Pray for Those Who Persecute You

Below is a copy of last Sunday's homily written and preached by Deacon Paul Ochenkowski, a fellow parishioner and permanent deacon assigned to St. Veronica Catholic Church in Chantilly, Virginia. Deacon Ochenkowski's words are markedly stirring and particularly poignant given today's highly disappointing SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  

I will allow the good deacon's words speak for themselves (posted with his permission) : 

HOMILY:

Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist

Sunday, June 24, 2012

            Well good evening/morning, brothers and sisters.  Today we mark the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, as well as the first Sunday in our two-week Fortnight for Freedom.  The fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, are dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country. Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action will emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty. Dioceses and parishes around the country have scheduled special events that support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty.

            Today, we mark the birth of St. John the Baptist, a martyr, and a man who certainly did remain faithful in the face of persecution by political power.  John lived in the Holy Land in the time of two kings, both named Herod, two civil rulers both of whom had a depressing record of meddling in religious affairs.  He was born during the reign of Herod the Great, famed for expanding the Second Temple, and infamous for slaughtering male infants in a desperate effort to eliminate the Messiah.  This Herod also regarded his Jewish religion so little, that not only did he regularly violate its Fifth Commandment during his murderous reign, but he played politics using religion, building temples to false gods to curry favor with the Roman emperors who now ruled the Holy Land.  St. John the Baptist survived the Slaughter of the Innocents, and outlived Herod the Great.

            But Herod the Great divided his kingdom upon his death, and bestowed the rule of Galilee upon one of his sons, also named Herod.  This second Herod, also known as Herod Antipas, would eventually take up an adulterous relationship with Herodias, wife of his half-brother, Philip.  John the Baptist, in the meantime, had grown up to become the precursor, the forerunner of the Messiah: the voice crying in the desert.  And it was this great and holy man, who as an adult, would have his famous encounter with this second Herod.  Herod would follow the depressing customs of his murderous father, and like him, also meddle in religious affairs.  We know that even though he regarded John the Baptist as a holy man, he feared him and had him arrested for denouncing his relationship with Herodias.  And of course we know how Herod set his own trap, how in a drunken swagger in front of his house guests, promised anything to Herodias’ daughter, Salome—who demanded the head of John the Baptist.

            The life of John the Baptist—from his escaping the Slaughter of the Innocents at the hand of Herod the Great, to his execution on the order of Herod Antipas—shows us graphically the importance of freedom of religion, shows us graphically what happens when civil rulers meddle in religious matters.  And despite everything, John the Baptist remained faithful and strong in the face of persecution by political power.  

            In a week and a half, we will mark the Fourth of July, the great celebration of American freedom.  Americans of the Revolutionary generation had grown up in an atmosphere of abusive use of power by their British colonial overlords.  The great revolutionary John Adams wrote to the equally famous revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson, these chilling words:  “Power is always at war with liberty.”  And so it is.  And recognizing this, the revolutionary generation sought to ensure liberty and to restrain the abusive use of power. 

            In the constitutions they wrote, religious freedom was guaranteed in very plain and unmistakable language.  Here in Virginia, on June 29, 1776, just days before independence, with British power crumbled away and Virginia’s last royal governor, the odious Lord Dunmore, fled back to Britain, Virginia put in place the first constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the first of six constitutions that would serve to govern this state.  Fairfax County’s own George Mason wrote the Bill of Rights that has been a part of every constitution this Commonwealth has had since then.  And Mason included a powerful article on religious freedom.  It says, in part, “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.”  Mason goes on, “No man shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.”  Fifteen years later, in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, the first words of the First Amendment said a bit more tersely, “Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  No official church—no forced taxes collected from everyone to support an official church whether you believe in its teachings or not; and freedom of religion.  Freedom of religion is guaranteed—and yet that ideal is sometimes not observed.

            America’s colonial tradition was one for the most part of powerful and persistent anti-Catholicism, a sad tradition that wove itself into the fabric of America.  The Puritans of New England, even when times were hard and food was scarce or expensive, always made a point of eating meat on Fridays—just to prove to themselves their own anti-Catholicism.  Neighboring Maryland, founded as refuge for repressed English Catholics, was in the late 1600s stripped away from its Catholic owners, the Calvert Family, and not returned to them until they converted to Anglicanism.  Catholicism there was banned and went underground.  On the eve of independence, only two of the thirteen colonies allowed Catholics to worship freely—little Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.  And even in those, Catholics had various restrictions placed on their ability to vote or hold elective office. 

          

            Despite the guarantees, these problems persisted throughout our history as an independent nation.  And a pattern has emerged:  overt anti-Catholicism is then accompanied or followed by laws which reflect that anti-Catholic sentiment.  There have been three periods in American history where this has occurred.  Up through 1840, Catholics were few and far between.  In 1840, Catholics were the 7^th largest Christian group in the United States.  But then, between 1840 and 1860, some 2 million Irish and 1.5 million Germans fled Europe and came to these shores.  Among them were millions of Catholics, so much so that by 1850, Catholics had become the largest Christian group in America, a position we have held ever since.  These millions of Catholics were faced with unspeakable bigotry.  Despite guarantees of freedom of religion, government intruded itself into religious matters.  Public schools taught religion, not the occasional prayer in public schools I remember from my young childhood, but classes in religion—specifically, Protestant theology.  The Church responded by establishing hundreds of Catholic schools to make sure our little ones learned the faith of Holy Mother Church.  Anti-Catholic riots also broke out in Boston and Philadelphia, in which churches and convents were destroyed or damaged, and priests and religious were roughed up or attacked, and most horribly, the Blessed Sacrament desecrated.

            Following World War I, there was a second time of anti-Catholicism.  The revived Ku Klux Klan made vicious anti-Catholicism one of its sad and sorry hallmarks.  And once again, anti-Catholic laws followed anti-Catholic sentiment, and there was more government interference.  For example, the state of Georgia actually passed a law which enabled the sheriff of any county in Georgia to enter any convent in his jurisdiction, uninvited and without a search warrant, to try to ascertain if any women were being held there against their will.  When Al Smith, a Catholic from New York, ran for president in 1928, more anti-Catholicism appeared.  Smith was portrayed as an agent of the pope, and one North Carolina minister observed, “I fear Catholicism more than I fear communism.”  When Smith was defeated, a sick anti-Catholic joke made the rounds, a joke which had Smith sending a one-word telegram to the Pope, a telegram that supposedly read, “Unpack.”

            Some of us in this room are old enough to remember the election of 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president.  Anti-Catholicism erupted then, as well, most notably in that year’s West Virginia primary.  But since then, especially in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, I’ll bet most of us thought that anti-Catholicism had been largely put to rest.  I know I sure did.  But like those earlier generations of heroic Catholics, we, today, are faced with what several recent authors have dubbed “The New Anti-Catholicism,” calling it “the last acceptable prejudice” in America.  The anti-Catholic sentiments that appear in some journals, have, for example, attacked Blessed John Paul II in horrifying terms, and show quite graphically this new anti-Catholicism.  But unlike the first two periods of anti-Catholicism, which developed primarily out of ignorant hatred of two waves of largely Catholic immigration, modern anti-Catholicism comes from opponents of the Church’s stand on its eternal principles, on its stand against modern secular humanism and the culture of death.  You know the secular humanists’ program:  same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, and euthanasia—the whole sad, sorry list.  And because the Church holds firmly to the inerrant truth in the face of these horrors, the result has been a new outbreak of anti-Catholicism and renewed efforts by government to exercise its influence where it does not belong—in matters of religion.   I think there can be little doubt that our generation of American Catholics is one of those that will be privileged to confront overt anti-Catholicism and government meddling with our beliefs, just as our heroic forbears did in the 1840s, and in the 1920s, those courageous men and women who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power.

            The life of the saint whom we honor today, St. John the Baptist, is a powerful example of what happens when civil authority meddles with religious affairs and obtrudes itself into religion.   And so, we all pray, that during this Fortnight for Freedom, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will succeed in all its efforts to have the Health and Human Services ruling reversed, so that American Catholics are free to practice their faith as Holy Mother Church teaches, not as government dictates.  We, too, must remember the words of Our Lord, recorded in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  And so we must, but we also must never compromise with evil, and must ever keep our eyes on the right.

             As we approach the Fourth of July, we should pray that the words from the 25^th chapter of the book of Leviticus, those inscribed on the liberty bell, which rang out to mark American independence so long ago, may once again ring true for every American:  “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” (Lev 25:10).   

~ Deacon Paul Ochenkowski

 

Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
e.e. cummings

I am a beach baby, having lived a stone's throw from Fire Island National Seashore on Long Island from the moment I was born until my family packed up and moved south in October 1971. I was 11 years old. No one warned me of how terribly I would miss the beach once we settled in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Our new home offered a beauty all its own - rolling hills gently reaching higher into the majesty of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the West, with the great Smoky Mountains rising just beyond. And a landscape dotted by herds of cattle and miles of farms; even a field of cotton at the end of our road.

I had taken for granted that my mother could just pile her babies into the family station wagon for a short 15 minute trek to the seashore (Google Maps says 8 miles - 13 minutes from our old home). As we welcomed our first Carolina summer,  I soon discovered that it would take at least 4 hours by car to reach the ocean. Needless to say, our summer mornings digging in the sand, chasing the waves before returning home for a quick lunch and a welcomed nap had sorely ended. Instead my parents would drive to the South Carolina coast, rent a hotel room or cottage and there we stayed for a few days or a week. It didn't happen very often, but it did satisfy that deep longing to allow the sand to tickle my toes and feel the heat of the salty sun on my back.

When you are born and raised near the sea you can never quite rid yourself of that ache to return again and again after life leads you away from it. Every summer I long for it - the briny air, the tumbling, crashing surf and the gull's cry. That's why almost every summer for the past seven years, Jim and I have loaded up our big Ford van (aka Big Bus) with all things necessary for a week (and then some) of beach living and head down to the most beautiful coastline in the world (in my humble opinion) - Hatteras Island National Seashore in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Over the years we have rented cottages in the Hatteras communities of Avon, Rodanthe, Salvo and Waves. Glimpsing the great Atlantic for the first time as we rumble along Highway 12 each June always sends a thrill through my veins like nothing else can and no matter how stifling hot it may be outside, we flip off the air conditioning and open the van windows. I allow the breeze to carelessly tousle my short, silver locks. From here on out, it's a "beach-do" for me. I am restless and eager to sink my toes into the slick, cool sand as the waves wash over my feet then recede into a dizzying, whirling rush of sea foam.

Hatteras Island beaches are pristine and wild despite the oodles of visitors that are drawn to its shores each summer. Hurricane Irene certainly left her mark. Rodanthe doesn't look quite the same. We spied some of the damage to a few of the cottages as we passed by on our way to Waves two weeks ago. In fact, Irene carved out a new inlet severing N.C.12 near the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, requiring a new, patch-work bridge to be built over it. It made me think about the temporariness of things, of life in this world and the incredible force of nature.

There were two days during our recent stay when we avoided the beach altogether after a few feeble attempts to stick it out. While walking Holly on the beach with Jim one morning, the wind pelted us with stinging sand, as the waves furiously pounded the shore, one atop the other in a marvelous show of audacious bravado. We turned back toward the house after only a few minutes. (Holly was drenched in sand - from her pointy, little Dachshund nose to the tip of her little tail - giving her the appearance of a snow dog. Poor thing!)

The sea was unruly that day and electrifying. I remember my dad liked to visit the beach right after a storm passed when the ocean was crazy wild rendering swimming too dangerous. I suppose I am very much like him. What is it about seeing nature unleash such sheer power? Are we fascinated by our inability to tame the beast? Do we delight in our puniness? I guess for different people it's different things. For me it's all of these things and probably more. Gazing out over rough seas exhilarates me, when all I can utter is, "Wow!"

I lose myself as I relinquish all to the tempest only to discover a truer version of myself standing there in front of my God. All masks blown clear away, no pretenses - just a foolish, little girl and her God in all His glory.

Rodanthe on Dwellable

No Worse for the Wear

Jim and I are in our early-to-late fifties. (I'm early, he's late.) We are in that wonderfully peculiar place of parenting adult children. I've often expressed the anguish of bidding them farewell as they grow up and move out.  But our kids continue to come and go, rendering our nest anything but empty.

Yet life is different. Very different. Two of our adult children are continuing their education locally and although they would love to be out on their own, economically, it behooves them to live at home. (One is subletting an apartment for the summer, but will return home in August, until the next phase of her life works itself out.) Our youngest returns home from college for summer breaks and at other times throughout the year. They are expected to help out with a few chores, and respect the rules of the house, but basically they come and go as they please. They generally don't need permission to stay out late with friends, but they do need it to borrow the car. They don't need to be home for dinner. They don't need a whole lot other than a roof overhead and food in the refrigerator. Unless I'm feeling especially kind, I no longer do their laundry, but I do grant them use of the washer and dryer and the laundry detergent. I've mothered them from diaper-hood to adulthood and everything in between. At times they have made me want to pull every hair out of my silly little head, but they have always been and continue to be my joy. 

They've grown into very likeable adults. I love our conversations over freshly brewed coffee or sipping a full bodied cab sav in the evening. I enjoy our shopping sprees and cooking ventures. They - especially my daughters - have become my dear friends.

I realize they won't be hanging around forever. After all the bitter-sweet milestones marking each of their journeys - kindergarten through college graduations, learning to drive, trips over-seas, a variety of employment opportunities, and marriage and motherhood for one - I am slowly realizing that a part of me is actually looking forward to their full independence, to their living on their own, working and raising families - or heading off to wherever God may be calling them. So, I guess you can say that nearing the empty nest is not quite as bad as I had previously expected. (And gosh, who knew how much fun grand-parenting could be? Being a Nana is positively the bees knees!) However, none of the kids is allowed to move more than a few hours away. My heart and soul would miss them too much! Seriously though, it could certainly happen. I now know that there comes a time in a mother's life when it is right - good - for her children to venture out on their own. It is good for them and for her, too.

I recall the early days of marriage, when I telephoned my mother to whine and wonder how my dear husband could be so plain unthoughtful, insensitive - so, well, selfish. No, I do not remember exact circumstances, but they probably related to things like tracking mud through the house or leaving his stuff lying all over the place, or forgetting it was our anniversary. (Okay, this one I do remember - at least he didn't knowingly and maliciously plan to go on that camping trip. He honestly forgot that it was our special day!) There were times, after some silly argument, when I childishly implemented the dreaded silent-treatment, stubbornly refusing to give in for days. I even remember several years ago blubbering to my former spiritual director about how annoyed I could get with my husband. He listened attentively to my long rant. When it was over, I expected something like a gentle pat on my head accompanied by a terribly sympathetic, "Oh, you poor dear."  I was shocked to hear instead, "Wow, you must really be hard to live with!" Bam, hello! My director's words were definitely a much needed wake-up call, no matter how much I hated hearing them.   I am also well aware that I am far more capable of driving my husband up the proverbial wall than he is me. But interestingly,  something has changed now that we've been together for over 27 years. Those little things really don't matter so much. They still occur, those frightfully petty little annoyances. But so what? Life has provided us a more mature perspective. We are wiser and know it is foolish to waste time dwelling on those pesky, little things. We've stopped making mountains out of mole hills.

We're stronger now than ever before. Together we are able to enter this new season of life. Together we realize that we can let them go, our kids, and our lives will continue to be fruitful and meaningful.

Because lying there, hidden behind all the boo-hooing that comes with severing the apron strings; underneath the aching blow of letting our children go, we've discovered a surprisingly delightful, wonderful phenomenon. It is a sweet, soothing balm. A new and better and deeper affection for one another. I am certain the seeds were planted on the day we wed and have been nurtured strong over the years by the grace of the sacrament.

It is a bit like we are falling in love all over again, only far better because we are so well connected - our souls really are one. We are older, but seem young again. We find more time to be alone together. Moments of intimacy have become more spontaneous.We are more relaxed, more mellow. We have become more merciful, more forgiving of one another. "I'm sorry" slips off the tongue more readily, more easily. We've emerged through perhaps the toughest part of marriage pretty much unscathed. No worse for the wear, as they say. 

Perhaps this renewed love is our reward for all the sleepless nights with little elbows poking our ribs and pudgy feet in our faces. For surviving teething and croup, countless childhood colds and flu, ear aches, potty training and how many trips to the ER? For (happily) surviving periods of biting cold, soaking rains, and unbearable heat over countless years on soccer fields and carting kids all over kingdom come. For refereeing too many sibling squabbles, enduring all that teenage drama, putting up with missed curfews and teaching them how to, gulp, drive. It hasn't always been smooth sailing. Like all the families I know, our lives have been peppered with moments of frustration and sorrow, but God has also graciously filled many of our days with joy and celebration, too. All embraceable moments.

I am truly grateful for being no worse for the wear and for continuing to share this adventure with my beloved friend, my dear husband. I am eagerly anticipating all that the future holds for us - stiff joints and all. May God grant us many more years - many more opportunities - to grow in faith, love and trust and may He be praised!

Please remember to pray for those couples who, after raising children, are seriously struggling to stay together and those whose marriages tragically succumb to the hardships and challenges they have faced over the years. God love them. God bless them.