May 21, 2006

This Sunday the parish celebrates with Bishop McCormack the First Communion and Confirmation of many of our young people. The Blessed Sacrament and the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are for the unity of the Church. Unity is the essential fact for growth. Corpses decompose; the Body of Christ which is the Church is constantly “composing” by bringing together all races and tongues into one song of praise uniting heaven and earth.

St. Augustine speaks of three unities: the unity of Christ and his Church, the unity of man and woman in marriage, and the unity of body and soul. The Church’s unity is a bond of love which finds its basic expression in the marital bond by which the Creator enables the human race to procreate. The unity of body and soul enables us to understand the other unities. Confusion about the body and soul has confused our culture in its understanding of marriage, and the corruption of marriage has made it hard to understand the mystery of the Church. Popular novels and films are sad testaments to this bewilderment.

Where there is spiritual integrity, growth follows. Moribund Europe, and in different degrees so also our nation, seems in some ways to be discovering this. Countries like Russia are waking up to the catastrophe of low birth rates, contradicting the eugenic schemes of the twentieth century. Italy is now reporting a significant return to the Sacraments and Religious life. In England, Holy Week attendance in Catholic churches was the highest in recent memory, with many people standing outside. A news editor could not write a story he was planning on empty churches because the crowds were too great for him to get in the door. It was like Yogi Berra’s fabled restaurant that “nobody goes to anymore because it’s too crowded.”

Holy Week in our own parish showed an astonishing vitality, and we too ran out of space. Our CCD classes are the largest ever, and this will require an expanded budget for more furniture and teaching equipment. Our teachers all volunteer and these small new expenses are a tribute to them and participating families. This weekend we also have three baptisms, a thanksgiving rite for one of our robust little ones whom I baptized several months ago in the hospital when he was born three and a half months prematurely, weighing little more than a pound, and the renewal of vows of a couple on their 50th wedding anniversary.

Holy growth has a way to go in our Archdiocese, especially in priestly vocations, although we are doing our part. It is only through spiritual unity that the distinctive talents of everyone become clear. The fourteenth century mystic, John Tauler, said, “None understands better the nature of real distinction than those who have entered into unity.”



Fr. George W. Rutler