December 7, 2003

The Advent season is inundated with performances of Handel’s “Messiah” which sets to music the words of the third chapter of the prophet Malachi: “For He is like a refiner’s fire…” In the third verse of that chapter, the prophet says that God “will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver.” The sons of Levi are the priests.

At each Eucharist we pray for the clergy. Prayers do get answered. Although the Third Sunday (“Gaudete” – “Rejoice”) of Advent has not yet come, I cannot but rejoice in signs of answered prayers for bishops and priests. The Church has passed through a hard season, the consequence of laxity and forgetfulness about the inestimable gift of the Holy Priesthood. In times of distress the temptation is to extremes: either to give up hope or to follow the enchantments of gossamer solutions. Instead, our Holy Father the Pope has been offering his physical suffering for the authentic reform and renewal of the Church. There are signs of a beautiful response from Heaven. In recent days, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Wichita, Kansas has been appointed Bishop of the troubled diocese of Phoenix. I knew Bishop Olmsted in Rome and for a period he was my spiritual director. The joyful burden of reforming a beleaguered Church is being placed on strong shoulders. This past week Bishop Raymond Burke of LaCrosse, Wisconsin was made Archbishop of St. Louis. We studied together in Rome and I was edified by his example. He has strengthened his diocese, promoted many vocations to the priesthood, and has been a leader in the authentic restoration of the Liturgy of the Latin Rite. He regularly spurned invitations from me and a circle of friends to train with us for marathon running, but he excelled in exercises of a spiritual nature, and this will redound to the benefit of the people of St. Louis. Also last week, Father Michael Miller, a monk of the Basilian order and President of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, was made Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education in the Vatican with the dignity of Archbishop. As a pious scholar of remarkable erudition, he inherits the orthodox learning of the Pope himself, and will have large responsibilities for our Catholic colleges and universities throughout the world, many of which are decadent.

In the spiritual warfare in which the Church faces a self-destructing culture, neither the solutions of strained reaction or superficial modernism can win. We have a responsibility to train a new generation of enthusiastic but ignorant young people in the ways of truth. We also must spurn the futile dreams of the aging debutantes of political correctness. The Holy Spirit is purging His Church, and He is like a refiner’s fire.

Fr. George W. Rutler