by nature than anyone else. We’re certainly not more organized as a group. It is because of the nature of the Church. We say of her that she is divine in her institution, human in her members—in her long history, inhumane in some of them, sadly. But every other institution ever founded on the face of the earth had a human founder, human members, and inhumane members. You don’t reform the Church by leaving her. You just get your own sinners.
Many years ago, a gentleman in the Archdiocese of Denver wrote to the editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, The Denver Catholic Register. In his letter, he explained: “Dear Monsignor Smith, I intend to start a new religion. Everyone will be able to join, and everyone will be comfortable because it won’t make too many demands on people. Our worship service will be very entertaining—we’re going to have a live band, nice padded comfortable seats, and you’ll be able to get a cappuccino in the lobby. I was wondering if, from the two-thousand-year experience of the Catholic Church, you might be able to offer me any advice.”
Monsignor Smith responded: “Dear Sir, you flatter me thinking that I can help you in this grandiose endeavor. Really, I can’t help you at all. But I can give you a piece of advice: you might have yourself beaten to a pulp, nailed to a cross until you die, and on the third day, rise from the dead. That should be a good start. Sincerely yours, Monsignor Smith.” Entertainment is no substitute for sacrifice.
The Essence of Prayer
And so tonight we come to the essence of prayer. The Catechism, in its section on prayer, offers the famous definition: prayer is the lifting of the mind and the heart to God. Then it asks how many kinds of prayer there are, and it says there are two. The first is called mental prayer—or meditation—and the second is vocal prayer. The entire section spends almost no time on vocal prayers—what we think of as the Rosary, devotions, and other things. The entire section is on mental prayer, quiet meditation.
When Padre Pio was asked for advice on growing in the spiritual life, he would always say: “Daily Mass, weekly confession, mental prayer.” Our order, from the sixteenth century, has committed itself to two periods of this a day. At our friaries, we do an hour broken in half—a half hour together in the chapel before morning prayer, and a half hour together before Vespers. Some of our elderly friars are there even an hour in advance doing this mental prayer, this quiet prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
He would also say: spiritual reading, and then twice daily, examine your conscience—not just at night as is customary before bed, but also in the morning as an act of gratitude and a beginning of the day.
I’d like to offer you tonight, if you haven’t already gotten a copy, a little sheet on how to get started with mental prayer. If you take nothing else away from this retreat and you’ve had no experience with mental prayer, I would encourage you to try and start simply. If you don’t do it at all, start with fifteen minutes. If you can’t come to church and be in front of the Blessed Sacrament—which is not always possible—find a prayer area in your home and place yourself in front of a beautiful crucifix and just contemplate that.
Saint Francis de Sales would often give people the penance of praying for ten or fifteen minutes in front of a crucifix, contemplating the great love that was poured out there. This is fundamental, because if we’re going to rebuild the Church, and if the culture has any hope, it has to start personally with us—with Christians praying again.
All those statistics I gave you about church attendance and Mass attendance—I would suggest to you that the first thing that goes in people’s spiritual life is not going to church. People stop praying first. Not going to church is not the first thing; it’s the last thing that goes. So we have to rebuild. We have to be people committed to our Lord. He is our Savior. He’s the one who is the object of our adoration, our love, our gratitude, our affection. And unless we spend time in prayer with him, growing in intimacy, we’re not going to get started at all.
I would recommend Father Jacques Philippe’s books—some of you may be familiar with them. There’s one called Interior Freedom. I think Father Philippe is one of the best spiritual writers of our generation. He also has one called Time for God. I would highly recommend both. Committing ourselves to that seed ground is where you rebuild the family. Because as Father Patrick Peyton, the famous Holy Cross priest, used to say: “The family that prays together stays together.”
Rebuilding the Family
Now let me offer you a few statistics from 30 years of pastoral experience. Fifty percent of marriages in this country end in divorce—whether they get married in church, in front of a justice of the peace, on a beach somewhere. And of people who get divorced, well over 80 percent—close to 90 percent—were cohabitating or were intimately physically involved before they got married.
The cultural gospel is that you should have a trial marriage—live together before you get married—and that somehow this will create a more stable relationship. At this point in my life, I would say: if that worked, it would at least be interesting.
The number one thing that almost guarantees a divorce is cohabitation. It seems counterintuitive, but if the gospel is true, you would expect to see it in statistics, and indeed it’s there. Less than two percent of couples who prepare for Christian marriage as Christians end in divorce. My experience is not that they don’t have problems; it’s that they have principles. And because of their Christian principles, they’re able to survive their problems together, their struggles together, and even their joys are better because of their fidelity to Christ.
When I was a little kid, my father sat my sister and me down and basically taught us the theology of marriage. He said, “Your mother is not the most important person in this marriage. I’m not the most important person in this marriage. The most important person in this marriage is Jesus Christ.” That was the heart of their Christian marriage. Two people who are believers, united. It helped them persevere through their struggles, it made their joys more acutely intense, and they had a stable relationship for 57 years.
To this day—my mother died a couple years ago on Christmas Eve—my father carries her picture around in his shirt pocket all the time. And when he goes to Holy Communion, he kisses her picture to this day.
Zero point two percent of couples who pray together end in divorce. That’s not even a half a percentage point. My dear parents were members of the Third Order of Saint Francis. For 30 years, they prayed the Liturgy of the Hours together at home. They had a little basket—people would ask my parents to pray for them, and they’d write their names down, put them in what they called their “prayer basket.” When they prayed the Hours together, they would remember these people. Even their prayer life took them outside of themselves. It’s part of what made them even more stable—the generosity of their charity toward others.
If you are not praying together, I would recommend trying to start, even simply. What’s important is not the length, as Pope Benedict used to say. It’s the commitment to the faithful structure of prayer in your life. We have to pray according to our state in life. The great Saint Francis de Sales wrote a beautiful book, An Introduction to the Devout Life, about how to grow in sanctity in the lay vocation. I highly recommend it.
I would recommend a little book from Dr. Ray Guarendi, a dear friend of mine, recently published called Simple Steps to a Stronger Marriage. It’s not a preachy book. It’s not about the theory of marriage. It’s illustrations from people who have been through different circumstances in their marriages and the wisdom they gained. I also recommend his books on parenting—especially Discipline That Lasts a Lifetime. He and his wife were not able to physically have children; they adopted ten children and raised these beautiful children together. So his advice comes not just from clinical experience but from personal experience.
Dr. Ray actually lives down the road from my father, and he brings his children and grandchildren to my dad’s house for Halloween. He never wears a costume, but when he knocks on my father’s door, he says, “I’m coming dressed as an aging psychologist.”
Raising Children in the Faith
At the root of a Christian family is prayer life. We teach our children how to pray. We have a moral obligation not only to prepare for Christian marriage as Christians, but also to train our children in religion. Now, faith is an adult experience, so you have 18 years. When they leave home, they’re no longer under your jurisdiction.
In our Catholic tradition, there is nothing about shunning. We don’t shun people, especially people we’re supposed to love—even if they’re difficult. That also doesn’t mean we’re imprudent. Sometimes a healthy distance is for their sake as well. But as long as people are living under your roof, they live with your rules, because you have a moral obligation.
After 18, if they don’t live in your house: I’ll pray for you. I’ll give you a good example. I’m not going to nag you. I’m not going to berate you. But I will always love you.
God indeed loves everybody. That’s an absolute statement. But God loved Adolf Hitler. God loved Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. If people are in hell, they’re not there because God failed to love them. What happens is people turn their backs.
This is the difference between pagan, servile fear of God and the Christian fear of the Lord. Servile fear says whatever’s on the other side is wicked or untrustworthy—so rituals had to do with appeasement. Think of those Aztec and Mayan temples outside of Mexico City, literally ripping the beating hearts out of living victims to appease their angry gods, before the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As Christians, we hear in Psalm 111: “The fear of the Lord is the first stage of wisdom.” Our fear is not fear of God, because our Lord revealed him to be a loving Father—Abba. The fear is of ourselves, because he’s given us free will, and we are free to turn our backs on the very thing that would save us. That is called filial fear.
We don’t shun people. We also don’t participate in people’s sins. If your child is over 18 but lives in your house, they’re under your jurisdiction, and you have moral culpability for what happens in your house. You’re not going to say, “Who am I to judge? You want to bring illicit drugs into my house? You want to bring illicit relationships into my house?” That is what I call stupid parenting.
But also, don’t shun people. Keep your hearts and your homes open. “I don’t agree with what you do, but you’re always welcome here. I’m not going to participate in your sin, but you are always welcome. I’m not going to financially underwrite a sinful lifestyle, but I will always love you.”
Let’s agree not to put each other on guilt trips. I’ll agree not to try to impose Catholicism on you if you’re over 18 and don’t live in my house. We don’t give unsolicited advice to adults. But let’s have you not try to force whatever you do or do not believe on me. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s love each other. Even if people don’t respond, send a Christmas card, send a birthday card. Let them know the door is always open.
The Indispensable Role of the Father
The family is foundational to the re-evangelization of culture. A review of 47 causal studies found that children from healthy two-parent homes score higher on standardized testing, have fewer behavioral problems, and are more likely to graduate high school and attend college. For millennials, the advantage in college graduation between those from intact and unstable families reaches 23 percentage points, and 20 points for reaching middle-income status. A Brookings commentary calls this the “two-parent privilege,” noting its link to lower incarceration and poverty rates.
Our pastoral heart goes out to people who find themselves in less-than-ideal situations, but it’s the faith that makes the difference, as I told you last night with my own father. But every study that’s been done points to one particular factor: if you’re talking about whether children will be practicing churchgoers when they get older, the most fundamental thing is the father.
Pius XII stated in an address to newlyweds on January 2, 1941: “The father is the head of the family, the protector and guardian of his household. He is priest and ruler in his own home. This paternal headship is not one of domination, but of sacrificial service modeled after Christ himself, who loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
All the modern development studies confirm the truth of this gospel message. Active, affectionate, healthy, faithful fathers’ involvement is strongly associated with higher academic achievement, increased emotional regulation, and more stable social behavior. According to a 2021 Census Bureau report, children in father-absent homes are four times more likely to live in poverty and experience significantly higher risks of behavioral disorders, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and incarceration.
In the realm of sexual development and modesty, the father’s presence is critical, particularly for daughters. Studies published in the Journal of Family Psychology demonstrate that daughters with warm, present, attentive fathers are far less likely to engage in early sexual activity, whereas those with absent or emotionally distant fathers are more vulnerable to seeking affirmation through unhealthy relationships.
Saint John Chrysostom exhorted Christian fathers to “be pastors of their own domestic churches,” calling them to be more responsible for the salvation of their children than monks are for those entrusted to them.
Even more striking are the spiritual consequences of paternal disengagement. A well-known study conducted in Switzerland in 1994 found that if a father does not attend church but the mother does, only about two to three percent of children will continue to practice the faith as adults. Conversely, if a father does attend church regularly—even if the mother does not—over 66 percent of children are more likely to remain faithful churchgoers.
The singular influence of the father’s witness underscores the ancient principle articulated by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891): “The family is a society, very small, one must admit, but nonetheless a true society. The father is the head of the family. The head must rule with wise and responsible leadership.”
In today’s cultural climate, where masculinity is often maligned and fathers are frequently absent or passive, the Church’s call is more urgent. Fathers must reclaim their spiritual role—not as mere disciplinarians or providers, but as visible, praying, faithful men who lead their families to heaven. The Baltimore Catechism taught that one of the chief duties of parents is to give good example to their children, teach them their prayers, and bring them up in the fear and love of God. When the father kneels in prayer, leads the family Rosary, and models the sacramental life, he imprints on the souls of his children a witness more lasting than any sermon.
What all the studies reflect is that in the early years of childhood, the mother is the child’s whole world—boys and girls. She is the first one who teaches them how to kneel, how to make the sign of the cross, how to say their first prayers. She leads them to the Angelus, to the Mass. She is foundationally essential because she creates in the hearts and souls of her little children a sense of security, stability, and love. If the mother does this foundational task, and the children feel rooted, they start to look to the father for the outward direction. And in all the studies, the most defining thing is the father’s practice of religion.
We have two priests in my community who are both doctorates and professors—one in moral theology, one in Scripture—and they have a sister who’s a religious sister. Their father was Lutheran. When he and their mother got married, the non-Catholic party had to sign a document agreeing to raise the children as Catholic. He was a lawyer, and he signed the document. He said, “Well, I signed a document.” So this Lutheran father went out and bought the Baltimore Catechism to teach his Catholic children the Catholic religion. He made sure they knew it, and he went to Mass with them every single Sunday. He wouldn’t go to Communion, but he went with them every Sunday. Not only did his children become faithful Catholics—they became priests and professors of theology, and their sister became a religious sister. He did, by the way, convert to Catholicism near the end of his life.
The witness of a faithful, praying father in a family is the defining issue. I always say it this way: if you want to play golf on Sunday and you expect any of your children to be churchgoers, this is not a problem. You just have to have statistically 50 children, and maybe two of them might be churchgoers. Other than that, the most convincing thing is our witness. Acta non verba.
Children, Obedience, and the Digital Age
We hear in Ephesians: “Obey your parents in the Lord, as is right” (Ephesians 6:1). God himself has placed parents as visible representatives of his authority. The fourth commandment teaches: “Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long upon the land.” This commandment is the first with a promise. The Catechism of the Council of Trent emphasizes that honoring parents is a duty children owe by the law of nature itself, and those who obey with love receive the blessing of divine favor.
Love God more than your phone. Seek the approval of heaven, not the fleeting applause of social media. A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 59 percent of teens report feeling pressure to look good or be popular on social media, often leading to anxiety and discontent. But God does not measure our worth by followers or filters. He gazes into the heart. Saint Louis de Montfort wisely said: “God has inscribed on the brow of every obedient child a blessing. Obedience, far from being weakness, is the path to strength, maturity, and grace.”
Rebuild the Family, Rebuild the Church
In an age where the devil attacks the family because it is an image of the Trinity, the empirical evidence speaks clearly. Children typically benefit most from a sacramental union of a father and a mother. And of course, our pastoral heart extends to those whose situations lack that, but God’s grace is always sufficient. What matters above all is love, fidelity, prayer, and a commitment to holiness. Let us make our homes once again holy ground—places of light, sanctity, and grace. To rebuild the Church, we must rebuild the family. Fathers on their knees. Mothers praying the Rosary. Children seeking heaven. And the Confraternity of Christian Mothers reminding us all of the power of domestic sanctity.
The Confraternity of Christian Mothers: A History
A note about the Confraternity: while it is made up primarily of women, it’s not just for women. When it was started in France, the French government—after the Revolution—had imposed secularism on the country by violence, through murder, through the guillotine, the infamous Robespierre. He executed ten percent of France to impose secularism on what was then called “the eldest daughter of the Church.” Any men who spoke up to defend the faith and their families were put to death.
So 50 years on after the Revolution, the only demographic group left in the country that was really opposing the forced secularization were mothers and women. At the gathering in Lille, France, in 1850, this was the issue. They got together to support their husbands. They bonded together to encourage, inspire, and support each other—encouraging their husbands, who had been cowed by the violence of the state, to take up that spiritual role of leadership in the family. The Confraternity was designed to find creative, insightful, and grace-filled ways of loving and encouraging their husbands.
Bringing Virtue Out of Your Spouse
And that’s good marital advice in general. If you want to bring a virtue out of your spouse—if your spouse seems to be struggling with their faith—what did Padre Pio do with his sisters? Did he nag them? No. Was he sending them links and videos? No. Was he chastising them constantly? No. He did the most effective and important thing he could do: he prayed for them. He gave them the beautiful witness of his life. And because he became so focused on charity toward others, countless souls were saved because of his own suffering. God uses suffering even to purify us.
If you want your spouse to be more patient, show them what patience looks like. If you want your spouse to be more forgiving, show them what forgiveness looks like. If you want your spouse to be more generous, show them what generosity looks like. Show them by your example. And pray for your spouse every day.
Father Urban’s Way of Prayer
I’d like to end with a little bit of advice about “pray, hope, and don’t worry.” One of our venerable old priests from my province was Father Urban Edelman. Father Urban was a brilliant moral theologian, a professor at our seminary for many years. He was also a very holy priest. For many years at our Saint Fidelis Seminary in Butler County, north of Pittsburgh, many religious sisters, priests, and even bishops would go to him for confession and spiritual direction.
Father Urban took care of the rose garden in front of the seminary, and he’d go on walks with the sisters—out of propriety, he wouldn’t meet with religious women in private. They’d walk through the rose garden, and he’d say, “Sister, when you walk out into the beautiful day, look up into the sky and say, ‘Jesus, for the blue sky, I love you. For the birds singing, Jesus, I love you. For the beautiful roses, Jesus, I love you.’” He wrote a whole little booklet on these aspiratory prayers, each ending with “Jesus, I love you.”
We celebrate this 800th anniversary year of Saint Francis of Assisi, and one of the things he’s known for is his love of creation. People think of the birdbath with the statue of Saint Francis down at Walmart and his famous Canticle of the Creatures, where he praises God for his creation. But let me clarify the spiritual meaning of that beautiful poem he finished composing just before he died. It’s not so much a reflection on the preservation or protection of the natural world. I would say it this way: Saint Francis was less concerned about saving the natural world and more concerned about saving souls.
What he saw in creation was a model of obedience to the will of God. What does a bird do? It flies, it sings, and by being what it is—by its created nature—it glorifies its Creator. We alone in creation can turn our backs on the Creator, because we’ve been given free will. We have the ability to disfigure ourselves, to destroy the beauty that God made in us. For Saint Francis, we can draw inspiration for the restoration of our lives from creation itself. That was what the Canticle was all about.
The Rosary of Names
Father Urban taught people to pray in this foundationally Franciscan way, and I’d like to leave you with a piece of advice about praying for those in your family, those close to you, those you worry about. Take the beads of your rosary, and on each bead say the Holy Name—that name above every other name, that powerful name—the Holy Name of Jesus. Then say the name of a person.
Start with your parents, living or deceased. “Jesus, Mom. Jesus, Dad.” Go through your brothers and sisters, the people you work with, your employees, people from your past, your present, people you’ve sinned against, people who have sinned against you, people you’re worried about, political figures, religious figures. Just go around the beads of your rosary—“Jesus” and a person’s name—and when you later pray the Rosary, all those souls, all your relationships to them, your worries about them, are taken up into what Padre Pio called the greatest weapon against evil: the Holy Rosary.
There is also a beautiful book on this topic by Father Sebastian Walsh, a Norbertine priest from California, called Always a Catholic, about raising faithful children and inviting back those who have left the practice of their faith.
Tomorrow at 7 p.m., we are going to celebrate Holy Mass, and I will offer to you during the homily what I call “the solution”—to bring all of this together: overcoming acedia, rebuilding the Christian family. It culminates in what I’m going to tell you tomorrow night. And at the end, I’ll give the apostolic blessing to close the mission.
Closing Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Saint Paul the Apostle, pray for us. Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Transcript prepared from auto-generated captions. Lightly edited for clarity and readability.