Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear family,
Blessed Fulton J. Sheen! What a joy that we can now call him “Blessed”! It was a great blessing to be present at his beatification Mass in St. Louis on September 24th, and to concelebrate Mass with a thousand priests and almost a hundred bishops, with about 50,000 people in the congregation at The Dome at America’s Center. Somehow, by the grace of God, I ended up in the front row of priests during Mass, along with four other priests I knew from seminary (three from Louisiana), and with a rather famous Franciscan priest sitting right behind me. If you have a spare three and a half hours, you can watch the recording on EWTN’s YouTube channel. I actually want to do that myself soon, to see it from all the angles that I might have missed from my limited perspective on the floor of the Dome. By the way, The Dome was the home stadium for the Rams a decade ago. As we entered the Dome, if it hadn’t been such a sacred and solemn moment—the procession at the beginning of Mass—I absolutely would have followed my impulse to jump up and slap the door frame as we “took the field.” But with a thousand priests and almost a hundred bishops watching at my back, and maybe even a TV camera… can you imagine?I restrained myself, but the joy came out in a smile that made my face hurt after a while. It was also very moving to see Bl. Sheen’s relic carried in by the young man who had been brought back to life miraculously as a newborn in 2010, after having no heartbeat for over an hour, with no serious lasting effects on his health, by the power of God through the intercession of Bl. Fulton Sheen. I’m really looking forward to all the good spiritual fruit that will come from this event and from the powerful example and prayers of this new “Blessed” for our country and our Church, and to becoming a better priest by taking to heart his convicting words and trying to follow his challenging example. I hope that in the future some of us will be attending the beatification of Msgr. Eyraud or Fr. Seelos! Although, seeing how long it took for Fulton Sheen to be beatified, I know we will have to be patient.
In the meantime, we can celebrate another saint today, St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast is October 4 and whose 800th anniversary of his heavenly birthday is this weekend! (He died October 3, 1226.) Because of this significant anniversary, Pope Leo declared this year a special Jubilee Year of St. Francis. Bring your pets (appropriately leashed or contained) for a special St. Francis’ Day blessing in the St. Hubert Rosary Walk at 11:30 a.m. this Sunday, October 4, as we praise God who is glorious in His saints and who works miraculously through their prayers.