Ss. Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Church

Advent wreath St. Catherine's Church in Bethlehem / Credit: Marinella Bandini

National Catholic Register, Dec 16, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel!”

This favored Christmas carol is no carol at all. It’s a hymn for the season of Advent — the liturgical season that is about so much more than simply preparing for Christmas. 

During these short four weeks, the Church has historically focused on Our Lord Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all prophecy and human yearning as she anticipates not only the celebration of his incarnation at Christmas but also as she waits in hope for his glorious return at the end of time.

The verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” are taken from seven ancient antiphons that the Church has used in her evening prayer liturgy since well before the ninth century. Every year, from Dec. 17 to Dec. 23, the Church’s liturgy enters a more intense and proximate preparation for Christ’s coming at Christmas. This shift is noticeable in the readings at Mass during these days but also in the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, specifically at evening prayer. Every evening during that week, the Church prays one of what have become known as the great “O Antiphons” before reciting Our Lady’s “Magnificat” canticle.

The O Antiphons invoke Our Lord using imagery taken from the Old Testament: “O Wisdom From on High”; “O Lord of the House of Israel”; “O Root of Jesse’s Stem”; “O Key of David”; “O Radiant Dawn”; “O King of the Nations”; and “O Emmanuel.” To these biblical images are added various pleas such as: “Come to teach us the path of knowledge!”; “Come to save us without delay!”; and “Come and free the prisoners of darkness!”

Each of these O Antiphons is a beautiful prayer in itself, but each also demonstrates exactly how the Church has come to understand Christ’s relationship to the promises and images of God so prevalent in the Old Testament.

“O Wisdom From on High!”

Isaiah prophesied that a shoot would sprout from the stump of Jesse. One of Jesse’s heirs would be a messianic figure and redeemer for Israel.

“The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding” (Is 11:1-2). Because Isaiah’s prophecies look forward so expectantly to the redemption of Israel and the whole world in the great promises of God, he is particularly the prophet of the season of Advent.

Christ, however, is more than the Anointed One. St. Paul told the Church in Corinth that “Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). Christ is the Wisdom that the Book of Proverbs speaks of as God’s artisan and delight (Proverbs 8). The Eternally Begotten Son is always the delight of the Father and the Artisan through whom all things were made.

Perhaps a more poignant instance of a powerful Old Testament image of the divine is the Dec. 18 antiphon: “O Lord of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai.” The events recounted in the Book of Exodus are magnificently tremendous, from the burning bush to the parting of the Red Sea to the giving of the Law to Moses at a Mount Sinai covered in thunder and lightning.

The Church Fathers routinely noted Christ’s presence in God’s various manifestations to the Israelites. St. Justin Martyr recalled: “The same One, who is both angel and God, and Lord and man, and who appeared in human form to Abraham and Isaac, [also] appeared in a flame of fire from the bush and conversed with Moses.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa comments on the events of the desert — the clouds, the thunder, and the tabernacle of God’s presence — “Taking a hint from what has been said by Paul, who partially uncovered the mystery of these things, we say that Moses was earlier instructed by a type in the mystery of the tabernacle which encompasses the universe.” This tabernacle, Christ the Son of God, he continues, “is in a way both unfashioned and fashioned, uncreated in preexistence but created in having received this material composition.”

The preexisting Eternal Son of God who is the perfect image of God is also the presence of God in the flaming bush, on Mount Sinai and perfectly in his incarnation.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Latin version of this antiphon begins with “O Adonai,” borrowing the Hebrew word God-fearing Jews speak when reading the Torah to avoid speaking the proper name of God himself — it is the name Lord, the name St. Paul tells the Philippians was bestowed on Christ because he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself unto death (cf. Philippians 2:6-11). Jesus Christ is Adonai. He is Kyrios. He is the Lord.

Finally, other O Antiphons identify Christ as the fulfillment of Israel’s greatness and human longing. He is the Oriens, the dawn that Isaiah promised would rise upon God’s chosen people (Isaiah 60:1-2). He is also the Root of Jesse. So he is not only the fulfillment but the beginning of the Israelite lineage.

He is the Creator and the One through whom David’s lineage came to be. So Christ is both the beginning and end of the promise to David. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the One the Old Testament predicts will rule as king of all the nations.

The O Antiphons are much more than simple refrains to be chanted before Our Lady’s Magnifcat or to serve as verses in an Advent hymn. They reveal the mysteries of Christ already being revealed in the power and glory of God in the Old Testament.

St. Thomas Aquinas was right to insist that many of the great prophets of Israel had real and explicit prophetic knowledge of Jesus and his mysteries even though they lived hundreds of years before the Incarnation. “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day,” Jesus himself once preached. “He saw it, and he was glad” (Jn 8:56). Christ is active in Israel. He is in the Old Testament.

These great antiphons remind us that there is so much more to Advent than preparing for Christmas. They remind us that Christ is the focal point of salvation history, and, in fact, of all world history, because he is Emmanuel — “God with us.”

The wisdom of God is exactly such that the Lord creates us to be in relationship with him in order to bring light not only to our lives but to the world. Every year the Church gives us these four weeks so that we might remember in an intense way what we should be living every day: in preparation, anticipation, and joyful hope that the Lord will come to us and save us.

O Emmanuel, Our King and Giver of Law: Come to save us, Lord Our God!

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA's sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

Pope Francis presides over Mass on Gaudete Sunday on the island of Corsica, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Ajaccio, France, Dec 15, 2024 / 13:00 pm (CNA).

Two days before his 88th birthday, Pope Francis received a warm welcome on the Mediterranean island of Corsica for a one-day visit to the city of Ajaccio, the capital of the French island region.

During the Dec. 15 trip, the pontiff encouraged the island’s Catholic majority to continue to foster its traditional piety as secular culture grows in Europe — and to use their devotion as fuel to serve others in charity.

The papal visit touched the peripheries of France, where a strongly Catholic population is steeped in Corsican traditions, including songs, both sacred and secular, linked to confraternities.

These religious associations, which have a long history in Corsican culture, continue to pass down the custom of singing. The hymns are usually sung a capella and in Latin.

Traditional Corsican hymns were featured throughout Pope Francis’ visit, especially at his Mass with an estimated 7,000 Catholics at Place d’Austerlitz, a park built as a memorial to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who was born in Ajaccio. Authorities estimate another 8,000 people were following the Mass on jumbo screens around the city.

In his homily for the third Sunday of Advent, Pope Francis said too much time thinking about ourselves and our own needs is why “we lose the spirit of joy.”

Distress, disappointment, and sadness are widespread spiritual ills, he noted, especially where consumerism is prominent.

“If we live only for ourselves, we will never find happiness,” the pope said, pointing to the recitation of the rosary and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of the confraternities as an example of how to cultivate faith.

The Mass in a mix of French and Corsican took place as the sun set over Ajaccio, ending by candlelight with purple skies behind the hills bordering the port city.

“May the Gospel of Jesus Christ help you to have hearts open to the world: Your traditions are a richness to be cherished and cultivated, but never in order to isolate yourselves; indeed they are always for encounter and sharing,” Pope Francis said in his closing message of thanks to the community.

Pope Francis is the first pope to visit Corsica, which is situated west of the mainland of Italy and north of the Italian island of Sardinia, the nearest land mass.

According to the latest Vatican statistics, the Diocese of Ajaccio, the Mediterranean island’s only diocese, has nearly 344,000 inhabitants, about 85% of whom are Catholic.

Approximately 400 people, many of them members of confraternities, were in the auditorium hall for Pope Francis’ first meeting of the day, the closing speech of a conference on popular piety in the Mediterranean region.

While extolling the French system of “läicité” and the “constructive citizenship” of Christians, Pope Francis underlined that “faith may not be reduced to a private affair, restricted to the sanctuary of the individual’s conscience.”

Francis warned against pitting Christian and secular culture against one another and praised the “beauty and importance of popular piety” in an increasingly faithless Europe.

After leaving the conference center, Pope Francis stopped along the road to pray and light a candle at a statue of the “Madunuccia,” or “little Madonna,” kept in a niche of a building.

The patroness of Ajaccio, honored under the title of Our Lady of Mercy, protected the city from plague in 1656, a day the city marks with grand festivities every year on March 18.

Pope Francis greeted enthusiastic locals lining the streets of Ajaccio as he traveled in an open-air popemobile to the 16th-century Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral, just steps from the sea in the city’s historic center.

Inside the Baroque cathedral, Francis prayed the Angelus with French bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians, and religious.

Addressing the island’s clerics and religious before the traditional Marian prayer, the pope emphasized the need for those whose lives are devoted to service to also spend time in “care for themselves” — including daily time for prayer, Mass, solitude, heartfelt exchanges with a person of trust, and a healthy hobby.

He also encouraged the priests, bishops, and religious to find the most efficacious routes for evangelization today.

“Do not be afraid of changing, of reassessing the old methods, of renewing the language of faith and realizing that the mission is not a question of human strategies but above all a question of faith, of passion for the Gospel and God’s kingdom,” the pontiff said.

After a day surrounded by the warmth of the people of Corsica, Pope Francis concluded his trip with a brief one-on-one meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron before returning to Rome.

St. Benedict Church in Baltimore, Maryland (left) and St. Benedict Church in Richmond, Virginia. / Credit: St. Benedict Church; Daniel Payne/CNA

Richmond, Va., Dec 15, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Catholics who have spent time in both Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia, may be unaware that two near-identical parishes exist in both cities, both built by the same architect-priest and both offering an ideal of what their designer called a “quiet, recollected, prayerful, somber, sanctified” atmosphere of peace and worship. 

St. Benedict Church in Baltimore and St. Benedict Church in Richmond were both constructed by Father Michael McInerney, OSB, a monk at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina who lived from 1877–1963. 

By the time of his death at age 85, McInerney had designed and built more than 200 churches as well as numerous hospitals, convents, and other works. Among his more notable creations was Sacred Heart College in Belmont, North Carolina, as well as works at his alma mater Belmont College. He is interred at Belmont Abbey. 

Though the priest’s works range in style and scope from Gothic to Art Deco, the two churches in Baltimore and Richmond are strikingly similar. Both were dedicated within just a few years of each other — the Richmond parish in 1929 and the Baltimore parish in 1933 — and both have remained active for nearly a century. 

Baltimore: ‘A spectacular house of worship’

In his history of the parish, local author John Potyraj describes the Baltimore St. Benedict’s as a “church built with nickels,” with the parish having “squirreled away a considerable amount” of money in the early 20th century prior to the building’s construction. 

A school, a rectory, a convent, and a “social center” rounded out what became a considerable Catholic campus in Baltimore’s Mill Hill neighborhood. 

Potyraj noted that McInerney regularly “scaled the scaffold” during construction of the parish “to inspect the masons’ work and provide instruction” and that the priest was “uncompromising” in ensuring that his architectural vision was carried out. 

The interior of the church offers “ample provision of natural light” within a “monastic atmosphere,” presenting modest ornamentation that does not “distract from the main purpose of the design” as a house of worship. 

Among the structure’s more striking features is a towering crucified Christ on the building’s face, one that overlooks the front portion of the property and which is embellished by a rose window. 

Also notable are the parish’s carved columns of polished pink granite, providing “the primary support of this spectacular house of worship” that symbolize the “pillars of the divine Church.”

The Baltimore St. Benedict’s was an active parish for nearly a century, though last year the Archdiocese of Baltimore discontinued all Masses and sacramental activity there after its pastor was removed following a scandal over sex abuse accusations and hush money.

On its website the parish says it continues to operate as St. Benedict Neighborhood Center. Its “Benedict’s Pantry” remains an active food pantry that regularly feeds hundreds of people. 

Ministry member Charlene Sola told CNA that the community has “started a new chapter” and is “excited about the future.” 

Though the parish is no longer an active Catholic church, the impressive, reverent building designed by McInerney still stands, giving testament to what parishioners at the building’s 50th anniversary described as a “home” where “the Father will hear us best of all and bless our prayers.” 

Richmond: ‘Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus’

About 150 miles to the south, St. Benedict Church in Richmond is still an active parish — and visitors from the Baltimore church could be forgiven for thinking they’d stepped into their own parish. 

The roots of the Richmond church date to 1911 when monks from Belmont Abbey opened up a boys high school — Benedictine College Preparatory — and an attached parish in what is now the city’s Museum District. 

An elementary school soon followed, while in 1922 a group of Benedictine nuns opened up the all-girls St. Gertrude High School just a few hundred feet away. 

The two prep schools have since moved out to Goochland County and are united under a single institution, the Benedictine Schools of Richmond. Yet the parish started by the monks over a century ago still remains, guided by the Benedictine motto “Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus,” or “that in all things God may be glorified.”

The church, dedicated in 1929 just several weeks before the catastrophic stock market crash that year, bears many of the hallmarks of McInerney’s style and shares many features with its Baltimore cousin. 

Among them is a large rose window on the front facade; though missing the towering figure of Christ crucified, the rose window itself is strikingly similar, including minor statuary flanking its bottom edge.

The carved pink granite columns are also nearly identical to their Baltimore counterparts, including their being topped with liturgical symbols as they run the length of the nave. 

Also of striking similarity are the two reredos — decorative backings — of the respective altars. Both are of unmistakable resemblance, though the Richmond reredos has been embellished with a marble bas-relief of the Twelve Apostles, while the Baltimore church retains a more simplified blind arcade of brick arches. 

The Baltimore parish, meanwhile, boasts a towering high altar, while the Richmond church displays a shorter and narrower arch stretching over the tabernacle. 

Father Gilbert Sunghera, who previously served as an associate professor in the school of architecture at the University of Detroit Mercy, told CNA that duplicate parishes are “not that common but [it] has happened.”

“I am about to work on a school chapel in Akron that has a twin in Toledo,” he said. “And Detroit had a number of fairly simple churches that were all similar and called Gumbelton Barns after [former Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton], done at a time when churches needed to open quickly.”

Writing on the construction of Catholic churches, McInerney said years ago that a Catholic building “should present an exterior, simple, strong, reserved, dignified, and bearing upon its front, some symbol of its sacredness as a temple of the Almighty.”

The interior, meanwhile, “should possess a religious atmosphere, breathing the Spirit of God: quiet, recollected, prayerful, somber, sanctified, filled with peace and benediction in the presence of the Lord in his holy tabernacle.”

“It should be reverently awe inspiring,” he wrote, ”another place of Calvary where Jesus is lifted up before the eyes of the multitude and, again and again, made a victim of sacrifice for the sins of the world.”

Lee Edwards received the VOC Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, at the opening of the Victims of Communism Museum in June 2022. This medal is the highest honor from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which he co-founded in 1994. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Spalding

CNA Staff, Dec 14, 2024 / 14:37 pm (CNA).

Author and Catholic convert Lee Edwards, one of the foremost historians of the conservative movement in America, died Thursday. He was 92. 

Edwards co-founded the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C., authorized by Congress in 1993 and completed in 2007.

He was a distinguished fellow of conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation for about 25 years before retiring about a year ago. 

He also wrote 25 books. Among them are well-known histories of American conservatives and conservatism — and lesser-known works, including “John Paul II in Our Nation’s Capital,” the Archdiocese of Washington’s official account of the pope’s visit in October 1979. 

“He was an optimist, very much upbeat. He believed God had a plan for each of us,” his daughter, author and political scientist Elizabeth Spalding, told CNA.

Anti-communism 

The turning point in his life’s work came in 1956 when he was taking graduate classes at the Sorbonne in Paris when Hungarians, including students about his age, briefly overthrew the communist government there. 

“And for those almost two weeks, my dad thought, ‘This is it. This is it. We’re going to beat communism,’” Spalding told CNA. 

Then the Soviet Red Army invaded Hungary, crushed the revolt, and restored communist rule. The United States and its Western allies did nothing. 

“My father said, ‘Right then, I swore I would spend the rest of my life trying to defeat communism and help those fighting for their freedom,’” Spalding said. 

Edwards helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960 and edited its magazine, New Guard. He later served as an aide to the Republican presidential nominee in 1964, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater. 

In 1967, Edwards wrote a political biography of Ronald Reagan during his first term as governor of California, through which he got to spend time with Reagan and his wife Nancy. Edwards became familiar with a code term Reagan used with some of his aides — “the D.P.,” which meant “the Divine Plan.” 

Edwards updated the book after Reagan became president. It came out not long after Reagan was shot and seriously wounded in March 1981. For that edition, the publisher put a yellow border on the cover saying it was “complete through the assassination attempt,” which mortified Edwards. 

Still, Edwards got to meet Reagan in the Oval Office, and he presented Reagan with the updated version of the book. 

“President Reagan puts down the book,” Spalding told CNA, “and then looks over at Dad and says ‘Well, Lee, I’m sorry I messed up your ending.’” 

Man of the right 

Freedom and conservatism were at the center of Edwards’ outlook. 

“Mine has been a life in pursuit of liberty,” he wrote in his 2017 autobiography “Just Right.” 

Edwards wrote biographies of Reagan, Goldwater, Edwin Meese, and William F. Buckley Jr. as well as books about conservatism. 

In his 50s, Edwards earned a doctorate in political science from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., with a dissertation on the origins of the Cold War. He later taught there as an adjunct professor. 

In 2017, he told an interviewer that he was about to teach a course on the 1960s, during which he planned to present what he called “both sides of the picture” — meaning not just the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam movement, which students often hear about, but also what he referred to as “the rise of the right” — including Goldwater and Reagan. 

Conversion 

Edwards was born Dec. 1, 1932, in Chicago but grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

He was raised a Methodist. His father, a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was a lapsed Catholic, though he later returned to the Church. 

In college Edwards stopped going to services because he realized he didn’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus. 

But in his mid-20s, he decided he needed religion to center his life, he said, after spending a mostly fruitless time in Paris drinking too much beer and chasing too many girls. 

“For the first time in my life, I admitted that I needed someone, something, other than myself to give purpose and meaning to my life: in short, I needed God,” he wrote in an article in Crisis Magazine in January 1994. 

When he got home he tried several Protestant churches. Then one day he went to Mass at St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill. 

“I said, ‘Oh, this is something different,’” he told The Arlington Catholic Herald for a December 2017 profile. 

A Redemptorist priest at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., gave him religious instruction and eventually started getting on him to join the Church. Edwards hesitated, coming up with various objections and uncertainties before finally agreeing. 

The delay led to an unusual date to become a Catholic — not Easter time, which is the most common time to enter the Church, but Saturday, Dec. 13, 1958 — St. Lucy’s feast day. Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of his being received into the Church.

Edwards later wrote that when he knelt at the Communion rail to receive Communion for the first time, next to him on one side “was a young Black boy in his dark blue Sunday suit and on the other an elderly white woman in a worn cloth coat and hat.” 

“Dad always said part of what he loved was the universality of the Catholic Church,” Spalding told CNA. “Everyone goes up to Jesus.”

Our Lady 

While he was working at the Heritage Foundation he was a common sight at the midday Mass at St. Joseph’s Church on Capitol Hill. 

Spalding told CNA that many people have contacted her during the past day or two to say they felt inspired by how he witnessed to his faith. 

“It’s something he didn’t talk about all the time,” she said. “It’s something he lived.” 

Edwards was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June. As he neared the end, his daughter said, she and her father discussed what his death day might be. 

Edwards died a little before 8 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

That shouldn’t have surprised the family, his daughter told CNA. To try to keep warm during his declining days he used a polyester lap blanket with a mostly black background and a colorful image of — Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

Edwards’ wife of 57 years, Anne, who assisted him in all of his writings, died in November 2022. Their gravestone, designed by the sculptor of the statue in the Victims of Communism Memorial, features an image of St. John Paul II holding a crozier and the words “Be not afraid.” 

He leaves behind two daughters and 11 grandchildren. 

A funeral Mass is set for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 19, at St. Rita Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Jack Traynor (next to child on first row) as a pilgrim to Lourdes in 1925, two years after his healing. / Credit: Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales

ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 14, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

In 1944, Father Patrick O’Connor, an Irish priest and member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban, published “I Knew a Miracle: The Story of John Traynor, Miraculously Healed at Lourdes.”

In the book he recounts how, during a 10-hour train ride to Lourdes on Friday, Sept. 10, 1937, Royal Navy seaman Jack Traynor told him firsthand how he was healed in 1923 at the Lourdes Shrine from the crippling wounds he had suffered from his participation in World War I.

Over a century later, on Dec. 8 of this year, the archbishop of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, Malcolm McMahon, announced that Traynor’s healing has been recognized as the 71st miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.

O’Connor described Traynor as a “heavy-set man, 5’5”, with a strong, ruddy face” who, according to his biography, “should have been, if he were alive, paralyzed, epileptic, covered in sores, shrunken, with a wrinkled and useless right arm and a gaping hole in his skull.”

Traynor was, in the missionary’s view, a man “with his manly faith and piety,” unassuming, “but obviously a fearless, militant Catholic.” Despite having received only a primary education, he had “a clear mind enriched by faith and preserved by great honesty of life.”

This enabled him to tell “with simplicity, sobriety, exactness” how he was healed at the place where the Immaculate Conception appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

O’Connor wrote down the account and sent it to Traynor, who revised it and added new details. He read the official report of the doctors who examined him and searched the newspaper archives of the time to corroborate the account.

How Traynor came to be considered incurable

Traynor was born in Liverpool, according to some sources, in 1883. His mother was an Irish Catholic who died when Traynor was still young. “But his faith, his devotion to the Mass and holy Communion — he went daily when very few others did — and his trust in the Virgin remained with him as a fruitful memory and example,” O’Connor recalled.

Mobilized at the outbreak of World War I, he was hit by shrapnel, which left him unconscious for five weeks. Sent in 1915 to the expeditionary force to Egypt and the Dardanelles Strait, between Turkey and Greece, he took part in the landing at Gallipoli.

During a bayonet charge on May 8, he was hit with 14 machine gun bullets in the head, chest, and arm. Sent to Alexandria, Egypt, he was operated on three times in the following months to try to stitch together the nerves in his right arm. They offered him amputation, but he refused. The epileptic seizures began, and there was a fourth operation, also unsuccessful, in 1916.

He was discharged with a 100% pension “for permanent and total disability,” the missionary priest related, and in 1920 he underwent surgery on his skull to try to cure the epilepsy. From that operation he was left with an open hole “about two centimeters wide” that was covered with a silver plate.

By then he was suffering three seizures a day and his legs were partially paralyzed. Back in Liverpool he was given a wheelchair and had to be helped out of bed.

Eight years had passed since the landing at Gallipoli. Traynor was treated by 10 doctors who could only attest “that he was completely and incurably incapacitated.”

Unable to walk, with epileptic seizures, a useless arm, three open wounds, “he was truly a human wreck. Someone arranged for him to be admitted to the Mossley Hill Hospital for Incurables on July 24, 1923. But by that date Jack Traynor was already in Lourdes,” O’Connor recounted.

Traynor tells about his pilgrimage to Lourdes

According to the first-person account originally written by O’Connor and corrected and adapted by Traynor, the veteran sailor had always felt great devotion to Mary that he got from his mother.

“I felt that if the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes were in England, I would go there often. But it seemed to me a distant place that I could never reach,” Traynor said.

When he heard that a pilgrimage was being organized to the shrine, he decided to do everything he could to go. He used money set aside “for some special emergency” and they even sold belongings. “My wife even pawned her own jewelry.”

When they learned of his determination, many tried to dissuade him: “You’ll die on the way, you’ll be a problem and a pain for everyone,” a priest told him.

“Everyone, except my wife and one or two relatives, told me I was crazy,” he recalled.

The experience of the trip was “very hard,” confessed Traynor, who felt very ill on the way. So much so that they tried to get him off three times to take him to a hospital in France, but at the place where they stopped there was no hospital.

On arrival at Lourdes, there was ‘no hope’ for Traynor

On Sunday, July 22, 1923, they arrived at the Lourdes Shrine in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. There he was cared for by two Protestant sisters who knew him from Liverpool and who happened to be there providentially.

The pilgrimage of more than 1,200 people was led by the archbishop of Liverpool, Frederick William Keating.

On arrival, Traynor felt “desperately ill,” to the point that “a woman took it upon herself to write to my wife telling her that there was no hope for me and that I would be buried at Lourdes.”

Despite this, “I managed to get lowered into the baths nine times in the water from the spring in the grotto and they took me to the different devotions that the sick could join in.”

On the second day, he suffered a strong epileptic seizure. The volunteers refused to put him in the pools in this state, but his insistence could not be overcome. “Since then I have not had another epileptic seizure,” he recalled.

Paralyzed legs healed

On Tuesday, July 24, Traynor was examined for the first time by doctors at the shrine, who testified to what had happened during the trip to Lourdes and detailed his ailments.

On Wednesday, July 25, “he seemed to be as bad as ever” and, thinking about the return trip planned for Friday, July 27, he bought some religious souvenirs for his wife and children with the last shillings he had left.

He returned to the baths. “When I was in the bath, my paralyzed legs shook violently,” he related, causing alarm among the volunteers who attended to the pilgrims at the shrine, believing it was another epileptic seizure. “I struggled to stand up, feeling that I could do so easily,” he explained.

Arm healed as Blessed Sacrament passes by

He was again placed in his wheelchair and taken to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. The archbishop of Reims, Cardinal Louis Henri Joseph Luçon, carried the monstrance.

“He blessed the two who were in front of me, came up to me, made the sign of the cross with the monstrance, and moved on to the next one. He just passed when I realized that a great change had taken place in me. My right arm, which had been dead since 1915, shook violently. I tore off its bandages and crossed myself, for the first time in years,” Traynor himself testified.

“As far as I can remember, I felt no sudden pain and certainly I did not have a vision. I simply realized that something momentous had happened,” Traynor recounted.

Back at the asylum, the former hospital that today houses the offices of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes, he proved that he could walk seven steps. The doctors examined him again and concluded in their report that “he had recovered the voluntary use of his legs” and that “the patient can walk with difficulty.”

Traynor makes it to the grotto 

That night, he could hardly sleep. As there was already a certain commotion around him, several volunteers stood guard at his door. Early in the morning, it seemed that he would fall asleep again, but “with a last breath, I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed. First I knelt on the floor to finish the rosary I had been saying, then I ran to the door.”

Making his way, he arrived barefoot and in his pajamas at the grotto of Massabielle, where the volunteers followed him: “When they reached the grotto, I was on my knees, still in my nightclothes, praying to the Virgin and thanking her. I only knew that I had to thank her and that the grotto was the right place to do so.”

He prayed for 20 minutes. When he got up, a crowd surrounded him, and they made way to let him return to the asylum.

A sacrifice made for the Virgin in gratitude

“At the end of the Rosary Square stands the statue of Our Lady Crowned. My mother had always taught me that when you ask the Virgin for a favor or want to show her some special veneration, you have to make a sacrifice. I had no money to offer, having spent my last shillings on rosaries and medals for my wife and children, but kneeling there before the Virgin, I made the only sacrifice I could think of. I decided to give up smoking,” Traynor explained with tremendous simplicity.

“During all this time, although I knew I had received a great favor from Our Lady, I didn’t clearly remember all the illness I previously had,” he noted in his account.

As he finished getting himself ready, a priest, Father Gray, who knew nothing of his cure, asked for someone to serve Mass for him, which Traynor did: “I didn’t think it strange that I could do it, after eight years of not being able to get up or walk,” he said.

Traynor received word that the priest who had strongly opposed his joining the pilgrimage wanted to see him at his hotel, located in the town of Lourdes, outside the shrine. He asked him if he was well. “I told him I was well, thank you, and that I hoped he was too. He burst into tears.”

Early on Friday, July 27, the doctors examined Traynor again. They found that he was able to walk perfectly, that his right arm and legs had fully recovered. The opening in his skull resulting from the operation had been considerably reduced, and he had not suffered any further epileptic seizures. His sores had also healed by the time he returned from the grotto, when he had removed his bandages the previous day.

Weeping ‘like two children’ with Archbishop Keating

At nine o’clock in the morning the train back to Liverpool was ready to leave the Lourdes station, situated in the upper part of the town. He had been given a seat in first class, which, despite his protests, he had to accept.

Halfway through the journey, Keating came to see him in his passenger car. “I knelt down for his blessing. He raised me up saying, ‘Jack, I think I should have your blessing.’ I didn’t understand why he was saying that. Then he raised me up and we both sat on the bed. Looking at me, he said, ‘Jack, do you realize how ill you have been and that you have been miraculously cured by the Blessed Virgin?’”

“Then,” Traynor continued, “it all came back to me, the memory of my years of illness and the sufferings on the trip to Lourdes and how ill I had been at Lourdes. I began to cry, and so did the archbishop, and we both sat there crying like two children. After talking to him for a while, I calmed down. I now fully understood what had happened.”

A telegram to his wife: ‘I am better’

Since news of the events had already reached Liverpool, Traynor was advised to write a telegram to his wife. “I didn’t want to make a fuss with a telegram, so I sent her this message: ‘I am better — Jack,’” he explained.

This message and the letter announcing that her husband was going to die in Lourdes were all the information his wife had, as she had not seen the newspapers. She assumed that he had recovered from his serious condition but that he was still in his “ruinous” state.

The reception in Liverpool was the culmination. The archbishop had to address the crowd to disperse at the mere sight of Traynor getting off the train. “But when I appeared on the platform, there was a stampede” and the police had to intervene. “We returned home and I cannot describe the joy of my wife and children,” he said in his account.

A daughter named Bernadette

Taynor concluded his account by explaining that in the following years he worked transporting coal, lifting 200-pound sacks without difficulty. Thanks to providence, he was able to provide well for his family. 

Three of his children were born after his cure in 1923. A girl was named Bernadette, in honor of the visionary of Lourdes.

He also related the conversion of the two Protestant sisters who cared for him, along with his family and the Anglican pastor of his community.

From then on, Jack volunteered to go to Lourdes on a regular basis until he died in 1943, on the eve of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

Paradoxically, and despite the factual evidence of his recovery, the Ministry of War Pensions never revoked the disability pension that was granted to him for life.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

null / Credit: New Africa/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 14, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

It’s that time of year again!

With Christmas quickly approaching, you may still be looking for the perfect gift for people on your shopping list. We’ve compiled a list of Catholic businesses that sell unique gifts for anyone you’re shopping for this holiday season.

Abundantly Yours

Rosaries make a perfect gift for a loved one on your shopping list. Abundantly Yours has a wide range of beautiful, handmade rosaries for men, women, and children. With different themed rosaries dedicated to a variety of saints — including St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Padre Pio, St. John Paul II, and St. Teresa of Calcutta — you’re bound to find the perfect one for whomever you’re shopping for.

Stella & Tide

Jewelry is always a great option for any woman you’re shopping for this Christmas. Stella & Tide provides beautiful, dainty Catholic jewelry with the hope of reminding the wearer to always turn to Christ in any difficulties she might encounter. The shop has everything from necklaces to earrings to bracelets and rings. 

The Catholic Woodworker

For any man you might be shopping for, The Catholic Woodworker specializes in beautifully crafted, masculine products including rosaries, pocket rosaries, crucifixes, home altars, and more. The Italian-made wall crucifix features the medal of St. Benedict and has a beautiful metal frame and dark wood inlay.

Be a Heart

If you’re shopping for children on your list, Be A Heart has a wide variety of Catholic-inspired toys including wooden puzzles, dolls, books, and more. A fun stocking-stuffer idea are the Jesus heals bandages, which include five different designs and remind little ones that Jesus heals all, even those scrapes and scratches.

Holy Pals

Looking for a gift the whole family can enjoy? Holy Pals offers matching family Christmas pajamas, even for your furry family members! Holy Pals aims to design products that give children the opportunity to draw near to Christ and to help parents teach their children about the faith. Their Christmas PJs come in a variety of designs including Prince of Peace, Away in a Manger, O Holy Night, and more, and range in sizes from newborn to adult XXL. They even have matching pet bandanas!

Gather and Pray

The Catholic Planner from Gather and Pray is a great gift for anyone who loves being organized, writing to-do lists, and keeping track of busy schedules. This planner also serves as a liturgical planner with feasts days and holy days of obligation included as well as pages on how to do an examination of conscience, how to pray the rosary, a list of novenas with start and end dates, and daily meditations.

EWTN Religious Catalogue

The EWTN Religious Catalogue also offers a plethora of Catholic goods that would make great gifts. The Holy Family holy water font is a particularly beautiful gift featuring the Holy Family sculpted in great detail and has a deep basin for holy water. (Note: EWTN is CNA’s parent company.)

Detail of a 1964 West German postage stamp showing Father Alfred Delp. / Credit: Zabanski/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Dec 14, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

In the waning months of World War II, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, a Catholic priest prayed in a prison cell, awaiting trial and a likely death sentence. The charges against him were false, and his trial, which began soon after Christmas, would prove to be a sham.

As you might expect, all this made for a somewhat subdued Advent for Father Alfred Delp — a German Jesuit whose meditations on Advent, written from prison and published after his death, continue to provide inspiration to readers. (“Prison Meditations of Father Delp” was published after his death.)

The young priest was executed the following February, in 1945.

Even before his ordeal in prison, Delp had preached and written extensively on Advent, even exhorting his people that “all of life is Advent” — a constant state of waiting, journeying, and longing for something greater. Christians, Delp said, should be actively preparing for the heavenly realities that are to come.

“To wait in faith, for the fruitfulness of the silent earth and for the abundance of the coming harvest, means to understand the world — even this world — in Advent,” he later wrote from his prison cell.

Delp was born in Mannheim, Germany, on Sept. 15, 1907. He was baptized Catholic but raised in a Lutheran home. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 saw his father drafted, and it shaped the younger Delp’s view on violence and the fragility of human life.

At the age of 14, Delp made the decision to leave the Lutheran church and received the Catholic sacraments. Postwar Germany was now in turmoil, creating fertile ground for extremist ideologies like Nazism to arise. 

Adolph Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in early 1933 and by that summer the Nazi Party was the only officially recognized political party in the country. As Nazism started to take hold, religious freedom came under attack, freedom of speech was suppressed, and numerous groups, particularly Jews, were persecuted. 

Delp entered the Society of Jesus in 1926 and was ordained in 1937, just two years before the Nazi invasion of Poland, which kicked off World War II in Europe. As a priest, Delp found himself in increasing danger but used his sermons and writings to continue to resist the Nazi’s ideology and rule, even cleverly twisting the words of the Nazi’s own propaganda against them by subverting the language of oppression. 

In one of his many sermons where he criticized Nazi society, he lamented that so many people had abandoned the idea of “a divine homeland to which to emigrate ... they are ultimately God themselves, and there is no God above them.” He exhorted his fellow believers that even small acts of courage can make a difference. 

He spent several years working for a Jesuit newspaper in Germany until the Nazis shut it down, and he became rector of a parish in Munich. Soon after, in 1942, Delp joined the “Kreisau Circle” — a group of about two dozen dissidents who sought to plan for a new, Christianity-guided Germany after the inevitable fall of Hitler’s regime. 

Delp served as the group’s spiritual adviser, bringing with him a deep understanding of Catholic social teaching. 

Delp and two other Jesuit members of the circle were able to fly under the Nazis’ radar for a few years until an infamous failed attempt on Hitler’s life by some of his high commanders. Despite having nothing to do with the failed plot, members of the circle were rounded up as the Nazis worked to arrest anyone with ties to the resistance. Delp could have gone into hiding but chose not to. 

Delp was not the only German priest killed for his resistance to Nazi ideology. Father Max Josef Metzger was executed for his peace activism and ecumenical work less than a year before Delp was killed. (Metzger was beatified last month in Freiburg, Germany.)

After Delp’s arrest in July 1944, he was taken to Berlin where he was interrogated and tortured for several weeks. In September, he was sent to a prison in Berlin to await his trial. It was there that he wrote his famous reflections, which women who were in charge of Delp’s laundry then smuggled out of the prison, sending them to his most trusted friends back in Munich.

Delp’s long Advent

“When I pace back and forth in my cell, three steps forward and three steps back, hands in irons, ahead of me an unknown destiny, I understand very differently than before those ancient promises of the coming Lord who will redeem us and set us free,” Delp wrote in one of his December 1944 Advent reflections. 

“So much courage needs strengthening; so much despair needs comforting; so much hardship needs a gentle hand and an illuminating interpretation; so much loneliness cries out for a liberating word; so much loss and pain seek a spiritual meaning.” 

Delp offered profound meditations on hope in his writings, despite his acute awareness — incarcerated as he was — of the darkness of the present time in Germany and in the world at large. 

“Life happens within a greater context than man can cope with or understand. Life brings greater burdens and bears a richer cargo than we can cope with, comprehend, or manage alone,” he wrote. 

“There is no reason to lose heart or give up and be depressed. Instead this is a time for confidence and for tirelessly calling on God … His nearness is as intimate as our longing is genuine. His mercy is as great as our call to him is earnest. His liberation is as near and effective as our faith in him and in his coming is unshaken and unshakable. That’s the truth!”

Delp was acutely aware that faith often requires a walk through darkness and uncertainty but doing so in relationship with God is the path to joy, regardless of one’s external circumstances. His convictions shine through in his meditation for the third Sunday of Advent, which is designated Gaudete (“rejoice”) Sunday in the Church.

“Only in God is man fully capable of life. Without him, over time, we become sick. This sickness attacks our joy and our capability for joy,” he wrote from prison. 

In his reflection on the Vigil of Christmas, Delp observed that the “harshness and coldness of life have hit us with a previously unimaginable force” on that bitter — yet still blessed — Christmas in the midst of war and oppression. 

“We should not avoid the burdens God gives us. They lead us into the blessing of God,” he wrote. 

‘The coming harvest’

Two days after the feast of the Epiphany in 1945, Delp’s trial finally began under a judge described as a “fanatical priest-hater.” Delp was summarily sentenced to death, despite having prepared for his trial, apparently laboring under the impression that it would be fair. Instead, he faced a kangaroo court designed to project Nazi power. 

In most cases, execution immediately followed a death sentence, but Delp was instead sent back to his prison cell. In the two weeks that followed, he wrote several more meditations, including one on the Lord’s Prayer and one on the Litany of the Sacred Heart. 

He stopped writing in January after hearing news of the executions of several other members of the Kreisau Circle as well as news of the arrest of his provincial superior.

After his long Advent of “waiting in faith,” Delp finally experienced the “abundance of the coming harvest” when on Feb. 2, 1945, he was hanged and his ashes scattered to the wind. He was 37.

“The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere,” Delp wrote in his prison reflections. 

“Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.”

A pro-abortion activist displays abortion pills as she counter-protests during a pro-life rally on March 25, 2023, in New York City. / Credit: Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 13, 2024 / 18:40 pm (CNA).

President-elect Donald Trump vowed he would not use his executive authority to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone in an interview published by Time magazine on Dec. 12.

When asked by Time whether he was “committed to making sure that the [Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] does not strip their ability to access abortion pills,” Trump said “that would be my commitment — yeah, it’s always been my commitment.”

The FDA first approved mifepristone to be used in chemical abortions in 2000. Under current law, the drug is approved to abort an unborn child up to 10 weeks’ gestation, at which point the child has a fetal heartbeat, early brain activity, and partially developed eyes, lips, and nostrils.

Mifepristone kills the child by blocking the hormone progesterone, which cuts off the child’s supply of oxygen and nutrients. A second pill, misoprostol, is taken between 24 to 48 hours after mifepristone to induce contractions meant to expel the child’s body from the mother, essentially inducing labor.

Chemical abortions account for about half of the abortions in the United States every year.

Before Trump committed to maintaining access to the abortion pill, the president-elect went back and forth with the Time reporter, stating that the issue is complex “because you have other people that, you know, they feel strongly both ways, really strongly both ways, and those are the things that are dividing up the country.”

The pledge is a blow to pro-life activists who had urged Trump to use the FDA’s power to enforce a Comstock Act prohibition on the delivery of “obscene” and “vile” products through the mail — which includes the delivery of anything designed to produce an abortion. 

Trump, who moderated his position on abortion during the 2024 presidential election, has said the states should determine their own policies on abortion. He said during the campaign that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected.

Alternatively, Trump has praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to restrict abortion and has vowed to free pro-life activists who have been imprisoned for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. He has also said he would consider a ban on federal funding for pro-abortion groups internationally and has vowed to protect religious freedom.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior, which has programs for the disabled, elderly, and impoverished, argued caring for those in need is part of its religious mission. / Credit: Catholic Charities Bureau

CNA Staff, Dec 13, 2024 / 18:20 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case brought by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior in Wisconsin after the Wisconsin Supreme Court in March ruled the agency ineligible for a religious tax exemption because Catholic Charities’ service to the poor and those in need was not “typical” religious activity. 

The Catholic Charities agency, which operates under the purview of the Diocese of Superior and has programs for the disabled, elderly, and impoverished, has argued that caring for those in need is part of its religious mission as a Catholic organization.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court had in March, however, ruled 4-3 that Catholic Charities’ activities are not “typical” religious activities because Catholic Charities serves and employs non-Catholics, does not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith,” and that its services to the poor and those in need could also be provided by secular organizations. 

As a result of the ruling, Catholic Charities remains mandated to pay into Wisconsin’s unemployment system, which it has paid into ever since Wisconsin’s tax exemption for organizations “operated primarily for religious purposes” was introduced in 1972.

In August, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior appealed the Wisconsin ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court will now decide whether a state violates the First Amendment’s religion clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise available tax exemption because the organization does not meet the state’s criteria for religious behavior. 

An amicus brief filed by the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC) explained that the Church views service to the poor as a religious activity because it is a core tenet of the faith and a command from Christ, distinguishing this command from simple philanthropy and explaining that Christian charity is about “looking at others through the very eyes of Jesus” and “seeing Jesus in the face of the poor.” 

The Catholic Church sees this duty as “inherently religious” because it expresses love for Christ, each other, and those they help, the WCC said. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est, the WCC stated that the Church “cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the sacraments and the Word.”

“Catholic Charities Bureau is on the front lines bringing love, healing, and hope to the most vulnerable members of our community,” said Bishop James Powers, bishop of the Diocese of Superior, in a Friday statement. 

“We pray the court recognizes that this work of improving the human condition is our answer to Christ’s call to serve those in need.”

Becket, the public-interest law firm representing the Catholic Charities agency, said the state of Wisconsin is “trying to make sure no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Penalizing Catholic Charities for serving Catholics and non-Catholics alike is ridiculous and wrong,” said Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. 

“We are confident the Supreme Court will reject the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s absurd ruling.” 

null / Credit: Djavan Rodriguez|Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 13, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago in a letter published this week in the archdiocesan newspaper urged Catholics to stand while receiving holy Communion and not make gestures that draw attention to oneself.

In the letter, published in the Chicago Catholic, Cupich said “the norm established by [the] Holy See for the universal Church and approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is for the faithful to process together as an expression of their coming forward as the body of Christ and to receive holy Communion standing.”

The cardinal goes on to state that “nothing should be done to impede any of these processions” and that “disrupting this moment only diminishes this powerful symbolic expression, by which the faithful in processing together express their faith that they are called to become the very Body of Christ they receive.”

“Certainly reverence can and should be expressed by bowing before the reception of holy Communion, but no one should engage in a gesture that calls attention to oneself or disrupts the flow of the procession,” he added. “That would be contrary to the norms and tradition of the Church, which all the faithful are urged to respect and observe.”

The letter does not directly state what specific gestures draw “attention to oneself.” CNA reached out to the archdiocese to request clarification but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

Although the guidelines issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) state that receiving Communion while standing is the norm, a person cannot be denied Communion because he or she is kneeling. 

“The norm for reception of holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States is standing. Communicants should not be denied holy Communion because they kneel,” according to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. “Rather, such instances should be addressed pastorally, by providing the faithful with proper catechesis on the reasons for this norm.”

The matter is also addressed in the 2004 Vatican document Redemptionis Sacramentum, which was issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments under St. John Paul II’s papacy.

The Vatican document states that Catholics “should receive Communion kneeling or standing” and that it is “not licit to deny holy Communion” based on whether a person “wishes to receive the Eucharist kneeling or standing.”

In his letter, Cupich wrote that “we all have benefited from the renewal of the Church ushered in by the Second Vatican Council.” 

“By recognizing this relationship between how we worship and what we believe, the bishops at the council made clear that the renewal of the liturgy in the life of the Church is central to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel,” the cardinal added. “It would be a mistake to reduce the renewal to a mere updating of our liturgy to fit the times we live in, as if it were a kind of liturgical facelift. We need the restoration of the liturgy because it gives us the capacity to proclaim Christ to the world.”

“The law of praying establishes the law of believing is our tradition,” Cupich wrote. “When the bishops took up the task of restoring the liturgy six decades ago, they reminded us that this ancient principle enjoys a privileged place in the Church’s tradition. It should continue to guide us in every age.”

For centuries before the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965, the norm within the Latin rite was to receive Communion on the tongue while kneeling. The council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, promulgated in 1963, did not make any changes to this norm.

Rather, in response to bishops permitting Communion in the hand while standing, the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship issued the document Memoriale Domini in 1969 to permit the practice in some circumstances but emphasized that bishops must “avoid any risk of lack of respect or of false opinions with regard to the blessed Eucharist and to avoid any other ill effects that may follow” when allowing Communion in the hand.