March 16, 2003

Two saints and three bishops

Every March, the Church marks the feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph, two saints who were not only personally friends of the Lord but who played roles of utmost importance in the life of the Church. This March, this particular Church of Chicago marks the ordination of three new auxiliary bishops, priests who are constantly striving, as are we all, to be friends of the Lord and who will be playing a role of significant importance in the life of the Church.

Patrick was a man utterly loyal to Jesus Christ, a believer who could endure to the end, a priest with the heart of a father. Much to the chagrin of some Irish, Patrick began life in Britain, probably in Wales, in a Christian family, at a time when Roman civil authority over Britain was waning. His world came to an end when, at 16 years of age, he was kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave to a chieftain in Ireland, a land outside the reach of Roman law. Patrick, who had been only a half-hearted Christian, found himself living a hard and lonely life and he turned to God. Of himself, he wrote, “The love of God and the fear of Him surrounded me more and more. And faith grew.”

Patrick escaped slavery, got to the coast of Ireland and boarded a ship that brought him to France. There he managed to get into a monastery school, became a priest, visited Rome and got back to Britain. In a vision, he heard “the voice of the Irish” calling him: “We appeal to you, servant of God, to come and walk among us.” The vision was backed up by a letter from the Pope, who appointed him “the bishop of the Irish who believe in Christ.” Earlier missionaries to Ireland had not had much success. The native religion was a kind of antecedent to current New Age tendencies: an animism, a polytheistic religion of nature spirits, organized around the religious leaders, the druids, who advised the chieftains and who tried more than once to kill the new missionary after Patrick returned to Ireland around 435 A.D.

About his life in Ireland not as a slave but as a missionary bishop, Patrick wrote: “I fear none of these things. I have cast myself into the hands of God who rules everywhere. ... I came to the Irish heathens to preach the Gospel and to put up with insults from unbelievers. I heard my mission abused. I endured many persecutions. Should I be worthy, I am ready even to give my life promptly and gladly for Christ’s name. It is in Ireland that I wish to spend my life until I die. ... I give this to my God who has kept me faithful in the day of trial, so that today I offer sacrifice to him confidently, the sacrifice of my life to Christ my Lord.”

One of Patrick’s big struggles was against slavery. As a former slave himself, he condemned the slave traders from Britain who made raids to capture numbers of Patrick’s new Irish Christians. One of the worst of these traders was a British sailor who was himself supposed to be a Christian. Patrick formally excommunicated him, denouncing him as “a ravening wolf”, in a letter that is one of the earliest Christian documents explicitly condemning slavery as immoral.

The goal of Patrick’s life and his role in the Church were “to preach God’s name boldly in every place, so that after my death a spiritual legacy may be left.” He shaped that legacy in visible form when he established the bishopric of Armagh in northern Ireland. This is the diocese of the Primate of Ireland to this day. Patrick also organized communities of monks and nuns, the beginning of that movement of Irish monasticism which, after civilizing the Irish tribes themselves, would reach out to the continent of Europe after the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West and bring the Germans and many other tribal peoples to the faith and to Christian civilization. To each place where Patrick preached and baptized, he would send a priest and give him a book that was a compendium of the faith, rather like a catechism. “As you are Christians, so also be Romans,” Patrick told his converts. As long as that connection has been strong, the Irish and those they have in turn evangelized have been themselves, finding their identity in Christ.

Four hundred years before St. Patrick, St. Joseph also discovered his role among the people of God in a vision that came to him in a dream: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1, 20) Since Joseph cared for Jesus when he was weak and defenseless, Pope Pius IX called on Joseph to care for Christ’s body, the Church, in a moment of great danger for the life of the Church in the 19th century. Declared patron of the universal Church, Joseph’s role as head of the family of Nazareth was connected to his protection and defense from heaven of the household of the faith on earth. Pope John Paul II traces the roots of Joseph’s vocation to a silent man’s listening to God’s word and acting on it, “in absolute readiness to serve faithfully God’s salvific will revealed in Jesus.” One of the traditional prayers to St. Joseph asks that “just as once you saved the child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God’s holy Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity.” It is ironic that not long after Pope John XXIII, from the depths of his own devotion, inserted St. Joseph’s name into the Roman canon of the Mass, altars and shrines to St. Joseph began to disappear from some Catholic churches.

On the feast of St. Joseph this March, three new bishops will be ordained for the service of the Church universal, as are all bishops, with their ministry localized in the Archdiocese of Chicago. On March 19 in Holy Name Cathedral, Fathers Francis Kane and Thomas Paprocki, priests of the Archdiocese, and Father Gustavo Garcia, a priest of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, will become members of the apostolic college, ordained to care for and to pastor God’s people as bishops.

The role of bishop is to make visible the apostolicity of the Church, reaching back to the apostles who appointed successors to lead the local Churches that grew from their missionary preaching. The role of bishop is to make visible the catholicity of the Church, reaching out collegially with all other bishops around the world in communion with the successor of St. Peter, the bishop of Rome. The bishop is to be a visible center of unity around Christ, so that the people know where they must gather to become holy.

Like Joseph, the bishop has to be a man who takes time to be silent in order to listen to God’s word and to read the signs of the times. Like Joseph, the bishop is a cooperator in the work of salvation that Christ carries out through his Church. Like Patrick, the bishop has to draw people from their unbelief and their enslavement to sin. Like Patrick, the bishop has to care for, provide for and defend the Church. Like both Patrick and Joseph, the bishop today works at a time of great danger for the Church, when her freedom here is threatened by a loss of identity from within and by harassment from outside. A United States bishop’s double role as both particular pastor here and member of a universal college is therefore a source of some encouragement today, for the Catholic Church is held in far greater esteem in the world at large outside the United States than is the country itself.

My prayer is that Bishops Kane, Paprocki and Garcia will be inspired by the example and sustained by the intercession of St. Patrick, apostle of Ireland, and St. Joseph, patron of the universal Church. May that be your prayer too. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

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