Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Parish, New Haven, CT
McGivney Festival Young Adult Prayer Vigil
October 31, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s reflection, please click below:
To watch a video recording of the talk, please click below. (If there’s a problem with the link, the talk starts at 7:18:24 and ends at 7:44:24)
The following text guided tonight’s talk:
It’s a real joy and privilege for us to be here tonight in devout celebration of the beatification of Father Michael McGivney and in prayerful vigil for the Solemnity of All Saints.
We are in the Church not only in which our new beatus is buried and where he receives so many prayers from the faithful flocking to him from all over the world, but where, for the first seven years of his priestly life, he worked indefatigably as a parochial vicar to prepare his people to enter the communion of saints.
It was in the basement of this Church that in 1882 he founded the Knights of Columbus.
It was in this sanctuary in which he brought Jesus Christ from heaven to earth and from the altar into the mind, heart, and soul of his people.
It was before Christ in the tabernacle of this Church where he knelt in daily supplication for those who asked for, or needed, his prayers.
It was in this pulpit, with what his parishioners remember as a “soft, pleasant voice” and “perfect diction,” that he shared Jesus’ words of eternal life and helped people, including many initially non-Catholics, to embrace the truth that sets us free.
It was here that he celebrated so many baptisms and First Communions, weddings and funerals, heard countless confessions, prepared the young to enter into the power of Pentecost through Confirmation, and led his people in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
It was here in this parish where he founded a Young Men’s Total Abstinence and Literary Society, planned parish picnics, directed highly successful plays, and carried out many other important social and fundraising activities.
Little could he have foreseen, little could he ever have imagined, that this evening, 136 years after he left this parish, the young for whom he was considered an apostle during his lifetime would assemble in prayer before the God he loved and humbly served, and substitute his beloved title “Father” with the celestial designation “Blessed.” But as Catholics heard this morning at daily Mass, “God exalts the humble.” From this day forward, Our Lady whose devotion he spread here must be telling him from her Son’s eternal right, “all generations will call you blessed.”
And how awesome it is for us to be here, in this holy place, on this holy day, to receive the graces that Blessed Michael McGivney, our Lady and all the saints are praying God to give us. In Rome, in what we now call the Scala Sancta, there is an inscription in the Chapel that served as the private chapel of the popes for 1000 years and in which the relics of most of the early saints were contained: “Non est in toto sanctior orbe locus.” “In the world world, there is no holier place.” At least tonight we can say, this side of heaven, there’s no greater place to be.
True Veneration
When we venerate those whom the Church has lifted to the altars, it’s important, of course, that we try to read books and articles, listen to homilies and podcasts, visit museums, and watch beautifully done documentaries or movies focused on them. It’s important likewise that we invoke them as powerful intercessors, recognizing that their prayers can sometimes accomplish what ours alone mysteriously cannot. But it’s most important of all that we try to follow them as they sought to follow Christ all the way, to imitate what’s imitable in them as faithful disciples and ardent apostles, so that one day we might share their eternal company and joy.
Saint Gregory the Great taught us 1400 years ago, “Vita bonorum viva lectio.” The life of the saints is a living reading — an active exegesis, an operative interpretation — of the Word of God and a vivid reflection of Jesus, the Word made flesh. The Saints and the Beati how us the beauty of our faith fully lived. They point us to the font of true happiness in this world and forever. They direct us to the path of life where we learn how to love God and others with 100 percent of the mind, heart, soul and strength God has given us.
That’s why the best way for us to praise and thank God for the life of Blessed Michael Givney, and the most fitting way for us to honor him on this All Hallows’ Eve, is for us to allow him to teach us about the way to holiness he strived so hard to indicate to his parishioners here at St. Mary’s, later to his flock at St. Thomas’ in Thomaston, to the first Knights of Columbus and to so many others he encountered and evangelized.
The Way of Holiness: Part I
What can we learn from Father McGivney to help us to respond to God’s call to be holy as he is holy, merciful as he is merciful, perfect as he is perfect, by loving one another as he has loved us?
The first thing he teaches us is that holiness is indeed possible.
St. John Paul II wrote in 2001, in his pastoral plan for the third Christian millennium, Novo Millennio Ineunte, that it was “necessary to rediscover the full practical significance” of Vatican II’s “universal call to holiness.”
He stressed that “this ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes’ of holiness,” people, for example, who have the stigmata like Padre Pio, who read others’ souls like John Vianney, who levitate in prayer like Joseph Cupertino, who fast far away from civilization like Anthony of the Desert, who found religious orders like Teresa of Avila, Frances Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Teresa of Calcutta, or who remain faithful under torture and death like the martyrs.
St. John Paul underlined, rather, that “the time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.”
Holiness is not only possible, he underlined, but is expected, and not just of clergy and religious, but every single one of the baptized.
Pope Francis, in his beautiful 2018 exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate on the call to holiness, talked about the “saints next door,” those who “living in our midst reflect God’s presence.” He calls these saintly neighbors the “middle class of holiness.” They’re not flashy. They’re not famous in the eyes of the world during their lifetime. They seem on the outside to be very ordinary. But on the inside the glow with the fire of God’s love for them and their own love for God and others.
What I love so much about Blessed Michael McGivney is not just that he is fellow diocesan parish priest raised to the altars. I love that he is a “blue collar saint.” He wasn’t, and never tried to be, Saint Augustine in the pulpit, Saint Thomas Aquinas in the classroom, Saint John of the Cross in prayer, Saint Vincent de Paul among the poor, or Saint John Bosco raising money. He sought to be Father Michael McGivney. In the midst of his daily prayer, incessant hard work, joys, pains, and service to God and his people, he did his best to unite his entire life to God. He aimed to let God’s mercy and love for him overflow so that his life would become a commentary on the words of consecration, giving his body and blood, sweat and tears, callouses and fatigue, for the salvation of those Jesus died on Calvary to redeem.
So the first point he teaches us is that holiness is possible for you and for me. As St. Paul said, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification” (1 Th 4:3).
The Way of Holiness: Part II
Saint John Paul II said in 2001 that it’s not enough merely to call all people to holiness. The second point is that we need to respond to that call.
Saint Thomas Aquinas once asked aloud, “What does it take to become a saint?” He replied, “Will it.”
We have to choose it. We have to cooperate.
While the choice between eternal life and eternal self-alienation from God should be conceptually straight-forward, it’s morally difficult.
To will holiness means to will the will of God.
It means to go the way of the grain of wheat, to lose our life to save it, to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow Jesus each day, to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive 70 times seven times, to care for Jesus in the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, ill, or imprisoned we meet, to live the beatitudes and choose to be poor in spirit rather than rich, to mourn with compassion rather than laugh, to hunger and thirst for holiness rather than be satiated by the world’s pleasures, to be meek and peacemaking rather than powerful, to be pure of heart rather than lustful, to be willing to be persecuted for our faith in Jesus rather than liked and esteemed by classmates, coworkers and those whose earthly opinions seem to matter.
Blessed Michael McGivney willed holiness. He not only aspired to the end but chose the means, daily, faithfully, fruitfully.
He recognized what John Paul II wrote, that because God calls us to holiness, “it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity.” Father McGivney never settled for the mediocre. He wasn’t showy, but patiently, from the time he was a boy, he put God first, he put others ahead of himself, and he never stopped doing so.
In the midst of his ordinary life in Waterbury, in seminary both in Canada and Maryland, here in this parish, and in Thomaston, he opened himself up to the God who can convert five loaves and two fish into a feast for thousands, who can change water into wine and wine into blood, and who can transform ordinary life into something eternally extraordinary.
Blessed Michael willed what God willed: his sanctification. And his example shows us how to will it, too.
The Way of Holiness: Part III
The third point John Paul II taught, and Father McGivney exemplified, is that it’s not enough to will holiness in general. We must will it very practically.
God would never call us to anything without providing all the means we need. John Paul II said that there’s a need “for a genuine ‘training in holiness,’ adapted to people’s needs.” He described six courses in this curriculum: Grace, prayer, Sunday Mass, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, listening to God’s word, and proclaiming God’s word by lips and life.
Grace means that everything starts from God who makes possible what he commands.
Prayer is not just an exchange of thoughts or words, but a true exchange of persons, in which God comes to abide in us and we abide in him. It changes us and opens us to become an existence-made-prayer.
The Mass is the greatest means of sanctification of all, by which the Son of God who is holy, holy, holy comes to make us his dwelling place and to sanctify us from the inside.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation brings our souls back to their baptismal splendor and fills us with God’s mercy so that we can pay that mercy forward not just to those who have sinned against us but in all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Listening to God’s word changes our mind so that we might begin to look at everything more and more from God’s perspective; it changes our words so that increasingly we echo God’s word; it changes our hearts so that we might begin to long for what God desires for us and others. St. Peter said that Jesus had the “words of eternal life.” We could paraphrase and say that Jesus “has the words of sanctification” and the more we know and live those words, the more people will be able to say of us what Gregory the Great said of God’s holy ones: vita bonorum viva lectio.
And once we really have come to know God’s word, we can’t but share it with others. We become like Saint Paul, who cried out, “Woe to me if I don’t proclaim the Gospel.” We burst to share it in every way, by words and witness.
Father McGivney excelled in living all of these pillars as a disciple. He also stood out as an apostle in helping his parishioners, young and old, converts and cradle, Knights and non-Knights, live by them, too.
This training in holiness constitutes the meat and potatoes of parish priesthood, to assist God’s beloved sons and daughter in living these six pillars. Every parish exists to be a “vocational/technical training school” for holiness, happiness and heaven. We found out earlier today that Blessed Michael’s feast will be August 13th each year. But for the last 130 years, his feast was tomorrow, All Saints Day, and for most of us, if we will what God wills, November 1 will be our feast as well.
Under Father McGivney, Saint Mary’s was this school of sanctity. So was saint Thomas. And he’s praying that your and my parishes will be, too.
The Way of Holiness: Part IV
The fourth and final point I would like to make is the special spirituality Father McGivney prioritized in the formation of the Knights of Columbus.
We know that he founded the Knights for three reasons.
One was as a benefit society, to care for widows and children whose husband or father was either incapacitated or had died, so that the family wouldn’t be destitute and the children wouldn’t risk becoming wards of the state. The second was to draw men from the secret societies that were seducing them to try to find fraternity and a sense of belonging in activities outside the Church and the domestic church of their home. The third was to have an opportunity to form men to be real men of God, faithful to the Lord, to the Church, to their wife and kids.
In forming the spirituality of the Knights to be men who live by faith, he put forward two principles of holiness and eventually added a third: charity, unity and fraternity.
Charity. In order to become a Knight of Columbus one needs to be what he called a “practical” Catholic, which means something different than what we today denote by “practicing Catholic.” A practical Catholic is someone who does more than know the Catechism, come to Mass on Sundays on Holy Days and keep the other precepts of the Church. A practical one means one who acts on Jesus’ call to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor like Good Samaritans. A practical Catholic is in contrast to a nominal one. It means a person who lives by faith, by hope and by charity.
The fruit of faith must be love for God and others and that’s what Blessed Michael not just taught but lived. He lived it in his care for the sick, his willingness to sacrifice for the poor like for the young orphan Alfred Downes, his daily visits to prisoners like Chip Smith, and his care for his ill and overworked brother priests. He taught it in making charity the first pillar of the Knights.
Unity flows from charity. We can’t really love God and love our neighbor unless we take seriously what Jesus prayed for on Holy Thursday night, that we would all be one as he and the Father are one, so that the world may know that the Father sent Jesus and loves just us as he loves Jesus (John 17). The whole Church is supposed to be a sacrament of the loving Trinitarian communion.
But we know that the Church is rent by divisions, between East and West, between Catholics and Protestants, between traditionalists and progressives, and so many other ways. It’s the greatest scandal of all.
Blessed Michael, as a practical Catholic priest, wanted the Knights to be like a Church in miniature, helping to bring about unity in the Church, and through it unity in society and unity in the world. Everything would begin by responding God’s grace to keep their communion.
And that is what leads to the third principle, genuine fraternity. We are our brother’s keepers. Christ came to found a family and by Baptism we become more related to each other by Christ’s blood than I am to my identical twin by genes. We need, however, to live that fraternity.
That’s one of the most beautiful things about the Knights of Columbus, of which I’m proud to say I’ve been one for 27 years, as well as founder of a Council in one of the parishes that I led. The Knights are a band of brothers, laymen and chaplains, united not only with each other, and not only with two million brothers on earth in 17 different countries, but also with Fr. McGivney and other deceased Knights we pray are with him among all the saints. It’s a fraternity ultimately with Jesus who took on our nature so that with him we could turn and call God “Our Father.”
The Knights of Columbus was founded by Blessed Michael to train Knights in holiness, to make our faith practical, and that means of holiness, and the men it forms, is Fr. McGivney’s greatest legacy of all.
The Knights of Columbus exists to form men like Daniel Schachle, the father of Mikey the miracle child, and the dad of Nathan who spoke here earlier tonight. It exists to sanctify men who aspire, like the Schachles, to form beautiful, generous, live-embracing, courageous, prayerful, families. As Daniel said last night, had he and his wife, Michelle, stopped at having, say, ten kids rather than 13, Mikey would have never been conceived, he would never have had his life in danger, he would never have received the miracle by which God has been so glorified and Father Michael McGivney’s intercessory prayer and sanctity recognized. In some places, the word “Knight” can be cheap, given by royalty to celebrities whose lives are far from exemplary. The Knights of Columbus exist to inspire and assist men to holiness, not just as individuals, but as a band of brothers, a communion of saints, beginning here but lasting forever.
If there are any young men here tonight who are not yet Knights of Columbus, I would urge you to become a brother of Blessed Michael Givney and his band of brothers. You will strengthen your fellow Knights and they will strengthen you.
The motto of the Knights of Columbus is Vivat Jesus, “May Jesus live.” And the essence of Father McGivney’s practical Catholicism was the vivid awareness that Jesus is very much alive. He was alive Father McGivney’s life. He’s alive in the Church. He’s alive in the Knights. He’s alive here tonight.
Through the intercession of Blessed Michael McGivney, may each of us grow in the faith that Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection and the Life is here with us always, making his call to holiness personal, possible, palpable, and practical.
May each of us hear Jesus saying to us, “I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full,” and leading us, day by day, toward that place where Blessed Michael McGivney and the Saints rejoice forever.
Vivat Iesus! Now and Forever. Amen!
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