Fr. Josh's Blog

"This teaching is not a body of abstract truths.
It is the communication of the living mystery of God."
-St. John Paul II

Welcome to Fr. Josh's blog! Check here often for Fr. Josh's monthly newsletter articles as well as other items of interest as they come around! Happy reading!

August 2017

What Keeps Us Catholic?
Reflecting on Truth and Kindness
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
 
While an Anglican seminarian in England, I read a biography of John Henry Newman, the great English convert to Roman Catholicism. His story did not have a favorable effect on me. In fact, reading it put me off Catholicism for almost a decade.

Because Newman’s life as a Catholic wasn’t pleasant nor, I thought, very attractive. Life after his conversion in 1845 was hard. He was despised by most of the friends he left behind in the Church of England, while at the same time he was held in suspicion by many of his fellow Catholics. At times, he was mistreated and humiliated, hardly accepted by many within the Catholic Church. Reading his story, I found myself thankful to remain within my genteel, although somewhat troubled, Anglicanism. Newman’s Anglican days were beautiful; his Catholic days were hard. The lesson for me was simple.
Choose the pleasant path and remain an Anglican. And so I did.

Such was my view of Catholicism for many years—harsh, impersonal, and coldly bureaucratic. Often, as an Episcopal priest, I welcomed Catholics into my parish after they’d left the Church in frustration, feeling either mistreated or simply neglected. Some, of course, came to the Episcopal Church for the ease and laxity of it. Others, however, seemed genuinely victimized and worn down.

Now, as a Catholic, I see the other side. Yes, there are Catholics who leave because they’re spiritually or morally lazy, not up to the challenge and adventure of Catholicism. However, there are also those who leave because we have not cared for them as we should. Becoming Catholic has not removed from me the view that the Church is sometimes harsh and difficult, on very rare occasions I’ve felt it myself. Yes, the Church can be unpleasant at times.

But why did Newman become a Catholic? Why did I become Catholic? And why do people remain Catholic even when the Church at times seems hard and uncaring? To answer this question is to uncover the deep place and purpose of the Catholic Church. Why become or remain Catholic, no matter what? Answer: Because it’s true. The religious marketplace is replete with versions of Christianity offering all sorts of fulfillment, progress, programs, support and so on. The Catholic Church, in contrast, makes this her primary claim, that she is the true Church of Jesus Christ willed by God. The Catholic Church points to the Bible, where Christ speaks of his body, and says unashamedly, “That’s me.” True converts to Catholicism come to the Church because in some way they see that she is true, true above every good and glory or shame and discomfort. Thus, having seen her truth, anchored Catholics rarely leave the Church. Newman was never completely comfortable with Roman Catholics, yet he never questioned his conversion, because, as he said, “I recognized my spiritual Mother.” Seeing the truth of Catholicism, he could never go back. Truth keeps us Catholic.

But what should we do about the harshness sometimes found in the Church? First, I’m not being unfaithful by saying that we Roman Catholics can get better at hospitality and pastoral care, institutionally and individually. We could learn a lot from our Protestant friends about this. We needn’t be afraid to be warm and friendly and even at times a little flexible. There is an overly rigorous side of Catholicism that could do to become a bit more human, more full of the “joy of the Gospel,” as Pope Francis teaches. It’s the same thing Pope Benedict XVI said during his trip to America years ago: “[I]n a society where the Church seems legalistic and ‘institutional’ to many people, our most urgent challenge is to communicate the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love.” What can we do about the harshness of the Church? We can be kind, all of us. Me, you, each one of us.

But second, and more deeply, we Catholics need to cultivate a deeper love for the Church—the Church as she is in reality, sometimes squalid but always glorious. It seems many Catholics tend either to sugarcoat the failures of the Church with pious excuses, or, on the other hand, overly criticize her as if they are not her spiritual sons and daughters. Neither extreme will do. Rather, we should pursue the ideal described by Henri de Lubac, himself a great theologian who suffered within the Church. To love the Church genuinely, we must love her in truth, “in her human day-to-day reality just as much in her divine and eternal ideality.” We mustn’t ignore our failures, but we must never forsake obedience to the Church. “Love should,” he said, “be our only response to our Mother the Church.” And to love the Church truly, we must be both realistic and docile. To be a person of the Church (what De Lubac called a “vir ecclesiasticus”), we must “first of all and always” be a child of the Church, loving and trusting as a child loves her mother.

Becoming or remaining Catholic is about truth, but for truth to be lived out requires virtues. Being a Catholic means living a life of faith, hope, and love but also patience, kindness, and, really importantly, obedience. That is what being Catholic looks like. It’s how we remain Catholic.

July 2017

"What Does our Religion say to the Poor in Dallas"
Fr. Joshua for the Dallas Morning News

Reflections on Sunday: Part Two
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
 
Sometime before his death in a concentration camp in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Lutheran minister and enemy of the Nazis wrote down what he thought had gone wrong among Christians in Germany:
 

The Church confesses herself guilty of the loss of the Sabbath day, of the withering away of her public worship, and of the contemptuous neglect of Sunday as a day of rest. She has incurred the guilt of restlessness and disquiet, and also the exploitation of labour even beyond the working weekday, because her preaching of Jesus Christ has been feeble and her public worship has been lifeless (Ethics 1.3).
 

What Bonhoeffer saw in the rise of Nazism was not just the dark fruit of nationalism, anti-Semitic hate, and totalitarianism. Looking at the Nazi regime, he at the same time saw Christian failure. For Bonhoeffer, the Church had become too indifferent and quiescent about the slowly developing culture of death which emerged so demonically in Germany in the 1930s. For him, it was not just that Hitler had come to power, it was that the Church had become too indistinct and too impotent to do anything about it, or even to recognize the evil of it at all.

And losing the holiness of Sundays was partly why it was easy for the Nazis. That is, when Christians agreed to forego the rhythm of worship set by the weekly observance of the resurrection of Jesus, they by default embraced another rhythm, one issuing not from God but from someone else, the Führer. When Christians let go of the rhythm of the Church’s worship, they began to forget the very language and thinking of the Church. Without Sunday, they followed another logic and rhythm designed not for their rest and honor, but for their manipulation. Without Sundays, Christians forgot that they were people and not tools, that they were created primarily to live and love and not just to produce and work. Sundays reminded them that they were human—something they forgot by forgetting Sundays.

Last month I wrote rather forcefully about the honor due God on Sundays. Many have forgotten that Sunday is a “day of obligation.” It’s a day Catholics are bound to be in Church unless hindered by some gravely serious obstacle. Now this obligation doesn’t stem from any institutional instinct. We are not trying to drum up attendance over the summer! Rather, we are trying to restore within our hearts and minds the power of regular, faithful worship. It sets the rhythm of our lives in the pattern set by God. It makes you a saint, and it makes us the Church. It’s how we belong to God. Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, an English Dominican, says it well:
 

Surely the obligation of Sunday Mass is a sign of that fidelity. It is usually seen just as a constraint on our freedom, a rule that must be obeyed, imposed from above by ‘the authorities’. It is seen as typical of Catholic legalism and of a culture of control, which is always telling people what they must do. Might we not see it rather as a sign of our stable belonging in this liquid and modern world? We have an obligation to celebrate our mothers’ birthday, but one would hardly see this as a constraint. It is an expression of the bonds that we have with our mothers. It is not an external obligation, like not being allowed to drive at more than 30 mph in built up areas. It is an expression of who one is. Obligation and religion both come from a root that means ‘to be bound’. Obligations express the ways in which we are rooted in abiding relationships with other people. They are signs of those enduring fidelities which give us strength and identity (What is the Point of Being a Christian? 199).

 
It’s more than rote following of rules, it’s deeper. Observing Sunday as the Lord’s Day, going to Mass, receiving Communion: all of this makes us a holy people, the royal priesthood Christ made us in baptism. Like Bonhoeffer suggested, keeping Sunday holy gives us our identity as Church that we cannot afford to lose. We must be the Church in this world desperate for redemption, truth and witness. God hopes to save the entire world, and he does this simply by calling us to be the Church. We must renew our sense of Sunday’s holiness. We mustn’t succumb to the ungodly rhythms of the world.
           
May we renew their devotion to Sunday. Don’t neglect it. Come to him and worship. This is what Christians do. Sunday is for worship and rest. Worship is not something you do if you can squeeze it in. Do not be intimidated by sports leagues, extracurricular activities, and commercialism, all of which may lure you away from Mass. This is not an authoritarian appeal for your presence; it is ultimately an appeal for your very lives.
 
 

June 2017

Reflections on Sunday: Part One
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

Since the beginning, Christians have kept Sunday holy. It was on the Lord’s Day John heard the trumpet and the loud voice, ushering him into the vision of God’s victory (Rev. 1:10). We know from the earliest Christian sources such as St. Ignatius and the Didache that Sunday was the day on which Christians gathered to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. St. Jerome, at the turn of the fifth century, said, “Sunday is the day of the resurrection, it is the day of Christians, it is our day.” Sunday was so important that Christians preferred even to risk their lives than forsake the holiness and worship of God on Sunday. In North Africa in 304 a group of Christians were arrested while celebrating Mass in someone’s home on Sunday. When the judge asked the owner of the house why he allowed such a gathering, his only answer was that these fellow Christians were his brothers and sisters. When the judge replied that he nonetheless should have prohibited such a gathering, the owner of the home answered, “Without the day of the Lord, we cannot live.”

Today Christians think differently. Many today treat Sunday worship as something entirely optional, as merely part of the weekend. Too many give up going to Church on Sunday if there’s something else allegedly more important scheduled, or if they just feel like sleeping in. It apparently doesn’t bother some Christians to leave off going to Church on Sundays for weeks at a time, supplying worthwhile excuses for their absence. Many Christian parents seemingly have no qualms about taking their children to games or tournaments on Sundays instead of to the worship of God. Once, Christians preferred the risk of persecution and death to missing the Sunday assembly of their brothers and sisters. Now they prefer the entertainments of a godless culture, remembering the God who created them only faintly or when convenient. It seems the murderous emperors of Rome needn’t have ever killed Christians. They only needed open shopping malls and sporting leagues, and the Church would have faded to nothing in a mere few generations.

This is undoubtedly a rather harsh conviction, and I do want to push against your conscience a bit. Yet, my purpose is more significant than that. Going to Mass on Sunday is not some antique cultural obligation. The point of Sunday is about hallowing time and honoring God. It’s also about formation of the body of Christ individually and corporately. When Christian parents take their children somewhere other than Church on Sundays, they are doing remarkable damage not only to their children but also to the Church—teaching in effect a sinister and ungodly priority. It simply doesn’t matter how much our excuses are tricked out with spiritual sentimentality. What is happening is the malformation of the saints of God in the shape of something other than eucharistic holiness of Christ. That is, when Christians gather on Sundays to worship and adore God in Christ and to share in his rest, they are practically, but also very deeply, shaping their lives after the pattern God gave as a gift in creation and redemption. When we give over our Sundays to God, not only in worship, but in rest, we are allowing the very pattern and rhythm of our lives to be molded by God. The alternative is what the Bible has always called idolatry. To allow something other than God to mold your existence and set your daily patterns is the very logic of idolatry. Thus, idolatry gives way to slavery. This may appear extreme, but the sinister is often subtle and comes supplied with very good reasons.

If this offends you, ask yourself why. Being a Catholic is demanding. Discipleship is no leisure activity. We are each of us prizes in a primeval and relentless war, and this war is waged through the subtle invitations of belonging. We are enticed to belong either to that which gives life or to that which gives death. Our life is found in Jesus who calls his sons and daughters together every week on the day of his resurrection. He calls us together to be with him, to be with each other, and to be finally human beings redeemed together into the image of God. Sunday worship is essential to who we are. So, what shapes your existence? What sets the rhythm of your life? What do you worship? You can’t say you love someone and only sparingly show it. These are urgent questions which must be asked. Without the day of the Lord, we cannot live.

"For the Sake of Our Democracy, Go Back to Church"
Fr. Joshua for the Dallas Morning News

May 2017

In Place: Reflections on Belonging
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
 

Farmer, poet, and philosopher, Wendell Berry, once wrote that the greatest danger facing our country today is that, “Increasingly, Americans—including, notoriously, their politicians—are not from anywhere.” Transportation is so easy, our world so wireless and our work so subject to shifting formations of markets that we forget how different, liquid, and detached-from-place our lives have become. It’s a cliché to talk about “mobile society,” so much so that we don’t notice or at least can hardly name the haunting anxiety many of us feel about this brave new but perhaps crumbling world in which we no longer feel at home. Philosopher Michael Gillespie helps us understand something about how things have changed. “In previous ages,” he argues, “people have defined themselves in terms of their land or place, their race or ethnic group, their traditions or their gods…” What is different today is that we define ourselves more in terms of time. “To be modern means to be ‘new,’ to be an unprecedented event in the flow of time…something different than anything that has come before…as self-originating, as free and creative in a radical sense, not merely as determined by tradition or governed by fate or providence.” It’s not as easy as it once was to see ourselves in terms of some grand, people-forming narrative—those stories which shaped religion and nations. Even in the face of some of our new patriotisms, the power of the American story is more and more being called into question here and abroad. We don’t see ourselves as we used to. Tense and silent, this sense of not belonging, of not being from anywhere, in many ways names our modern anxiety.

Some, though, think this good and liberating. No longer bound by our particular stories, we’re now free to seek out some new more global or virtual communion. I’m less convinced than these cultural optimists. Being detached from our particular stories and particular places, in my opinion, has made this world more frightening and abstract. For example, now we worry about something called “the economy,” some abstract thing most of us know nothing about but which most of us fear. We worry also about something called “the environment,” again something we can’t really conceive. We used to worry about Phyllis and Bob who owned the shop across the street. And we used to worry about our neighbor’s crop, about the soil beneath our feet. Now we worry about detached and abstract things; and in realizing that we can barely name these abstractions, much less control them, we suffer from that peculiarly wordless anxiety that is so much part of worried modern life. Not knowing where we’re from and worrying about these detached and abstract things, we suffer from what psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove called “root shock,” our “reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystem.” Speaking to the New York Times, Martin Cottingham exemplified just this sort of thing. Reacting to the closure of his local Catholic school he said, “The world can change, but if you got your school, your church, your sports all within a couple of blocks, you’re safe.” Losing our harbors of belonging is traumatic and fearful. We’re beginning to forget who we are because we’ve forgot where we’re from.

And it’s hard to be a Christian having lost sense of belonging. The God whom we’ve been told about for generations is a God that is certainly transcendent and infinite, but also local, immediate, and personal. The God of Jews and Christians makes himself known to a lone wandering shepherd, to a farmer, to an elderly couple, to a young girl—all belonging to a particular tribe within a particular nation. Our God is an intimate, local God that comes to the places we belong. He is not some distant mechanistic deity. Thus, for those of us who have become detached from our places of belonging, it’s not entirely difficult to understand why God may seem so distant and unreal. God wants to make his home with us, but we don’t have homes anymore. This lost sense of belonging also contributes to our lost sense of sacredness. Again, quoting Wendell Berry, “There are no unsacred places;/ there are only sacred places/ and desecrated places.” The world is probably very beautiful, but unless we take time to give ourselves to a particular place, it will always be difficult to see the innumerable beauties of our little earth. Without belonging to a place, God is harder to find and his creation harder to love.

But what can we do? First, as Christians, we can remember that belonging is part of God’s nature and plan. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all belong to each other perfectly, and in grace this Triune God of ours invites us to belong through him, with him, and in him—“I in them and you in me,” as Jesus prayed. Fundamental to our understanding of God is his invitation to belong in him. Second, we must risk belonging to a place. A person interested in RCIA is often nervous about committing all year to the RCIA community. Many simply want to come into the Church discreetly by themselves. Yet, we make them journey together as a community of persons, as people that have learned how to belong. We all need to learn how to belong, to risk belonging to a place. If we don’t learn to belong to each other, it may very well be impossible to belong to God.

And finally, practically, why don’t you just come to the place of St. Rita. Come into the sanctuary or the chapel, the new coffee bar in the Parish Commons. Meet a friend for lunch under a tree. Come to St. Rita some time and do nothing—just be here. Sit here and become a part of the place in silence, or in laughter. We’ve created new spaces for you to come and to engage in the blessed spiritual work of wasting time. Come discover spaces just to belong and be.

Come into this place and rest and waste time. Belong to this place, and you just might discover that God belongs to you. Lost, you will be found, and all your fears relieved.
 

April 2017

The Way of Jesus: An Invitation to Holy Week
 Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

On Ash Wednesday, the Church bid her faithful to “follow the Lenten observances” so that they “may be worthy to come with minds made pure to celebrate the Paschal Mystery” of Christ. Throughout these weeks of Lent, the people of God have been obedient in prayer, fasting and in self-examination. Here, at Saint Rita, we turn with the whole Catholic Church in every age and throughout the world toward Jerusalem, to that city of peace, to that lonely path trod by the Lord. With countless saints and angels we follow the way of Jesus to Calvary, to the Cross, like those holy women and like John—they who saw the world tremble and the sky darken and the death which Jesus called his “glory.”

All of God’s people are invited to follow this path of salvation. The Church’s ancient liturgies rehearse our redeeming story, making it present to us for our deification. In this holy week the Church’s faithful are brought into this story. Saint Augustine said, “All the events, then, of Christ’s crucifixion, of His burial, of His resurrection the third day, of His ascension into heaven, of His sitting down at the right hand of the Father, were so ordered, that the life which the Christian leads here might be modeled upon them, not merely in a mystical sense, but in reality.” In the mystery of this holy week, we find and behold the man from Galilee who died for us. We find that in walking with him on his path during this holy week, he too walks with us on our paths. In this holy week we discover that he not only walks with us, he also guides us into a new life of resurrection and glory. This is what it means to be “illumined,” to employ an old wonderful term used by countless fathers and mystics. To follow Jesus to the Cross, to see him crucified and to wish to be crucified with him, is to see God and to learn the truth of all true things. As Saint Maximus the Confessor taught, “The one who knows the mystery of the cross and the tomb, knows the reasons of things.”

And so at Saint Rita, we will follow the Lord. We will keep this Holy Week. Come and see. Join us on this journey to the Feast of Feasts.
 

A Prayer for Holy Week
 Heavenly Father, you gave your only-begotten Son so that whoever believes in him would not die but live forever. For my salvation, your Son Jesus died for my sins on the Cross. He bid me to follow him, and to take up my cross as a disciple. Give me the grace of your Holy Spirit that I may in this holy week give you such time, honor, and devotion in following your Son’s Passion. Illumine me as I follow your Son this week, and grant that I may have something of that heavenly light. By your light, may I not only hear of your Son’s resurrection, may I also experience it in my heart. In the Name of him who suffered for me, Jesus our Lord. Amen.

 

March 2017

 "The Hope and Power of Confession"
Fr. Joshua for the Texas Catholic

"I'm a Married Catholic Priest"
Fr. Joshua for the Dallas Morning News

Lent and Love
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

For Saint Augustine, love proved everything. After learning all that one could, the theologian mustn’t be proud, he said. Rather, he or she should remember Paul’s warning that “knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies” (1 Cor 8:1). However much one may learn much, only sharing in the suffering of Christ will actually save him (De Doctrina Christiana 2.41.62). That is, both faith and works are useless unless you also love—as God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. Thus, in reading scripture, in work, in study, in leisure—in all these human endeavors, their worth is known by the love these things share in and spread. It makes no difference to the glory of God or to the Church that you know anything, or that you do anything, or that you give this, that, or the other thing to the Church or to anything else. That is, they make no difference insofar as they are empty of love. Like a good marriage or a good friendship, our relationship with God cannot just be works and ideas. It must be a love affair.
Love is at the heart of Lent. In this season we are reminded through our fasts and added prayers, through our sacrifice and confession, that it is not sufficient that we simply get our ideas right about God. It will not do just to belong to the Church as if it were a political group and not an organic body. We must love God with all the bodily, emotional, and intellectual energy we can muster. Our life with God must be a genuine love affair with all that entails. God must invade your life. He must frame your day and your imagination. As a good husband takes his dearest wife as his compass, so too should God govern your reality—transcending all earthly loves and knowledges, making them finally human. I learn of love by loving my wife; I learn of God by loving Jesus. This is the way it works. This is the great sign betwixt Christ and his Church.
           
And it’s why we’re bidden by the Church to follow Jesus into the wilderness. In imitation, we are asked to deny ourselves, to sacrifice, to refuse the violence of this demonic world. We are invited to do these things because Christ is in the desert we enter. We want to learn of him in his suffering and death, so we may know him in his resurrection. We must marry ourselves to Jesus in order truly to experience the tragedy of his death and the joy of his rising. We can only come to this by knowing Jesus, and we can only know Jesus by loving him. And love is a full thing.

Probably more than anything else, the Lenten sermons of Saint Leo the Great, in the fifth century, exemplify the spiritual ideal of Lent and show how it is possible to weave the threads of faith and works into a fabric of love.  “But when these days,” he said, “which are especially marked out for the mystery of human redemption and immediately precede the Paschal Feast, come around, we are bound to prepare ourselves more diligently with pious purification.”  For Leo, Lent was an opportunity for Christians to be restored to the likeness of God, so that we come “to the most holy of all feasts free from all turmoil” (Sermon 44.1, 3). For him, struggling for “pious purification” took the form of fasting, forgiving, and almsgiving. By these spiritual or corporeal works, we are able to draw nearer God, intimate in our imitation of him, so much so as to be agents of divine work ourselves (Sermon 43.4). When we dare to fast, to reduce ourselves as the Son of God emptied himself and also fasted in the desert; when we dare to forgive the innocent as well as the guilty just as God forgives us; when we dare to give out of our abundance and even our poverty; when we do all these things in prayer and out of dispassionate and Godlike love, then, as Leo said, God “sees his own love imaged forth in man” (Sermon 48.5). Lent is meant for our total conversion.

Lent means to shake your body and your mind. Fasting, forgiving, and almsgiving are meant to be felt physically as well as spiritually. It is meant to be a holistic experience because God became human. Our discipleship is meant to be more than intellectual. No love on earth is merely sentiment—that’s called hypocrisy. The Lenten discipline of the Church, when embraced with the light touch of a lover, will bring the warm Christian soul into the very presence of Christ. This is the way of salvation. As Augustine said, it is not sufficient that we were made rich in Egypt, that we learned all we could. We must also observe the Pasch and thereby share in the love and suffering of Jesus. We must not just get our ideas right. We must go with Jesus to the suffering. As Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn 11:16).

Thus, we have here something of a Lenten Rule. In love and with prayer we should fast, forgive, and give to those in need. However, forgetful as we are, we must diligently keep our souls away from the ruts of dead pious mechanism. The line between healthy religious habit and rote emptiness is sometimes very thin. It is always good to ask why Christians embrace a rule of life. Often, we slip into the mistaken way of thinking that conceives a rule of life to be the same thing as a life of rules. A rule of life, in the Christian sense, is certainly not this. A rule of life is about patterning one’s life after the life of Christ. Paul encouraged the Philippians to have the “mind of Christ,” to think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise (Phil 2:5, 4:8). In order to think of these things we must turn away from other things. We must spend time, learn, sacrifice for, and enjoy the God we love—all because he loves us. As with human loves, our love for God begs for our devotion, and true devotion shows itself in deeds. As James said, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (Jam 2:14).

But a rule of life is not just about being genuine. It is also about salvation and knowledge. Through the personal habit that follows upon living according to a rule of life, the soul is brought into a more intimate relationship and communion with God. Saint Maximus the Confessor, similar to Leo, described the purpose and hope of this Lenten Rule perhaps the best. “Almsgiving heals the irascible part of the soul; fasting extinguishes the concupiscible part, and prayer purifies the mind and prepares it for the contemplation of reality.” Only then, Maximus said later on, is the mind “freed from the passions” and therefore able to journey “straight ahead to the contemplation of created things and…to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity” (Four Centuries on Charity 79, 86). We wonder how love and knowledge fit together. Here, in this Lenten Rule we see how. In following Christ, in following his loving and cruciform ways, we come to see how he is indeed the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor 1:24). We see how our Lenten sacrifices share in the evangelization of the world: by our imitation of Christ, the “manifold wisdom of God” is more clearly presented to the world (Eph 3:10). Thus, our practice of Lent, we discover, takes on a greater significance than simply personal growth. It embraces the whole meaning of the Church.
          
May you have a blessed Lent. Take this opportunity to renew your discipleship and find the Lord again. Do not neglect what is for your salvation. Our God chose to save us through love! Discover in this Lent the astounding mystery of it all.
 

Ferbruary 2017

On Being a Parish
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
 
What’s the point of a parish? It’s not an academic question, but a deeply spiritual and imminently practical on. What is St. Rita Catholic Community? Why does it exist? Drawing near the end of our long building campaign, we would do well to return to these basic questions. For every type of community, it’s good ever so often to pause and ask, “What’s this all about?”
           
Exploring our tradition, we see that Christians have dwelt together from the earliest times—since Jesus called his disciples to follow him together as the “twelve” and the “seventy-two.” Dioceses are rather ancient things. However, parish churches as we know them structurally are really the legacy of Charlemagne in the ninth century although the Greek word paroikein (in English, “parish”) was used by the earliest Church fathers centuries before that.

And the meaning of paroikein is illuminating. It’s twofold: First, it simply means “to live beside,” and this makes sense given that a parish is the local embodiment of the universal Church comprised of persons living close together. Yet, equally, the word translated into English as “parish” also means “foreigner” or “stranger”—the sense being that as Christians we are ultimately pilgrims on a journey living as stewards of the created world, knowing that our destiny is in heaven, and not as idolaters that make mere material well-being their ultimate concern (cf. 1 Pt. 2:11). This distinguishes a parish from say a book club or your fantasy football league. A Catholic parish is made up of faithful people committed to a particular form of life shaped by a particular hope. That is, members of a parish live intimately within the presence of Christ himself, trusting all the while that when Jesus “appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2).

This is what the Church means by “community.” The Code of Canon Law describes a parish as a “definite community of the Christian faithful established on a stable basis” (§515.1). By “community,” we understand that our parish is constituted first as a communion of persons and not as buildings. All our property could be taken away, but as long as we remain a communion of faithful people, we remain St. Rita Catholic Community. That is, positively, what binds us together is something profound and lasting, something that “never ends,” something “that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7-8).

That is, what binds us together is love. Echoing Paul, the Catechism is clear: “Above all,” it teaches “charity ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’” (815). Love is that pervasive reality that characterizes everything we do. Fundamentally, the love that makes a parish is exemplified in our common faith and worship and in our apostolic unity with Bishop Burns, the other bishops, and also our Holy Father. When someone dismisses the Church as an “institution,” that person really has failed to learn anything deep about love. Of course there are sins and failures, but love endures such things. To reject the Church because she’s merely an “institution” is like rejecting your family because you can describe it sociologically or financially. Such reductive conclusions may be true, but they are also totally devoid of love. Christians see things differently. We see love.

What does this mean for the average parishioner? Simply this: What do you do for love? What do you give for love? What do you say for love? Do your words build up or tear down? Do your actions inspire or offend? Love makes a parish. What about your life shares and shows love? Love has been the theme of our parish for over half a century. May it continue until we pilgrims are brought home.

On Eucharistic Adoration
by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield
 
Christ identified himself with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. He first did so in Capernaum saying, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.” He immediately intensified this statement by saying, “my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink” (John 6:51,55). Later, in the Upper Room, he identified himself again with the bread and wine of Passover saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Even after his resurrection, Jesus is still identified with the bread and wine of the Eucharist as both Luke and Paul teach (Luke 24:28-32; 1 Corinthians 10:16).
 
Ever since Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68), the Church has always believed this. Ignatius of Antioch, writing at the dawn of the second century, distinguished right-believing Christians from false believers who “will not admit that the Eucharist is the self-same body of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in his goodness afterwards raised up again” (To the Smyrnaens, 7). The belief of the Church is stated clearly by the end of the second century in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons: “For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity” (Against Heresies, 4.18.5).
 
Of course believing in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus influenced worship. In addition to normal Eucharistic gatherings, known as the “breaking of the bread,” there is early evidence of worship or adoration of Jesus in the Eucharistic bread. There are traces of such adoration in Spain as early as the sixth century, for example. By the twelfth century, elevating the newly consecrated bread and wine within the Mass was commonplace in the West, and by the thirteenth century, Eucharistic adoration took root in the West with the promulgation of the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1247.
 
The purpose of such extra-liturgical adoration is simply to cultivate and extend the beauty and grace of Communion. Eucharistic adoration is a way to savor the presence of Jesus, to contemplate the gift of his passion and his risen body and blood. Thus, we offer this time of adoration and spiritual communion. At St. Rita we celebrate Holy Hour with Benediction every Thursday evening during Confessions and all day on the first Friday of the month. Christians have been doing this for centuries, and so do we. And countless souls have been blessed in the experience. Echoing Saint John Paul II, “May our adoration never cease” (Dominicae Cenae, 3).
 

January 2017

A New Year & A Renewed Mission!
Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

A new year brings new opportunities to Saint Rita Catholic Community! Not only is there change afoot in our country and in our city, but also in our Diocese and in our Parish—all of which calls for prayer and positive thinking, the renewal of charity and the will to hope! Ours is an exciting time! A time to rely on the Holy Spirit and to trust in the providence of God.

We rejoice in the appointment of Bishop Edward J. Burns as the next Bishop of Dallas! He will be installed as bishop February 9 at the Cathedral downtown. Here at Saint Rita we were particularly blessed to host our new bishop on his first day in Dallas as he called the Diocese to prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Here, in our parish, our new bishop began his ministry among us pointing to the Lord in the Eucharist. He bid us, “Stay close to Jesus Christ!” He pledged his faith to God and to his call. He invited all of us into the mission of the kingdom of God. He called us all to be joyful and faithful Catholic Christians. It was a momentous beginning; and one that, for me personally, I found inspiring.

Which instills within me hope and confidence about the opportunities we face this year at Saint Rita. One of the first things on Bishop Burns’ to-do list will be to appoint a new pastor for Saint Rita. And on that, I can offer you no inside information (because I have none!); I can only beg your prayers. We must in things like this trust instead of worry, keeping the faith that God has always taken care of us and will continue to do so. I’m excited about the future! And I think all of us should be excited!
           
As you know too—and hopefully you’re praying about it —we are in the process of finding a new principal for our School. After decades of outstanding service, Dr. Hines will retire at the end of the year. Thus, we’re hard at work finding an excellent replacement. Hitherto we’ve received over thirty applicants, formed a search committee, and are now in the process of selecting from among those applicants those we’d like to bring in for interviews. We are fortunate to be a School and community that is widely considered desirable (because it is!), and this gives us an advantage in selecting an outstanding new principal. As I have told our various councils and our parents: at the School, ours is a culture of faith, hope, and love—and educational excellence. We will settle for nothing less in our new principal. These children are given us in sacred trust. Thus, we will treat their education and formation accordingly—as sacred. Please keep this in your daily prayers!
           
Also, as we draw near to the end of our building projects hopefully this spring, completing our momentous vision of faith that will carry our community well into the future, let us all now refocus our energies upon the basic mission of the gospel, on being here at Saint Rita what the Church is by the grace of God. Let us recommit ourselves as a community of “life, charity and truth,” to quote Vatican II, finding our purpose always as an instrument of God’s love and redemption of all people. We’ve built everything we’ve built for this mission, so let’s not let up, let’s get to work! From construction to evangelization—that’s our task! And again, this excites me more than I can say—what the Spirit will do through us!
           
So, very simply, just trust God! Let God be God; you and I—let’s be faithful! Let’s love and pray and worship and rejoice and serve and forgive. May we be the Church. May we be Christ for one another. May we share God’s love with everyone—in this world so in need of it!
God bless you!