Persecution Is Easier To Relate To Today Series

Thursday after Christ the King 2018

There was a time in my on life that Fr. Richard Neuhaus called “the Catholic moment,” a time when being Catholic seemed to be the best thing in the world. We had a Catholic president, a pope, now a saint, who had called a Council at the Vatican with the task of bringing the Church up to date. Aggiornamento was the watchword of American Catholics. Religious and priestly vocations were booming, as GI’s of World War II, sick of seeing only death and despair in Europe and Asia, joined with us Boomers looking for meaning and hope in God and the Church. It seemed like only a positive future was possible for the children and grandchildren of Italian and Irish and Spanish and Mexican immigrants. When we came to the readings from the Book of Revelations and the Gospel here in the last week of the liturgical year, we could not find common cause with the persecuted Catholics depicted here from the first century. Moreover, because we were enamored with bringing the liturgy up to date with guitars and drums and amplifiers, we had no understanding that the scenes from Revelations of the heavenly liturgy, with incense and chanting and solemnity, should be prepared for by a similarly awesome, beautiful Eucharist here on earth.

How the times have changed! For the past fifty years we have seen terrible division over Pope Paul’s encyclical on family life and birth control, with over 90% of Catholic couples contracepting, contrary to the two millennia old teaching of the Church. Moreover, the family is under constant attack from Planned Parenthood and the fellow-travelers of abortionists and the LGBTQ activists. The clerical core of the Church has been maimed by the sexual abuse of a minority and the defection of many. Vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life have been cut more than half in the half-century. And we are under constant assault by politicians, so-called comedians and the mass media. Today we quite easily relate to the readings from the Lectionary. God almighty, come to our aid!

The Church, in this last week of the year, gives us a whole “raft” of saint witnesses who gave their lives for the Gospel. Last week they were Cecilia, Clement, Miguel Pro. Tomorrow it will be St. Andrew, apostle and martyr. Our saint today, at least in the Extraordinary calendar, is Saint Saturninus, a bishop. “St. Saturninus was . . .one of the most illustrious martyrs France has given to the Church. . . . He was the first bishop of Toulouse, [where] he went during the consulate of Decius and Gratus [about the year 250 AD]. Whether there were already Christians in the town or his preaching made numerous conversions, he soon had a little church. To reach it he had to pass before the capitol where there was a temple, and . . .the pagan priests ascribed to his frequent passings the silence of their oracles. One day they seized him and on his unshakeable refusal to sacrifice to the idols they condemned him be tied by the feet to a bull which dragged him about the town until the rope broke. Two Christian women piously gathered up the remains and buried them in a deep ditch, that they might not be profaned by the pagans.

“[Saturninus’] successors, Sts. Hilary and Exuperius, gave him more honorable burial. A church was erected where the bull stopped. It still exists, and is called the church of the Taur (the bull). The body of the saint was transferred at an early date and is still preserved in the Church of St. Sernin (or Saturninus), one of the most ancient and beautiful of Southern France.”

The attacks on the Church in the United States, Europe and Australia so far have rarely involved murder of priests and religious. Our enemies, whether secular or religious, have usually deprived us of money through lawsuits. That, of course, restricts our outreach and evangelism. But the Church has always relied on volunteers, and will continue to do so. We cannot stop preaching the Good News. We must pray for a new generation of lay and clerical volunteers to step up and pick up the Torch of Faith, because souls are perishing because they have not accepted God’s Word and Sacrament.

This Thursday service will be my final leadership role before my retirement on December 1. I will continue to pray for all in the parish, and especially for you faithful ones in this early Word and Communion service. And I would be grateful for your prayers as well. Saints Saturninus and Andrew, pray for us.