Today we Dominicans and many others throughout the world celebrate with special pride and joy the feast of our Sister, Saint Catherine of Siena. Only three women have been declared Doctors of the Church, and she was the earliest one to be so honored. The life of this remarkable woman was very closely associated with the Popes. When she was a little girl of only six, Our Lord appeared to her. In her vision, she saw Christ dressed in the vestments of the Pope and enthroned among saints and angels in heaven. The beauty of the vision gave her a tremendous awareness of the connection of Our Savior and his vicar on earth, the Pope. This was the means chosen by Our Lord to correct a major problem in the Church. About forty years before Catherine’s birth, the Pope, under the influence of French cardinals and politicians, had left Rome and gone to live in Avignon, a French city on the Rhone river in what is now southern France. He and his successors remained in Avignon for seventy years, much to the scandal and demoralization of the Church and its people of the time. This Italian girl, in her twenties, moved by the Holy Spirit, exerted such influence upon the Pope that he finally gave in to her begging, pleading, threatening, and scolding, and returned to Rome where he belonged and where the Popes have continued to reside ever since, as they had since the time of Saint Peter. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.

If ever there was a saint who was grateful to Our Lord for his establishment of the papacy and devoted to the current occupant on the seat of Peter, it was Catherine of Siena.  The two principal criteria by which a Catholic can be identified are these: that he or she believe in, and worthily receive, the Holy Eucharist regularly, and that he or she be in communion with and obedient to the Pope, the Bishop of Rome. We here in America have come to believe that our democratic form of government gives us the right to criticize our political leaders, to lampoon and ridicule them, and to disobey them whenever we can get away with it.  That immature and irresponsible mentality cannot be carried over into the Church. We do not elect our Popes; the Church is by no means a democracy. It teaches and governs by divine authority.  And Christ said to Saint Peter, the first Pope, “Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” That total authority has been passed down from Peter to all his successors, of whom [Pope Francis] is the [265th]. I do not necessarily agree with everything that every pope has done; we all know that some of our popes were not good men and were scandalous pontiffs. But they never erred in matters of faith or morals. On the other hand, in the last two centuries, the Church and the world have been blessed with some of the finest popes in the history of Christendom.

If we want to be the Catholics we ought to be, let us ask Saint Catherine of Siena to help us in that very noble aspiration.  “He who hears you, hears Me,” Jesus said to the apostles and their successors.  And to Saint Peter, “Feed my lambs . . . feed my sheep.” Let us accept the “feeding” of our Popes for in doing so, we are nourished by Christ Our Lord himself.  Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown.

Yesterday afternoon, on Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict followed the tradition of going to the top of the Aventine Hill, the highest of Rome’s famed “seven hills.” He went first to the Benedictine abbey of San Anselmo; from there, there was a procession to our Dominican church of Santa Sabina, just about a block away. And there, Pope Benedict celebrated Mass and received and then distributed ashes. He spoke about the unity of the human race with the rest of our cosmos, alluding to the second creation story in Genesis 2:7. For the Church each Ash Wednesday recalls the words that we find in the first book of the Bible: “The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.” And then, when Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, he said to them, “You are dirt and to dirt you shall return.”

Here in our southern Dominican province, we have several burial places and we are allowed to choose the one where we would like to be laid to rest.  We may also choose to be buried bodily or to be cremated.  That is a relatively new option; when I was a child, the Church still forbade cremation since her enemies often used cremation as a means of denying the doctrine of the resurrection.   

While we’re thinking about these matters, let us use our Ash Wednesday themes well. We certainly ARE from the earth on which we live; it is also certain that we will one day return to our component parts, when this living soul of ours departs the body and leaves it lifeless.  Is this morbid thinking?  Not at all!  We were not made for this life, but for the next.  And in the next life, we will have a vibrant body and a life-giving soul.  As Father James Fox, the abbot of the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, wrote to the Baroness von Trapp when one of her daughters died in childbirth, “We envy your sorrow, and Martina her heaven.”  With our Christian faith, death is a reason for endless rejoicing, not for endless sadness.  Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown.

On this beautiful feast day of our Church calendar, we discover that what we are celebrating has a number of important elements, each of which is the apt object of meditation and prayer. Let’s look at some of them:

·      This is the feast of the Presentation of Our Divine Lord as a 40-day-old baby in the temple at Jerusalem, in accordance with Jewish worship.

·      It is the time that Jesus is officially and formally presented to God his father in the temple, the dwelling of God among his people.

·      It is the momentous meeting of the Jewish temple — an inanimate building — with the Christian temple: the body of Jesus in which God dwells far more really and intimately and personally than he did in the sacred building in Jerusalem.

·      Two persons who were prophets of the Jewish cult, namely Simeon and Anna, recognize this baby as the promised Messiah, and they thank God for having fulfilled his promises of old.

·      Simeon calls Jesus a LIGHT to enlighten the Gentile nations of the world and the glory of the Jewish people. Thus all of humanity has reason to rejoice over the birth of Jesus in our world. The Jewish temple receives the Christian savior; Jewish prophets hail this Jewish Messiah who is the glory of the Jewish race and the hope of all humankind.

·      This is the fourth joyful mystery of the Rosary. But it is also first of our Lady’s sorrows, since Simeon looks into the future and sees that her soul shall be pierced by the sword of Jesus’s sufferings and death. Thus the shadow of the cross falls across her life even as early as this, and at such a joyous celebration.

·      This is the feast that used to be called Candlemas Day, since in honor of Christ, a light of revelation to the nations, candles were blessed on this day for religious use in churches and homes.

·      And finally, this is the celebration of the event that occurred when Jesus was only forty days old. He is called the light of revelation to the nations; as an adult he would say of himself: I am the light of the world!

Christ, light of the world, illumine our minds and hearts, and shine in all our words and actions. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown.

In the first reading for today’s Mass, we get a beautiful message of love and encouragement from God our Father. The passage is the beginning of Saint Paul’s first letter to the Christian community in Corinth, of whom he was especially fond. But because that letter is divinely inspired, it applies to all of us, and what Saint Paul is saying to the Corinthians, God is saying to you and to me.

Saint Paul begins by saying that his fellow-apostle Sosthenes and he send greetings to the Corinthians, “to you who have been consecrated in Christ Jesus and called to be a holy people.” He goes on, “and to all those who, wherever they may be, call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.” He continues, “I continually thank my God for you because of the favor he has bestowed on you in Christ Jesus … You have been richly endowed with every gift of speech and knowledge …You lack no spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful and it was he who called you to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

You have been richly endowed. You lack no spiritual gift. How true these statements are about all those who have faith in our Divine Lord and attempt to live in union with him! What a joy to be members of his people, recipients of his grace, his love, his peace, and his promise that we will be with him forever. One of the nicest things that Jesus says in the gospel occurs just before his sufferings and death. He told his disciples, and us, “I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you also may be.”

So, let us be grateful and happy that we have been so richly endowed; that we lack no spiritual gift. And that Our Divine Lord is in heaven, preparing a place for us. Let us try not to fear death. There is a natural fear of disintegration, but let us try to rise above that fear into the realm of supernatural confidence, trust, and the “joyful hope” that we speak of at Mass. Jesus, who is with us every day, but concealed in his word and his Eucharist, awaits us at the end of our brief journey through this world, and he awaits us in all his glory and divine beauty. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago.  Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown, who was born into eternal life seven years ago on January 9, 2017.

Our national celebration of Thanksgiving is unique in all the world, as far as I know. I’m not aware of any other country that has a Thanksgiving Day. It is to the credit of the American people that we have celebrated it and preserved it during the entire history of our nation. I’m surprised that the ACLU or some similar organization has not tried to get rid of it, since it is essentially religious. If you are going to give thanks, then to whom are you going to give thanks? By its very nature, Thanksgiving requires someone to thank, and, of course, that someone is God.

So even though the non-religious people in our country make a baked turkey, rather than the Almighty God, the center of their Thanksgiving observance, Thanksgiving is a religious celebration, and we, who do believe in God and do wish to express our gratitude to Him for all that He does for us, can make of this national holiday a uniquely reverent and devout celebration.

Let us remember our miliary personnel as we celebrate Thanksgiving this year.  I have some idea how they feel.  I have celebrated the Fourth of July a number of times outside the United States, and once, I celebrated Thanksgiving in Rome.  It wasn’t the same as being at home with family and friends in the heart of our own nation which is observing the day together as a people.  This year our military forces are deployed in many countries throughout the world.  Thanksgiving will remind them of home, families, and their past lives as few other things can do.  Let us pray for them that this will be the last time they must be away from their homes and families because of world hostilities and let us pray for the Peace of Christ throughout this world, where so many misguided people find war so easy and peace so difficult. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown.

Exactly nine months ago today, on December 8, the universal Church celebrated the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Mother. Since there is ordinarily a nine-month period between human conception and birth, we now celebrate the birth of the little girl who had been immaculately conceived nine months previously.

This is a unique day in the calendar and liturgy of the Church; it is one of the three—and only three—times each year when we celebrate births.  We humans are usually born without grace, or as we say, “in the state of original sin.” The saints die in grace. So the death of God’s holy ones is more to be celebrated than their birth.  However, we know of three human beings who were born in the state of grace: Our Blessed Mother who had been filled with grace from the first moment of her conception, then Saint John the Baptist who was sanctified by the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb, when he “leaped for joy” at the close proximity of the unborn Christ in the womb of Our Lady, and finally Our Divine Lord himself, who is not only “full of grace” but is the very source of grace for every man, woman, and child ever brought into being.

The most frequently used prayer to Our Lady is the “Hail Mary” which ends by asking the Mother of our Lord, “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”  Our Lady was conceived, was born, and ended her life on earth “full of grace.” We are not conceived nor born in God’s grace, but we certainly do hope to end our life in that happy state, so we ask for the prayers of her who is immaculate.  Look back over your life.  How often do you think you have said to Our Lady: “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death”? Fifty, every time we pray the Rosary.  That comes to about a million in the course of 55 years. Can the “clement, and loving, and sweet Virgin Mary” ignore all of that supplication addressed to her?

So today, let us who want to die in grace continue to ask her who was born in grace for that tremendous favor. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown.

Yesterday, August 30, I spoke and wrote of our receiving of our religious habit on August 30, 1956 and thus beginning the year of retreat called the novitiate. Exactly a year and a day after that “vestition” or receiving of the distinctive garb of the Dominican Order, those of us who wished to continue our progress toward the permanent commitment which we call “solemn vows” took temporary or simple vows binding us for three years to this life of ours. That was on August 31, 1957. Then, when those three years had passed, those who continued to aspire to the fullness of the religious life and, for some of us, to the priesthood, made our solemn vows on August 31, 1960. It is one thing to bind yourself for three years to a certain way of life. It is quite another to make that commitment for the remainder of one’s life.

I still have the small sheets of paper on which I had typed, in Latin, the formulas of my vows. The one that I read while kneeling before my religious superior in 1957 ends with the words “usque ad triennium”— for three years. The one I read in 1960 ends with the words “usque ad mortem”—until death.  I remember very clearly the tension, the emotional power that we felt as we made our way to kneel at the feet of our superior and to read that formula. You could have heard a pin drop in the chapel. What had begun four years before with a one-year promise and then a three-year promise was now a life-long promise of the most grave and serious nature. Frequently during my ministry I have officiated at weddings in which the bride and/or the groom has shown that same understanding of the great importance of what they were doing.  It is beautiful to see and to share, and it always brought back to me the way I felt as I pronounced those words which changed my life: usque ad mortem. Until death.

As we think of these things, let us pray for many vocations to religious life and priesthood; let us pray that those in vows will be totally true to them and thus glorify God and give powerful witness to the entire world. And let us pray in thanksgiving for the grace of religious vocation.  People often talk about the generosity of those of us who make those vows. But I think they have it backwards.  It is not we who are generous with God; it is God who is generous with us and gives us the grace to live this life and thus serve both God and man. Thank you for seeking God’s truth.  God bless you.  Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown

In the year 1956 our church calendar had not been altered for many years, and the feast of Saint Rose of Lima fell on August 30. She was a member of the Dominican laity, and was the first person of the entire New World to be canonized, so we Dominicans are very proud of her. And it was customary for the incoming novices to our Order to receive the Dominican habit on her feastday. So on August 30, my classmates and I will celebrate our 55th anniversary of the beginning of our Dominican life. We have worn the habit of Saint Dominic and written “O.P.” — of the Order of Preachers — behind our names for fifty-five years. I ask that you join with us in thanking our God for this tremendous grace.

In the gospel used at Mass on the commemoration day of Saint Rose, Jesus tells us that he is the vine, we the branches. The whole reason for cultivating grape vines is to produce grapes, and from them, wine. Now, left to itself, the vine will produce a great many branches and leaves and tendrils, and some clusters of grapes as well. The vine-grower, who is interested in wine and not in beautiful foliage, takes his pruning shears and cuts, and cuts, and cuts. In present-day viniculture, usually only one cluster is allowed to grow on each vine; all the other incipient clusters are cut away; most of the branches and leaves are cut away. One branch, with one cluster, and just enough leaves to protect that one cluster from the heat of the sun, are allowed to grow. All the rest is pruned away. Now, think how you would feel if you were a grape vine. You expend every effort to produce lots of growth. Many branches, many leaves, many clusters of fruit, many tendrils. You hope that your sincere efforts and the growth that you can produce will please your master the vine-grower. But does it? NO! He comes with his shears and reduces almost all your efforts to nothing. Why does he treat you like this? How can he be so cruel? But you see, he has human intelligence, and you don’t. You’re only a vine, doing your thing — doing what comes naturally. But he is a man, doing to a vine what is not natural to the vine, but that which is SUPER-natural to the vine — that which is useful to human intelligence and design.

And so with us. We strive for success and pleasure. Christ tells us to deny ourselves and take up our cross. We strive for wealth and a life of ease; Christ lived poorly and says to us “blessed are the poor in spirit.” We strive to rise to the top, to be in command, to be in authority over others. Christ tells us to become like little children. It’s all part of the pruning, the cutting, the vine-growing which is supernatural to our own inclinations. But if we allow him to do what he wants with us, he will produce something far better than we could. Let us trust him to do that. Thank you for seeking God’s truth, God Bless you.  Father Victor Brown.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Augustine. He’s a tremendously important figure in Church history. To understand his great position in Christian history, let try to divide the story into segments.

First, we had Our Divine Lord and his apostles. They lived in the first century of Christian history. The Church was born and began to spread at that first Pentecost just after Our Lord ascended into heaven. The Roman Empire began to persecute the Church, and continued doing so until the Emperor Constantine in the year 313 allowed it to exist and operate openly. Then there was a great flowering of the intellectual and spiritual life of the Church with the fathers and doctors of the Church. People like Saints Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great and Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin for the sake of the Latin-speaking empire. In the Greek-speaking east, the Church produced men like Saint Basil, John Chrysostom, and Athanasius. Of these, the greatest was Saint Augustine.

Gifted with a brilliant mind, and moved by God’s grace, thanks no doubt to the prayers of his mother, Saint Monica, the 40-year-old ex-playboy—now a priest and bishop—turned his fine mind to Christian revelation as he found it in the Scriptures and the teachings of the earlier Church. He had “first crack” at all of this wealth of doctrine, so to speak. He wrote copiously, and immensely enriched the Church by his explanations and commentaries on Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. You can find his “Confessions” and “The City of God”—two very famous books of his—in most of the libraries of the world and all Catholic seminaries and universities.  And in the Liturgy of the Hours, we read constantly from his other works by which he sheds light upon the Bible and the teachings of the Church. He died nearly 1600 years ago, but is still very true, very relevant, very helpful.

Our Divine Lord tells us in the gospel: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Saint Augustine helps us to follow that way, understand that truth, and live in accordance with that life. Thank you for seeking God’s truth, God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  This message was composed some years ago.

Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of Pentecost. It commemorates the day when, ten days after His Ascension into Heaven, our Divine Lord sent the Holy Spirit upon the infant Church and into the hearts of its individual members, and, as is always the case with our liturgical celebrations, the greatness of that great event is repeated for us in our world today. Thus, those who celebrate the feast of Pentecost each year with devotion and sincere prayer receive graces similar to what the Apostles and Disciples received in that Upper Room in Jerusalem so long ago.

In that beautiful, old, venerable hymn called a sequence that we use in the Liturgy at Pentecost, we ask the Holy Spirit to “melt the frozen, warm the chill.”  Let us think about those words today.  Love has always been seen as warm.  We use words like ardor and fervor to indicate the warmth of love.  Ardor comes from a Latin word meaning “to burn.”  Fervor also comes from the Latin, it means “to boil,” like hot water.  A living body is warm.  A corpse is cold.  So we speak of the warmth of love, the coldness of indifference or hatred.

You might remember that when Dante wrote his classic, “The Divine Comedy,” he has Virgil leading Dante down the various passageways of Hell until they come to the very bottom, where Satan is eternally imprisoned.  And in what condition does Dante find the Prince of Devils?  He finds Him lying, bound on the surface of a frozen lake, suffering eternally from terrible cold.  This symbolizes His total lack of love of God and of the other angels and mankind.

So we ask the Spirit to “melt the frozen, warm the chill.”  Let’s apply that prayer to ourselves.  Do we treat some people with coldness?  indifference? hatred? lack of forgiveness if they have offended us or if we think they have offended us?  Do we close our hearts to some for one reason or another?  Do we fail to take seriously what we say in the “Our Father”—“forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”?  If our hearts are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, they must be warm with love. If they are cold, hostile, contemptuous of others, vindictive, that is a sure sign that we have made it impossible for the Spirit of the Living God to take up residence within our being. Thank you for seeking God’s truth.  God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.

Note:  Father Brown composed this message some years ago. Please pray for the souls of the faithful departed, including Father Brown