I didn’t preach this past Sunday, but I spent part of the day wondering what I would say if I did.
America spoke with a few Catholic preachers from Minneapolis to learn how they put into words something that is almost beyond words:
At the beginning of his homily for the Saturday evening vigil Mass on Jan. 24, R.J. Fichtinger, S.J., the pastor at Saint Thomas More Catholic parish in St. Paul, Minn., dragged a chair over from the side of the sanctuary and sat down with a sigh. He looked at his parishioners somberly. You could hear a pin drop in the pews.
“I’m tired,” he began. “I don’t know about you, church, but I am tired.”
“Just when I think I have the best homily available, then the world goes and changes. Just when I think I’ve found the answer to this frustrating time that we seem to be living in, there’s another hand that’s dealt. Just when I think it’s hit a point when it can’t get worse, I’m proven wrong.”
That morning, Border Patrol officers had shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. He was 37…
… In an interview with America, Father Fichtinger spoke about the difficulties of preaching in the wake of a crisis.
“Everyone seems to have this fatigue that is permeating their hearts,” he said. “I’ve seen an uptick of a number of people who want to come and have a conversation with a priest and try to talk out what’s going on in our world.”
“This weekend’s readings felt like they were really wonderfully matched. If we can pull them into our context, we suddenly realize that what Jesus is doing still matters in this modern world,” he said.
Sunday’s Gospel (Mt 4:12-23) takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and opens with him hearing about the arrest of John the Baptist. Jesus leaves Nazareth to travel to Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, where he recruits his first disciples, the fishermen brothers Peter and Andrew.
“Our Gospel is abundantly clear that God will call us even in times when things seem like they are at their worst. And the truth is, it might even get worse than that,” Father Fichtinger had told his parishioners…
… Joseph Gillespie, O.P., said Mass at the Basilica of St. Mary early on Sunday… He said that “we cannot dismiss” “the murdering” of Alex Pretti and the shooting of Renee Good “as mere accidents.”
“We can’t run from it. We have to open our eyes to it despite the cognitive dissonance that might come out of Washington or some other observers,” he said.
He cautioned, “Darkness does not drive out darkness. It is only through the light of Christ that we can push away the darkness that obscures the reality of what we are seeking to be as a people of faith and of hope and of love.”
