This weekend the Catholic world will consider two phases of the afterlife. The Solemnity of All Saints on Saturday reminds the faithful of those celebrated and sometimes uncelebrated heroes of the Christian life. The martyrs, monks, missionaries, mentors and married folk who dedicated their lives to Christ both in spirit and in deed are recalled, reverenced and now recruited as intercessors before the face of God. On Sunday, worshippers will recall their own beloved dead who perhaps have gone on to full glory or may still be in need of the Church community’s intercessory prayers to release them from the final residue of sin. Eternity, fully enjoyed by the saints and coveted by the souls in purgatory, should be an equally important part of the Gospel message for those believers still working out their ultimate destiny here on earth. more

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is more often remembered as Edith Stein, the brilliant philosopher, who was born into an observant German-Jewish family, inclined toward atheism as a young adult, eventually converted to the Roman Catholic Church and then became a Discalced Carmelite nun. Reminiscent of Loyola, reading the life of St. Teresa of Avila was instrumental in her conversion in 1922 after which she gave up university life and taught in a Catholic grammar school for ten years. Still, Edith’s academic credentials are impressive. She worked with the eminent philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. She translated Aquinas’ “On Truth” into German. She became a lecturer at the Catholic-associated Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Munster in 1932, resigning in 1933 due to anti-Semitic legislation. At that time, Edith wrote to Pope Pius XI about Nazi abuse. more

Surely no line of Scripture is more misleadingly quoted than Jesus’ pronouncement to “…render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Not only is this quote broadly used to justify the separation of church and state, but more deviously it is being extended to endorse the separation of religion and society. Progressive politicians no longer mention freedom of religion but rather refer cleverly to freedom of worship. Religion, of course, embraces the fullness of the believer’s life: church, politics, business, family, etc. All human activity has a religious dimension. Worship on the other hand is what takes place within a church building. Worship is liturgical, ritualistic and ceremonial. The immediate focus of worship is the sacred; the broader focus of religion must include the secular. Progressive politicians have no problem with parishioners lighting candles, whiffing incense and singing hymns. That’s worship. But some government leaders do have trouble with religious persons protecting traditional marriage, shielding the unborn, defending authentic conception, preserving dignity at the end of life, limiting medical experimentation and maintaining cultural vestiges from America’s theistic roots. more

This Sunday’s Gospel account of the guests invited to the wedding feast following so closely after last Sunday’s Gospel passage on the vine grower and his inhospitable workers might seem to be a variation on the common theme of Gospel rejection. Certainly for St. Matthew, both parables share a sad tale of refusal. more

Nothing grieved Jesus more than the hostility of the religious leaders toward his message of redemption and salvation. Jesus was patient with the crowds and forbearing toward sinners, but he was quite irritated with the priests and teachers, scribes and Pharisees, rabbis and doctors of the law, who resisted his every word and ignored his calls for repentance. more

Occasionally in the Scriptures the reader will come across pre-existing hymns that were lifted, so to speak, by the sacred author and incorporated into the revealed word of God. Possibly, the first account of creation from Genesis with its very stylized first day, second day, third day, etc., arrangement was a poetic prayer read in the Jerusalem Temple. The Song of Songs was quite likely a secular love poem adapted for Temple use. St. Luke’s incorporation of songs placed on the lips of Zachariah, the Virgin Mary, the Bethlehem angels and Simeon might also represent some devotional material in use before that evangelist actually put pen to paper. more

The workers in the vineyard who received the same wage after working all day in the Palestinian heat as those late-comers who worked only the last hour as the day began to cool might seem to have a legitimate grievance. Currently, an eight-hour day’s labor at the present minimum wage of $7.25 would net a payment of $58. Rare indeed would be the worker who stood uncomplainingly in line while witnessing a fellow laborer receive fifty-eight dollars for one hour’s work only to be handed the same amount for a full day’s work. Clearly the situation is unjust. And this is precisely Jesus’ point in relating this parable, unique to St. Matthew, about the laborers in the vineyard. more

In the musical film, “The Sound of Music,” as Maria von Trapp wends her way from the cloister gate to the church altar, the camera follows her stride down a long aisle, up a good number of steps, across the sanctuary, before ascending the ornate baroque altarpiece, rising above the church roof toward twin bell towers and finally gazing off into the blue Austrian sky. The viewer’s eye is faithfully guided upward toward celestial heights. This majestic cinematic sweep, enhanced by stately wedding music, graphically and happily illustrates Pope-emeritus Benedict’s nostalgic and distinctively Bavarian appreciation of the Catholic liturgy. more

The oldest church building in the city of Woonsocket is, oddly, not a church at all. The Quaker Meeting House on Smithfield Road, just at the edge of the city line, facing Union Cemetery in North Smithfield, is intentionally just a meeting house where individual believers gather for prayer, song and Biblical inspiration. The Society of Friends, as the Quakers are officially known, shuns formal worship. more

The 27 books of the New Testament were written over a span of perhaps 60 years and they were written over an area of perhaps half the Mediterranean world. St. Paul’s earliest epistles were written possibly around 45 A.D.; the final works of St. John came into circulation maybe in 100 A.D. The various letters and books could have been written in Jerusalem, Syria, Turkey, Greece or Rome. Given this varied background, the centrality of St. Peter in the minds of all the New Testament authors is compelling. more

Each day a retired priest of the diocese offers Mass for the elderly sisters and senior residents of Mount Saint Rita Health Center in Cumberland. As the celebrant sits for the reading of Scripture and the psalm response, his chair faces a stained glass window dedicated to St. Catherine of Genoa, one of two dozen windows dedicated to a great variety of saints. Readers might be aware of St. Catherine of Siena, the third order Dominican who successfully prodded the medieval popes to abandon Avignon and return to Rome. And a few readers might even recall St. Catherine of Alexandria, an early martyr spitefully put to death stretched out on a wheel that now bears her name. But St. Catherine of Genoa might be as obscure to most readers as she was to the present writer. more

In the mid-1960s, there was some concern among liturgists that the offertory portion of the newly revised Mass might detract from the Eucharistic prayer and the words of consecration. more

Very Reverend Monsignor Charles H. Lynch was a native of St. Charles Borromeo parish in Woonsocket and a close friend of my family. While my mother was attending Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in Providence, “Charlie” Lynch was attending LaSalle Academy. more

Somewhat submerged in the right front corner of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul is the fortress-like structure’s cornerstone recalling the date in 1889 when Bishop Thomas Hendricken inaugurated the project that would give the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island a worthy testimony to the Catholic Church’s expanding presence throughout the community. Mass had been offered in Newport a century earlier. Bristol witnessed some Catholic activity early in the nineteenth century. Pawtucket had its first parish by 1826 and Woonsocket first celebrated the Holy Sacrifice in a local home during the same year. more

In the late spring of 1961, some of my seminary classmates chose to pursue their priestly vocations in other dioceses. Ed Masse became a priest in Manchester, N.H. Roland Cloutier joined the Norwich, Conn., diocese. Richard Martin pursued his priestly studies for the Diocese of Richmond in Virginia, later joining the newly formed diocese of Arlington in that state. more

St. Matthew envisions Christ upon a mountain four times in his Gospel account. Christ is taken by Satan to the top of a high mountain to be offered all the world’s kingdoms arrayed before them. Christ ascends another mountain for his introductory catechesis on the nature of the Christian life, the celebrated “Sermon on the Mount.” Again Christ and three select apostles climb Mount Tabor, the mountain of the Transfiguration, where Christ is glorified in the presence Moses and Elias. Now finally, Jesus invites the Eleven to meet him on the mountain of his Ascension in Galilee, charging them with a final commissioning to go out and become the Church, continuing the Incarnation down through the ages. more

The happiness of the Easter season is well-reflected in the lyrical psalm to be heard at this Sunday’s Mass. “Let all the earth cry out to God with joy,” the liturgy intones, invoking psalm 66, in which the Jewish community praises God for his powerful acts for Israel, for the exodus from Egypt and the entry into the promised land, but also for relief from some recent, but unspecified calamity hinted at in verses 8-12. The first Christians had little difficulty in adapting this psalm for their own use since they were still basking in the glory of the resurrection and ascension of the Christ, and the arrival and bestowal of the Spirit at Pentecost. Yet, a very specific calamity had recently beset the early Christian community at Jerusalem. more

St. Thomas is mentioned in all four Biblical references to the twelve apostles. Matthew 10, Mark 3 and Luke 6, as well as Acts, 1 find St. Thomas faithfully listed among Christ’s dearest disciples even though these books were written decades after St. Thomas himself had moved on from Jerusalem. Although the fourth Gospel account by St. John does not list the twelve apostles as these other writings do (in fact, St. John never uses the word “apostle”), he recalls St. Thomas quite personally by informing the reader that this man Thomas was nick-named Didymus, a Greek word meaning twin. Thomas itself, for that matter, is actually the Aramaic word for twin. more

“I came so that they might have life,” Jesus benevolently declares in this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage. “…And have it more abundantly,” the Master continues with even greater generosity. Modern believers hearing this bountiful promise might well ask the question posed by St. Peter’s first hearers cited in this Sunday’s first reading from Acts: “Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other apostles, “What are we to do, my brothers?” Yes, indeed, that is the question of the ages: “What are we to do?” How does the contemporary believer lay hold of the abundant life promised by Jesus Christ? How is it seized? How is it appreciated? How is it made effective in each succeeding generation? more

Providence College presents an annual interfaith dialogue among representatives of the Catholic community, and most often the Jewish community. A Catholic religious sister who spoke this year reflected that the common division of the Bible into the Old Testament and New Testament could seem to slight present day Jewish society by implying that their relationship with God was antiquated so God need no longer be true to his promises. more