Fervor and the Faith

On my way to Cologne, Germany, for the World Youth Day celebrations in August, I stopped in England to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in East Anglia. This was the most famous Marian shrine in Catholic England, with pilgrimage routes well marked throughout England and much of Europe. The flow of pilgrims stopped at the time of the Protestant Reformation in England, when King Henry VIII brought the statue of Our Lady to London, burned it publicly, closed the Augustinian priory which served the shrine, confiscated its property and razed the shrine to the ground.

A century ago, an English convert to Catholicism became interested in restoring at Walsingham a shrine in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She bought the one building still standing from the 14th century, a very small chapel about a mile from the site of the original shrine, and gave it to the local Catholic bishop. It took some time, but the chapel has been repaired after being used as a stable for several centuries, a facsimile of the original statue was sculpted and pilgrims now visit regularly. The Church of England has also created a modern Marian shrine in the town of Walsingham itself.

The day I was there to celebrate Mass turned out to be the day for the annual pilgrimage of the traveling people and gypsies. What I had planned as a quiet day of prayer and reflection was inserted into the visit of a people who can pray while they’re doing everything else as well. I was captured by their enthusiasm and grateful to become part of it. They offered flowers, walked around, talked and argued, lit candles, danced and demonstrated a fervor that must have pleased Our Lady and that transformed my pilgrimage.

It was a good preparation for World Youth Day. With me in Cologne, along with over 500 young pilgrims from the Archdiocese, were Bishop Manz, who is the bishop for youth ministry in the Archdiocese, and Bishops Perry and Garcia. Bishop Perry even spent the vigil night in the muddy field with the young people sponsored by the Knights of St. Peter Claver! Bishop Garcia overcame a bout with illness to join the young pilgrims at the vigil Saturday night and the closing Mass on Sunday.

The World Youth Days follow a pattern of catechesis, confession, Mass, encounter with the Holy Father, pilgrimage and meetings with young Catholics from around the world. At one of my catechetical sessions, there were 50 young people from Bahrain and Kuwait, places where one might not expect to find Catholics, were they not physically in front of you. What really transforms everything else is, of course, the fervor and the enthusiasm of the young people themselves. At the Masses and ceremonies as well as on the streets, the attitude and joy of the youngsters were not just youthful high spirits but, I believe, a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives together in the faith.

Without the fervor that the Holy Spirit brings to our life as a Church, living the faith gets bogged down in fulfilling plans and programs, managing an enterprise and sometimes arguing ideologies. But the faith, because it is our entry into the life of God himself, is a gift of the Spirit; and living it should set us free and make us joyful. Fervor opens the heart for the surrender of faith that Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the young people in Cologne to make. “Surrender creates union,” the Pope said, explaining that surrender on our part is made to God’s infinite love, calling us always beyond our selves and our projects. Fervor born of such surrender is neither superficial emotionalism nor passing excitement. It is an expression of joy in the truth shared in the Church, the truth about Christ and his love for us.

Catholics are now, it seems to me, sometimes hesitant to show enthusiasm about their faith or the Church. Disillusioned or hurt in some way, they don’t want to be disappointed again. Resentful about elements of the Church’s teaching they cannot accept, their belonging is tentative. Some grieve the loss of a Church that nurtured them. Argument won’t win such people to full participation in the life of the Church. Prayer for total conversion will, as will association with those, especially young people, who have surrendered themselves to Christ and found union with his body, the Church, at the center of their lives.

What would an enthusiastic Church, one filled with fervor, look like here? To begin, there would probably be 200,000 subscribers to the Catholic New World! There would be a couple of hundred seminarians studying theology for Chicago at Mundelein Seminary. All our parishes would be filled with people eager to worship God at Mass each Sunday. We would be besieged with parents who want to make the sacrifice necessary to assure a solid Catholic education for their children. The incidence of divorce among Catholics would be almost nil. Cohabitation before marriage would be regarded as a scandal. Reformed religious orders would witness to the radical conversion called for by Christ in the Gospel when he told his disciples to leave all and prefer nothing to him. Lay people would be thoroughly instructed in the truths that set us free. Grateful for the Spirit’s giving the Church the authority to forgive sins, people would make good use of the sacrament of penance on the way to holiness of life. Priests would be obviously striving for sanctity and be given totally and joyfully to making their people saints. Specialized movements would contribute to the unity of the Church and of our parishes. The faith would be recognized as a sure path to a saner society rather than a burden to be privatized and explained away. The poor would be always welcomed and helped, and there would be no racial and cultural prejudice among Catholics.

Impossible? Not at all. We caught a glimpse of it at Walsingham and Cologne. I catch glimpses of it, as do all our priests, when fervor breaks through our bureaucratized lives and the action of the Holy Spirit becomes evident in our ministry. People know when their religious practice is truly alive and when they’re just bumping along. The difference is fervor.

Finally, I want to thank personally all those whose generosity, prompted by the Holy Spirit’s action, has come to the aid of the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf coast. The first seven years of my life as a priest were spent on the Gulf coast and in New Orleans, and seeing pictures of the devastation there now tears me apart. It has been hard to establish contact with friends, but I take consolation in the very many organized efforts now making the best of a situation that could otherwise be full of despair for the future. Thank you and God bless you.

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