The Communion of Saints: We’re All Connected!

(All Souls’ Day 2024: This homily was given on November 2, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here:  All Souls 2024]

The popularity of social media (Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.) is pretty easy to explain: People want to stay connected.  They want to stay in touch with family and friends—with the people they love.

And that’s the big problem with death (at least it’s the big problem with death when you look at it strictly from a human perspective).  Death destroys the connection between us and those we love.  Our ability to communicate with them, and influence them, and interact with them is taken away, sometimes suddenly.

And it hurts.

But notice what I said.  I said this is the case when we look at death from a strictly human perspective.

However, we’re not supposed to look at anything in this life from a strictly human perspective, and that includes death.

Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.  He suffered, died and rose again from the dead, and that has changed EVERYTHING!  Everything—including our relationships with those who have gone before us in faith.

As Catholics, we say we believe in the “communion of saints”.  (We say that in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”)  The Catechism tells us that the communion of saints is “the Church”—which means the whole Church, the entire People of God: some of whom are not here on this earth at the present time.  Some of God’s people are already in Heaven with the Lord, others are being made ready for Heaven by passing through the purifying fires of Purgatory, and the rest are here with us. 

So the whole Church exists in 3 different “states” or conditions: there’s what’s called “the Church triumphant” (that refers to those in Heaven); there’s “the Church suffering” (that refers to those in Purgatory); and there’s “the Church militant” (that’s us).

And we’re all connected!  That’s the good news!  Spiritually speaking, nothing—not even physical death—completely severs the bond between those who are in Christ.  The Catechism puts it this way in paragraph 955: “So it is that the union of the wayfarers [that’s us here on earth] with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods.”

This is why we ask the saints in Heaven to pray for us.  We believe that their prayers before the throne of God can bring us graces here on earth.  And they can!  They can because we’re still connected to them in the spiritual realm. 

We also believe that our prayers and sacrifices can directly benefit the souls in Purgatory—helping them to be purified and thus get to Heaven more quickly!  This is why we have Masses said for the dead: it’s to help our deceased brothers and sisters who are currently in Purgatory!  Remember, those who are in Heaven don’t need our prayers because they’re already in the kingdom, and those in Hell can’t be helped by our prayers because Hell is eternal.

The only ones that we in the Church militant can help are those in the Church suffering—and vice versa.  The souls in Purgatory, according to many of the canonized saints, can also pray for us; they just cannot pray for themselves.  They need us to do that for them.

And if we do pray and do penance for the holy souls, they will know it!  They will be aware of the fact that we are helping them—which can also be a great help for us, especially if our relationship with a certain deceased relative or friend was not all that it should have been.

You see, if you’re a Christian it’s never too late to make amends; it’s never too late to demonstrate your love for another person.  You know, every once in a while someone will say something to this effect: “I never told my dad I loved him before he died,” or “I never asked my mom for forgiveness for what I did.”  They say these things as if they’re totally cut off from their deceased loved ones.

But that’s not true!  As I’ve hopefully made clear, if their loved ones are in Heaven or Purgatory, they are not totally cut off from them.  If their loved ones are already in Heaven they’re perfectly happy and have no animosity toward anyone; and if they’re in Purgatory they will be blessed through the prayers and penances that are offered up for them, and they will be incredibly grateful to the people who are offering those prayers and making those sacrifices.  And they will no doubt pray for those persons while they’re still in Purgatory and later on when they finally get to Heaven.

So it’s never too late to touch other members of God’s family and of our individual families, even if they’ve gone home to the Lord.

And in a similar way, as I indicated earlier, they can help to bring God’s blessings to us by their prayers. 

Let me give you an example of this from my own personal experience.  As some of you know, my mom died of cancer in 1990 at the age of 60.  In the years before her death my mom had two great loves: the priesthood and young people.  She served a number of good priests for many years as the secretary at the parish I grew up in in Barrington; she prayed and offered her sufferings for priests; and she did a lot of work with young people, especially on youth retreats at the local CYO center. 

I had been in Westerly a little more than two years when mom died, and those two years were pretty normal.  Nothing really extraordinary happened in my priestly ministry.  But after my mother died some truly incredible things began to occur here.  Youth ministry exploded.  Young people started coming to our youth group from all over the place, and a number of them discerned a call to the priesthood and/or religious life.

Now perhaps that’s all a coincidence.  I’m willing to admit that possibility.

But I’ve never thought so.  I’ve always had the sense that Dolores Suriani has had something to do with all the good things that have happened here, spiritually, in the past quarter century.

I can’t prove it, but I believe it—because I believe in the communion of saints.

So as we pray for our deceased loved ones tonight, we should also ask them to pray for us, that we will be faithful to the Lord during our remaining time on this earth, and someday join them in the Church triumphant, the kingdom of Heaven, where all of God’s people will get together—and stay together—forever.

 

Having a Healthy Self-love

(Thirty-first Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on November 3, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Psalm 18; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 12:28b-34.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Thirty-first Sunday 2024]

Most people are familiar with Narcissus, the character in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection.  It happened one day when he caught a glimpse of himself in the waters of a spring.  He was captivated by his own beauty, and that enthrallment ultimately led to his demise.

This, of course, is where the word “narcissism” comes from.  If a person is narcissistic, he is (and here I quote Webster’s Dictionary) “extremely self-centered with an exaggerated sense of self-importance: marked by … excessive admiration of or infatuation with oneself.”

There’s even a clinical disorder called “narcissistic personality disorder,” which, according to the Mayo Clinic web site is a condition in which people “have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.”

This, my brothers and sisters, is not what Jesus is talking about in this gospel text we just heard from Mark 12 when he says to us “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  We need to be clear about that.  Jesus is not advocating narcissism in giving us this commandment, nor is he encouraging sinful pride.  Rather, he’s indicating to us there that we should have a reasonable, healthy love for ourselves. 

And this is extremely important—especially for our neighbors!—because our ability to love them in the way Jesus wants us to love them is directly dependent on our ability to love ourselves in the way that Jesus wants us to!  Notice the wording of the commandment: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  If you have a narcissistic love of yourself, you will tend to have “troubled relationships” with others (to use the expression on the Mayo Clinic web site).  The same is true if you love yourself too little, or worse if you hate yourself.  In fact, if your attitude toward yourself is hatred, your neighbors will really be in trouble—because your tendency will be to treat them in the same way!

So, what is Jesus telling us here?  What does it mean to have a healthy, reasonable love of ourselves—a love that we’ll be able to show to our neighbors?

Well, I would say that a healthy self-love is rooted in an appreciation: a deep appreciation of yourself as God’s loved, special and unique creation (even though that creation has been wounded by sin).

The writer of the 8^th psalm, for example, had this kind of appreciation.  He had a deep appreciation of his own dignity as a person created in the image of God, as well as an appreciation of everyone else’s dignity.  He indicated that when he wrote these famous words: 

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you arranged, what is man that you should keep him in mind, mortal man that you care for him?  Yet you have made him little less than a god; with glory and honor you crowned him, gave him power over the works of your hands, put all things under his feet.

Now if you’re a Christian you will have a second appreciation that will help you to love yourself in a healthy way: you’ll have an appreciation—a very deep and profound appreciation—for what God has done for you in Christ Jesus.  You will realize, in other words, that Almighty God, the Creator of the entire universe in all its splendor, thought that you were worth dying for!  You, personally—even with all your imperfections and weaknesses—are that valuable to the Lord.

How could we not love what Almighty God himself was willing to die for?

This is why Jesus said to us, “You are worth more than many sparrows.”  Hopefully we all believe that about ourselves.  Many people, sad to say, do not.  They hate themselves and think they’re worthless—usually because of things they’ve done.

Well, St. Paul also did bad things in his life, but he still loved himself; he still had an appreciation of himself as God’s good creation, as well as an appreciation of what Jesus Christ had done for him by his passion and death.  This comes through in that famous passage from First Timothy where Paul reflects on his conversion.  He writes,

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, that he has made me his servant and judged me faithful.  I was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man filled with arrogance; but because I did not know what I was doing in my unbelief, I have been treated mercifully, and the grace of our Lord has been granted me in overflowing measure, along with the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.  You can depend on this as worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Of these I myself am the worst.  But on that very account I was dealt with mercifully, so that in me, as an extreme case, Jesus Christ might display all his patience, and that I might be an example to those who would later have faith in him.

To love someone is to desire the good for them.  Well, the best thing we can possibly desire for another person is that they make it to heaven!  Paul knew that God loved him (even with his sins) because he knew that God desired heaven for him—and that God had sent his only begotten Son to die for him to make sure that this desire would eventually become a reality.

So if God loved Paul that much, how could Paul not love himself—and his neighbor as well?

God desired heaven for Paul, Paul desired heaven for himself (that was at the root of his self-love), and he desired heaven for everyone else—even his enemies.  He knew how much mercy, forgiveness and patience God had shown him in his life (that’s clear from the passage I just read), and he realized that he needed to show that same kind of patient, merciful and forgiving love to others.

He loved his neighbor in the best possible way, because he loved himself in the best possible way.

Which is precisely the way it’s supposed to be for each of us—and for every Christian.

 

Bartimaeus and ‘Choice’

 

(Thirtieth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on October 27, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Mark 10:46-52.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Thirtieth Sunday 2024]

What do you learn about Bartimaeus from the following statements? 

• Bartimaeus chose.
• Bartimaeus chose again. 
• And he chose again. 
• And he chose again. 
• And in the midst of all this, he chose once more.

What have you just learned about Bartimaeus?

“Not much, Fr. Ray.” 

That’s right!  That’s exactly right.  You’ve been told that he made 5 decisions, but that’s it.

Before you could learn anything substantial about Bartimaeus, you’d need to know WHAT he chose!  Was it good or was it evil?  Was it something harmful or something helpful?  Was it a sinful act or a virtuous act?

If you had a 3-year-old son, and I said to you: “Your 3-year-old son was standing near the edge of a cliff today, and he chose,” you wouldn’t know whether to scream in horror or jump for joy, would you?  But if I said, “Your 3-year-old son was standing near the edge of a cliff today, and he chose to turn away and walk to safety,” now you’d know how to react, because you’d realize that he had made the RIGHT choice.

“Fr. Ray, this is common sense.” 

Well, in that case, it only proves the old adage, “Common sense is not so common.”  Because right now in our society it’s considered a sign of brilliance and enlightenment if you say, “I believe in the right to choose”—and leave it at that.  

If this is all common sense, then why don’t more people ask what should be the obvious follow-up question: “Choose what?”  “Okay sir, you’re for ‘choice.’  So am I.  I’m for making the right choice in every situation.  What choice are you for?  That’s what matters.  Is it, perhaps, the choice to live an immoral lifestyle or the choice to kill innocent human beings: the pre-born child, the mentally handicapped person, the terminally ill cancer patient?  Could that be why you choose not to finish your sentences?  When I say, ‘I believe in the right to choose,’ I always tell people what the choice is that I support, because I only support GOOD choices.  I’m not ashamed—or afraid—to finish my sentences.”

I indicated at the beginning of my homily that Bartimaeus made at least 5 choices on the day he encountered our Lord.  Thankfully, they were 5 very good choices.  And please note: if he had not made any one of these 5, he would not have been healed by Jesus!  He would have ended the day as he began it—as a blind beggar.

St. Mark tells us the story:

“As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging.”  Someone then told him that Jesus was passing by.  At that moment, he made his first choice: THE CHOICE TO CRY OUT.  He could have easily chosen to remain silent; he certainly had that option.  But had he done so, he never would have met Jesus.  And if he had not met Jesus, he would not have been healed.

St. Mark goes on: “On hearing it was Jesus of Nazareth, [Bartimaeus] began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”  Which brings us to good choice #2: THE CHOICE TO GO AGAINST PUBLIC OPINION.  You see, if you had polled all the people in the crowd at that moment and asked them, “What should Mr. Bartimaeus do now?” most would have said, “He should close his mouth and keep quiet!”  We know that because St. Mark tells us, “And many rebuked [Bartimaeus], telling him to be silent.  But he kept calling out all the more, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’”  Good for you Bartimaeus!  We need more people like you in the world today: people who are willing to disregard the polls and do—and stand up for—the right thing!

St. Mark continues: “Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’  So they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.’  He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.”  Here we encounter good choice #3: THE CHOICE TO OBEY JESUS.  Our Lord said, “Come,” and Bartimaeus did.

Once the blind man was in our Lord’s presence, he made his 4th good choice: THE CHOICE TO EXPRESS HIS NEED TO JESUS IN AN HONEST PRAYER OF PETITION.  As St. Mark tells us, “Jesus said to him . . . ‘What do you want me to do for you?’  The blind man replied to him, ‘Master, I want to see.’”

Jesus gives him his sight immediately, based on these 4 choices and choice #5, which was the one which stood behind the others.  I’m talking about THE DECISION OF BARTIMAEUS TO PUT HIS FAITH IN JESUS.  That choice motivated and inspired the other 4 I just mentioned.  Jesus recognized this and commended Bartimaeus for it when he said, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”  In other words, “Your choice to put your faith in me has made you well.”

Many people today are fond of telling us they’re “pro-choice.”  Among other things, the story of Bartimaeus teaches us that this term—“pro-choice”—is absolutely, positively meaningless when it’s used in isolation (as it normally is!).  First and foremost, the quality of a choice is determined by the goodness or badness of the object chosen.  When the choice, for example, is to lie or cheat or steal or fornicate or kill babies in the womb, then to be pro-choice is actually to be pro-evil, because the object being chosen is evil.  The only time it’s acceptable to be “pro-choice,” is when the object of the choice happens to be good: the choice to love, the choice to forgive, the choice to respect human life from natural conception to natural death.

Bartimaeus was blessed by Jesus because he made the right choices, and ONLY because he made the right choices!  May we—as individuals and as a nation—experience the countless blessings of the Lord for the very same reason. 

 

Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it—although you might not get it in the way you expect to!

(Twenty-ninth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on October 19, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-ninth Sunday 2024]

There’s an old saying: Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it!

As it’s written, there’s a great deal of truth in that expression.

But, based on today’s gospel story—and on my own observation and personal experience—I would maintain that a qualifying phrase should be added to that saying in order to make it completely accurate:

Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it—although you might not get it in the way you expect to!

There are, as most of us know, three possible answers to the prayers of petition that we lift up to God: the Lord can say Yes; he can say No; or he can say Wait.

But that’s only half the story.  I say this because most of the time when we ask God for something, we have our own ideas about how God should give it to us!

The problem is, our ideas about how God should supply our needs don’t always match up with his ideas on the same subject.

And this causes some people to think that God doesn’t hear their prayers, when, in fact, he does.  For example, we say to God, “Please give me patience”—and we want God to magically and instantaneously infuse that gift into our soul such that nothing bothers us anymore.

Of course, that’s not the way it usually happens.  Normally when God gives us this particular gift, he also allows it to be tested—and I mean REALLY TESTED!

We say to God, “Please heal me of this illness”—and we want God to make us well immediately and directly by a special miracle.

And at times he does heal people that way.

But he also might heal us through the instrumentality of modern medicine, and only after some long and very painful therapy.

We say to God, “Please restore my relationship with my ex-friend, John; we haven’t spoken to one another in years”—and we want God to pour his grace into John’s heart, such that John immediately picks up the phone and calls us and apologizes for what he did and said to us all those years ago.

Well, maybe it will happen that way, but maybe it won’t.  Maybe God will only answer that prayer after we have made the first move toward reconciliation with a letter or a phone call or a personal visit.

Sometimes God gives us what we want, but not exactly in the way we want it.

And so it was for James and John.  They asked Jesus for special places in his kingdom, and, happily, they did get what they asked for!  Here in this scene, of course, Jesus doesn’t commit himself on the matter, but we know for a fact that he did honor their request—their ‘prayer of petition’—because of what he said in Matthew 19.  There Peter says to Jesus, “We have put everything aside to follow you.  What can we expect from it?”  And Jesus responds by saying, “I give you my solemn word, in the new age when the Son of Man takes his seat upon a throne befitting his glory, you who have followed me shall likewise take your places on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.”

The Heavenly Father made it clear to Jesus that Peter, James, John and the other apostles would have special places in his eternal kingdom.  So this request—in effect, this prayer of petition—that James and John made in today’s gospel was ultimately answered by Jesus with a resounding Yes; however their path to those special heavenly places was probably not what these two apostles expected. 

When they made their request, they probably did not think they would have to endure great suffering beforehand, but that’s exactly the way it happened.  James was the first apostle to be martyred (Herod Agrippa had him beheaded only a decade or so after the Resurrection of Jesus), and John endured a martyrdom of intense persecution throughout his life for his faithfulness in proclaiming the gospel.  Both drank from the cup—the cup of suffering—from which Jesus drank.

They probably expected a much easier path to glory, a much easier ‘road to the throne’ so to speak!  They accepted “the cup” willingly and eagerly in this gospel scene, but I doubt they really understood what that cup contained!

So let’s not be discouraged when we pray for good things for others, and suffering comes to them instead.  In reality God might be saying Yes to our prayer, but by a different path than the one we think he should follow.  God does not cause evil, but he will sometimes allow us to experience evil for the sake of a greater good.

That’s the way it was for James and John: he allowed them to experience the ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’ of intense suffering, for the sake of an eternal crown of glory.

I have known, for example, many people who have prayed for the conversions of their children who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or who are living an immoral, hedonistic, materialistic lifestyle.  They pray and they pray and they pray—and nothing seems to be getting better.  In fact, their children sink deeper and deeper into sin.  They sincerely wonder if their prayers are falling on deaf ears.  Finally their children hit rock bottom, and are on the verge of despair—but then, they turn their lives around.  They open up to God; they make a humble and thorough confession; they get reconnected to the Church; they start coming to Mass again; they find a community of believers that supports them; they make ‘a complete 180’ in their lives.

Afterward, so very often, these converted men and women will say, “I’m not happy I brought all that suffering on myself and nearly destroyed my life, but I know that if I hadn’t suffered in that way—if I hadn’t hit rock bottom—I never would have changed my ways.  I would have continued down the wrong path—and I probably would have ended up in hell.”

Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it—although you might not get it in the way you expect to!

But that’s ok.  At least, that’s what these converted men and women would say.  And I’m sure James and John would agree with them, sitting, as they now are, on their glorious thrones in heaven.