Aid to the Church in Need
MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
Miracles do Happen Prayer makes Miracles
MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
Aid to the Church in Need
MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
CONTENTS PAGE Miracles do happen.................................................. J F Declan Quinn...............................1 The ‘Church Suffering’............................................. Fr. Martin Barta..................................2 Source of Life and Love........................................................................................................4 Preaching and witness..........................................................................................................6 Where once the blood of martyrs flowed........................................................................8 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’....................................................................................... 10 Eucharistic Miracles.................................................. Patti Armstrong............................... 12 ‘Prayer makes Miracles’ - A Reflection by Pope Francis........................................ 16 God always answers our Prayers ........................ Francis Phillips................................ 20 The Cost of Witness - A Reflection by Pope Francis............................................... 22 A Good Shepherd. An Authentic Witness.................................................................... 24 When Christianity becomes a crime ................... Jonathan Luxmoore....................... 28 The Merciful Love of God........................................ Johannes Freiherr Heereman........ 32
Editor: Jürgen Liminski. Publisher: Kirche in Not / Ostpriesterhilfe, Postfach 1209, 61452 Königstein, Germany. De licentia competentis auctoritatis ecclesiasticae. Printed in Ireland - ISSN 0252-2535. www.acn-intl.org
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN A chairde, he Holy Father tells us that ‘prayer makes miracles’ and while I for one would not disagree, there are many who do not believe in either miracles or in prayer for that matter. Now irrespective of what the ‘many believe’ the simple truth is that miracles in fact do happen and prayer works…invariably.
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Let’s talk about miracles first. Before the Church recognises any extraordinary event / ‘happening’ as a miracle it goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that Science cannot offer a satisfactory explanation and that the extraordinary occurrence was the specific object of prayer. So it is that quietly, systematically relentlessly the Church is continuously engaged in the process of investigating and validating the occurrence of would-be miraculous events. Precisely then because the process for investigating and validating miracles is so rigorous1 we can be re-assured not only that miracles happen but they are happening all around us and happening all the time. To appreciate this truth we only need ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’. Sadly of course in today’s world many are blind/have been blinded to this truth and are deaf to any evidence as to the existence of miracles and the efficacious power of intercessory prayer. 1 This is perhaps most evident in the process of promoting and pursuing causes for canonisation.
Each of us knows many such people where prayer has little or no role in their lives, where they have little time for Jesus and even less for His institutional church. The sad truth of the matter is that many of our close friends and family members have rejected the faith and have even become hostile to the Church: truth to tell this is to their loss, indeed their eternal loss. Since this is no small matter what are we going to do about it? And here we have an obvious answer: let us pray. Let us pray for them and let us pray also for the grace to know what we can do to help them (re-)discover the Joy of the Gospel and the Hope the Church has been mandated by God to offer the world always and everywhere. In all of this let us be in no doubt, prayer works ...because God is always only a prayer away!
Beir Beannacht
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ire) PS. Please pray for all those who have fallen away from the faith and who live without lasting Hope and and true Joy in their lives.
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
THE ‘CHURCH SUFFERING’ ‘We have an immortal soul to save for eternity. Mary calls us to penance and to the prayer of the Rosary. It would be foolhardy not to respond to her request.’ Father Werenfried van Straaten
Dear Friends,
We will clearly see our lack of love and be filled with remorse. All we will want is to be totally healed and transformed. With wholehearted gratitude we will embrace all the painful, yet necessary, purification that this involves, as a gift of Divine Mercy – just as a sick man accepts the need for a serious operation in order to be healed. However, after our death we can do nothing more for ourselves.
e often tell you about the suffering Church which needs our help. But that is the Church we see in this world. However beyond this life there is what we call the ‘Church Suffering’, which is entirely dependent on our help. The Communion of the Saints includes not only the visible Church here on earth, which we also call the ‘Church Militant’, but also the ‘Church Triumphant’ – the Saints in Heaven – and the ‘Church Suffering’ The purification which refers to the Holy of Purgatory – a gift Souls in Purgatory, who of God’s loving Mercy. are the ones who still need our prayers.
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After death when we stand before the Face of God, not only will all good things we have done be revealed to us, but also the past sins and imperfections of our lives – the unrepented sins, the consequences of our sins, the good things we have failed to do, or done only half-heartedly… But when we stand before God, and if we are truly open to His love, then we will have only one desire, namely to love as He has loved us.
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Only with the help and prayers of others who are still on earth and still able to do good can we be helped to pass more quickly and more easily through God’s purifying fire.
In his encyclical Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI described the wonderful communion we share with the faithful departed: ‘The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death – this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. … No
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one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.’ ear Friends, to pray for the souls of the faithful departed is a Work of Mercy, and one that is often forgotten. And yet we can help these souls, with every little act of love, every sacrifice and prayer, however small it may be. And the most profound help is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There are countless souls in Purgatory who are have been completely forgotten and for whom no one prays. But we can help them, and they too can make intercession for us and will prove to be good friends to us.
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That is why St John Vianney, the holy Curé of Ars tells us: ‘If we only knew what power these good souls have over the heart of God and what graces we can receive through their intercession, they would not be so abandoned by us. The prayer for their release from Purgatory is, after the prayer for the conversion of sinners, the most pleasing prayer to God.’
My heartfelt blessing on you all.
Father Martin M. Barta, Spiritual Assistant GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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SOURCE OF LIFE AND LOVE hrist exhorts us: ‘Remain in My love!’ (Jn 15:9). He has given us the Holy Eucharist – His Golgotha and the gift of His presence – so that we can indeed remain in His love.
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No grace is greater than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In 2015 you gave 1,431,380 Mass stipends for priests. In doing so you helped one priest in every nine around the world by your offerings. Their profound gratitude for this is expressed in their numerous letters to us, promising joyfully to offer these Masses for you and your intentions. In most cases the money you give them in the form of these stipends is used for vital basic necessities, not just for the priests themselves but also for others still poorer than they are, and for the sick and elderly. And sometimes this money is also invested in the spiritual life.
This is the case with the 29 priests of the diocese of San Martín in Argentina. They have written personally to thank you for your Mass offerings, which meant they could take part in a theological seminar on God’s Mercy. Father José Giacomello is 85 and was ordained in 1957 by the then Patriarch of Venice, who later became Pope John XXIII. A year later he arrived in Buenos Aires. It means so much to him to gather with his brother priests and experience the solidarity of the universal Church, the Communion of the Saints. Father José Calnera also warmly thanks you for this opportunity ‘to revitalise the sacerdotal bond with my fellow priests’. Other priests tell us about the ‘difficult economic situation’ in the country – without Liberia
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obody knows how long the current situation will last. So now he is planning an emergency aid programme to help the poorest families. But it won’t be possible without the priests. Already they are sharing all they have with their parishioners and with the poorest of the poor – and when they have nothing else, then they console them, providing their prayers and counselling.
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actually mentioning that Argentina is on the brink of bankruptcy. Your Mass offerings allows many priests to survive in Crimea. People are unable to buy very much as they can only afford the cheapest of goods, says Bishop Jacek Pyl of Odessa-Simferopol. ‘Unemployment is incredibly high, and food imports from Ukraine have been blocked. Travelling in and out of the peninsula by car is practically impossible.’
The auxiliary bishop has asked for more Mass stipends, and we have sent him additional offerings. Jesus has said, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt 28:20). In your kindness you are helping to fulfil this promise, and in so doing you are helping the people of Crimea both materially and spiritually. •
WHAT ARE MASS STIPENDS? A Mass stipend is a gift of money for the support of a priest, in return for which he celebrates Holy Mass for our intentions. We cannot ‘buy’ the Mass or the graces it brings, but the offering made unites the giver more intimately with the Holy Sacrifice that is offered. This custom spread in the Middle Ages, but dates back to the 2nd century. To avoid any abuse, Canon Law (945-958) closely regulates the process of accepting, administering and applying Mass offerings. These may be for individual Masses or for groups of three, six, nine or 30 Masses. The bishop or religious • superior is responsible for observing these regulations.
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
PREACHING AND WITNESS ‘There is nothing more beautiful in life than belonging for ever and wholeheartedly to God, and giving one’s life to the service of one’s brothers and sisters.’ So says Pope Francis. His words are a manifesto for us, a manifesto for mission. For mission means bringing God to others. eautiful and fulfilling though this work may be, it is not easy. Again and again it comes up against the barriers of nature and human limitation. In the prelature of Juli (Peru), at an altitude of almost 4,000 m (13,000 ft) in the Andes, over 80 small communities live and work. The priest can visit only every six or seven weeks. The roads are too steep, too long,
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too stony. But even here, at the ends of the earth, the Good News of Christ must be preached. Over half the homes here in the Peruvian Altiplano have no electricity or running water, and one person in four is illiterate. If Father Percy Rojas Ballón was not there in person he could not proclaim the Word of God. He has to be physically present to celebrate Mass, administer the Sacraments, help with their social and practical problems. And he cannot do so without a tough, all-terrain vehicle. After 11 years his old jeep is on its last legs – to the point that he finds it less stressful to travel on foot. But then people be deprived of his frequent
High in the Andes: Proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth…
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YEAR OF MERCY A beacon of love providing light to a new life: Sister Marie holding the newborn child of a single mother.
visits. And besides, a new vehicle would be of great use to the prelature in many other ways. The mission must keep moving forward… We have promised to help them acquire a new vehicle. Mission means more than simply proclaiming the Gospel. It means bearing witness. ‘You are not only “teachers”; you are above all witnesses... [to] Christ in your own charism’, Pope Francis told missionaries last year. For the Daughters of Our Lady of the Most Sacred Heart in the Democratic Republic of Congo this means bearing witness to the infinite love of God through their lives and their work. Some 41 of them are doing just this in Mbandaka, in the northwest of the country, by caring for street children, single mothers and young girls, and orphans. The ongoing warfare in the country, that has now lasted over 20 years, has torn many
families apart, destroyed the schools and devastated the social support systems. There is no one but them to care for the lost and abandoned. But the convent where the Sisters live is around 10 miles (15 km) from their social and healthcare centre where they minister to the people. In urgent cases, sometimes they cannot get there in time. So they have started to build another branch of the convent, close to the centre. They need our help to continue the work and they will get it. The wonderful witness to the love of God in the life and work of these sisters must be helped to continue. •
Water and Word. In 2003 missionaries brought fresh hope to the Gumuz people in southeast Ethiopia – with well water and the water of Eternal Life. They are working on a three-year social and pastoral evangelisation programme for children and young people. We have supported them. As you can see, it is bringing great joy.
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WHERE ONCE THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS FLOWED runachal Pradesh is a mountainous region blessed by the morning sun. But this region on the far north-eastern tip of India is also described as a ‘forgotten land’ as statesponsored development programmes do not reach as far as this region. But the Church has not forgotten the 32 tribes living on the frontier with China, Burma and Tibet – she is helping them. And many are seeking baptism.
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Arunachal is mission territory. But once things were worse than they are today. Up until some 23 years ago Christians were still being persecuted, their churches burned down, their crops destroyed. Indeed, around the middle of the 19th century there were even headhunters abroad; mission-
aries were beaten and tortured, and the blood of martyrs reflected in the red sunlight of the mountain dawn. But, towards the end of the 20th century, some of the missionaries invited the local people to visit their mission outpost on the border with Assam. Many came, saw the goodness and joy that the Good News of Christ can bring, and took the message back to their own villages. Now they say, with wholehearted conviction, ‘Jesus is the best doctor of all. When we call on the name of Jesus, we do not have to pay anything; we don’t have to give a chicken, or a hen.’ Despite continuing persecution, almost 150,000 people have been baptised in the past 30 years, and the number is growing
‘Jesus is the best doctor’: Celebrating Mass in the mountain dawn.
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nearest hospital – a journey of four hours covering 100 miles (160 km) – and they also use it to bring food to the three communities of religious sisters and visit the villages to celebrate Holy Mass, baptise and hear confessions – this old workhorse is now in the repair shop every couple of weeks and no longer worth the expense. Beyond repair: the old Mission truck of the diocese of Miao.
daily. In the newly established diocese of Miao the largest Catholic village is Neotan. In the past the villagers were animists, or in some cases members of a Protestant community. Then in the year 2000 the village elders came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was the true Church of Christ. ver 500 people joined the elders in being baptised. Overnight, the former Baptist church became a Catholic church, and the local Catholics built a new chapel for those Baptists who chose not to convert, ‘so that they could continue to meet and pray together’.
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‘We feel guilty’, says Father Felix, ‘in using the savings of the children and their families on maintaining this vehicle – even though they give them gladly, knowing that without it we could only visit them rarely.’ More and more children and families are now waiting for the priests to come with the Good News. And so, in your name, we were happy to promise them the help they need for a new pickup truck. For this too is a means of sowing the seed of faith in this mission soil. •
By now the persecution has ceased. The seed is beginning to sprout. But all the natural and physical challenges of this mountainous region remain, the heights and distances that cannot be compassed in the time available without a suitable and sturdy vehicle. The old pickup truck, which Father Felix and Father Esack use to transport the sick to the
Once persecuted, now sought out and listened to: a priest explaining the Gospel.
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‘BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS’ he priest is a peacemaker, par excellence. Through the Sacraments, and especially through the Eucharist, he enables us to engage in a personal relationship with God, a dialogue between the creature and his Creator.
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For Father Sebastiano, the founder of the Silsilah movement on the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines, this relationship, this dialogue is the founding principle of his peace movement. ‘Dialogue begins with God and brings people back to God’, he says. He strives to pursue dialogue with all religious groups and especially with the
Father Sebastiano d’Ambra: ‘Peace is our vocation’.
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Muslims. For ‘deep in the heart of every individual there is always a place of goodness.That is what we must reach.’ Unfortunately, radical Islamists cannot grasp this way of thinking, which is simply love of our neighbours and our enemies. Twice already Father Sebastiano has survived assassination attempts, and twice the centre of his movement, which has already won over many thousands of Christians and Muslims to the cause of dialogue and peace, has been attacked. Unfortunately Mindanao is also home to the violent Islamist terrorist organisation, Abu Sayyaf. Its campaign of terror has gripped the city of Isabela, on the island of Basilan, and in particular Bishop Martin Jumoad and the 115,000 or so Catholics of the Catholic prelature of Isabela de Basilan. They make up a quarter of the population of the island; the rest are Muslims. The priests and religious live under constant threat; many have already been abducted, like Father Eduardo and Father Bernardo, while others, like Father Rhoel Gallardo and Father Rene Enriquez, were even tortured to death. Six years ago Islamists attacked one village, burning and killing. And in Isabela, the capital city of the island, a bomb destroyed the Cathedral of St Isabela. The goal of Abu Sayyaf is to kill or drive out all the Christians. Instead they are staying
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in their mission and continue supporting the Catholic faithful on the island. We are giving our support. He has no illusions, but agrees with Father Sebastiano: ‘I know the Lord is at work. I am just an instrument; may his will be done.’ Their message is clear: ‘Peace on earth to men of goodwill’ (Lk 2:14). ‘I do my best’, says Father Sebastiano, ‘but then I add, Lord, may you bring everything to perfect completion!’ This perfect completion is found above all in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Bishop Martin S. Jumoad: ‘We stay, and we pray.’
put and seeking dialogue with their neighbours. But they are poor, and can barely afford to support their 14 priests. So Bishop Martin is urgently seeking our help, in the form of Mass stipends for his priests, and above all our prayers that they stay strong
Nowhere on earth is peace more perfectly present. So your help for priests, especially in crisis areas, is truly a work of peace, more extensive and enduring than anything • we can otherwise achieve.
‘This is my body’: Celebrating Mass in Isabel on the island of Basilan.
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EUCHARISTIC MIRACLES
Patti Armstrong 2
n no small number of occasions throughout Catholic history, consecrated Hosts have miraculously bled or turned into human heart tissue. Such miracles are physical manifestations of the theological core of our faith — that at the Consecration of the Mass, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is only after intensive investigation, however, that the Church will declare a miracle.
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Msgr. Mannion’s perspective reflects the Church’s cautious approach to all miracles, because, often, there are organic explanations. That turned out to be the case in Salt Lake City. On Dec. 16, 2015 the diocese announced in a statement, signed by Msgr. Mannion: ‘After a thorough investigation, the ad hoc committee unanimously concludes that the observed change in the host was not miraculous, but resulted from the growth of red bread mold.’
An investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle in the Diocese of Salt Lake City was opened in November 2015 after a host appeared to bleed at St. Xavier Church in Kearns, Utah. Although initially it was displayed and attracted great excitement, the diocese appointed a committee to look into it.
Despite the fact that the investigation showed the Utah case was not miraculous, Msgr. Mannion encouraged Catholics to ‘take this opportunity to renew their faith and devotion in the great miracle of the Real Presence, which takes place at every Eucharist.’
In an interview, the head of the committee, Msgr. M. Francis Mannion, explained that the host was taken for testing to a biologist at an undisclosed university. ‘It’s a matter of prudence,’ the monsignor said. ‘The attitude is to approach the whole thing with a cautious reverence. We are not starting with a conclusion, but are walking through the steps.’
2 Edited and adapted from POPE FRANCIS, MORNING MEDITATION IN THE CHAPEL OF THE DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 as reported by L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly ed. in English, n. 2, 15 January 2016.
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In recent years other reports of bleeding hosts have turned out to be false. For instance, in May 2015, several blogs showed a photograph of a bleeding host at St. Patrick’s Church in Rochelle, Ill. At least one report even claimed the host had turned to flesh and blood. The pastor, Father Johnson Lopez, confirmed to the Press that it was only bacteria. ‘I truly believe in miracles, and an extraordinary miracle of the Eucharist would be a blessing for our community, but there was no miracle,’ he said. Similar occurrences have happened also at churches in St. Paul, Minn., and Dallas,
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Texas, where what appeared to be blood on hosts turned out to be fungus. In every case for the Church to announce a true Eucharistic miracle, there must be no other reasonable explanation, and scientific evidence verifies that the blood or flesh is human. While Pope Francis was the auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Argentina, just such a miracle took place in 1996, in the parish of Santa Maria y Caballito Almagro. Renowned scientist Ricardo Castanon Gomez, who headed up the investigation, explained the miracle in a video. The story is also told in detail in Reason to Believe: A Personal Story by Ron Tesoriero. n Aug. 15, 1996, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, a woman approached Father Alejandro Pezet after Mass to report she had found a desecrated Host on a candleholder at the back of the church. The priest followed canon law for proper disposal, putting it in a glass of water to dissolve. Instead, the Host appeared to turn into a bloody piece of meat.
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Cardinal Antonio Quarracino and our current Pope Francis, then-Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had it photographed on Sept. 6, 1996. The photographs show a fragment of bloodied flesh that had become larger than a host. GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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It was placed in a tabernacle; and after three years, with no signs of visible decay, Bishop Bergoglio opened an investigation. On Oct. 5, 1999, in the company of witnesses, Gomez sent a sample of the blood to The San Francisco Forensic Institute. So as not to be influenced in any way, no scientists were told where the sample came from. The results came back that it was human blood, AB-positive, and contained human DNA. issue samples were then sent to Dr. Frederic Zugiba, of Columbia University in New York, a renowned cardiologist and forensic pathologist. His results on March 26, 2005, identified the sample as human flesh and blood. Zugiba testified that it was ‘a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle close to the valves.’ Because white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, he stated that ‘the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.’
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Author Tesoriero actually witnessed these tests, along with Mike Wilesee, a wellknown Australian journalist. Wilesee asked the scientist how long white blood cells can remain alive from a piece of human tissue kept in water. Zugiba told them it would last a matter of minutes. When he learned it had been in water for more than three years, Zugiba was amazed and said that the cells from the sample were moving and beating as a heart would, so there was no way to scientifically explain his findings. 14
Then Gomez arranged to compare those lab reports with the ones from the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, Italy. That miracle took place during the eighth century. A priest-monk suffered from doubts about Transubstantiation, wondering if the bread and wine really did become the Body and Blood of Christ. He prayed for help believing it was true. At the Consecration of one of his Masses, the Host changed into a circle of flesh, and the wine became blood before the eyes of numerous witnesses. This Host-turned-flesh and the wineturned-blood, without the use of any form of preservative, are still present more than 1,300 years later in a reliquary at St. Francis Church in Lanciano. They have been scientifically tested a number of times, with the last one being in 1970. Again, without revealing the origin of the test samples, the experts compared the Buenos Aires lab reports with those from Lanciano. They concluded that the reports must be from the same samples. Both samples revealed an ‘AB’-positive blood type, which occurs in 5% of the population. The DNA is identical, and there are features to indicate that the man came from the Middle East. (It is also noteworthy that these lab results match up with those from the Shroud of Turin and the Cloth of Oviedo.)
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Science Increases Faith eaching about Eucharistic miracles like these can increase faith and bring people back to the Catholic Church, according to Dorie Gruss of Lombard, Ill., director of the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association. The late Father John Hardon, whose cause is up for canonisation, was the association’s founding spiritual director. Gruss said he often told her, ‘If you don’t believe in the Eucharist, you are not really Catholic.’
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The association promotes perpetual adoration and has created an exhibit and published a book on 140 Vatican-approved Eucharistic miracles called ‘The Vatican International Exhibition: The Eucharistic Miracles of the World.’ It has been displayed in 18,000 churches.
‘Father Hardon believed that the essence of the Catholic faith is the Eucharist,’ Gruss explained. ‘He could see the disrespect for the Eucharist and he wanted Catholics to get back to believing in t h e True Presence, so our website is Father Hardon’s work.’ According to Gruss, educating people about Vatican-approved Eucharistic miracles is a way to convince them with scientific evidence that at the Last Supper Jesus literally meant it when he said, ‘This is my Body, and this is my Blood.’ ‘These miracles bring about a resurgence of faith in the Eucharist,’ she said. ‘And that is something we really need right now.’ •
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‘PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES’ A REFLECTION BY POPE FRANCIS
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he First Book of Samuel (1:920), speaks of three protagonists: Hannah, Eli the priest, and the Lord. The woman, ‘with her family, with her husband, went up to the Temple every year to worship God’. Hannah was a devout and pious woman, full of faith; however, she ‘bore within her a cross that caused her a great deal of suffering: she was barren. She wanted a son’. The description of Hannah’s fervent prayer shows how she ‘struggled with God’, she implored him at length, with ‘deep distress, weeping bitterly’. The prayer ends with a vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if you look with pity on the misery of your handmaid, if you remember me and do not forget me,
if you give your handmaid a male child, I will give him to the Lord for as long as he lives’. With deep humility, Francis explained, recognising herself as ‘miserable’ and as a ‘handmaid’, she ‘vowed to offer her son’. Hannah, ‘gave her all in order to attain what she wanted’. Her entreaty was noticed by the elderly priest Eli, who ‘watched her mouth’. Hannah ‘was praying silently’, only her lips were moving, and her voice could not be heard. The image offered by the Scripture is extraordinary, because it reflects ‘the courage of a woman of faith who, with her sorrow, with her tears, asks for the Lord’s grace’. In this regard the Pontiff commented that in the Church there are ‘many such good women’, who ‘pray as if it were a challenge’, and as an example, he recalled the figure of St Monica, Augustine’s mother, ‘who with her tears managed to attain the grace of her son’s conversion’. The Pope then analysed the character of Eli, who was not wicked but was ‘a poor man’ for whom Francis feels ‘a certain fondness’, because ‘in myself too’, he admitted, ‘I find defects that bring me close to him and enable me to really understand him’. 3 Edited and adapted from POPE FRANCIS, MORNING MEDITATION IN THE CHAPEL OF THE DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 as reported by L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly ed. in English, n. 2, 15 January 2016.
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This elderly priest ‘has become lukewarm, has lost his devotion’ and ‘does not have the strength to stop his two sons’, who are ‘delinquent’ priests. Yes, they are truly wicked men ‘who exploit people’. Eli a ‘poor and feeble man’, is therefore incapable of ‘understanding this woman’s heart’. In seeing Hannah moving her lips in anguish, he thinks: ‘This woman has drunk too much!’. The episode holds a lesson for all of us: ‘how easily’, Francis said, ‘do we judge people, how easily do we lack the respect to ask: “What must she have in her heart? I don’t know, but I say nothing”’. He then added: ‘When the heart lacks pity, we also think badly, judge badly, perhaps to justify ourselves’. li’s misunderstanding is such that ‘finally he says to her: “How long will you make a drunken show of yourself?”’. Hannah, in her humility, does not respond: ‘Old man, what do you know about it?’. On the contrary, she says: ‘It isn’t that, my lord’. And despite knowing all the deeds of Eli’s sons, she does not rebuke Eli or point out: ‘What do your sons do?’. Instead she explains to him: ‘I am an unhappy woman. I have had neither wine nor liquor; I was only pouring out my troubles to the Lord. Do not think your handmaid a ne’er-do-well; my prayer has been prompted by my deep sorrow and misery’.
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In these words Pope Francis identified Hannah’s ‘prayer with sorrow and misery’. She ‘entrusted her sorrow and misery GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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to the Lord’. And in doing so, the Pontiff added, Hannah reminds us of Christ. Indeed, ‘Jesus experienced this prayer in the Garden of Olives, when his sorrow and misery were so great that his sweat became blood, but he did not rebuke the Father: “Father, if you are willing, remove this from me, but thy will be done”’. On the contrary, ‘Jesus responded in the same way as this woman: meekness’. Pope Francis then observed how at times ‘we pray, we ask the Lord, but so often we do not know how to reach that struggle with the Lord, with tears, to ask, to ask for grace’. n this regard Francis described an event that happened in the Shrine of Luján, in Buenos Aires, where there was a family with a nine-year-old daughter who was very ill. ‘After weeks of treatment’, the Pope recalled, the little girl
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‘did not manage to escape that illness, it had worsened and the doctors, at around six o’clock in the evening’ said that she had only a few hours left to live. So ‘the father, a humble man, a labourer, immediately left the hospital and went to the Shrine of Our Lady in Luján’, 70 kilometres away. When ‘he arrived around 10 o’clock in the evening, everything was closed, and he grabbed hold of the gate and prayed to Our Lady and struggled in prayer’. This, Pope Francis continued, ‘is a fact that really happened, at the time when I was there. The man remained like this until five in the morning’. He ‘prayed, he wept for his daughter, he struggled with God for his daughter through the intercession of Our Lady. Then he returned. He arrived at the hospital at
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about seven or eight, and went to find his wife. She was crying and the man thought that the girl had died, but the wife said: “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.... The doctors came and said that they don’t understand what happened”. And the little girl went home’. ssentially, the Pope observed, with ‘that faith, that prayer before God, convinced that he is capable of all, because he is the Lord’, the father in Buenos Aires recalled the woman from the biblical text. The one who not only obtained ‘the miracle of having a son a year later and then, the Bible says, she had many others’, but she also succeeded with the miracle of ‘awakening the lukewarm spirit of that priest’.
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And the saints are these people’, like the woman in the Bible passage: ‘Saints are those who have the courage to believe that God is the Lord and that he can do all’. The Pope then prayed that the Father ‘give us the grace to trust in prayer, to pray with courage and also to awaken piety, when we have lost it, and to go forward with the People of God to the encounter with him’. •
When Hannah ‘explains to that priest — who had completely lost all spirituality, all piety — why she was weeping, he who had called her “drunk”, says to her: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him”. He released from under the ashes the little priestly flame that was in the embers’. Here then is the final lesson. ‘Prayer makes miracles’, Francis said. It even makes them for those ‘Christians, be they lay faithful, or priests, or bishops who have lost their devotion’. Additionally, he explained, ‘the prayers of the faithful change the Church: it is not we, the Popes, the bishops, priests, nuns who bring the Church forward, it is the saints! GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
GOD ALWAYS ANSWERS OUR PRAYERS Francis Phillips 4
he life story of Fr Gereon Goldmann is extraordinary. During World War two Goldmann was a young German seminarian studying to be a priest in the Franciscan Order, when he was conscripted into the SS aged 22 and served as a medical orderly. As well as nursing the sick and wounded, he also gave Communion to dying soldiers.
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In 1943 Goldmann went home on brief leave to Fulda from the battleground. There he met Sister Solana May, an elderly nun who had taught him to be an altar server as a child. She calmly told him that he would be ordained a priest the following year. Goldmann replied that it was ‘impossible’,
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pointing out that when he was drafted he had four more years’ study in the seminary. Unperturbed, the nun stated, ‘On the day of your mother’s death [when Goldmann was eight], I began to pray for you, that you should become a priest at the end of 20 years. The entire convent joined me in this devotion and for two decades we have appealed to the Lord on your behalf…Since Holy Scripture assures us that our prayers are heard, there is no doubt that you will be a priest next year.’
4 Adapted and edited from Frances Phillips, ‘The gripping graphic novel that teaches us that God always answers our prayers,’ Catholic Herald Friday, 27 May 2016.
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Goldmann was still sceptical, saying there was a war on and that Church law would not permit it. Sister Solana made short shrift of this: ‘War? The Bible does not say “Prayers are answered except during a foolish war, in which event God is powerless”… The matter is very simple. You will see the pope. He made the laws, he can also dispense from them.’ She then directed Goldmann to ‘pray to the Mother of God in Lourdes. Then you will see the Pope in Rome and you must ask him boldly for your ordination.’ By some ‘coincidence’ some months later, the seminarian was given special duties in
France, at Pau, near Lourdes. And later that year, en route to the Front, he found himself in Rome and the highly improbable circumstances predicted by his elderly spiritual benefactress came true: he was ordained in 1944. Fr Goldmann’s story illustrates what all Christians should know: that prayer is powerful and God always answers it, though sometimes in unpredictable ways. It also shows us that God is present even during the most evil or tragic events, • such as a war, a world war.
‘WE ARE LIBERATED BY YOUR SACRIFICE’ Your Mass offerings are also missionary works. This point is made by Father Marcelo of the diocese of Barra in Brazil in his letter thanking ACN. Your sacrifices, he says, liberate the priest from the poverty that makes life a battle for survival – “above all when they are given with such joy as they are by you”, so that ‘we can work all the more to spread the Good News and work to extend the Kingdom of God on earth’. Father Joel (photo) for his part deeply appreciates ’the brotherly love that moves you to help and support us’. We have received many other letters from the priests and missionaries of this diocese. And in all of them one can sense their profound joy, despite all the difficulties of their mission, in belonging to a worldwide community of love. All of them express their heartfelt thanks, and all of them will remember you and your intentions at the altar. • GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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THE COST OF WITNESS A REFLECTION BY POPE FRANCIS
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here is a ‘twofold witness’ in Christian life: that of the Spirit who ‘opens the heart’, showing us Jesus, and that of the person who ‘with the power of the Spirit’ proclaims ‘that the Lord lives’, even at the cost of ‘paying the price’ of persecution.
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Once again the Holy Spirit and his action in the heart of every believer was pivotal to Pope Francis’ meditation during Mass at Santa Marta on Monday 2 May 2016. The liturgy continued to offer passages from The Acts of the Apostles (16:11-15), regarding the first missions of the burgeoning Church and excerpts from Jesus’ discourse during the Last Supper (Jn 15:26-16:4).
what was said by Paul’. So who was it that ‘touched this woman’s heart?’, the Pontiff asked, recalling that Lydia ‘felt within her’ something that made her say: ‘This is true! I agree with what this man says, this man who bears witness to Jesus Christ’. The answer is: ‘the Holy Spirit’. It is he ‘who made this woman feel that Jesus was the Lord; he made this woman hear salvation in Paul’s words; he made this woman hear the witness’. Thus, the Pope explained, the Spirit ‘bears witness to Jesus. Each time we feel something in our heart that draws us to Jesus, it is the Spirit working within’.
Specifically in the day’s Gospel we read that Jesus ‘speaks of the witness to him that the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, will bear and of the witness to him that we too will have to bear’. Francis emphasised that here the ‘strongest’ word is precisely: ‘witness’. The witness of the Spirit is also seen in the First Reading where, as it speaks of Lydia, ‘from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, a worshiper of God’, it says: ‘The Lord opened her heart to give heed to 5 Edited and adapted from POPE FRANCIS, MORNING MEDITATION IN THE CHAPEL OF THE DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE, Tuesday, 12 January 2016 as reported by L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly ed. in English, n. 18, 6 May 2016.
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Jesus explained the action of the Spirit to the disciples: ‘He will teach you things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you’. And the Spirit, Francis added, ‘continually opens the heart, as he opened the heart of this woman, Lydia’, and he ‘bears witness’ so that we may ‘hear and remember what Jesus taught us’. his witness, the Pope explained, ‘is twofold’. In other words, ‘the Spirit bears witness to Jesus for us, and with the power of the Spirit we bear witness to the Lord’. Jesus emphasises this in the Gospel passage: ‘When the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning’. The Lord, Francis noted, dwells upon the characteristics of this witness — ‘perhaps the disciples didn’t quite understand’, he observed — adding: ‘I have said all this to you to keep you from falling away’. Thus, he explains to them ‘the cost of Christian testimony’ in a direct way: ‘They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God’.
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Thus, the Pontiff stated, ‘a Christian, with the power of the Spirit, bears witness that the Lord lives, that the Lord is risen, that the Lord is among us, that the Lord celebrates with us His death, His resurrection, each time we approach the altar’.
A Christian does this ‘in his daily life, with his way of acting’. This, the Pope added, ‘is a Christian’s unceasing witness’. At the same time, a Christian must be aware that sometimes testimony ‘provokes attacks, provokes persecution’. The persecution can be small, such as ‘gossip’ and ‘criticism’, but it can also be the kind that ‘fills the history of the Church’, such as what leads ‘Christians to prison’ or ‘even to giving their life’. Therefore, it is the ‘Holy Spirit who lets us meet Jesus’, who pushes us ‘to make him known, not merely with words, but with the witness of life’. And, the Pope suggested, ‘it is good to ask the Holy Spirit, who comes into our heart, to bear witness to Jesus’ and to pray to Him in this way: ‘Lord, let me not move away from Jesus. Teach me what Jesus taught. Remind me what Jesus said and did and also help me to bear witness to these things. Do not let worldliness, easy things, the things that come from the father of lies, from the prince of this world, from sin’ — do not let these things ‘distance me from witnessing’. Let me not ‘fall away, as Jesus says, from being Christian, because someone might avoid me or there may be persecution’. •
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A GOOD SHEPHERD. AN AUTHENTIC WITNESS
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t was 1:30 in the morning on July 28, 1981, and Guatemala was in the throes of a decades-long civil war. The three ski-masked men who broke into the rectory were Ladinos, the nonindigenous men who had been fighting the native people and rural poor of the country since the 1960s. They were known for their kidnappings, and wanted to turn Father Stanley Francis Rother, 46, into one of ‘the missing.’
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Not wanting to endanger the others at the parish mission, he struggled but did not call for help. Fifteen minutes and two gunshots later, Father Stanley was dead and the men fled the mission grounds. The five-foot-ten, red-bearded missionary priest was from the unassuming town of Okarche, Oklahoma., where the parish, school and farm were the pillars of community life. He went to the same school his
whole life and lived with his family until he left for seminary. Surrounded by good priests and a vibrant parish life, Stanley felt God calling him to the priesthood from a young age. But despite a strong calling, Stanley would struggle in the seminary, failing several classes before graduating from Mount St. Mary’s seminary in Maryland. Hearing of Stanley’s struggles, Sister Clarissa Tenbrick, his 5th grade teacher, wrote him to offer encouragement, reminding him that the patron Saint of all priests, St. John Vianney, also struggled in seminary. ‘Both of them were simple men who knew they had a call to the priesthood and then had somebody empower them so that they could complete their studies and be priests and they brought a goodness, simplicity and generous heart with them in (everything) they did’ said Fr. Stanley’s biographer, Maria Scaperlanda7. When Stanley was still in seminary, Pope St. John XXIII asked the Churches of North America to send assistance and establish missions in Central America. Soon after, the diocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa established a mission in
Sister Marita Rother, left, and Tom Rother, right, carry a framed photograph of their brother, at a Mass in honour of his memory.
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6 Adapted and edited from ‘This priest from Oklahoma was a martyr – here’s his powerful story’ by Mary Rezac Feb 18, 2016 (CNA/EWTN News) 7 Maria Scaperlanda, ‘The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run’.
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Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people. A few years after he was ordained, Fr. Stanley accepted an invitation to join the mission team, where he would spend the next 13 years of his life. When he arrived to the mission, the Tz’utujil Mayan Indians in the village had no native equivalent for Stanley, so they took to calling him Padre Francisco, after his baptismal name of Francis. he work ethic Fr. Stanley learned on his family’s farm would serve him well in this new place. As a mission priest, he was called on not just to say Mass, but to fix the broken truck or work the fields. He built a farmers’ co-op, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station, which was used for catechesis to the even more remote villages.
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‘What I think is tremendous is how God doesn’t waste any details,’ Scaperlanda said. ‘That same love for the land and the small town where everybody helps each other, all those things that he learned in Okarche is exactly what he needed when he arrived in Santiago.’ The beloved Padre Francisco was also known for his kindness, selflessness, joy and attentive presence among his parishioners. Dozens of pictures show giggling children running after Padre Francisco and grabbing his hands, Scaperlanda said. GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
‘It was Father Stanley’s natural disposition to share the labour with them, to break bread with them, and celebrate life with them, that made the community in Guatemala say of Father Stanley, he was our priest,’ she said. Over the years, the violence of the Guatemalan civil war inched closer to the once-peaceful village. Disappearances, killings and danger soon became a part of daily life, but Fr. Stanley remained steadfast and supportive of his people. n 1980-1981, the violence escalated to an almost unbearable point. Fr. Stanley was constantly seeing friends and parishioners abducted or killed. In a letter to Oklahoma Catholics during what would be his last Christmas, the priest relayed to the people back home
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the dangers his mission parish faced daily. ‘The reality is that we are in danger. But we don’t know when or what form the government will use to further repress the Church…. Given the situation, I am not ready to leave here just yet… But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it.... I don’t want to desert these people, and that is what will be said, even after all these years. There is still a lot of good that can be done under the circumstances.’ He ended the letter with what would become his signature quote: ‘The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to
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endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.’ In January 1981, in immediate danger and his name on a death list, Fr. Stanley did return to Oklahoma for a few months. But as Easter approached, he wanted to spend Holy Week with his people in Guatemala. ‘Father Stanley could not abandon his people,’ Scaperlanda said. ‘He made a point of returning to his Guatemala parish in time to celebrate Holy Week with his parishioners that year – and ultimately was killed for living out his Catholic faith.’ Scaperlanda, who has worked on Fr. Stanley’s cause for canonisation, said the priest is a great witness and example, particularly in the Year of Mercy. ‘Father Stanley Rother is truly a saint of mercy,’ she said. ‘He fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, visited the sick, comforted the afflicted, bore wrongs patiently, buried the dead – all of it.’
come from ordinary places like Okarche, Oklahoma,’ she said. ‘Although the details are different, I believe the call is the same – and t h e challenge is also the same. Like Father Stanley, each of us is called to say “yes” to God with our whole heart. We are all asked to see the Other standing before us as a child of God, to treat them with respect and a generous heart,’ she added. ‘We are called to holiness – whether we live in Okarche, Oklahoma, or New York City or Guatemala City.’ In June 2015, the Theological Commission of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted to recognise Fr. Stanley Rother as a martyr. •
is life is also a great example of ordinary people being called to do extraordinary things for God, she said.
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‘(W)hat impacted me the most about Father Stanley’s life was how ordinary it was!’ she said. ‘I love how simply Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Paul Coakley states it: ‘We need the witness of holy men and women who remind us that we are all called to holiness – and that holy men and women GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRACLES DO HAPPEN - PRAYER MAKES MIRACLES
WHEN CHRISTIANITY BECOMES A CRIME Jonathan Luxmoore 8
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hen Russia’s small Catholic community commemorated its post-communist revival in the spring of 2016, it was a time to take stock of progress achieved over the past quarter of a century. Catholics still face discrimination in Russia, as the Orthodox Church, backed by President Vladimir Putin, rebuilds its power and wealth. Yet the sufferings inflicted under Soviet rule are remembered with particular bitterness. The eight decades from the Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Iron Curtain brought waves of anti-religious repression comparable to the persecutions of the first centuries. Yet they also produced acts of witness paralleling the most heroic of Christian history. When I began gathering material for a twovolume history, I had a pretty sound grasp of what Christians, so many of them Orthodox believers, had endured. But I had little idea of the sheer scale of persecution. Lenin’s power system claimed possession over minds and souls, and commanded not just obedience but also active approval. By promising absolute good, it eroded any sense of evil, unleashing primal instincts usually constrained by law and ethics. Christians were shocked at how the potestas 8 Jonathan Luxmoore ‘When Christianity becomes a crime by Jonathan’ Catholic Herald 9 June 2016
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tenebrarum, the power of evil spoken of by St Paul, had surfaced again in their own lifetimes. ‘In childhood and adolescence, I immersed myself in the lives of the saints and was enraptured by their heroism and holy inspiration,’ the youthful Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd confided to a friend as he awaited execution in 1922 as an ‘enemy of the people’. He and other priests were dressed in rags so the firing squad would not recognise them. ‘I sorrowed that times had changed and one no longer had to suffer what they suffered,’ he said. ‘Well, times have changed again, and the opportunity has arisen to suffer for Christ both from one’s own people and from strangers.’ The paradigms of persecution and martyrdom, established in the Early Church, had indeed made a drastic comeback. Under Roman rule, there had been secret police and informers, show trials and forced labour sentences. Propagandists such as Celsus and Porphyry had ridiculed Christian beliefs, while Roman officials had followed the tactic of ‘striking the shepherd so the sheep will scatter’ – using torture to break the will of Christians and force them to incriminate others. Whereas the Romans had defended the established religious order, communists sought to destroy it. But the impulses of
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suspicion and hostility were much the same. In both cases, Christians represented an alternative value system. They owed temporal loyalty to the state, but spiritual loyalty to a heavenly kingdom beyond it. When the two came into conflict, they were bound to obey God. For regimes demanding absolute submission, this could not be tolerated. St Augustine had recognised the importance of the martyrs to Christianity’s expansion. It was those who had said ‘Christianus sum’ (I am a Christian) in the face of death who had truly followed Christ. By then, the Church’s persecution had long since ended with Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Toleration. Yet ‘red martyrdom’, the martyrdom of blood, would never disappear. Eleven centuries later, St Thomas More would advise Christians facing a test of conscience to consider their situation carefully, and to ‘appoint with God’s help in their own mind beforehand what thing they intend to do’. Martyrdom required spiritual and intellectual readiness. But the persecutors were often wellprepared too, as became clear when mass martyrdom returned with the new ideological state ushered in by the French Revolution. Reading interrogation records from revolutionary France and the shortlived Paris Commune of 1871, one is struck by the similarities with later communist-era methods: the same remorseless drive to wear down victims, expose their contradic-
tions and destroy their moral certainties. The Bolsheviks who seized power in Russia had learnt lessons from these events. Lenin revered the Commune, seeing it as a practice run for 1917. But he concurred with Marx that the Communards had been weakened by their ‘conscientious scruples’. The Commune’s suppression, with 20,000 dead, had revealed what the vengeful bourgeoisie would do when attempted revolutions collapsed. Preventing this required a new ‘revolutionary boldness’.
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enin was baptised in 1870 and 18 years later was married with Orthodox rites. But he had studied the 19th-century arguments over religion and left it firmly behind. To call religion the ‘opium of the people’ was too kind, Lenin wrote in 1909, paraphrasing Marx and Feuerbach. It was ‘a kind of spiritual rotgut, by which the slaves of capital blacken their human figure and their aspirations for a more dignified human life’. Churches were ‘organs of bourgeois reaction’. Rooting them out was the logical extension of Marx’s historical inevitability. ‘Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness,’ Lenin told the writer Maxim Gorky. ‘Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions … are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God decked out in the smartest ideological costumes.’
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A paramilitary police, the Cheka, was operating with 40,000 agents within a year of the Revolution from Moscow’s Lubyanka. ‘We have no concern about justice at this hour,’ its Polish founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, confidently proclaimed, as his newspaper ran copious lists of arrests and executions, province by province. Dzerzhinsky had planned to become a priest, and would have Masses of expiation said for him, arranged by his anguished sister Aldona, in a Warsaw church. Even then, Lenin believed his regime was being ‘inordinately soft’ and urged the Cheka to make fuller use of its summary powers, ‘so people will see it all, understand it, tremble’. Hundreds were slaughtered during French-style ‘September massacres’ in the prisons of Moscow, while the press recorded 15,000 executions in a month, at least twice the number from an entire century of Tsarist rule. In Russia’s southern republics ‘enemies of the people’ could be denounced, tried, killed and buried in a single afternoon.
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n estimated 25 million people died in peacetime under communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Documentation concerning anti-Christian persecution has been slow to emerge. A Russian state commission has confirmed that 45,000 Orthodox churches were left in ruins and tens of thousands of Orthodox priests, monks and nuns killed in the first two decades of Soviet rule.
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As for Russia’s Catholics, no systematic study was undertaken until the late 1990s, when experts revealed the extent of the repression. Of the 2,000 Catholics whose fates are known, 422 priests were killed, up to a third in Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937-38, while all but two of 1,240 Catholic places of worship were turned into shops, warehouses, farm buildings or public toilets. When communist rule was brought to postwar Eastern Europe by the Red Army, the persecution started again. The region’s cardinals – Stefan Wyszyński in Poland, Josef Beran in Czechoslovakia, József Mindszenty in Hungary and Alojzije Stepinac in Croatia – tried to rally the faithful and were all brought down, with only Wyszyński regaining his position, while Greek Catholic communities were savagely suppressed. Whereas Lenin’s regime had consolidated its power through open violence in the early years, by the 1960s communist methods had changed. We know now that the churches of Eastern Europe were more extensively infiltrated by secret police agents than previously thought. Even in staunchly Catholic Poland, up to 40 per cent of Catholic clergy were listed as informers in some dioceses. The Vatican itself was also infiltrated. Yet some top communist rulers had complex personal attitudes to religion. Stalin, for all his anti-faith brutality, often used
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religious language and had an excellent knowledge of the Bible gained from six years in an Orthodox seminary. In later years, Czechoslovakia’s Gustáv Husák made his Confession before he died, while Hungary’s János Kádár asked to see a Catholic priest and Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito was cared for, at his own request, by Catholic nuns. Poland’s General Wojciech Jaruzelski received Holy Communion and, in May 2014, a full Catholic cathedral funeral, while Mikhail Gorbachev donated his parents’ house to the Orthodox Church.
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n the euphoria which accompanied communism’s collapse in 1989-91, there were echoes of the rejoicing that followed the 4th-century Great Deliverance, when, as the historian Eusebius described, new bishops were consecrated, places of worship reopened and confiscated properties returned, as newly liberated citizens ‘lost all fear of their former oppressors’. But the Church still suffers today from the wounds inflicted on it. Eastern Europe’s democratic governments have honoured many of communism’s Christian victims, such as the young Jesuit Fr Władysław Gurgacz, shot in 1949 for ministering to Poland’s postwar ‘doomed soldiers’, and the Sister of Mercy Zofia Łuszczkiewicz, who died of TB in 1957 after receiving three death sentences for her underground links. Yet most communist-era villains have escaped judgment and are now enjoying a comfortable retirement, unrepentant and undisturbed. Perhaps this
was a price worth paying for communism’s peaceful overthrow. Yet even within the Church, recognition of communist-era sufferings has been half-hearted. Communist rule produced its own Polycarps and Perpetuas, its Cyprians and Tertullians. Whereas Early Church accounts of martyrdom were heavily embellished, the communist-era martyrs were absolutely real, witnessing and suffering in living memory. In an age of relativism, the very notion of martyrdom has been derided. Its misuse by Islamist suicide bombers has tainted the term with fanaticism. While political and ideological causes can also have their martyrs, true martyrs cannot violently kill themselves or murder others in the process. Yet for many even genuine martyrdoms involve barely credible stories of otherworldly defiance, outdated certainties which glorify pain and evoke intolerance. Ideals and principles may be fine things, but can they ever be worth dying for? In the Christian tradition, the answer can only be a resounding yes: Christianity is, ultimately, about following Jesus Christ come what may. • Jonathan Luxmoore’s two-volume study of communist-era martyrs, The God of the Gulag: Martyrs in an Age of Revolution and Martyrs in an Age of Secularism, is published by Gracewing.
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THE MERCIFUL LOVE OF GOD Dear Friends,
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ust a few days after the murder of a priest in Normandy, we were visited by a bishop from Niger, in the Sahel region. Christians there are no more than a tiny minority. He told us how, for the first time, Muslims and Christians in Niger prayed together, both in a mosque and in a Christian church. He described this as a prophetic sign. There is at least a glimmer of hope in the fact that in the Islamic world the awareness is also growing that violence is not of God, God Is Love. Now this glimmer of hope must become a hope lived in the lives of all people of goodwill. This is the task we are working on in many different countries, and thanks to your generosity, the Church can indeed visibly embody this hope.
This is happening in all kinds of projects, both great and small. But it is most visibly present in the Sacrifice of the Mass. St John Vianney, the holy Curé of Ars, once said that suffering ‘is the most powerful of all prayers, for it always moves the heart of God.’ And so we can say that in empathising with the sufferings of others and expressing the Merciful Love of God in all we do, we are strengthening hope. Thank you for your generosity, which gives us fresh courage.
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
WHERE TO SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION FOR THE CHURCH IN NEED Please use the Freepost envelope. Aid to the Church in Need,
info@acnireland.org
If you give by standing order, or have sent a donation recently, please accept our sincere thanks. This MIRROR is for your interest and information.
www.acnireland.org
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I GIVE WITH LOVE...
...BLESS YOU AMDG
Flowers that do not wither My husband died recently. My children and I have decided not to spend money on flowers, which next day will wither and be thrown out. Instead we are sending money to ACN. That way it will be transformed into flowers that do not wither away.
Dear Friends,
Sharing the little they have
As a result of your prayers, your contributions and the works of our project partners throughout the world such as Bishop Martin and Fater Sebastiano in the Phillipines, we are able to help millions of poor souls live lives in dignity in the face of evil.
We will be all the more committed to spreading the mission of ACN, in the certainty that many other people are also committing themselves to helping this blessed work, which is making it possible to spread the message of Jesus to the ends of the earth.
Thank you for joining with us in our efforts to be God’s Mercy, His Missionaries of Joy and of Hope as we struggle together daily to carry the divine light of God’s Face to every dark and forgotten corner of our broken world.
A benefactress in Portugal
Our community will likewise share the little we have, in order to help with your projects – not only because you are supporting our projects, but also so that the dreams of others can become a reality.
Be assured that God does not forget those who are His hands of Mercy in this fallen world. In Christ,
From a religious sister in Brazil Heartfelt thanks A simple word to say ‘Thank you’ from the bottom of my heart for all that you do for the Church in need… for all your works of Mercy. Infinite thanks for being there and for doing all the good that you do for the needy. Infinite Grace and blessings on you all… From a new benefactress in Canada
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ire)
WE ARE CALLED TO BE MISSIONARIES OF JOY
THE PURIFICATION OF PURGATORY – A GIFT OF GOD’S LOVING MERCY. ACN Spiritual Assistant
‘We have an immortal soul to save for eternity. Mary calls us to penance and to the prayer of the Rosary. It would be foolhardy not to respond to her request.’
Father Werenfried van Straaten
Praying for the dead. Mass being celebrated at a cemetery in the Philippines.
THE MIRROR IS AVAILABLE TO READ AT ACNIRELAND.ORG
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MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
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MIRROR GIVE JOY, GIVE HOPE
Cuan Mhuire 1966-2016
Miracles do Happen Prayer makes Miracles
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Being God’s Mercy in the home
Being God’s Mercy
Holding up Jesus to the World The Medicine of Mercy