By PEGGY MOEN
MINNEAPOLIS — “There was always something,” Fr. John Paul Erickson told his audience of 150 at the Church of St. Helena on May 18. “Always a struggle between light and darkness” ever since Adam and Eve took the apple and we’ve never had “a golden era.”
With gender ideology and other aberrations, we are undergoing some “strange struggles,” he said, but every age has had to fight its battle against evil.
Fr. Erickson, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul, was addressing “An Evening Affirming Human Life and the Family,” a joint venture of St. Helena’s and the Office of Marriage, Family, and Life of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The “Evening,” an annual talk and banquet, has taken place for over 30 years.
Jean Stolpestad, director of the archdiocesan Office of Marriage, Family, and Life, welcomed the crowd, and Fr. Richard Villano, the pastor of St. Helena’s, introduced Fr. Erickson.
A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, Erickson directs the St. Paul Archdiocesan Office of Worship.
In his talk, Father said that the forces of light have always proclaimed that “the darkness will not triumph” and they know that “God wins.” And so we must “stay near to Jesus and live our baptismal commitment seriously.”
To carry out this mission completely, Fr. Erickson said we must focus on prayer and the sacraments and on the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
The prudent Christian sees “communion with the Lord” as “the goal to be pursued above all else.”
That struggle toward the goal is part of God’s plan. As to our daily struggles, looking at what “what bothers us in our lives” will tell us what is wrong with us, he said. That is, for example, a preoccupation with food might indicate gluttony.
“Be angry about the right things,” he counseled his listeners.
Use time well, Father said, and “sanctify daily life” because “we do not know the day or the hour.”
Justice he defined as “[giving] to the other what is their due.”
And “we must first of all recognize our duty to God….We owe worship to God. We owe Him everything.”
Going to Sunday Mass is “not just a matter of personal fulfillment” — this is justice.
Our siblings, parents, and children come to us from the Lord, said Fr. Erickson — in justice, “we owe our children a good example.” One’s family can be the most difficult place to be a Christian.
He decried the “great tendency…to isolate ourselves,” exacerbated by electronic communications. We owe our involvement to our parishes and neighborhoods. “I am a member of a community.”
Fr. Erickson explained fortitude as the “capacity to endure suffering for the greater good” — it is the virtue of the soldier and the martyr.
“Someone who suffers well” is more powerful than books as a teacher.
“Be willing to be different,” he said — be known for living differently. Live lives of simplicity and care and show a “willingness to forgive” — for, as Scripture says, if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven.
Abortion is “a satanic reality,” he said, but he also stressed that there is a hierarchy of evils, and “they are all connected,” including the neglect of the needs of the poor.
“We have to be different from the world” through “our capacity to suffer.”
Temperance, Fr. Erickson said, is “the proper use of the goods of the world.”
Catholics see “the beauty of God in the good things of the world,” he said, and we do not reject them.
But we must moderate our use of amusements: “How much do we depend upon these things for our peace? Strive to use the stuff of the world well.”
To keep our lives in balance and curb our appetites, we need to practice “deliberate acts of self-denial,” said Fr. Erickson.
These acts will “strengthen us for that moment when we are asked for more.”
We Christians, he concluded, must live lives of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. “By living the cardinal virtues…we will be lights for the world.”
After the talk, The Wanderer asked Fr. Erickson if he sees more hope now for the pro-life cause.
“I do,” he said, as there has been “a generational change” in attitudes toward life. The thinking on homosexualism, however, is not as encouraging and we could be “in for some very challenging times.”
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