Fr. Mike Schmitz’s full speech at the National Eucharistic Congress (youtube.com)

GOD OF POWER AND MERCY,
YOU DESTROY WAR AND PUT DOWN EARTHLY PRIDE.

BANISH VIOLENCE FROM OUR MIDST

AND WIPE AWAY OUR TEARS,
THAT WE MAY ALL DESERVE TO BE CALLED

YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS.

KEEP IN YOUR MERCY THOSE MEN AND WOMEN
WHO HAVE DIED IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM
AND BRING THEM SAFELY
INTO YOUR KINGDOM OF JUSTICE AND PEACE.

WE ASK THIS THOUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.
R/. AMEN

FR. ED BROOM, OMV

   Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three young shepherd children six times in the year 1917, from May 13^th up to the great miracle of the sun on October 13^th.  These three shepherd children were brother and sister, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, and their older cousin, Lucia de los Santos.

   In every one of the six apparitions, Our Lady exhorted them, as well as the whole world, to pray the most holy Rosary on a daily basis. Our Lady appeared during the course of World War I in Europe. Many lives were taken, and families devastated.

Our Lady revealed some little-known statements to Jacinta that had great importance in 1917, but even greater relevance today. There are five. We will list these five and offer a brief commentary, then offer three concrete ways that we can honor Mary in the month of May.

1. War

War is a punishment for sin. In a time in which wars are waging and claiming innocent lives, let us strive to pray more and sin less so that we will help bring an end to wars. Ven. Fulton J. Sheen stated that World Wars start in the hearts of many individuals living in sin. Wars from within spill over into wars among peoples and nations.

2. Fashions

Certain fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much. Let us try to always dress with great modesty and strive to live in the presence of Jesus and Mary. As St. Paul reminds us: “We are Ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20). Let us never be a source of sin or scandal for anyone, but a means for their sanctification and imitation.

3. Priests

They must be pure, very pure. They should not busy themselves with anything except what concerns the Church and the salvation of souls. The disobedience of priests to their superiors and the Holy Father is very displeasing to the Lord. Let us pray and offer sacrifices for more priests and for holy priests. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Mt. 9:37). On Thursdays, pray for priests by offering Rosaries, Masses, and Holy Communions for them!

4. Matrimony

Many marriages are not good; they do not please Our Lord and are not of God. Those who are married should do all in their power to live out their vocation of marriage, a vocation in which husband and wife are called to mutually sanctify each other, and this should flow over to their children. May those who are engaged take more seriously their preparation for a wonderful but very demanding vocation—the vocation of Holy Matrimony.

5. Call to Purity

Our Lady revealed to Jacinta Marto of Fatima that more souls go to hell because of sins of impurity than for any other reason. In the July 13, 1917 apparition, Our Lady showed the three children a very graphic vision of hell and the suffering of the condemned souls. This vision motivated little Jacinta to offer constant and heroic sacrifices to God for the conversion of poor sinners. When Pope Saint John Paul II beatified Francisco and Jacinta, he presented Francisco as a “Little Mystic” because he loved to be silently present in front of the Blessed Sacrament in prayer. However, the saintly Pope presented Jacinta in the light of a “Little Victim soul.” The reason? She willingly offered herself as a victim soul to suffer for the many souls who are in jeopardy of being lost for all eternity.

   In this month of May dedicated to Our Lady, let us offer our Heavenly Mother three small but very beautiful flowers to fill her Immaculate Heart with immense joy!

First, avoid sin. When tempted to sin, let us pray a fervent Hail Mary and beg Our Lady, the full of grace, for the grace to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to the love of God.

Second, pray the most holy Rosary. In this month of May, let us pray the most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary daily, most especially for these two intentions: for the conversion, sanctification, and salvation of the family; and for the cessation of wars and world peace. 

Third, study the Fatima message. Why not learn more about the message of Our Lady of Fatima? How about reading a good book, watch a good movie, and/or study a well-written commentary on Our Lady of Fatima and her message, which indeed is an excellent summary of the Gospel message of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s hard to believe that some of the people attending Mass today were not born when the movie “Jerry Maguire” first debuted.  That was 1996 and the movie, a romantic comedy-drama starring Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renée Zellweger, and Regina King. One of the most iconic lines in the move, and one of the biggest lines of garbage in movie history, was when Jerry Maguire turned to Dorothy Boyd and, with tears in his eyes, emotionally, says to her: “you complete me.” The sentiment is not unusual. In fact, this sort of expectation of another in relationships, courtships, and marriages, is very prevalent and, at the same time, very deadly. If you expect anyone else to complete you, in a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, or a family, you are destined for disappointment and failure. 

The Book of Genesis tells us that nothing God had made was suitable as a friend for Adam, so God created Eve. Adam and Eve were made to be companions for each other, so that Adam would not be alone, he would have accompaniment in life. Human beings accompany each other in life, and through life. We are all born into relationships. The first relationship we have is with our parents, our mother, who first, in her own body and then from her own body, feeds us. We are sheltered, made safe, we learn, we grow, through our relationships. We make friends, we marry, we have children of our own, we are community beings, and we help each other, but we don’t complete each other. And, to put those expectations on another, on a friend, a parent, a wife, a husband, a mother, father, son, daughter, brother, or sister, is to put too great a burden on them and to expect too much. The created world, and even the created person, is not enough to fill what only God’s love can fill.

The truth is that the Book of Genesis also teaches us that God created us to be loved by Him and to love Him. We are created to be in relationship, first, with God. Created by God and for God, only God can fulfill us, only God’s life, God’s love, God’s grace, can complete us. From within we search for completeness, every person knows this, or at least feels this instinctively. Even those who have never heard of God seem to know that their soul, heart, being, longs for something more than the world can offer or give, even people, even the people we love most and who love us most, cannot fulfill the longing we hold deep within. Often, as we all know, we search for fulfillment in all sorts of places, people, and things. We discover that created things cannot take the place of the one uncreated thing we long to have and to love. Made for God, we long for God, and only God can fulfill that longing. 

This is not to devalue the other riches in our lives, in fact, these also are gifts from God that are to help, enhance, brighten, give purpose and they are signs of God’s love and care for us. However, only God can fulfill us. As we begin a new year if we want to find completeness, if we want to find our purpose and destiny, if we want to be fulfilled and live as fully as we can, we should let God enter our lives fully so that we might be complete and live life as God intends us to live it, to experience life as God intends us to experience it. Anything else, everything else, is just not enough. Only God!

EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 22nd, 2023 Kathy Wandstrat is retiring from the position of Regional Secretary for St. Simon the Apostle and St. Aloysius on the Ohio.  Please direct any bulletin information to simonalsbulletin@olv.org.

For other needs  please contact Beth Schumacher at 513-941-3656, #3

A few weeks ago, I flew to Ireland and the flight from Newark landed in Dublin at 4.30am. Two of my nieces, Lyn and Emma, were flying back from Britain the same day so I arranged to meet them at Dublin airport. What I didn’t realize when I made this arrangement was that my flight would get in so early and their flight didn’t land until 9am. That’s right, a four and a half hour wait, for the most impatient person on the planet. My nieces were returning from a baby shower for my cousin’s daughter who was expecting her second child. The expectation and then the birth of a child is so important that family from all over help prepare for the new arrival. It is both an expectant celebration and a time for preparation.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the experience of expecting a newborn. It is not a time of passive waiting but a time that involves a lot of excited preparation and even change. As soon as a child is conceived change begins to happen in the body of the child’s mother. While it seems on the outside that this change is slow and almost, except for a bump, unperceivable, interiorly the whole of the mother’s body changes to receive and help create a new human being. Families also prepare, they buy things they think will be essential like toys, stuffed animals, Reds and Bengals gear, balloons and then stuff that is actually needed like diapers, clothing, formula, a savings account for Catholic education. They paint rooms for the baby, make the house “child-proof,” they sell the Ferrari and buy a van. They actively prepare.

The image of an expectant mother is also an image that is related to the Holy Season of Advent – in three ways. First, the Blessed Virgin Mary is heavy with child – she is carrying God’s own Son, Jesus. This is a historical fact that we celebrate every year. God sent His Son, “born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Mary and Joseph, and their families, prepared in the same way for the arrival of Jesus as we all do for our children today. Thank God Mary said yes to God or there would be no Jesus. What a difference a child can make. We celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas; the season of Advent is a time of preparation for His arrival.

Second, we prepare each year for a celebration that remembers that Jesus came, and we give thanks to God for the gift He has given us. The gift of salvation, the gift of receiving God’s grace and God’s love. All this is made possible by the birth of God’s Son at Christmas. And so, we celebrate by giving gifts to each other because this reminds us that God has given us a gift. We don’t only give gift to our family and friends at Christmas because Jesus Himself told us that when we celebrate, we should be careful to provide for the poor and the less fortunate. So, we share our joy with others, especially those in need, at Christmas.

Advent also remind us to prepare in a third way, in looking forward to the Second coming of the Lord. Jesus Himself tells us that He will come again. The next time He won’t come as a child but as a judge. Jesus also tells us how to prepare for this Second coming: He will ask us “did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, give a drink to the thirsty, care for the widow, the orphaned, search for the lost? And if we did, He will say to us come and stand on my right, you belong to me and with me. Advent reminds us to prepare, not in a passive way but in an active way, for the Second coming of the Lord. Our life is a time of active waiting and preparing.

One of the major images of the Christmas story is the “Star of Bethlehem.” For centuries people navigated by looking at the stars. The intrepid adventurous and the ordinary traveler looked to the sky in order to find their way. At Christmas a star figures prominently in the story of the birth of Jesus. The Maji follow their star and it leads them to the meaning of their journey – not a king, or an emperor, not the powerful or the rich, but a child, a poor child, a humble, little child. Yet, this child was their treasure. Shepherd’s also saw the star and found their way to a stable – and the comfort of knowing God had come to be with them.

I have always been struck by the engagement of families in the life of the schools here at St. Dominic and Victory. When I was a child, we didn’t have that back home in Ireland. Typically, except for infants, children found their way to school and back home in the afternoon. There were no pageants at Christmas and Easter, there were no grandparents’ days, and no open house. School was school and that was all. Today, for my nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews it is different.

I am privileged to witness something very special here at our schools. It’s amazing to see the joy that parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, families, have in participating in the life and events of their children and grandchildren. And to be honest, as I stand back and observe as a privileged witness, it’s even more wonderful to see the joy on the faces, and in the hearts, of our children when they see their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, families. You can see the children’s deep sense of gratitude, excitement, joy and love. Your children love you and they love to be with you, and they love when you are here with them. They look at you and you can see their absolute conviction that you are theirs and they are yours. They love to be with you. You are their life, their treasure.

You are their stars and for them you shine out and show them the way. They want to be you, they want to be like you, and they want to follow you. I wonder if you know that, I wonder if they know how important you are to them. Without the star no one would have found their way to Bethlehem. The star pointed the way and guided the kings and shepherds to the Baby Jesus. God has sent you into the world to shine for them. God sent you into the world to show them the way. You are the star that will lead them to Jesus, the child of Bethlehem.

Children need stars to follow, and you are the most important stars in their lives. Children follow where you go, you show the way. You show them how to live, how to love, how to be a good loving husband or wife, a loving mother or father, a loving son or daughter, a good person, a kind person, a courageous and compassionate person. Who you are they will become, where you lead, they will follow, what you do, they will copy? Children need stars to follow, and they need those stars to lead to a life worth living, values worth having, a character well formed in love. Most of all they need to follow you, their star, to the same Child, the same God, that the original star led kings and shepherds to find in Bethlehem. They need you to lead them to God – who is life – the only life worth having and the only life worth living.

God sent you into their lives to be a star. Shine for them!

I was walking along a street in Dublin city center on a cold, wintry, wet, dark evening a few years ago, and two old “down and outs” were a few paces in front of me. Neither of them was better for ware, but one old chap was definitely sick. He was hunched over, coughing, and struggling along with the help of his friend. As the rain fell gently down on them, they came to a slow halt and one old chap put his plastic bag of belongings down on the ground and slowly took off his overcoat. He then proceeded to put his coat over his ill companion who already had a coat. He tried to shrug him off, but the old boy insisted, and he put the coat on his friend. He then took up his bag, containing his worldly belongings, took his friend by the arm, and they slowly walked on. If that’s not nobility, I don’t know what is; and if God doesn’t see that well then, He is blind.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been big on the idea of kings, queens, monarchs, royalty, aristocracy, blue blood, or all that stuff. If history tells us anything about monarchs and royalty it is that one set of thugs violently replaced another set of thugs while inflicting war, destruction, brutality, atrocities, and even genocide on their own and other peoples. Ireland’s experience with royal guardianship was not a happy one no matter who the king or queen was, no matter what their religion, or if they were home grown or some foreign pretentious idiots. The idea that one person, because of an accident of birth, is considered to have more value than another, more privileged than another, more rights, more honored, more dignity and value than another, is pure dung. The notion of inherited privilege like this is created by bullies and supported by imbeciles.

Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of nobility of character, Shakespear spoke of a nobility of mercy (Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 1), and Thomas Jefferson spoke of a nobility of virtue and talent: “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.” The French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus said that: “Real nobility is based on scorn, courage and profound indifference.” Our own baptism ritual tells us that we are all sealed with the chrism of salvation that in God’s eyes makes us “priests, prophets, and kings.” So, I guess, in this sense we are all nobility. In God’s Kingdom we are all royalty, we are all privileged, we all have dignity, we all have honor and value. Of course, we don’t always see ourselves or others in this way, and we don’t always treat others as if they have value and dignity. Where does our nobility come from? God created us all, and God even now holds us in being, that is what gives us dignity, value, and worth. We are created by God, we are His children, that makes us brothers and sisters, equal, valuable, dignified.

When we look to understand nobility we look to Jesus, His life, His example, and His teaching. And what do we find? A man who cares for the sick, feeds the hungry, forgives sinners, spends time with tax collectors, washes the feet of His disciples, cures lepers, delivers the possessed from the grip of the demons, a man who challenges the powerful and raises up the humble, a man of compassion, charity, courage, strength, conviction. We see a man willing to die for others. What does it mean to be noble – look to Jesus. Jesus teaches us an aristocracy, a nobility, of love. In the Gospel today, Jesus tells us what the key to life is, on earth and in heaven.

In his proclamation of the 3^rd October 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be National Thanksgiving Day.

Grateful for all the good things God has given to our Nation, even in the midst of a great civil war which Lincoln believed was God’s punishment on America for allowing the institution of slavery, which was an afront to God, the President said: “that we are prone to forget the source from which they come…the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

All over the country, and indeed for Americans all over the world, Thanksgiving is a day of celebration and joy as we give thanks for the good things in our lives. Around dinner tables people will express their gratitude to and for each other, for people remembered and benefits received. We will be grateful for family, health, those we love and those who love us, we will be grateful for our wealth, our happiness, our home and our nation. Some will express thanks for the simple things in life: my dog or my cat, my chicken, my pig and goat, the lizard or the monkey. I can hear the hippies among us giving thanks for the smell of the fresh cut grass (double meanings here), or the sunrise, or the sound of the sea breaking on the shore. Some will give thanks for the turkey they are about to eat or the love we all share.

And I must ask: “When did Thanksgiving become about us?” When did we become the center of Thanksgiving and the focal point of what we are thankful for?

For Abraham Lincoln God was to be the focus of our thanks. Lincoln was smart enough to realize that we don’t create our own bounty. In fact, we don’t actually create anything. It is all a gift. Certainly, we are inventive, and we make things, but the reality is that we are only manipulating the things that are given to us from God. Even our minds, imaginations, knowledge, life, not to speak of the material riches of creation, are all given through the benevolence of a God who gives, shares, creates, and loves.

Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as a day to give thanks to God – not to give thanks in general. For President Lincoln God is to be the focus of the day and of our thanks and he understood that we have a lot to be thankful for. So why are we focused on ourselves? When we focus on ourselves, we lose sight: we lose sight of the other, we lose sight of the important things, and most of all we lose sight of the One who really matters and makes a difference, the One who provides it all, and the One without whom none of it would exist – we lose sight of God. And if we lose sight of God, we surely will fail to find our way because without God we have no horizon to move toward, we have no guiding star to show us the way, and we replace God with ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I know that I would make a lousy god.

God our Father, we give thanks for your ever-watchful providence. Thank you for being God and thank you for caring for me, for caring for mine, and for caring for all of us. Thank you also for our great Nation. Keep us always in your providential care.

When I was a child growing up in Dublin, I can recall that almost every year we had a visit from Jehovah Witness missionaries. These were usually young men who were carrying out their missionary commitment which is part of their obligation as a Jehovah Witness. I guess they take the “witness” part of their belonging very seriously. It was also not unusual, when I was a child, to have the Jehovah Witnesses predict the imminent end of the world. The predictions were usually published in their newsletter “The Watchtower” and the years that the Biblical Armageddon was to happen included: 1878, 1881, 1918, 1925, 1975 and a number of years around the AD 2000 Millennium. I guess predicting the end is not a precise science.

Of course, we don’t have to look to the Jehovah Witnesses for a preoccupation with the end times. There was a great deal of concern about the imminent end of the world, or civilization as we know it, around the year 2000 AD and the millennium. Much of the concern was around the inability of computers to compute the date 2000 resulting in the crash of the economic and banking infrastructure which had become dependent on computers. Also included in the imminent crash was such as flight, the power grid, land ownership information, security information, government files and so forth. At the parish where I lived at the time a group of Catholic people moved into the neighboring rural areas, bought a farm, and dug a “shelter.” This shelter was filled with durable food stocks, beds, living areas, generators, fresh air supply equipment and the necessities of life. This was to be a safe shelter that would provide temporary life support in case civilization collapsed. I’m pretty sure that a number of people entered this shelter on the eve of the millennium and came out a few days later only to find that the world was as it was before.

Further back around 1000 AD there were also concern for the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ. Many Christians expected the end of the world, and some Catholic preachers predicted the end was coming. The same was true of many protestant reformers from the sixteenth century and beyond. The truth is that almost every age and every religion have a similar fixation with the “end times.”

The Gospel today hints at the same concern about the end times while in other places people ask directly when the end will come and what will be the signs that indicate its arrival. Jesus speaks about being ready no matter when the time comes because we never know when that will be. Jesus Himself predicts the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the persecution of His followers. They will be thrown out of the synagogues, brought up on charges, will have to face false witness, be stoned, and killed. Nevertheless, Jesus tells His disciples that even though all these things will happen, they are not to lose focus. Instead of wondering if this is the end, or the beginning of the end, His followers are to remain steadfast in living the life He has called them to live. The disciples of Jesus are not to waste their time in speculation but in carrying out His mission to bring salvation, not destruction, to the world. Their time should not be wasted on what might happen, but it is to be spent in making good, holy, things happen. And what is it they are to make happen? The building of the Kingdom of God. Anything else, falls short of our calling, our mission, and is a waste of valuable time and resources. This is the good oil that fills the lamp so that when the Lord comes, we are ready to meet Him.

Let’s face it, we all are living in the last times. I’m sixty years old and have been a priest for thirty years. That means I have about ten good years of life left, possibly longer, but more likely, shorter. I’m living in the last times as far as my life is concerned. Soon, I will face God. Soon, I will have to give an account of my mission. I have no time to spare. For me, as Saint, Pope John Paul II said: “The future starts today not tomorrow.” I wonder if I have enough oil gathered.

Building the Kingdom is about love, loving God, and loving our neighbor. That love will be the only thing, the oil, we carry into God’s presence and that love will exist for all eternity. Love is the only treasure that will matter to God, and love will be the only treasure we will take with us to God. Focus on building the Kingdom the rest is just something that is left behind to turn into dust.