By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
As the foundation for all we ponder herein, let us remember the grave caution given to us by our Lord, Jesus the Christ: “. . .do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28).
Dear family, at each and every Holy Mass, the priest calls all the faithful to pray the Lord’s Prayer, reminding you that we pray that prayer, quote, “at the Savior’s command.” Further, the priest states that we pray that particular prayer because we were formed by divine teaching. Therefore we dare to say “Our Father” because Jesus’ Father is our Father too. Then we conclude that Lord’s Prayer with these words: “lead us not into temptation but” — here it comes — “but deliver us from evil.”
Immediately thereafter, the priest continues with a similar prayer: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
We have heard all these most-profound prayers so many times, countless times, innumerable times, that we pretty listen like they are on auto-pilot. We buzz right through without serious consideration, and probably wouldn’t even notice the prayer at all. But there is a reason — namely, all that is prayed just before we receive Holy Communion, Jesus, the source of grace and heavenly glory. The timing of it all is a clue to its great importance.
To even begin to understand it, we have to have a firm grasp on what actually is evil, or what evil actually is. Few people seem to get it. For instance, remember in Acts, the scene where St. Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death. St. Stephen lit into the people — particularly the elders and the scribes, who were the clergy leaders of the day: Stephen said to the people, the elders, and the scribes:
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it” (Acts 7:51-53).
Those stiff-necked people did not appreciate St. Stephen’s manner and tone, so they did what stiff-necked people always do. “When they heard this, they were infuriated, and they ground their teeth at him…they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together. They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him” (Acts 7:54, 57-58). And that is being evil to the core!
Now we can bet St. Stephen knew the Lord’s Prayer. We can bet he prayed it countless times. Pretend for just a second that you are Stephen, and you earnestly pray — “Deliver me from evil!” Yet look what happened. That did not stop the people from stoning him. What did St. Stephen think? His prayer did not work? What would you think? Your prayer did not work?
Seriously, what about us? When we, in our lives, are faced with evil, even after we have prayed earnestly, time and time again — “deliver me from evil” — does that mean our prayers are not working?
This question is at the center of everything we are experiencing here and now. If we do not get it right, our eternal souls are lost. So many people turn away from God precisely because, in the midst of their suffering, they think thusly: “If God is all powerful and all loving, He could prevent or STOP my suffering. Therefore, because I am suffering, either God does not really exist, or God hates me!”
So where, in the midst of suffering, should people be able to turn for nourishment, for strength, for peace, for joy? The Catholic Church, repository of the Truth and minister of Sacramental Grace.
A year ago we were on day 43 of so many of the hierarchy consenting to, even encouraging, the lock-out and lockdown. The Holy Mass, and the sacramental grace of Baptism, Confession, the Holy Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick and Dying. Oh dear family, the ramifications, the repercussions, to this unimaginable, unmitigated relentless attack on the foundations of our faith — we have no clue.
But one year later we do know this: Before COVID (from which over 90 percent recover successfully) 75 percent of people did not come to Holy Mass even on Sunday, and now that number is far greater. Why should they bother? Many shepherds of the Church treated Mass like it is nonessential. And some shepherds of the Church have gone so far as to call police to arrest people who do not mask-up.
The Example Of The Saints
In contrast to this, let us consider a few of our great saints of whom we ask intercession in our litany at the end of every Holy Mass.
St. Charles Borromeo in Milan was not worried about what could kill the body when he climbed a pile of corpses of victims to the Black Plague to anoint a victim who had not yet died.
St. Aloysius Gonzaga was not worried about what could kill the body when he confronted the 1591 plague that broke out in Rome. There the Jesuits opened a hospital for the stricken, and Aloysius volunteered to work there. After begging alms for the victims, Aloysius began working with the sick, carrying the dying from the streets into a hospital founded by the Jesuits. There he washed and fed the plague victims, preparing them as best he could to receive the sacraments.
But though he threw himself into his tasks, he privately confessed to his spiritual director, Fr. Robert Bellarmine, that his constitution was revolted by the sights and smells of the work; he had to work hard to overcome his physical repulsion. He died of the plague on June 21, 1591.
St. Damien of Molokai was not worried about what could kill the body. A priest from Belgium, he traveled to Hawaii to serve there, starting in 1864, and then volunteered to minister to lepers who — get this — were sent to Molokai, starting in 1866, to live under government-required medical quarantine!
Beginning in 1873 when he went to Molokai, Damien dressed residents’ ulcers, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, shared pipes, and ate poi by hand with them, providing both medical, emotional, and spiritual support. After 12 years of caring for those in the leper colony, Fr. Damien was diagnosed with leprosy. He continued with his work despite the infection, but finally succumbed to the disease on April 15, 1889.
Let us put all this together, St. Stephen, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and St. Damien of Molokai, and then let us compare it to the Catholic Church’s reaction to the COVID pandemic. Dear family, we are thirteen long months into this fear-demic, with no end in sight and we are constantly hit with new fears about the disease, some of them not at all scientific.
Dear family, if the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is not unique and the repository of Truth and means of Salvation (the Sacraments), then we all might as well just go home and forget it. Done. Boom. Good to go. But if the Catholic Church is unique, and is the repository of Truth and is the means of Salvation via the means the real Jesus gave us — that is, the sacraments, beginning with Baptism — then we had better start acting like this is true.
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