Pope John XXIII

This coming Sunday, September 28, is the 54th anniversary of the election of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII. Elected in 1958, at the age of 77, many expected him to be simply a “placeholder.”


However, just two months after his election, he became the first pope since 1870 to make pastoral visits in his Diocese of Rome. On Christmas day, he visited children infected with polio at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and then visited Santo Spirito Hospital. And the following day he visited Rome's Regina Coeli prison, where he told the inmates: "You could not come to me, so I came to you."

He wrote in his diary of: ...great astonishment in the Roman, Italian and international press. I was hemmed in on all sides: authorities, photographers, prisoners, wardens...”

Roncalli, who came from a poor peasant background, described himself as a "prisoner of opulence" in the Vatican. "I have nothing against these good noble guards," the pope confided, "but so much bowing, such formality, so much pomp, so much parading make me suffer, believe me. When I go down [to the basilica] and see myself preceded by so many guards, I feel like a prisoner, a criminal; and instead I would like to be the 'bonus pastor' for all, close to the people. [...] The pope is not a sovereign of this world. “

He recounted how much he disliked at the beginning being carried on the sede gestatoria through the rooms, preceded by cardinals often more elderly and decrepit than himself, confessing that this was not very reassuring for him, “because ultimately one is always teetering a bit."

In January of 1959, he announced his intend of convening an ecumenical council. The cardinals gathered in St. Paul's Outside the Walls greeting his words with stunned silence. And L’Osservatore Romano did not think the announcement worthy of its front page.

In 1959, Fr. Roberto Tucci was appointed director of the Roman magazine of the Jesuits, "La Civiltà Cattolica". He met with Pope John at Castel Gandolfo and noted in his diary: "Striking simplicity and affability of manners that dispel any embarrassment and are very touching. Welcome at the door and accompaniment almost back to the threshold again."

When the Council opened on October 11, 1962 (fifty years ago) and the 2540 bishops had taken their places in St. Peter’s, Pope John dismounted the sedia gestitoria at the entrance to St. Peter’s and walked down the central aisle. Like his brother bishops, he wore a miter. He addressed the assembled Council, beginning “Gaudet Mater Ecclesia,” Mother Church rejoices today. He told them that “in the current conditions of human society, (some) can see nothing but betrayal and destruction. They say that in comparison with the past our age has done nothing but decline and deteriorate. And they behave as if they had learned nothing from history, which is the teacher of life, and as if in the times of the earlier Councils the Christian idea and Christian life, morals, and the just freedom of the Church had done nothing but blossom and triumph.”

He went on, “but we have to decisively contradict these prophets of doom who keep on predicting nothing but disaster, as if the world was about to end.”
Less than two months before he died, Pope John issued an encyclical letter, Pacem in Terris, addressed “to all men of good will.” Darius Milhaud composed a choral symphony with that title for the dedication of the new Parisian radio building, making John’s encyclical the only one ever set to music.
John XXIII died on June 3, 1963 and, later that year, on December 3rd, President Lyndon B. Johnson posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award, in recognition of the good relationship between Pope John and the United States.
And in 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Pope John XXIII blessed. His feast day is June 11, the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

Saints

“I am not advocating world-movements or public meetings... my appeal is rather to the individual conscience than to the public ear; my hope is rather to see the emergence of a Saint, than that of an organization...
    “There is no harm in besieging heaven for the canonization of such and such holy persons now dead. But should we not do well to vary these petitions of ours by asking for more Saints to canonize?”

Ronald Knox, in "God and the Atom"

St John the Baptist

“Are you the One Who Is to Come?”

Jesus answered,

“Go and tell John

What you see and hear.”

So they did…

We saw a blind woman staring at the back of her hand,

first the palm, then the back,

over and over again,

twisting it like a diamond in the sun,

weeping all the time and saying,

“I can see through tears; I can see through tears.”

 We saw a lame man

bounce his granddaughter

on his knee.

We saw a leper

kiss her husband.

We saw a deaf boy

snap his fingers

next to his ear

and jump.

 We saw a dead girl

wake and stretch

and eat breakfast.

The poor we saw

were not poor.

From “The Man Who Was a Lamp” in Starlight, Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long by John Shea.

St. Angela Merici

St. Angela Merici (1474-1540) was one of the women who pioneered a new form of ministry for religious women in a time when the choice for women was marriage or enclosure in a convent. In her youth, moved by the poverty and ignorance of her neighbors in northern Italy she began to provide simple religious education to their children. Other women joined her and in 1533, at the age of 50, she set about formalizing this community of women. Two years later, twenty-eight women prepared to consecrate themselves to the service of God under the patronage of St. Ursula, the Company of St. Ursula, or Ursulines.

Angela had developed a simple rule for the community but did not envision them as nuns; they did not wear a habit and did not take vows. They continued to live in their homes. Such an association of women was a novelty and generated concerns. Four years after her death Pope Paul III approved a constitution for her community.

Twenty-eight years later, in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII, at the insistence of Saint Charles Borromeo, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, declared the Ursulines a religious order under the Augustinian rule. In most cases, especially in France, the sisters adopted enclosure and took solemn vows. They were called the "religious Ursulines" as distinct from the "congregated Ursulines" who continued to follow the original plan.

St John Fisher

June 22 is the feast of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher. The latter, after becoming Chancellor of the University of Oxford, went on, at the insistence of King Henry VIII, to become bishop of Rochester. He was attentive to his diocese at a time when bishops usually looked upon their diocese simply as a source of income.


He did not recognize Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and would not support the Act of Supremacy by which Henry was constituted Head of the Church in England. After being imprisoned in the Tower of London on a charge of treason, he was executed on June 22, 1535, being beheaded the day before the vigil of his namesake, John the Baptist who was also beheaded for opposing the marriage of a king.
John Fisher was the only bishop to oppose King Henry. However, he did not condemn his fellow bishops for not doing likewise: “I condemn no other man’s conscience; their conscience may save them, and mine must save me.”

He is a saint for our times when disagreements are so often met with harsh and vindictive statements.

Prayer after Communion (from the British missal): “renew us, Lord, and strengthen us by the example and prayers of your martyrs Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, so that always following the voice of conscience, we may ever be your good servants.”

Favorite Carol

One of my favorite Christmas Carols is “Good King Wenceslaus.”

The good king looked out his window on the feast of Stephen, that is, on the day after Christmas. The moon shone brightly; a clear sky means a very cold night. The king saw a man gathering fuel to heat his home and inquired who the man was. The king’s page answers that the peasant lives “a good league hence.” A league is somewhere between two and a half and four and a half miles, a long way to go to forage for firewood.

The king responds by having his page gather meat and wine and firewood. He doesn’t sent them out to the man but tells his page that they will take them to the man’s house.

When the page says he can go no further because of the wind and cold, the king tells him to follow behind him, using the king as shelter.

The carol concludes: “Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.” Not just at Christmas, but especially when Christmas has passed.

Ancestors

The gospel reading for the vigil Mass of Christmas is the opening of the Gospel according to Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus. Most parishes that I am familiar with do not use this reading. Instead they use the gospel reading for the midnight Mass, the account of Jesus’ birth from Luke.


The genealogy of Jesus from Matthew has four interesting women in it: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba who is identified only as Soloman’s mother who had been the wife of Uriah.

The footnote in the New American Bible says that these women “bore their sons through unions that were in varying degrees strange and unexpected.”

Perhaps the strangest to our way of thinking is the first, Tamar. She was the wife of Judah’s firstborn son. However, we read he “greatly offended the LORD; so the LORD took his life.” As was the custom the times, another of Judah’s sons, Onan, was married to Tamar to raise up children for his deceased brother. This was not to Onan’s liking and he, too, offended the LORD and died. Tamar had a right to marriage with another of Judah’s sons. However he put this off, for understandable reasons. As time passed and there was no forth coming marriage, Tamar took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself and plopped herself down by the roadside when she know Judah would be passing by. He, mistaking her for a prostitute, had intercourse with her, promising a goat in payment. She obtained his seal as a pledge and promptly returned home after Judah left. When she was reported to be pregnant, Judah’s response was: “Bring her out; let her be burned.” However, when Tamar produced Judah’s seal, identifying him as the father of her child, he recognized that he had wronged her.

The next woman is Rahab, a prostitute of Jericho, who protected the spies that Joshua had sent to recognoiter Jericho. In return she and her family were spared when Jericho fell to the Israelites.

The third is Ruth, who is well known for her loyalty to her mother-in-law, Noemi. Ruth was a Moabite, a foreigner, who became the great-grandmother of David.

The fourth woman is Bathsheba who gave birth to Solomon after her adulterous affair with David.

These are not four of the women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus; these are the four women mentioned, the only ones, other than Mary.

Scripture is quite willing to provide examples of God working in unexpected ways. However in the accounts of the lives of the saints I find a tendency to sanitize the work of God.

I had to chuckle when I read that an account of Pope John XXIII’s visit with prisoners in Rome; he told them that he had a relative who had been imprisoned for poaching. L’Osservatore Romano edited that comment out when they reprinted his talk.

God can work wonders, with fallible even sinful people. That’s good news.

St Nicholas

Each Advent, I enjoy listening to Benjamin Britten’s “Saint Nicolas Cantata”. Saint Nicholas, according to tradition, was bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey in the early part of the fourth century. His feast is on December 6^th.

Britten’s cantata begins by acclaiming that “Nicholas was born in answer to pray and leaping from his mother’s womb he cried: ‘God be glorified’”.

The cantata then summons Nicholas who tells us that when his parents died, he sold his lands to feed the poor; he gave his goods to charity.

On a trip to Palestine, he calms a storm at sea and prays: “O God, we are all weak, sinful, foolish men, we pray from fear and from necessity,… forgetful of thy grace. Help us, O God to see more clearly... Teach us to ask for less and offer more in gratitude to thee; pity our simplicity.”

Nicholas is chosen bishop and promises to defend God’s servants and to comfort widow. He suffers imprisonment during persecution.

In time of famine he feeds the people from the Emperor’s grain ship with no diminishment of the supply of wheat. When a butcher seized three young boys in time of famine, Nicholas restores them to their families. He provides dowries for three daughters of a poor family, saves an innocent person from execution, walks upon the water, and sits among the bishops who were summoned to Nicea where he boxed Arius’ ear.

The cantata concludes with: “He was a spendthrift in devotion to us all. We keep his memory alive in legends that our children and their children’s children treasure still.

The stories of Nicholas should sound very familiar for they are echoes of the Gospel. In the lives of the saints we find the message of Jesus incarnated in men and women of different ages and cultures. We do well to keep their memories alive.