Jesus Is Not A Dry Cleaner

Last week, Pope Francis delivered an engagingly potent homily about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He said:

Jesus in the confessional is not a dry cleaner, it is an encounter with Jesus but with this Jesus who waits for us just as we are…Many times we think that going to confession is like going to the dry cleaner to clean the dirt from our clothes.

We are tempted to feel this way about reconciliation, but in actuality, Jesus gives us so much more. He “donates to us the peace that only he gives.”

For more of Pope Francis’ homily about the graced experience of Reconciliation, go here. 

The Lifting Up

The "lifting up," that is, the ascension into heaven, signified the sharing of Christ as man in the power and authority of God himself. This sharing in the power and authority of the Triune God is manifested in the sending of the Counselor, the Spirit of truth who, "taking" (Jn 16:14) from the redemption affected by Christ, brings about the conversion of human hearts.

-Blessed John Paul II, General Audience on April 19, 1989

A Leper With The Lepers

Jozef De Veuster received the name of Damien in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. When he was 23 years old, in 1863, he left Flanders, the land of his birth, to proclaim the Gospel on the other side of the world in the Hawaiian Islands. His missionary activity, which gave him such joy, reached its peak in charity. Not without fear and repugnance, he chose to go to the Island of Molokai to serve the lepers who lived there, abandoned by all. Thus he was exposed to the disease from which they suffered. He felt at home with them. The servant of the Word consequently became a suffering servant, a leper with the lepers, for the last four years of his life. In order to follow Christ, Fr. Damien not only left his homeland but also risked his health: therefore as the word of Jesus proclaimed to us in today's Gospel says he received eternal life…Let us remember before this noble figure that it is charity which makes unity, brings it forth and makes it desirable. Following in St. Paul's footsteps, St. Damien prompts us to choose the good warfare, not the kind that brings division but the kind that gathers people together. He invites us to open our eyes to the forms of leprosy that disfigure the humanity of our brethren and still today call for the charity of our presence as servants, beyond that of our generosity.

-Pope Benedict XVI, October 11 2009

Oh St. Damien Molokai, beatified by our patron Blessed John Paul II, you built the Church above on the abandoned island of Molokai. From your place in heaven, please pray for us sinners on this day of your feast, that we may imitate your example in bringing the Church to those who are far away, especially the poor and the marginalized. 

We Simply Need To Be Real Christians

On April 25 our Chaplain here at the Blessed John Paul II Shrine, Fr. Gregory Gresko, gave a retreat reflection for a gathering of Church leaders involved in the pro-life and pro-family movements. His words capture the heart of what it means to be a Christian in the age of the New Evangelization, so we thought we would share parts of his reflection here on OpenWide the Doors.

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To be the most effective agents of the New Evangelization, Christians are called to become what they are!   As we have heard many times already and rightly from our American bishops, the New Evangelization is not a project, but instead a living of the Christian life genuinely, in authenticity, to be bearers of Jesus Christ in our own particular witness, day in and day out.  We need not become stressed or lose our peace over having to accomplish something big, even of surmounting what seems to be insurmountable darkness.  Rather, we are to submit ourselves humbly, daily before the Lord in prayer and in living the sacramental life of the Church in its fullness, bearing Christ Jesus in our daily witness of the Faith wherever we are called to testify to the Faith at any given moment. 

The New Evangelization is the genuine presentation of Christ’s Light incarnated in you and me -- and in our fellow Christians -- placed as His Light within a world darkened by sin and evil.  The light doesn’t worry about offending the darkness … It simply, humbly enters the room and greets the darkness with its brightness, its peace, its joy, its faith, its hope, and its love.  Christians are to live their earthly pilgrimage through the world of darkness toward heaven, to which they belong already as citizens through a baptismal consecration authentically lived, espousing the same humble attitude of being loving, peaceful, joy-filled Christians who shine the Light of Christ wherever they go.  And in doing so, God Himself demonstrates through our Christian testimony that Jesus Christ already has conquered sin and death through the power of His Cross and Resurrection.  We are to bring the Light of Christ to the world peacefully, without any compromise of His Truth, confident that it is the full, integrated Truth that is the Way to real freedom and not libertinism … to real selfless, self-offering, self-giving love instead of a disordered, self-centered lust or egoism, which tries to impose itself in totalitarian fashion upon the world as being some kind of “new truth” but which, in reality, is an ancient lie from the father of lies.

Papal Intentions for May

This month, let us join Pope Francis in praying for administrators of justice, that they “may act always with integrity and right conscience.”

Let us also pray for our seminaries, especially those of mission churches, that they “may form pastors after the Heart of Christ, fully dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel.”

May Your Faith Be Strong

May your faith be strong;

may it not hesitate, not waver, before

the doubts, the uncertainties which

philosophical systems or fashionable

movements would like to suggest to you.

-Blessed John Paul II

November 3, 1980

Why We Work

The first day of May has much significance in our world and especially in our Church. It is May Day, the day of the worker, and for Christians it is also a day to remember the foster father of our Lord, St. Joseph the Worker.

Blessed John Paul II was beatified on this day two years ago. Early in his pontificate, he reflected on the meaning of human work, something that he thought much about as he performed forced labor in his youth and as he grew resisting a Communist regime’s materialistic understanding of man and his vocation.

In his 1981 encyclical, Laborem Exercens, he noted that the human person works for three main reasons.

First, there is a deeply personal dimension to work. Work is a good thing for man, and through it he realizes himself:

Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being.”

Work also makes family life and providing for one’s family possible. Blessed John Paul II writes that, “the family is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within the home, for every person.”