June 13, 2019 – Baltimore, MD
“God draws straight with crooked lines.”
It is the third day of our bishops’ conference meeting in Baltimore, and the business part of our meeting is over. Tomorrow is a day set aside for prayer together, with nothing further to discuss, decide, or vote on. I thought I might use the occasion to share with you a couple of experiences I had today by way of following up on what I wrote yesterday.
I typically do not pay much attention to the feast days in the calendar of the Roman Church, but I learned at Mass this morning that today was the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, the beloved 13th-century Franciscan priest.
Unlike many of you, I’m sure, I have never had a particular devotion to St. Anthony, despite starting my seminary education with the Capuchin Franciscans. I understand, however, that devotion to this particular saint is very, very popular in Romania, even among the Orthodox. He is one of the most quickly canonized saints in the history of the Catholic Church, and is popularly regarded as a very active and popular friend in heaven. American Catholics, in particular, consider St. Anthony as the saint to turn to when looking for something one has lost. I had lost something, but it never occurred to me to ask the saint for his help to find it.
Nevertheless, it seems that St. Anthony might have been using the occasion of his feast day to pass along a couple of messages to me. First, I was struck by this line from morning prayer: ”Those who are learned will be as radiant as the sky in all its beauty; those who instruct the people in goodness will shine like the stars for all eternity” (antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah). I thought immediately about the question I pondered yesterday: if I feel that I have not communicated enough, why do I believe I am supposed to communicate more in the first place? My answer yesterday was that it is my duty as your bishop to preach God’s consoling word, and preaching is what St. Anthony is most famous for, as that antiphon says.
Then, later this morning in the course our meeting, I was struck once more by a line from a document we were discussing and which we approved for publication, “Affirming Our Episcopal Commitments.” The document notes, “In keeping with the promises made at his episcopal ordination [in the Latin rite], a bishop is ‘to guide the holy People of God in the way of salvation, as a devoted father and sustain them…’”
At my ordination to the priesthood on May 18, 1986, my spiritual father, Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, gave the dinner speech. In this speech, he made a specific request of the dinner guests. He asked everyone to commit to praying for me one day a week, noting what he said was universally the experience of a priest, namely, that of going to bed every night, exhausted, with the thought “I was not holy enough today.” He was absolutely right, and I have experienced this myself every night since that day.
I think my awareness that I am not holy enough for the mission I have been given by the Church (something that ought to be obvious to anyone) is part of what is behind the sense I have had for the past few years that I had “lost my voice.” What can I, sinner that I am, say to you that will help you to become holy?
I don’t have an answer to that. The only response I have is that God “draws straight with crooked lines.” God can choose to work through my sinfulness to bring about your holiness. I am to preach (and write) about the Good News of Jesus at all times, sinner or not. Perhaps God has made that choice. Perhaps not.
St. Anthony of Padua is the saint we turn to when we have lost something and need to find it. I had lost my voice. Maybe St. Anthony is helping me find it again.