May marked the 130th anniversary of the birth of Stanisława Leszczyńska, a Servant of God and midwife at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The unveiling of a monument in her honour was preceded by a solemn Mass at the Visitationist Church in Warsaw.

Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, the Archbishop of Kraków, presided over the liturgy, joined by the Archbishop of Warsaw, Adrian Galbas. Among the large congregation was Ewa Machaj-Antosiewicz, one of the children delivered by Stanisława in the concentration camp.

Cardinal Ryś noted that “after the war, she did not want to speak about the camp because she did not want to incite hatred toward the Germans. And when she did speak of those she encountered there, she saw them more as victims of a system than as executioners.” The cardinal emphasized that Leszczyńska was fully aware that she was saving lives that could be taken—murdered or gassed—the very next day.

ARREST

When the Germans invaded Poland, the Leszczyński family began covert work to help Jewish families in their neighbourhood. Moreover, the men were members of the National Armed Forces (NSZ). Following a denunciation, the entire family was arrested in February 1943. Stanisława and her daughter were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau after enduring brutal interrogations and torture. She was remarkably fortunate to have secured—and, more importantly, smuggled into the camp—credentials as a midwife.

“Her apartment served as a transit point for smuggling goods from the Łódź Ghetto to the ‘Aryan side.’ One of her accounts also mentions a girl from the ghetto who found temporary refuge in the Leszczyński home,” noted historian Fr. Prof. Gliński.

According to historian Dr. Robert Derewenda “the Germans were fully aware that Poles were helping Jews. That is why they announced the harshest penalties against any Pole who had contact with Jews, refused to hand them over, or otherwise tried to help them. Under German occupation, Poles faced the death penalty for such actions, and yet some still helped Jews.”

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

Until 1943, every child born in the German concentration camp was killed immediately, often by drowning in a barrel. From 1943 onward, only Jewish infants were murdered; the others were subjected to medical experiments or, if they had so-called Nordic features such as blond hair and blue eyes, were taken from their mothers and sent to German families.

Upon arrival, Stanisława and her daughter were assigned to the most gruelling labour. Each day, they were marched beyond the camp gates to dig ditches and haul clay. Under the strain of this backbreaking slave labour, their strength waned with each passing day. All around them lay the bodies of women who had already succumbed to sheer exhaustion.

Yet, after only a few days, the miracle they had prayed for happened. In the maternity block, the camp authorities began a desperate search for anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of medicine. For Stanisława, this was a singular opportunity—not only for the survival of herself and her daughter, but also to return to the profession she loved.

In the beginning I was alone in my work. In difficult situations, when a specialist doctor was necessary, I had to handle it myself. German camp doctors, Rhode, Koenig, and Mengele could not “lower” themselves to treat non-Germans, so I had no right to ask for their assistance. Later, I was helped several times by a doctor working at another barrack and totally devoted to her patients, Janina Wegierska. (The Report of a Midwife from Auschwitz)

A MATERNITY WARD IN HELL

The camp block was a place of relentless infection, stench, and vermin. It swarmed with rats as large as cats, which gnawed at the ears, noses, fingers, and heels of the gravely ill women, too emaciated to move. Whenever possible, Stanisława drove them off, taking turns with the woman on night watch. Even the convalescent women helped, dividing their few hours of sleep to keep the rodents at bay. The vermin were drawn by the scent of the women, who had no way to wash or change their clothes.

The midwife had to secure the water needed to wash both mother and newborn herself. Fetching a single bucket took twenty minutes. She delivered babies on the brick chimney flue that ran the length of the barracks; since it was heated only a few times a year, icicles hung from the ceiling in winter. Instead of sterile sheets, she had only a filthy blanket teeming with lice.

DEFIANT MIDWIFE

The orders were clear: every newborn infant was to be drowned in a barrel immediately after birth. Fluent in German, Stanisława made it clear to Dr. Mengele that she “would not kill any child.” At first, the German could not believe that anyone would dare oppose him; after all, everyone around him trembled at the mere sight of him. “What?” he asked, raising his voice. “You are to kill all newborn children immediately. Do you understand?” She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “No, never,” she replied. “Children must not be killed!”

A MIRACLE OF LIFE

Before every birth, Stanisława prayed for the health of the children and their mothers, and after they were born, she baptized them, commending them to God’s care. When—using modern language—complications arose, she did not turn to the Virgin Mary with a plea, but with an alarm that sounded like a command: “Come, even in one slipper!” And indeed, help always arrived!

On one occasion, the camp physician, Dr. Josef Mengele, demanded to see the data on perinatal mortality. When Stanisława presented him with the figures, he refused to believe them. “He remarked that even the most impeccably run German university clinics could not boast such success,” she later recalled. “In his eyes, I read only anger and hatred.”

Of the three thousand deliveries she attended, not a single mother and not a single child died in childbirth. About five-hundred of the babies were sent away to be Germanized. Only about thirty infants survived in the care of their mothers after liberation. She delivered the final infant on the very day the Germans fled before the Soviet advance.

Such a record was unmatched by the physicians of the Third Reich, and it remains unsurpassed by modern maternity wards today. Even more surprising, many of the women she looked after said they felt little or no pain during childbirth, even though almost all of them gave birth without any medication.

A WITNESS TO FAITH

After the war, she continued to work as a midwife in Łódź, a city associated with the great Polish saints St. Faustina Kowalska and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

She died of cancer in 1974. In the final stage of her illness, she consistently refused to take painkillers. Thousands attended her funeral.

When Pope St. John Paul II visited Łódź in 1987, he said that Stanisława Leszczyńska is an example of Christian heroism. She is also an example of an extraordinary way of life, one marked by trust in God, hope, and serenity. She saw goodness where many would not have had the courage to look for it.

In the early 1990s, the Catholic Church formally opened Stanisława’s sainthood cause, giving her the title “Servant of God.”

Let these reflections end with the following prayer:

O God, Creator of all life, who in Your omnipotent goodness blesses human families with the gift of new life, grant that Your Servant Stanisława, whose profound love for mothers and children led her to protect many from death, may find many women to join her cause and, in God’s grace, be swiftly raised to the Altars. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Photo by Frederick Wallace on Unsplash

As a child I was fascinated by the television show Bewitched. I dreamed of having Samantha’s ability to twitch her nose and make a messy room neat as a pin, a broken lamp unbroken, or dress and be ready for a fancy party straight from her housework clothes. The word fascinate itself means to bewitch, enchant, or put under a spell, which seems very appropriate for the other-worldly attraction the instant fix has on humans.

Today, makeover shows and reels of every kind give us the satisfaction of extreme change and restoration in a half-hour or less. The dopamine hits that were once reserved for such long worked-for events as bringing in the year’s harvest or completing a piece of fine craftwork are now readily available to all scrollers with a few minutes to spare.

These forms of entertainment train our brains to constantly look for and expect the next delight, rather than to be present to the simple pleasures of the moment. Small progress is rarely noticed and sometimes even derided.

Poco y Poco

In direct opposition to our culture’s adoration of the instant fix and rapid makeover is Our Lord’s way of a little at a time. Training us in many virtues, including patience and humility, and taking baby steps and being satisfied with them is another way Jesus and His Church run countercultural. Eschewing the world’s ways and choosing instead to start small allows God room to move in our hearts and in our lives.

As opposed to the quick makeover or the weekend warrior project, scripture offers us the often-used saying, do not despise the day of small beginnings, which has its roots in the biblical passage Zechariah 4:6-10:

Then he said to me: “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you become a plain. He will bring forth the first stone amid shouts of ‘Favor, favor be upon it!’”…For whoever has scorned such a day of small things will rejoice to see the capstone in the hand of Zerubbabel.

This story demonstrates that we testify to our trust in the Lord when we pray, trust, and take the next, often humble, step God shows us.

Famed Spanish artist and architect Antoni Gaudi began construction of La Sacrada Familia in 1882. When asked about the painfully slow building process, Gaudi famously replied, “my client is not in a hurry.” One hundred years after his death, the glory of a work offered to God is complete. As cathedrals go, 144 years was fairly quick, given that some have taken 500 or more years to complete. Whole generations of artisans came and went knowing their work for the glory of God would continue long after they were gone. They themselves did not live to see the coveted “finished product” but that did not deter them from making their contribution.  

When we do not despise the day of small beginnings but instead choose to begin something God has placed on our hearts, we show that we trust Him with all things, including our time.

Trust Sometimes Seems Impractical

Not being comfortable with either of the two major political parties’ ballot offerings in the most recent presidential election, I looked into a third option.  The worldly-wise voice in my head gave me the same old practical warning that voting for a third party would be wasting my vote or worse, be equal to voting for the party I disagreed with more. But God gently whispered, do not despise the day of small beginnings. He was essentially whispering, trust me and vote your conscience. My conscience found that every single item of Catholic Social Teaching is included in that third party’s platform, and nothing is included that runs contrary to it.

I made the prudential judgement to trust God and not despise the day of small beginnings. As expected, the candidates I voted for only received about 42,000 votes nationwide. A small beginning indeed, but our votes were offered as a voice affirming another option besides an angry stand-off between two very different and deeply flawed ways of governing. Even more, our votes affirmed the hope of small beginnings.

God’s Pace is Not Our Pace

Bewitched, makeover shows, and even political promises can instill unrealistic dreams of how change happens and work gets done. More than that, these and other cultural influences teach us to despise slow change and alter our pace of life. When an advertisement at the gas pump on June 6^th tells you that the holiday season is right around the corner, something important is off.

The world attempts to program us to rush, hurry, and leave the present moment rather than be present and trust that God will arrange all as we take care of the duty of the moment and attend to the people that He has placed before us to love. We are trained to work like machines and program our lives to such an extent that there is no apparent need to slow down, be present, and listen for God’s guidance. It’s full steam ahead at all times.

However, when we choose to be present and live at a human pace, we are increasingly able to hear God’s whispers and respond to them. When we do this, we discover that God rightly orders our time, along with everything else with think we need to take care of on our own. When we share Jesus’ yoke and follow His pace, things go much better, even if they go more slowly.

Nowhere in the gospels is there a description of Jesus rushing about. The only quick makeovers He performed were His miracles which came directly out of His life of deep prayer union with the Father. Jesus’ life is a model for us in how we were created to live and thrive. Let us trust God enough to live life one moment, one step at a time, inviting, not despising, the days of small beginnings.

Patient Trust

A Prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

The Holy Spirit is rightly called the Sweet Guest of our souls because He is the loving God of power and consolation dwelling within us. Yet He is also called the Great Unknown because we do not know Him as much as we should. He is the powerful guest with us and within us always, yet we often fail to remember Him.

Because we do not know the Holy Spirit, our lives cannot be pleasing to God. St. Paul writes to Timothy, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7). When we are ignorant of the Spirit within us, we lack the courage and strength to be faithful in the face of difficulties and challenges in our world. We cannot make good decisions and maintain our focus on God and His will for us in times of great emotional turmoil. We are easily overcome by our fears because our love is weak.  

Therefore, the first thing we must do is not simply multiply our spiritual practices: receive more sacraments, accumulate more prayers, or read the bible more. Our first task is to deepen our relationship, to know the Spirit well so that we can respond to His movements in our spiritual practices and daily choices. He is the one who makes us good, inspires us to do good out of love for God, and makes our efforts supernaturally effective. He will direct and guide us in our religious and spiritual practices so that we experience His powerful life and love through them.

Our lives are pleasing to God and beneficial to others only when we know the Spirit as we should and do all things under His gentle impulse. Here are six truths to know about the Holy Spirit at all times if we are to glorify God with our lives.

1. Spirit of Sanctity

By the abiding presence and power of the Spirit, we belong to God as His beloved children, and we participate in His holiness. Our identity as God’s beloved children does not depend on our performance, experiences, or conditions in this life.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies us and moves us to live truly holy lives. We have this hope of holiness through the Spirit.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure as He is pure. (1 Jn. 3:2-3)

By the power of the Spirit, we too can be truly holy in this impure world. We can please God in our thoughts, words, and deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can no longer excuse ourselves from striving for personal sanctity because of the sinfulness of our world or the temptations to conform to the world.

2. Spirit of Love

In the words of St. Paul, God has generously poured His love into our hearts: “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). We can enter into and participate in that very love between the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

By the presence of the Spirit, we are always and unconditionally loved by God. Are we living as God’s beloved sons and daughters? Are we still living in fear while possessing that “perfect love that casts away fears” (1 Jn. 4:18)? Are we confident in the love that God has for us, no matter our experiences in life?

Do we also realize that, by possessing the Spirit of love, we can also be truly loving people who love God and others as Jesus did? We, too, can and should love, pray, serve, obey, forgive, and endure like Jesus because we have His Spirit of love within us.

3. Spirit of Truth

Jesus assures us that the Spirit will “guide us to all truth” (Jn. 16:13). He will teach us truth about God, ourselves, and others, and how we are to live out our relationship with Him. The very first words that the disciples spoke after receiving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost were the truth about God and His deeds in Jesus; “We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God” (Acts 2:11).

What is our attitude towards truth today? Have we fallen for the rampant relativism of our times, in which truth is a social construct or based on our feelings and moods? Are we people who listen to the voice of the Spirit of truth, believe this truth, speak this truth with boldness, and act on it faithfully? Do we buy into the lie that truth is the opinion of the majority?

The many examples of spiritual slavery in our time show that we do not have the truth of the Spirit in our lives. Jesus assures us that the truth from the Spirit alone makes us free, teaching that “If you continue in word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32).

4. Spirit of Jesus

St. Paul said to the Corinthians, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). The Holy Spirit enlightens and convicts us of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and moves us to submit to Jesus as the sovereign Lord of our lives.

If Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we will do and endure all things for Him, to please Him and to give Him glory. We will deny ourselves even legitimate pleasures and privileges to show our complete submission to Him. We will depend on Him and live for Him. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered by sins, created things, or human love and respect. We will use all that we have to do His will and do so for His glory.

5. Spirit of Peace and Unity

The first gift that the risen Christ offered to His disciples was peace; “Peace be with you.” Then He offered them the Holy Spirit who makes this peace possible by reconciling us with God and with one another: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn. 20:19-23).

Through the Holy Spirit, we receive divine forgiveness for our sins and the grace to labor for unity with others. Through the Holy Spirit, we can begin to participate in that unity between the Father and the Son.

How are we enjoying and sharing with others that inner peace that Christ has won for us? How are we allowing the troubles of life to diminish our inner peace? How are we futilely searching for peace in this world, though Jesus has told us that “in this world we will have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33)? How are we agents of deeper peace and unity in our families, Church, and world? 

6. Spirit of Generosity

St. Paul reminds us that “there are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.” We have specific gifts from the Holy Spirit for the good of the body of Christ: “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (2 Cor. 12:4-7).

So, are we in touch with the specific gifts that the Spirit has given to us for the building up of the body of Christ? What are the excuses we make for not making good use of these gifts? How are we trying to deny our gifts because we are afraid of the responsibilities and duties involved?

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit in us from the moment of our baptism. His presence within us was intensified with the sacrament of Confirmation. He is again poured into our hearts through the Eucharist and sacramental confession. He is present in us so that we live truly godly lives in godless times.

If we still do not know Him, there is no way that we can resist the pull of the world towards the godlessness of our times. We will give in to the sinful indulgences of our times in their many forms. We will give in to pornography, greed, homosexual unions, corruption, divorce and remarriage, abortion, contraceptive mentality, etc.

We cannot possess the Spirit and still live worldly lives under the dominion of our fleshly desires. St. Paul tells us why this is so, because “The flesh in its tendencies is at enmity with God; it is not subject to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot be; those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” We are called and gifted to live in the Spirit because “we are not in the flesh; but we are in the spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom. 8:5).

Indeed, the Spirit of God, the Great Unknown, dwells in us all the time, pouring His love, power, and self-control into our hearts.

As we encounter this Spirit again in each Eucharist, let us strive to know Him better so that our lives are truly pleasing to God, even in ungodly times.  

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Image from The Met

Jacques Maritain and his dear friend Raïssa Oumansoff were students at the Sorbonne. Their searching intellects, however, were frustrated by the fact that they could find no truth that would satisfy their restless minds. At that time Jacques was without any religious belief, and Raïssa was a self-declared atheist.

In her 1942 memoir We Have Been Friends Together, Raïssa spoke for herself and Jacques when she stated: “I wanted to know whether existence is an accident, a blessing, or a misfortune; I scorn that resignation and renunciation of the intelligence of which we have so many examples around us.” They could not continue to live in a world that had no meaning.

In near despair, they planned to commit suicide if they could not find any meaning to life over the course of the following year. “It was then,” writes Raïssa, “that God’s pity caused us to find Henri Bergson.”

Bergson’s brilliant lectures answered the couple’s intellectual needs. Other friends entered their lives which led them to become Catholic. Jacques became the leading Thomistic philosopher of the 20^th century and a prodigious writer, while his supporting wife, Raïssa, authored several works of her own, including Adventures in Grace and Saint Thomas Aquinas: For Children and the Childlike.

Their story serves as an inspiration for anyone who is diligently searching for life’s meaning. God’s grace is ever available.

Extraordinary as the Maritain’s story is, it is not exceptional. We turn to another story that parallels that of the Maritains—an encore, so to speak, of divine grace. It is the remarkable story of Michael Pakaluk and Ruth Van Kooy.

Ruth arrived at Harvard as a brilliant student and a pro-choice atheist. Michael had been an atheist, himself. The two met as sophomores in the late 1970s. They shared a deep determination, like the Maritains before them, to find meaning in life. Harvard, like the Sorbonne, offered them little help.

Their intellectual gifts were combined with a certain honesty that allowed their mutual discussions to lead them in the right direction. They seemed to have been made for each other. They were married at the end of their sophomore year. Eventually they found their way into the Catholic Church. But they were anything but Sunday Catholics.

Michael became a university professor and a prolific writer in defense of life and common sense. Ruth became President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. She was such an effective defender of life that abortion rights activists often refused to go up against her. The well published philosopher, Peter Kreeft has bestowed high praise on Ruth: “I have read and debated much about abortion, but I have never seen a clearer and stronger pro-life argument than Ruth’s.”

Michael’s book, The Shock of Holiness (Ignatius Press, 2025) is subtitled, “Finding the Romance of Everyday Life.” Here we find how well we can fit into the life that God has created for us. It is a never-ceasing experience of the unexpected gifts that He brings to us on a daily basis. Unlike many philosophers in the modern world, Pakaluk acknowledges both the existence and presence of a loving God. His message is clear: Christian sanctity is far nearer and far more beautiful than we think.

Over time Michael and Ruth found spiritual guidance with Opus Dei. Their marriage was blessed with seven children. Her demanding family life, however, did not prevent her from being active in her community. As her husband recalled, “She was like ‘Mother of the Neighborhood’.”

Sadly, she lost one of her children. His name was Thomas Matthew. He died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 1989 at six weeks of age. His passing produced a mother’s grief that could be assuaged only by Ruth accepting the evangelical conviction, “blessed are those who mourn.”

Death struck again. This time it was Ruth who contracted breast cancer. She passed away seven years later at age 41. Her life was deeply spiritual and an inspiration for everyone who knew her.

Her cause for canonization is currently moving forward. Her life as a devoted and selfless Christian is documented in her book, The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God.

The extraordinary life of Michael Pakaluk continued. In 1999, he married Catherine Hardy, also a graduate from Harvard. Their marriage has produced eight children. Michael Pakaluk has become the father of fourteen (six from Ruth and eight from Catherine). He and his second bride are both teaching philosophy at Catholic University.

Catherine has gained considerable attention with her book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. It is a study of the motivation expressed by American women who are open to having large families. The phrase, “Hannah’s Children” refers to the Book of Samuel. Hannah had been barren, but God answered her prayer with Samuel, and then with three more sons and two daughters. Dr. Catherine’s narrative reveals women in America who see children as their greatest purpose and blessing.

This divine encore, no doubt, is repeating itself, though in most instances, unrecorded, in many places throughout the world. God’s grace and how He answers prayers is the common and reassuring denominator. “Ask and you will receive.” Life is a gift. Children are a blessing. Marriage is a sacrament. These are the simple truths that American society must re-learn. The Maritains and the Pakaluks, each in their own distinctive fashions, are showing the way.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

What don’t you like about yourself? Even after going to Confession, do you still sometimes feel ashamed of your sins? And is this making you wonder if Father God is keeping you in misery because you don’t deserve better treatment?

Father God is full of compassion for you. Compassion is not something that we have to wait for. Compassion is not something we need to be good enough for. Jesus gave us a parable that describes what the Father’s compassion looks like. The story of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15:11-32) illustrates that compassion fills the Father’s heart even while we are still far off track in the Christian life.

So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. (Lk. 15:20 NAB)

The parable of the Prodigal Son assures us that the Father cherishes us no matter what we’ve done. He waits, full of fatherly yearning, for us to turn away from our sins and turn toward Him. That’s all we need to do; just turn around. And the moment we do that, He runs to us! He wastes no time but immediately embraces us, welcomes us, and kisses us with His superabundant love.

The prodigal son had not yet asked his dad for forgiveness when he felt forgiveness wrap around him like a warm blanket. His confession came afterward. This is how the Father treats us. When we sin, He waits for our repentance with eager anticipation. He feels the pain of our absence. His fatherly heart yearns for the moment when we’ll realize that we’re better off with Him than in the pigsty of our sins.

Why does He treat us this way when He knows we will so easily fall back into sin? He sees our future. And yet He does not hold our future sins against us. He embraces us in the here and now. That’s compassion!

This is what it means to be an adopted child of God through the Sacrament of Baptism. When the Father looks at us who are His adopted sons and daughters, He doesn’t focus on what we’ve done wrong. While we are still in the state of sin, His focus is on the horizon line while He awaits our turnaround. He focuses on the steps we make in the right direction. He is driven by compassion to run and meet us, wherever we are, and to embrace us in a divine welcome-back hug that braces us up in our weaknesses.

Because of this, we can stop feeling ashamed of ourselves. We can give God’s compassion to ourselves. At the same time that we’re feeling convicted to repent, rather than beat ourselves up over what we did wrong (which is Satan the Accuser attacking us), the Father wants us to be compassionate to ourselves just like He’s being compassionate. This does not mean that we make excuses for our sins. No, it means that, just like Father God is focused on our turn-around and celebrates our repentance, so should we. Instead of unceasingly wallowing in regret, we can learn from our mistakes, and we can grow stronger in our commitment to live as the saints that God gifted us to be when we were baptized.

When my imagination illustrates the story of the Prodigal Son, I see the son limping toward home. He’s walked a long distance on an empty stomach. He’s weak and barely able to trudge through the last few miles of the journey home. His father runs to him and cries tears of joy and relief while hugging his son. Then he provides his own strength to support his son for the rest of the way.

Abba-Father is bracing you up, too, in your weaknesses—even before you conquer that persistent sin that makes you feel so unworthy. In His tremendous compassion He is giving you powerful support.

Such compassion is unimaginable for those of us who were abused or neglected or rejected by parents. And even in homes where the parents were full of compassion, to the child, discipline felt more like animosity than compassion. A good parent gives children a welcome-back hug after they’ve learned their lesson or showed a desire to improve. But if we grew up in a home where we did not feel our parents’ compassion during punishments, we’re probably projecting their character flaw onto God’s Fatherhood.

Therefore, when our prayers go unanswered or we suffer a problem that makes life difficult, we automatically assume that God is lacking compassion. Maybe we think we’re being punished.

It’s true that God disciplines us, but this always comes from a heart that yearns for us to become our best selves, which is also our happiest selves. The Father’s heart breaks when we sin. He knows that sin is destroying us in ways we cannot yet see. And He longs for us to spend eternity at Home with Him. He is all-goodness, and so He has to chastise us.

He does not chastise us by refusing to answer our prayers. That would require Him to stop being good, which is impossible. The word “chastise” comes from the Latin word castigare, which means “to set or keep right” or “to make pure.” The chastisements of Father God are designed to get our attention and make us turn to the Son who took our sins and nailed them to His Cross. By the blood He shed for us on Good Friday, we are purified from every sin that we genuinely want to overcome.

The word “compassion” means “to suffer with.” The Latin word com means “with, together.” The Latin root of “passion” is pati, which means “to suffer.” Therefore, it’s good to realize that in every chastisement, the Father suffers with us.

He is not the parent who sends an erring child to the corner; He takes us to the corner and sits with us there. He is not the parent who teaches a lesson by making the child suffer; He is the Father who takes us to the Son who chose to suffer for us.

When we accept this tremendous act of love, Jesus and the Father give us the Holy Spirit who teaches us lessons in a most victorious way. Thus, all things—including our sins—are made to work together for our good because our Father delights in turning something evil into something holy.

We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

John, the son of Zebedee, was a simple man who fished the waters of the Sea of Galilee in the first century A.D. He joined Jesus after hearing John the Baptist proclaim that Jesus was the Lamb of God. He witnessed many of Jesus’ miracles, including the astonishing miracle of the healing of the Gerasene Demoniac. Witnessing Jesus heal this man through love and empathy revealed to John three truths: God is love; perfect love casts out fear; and love means that death is no longer something to fear.

Years after witnessing the miracle, John, an old man and the only surviving disciple of the original twelve, penned the Gospel that bears his name and wrote three letters to his followers. In the Gospel and Letters, we find the ultimate expression of God’s love for Christians and their love for God.

Specifically, John presents Jesus as the Logos, the Creative Word who loves all Creation. According to John, Christ is in all people, He is eternally present, and the world could not hold all the books that could be written to describe His wonderful works. In other words, the world could not hold the book of life that exists for every person. Each person hears the voice, each person reads the word, and in each person, there are miracles akin to the turning of water into wine, the raising of Lazarus, and the healing of the Gerasene Demoniac. Each person’s life is a unique miracle, and contains the basis of truth within it. In one’s own experiences, they can come to find the Word within himself. That same Word is alive and has become flesh in each person, even if most do not recognize it.

Agape: God’s Descending Love

Throughout his Gospel and Letters, John uses the Greek word agape (rather than the word eros) for love. According to Pope Benedict, agape is “descending love” because it is the love of God directed toward humans. To receive this love, humans must practice obedience to abide by God’s will. “We can thus understand how agape also became a term for the Eucharist,” Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “there God’s own agape comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us.” He continues:

…the love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Then self-abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy.

Thus Pope Benedict XVI describes how our proper use of free will in the context of grace is itself our loving response to God.

Similarly, in his first letter, St. John declares that the person who keeps God’s ways has the love (agape) of God. This love is active, not just through words, but through doing things for others, hence for God. John wrote further that love comes from God, it is how we know God, for God is love. When we love other humans and creatures, we are exercising the love that God has granted us, and in return we are loving Him. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God’s love lives in him.

Love Overcomes Death

In John’s words, what is more important for us who naturally fear death is his proclamation that “perfect love casts out fear.” There is no fear in love. Fear is about punishment—the Greek word is torment—and the person who loves does not fear torment.

John is referring to the ultimate punishment, death, which all humans fear. Though death once was a punishment of Adam and Eve, with Christ, this punishment has been overthrown. Death is how we are reunited with God, Who is Love. There is no fear in God, and so there ought to be no fear in death, since it is the means through which we are united with Love. Thus John concludes that one who fears has not yet been perfected in love.

But is it truly possible to be perfected in love before death?

To Be Still and Know God

To be still and to know God is to accept His love. To love God is to abide in God. When God loves me, He abides in me. Now, in this present moment, I can accept God’s will, know His presence, and feel a moment without fear. John writes that “no man has ever seen God,” so the “proof” we have of Him is love. To love one another is to experience and to abide in God—to accept His transcendent will and His presence. Therefore, being still allows the presence of God to overwhelm fear.

Contrarily, exercising one’s own will cultivates fear.

John’s authority for his teaching was granted through Christ and his experiences watching Him love others. John saw how Jesus healed Legion, the demoniac. He was present when Jesus drove the legion of fear from the man and left him with a legion of love. John saw the power of Jesus’ teaching. He learned that there is no fear in death because death is the reunification with Love itself.

Such experiences informed John that Jesus was and is the Logos, an idea long wrestled with by Greek philosophers who unfortunately never saw it fully realized in the person of Christ. But John did. He witnessed the Logos in person. He saw Truth in the flesh healing, loving all creation, teaching, suffering, and dying.

As Pope John Paul II taught, Jesus’ willingness to suffer for the sake of love teaches us that our suffering, too, is for the sake of love—and therefore it is not to be feared.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love.” Benedict refers to God’s love, agape, as oblative love: It is a love that gives, that offers, that serves, that sacrifices. Oblative love is love that does not expect anything in return: praise, gifts, fame, physical comfort. This is the love the Church teaches. Such love is often invisible, done in secret, anonymous.

Moving Toward a Society of Love

The Greeks, such as Plato, who conceived of the Logos, also conceived of the possibility of a perfect society. Plato wrote of such a society in The Republic, arguing that only philosophers can know Truth, and that a society built on such Truth would be a perfect society. Plato’s society was based on the ideal of justice. He knew there had never been a society that was governed by justice or by truth. The Greeks’ attempts to do so failed.

But then Jesus Christ came among us. He taught us to love. If the Church has any great surpassing goal among all others, it is to bring all people to come to know God’s love. When everyone knows God’s love, when they practice love on earth, only then will humans approach the ideal that Plato suggested in The Republic and, better still, the society of love that Jesus preached throughout the Gospels.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Dads, grandfathers, mentors, clergy—so many men in our communities are uplifting friends and loved ones, many going unseen. This Father’s Day, Catholic Exchange brings you true stories of fathers transforming lives.

Neighborhood Favorite

-Lynne Parker Davis from Atlanta, GA

My dad, Jack Gordon Parker, made friends easily and for life.

He was born in the late “roaring” 1920s. His father died in 1932 of the Spanish flu as the economy crashed. Dad always remembered the hungry times too well. There was never a creamed meat dish or seltzer served in our home.

He joined the Army during the conflict in Korea, returning with hundreds of pictures of his buddies and the children they sponsored in Japan and Korea.

He married into an Italian immigrant family at a time when Italians were reviled. Although my mother’s brothers teasingly called him “The Americano,” he was well-loved by the family. Parts of his own family expressed their disapproval, but he was never bitter.

His was a steady faith. In high school, religious education class was offered a 20-minute drive away, and Dad drove us there each week through our senior year. Now that I think back on it, there wasn’t enough time for him to go home and return. I guess he relaxed or slept in the car waiting for us.

He had tremendous faith in himself but no ego. He had the confidence to tackle difficult projects like building a house, putting up with our prickly, mentally suffering mother, and yet found time to help whoever asked.

He and Mom decided the only way they could afford a home was to build one. Mom worked the 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. shift, so every day after his work, Dad walked home, fed us, borrowed my uncle’s car, and dragged us out to the country while he constructed the amazing California contemporary home Mom wanted. Over the stretch of seven years, he put in every nail, cut every board, ran every inch of wiring and plumbing.

On Sundays, he rested.

As Mom slowly slid into dementia, he quietly took over the cooking, cleaning, and bill-paying. He took care of Mom for eight years at home and then eight years at a long-term care wing of a hospital.

He was honored with the hospital’s Volunteer of the Year award for his devotion and kindness. He brought laughter to all those around while giving Mom the special attention she needed. And he often won Best Costume in the Halloween hospital contest—just to make people smile.

When he came to live with me full-time, he moped without his bevy of friends. At 90, he took up walking to a nearby four-way-stop corner, parking himself on his rollator, and spending a couple hours waving to the people who drove by. He’d shout, “Have a nice day” and “Have fun today” to the cars, and “Study hard” to the waving kids on the bus.

People loved seeing him, especially while we were isolated because of COVID-19. His joy bubbled over. He gained such a following that, on the neighborhood app Nextdoor, I had to announce when he was visiting one of my brothers and when he was returning, so that they wouldn’t worry.

One of my messages had 2,999 hearts/responses welcoming him back.

He was like that, thinking of others and finding a way to create joy with love throughout his life. I am honored to be his daughter and live challenged by his goodness.

From Addiction to Abundance of Life

-Jacob Plante from Miami, FL

My father, John Plante, was born and raised in Derby, Vermont, to a Franco-American family of six. To someone who has never met my dad, I would describe him as “full of life.”

At 65, when many people would merely seek to lie down and rest, he makes every effort to exercise, learn new skills, teach others, and grow in any way he can. He’s also an outstanding father, who is present with love and care to everyone he meets. Some of my friends enjoy spending time with him even more than their own fathers, because they see in him what a father should be.

My childhood memories are filled with moments where my father simply delighted in me as his son, taking every opportunity to smile and laugh with me. As I grew in my faith, I realized that God the Father is the same way, delighting in us as His children.

My father’s faith has impacted me because he understands the transformative power of suffering. Before I was born, he struggled with alcoholism, which led him and my mother to an addiction ministry called Nueva Vida. It changed his life, not only helping him overcome his addiction, but also allowing him to minister to others in similar situations.

To this day, he emphasizes the value of the Serenity Prayer, which he learned during his recovery. He especially highlights the line asking God for the grace to accept “hardship as a pathway to peace,” and like Jesus, taking the world “as it is, not as I would have it.”

My dad sees this as taking up your cross exemplified, and this piece of wisdom has taught me: if I can accept the struggles of life and offer them for God’s greater glory, then no suffering is in vain.

I don’t know where I would be without my father’s love and guidance all these years, forming me in my faith, my relationships, and my life.

Better Than a Millionaire

-Belkis Mejia Perdomo from Miami Beach, FL

My father, Edgardo Mejia, figures out a way to resolve anything and everything. He bends over backwards for everyone. No task is too big.

You need a lift to your house? He’ll take you there.

Your tire has a hole? He’ll patch it up.

You need a friend? He’ll listen to you without judgement.

He’s been spending time with a man who has special needs. “He needs a paternal figure in his life.”

He doesn’t openly share with others what he does, usually uttering the words, “I have a church event.” What people don’t know is he’s been planning that church event for weeks, figuring out how to run it in three days on little sleep and never showing an inkling of frustration.

My dad is from a little town in Honduras called Buenos Aires. He immigrated to the U.S. when he was 20 and, similarly to his father, he’s a contractor who loves his job. He’s always helping the nuns whenever they need help fixing something, always trying to be a better neighbor to those around him. 

He honors his parents. In his young boy heart, he still looks forward to spending time with his 92-year-old dad. For years, he’s had the same Sunday routine: wake up, pick up his dad, go to 7:00 a.m. Mass, grab breakfast, and laugh over a new story before dropping him at his sister’s for lunch. He always says, “I don’t envy what millionaires have. I have a father who has more wisdom and stories on his pinky finger than anyone I’ve ever met.” 

My dad has been a large reason why I’ve grown up loving the Faith. He taught me to be amicable, a peacemaker, and to serve people. My dad is my best friend. He isn’t always perfect, but he sure tries to make up for it.

A father who prays over me—whether it’s my friendships or work—he reminds me that no action is too small. 

The Proud Homesteader

-Connor S. Curley from Bethune, SC

⁠ My father, James Curley, is a homesteader with a Master’s degree in physics.

Besides teaching almost continuously throughout the years, he raises hogs, chickens, milk cows, and the occasional goat. He has held several side jobs to accommodate our large family of eight children. He has been a quail farm foreman, a patent agent, a fiber cable developer, and a newspaper deliverer—to name only a few. 

The stories I share about him usually end with some anecdote, advice, or inspiration he gave me, and for good reason.

I remember one afternoon, the Bethune Chicken Strut came to town. This year was special: my brother and I were scheduled to compete in bull riding at the town rodeo. And my father was just as excited as any of us.

As we were preparing to leave the house, I turned the corner on our small property carrying a pail of water for the hogs. I stumbled upon my father there, standing alone, praying his Rosary. I asked him if he wanted to ride in the rodeo with us one day, mentioning something about having opportunities that he never had.

That question is a vague memory, but I will never forget his answer.

“Connor,” he said, “sometimes, parents pressure their kids into sports, outings, or events because they are trying to live vicariously through their children. And in another lifetime, I would have loved to do all this. But I have my role being married to your mother, and that is the best thing.”

He went on, “I would have loved to be a cowboy growing up, but I don’t feel like I missed the boat. I love watching you guys, and you kids make me proud; but I have never tried to live vicariously through you guys, and I am happy watching.”

This might seem like a small thing. I suppose, when it comes down to it, every story about every father is a small thing to someone on the outside. This story may have been a bigger deal had I won a buckle that night (I didn’t). Or perhaps the narrative could do with some fabrication about my father getting his shot to be a cowboy, even after being at peace with opportunities he never got.

But none of that really happened.

That year would be our last festival: the town shut it down thereafter.

That night, though, my father watched us ride, the same way he has watched all of his kids—with excitement, love, and pride—all while standing beside my mother.

Now that my wife and I are fighting to build a family of our own, I cannot help but think of all the things my father did for us—and did gratuitously. His orientation for sharing good things with his children simply because it is good to do so is a strong factor in the life experiences my wife and I seek out, share, and communicate to our own little one.

When it comes down to it, it is not much different than what God our Father does for us. I have just had the privilege of having a proximate example.

We wish a happy and blessed Father’s Day to all fathers, spiritual fathers, and grandfathers of the Catholic Exchange community! The joy, example, and hard work you give has the power to transform hearts and influence generations for the better.

Photo by Nabil Naidu on Unsplash

The famed Dominican friar Meister Eckhart has a phrase, “Love has no why” (Die Minne hat kein Warum), and it is perhaps one of the most famous statements in Western Christian mysticism. In its fuller, but less familiar form, he writes: “Love has no why. It loves because it loves. It knows no reason. It asks for no reason.” What exactly this means, like most great poetry, is a subject of some debate.

At first glance, this sounds like a defense of irrationality, but Eckhart means something more subtle in his prose. Most human actions are done for a reason. They are directed towards some specific goal. We work to earn money. We study to gain knowledge. We exercise to improve the state of our health. These actions are all clearly goal-directed. They have a why, a purpose outside of themselves.

For Eckhart, true love is something different. Genuine love does not treat the “beloved” as a means to some further end. Loving that person or that thing is the end to itself.  If I love someone solely because they are wealthy, attractive, or useful, my love is actually directed toward those benefits and not the person. The person becomes a vehicle for something else. That is to say, love, or rather real love, is beyond any clear prudent purpose.

However, Eckhart would not say love is irrational, at least not in the same sense of being foolish or contrary to reason. Rather, love is non-calculating. It is born of an emotional certainty. Our reason often operates by comparison and purpose. Love transcends the logic of engineering or strategy. A young mother does not calculate whether her child is “worth” loving. She simply loves her child. A friend does not maintain a spreadsheet of various favors received and rightfully owed. The deepest forms of love seem excessive from a purely rational perspective. This is why lovers throughout the history of art and literature often appear irrational. Love introduces something novel into the human soul. It is fundamentally a different order of value.

Eckhart, being a mendicant friar, while he is interested in the idea of human nature, is speaking more specifically about divine love. It stands to reason that God does not love humanity because humans are useful to Him in any material way. God gains nothing from creation. Therefore, divine love cannot be motivated by any type of need. God loves because love is His nature (1 Jn. 4:8). Likewise, the soul united to God begins to love in the same way, not for the sake of some nebulous reward, not even for the proposition of heaven, but simply because goodness is lovable. Eckhart suggests that a truly holy person would love God even if no reward existed.

All of this is to say that no one, in their heart of hearts, respects love that is not freely given. True love, if in fact it is true love, is free because it arises from what we are, not from what we hope to obtain. A flower blooms because it is in its nature to bloom. Eckhart uses a similar imagery elsewhere in his writing, when he says: “The flower blooms because it blooms.” It does not bloom to be admired or born out of any sense of gratification. Its flowering is its own justification. What is more, love is entirely independent from the idea of effort. If one spouse would ask the other “Do you love me?”, among the sundry incorrect responses would be, “I’m trying very hard.” Love is also removed from any conscientious effort. The Maronite poet Khalil Gibran in the early 20th century speaks to this same observation in his own prose when he writes:        

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

Some theorists in contemporary psychology have claimed the existence of “psychological egoism,” that all people are motivated by self-interest as their primary motivation. This unique form of cynicism assumes that every behavior has an underlying motive that is fundamentally selfish. Eckhart challenges this kind of behavioral reductionism. He suggests there are moments when human beings act from an overflowing abundance, and that this abundance is synonymous with love. In that sense, “Love has no why” is a radical claim. Perhaps even a subversive claim. It posits that the greatest act of humanity is not a transaction, but as gifts freely given. As Christ Himself taught, “Freely you have received; now freely give” (Mt. 10:8).

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

Jesus tells His disciples that there is empty fear and worthy fear.  How will they know the difference?

Gospel (Read Mt. 10:26-33)

The tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel begins with Jesus calling the Twelve Apostles, then sending them out to preach the Good News He’s going to teach them.  He gives them detailed instructions for their mission, telling them where to go, what to say, what to do, and, instead of the expected, what not to take with them. 

He also gives them a solemn warning, which was bound to leave them a little shaken:  “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves” (see vs. 16).  He describes the serious opposition they will face as bearers of His message, even within their own families.  However, He reassures them with this promise:  “do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you” (see vss. 19-20). 

Would this be enough to assuage their fears?  This Sunday’s reading tells us more.

First, Jesus tells the apostles to “fear no one.”  He goes on to help them avoid the fear that can come from doubt about the truth of the message they will preach.  Strong opposition can make us doubt that the Gospel (which is truly an outrageous message in every sense of the word) is actually what people need to hear.  How could the Twelve, a small, ragtag band of traveling disciples, have confidence enough in their itinerant rabbi to sustain them during times of resistance, ridicule, and even violence when they delivered His word? 

He tells them, “Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known” (vs. 26).  This is a promise meant to give courage to the apostles.  He knows that they will one day have to boldly announce the Gospel message He will give them, in relative quiet and secrecy, to a world that doesn’t want to believe it. 

Jesus gives them assurance that no matter how skeptical people are of their message of salvation resting on faith in a Man who came back from death, one day its truth will be crystal clear to (and adored as glorious by) the whole universe.  The apostles simply need patience and perseverance.  We do, too.

Next, Jesus addresses the fear that comes from bodily persecution:  “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (vs. 28).  This is perhaps a fear stronger than the fear that comes from doubt.  Fear of physical suffering is instinctive in us, and it runs deep.  However, Jesus explains that their opponents’ power over them is only temporal and physical, as harsh and as final as it may seem. So this fear, along with doubt’s fear, is essentially empty.  It cannot have the last word. 

There is another fear, however, that is a worthy one. 

Jesus tells them, “be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (vs. 28b).  Who has that kind of power?  Some would say Satan, although his power over us is limited by God Himself.  It is ultimately our own choice to either resist or receive the corruption he offers us disguised as a satisfying path to happiness. 

If we grant him a foothold in our lives, he can certainly lead us to destruction, for that has always been his goal (see Gen. 3:1-7).  We should, therefore, constantly be alert to his lying hatred for us (see Eph. 6:1-11; Jas. 4:7; 1 Pet. 5:8-10) and never underestimate him or overestimate our own mortal strength against him.  In this sense, the “fear” of Satan means an informed vigilance against the great damage this enemy can do to us if we let him.

We might also see these words as a reminder to “fear” God, Who ultimately is the only One on earth or in heaven Who has the power over our eternal fate. 

Notice that here, too, our own personal choice is a factor in what becomes of us.  Jesus tells the Twelve that their heavenly Father knows everything that happens in the world.  Not even a tiny, insignificant sparrow dies without the Father’s knowledge.  We have to wonder what the apostles made of that statement.  Did it seem like wild hyperbole to them?  If so, His next words must have pushed them over the top:  “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.” 

What more could Jesus say to give them great confidence in God’s love and care for them?  He didn’t want them to fear any danger from anyone; He wanted them to have courage to do what He asked of them. 

Still, He reminded them that it would be their own personal response to Him that determined their future:  “Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I will also acknowledge before My heavenly Father.  But whoever denies Me before others, I will deny before My heavenly Father” (vs. 23-33).  To “fear” God and act appropriately, with an understanding of our accountability to Him and His right to deal justly with what we choose for ourselves is another possible interpretation of Jesus’ warning to “be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

Ultimately, these words contain both comfort and a warning.  This Cistercian chant puts it well:  “Victorious love shouts to the four winds.  You who follow Jesus, do not fear what leads to death, rather fear to yield to fear.”

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, help me not to shrink in fear from shadows.  Even a sparrow can remind me of what is real.

First Reading (Read Jer. 20:10-13)

The prophet Jeremiah was one who knew quite well the opposition that those who speak God’s words will inevitably face.  Jeremiah and his words were hated in his day, because he had the unenviable task of telling the Jews that God’s just judgment on their covenant infidelity was about to fall on them in a catastrophic way. 

Jeremiah knew his enemies were eager to silence him.  As terrifying as this must have been, he found courage in the nearness of the Lord:  “But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion:  my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.”  This is just the kind of courage Jesus had when He was faced with murderous opposition and the courage He urged on His apostles. 

Jeremiah was not only able to continue his prophet’s work, but in the midst of it, he was able to sing:  “Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for He has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!”  This is truly fearless faith.

Possible response:  Father, singing Your praise is the perfect antidote to fear.

Psalm (Read Ps. 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35)

The psalmist described the fate of those who fearlessly stand with God, consumed by their zeal for his house.  Here we have a prophetic foreshadowing of Jesus, Who likewise incurred the wrath of His brothers, the Jews, by daring to cleanse the Temple and to charge them with profaning it with their irreverent religiosity. 

The psalmist calls out for God’s help: “Lord, in Your great love, answer me.”  Surely the apostles would need to follow his example when they set out on their mission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth—many times over. 

The psalmist is confident of God’s kindness to one in desperate need:  “For the Lord hears the poor, and His own who are in bonds, He spurns not.”  Just as Jeremiah had faith to sing God’s praises in the midst of great persecution, so, too, the psalmist’s tongue was loosed when he was insulted and treated as an outcast:  “Let the heavens and the earth praise Him, the seas and whatever moves in them!”

Possible response:  The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read Rom. 5:12-15)

St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans is the most theological of all his letters.  From beginning to end, he sets out in clear, systematic fashion Who God is, who man is, the problem man created for himself, and how God fixed it.  In the practical section of the epistle (the last several chapters), St. Paul explains how a person who has been fixed by God’s grace ought to live.  This reading touches on two truths that expand our understanding of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel, not to be afraid of persecution and to count on God’s great love for us to enable us to do what He asks of us.

First, St. Paul gives us an explanation for why God’s message to man has always stirred up resistance:  “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.”  It is the sin we inherited from our first parents that distorts our vision of God, making Him look like an enemy instead of our loving Father.  Sin makes us want to silence God by persecuting His messengers. 

Next, St. Paul reminds us of the magnificent love of God for His sinful human children.  He tells us that one act by Adam stained all of us with sin and death, but Jesus’ sacrificial life has caused grace to flow to all of us.  That is why Jesus could say in the Gospel, “do not be afraid [of persecution]; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Possible response:  Father, You have shown Your love to us, Your rebellious children, not by getting revenge but by showering us with grace.  How foolish fear seems!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

A little over two weeks ago, I made the decision to finally stop drinking caffeine. I have been addicted to coffee for 21 years and Diet Coke for a few years before that. I have known for a while that the Lord wants me to let this addiction go.

And yes, it is a full-blown addiction. Anytime we say “I can’t live without…” it is an addiction. While caffeine is a socially acceptable drug (even popes have spoken well of coffee), the Lord has made us for freedom. Total freedom includes not being addicted to coffee.

Oftentimes in prayer we discover that our addictions or crutches come from somewhere. I became fully addicted to black coffee and mochas specifically while I was dealing with PTSD from being a 9/11 relief worker. A combination of SSRIs and trauma led me to rely on sugar and coffee to make it through the day. As the addiction set in, my day started to center around getting my first cup of coffee or a mocha.

A few years ago, the Lord started putting it on my heart that I needed to abandon this addiction. Five miscarried babies, a period of illness for my husband, periods of my own illness, the death of my father, and a whole host of stressors over the years kept me clinging to a mocha a day. When the grief was most intense, it would be two mochas a day.

Grief and pain often lead us towards the things of this world for comfort, pleasure, and relief from the pain. While this may be acceptable on occasion, it becomes an impediment to our deeper spiritual, psychological, emotional, and physical healing when it becomes an addiction. It doesn’t have to be coffee. For some people it is social media, television, pornography, overeating, sex, shopping, gossip, alcohol, anger, illicit drugs, or a whole host of other worldly things that either become disordered through our abuse of them or are gravely sinful.

As I stepped out of campus ministry and collapsed after a very intense 14 months of death, family emergencies, and health issues on top of ministry, it became clear that the Lord needs to heal deep places within me. As I spent time in mental prayer at home and at Adoration, this nagging sense that I need to give up mochas and caffeine kept tugging at my heart.

Finally, a few days before I began my detox, the Lord made it plain to me at Adoration that I needed to let this addiction go. I asked for a passage from Sacred Scripture to confirm what I was hearing. I opened Matthew 19:16-30:

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”

He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

This passage has resonated deeply with me for a few years. The rich young man is the example of someone who is following the law, but who is still attached to too much of the world. While wealth is the example the Lord uses, this lesson can be applied to any area of our lives that we don’t want to let go. The Lord has made us for full freedom and a life of abundance in Him. Anything we cling to ultimately keeps us from being completely free in Him.

One of my favorite quotes from St. John of the Cross is:

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.

In that moment at Adoration, the Lord infused me with His love and a deeper desire to fly spiritually to Him.

I needed these graces. When I started my detox, I became very ill. I had the worst migraine I have had in 25 years. The headaches lasted well over a week. I have been in an intense brain fog for two weeks that is finally starting to get better as I write. I had conversations with people that I barely remember, and I walked away feeling like I talked way too much because I couldn’t focus. I haven’t felt like myself at all.

The first lesson I learned was that quitting cold turkey was making me violently ill, so I had to drink 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of coffee each day initially. I also ate a lot more sugar in the beginning, which I only allowed to get through the withdrawal symptoms. This experience taught me that what I was doing to my body wasn’t good for it. I am highly sensitive to caffeine and medications. It’s why I got so sick from the detox. There is no way the Lord wanted me to ingest something that was impacting me this much. It has been a humbling experience.

The second lesson I learned is that it is only love that frees us from deeply held attachments and addictions. I couldn’t muscle my way out of the addiction or simply will it. This particular addiction is wrapped up in deep grief and pain. It is only the love of Christ that gave me the strength to finally cut ties with caffeine. When the withdrawal symptoms were at their worst, I was driving by one of the local Catholic churches, and I said to the Lord in the Tabernacle that I wanted freedom to love Him more and draw closer to Him. That prayer propelled me forward and continues to do so. Love is the only path out of this addiction. He has to be the reason I sever the cord keeping me enslaved to caffeine.

Christian asceticism is not a self-help project based on sheer willpower. We are weak and sinful. There are wounds that lay dormant or hidden within us until something brings them to the surface. Some of our attachments and addictions are tied to pain, grief, trauma, and wounds that the Lord wants to heal. We have “cords” that are keeping us from flying to deeper union with Christ. It is only love for Him and His love for us that can ultimately heal and free us. A heart on fire with love for Him can conquer any obstacle by His grace. It is love that will lead us to surrender everything to Him.

Photo by Lex Sirikiat on Unsplash

On March 26, 2026, Noelia Castillo Ramos, a twenty-five-year-old Spanish woman, died by legal euthanasia in Barcelona. Her father fought for twenty months to stop it. He argued that his daughter, already marked by suicide attempts, psychiatric illness, trauma, and severe physical suffering, should first receive fuller treatment and support. The courts disagreed. Spain’s legal system, and ultimately the European Court of Human Rights, allowed the procedure to go forward.

This is precisely the kind of case that reveals the deep falsehood at the heart of the euthanasia project. We are told that euthanasia is about dignity, autonomy, and compassion. But as the Spanish bishops rightly made clear, Noelia’s story was not a clean case of autonomy. It was a case of compounded suffering: grave psychological pain, bodily limitation, social fracture, and despair. To describe such a case mainly in terms of “choice” is already to falsify it.

The real question is not whether her decision was legally authorized. The real question is what kind of society looks upon a young woman in such darkness and decides that death is the appropriate form of care.

According to public reporting, Noelia had suffered repeated sexual violence and later attempted suicide by throwing herself from a fifth-floor window in 2022, leaving her paraplegic and in chronic pain. Yet even this does not exhaust the tragedy. Her father maintained that her request for euthanasia should be delayed until she had received more complete psychiatric treatment. In other words, the issue was never simply whether she suffered, but whether her suffering had first been met with everything that medicine, family, society, and spiritual care could offer. Instead, the state increasingly treated death itself as the answer.

This is why the Church is right to reject the language of “pure autonomy” in such cases. When a person says, “I do not want to continue,” the first question cannot be, “How do we facilitate that wish?” The first question must be, “What suffering is being expressed here, and who is remaining with this person in it?” That is the truly human question. It is also the Christian question.

At one level, even sociology can help us see what is wrong. Durkheim understood that suicide is never merely private. It becomes more thinkable when a person is no longer held within a meaningful moral and social world. Isolation grows. Bonds weaken. Life loses shape and intelligibility. In such a world, suicide begins to appear not simply tragic, but rational. That is not liberation. It is a sign of disorder.

But the Christian account goes deeper. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that hope is ordered toward a future good that is arduous yet possible to attain, above all by the help of God (ST II-II, q. 17, a. 1). Despair, then, is not merely sadness or emotional exhaustion. It is the turning away from the divine good as no longer attainable for oneself (ST II-II, q. 20, a. 1). That is why despair so often lies near the logic of suicide. The suicidal person does not merely suffer pain. He or she begins to believe that no further good can be received, that neither human help nor divine mercy can carry the burden. Aquinas even suggests that once hope collapses, the soul withdraws from salutary goods and begins to sink under the weight of its own judgment (ST II-II, q. 20, aa. 3–4).

Despair, then, is also a kind of spiritual constriction. The soul falls into a rabbit hole of the will, descending into the conviction that there is no exit, no horizon, no gift still possible. It no longer sees reality whole, but only the darkness immediately at hand, and that darkness begins to feel absolute. In this respect, one might even see a distant analogy with the demons. Aquinas holds that the demons are not simply ignorant in the ordinary sense; rather, their will is fixed in evil, obstinately turned away from the good (ST I, q. 64, aa. 1–2). Their condition is not one of openness, receptivity, or repentance, but of self-enclosure.

Not that the suffering person is demonic, of course, but despair can take on something of that same inward constriction: the will becomes unable to imagine rescue, unable to receive a future, unable to remain proportioned to the good that still exceeds its present suffering. That is why despair must never be ratified as though it were clarity.

And yet the Christian answer is not mere contradiction, but reopening. For Aquinas, God knows all things in Himself, not by piecing together fragments, but because in knowing Himself He knows perfectly all that proceeds from Him (ST I, q. 14, aa. 5–6). The despairing person sees only the immediate darkness; God sees the whole. He knows the creature more deeply than the creature knows himself. He knows the hidden good still possible, the path not yet visible, the mercy not yet received. To lean on God by faith, then, is not to flee reality, but to entrust oneself to the One whose knowledge is whole and whose love is not trapped within the present moment. Faith opens the horizon because it rests in the God who sees all things in Himself and still loves what He has made.

That is why the answer to despair cannot be the ratification of its conclusion. One does not heal blindness by confirming that there is no light. One does not answer hopelessness by making hopelessness legally operative. The answer is to reintroduce the sufferer to horizon: to meaning, communion, mercy, and the possibility that even now he may be carried by a good he can no longer see.

Aquinas is equally clear that suicide is gravely wrong because it violates rightly ordered love of self, wounds the community, and sins against God, to whom life ultimately belongs (ST II-II, q. 64, a. 5). Human life is not our property; it is entrusted to us. That moral judgment remains true. Yet in practice, a narrow reception of this medieval clarity has sometimes encouraged a response that is too merely prohibitive, as though the suicidal person were helped chiefly by being told, with sufficient force, not to do what he contemplates.

But the suicidal person is often not reasoning in a spacious moral field. He is inside a rabbit hole of the will, a constricted horizon in which pain has shrunk the future and the good has become nearly invisible. In such a condition, coercion may sometimes be necessary to prevent immediate harm, but it cannot by itself heal the despair that made self-destruction seem plausible. What is needed is not only restraint, but rescue: not only prohibition, but the reopening of horizon. The sufferer must be helped to emerge from his own narrowing, to recover a sense that reality is larger than his pain and that the future is not sealed shut.

This is where faith becomes essential. Faith in God does not merely add a consoling sentiment; it introduces the soul to the One who sees wholly, knows all things in Himself, and loves beyond the limits of our present darkness. The answer to suicide, then, is not the ratification of despair, but accompaniment strong enough to widen the field of vision again—so that the sufferer may begin, however faintly, to hope.

That is exactly what makes Noelia’s case so revealing. She was not a symbolic hard case from decades of political rhetoric. She was not simply an elderly person near death. She was a young woman whose life had been shattered by violence, mental suffering, and physical injury. She was, in the most obvious sense, vulnerable. And yet that very vulnerability became, within the euthanasia framework, part of what made her eligible for death. That is the logic that defenders of euthanasia routinely deny and that concrete cases so often confirm: what begins as an exceptional remedy for extreme cases slowly becomes a system for eliminating burdensome lives.

Spain legalized euthanasia in 2021, after years of political and cultural preparation. The case of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic sailor whose death became famous in Spain and later inspired Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside), played a central symbolic role in that shift. His story was used to frame euthanasia as an act of liberation and compassion. Reuters reported at the time that Spain became the fourth country in the European Union to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide for persons with serious and incurable or debilitating conditions.

But laws never remain confined to the emotionally persuasive cases that help pass them. That is one of the permanent lessons of modern bioethics. Once the principle is conceded—once society accepts that some innocent human lives may be deliberately ended because suffering has become too great—the boundaries begin to move. Chronic suffering enters. Disability enters. Psychiatric anguish enters. Social abandonment enters. The language remains “compassion,” but the underlying judgment hardens: some lives are now classified as lives for which death is a reasonable solution.

That is not mercy. It is a false mercy, because it eliminates the sufferer instead of bearing the suffering.

And this is where Christian anthropology becomes decisive. Dignity does not arise from autonomy, productivity, wantedness, or control. It arises from what the person is: a creature made in the image of God. The unborn child has that dignity. The disabled adult has that dignity. The depressed and traumatized young woman has that dignity. The person in agony has that dignity. Once dignity is relocated from being to function, the weak will always lose.

This is also why the Church distinguishes so carefully between accepting death and causing death. The Christian tradition has never required aggressive interventionism at all costs. One may refuse disproportionate treatment. One may accept that death can no longer reasonably be prevented. But that is radically different from choosing death as the solution to suffering. The difference is moral, not merely medical. It is the difference between accompanying a person through mortality and declaring that his life is no longer worth the burden.

There are signs, however, that the supposed inevitability of euthanasia is beginning to crack. In Scotland, lawmakers voted to reject an assisted-dying bill, with concerns about coercion and the protection of vulnerable persons playing a central role in the debate. That vote does not solve the crisis, but it does expose one of the great modern myths: that Western societies can only move in one moral direction, steadily away from the Christian understanding of the human person. They can still choose otherwise. They can still choose care over killing.

That is the real lesson of Noelia’s death. The issue is not simply Spanish law, nor only one tragic biography. The issue is whether we still know what compassion means. Compassion does not mean killing the one who suffers. It means suffering with him. It means remaining. It means refusing to let pain speak the final word about the value of a life. It means family, friendship, treatment, prayer, the sacraments, palliative care, and the stubborn insistence that dependence is not indignity.

The dividing line today is becoming very clear. One vision sees suffering and concludes that the sufferer may be removed. The other sees suffering and concludes that the sufferer must be loved more intensely. One is a culture of disposal. The other is a civilization of love. Noelia Castillo deserved the second. Instead, Spain gave her the first.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on Bioethics & Culture by Fr. Francesco Giordano, tackling the challenging moral issues of our day.

Photo by Hiroshi Tsubono on Unsplash