From the Pastor's Desk | November 3, 2024

Election

If you have not already voted, either through early voting or via absentee ballot, then I encourage everyone to head to the polls this Tuesday and exercise your right to vote - “to exercise your vocation as a citizen,” to quote Pope Francis.  Catholics have an important role to play in each election.  As we heard in Mr. Paul Stankowitz’s talk on faithful citizenship, voting as an informed Catholic is not easy.  No single candidate or party will fulfill everything that Christ and His Church teaches and espouses.  I offer the following points to consider using the Michigan Catholic Conference’s Focus Newsletter for the fall of 2024:

• It is essential for Catholics to be guided by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight, and that the moral obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions. 
• A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, racist behavior, in vitro fertilization, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, or redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. 
• There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. 
• A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support.  Yet if a candidate’s position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support. 
• These decisions should consider a candidate’s comments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue.  In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching.  

A Catholic conscience is best formed through prayer, regular reception of the Sacraments (especially Holy Communion and Reconciliation), reading Sacred Scripture, and the teachings of the Church as handed down to us through Sacred Tradition.  Please take time to make an informed decision and spend significant time in prayer before you cast your vote.   

November

The month of November is significant in the life of the Church.  We move toward the end of Ordinary Time and the end of the liturgical year culminating in the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe on November 24.  The end - finality - is a theme that the Church asks us to contemplate.  So, we contemplate the four last things - heaven, hell, death, and judgment.  

Everything in the created order is created toward some end - some purpose.  With the school kids, I often use the example of planting a tomato seed.  If one plants a tomato seed, waters it, maintains the soil, and provides the right amount of light, the end of that tomato seed is to grow into a tomato plant.  That seed has an end - a purpose.  The same holds true for each one of us.  We are ordered for an end - a purpose.  Our end is eternal beatitude with God.  However, because sin has entered the world, the right ordering of our beings has been disordered.  Other sinister forces are competing for us.  The world, the flesh, and the devil all work on us to pull us away from our right ordering toward God.  The month of November is a good time for each of us to contemplate where our souls are directed.  Are we really and truly ordered toward God?  Or are we living in such a way that we are ordered toward something else entirely?

Remembering our end and contemplating the four last things prepares us for a new beginning.  It prepares us for Advent - the coming of our Savior who puts us back into right order or right relationship with God so that we can truly call Him Father.  

The Dead

As we move through November, as we contemplate the four last things, the month of November is also a privileged time for us to remember and pray for the dead.  We began the month of November with the Feast of All Saints Day.  We celebrate the fact that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) who have already achieved their end and dwell for eternity beholding the beatific vision.  The Church Triumphant is in heaven interceding for us, praying for us, cheering us on to the finish line, praying us into heaven.

The following day, November 2, we celebrated the Feast of All Souls Day.  This is the day each year  where we intercede, as the Church Militant, praying for the faithful departed, praying for our loved ones, praying for the ones who died alone and forgotten, praying for the unborn.  We pray for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory - the Church Suffering.  The month of November is set aside by the Church to pray for the dead.  
In the sanctuary of the Church, you will notice a lectern with the Book of Dead placed upon it.  Please feel free to write the names of your loved ones in the book so that we will remember them at each Mass and, in a very intentional way, pray for them throughout the month of November. 

I encourage each of you to be intentional about praying for the dead this month.  My father passed away almost two years ago.  On the Feast of All Souls, I drove out to the cemetery and visited his grave (and many of my relatives who have gone before me) and prayed a rosary.  I encourage each of you to do the same.  Keep in mind that those who pray a rosary in a cemetery during the month of November receive a plenary indulgence.  To receive the indulgence Catholics must: 

• Fulfill the ordinary conditions of an indulgence, which include sacramental confession, receiving the Eucharist, praying for the Holy Father’s intentions, and being completely detached from sin.
• Devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the departed, even if only mentally.

I also encourage you, especially those who cannot get to a cemetery for whatever reason, to use the month of November to spend time praying before the Blessed Sacrament on Fridays for those who have died.

Advent Giving Tree

Soon the Advent Giving Trees will be placed at the north and south entrances of the church.  They will be filled with tags for gifts to be purchased for various organizations including Cristo Rey; Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton, and Clinton Counties; Shared Pregnancy Women’s Center; and St. Vincent de Paul, among other organizations.  Please take tags and purchase the gifts identified on each tag.  You can bring the gifts back to the church and simply place them under the trees.  They will be collected each day and secured until they are sorted and distributed.  We ask that all items be new, not used.   

Gospel Reflection

In the readings this week, the law is placed before us.  In the first reading, taken from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses implores the people to keep the Lord’s statutes and commandments throughout the days of their lives.  In the last part of the first reading, we hear the great Shema prayer, prayed by faithful Jews three times a day.  It is a declaration of the one, true God and a call to love Him with one’s entire being.  It is a call to love the Lord by keeping His commandments and statutes. 

In the Gospel today, one of the scribes came to Jesus and asked Him what the greatest commandment is.  Jesus’s reply is twofold.  First, Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength thus echoing the words of Moses in the first reading; echoing the great Shema prayer.  Second, Jesus says the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, that there is no other commandment greater than these.  In saying this, He links Deuteronomy with Leviticus (particularly chapter 19 verses 9 and onwards).  He also sums up the entire decalogue, the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, in two sentences.

In answering this question, Jesus cuts right to the chase and answers simply and authoritatively - love God and love your neighbor.  Both commandments hinge on the word love.  The word love, particularly in the English language, gets us in a little bit of trouble because it has taken on so many meanings and is used in a variety of ways.  Biblically speaking, there are four different kinds of love or words used to express love in different ways:

• Philia - as in the love between two platonic friends
• Storge - as in the love between and/or within a family; familial love
• Eros - as in erotic or sexual love between a married man and woman
• Agape - as in the highest form of love; self-giving; unconditional

The word Jesus uses in this particular context is agape (αγαπήσεις).  In using this particular word, Jesus raises the bar.  He doesn’t expect us to simply pay God respect or treat each other nicely.  Rather, the law requires that we love both God and neighbor in the same way that Jesus loved us - through the Cross.   The Cross shows us how much He Himself loved the Father and each one of us - by dying; by laying down His life; by pouring Himself out.  That’s a high bar.  St. Thomas Aquinas, in defining love, taught that to love is to will the good of the other, despite sin.  That’s the cross.  To will the good of the other isn’t always easy.  Quite often it’s quite difficult.   

In our prayer today, let’s contemplate the degree to which we love God and love our neighbor.  Do we merely pay God respect and strive to be nice?  Or, are we giving our entire being over the Father and, in so doing, living this self-gift in all our relationships, even the most difficult ones?     

Know of my prayers for you all! 

Fr. Ryan