CLERGY & STAFF

Recently there seems to be a cottage industry in studies of William Shakespeare that have suggested that the great playwright and poet was a Roman Catholic. For example, in a 2001 edition of The Times Literary Supplement, a "Catholic" interpretation of Shakespeare's obscure, untitled poem of 1601, usually called "The Phoenix and Turtle," was presented. Soon this interpretation was resoundingly squashed. However, on April 18, 2003, another attempt at a Catholic reading was presented, and as far as I know its plausibility has not been challenged.

The poem itself, on several levels, seems modeled on the Requiem Mass; indeed, the last line–For these dead birds, sigh a prayer–calls upon the reader to do what was forbidden in Protestant England: to pray for the dead. In this case the dead are the Phoenix–the mythical bird that sacrifices itself, dies in a fiery blaze, and is born again, a symbol of the Resurrection–and the Turtle or Turtledove–a symbol of fidelity, of faithfulness. This latest reading of the poem suggests that the self-sacrificing phoenix is the Catholic martyr, St. Anne Line, who was canonized in 1970 and is portrayed in blue at the bottom of the window above the tabernacle here in this church, and the faithful turtledove is her husband, Roger.

Anne Heigham was born in England in 1567 to strict, wealthy Protestants who were connected to the Royal Court. However, when she was in her late teens, she converted to Catholicism, which was an illegal and persecuted religion. Her father immediately disinherited Anne from the family fortune. In 1585, at age 18, Anne met and married Roger Line, also 18, another Catholic convert of well-to-do background who had also been disinherited. A Jesuit friend described their life together as one of "poverty and holiness"–Grace in all simplicity, as Shakespeare writes. They had nothing but each other.

A year later Roger was caught by the agents of Queen Elizabeth I while attending Mass, which for the laity carried the sentence of life imprisonment and a large fine. Since he was penniless and could not pay the fine, Roger was exiled to Europe. Yet Anne's and Roger's love remained unabated, despite separation, as the poem implies:

Roger was able to send a little money back to support Anne in England and in hopes of eventually paying her passage to join him in Europe, but he suddenly collapsed and died in poverty in 1594 at the age of 27.

Anne was now widowed and poor, and suffering from chronic ill health due to her poverty. However, she found support from Jesuits and other friends. With their help she established a house in London where priests could secretly stay and secretly offer Mass for Catholics in the city. For several years Anne engaged in the dangerous work with great success.

But in 1601, the same year this poem was written, about this time of year, on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple on February 2, government agents broke into her house just as Mass was about to begin. Anne was found beside the makeshift altar with candles ready to be blessed. She was arrested for harboring priests and having Mass said in her house, which were both capital offenses. Too weak to walk, she was carried into court, tried, and convicted on February 26, and at age 34 executed by hanging on the following cold, frosty day, at last joining Roger in death. As Shakespeare writes:

Both had died, in different ways, for their Catholic faith, and so had remained faithful to each other's love.

Lady Anne Dacres Howard, Countess of Arundel, whose husband had also died for Catholicism, had Anne's body recovered from a ditch and brought to her own house, where she herself washed it and laid it out with candles burning, in preparation for a clandestine funeral.

Possible mourners may have included Anne's friend and confidante the Jesuit Mission Superior Henry Garnet and his friend the Catholic composer William Byrd, who both may be alluded to in the poem, and the Earl of Worcester and his secretary, who together had many personal connections to the Lines, as well as connections to Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton and to Shakespeare himself.

If this reading of "The Phoenix and Turtle" is correct, it is remarkable that Shakespeare should write such lines for such an undistinguished couple as the Lines. Yet it is even more remarkable that such a couple did what they did in their short lives amid such gross hardships as familial rejection, destitution, separation, chronic illness, ignominious death.

As St. Paul says today, Anne and Roger Line were not wise, powerful, or wealthy. They were foolish to forego their families' wealth and support, foolish to fall in love and marry someone as poor as each other, foolish to commit acts that could and did bring impoverishment, imprisonment, exile, execution. They were weak, lowly, despised; they counted for nothing. Yet it was their intimate love for God, and for each other, that made them realize that who they were, and what they did, counted for something.

Most of us are not particularly wise, powerful, or wealthy. Most of us have probably felt foolish, weak, even good-for-nothing; we've probably felt it many times, sometimes even been made to feel it. Yet an intimate love of another person, an intimate love of other people, and an intimate love of God should help us know that we count for something, whatever kind of impoverishment or weakness we undergo, or whatever kind of impoverishment or weakness we have undergone in the past or are likely to undergo in the future. In God's eyes we count for something, indeed, for far more than we can possibly imagine. May this knowledge of how God values each of us move us to acts of fidelity worthy of Roger Line and to acts of self-sacrifice worthy of St. Anne Line, so that what Shakespeare may have said of their love may be said of our love for God and others:

Today when Jesus gives the disciples the Holy Spirit in the dark upper room and sends them on their mission to follow in his footsteps, it is as if he is telling them: "Forth now and fear no darkness!" For they are a little group of men and women of no great rank or abilities, and and they are being sent to do the wonderful things that Jesus had done in a world filled with darkness, in a world that not only did not understand Jesus, but killed him. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit, God's own self at work in their lives, gave the disciples courage to respond to Jesus' message: "Forth now and fear no darkness!"--and so face the darkness that overshadows so much of the world, and overshadowed the many human lives that they would touch and heal and enlighten. The Holy Spirit also gave them courage to hear Jesus' message: "Forth now and fear no darkness!" and so to face the darkness of their own self-doubts as weak, frail human beings, knowing that the Spirit would work through them and with them. And Jesus taught them that the Holy Spirit is also called the Comforter, and that the Spirit would comfort them when they seemed to be alone in the midst of the world's darkness and seemed to be alone in the darkness of their own frailty.

And so through the millennia Christians have needed Jesus' command and the Holy Spirit's command: "Forth now and fear no darkness!" Whether into the darkness of the world and its turmoils, or into the darkness of the church and its griefs, or into the darkness and doubt of themselves and their own abilities, they went forth, with trepidation, but with hope and faith that the Spirit of God was in them and with them and with God's people, to inspire them and comfort them in the darkness and in the danger and in their self-doubt.

Mary in heeding the message that she would bring God incarnate into the world, Joseph in taking Mary as his wife, Peter and Paul in their missions, all went forth, despite the darkness and the danger and the self-doubt. Heroes of the church like Joan of Arc, Thomas More, Thomas Becket, and Damian of Molokai have gone forth despite the darkness and the danger and the self-doubt. Mystics of the church like Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux, Julian of Norwich have gone forth, despite the darkness and the self-doubt. Theologians of the church like Francis de Sales and John Henry Newman have gone forth, despite the darkness and the self-doubt. Artists like Michelangelo, scientists like Galileo, writers like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alessandro Manzoni, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Muriel Spark, musicians like Anton Bruckner, Edward Elgar, and Francis Poulenc have gone forth in their life's work, all despite the darkness and the self-doubt.

And let me remind you, brothers and sisters, that all of these people, like us, had plenty of chances of turning back from Jesus' and the Spirit's command: "Forth and fear no darkness!" Only they didn't. And if they had, we would never know, because they'd have been forgotten. We remember them and ask for the prayers of those who just went on--and not all to a good end, mind you. And often they were in a worse place or in a blacker danger than ours, in terms of the state of the world or of the church or of their own lives. But inspired and comforted and loved by the Holy Spirit, God's own self at work in their lives, they made the world and the church and the lives of countless people and their own lives less dark, even to the point that the darkness itself has been, at times, transformed into something beautiful and blest, like a starlit night, and all its fears pass away.

May the Holy Spirit inspire us not to quail at the darkness and the fears and frailties that assail us and the church and the world. And may the Holy Spirit inspire us to trust in the love and the comfort and the courage that the Spirit of the Risen Jesus offers us every day. May we not turn back from the command of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, despite the darkness and the danger and the doubt.

Today Jesus tells us that following him requires difficult choices in relation to both family ties and life in general, but that our generosity will bring us a generous reward. Furthermore Jesus challenges us not to allow any person, not even our own selves, our parents or children, to occupy that special place within ourselves which belongs to God alone. Of course we should love our families, but our families should not be our only concern. As followers of Jesus we are called to show openness and hospitality to others. As the Rule of St. Benedict says, "Let all guests be welcomes as we would welcome Christ himself."

Well, there are many visitors to the city this weekend, and we should welcome them. For example, this weekend is the Billy Graham crusade. Now you may remember that a Vatican document called Dominus Jesus stated that Catholics should not refer to Protestant churches, like the Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, as "sister churches," because they were not real churches as we understand the word "church."

Well, in 1970, when Pope Paul VI canonized the 40 martyrs of the Protestant Reformation in England and Wales, some of whom are portrayed in our window above the tabernacle, he said that among Catholics, and I quote: "there will be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and the worthy patrimony of piety and the usage proper to the Anglican [or Protestant Episcopal] Church when the Roman Catholic Church is able to embrace her ever beloved sister in the one authentic Communion of the family of Christ." Furthermore, the same Pope Paul gave his own bishop's ring to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, leader of the Anglican or Protestant Episcopal Church. There is no greater sign of a bishop's authority than his ring, and there was no greater gift that Pope Paul could give to the leader of our sister church. May we welcome our Protestant brothers and sisters in Christ with the warmth of Pope Paul.

This weekend is also gay pride weekend. Now there is fear and even anger and hatred in our church and in our country and in Europe concerning the place of homosexuals in our societies. It might be good to recall the words of Cardinal Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster in England who died in 1999, and whom many people regard as a saint, and who was the religious leader in Great Britain in the 1980s and '90s. In 1995 he wrote in "A Note on Church Teaching Concerning Homosexuals" that said: "Homophobia should have no place among Catholics. Catholic teaching on homosexuality . . . can never be used to justify homophobic attitudes. . . . The church condemns violence of speech and action regarding homosexual people. . . . Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected." And regarding laws pertaining to sexual orientation in particular, Cardinal Hume pointed out that "Catholics will reach diverse conclusions about particular legislative proposals, even taking into account the criteria [that the church has enunciated regarding policies relating to people's sexual orientation." May we welcome gays and lesbians with such Christian attitudes.

Women, as you see and know, are everywhere. In fact they make up the majority of most parish congregations. Yet the church and the world in general have not been so welcoming to the contribution women make and can make to the life of the church and the world. One woman whom the church did welcome was St. Elizabeth of Schönau. She was a cloistered nun in Germany in the Middle Ages; she was a mystic and a visionary, and a contemporary and friend of the famous St. Hildegard of Bingen. One vision St. Elizabeth experienced and wrote about was of the Virgin Mary vested as a priest and standing at the altar. Another of her visions was of Christ becoming incarnate, becoming human, as a woman, not a man. One might think that this woman would have been burnt at the stake for having such visions and writing about them in the so-called Dark Ages. In fact she was so highly regarded and so popular that she preached to congregations of nuns, monks, priests, and laity in churches throughout western Germany. And when she felt the contemplative life too compelling for her to leave the cloister, her abbot went out and preached her sermons for her. St. Elizabeth's writings were far more popular than those of the now more famous St. Hildegard. Furthermore, her popular canonization in Germany was recognized by Rome. Centuries later, in the 1500s, St. Elizabeth's writings would be used in the Catholic Reformation to defend our belief in the Eucharist against Protestantism. St. John Fisher, whose statue stands in this church above the tabernacle, was among the first to quote her writings on the Eucharist, and Fisher's writings were pivotal for the Council of Trent, the great church council of the Catholic Reformation. May we welcome women into the work of the church and the world as St. Elizabeth of Schönau was welcomed.

Let us pray for the grace to welcome people into our city and into our church as we would welcome Christ. And I'm not talking just in terms of the vast scheme of things; I'm talking about being hospitable in the here and now, by welcoming the people who are sitting near you whom you don't know. "I'm shy," you might say. Well, I'm shy too. After Mass, introduce yourself. Strike up a conversation. You might start things off with words like: "I should know your name. Mine is . . ." Or "Wasn't that music beautiful?" Or "Wasn't that sermon tedious?"

In the story or parable that Jesus tells us today, the king's conduct seems utterly unfair and without sense. First he send his servants to gather anyone they can for the wedding feast. But then the king expels a guest who arrives without the proper attire.

This seeming lack of sense is because this parable is in fact two parables, which have been united in St. Matthew's Gospel. The first parable is about universality. All are invited to the feast without any questions asked. The invitation doesn't depend on who we are--it is universal; as Jesus says, "bad and good alike" are invited. According to Jesus, heaven is like that. Everyone is invited when they hear the gospel, the good news that Christ offers. So when sinners like ourselves say yes to the invitation, we are welcomed into God's Kingdom.

The second parable--about the expulsion of the guest without the right clothes--is about accountability. Though the invitation is universal, not everyone is allowed to join the banquet. There are standards to be met. We are accountable for our actions. Heaven is like that, Jesus is saying. We cannot presume on God's grace--the free gift of God's own self at work in our lives--to admit us to the Kingdom, if we have not accepted that grace and lived our lives accordingly.

As a priest I've been blessed to witness the reconciliation of many people to the Church--the means by which we may enter God's kingdom--who have been estranged from it. People whose lives seemed to have been one disaster after another, whose health is broken, whose spirits are crushed, who reckon they have nothing to live for, who have felt outside God's universal invitation and God's universal, that is "Catholic," Church. At last they've realized that they are cherished by God, and God welcomes them to the feast with the warmest of embraces.

Nevertheless, we also have to be careful of the sin of presumption. We cannot live lives of self-absorption, with little regard for God or anyone else, and expect to be welcomed into God's Kingdom.

Roman Catholics carry a sense that the church is always open to them. We are welcome at any Catholic altar around the world, no matter the language of the Mass or the kind of people around the altar. This parish of Corpus Christi--which of course means Body of Christ--is an excellent example of the universality of the Roman Catholic Church. For its nigh-on 100 years, Corpus Christi has always been a relatively small parish, and yet the social, ethnic, political, economic, and educational variety of her people and priests has been extraordinary; and that we desire and find consolation in worshipping God and trying to do God's will together is a thing to rejoice in and thank God for. And we are but one small facet of a Church of over a billion people; no other religious community can claim such universality.

At the same time the Church has the duty, under God, to challenge us regarding the Catholic identity that we claim. What does our Catholic identity mean to us? Do we hold beliefs that are contrary to the Church's dogma, such that our integrity and the Church's integrity require a parting of our ways? Can we say or sing "Amen" to the Creed and Eucharistic prayer with conviction, or with the desire to grow in acceptance of them? We may not understand it all--we are talking about mysterious truths--but can we accept that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, truly human and truly divine, bring us salvation now and forever? That the bread and wine become Christ's true, real, substantial body and blood? That every Mass is a participation in the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross? That all seven sacraments make Christ truly present in our lives? That our prayers for the living and the dead, and the prayers of Mary, the angels and saints for us are efficacious? That we are to strive for charity, holiness, justice, and peace in our lives and in the lives of our fellow human beings, "whatever their race, language, or way of life," as we pray in the Second Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation? That we shall rise from the dead and receive glorified bodies that shall enable us to experience and do wonderful things, most especially to see the Risen Jesus, in his own risen, glorified body, face to face? That the Trinity of Father Son, and Holy Spirit, who is one God, is intimately concerned and involved in our daily lives? These are life-giving truths of the Church, and we cannot accept some and reject others. The Protestant churches have found, some to their dismay, that if you reject one element of the faith, the entire edifice of Christian faith can collapse. As the saintly Cardinal Hume of England said, Catholicism is a table d'hôte, not à la carte, menu. This notion is hard for many to accept, but we must realize that we live in an often self-indulgent culture, that is prone to circumvent inconvenience and compromise principle. Immersed in such a culture, we find it hard, at times, to acknowledge that truth outweighs expediency, and that we shall be judged by truths that may transcend our personal desires.

Nevertheless, we also must be very suspicious of any belief, sentiment, or behavior that tends to distance us from the life of the Church and discourages our participation in the sacraments. Usually God provides us with some means of resolving conflicts when humility and charity guide our attitudes. And there are few greater examples of humility and charity in regards to the church's universality than the two men the Church remembers this week: two men who also knew their church history, I am happy to add. One is the Venerable John Henry, Cardinal Newman, the 160^th anniversary of whose conversion to Roman Catholicism is today. Two of today's hymns, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" and "Lead, Kindly Light," and a Communion motet, "May He Support Us," are from his writings. He was the greatest Christian theologian of the nineteenth century, and to him we owe the spirit of the Second Vatican Council which ended forty years ago this year. It is a matter of personal pride that my English great-grandfather was named John Newman Thompson while that holy man was still alive and in the midst of his greatest trials, and long before he received the cardinal's hat and the recognition from his adopted church that he so long deserved. Newman reminds us that we are accountable for our actions when he wrote that "while in heaven it is otherwise, here on earth to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." But Newman also reminds us that the Church is all-embracing, and that Christ's truth which she professes is not like some tiny spring from which only a select few may drink, but is like a river that is "deep, broad, and full." He also reminds us, especially those who attempt to distance others or even themselves from the life of the Church and the sacraments, that "gloom is no Christian temper," and that "the voice of the whole Church will, in time, make itself heard." such that the Church and her people will "triumph, against all human calculation."

The other man we remember this week said the same: Blessed Pope John XXIII, whose feats is this Tuesday, October 11--that date of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which he called in the nick of time, to save us from the self-absorbed attitudes of many clergy and laity--whether they were quote "conservative" or quote "liberal"--who in the previous hundred years had distanced millions from the life of Christ and his Church. As he told the bishops at the opening liturgy of Vatican II in 1962--after taking a discreet but fortifying sandwich and cup of coffee--"We are shocked to discover what is being said by some people who are without justice or good judgment in their ways of looking at matters. In the existing state of society they see nothing but ruin and calamity, saying our age is much worse than past centuries. They behave as though history, which teaches us about life, has nothing to teach them. It seems to us necessary to express our complete disagreement with these prophets of doom. On the contrary, Divine Providence is leading us towards a new order of human relationships, which through the agency of humans and, what is more, above and beyond our own expectations, are tending towards the fulfillment of higher, and yet more mysterious and unforeseen designs. Everything, even those events which seem to conflict with her purposes, is ordered for the greater well-bring of the Church."

The lesson of Jesus and two of his greatest disciples of these latter days, Venerable John Henry, Cardinal Newman and Blessed Pope John XXIII, are ultimately quite simple. Christ will hold us accountable for our actions, but he invites us into his universal Church so that we may receive his love and his grace, in order that he may transform our self-absorption, or our facile optimism or our wailing pessimism, into lives of charity, holiness, justice, and peace, so that we may, one day, meet Jesus face to face at the table of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When the Beloved Disciple arrived, he reluctantly turned his eyes from the green world of the Garden of Olives to the dark, stone-cold, barren corruption of a tomb--Jesus’ tomb. And as he looked into the stone-cold darkness of the sepulcher, he could not help but remember the horrors of two days ago. Of witnessing Jesus endure the wilderness of pain and fear of the way of the Cross. Of witnessing Jesus’ slow torment on the Cross, each moment more bitter than the last. The Beloved Disciple witnessed the sleepless malice of evil, sin, and death surround Jesus, beat him down, kill him. And as he watched his master die and clung to Jesus’ sobbing mother, to whom Jesus, in his dying words, had committed to his care, he could not help but wonder as he himself sobbed: “Lord, what is to become of us?” It was only by force of will that he could look into the tomb, and then, enter it.

But as the first faint light of dawn entered that stone-cold, dark tomb, he felt a thrill--not the anguish or fear or doubt that had haunted his waking and sleeping hours of the past two days--but something different. As he looked at the empty grave clothes, he no longer wondered, “Lord, what is to become of us?”, but he began to hope: “Lord, is everything sad going to come untrue?”

Today we hear the words: The Beloved Disciple saw and believed. He began to understand the three years of Jesus’ deeds and words at last. The Father would not sent Jesus on such an errand to save humanity if there had been no hope. As the light of dawn and a bit of the sun’s warmth grew in the empty tomb, he realized with joy, great joy, that his master was alive, that Jesus was free, that the burden of death had been taken away from him. He began to understand, in a flash of insight as the sun finally flashed over the horizon, that Jesus, and his disciples, and us, are not bound to the limits of this mortal world, and beyond this world is more than memory. For beyond this world is life everlasting, and God’s everlasting love. Indeed, everything sad is going to come untrue.

For, my brothers and sisters, with the rising of the Son, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, a great shadow has departed--the shadow of sin and death. And this morning, more than any other, we must remember the great danger we were in, the danger of being annihilated by this shadow, and so pray for the gift to love and strive to follow Jesus all the more. For Jesus gives us the gift, through the power of the Holy Spirit given to us at Baptism, in every Eucharist and in all the seven sacraments, to look at all that is barren, cold, dark, corrupt, empty, dead, in our lives, and find Jesus there.

If for a moment we turn our eyes from the beauty of this spring day, from the sunlit sky and the blossoming trees, from the flowers on this altar, and to look where all seems barren and cold in our lives, we shall find Jesus there. Whether in sickness, sadness, bereavement, poverty, pain, confusion, guilt, fear, unemployment, divorce, abuse, addiction, war, despair, death, we may find Jesus there, with his wounded hands stretched out toward us, if we pray for the gift to seek him. And in Jesus we shall find the gift, again if we ask for it, of a life that is more than worth living, and hope even beyond endurance, and endurance even beyond hope, which is faith, and the understanding that one day everything sad shall come untrue, because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

All that we’ve just heard sung of Jesus’ passion and death, according to St John’s Gospel, is prefaced by something we heard at Mass on Tuesday of Holy Week, when Judas goes out of the Upper Room in order to betray Jesus. "And," as the gospel says with devastating finality, "It was night."

Night and its darkness have always held terrors for human beings. Children and adults have nightmares, and some fear the unquiet dead, or other wraiths of fear and darkness, or the devil himself, hiding on the edges of consciousness in the blind night. People are often reluctant to travel in the nighttime. You may have noticed that the worst weather, whether it be rain or snow, usually comes at night. It can be bitterly cold after the sun sets, even if the day is warm. People lock their doors before they go to bed. And people who live in neighborhoods plagued by thieves and other criminals do not go out at all into the night. Most of all we probably fear the darkness of death, the coffin lid shut with devastating finality, and the commending of our beloved dead and finally ourselves, later, or sooner, to the darkness of the earth, or the darkness of the brooding waves of the sunless depths of the ocean.

And so it should be no surprise that Jesus’ lonely agony, arrest,and betrayal unto a horrible death, all occur in the gloomy watches of the night. As we heard this morning at the Service of Tenebrae, a word which literally means "darkness:" "All my friends have forsaken me, and they who lay in ambush for me have prevailed. He whom I loved has betrayed me, and with fierce looks they have cruelly struck me."

But amid all these black thoughts we must remember, brothers and sisters, that our salvation also came amidst the darkness, in the silent watches of the night. We celebrate Christ’s birth with exceeding great joy at midnight, and we first begin the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the darkness of death into the bright splendor of eternal life after nightfall on Holy Saturday. Moreover, the first disciples recognized the risen Lord in the upper room after sundown, and at the end of the day at Emmaus.

Is it not strange and wonderful that the designs of evil and despair, of the devil himself, should be utterly overthrown when their power should be waxing, in the darkness? By its own weapons is evil worsted; by Christ coming amidst the darkness is the darkness of evil, sin, and death conquered forever. So now not the day only is beloved by humans, but the night too is beautiful, and blest, and all its fear has passed away; for it was in the night that we were saved by Jesus in his rising from his death on the cross.

Now some may think that these are pleasant sentiments, and nothing more. The darkness still holds terror for many, and that darkness has many sources: sin, poverty, ruined relationships, personal betrayal, injustice and tyranny, pain, illness, depression, death itself – whether swift and violent or slow and debilitating. To say that the darkness may be blest is to offer only a tiny bit of hope to cling to for those who suffer, and perhaps only a fool’s hope at that. Yet Jesus experienced most of these things on the night before his death, and he experienced those torments with faith, that is with active belief and trust in God, for he actively, albeit patiently, endured so much evil: so many wounds of the flesh, and so many betrayals of the heart. Certainly that night Jesus showed at the very least endurance beyond hope, which is nothing less than faith, so that at the end he could say, "It is finished," and give back to God the gift of life, and to lay it down upon the altar of the cross. And so Jesus certainly possessed an enduring faith, by which he knew that the darkness of death held no terrors for him, anymore.

We have all experienced times in our lives marked by only a little hope, or just a fool’s hope; perhaps some are undergoing such an experience today. Whatever our situation, let us pray that God will give us the gift he gave Jesus, his son and our savior, when "it was night:" the gift of faith, of active, enduring belief and trust in God; and from that faith, that endurance beyond hope that Jesus possessed, we may know that in the darkness, even in the darkness of death, we shall ultimately find something beautiful, and blest, like a starlit night, and all its fear pass away.

We all get junk mail; there is a special brand of clergy junk mail, which I throw out immediately with all the rest. But one of my fellow Jesuits, who actually reads junk mail for priests for his personal amusement, told me that one letter actually said: 'WE'LL TELL YOU HOW TO VOTE! 'Can you imagine? Unfortunately that garbage was only shocking in that the authors were so blunt about their intent. For we all know that there are priests, nuns and even bishops who want to, try to and even do tell us how to vote. On the other hand, one wise Jesuit from the Middle East said about that even more confusing issue of sex: 'whatever idiot layperson asks a priest about sex gets the answer he or she deserves.' I reckon that wise Jesuit would say the same about politics. Given the words that Jesus speaks to us today, however, I think it might be helpful to speak, not of politics or sex, but of a notion even more misunderstood that those two subjects: I mean the human conscience.

The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, one of the two greatest theologians of the past 200 years and soon to be declared Blessed by the Church, described the human conscience as quite simply 'the voice of God'. For we believe that God possesses the eternal characteristics of truth, justice, mercy, kindness and holiness that are part of his very nature as God. They are identical with himself, and they make up the law by which we are to live. God gives this law, which is again nothing less than himself, to us human beings. This divine law of God's truth, justice, mercy, kindness and holiness is our conscience, and it demands our obedience. Conscience also needs experience and training in order to grow, become strong and be, as they say, 'a formed conscience'. For conscience is the supreme rule of our actions: our thoughts, desires, words and deeds. And it rules our actions by the voice of God speaking to us in the midst of our hearts and minds and in the midst of our actions. This is the ancient understanding of conscience, which has been replaced with a relatively new and false notion of conscience: for many people today, conscience is not the voice of God, but something we humans have created. For many, conscience means the right to think, speak, write, act and believe according to our own private judgment, opinions, and even fantasies. [Ironically this is the sort of conscience – really false conscience – for which the main character in the 1960 play now on Broadway, 'A Man for All Seasons,' dies; the real Thomas More died for the real sort of conscience I described earlier.]

The duty we owe God, to love him and our neighbors, usually has little or nothing to do with this modern, false notion of conscience. In its ancient, true understanding, conscience has rights, most especially the right not to be forced, because conscience has duties, duties to obey the claims made upon us by the voice of God speaking within us. According to the false notion of conscience we can do away with duties, we can do away with true conscience, we can do away with God himself. But this is not conscience. This is human self-will, perhaps even the sin of pride, in all its morose, self-indulgent emptiness.

It is vitally important that we Catholics especially remember that conscience is the voice of God speaking within us, commanding our obedience to do what is true, just, merciful, kind and holy in the concrete here and now, not in some abstract situation. It is important because there are those who think they are the voice of God, like those who send junk mail to priests to tell us how to vote. St Thomas Aquinas defines conscience as 'the practical judgment of our reason, by which we determine what is to the good to be done, or the evil to be avoided, in the here and now.' Therefore conscience cannot come into conflict with the Church's and the Pope's infallibility, since the infallible decrees of the Church concern the truths of the faith and general principals of morality, not particular cases of choosing good or evil in a concrete situation. For example, we have the general principal, 'Do not kill'; however we may kill in the concrete situation of self-defense.

Now a pope or bishop may give particular commands which they want us to adhere to in practical circumstances of the here and now, but popes and bishops are not infallible in what they command us in such particular circumstances. No Catholic pretends the pope who condemned Galileo was infallible in that act. That's why it is very problematic for some bishops to command Catholic politicians not to receive communion because of a political position they take, rather than an act they do. The Law of the Church solemnly condemns only those Catholics who are directly involved in abortions, for example. Moreover, the Law of the Church states clearly that Catholics have a right to the sacraments, and only in the gravest circumstances may people be forbidden to receive them. Most of the bishops and the pope know this, I think, and that is why the vast majority of bishops of this country and the pope have not forbidden communion to politicians, contrary to the wishes of a very few bishops.

Nevertheless, we should very carefully examine our consciences with serious thought, prayer and all other available means to arrive at the right judgment on such matters, for we are in the presence of God Almighty when we make use of our consciences. We are also bound to presume the bishops and the pope have a good intention in all they say and do and command, and we must beware of the mean, ungenerous, selfish, vain, proud, skeptical, false form of conscience to which so many can fall victim.

So let us pray for the grace to remember that true conscience is the voice of God speaking to us, calling us to do good and avoid evil in concrete circumstances, and to use it wisely; and to avoid the false conscience, which is merely self-will wrapped in a vain banner of its own devising. I can think of no better way of doing this than praying these words of the Venerable John Henry, Cardinal Newman: 'My God, I confess that you can enlighten my darkness. I confess that you alone can. I wish my darkness to be enlightened. I do not know whether you will; but that you can and that I wish, are sufficient reasons for me to ask. I hereby promise that by your grace which I am asking, I will embrace whatever I at length feel certain is the truth. And by your grace I will guard against all self-deceit which may lead me to take what [my frail human] nature would have, rather than what reason approves.'