The following is the transcript of Bishop Caggiano’s Lecture entitled “In the Shadow of the Cross: Come let us Worship”
First and foremost, once again, I want to thank you for being here tonight and for spending this time. I consider this family time. As you know, the Bishop’s Lecture Series was created to feature very famous individuals giving very scholarly remarks. That is not what you’re going to have tonight. I stole this time from the schedule because I wanted it really as family time, time for us to prepare ourselves theologically, pastorally, spiritually, for what’s going to begin on Sunday, which is our own participation in the Eucharistic renewal. The Lord is going to arrive in Bridgeport from the Archdiocese of Hartford at noontime on a yacht. When the boat parks at the pier, we will begin a three-year adventure. I thought to myself, this is a golden an opportunity for me to offer some remarks and for us to, as believers, break those remarks open for each of our own personal spiritual well-being. Father Clark is sitting here. Father Clark gave the first talk on beauty and architecture. The Gothic Architecture did an excellent job. And next year, we have four speakers, which at the end of my talk, if you remind me, I will tell you who the speakers are.
Okay. Okay. What brings us here tonight is to paint a picture, if I may put it that way. It’s to enter into a meditation of a mystery, a mystery that, quite frankly, even the most brilliant of the theologians in the history of the church, could not fully and completely adequately explain, for a mystery defies that. In fact, it is a mystery because in the liturgy, we call it that. Let us proclaim the mystery of faith. The mystery of faith, of course, is the celebration, is that which is right before us on the altar and the celebration that allows it to come in our midst. What I’d like to do is offer some thoughts, maybe some hues, some pieces of that picture to paint it for you and me, and they will allow the Holy spirit to guide our conversation and discussion. What also brings us here is the recognition that among believers, there are many who do not have an understanding, even rudimentary, of what that mystery is. There are those who may or may not understand it and don’t feel any need to participate in it every Sunday. Then there are those, and please, I don’t mean to, in any way, insult anyone, including myself here, but there are even those among us who do participate And yet there is still the challenge to go deeper, to allow it to move us more profoundly so that the other 180 some odd hours of the week are informed solely and completely by the mystery we have entered into in an active, conscious way at Sunday Mass.
Bishop De Marcio used to say, who was my bishop in Brooklyn when I was an auxiliar bishop, he said, Frank, in the church, there are no No secrets, only mysteries, because they’re divine. That’s what brings us here. So as I want to do, allow me to tell you a story, at the risk of embarrassing people that I love, to set the stage for the key to paint the picture. I feel very awkward being here, stuck in front of this podium. I’m going to try to do my usual thing. July 17th, 1965. I was six years old. My mother and father returned back to Italy for the very first time after they left for my uncle, Jerry’s, wedding. It was the first time I met all four of my grandparents who lived in Italy their entire life. Grandma Nonna decided to have a welcome dinner Sunday. Now, I’m thinking to myself, welcome dinner, some and uncles, 8, 10 people. 51 people later showed up. It was nothing else than an ordeal. It was a marathon experience. I remember it vividly for three reasons. Number one, the beginning of the meal was, as any Italian meal begins with antipasto.
Well, the breads are given antipasto, and I have never, ever tasted food like that before. Not knowing that my grandmother raised the pigs that became the sausage and the prosciutto that we ate, that she made the mozzarella with her own hands, all the cheese they made themselves, all the olives they grew on their trees. I mean, it was a remarkable experience, number one. Number two, it was the first time in my young life that my mother had somebody who had authority over her at dinner. The very first time, I could see my mother was spying me. I was aiming for something, and my grandmother, of course, in her italian, said, Yeah, eat, eat, eat. I said, It’s like an inmate out of prison, number two. Number three, grandpa made his own wine. I’m happy to inform you that the very first time I had wine was that day at the ripe age of seven. And before my father could say anything, he just handed it to me and the rest was history, my friend. All these years, it was history. That experience of antipasto was enjoyable, memorable, but it actually has a really profound significance of why it exists Whether it’s hors d’œuvres or antipasto, it cuts across all cultures.
Why does it exist? Because it has three functions. I stumbled upon this when we eventually got cable and I was visiting my mother, and she had the cooking show, the channel all the time. That or the religious station in Brooklyn. And Lydia had an entire show on Antipasto. And this is among the things she said. She said it serves at least three functions. Number one, it’s a sign of welcome because those who come to one’s home come as guests. So what you do is you provide the best of food to let them know that there’s no one who is a guest at the table, but it’s only family at the table. It’s a beautiful image. Number two, that the food is meant to satisfy but not fill you. Of course, I didn’t learn that lesson that day, but it’s not. It’s meant in some way to give some sense of a satisfaction which the rest of the meal is to provide. And third, It is to open the appetite because if antipasto is done correctly in any way, shape, or form, or derbs correctly, you should have all the basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, a bit bitter, because your palate completely opened for the feast that is coming, to appreciate what comes next.
There is a book called Eucharist and Eschatology, written by Dr. Jeffrey Wainwright, who himself is not a Catholic. And in that book, he explores this beautiful image that I have used over and over again about the Eucharist, the Eucharist, the mystery of faith being the antipasto of heaven. The more I think of it and the more I reflect on it, the Eucharist is the antiposto of the celestial banquet. Remember, my friends, the Eucharist gets us to heaven. In heaven, there is no Eucharist. There will be no Eucharist because we will be with Him who is the Bread of Life. And so it is the foretaste, is it not, of what lies ahead. So that is what I’d like to do. Use those three insights that Lydia provided as the three hues to start painting this picture. And the first is to Remember, like Antipasto, Jesus offers Himself as food because he is reminding us of who we are. We are not guests. We are His divine family, number one. Number two, he provides us the best of all foods because He Himself is the food, body, blood, soul, and divinity, not meant to fill our stomachs, but to meet the needs of our hearts and our spirits, the restlessness that you and I live with to strengthen our hopes and our dreams, to meet us in our challenges, and to leave us hungry for more.
The third is What is that more? I’d like to end by suggesting there are three things they ask of us, the Lord asks us of us, to receive Him worthily, to give Him thanks, and to go out, and to offer to others the love he offers to us in the Eucharist. Those are our themes, and then we’ll have some time to break them open. The single most important insight that we need to remember, my friends, in the Eucharist, is that the Eucharist makes no sense if we do not begin with the great gift of baptism. What happens at baptism? We are literally redeemed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We enter into the mystery of His death. We literally die and rise with Christ. And what the church teaches is that original sin is forgiven, all personal sin is forgiven. We are enlightened in mind and heart. We have infused into us the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. And we enter into what? A communion of believers. Notice the word communion of believers. Therefore, in baptism, we enter into a relationship with the Lord that’s rooted in the mystery of His death and resurrection.
So the church fathers say, what Christ enjoyed by grace of who He was as the Son of God, we obtained by adoption in the sacrament of baptism. So you and I are truly the daughters and sons of God in Him. Now, let’s think about that for a We say we are members of the faithful. I will defer to Father Lennix with his liturgical knowledge. But in the patristic era, there were many orders in the church. So there was the order of the catechumans, which we have now resurrected in the contemporary church, the order of the penitents, there was the order of the widows, and then there was the order of the faithful, for they were the ones who responded in faith and were received into this communion. So that is why we dismissed the catechumans before we enter into the liturgy of the Eucharist, because they are not yet ready. They are not in communion. Only the faithful are. In the modern church, we speak of the universal prayer, but we also speak of it as the prayer of the? And that’s all of us through baptism. So when you consider and see it that way, oh, look at this.
Oh, look at this. Wow. Now, is that the Father of Evil at work? Thank God I did those pages already. So in effect, keep that in mind because baptism establishes the communion. Now, you have heard me say before, I’m just going to remind you, there’s another term, because when I say family, particularly in the 21st century, that word comes with many connotations, does it not? Families are hurting desperately in many ways. Rather to get stuck with all the connotations, there’s another term that the Lord Himself gives us on the night before he died, on the night before he offers his life for us and gives us this great sacrament. The same night is the first night he calls His Apostles. What? Friends. That’s interesting, no? Three years waited. Miracles, talking, eating, praying, mountaintops, all the places they went. Waited to… Why? Why? Any ideas? Because what is a friend? I know what we call friends. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, a A friend is someone who chooses to love you. It’s not like a relative who has to love you. A friend is someone who chooses to love you. And the Lord says, I no longer call you slaves.
I call you my friends. The point being, a friend is someone who chooses to love you at your ugliest and does not walk away. We have many acquaintances, my friends, but really, truly very few friends. So there’s a beautiful theological concept to say the communion we establish is friendship with God. Either one says the exact same thing in the mystery. So in this profound way, the starting point to understand the mystery of the Eucharist is to understand the mystery of baptism. So what do we say then happens at the Eucharist? What actually happens in this mystery? Allow me to put it this way. What happened once for us in baptism is relived over and over and over again through the mystery of the Eucharist, because on the altar, we have the marrying of heaven and earth. We have the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection once again given to us. So the communion of baptism is renewed over and over and strengthened and deepened more and more each time we go to Sunday Mass. We say in an unbloody way, we are entering into the one irrepeatable, unique sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. And there’s much liturgical and autistic symbol that highlights that each time we come.
Much of that, unfortunately, in the modern church has been lost and now is slowly being reclaimed. The Lord who comes to us comes to us in His true, full, real, substantial presence. It is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the one who died on the cross, rose from the dead and will come again in glory. So that which saved us in baptism continues to strengthen and save us and strengthen our communion over and over again. They are linked intimately. So if you see it that way, my friends, there is no reason why a person would say, I don’t have to go to Sunday Mass. If you understand what it is that is really going on at Sunday Mass. It is the gift of our own redemption given to us over and over So unlike our Protestant brothers and sisters, it is not a symbol, it’s not a sign, it’s not just a sacred meal, it’s not a reminder, it’s not a communal memorial. We use the word transubstantiation, Aristotelian philosophy, substance and accidents, that which appears, the appearances, all the outer qualities, and then what something is. So we believe that in the act of the great consecration, when we enter into this mystery on the altar and he actually comes to us and we receive Him, we are receiving Christ.
What is it? It’s not who is it? It’s truly Jesus. What does it look like? What does it taste like? Bread, the accidents of bread, transubstantiation. Most young people don’t understand that terminology. I presume we in this room do. So the Mass is a sacrifice. The Mass is also a memorial. But a memorial as understood by Christians, meaning that what we remember, we We all remember an historic act. We remember that which is real before us. What does the priest say at Mass? Do this? So he’s not saying, We’re reminded what happened. It is here. Remember, it is here. So it is a sacrifice, and it is a meal. It is a meal. Now, what I’m about to say may offend you, but at this point, I’m on Medicare, so it is what it is. Okay? Just for what I just said, you will hear people say, I got nothing out of that. What in the name of goodness does that mean when it is referring to the Holy sacrifice of the Mass? It is the gift of our redemption. You could have the worst preacher on two legs. You could have the worst music ever created in 21 centuries of faith.
You could have the most hideous church ever created, which hopefully None of that applies here at St. Michael’s. That’s not the point. But to get nothing out of it, how could that be? See, because what do we do at Sunday Mass? We are giving worship. We are coming before the mystery that saves us in Jesus Christ. And what do we do? We give thanks for the gift that we do not deserve. We cannot earn None of us are worthy of. And yet he graciously gives it, not just on Calvary, but in grace. Every time we come to Mass, he’s there offering, pouring literally out His life and His blood, literally pouring it out. For food. It has nothing to do with what we get out of it, except the fact that he gives us everything. So it’s not so much what the mass gives to us. The real question Question is, and this is where people could get offended, is what did we give back? Because that’s what worship is, is to give back to God what he has given us. And unfortunately, we live in a world where the mentality is different. It’s almost as if there’s an infiltration of a sense that the mass is meant to either entertain me or to engage me or to occupy me or to whatever it is.
It should all do. I mean, I’m not suggesting it not, but the fundamental gift is there. Therefore, we should literally be sitting in awe, kneeling in awe, and be reminded of the baptism that set us free. If we think about that, we have a lot of work to do because we have lost that sense of worship, particularly at Mass. Perhaps, please God, with the renewal, we will be able to have that reborn. It reminds me of the story of the little girl in religion class. Have you heard this story? It’s a joke. Please laugh. Okay? When it’s over. Girl in religion class. And the teacher said, Where does God live? And of course, little kids, they’re all little kids. Oh, God lives in the mountains, in the ocean, in this and that. The other way, he lives in church. He goes, Great, great, great, Great. The little girls in the back, wave in a hand, wave in a hand, wave in a hand. Finally, the teacher said, Okay, I forget her name. Okay, where does God live? She says, God lives in the bathroom. Of course, the teacher thought, She’s causing trouble. She said, What did you say?
She said, God lives in the bathroom. She couldn’t resist. She said, Who taught you God lives in the bathroom? She said, My father. Of course, she couldn’t let it stop there. The teacher said, When did your father ever tell you God lives in the bathroom? She said, Every morning when my mother’s in the bathroom, he knocks on the door and says, My God, are you still in there? Did you like that? That’s from our link letter on YouTube. Okay. Yeah. Okay. To be theologically correct, we’re taping, remember, God is omnipresent. God is everywhere. But what we’re talking about is His presence in a way that is irrepeatable and unique. A presence that allows us to taste redemption, to taste eternal life. That is what the mystery is. Allow me to ask you one question. Baptism begins the communion. There is no eating. It’s the anointings, it’s the washing in water, all the rest. Of all the ways the Lord could have continued to build on this communion, mystery of His death and resurrection, the re-representation of His death and resurrection, the deepening of it. Why do you think the Lord has us literally eat and drink?
Why do you think that was in His mind? What do you think? Do you have any ideas? I’m not doing all the work here. Any ideas? Nourishment of the soul. Nourishment of the soul. Great. Excellent. What do you think? Please. Something that becomes part of you. Keep going. You’re there. Jump. You’re gone. The communion with rice is what you’re consuming at the house. Yeah, because it’s a physical process. It’s a physical process because it’s also a reminder that Christ died on the cross to save you, not just to save your soul, to save you and me. And we are soul, spirit, and body. On Sunday, what do we say? We believe in the resurrection of the body. So the Antiposto of heaven, this best of all foods, is reminding us that, especially myself now, that I’m literally falling apart. When I rise from the dead, if I am worthy to enter into the glory of God. I will be glorified. My spirit will rejoice, my soul will be at peace, and my body will be made new just as Christ was. Theologians have always speculated as to the awareness of each other in eternal life.
My hunch is that there will be an awareness of the love of God, the Beatific vision, where we ever fall more in love with God for all eternity as we love each other perfectly for all eternity. What a beautiful thought. It’s all because we’re literally invited to eat and drink. Remember, my friends, when Christ rose from the dead and he appeared to St. Thomas. In His glorified body for all eternity, he still had wounds. Fascinating, no? Because he wanted us to remember, in part, that it was really Him. Our God is no stranger to the suffering that you and I bring to the mystery of our redemption at the Eucharist. So that’s number one. Number two, the Eucharist satisfies us but does not completely fill us. I have a very dear friend of mine who doesn’t practice the faith. This was years ago when I was a young priest. And he had these ideas, his idea of evangelization, of how to get people to Mass. So he said, Well, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. You got to do more than that. He said, Like donuts or stuff like that. I said, Well, you’re out of your mind.
It’s meant not to fill us, but what is it satisfying? What is it satisfying? Exactly, Kathy. It’s your heart and soul and spirit. Now, who in this room has not come to the Eucharist desperately praying for someone who may be ill or with the weight of a child or a grandchild who has lost their way and we’re desperately trying to find them back? Who has not come to the Eucharist struggling with loneliness or anxiety or just the worries of the world that is being created around us that we’re leaving to our next generations, thinking to ourselves, what in the name of goodness are we leaving them? I could go on and on and on, or the worries of war, or we look at the pictures of those who are suffering, or children who are orphaned in the Holy Land, or in the… You get my drift. See, we come to the Eucharist and we receive this food because the Lord is the only one who can meet those needs. They will still be there, but they will begin to be satisfied. Why? Because if you were betrayed, my friend, and your heart was broken, you are receiving into you a God who knows what it means to be betrayed.
If you arrive struggling with loneliness, he was also alone in the garden and kept going, we are not alone, for he dwells within us. We think of all the sickness and suffering and war and herd and all the rest. Well, he is there to give us the grace to go and do something about it. If we cannot do totally everything to heal, nonetheless, he is there because the victory is ours. What does that mean? The Father of Evil, his reign is over. It’s over. There will be a recreation of all things. Christ’s victory is assured, and us in Him is assured if we only allow His grace to continue to move us in life. I mean, if you consider that we would be running to Mass every time we had a chance just to be able to celebrate that victory, it doesn’t mean That the battle is over, but the war is won in Him. That’s number two. Then allow me, what is it that the Lord would like from us? If you were to look at the liturgy of the Eucharist, there are two ways to answer this question. I’m going to answer it this way first.
If If you look at the liturgy of the Eucharist, what happens? There’s a four-fold action that happens at Mass, which is the exact same four-fold action that happened at the last supper. And what was that? Jesus took bread, he blessed it, he broke it, and he gave it to His disciples. So what do we do at Sunday Mass? We take the gifts, They are blessed and consecrated by the priest in persona Christi. The bread is broken, and then it is given to those who are able to come to communion. That is the grammar of discipleship. We’re taken out in baptism. We are consecrated. We are consecrated also each time we receive the sacred Eucharist. We are reconsecrated over and over again, meaning that communion is deepened and strengthened with His grace in His ind dwelling presence for it’s really Christ there. And then we are sent out into the world not to have a nice time, but to be broken. To be broken because no student is greater than his teacher. And the Lord was. The Lord gave His life. So we, too, do that because of the grace we received. See the point? The grammar is there.
But go back to my three points, the other way to answer this, to receive the Eucharist worthily. Baptism establishes communion. And this is a very sore issue for many, many people in the modern world who believe we live in an egalitarian society and everyone has a right to everything, and that’s just the way it should be. Well, in fact, my friends, communion is established in baptism, but that communion can be hampered, can be broken, broken. It can be broken by faith being broken. It can be broken by sin. Every time we come to Sunday Mass, what do we do? We begin with the penitential rite because none of us comes to Mass without our sins. I must tell you, a pet peeve that I have is that when you come to Sunday Mass, and sometimes I’m guilty of it too, so you could hold me accountable from this point on, and we say, In order to celebrate sacred mysteries, let us acknowledge our sins. I confess to Almighty God. And you said, what acknowledgement just happened here. There was no time to give any thought. Now, granted, we do it before Mass begins, but there really should be a pause of silence And a recollection of what is it that how have we failed before the Lord?
So we recognize that we all, but then there is serious sin, as there are those that no longer believe what the church believes. Both cases, that communion can’t be had. But the door is open to invite people back, but they have a journey to go through to be able to receive. So it’s not a judgment on the worthiness of the individual because nobody in the end is worthy. But it’s a recognition that communion creates communion. All right. So number one, to receive the Eucharist worthily by a show of hands. Forgive me. Who prefers to receive Holy Communion in the hand? Raise your hands. Who Who here receives Holy Communion on the tongue? Raise your hand. Okay. All right. Remember, my friends, in the communion wars we are living, which is better, the mind’s better, yours worse. Or who here receives communion standing? I would think almost everyone. But there are growing numbers of Catholics who receive nearly more communion wars, mind’s worse. Mine’s better, yours is worse, mine’s more worse. Truth of the matter is, If you receive on the tongue, we have offended the Lord when our tongue has not been used for charity.
You receive in the hand, you’ve used your hands to offend the Lord, if and all the reason, by not doing the acts of charity. In other words, it’s the person himself or herself that the Lord is inviting into communion. The method of how to receive is totally up to you. There is no better or worse way. What’s called for is to receive Him worthily, to prepare our hearts to receive Him, to welcome the King of Kings in His gift of redemption in your life and mine. So allow me to be practical If you and I are coming to Mass, like for if I arrive to celebrate Mass with seven minutes to go, which has happened, and I’m rushing in, putting my vest in. I am not recollected. I mean, Mass is valid, but I’m not recollected. That’s also part of the worthiness is to prepare ourselves to enter into the mystery when we come to Sunday Mass. Otherwise, the mystery is there, and it’s like walking past a beautiful mass Mr. Peace in a Museum, you don’t even notice you’re out the door before it’s over. So that’s number one. And I want you to give thought to that in the renewal, because all of us have work to do in that regard.
Second is to be thankful. I joke about this at confirmation. You’ve heard me say this joke, too, and that is, you will know they are Christians by how they leave the parking lot. Exactly. So the second is we enter into the great gift of Thanksgiving, right? That which the son offers to the Father. Eucharist literally means to give thanks. Thanks for the mystery that we’re entering into. The truth is, we receive the Eucharist not simply to give thanks for that hour, but how thankful are you in your life for the blessings God has given you and me? How often do we pause to acknowledge the gracious, reckless, generosity of God for you and me? The Eucharist, if we are receiving it in a worthy way and allowing it to satisfy our spirits and hearts to feed that, we need to become more thankful for the simple blessings God gives us, even our next breath, even the fact that I’m ending in three minutes. All these blessings God is giving you and me. How thankful are we? And how much time do we do complaining? How much time do we have wondering what else we should have?
How much time do we spend wasting our time comparing ourselves to others when in the end, God knows all your secrets and still loves you. God knows your deepest shadows and dies on the cross for you. And offers you His sacred body, blood, soul, and divinity in the mystery of our redemption. Remarkable, isn’t it? And then the third is lastly, because I got the cue. What do we do being sent out? What do we do? And that’s what the one is all about, because the karygma, the proclamation of faith is Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. That’s the fundamental mystery of faith. In Christ, death and resurrection, you, I, humanity, all creation has eternal life. That is what we proclaim. So what I’m going to end is simply say, we go Sunday Mass, we are nurtured. We are entering into the mystery of redemption. We receive the sacred body, blood, soul, and divinity so that we can go out and proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To do it not in words, but in witness, in the integrity of our lives, in our Christian, so that in all that we do, in faith, hope, and charity, to be able to invite those who do not yet know the mystery or have left the mystery or don’t understand the mystery to say, You know what, ladies and gentlemen, there’s something here that I need because I want to be like her.
I want to be able to be like him, and I know his struggles, and see the joyful man that he is or the faithful woman that she is. That’s what conquered the Roman Empire. Allow me to I’ll end with just one story, if I may. Are you familiar with Cardinal von Thuan? He spent 13 years in prison, nine years in solitary confinement. Vietnamese. He was made a cardinal impectoray, and he befriended his prisoners and the guards, and he was put into jail basically because of his faith. So he was able to convince his captors to give him, periodically, a small piece, small little can, and in it, periodically, he would get a bit of rice wine and a small fragment of whatever bread or breadlike substance he could have. And in a cell that had no light, No light. He knew the Mass. He would celebrate Mass in the darkness of his cell. John Paul elevated him to become a cardinal, eventually was released, did not attend his own consistory, but went to Rome. At a Mass where he encountered the Holy Father, as they embraced, he knelt down before him Of course, in reverence, kissed the Fisherman’s Ring as the successor of St.
Peter and handed to John Paul the little can. And he said to him, This is where my Lord came to visit me. See, he knew the mystery that we’re talking about. He knew it. He didn’t need any theology. He didn’t need any great explanation. He knew what we are talking. This is our redemption. So please God, 385,000 Catholic in this diocese in the years ahead will be able to say the exact same thing. Thank you very much, everybody.
