Monthly Newspaper • DIOCESE OF BRIDGEPORT

As Father Cantalamessa continues his reflections with the bishops regarding the “new way of thinking” that the Lord wishes to impart upon us, he offered some interesting insights regarding the gift of preaching. One of those insights is so fundamental and important that it raises a series of questions that every Christian must answer every day of his or her life.

Father Raniero began his talk by highlighting an important distinction found in the New Testament when the Scriptures speak of the earliest preaching of the apostles. He noted that when the apostles preached, they did two complementary things. First, they offered a basic kerygma of faith, which means that they proclaimed the fundamental truth of their own belief in the person of Jesus. By doing so, they offered a basic choice to their hearers, inviting them to accept Jesus as their Lord and Messiah. Second, they followed the kerygma by offering didache, which means “teachings” about Jesus. They spoke of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom, His parables and miracles. This didache was to nurture the initial response of faith that the kerygma was meant to raise in their hearers. However, the didache always followed the kerygmatic offer to believe. Otherwise, the didache could easily be reduced to laws, nice teaching, an interesting way of living or another philosophy.

It seems to me that much of our failed efforts in evangelization are due to the fact that we are not preaching the kerygma of Christ. Whether it is in the pulpit or by our daily witness, we are not answering the question posed by Jesus to the apostles: “Who do you say that I am?” We do not clearly and without hesitation proclaim our faith that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, my Messiah and God! Further, we do not ask those around us to reflect upon this same question and to make a choice for or against Him.

How many Christians know the didache and do not embrace the kerygma of Christ? How many times have we shaped Jesus to fit our lives rather than have Him rule our lives? How often have we tamed the message of the Gospel by making it an intellectual, theological construct that entertains our intellectual curiosity, while at the same time robbing the Gospel of its ability to reveal our sinful self-righteousness, anger and belief that we are better than those “fallen away”? How often have we forgotten the power of the kerygma?

It is time to start preaching the kerygma of Jesus Christ. It is time to proclaim without hesitation that He is the Savior whose Death and Resurrection has set us free. He is the Lord of the living and the dead, the only Savior the world will ever know, whose desires our complete submission to His Divine Will, molding us into vessels of His love and mercy. For without embracing the kerygma, learning only the didache may have little eternal results.

The previous reflection originally appeared on Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Facebook page. Follow the Bishop for daily reflections and weekly videos! 

In yesterday’s reflections, Father Cantalamessa focused upon a key ingredient that marks the “world’s thinking” that needs to be rooted out from the life of every Christian, especially every bishop. He called it “the love of money” that forms the centerpiece of what motivates much of what the world does, often in opposition to the message of the Gospel.

In one of his opening statements, Father Raniero made clear that the modern rival to God is precisely the pursuit of money (and all that this implies, including material possessions, honor, power, etc.). Such a pursuit defines the very nature of the secular world, that sees all things only in terms of their materiality and denies any spiritual quality or dimension to life. He quoted the Scriptural admonition that money is the root of all evil, reminding us as bishops that our attitude towards material possessions (including honor and power) can easily be corrupted by the prevalent attitude of secularity. As such, since we cannot serve two masters, he asked us bluntly: whom do we wish to serve?

Later in his talk, in a moment of great insight, Father Raniero posed another question that has caused me to reflect deeply since he asked it. He remarked: “Why is the pursuit of money so devastating to the spiritual life?” His answer was simple: any person who gets caught in an unbridled pursuit of material possessions makes the grave spiritual mistake to place his or her faith, hope and love in material possessions and not God. Such a person has chosen to worship a false God that is an idol and has forsaken the one, true God. I wonder how much this idolatry has affected various aspects of our Church’s life? I even wonder how often you and I may slip into this idolatry and not even realize it?

If this pursuit for “money” needs to be rooted out from our Christian lives, then we need to embrace a true spirit of detachment. More on this topic in the days ahead.

The previous reflection originally appeared on Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Facebook page. Follow the Bishop for daily reflections and weekly videos! 

The bishops’ retreat began last night here at Our Lady of the Lakes Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois with over 280 bishops in attendance. The first talk was given by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the Papal Retreat Master, who will lead our retreat. His opening remarks were excellent, focusing in part on the daily need to choose the right priorities around which we can live our daily lives. Of course, a central priority is daily prayer.

Father Raniero concluded his talk with a story that beautifully illustrated the need to choose priorities wisely. He spoke of a meeting where an efficiency expert, speaking to a group of business leaders, placed before himself a large glass vase, into which the expert put a number of large stones until no further stones could fit. The expert then asked his audience: “Is the vase full?” They all answered yes and he countered with the response: “no it is not”.

The expert then proceeded to add smaller pebbles that gradually filled the spaces between the larger stones. He asked the question again: “Is the vase full?” One attendee caught on and said, “No”. The expert agreed and then poured sand into the vase, filling more of the empty space. He asked again: “Is the vase full?” The audience all replied, “No” and the expert agreed, pouring water into the vase until it was, in fact, full.

The expert concluded by asking: “What did you learn from this exercise?” Since no response was forthcoming, the expert asked a different question: “Now that the vase is full, is there any way to go back and add a single large stone into the vase (the ones he began with), now that it is filled with pebbles, sand and water? The universal answer was “no”, to which he replied, “The large stones are the priorities of your life. If you do not start with them each day, they will never fit into your life once the pebbles, sand and water fill in the rest.”

I reflected upon this simple story all last night, asking myself the question: what are my real priorities and do I make a conscious, daily decision to fit them into my life first? It is a question that will accompany me this week on retreat.

Perhaps it is a question that demands your reflection as well?

The previous reflection originally appeared on Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Facebook page. Follow the Bishop for daily reflections and weekly videos! 

Yesterday began a period of intense prayer and personal reflection for the coming feasts of the Christmas season. It is the traditional time when many cultures began their Christmas novena, ending with the celebration of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Another sign that these days are set aside in a special way appears in the Evening Prayer of the Church, which celebrates the “O’ antiphons at the start of the recitation of the Magnificat. Each “O” antiphon is a different title that describes the characteristics of the Messiah. Together they proclaim the coming of the One who would fulfill the desires of God’s people and bring redemption and peace to humanity and the entire world.

As we contemplate the figure of Saint John the Baptist during this second week of Advent, his place in the desert can give us much to reflect upon. For it seems that in our own age, the Lord is guiding us into the desert (or otherwise referred to in the Gospels as the “wilderness”) both as disciples and as a Church.

Recall that the work of any prophet was to speak the truth to the people of his time- a truth about their failures and sins. It was not an easy message to hear, provoking opposition and even persecution. However, the prophet offered these words of correction in the hope that it would move God’s people to embrace and accept the vision of new life that would be realized when the Messiah came to bring redemption and forgiveness to all who ask. As such, the prophets walked among God’s people, preaching a message of both conversion and hope.

As we enter the holy season of Advent that seeks to prepare us for Christmas, we may wish to consider adopting a particular spiritual practice that can prepare our minds and hearts for the coming holy days of the Lord’s Birth. My experience has been that these days become ever more hectic as we approach Christmas. There are many competing obligations that demand our time and attention. As a result, if we are not intentional in making time to prepare, we will find ourselves, before we know it, on the threshold of Christmas, having lost a great opportunity to prepare ourselves to receive the only gift of Christmas that matters- the Lord Himself.

As we reflect further upon the mystery of Christ’s kingship, we can ask ourselves a simple question: what does it mean to profess our allegiance to Christ the King? What does it look like? How can we live such an allegiance in our secular, confused and compromised world?

The answer to all these questions is the same. To make an allegiance to Christ is to choose to speak, act and stand with Him in faith when we make our ordinary, daily choices. Each time we make a choice between doing what is right and doing what the world wants us to do, we are making a choice between standing with Christ or standing with the world. Each time we need to choose between speaking the truth despite the cost or remaining silent, we are choosing between our allegiance to Christ or the world. Every time we choose between loving a person selflessly and generously or seeking to take advantage of that person for our own benefit, we are choosing to whom we have allegiance- the world or Christ.

For a very long time I found it puzzling that of all the holidays that we celebrated as a family, the one that my father loved the most was Thanksgiving Day. It appeared strange in part because there is no comparable holiday in Italy. Growing up, I always connected the fact that Thanksgiving involved eating a grand meal as the reason for my father’s love of the day since he was no stranger to enjoying a great meal!

However, in my father’s later years, it became clear to me that his love for Thanksgiving had little to do with the meal we eat (usually lasagna followed by turkey and the trimmings). Rather, I began to sense a deeper reason. I realized that it was the one day in the year that allowed my father the opportunity to honor the community that he chose to join and for which he was deeply proud. Thanksgiving was the day that my father celebrated being part of the great, honorable, diverse and sometimes unruly community we form as Americans. He belonged to a community for which he was proud to be a part and considered one of his great blessings.

My father’s example gives me pause as we prepare to celebrate this Thanksgiving Day. For to remember and give thanks for the tangible blessings in our lives is both necessary and obvious. In contrast, we often forget the spiritual, intangible gifts that God has given us. One of those gifts are the very people around us, with whom we live, work, share life as our neighbors, with whom we raise our children, dream of a better future and come together in times of challenge and crisis.

It seems to me that we often take for granted the blessings we share together in our common life as a nation. If we take it for granted, it can easily suffer and even fall apart. For this reason, I ask that you and I recommit ourselves this Thanksgiving to recognize, celebrate and foster the community we form, as one nation under God, in all our diversity, disagreements, and common hope for the future. Let us recommit ourselves to patient listening, a spirit of understanding, a willingness to speak the truth with respect and to stand in solidarity with whomever is our neighbor.

My father loved Thanksgiving for all the right reasons. I pray that I will always follow his example.

The previous reflection originally appeared on Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Facebook page. Follow the Bishop for daily reflections and weekly videos! 

Very often in the life of faith, we spend a great deal of time and effort attending to the immediate needs of those around us. This is absolutely necessary since the demands of charity are the highest obligations that we need to fulfill in discipleship. However, this week I would like to explore the obligation to address the societal factors and systems that create the circumstances that foster poverty, discrimination, inequality, and persecution among God’s children. While an immediate need is to alleviate human suffering, we also have an equally important obligation to root out the causes in our world that create much of this suffering in the first place.

In the Webster’s online dictionary, the word “poverty” is defined as “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions”. This definition reflects the modern world’s understanding of poverty, seen solely in material terms. However, for those who share faith in the Lord Jesus, we know that poverty has many other faces, none of which have anything to do with material possessions.

Let us consider for example those people who have been denied the affirmation and affection they deserve simply because we are all children of God. This can happen in the most affluent of families, as well as the most materially poor. Faith reminds us that the worldly attempt to show love for someone through the giving of gifts, money or material possessions is only a shadow of what true love is meant to be. Rather authentic love is better expressed in time spent together, telling a person the truth for their own good, standing by someone in times of challenge and forgiving a person when they fall or sin, even against us. Such experiences are transformational in part because they do not demand any material possessions. Anyone can love, whether they are materially rich or poor. In this sense, there is great poverty among many people who may otherwise live comfortable lives.