News - November 2023 RSS Feed

A few weeks ago, we listened to the parable of the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom. Five of them foolishly did not bring oil with them for their lamps. That lesson from that Gospel can be applied today as well. Be patient. Plan ahead because delays can happen. One of the ways we should prepare would be with end-of-life decisions. Several years ago, the Roman Catholic Bishops of Maryland issued a pastoral letter “Comfort and Consolation,” which is well worth reading. I have copies of this pastoral letter available for those who wish to have one. Please feel free to ask me for a copy.

On Sunday, November 12, the Gospel passage that was proclaimed was Matthew 25:1-13. The end of the passage had these sobering word: “Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” November is a month when we remember the faithful departed and a time of year when we are reminded that one day we will die. Benjamin Franklin once quipped, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” I thought that it would be good today in light of this to quote from a statement issued several years ago by the Roman Catholic Bishops of Maryland: “Comfort and Consolation Q & A: Questions to Consider Now and at the Hour of Our Death.” Today I want to quote from the preface of that important document.

Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) was born to a family of German immigrants in New York City. When he was five, his father deserted the family. Because of the financial crisis this caused the family, his two older brothers left school and became apprenticed bakers. Young Isaac joined them in the family business. As a young man he had a mystical experience. This led him on a spiritual journey from the Methodist Church to Unitarianism, Mormonism, the Transcendentalist Community at Brook Farm, and finally to Catholicism at the age of twenty-five. This was a very countercultural move on his part as anti-Catholicism in America was at an all-time high. Shortly after becoming a Catholic, he felt a call to the priesthood and entered the Redemptorist Fathers. Isaac Hecker believed that Catholicism and Americanism were complimentary. If the Catholic Church could free itself from its European appearances, he thought, it could fulfill its ultimate mission: the conversion of America to Catholicism.

On March 11, the church celebrated the memorial of St. Martin of Tours (316?-397). Two parishes in the Archdiocese of Washington are named after him: St. Martin’s on North Capitol Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. and St. Martin’s in Gaithersburg. St. Martin was born of pagan parents in modern-day Hungary. His father was in the Roman army and at fifteen Martin followed in the footsteps of his father by joining the army. He became a catechumen a short time later and was baptized when he was eighteen. When he was twenty-three, he refused a bounty from the emperor Julian and said at the time, “I have served you as a soldier; now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to those who are going to fight. But I am a soldier of Christ, and it is not lawful for me to fight.” For a while he was imprisoned but eventually discharged and went to be a disciple of St. Hilary of Poitiers.

Eusebio Kino was born in the principality of Trent in 1645. When he was twenty, he entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) hoping to become a missionary in Asia. Instead, he was sent to New Spain where he was assigned to what was considered “the outskirts of Christendom”—an area comprising present day Sonoma in Mexico and southern Arizona. During the next twenty-four years he covered on horseback or on foot this very large territory, which was approximately twenty thousand square miles.