Septuagesima Third Sunday before Lent January 30 and 31, 2021 Homily for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass of St. Thomas More Catholic Parish celebrated at St. Joseph Catholic Church 116 Theodore St. Scranton, PA 18508 Mark 1:21-18 1 Corinthians 7:32-35
The Epistle today is one of the principal texts I use when I do speaking engagements about the value of the celibate priesthood. We read, “…the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.” The great value of the celibate priesthood, of course, is that an unmarried man, like St. Paul, can devote one hundred percent of himself to his parish, whereas I, as a married man, must necessarily direct a considerable amount of time to the good of my wife and children.
The principal way in which my interests are divided has to do with my concern for the health and welfare of my wife and kids. That is, I have always imagined that martyrdom is something God may not give to me, indeed something I might be tempted to refuse, for concern over how my widow and my children might be provided for and protected in my absence. Just as I lack the radical freedom to be sent at a moment’s notice to the hostile mission fields—I think today of Syria and Nigeria—so I naturally wonder what would happen to my family if I were required to die for the Faith.
Before this month, these questions were purely theoretical. I had never experienced a conflict between my responsibilities as a husband and father and my responsibilities as your priest and pastor. Sure, there have been inconveniences, such as when I was on-call as the Chaplain at Mercy Hospital and seemed to be called away from nearly every family event for an entire year. But this minor annoyance has always been balanced by the flexibility of my schedule: I have been able to take my wife to doctors’ appointments and fulfill other necessary duties with relatively little conflict with my vocation as your father in Christ.
That all changed the week after January 6th. After we received the twin blows of Damian Alfonso’s difficult diagnosis, a diagnosis confirmed at the pediatric cardiologist last week, and my wife going down for ten days with bad symptoms from the Corona Virus, I was confronted with the reality that I could not both fulfill my duties as a priest and care for my wife and children. Part of the reason our marriage has worked so well, and that I have been able to work as hard for the benefit of the parish, is that my bride is tirelessly industrious. Even in the months she was recovering from giving birth, she has been back on her feet in very short order, and she works constantly with very few breaks and no complaints.
However, even with the benefit of God’s grace, we all have our limits. It has been very humbling for both of us to find ourselves literally incapable of accomplishing tasks we have taken for granted for more than twenty-four years of marriage. I have been especially perturbed by my inability to write the thank- you letters for the Christmas appeal donations that so many of you gave towards the needs of our parish. I haven’t written out my homilies for Judy Sanderson to type and distribute, and grading for my class at Maria Kaupas Academy has gone out the window. I have felt unequal to the task of caring for you, my spiritual children, as caring for my wife and biological progeny has necessarily demanded my first attention.
Yet in the midst of this struggle, one most celibate priests never even contemplate, and one they can’t experience, something truly graceful and amazing happened. My parishioners, some of whom I have cared for for more than twenty-one years, banded together to take care of my family and me. The academic arguments as to why a married man cannot serve a parish as freely and fully as can a celibate man still hold much weight, and I will continue to press them, when I am asked to speak on this topic. But on an experiential level, such arguments have been exploded, and I will now need to add to my presentations the other half of the equation—how devout parishioners respond when their pastor stumbles while carrying his cross.
As we begin this season of pre-Lent, we look forward to the Stations of the Cross that we will walk every Wednesday and Friday evening beginning February 17th. And truly, you have been like Simon of Cyrene, carrying for us what we are not able to bear. The meal train has truly been a godsend, not only because my wife can’t cook at the moment, but neither can I. No doubt I could learn, but this would not afford me time to do much else. What we have seen is our love for you being answered in more than equal measure, so much so that whatever anxieties about providence we may have suffered have disappeared altogether. I know now that I could accept martyrdom, if I were so called. St. Paul writes to us, “I want you to be free from anxieties,” and because of the love you have shown for me and my family, we are. I am reminded of St. John’s counsel to the Church, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (I Jn. 4:18).
St. Paul himself had this experience of requited love with the Church in Galatia. He wrote to them, “…though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. …For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me” (Gal. 4:14-15). The strength of a man’s ministry in the Church, in other words, doesn’t have only to do with his love for the parish, any more than the strength of a marriage has only to do with a man’s love for his wife. It has also to do with the response of the one being loved. Just as my wife pours herself out for me with every passing day of Damian Alfonso’s very difficult gestation, so you by your sacrifices are demonstrating your willingness to pluck out your very eyes for us, if such were required.
What we have discovered through this trial is a great value of the married priesthood, one I had not recognized before: the opportunity the married priesthood affords parishioners to love more than just their pastor. A celibate man’s love is focused, as it should be. But a married man, though his interests are divided, his love must be expansive, inclusive of all the children the Lord gives him to shepherd, both his parishioners and his own offspring. Likewise, your love for me includes my whole family, an expansive and inclusive love that has grown and matured precisely because I have a wife and children.
I am reminded of the Apostles’ journey across the Sea of Galilee, when the wind arose while Jesus slept on the cushion. The disciples woke him and asked, “Do you not care if we perish?” (Mark 4:38). Recall that Jesus then made the sea be still. By your love, you have calmed the storm that threatened to overwhelm me. Thus, pre-Lent has arrived just in time, as these are also the weeks we begin our examination of conscience, in anticipation of our Lenten confession and absolution. I have occasion today to say sorry, as I realize I am the subject of our Lord’s rebuke, “Why [were] you afraid? Have you no faith?” (Mark 4:40).