My computer is back in operation and I am happy to send you a daily message again today. Yesterday, we celebrated the feast of the consecration of the basilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of the archdiocese of Rome and therefore the Pope’s own cathedral. And today, we celebrate one of the greatest of our Popes, Saint Leo the Great. Let us put these two celebrations together and consider them in our thought and our prayer.

For the first two centuries of the Church’s history, she was persecuted by the Roman Empire and had to operate in secret—in the catacombs of Rome and in hidden places elsewhere in the immense empire. It was impossible to build churches or any visible buildings that would attract the attention of the imperial police. Almost every Pope and Bishop during that time was captured and killed by the agents of the Caesars. Then, in the year 313, the emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Toleration, whereby all religions were permitted to operate freely in the empire. The church came up from underground, both literally and figuratively, and began to build impressive churches, monasteries, and other buildings to house her many works. The Laterani family gave to the Pope the property on which now stands the basilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome. Divine worship began there in the year 324—1685 years ago!

That’s a long time and a glorious history of prayer and liturgical sacrifice to the honor and glory of God. One of the most striking monuments in Rome is the statuary group located before Saint John Lateran. It depicts three Franciscan friars—Saint Francis of Assisi himself and two of his companions. They have come down to Rome from Assisi to ask the Pope’s blessing upon their new congregation of friars. As they catch sight of the Lateran basilica and residence where the Popes lived in those days—the church already nine hundred years old—Francis raises his hands in delight and greeting, his face suffused with the joy of seeing this heart of Christianity. The statuary group catches this happiness and reflects it beautifully. It’s a wonderful monument to faith, joy, gratitude, reverence. In our own place and time, we have similar feelings of joy and appreciation for our churches. We of New Orleans know the sorrow of losing so many of our parish churches to Hurricane Katrina, including the church where I received the first Sacraments: Our Lady of Good Counsel. Here, the people on the Bolivar peninsula are fighting to keep their church, Our Mother of Mercy, open after the destruction of Hurricane Ike. And recently in our liturgy we have read of the joy on the part of the Jews at the time of the Macchabean revolt which drove out the pagan Greeks and allowed the people of God to reconsecrate the Temple in Jerusalem. That happy occasion is still celebrated yearly in the feast of Hanukkah, near our Christmas time.

In the year 440, a Roman Pope named Leo—the Lion, named for Our Lord, the Lion of Juda—was elected. He combatted the external enemies of the Church—Huns and Vandals —and her internal enemies, those who taught false doctrines and tried to lead Christ’s flock into error. All of this shows us the great gifts of our faith, the truth of Christ, his Church, and the great institution of the Papacy. Let us be grateful for these gifts and the spiritual wealth that they bring to us and to the world. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Nearly a month ago, on October 6, Fr. James Burke, one of the members of our community here, died. He was eighty-six years old, and worked until the very end. In fact, he had just completed a preaching tour in Argentina when he returned to Houston. The members of the charismatic group who arranged his travels noticed as they brought him to the airport in Buenos Aires that he obviously wasn’t well. They alerted us at this end of the trip, and he was taken directly to the hospital where he died a few days later.

Now, we are busy with the process of disposing of his things—clothing, books, photographs, notes, and even some Andean knitted caps that his friends in South America gave him as mementoes of his travels there. He was a quiet, gentle, kindly man, born and raised in Chicago of Irish ancestry. He had been a priest for sixty years. Having spent many years in the Spanish-speaking world, he was fluent in that language. He called us “hermano” (Spanish for “brother”). I suspect it was both because he loved the concept of our brotherhood, and also because he spent so much time away from the community that he couldn’t always remember our names, and “hermano” would apply to all of us!

As I was going through some of his things, a poem by one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson, came to me. It is appropriate here; let me read it to you:

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth—

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.

Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

November 4th is the commemoration day of Saint Charles Borromeo, one of the outstanding figures of what is called the Counter-Reformation. That was the movement in the 16th and 17th centuries which combatted “the Reformation,” beginning in the early 1500s. The word “reformation” in ordinary English means the process of reforming or improving something. When the historical “Reformation” occurred in which Martin Luther, John Calvin, and King Henry VIII led nearly half of Europe out of the Church into heretical and schismatic groups, they saw it as a reform from their own point of view, but it certainly was not a reform or reformation from the perspective of the Church.

When you have a sore hand, you don’t solve the problem by amputating the hand, but by healing it. Undoubtedly there were abuses in the Catholic Church in those days, but they were not healed by setting up rival churches and thus destroying the unity of the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. The three leaders of the reformation, namely Martin Luther, John Calvin, and King Henry VIII, brought rival churches into being.

Within the Catholic Church, the counter-reformation produced saints like Saint Charles Borromeo to heal, not to divide. They did much to prevent even more former Catholics from being forced or led out of the Church. Thus we see in our church histories that many countries were saved for unity with Rome while others separated themselves from that unity and are still not in full communion with us. But the days of quarreling and name-calling are largely gone, and now we find on both sides of the theological divide people of good will who recognize our common obligation to work for the unity that Our Lord prays for in the gospel.

Saint Charles Borromeo was born on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, namely, the lake country of northern Italy. He was of a wealthy and noble family; tourists still visit the Borromean Islands in that splendid lake which take their name from his family. His uncle, Pope Pius IV, recognized tremendous talent and virtue in his young nephew, so his church career began very early, not because of the sad practice of nepotism that was a problem for the Church in those days, but because of the Pope’s accurate judgment of the young man’s abiliities. Charles was soon a cardinal and the archbishop of the great diocese of Milan, a post that he kept until his early death at the age of only 46.

It is very appropriate for us to pray through his intercession for all our bishops, that they may be wise and holy men, and for the reunion of our separated brothers with the See of Peter, the Church of Rome. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

November 3rd is the feast of Saint Martin de Porres, the Dominican laybrother who lived in colonial Lima, Peru, back in the 1600s, and who is the patron saint of our southern Dominican province in this country.

I must do this daily message quickly, because we are leaving in a few minutes to drive to Lufkin, Texas, where the monastery of our cloistered Dominican nuns is located. There, on this feast day of ours, one of the young Sisters will make her solemn vows, that is, she will bind herself for the rest of her life to the service of God in the religious life of our contemplative nuns.

It is a beautiful action; just as bride and groom give themselves to each other “til death do us part,” so does a friar or nun, monk, or active sister or brother devote her- or himself to the service of God in the Church permanently. It is the greatest gift that one can give, prompted by God’s grace. I would commend our young Sister to your prayers today as she makes this permanent commitment of herself, and ask your prayers for many other young men and women to follow her example in giving themselves to the service of Our Lord for the rest of their lives. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

When we were schoolchildren learning our catechism, we were taught that the people of God are divided into three groups: the Church Militant on earth; the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in heaven. “Militant” means “fighting.” We here on earth fight against evil and try to do good in our lives, as the Lord commands of us.

Yesterday, on All Saints Day, we celebrated all those of the Church Triumphant. All those canonized and recognized saints whom we celebrate in our liturgies and lives of the saints, as well as the unknown men, women, and children in heaven, known only to their own families, friends, and maybe a few others.

 And today, All Souls Day, we celebrate the other branch of God’s people: the Church Suffering, that is, those who are being detained in Purgatory to make atonement for their sins before entering the fullness of eternal life in Heaven. In the Second Book of Macchabees in the Old Testament, we are taught that “it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be freed from their sins.” And we know that it has been part of our Catholic doctrine that we can assist the dead by our prayers and spiritual works if they need it. In the first generation of the Church, some of them erroneously had themselves baptized for the dead. Saint Paul corrected that idea, but did not deny or contradict the notion that we can be of help to those who have died. Since we cannot help those in hell, and those in heaven do not need our help, it follows that there is a condition after death in which we can help those there; this we call Purgatory, and we pray for them all through our lives, particularly on this, All Souls Day, which follows immediately after the solemnity of All Saints.

 We speak often of the “Requiem”; the Requiem Mass, Mozart’s Requiem, etc. The word “requiem” is the Latin for “rest.” We pray in Latin, “requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” (eternal rest grant to them, O Lord.) Today, let us all pray fervently for those in Purgatory, perhaps some we have known and loved, and to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude for all they have done for us. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord; Bring them into the fullness of life in Heaven. Thank you for seeking God’s truth.  God bless you.  Father Victor Brown, O.P.

We come to the end of this week and the beginning of the new one and of a new month as well. This Saturday is Hallowe’en, a day that began with religious significance although it is now mostly about spooky fun and foolishness. The word “Hallowe’en” really means the eve, or night before, All Hallows, which was the old English way of speaking of All Saints. To this day, there are lots of churches in the British Isles which bear the name of All Hallows.

The following day is November 1st, the solemnity of All Saints which this year replaces the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time. The reason for this celebration is that we are accustomed to celebrate the more prominent saints throughout the church year: Our Lady, the apostles, the martyrs, the doctors of the church, and the other outstanding figures in church history. But the Church wants to remind us that these whom we know are just a small fraction of all those others who are now enjoying eternal life with God our Father because they lived lives in imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and are now reaping their reward.

It is very possible, and—I hope—factual that our grandparents and parents are among their ranks, and that many of the people who have done us good throughout our lives, like teachers, pastors, neighbors, fellow workers, and friends are now among the saints in heaven. If we think back over our lives, we will remember people who were exemplary and whose love and other virtues impressed and touched us and possibly had a good influence upon us.

There is a remarkable book called “Through a Hundred Gates” in which the many contributors tell what motivated them to become Catholics. In some cases, there was very conscious effort over a period of time. In other cases, an isolated word or gesture led them into a deeper spiritual life. The famous Knute Rockne, the football coach of Notre Dame University back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, tells how impressed he was by watching his team players get up and attend early morning Mass before an important game in a city not their own. Those young men didn’t know that “Coach Rockne” was sitting in a corner of the hotel lobby because he couldn’t sleep, and therefore they certainly were not doing that to impress him. He wasn’t even Catholic, being born of Norwegian ancestry. But he saw them, and they led him to a deep esteem for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and then into the Church. So as we celebrate All Saints Day, we may well be celebrating people we have known very well, and people who love us and are even more interested in our well-being now than they were when they were on earth with us. Let us ask them all to pray for us and help us in our pilgrimage through this life and on into eternity. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

In today’s Mass, the gospel presents to us an interesting little episode involving Our Divine Lord and Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. Herod, the son of the man called “Herod the Great” who tried to kill the infant Jesus by slaughtering all the baby boys of Bethlehem, was morally no better than his father. He now wants to get rid of Jesus from his own political territory—Galilee, at the northern end of Palestine. He is curious to see and meet Our Lord, but evidently thinks that that would be politically imprudent, so he simply lets it be known to Our Lord that he (Herod) wants to kill him, as if that would frighten Jesus away from Galilee.

When this message is given to Our Lord, he answers with the only instance in the gospel of his calling someone by an insulting epithet. “Go tell that fox,” Jesus says to those who warn him to leave Galilee, that I will leave in my own good time and then I will go south to Jerusalem, our holy city, for that is where the prophets are to die. So he goes to Jerusalem not to escape Herod but to accomplish his purpose of redeeming the world by his death on the cross.

As it turned out—and of course, Jesus foreknew that this would happen—Our Lord did encounter Herod even in Jerusalem. The Galilean ruler had gone down there to observe the Passover which was going on at the time when Jesus was being arrested, tortured, and killed. Pilate, the Roman ruler of Judea and its capital Jerusalem, knew that Jesus was innocent and should not have been killed. He looked for a way to avoid having to give the order or at least the permission for Our Lord’s death. And when he found out that Jesus was a Galilean, having been raised in Nazareth and made his headquarters in Capharnaum, he happily sent Jesus—in chains—to Herod who was conveniently in Jerusalem for the Passover. The curious Herod was delighted to hear that they were bringing Jesus to him; he was no doubt hoping to see a miracle or at least to hear words of great wisdom from this man about whom he had heard so much. But Jesus stood before the eager politician in total silence and inactivity. He was not to die by the authority of Herod but rather of Pilate. This is why we say in our creed each Sunday at Mass: he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It is the great Roman Empire which sends Jesus to the cross, not the petty potentate of Galilee. But more basically, it is the most holy will of Christ which led him to die for us on the cross. He was not the helpless victim of his enemies; he was the obedient and loving son of his eternal Father who decreed that he would die as the universal Passover Lamb whose blood would accomplish our deliverance from sin, death, and perdition. Angry and disappointed in not being given a demonstration of Jesus’s famous words and deeds, Herod had no choice but to send him back to Pilate who then behaved in tragic weakness and evil. “I find no fault in him,” Pilate said of Jesus. “So I will have him scourged.” But even the savage Roman beating could not satisfy the blood-lust of Our Lord’s enemies, so Pilate, to avoid a riot, called for a basin of water, washed his hands of the matter (as if that could exonerate him of his gross injustice) and then turned him over to his enemies to be crucified. He caused a sign to be nailed to the cross over Our Lord’s head which said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” When the people of Jerusalem objected to it, saying that Jesus was not their king, the weak Pilate tried to save some of his own dignity and authority by saying, “Quod scripsi, scripsi!” What I have written, I have written. How pathetic! How unworthy of this crooked politician who was condemning the man whose death would be his only hope of redemption. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

On this feast of two of Our Lord’s twelve apostles, namely, Saints Simon and Jude, we approach the end of this month of October, the month of the Holy Rosary. So let us again meditate a bit on one of its mysteries—those twenty events which provide us with food for thought and prayer as we recite the Our Fathers and Hail Marys of the Rosary.

Today, I’d like to consider the fourth joyful mystery, the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple. Our Lady and Saint Joseph were a devout Jewish couple, totally steeped in the religious practice and culture of their people. Therefore, when their newborn son was forty days old, they brought him to the temple in Jerusalem for his formal presentation to God and for the so-called purification of his mother. There are so many concepts involved in this event that we could well devote an entire course to this mystery rather than just a few minutes. For one thing, blood was considered very sacred, and any contact with it obliged the one who touched it to wash or otherwise cleanse him- or herself to get the “sacredness” off, before making contact with other, less sacred things. When a woman had a baby, the blood associated with human birth rendered her needful of “purification” in that same sense. It’s like the priest who washes his fingers after Communion in Mass; not because the Sacred Species are dirty, but precisely because they are so clean and should not be mixed with other things in the course of the day’s duties. So Our Lady with her newborn son and husband went to the magnificent temple in Jerusalem which actually was still under construction. It was an enormous building, enclosing several inner courtyards and boasting the finest building materials to be found anywhere. It was always swarming with people coming to pray, to offer sacrifice, to study in its many classrooms with this or that rabbi or expert in the law. Choirs practiced their music; musicians their skills; money-changers did a brisk business changing the ordinary legal tender of the Roman Empire into the temple coin which would not offend Jewish sensibilities because it did not bear the graven images of human beings like the Caesars or, worse still, pagan gods and goddesses.

In addition to the notion of the purification of the mother, there was the redemption of the firstborn child. All life comes from God, whether it be vegetable, animal, or human. And at the beginning of a harvest, like wheat or barley or grapes, and at the beginning of an animal’s or a human couple’s parenthood, the first product is given to God in thanks for his gift of life to us. Thus a firstborn child in the Jewish religion was brought to the temple to “give” him or her to God, and then to be “bought back” or redeemed by the substitution of a lamb, or if the couple couldn’t afford a lamb, then a pair of doves. Our Lady and Saint Joseph evidently could not afford a lamb, so they brought the redemption gift of the poor: a pair of doves.

One more element of this mystery: the holy old man Simeon, to whom God had revealed that this baby is the promised Savior of the world, says about him to those present that this infant Jesus would be “a light to enlighten the pagans and the glory of God’s people Israel.” Thus it has become a Christian tradition to bless candles on this day since our religious use of candles bespeaks the sharing of Christ’s light with all the world. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Here in our priory, we have a young confrere who is taking a course in medical ethics at M.D. Anderson Hospital, the institution that is so well known for its work with cancer patients. Because he is here, the conversation around our table often centers upon medical topics. Last night, for example, we were talking about the remarkable statistics concerning the Houston medical complex with its many hospitals and thousands of patients and employees.

With that in mind, I listened to what Saint Paul says to the Romans in the first reading of today’s Mass. He says, “Creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Now what does Saint Paul mean? He means that God made us who are part spiritual, part physical, to be as we are. We will live for a time in this life, and then we will undergo death, the separation of soul and body. And no matter what good care we take of our bodies, we are going to die. Thus in a sense all the medical technology in the world is futile; we might delay and postpone death for a few years, but we cannot escape it. That is the futility that Saint Paul speaks of. But death is not the end of the story. He goes on to say that creation is groaning in labor pains, because we are waiting to be born to eternal life. Labor pains have to do with giving birth, not undergoing death.

Jesus died because he was human and therefore mortal. But he rose from the dead and will never die again. And he promises that if we live according to his holy will, we will rise to eternal life with him. “We wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies, for in hope we were saved.”
The point of all this is that we are not to be saddened or discouraged by the inevitability of our death which makes itself known by the physical changes that old age and illness bring. That is a part of the human journey, but not the end, and certainly not the purpose of it. As we were asked by the little catechism long ago, “Why did God make you?” And we were taught the answer—the most important answer we will ever learn: “God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in heaven.” Not futility, but divine love and an eternal purpose. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

If I were to ask you to give a good definition of “poetry,” I bet you’d have a hard time doing it. Poetry certainly isn’t an easy concept to define. I looked it up in my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, and this rather convoluted description is what I found: “The embodiment in appropriate language of beautiful or high thought, imagination, or emotion, the language being rhythmical, usually metrical, and adapted to arouse the feelings and imagination.” That isn’t very clear, but I doubt that I could do any better.

Because poetry often has to do with “beautiful or high thought” as Webster says, it is often religious and religion is expressed in poetic language. That brings me to the point of my thought today. This past Saturday, the Liturgy of the Hours offered us for our meditation a passage from the book of the prophet Baruch in the Old Testament. Baruch is talking about the great virtue of prudence, which is such a precious treasure in one’s personality. The prudent person is very fortunate, very gifted. The imprudent person is seen to be stupid, foolish, unreliable, undesirable. Baruch says: He who knows all things (that is, God) knows her (prudence.) He who established the earth for all time and filled it with four-footed beasts; he who dismisses the light and it departs, calls it, and it obeys Him trembling; before whom the stars at their posts shine and rejoice; when he calls them, they answer, “Here we are!” shining with joy for their maker.

Stop and think about the sun and the moon and the stars. Remember that they are all creatures of God, and therefore, in a sense, his children. They are brothers and sisters of ours under the universal fatherhood of the Lord God. Because they are not gifted with free will and the ability to say “yes” to this and “no” to that, they cannot disobey God and therefore commit sin. They do exactly what he wants at all times. This is what Baruch means when he says that when God dismisses the light it departs; when he calls it, and it obeys him trembling. The prophet sees the sun and the light that emanates from it like a servant of God. The master calls the servant when he wants something; he dismisses the servant when the service has been rendered. “Come here and do this.” And later, “You may go.” Every morning the sun rising in the east fills our world with light, clarity, beauty, warmth, and joy. In the evening, it goes to its rest in the west and we need lamps or some sort of artificial light by which to see. That huge and immensely powerful star which is the center of our solar system is a servant of God, and yet for all its greatness, we human beings are greater than it because we can look into the face of God and say, “I love you.”

Baruch says so movingly that when the Lord calls the stars in the evening, they answer: “Here we are!,” shining with joy for their Maker. Beautiful ideas! A splendid way of describing the glory of this world of ours, controlled by God and obedient to him. Thomas Merton once made a similar point by saying that all the leaves on all the trees of the world are tongues which speak his praises and speak to us of his inexhaustible creativity.

So, my dear friends, let us consider God’s holy word in sacred scripture, and especially the Incarnate Word who is his own and only son, and let us shine with joy at the privilege of knowing, loving, and serving him all our lives. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.