Serving Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
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I am grateful to my parishioners for providing the opportunity to go on retreat the other week in St. Louis. There were about thirty-five priests from the Diocese of Jefferson City at Mercy Center in Ladue. Fr. Patrick Baikauskas, OP (Order of Preachers aka Dominicans) led the retreat. The five days were restful, grace-filled, and a wonderful sharing in the priestly brotherhood.
Fr. Patrick is the Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. He teaches homiletics there and on the retreat used his experience and deep scholarship to reflect on the spirituality of preaching the Sunday homily. He challenged all of us not to be complacent about homily preparation and delivery, giving some practical advice about what makes bad homilies (we filled two big posters of comments about that!), and what makes good homilies (much more of a challenge to fill a full poster.)
My three take-aways: 1. I need to tighten my homilies up and not go off on tangents. In general I preach longer than what he recommends for an average Sunday Mass. 2. While I am fairly sure of what I want the focus of my homily to be each Sunday, I do have to pare down that focus so it is very clear to the congregation what I believe the Word is about for that day. 3. I need to be clearer about providing a functional statement or purpose in my homilies. I am obligated to provide the congregation with some motivation for embracing the focus of the homily and allowing the Word to lead the congregation further on the road of conversion. Simply put, the focus statement is knowledge. The function statement is action.
Fr. Patrick joined the Dominicans when he was older, after a career in politics for the people of Illinois. He had worked both on a state level and a national level. He was the pastor of the parish for Purdue University for many years and in addition to his other duties, he is one of the Missionary Preachers for the Eucharistic Revival commissioned by the US Bishops Conference.
A life-long Catholic, he still tells his “conversion story”, what brought about the change of career and vocation in embracing the baptismal call of every Christian to evangelize. He tells of an extra-ordinary moment of grace that had to do with a homeless person and an Italian deli in Chicago. He witnessed Christ in person in the guise of a friend of his who ran the deli. As I understand the story, Father Patrick recognized that he was not the channel of grace that he knew he should be and began to seriously consider religious life.
The connection to daily Mass is this: Father Patrick had by the time of the encounter at the deli gotten into the habit of attending daily Mass. He says that while that one day in the deli with the homeless person was the “aha moment”, he knows that he never would have recognized that particular moment of grace without those years of making the Eucharist the center of his life and spirituality. By attending daily Mass he gave God the time and space to lay a foundation for the transformation that was to come.
I can vouch for the special grace that comes through daily Mass attendance. I mentioned before that it was common for me and my brothers to wake up early to go and serve the 6:30 AM daily Mass. I have also mentioned the time when my Uncle Al, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, came to visit us and we celebrated Mass, my Uncle, my mother and father, and me and my five siblings. It was just us in the church that day. And ever since I have understood that Jesus is there for us, every day, waiting for us to join with him in Word and Sacrament.
Even before I went to the seminary, where daily Mass was the rule, there were times when I attended daily Mass outside of the weekly school Mass. At first it was because I was scheduled to serve the daily Mass or was asked to serve a funeral. [Yes, servers were expected to come to Mass and serve even if it wasn’t a school Mass!] But there were other times when I asked my dad to drop me off early so I could attend daily Mass.
In fifth grade it was because we had learned about the devotion of nine First Fridays. My grandfather had recently died and I was quite sad since he had been spending some time in our care in Sedalia and I had just gotten to really know him. After learning about Our Lord’s promises to Saint Margaret Mary Alocoque: “On Friday during Holy Communion, He said these words to His unworthy slave, if I mistake not: ‘I promise you in the excessive mercy of My Heart that Its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on nine first Fridays of consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they will not die under My displeasure or without receiving their sacraments, My divine Heart making Itself their assured refuge at the last moment.'”
Now Sister Laura said that this promise wasn’t a “free ticket to heaven”, but it made sense to me to start thinking about preparing my soul for my final journey, even if I was only eleven at the time. It wasn’t too difficult to plan ahead, but I did have to make the final one in the summer and ask mom to take me to church for the last time. I remember it quite vividly because it was the first time I asked a priest to hear my confession outside of the usual hours or at a penance service.
There was another time in grade school that I attended daily Mass for the Lenten Season. I was in sixth grade and bit my nails to the quick. Lots of teasing from my brothers and lots of painful hangnails. My Lenten resolution that year was to give up biting my nails and to make it a serious promise, I would attend daily Mass throughout that Lent before school started. God answered my prayers and by the end of Lent I had broken a pretty bad habit. Not to say I always use nail clippers, but by and large it worked out OK.
Attending daily Mass in the seminary from the age of 14 on was a singular grace of my adolescence. While there was so much to be learned in the classroom and out of it, the daily Eucharist was where I learned the most about my faith. They were always celebrated fully with song and participation. And the priests’ homilies taught me what no book could, how personal witness of the faith makes the Scriptures come alive.
Word and Sacrament celebrated with others who also want to know God. I guess it can be summed up in that song made famous by the musical Godspell which has been one of the most frequent prayers of my mornings upon awakening: “Day by day, Oh, Dear Lord Three things I pray. To see thee more clearly; Love thee more dearly; Follow thee more nearly Day by day.” Making daily Mass part of one’s life has been the surest way to see this prayer come to fruition.