I’m standing outside the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, known as the New Cathedral. It’s an incredibly beautiful church. It was consecrated in 1926 after nearly 20 years of construction, but the work went on because it holds the largest mosaic collection in the Western Hemisphere for any single church. Forty-one million pieces of glass mosaic are found in this church.
It’s a unique building. The exterior is Romanesque, this Western style of architecture, and the interior is Byzantine Christian architecture. It’s an incredible blend of East and West, an incredible sign of the beauty and the solidity of our faith and of the Church.
We’re here on our pilgrimage to attend the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, a man who had a deep love for the Church, this great mystery, this sacrament of our salvation. He understood the beauty of the Church, the mystery of the Church, the wonder of the Church. This individual church reflects that beauty in a beautiful way. And I encourage you, through the intercession of soon-to-be Blessed Fulton Sheen, to grow together in a deeper love for the Holy Church.
Our Lord summons the Twelve and sends the Twelve, and that pattern has not stopped in the life of the Church since the time of our Lord. This calling and sending. We’re invited in our own journey of life to hear the Lord calling us, inviting us to participate in his mission. By virtue of our baptism and confirmation, each of us is invited and called to share in the great mission of Christ. It’s a great honor and a great privilege.
Today we celebrate the great saint Padre Pio, a saint who captivated the whole world. He died in 1968, a very contemporary saint. The Italians canonized him way before the Pope did. I remember being in Italy, studying there in 1997 and 1998. There were Padre Pio statues everywhere. It was like the people had spoken: he was a saint. And that is often the case with canonization, that the Church simply confirms what the people already know.
Padre Pio lived an extraordinary life. As most of us know, he had the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, for 50 years. People doubted him and questioned him. The Church was very difficult with him at different times because of the claim and the concern that maybe this was not authentic. He suffered a lot, both physically and simply because of people being suspicious about him. But like gold tested in fire, all of that purified him. He was deeply purified by his suffering, by a deep participation in the cross of Jesus Christ.
His life is marked by extraordinary miracles and signs, and perhaps that was a gift for us in our skeptical, rationalistic way of thinking as moderns and postmoderns, the idea that miracles are somehow just fabrications of the imagination, that past accounts of miracles were medieval exaggerations. We saw in his life a confirmation that God can work in extraordinary ways.
One of my favorites: he had the gift of bilocation, the gift of being in two places at once. Some people think I have the gift of bilocation because they’ll hear me on the radio while I’m celebrating morning Mass. That’s called the gift of a prerecorded show.
But one favorite story was that he had not left his monastery at all, and his superior received a letter saying, “Dear Father, thank you for sending Father Pio to our monastery and resolving the conflict among our monks.” Because the monks were fighting, which I love, because that’s so real. We don’t think of monks that way, but they are as real as you and me. They get irritated and frustrated and they have to forgive, and they have grudges. It’s all very real. So the monks are fighting. Padre Pio shows up. He restores peace to the monastery. The superior writes the letter. “Thank you for sending Padre Pio.” Padre Pio had never left the grounds.
This is one of many, many stories involving Padre Pio, a priest on mission in his own time and in his own place, faithful to the Lord’s call.
This week, of course, we’re celebrating Venerable Fulton Sheen, and we can’t wait to be able to call him Blessed Fulton Sheen. We can see that same pattern in his life: called and sent. “Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for my feet.” Called and sent.
We’re thankful that Venerable Fulton Sheen, like Padre Pio, found in the Word of the Lord a lamp for his feet and a lamp for our feet. We are invited, inspired by these saints, to encounter the Lord’s call in our own life, his call to follow him, his call that sends us forth.
We’re invited to allow these words, “Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for my feet,” to truly be words that are our words. Inspired by Fulton Sheen, who taught so faithfully from the heart and the life of the Church, we find in the Church that authentic teacher, so that we can be confident that it is truly his Word and not our word that we’re placing in the mouth of God. No, we want his Word, not our word.
In Saint Padre Pio, in Venerable Fulton Sheen, we find examples of those who sought the Word and shared the Word. Your word, O Lord, is a lamp for my feet.